rssI have an enourmous amount of time for Sy Hersh. He's one of those rare things, an American journalist. This piece in the Columbia Journalism Review is a nice profile of the man and some of his more notable stories. I must get around to tracking down a copy of the My Lai book...
No, not that Bush. The other one, who thinks he'll be presidential material in 2008.
You may not disagree with Gov. Jeb Bush.
No. You may not disagree. You are not permitted.
If you do disagree with Gov. Jeb Bush, then your disagreement is not based on principle.
No. Only the governor has principles.
You do not have any principles.
Your thinking is flawed. Your intellect is poor. Your motives are bad. Your integrity is suspect.
All of this is true even when you are Republican and disagree with the governor.
The governor of Florida has gone stark raving pig-headed over this medical malpractice thing. Even his own party members are not allowed one hair of disagreement with him. He is right. They are wrong.
Nice to see that the Bush trait of handling criticism well is not just limited to the Bushes called "George".
Josh Marshall has another interview up with Ken Pollack, noted liberal war-hawk (Pollack's book "The Threatening Storm" was cited by many liberals as a reason that they supported war on Iraq).
Pollack's having to seriously twist and spin to validate his pre-war justifications for taking on Iraq. Some of his efforts are pathetic:
For those not paying attention, this "centrifuge" had been buried for a decade -- even after the inspectors were pulled out of Iraq in 1998, no-one thought to pull it out of the ground. Note also that a single centrifuge is a long way from something that could produce a nuke.
Pollack's obviously been well briefed in his use of the "dual-use" meme as a justification for why we've not found chemical weapons. This is a great excuse - almost anything can be claimed as "dual-use" if you're really stuck for answers. In the hands of a desperate man, a screw-driver is a dual-use weapon.
He also claims that those "trailers of mass destruction" were in fact weapons labs. It's a pity for this interesting idea that the only evidence so far is that they were not. His claim that there's evidence that backs his stance up, but we just haven't seen it yet because the US hasn't released it, fails a basic laugh-test. With all the damage that Bush and Blair have been taking from the absence of any WMDs, it's totally fanciful that someone wouldn't have leaked real evidence to the media by now. Here's some more from Pollack:
Let's see - the trailers, I'm not suprised that they sat on them. They're incredibly weak as far as WMD evidence goes, and they were probably hoping to find something better. Of course, they didn't and haven't, so they needed to use them anyway. By "The Iraqi scientist" I assume he's referring to Mahdi Obeidi. They didn't "sit on the evidence", they completely fucked up the way that they handled him, and then tried to get the media to hold off for a day or so to try and cover their asses. I seem to recall that someone did some quite good reporting on this issue - in fact it was Josh Marshall himself!
Pollack (and Marshall, from the tone of the questions) still seem to think that even though Saddam seemingly had no WMD, had no WMD-producing infrastructure, and (seemingly) made no plans to bring up a WMD program in the event of the US invading Iraq, well, the war was still justified because there remained the possibility that one day he might decide to start up a WMD program. This is a ludicrous case for war. Any country could be invaded under this justification. And what information has been presented that Saddam had any plans to act against the US? As far as I've been able to find, none at all. "But, but, he helped Palestinians! And he didn't like Israel!" So what? Since when is the US the enforcer for Israel? (And big points to the US for trying to ram through a pro-Israel line in the new "democratic" Iraq. I can't see that going badly, no, not at all. Look how well it's gone in Mauritania). Yes, he invaded Kuwait, and he is/was a total prick of a human being. But was he that much more of a prick, than, say, Islam Karimov? I think there's an easy case to be made that Karimov is far far more of a bastard to the poor bastards under his control -- but rather than being invaded or having a US$25M bounty on his head, instead he's being punished with hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid.
Under the new Pollack justification for war, it seems that pretty much anyone is a valid target for pre-emptive war. You don't need WMD, or to be a threat to the US, or to even be planning WMD - but if there's a possibility that one day in the future you could get WMD and become a threat to US control, you're a target. Could Pollack possibly lower the standards in this debate any further? At what point is it possible for him to say "well, actually, it appears that Saddam was no threat to anyone but his own people".
And of course, I end with the usual rejoinder to those who would say "aha! obviously you hate freedom and love Saddam!" No, he was/is a complete monster, and if he's dead, the human race is better off. I'm not convinced, however, that the Iraqi people are better off now than they were under his despotism. The US seemingly has no coherent plan to make Iraq better (other than to sell everything that's not nailed down to various enormous corporations for a nominal fee). As far as I can see, the US plans to turn Iraq into a case-study for IMF-style economic butchery. As if the various examples of South America haven't already demonstrated the utterly stupidity of this approach...
Here endeth the rant.
Slate resurrected an old piece on Thurmond from 1997 as a bit of an obituary for the old racist.
The rehabilitation of Strom and Jesse [Helms] is Washington politesse of the worst sort, a twisted Inside-the-Beltway version of ancestor worship. Call it the Grand Old Man Theory: Anyone who's served as long as Strom or Jesse has can't be all bad. Here's a reminder: Thurmond and Helms are all bad. They have done as much to despoil American politics as any two men living, and they're an embarrassment to the Senate.
In 50 years of public office, Thurmond has compiled a perfect record: He has done nothing that can be called an achievement. His career is an unblemished half century of efforts to impede progress, inflame race relations, and squelch good government.
I know that my sense of humour is very very dark, but this story from last Friday was my news highlight for the week: Snowtown trial shown 'serial killer' poem:
The jury in the Snowtown murder trial has been shown a poem written by accused killer Robert Wagner.
The poem was written in Adelaide's Yatala Labour Prison in September 2000 and sent to a fellow prisoner.
....
In it, Wagner writes in rhyming verse that he has never been to a Snowtown bank and there are paedophiles in the barrels so who cares.
One stanza says: "See you know I only provided a service that's needed, for just like your gardens our streets should be weeded."
Another reads: "Now in months to come it's my judgement day, you can be sure I shall have my say, and I will not ever be held in contempt, for everyone knows my time was well spent."
It concludes: "If my life reads like a Stephen King thriller, you know I'm not a bad guy for a serial killer."
I spent a merry couple of hours composing my own serial-killer poetry and snowtown bank haikus... most fun.
(For merkins and other furrigners wanting to know about Snowtown, google gives this site)
... this is ridiculous. Overnight, I received a security digest listing this week's MS security holes. This one just blew my mind:
MODERATE: Internet Explorer Horizontal Rule Buffer Overflow
Affected Products:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0, 5.01, 5.5, 6.0
Description:
A malicious HTML page provided by a website, email message or other
source can cause a stack-based buffer overflow in Internet Explorer
allowing for the execution of arbitrary code. The overflow can be
triggered by specially crafted script that attempts to manipulate a
horizontal rule tag with an overlong "align" attribute. An example
demonstrating the overflow has been posted, but writing a code execution
exploit is believed challenging because the shellcode must contain only
printable ASCII characters.
Yes, that's right - they fucked up the implementation of <hr>. That'd be one of these:
How bad are your software development practices when you can't even get "draw a horizontal line with some empty space around it" correct?
Someone in the Greens noticed that there was nothing in the new all-ASIO's-Christmases-have-come-at-once bill to stop ASIO from going and getting a new 7 day secret arrest warrant once the first one runs out. Suprisingly, the ALP grew a pair of balls and said that this wasn't on. Unsuprisingly, the Libs are playing their usual games:
I believe the phrase "oh, just FUCK OFF" is appropriate here. Have any of our eager little stormtroopers produced the slightest piece of evidence that this new legislation will actually make us safer, as opposed to, say, allowing them to grab people without real process, then cover up their mistakes afterwards? Under this lovely law, if you're grabbed for no reason, not only do you have no recourse to any form of compensation, but trying to actually publicise that you were mistreated by ASIO is a crime. This is sickening.
And let's not even get into the question of whether ASIO are actually competent enough to be given this sort of unchecked power.
Fred Kaplan writes in Slate about the Pentagon's ever-lower standards for "success" in the idiotic Star Wars program. Remember, this waste of time and money is what our lovely government in Canberra would love to sign us up for. This is dumb, dumb, dumb. Not just for the normal "it will lead to an arms race" reasons, but because It Just Doesn't Fricking Work.
Noted war-backers TNR have a great piece on the lies and misdirections of the neocons about Iraq.
Greg Palast on the fabrications and lies that were told about Cynthia McKinney.
Jeez, nobody tells the prime miniature anything these days. Yesterday, in parliament:
Let me guess, "no-one told Howard". The PM's office must have the worlds worst internal communications. I mean, I know Howard wears hearing aids, but couldn't they write stuff down for him?
The alternate answer is, of course, that he's a lying scumbag. But I'm sure someone with the scruples of Howard would never stoop to that. Maybe the WMD was a "non-core" justification for war? If it wasn't already the case that Howard's ministry had re-defined ministerial responsibility to mean "whatever you can get away with, or brazen out if you're caught" I'd almost think Howard could be in trouble for lying to the house of reps.
And yes, Saddam was/is a total asswipe, but y'know, kicking him out then letting the place descend into anarchy and chaos isn't exactly what I'd call a great outcome. And when will we be seeing the US taking action over Burma? Oh, that's right, they are - they're supporting US corps who wish to profit from the Burmese military. I should instead re-phrase that as "when is the US going to take positive action against the Burmese military junta?"
Jesse at Pandagon writes about something I've had on my mind for a while - the stream of novelty conservative pundits. In this particular case his target is the 14 year old Kyle Williams, but it's something that's fairly wide-spread. Take some token representative of a class you'd not expect "conservatism" (I use scare quotes because it's pretty clear that modern "conservatives" are a bunch of radical reformists) from, and turn them in to a pundit. The most obvious example is, of course, Crazy Andy - "He's a HIV-positive gay Englishman - and he's a conservative thinker!" Kyle, of course is "He's a fourteen year-old home-schooled Okie - and he's a conservative thinker!" Or Virgin Ben Shapiro - "He's a young Jewish male at an Ivy-League university - and he's a conservative thinker!" (Obviously, the term "conservative thinker" is meant here in the sense of "they're conservative about when they actually think".)
To me, these are reminiscent of the They Fight Crime! generator:
He's a lounge-singing hunchbacked paramedic with no name. She's a mistrustful impetuous mermaid living on borrowed time. They fight crime!
He's an oversexed neurotic cowboy in drag. She's a sharp-shooting gold-digging mermaid from aristocratic European stock. They fight crime!
He's a sword-wielding vegetarian cyborg who must take medication to keep him sane. She's a pregnant communist bounty hunter from a secret island of warrior women. They fight crime!
Replace "They fight crime!" with "They support the Republicans!" and you've got a formula for endless new pundits for WorldNetDaily and Townhall.com.
How terrible an opposition is the federal ALP? When the NSW right (motto: "fuck you all, as long as we end up on top of the dung-heap, we win!") have quite finished with their attempts to entrench the ALP's permanent occupation of the opposition benches, maybe they can get back to, say, questioning the Government about their lies on Iraq?
Andrew Wilkie, who resigned from the ONA on the eve of the Iraq war, will be presenting evidence to a parlimentary enquiry - unfortunately, it's going to be a British parlimentary enquiry.
Of course, what's a little lying to the public (and to the parliment) to the NSW Right? They're dealing with more important issues - making sure no-one can threaten their power bases. Idiots. Abso-fucking-lutely moronic. And so, thanks to this brains trust, we're stuck with the hideous spectacle of Howard as our leader for the forseeable future.
Richard
Norton-Taylor in the Guardian with "Ten killer questions to put to Blair".
With only minor changes, questions 5 through 10 are all relevant to the
Australian government. If we had a federal opposition, they'd be very
interesting to put to the PM in Question Time. In the upper house, where
Defense Minister Robert Hill serves his mastersconstituents,
the greens and/or the D*mocrats could serve them up.
Of course, I doubt they'd be able to get straight answers to many of them. Between Howard's habit of making sure he never hears anything on the record that might be damaging later, and the rather minor role the Australian government took in the deliberations, they probably weren't told anything that went against what they were claiming.
Almost up to the standard "kill both parents, ask for clemency as an orphan", is this lovely piece:
The Defence Force has already received a $3.5 million bill from the United States for the bombs the Australian Air Force dropped during the Iraq war.
A Senate Estimates hearing has heard Australian forces dropped 126 bombs on Iraq during the military campaign, all of which were supplied by the US.
The committee has heard the Defence Department is still waiting on additional bills for munitions used by Australian forces during the conflict.
I dunno that we'd want to help out the US occupation force in Iraq - the bills could be huge! If the Australian Defence Force had a sense of justice, they'd bill the US for rental of the SAS units that were in the war.
Ironic Times - kinda like the short headline bits of the onion. My fave from the current page is "12 Million Poor Children Won't Get Tax Break Given to All Others -- But they do get valuable lesson in politics."
xymphora with a state of play in Iraq roundup. (via Free Pie)
Mark Kleiman observes that Bush is maintaining his campaign promise to not indulge in nation building.
Another fine quote collection from Billmon, this time the slow slide from "Iraqi Democracy" to "The Iraqis can shut the fuck up and accept the leadership we assign to them".
John Quiggan points out that the hopeless joke that is the state Liberal leader, Robert Doyle, is pushing that issue beloved of the Herald-Sun's letters page, "too many speed cameras". Love your work, Rob, you dickhead.
Really, really simple: if you object to contributing to the state's revenue through speeding fines, then don't fucking speed. This sort of crap is the sort of thing you expect from the no-sharp-objects libertarian loons in the US, not a modern Australian politician. [Footnote: it occurs to me that the only word that really describes this political effort of the liberals is "fuckwitted". I know it's not a word, but, by gods, it should be.]
Both Josh Marshall and Eric Alterman point to this piece in TNR. John Judis gives a bit of a history lesson about what happened the last time the US got all imperial. It's a very worthwhile read...
I love polar bears. They're wacky - polar bear documentaries were always one of the highlights of the National Geographic channel on cable TV. Dougal points out this page, detailing (with pictures) a polar bear attempting to turn one of the US Navy's Seawolf-class attack subs into a tasty polar-bear treat. The result has to be called as a tie - no major damage to either bear or sub. Of course, the bear's going to have the best "you shoulda seen the one that got away!" story, ever.
Maybe it's just the universe having it's way with the Minister Against Communication, Information Technology, the Arts and especially against the ABC, but it's rather ironic that in the same week that he leads a charge against the ABC on the grounds that they declined to drink the US-supplied Kool-aid on the Iraqi WMD claims, those same WMD claims are falling apart all over the place. For examples, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Not forgetting, of course, Billmon's amazing quote list detailing the lies and deception, now in a conveniently searchable database.
I have no doubt that we'll soon be hearing about how anyone doubting the WMD line is a Saddam-cuddler, an enemy of freedom, and all that. As David Neiwert points out (links bloggered, scroll to Sunday, June 01, "Bush's historical revisionism") Bush is back on the Hussein=Hitler wagon again. The snide response is that there's at least one major difference - the Allies didn't let Hitler get away. (Plus, of course, as Colin Mocrie pointed out in his amazing "Canadian Apology", "Everyone knew he had weapons.")
The theme of news-stories inspired by Far Side cartoons seems to be continuing, with this one from Warren Ellis' blog (original comic).
This piece details Microsoft's response to the online Apple music store. One bit particularly caught my eye:
So, you don't actually get to buy the music, you just rent it. And if you stop paying, you get cut off from the music you've already paid for. Why on earth do they think anyone will use this, if they have a choice? The only way they'll get consumers to use this is if they shut down all alternatives, and even then I suspect people will just give up on online music purchasing. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. Microsoft demonstrate again why they have to either leverage their existing near-monopoly, or else piss an enormous quantity of money up against a wall, to get into new markets. It's because they're just clueless.
Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz on the Sharon government's PR efforts.
Swedish Minister for Migration calls GWB "that fucking Texas geezer".
The money that Bush promised for AIDS relief? According to Body & Soul, it's tied into the countries receiving the aid removing any restrictions on genetically modified food. It's bad enough that the sanctimonious little fuck seems to think that simply saying "we are sooo generous" is better than actually donating money. But to try and tie aid money to this sort of blackmail is just vile beyond belief. Many countries with food supply difficulties have legitimate concerns about accepting US agribusiness' GM crops - for instance, the way that they insist that you have to re-purchase the seeds each year. (And the chutzpah of trying to tell the Europeans to give more aid! Jeebus)
This is one of the most over-ambitious attempts I've seen in a while.
A three-month-old baby was killed by ants while she was sleeping in a crib in a suburban home in Phoenix, Arizona, a news report said today.
A baby sitter said she had left the infant alone for just half an hour and then found her covered in black ants that had bit-ten her hundreds of times, the Arizona Republic newspaper reported.
I mean, how are they going to get something that size back into the ant-hill?
(tip of the hat to Benji for noticing this, but the tasteless comments are not his fault)
A couple of quick links, via Ted Barlow and others.
At the antic muse, a quiz. Can you pick which statements are from Ari the Liar and which are from former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf? (And who can guess where Ari will turn up after leaving government service next month?)
Frank Rich on William Bennett.
People who've read older pieces of mine will know that I regard William Safire as a sad old hack that would be better suited to a retirement home than a major opinion column. However, his latest is a breathtaking new low. Apparently, all those economists worrying about deflation, the dollar tanking, and the prospect of budgetary catastrophe as far as the eye can see are just silly worries. It will all be fine, he assures us, providing little or no justification for same. See, tax cuts will raise revenue (thus allowing us to pigeonhole Safire as either a supply-side crank, or a brainless Movementarian who'll take whatever spin points he's fed). And deflation, wow, that means that paychecks will buy more (brilliant! why haven't mainstream economists worked this out?) And the weak dollar, well that's just making american exports more competitive. Well, yes, except that a) America imports far far more than it exports, this will make imports cost more (and with American companies relocating all their manufacturing to China, it's not like there's anything left to export), and b) continued weakness in the dollar will lead to capital deserting the United States for the Euro - at that point the US economy is so screwed it's not funny. Grown-up economists actually worry about this stuff. A lot. But in Safire-land, it's all fine, because there's Republicans in power, all's right with the world.
The latest spin point? It's not the bombing, and the fighting, and the looting, and the total breakdown of civil society that's made Bagdhad a total disaster. Apparently it was already broken, but no-one knew.
So I guess those mounds of garbage that are piling up and the failure of basic services such as electricity are just some sort of (no doubt French-instigated) plot?
And I can't imagine how it was that Garner managed to achieve diddly-squat during his time as Iraqi viceroy.
Yep. And "damn, you have no fucking idea what you're doing".
This piece (via Liquid List)
The U.S. executive selected by the Pentagon to advise Iraq's Ministry of Oil suggested today that the country might best be served by exporting as much oil as it can and disregarding quotas set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. His comments offered the strongest indication to date that the future Iraqi government may break ranks with the international petroleum cartel.
"Historically, Iraq has had, let's say, an irregular participation in OPEC quota systems," said Philip J. Carroll, who formerly headed Royal Dutch Shell in the United States and now chairs a commission advising Iraq's oil ministry. "They have from time to time, because of compelling national interest, elected to opt out of the quota system and pursue their own path. . . . They may elect to do that same thing. To me, it's a very important national question."
The whole piece is worth a read, just to see exactly what it is that 147 US servicemen and countless thousands of Iraqis died to enable. This bit, however, is a favourite:
Among the questions the ministry will confront is whether to break up the state oil empire and put some of its pieces into private hands. Hussein used the state apparatus -- centrally controlled by the oil ministry -- to skim profits for his family and funnel wealth to companies tied to his security agencies. Carroll said his team planned to assist the ministry with a study of potential structures. All options, from maintenance of the old system to complete privatization, will be on the table, he said.
Carroll was careful to avoid endorsing any particular structure, but he warned of the pitfalls of maintaining a system dominated by the ministry and the state companies. "Highly centralized models are not always as efficient as they should be," he said. "They are prone to corruption. They tend to be more prone to the government seeing them as a cash cow" for funds for other purposes.
Because we know that privately held companies are of course completely honest and above board. And Bush's Harken got the Bahrain contract on the basis of their superior oil knowledge.
And gods know, you don't want the government using the oil revenues "as a cash cow" for other purposes. The next thing you know, they might be building wasteful hospitals, or schools, or collecting the garbage, or paying for police, or supplying electricity, or indeed doing any one of the countless little things that the US has liberated the Iraqi people from. Goddammit, the US didn't spend all that time and effort to turn Iraq into the poster child for modern day untrammelled capitalism only to have some goddam locals try to waste perfectly good oil money on socialist ideals like public services.
A mark of a quality piece of merchandise seems to be that it's not offered as spam. As a further data point -- I just received a spam decrying the liberal media and offering as a counter both the Goldberg "Bias" book and Coulter's terrible "Slander" polemic. It finishes by offering a leaflet from the Media Research Center as a "free offer".
Wow. How all-powerful must the so-called-liberal-media be if the loons are resorting to spam to publicise their books?
The spam claims to be from: Center of Media Studies (Centro de Estudios sobre la Información), Buenos Aires-Santiago de Chile
It seems as uggabugga is to pretty diagrams, WampumBlog is to graphs. The latest is a breakdown of jobless claims by President, followed by a comparision of the new jobs added for the first 2 and a bit years of each of the 5 most recent presidents. It will probably come as a suprise to see just how violent the difference is between Clinton and Carter and Reagan and the Bushes.
The free-trade zealots are at it again:
The Federal Government says Australia will gain the greater advantage in any free trade agreement with the US.
About 40 senior Australian Government officials fly to Hawaii for the second round of talks on a free trade agreement today.
Trade Minister Mark Vaile says because Australia has far fewer trade barriers than the US, Australia has more to gain.
And the US would agree to this why exactly? If the free-trade deal isn't going to help the US, why would they sign? Or is it instead simply a matter of using free-trade deals to destroy social programs that you don't like? In this case the PBS (pharmaceutical benefits scheme) is certainly going to be targetted for destruction - as part of the deal the US will demand that it be opened up to any piece of marketing-driven pills that they wish. This will then drive the cost through the roof, allowing Howard to (sorrowfully) announce the program will be means-tested, higher payments, all that stuff. Watch carefully:
[Trade Minister Mark Vaile] has dismissed yesterday's call from the Australia Institute to remove the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme from the negotiating list, saying the US has already stated it is not going after the PBS.
"You can't get it any clearer than that and that came from the American side, not our side," he said.
Uh huh. Well, then, if the US isn't "going after the PBS", there's no harm in removing it from the list of negotiating points then, is there? And of course the US isn't going to say they're "going after the PBS". They're going to be saying they want equitable access for all pharmaceutical manufacturers, or some such nonsense.
Look, the only thing we could possibly gain from a free-trade deal with the US is agricultural access. Given the current inmates in Washington are the most protective in years (witness the enormous agriculture subsidies bill rammed through last year), there's no chance we'll get anything of consequence. Instead we'll find our own government selling out the social programs that they hate but can't admit to wanting to destroy. (Quick question: estimate how fast Howard would be out of office if he came out and said he wants to effectively remove Medicare, the PBS and make all tertiary education upfront-fee based). These are all goals of our Canberra-based zealots, but they know that to actually own up to them is electoral suicide. So instead they will destroy them using underhanded methods that also prevents a future Labor government from undoing the damage.
Via Blah3.com, we get this story of epic, epic stupidity. Seems a bunch of military returning from Germany were flying into New York in a chartered 777, and they wanted a "triumphant flyover". So the FAA allowed the plane to do a couple of low-altitude circuits of NYC. Without informing the city first. You think people in New York might be a bit twitchy about low-flying commercial airliners?
But it was for the military, so that makes it ok.
But what are the differences?
Unable to continue his vendetta against the NYT editor that sacked him, Sully is forced to face facts:
The second matter is the federal deficit. The Rovian base may not give a damn, but this issue helped torpedo Bush's father's re-election and has major appeal to independent voters. Why do the Republicans think this is no big deal? When I see the president campaigning for another huge tax cut, while the deficit heads into the clouds, I have to ask whether this administration is serious about economic and fiscal responsibility. And, hey, I loathe taxes. If the Bushies are losing me on this issue, they're screwed.
"If the Bushies are losing me". Jesus fuck, what does it take? Does it need Bush to publically wipe his arse with the federal government's budget papers, on live TV? Or maybe he could just come out and say "well, hell, if smaller government is good, no government must be perfect! so we're going to fly it into the ground and then get a truck to run over what's left."
"I have to ask whether this administration is serious about economic and fiscal responsibility". For fuck's sake. I think it's perfectly clear that they're not.
Sullivan still wants the presidency to succeed, "But for the right reasons". Let's see... Would that be that they're completely comfortable with jailing you for your own private behaviour? Or that they're eager to allow you to be discriminated against for your sexuality? Or simply that they're a bunch of tiny-brained morons who long for a totalitarian state where all dissent is crushed? Just asking...
I have to ask whether Sullivan is serious about political discourse. How can someone who evidently has eyes, ears and a brain be so wilfully ignorant?
Friedman, who's still desperately shilling for the war he wanted:
So just as it is becoming increasingly clear that many weapons sites including nuclear research sites which might have proved that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, have been looted and the evidence scattered, the same is happening with sites of his human mass destruction.
Got that? The reason there's no WMD evidence is that those pesky pesky Iraqis looted it already. Oh good. So, instead of a gradual but effective UN inspection regime, the americans went in and kicked over the whole country. They then made no effort to secure all these supposedly dangerous weapons, letting these supposed weapons fall into the hands of whoever wanted them. And this, somehow, shows that the US leadership are geniuses? To me it shows that either a) they knew there was nothing, and deliberately let the sites be looted to give themselves an excuse, or b) they are utterly utterly incompetent and shouldn't be trusted with cutlery, let alone leadership of the largest military the world has ever known.
And gee, guys, isn't it lucky that Al-Qaeda doesn't have their "Iraqi ally" Saddam Hussein to help them now? I'm sure that this will cause them enormous problems - there's no way they're going to be a threat now. Oh, no, wait, that's right-- They hated Hussein, so all the americans have done is remove someone that Al-Qaeda didn't care for, and have given them a vast new body of recruits (as well as countless easy targets - the poor bastards in the military that have the thankless job of trying to fix Rummy's mess). Way. To. Fucking. Go. Could you perhaps screw up a little more? Maybe trash the US's Bill of Rights and destroy the economy? Yep, done and done. Wreck the United States' relations with pretty much the entire world? Done. But that's ok. The US doesn't need the rest of the world. Well, actually maybe they do. Looks to me like the US ran up about, ooo, $120 BILLION dollars in current account deficit in the 4th quarter of 2002 alone. That'd be the rest of the world funding the US, looks like. Gee, I sure hope the US doesn't go out of their way to piss off the rest of the world and act like they care not a jot for the world. I mean, that could lead to losing out on trade deals and the US dollar getting trashed. Oops, that's done, too.
You know, the way that the Bushies are going, they're not going to need a second term. There's going to be nothing left for them to wreck by the end of next year.
The Texas Democrat walkout. Amazing, entertaining, and just a damn fine bit of political workmanship. The basic background: Pushed by Tom Delay, majority leader of the (federal) US House of Representatives, Texas republicans are attempting to ram through an outrageous gerrymandering, rigging a whole lot of electoral districts (see, e.g. this one at Calpundit). There's 88 republicans in the 150-seat House, but the rules require 100 members to be present. So 50-something of the Democrats up and left. To avoid being arrested(!) by Texas Rangers and forced back to the House, they scarpered over the border to Oklahoma.
Texas Governer Goodhair Perry has asked the US
Federal government to intervene, after the (Democratic) Oklahoma
state government told them to fuck off.
Public and media sentiment seems to be in favour of the Dems, who've been making much of the Republicans drive to rig electoral boundaries rather than worrying about things like the woefully underfunded health and education sectors in Texas, or the glowing red crater that remains of the Texas budget. (Remember when you see Bush trashing the US economy - he practised on Texas.)
The weblog Orange Report is all over this like a rash, there's also a bunch of reports at the political state report.
Gosh. Don't need to worry about the gutting of medicare, because the clowns in Canberra are giving me a $10 a week tax cut. How stupid do they think people are? That $2.4B in tax cuts is fuck-all spread across the nation, but if, say, it'd instead been pumped into Medicare, it would have done a lot more good.
As far as electoral bribery goes, that's just a piss-weak effort.
The far-far-right "Concerned Women of America" issued a "hypothetical Q&A with Rep. Frank" on the Rick Santorum issue. Barney Frank is an openly gay Democratic member of the House of Representatives, while Rick Santorum is the disgustingly bigoted homophobe who went on the record comparing homosexuality to incest and bestiality.
Michele Signorile (via TBogg) notes this statement from Frank:
"My occasional interactions with Concerned Women for America have made it very clear that their grip on reality is extremely tenuous, but I had not expected the organization to confirm this voluntarily.
"Apparently disappointed with the efforts that their fellow right-wingers have made to defend the notion that people should be subject to criminal conviction for private consenting sex acts between adults, the Concerned Women have distributed a primer on how to argue the case. Oddly, even for them, this takes the form of a "hypothetical Q & A with Rep. Frank."
"The document consists of an imaginary dialogue between me and a debater imaginatively named "Answer" in which I ask a series of questions, some of which are fatuous and few of which I have ever asked, only to receive answers from Answer that are meant to refute these positions.
"What is interesting is that even in this format in which they make up the questions and provide the answers, the Concerned Women of America don't seem to me to do very well in the debate. I am reminded of the hapless candidate who debated an empty chair and lost the debate.
"Since I have in fact debated right-wing representatives on this issue on several occasions recently, with transcripts available from TV shows, it is telling that they eschew the use of what I've actually said in favor of debating me by imputing to me a variety of things that they have made up. I am impressed at least by their self-knowledge -- they seem to realize that reality is not something they are good at."
I wish this piece (from a week ago) surprised me, but it really doesn't.
THE US has reportedly asked Australia to take back war on terror detainee David Hicks - but Australia doesn't want to.
The New York Times says Australia is reluctant because Hicks has not violated any Australian law and would have to be released on his return.
And more, from the following day's Age:
Prime Minister John Howard did not discuss the plight of terrorist suspect David Hicks during talks with the US president despite reports Australia was asked to take him back.
...
Mr Howard said there was no need to discuss their plight, as the issue was being examined by Mr Williams and his American counterpart.
This piece, via Altercation.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz harshly criticized Turkey for not backing the United States in its war against Iraq and urged the Turks to follow Washington's line in relations with Iran and Syria.
Wolfowitz's sharp comments, in an interview broadcast today, underlined tensions that have characterized U.S.-Turkish relations since Ankara refused to allow the deployment of U.S. ground troops to open a northern front against Iraq or the use of Turkish bases for raids on Iraq.
He told private television CNN-Turk that he was particularly disappointed with the Turkish military. "I think for whatever reason, they did not play the strong leadership role . . . that we would have expected," he said in the interview, conducted Monday in Washington.
So here we have the only fully democratic Muslim nation in the region, and we have influential Wolfowitz calling for the military to "play a strong leadership role". Jesus. With the history of Turkish military coups, I'm surprised the Turks didn't send Wolfie home in a sack.
Yeah, the US military's there to help democracy. Bollocks.
Hersh on the wonderfully named "Office of Special Plans" at the Pentagon. This is the backup intelligence team created by Rumsfeld, et.al. to come up with evidence against Saddam, even if they had to create it themselves. It's a wonderful case study in self-deception. And love the passive voice from Bob Kerrey, a supporter of the war:
No, they weren't just "willing to allow"... they lied and falsified evidence.
Insty-tool thinks the comic strip day by day is "like Doonesbury, but funny". Well, I tried reading a month of this "conservative answer to Doonesbury", and, well, it's missing something. Clever punchlines, non-obvious observations, and, well, anything that's actually worth saying. No doubt a fine future awaits it alongside Mallard Fillmore.
Anti-piracy games for kids! You too can play a ferret throwing balls to stop pirated software and skull and crossbones from freezing the city. I'd suggest less acid for the BSA.
Jesse at Pandagon explains why Bill Bennett's gambling problem is a legitimate target.
The Horse points out that Bush's little staged aircraft carrier moment was lifted straight from the Putin playbook.
I'm really not a fan of TV in general, but I am a fan of good TV, and good comedy. For this reason I think Graeme Blundell's "King, The Life and Comedy of Graham Kennedy" sounds like a good read. There's a long piece in The Age today, full of countless little Kennedy moments.
Courtesy of the Morning Fix's "Oh My God" section, Catholic Schoolgirl dolls. Aside from the obvious "because you're a disgusting old man", why would anyone buy these? I mean, jesus H. christ onna stick (pardon the pun), check out the text for the "Elizabeth" doll:
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, so very wrong.
So I go to look at something on yahoo. Oh, you need to sign up for an account. After a frustrating registration process ("Sorry, your answer for 'What is the name of my pet?' must be 4 or letters" -- guess my cat Gin isn't a pet, then) filled with requirements for far too much personal information (fuck you yahoo, I'm the CFO for a Fiji-based icecream company), I see the "View your marketing preferences". Now, we all know what this means, don't we:
So I uncheck all of them, only to be told:
5 days? To make a simple database change, after signing up was a matter of seconds (apart from the annoying registration form). Uh huh. Gee, I can't imagine why it is that Google's taking you apart in the web popularity stakes. Spamming filth.
According to this page, AOL killed some puppies.
I'm trying not to be callous, but it does seem like they were probably Chihuahuas...
(link via Politech)
The Guardian created some fake advertising slogans for the Tories and then managed to get the hopeless Iain Duncan-Smith (Tory leader) to pose for photos in front of them. "My cat died under a labour government" and "It rained less under a conservative government". story here, and lots of photos here. (Link via shiny new Calpundit).