blogenlust

Follow Me

2005-02-19T18:03:00.000-08:00

So it was raining and I was bored (and inspired by Shakespeare's Sister and Rook), so I switched over to TypePad:

http://blogenlust.typepad.com
Please follow me there.

It's Only Propaganda If You Get Caught

2005-02-19T08:08:00.000-08:00

In North Korea they call it state-run media. Here we call it "pre-packaged television programs":

Washington -- The comptroller-general has issued a blanket warning that reminds federal agencies they may not produce "newscasts" promoting administration policies without clearly stating that the government itself is the source. Twice in the last two years, agencies of the federal government have been caught distributing prepackaged television programs that used paid spokesmen acting as newscasters and, in violation of federal law, failed to disclose the Bush administration's role in developing and financing them. Those were not isolated incidents, David Walker, the comptroller-general, said in a letter dated Thursday that put all agency heads on notice about the practice. In fact, it has become increasingly common for federal agencies to adopt the public relations tactic of producing "video news releases" that look indistinguishable from authentic newscasts and are sometimes picked up by local news programs. It is illegal for the government to produce or distribute such publicity material domestically without disclosing its own role.

Of course, it isn't just federal agencies producing "video news releases" that is the problem. The problem is that people like Armstrong Williams and Jim-Jeff Gannon-Guckert are paid mouthpieces for this Administration's policies, all the while maintaining the cover of objectivity (no matter how flimsy of a cover that may be, especially in the case of JimJeff).

What Is Our Policy Towards Iran?

2005-02-18T12:39:00.000-08:00

Not surprisingly, the one thing lacking in all discussions of the recent increase in tension between Iran and the United States is a public critique of U.S. policy towards Iran. This is a consequence of both a Democratic Party without a cogent foreign policy agenda, and a more general, apolitical post-9/11 mentality that discourages criticism of Bush's foreign policy. It's an extremely dangerous position to be in, particularly at a time when foreign policy decisions carry as many consequences as they have in recent years. Lately, not a day seems to go by where the Bush Administration does not mention Iran, and specifically, the likelihood of a military confrontation in some form. Anybody that has paid even a passing attention to Bush's rhetoric over the last five years would recognize this gem from an interview he gave to German television today:

"First of all you never want a president to say never, but military action is certainly not, is never the president's first choice," Bush said, when asked if he could rule out military action against Iran. "Diplomacy is always the president's, or at least always my first choice and we've got a common goal, and that is that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon," he said in the interview taped in Washington and broadcast before his arrival in Brussels Sunday for summits with NATO and the EU.

If I looked hard enough, I could probably find an almost verbatim quote from exactly two years ago that instead referenced Iraq. In other words, we seem to be following the same path that led us to invade Iraq as we are now with Iran. And yet, it might just be me, but I haven't heard any serious public debate about whether this is a good idea, or what possible alternative responses might look like. I do know that we need to put pressure on Iran, but we need to do so in a way that does not exclusively rely on the threat of military action. Military action, including a surgical strike, will do nothing but embolden the mullah's grasp on power. First of all, with the way that their nuclear program is spread around the country, it is highly unlikely that a strike will take out the entire program. Moreover, even though it is true that Iran has a fledging pro-democracy/anti-mullah faction, such a strike might alienate their support, since given the choice, they will likely side with the mullahs--no matter how much they despise them--if it means fighting off foreign invasion. This puts us in a very difficult spot, and it's where you end up when you have a dearth of opinions that are open to consideration while formulating foreign policy. We're basically left in the position where we have to decide whether a nuclear Iran creates a more stable situation than invading/attacking Iran to prevent them from becoming nuclear. Unfortunately, it didn't have to be that way, but it's where our policy (or lack thereof) has taken us.

Questions

2005-02-18T11:25:00.000-08:00

Is it really a good idea for Rush Limbaugh to go to the world's largest opium den? Regardless, I'm sure we can expect some fair and balanced coverage of all the good things we're doing in Afghanistan. Rush lie? Please! Oh, and did you know that we're handing out ecstasy to traumatized soldiers? 'Tis true. But don't even think about asking for medical marijuana to treat your cancer/AIDS/anorexia/glaucoma/MS/wasting syndrome.

Set your Tivo

2005-02-18T09:25:00.000-08:00

I love Frontline. If I could marry it, I would. I'm especially excited to watch this Tuesday's program, entitled "A Company of Soldiers," which is an inside look at the U.S. Army's 8th Cavalry Regiment stationed in Baghdad. It's pretty raw, which means it has some bad language. Imagine that: soldiers in war, using bad language. What is this world coming to?

Democrats Don't Always Roll Over

2005-02-17T11:35:00.000-08:00

Apparently the consensus (at least from readers of this blog) is that Democrats will roll over with the Negroponte confirmation. It's probably true that Negroponte will be confirmed, and the best that we can hope for is that a lot of noise is made throughout the confirmation process like the stance taken against the Gonzales nomination. The notion of Democrat's rolling over, however, is not completely fair to the Democrat's (so far) successful efforts to uphold 20 Bush judicial nominations. I suppose an argument can be made that these are just as important as confirming people like Negroponte and Gonzales, and that Democratic efforts to fillibuster these appointments are laudatory. So it's good to keep in mind that Democrats haven't been rolling over to everything the Bush Administration puts forward. I bring this up because I just finished reading an excellent post from Matt at 1115. He reminds us that Bill Frist is trying to "go nuclear" on the Democrat's ability to fillibuster judicial nominees, and also points out that Pat Robertson has warned Frist that if he can't deliver the "nuclear option", he can't assume he'll have the Religious Right's support if he ran for President. Since we know that Frist is jonesing to be President, and since we know it's basically the kiss of death for a Republican to run for President without the Religious Right's support, we can assume that Frist will do everything in his power to change the rules and eliminate Democratic resistance. Now I'm not sure what Democrat's can do to respond to the "nuclear option," but they've got to do something, and I'm pretty confident they'll do everything in their power to stop him. Like Matt, it's more than a little ironic that the Party so eager to tout its ability to dish out democracy abroad is so eager to squash it back home. Not that anybody here notices. Or cares.

Negroponte

2005-02-17T07:55:00.000-08:00

Wow. I'd suggest that Democrats do everything in their power to prevent the confirmation of Negroponte as National Intelligence Director. Some background: 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Terrorism Link To Iraq

2005-02-17T00:13:00.000-08:00

This article from the Washington Post highlights the danger of defining victory in Iraq as being able to hold an election. The fact is that the effects of our actions and mishandling of the post-war period have yet to play out, and according to US military and intelligence officials, it may not be a happy ending:

The insurgency in Iraq continues to baffle the U.S. military and intelligence communities, and the U.S. occupation has become a potent recruiting tool for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, top U.S. national security officials told Congress yesterday. "Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists," CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism," he said. "They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries." [...] "Our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment," Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate panel. "Overwhelming majorities in Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia believe the U.S. has a negative policy toward the Arab world." Jacoby said the Iraq insurgency has grown "in size and complexity over the past year" and is now mounting an average of 60 attacks per day, up from 25 last year. Attacks on Iraq's election day last month reached 300, he said, double the previous one-day high of 150, even though transportation was virtually locked down.

60 attacks a day? Pshaw! There are 60 muggings in NYC every day!! Or so Brit Hume might say. On a serious note, this is a perspective that needs to be aired more publically. I am surprised by how often I encounter people who don't take into consideration the physics of international relations: Every action has a reaction. I don't have to remind anyone that John Kerry was right to say we need to fight a more sensitive war on terrorism, one where we understand that actions may have consequences that negate benefits. Abu Ghraib is a perfect example. Our attempt to snuff out the insurgency by using torture to gather intelligence actually backfired in that it verified the very worst caricatures of the American occupation. We're much worse off now, in terms of winning the hearts and minds, than we would ever have been without Abu Ghraib. We have to realize, and our actions have to demonstrate, that the war on terrorism is more a war about winning hearts and minds, than it is about invading and overthrowing regimes. Update: Not that I have to drive home the point about Abu Ghraib, but this news is exactly what I'm talking about.

Jerry Brown Blogs!

2005-02-16T20:51:00.000-08:00

I'd like to cordially invite Oakland mayor Jerry Brown to join us at the next meeting of the BARBARians. (via TalkLeft)

Powdered Keg Redux

2005-02-16T07:52:00.000-08:00

The assassination of a political leader. The forming of alliances. Where have I heard this one before? Along with Steve Soto, I can't quite tell on what grounds the Bush Administration is going after Syria for the assassination of Hariri. It seems forced and over the top, and when combined with our recent saber rattling towards Iran, a little unnerving. I'm still not sure whether Bush is audacious and stupid enough to start another war (a much bigger war), or whether he is just ratcheting up the rhetoric. I'm also not very confident that he can do the latter without also starting the former. But all is not lost. We have the chronically incompetent Rice, and her new sidekick, Elizabeth Cheney, on the job. We're in good hands.

Local News

2005-02-15T12:06:00.000-08:00

I'm not a big fan of local media. I find it dangerously lacking in substance and context, and think it is a major reason why (generally) people don't seem to a) care what is going on in the world, and b) know what is going on in the world. In my opinion, local news (and certainly cable news, too) is a major reason why a large percentage of this country thinks Iraq had something to do with 9/11 and had weapons of mass destruction. A recent study from Broadcasting and Cable (via Cursor) seems to validate my concerns:

Although many considered the November presidential election a referendum on Iraq, that would have been hard to tell by the time devoted to the war in local TV newscasts. Of 44 network affiliate evening newscasts studied in 11 markets, stations averaged 25 seconds of Iraq war coverage per newscast. The only story given less coverage was foreign policy, at 13 seconds. The presidential election got almost five times that coverage at two minutes, though local races barely beat it out at 30 seconds. Iraq was also beaten out by sports, weather, health, crime, injury, economy, “other,” and even bumpers, teases and intro music. [...] According to the report, the typical pre-election newscast broke down this way: * Ads: 8 minutes * Sports/weather: 6 minutes * Elections: 3 minutes, 11 seconds * Crime: 2 minutes, 34 seconds * Local interest : 1 minute, 56 seconds * Teasers, intros: 1 minute, 43 seconds * Health: 1 minute, 22 seconds * Other: 1 minute, 12 seconds * Injury: 55 seconds * Business/economy: 47 seconds * Iraq: 25 seconds * Foreign policy: 13 seconds

I understand that local news is by definition local, but for many people it is the only news they watch. I think the problem stems from the fact that local news coverage only fills a half-hour time spot. Twenty-two minutes is not enough to offer comprehensive coverage of the day's events--even if it is local. Not to pick on my home state, but I would be curious to see the breakdown of Milwaukee's local news. During football season, which in Wisconsin is about 300 days of the year, Packer coverage takes a huge chunk of the twenty-two minutes of news. And during the real football season, the local news is often followed by another half hour of Packer coverage. Packer's Extra, it's called. Now, to a certain extent, stations have the right to present what it knows its audience wants to watch. At the same time, though, these stations--as news stations--have certain responsibilities to maintain. It's definitely a balancing act, and I think a very good argument can be made that local news stations are not living up to their responsibility to cover what their audiences need to know versus what they want to know. One last thing: I suspect some people might argue that news from Iraq isn't local, and therefore doesn't have to be addressed on the local news. I would respond that Iraq is very much a local issue, not just because local men and women are dying and fighting in the war, but also because of the huge financial cost incurred by this war, and paid by U.S. taxpayers. We ought to have a little more oversight as to how our money is being spent.

Monday Night Picture Blogging

2005-02-14T20:11:00.000-08:00

I was in NYC this past weekend, thus explaining the dearth of posts. Today I was too tired and too busy to write anything, and hopefully tomorrow I will feel more inspired. In the meantime, here are a few photos from the weekend. We were lucky to be in Central Park for the unfurling of Christo's Gates:

The reason for the trip, though, was that I had a meeting (top-secret) with the UN Security Council, all of whom happen to be big fans of Blogenlust. Here is where we met:

Deja Vu All Over Again

2005-02-09T14:19:00.000-08:00

Seriously, is this Administration barking mad?

BRUSSELS, Belgium (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday that Iran must live up to its international obligations to halt its nuclear program or "the next steps are in the offing." "And I think everybody understands what the 'next steps' mean," Rice told reporters after a meeting with NATO foreign ministers and European Union officials. [...] "We believe this is a time for diplomacy," the secretary said Wednesday, adding that human rights in Iran and Tehran's sponsoring of terror groups are also causes for concern. "The message that we are giving to Iran: We do have diplomatic means at our disposal, we are doing this bilaterally as well as multilaterally, and I believe that a diplomatic solution is in our grasp, if we can have unity of purpose, unity of message with the Iranians and if the Iranians understand that the international community is quite serious about it living up to its obligations."

She's right about that last part. This is a time for diplomacy, but the United States should not reduce diplomacy to the level of school yard taunting. Instead of trying to encourage Iran to stop their nuclear program, Rice is actually giving them an excuse to speed it up and cover it up further. After all, Iran's biggest enemy already surrounds it, and it's now threatening invasion on a daily basis. What would you do if you were Iran? I get the impression that this Administration doesn't care whether Iran abandons their nuclear program, in much the same way that they didn't really care whether Iraq had WMD. All that matters is that Iran appears to be a threat, and that is what Rice is laying the groundwork for. My prediction is that if we do attack Iran, it will not be built up like our invasion of Iraq. It will be some type of surprise attack, that provokes an Iranian response, which we'll then use to justify a full-on invasion--draft and all.

Daou Report

2005-02-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

Apparently the Daou Report has been incorporated by Salon. In principle, I don't really mind the move. What I do mind is that in order to read more than one of the blog highlights you have to jump through Salon's advertisement hoops. In fact, I don't even mind Salon's advertisements--usually if I'm going to read one of their articles, I don't mind viewing a few ads. But the thing I found so great about the Daou Report was that you could quickly skim through dozens of blogs without clicking on anything. For me, this was the essence of it's coolness, and sadly it's missing in the new format. Oh well, maybe they'll fix it. Update: I just realized that if you use an RSS reader, you can still read the highlights sans advertisements. I recommend Newsfire.

He's Baaaaaaack

2005-02-09T07:27:00.000-08:00

Via War and Piece, it appears that Ahmed Chalabi is positioning himself to be the next Prime Minister of Iraq:

WASHINGTON - The former Iraqi exile leader who helped found the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, is seeking his country's highest office and says he has accepted an informal nomination to be prime minister. In a phone interview yesterday with The New York Sun, Mr. Chalabi said he had said yes to the request from prominent members of the United Iraqi Alliance list, the slate of candidates that will likely control a majority of seats in the transitional national assembly to be announced in the coming days. [...] If Mr. Chalabi manages to secure enough support to be prime minister of Iraq, it will mark an extraordinary comeback for the man most analysts wrote off last May, when American and Iraqi soldiers raided his home and confiscated computers on charges that he had employed thugs to bully bureaucrats in the finance ministry. Throughout last summer, Mr. Chalabi was targeted by an untrained judge appointed by the Americans; all charges were eventually dropped. The CIA had written off the former banker as having no political base in Iraq, while leading Democratic politicians blamed him for fabricating intelligence on Saddam Hussein's links to Al Qaeda and arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

And how could they forget his ties to Iranian intelligence? Isn't democracy grand?! Also, as The Left Coaster notes, this is great news for US military in Iraq because it means they'll be ~~kicked out~~ coming home soon! And in other Iraqi related news, Swopa at Needlenose has two great posts on the effects of the Iraqi elections, especially in light of the Kurds' success at the polls. Frankly, I'm so sick of posting about Iraq. I really wish the elections were the "be all, end all" they were presented to be, and I really wish that I wasn't compelled to post on everything I find outrageous and disgusting. You'd think that I would be numb to it all by now, but unfortunately, not yet.

Just AThought

2005-02-08T13:11:00.000-08:00

Despite the President's man date, he's having a hard time convincing his own Party to sign on to his Social Security reform bill. Why? Becasue partisanship can never trump self-interest, and even Republicans know that Bush's plan isn't going to help the majority of their constituents. This is also why Republican's blindly support the President's aggressive foreign policy. The percentage of angry military personnel and families is not high enough to affect election results. If this changes-- if a draft were re-instated, or if military sacrfice became more egalitarian--then even Republicans would think twice about writing the President another blank check to go to war (not that he needs their permission).

50+

2005-02-08T11:27:00.000-08:00

What is the number of people killed in Iraq over the last 48 hours?

Iraqi Election: You mean there's results?

2005-02-07T16:09:00.000-08:00

Did you know that the Iraqi elections had results? Me either. Well they do, and they're in (sort of), and it doesn't look good for the "Freedom is on the March" candidates:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A Kurdish ticket pulled into second place ahead of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's candidates in Iraq (news - web sites)'s national election after votes were released Monday from the Kurdish self-governing area of the north. Insurgents struck Iraq's security forces with suicide bombs and mortar fire, killing more than 30 people. First election returns from the Sunni heartland confirmed on Monday that many Sunnis stayed away from ballot box, leaving the field to Shiite and Kurdish candidates. A Shiite-dominated ticket backed by the Shiite clergy leads among the 111 candidate lists, with a final tally of last week's election for a 275-member National Assembly expected by week's end. Allawi, who favors strong ties with the United States, had hoped to emerge as a compromise choice for prime minister, but the Shiite cleric-backed ticket say they want one of their own for the top job.

Actually, it depends on how you define Freedom. If you mean Freedom to draft an Islamic Constitution, then Freedom be marching! If you mean Freedom to assert your right to create an autonomous Kurdish state, then Freedom be marching! But if you mean Freedom to forge strong ties with the United States, then, well, better luck next time! (If there is another election). Now, I'm no Juan Cole, but it's not good for the US if their candidate finishes a distant third. It's also troubling, no matter what Cheney says, that top Shiites are calling for an Islamic constitution. On top of it all, it's probably not good that the Kurds might think they have a mandate to push for an automous state of their own. These are all mere insignificant (and messy) details. All that matters is that there even was an election.

A Raise for Special Forces

2005-02-07T06:00:00.000-08:00

One of the most worrisome trends of Rumsfeld's tenure as Secretary of Defense is the increased reliance on private military corporations (PMCs) to function in rolls traditionally taken by the United States military. Basically, it's Rumsfeld's way of slimming down the military to be a more mobile and responsive fighting force that is heavily reliant on Special Forces. Ironically, many of these PMC's employ former Special Forces officers, having drawn them away from the US military with lucrative salaries. So, in effect, Rumsfeld's efforts to make the military more Special Forces-ish, has had the unintended (yet predictable) consequence of depleting the number of veteran Special Forces officers. This shouldn't be a surprise, since unintended consequences are pretty popular with anything this Administration decides to do. So, I wasn't too surprised to read this in yesterday's New York Times:

The Defense Department has approved a series of incentives for members of elite Special Operations Forces who remain in the military, including a $150,000 bonus for the most experienced and highly trained combat personnel who promise six additional years in uniform, military officials said Saturday. The pay and incentives package was devised to stem an exodus of senior sergeants, petty officers and warrant officers to higher-paying civilian security jobs in places like Baghdad and Kabul, just as they are needed to continue playing a pivotal role in combating terrorists and training indigenous security forces worldwide. "Our investment in these professionals is great, and the experience gained through years of service makes them invaluable assets to our nation's defense," said Lt. Col. Alex Findlay, a personnel officer with the Special Operations Command. "Younger replacements can be trained, but experience is irreplaceable in the current worldwide war on terrorism."

This should have been done from the start, since many former Special Forces officers have already made the switch. And why shouldn't they? Even with the increased incentives, PMC salaries are still higher. The real solution is to recognize that we can't keep outsourcing military duties to private companies, because the free market will always pay more than what the federal government can pay for the same position. This will mean that we have to increase the size of the military, and it might also mean we'll have to start using the military more wisely. Both of which are not bad ideas, in my opinion.

Rice Reassures

2005-02-04T08:45:00.000-08:00

I'm glad that Rice reassured us that we have no plans to attack Iran. Ooops. My bad. Correct link here.

Response to Hinderaker

2005-02-03T14:23:00.000-08:00

As promised, today John Hinderaker posted a response to Camille Gage's recent op-ed in the Star Tribune. Hinderaker includes in his post a copy of an article he sent to the newspaper as part of an effort to set the record straight on Gage's allegations. I'm not too concerned with the first half of the article, since it primarily consists of background information from this post that appeared on Power Line in October 2004. However, I think the second half of the article, the half in which Hinderaker berates the Star Tribune for failing to fact check Gage's story, raises some interesting questions. First things first, though. This is what we know about the original story posted on Power Line. Read it because it's important to know what's going on. Also, it's important to understand that Gage's op-ed was specifically addressing the allegations charged in this piece from Agape Press, because in his response, Hinderaker uses smoke and mirrors to confuse people on what is actually being alleged. Turning to Hinderaker's post, he writes: "Because the editors did no fact checking, they did not know that the FAIR report, far from having "no factual basis," has been the subject of a criminal investigation."
It would have been nice for Hinderaker to cite where he learned of this criminal investigation, since I've spent some time on Lexis Nexis trying to find a citation. I haven't had any luck, and that doesn't mean there isn't an investigation ongoing, just that it might not be "national news." However, in a January 27, 2005 Journal Sentinel article, there is mention of an investigation into possible voter fraud in Milwaukee. But these charges don't seem to be related to those made by FAIR. Interestingly, Mike Johnson, the spokesman for the Milwaukee FBI office told the AP: "If it appears federal criminal violations may have occurred, we'll open a criminal investigation." Next, Hinderaker claims: "Because the editors did no fact checking, they did not know that the FAIR representatives have submitted sworn affidavits saying they went to deputy registrars in Racine and Milwaukee who accepted their registration to vote, even though they made it clear they were not eligible Wisconsin voters.
Because the editors did no fact checking, they did not know that the FAIR representatives made tapes of their conversations with the deputy registrars which are consistent with their sworn accounts, and have been turned over to federal and state law enforcement authorities."
Again, a citation would be nice, and I haven't seen anything about this in Lexis Nexis (which doesn't necessarily prove it's not true). The only source I could find was on the FAIR website, from a November posting of two press releases on the allegations. The first ends by mentioning that the tapes were handed over to the Racine and Milwaukee District Attorney's offices. The second mentions that Milwaukee DA Michael McCann decided "not to pursue criminal prosecutions resulting from FAIR's investigation which unconvered evidence that noncitizens and illegal aliens were being registered to vote in the county." Somewhat defensively in my opinion, the press release continues with: "He was not referring to prosecution of Voces de la Frontera or others involved in registering noncitizens and illegal aliens to vote." I'm not sure what the difference is, but presumably, if there were criminal investigations filed against Voces de la Frontera, it would be noted on FAIR's site. It's not, though. Oh, and I've emailed Hinderaker for another source on this information, and haven't heard back from him yet. Finally, Hinderaker adds: "Because the editors did no fact checking, they did not know that two liberal activists are already under indictment for voter fraud in Racine County."
Hmm...I think Hinderaker is trying to suggest that these two activists are the same two sent by FAIR. Unfortunately, they're not. The two people involved were associated with Project Vote, and they were indicted because they were felons on probation, which makes it illegal for them to register voters. Now, maybe Hinderaker is talking about two other liberal activists associated with the FAIR investigation that were indicted for voter fraud in Racine County, but I haven't been able to find any articles announcing such indictments. Now, after doing this research, I'm not very satisfied with Hinderaker's response. He doesn't seem to address the content of the original article, and makes claims that aren't easily supported by evidence. Of course, I haven't put that much energy into finding the sources Hinderaker cites, but I've done enough to know that his claims are not as clear cut as he suggests. And, in fact, it seems as though he is purposely confusing the story. I say purposely because Hinderaker is a lawyer, and presumably he isn't an idiot and can figure out that these things don't add up. There's one more thing that I came across, which I find interesting, but haven't been able to fully verify. In 2000, a Susan Tully from Viroqua, Wisconsin unsuccessfully ran as a Republican candidate for Congress. I learned this from a recent article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that detailed some overdue bills associated with then Governor Tommy Thompson and his campaigning for local Congressional candidates. Of course, a Susan Tully is also the Midwest Field Director for FAIR, and the source of the Agape Press article. Now, as I said, I don't know if this is the same person, I just found it an interesting connection. I tried to email Tully at FAIR about this, but her email bounced. UPDATE: Interesting. Susan Tully is the Midwest Field Director for FAIR and she was the losing candidate for a Congressional office in 2000. Here's a November 2000 article from the Journal Sentinel that mentions how Tully moved to Wisconsin from California. If you read her biography at FAIR, it also mentions her residency in California. Now if I were a tinfoil hat type of guy, I might see a connection here... DOUBLE UPDATE: Hinderaker responded. We've been exchanging a few emails. I first asked him if he had a second source for the allegations:

I've talked to the people who signed the affidavits and reviewed the transcripts of the tape recordings they made. Most of this has not appeared in the newspapers.

In a follow-up email I asked about the criminal investigation and the two indictments. He responds:

As I understand it, the indictments are not directly related. How all of these events in Milwaukee and elsewhere fit into a general pattern of corruption is yet to be determined. The criminal investigation is pending. A joint federal-state task force is looking into the broad issue of voter fraud in Milwaukee, and I suspect it will be a while before this plays itself out.

Was that the impression you got of the situation after reading his response to the Star Tribune?

Semper Fi, Jesus

2005-02-03T10:57:00.000-08:00

You might remember John Eldridge and his desire to turn lazy docile men into good Christian warriors. It seems he's getting some help from Mark "Gunny" Hestand and his Christian Warrior Boot Camp:

The teens are part of "Boot Camp," a youth group that mixes Marine Corps values and combat techniques with Bible study. The concept is the brainchild of Hestand, who started the group in 2001 to encourage youth involvement in the church. As far as he knows, Boot Camp is unique in the Christian world.
While some may find the juxtaposition of military and the church to be unusual, or even alarming, Hestand said he believes the two share key principles.
"We take the basic principles that are Christian and basic principles of warfare and we merge them," he said. "Our enemy is Satan. Our weapon is not an M-16, it's the Bible. We're trying to get them to be warriors for God."
Hestand lists the Marine values of honor, courage and commitment as analogous to Christianity."One of the reasons I chose the Marine style over other military branches is that almost anything they say you could replace the word 'Marine' with 'Christian,'"Hestand said.
Boot Camp has just over a dozen members - all in junior high or high school - who have signed pledges of commitment to the group. Every Sunday, participants arrive early to church in their camouflage fatigues and black boots.
Once the 90-minute service commences, the boys gather outside, usually in the church's south parking lot, where for 20 minutes they do physical training like new recruits under the barks and orders of drill sergeants.
"We really get in their face," Hestand said.
The next 20 minutes are dedicated to combat techniques, such as ambushes or guerrilla tactics. The last 45 minutes are spent on Bible study.

"We take the basic principles that are Christian and basic principles of warfare and we merge them." Unoriginal bastard, Hitler did that 70 years ago! The basic premise of Hestand's Boot Camp is beyond disturbing, it's fascist. You could easily exchange Islam for Christianity, and we (and by we, I especially mean the Christian Right) would instead be talking about terrorist training schools. The thing that irks me the most is that nitwits like James Dobson wage a cultural crusade against the likes of SpongeBob and Janet Jackson, but are virtually silent when it comes to the bullshit from their own people. Immersing kids in a culture of killing in the name of Jesus? That's cool. SpongeBob's butt exposed on television? Crusade!! The question I want to know is how is Hestand funding his Boot Camp? Faith-based funds?

Freedom! Liberty! Bigotry!

2005-02-02T21:12:00.000-08:00

Shakespeare's Sister asks the best question of the night:

How can a speech riddled with references to freedom and equality contain a call for a federal marriage amendment denying rights to a sizable portion of the American public? Or a demand to make tax cuts favoring the wealthiest permanent? Or a recommitment to funding faith-based initiatives over those which, in a country where freedom to practice or not practice religion as one sees fit, do good works in the name of humanity instead of God? Unmitigated horseshit.

Go read the rest. She's also right about Pelosi and Reid--how hard is it to find some personable and energetic Democrats to go on television and articulate policy?

Purple Finger, Brown Nose

2005-02-02T19:32:00.000-08:00

God. I have to say that the purple finger imagery from this speech is the lamest attempt at political theater since, well, the President landed on an aircraft carrier, dressed in a flight suit, and prematurely declared Mission Accomplished. For some reason it reminded me of Tobias on Arrested Development, and how he got blue paint all over the place, while waiting to be called back by the Blue Man Group. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I pity you. Update: If you were lucky enough to miss the speech, Rising-Hegemon has pictures of the Purple Fingerers (scroll down a bit).

Islamic Law in Iraq?

2005-02-02T07:53:00.000-08:00

One of the concerns about bringing full-fledged democratic elections to Iraq was that it might result in an Islamist government ruled by Islamic law. From a humanrightsfreedomdemocracyliberty! standpoint (which we seem to care about in this instance), this would be disconcerting since strict Islamic law isn't particularly kind to women. So what to make of this?:

The turnout for the top-finishing electoral list, a coalition of Islamist parties supported by the Shiite clerical establishment, has convinced leading clerics in Najaf that religious parties will have a majority in the National Assembly that will write Iraq's next constitution, several of them said.
The clerics of Najaf who orchestrated the Shiite coalition say they expect a constitutional debate between hard-line Islamists, who want Quranic law to be the constitution's primary source, and moderate Muslims who want a milder form of religious law. This debate, they say, will dwarf any challenge from secular parties.

It's important to remember that this election, although a step in the right direction, only chose the parties that would put forth the people to draft an Iraqi Constitution. An election where real leaders are chosen won't come until the end of this year. Thus, given the intensity and variety of political, religious, and cultural factors trying to inluence the drafting of this Constitution, we're by no means out of the woods yet. In reality, the response to the election results will be far more important than the election itself.

On a side note, this is embarrasingly ridiculous.

All You Have To Do Is Ask

2005-02-01T13:07:00.000-08:00

In an editorial in yesterday's StarTribune, Camille Gage sounds a note of caution over using blogs as a primary source of news. This caution resulted from a recent run-in with John Hinderaker, of the popular conservative blog Powerline. From the editorial:

As a graduate student in public affairs at the University of Minnesota, I recently heard an in-class presentation by John Hinderaker, who, with partner Scott Johnson, runs the Powerline blog. Powerline played a role in breaking the Rathergate affair and was recently named "Blog of the Year" by Time magazine. Prior to Hinderaker's presentation, the week before the November elections, I visited the Powerline site. To my surprise an Oct. 27 post covered alleged voter fraud in Racine, Wis., my hometown. The charges involved the registering of illegal aliens to vote. The story seemed outrageous, so I made a few phone calls to check it out. What I discovered was troubling. There was no factual basis for the voter fraud allegations. Powerline posted the story based on the word of a single individual employed by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). This was hearsay at best, posted as "news" at a time when voter registration efforts by the Democrats and 527 groups were coming under fire by conservatives. At class I asked Hinderaker if posts to Powerline were fact-checked. He was dismissive of the question, so I asked if he was aware that the Racine voter fraud story was inaccurate. He stated that he was not, slapped his hands together and stated that the blogosphere was all about speed and therefore did not allow for fact-checking. Mr. Hinderaker went on to say, "Our readers let us know when we get it wrong." And therein lies the cautionary Catch-22: Bloggers may serve as media watchdogs, but who will watch the blogs? Do you have time to fact-check what you read online?

It's a good question, and one that bloggers and journalists should be weighing when they post stories or run with something they read on a blog (and I speak from experience on this!). Unfortunately, though, instead of using Gage's article as a starting block for a discussion on blogs and journalism, many conservative bloggers have turned to attacking Gage and impugning her credibility. Some examples are here, here, and here. Hinderaker even went so far as to call Gage a "miscreant" and criticized her for not elaborating on who she contacted and what information she found in order to conclude that there wasn't any factual basis to the story. He also added:

We are, of course, preparing a response. It will focus, I think, on the fact-checking that the Strib did before they printed Ms. Gage's attack on us. I talked to Commentary Editor Eric Ringham today, and he acknowledged that the Strib didn't do any fact-checking at all before they accused us of not fact-checking. That's right: None. Zilch. Zippo. Nada. And Ms. Gage, if that's really her name, has no knowledge about the voter fraud scandal which has now resulted in a federal criminal investigation.

And then, in an update, he notes that Gage gave money to the Dean campaign, as though that actually means anything. Now I understand that in Hinderaker's world, things move fast, and there isn't anytime for fact-checking, so I took two minutes and emailed Gage about who she contacted and what information she discovered. She was kind enough to respond with the notes she used for the story, which I've pasted below with her permission:

I began by calling Tom Farley, the news editor at the Racine Journal Times. Mr. Farley had no knowledge of the allegations. He pointed out that there is no city position with the title "Deputy Registrar of Voters" (what the post cited). He stated the City Clerk's office dealt with voter registration and suggested I call the Carolynn Moskonas, the Racine County Clerk. I then called Ms. Moskonas at the City Clerks office. She was unaware of this matter. Ms. Moskonas explained to me that at the direction of the state legislature, volunteers involved in voter registrations drives must attend a training. They are then considered "deputy registrars." I decided to go to the source of the allegations and contacted Susan Tully, Midwest field director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). I told her I was a student researching allegations of voter fraud. I asked her if she would name the individual or group in question. She declined to name the individual, but said the group was Voces de la Frontera, a group that works with Hispanic immigrants. I asked her directly how she knew the individual in question was an illegal immigrant and asked if she had spoken to them. She quickly admitted that she did not actually know if the individual in question was an illegal alien. I asked her when the alleged voter fraud occurred. She informed me the incidents took place in August and September, 2004. I then asked her which law enforcement agency she contacted and she told me she had called the FBI. I then did an internet search on Voces de la Frontera. The first hit was a recent press release, released jointed by Wisconsin Citizen Action and Voces de la Frontera regarding their successful voter registration drive. I called Nathan Sooy, the contact listed on the press release. I asked Mr. Sooy if had was aware of these allegations. He informed me that this was the first he had heard about it. I asked him if they had been contacted by the State Elections Board, the Secretary of State or any other law enforcement agency regarding these charges and he said that neither Wisconsin Citizen Action nor Voces de la Frontera had been contacted.

After reading her notes, it's not hard to conclude that there really isn't any factual evidence as Gage claimed in her article. If Hinderaker, et. al. really had a problem with Gage's allegation, all they had to do was send her an email and ask her nicely to verify the source and information. But, clearly it was far easier for them to impugne her credibility than to take a few minutes to check her story out (Hinderaker says he contacted the StarTribune, but why not directly contact Gage?) And this, in my opinion, is one of blogging's biggest problems: too often blind partisanship overtakes sound reasoning, and the result is misinformation under the guise of "information you won't hear on CNN or Fox!!" Both the Right and Left are guilty of this, and I think it's the most important point of Gage's article.

Jack v. Jay?

2005-01-31T13:00:00.000-08:00

Something I've been following closely during the past week is the fallout from Jack Shafer's Blog Overkill article. As I wrote earlier, I think Shafer's piece is solid because it recognizes both blogging's promise and limitations--Yes, blogs have tremendous influence on the mainstream media, but no, blogging will never replace it. Seems obvious to me, but the article spawned a fairly substantial debate on exactly who it is that claims blogs will take over the world of journalism. Shafer made it pretty clear that he thought it was people like Dave Winer, Jeff Jarvis, and Jay Rosen--and, if you're like me, and didn't attend the Conference, but read Shafer's account, it would be easy to walk away thinking the same thing. According to Jay Rosen, though, this is a gross mischaracterization of his position. I can't vouch for Winer or Jarvis because I don't regularly read their blogs, but I can vouch for Rosen, whose excellent Blogging vs. Journalism Is Over clearly articulates the same point (blogs have influence-yes, replace?-no) Shafer makes in Slate. So why is Rosen upset? Maybe because Blogging vs. Journalism Is Over was given at the same conference Shafer attended! Rosen's justifiably annoyed that Shafer had to knock-down the blogging triumphalist strawman in order to make the same point many attendees were making. I'm not sure why Shafer chose to do this, but maybe it was because he thought it would be better for the article he intended to write if he didn't come across as repeating what people have been saying all along. Whatever the reason, it's unfortunate that the discussion surrounding the article has become a distraction from the less dramatic point that Shafer and Rosen actually agree. Just a thought: It seems that the desire to tear down blog triumphalism hinges on the use of the world "revolutionize" to describe blogging's impact on journalism. There's something about that word, which puts even blog sympathizers on the defensive because they're wary of the connotation "revolutionary" can carry. I think when people like Rosen use the word "revolutionize" to describe blogging's influence on journalism, what they mean is that it's having a functional impact on the field. That is, the way journalism is being done, is changing because of media like blogs. Misunderstandings have arisen, though, because people have misinterpreted "revolutionize" to mean "over-throw." When these people hear that "blogs have revolutionized journalism" they're thinking of "revolutionize" in terms of blogs replacing traditional journalism. But that isn't the case. Blogging's impact on journalism is more "revolutionary" in the sense of the Industrial Revolution, than the Islamic Revolution. For the purposes of the debate, it might be less distracting and more practical for people to start finding another way to characterize blogging's influence.

Civilized vs Uncivilized: 100 Years Later

2005-01-30T20:59:00.000-08:00

Tom Wolfe has an interesting op-ed in Sunday's Times, in which he compares President Bush's second Inaugural Address to Teddy Roosevelt's Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. What's interesting to Wolfe is that nobody at the Council on Foreign Relations was able to connect President Bush's:

"The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands",

with President Roosevelt's:

"We would interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations."

After reading both speeches, I think Wolfe is correct to draw this analogy. However, I'm surprised and disappointed at what he chose to leave out of the comparison. The underlying theme of TR's corollary is that the people of the United States (and it's Anglo-Saxon culture) are more civilized and superior to peoples that are not as politically or culturally advanced. For instance:

"Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may lead the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power."

It can basically be boiled down to race, and this becomes more clear when you undersand that TR was talking about expanding America's sphere of influence into the Far East. In this sense, Roosevelt was framing America's growing Imperialism in a charitable way-- the "civilized" Americans would be helping their "uncivilized" brethern. I can't help but detect a similar trace of cultural arrogance in Bush's foreign policy, whose ideological framework was laid out in the second Inaugural. The way Bush talks to the Middle East about bringing freedom and democracy to that region is not unlike Roosevelt's way of talking to the people of the Far East. In fact, the rhetoric of freedom is used to gift wrap the War on Terrorism in much the same way that helping the uncivilized was used to garnish American Imperialism. One hundred years later we realize that notions of cultural superiority should have no role in dictating our foreign policy (didn't the whole world say, "Never Again!" at Auschwitz this week?). I'm disappointed that Wolfe could write such an endearing piece comparing TR's rhetoric with W's without noting their most abhorrent similarities.

Election in Iraq

2005-01-30T14:28:00.000-08:00

I'm glad to see that all hell didn't break lose during the Iraqi election, and I'm curious to see what the final numbers are and which parties will have the most control. By most accounts, it seems that the election pretty much played out as expected: The Shiites and Kurds got out the vote, and the Sunnis didn't. Last night I watched about an hour of TV coverage on Fox and MSNBC (itself a bizarre spectacle), and I was struck by how few people were actually at the polling places. Of course, that might be because voter turnout was sporadic throughout Iraq, but you would think that if the media was going to show up at a polling place, they'd show up at a polling place with lots of people. Maybe President Bush was right to lower expectations, or as Sadly, No! points out, maybe he was wrong. I think we would have been able to find "victory" in just about anything that happened today. So, were the elections the "resounding success" President Bush claims them to be? Probably too early to tell, but probably not too early, as Hoder notes, to start hearing confirmations from the neoconservatives that their dangerous experiment "works". Before we start bringing democracy to Iran, though, Juan Cole warns us on what we can expect in the more immediate aftermath of the Iraqi election:

Many of the voters came out to cast their ballots in the belief that it was the only way to regain enough sovereignty to get American troops back out of their country. The new parliament is unlikely to make such a demand immediately, because its members will be afraid of being killed by the Baath military. One fears a certain amount of resentment among the electorate when this reticence becomes clear. Iraq now faces many key issues that could tear the country apart, from the issues of Kirkuk and Mosul to that of religious law. James Zogby on Wolf Blitzer wisely warned the US public against another "Mission Accomplished" moment. Things may gradually get better, but this flawed "election" isn't a Mardi Gras for Americans and they'll regret it if that is the way they treat it.

Breaking News

2005-01-28T16:06:00.000-08:00

President Bush rolled out the trailer for next week's State of the Union today, and boy, are we in for a doozie of a surprise!

He also gave a brief preview of the State of the Union address he will deliver on Wednesday: "I will remind the country we're still at war. I want to thank the Congress for providing the necessary support for our troops who are in harm's way."

Good thing, because I almost forgot. And I bet their families almost forgot, too. I bet he'll also remind us by asking us to continue making the ultimate sacrifice: more tax cuts.

Friday Nude Ann Coulter Blogging

2005-01-28T16:05:00.000-08:00

Back by popular demand... (via Wonkette) Hope you have a nice weekend.

Queer Eye For the War Criminal

2005-01-28T09:52:00.000-08:00

Dick Cheney: (via Getty Images) Pure Class.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney raised eyebrows on Friday for wearing an olive-drab parka, hiking boots and knit ski cap to represent the United States at a solemn ceremony remembering the liberation of Auschwitz. Other leaders at the event in Poland on Thursday marking the 60th anniversary of the death camp's liberation, such as French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin, wore dark, formal overcoats and dress shoes or boots.

Isn't that a Triple Fat Goose jacket? Schweet! On the bright side, at least he wasn't wearing this.

Time to Leave?

2005-01-27T14:52:00.000-08:00

Today I learned that one of the Marines killed in Tuesday's helicopter crash had been corresponding with a close friend. I'd actually read a few of the letters between the two, so in a small sense, I feel as though I know a bit about him despite the fact we never met and he had know idea who I was. It turns out that the Marine killed was in the same unit as another person my friend knows. This person was severely injured in Fallujah last November, and had he not been, would likely have been on the helicopter with the rest of his unit. This is extremely upsetting for me, even as someone with no real physical connection to these guys. I can't imagine how their families, and the families of other soldiers killed in action must feel when the Commander in Chief consistently proves himself to be an insensitive prick:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 - President Bush's opening statement at his news conference on Wednesday was striking for what it left out: any mention of the 31 Americans who died overnight in the crash of a Marine helicopter in Iraq, the largest number of American deaths in a single incident since the war began. Mr. Bush instead focused on his long-term goal of "ending tyranny in our world," and then cast the Iraqi election coming Sunday as part of a march of freedom around the globe. He said that if he had told the reporters in the room a few years before that the Iraqi people would be voting, "you would look at me like some of you still look at me, with a kind of blank expression." [...]
Though the tone of the news conference was at times light and bantering, in response to a question later Mr. Bush did address the helicopter crash: "Obviously any time we lose life it is a sad moment," he said. [...] "It's almost a policy," said the adviser, who asked not to be named because the president does not want aides talking about the inner workings of the White House, "because if you mention one, you have to mention them all."

I'm not even going to comment on the insensitivity of this because I think it speaks for itself. Bush is trying to run a faith-based foreign policy. He has faith in the fact that if he just ignores the negative and accentuates the positive, we'll all be fine and Iraq will be a beacon of freedom, democracy, and liberty. This is not going to happen as long as George W. Bush has any measure of influence on our foreign policy and the sooner he realizes this, the better off we're going to be. I admire Senator Ted Kennedy for publicly saying what no doubt many of his peers are thinking to themselves:

''The U.S. military presence has become part of the problem, not part of the solution,'' Kennedy said in a speech to Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. ''We need a new plan that sets fair and realistic goals for self-government in Iraq, and works with the Iraqi government on a specific timetable for the honorable homecoming of our forces.''

Bush likes to talk about our "long-term goals" as if they are justification for the mess he created. The fact is, Bush has never defined anything resembling a concrete goal when it comes to Iraq. Freedom and democracy are dreams, not goals. Moreover, he's never actually addressed the logistics of our plan to achieve whatever the hell it is we're trying to achieve. It was always frustrating for me during the election when people would criticize Kerry for not having a real plan for Iraq. Although that might have been true, it would have been nice for these people to hold the President to the same standard, since he is our Commander and Chief and he's never really said what his plan is. Personally, I've always been a bit concerned about the cut and run option. I've never been sure that it wouldn't make things worse and create a situation that we would have to eventually deal with on a much more dangerous scale. But at this point, I have zero confidence in this Administration's ability to competently deal with the situation, so I'm beginning to rethink whether getting the hell out of there might not be such a bad idea.

Should We Believe the Blogging Hype?

2005-01-26T20:36:00.000-08:00

Even though I could use the money (every dollar counts!), I'm not going to work over Jack Shafer for this piece he wrote for Slate on the hype surrounding blogging. Overall, I think it's pretty solid because it recognizes both blogging's potential and limitations. As I've written previously, I don't think it is correct to assume (or wish) that blogs are going to take over the major media anytime soon. At best, blogs are complementary to, and a watchdog on, the traditional media. Hoping for anything more is wishful thinking. I do think, though, that Shafer gives too much credence to those that believe blogs will revolutionize media. He starts off comparing the hype around blogs to that of Guerrilla Television from the 1970s. On the surface the comparison seems relevant, since the premise of guerrilla television was that anybody with a small video camera could produce their own news and (cross your fingers!) one day take over NBC. The comparison fails, however, when you realize that blogging utilizes a prefabricated infrastructure--the Internet--that is cheap, extremely popular, and easy to utilize. This luxury wasn't available for guerrilla producers or pamphleteers, which ultimately stunted its potential growth. For instance, I could post this, and theoretically, it wouldn't be hard for millions of people to read it within 24 hours. But if I wrote this on a piece of paper or videotaped myself reading it, it would take weeks (at best) for the same number of people to consume it. The bottom line is that there is power in speed, and that is what is so significant about blogging, and it is why blogging has already had more influence than previously thought revolutionary media. If I were at the same conference, I might have had a similar reaction, since it sounds like there was a lot of over-hyped optimism about the revolutionary power of blogging. I think this is inescapable whenever you get a bunch of people together that are on the cutting edge of a developing technology. It's that type of optimism that puts these people on the cutting edge in the first place. But when you put them all in the same room, you run the risk of creating an optimistic echo chamber. Blogging is very cool and very promising, to be sure, but it isn't going to replace the mainstream media, at least in the foreseeable future. I've totally digressed from my original point: I think Shafer's account is a good summary of the current blogging landscape. And even though he might have been affected by the triumphant group-think, I think his skepticism about how far blogging will go is warranted. So read it for yourself and tell me what you think. UPDATE (1/30): According to others that were there, it sounds like Shafer created the impression of the over-hyped optimism just to be able to knock it down. Of course, if this is true, bad for Shafer, and bad for my critique of the over-hypers, but in the end, I think his main point still stands.

There's Room For Only One Meddler In These Here Elections!

2005-01-26T19:49:00.000-08:00

Bush's War on Irony continues at full force:

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Iran (search) should stay out of Iraq's elections, President Bush said Wednesday on pan-Arab television.

"Iranians should not be trying to unduly influence the elections," Bush said of Sunday's polls in an interview with the Dubai-based satellite channel Al-Arabiya, according to a White House transcript.

He also buried the expectations bar about 10 feet in the Iraqi sand:

"The fact that they're voting in itself is successful," Bush said.

No, it isn't.

Cha-Fucking-Ching

2005-01-25T21:16:00.000-08:00

Who needs a tax cut?

The budget deficit is becoming a knottier problem in the short term and will be a potentially catastrophic one in the future, the Congressional Budget Office reported today. The report suggests that President Bush, in the budget he will deliver to Congress in two weeks, will have a harder time keeping his promise to cut the deficit in half during his presidency. The CBO's annual report on the budget outlook foresees a deficit of $400 billion this year. It also forecast a cumulative deficit of $1.3 trillion from 2005 to 2014, an increase of nearly 60% from the CBO's $861-billion estimate of just four months ago.

There is no way in hell Bush is going to cut the deficit in half by 2008, not with tax cuts and total war:

These figures take into account some of the administration's request today for another $80 billion for the war in Iraq, but they do not assume an extension. Nor do they assume the likely extension by Congress of some major tax cuts that were enacted in 2001 and 2003 and are scheduled to expire in 2009 and 2011.

Yeah, I'm sure we won't need any more money for Iraq or Afghanistan.

Obituary

2005-01-25T11:47:00.000-08:00

Coalition of the Willing (2003-2005) Also known as the Coalition of the Bribed, The Coalition? of the Willing? Ha! Ha!, The Not Your Daddy's Coalition, and The You Call That A Coalition? Coalition , the Coalition of the Willing was a 45 (or 48 depending on who's counting)-member group of nations first brought together to find WMD, stop torture, and bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. When no WMD was found, the Coalition started advocating torture, and when people started to realize that freedom and democracy really meant an illegitimate election, membership slowly diminished, until the Coalition was no more. The Coalition is survived by The United States, Great Britain, and don't forget Poland (though, not for long). (via the wonderful Cursor)

Expensive Targets

2005-01-25T01:39:00.000-08:00

The soon-to-be-built, yet-to-be-bombed US Embassy in Iraq will cost you, the US taxpayer, $1.5 billion. To put this in perspective, the Freedom Tower will also cost $1.5 billion. When finished, they will be the two most expensive targets in the world! It seems like we throw $80 billion down the Iraqi rabbit hole every few months... (via Atrios)

BARBARians in SF

2005-01-24T21:04:00.000-08:00

Ok, it's that time again. This Thursday, January 26, 6-9pm at The Uptown at 17th and Capp in SF. Unfortunately, this conflicts with the BARFF (Bay Area Resident's Focus on the Family) Meet Up at The Stud, so attendance might be low. More details here. For the uninitiated, BARBARians stands for Bay Area Resident Bloggers and Readers. So if you somehow fit into that description, and even if you don't (I'm pretty sure the "Resident" part was only added to make the acronym work), feel free to join us.

James Dobson Goes To The Movies For Your Kids So You Don't Have To

2005-01-24T13:15:00.000-08:00

Via The American Street, I noticed this handy guide to movies from James Dobson's Focus on ~~Fascism~~ the Family organization. It's particularly helpful if you want to know how many times the word "fuck" was used in Closer ("about 40, with a handful of 'shits'"), the sexual content of Racing Stripes ("There's a bit of magnetism between animals that comes across in subtly sexualized humor meant to go over the heads of youngsters while amusing their parents"), or the spiritual content of Darkness ("The entire plot hinges on ritualistic satanic sacrifice"). I especially enjoyed this hot description of the sexual content in The Incredibles:

Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl revel in their visibly passionate relationship. Quick kisses, longing gazes, lingering touches and wink-wink romanticism hint at some of the best things marriage has to offer. Elastigirl becomes concerned that Mr. Incredible has developed a wandering eye, but she's proved wrong. Elsewhere, Mirage wears an outfit that reveals a bit of cleavage. (All the superhero getups are skintight.)

Some of the best things marriage has to offer?? I need a cold shower! Overall, this is a great resource if you want your kids to grow up being square like their parents.

Onward Christian Warriors!

2005-01-24T08:24:00.000-08:00

I have the feeling that if Bush actually read books, he'd probably like this one.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Movies like "Braveheart" and "Legends of the Fall" are on the viewing list for men in a growing Christian movement that calls for them to throw off their "nice guy" personas and emulate warriors. The book which inspired the movement, John Eldredge's "Wild at Heart," has already sold 1.5 million copies in English and been translated into 16 languages, most recently Korean. Eldredge believes many Christian men have become bored, "really nice guys" and invites them to rediscover passion by viewing their life's mission as having a battle to fight, an adventure to live and a beauty to rescue. [...] Men have been flocking to retreats and forming small groups to study it. Some are organized by Eldredge and his team, but many are just informally arranged by readers of the book. These groups have sprung up as far away Kazakhstan and even among tribes along the Amazon River in South America.

And guess where Eldredge used to work:

Eldredge, who is a trained counselor and worked for 13 years for Christian organization Focus on the Family, said we are currently living in a "fatherless age" with many men having abandoned their children if not physically then emotionally. His own father was an alcoholic who after some good years when Eldredge was young became increasingly distant. Chase had lost his father, who he described as "very cold," just a few months before he attended the retreat. " A lot of what it brings out is how much you are impacted by your own father. What role model he set for you and how God relates to us as the big father," Chase said. Eldredge said he used characters such as Mel Gibson's warrior Wallace in "Braveheart" because the characters often embody men who are engaging their passions by fighting noble battles, rescuing women and finding adventure.

This explains so goddamn much. What is it with these people and their fathers? Their entire interpretation of Christianity boils down to dealing with their repressed aggression towards a father figure. Nevermind the fact that had Jesus actually read Eldredge's book, we would never had Christianity in the first place. And where would we be then?!? Incidentally, in case you were wondering, women can be good Christian Warriors, too.

News From Iraq

2005-01-24T08:17:00.000-08:00

The Good News:

Iraqi security forces have arrested the "most lethal" top lieutenant of al-Qaida's leader in Iraq -- a man allegedly behind 75 percent of the car bombings in Baghdad since the U.S.-led invasion, the prime minister's office said Monday. Sami Mohammed Ali Said al-Jaaf, also known as Abu Omar al-Kurdi, was arrested during a Jan. 15 raid in Baghdad, a government statement said Monday. Two other militants linked to Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror group also have been arrested, authorities announced Monday. Al-Jaaf was "the most lethal of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's lieutenants," the statement said.

Of course this is great progress, but it still seems like we've had car bombs in or near Baghdad at least once a day since January 15. The Bad News:

The protest in Baghdad and others in towns across southern Iraq, including Kut, Amarah and Karbala, marked the latest campaign by Sadr's group, a grass-roots movement led by Shiite clergy that claims to speak on behalf of the Shiite downtrodden. Through protests, sermons and declarations by the reclusive Sadr, the movement is signaling its doubts about the Iraqi election, ending months of ambiguity over whether Sadr had surrendered his arms for a place in the political process. [...] Sadr's men have stopped short of calling for a boycott but insist they are not supporting the election. In coded language, they have ridiculed Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's most influential religious leader, whose perceived backing of the top Shiite coalition has made it the favorite in the vote. Loath to provoke the U.S. military, which killed hundreds of its followers in last year's fighting, the Sadr movement has relegated its militia to a lower profile while keeping up its strident rhetoric.

I don't know how much influence Sadr has within the greater Shiite community, but I do know he can get people's attention. If a solid percentage of Shiites join Sunnis in boycotting the election, then the election will really be futile.

The Next Episode In The Long Series of Legitimate Iraqi Elections

2005-01-22T18:48:00.000-08:00

Even though both the Americans and the Iraqis are admitting that the upcoming Iraqi elections will be "less than perfect," I've heard a lot of talk about the symbolic importance these elections will provide the people of Iraq. The argument is basically this: Even though half the country has promised not to vote, and we can't provide full security at the polling places, and even though Iraqi expatriots aren't planning to vote, it doesn't really matter because it's still an election. It's still better than what they had before. Oh really? You might recall the last Iraqi election before the war to bring "real" elections to Iraq:

Wednesday, 16 October, 2002, 11:41 GMT 12:41 UK Saddam 'wins 100% of vote' Iraqi officials say President Saddam Hussein has won 100% backing in a referendum on whether he should rule for another seven years. There were 11,445,638 eligible voters - and every one of them voted for the president, according to Izzat Ibrahim, Vice-Chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council. [...] Before the vote, Washington dismissed the referendum as a farce after the last such vote gave the Iraqi leader 99.96% support. "Obviously it's not a very serious day, not a very serious vote and nobody places any credibility on it," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said on Tuesday. In London, the Foreign Office painted a stark picture of the "choice" facing the Iraqi voters: "You can't have free elections when the electorate goes to the polls in the knowledge that they have only one candidate, that candidate routinely murders and tortures opponents of the regime and the penalty for slandering that sole candidate is to have one's tongue cut out."

But apparently you can have free elections when the second largest religious minority decideds to boycott the election. This is why I don't buy the argument that we should keep to the election schedule just because it's an election. Elections, almost by definition, have to be considered legitimate (offer not valid in Florida or Ohio). It's really quite simple: If everyone knows it won't be legitimate before it even happens, then don't have it until people think it'll be legitimate. This time around, we're going to be like Saddam Hussein insisting that the will of the people has spoken and that (of course!) the results are accurate. Meanwhile, the rest of the world will be echoing the words of Ari Fleishcher: "Obviously it's not a very serious day, not a very serious vote and nobody places any credibility on it." Does anybody want to bet that there will be more than 11 million voters this time around?

Sie konnen nicht dort gehen

2005-01-22T09:04:00.000-08:00

At least somebody is trying to hold Rumsfeld accountable for his actions:

MUNICH - United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has cancelled a planned visit to Munich. Rumsfeld has informed the German government via the US embassy he will not take part at the Munich Security Conference in February, conference head Horst Teltschik said. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights filed a complaint in December with the Federal German Prosecutor's Office against Rumsfeld accusing him of war crimes and torture in connection with detainee abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Rumsfeld had made it known immediately after the complaint was filed that he would not attend the Munich conference unless Germany quashed the legal action. [...] The organisation alleges violations of German legislation which outlaws war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide independent of the place of crime or origin of the accused. [...] The Center for Constitutional Rights said it and four Iraqis tortured in US custody had filed a complaint with German authorities against Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet and eight other senior military and civilian officials over abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq.

This is good stuff. The same thing happened, although unsuccessfully, to Kissinger. I think Steve Soto said it best, "You know we have sunk a long way when we have to get lessons on war crimes, international law, and accountability from the Germans."

Tilting at Windmills

2005-01-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

It's interesting to read all the post-speech commentaries glow about the ambitious, idealistic, and historic agenda put forth by the President. For 24 hours, at least, it seemed that "the expansion of freedom in all the world" was easy and without consequence. In fact, without any mention of Iraq and Afghanistan, one could almost forget that half a world a way, the very ideals and ambition adored by 51% of the country, have failed miserably for over a year, with no end in sight. This speech wasn't ambitious, it was audacious. It wasn't idealistic, it was out of touch. And it was far more Quixotic than Wilsonian. How much worse do things need to get in Iraq for people (and much of the fawning press) to start recognizing the disconnect between this:

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

And this:

BAGHDAD, Jan. 21 -- A car bomb exploded outside a Shiite Muslim mosque killing 15 people and wounding 40 in Baghdad on Friday as worshipers celebrated one of the year's most important Muslim holidays. Police cordoned off the Taf Mosque in southwest Baghdad so it was not possible to observe the scene, but survivors taken to Yarmouk Hospital described a white car plowing into the mosque and detonating.

The only reason this disconnect is allowed to exist is because we've become numb to the death and destruction in Iraq. Reports of the daily car bombs are read like sports scores on the news, often quickly and out of context. Flag-draped coffins and the wounded are censored from our view, lest we start to realize that exporting freedom has real consequences. As a country, we've hardly been asked to sacrifice (unless you're in the military), and have actually been "rewarded" economically with tax cuts. But listening to the President, you'd think the negative effects of our actions were just a bad dream cooked up by his opponents. Some have accused Bush's rhetoric as being too idealistic. I don't think that was a mistake. This Administration has always tried to mask its failures and scams in the rhetoric of idealism and crisis. Yesterday was no different. To obscure how massively he's failed at implementing these ideas, Bush had no choice but to overcompensate and act as though he was our Messianic Savior who re-invented sliced bread. It's actually a good indication of how we're doing: the more rosy a picture Bush paints, the worse off we are.

Four More Years

2005-01-20T10:41:00.000-08:00

So it's official: Bush is sworn in for a second term. I had a chance to listen to a little of his speech, and from what I heard, any hope that version 2.0 is going to be more moderate and less Bush-like is wishful thinking. Much of the speech was like what we've come to expect from Bush over the last four years. He spoke as though there were no opposition or wariness to the actions of the past, and issued veiled threats of similar actions in the future. Even though he didn't explicitly mention Iraq or Afghanistan, you can be sure that he was talking about them, and probably also Iran and Syria, when he says things like:

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. [...] My most solemn duty is to protect this nation and its people against further attacks and emerging threats. Some have unwisely chosen to test America's resolve, and have found it firm.

And he made it pretty clear just who needs our help the most:

From all of you, I have asked patience in the hard task of securing America, which you have granted in good measure. Our country has accepted obligations that are difficult to fulfill, and would be dishonorable to abandon. Yet because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well – a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.

I'm pretty sure he doesn't mean white people. I still think there is reason to be somewhat optimistic about the future, though. We already know that Bush won't change, but what will change is the dynamics of the people that support him. During the election, Bush painted himself into the corner with the Religious Right, and if he doesn't deliver, their support will switch to the Roy Moore's of the world. Personally, I don't think Bush has the guts to follow through, and early indications back that up. The other thing to keep in mind is that as things in Iraq deteriorate and the public's dissatisfaction for the war continues to grow, we're going to start seeing Republicans positioning themselves away from the President (not only on Iraq, but also Social Security) in order to win re-election or run for the Republican nomination. We've already seen a little bit of this with people like Gingrich and Whitman. At the least, this will slow down and complicate Bush's agenda, and maybe even prevent us from bringing democracy to another "dark corner" of the world. Overall, I have my fingers crossed that Republican hubris over the next four years will render them unelectable in 2008.

Blogging and Journalism

2005-01-19T11:16:00.000-08:00

Jay Rosen at PressThink was kind enough to post a draft of the essay he plans to deliver at the Blogging, Journalism, and Credibility Conference next weekend at Harvard University. The essay, entitled "Bloggers vs. Journalists Is Now Over", is very good and insightful. Here are some of the parts I found most interesting:

The question now isn't whether blogs can be journalism. They can be, sometimes. It isn't whether bloggers "are" journalists. They apparently are, sometimes. We have to ask different questions now because events have moved the story forward. By "events" I mean things on the surface we can see, like the tsunami story, and things underneath that we have yet to discern. That's why we're conferencing: to find the deeper pattern, of which blogging and journalism are a part. So that is what I give you: my best attempt at scratching out a pattern. [...] When 90 percent of the op-ed style writing was done on actual op-ed pages, editorial page editors had sovereignty over that region of public dialogue. With blogging and the online space generally, that rule is gone. Opinion in reaction to the news can come from anywhere, and the bloggers are frequently better at it than the sleepy op-ed page ever was. Newspaper op-ed pages can still have influence; they can still be great. But they are not sovereign in their domain, and so their ideas, which never anticipated that, are under great pressure. [...] Instead of wrestling with blogging's actual potential in journalism, we have tended to fight about bloggers' credentials as journalists. This is a matter of far less importance, although I would never say "credentials don't matter." Even fights about credentials matter, sometimes. But that is a poor way to go about discovering what blogging means for journalists and the future of the public service franchise. Today there is every reason in the world for journalists to finally get religion about blogging while bloggers get their thing with journalism straight.

I've been thinking a lot about this topic lately, and have admittedly found it difficult to get a full grasp of the issue, not only because of its complexity, but also because of how quickly the gist of the debate changes. As Rosen notes, the "bloggers vs. journalists" debate changed monumentally the moment the tsunami hit, and it's hard to know how it will change and evolve during the next major crisis. For bloggers, the tsunami (and, at least ostensibly, Rathergate--although I think this is more of an example of the dangerous mob mentality that exits potentially in the blogosphere) bolstered their credibility among journalists and the public. The medium is evolving so quickly, though, that something could happen tomorrow that destroys all this earned cred. As a result, it's difficult to have a definitive understanding of What It All Means. Keep that in mind as you read some of my thoughts on the topic. I've never quite understood all the fuss about blogging and credibility. Originally, credibility became an issue when the Internet was just beginning to become a major source of public information. It was easy for people to dismiss anything that was published on the Internet for no other reason than the fact that it originated online. In a sense, the Internet was seen as the world's shitty high school newspaper--fun to read over lunch, but something you shouldn't take too seriously. This, of course, has changed in large part due to the blogosphere, but it hasn't changed because blogs are replacing journalists. It's happening because blogs are a great source for niche information (i.e. liberal politics, foreign affairs, etc), they're fun to read, and they're interactive--often the reader can participate in the discussion in ways they can't with other media. The popularity, and by extension the credibility, of blogs has been driven purely by the large numbers of people that read them (e.g., Kos gets 260k/day, Instapundit gets 150k/day). If that many people are taking the time to read blogs, there must be something there. It might not be journalism per se, but it is something close. At the least, it is something complementary, and not threatening. The thing I find most interesting about the debate on the credibility of bloggers is that it hasn't originated with the public. Instead, it largely has derived from the Journalism Establishment, who for reasons that are sometimes valid and other times petty, feel threatened by the blogging phenomenon. This insecurity comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what blogs are about. It arises out of a misguided generalization that bloggers are, as some critics suggest, anonymous, irresponsible, and unaccountable for what they write. They create an image of the blogosphere that is akin to a Wild West type anarchy. To generalize like this is to ignore a lot of very good bloggers (who also happen to be journalists), and to ignore the reasons why these people blog. The truth is that many political and media bloggers write to supplement what the media has already written. They may take a decidedly biased tone where journalists have (traditionally) remained objective. But this is accepted by the public because it's what people apparently want. As someone notes in Rosen's essay, objectivity is dead. People want to read the news through the lens of their political bias. It's why Fox News is so popular and it's why blogs are taking off. Of course, blogs also serve as a watchdog on the media, which in my opinion, is a good thing and something journalists should embrace. An apt comparison to this is John Stewart's appearance on Crossfire. Tucker Carlson and the Crossfire gang were critical of Stewart because they didn't think Stewart was upholding certain journalistic standards in his role as anchor of The Daily Show. The criticism was ridiculous, not only because The Daily Show is satire, but because Crossfire and much of the rest of the media are equally guilty (and more culpable) of the very same things they accused of Stewart. And this is pretty much where a lot of the debate on bloggers vs. journalism has focused--blogs aren't respected because they're not playing by the same rules as everyone else. The reality of the situation is that blogs refocus the public's attention on things that Journalism either doesn't bother with or sufficiently investigate. It's interesting that Journalism has been so concerned about holding bloggers accountable, but doesn't seem to be equally concerned with holding the President or his Secretary of Defense to the same level of accountability. That is why blogs are flourishing and journalism is in an existential crisis. Blogs are just a lot better at shining a light on things than most media outfits because, I think, they have more freedom to examine things without the journalistic red tape that sometimes limits traditional journalism. It is true that this sort of lawlessness among blogs can be abused, but the pure number of blogs combined with the intelligence and skill of many of the top bloggers serves as a vital check on this lawlessness. In this way, I think the freedom enjoyed by blogs is beneficial to everyone, including journalism. These are just some random thoughts that I've been thinking about lately, so for a more coherent and detailed account of this issue, you'd be well served to check out the awesome Press Think.

Rice has a history of succeeding at failure

2005-01-18T11:41:00.000-08:00

Noticeably absent from the discussions surrounding Rice's merits for the Secretary of State position is the fact that in October 2003, she was charged with managing the post-war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We want to cut through the red tape and make sure that we're getting the assistance there quickly so that they can carry out their priorities," Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said. "It's a new phase, a different phase we're entering." Rice will head the Iraq Stabilization Group, which will have coordinating committees on counterterrorism, economic development, political affairs and media messages. Each committee will be headed by a Rice deputy and include representatives of the State, Defense and Treasury departments and the CIA. [...] The new structure will give Bush's top White House aides a stronger voice in decisions and will make the president more directly accountable [ed. HA! Good one!]. Because of their close relationship, many people will assume Bush signed off on Rice's decisions.

So, 15 months ago, after expressing dissatisfaction with the progress in Iraq, Bush appoints Rice to oversee, among other things, counterterrorism and political affairs in Iraq so that he can have more control over, and be more accountable for, events there. Mission Accomplished, indeed! (Note to Democrats: This would have been a nice thing to mention during the election.) With this in mind, her statements on Iraq at today's confirmation hearing are not encouraging:

WASHINGTON — The U.S. is committed to improving "Iraq's capability to defend itself" and that improvement is directly tied to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told a Senate panel Tuesday as hearings opened into her nomination as secretary of State. [...] "The Iraqis will take more and more responsibility for fighting the terrorists, for rooting out the Baathists, and we will help them get there," Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She said the Bush administration was well-aware that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq was tied to the successful training of an Iraqi security force. "The goal is to get the mission accomplished," she said. "We're right now focused on security for the election." Iraq is scheduled to hold its first democratic election Jan. 30.

I'm not sure there is anything Rice accomplished as head of the Iraqi Stabilization Group that makes me feel any better about our prospects in Iraq--especially now that she is Secretary of State. Arguably, things have gotten far worse since Rice took over post-war Iraq in October 2003, and we should all be wondering why we should expect to get different results with her as Secretary of State than as head of the Iraqi Stability Group.

Break

2005-01-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

I'm taking a break from the blog. Maybe a week or more. Probably not less. See you then!

Vote and Die!

2005-01-12T11:23:00.000-08:00

Has there ever been a serious explanation for why we need to maintain the January 30th Iraqi election timeline? We're now saying that the elections are going to be "less than perfect," a gross understatement suggesting the only thing we have to worry about is voting irregularities on the scale of those that are common in all elections. In reality, "less than perfect" actually means that there is going to be widespread violence, large percentages of the population boycotting the vote, and a sense that the election is nothing but a prelude to civil war. Any one of these things should be enough to seriously consider the merits of postponing the election for a few months, but when all three are highly probable, our obstinence borders on negligence. The actions we've taken, combined with a lack of planning, have created a dangerously unstable environment that is ripe for chaos, perhaps sparked by a botched election. The right thing to do is hold off on elections until we can guarantee greater participation from the Sunnis and provide greater security at the polls. Honestly, though, I've always felt that these elections were more for us than them, and the Bush Administration's actions back this up. If we really cared about fostering democracy in Iraq, we'd never seriously consider rushing into these elections. Instead, the elections on January 30th will be held up as progress and vindicate the President's motivations and rhetoric that lead us into this mess in the first place. In effect, we'll define victory down to the lowest denominator and use it as an excuse to start scaling back our presence, leaving in our wake the Iraqi Civil War of 2005, which ironically will ultimately decide who controls Iraq.

Macworld SF 2005

2005-01-11T21:06:00.000-08:00

If you're an Apple enthusiast (and why wouldn't you be?), you've probably heard about Macworld SF 2005. On Tuesday, Steve Jobs kicked it all off with the introduction of iWork, Mac mini, and the iPod Shuffle. All of them look very cool, but I'm especially drawn to the Mac mini. I used to have the G4 Cube and loved it. This looks about a quarter of the size and comes with all the best features for $500. The iPod Shuffle looks great in theory, but I'm skeptical on how popular it will become. In my opinion, the best part about it is its size and portability, but I'm not sure why it's necessary to have the music constantly shuffling. Personally, I could probably live with that, especially for use while working out. But I have my doubts about whether it can achieve popularity on the same level as the iPod mini. And while we're on the subject of Apple products, you should definitely check out NewsFire--an awesome and stylish RSS reader for OS X. If you haven't jumped on the RSS bandwagon, this is a nice program to get you started. Basically, since I've started using an RSS reader, I've been able to check hundreds of blogs and newspapers in half the time it would normally take me with my bookmarks. Of course, another nice RSS utility is LiveMessage Alerts (full disclosure: i'm employed by them). If you have an MSN account and use MSN Messenger you can sign up for my Alerts (on the left) and choose how you'd like to be alerted whenever I update my site (either by email, MSN Messenger, or text message). It's a great way to keep up with your favorite blogs, sports scores, and breaking news. You can give them a try here, and place them on your site here. At the very least, take a closer look at RSS. I'm certain you'll see what all the fuss is about.

We're All Going To Die

2005-01-11T20:43:00.000-08:00

Try not to think about this while riding BART under the Bay:

Tokyo, San Francisco and Los Angeles lead a world list of urban areas that could suffer catastrophic losses in lives and property from earthquakes, flooding, tsunamis or terrorism, the world's largest reinsurance company said in a report Tuesday. [...] With a risk index of 710, Tokyo and its 35 million inhabitants were far ahead of No. 2, the San Francisco Bay area, which rated 167, mainly due to Tokyo's high risk of multiple disasters, its huge population and roughly 40 percent share of the country's economy.

As the SFist notes, maybe this will be the thing to bring down housing costs. It might thin out our traffic problem, too.

Psych!

2005-01-11T15:01:00.000-08:00

Salvadoran-style death squads in Iraq? Pshaw!

PENTAGON "Somebody has been reading too many spy novels." That reaction came today from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to reports, published on Newsweek's Web site, that suggest military planners are mulling a so-called "Salvador option" for use against Iraqi insurgents. [...] Rumsfeld says "the Pentagon doesn't do things like that." He also says the type of training that Iraqi soldiers are receiving "doesn't involve the kinds of things that are characterized in that story."

If Rumsfeld says it, it must be true.

Scum

2005-01-11T13:17:00.000-08:00

But don't millions of Americans laugh everyday?

"Inmate Says Graner Laughed During Abuse" FORT HOOD, Texas - A Syrian inmate at Abu Ghraib said Army Spc. Charles Graner Jr. was the Baghdad prison's primary torturer who laughed while physically abusing him and threatened to kill him more than once. Amin al-Sheikh, testifying via videotaped deposition shown in court Tuesday, said Graner also made him eat pork and drink alcohol, in violation of his Muslim faith, and that he listened through his cell wall while Graner and other Americans forced a Yemeni prisoner eat from a toilet.

I can't help but think that had Graner never been caught on film, he'd be on an accelerated path towards promotion. I don't know why I would think that...

Oops

2005-01-11T13:03:00.000-08:00

This is funny. "Hardcore Porn Takes Over Political Site":

LONDON (Reuters) - A Conservative party association in the small Welsh town of Delyn is trying to buy back its Web site domain name after it was taken over by pornographers. The site once promoted the activities of the local Conservative association, offering news about area councilors and useful contact numbers. Now users are confronted with offers to buy hardcore movies featuring group, lesbian and anal sex, as well a raft of explicit images of naked women.

This is my favorite part, though:

A spokesman for Welsh Conservatives -- who stressed he had not seen the offending site -- said the problem arose when the Delyn conservatives took on a new Internet address but forgot to renew their ownership of the old name, which was subsequently snapped up by a pornographer. "It was brought to our attention by a student from Oxford University who was logging onto the site to do some research," he added.

A twofer! The classic "It wasn't me looking at porn" defense, paired with the "Just doing my anatomy homework!" excuse. Yeah, we believe you.

The Bush Principle

2005-01-11T10:08:00.000-08:00

Via War and Piece: The Bush Administration is bringing new meaning to the term "fucking up":

WASHINGTON -- The man who insisted that President Bush make the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium for nuclear weapons in Africa is poised to assume a top State Department job that would make him the lead US arms negotiator with Iran and North Korea, according to administration officials. Robert G. Joseph, a special assistant for national security to President Bush until a few months ago, is on the short list to become undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, the nation's senior diplomat in charge of negotiating arms control treaties, said the officials, who spoke on the condition they not be named. Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice, who was Joseph's boss at the National Security Council, has been a strong supporter of Joseph, the officials said. Joseph did not respond to messages yesterday. [...] "He should have been fired or reprimanded," said Joseph Cirincione, a senior arms-proliferation specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "We see instead that he could be given the key position in the Department of State for all treaty and nonproliferation matters."

It almost seems like there's a direct correlation between the magnitude of the mistakes made and the level of promotion received. But what do I know? I don't have an MBA and Bush is the CEO President. The thing we all have to keep in mind is that this only seems outrageous to us because we're outside the Administration. From Bush's standpoint, the inclusion of the Iraq-Uranium-Africa connection was gold--it was successfully used over and over again in the run-up to the war, and people ate it up. It didn't matter that the intelligence was wrong, because they never cared about the intelligence in the first place. They only cared about one thing: getting their goddamn stupid war on. Bush's job performance standards are defined in terms of how successfully an individual used whatever it took as a means to an end. If an individual accomplished this, despite whatever scruples he or she may have had, their loyalty to Bush was proven, which in turn guaranteed they'd stick around and, in many cases, be promoted. This is what happens when you have a President that prides loyalty over competence. This, too.

Abu Ghraib = Cheerleader Camp

2005-01-10T15:39:00.000-08:00

Someone should punch this guy in the face.

FORT HOOD, Texas (Reuters) - A lawyer for Charles Graner, accused ringleader in the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal, on Monday compared piling naked prisoners into pyramids to cheerleader shows and said leashing inmates was also acceptable prisoner control. "Don't cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?" Guy Womack, Graner's attorney, said in opening arguments to the 10-member U.S. military jury at the reservist sergeant's court-martial. [...] Womack said using a tether was a valid method of controlling detainees, especially those who might be soiled with feces. "You're keeping control of them. A tether is a valid control to be used in corrections," he said. "In Texas we'd lasso them and drag them out of there." He compared the leash to parents who place tethers on their toddlers while walking in shopping malls.

Some pro bono advice for Charles Graner: Find a new lawyer. Who is Guy Womack? Only the USA's preeminent expert in Strange But True Law!! Apparently it is strange but true that if you pile a bunch of naked people in a pyramid, take pictures, and laugh at them, you might be charged with torture.

Big Dick is Watching You

2005-01-10T10:12:00.000-08:00

"Get some devastation in the back." --Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R), quoted by the AP, to a staff photographer taking a picture of him before leaving tsunami-stricken southern Sri Lanka. The devastation:

We're Losing

2005-01-10T07:54:00.000-08:00

Newsweek is reporting that the Pentagon is seriously considering a proposal that would bring Salvadoran-style death squads to Iraq as a means of going on the offensive against the insurgency:

Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out. Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras.)

Chalk this up as another brilliant proposal from the "Do As I Say, Not As I Do": Bringing Democracy and Freedom to the Middle East policy currently in vogue with this Administration. It's pretty fucking ironic that an Administration that claims the Iraqi insurgency is acting out of desperation would even consider such a disgustingly vile and desperate proposal. The writing is on the wall: We're losing. Big time. It is only a matter of time before those words start publicly leaving the lips of people in Washington and Baghdad. And when they do, it won't just be from people like you and I. It will be from conservatives like Newt Gingrich and in publications like The Weekly Standard. Even though I've never agreed with the stated purpose of this war, I understand the vital importance of seeing it through the right way. The danger of leaving Iraq much worse than we found it is far greater than the "danger" that led us into war in the first place. A different Administration might look at the current situation and decide it needs to take a step back and reconsider the direction we're heading. Not this Administration. When the going gets tough, they seem to always make it worse. The Poorman said it best:

And, before you ask: no, I have no clue about how we can improve things in Iraq. I don’t have a single idea for how we can un-shit the bed, and I don’t hold out much hope that this whole bed-shitting episode is ever going to be brought to a lemony-fresh conclusion. I do, however, know who shit the bed, and have some sense of how frequently he shits there. Let’s stop shitting for a start.

I don't think death squads constitute a "stop shitting."

An Opening for Democrats

2005-01-08T21:33:00.000-08:00

One positive thing that might result from Bush's re-election is that Republican candidates and officeholders across the country will be irrevocably tied to his policy failures. Bush is lucky to have been up for re-election in 2004 instead of 2005 or 2006 because if it wasn't painfully clear how bad things were in 2004, it probably will be by 2006. On issues like Iraq and the economy, there is already evidence of top Republicans positioning themselves away from the President. This is particularly unusual so soon after the President won re-election and a "mandate." Two recent examples of this are Newt Gingrich and Christie Todd Whitman, both of whom have written books critical of the President, and both of whom, it seems, have Presidential ambitions. I suspect we'll see more and more of this in the next few years, especially if things continue to get worse. Things will get really interesting if someone like Bill Frist has to decide whether his continuing adherence to the Administration's every word jeopardizes his ability to win a Presidential primary. Of course, this is great news for Democrats, unless it turns out that non-Bush Republicans can do a better job of a) distancing themselves from Bush, and b) articulating a viable alternative. I don't want to get too confident that this won't happen until I see what shape the new Democratic leadership takes in the next few weeks. The election for the DNC chairperson is just around the corner, and the result will have serious implications for the Democrats' ability to shape a message and a platform over the next two to four years. If Democrats can successfully package distinct policies with a focused message, it shouldn't matter what the Republicans are saying. At the moment this is still a big if, but it is enough to be optimistic about our future prospects.

But Can They Drink?!

2005-01-07T11:38:00.000-08:00

Looks like we've got some competition.

Double Standard

2005-01-07T07:55:00.000-08:00

"Soldier In Iraq Prison Scandal Goes To Trial", Reuters, 7 January 2005:

FORT HOOD, Texas (Reuters) - U.S. Army Spc. Charles Graner, the accused ringleader of the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal that outraged the world, went on trial on Friday ready to offer a defense he was just following orders. [...] The Bush administration and military leaders have blamed the abuses on a small group of soldiers and said there was no policy of mishandling prisoners.

"Specter Expects Gonzales Confirmation", Associated Press, 7 January 2005:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Friday he feels certain that Alberto Gonzales will be confirmed as attorney general despite concerns about his role in a Bush administration legal doctrine that critics said undermined prisoner-of-war protections and a law against torture.

So the guy that oversaw the legal opening to allow torture gets confirmed as AG the very same day the guy who carried out this legal opening goes to trial. Wonderful. The reemergence of the torture debate has really brought out an ugly side of our culture. I was listening to Imus talk to Ann Coulter (don't ask me why) today and they were both saying that they didn't see anything wrong with what Gonzales did. Imus even went so far as to say something like, "we should be able to slap around a few Muslims to get them to talk [sic]." What the fuck is going on here?

Chatter Chatter

2005-01-06T13:31:00.000-08:00

This must be a coincidence:

U.S. intelligence monitors are picking up less terror threat talk than a year ago, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Thursday. A variety of factors could be contributing to the lull, Ridge said, and he warned that terrorists "are strategic actors and long-range planners" who could be merely lying low before striking again. "There certainly is a diminution, reduction in the amount of intelligence, and the decibel level is lower," Ridge told reporters, comparing information picked up over the past several months to the similar period a year ago. Ridge offered no single explanation for the drop, saying it could be stepped-up U.S. efforts to boost security, increase military action, disrupt terrorist leaders and their finances or, simply, the "hardening of America."

Or it could be that the election is over.

Happy Torture Day!

2005-01-06T07:40:00.000-08:00

Barring any sudden growth of balls in certain Senators and Congress men and women, Alberto Gonzales begins his path towards Attorney General today. I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate my country for honoring such a stand-up guy. As Mark Danner writes in today's New York Times, we've got a lot to be proud of:

When Alberto Gonzales takes his seat before the Senate Judiciary Committee today for hearings to confirm whether he will become attorney general of the United States, Americans will bid farewell to that comforting story line. The senators are likely to give full legitimacy to a path that the Bush administration set the country on more than three years ago, a path that has transformed the United States from a country that condemned torture and forbade its use to one that practices torture routinely. Through a process of redefinition largely overseen by Mr. Gonzales himself, a practice that was once a clear and abhorrent violation of the law has become in effect the law of the land. [...] By using torture, we Americans transform ourselves into the very caricature our enemies have sought to make of us. True, that miserable man who pulled out his hair as he lay on the floor at Guantánamo may eventually tell his interrogators what he knows, or what they want to hear. But for America, torture is self-defeating; for a strong country it is in the end a strategy of weakness. After Mr. Gonzales is confirmed, the road back - to justice, order and propriety - will be very long. Torture will belong to us all.

I suppose people might say I'm overreacting, and maybe I am. After all, Gonzales says he's done with his days of torture, making it seem as though it was all just an innocent frat prank. Even if I accept this at face value (which I don't), it still doesn't matter because the damage has been done. Remember that this wasn't irreparable damage, as we could have at the least held some people accountable for these actions. Instead, just about everyone but the lowest people involved have remained employed, or worse, promoted. Maybe the message this sends is lost on most of this country, but it definitely isn't lost on the rest of the world--especially the part of the world we're trying to give "freedom and democracy." We really screwed the pooch with this entire torture debacle, and today, god willing, we're going to make it cool to screw the pooch.

Ann Coulter Nude

2005-01-06T07:31:00.000-08:00

Ann Coulter in ways you've only seen her in your dreams.

Another Day

2005-01-05T10:57:00.000-08:00

Goddamn. Another day, another bombing. It's becoming mundane. This is especially disheartening:

The number of Iraqi policemen killed in the last four months of 2004 was at least 1,300, according to Iraqi Interior Ministry figures released Wednesday.

When the security forces we are waiting to replace us are being killed at a faster rate than our forces, it isn't a good sign. And I thought the US Army had a difficult sales pitch for new recruits. Imagine trying to recruit Iraqi policmen... update: Not like the President cares things are getting worse in Iraq.

5000?

2005-01-05T10:23:00.000-08:00

Something that seems to be lost in all the tsunami coverage is the fact that it looks like thousands of Americans have lost their lives:

AS MANY as 5000 Americans are still unaccounted for a week after the world's deadliest tsunami pounded a dozen countries across the Indian Ocean, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said today.Mr Powell told reporters aboard his plane en route to Bangkok that the confirmed toll of Americans still stood at 15 with a defence department worker listed as missing. "The number of private citizens or citizens unaccounted for still lingers around 4-5000," he said, adding the figure was based on phone calls from relatives or friends inquiring about their whereabouts.

As Far East notes, if 5000 people are still missing, most of them are probably not coming back. And a few days ago, Digby also expressed some amazement that we haven't heard much about the seemingly high American death toll. Has there been much attention paid to this? I haven't been watching or following the television coverage of the tsunami, so I wouldn't necessarily know. I would think, though, that (about) 5,000 dead Americans would at least merit more attention from the press, if not from the Administration.

Pimp of the Nation

2005-01-05T00:43:00.000-08:00

PusBoy notes the classy line-up scheduled for the Kick Ass Inauguration later this month. Joining Gloria Estefan (which Bush is getting inaugurated?), John Michael Montgomery (who?), and Kelsey Grammer (representing the sacredness of the institution of remarriage), will be the "teenage singer Jo Jo joined by Kid Rock." Yes, the same Kid Rock who, in his passionate ballad Pimp of the Nation, eloquently sang,

While you be left pimpin Barbra Bush What's up granny First name Annie Dried up cunt and a saggin fanny The highlight of your sex adventures You wanna suck this take out your denchers A show of life is all I'm givin Old pimp young hoes is how I'm livin But for now rap's the occupation But watch one day I'll be Pimp Of The Nation

And also the same Kid Rock who has been known to dress in the American flag:

All this can be yours for only $150 or more.

You Know His Work

2005-01-04T23:21:00.000-08:00

Check out this great ad campaign: (Via AMERICAblog)

You might also find this encouraging:

A dozen high-ranking retired military officers took the unusual step yesterday of signing a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee expressing "deep concern" over the nomination of White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales as attorney general, marking a rare military foray into the debate over a civilian post. The group includes retired Army Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The officers are one of several groups to separately urge the Senate to sharply question Gonzales during a confirmation hearing Thursday about his role in shaping legal policies on torture and interrogation methods.

It's good to see people finally raising some hell about Gonzalez's role in the sanctioning of torture. However, I'm afraid it might be a little too late. It would have been nice to see these things out in the open the day after he was nominated, but I guess we have to take what we can get. Gonzalez should just be thankful that he isn't from Ethiopia.

Quick Math

2005-01-04T10:21:00.000-08:00

Today's math lesson is brought to you by the country of Iraq: Where the Road To Democracy is Paved With Bombs and Bodies: 200,000 insurgents > 150,000 US Soldiers 1 assassinated Baghdad governor + 1 attack on Allawi's HQ = 2nd thoughts There are 26 days until the Iraqi elections and it is becoming quite clear that a) we don't have enough troops to provide the security required to pull off this election and, b) we are quickly losing the numbers game of us vs. them. The fact of the matter is that both of these things have been quite clear for a long time and we've done little to stop them. As a result, any intentions of bringing real democracy to the Middle East are now a pipe ~~dream~~ bomb, and in it's place is a smoke and mirrors campaign (surprise!), aimed directly at the American public, charged with creating the impression that democracy is both easy and messy, and that things are really going swell, no matter what those pessimistic liberals might say. TalkLeft notes that both the interim President of Iraq and the Defense Minister are questioning the rationality of holding elections at the end of the month. At what point will the puppet masters agree? At what point will we witness the Flip Flop to end all Flip Flops?

Social Security

2005-01-04T07:56:00.000-08:00

The fact that the privatization of Social Security seems to be the Bush Administration's pet project for 2005 is a bit of a mixed blessing for me. On the one hand, I barely have a grasp on the basics of the issue, so recent discussions of SS have been over my head (thus the lack of posts on the subject). On the other hand, it forces me to learn more about a topic that will be very important, not only this year, but also in the future. So all in all, I guess I should be thankful that Bush is trying to destroy Social Security. I think those who have compared the Administration's marketing of the war and tax cuts to their Social Security project are correct. Bush's M.O. has always been to confuse an issue with smoke and mirrors so that people really don't understand why something is necessary or how it will affect them. Often this is done by obsessively accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative (Don't mess with Mister In-Between!!). Thankfully, there are people I trust like Paul Krugman who can sort through the fact from fiction on the issue of Social Security:

Here's the truth: by law, Social Security has a budget independent of the rest of the U.S. government. That budget is currently running a surplus, thanks to an increase in the payroll tax two decades ago. As a result, Social Security has a large and growing trust fund. When benefit payments start to exceed payroll tax revenues, Social Security will be able to draw on that trust fund. And the trust fund will last for a long time: until 2042, says the Social Security Administration; until 2052, says the Congressional Budget Office; quite possibly forever, say many economists, who point out that these projections assume that the economy will grow much more slowly in the future than it has in the past. So where's the imminent crisis? Privatizers say the trust fund doesn't count because it's invested in U.S. government bonds, which are "meaningless i.o.u.'s." Readers who want a long-form debunking of this sophistry can read my recent article in the online journal The Economists' Voice (www.bepress.com/ev). [...] In fact, the Bush administration's scaremongering over Social Security is in large part an effort to distract the public from the real fiscal danger.[...]As a budget concern, Social Security isn't remotely in the same league. The long-term cost of the Bush tax cuts is five times the budget office's estimate of Social Security's deficit over the next 75 years. The botched prescription drug bill passed in 2003 does more, all by itself, to increase the long-run budget deficit than the projected rise in Social Security expenses. That doesn't mean nothing should be done to improve Social Security's finances. But privatization is a fake solution to a fake crisis. In future articles on this subject I'll explain why, and also outline a real plan to strengthen Social Security.

The problem is that SS probably does need some reform, but the Bush Administration's notion of reform is far too extreme for what the reality of the problem requires. Of course, this is consistent with other "problems" Bush has sought to "fix." Frankly, I don't need to know anything about Social Security to know that when Bush is trying to fix something there is usually an underlying motivation that has nothing to do with helping regular Americans and everything to do with helping his "base." In this case, it will be the Wall St. brokers who stand to make a killing on privatized Social Security.

Powell: Shiites Will Win

2005-01-03T15:55:00.000-08:00

It looks like Colin Powell, fresh off his Times Square gig, wants to get in on a little Sylvia Browne action, too. Demonstrating why he gets paid the big bucks ~~to keep his damn mouth shut~~, he boldly predicts a Shiite victory in the upcoming Iraqi election:

US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday predicted a Shiite victory in the Iraqi elections, but moved to assuage concerns it could bolster Iranian influence inside the country. [...] "The new government that comes into place in Baghdad, the transitional national assembly, will be majority Shiite," Mr Powell said on NBC's Meet the Pressshow. "That's the majority of the population."

Of course, this is a little like predicting the outcome of a game that has already happened, since we know that Iraqi Sunnis have decided to sit out the election:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Less than a month before Iraq's election, Sunnis nationwide are deciding to sit it out. Political leaders of Iraq's once-dominant sect say that it's because insurgents are intimidating Sunnis when they try to register to vote and threatening voter registration officials in Sunni strongholds. Opponents say the Sunnis - a 30 percent minority of Iraqis - are withdrawing to save face in the Jan. 30 election, which they appear sure to lose to majority Shiite parties. [...] Intimidation of registrants and registars in Sunni communities is one explanation for the low figures, said al Ezy. Dr. Huda al Nuaimi, a political science professor who lives in a Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad, said she was among the intimidated. She tried to pick up her voter registration card, she said, but the man who had them was threatened if he handed them out, so she could not pick it up. Al Nuaimi, a secularist, supports the Islamic Party's call for a delay in balloting. "If we postponed the elections, it doesn't mean we are going to give up to terrorists as much as it could mean allowing the Iraqis to vote in a safe environment," she said.

You can almost smell the legitimacy of this election from here.

Back in the U.S. [S.R.]

2005-01-03T08:07:00.000-08:00

As the distinguished gentlemen King of Zembla and mrgumby2u have already pointed out, this is a very bad idea.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration is preparing plans for possible lifetime detention of suspected terrorists, including hundreds whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts, The Washington Post reported Sunday. Citing intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials, the newspaper said the Pentagon and the CIA had asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for those it would not set free or turn over to courts at home or abroad. As part of a solution, the Defense Department, which holds 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, plans to ask the U.S. Congress for $25 million to build a 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence, defense officials told the newspaper.

Christ, why waste the money? We ought to just kill them, right? I mean, if we're going to completely trash the Constitution we should do so in style. Not Gulag-style, but Auschwitz-style. I'm not sure what I find more disturbing, the fact that we have the audacity to propose this, or the fact that the public is generally complicit with the idea of indefinitely detaining people with no evidence. I agree with Digby, Democrats (and everyone with a brain) need to start taking a stand on the issue of torture, and a good place to start will be the confirmation hearing for Alberto Gonzalez. I'm sure we'll be cast as treasonous scum obstructing the ascension of an (minority!) American hero. So be it. We need to draw a line somewhere, and if we can't draw it at torture, we should just give up and get in line for our chance to piss on everything this country has ever stood for. On the bright side, three cheers for people like Richard Lugar and Carl Levin, politicians willing to stand up to the notion of indefinite detainment with no evidence. They could definitely use more support, so please take a few minutes to contact your representatives and tell them they should buck up and fight this proposal.

Just Call Me Sylvia Browne

2005-01-02T15:12:00.000-08:00

You heard it here first. Packers go 10-6. Nevermind this, though.

Frank Rich Speaks

2005-01-02T10:24:00.000-08:00

If I were you, I'd read Frank Rich's latest column. Some salient excerpts:

So the soldiers soldier on, and we party on. As James Dao wrote in The New York Times, "support our troops" became a verbal touchstone in 2004, yet "only for a minuscule portion of the populace, mainly those with loved ones overseas, does it have anything to do with sacrifice." Quite the contrary: we have our tax cuts, and a president who promises to make them permanent. Such is the disconnect between the country and the war that there is no national outrage when the president awards the Medal of Freedom to the clowns who undermined the troops by bungling intelligence (George Tenet) and Iraqi support (Paul Bremer). Such is the disconnect that Washington and the news media react with slack-jawed shock when one of those good soldiers we support so much speaks up at a town hall meeting in Kuwait and asks the secretary of defense why vehicles that take him and his brothers into battle lack proper armor. [...] The ethos could hardly have been more different during the World War II so frequently invoked by Mr. Bush. As David Brinkley recounted in his 1988 history, "Washington Goes to War," the Roosevelt administration's first big push "was a tremendous voluntary program to reduce the deficit, encourage saving, trim spending and thus curb inflation - the sale of war bonds." Though bonds would not in the end pay for the war - that would require the sacrifice of paying taxes - F.D.R. believed that his campaign "would give the public a sense of involvement in a war being fought thousands of miles away, a war so distant many Americans had difficulty at times remembering it was there at all." Gen. George Marshall, the Army's chief of staff, took it on himself to write notes by hand to the family of each man killed in battle until the volume forced the use of Western Union telegrams. [...] Washington's next celebration will be the inauguration. Roosevelt decreed that the usual gaiety be set aside at his wartime inaugural in January 1945. There will be no such restraint in the $40 million, four-day extravaganza planned this time, with its top ticket package priced at $250,000. The official theme of the show is "Celebrating Freedom, Honoring Service." That's no guarantee that the troops in Iraq will get armor, but Washington will, at least, give home-front military personnel free admission to one of the nine inaugural balls and let them eat cake.

I'd love to know how we can fix this disconnect, especially since our outrage bar has been raised so high that we're virtually blind to everything wrong with this war and Administration.

Gay Adoption

2005-01-02T09:32:00.000-08:00

It is unfortunate that in the year 2005 we have to have a court battle about whether homosexuals are fit to adopt children. Fortunately, the ~~activist judges~~ courts are making the right decisions:

In his ruling Wednesday, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Timothy Fox said the ban enacted by an Arkansas state agency in 1999 had nothing to do with protecting children's health or welfare, but instead was an attempt to regulate "public morality," which is beyond the agency's authority. Fox also issued a series of findings, based on testimony by child welfare and mental health experts: -- Children of lesbian and gay parents are as well-adjusted as other children. -- Being raised by lesbian or gay parents doesn't increase a child's risk of psychological, behavior or academic problems, confusion about gender identity, difficulties in relating to peers, or child abuse. -- There is no evidence that heterosexual parents can guide children through adolescence any better than homosexual parents can. The issue of whether parents' sexual orientation affects children's well- being is critical not only to the Arkansas case -- which is headed for an appellate court -- but also to a case before the U.S. Supreme Court over Florida's ban on adoptions by lesbians or gays. It could also affect a case in San Francisco Superior Court on California's ban on same-sex marriage. [...] But officials in Arkansas and Florida argue that the ideal situation for a child, which a state is entitled to promote in its laws, is to be raised by a mother and father. That position was endorsed by the federal appeals court in Atlanta that upheld a Florida law banning adoption by any gay, lesbian or bisexual. The state has a legitimate interest in "promoting an optimal social structure for educating, socializing and preparing its future citizens to become productive participants in civil society," the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said last January. For an adopted child, the court said, an "optimal home" is "one in which there is a heterosexual couple or the potential for one." [...] "We have never argued that it was detrimental to children to be placed with homosexuals but just that it would not be optimal," said Julie Munsell, spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Human Services. Foster children in such homes would be under stress, she said, "because the social climate in our state has not been accepting of those lifestyles."

The issue here is whether homosexual parents can provide an optimal environment for raising children. Those arguing that it isn't are arguing solely on the basis of moral prejudices, because if they were looking at the situation rationally, they would realize that it isn't about the gender make-up of your parents, it's about the love and attention you give your child. If two men or two women can raise a child in a loving and supportive environment there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to adopt children. Like the issue of gay marriage, the slippery slope in this case is pretty steep. If we aren't going to allow homosexual adoptive parents because they won't provide an optimal environment for raising children, we should be more stringent on heterosexuals that can't provide an "optimal environment." Example: "Oh, you work 80 hours/week? It's not that it's bad, its just that it isn't optimal. Sorry." Of course, the real problem in this country is that there are already more kids up for adoption than interested parents. Then why should we be denying perfectly good parents the right to adopt children solely on the basis of their sexual orientation?

Friday Fake Smile Blogging

2004-12-31T14:50:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year 2005! Things can only get better, right?

"We don't have much leverage with the Iranians right now."

2004-12-31T00:06:00.000-08:00

Apparently Susan Rice thinks we need an Iran Policy. Feeling a bit shrill lately, Susan? Don't you realize we already have one? They're evil. Very evil. What more do we need to know?

Has President Bush quietly concluded that the United States can live with a nuclear-armed Iran? If this seems preposterous, recall the president's words at his year-end news conference. Asked about U.S. policy toward Iran, he said: "We're relying upon others, because we've sanctioned ourselves out of influence with Iran . . . in other words, we don't have much leverage with the Iranians right now." [...] Consider what's at stake. Oil-rich Iran is arguably the world's most active state sponsor of terrorism. Iran was behind the 1996 bombing of the U.S. military barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. It is funding anti-Israeli terrorist groups, harboring al Qaeda operatives and meddling in Iraq. Iran clandestinely built a sophisticated uranium enrichment program that the United States and European nations agree is intended to produce nuclear weapons. Iran has missiles capable of delivering such weapons to Iraq, Israel and even parts of Europe. President Bush says the greatest threat to U.S. national security is a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists. A nuclear Iran, not Saddam Hussein's Iraq, is a truly dangerous manifestation of that threat. So how has the Bush administration acted to protect us? Overstretched with 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and paralyzed by internal policy disputes, the administration's response has been to posture, threatening to take Iran to the U.N. Security Council, while effectively having no Iran policy at all. In response to one of the most urgent threats to the United States, Bush has subcontracted American security to the Europeans. Last week the president confirmed this as his approach, arguing that the United States has no choice. "We've sanctioned ourselves out of influence," the president said, almost echoing Vice President Cheney, who as chief executive of Halliburton pressed for lifting U.S. sanctions against Iran.

"We don't have much leverage with the Iranians right now." Translation: I shit the bed with Iraq, and we don't even have enough troops to threaten a few thousand Iraqis much less the entire military of Iran. As much as it would have been more relevant to attack Iran instead of Iraq, could you imagine how badly we would have screwed that up? Iran is nearly twice the size of Iraq and even more populated (with mountains). There is a reason why we went to Iraq--we thought it would be easier. Of course we need an Iran policy, it should have been one of our top priorities from the get go, and especially after 9/11. Unfortunately, our current Iran policy is procrastination. The President is actually right to say that we don't have any leverage with Iran. As a result, our policy is to wait until we do. At the rate we're going this could take years, and who knows what type of condition our military will be in by then. In the meantime, Iran will continue to discreetly develop nuclear capabilities and will continue to strengthen its ties with terrorist organizations. Mark Kleiman asks a damn good question, "Is there really no Democrat left willing to make the criticisms that are dying to be made?" This could be a great point upon which to develop a Democratic policy towards the war on terrorism. Just saying.

Blogs and Resumes

2004-12-30T17:24:00.000-08:00

Is a blog the type of thing you put on a resume? More specifically, should I put Blogenlust on my resume? In the past I wasn't sure it was the type of thing I wanted to share with prospective employers, but recently I've been thinking it might be an interesting addition. Thoughts? Bueller?

Unspeakable

2004-12-30T14:18:00.000-08:00

Over 125,000 feared dead. And the number seems to be increasing by tens of thousands every few hours. I don't know what to say other than don't take anything for granted... This destruction will take years and billions of dollars to rebuild. The damage to the tourism industry in these countries (their biggest economic sector) is immeasurable and who knows how long until they will recover. Yet, why does it seem that the First World is in a philanthropic pissing contest about how much money they are giving in comparison to other countries? I'll admit, I think the US should have given more upfront, and in a perfect world, Bush should have declared that we'll promise to spend however much money it will take to rebuild and recover from the destruction. Instead, the original declaration of $15 million brought forth silly arguments between countries over who was giving what and why weren't they giving more. This has lead US officials like Powell and Bush to offer petty defenses of how much money the US gives in charity each year. This completely misses the point. We shouldn't be feeling good about ourselves just because we donate the most money each year (we also have the most money to give). We should have been pledging to provide as much as it would take from the very beginning. In other words, it's not necessarily the amount of money we first pledged that gets me upset. It's the fact that we didn't say from the get go that we were going to do whatever it takes. Maybe it is a meaningless point, but it bothers me how even the most unavoidable disasters can be so quickly politicized. One last thing...The State Department is reporting that thousands of Americans are still missing. I don't want to assume the worst just yet, but we're talking about 9/11 type numbers here. It got me to thinking of the differences in our reaction to both events. Of course, there is a huge difference in that we were attacked on 9/11, but to me at least, death and destruction is still death and destruction. It is interesting to think about even if you compare our response to the tsunami to the response of other countries to 9/11. I'll never forget the Le Monde headline: "Today We're All Americans." How come it took the President of the United States three or four days to make public statements to the effected countries? Just thinking aloud here (and through a heavily congested head...so please forgive the disconnected thinking and writing :))

Buyer's Remorse

2004-12-29T07:50:00.000-08:00

A nice Wednesday morning punch in the face:

Washington -- Despite a clear-cut re-election and the prospect of lasting GOP dominance in Congress, President Bush prepares for his second term with the lowest approval rating of any just-elected sitting president in more than half a century, according to a series of new surveys. [...] A new Gallup survey conducted for CNN and USA Today puts Bush's approval rating at 49 percent -- close to his pre-election numbers. That's 10 to 20 percentage points lower than every elected sitting president at this stage since World War II, according to Gallup. Bush's Gallup rating echoed a survey published last week by ABC News and the Washington Post, which put his approval rating at 48 percent. That poll also found that 56 percent of Americans said the Iraq war was not worth fighting. Time magazine put Bush's overall approval at 49 percent.

And I thought the Gallup Poll was supposed to be a Bush-friendly poll! When I see things like this, I realize how badly the Democrats, and I mostly mean John Kerry, dropped the ball this past election. Now that my post-election traumatic depression is pretty much behind me, I think I can clearly say that I agree with John at AMERICAblog: Kerry sucked. Of course, that doesn't mean I think he would have been a bad President, and it isn't to say that he lacked the right background or temperament for the job. This is strictly in the way that he ran his campaign. In my opinion, there were too many things that Kerry could have used in his favor to undermine Bush's strongpoints on Iraq and the war on terrorism. A coordinated counterattack on many of the false and misleading claims put out daily by the Bush campaign was too little too late. I can't forgive the Kerry campaign for this because anyone who has followed previous Bush campaigns knows this is a major part of their M.O. Despite all the talk of mandates and a decisive victory, Bush remains a widely unpopular President. He should have been a sitting duck, but Kerry enabled him to become a lame duck. The issue now is to figure out how to turn this from an irrelevant bitching point to something that can be learned from. Personally, I'd like to see a better Party definition and an improved articulation of Party policies and ideas (I think blogs can serve an important purpose in this regard). That way, Democrats from our nominee to local candidates are on the same wavelength when it comes to what we stand for and how we'll benefit people when elected. I think Kerry's flip-flop image was highlighted by a lack of a defined Democratic stance on many issues, but most especially Iraq and the war on terrorism. A clear position on these two issues must be the starting point for 2006 and 2008. I'm afraid that if we don't do this now, I'll be writing the same post 4 years from now. The good news from these poll numbers is that a lot of people in this country still aren't happy with the politics of George W. Bush. That is something that should give Democrats a lot of hope for the future. They just need to do a much better job of selling themselves.

New Bin Laden Recording

2004-12-28T13:09:00.000-08:00

Juan Cole has a very interesting analysis of Osama bin Laden's latest recording, in which he calls on Iraqis to boycott the January 30 elections.

Bin Laden's intervention in Iraq was hamfisted and clumsy, and will benefit the United States and the Shiites enormously. Most Iraqi Muslims, Sunni or Shiite, dislike the Wahhabi branch of Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia, and with which Bin Laden is associated. Nationalistic Iraqis will object to a foreigner interfering in their national affairs. Zarqawi is widely hated in Iraq because the operations of his group often kill innocent Iraqis as opposed to American troops. The Shiites in particular despise Zarqawi, and are aware of his hopes of provoking a Sunni-Shiite bloodbath in Iraq. (The muted Shiite response to the US assault on Fallujah in November and December derived in large part from a conviction that the city had become a base for Zarqawi and like-minded Salafi terrorists). Zarqawi websites have claimed credit for the assassination in 2003 of Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, a respected Shiite leader, which involved descrating the Shiite holy city of Najaf. The mainstream of the Kurds hates Zarqawi, because of his earlier association with the small Kurdish radical Muslim terrorist group, Ansar al-Islam, which targeted the two major Kurdish parties. Bin Laden as much as declared Grand Ayatollah Sistani an infidel. But Sistani is almost universally loved by the 65% of Iraqis who are Shiites, and is widely respected among many Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, as well. Bin Laden, the Saudi engineer, makes himself look ridiculous trying to give a fatwa against the Grand Ayatollah of Najaf. If anything, to have al-Qaeda menacing the Shiites in this way would tend to strengthen the American-Shiite alliance. If Bin Laden had been politically clever, he would have phrased his message in the terms of Iraqi nationalism. By siding with the narrowest sliver of Sunni extremists, he denied himself any real impact. By adopting Zarqawi, who has killed many more Iraqis (especially Shiites) than he has Americans, he simply tarnishes his own image inside Iraq. It appears that Bin Laden is so weak now that he is forced to play to his own base, of Saudi and Salafi jihadists, some of whom are volunteer guerrillas in Iraq. They are the only ones in Iraq who would be happy to see this particular videotape.

I'm really in no position to effectively argue against Cole, especially when it comes to the political situation in Iraq and the greater Middle East. He is probably correct to suggest that there is a potential for this to blowback into bin Laden's face, and it very well could be a sign that bin Laden is increasingly desperate. However, from an American political perspective, one consequence of bin Laden's comments is a further confusion about who it is we are actually fighting in Iraq. In my opinion, this is great political news for Bush. It comes at a time when the situation in Iraq is rapidly deteriorating, and any connection the Bush Administration can make between the Iraqi insurgency and 9/11 is good for them, because it makes the increasingly steep sacrifices more worthwhile for the American public. Perhaps this is why General Richard Myers made the astoundingly incorrect statement that "This attack [in Mosul], of course, is the responsibility of insurgents, the same insurgents who attacked on 9/11." Now why would bin Laden want to help Bush out? I can think of at least one good reason. Since the US is bogged down in Iraq, enabling the Bush Administration to continue to link Iraq and Al Qaeda gives them more justification for staying put, which would further deteriorate American morale and military resources. Of course, it also may be the case that bin Laden had other intentions (like those Cole suggests), and that the positive political implications for Bush are an unintended consequence. So what are the consequences of this good news for the Bush Administration? I'd say any added confusion to who or what or why we're fighting in Iraq is always helpful because when people don't know exactly what is going on, they can't get outraged and they can be easily misled. And where would the Bush Administration be without an apathetic and gullible American electorate? Another potential consequence is that they can use this to widen the war. If AQ and the insurgency are interchangeable, than it is easier to justify an excursion into Syria or Iran. It will be interesting to see how this gets played out. The other night the local news led with the new bin Laden tape, and claimed it was definitive evidence of a link between the insurgency and AQ. Who needs OBL when you have the local news!?

Tsunami Relief

2004-12-28T11:51:00.000-08:00

update: US aid has increased to $35 million... You might have already seen this at Eschaton, but if you haven't, let me reiterate how disgusting this is:

Link: The Bush administration yesterday pledged $15 million to Asian nations hit by a tsunami that has killed more than 22,500 people, although the United Nations' humanitarian-aid chief called the donation "stingy." Context, context... The war on terror will take center stage at next month’s second inauguration for President Bush in Washington, D.C. ... The estimated budget for the event is $30-40 million, but that will not cover security costs.

The deathtoll has risen to over 50,000 people and officials are concerned this number could double once disease sets in. Yet, the United States of America, the richest country in the world, is sending pocket change. Rob at AMERICAblog asks a good question:

How Christian is George W. Bush? Evidently not very. In one of the largest natural disasters in recent years, the Bush administration response of $15 million is the equivalent of what George Bush spends in Iraq in TWO HOURS. That's right, at $177 million a day in Iraq, $15 million is a pittance. Those are great Red State Values. What would Jesus do? I expect that he would have spent more time and money trying to help people in a natural disaster than the pathetic response the Bush administration has provided. Democrats should be on television right now calling on the Bush administration to do right in this human disaster. That's what I call Blue State Values.

Qubit has a list of relief organizations where you can donate to the relief efforts.

Fa-La-La-La-Fel

2004-12-27T09:23:00.000-08:00

One of the more exciting gifts I received this weekend was Bill O'Reilly's Who's Looking Out For You?. At first I thought it was a joke. Since most of my family knows where I stand on issues of politics (but apparently doesn't read this blog), I assumed that people would know that you don't give people like me books by people like O'Reilly (especially for Christmas!). Afterall, you'd never consider giving your Jewish friend the Koran with the implication that he should read it because he might be so surprised at what he reads that he would consider converting. This, I believe, was the subversive message of my brand new O'Reilly book. (BTW, You try smiling as you talk about how you can't wait to read it in front of 20 people!!) Anyway, because I have a soapbox from which to ridicule it, I've decided to actually read the book. Shouldn't take more than the 4 hour plane ride I'm about to embark on since its dimensions are 14 font, 1/2 inch spacing between lines, and 2 inch margins. And if I skim through the self-indulging, I can probably finish it before we take off. I've actually started reading it (last night, over a dish of falafel), and was surprised at O'Reilly's witty sense of humor, like this from page 3:

If you are going to drink a quart of bourbon a day or smoke crack, this book is not going to help you. In fact, if you are in the above category, you've probably stolen this book. Give it back. Now.

LOL!! ROTFLMAO!!

Or this, from page 8:

There is no question that our society has now embraced the casual approach when it comes to having children. Columnist Kathleen Parker nailed it. "Today having a baby is like swinging through McDonald's for a burger. One baby all the way, hold the dad."

HSIJPMP!!

And please, spare me the jokes about Bill "You Have Really Spectacular Boobs" O'Reilly's Middle Eastern food fetish and infidelity. O'Reilly is pure class, as illustrated on page 29:

Years ago I was friends with a fellow broadcaster. Because we were both single and liked the ladies, we had some great times.

See, "had some great times." Nothing to worry about, that is, unless you look like Halle Berry (page 59):

Now, I rarely go to parties, primarily because I am not often invited. I think we all know why. Also, I'm not much of a schmoozer unless you look like Halle Berry.

Inbetween these humorous gems, O'Reilly does a good job of talking about himself. A lot. And when he isn't talking about himself, he does a very shrewd job of painting himself as a politically independant Everyman, that (you guessed it) is looking out for you! One thing that I've noticed about O'Reilly's writing is that he does seem to criticize both Republicans and Democrats, but he does so in a way that the criticisms of Republicans are petty (e.g. Bush works too hard at what he does, so don't expect him to change much), whereas the criticisms of Democrats are more damaging. (e.g. Clintons caused 9/11). I don't think it is particularly honest, especially for such a "fair and balanced" guy like O'Reilly, but I didn't really expect a whole lot more. Finally, O'Reilly is incredibly gifted at constructing strawmen and easily knocking them down. He valiantly argues for things like better families, as though anybody would honestly argue against that (in O'Reilly's world, it is the Clinton's and liberals who argue against these things). As for myself, I can't wait to read the chapter on how cheating on your wife and kids with a co-worker leads to a closer family. If I can stand to, I'll write more about the second half of the book later. I'd also like to point out that I extended an invitation to watch Fahrenheit 9/11 or borrow another book of my choosing to the person who gave me the O'Reilly book. Of course, as you might imagine, that was an excercise in futility.

Moral Values

2004-12-26T07:51:00.000-08:00

Ah yes, those upstanding citizens, otherwise known as the College Republicans, are at it again:

The College Republican National Committee is under fire for using front organizations to collect millions of dollars in contributions, including money from elderly people with dementia. During the 2004 campaign, the group sent out direct-mail solicitations under such letterheads as "Republican Headquarters 2004" and "Republican Election Committee." One four-page letter asked prospects to send $1,000 together with an American flag pin for President Bush to wear to "Republican Headquarters" to ensure that Bush knows "there are millions who are giving him the shield of God to protect him in the difficult days ahead." In small print at the bottom of one page, the letter notes: "A project of and paid for by College Republican National Committee." Many donors complained that they thought the money was going directly to the Republican Party, and not to the college group, which is no longer affiliated with the GOP. The controversy over the letters has produced angry responses from leaders of state College Republican chapters, including those in Washington state, North Carolina and New York.

Back in the day, when I was the Treasurer of the campus College Republicans, I never would have dreamed of something like this. Then again, I was never CR material in the first place. (via Political Wire)

Syria? Why not.

2004-12-26T00:55:00.000-08:00

Now that Christmas is over, we can forget all that peace on earth and goodwill towards men shit. Syria, bitches!!

The US is contemplating incursions into Syrian territory in an attempt to kill or capture Iraqi Ba'athists who, it believes, are directing at least part of the attacks against US targets in Iraq, a senior administration official told The Jerusalem Post. The official said that fresh sanctions are likely to be implemented, but added that the US needs to be more "aggressive" after Tuesday's deadly attack on a US base in Mosul. The comment suggested that the US believes the attack on the mess tent, in which 22 people were killed, may have been coordinated from inside Syrian territory. "I think the sanctions are one thing. But I think the other thing [the Syrians] have got to start worrying about is whether we would take cross-border military action in hot pursuit or something like that. In other words, nothing like full-scale military hostilities. But when you're being attacked from safe havens across the border – we've been through this a lot of times before – we're just not going to sit there. "You get a tragedy [like the attack in Mosul] and it reminds people that it is still a very serious problem. If I were Syria, I'd be worried," the senior administration official said.

It's funny they should mention this. Just yesterday I caught myself thinking, "WTF? 2001, 2003, 2005? Isn't it about time we invade another country?" In all seriousness, even if the insurgency is being directed out of Syria, the simple fact is that if the conditions in Iraq were better, the insurgency wouldn't be so popular. Invading or attacking Syria will do nothing to improve those conditions, and if the past is prologue in anyway, it will make the situation even worse. Not like that will stop us or anything. Hopefully, an article like this is nothing more than a way this Administration thinks it can pressure Syria into stopping whatever it may be doing. Even I don't think this Administration is stupid enough to widen the war at this point. But, then again, stranger things have happened.

A Word From Our Sponsors

2004-12-24T05:18:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers, Just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone who visits Blogenlust a safe and happy Holidays! I'll be celebrating Christmas with my family over the next two days, and will (probably) not be posting until after Christmas. Peace Out, John UPDATE: Gmail invites make nice stocking stuffers. I have about 6 or 7 to give away, so contact me if you'd like one. DOUBLE UPDATE:: Don't forget that The Christmas Story is on for 24 straight hours (until Christmas night at about 8p EST) on TBS!!

Connect The Dots, La La La

2004-12-23T13:20:00.000-08:00

CONNECTION: "Iraq Base Was Hit By A Suicide Attack, U.S. General Says," Washington Post, December 23rd, 2004:

BAGHDAD, Dec. 22 -- Investigators believe a suicide bomber penetrated security at a U.S. military base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and detonated an explosive Tuesday that killed 22 people, including 14 U.S. service members, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday. The attack, which also wounded 69, was the deadliest on an American installation since the beginning of the war in March 2003.

"Iraq's Unsecured Ammo Dumps Providing Explosives For Insurgency," The Dallas Morning Star, December 22nd, 2004:

"We simply did not have enough troops - I would argue we still do not - in Iraq to secure the country after the victory over Iraq's military," said David Kay, who led the CIA's initial efforts to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "The result is an insurgency that did not have to worry about how to arm itself."
Since the war began on March 19, 2003, military and civilian weapons teams have found more than 10,000 ammo dumps. They have secured or destroyed more than 414,000 tons of artillery shells, bombs, bullets, rockets and other munitions.

But the CIA survey team scouring the country for weapons of mass destruction told Congress last fall that the "lower limit" of munitions scattered across Iraq was 600,000 tons.

NO CONNECTION:
General Richard Myers, December 22nd, 2004:

Gen. Richard Myers at today's Pentagon briefing: "This attack [in Mosul], of course, is the responsibility of insurgents, the same insurgents who attacked on 9/11, the same type of insurgents who attacked in Beirut, the same insurgents who -- type of insurgents who attacked the Cole, Khobar Towers, and the list goes on."

LaLaLa LaLaLa

"Oh, you have a blog?"

2004-12-23T12:14:00.000-08:00

If you're not a closet blogger, you might have to deal this holiday season with probing questions from people who have no clue what a blog actually is. In situations like these, it is important to know what wannabe hipsters think blogs are all about. Thankfully, there is Time Magazine, always having one finger on America's pulse, and another up George Bush's ass. In the latest issue, Time notes 10 things they learned about blogs this year. This includes:

Bloggers Make Money Earn a living in your pajamas! Online ads (along with Google's automated ad server) allow popular bloggers to go pro. Joshua Micah Marshall of talkingpointsmemo.com, a political blog, says he makes $5,000 a month from banner ads—enough to hire a research assistant.

This is especially helpful for those bloggers (like myself) who have enough questions to answer about why they can't find permanent employment. "Oh, you write a blog?" says Uncle Mind Your Own Damn Business, "How much money do you make a month? How many research assistants have you hired?" Perhaps the best way to answer questions like this is to defer to your pet:

Pets Have Blogs Too It started as an in-joke among feline-friendly bloggers: why not post pictures of their cats every Friday afternoon? Friday catblogging became a hit, and soon even NASA was playing along by posting pictures of the Cat's Eye nebula.

And if your relatives and friends are still taking you seriously by this point, they'll probably stop after reading this:

Blogging Can Get You Fired When Delta flight attendant Ellen Simonetti, 30—a leggy blond and self-styled "queen of the sky"—began her blog, she thought it would be fun to post pinup snapshots of herself in uniform. Delta wasn't amused and promptly fired her. Undaunted, Simonetti retitled the blog Diary of a Fired Flight Attendant and detailed her legal battle to get her job back.

As for me, I'll be winging it this year. Last year, I told everyone I wrote Eschaton, and people were really impressed. Unfortunately, I can't use that this year, so I think I'll say that I was on the front-lines of Rathergate, which in my extended family will probably be considered a badge of honor.

SNOW IN DECEMBER!!!!!!! OH SHIT!!

2004-12-22T18:43:00.000-08:00

Must be a slow news day for Drudge... Amazing that it would snow throughout the Midwest and Central Plains at the end of December. And there must be another Ice Age coming if Chicago is bracing for sub-zero temperatures...three days before Christmas. I guess we can be thankful that there isn't anything really serious to report on.

Occupation Is Messy

2004-12-22T17:49:00.000-08:00

People continue to needlessly die because of Donald Rumsfeld, yet he still has a job, and the President's Chief of Staff thinks he's doing a "spectacular job." Here is what Rumsfeld had to say today, in response to the attack at the dining hall in Mosul:

"Someone who's attacking can attack at any place at any time using any technique, and it is an enormous challenge to provide force protection, something that our forces worry about, work on constantly. They have to be right 100 percent of the time. An attacker only has to be right occasionally," Rumsfeld said.

Besides being a great counterargument to his missile defense proposal, it also ignores the fact that people had been worried about an attack at this dining hall for months. This wasn't a freak accident, these people were sitting ducks!

CNN personnel who have visited the base said the dining area is a tent-like facility with no hardened protection -- and that soldiers had specifically raised concerns that they could be targeted by insurgents at meal time. One had told CNN it was only a matter of time before there was an attack on the mess hall. "There is a level of vulnerability when you go in there, and you don't feel like there's a hard roof over your head," said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, an officer at Camp Marez.

I think Kos is right, this was borderline criminal negligence. Look, this situation fucking sucks. We're left with a huge mess that is getting worse by the day and there isn't a light at the end of the tunnel. Some people back in Washington are hesistant about getting of rid of Rumsfeld because they think we're at such a crucial stage that his dismissal might screw things up. Clearly, these people aren't paying attention. Things can't get much worse, so why not try and find a Secretary of Defense that isn't an incompetent arrogant war criminal? What's the worst that could happen? Iraq goes to shit? It's too late!!

Contractors Start Pulling Out

2004-12-22T07:13:00.000-08:00

It just occurred to me that the biggest problem facing our occupation in Iraq is not necessarily the fact that our troops are spread too thin, but that we're relying so heavily on private military contractors to provide essential services for us and Iraq. As a result, it is distressing that a major U.S. contractor had decided to call it quits.

WASHINGTON — For the first time, a major U.S. contractor has dropped out of the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild Iraq, raising new worries about the country's growing violence and its effect on reconstruction. Contrack International Inc., the leader of a partnership that won one of 12 major reconstruction contracts awarded this year, cited skyrocketing security costs in reaching a decision with the U.S. government last month to terminate work in Iraq. "We reached a point where our costs were getting to be prohibitive," said Karim Camel-Toueg, president of Arlington, Va.-based Contrack, which had won a $325-million award to rebuild Iraq's shattered transportation system. "We felt we were not serving the government, and that the dollars were not being spent smartly." [...] "It's not a terrible loss," said Amy Burns, spokeswoman for the Pentagon's Iraq Project and Contracting Office, which oversees the bulk of the reconstruction work in the country. "It actually may be good that we're both moving on." But reconstruction experts say Contrack's withdrawal might foretell trouble with other contractors. ""It's a very bad sign," said Michael O'Hanlon, a scholar at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington who has closely followed the reconstruction process. "If this is how other private companies are thinking, it's a very bad potential warning." Coming as U.S. reconstruction officials have been touting signs of progress, Contrack's withdrawal underscores the challenges in the $18.4-billion effort to rebuild Iraq. The effort to revamp the country is considered vital to providing Iraqis with jobs and services and to weakening the insurgency. So far, however, it has been beset with delays, violence, allegations of graft and waste, and frustration among ordinary Iraqis and top U.S. military commanders at the lack of progress.

It's not a good sign when costly no-bid contracts (i.e. bribery) won't keep companies from sticking it out. The big problem with all of this is that we're contracting the job of reconstructing Iraq to private military contractors who can pick up and leave whenever they want. Frankly, I think this is a big mistake, because reconstruction is so crucial to our efforts. If we can quickly and sufficiently reconstruct the infrastructure of Iraq, we can undermine the rhetoric and motivations of the insurgency. As it stands now, the US military doesn't have control of reconstruction because we don't have enough troops. And if more contractors start pulling out, we won't even have enough of them to finish the job. If that happens, shit we didn't even know existed will start hitting the fan. Reconstruction should be the absolute top priority because it is the answer to basically all of our problems. It provides an answer to the insurgency, it provides a ticket home for all of our troops, and it provides the quickest route to political and economic reforms. I wonder how many Americans realize that the US military is not in control of reconstructing Iraq? I wonder if they'd care?

Travel Day

2004-12-21T16:48:00.000-08:00

Today is a travel day for blogenlust, as I'm on my way from balmy Oakland to freezing Wisconsin. Can't complain, though, because if there is one time of year I don't mind the snow or cold it is ~~Christmas~~ Winter Solstice. Right now I'm at LAX, which looks more like a Juicy Couture fashion show than an airport. On the flight here I had the chance to read America's Other Finest News Source, USA Today. In a guest editorial defending...I think I just saw Ashton Kutcher...President Bush's dream of bankrupting the US with a national missile defense shield (presumably one that works), Baker Spring writes:

If President Bush, in the wake of 9/11, announced that the United States had been deliberately leaving the country vulnerable to attack by airplanes, most Americans would be incredulous — and angry. Yet this is exactly our situation when it comes to ballistic missile attack. We're completely vulnerable to any state or terrorist group armed with a ballistic missile. Fortunately, Bush is moving to eliminate this vulnerability by constructing a limited ballistic-missile-defense system and declaring it operational as soon as possible. [...] Yes, the missile-defense system we're pursuing right now is limited. Future tests may reveal problems. But this is an argument for moving quickly to make the defense better, not giving up. Even with its initial limitations, the system we're building now will keep our enemies guessing. That's exactly what we need. So let's take what we've learned from this scrubbed test and use it to improve, not end, this vital program

Here's the problem with Spring's thesis: Even if you construct an extremely expensive invisible shield around the United States, terrorists can still use airplanes as missiles! In other words, if you eliminate one option, it makes other options that much more appealing, and in this case, the other options are that much harder to prevent (i.e. floating a bomb into a harbor or igniting a tanker of liquid natural gas). In addition, it should be noted that our missile defense system is a huge black hole into which billions of dollars of our tax money gets thrown year in and year out, and the best part is that it doesn't even work.

A Swell Proposal

2004-12-20T13:43:00.000-08:00

Make September 11 Election Day? Damn. You really can't make this stuff up anymore.

Deuling Storylines

2004-12-20T09:41:00.000-08:00

White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, yesterday on ABC's This Week:

"Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a spectacular job."..."The President has provided good direction for our military, and Secretary Rumsfeld is transforming our military to meet the threats of the 21st Century."..."There are no guarantees, but we'll work hard to provide security. It'll be a wonderful success story."

The CIA, the DIA, and the State Department (make sure to read the whole article), to President Bush:

WASHINGTON - The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department have warned President Bush that the United States and its Iraqi allies aren't winning the battle against Iraqi insurgents who are trying to derail the country's Jan. 30 elections, according to administration officials. The officials, who agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity because intelligence estimates are classified, said the battle in Iraq wasn't lost and that successful elections might yet be held next month. But they said the warnings -including one delivered this week to Bush by CIA Director Porter Goss - indicated that U.S. forces hadn't been able to stop the insurgents' intimidation of Iraqi voters, candidates and others who want to participate in the elections. "We don't have an answer to the intimidation," one senior official said. Nor have the United States and interim Iraqi government been able to find any divisions they can exploit to divide and conquer the Sunni Muslim insurgency, the intelligence reports say.

The reason we don't have an answer to the intimidation is that we don't have enough boots on the ground to secure order. As a result, we've created an increasingly confident and brazen insurgency that knows we're spread too thin to effectively stop them. Hopefully, I don't have to remind anyone that it was Secretary "I'm too busy to give a shit" Rumsfeld's "spectacular work" that created this situation.

Invasion v. Persuasion

2004-12-20T03:23:00.000-08:00

Just read an interesting article by George Packer in The New Yorker entitled "Invasion vs. Persuasion." It's subject is how (not if) the United States should go about spreading freedom in the non-democratic world:

The best role for critics in the President’s second term will be not to scoff at the idea of spreading freedom but to take it seriously—to hold him to his own talk. The hard question isn’t whether America should try to enlarge the democratic order but how. It’s a question that the Administration seems to have thought about very little, yet it makes a big difference.

As examples, Packer contrasts the recent events in Ukraine with those in Iraq. Packer argues that events in Ukraine have been heavily influenced by the work of Western governments and NGOs over the last ten years. As a result, the political opposition was adequately funded and organized enough to successfully take on the corrupt government.

The popular uprising in Ukraine has now secured a new Presidential election, the previous vote having been discredited by huge fraud. There’s a quiet American story behind that achievement. For years, beginning in the nineteen-nineties, governmental and non-governmental organizations poured millions of dollars into Ukraine’s politics, building up the parties, training civil-society groups and journalists, establishing election monitors. These efforts helped strengthen the opposition against a corrupt government, but they were nonpartisan: technical support was given to all parties. [...] But in Ukraine the meddlers have done nothing worse than help guarantee a people’s right to choose a government freely. The effort succeeded for two reasons: there was a democratic movement already in place; and outside support did not come with a “Made in America” label, because the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also played an important part. “The thrust of the campaign is to oblige Ukraine to have a free and fair election,” Thomas Carothers, a democracy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says. “This is a human right. It’s not American. It’s not unilateralist.”

If our attempts to spread democratic reform to Ukraine can be characterized as subtle, then our excursion in Iraq is more like a bull in a china shop:

In Iraq, the United States has tried to stage-manage the political transition alone, and has seen every plan overtaken and nullified by events. Lacking legitimacy in the eyes of both Iraq and the rest of the world, defying international standards and declaring its own, the Administration has had to base its claim on good intentions. But in the war of perception between that claim and the daily stories of tortured prisoners and civilian deaths America is losing. According to Carothers, who has just co-edited the first technical book on democracy promotion in the Middle East, the Iraq model has set back the cause of Arab reformers. At this point, the Administration seems ready to hold an election and declare victory. Meanwhile, the insurgency looks increasingly like a civil war. An election, though politically necessary, might only worsen the conflict. Shiite politicians and clerics are organizing a unified ballot that will guarantee the majority Shiites a vast share of next month’s election spoils at the expense of the country’s alienated Sunnis. The elected parliament, which will write a constitution, isn’t likely to be truly representative, or to create a political consensus out of this violent polarization. More probably, the losers will opt out and the civil war will intensify.

At first I was reluctant to buy into Packer's thesis that we need to actively promote democracy in places where it is non-existant. Afterall, we've been so fucking successful in Iraq and Afghanistan it hurts. However, after thinking about it a bit, and learning about the NGO and Western governmental influences in Ukraine, I think he might be on to something. The Bush Administration has created this paradigm that dictates that things can only get done by flexing our military muscle. As a result, diplomacy and soft-power have been marginalized at a time when both are vital to our foreign policy. The problem, highlighted by recent events in Ukraine, is that reality doesn't fit into the Bush Administration's paradigm. That is to say, military force is rarely the best way to create democratic institutions in a country (and a region) that has few democratic experiences. Instead, history has shown that it is often efforts similar to those in Ukraine that are the most successful in creating long term democratic reforms. I think this is an important point for Democrats to take into consideration when it comes to articulating their own foreign policy, and also demonstrating why the Bush foreign policy has been unsuccessful and counterproductive. And speaking of a Democratic foreign policy... The current foreign policy debate in this country is dominated by Bush's "foreward strategy of freedom," and even Democrats would be hard-pressed to articulate their foreign policy (answer: ABB: Anything but Bush's...and we all know how well that worked last time). Even if our foreign policy doesn't change, this country would be much better off with a larger discussion on the topic. If the Democrats have any hopes of retaining a Congressional or national majority within the next generation, they'd better start speaking up and standing up for policies they believe in. It doesn't have to be exactly like Packer's thesis (although that would be a good start), it just has to be something.

Things I've Seen

2004-12-19T06:52:00.000-08:00

This weekend (I had babysitting duty so there was some extra time for movies!): * Friday night I saw The House Of Flying Daggers, an awesome Chinese film in the same mold as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero. The cinematography is beautiful, the plot is very interesting, and the fight scenes are awesome. I highly recommend this one, even if you aren't into these types of movies. * Rented Collateral and Born Rich last night. Collateral was good--lots of action, intensity, and good acting. I hadn't realized how good of an actor Jamie Foxx was until I saw him in Ray, and he is just as good in a supporting role here (he received a Golden Globe nomination for this role). Tom Cruise plays a decent bad-ass hitman, too. Born Rich is a documentary by Jamie Johnson, the 21 year old heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. The film is his attempt to understand the effects of inheriting so much money, and in the process he interviews various other "rich kids" about how they are dealing with their own wealth. Included in this group are Ivanka Trump, Josiah Hornblower (Vanderbilt/Whitney heir), S.I. Newhouse IV (media heir), Luke Weil (gaming heir), and Cody Franchetti (textile heir). Some of these people are more grounded than others, but many of them have this strange complex about not wanting to talk about their money and worry about the social perception of having so much money. I think a lot of them were concerned that they would be widely recognizable because of their money, but the fact is, you probably wouldn't recognize any of these people on the street unless you were also a part of the top .001% of the richest class. I mean, it's one thing to be rich and recognizable like Paris Hilton, and it's a totally different thing to be rich and Jaime Johnson. They are not mutually exclusive, but that is how these people see themselves. Overall, if you like documentaries, you'll probably like this film. Has anyone seen A Day Without Mexicans ? I rented this also, but haven't had a chance to see it yet. I've heard it's really good. Briefly, it's about what would happen if all the Mexicans suddenly disappeared from California. I'd imagine all hell would break loose, and the same would happen in any other place!

What if?

2004-12-19T06:31:00.000-08:00

What if Rummy was never born? Maureen Dowd tries to make the unknown known.

Spare Pre-Paid Phone Cards?

2004-12-17T13:03:00.000-08:00

I've become a big fan of the Imus Morning Show, listening to it everyday on my way to work. Lately, Imus has been very critical of the Administration and Congress for not providing more assistance to soldiers and their families. For instance, Rick Santorum was a guest on yesterday's program, and Imus drilled him on why death benefits for the families of soldiers killed in Iraq were only $12,000. Santorum, the literal panty waste that he is, was proud to announce that Congress has actually doubled that amount from $6,000. As if that is something to be proud of. Imus' concern stems from a recent trip to Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital, where he realized that the conditions and equipment injured soldiers received were not on par with the level of sacrifice they had given to end up in the hospital. He rightfully blames the Congress and Administration for not doing more for the troops they've sent off to be killed and injured in a war of choice. On the same note, a caller on today's program explained that pre-paid calling cards were the number one request from soldiers at Walter Reed. Apparently the government isn't covering phone charges, which has led to a rationing of phone minutes among the hospitalized. Needless to say, Imus wasn't very happy about this news:

"The number one request at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center was phone cards. The government doesn't pay long distance phone charges, you can't even make that up, and wounded soldiers are rationing their calls home and a lot of them will be their at Walter Reed for the holidays. Well I'll buy ten thousand dollars worth of phone cards and send it to them. Here is where you can send your phone cards..." Walter Reed Medical Family Assistance Center, 6900 Georgia Ave., NW, Washington, DC, 20307-5001

If you've got any spare change lying around, or even some spare phone cards, give a thought to sending them to the above address. I couldn't imagine being there and not having the means to talk to my friends and family because I couldn't afford a long distance phone call. This makes me even more upset when I think about how much money certain corporations tied to this Administration are making from this war. Not to mention the fact that that asshole Rumsfeld still has a job. I could go on, but won't. Just try and send a phone card if you have the means.

Ban Adultery

2004-12-17T06:30:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Sonofabitch. Thanks to mrgumby2u, it turns out that, like Bill O'Reilly, I was punk'd. Although, I must confess that I saw this first at the Agonist, so I'm not the only one. The King is on the story. I should have known when I couldn't find anything about "Defend Our Marriages" on Google. Anyway, I think Ottawarotic (in comments) brings up a good point...the Democrats (or someone) should be advocating this, since it will drive home the point how hypocritical it is to talk about only gay marriage being a threat to the institution o' marriage. A group called Defend Our Marriages is pushing to bundle anti-adultery legislation with an anti-gay marriage bill. Shockingly, even the most ardent anti-gay marriage lawmakers are wary to support such an addition. I wonder why?

When members of a pro-family lobby group called Defend Our Marriages were looking to add anti-adultery language to the proposed constitutional amendment banning homosexual marriage, the office of Representative Dan Burton was one of their first stops. After all, the 11-term Indiana Republican has a long history of fighting for family values, and was a co-sponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment introduced last May. But Burton balked when it came to backing the adultery provision. "We couldn't even get a meeting with him," said DOM member Sandy Slokum, noting that her group had chosen to approach Burton because of the 100% rating he'd received from the Christian Coalition. "His office basically slammed the door in our faces. Doesn't he believe in the seventh commandment?" said Slokum. Perhaps not. In 1998, Burton was forced to admit to having had an adulterous affair in the 1980s, during which he fathered a son. Were the amendment banning both homosexual marriage and adultery to take effect, Burton would lose many of the privileges of marriage, including tax benefits, inheritance rights, even the ability to visit loved ones in the hospital. Burton might even have to run for his congressional seat as a single man, not an easy task in era in which "single" is short-hand for homosexual, and single candidates are often derided as "limp wrists" and "switch hitters."

While I couldn't disagree more with the motives of groups like Defend Our Marriages, I admire their consistency. In fact, I'd like to see them take it a step further. We should ban divorce. If marriage is such a sacred institution, it should never be broken. After, all isn't this where the slippery sloap of denying gay marriage, and even adultery, is eventually heading? Of course, this will never happen because people don't like government getting involved in their personal lives, unless it is another person's gay marriage or it's a woman's reproductive rights. The other major roadblock to such legislation, illustrated by Dan Burton, is the high rate of adultery in the group of people voting on it. Self-interest will always squash principle, especially in the Congress.