I'm listening to Air America on their first day of broadcast (on the Internet feed). Some guy phoned in and said:
The DLC drifted off and away from me.
Yes, it was President Al Gore, on the O'Franken Factor. (Other future guests - for tomorrow - include Senator Clinton and Richard Clarke.) And he said he would be a studio guest in the future. Oh, yeah, the current guest appears to be Michael Moore, who couldn't quite bring himself to apologize but promised his support this time.
I've been reading this post and the comment thread over at Making Light, where Teresa listed the implications of Clarke's testimony and then summed up:
Is there anything about the current hearings that does interest the administration? From the evidence so far, they're interested in controlling what you and I find out about what happened, and what the administration did and didn't do about it. But they're only concerned about that because we vote, and because Dubya's perennially sensitive about the lustre of his reputation. Our actual safety doesn't enter into the calculation.
There are many good and interesting posts about the negligent and calculating nature of the administration that deserve your attention, as well as a wider-ranging examination of the system and the culture, and it's worth reading the whole thread, but here are some bits that particularly caught my eye.
One aspect of the entire Clarke affair that only struck me after it had time to sink in was when Leslie Stahl made a comment about how he was bringing down a smear campaign upon himself. Well, of course. We all know that, but the thing is, we've gotten desensitized to something we need to remain aware of. Isn't it an odd thing that it's a foregone conclusion now? I'm not sure when the turning point was, but I think it was in '96, when the GOP took the House, that we could pretty much count on anything that would outrage the Republican machine generating this kind of smear campaign.
I think "outrage" is the wrong word. I think it's anything that would potentially hurt the Republican machine, or anything that might benefit Democrats, that generates the smears - and if they can't find anything to get upset about, they invent something.
(Take, for example, the pardon of Marc Rich. This didn't really outrage Republicans, but it was as if they had a checklist of everything Republicans had done to outrage Democrats in the past and, as if it was equivalent to George H.W. Bush's pardons of those who might otherwise be able to testify against him, they used the Rich pardon to show that Democratic pardons - especially by Bill Clinton, who as we know is married to Satan - are at least as evil. They didn't bother to mention that leading Republicans had been working to achieve that pardon for Rich.)
Graydon wants to spell out the danger these people present; Patrick says we've been here before and we just have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but it's do-able. Here he says:
Remember, the point isn't to build the new Jerusalem, crusade for utopia, or establish a libertarian paradise. The point is to get rid of these bastards and re-establish normal American politics, with all the usual compromises, dissemblings, backroom deals, and other moral misdemeanors that implies. All of which is one hell of an improvement on the rule of unfettered Might Makes Right, which is what we're on our way to right now.
Terry Karney usefully explains why armed revolt is no answer. My favorite on the weird-o-meter is this post from an anarchocapitalist who recognizes the dangers of the Bush administration and agrees with Graydon's critique of capitalism, but still ends up saying, "I blame regulation, not capitalism."
Jeremy Leader with a reminder that there is never a time for complacency:
The trouble with military metaphors is that this is a life-long campaign; it's not just a matter of standing in the "shield wall" for a few hours, days, or even a few years of battle; we have to keep opposing the enemies of our democratic system for the rest of our lives.
I didn't know, either. From Notes on the Atrocities: All right, enough fun and games with this Clarke business. Turns out there's actually an election on. The other guy, it further turns out, unveiled his economic plan on Friday. Who knew? Really, you'd think Kerry and his people would know better.
I'm set in my ways, and in my taste in chocolate, but reading a story like this makes me willing to try something new just because.
Widows and Orphans First... is Eric Alterman's Nation article about right-wing media attacks on a group of families of those who died on 9/11. And here is Michael Tomasky's piece from The American Prospect on RNC attacks on Clarke. 01:48 GMT
Tuesday, 30 March 2004
News & Views
"Throughout 58 years I have had much enjoyment in doing these talks and hope that some of it has passed over to the listeners, to all of whom I now say thank you for your loyalty and goodbye." (And more.)
Garry Wills on The Passion of the Christ - God in the Hands of Angry Sinners: In Gibson's film the union of the divine and human in Jesus is not explored or explicated. He is just a sponge for punishment. Which makes one wonder why so many call their viewing of the film a conversion experience. From what, or to what, are they being converted? From Christianity to philoflagellationism?
Craig Unger, author of House of Bush, House of Saud, has given an interview to Bill Scher of LiberalOasis: It's unique. Never before in history has a president of the United States -- and I'm really referring to both President Bushes -- had such a close relationship with another foreign power. Never have they had personal and financial relationships and their public policies so deeply tied to another foreign power. [...] That raises the question of: if you're in bed with the Saudis, how can you fight a real war on terrorism? And then there's the $1.4 billion question.
David Yaseen has personal reasons for feeling a need to give consideration to the meaning of Yassin and Hamas.
He doesn't appear to have permalinks, but Bob the Angry Flower has a few words to say about how much fun it is to watch Clarke punch holes in Bush's phony record on national security. 21:05 GMT
Liberal Oasis does the weekly Sunday Talkshow Breakdown and says the media still hasn't caught up with what Clarke is actually saying: That Clinton prevented terrorism, and Bush hasn't.
Jack at RuminateThis has learned that NPR is kicking his favorite morning radio guy.
Many long years ago, I was sprawled across my bed reading when the LNS news came on the radio with a story about how the DOD had mislaid cannisters of a wheat-destroying fungus they'd developed for military use. They said they had the location narrowed down to "somewhere in the midwest."
The next morning I picked The Washington Post off the doorstep and saw a picture spread across three or four columns showing, according to the caption, farmers in Kansas fighting a strange, wheat-destroying fungus of unknown origins. There was no story attached.
What makes this event particularly memorable for me is that when I finished the book I'd been reading at the time, I felt like I'd been reading the same story.
Scorpio also has a fondness for that author, and especially that book, The Sheep Look Up, and finds it even more relevant today. 13:01 GMT
Monday, 29 March 2004
Facts & theories
At Bad Attitudes, Jerome Doolittle seems downright depressed by the results of a Newsweek poll, and provides a couple of useful links to:
a theory about the source of Condoleezza Rice's current travails which is so devious that only a Xymphora could have dreamed it up - or a Dick Cheney.*
Built to Fail, showing a few more ways in which No Child Left Behind is meant to leave no public school standing.*
This is an amazing and extremely distrubing article from the East Bay Express about AXT Inc., a Fremont, CA, semiconductor company which exposed its employees to airborne arsenic at levels four times the legal limit in 2000 and was issued "Willful" citations and penalties of $313,000 by Cal/OSHA, the California workplace health and safety agency.
Company employees were almost entirely recent Chinese immigrants who spoke no English. As a result of the Cal/OSHA inspections and fines, American Xtal Technology (AXT) moved its production operations operations to Beijing, China, where it now has a 1,000-worker factory doing the work that health and safety regulators in California would not allow.
This is a large part of what people like Tom Friedman are celebrating when we send jobs abroad without the worker protections that corporations are trying to evade by moving them to other countries.
David Neiwert has a grotesque story about some right-wing creeps who objected to a bit of photoshopping by a gay artist and they drove all the way to Georgia from Fred Phelps country in Topeka, Kansas just to brutalize him.
Tapped says Noam Chomsky has a weblog, and he says this: We have several choices to make. The first is whether we want to pay attention to the real world, or prefer to keep to abstract discussions suitable to some seminar. Suppose we adopt the first alternative. Then there is another choice: electing Bush or seeking to prevent his election. [...] It's a matter of judgment, of course, but mine is that those who favor electing Bush are making a very serious error. 14:56 GMT
The Awakening
A few more reactions to the Clarke revelations, well worth reading.
It is, at this point, well within the realm of possibility that had Al Gore been elected, and retained Clinton's national security priorities, strategy, and tactics, we might have gotten a few headlines about oddball arrests in late August, 2001, and September 11th would have been just a glorious sunny day in New York. And Republicans like John Ashcroft, if not Ashcroft himself (who, remember, lost his Senate seat to the dead guy), would even now be painting Gore administration anti-terrorist plans and priorities as a sinister plot to undermine the rights of citizens -- just like Ashcroft himself did incessantly while Democrats were nominally in charge of federal law enforcement.
And, deep down, the American people are not surprised. With more than three years to go and a national security crisis on their hands they closed their eyes and held on for dear life, hoping against hope that he would rise to the occasion. He didn't, despite all the phony media hooplah that insisted he was Churchill in ermine and epaulets. We are now only eight months away from our first chance to replace him with someone more capable. People are starting to let go of their desperate need to believe.
Last night someone observed that Tim Russert looked like he was going to cry at the end of his interview. Tim Russert, who can more than most be held to blame for the disaster of the 2000 election - because it was Tim Russert who, knowing full well that Gore had probably won Florida, caved-in to his boss and called the election for Bush. And by doing so set in motion the horrific course we have been on since that day. Is it possible that Russert knows at last how much blood is on his own hands? 14:03 GMT
Seen at Bartcop
It's on Bartcop's front page right now, from a reader called Oracle Jones. Bartcop doesn't have individual links for items, but when the page rotates off the front page it will get its own URL.
Who is sabotaging Bush's campaign?
First President Bush attempts to appoint Anthony Raimondo, CEO of a manufacturing company in Nebraska, (proof that the president was serious about keeping jobs here at home) to be Manufacturing Czar at the Commerce Department. That didn't go over so well when it was revealed that Mr. Raimondo had laid off 65 of his own workers while building a $3 million factory in China that would employ 165 Chinese people.
Next, the Bush/Cheney is offering a beautiful red jacket on their reelection web site. Close inspection of the label inside the jacket reveals that it was made in Burma, a country banned from selling products in the United States for its well documented use of slave labor in clothing manufacture and other industries. Lastly, the White House is now complaining about the release of a new book by Richard Clarke. Clarke, the top anti-terrorism official under every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan, has written "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror" that excoriates the Bush administration for ignoring terrorism.
The White House immediately turned on the former long time public servant (and registered Republican, I might add) with its usual mixture of characterization assassination, disinformation and outright lies. One fact that particularly outraged the Bushies was the timing of the release of the book, in the middle of the Presidential race.
"Who," the White House ranted, "would release such a book at this particular time other than a partisan closet Democrat."
Yep, you guessed it. The White House!
Quoting Mr. Clarke, "I wanted the book to come out much earlier but the White House has a policy of reviewing the text of all books written former White House personnel-to review them for security reasons. And they actually took a very long time to do that. This book could have come out much earlier. It's the White House that decided that decided when it would be published, not me."
So I ask the question again. Who is sabotaging the Bush/Cheney campaign?
You've got to admit, they couldn't look any worse if they'd planned it. 13:13 GMT
Sunday, 28 March 2004
Web crawl
Feorag has two questions about why the gore in The Passion of the Christ is more acceptable for general public consumption than erotica is. Maybe you can supply the answers. Meanwhile, it's time to play paper dolls! Nice set of fridge magnets, too.
Atrios says it's time to revoke the Catholic Church's tax-exempt status now that they seem to have turned into part of the Bush campaign organization.
Jack Balkin says about the Pledge case: Rather Newdow will lose because no matter what the existing doctrine says the Supreme Court is not going to hold that government officials' use of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance violates the Establishment Clause. The doctrine will simply be parsed or altered in such a way as to avoid this result. He also discusses the revised federal marriage amendment.
Which New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Are You? As usual, I hated this poll, which asked me which guy was gonna play me in the movie, and I didn't know who some of them were and I knew the rest of them were definitely not going to play me in the movie. (We all know that Cher is going to play me in the movie - now that Walter Matthau is no longer available - right?) (via)
One of the more exciting moments of the last few days has been Bill Frist's fantasy moment, covered ably as usual by Josh Marshall:
Earlier this afternoon I wrote a lengthy post [...] on the shameless and I suspect (for himself) eventually quite damaging speech Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist gave on the Senate floor this afternoon, accusing Dick Clarke of being a perjuror and a profiteer on the blood of 9/11. [...] I never cease to be amazed at these guys' ability to outpace my ability to impute bad faith to them.
A few hours after accusing Clarke of perjury, he admits that he has no idea -- not just no idea whether he perjured himself, which is a fairly technical question, but no idea whether there were any inconsistencies at all.
John Kerry must have seen the humor in it, too, because as Suburban Guerilla tells me, he is right on it:
"My challenge to the Bush administration would be, if (Clarke) is not believable and they have reason to show it, then prosecute him for perjury because he is under oath, Kerry told CBS's MarketWatch.
"They have a perfect right to do that," said Kerry.
Republicans in Congress want to declassify testimony Clarke gave before Congress in 2002 that they claim is at odds with accounts critical of the administration in the aide's recently published book.
Understand: If they go after Clarke, pre-trial discovery allows Clarke access to EVERYTHING.
This administration thrives on keeping the public in the dark - so they are not gonna let that happen. 16:58 GMT
AUSTIN, Texas - Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader is receiving a little help from his friends - and from George W. Bush's friends.
Nearly 10 percent of contributors who have given Nader at least $250 have a history of supporting the Republican president, national GOP candidates or the party, according to computer-assisted review of financial records.
Among the new crop of Nader donors: actor and former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein, Florida frozen-food magnate Jeno Paulucci and Pennsylvania oil-company executive Terrence Jacobs. All have strong ties to the GOP.
These are all people who are still supporting Bush, you understand, and not disappointed Republicans who just can't bear to throw their support to the criminal administration. And I love their "principled" reasons:
"Did I give $1,000 to Ralph Nader because I hope and believe he will be president? No," California business executive Charles Ashman said. "I don't believe that any more than Ralph Nader does. But I was offended to see this campaign to squelch him from being a candidate."
Sure you were, just like you were furious at the way Rev. Jesse Jackson was frozen out back in the days when he was actually the front-runner. Remember all those Republicans who were so eager to promote Jackson's candidacy and gave him money?
Just wanted to brighten things up a bit, and preferred this picture to the thumbnail of the bra. (I've been disappointed with their presentation, lately.) Alternatively....
Once upon a time, it would have been the biggest news of the week. But last night the only place I saw it was at War Liberal:
Researchers find possible chink in HIV's armor Maybe, just maybe, researchers at UAB have found something that will help in the fight against AIDS. It appears that the virus, in its early stages of infection, might be more vulnerable to antibodies. (This might explain why infection rates for HIV are relatively low, and why it tends to attack those with already compromised immune systems. My speculation there.)
UnfairWitness has an item on the former FBI wiretap translator who has publicly called Condi Rice a liar for her claim that they had no "specific" information warning them about 9/11. Check it out and have a look at the accompanying photograph.
In a post below that I wrote hastily while hurrying away to work, I inadvertently identified the NYT article I was quoting as being from The Washington Post (now fixed). The Post article, which I meant to link at the time in the same piece, is this utterly damning item that details the complete contradictions in some of Condi Rice's statements. 18:43 GMT
Slumming
I was just following a referrer link and found a dark pocket on The Other Side. The referral came from here where one right-blogger interviews another:
What are your favourite blogs?
> The girlies, mostly (they're on my blogroll). I even enjoy Avedon Carol.
Who are your intellectual heroes?
> Roger Scruton; The Pope.
He even enjoys Avedon Carol, despite the fact Avedon Carol horrifies Roger Scruton and also laughs in his face. (Really - face to face on the BBC!)
So I wandered over and looked at this guy's weblog, and found that neither of us is particularly fond of Polly Toynbee, but also found this:
Terrible news is revealed today by Maeve Kennedy, in the Guardian:
"Increasing numbers of middle-aged, middle-class, white people are visiting Britain's archives to research their family histories. Attracting young users, particularly young black users, however, remains an elusive aspiration".
Shocking. Maybe they should give away free crack cocaine to every entrant.
Uh, right.
But while I was there I followed a link to Diana Moon's Letter from Gotham for a look at where the sea-change has brought her, and it's brought her into the grip of sanity:
ON HANGING UP THE OLD NEOCON FLAG. One of the nicest condolence letters I received was from Dave Trowbridge, whose political trajectory since 9/11 roughly parallels my own. Hearing Dave's story made me feel a little less isolated. Since becoming an opponent of the war I lost all most of my friends on the other side. In fact, not one of them so much as acknowledged the recent loss, a fact I cannot attribute to ignorance, as news travels quickly in the blogosphere, even from a no-longer-widely-read blog such as mine.
I didn't mean to go off on that. What I meant to write about was Dave's take on James Lileks. I was never a huge fan of Lileks* but I can understand what people saw in him. It's depressing in a way to realize that someone you once liked a lot has become repugnant to you. That's exactly what happened with me. Every morning I'd line up my hitlist: Frontpagemag, NatRev, Sullivan, Instapundit...(I could never stomach Den Beste--the moment I read his prediction that Netanyahu was certainly going to be the next PM of Israel I realized I was dealing with a phony)...reading them provided a sense of psychic security. It was, I now realize, a fake camaraderie, which compensated for an insecurity about my own convictions, which pathology I believe grips all neocons.
Perhaps there should be a new entry in the DSM: neoconitis, denoting reflexive belligerance, a tendency to blame others for one's own problems, an irresistible tendency to fabricate non-existent threats while minimizing real ones, an obsessive need to crush dissent, and an equally obsessive need to force other societies into unsuitable cultural templates by means of ill-advised military adventures paid for with other generations' money.
(And other people's blood, she forgot to say.)
Perhaps Charles Krauthammer should be alerted.
[Deepest sympathy on the loss of your mother, Diana.] 16:19 GMT
The Chicago Trib has a story answering the question of who the "reporter" was in the Medicaid commercial put out by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHH).
Patrick Nielsen Hayden did a post about the abysmal Medicaid "reform" the other day and pointed to this helpful summary of the plan, along with this clip from The Daily Show in which Jon Stewart helpfully points out that the commercial, contrary to DHH claims, is entirely uninformative and is in essence just another campaign talking point from the RNC paid for with your tax dollars.This isn't the first time the administration has charged you so that it could toot its own horn about doing something for you that it hasn't really done for you. Their record of corruption - and make no mistake, this is corruption - is incredible, and should not be left off of the list of things we need to keep going after them for.
But give special attention to this kind of thing, because the administration can keep using your money right up to the election to campaign for itself under cover of ordinary news or "educating the public", but thanks to the Campaign Finance legislation, ordinary citizen groups cannot buy advertising to counter any of these lies. 18:31 GMT
Political Wire says: The latest Rasmussen Tracking Poll shows Sen. John Kerry at 47%, President Bush at 44%, and "some other candidate" at 4%.
At the DNC blog, Kicking Ass: The White House has finally stepped over the line. After doing everything in its power to obstruct the work of the 9/11 commission, the Bush administration is now manipulating the proceedings by feeding questions to the Republican commissioners.
Kevin Drum wonders if Tom DeLay will be leaving his leadership post now that he's been caught, you know, being totally corrupt - but even if he does, will it make any difference? (Honestly, these guys would have to be in a top-security jail, probably in isolation, before they'd stop doing what they're doing.)
Elton Beard caught someone playing the race card: Robert Novak: Congressman, do you believe, you're a sophisticated guy, do you believe, watching these hearings, do you believe that Dick Clarke has a problem with this African-American woman, Condoleezza Rice?
Josh Marshall: Rice truly has the best of all worlds. She hangs back at the White House shooting spit balls at Clarke and the rest of them. But she doesn't have to back anything up because she doesn't have to testify under oath or get questioned. (Josh has lots more on the campaign to destroy Clarke, too.)
Paul Krugman figures the only reason Clarke would risk the wrath of the most vindictive administration in history is because it's true, "the Bush administration is a complete fraud, especially when it comes to the war on terror."
Huey has the campaign commercials for the Almost President: here and and here. 15:20 GMT
Thursday, 25 March 2004
Clarke: True Class
Read this post at Electrolite, and then go into the comments to read this one from Michael, who as you may recall had arrived at work in the World Trade Center just before the second plane hit:
And so I watched Clarke's testimony on CNN today. Taped it in fact because I had a feeling that it would have all the makings of a Historical Document.
Anybody who has been paying attention to these hearings will know that all of the witnesses have started their testimony with a lengthy statement explaining this or that about their role in the lead up to 9/ll, much of it self-justifying, much of it saying, well, you know, we were busy with other stuff. So on and so forth.
Mr. Clarke did otherwise. His statement was brief and to the point.
He made a heart-felt apology to the American people for failing to stop 9/ll. He said he did his best. He said a lot of people did their best. But in the end, it didn't matter because they had failed the American people, most especially the victims, and the families of the victims who died on 9/11.
The members victim's families who were in the room broke into applause.
I stared at the screen shocked.
And then I, yep, I will admit it here: I started crying.
Jeralyn Merritt reports at Talk Left that a federal judge in California is allowing medical marijuana to be used as a defense against a cultivation charge. And in Canada, marijuana is to be sold in pharmacies. Wow.
Jeralyn also introduces us to a weblog on religion, The Revealer, which has some great posts up, including this one on freestyle evangelicals - including Jimmy Carter and many others like him for whom religion is important and that's why they are not supporting Bush.
David Neiwert directs us to his just-completed three-part series on his experiences at the 2001 Seattle Mardi Gras Riots.
Gail Sheehy in The New York Observer, Four 9/11 Moms Watch Rumsfeld And Grumble: It is still incredible to the moms that their Secretary of Defense continued to sit in his private dining room at the Pentagon while their husbands were being incinerated in the towers of the World Trade Center. 17:12 GMT
War Zones
Billmon observes that Republicans' snarky remarks about Kerry's war service reveal "the degree to which the Republicans no longer feel it necessary to pander to (or even show much respect for) those who served in Vietnam." (via)
Liberal Oasis observes that the folklore about Bush's response to terrorism has been chipped away by Clarke and the commission, but says the lambasting Clinton's administration is taking isn't fair. The difference between Bush and Clinton is that Clinton was doing something and stopped several attacks from taking place. Bill Scher also takes a look inside Air America Radio, and by the way has an article in The Star Tribune called "What Europe is Truly Doing" - and what they're doing is trying to disentangle themselves from Bush's disastrous "anti-terror" plan. We should do the same.
Alan Bisbort explains that Bush is Too bad to be true: Because the vast majority of Americans agree that a clean environment is a desirable thing, any loudly partisan attacks on Bush in this regard, no matter how justified they are -- and no American president has ever been as bad on the environment as Bush -- have a tendency to backfire. This is simply because people can't believe anyone, or any government, could be that bad.
Newsnight had Salam Pax on doing his video diary of a religious festival in Baghdad that's been illegal as long as Saddam was in power. They had to import a couple million folks from Iran to show them how to do it. They had these chain flails they were smacking their own backs with. It had something to do with the death and suffering of Imam Hussein, I think. It seemed a bit idolatrous to me but what do I know?
Anyway, he was a dumpy guy with a disappearing hairline, just so you know. 03:25 GMT
Nick Smith's allegation that a member of the House leadership tried to bribe him into supporting the Medicare drug bill. According to Roll Call, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the matter, too. But a Kalamazoo talk-radio host whose scoop made it impossible to sweep Smith's allegations under the rug is out of a job.
Kevin Vandenbroek, formerly of WKZO radio, should have gotten a raise for his contribution to the Smith story, which was picked up by Slate and subsequently by just about every other national publication covering the Medicare bribe. Instead, Vandenbroek was fired last month, apparently for political reasons.
Hesiod, recommending a storm of angry letters, has contact details for WKZO and the local broadcasters and papers. He's right - this kind of thing keeps happening because only right-wingers make their displeasure known.
I found this quote from an article about making books free online at Modulator, who thinks the RIAA needs to pay attention to this:
What happened was precisely the reverse of what the publisher expected. Instead of lost sales, the sales of the book shot up. In the few weeks since the text went online, more copies of this book left our warehouse than during the whole of the last decade.
Readers of The Sideshow will, of course, be unsurprised.
Pacifica Radio Reborn - Pacifica has been with us since 1950. But a funny thing happened not so long ago that is part of the growing takeover of media by the right:
At midnight December 23, 2000 on Instructions from Pacifica Executive Director Bessie Wash, all the locks at WBAI were changed, and security guards hired by Ms. Wash began barring entrance to the station. One of those people barred was Amy Goodman the host of the award winning show "Democracy Now." She was told by newly appointed interim general manager Ultrice Leid that she could not go in. Ultrice Leid was a programmer at WBAI recently passed over for a Program Director's position by long time General Manager Valerie van Isler. Ms. van Isler found herself subsequently fired as well, Program Director Bernard White - co-host of the morning drive show - was also fired.
Fortunately, this was turned around, but like I say, there is never a time to be complacent.
Though plenty of journalists have pooh-poohed Stern's concerns, anyone who's been paying attention knows how accurate his assessments are. When Clear Channel president John Hogan appeared before members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, he openly admitted that though Stern had not committed any fresh sins, the company decided to drop him anyway.
The more I hear about this, the more I think Howard may be right about it. Though this snowball started rolling at least 20 years ago, these things have been happening more and more often over the last three years.
Unless Sen. Byron Dorgan's (D-ND) controversial provision throws an anti-consolidation wrench in the anti-indecency works, [The Nation] the Senate will likely pass this indecency legislation (how many Senators will vote against "decency?") and the effect on free speech will be immediate.
"The very notion (of the legislation) runs counter to everything prescribed in the First Amendment," Marvin Johnson, an ACLU legislative counsel, said. "The vagueness of the language will lead broadcasters and individuals to stifle their remarks and remain silent rather than run the risk of facing an FCC fine. Not only will our First Amendment rights suffer, but so will the national dialogue."
"This is going to be a very dark day in our history," Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y) said. "We're going down the slippery slope of eroding our Constitution."
Meanwhile, Pissed Off American has a look at pseudo-journalism used to sell the budget-busting prescription drug plan shoe-horned through Congress last session.
02:33 GMT
Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'
Did anyone read or hear that and think that the report actually had an accompanying note saying, "Wrong answer. ...Do it again"? I sure didn't. I assumed this was a paraphrase or summing up of something that conveyed the same message in more formal - and probably more oblique - terms.
It turns out that the notation on the returned document, from Steven Hadley, was,
Please update and resubmit.
John Cole of Balloon Juice thinks that makes Clarke a liar. He considers Hadley's note to be no more than a responsible request for follow-up.
I don't think so. Clarke was short-handing the description of an entire process in which the administration repeatedly refused to accept what was already demonstrably true: that Al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11 and Iraq was not. There was never any reason to think Iraq had anything to do with it. The report in question was not even necessary, and was only done because the administration wanted Clarke to come up with the non-existent goods on Iraq.
The term "resubmit" means the submission has not been accepted. If Clarke thinks his conclusions were rejected, it's because they were. It's pretty clear, in the context of what had been going on, that "Please update and resubmit" means precisely the same thing as "Wrong answer. ...Do it again." We already know what the right answer is, because - as we may recall from Barton Gellman's story in The Washington Post - Clarke had already given the same conclusion to George W. Bush himself on September 12th:
"Go back over everything, everything," Bush said, according to Clarke's account. "See if Saddam did this."
"But Mr. President, al Qaeda did this," Clarke replied.
"I know, I know, but . . . see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred."
Reminded that the CIA, FBI and White House staffs had sought and found no such link before, Clarke said, Bush spoke "testily." As he left the room, Bush said a third time, "Look into Iraq, Saddam."
So, in essence, Bush is telling him to "resubmit" every time he doesn't like Clarke's answer.
I understand the process of making submissions to government, having been asked for a few myself, and no one expects you to resubmit the same document in light of new evidence. I'm sure Clarke knows that, too. If our intelligence services had unearthed new information that contradicted their earlier findings, that would be the substance of a new report, not an addendum to an old one. I sincerely doubt that anyone would have had to tell Clarke that if the situation changed he should inform the administration. That was, after all, his job.
Cole's "evidence" for further alleged lying by Clarke appears to be based on the WashPostseries from 2001 that painted Bush as some kind of a decisive leader in the aftermath of 9/11. But we all know that the authors of that piece were not present in the White House to view the events described -
This series, by Post reporters Bob Woodward and Dan Balz, is based on interviews with President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other key officials. Interviews were supplemented by notes of National Security Council meetings made available, along with notes taken by several participants.
- rather, they were working stenography for an administration that produced heroic fiction about a president we do not have. (You don't really think that Bush and his coterie would have given interviews admitting that they'd screwed-up royally, lied about where Bush was and why he was flying around the midwest, and tried to figure out ways to ignore Al Qaeda so they could chase Saddam instead, do you?) While Bush's supporters have been sleeping in their cocoons, they seem unaware that the series in question was the beginning of the end for Bob Woodward's credibility; most of its "factual" details have been "updated" continually since it was originally published, and as each story changes when new information about what really went on in the White House comes to light.
Time and again, people leave the administration when it becomes clear that the level of irresponsibility and dissembling this White House requires is more than they can bear to go along with - or to provide. Time and again, when they give their reasons, they are followed by a campaign of smears in an attempt to dismiss what they have to say. How many times does this have to happen before people wake up and wonder why that is, and whether they should really be carrying water for these people? 23:40 GMT
Bill Scher has a couple of observations about the reaction to Clarke's revelations. The first is a memo to the press: Fierce Damage Control Means Something To Hide. But the second is this: Liberals Not Hysterical Enough, Who Knew? Well, it's like I've been saying since Watergate: No matter how cynical I am, I'm still not cynical enough.
Skippy returns to the subject of the disappearing middle-class and makes an astute observation about how moving companies abroad to make production less expensive doesn't necessarily translate to cheap prices at home. He's right; savings for the company are far less often passed on to the consumer than is being claimed. The truth is that the money goes to the guys at the top and their investors. You know that when their costs go up, those costs are passed on to you in rising prices. How often have you seen the price go down as a result of savings in production costs?
Gregory Harris at Planet Swank briefly notes that the press got a little weird, with The Wall Street Journal putting a "devastating compilation of the lies inconsistencies in Administration statements about 9/11" on the front page, while The Washington Post "devotes op-ed space to Condi Rice for a "rebuttal" on the very day she refuses to make the same claims under oath before the 9/11 Commission."
I like the way John McCrory phrased it (and not just because he linked me): But it isn't just the freakish and bizarre theories of this crowd that are dismaying. It's that their perspective was stuck in an outdated Cold War worldview. When challenged by a new form of warfare - stateless terrorism - that commenced with America's second Pearl Harbor, these folks responded as though nothing had changed; Rather than fight this new form of war and fight the people who attacked us, they chose to fight a conventional war against people who didn't.
Strata Lucida notices A Telling Slip in Bush's speech celebrating the anniversary of the invasion.
Suburban Guerilla dances on Powell's head. Oh, I forgot, I promised myself I'd try to remember always to refer to him as Colin "My Lai" Powell. 00:48 GMT
Tuesday, 23 March 2004
In other news...
At Balkinization, Hate Speech Codes For Broadcasting? on the FCC's recent decision that Bono's use of the word "fucking" (as in "fucking brilliant") during the Golden Globes violated federal laws against broadcast indecency.
Feorag passed me a link for this story in the Edinburgh News: Huge rise in vice girl attacks since city tolerance zone axed. ATTACKS on prostitutes have increased tenfold since the city's unofficial tolerance zone was scrapped, new figures revealed today. Of course, they were warned. Of course, they won't learn from it. (Have I mentioned lately that liberal policies reduce crime?)
Remember Yuval Rubinstein's prediction when the man to smear was Paul O'Neill? Well, he was right. (Also, this is worth a read: Having said that, it is important to remember that Republicans have not won a presidential election outright since 1988. What's disturbing is their utter inability to accept this.)
Lambert has the quote from Condi Rice laying the decisions of the Bush administration at Clinton's feet. (And Tresy reports on Al Qaeda's endorsement of Bush in the election.)
Liberal Oasis notes an interesting sidelight to the Clarke revelations, in that Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) is pretty openly not disagreeing with Clarke's evaluation (in addition to which he never attacks John Kerry). On the other hand, there's Joseph Lieberman....(And Richard Lugar may also have his doubts about the Bush plan for the future of Iraq, according to Matt Yglesias at Tapped.) 12:12 GMT
Monday, 22 March 2004
What the Papers say
The New York Times, I'm told, put the Clarke story deep inside the front section on page 18 or so. If this is truly the case, a letter-writing campaign is certainly in order - a deluge. Write to the NYT and tell them that an important story like this belongs on the front page.
In a new book, Richard A. Clarke, who was counterterrorism coordinator for President Bill Clinton and President Bush, asserts that while neither president did enough to prevent the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has undermined American national security by using the 9/11 attacks for political advantage and ignoring the threat of Al Qaeda in order to invade Iraq.
Mr. Clarke, who has spent more than 30 years as a civil servant in Republican and Democratic administrations, issues a highly critical assessment of the Bush White House in "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," which is being released on Monday.
The accusations by Richard A. Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism specialist, that the Bush administration failed to take the threat of Al Qaeda seriously before Sept. 11 overtook other campaign developments on Sunday and promised to reverberate this week when the Sept. 11 commission conducts a public hearing.
Note that the story does not begin with the damning information that the White House actually tried to avoid going after Al Qaeda and instead exploit the situation to attack Iraq. The following paragraph goes immediately to:
The White House moved quickly to respond to the harsh criticism by Mr. Clarke and his account of how top White House advisers were fixated on Iraq. It issued a detailed rebuttal that said Mr. Bush had "specifically recognized the threat posed by Al Qaeda."
The Washington Post site has two items, both by Barton Gellman, one of which says it appears on page A1, and in contrast to the NYT articles, they concentrate on the response to 9/11 at the top rather than the pre-9/11 negligence. I didn't like the title, though - Memoir Criticizes Bush 9/11 Response, which suggests this is just a book review rather than the word of the man who was actually in charge of terrorism for the United States government. However, the top grafs do spell out the problem with Iraq:
On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, according to a newly published memoir, President Bush wandered alone around the Situation Room in a White House emptied by the previous day's calamitous events.
Spotting Richard A. Clarke, his counterterrorism coordinator, Bush pulled him and a small group of aides into the dark paneled room.
"Go back over everything, everything," Bush said, according to Clarke's account. "See if Saddam did this."
"But Mr. President, al Qaeda did this," Clarke replied.
"I know, I know, but . . . see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred."
Reminded that the CIA, FBI and White House staffs had sought and found no such link before, Clarke said, Bush spoke "testily." As he left the room, Bush said a third time, "Look into Iraq, Saddam."
Washington, D.C.: Are there any allegations in Mr. Clarke's book that have been specifically refuted? We are hearing plenty of vague, blanket dismissals of his claims, and suggestions of his political motives, but nothing on the substance of his argument.
Barton Gellman: Not clear if you mean refute or rebut. For the latter, the White House says, for instance, that Clarke is wrong to say Bush delayed use of the armed Predator drone to go after bin Laden. Administration says the drone just wasn't ready until at lease August or early September, so they didn't lose much time before 9/11. My reporting a long time ago (my producer, I think, will post the links) found that it could have flown by early spring, and that Clarke among others pushed hard for that. The administration hadn't decided its terror policy yet, and didn't force resolution to a Pentagon v. CIA dispute on who would be responsible for using and paying for the drone. (Not what you may think -- neither one wanted it.)
Arlington, Va.: Everyone blew off Paul O'Neill's book as the ravings of an old man. Do you think people will take another look at what he had to say in light of Clarke's book which sounds like it corroborates much of what O'Neill said.
Barton Gellman: I don't know about "everyone." His book got the sharply partisan responses that have become usual in American politics in recent years. O'Neill is generally seen as a fairly serious guy, who speaks his mind, and people agreed or disagreed mainly from their own political values and judgments. Where he and Clarke overlap is in asserting that the Bush team had made up its mind to invade Iraq long before 9/11. Clarke offers more documentation, because he was in more of those meetings.
I'm glad he picked up that distinction between "refute" and "rebut". I've noticed a lot of articles and public statements where (partisan or just lame) hacks treat any old responses by the White House as refutations when, in fact, no charges are ever properly answered at all, and when they seem to be getting direct answers, those answers turn out to be lies. There hasn't been a single refutation yet, to this or any other charges. A denial is not a refutation. And neither is a non-denial denial. 23:49 GMT
Maniacs & Lying Liars - again and again
The big news, of course, is Richard Clarke's book tour, which has involved a number of fascinating interviews, including on 60 Minutes last night. Atrios and Josh Marshall have both been covering this, and at the moment it all seems so devastating that the only question some people have is whether the other side will manage to smear Clarke effectively or just crash his plane.
Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'
So it's absolutely clear: Our intelligence experts were all correct in their assessment, and the White House itself refused to accept their judgment.
If Richard Clarke is right, and there is every reason to think he is, the US was days, if not hours, away from letting Osama Bin Laden get away with murder. [...] Perle and Wolfwowitz, despite all available evidence, would have let Osama sit in Afghanistan untouched just to get Saddam. The fact that no state would have ever launched a 9/11 attack and not expect a B-2 response was beyond them.[My emphasis.]
Let's keep this in mind, and it's really simple: the Bush response to 9/11 would have let Osama get away with murder, killing thousands of innocent people. Only the professionals of the CIA and FBI prevented this insanity. When Bush was told that "you'll lose the whole world", was he prevented from attacking Iraq.
Temporarily. But, ultimately, they thought they could lie their way past that, too. And when it didn't work, it was everyone else's fault, of course - the French are "our enemy", "Old Europe" is out of touch, etc. Josh Marshall on the Clarke interview:
One chilling note in this passage is that Paul Wolfowitz, the prime architect and idea man of the second Iraq war, spent the early months of the Bush administration focused on "Iraqi terrorism against the United States", something that demonstrably did not even exist. A rather bad sign. [...] That screw up is a reality -- their inability to come clean about it is, I suspect, is at the root of all the covering up and stonewalling of the 9/11 commission. And Democrats are both right and within their rights to call the White House on it. But screw-ups happen; mistakes happen. What is inexcusable is the inability, indeed the refusal, to learn from them.
Rather than adjust to this different reality, on September 12th, the Bush war cabinet set about using 9/11 -- exploiting it, really -- to advance an agenda which had, in fact, been largely discredited by 9/11. They shoe-horned everything they'd been trying to do before the attacks into the new boots of 9/11. And the fit was so bad they had to deceive the public and themselves to do it.
As the international relations expert John Ikenberry noted aptly in a recent essay, the Bush hardliners "fancy themselves tough-minded thinkers. But they didn't have the courage of their convictions to level with the American people on what this geopolitical adventure in Iraq was really about and what it would cost."
An RNC talking-point is that Clarke has spilled the beans on the White House because of sour grapes after being demoted. The Stepford Press, naturally, is carrying water for them, as usual, as Atrios notes:
Stahl thinks the important issue is that Clarke's demotion may have caused him to throw a hissy fit. I think the important issue is the fact that when the Bush administration came into power, they decided that the position of National Coordinator for Counter-terrorism wasn't important enough to be a Cabinet level position.
One of the most scandalous actions of the administration, which I have referred to on several occasions, was that they pulled the FBI off of Al Qaeda as soon as they got into office. The press scandal is that this has not been treated as headline news, as it should have been immediately, certainly after 9/11. Atrios briefly notes what he calls Operation Ignore:
Newsweek has learned that in the months before 9/11, the U.S. Justice Department curtailed a highly classified program called "Catcher's Mitt" to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States, after a federal judge severely chastised the FBI for improperly seeking permission to wiretap terrorists. During the Bush administration's first few months in office, Attorney General John Ashcroft downgraded terrorism as a priority, choosing to place more emphasis on drug trafficking and gun violence, report Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas in the March 29 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 22).
It's nice that Newsweek has finally learned something I've been talking about for more than two years. And remember, this was all going on at a time of heightened awareness of an impending attack by Al Qaeda. They had been warned by the Clinton administration, bin Laden had gone on radio with threats, allied intel was sending alerts, and John Ashcroft was switching to chartered flights rather than flying commercially. (Oh, and Bush went on a month-long vacation.)
And then the towers fell, and then they apparently went into paralysis because they couldn't get our intelligence people to support the fantasy that Iraq was responsible. And then, having bombed Afghanistan even though they really wanted to bomb Iraq, they decided not to let it go, and started making up lies to get us in, and then lies to cover their lies. Guess who's the latest defender of the regency:
PHILADELPHIA, PA: On CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer on Sunday, Sen. Arlen Specter told America that the Bush Administration NEVER CLAIMED a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
It has always baffled me that Arlen Specter once had a reputation (and still has it among some people) for some kind of hard-nosed integrity. On almost every opportunity that I've had to observe this man in action, he's demonstrated something considerably lower than those qualities.
But never mind, this is just one bit-player in the grand play before us at the moment. The administration changes its story every ten minutes and they've always got the chorus coming in behind them to "straighten it out". The truth, as Atrios shows, is that the administration based a considerable portion of its case for invasion on a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda and Iraqi participation in 9/11 - a connection that many soldiers currently serving in the Gulf still believe is why they are there.
Now, it would be too much to expect someindividuals to ever admit that they have had the wool pulled over their eyes by maniacs and liars, but I'm still kind of ticked off at thepeople who once supported the invasion but now, having realized they fell for a sucker-play, think the reason folks like me could put 1+1 together to get 2 were able to do so - when they couldn't - only because we "hate Bush" and therefore wouldn't have believed him even if what he was saying had been obviously true and as plain as the nose on my face.
That is, if Bush had been saying, "1+1=2," we would all have instantly turned around and said that, no, it equals six, or seven, or something else.
Yes, I've beefed about this a couple of times before, but I'm not done with it, yet. It irritates me that these people who think they are being "moderate" and "reasonable" still think they can dismiss the clarity of others who were sharper than they were as some kind of insanity.
Let's get this straight, oh Moderate Matt and Cool-headed Kevin, you guys were the ones who suffered temporary insanity. And we weren't. Even as the towers were falling, we never forgot that one plus one still equals two.
Richard Clarke has only provided the details of what we already knew - what has always been known.
It has always been known that bin Laden hated Saddam and that there was no common cause between them.
It has always been known that Iraq had absolutely no reason to launch a 9/11 and had many, many good reasons to want nothing to do with any such thing.
It has always been known that the Bush administration are liars. They were lying from at least the moment Bush received the Republican nomination, on the record and in front of God and everyone.
If someone has been lying to me consistently, why should I believe them when they are now telling me something that is obviously not true?
The attack on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 changed none of these things. It did not mean "everything had changed." It did not suddenly mean Saddam had inexplicably become suicidal. It did not make George W. Bush into the brave man of integrity he had never been in his life and had certainly proven on 9/11 he was still not, as he hid on Airforce One and scuttled away at a time when he should have been leading his nation.
What changed for you on 9/11? Did you learn that terrorism existed?
It was something I already knew. I have said this before and I will say it again: I have sat in my home and felt my house shake from the force of a bomb in the Docklands area. I have mourned the destruction of the atmospheric warrens of Camden Town, a favorite wandering-place for me. I've thanked my luck when I just missed being in a department store that was bombed at a time when I had originally planned to be shopping there.
And I've watched the over-reaction of a government that seemed to think it could eliminate terrorism with restrictions on civil liberties that only provoked further terrorism. (And which, not incidentally, gave the police opportunities to abuse favorite targets who had nothing to do with terrorism. Or, as one taxi driver remarked ironically to me, "Did you ever know there were so many black people in the IRA?")
On 9/11 I watched the buildings fall over and over on my screen and could feel my nightmare unfold before me. Not everything had changed, not yet - but it was about to. And you let it.
Housekeeping note: Elayne Riggs wrote to let me know that the RSS feed from Blogmatrix no longer seems to be working. I haven't got the replacement together yet, but I'm seeking advice.
Josh Marshall has a smart post up about some campaign missteps by Kerry. Someone needs to tell him that he can't be on vacation at all between now and November. And right now he needs to be playing hard to make sure the Republicans don't get a chance to define him. This is what fighting is all about, and this is what Democrats were furious at the Gore team for not doing. Kerry and his surrogates have to be in there all the time to make sure there is a response to every slur. And there's plenty to respond with. As Josh says: The winning campaign against the president is equally clear. He doesn't tell the truth. Almost nothing he has told the American people has turned out to be true (from budgets to jobs, from wmds to his personal past). In many cases, that's because he's lied to them. In others, it's because he's promised things he had no reason to believe were true. In some instances, he just failed to deliver. And Josh rightly points out that the "credibility" issue in the Bush campaign amounts to: "Vote Bush: When Dangers Threaten, You Know He'll Go Berserk!"
This post is from the Bartcop Forum, posted by Jody B:
I Want To Talk About Platform & No Child Left Behind
Today I attended a district platform committee meeting in Iowa's southeast district. I volunteered to work on the Education Sub-Committee. There was a college administrator in attendance, a kindergarten teacher, a school librarian and me. I said that our convention had voted for a repeal of the No Child Left Behind Act. The administrator said, "Let's be realistic. That's not going to happen." Well when we had sifted through the platforms from thirteen of the counties represented, seven of them had a Plank about the Repeal of the No Child Left Behind Act. I let the committee bat the subject around until the librarian finally asked me what I thought about the subject.
I said, if you guys so choose, there are three of you and one of me, but I came here to represent my constituents for voting for a repeal of the No Child Left Behind Act. In my hometown of 23,000, we have our one and only high school and one of our elementary schools on the at-risk list. If we lose our high school funding, we would be looking for area schools to transfer over a thousand high school students to. Since we are the largest town in Wapello Co., that means we would be trying to divide those students between the five school districts closest to us, and those communities are a third to half the size of ours. I'm standing behind my convention's decision to endorse a plank for a repeal of the No Child Left Behind Act."
Well, to my utter amazement, the debate stopped, and the rest of my committee members agreed to support the 'Repeal' plank as I had written it.
I am hoping that there are others of you out there who will take an aggressive stand on this subject as well. Eventually, Congress is going to have to hear us, folks. Just keep talking to them. Don't let up, and stand by your convictions.
To me, trying to fix it is like trying to fix a house that was built on sinking sand. No matter how much we attempt to shore it up, it's never going to be a solid, reliable house to live in. We need Congress to go back to the drawing board and come up with something realistic that can actually be implemented, something professional educators have had input on, and something with a fair evaluation process.
Facing these issues head-on is the only way to deal with them - this is a program that cannot work to do what it purports to do, and there is no point in pretending otherwise. This is a fine example of someone who is in a position to work for change and simply getting down and doing the business.
And this post in the same thread provides some needed background for what the program does and why it can't work - not least because it is not designed to work, but to destroy public education. 11:40 GMT
Condi Caught in Lie to Cover White House Failure to Remove bin Laden before 9/11 In an interview with Lisa Myers of NBC this week, Condi Rice went on record with an easily provable lie. She claims one reason Osama Bin Laden wasn't taken out in the summer or early autumn of 2001 before the 9/11 disaster is because the armed Predator surveillance craft - which had had OBL in its sights - was not operational. But according to several sources, this is a lie. The "Washington Post" reported: "On September 15, 2001, CIA Director Tenet tells Bush, 'The unmanned Predator surveillance aircraft that was now armed with Hellfire missiles had been operating for more than a year out of Uzbekistan to provide real-time video of Afghanistan.'" [See also link and link]
Condi Rice Continues to Slither Out of Testifying to 9/11 Panel to Avoid Lying to Protect Bush "The federal panel reviewing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks disclosed its witness list yesterday for its two-day hearing on counterterrorism next week. But the list omits one invited official: national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. She has repeatedly declined on the advice of the White House, citing separation of power concerns. Commission officials haven't ruled out a possible subpoena." There is only one possible reason that Rice insists on slithering out of testifying: She is hiding the explosive truth and would be forced, by testifying to either lie and open herself up to a huge perjury charge, or tell the truth and bring down the White House. [link]
Jeff Softley: 'Sean Hannity has a small....' is really an article intended to "illustrate the manner in which the Republicans use strategic, repetitive rhetoric - which often bears zero relation to the truth - to shape public perception." 20:36 GMT
I saw this
This is the weirdest-looking photo from a lingerie catalogue I've ever seen. Never mind that it's not lingerie, but it looks like that woman has a science fictional disease.
Kevin Hayden sent me links for two personal weblogs by a woman who also does it in pinks. She doesn't give her name. I've looked at one of them, Prose and Cons. She takes pictures as well as posting other images she likes. This amusing item is one she found elsewhere, but don't miss her photo of breaking waves. She's not a bad writer, either.
20:21 GMT
Friday, 19 March 2004
A site to play at
I was just cruising around at Biomesblog and found this picture and zillions of neat links. Here are just a few:
Atrios has the skinny on the bust of a USA Today reporter busted for making stuff up. There are some eerie parallels - in fact - with what was said about the Jayson Blair case. The difference is that people trusted this guy because he was an evangelical Christian. 18:51 GMT
Boy, is irony ever NOT DEAD
Patrick has found a humdinger about how - get this - liberals love conspiracy theories, and says:
You can understand why this particular writer is interested in cutting off talk about "foul play and dirty tricks," seeing as he's Oliver North.
Imagine, if you will, the Labour party introducing a resolution in the House of Commons saluting the Iraqi people and brave British Troops and declaring the world to now be a safer place because of the stalwart effort of Tony Blair and his party and passing it within a hundred hours of a terrorist attack in...oh, say, Boston...that left 1200 dead and over 6000 injured. That is the equivalent hypothetical comparison to what the House Republicans did yesterday. It was a simple partisan exercise designed to give neither comfort to the Iraqi people nor actual tangible support to the troops (you know, things like sufficient body armor or humvee armor or - in some instances - decent garrison facilities to make their one-year deployment somewhat more bearable), but instead geared to fostering Republican electoral prospects.
Kevin Drum is now getting paid to blog by The Washington Monthly, so he's doing all his political posting there, now. He did not approve of Tom Friedman accusing the Spanish of appeasement. Many comments ensued.
But before he started his new gig, he did this post at CalPundit in which he mentions Donald Rumsfeld repeating the claim that the UN inspectors were not in Iraq. This seems to be a current administration talking point, weirdly. And I think it's something that should be pounded - why does the administration keep claiming that Saddam never allowed the inspectors into Iraq? Are we really supposed to have mass amnesia on this? Did Hans Blix actually exist? Write to your favorite member of the White House press corps and tell them to ask this question. At least it'll be another opportunity to make Scottie dance.
Thom Hartmann says There is no such thing as a "free market". He also says that, The "middle class" is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and won't exist without it (as millions of Americans and Europeans are discovering). A good article explaining why liberals are right.
Watch the ads from Media Fund that explain what Bush has done for jobs and for the American Dream. 18:10 GMT
World of wars
Kathryn Cramer has been all over that plane full of mercenaries that was detained in Zimbabwe, tracking it's history and owners. Hmmm.
If you didn't read Kerry's speech, "Protecting Our Military Families in Times of War" when Atrios posted the link, have a look now. We all know how Bush has been abusing our troops, but there are things mentioned in that speech that even I hadn't heard about. I read stuff like this and I get outraged all over again. (But not enough that I don't wish he'd let me edit it first.)
Nat Parry, Bush's Iraq Getaway: The key now for George W. Bush is to manage a political escape from his mugging of a fundamental precept of democracy - an informed electorate - and still win a second term. To achieve that, Bush has employed some tried-and-true tactics, like hand-picking a presidential commission that will report on his use of intelligence after the November elections. But most importantly, he is still trusting that the U.S. news media is incapable of sustaining much scrutiny. Among other things, a quick refresher course in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq as it began in January of 2001, with plenty of background on the much longer history of Republican deceit and betrayal. 00:55 GMT
To be sure, the PP said it went to Iraq to help promote peace, but Spain's intervention had "war of civilizations" written all over it. Many Spanish troops serving in Iraq, for example, wore an arm patch depicting the Cross of St. James of Compostela. That insignia commemorates the Battle of Clavijo in 844. According to legend, the Apostle St. James the Elder came down from the sky and killed every Moor - as Muslims were then called - in his path. Ever since, St. James has been called "Santiago Matamoros," St. James the Moor Killer.
In July, the Madrid newspaper El Mundo warned: "To put the Cross of St. James of Compostela on the uniforms of Spanish soldiers demonstrates an absolute ignorance of the psychology of the society in which they will have to carry out their mission."
Boy, is that ever understating the case. Because you don't need to know much about "the psychology of the society" in question, you just have to think about walking into any society with soldiers wearing symbols that specifically spit on their beliefs. Soldiers? Hell, imagine sending even disaster-relief workers into some flooded town in America if they're all wearing armbands with inverted crosses and Satanic mottos emblazoned on them and ask whether that would leave a nasty taste on the palates of the local populace. And that's just assuming that all those Satanists did was straight-up disaster-relief. Let a few of them point guns at the locals and man are you asking for it!
The really alien psychology here isn't that of Muslims who remember St. James the Moor-killer too well, it's that of leaders - in Spain and in America - who deliberately use provocative language and symbols to alert the Muslims we are ostensibly "liberating" to the fact that our ruling parties are hostile to them and we hate their religion. No, more than that - that, while we say we are coming to liberate you, we are actually making war on your entire culture.
What else can explain the Cross of St. James? Who thought it would be a good idea for Bush to say we were embarking on a "crusade"? What earthly good can such a show of contempt ever do?
One of the most clever impediments the Republicans have set up for their opponents to deal with is the continuing conundrum of whether their leadership is clueless or just ... well, deliberately embarked on a program of evil criminality. Reagan was visibly suffering from Alzheimer's, of course, but was his whole administration? No one really believes that George H.W. Bush was "out of the loop", but as long as you can't prove otherwise (because he pardoned everyone before they had to testify), nothing is ever on the record.
But this administration has got to be the most spectacular example of arrested development I've ever seen in an entire group of supposedly functional adults - and I'm saying this as someone who worked with rock musicians in the '60s. Whatever it means to be "the grown-ups", this definitely is not it. (And at least those guys in the '60s had the excuse of being teenagers or very young adults who were on drugs, you know?)
They're brash, they're rash, and frankly even if they are embarked on a program of deliberate criminality, it's hard to avoid the feeling that they don't know what the hell they're doing. But you don't have to be that smart, or that "mature", to know that all this "culture wars" and "war of civilizations" stuff is just plain crazy. 17:12 GMT
Media Bias
Media Concentration--The Silent Killer of Democracy is particularly interesting because it is a blog post on Alex Alben's campaign blog, and there aren't too many people running for Congress who are talking about this issue. (Via Atrios.)
Audiences for US journalists decline: Only 5% of stories on cable news contain new information, the report found. Most were simply rehashes of the same facts. There was also less fact checking than in the past and less policing of journalistic standards.
From FAIR, One Year Later, Sunday Shows Short on Iraq Critics. FAIR provides e-mail addresses for ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, NBC's Meet the Press, and Fox News Sunday and advises you to write.
Lead Balloons at Bad Attitudes says that ABC's The Note has been exhibiting a lack of fairness: Having played a leading and egregious role in the media tear-down of Big Howard Dean, ABC News's The Note has decided that what America needs most right now is for ABC News to tear down John the Warrior by highlighting the president's criticisms of Kerry without providing equal time to the responses of Kerry's defenders. 10:33 GMT
Early morning media
The Farmer has an interesting post up at Corrente considering a bit of back-and-forth between Pat Buchanan and Chris Matthews on Kerry's statements about atrocities in Vietnam. Lambert thinks outsourcing hasn't gone far enough. And are the Republican spinmeisters laying the groundwork to cancel the election?
Bartcop recently mentioned something called Maroon Bells and said it was one of the most photographed things in the world. I did a quick Google and found some of those photos.
Jon Stewart with the bottom line on gay marriage. (Worth the wait to load.) 01:17 GMT
Wednesday, 17 March 2004
Calling them out
Molly Ivins: How much fun can one administration have? More dead GIs. New record trade deficit. Stock market plunge. Defeated ally in Spain. New Spanish prime minister says the occupation in Iraq is a "continuing disaster" and he's pulling his troops out. Still no jobs. And then the guy who was supposed to be the new jobs czar turns out to have laid off 75 of his own workers while building a $3 million factory in China to employ 165 Chinese people.
You can have it both ways, says Josh Marshall, responding to Andrew Sullivan's claim that the Spanish election result was a victory for bin Laden: Just because you've inflamed or emboldened your enemies doesn't mean you've used the most effective means of attacking them. Indeed, quite the opposite can be true. Also, some polling results, from Iraq and the US.
The Pinocchio presidency by former ambassador Joe Wilson, who says Bushista lies are due for some hammering.
Paul Krugman says George Bush is in no position to call anyone else Weak on Terror. The truth is that Mr. Bush, while eager to invoke 9/11 on behalf of an unrelated war, has shown consistent reluctance to focus on the terrorists who actually attacked America, or their backers in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. That's the issue that's bugged me since the idea of bombing Kabul first came up. Not that I didn't like the idea of bringing down the Taliban, but the madrasses are in Pakistan, and the moneyed promoters of Wahabism are the leaders of Saudi Arabia. Iraq was such an obvious irrelevancy that I was frankly astonished that anyone ever took it seriously. 14:17 GMT
Creeps
John at Sore Eyes is understandably speechless after reading yet another example of the creepiness of Home Secretary David Blunkett, quoting this article:
On Tuesday, Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the innocent man shouldn't have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping for nothing under regulation grey blankets.
And then there's this post with a sample of responses to the question: "What is the most insane thing your boss has ever said to you?" I think my favorite is: "Please try not to read too much into the fact that your job is being advertised in the paper this week."
Stepford Whistle-blower: Hesiod reports that: Now the fuckers are saying that John kerry ignored a warning about lax security at Logan airport in 2001, which directly led to (ta! da!) the 9/11 attacks! But in an update, Hesiod finds an interview with the author of the piece from September 16, 2001, in which he credited Kerry with having done the right thing. Hmmm.
Ginger says: The sort of thing mentioned in this Chronk editorial is why I laughed my ass off at the idea that Chuck Rosenthal botched his anti-sodomy argument in front of the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas because he's secretly gay-sympathetic. It's not that I think his continued refusal to treat an innocent man like an innocent man associates him with anti-gay bigotry, it's that his pedantic insistence that the accuser must be made to feel good leaves me thinking that he has no idea that justice is law tempered by mercy. 03:00 GMT
A PSA from Atrios
Important enough to quote a significant part of this one:
But, having said that the situation in Illinois provides a wonderful lesson about why the Democratic party organizations, and not just the candidates themselves, need money. The presumed Democratic candidate flamed out spectacularly after some nasty information about his past came to light. Fortunately, this happened before the primary. These kinds of things can happen at any time in the election cycle. Something can happen, a candidate can stumble - either ours or theirs - and only the party organizations are in a position to capitalize on the shifting campaign fortunes by placing money strategically. Only they can really make a sudden money drop into a race when it might matter.
It's this flexibility and ability to look at the entire campaign picture which makes them an essential part of the process. Every Democrat is trying to get elected, but only the DNC, DSCC, and DCCC are focused entirely on the bigger picture goal of winning majorities in the House and Senate.
I try to limit the fundraising begging here as much as possible. But, our side needs money. Feed them turkee, and they will grow stronger. With strength comes confidence, and with confidence victory. I'm tired of reading news reports about how poor the Democrats are, and how behind they are in fundraising.
And, if you're not in the mood to donate you can just go and read their weblogs. Kicking Ass is the DNC's, From the Roots is the DSCC's, and The Stakeholder is the DCCC's.
John Kerry's call for monthly debates with Bush is lovely, underlining the fact that, of course, Bush couldn't possibly do it. Condi Rice says Bush is too busy - and it's true, he can hardly find time to memorize his campaign talking points well enough to make them fly with his hand-picked pro-Bush audiences. (Well, except for the ones who don't speak English.) Every time he does anything public these days he embarrasses himself, and this time the press isn't quite as willing to cover for him as they once were. If even Russert - and it's not just Russert - is starting to press the administration on their numerous lies and inconsistencies, Bush is in very big trouble indeed. I'd love to see Kerry hammer the point at least thrice weekly that George Bush doesn't dare debate his lousy policies before the public. Refusing to debate didn't do his father much good, I seem to recall.
Just let the GOP try and replace Cheney on the ticket with Giuliani and watch the fur fly. Rudy's credentials as the hero of 9/11 won't look so good once people are reminded of how he was responsible for the communications breakdown for first-responders on the day - negligence that cost many people their lives. (Here's Breslin's original article.)
I've been saying for so long now that with so many of our actions in the United States, we've been handing victories to our presumptive enemies in this war on terrorism. We've been cowed into a shaky state of constant fear, not by the terrorists who attacked us one day, but by the klaxon fearmongering of our leaders day after day, whose true leadership doesn't appear to have anything to do with the safety of the American public at all. When one citizen lost his rights, and then another, it became beyond ironic to say, "then the terrorists will have won," because I began to believe it. I still do, but at least something marginally sane is beginning to take shape, and these citizens will have something like a day in court. (No free access to counsel or due process of law yet, but at least their lawyers can tell them, on DoD videotape, that their cases are going to the Supreme Court.)
Tarek is right: If we allow minorities of our country's residents and citizens to lose their Constitutional rights, if we allow our lives to be ruled by fear, then the terrorists have accomplished exactly what they set out to do. That's why they call it "terrorism", you know - the point is to terrorize. 9/11 gave us horror, but it is the Bush administration itself that has created the climate of fear. When our own government colludes by encouraging us to feel fearful while actually giving dissenters and some ethnic and religious minorities something to fear from them, the populace has indeed been terrorized.
We are fortunate in that some of the apparatus of civil libertarian activism still exists in the US despite 30 years of clever and well-funded attacks on liberalism from the right. Though we are weakened by those attacks and by divisions into "libertarian", "liberal", and "leftist" camps, some progress has been made in fighting back against fear-mongering and hysterical legislation that has been falling on our heads since September of 2001.
Every generation seems to have its watershed events, or movements, when we believe we can permanently change history, when the sins of the past will never trouble us again. And then the next, when we learn, finally, that no such thing can ever happen, and that complacency is forever unacceptable. It's why Dale Spender made an entire book out of the insight that there had always been a women's liberation movement throughout the 20th century, telling readers that each iteration of the WLM started off thinking they were the first to recognize and fight women's inequality, to then learn that they had had predecessors, and to believe that this time things were different and that there would be no need for a later movement. And then, to make the same mistakes, to face the same failures. (The term "feminazi" should come as no surprise to those who remember Shulamith Firestone's chapter on "the 50-year ridicule" of the suffrage movement.)
World War II and the discovery of the camps and the final solution were also a watershed event, and we all believed we would "never forget", that we would watch for the signs of encroaching fascism and stop them before they spread. "Never again," we said, and we believed it. And for many years the survivors of Nazi Germany themselves were indeed vigilant, fighting for civil liberties even for people they despised, demanding that the promise of the Bill of Rights be kept. But look how easy it has suddenly become to forget, to allow the mine to be strewn with dead canaries.
It's why I keep repeating that tired old phrase that takes so long for people to genuinely absorb, that the price of liberty is for-goddamn-sure eternal vigilance, and it's not just "the government" or "the corporations" or "the powerful" you have to watch out for; it's also your neighbors, and yourself. Complacency, arrogance, and fear can and will co-opt the living hell out of you.
This is an important moment in history. It won't be the end of history, even if we win. It won't be the day we can at last breathe a sigh of relief and decide we never have to worry about this stuff again. But it's a moment when we can make the choice to fight to keep America, and maybe retain the ability to keep fighting for it - or lose this wonderful experiment.
(While you're at TLL, you might want to see how Oliver is doing with his experiment of immersing himself in right-wing newsmedia. And don't miss the Public Service Announcement that explains how George W. Bush is too liberal for America.)
[A shorter version of this article has been posted to DailyNewsOnline - which, remember, has comments.] 04:34 GMT
Matt Yglesias doesn't know what "socialism" means. We used to put tax money into most of the things he's talking about, and no one called it "socialism" in those days. And it wouldn't be "socialism" to use taxes to pay for universal healthcare. It would just be facing reality.
