Those whacky Republicans!

I decided to see what these anti-immigrant Repugs have been up to.

Rep. Steve King (Iowa) is good friends with right-wing nutjob columnist Michelle Malkin,

and climbed a mountain in Tibet to construct a cross made of boulders (I hope he carried those boulders all the way up the mountain).

Tibet???

Rep. Virgil Goode is goode friends with government-drowner Grover Norquist,

and intends to milk it for all it's worth.


The OC's Dana Rohrabacher congratulated Colin Powell for lying us into war,

and was rewarded with a ride on Air Force One.

This ought to cheer you up

From Chris Floyd:

The war aims of the Babylonian Conquest have always been obvious to anyone who concentrates on the operational reality of the action and ignores the ludicrous cornball about democracy and security that Bush dishes out to gull the rubes back home into giving up their blood and treasure on behalf of his tiny, tyrannical elite. The reality clearly shows that Bush had three primary objectives in launching the invasion. First and foremost was the transfer of large portions of the national wealth of Iraq--and the United States-into the coffers of his political cronies, corporate backers and family members. (Also here.) Second was the frantic acceleration of the long-running, bipartisan militarization of America, which is now almost wholly dependent on war and rumors of war to keep its heavily-mortgaged economy afloat. Third was planting a permanent military presence in Iraq to "project dominance" over the strategic oil lands and serve as staging areas for further operations in regime change and political extortion as needed. ("Nice little country you got there, Abdul; too bad if something, like, happened to it – you savvy? Now howzabout signing that free trade agreement already?")

None of these aims have been harmed in the slightest by Iraq's death spiral into civil war. The Bush Faction's war profiteering and fraud--on a scale surpassing anything ever seen in world history--has fueled a ruthless political machine that despite its growing unpopularity with the American people now controls all three branches of government and has overthrown the Constitution, openly declaring that its leader is beyond the reach of "judicial review, congressional oversight or international law," as the Washington Post reported--rather belatedly--this week. Swollen by the swag of aggressive war, the elite interests represented by the Bush Regime--oil, military-related industries and predatory venture capitalists like the Carlyle Group-have had their already inordinate sway over American society and policy increased by several magnitudes. They will remain ascendant for decades to come, no matter what happens in Iraq, or in any U.S. election.

If you're not sufficiently depressed, try reading the whole article.

"Let the prisoners pick the fruits"

That's what it's all about--reinstituting slavery. The quote above comes from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Confederacy). The McCain-Kennedy Senate bill, which is pretty much along the lines that W has been pushing for for a couple of years, is horrible enough. It would basically legalize the current system of an underclass of low-wage labor without legal rights at the workplace, beholden to employers who would no longer be breaking the law by hiring them. But Rohrabacher and his neanderthal House colleagues want to go further--slave labor. The good news is that they are threatening to tear the Repug party to shreds over this issue:

"I don't think [Bush is] concerned about alienating voters, he's not running for re-election," said Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado. He said Republicans could lose the House and Senate over the immigration issue, and he said of the president: "I wish he'd think about the party and of course I also wish he'd think about the country."
...
Rep. J.D. Hayworth of Arizona and others said Republicans would pay a price in the midterm elections if they vote for anything like the Senate legislation. "Many of those who have stood for the Republican Party for the last decade are not only angry. They will be absent in November," he said.

Rohrabacher said Americans should be able to "smell the foul odor that's coming out of the U.S. Senate."

Asked a few moments later whether the same odor was emanating from the president, he said, "I have no comment."

Hmmm...should have asked him that question earlier! Rep. Steve King wants to make a class war out of it:

"The elite class in America is becoming a ruling class and they've made enough money by hiring cheap illegal labor that they think they also have some kind of a right to cheap servants to manicure their nails and their lawn, for example.

"So this ruling class, this new ruling class of America, is expanding a servant class in America at the expense of the middle class of America, the blue collar of America that used to be able to punch a time clock, buy a modest house and raise their families. ... Those young people are cut out of this process."

The mind boggles--an Iowa Repug attacking the ruling class. Dude--you ARE the ruling class! Maybe Rep. King should ask Rep. Rohrabacher how having prisoners do the work is going to help the middle class. Of course, these are Repugs talking, so logic is not an issue:

Referring to a wave of demonstrations in recent weeks, Rep. Virgil Goode of Virginia said, "I say if you are here illegally and want to fly the Mexican flag, go to Mexico and wave the American flag."

Oooh! Goode one! These are the people making our laws. We are doomed.

From Doonesbury.

Rice meets the Straw Man

Imagine the irony.

George will be so jealous.


Gee, Condi--ever wonder how "Blackburn" got its name?


Destroying the world is so much fun!


"Ebony...and ivory..."


I'm melting! Melllll...ting.....


Angela--I'll take you on a shopping tour of New York, get you some clothes. Next hurricane!


"George Bush is SO going to hell." "Heaven." "Hell." "Heaven!"



Of course, Jack Straw was the only one in Britain glad to see Condiliar.

Internecine, part deux

Following up on this morning's post, a commenter over at A Tiny Revolution that while Saddam may have played a role, it has been US policy to exacerbate sectarian divisions. Remember the Salvador Option?

...one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers...

Of course, aWol has at least one ally in his quest to continue the ethnic cleansing begun by Saddam: Globaloney Man!

W is like, ya know, history, dude!

Ours is a society where things are like instant, so therefore, history almost is like so far back it doesn't count.

(Emphasis added.) -- AWol, answering questions after yesterday's speech. Jenna must have been like talking into his like earpiece instead of, like, Karl. Maybe keeping Jenna away from the microphone was one of Andy Card's jobs he like forgot to tell Bolten about.

Later on, George and Jenna demonstrate their comprehensive grasp of economics:

One of the most pure forms of democracy is the marketplace, where demand causes something to happen. Excess demand causes prices to -- the supply causes prices to go up, and vice versa.

For more delightfully snotty comments about the Idiot-in-Chief's latest public embarrassment, go pay a visit to, like, WIIIAI. And vice versa.

From Lloyd Dangle.

From Doug Marlette.

From Andy Singer.

From Bruce Plante.

Some posts need to be stolen whole

Although unlike serial plagiarists like Tony Blair, Ben Domenech, or Vladimir Putin, I'll give credit where credit is due. In this case, credit goes to Jonathan Schwarz for this post on his blog:

So in a speech yesterday Bush said this:

Today, some Americans ask whether removing Saddam caused the divisions and instability we're now seeing. In fact, much of the animosity and violence we now see is the legacy of Saddam Hussein. He is a tyrant who exacerbated sectarian divisions to keep himself in power.

I actually have some sympathy for this perspective. But it does contrast starkly with Bush's pre-war views, as recorded in the January 31, 2003 "White House Memo":

The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups." Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.

Again, Bush's speech was yesterday (Wednesday). This memo story was on the front page of the New York Times two days before (Monday). So...would it be too much to ask for some enterprising reporter to repeat both instances of Bush's words back to him, and politely ask when between January 31, 2003 and March 29, 2006 HE MANAGED TO FIGURE THIS OUT?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess: yes, it is too much to ask.

That's the end of Jonathan's post. Feeling compelled to add value, I'll ask: Does anyone think W actually used the word "internecine," or even knew that there were different religious and ethnic groups in Iraq? According to the NY Times, the memo was written by David Manning, Tony Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time. I'm pretty sure he was paraphrasing. Let's imagine what the conversation was really like, perhaps enhancing a bit just for fun:

W: So, let's go to war!
Blair: Now?
W: Well, in March.
Blair: Are you prepared?
W: Yeah. We got tanks and planes and humvees and Predators and tanks and stuff.
Blair: But George, old chap, what if things don't go smoothly?
W: Huh?
Blair: Well, the Iraqis might start fighting amongst themselves. There are different ethnic groups and religious sects there.
W. Huh?
Blair: Quite. Saddam keeps quite a lid on it, but the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds don't really like each other. When we take Saddam out, they may start attacking each other.
W: Huh.
Blair: There could well be internecine fighting; even civil war.
W: There won't be interseen fighting, whatever that is. Very unlikely. Wanna go play fetch in the Rose Garden?
Blair: Woof!

War

There were dozens of people- mostly men- standing around in a bleak group. Some of them smoked cigarettes, others leaned on cars or pick-up trucks... Their expressions varied- grief, horror, resignation. On some faces, there was an anxious look of combined dread and anticipation. It’s a very specific look, one you will find only outside the Baghdad morgue. The eyes are wide and bloodshot, as if searching for something, the brow is furrowed, the jaw is set and the mouth is a thin frown. It’s a look that tells you they are walking into the morgue, where the bodies lay in rows, and that they pray they do not find what they are looking for.

-- Riverbend

Passing the buck forwards and backwards

Last week, aWol said he was leaving the resolution of the Iraq mess up to future presidents. Today, he blames the mess on a former tyrant. I guess he's got nothing to do with it--which sounds pretty good to me. If a future president is the only way to resolve this insanity, I say we should get one ASAP, not waiting three more years.

It's the Chomsky thing, isn't it?

The Bushies, in particular ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, have been strong-arming the Iraqis to pick someone besides current prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to be PM when (or more accurately, if) a new government is formed. Because democracy means doing exactly what Bush wants.

This is probably because al-Jaafari has expressed admiration for Noam Chomsky. Al-Jaafari should probably consider himself lucky. I mean, look at what happened to fellow Chomsky admirer Pat Tillman.

Repug candidate proves that things are fine in Baghdad

By posting this photo of Istanbul:


Howard Kaloogian is running for the House seat desecrated by Duke Cunningham. He posted that photo on his campaign web site with this caption:

"We took this photo of dowtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism."

General consensus is that the photo is from Turkey, probably Istanbul. Most of the comments there suggest that Kaloogian is a liar. I suspect, instead, that he was just passing on a lie. He gets off the plane, travels to town escorted by military security, gets shown a few sights, takes a few pictures. How's a Republican from San Diego supposed to know he's in Turkey, not Iraq? This is probably the same "Iraq" that Joe Lieberman saw.

Utter debacle

Must-read interview of the month. The LA Daily News interviews Eric Haney, a founding member of the military's Delta Force and currently adviser for the new CBS TV show "The Unit." I'll try not to quote the whole thing, but...

Q: What's your assessment of the war in Iraq?

A: Utter debacle. But it had to be from the very first. The reasons were wrong. The reasons of this administration for taking this nation to war were not what they stated.
...
We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies.

Q: What is the cost to our country?

A: For the first thing, our credibility is utterly zero. So we destroyed whatever credibility we had. ... And I say "we," because the American public went along with this. They voted for a second Bush administration out of fear, so fear is what they're going to have from now on.

Our military is completely consumed, so were there a real threat - thankfully, there is no real threat to the U.S. in the world, but were there one, we couldn't confront it. Right now, that may not be a bad thing, because that keeps Bush from trying something with Iran or with Venezuela.

The harm that has been done is irreparable. There are more than 2,000 American kids that have been killed. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed--which no one in the U.S. really cares about those people, do they?
...
Q: What do you make of the torture debate? Cheney ...

A: (Interrupting) That's Cheney's pursuit. The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It's about vengeance, it's about revenge, or it's about cover-up. You don't gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the world knows that. It's worse than small-minded, and look what it does.
...
It's worse than ridiculous. It's criminal; it's utterly criminal. This administration has been masters of diverting attention away from real issues and debating the silly. Debating what constitutes torture: Mistreatment of helpless people in your power is torture, period. And (I'm saying this as) a man who has been involved in the most pointed of our activities. I know it, and all of my mates know it. You don't do it. It's an act of cowardice. I hear apologists for torture say, "Well, they do it to us." Which is a ludicrous argument. ... The Saddam Husseins of the world are not our teachers. Christ almighty, we wrote a Constitution saying what's legal and what we believed in. Now we're going to throw it away.

Sorry, I didn't leave much out, but there is a bit more.

Liberation

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, aWol, Rummy, Condiliar and I'm sure other Bushies continue to make the absurd claim that they have "liberated" 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This is not liberation. (Via Juan Cole)

Takin' it to the streets

Huge protests in France, Britain and the US.

I can't claim to have any great solution to offer to the immigration question. The status quo isn't good, and neither are the proposed "solutions." Bush, McCain and Ted Kennedy want to put undocumented aliens into some kind of semi-permanent second-class status; sort of an indentured servitude. This would suit the needs of the corporations wanting to keep labor cheap, plentiful and servile, and allow them to exploit it without breaking any laws. It would probably be a mixed bag for the immigrants themselves--they would pretty much be stuck with an employer, no matter how bad, but at least there would be some rules to play by. Then there's the (non)Sensenbrenner Repugs, who want to deport and/or lock up anyone who is or who has ever known an undocumented alien. This is one of those "What's the matter with Kansas" cases--letting xenophobia rule to the detriment of practically everybody.

The elephant in the room that is being generally ignored is the reason why so many Latin-Americans keep trying to come to this country. So-called "free trade" and US-sponsored neoliberal economic policies have colonized the economies of Latin America, depriving millions of the opportunity to make a living off of the land or in small business. (See these posts for more of my rantings about NAFTA and "free trade.")

BTW, the protests in France are related to those here, in that the government is trying to undercut the rights of labor by providing a large pool of workers beholden to their bosses and without any rights. In France, the law they are opposing allows employers to fire workers without cause or compensation during their first two years on the job.

Caspar's now an unfriendly ghost

Dennis Perrin writes Weinberger's obituary.

Most will remember Weinberger as an Iran/contra co-conspirator who, thanks to the outgoing President George H.W. Bush in 1992, was pardoned for his role in subverting Constitutional government -- or what Constitutional government there was at the time of his criminal activity. He was a tireless exponent of state terror in the Americas, primarily against Nicaragua, helping to slaughter tens of thousands in that country and wrecking whatever social gains had been made there before he really got rolling as Reagan's Secretary of "Defense," a rather euphemistic title, given the aggression Weinberger was associated with.

Pop!

Cannonfire has a long, interesting post on the deficits and the housing bubble and their implications for the near future. My "shorter" version is the title of this post.

Crude oil up nearly $2

The Nymex future closed at $66.07, up 2.98%.

Dude, we're diplomats!

AWol's crooked brother (well, his crooked brother Neil--you have to be specific with this family) peddles educational software. This recently made news because Queen Mother Barbara Bush recently made a donation to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund. Doesn't sound like the evil witch we all know and hate, does it? Well, Babs specified that her donation be used to buy Neil's software for Houston schools that took in large numbers of Katrina evacuees. They probably could have used more desks or portable classrooms or especially teachers, but crappy software is what they got from Babs instead.

There are plenty of scandalous sides to this story; Cannonfire has several. But I decided to check out the web site for Neil's Ignite Learning program. Some of the stuff is just bizarre, like The XYZ Affair ("Dude, we're diplomats!"). But, in the interest of driving a wedge into the confluence of effluence that is the Republican party, I want to point out two of the science topics on that sample page. One is "Solar System: Formation," which presents two competing theories as to how the solar system was formed, neither one of which sounds anything like this:

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years: and let them be for lights in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made the two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

One of Neil's versions states that the solar system was formed "billions of years ago." And then there's "Heredity," which presents natural selection and evolution as facts.

Do W's religious wrong supporters know that his brother, funded by his mother, is boldly (if annoyingly) teaching the next generation that what those supporters believe is nonsense?? Maybe somebody should tell them. The UAE ports issue, the huge deficits and immigration are already starting to tear at the fabric of the GOP. Lets throw this into the mix, too!

Time will tell

From Time Magazine's cover story this week:

No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth.

Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.

From heat waves to storms to floods to fires to massive glacial melts, the global climate seems to be crashing around us.

The problem -- as scientists suspected but few others appreciated -- is that global climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping points and feedback loops, thresholds past which the slow creep of environmental decay gives way to sudden and self-perpetuating collapse. That's just what's happening now.

Here in Michigan, I've only had to wear boots about three times since Christmas. Here are a few facts gathered from some quick Googling:

• It's about eight miles north from the bottom of the west arm of Grand Traverse Bay to Marion Island, and for decades that stretch of water froze almost every winter. We know that because a record of the first freeze-up and first ice-out has been kept for 155 years, ever since 1851.

  Then, about 1970, something odd started happening. The number of years when the bay froze began to nose-dive. And, since 2000, said Jim Nugent of the Michigan State University Horticultural Center in Traverse City, the west arm of the big, deep bay has frozen only once.

• Traffic accidents are way down in Isabella County, apparently due to the unusual lack of snow and ice.
• From late December through mid-February, Michigan experienced 48 consecutive days where the temperature was above average.
• January temperatures for most of the state were more than 10 degrees above normal.
• The entire year, from February to February was the warmest 12-month period in Canada's history.

From Chris Britt.

From Steve Sack.

FRom R.J. Matson.

From Mike Thompson.

We should know about Saddam's regime, but not Bush's

The NY Times has an article today about the posting on the web of numerous documents captured in Iraq by invading coalition forces. John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, authorized the release under pressure from Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI).

Mr. Hoekstra said he wanted to "unleash the power of the Net" to do translation and analysis that might take the government decades.

"People today ought to be able to have a closer look inside Saddam's regime," he said.

Mr. Hoekstra said intelligence officials had resisted posting the documents, which he overcame by appealing to President Bush and by proposing legislation to force the release.

Hoekstra and other right-wingers are apparently hoping that the documents will retroactively justify the criminal invasion, somehow negating the findings of the Iraq Survey Group and the 9/11 Commission about Iraq's alleged WMD's and ties to al Qaeda. Whatever. I think it's a good thing; get the information out there.

But Rep. Hoekstra should realize that there's a criminal regime which has a much greater impact on, and is a bigger threat to, the American people than Saddam ever did or could have--the Bush administration. If we need to know what was going on in Iraq, we certainly need to know what is going on here.

Of course the NY Times, a full partner with the Bushies in undertaking the criminal invasion, is busy rewriting history:

The truth about prewar Iraq has proven elusive. The February 2003 presentation Colin L. Powell, the secretary of state at the time, to the United Nations appeared to provide incontrovertible proof of Iraqi weapons, but the claims in the speech have since been discredited.

"Incontrovertible" only to those who were busy studying their own colons from the inside. UN inspectors were in Iraq (despite what Bush says). If Powell had "incontrovertible proof" of weapons, he would have informed the inspectors privately, and Saddam would have been caught red-handed. His presentation to the UN proved precisely nothing, except, in retrospect, that Powell is a baldfaced liar. The Times continues:

Given that track record, some intelligence analysts are horrified at exactly the idea that excites Mr. Hoekstra and the bloggers: that anyone will now be able to interpret the documents.

"There's no quality control," said Michael Scheuer, a former Central Intelligence Agency specialist on terrorism. "You'll have guys out there with a smattering of Arabic drawing all kinds of crazy conclusions. Rush Limbaugh will cherry-pick from the right, and Al Franken will cherry-pick from the left."

That won't be any worse than what Powell did. But the big benefit will be that people like Juan Cole, who know Arabic and the Middle East, will be able to access these documents directly and come to informed conclusions as to what they mean. Not only that. Incredibly, the Times article only discusses that US-based Arabic speakers and various bloggers and pundits will be reviewing these documents. It doesn't even consider the possibility that on the web they will be accessible in the Arab world, including to millions of Iraqis who suffered under Saddam and who now suffer under US occupation. They should be able to learn what was going on in their government before. They should also know who is responsible for what is happening to them now--both Iraqis and Americans have the right to know how the Bush administration decided to go to war. They shouldn't have to wait for enough memos to leak out of Britain--they (we) should have full access to the documents and meeting minutes related to the planning and execution of the invasion.

Get to work on that, won't you, Mr. Hoekstra?

In Justice

I've mentioned the new ABC show In Justice before. Last Friday's episode was particularly good, especially if you're opposed to automatic sentencing and three-strikes laws. The lawyers took the case of a black man sentenced to 30 years for stealing a case of vodka--supposedly his third strike. They investigated both his second and third convictions, eventually finding they were bogus. On the vodka theft, the key witness was his friend, the actual thief, who testified against him because a conviction would have been his (the witness') third strike. One of the lawyers rips three strikes to pieces, and they discuss how crappy fingerprints really are as evidence. They even mentioned the false ID in the Madrid train bombing case! (Sorry, there don't appear to be transcripts or even detailed summaries of the show online; I think I still have the show on my DVR, however, so I may go back and pull a few choice quotes.)

After reading this book a few years ago, I have little faith in our criminal justice system. There's money to be made locking people up, so people get locked up. Most cop shows tend to support the idea that its okay to bend the rules because vicious criminals are getting off scot-free every day. "In Justice" makes a case, every week, that innocent people are being locked up every day because the rules are bent. Which I suspect is closer to the truth.

Word

The FBI is investigating Americans — just for opposing the war. You know, maybe when we're done establishing a democracy in Iraq, we could try it over here. Stop, don't applaud, I don't want to get investigated!

— Jay Leno, via Past Peak.

It's like a fractal

The relatively minor screwups in the Iraq war have an uncanny resemblance to the war as a whole. From Juan Cole, discussing the Shiite-hitting-the-fan happenings yesterday (emphasis added):

Then US forces raided a secret prison of the Ministry of the Interior.

They captured 17 Sudanese inmates. After an investigation, the US finally acknowledged that the assault had made a mistake. The 17 Sudanese really were guerrillas or in any case legitimately held.

In other words, the jail raid was based on poor information and false premises. It is possible that our troops also messed up indirectly.

We'll probably find out, eventually, that the military knew the information was poor and the premises false, but were set on the path to the raid and refused to let facts get in the way.

And who believes the current story? Do YOU think the 17 Sudanese were legitimately held?

It's a secret

I would tell you where this link leads, but it's a secret.

They never stop

Via WIIIAI and CNN, I learn that unfortunately-not-new-NFL-Commissioner Condiliar Rice was getting very creative yesterday:

Saddam Hussein, and we have said this many times, as far as we know, did not order September 11, may not have even known of September 11. But that's a very narrow definition of what caused September 11. If you think that what caused September 11 was that the people who flew airplanes in caused September 11 then, no, Iraq has no relationship. But if you think that this was a broader problem of an ideology of hatred, of terrorism becoming an acceptable means in places where there was a freedom deficit and there was no possibility for legitimate political discourse, then you realize that you have to have a different kind of Middle East. And a different kind of Middle East with Saddam Hussein at the middle of it is unthinkable.

Rube Goldberg would be proud. It would have been simpler and just as accurate to blame the Port Authority for building those giant skyscrapers right in the path of those low-flying airliners.

Also, I hate it when anyone says that any idea is "unthinkable." It's just another one of those rhetorical tricks which means, in effect, "SHUT UP." Condiliar had to think it to say it, meaning it's not "unthinkable," even by the smallest of minds. The intention, of course, is to make the listener feel guilty and ashamed to have actually thought the thought. Similar rhetoric from the right includes charges of "not supporting the troops," of "putting the rights of terrorists ahead of the safety of Americans," of being "unpatriotic," or of wanting to "cut and run." From the left, you'll hear charges of racism or sexism or homophobia or supporting "states' rights," all frequently presented not as legitimate criticism but simply in the attempt to get the other person to shut up.

But "unthinkable" is especially Orwellian (okay, that's one "SHUT UP" I use myself)--anyone who actually thinks the thought is guilty of a "thought crime." I find this particularly threatening, because I can think just about anything. In fact, I can't think of anything I can't think of! When I was in engineering school, I was in a drawing class where we did lettering exercises (this was pre-AutoCad days). In these exercises, the teacher would ask us to list novel uses for some everyday object, like a paperclip. Most students would come up with five or ten, maybe; I regularly had thirty or forty. So I can think about Saddam at the middle of the Middle East. I can think about nuclear war. I can think about fetal rape rooms and aardvark crucifixions and writing bad poetry in bad Russian. I can envision purple rickshaws tunneling under the Alaskan tundra--and I don't even do drugs! Heck, I can even imagine President Condoleeza Rice.

Doesn't mean that I like or approve of everything I think.

From Stephane Peray.

From Pat Bagley.

From Bob Englehart.

You're either Willis or you're with the terrorists

Eli at Left I found this quote in the "Celebrities" section of the San Jose Mercury News:

Diplomat-in-training Bruce Willis has defused a potential war with Colombia. The "Armageddon" star recently argued that since Colombia's cocaine trafficking is as evil as terrorism, we should invade the country. A surprisingly irked Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez called Willis "arrogant" and "ignorant."

"I spoke to the Colombians," Bruce now tells the New York Daily News. "It's fine. I get passionate sometimes."

Willis is just Moonlighting as a diplomat; old habits Die Hard. Fortunately, he "talked to the Colombians," so it apparently won't lead to Armageddon (or, God forbid, Armageddon II). Bruce has a Sixth Sense about these things, he talks them through before going the Whole Nine Yards.

I just watched Oceans Twelve yesterday. Willis played himself. I thought he did a crappy job of it. {Julia Roberts did a much better job portraying someone pretending to be someone pretending to be Julia Roberts.}

Also, in his defense--maybe he's at least a little right? The drug trade has probably killed many more people than what generally gets called "terrorism." And we've already pretty much invaded Colombia. I'll reword it for him: "Why such a big deal about 'terrorism'? The Colombian drug trade kills more people. We should pull our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan before we pull them out of Colombia!"

Unfortunately, Mr. Willis couldn't be reached for comment, so I assume my paraphrasing is okay with him.

Hypocrisy is the coin of the realm

From BBC:

"We urge all members of the international community to demand that authorities in Belarus respect the rights of their own citizens to express themselves peacefully and to condemn any and all abuses," Mr McClellan said.

From the NY Times:

Three years after the invasion of Iraq, American troops are no longer simply teaching counterinsurgency techniques; they are trying to school the Iraqis in battling a Sunni-led rebellion without resorting to the tactics of a "dirty war," involving abductions, torture and murder.
...
"The tradition in this country of a law enforcement agency that had absolute power over people, we've got to break them of that," said Maj. Andrew Creel, the departing joint operations officer here. "I think it'll take years. You can't change a cultural mind-set overnight."

Don't be so sure, Major. It seems to have been done in this country, going the other way.

Still not a vegetarian? part whatever

The Bushies' Department of Agriculture is going the extra mile to make sure that a small meatpacking company CAN'T go the extra mile to make sure their beef is safe. Creekstone Farms, of Kansas, wanted to build a mad-cow testing lab at its slaughterhouse capable of testing every cow processed. Unfortunately, the USDA controls the sale of mad-cow testing kits, and wouldn't allow Creekstone Farms to buy enough kits to test every cow. The USDA blocked the sale at the behest of the major meatpacking corporations, who adamantly oppose testing every cow (or any cow, probably).

Jonathan at Past Peak has much more. Remember, just about every burger or steak you eat supports these giant meatpacking corporations, who may be the most dangerous and criminal companies in the country (and that's saying a lot). They brutally slaughter many thousands of animals every day, after having raised them in horrendous conditions. And the way they treat their workers and the general public, or the environment for that matter, isn't much better.

Criminal negligence

Robert Parry writes about the exteme negligence exhibited by aWol prior to 9/11, most recently re-exposed by arguments in the Moussaoui case:

Yet, if President Bush had demanded action from on high, the ripple effect through the FBI might well have jarred loose enough of the pieces to make the overall picture suddenly clear, especially in view of the information already compiled by the CIA.

Ironically, that is almost the same argument that federal prosecutors are making in seeking Moussaoui's execution. It's not that he was directly involved in the Sept. 11 plot, they say; it's that the government might have been able to stop the attacks if he had immediately confessed what he was up to.

To some civil libertarians, the case raises troubling Fifth Amendment issues by creating a precedent for putting someone to death who didn't promptly confess and thus didn't provide clues that might have prevented a separate murder that the defendant didn't specifically know about and wasn't directly involved in.

In effect, the government is basing its demand for Moussaoui's death on the notion that the failure to do something that might have prevented the tragedy of Sept. 11 should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

However, the Bush administration has taken almost the opposite position on its own culpability. Despite a strong case for criminal negligence--beginning with FBI officials and reaching up to the Oval Office--Bush and other senior officials have insisted they have nothing to apologize for.

Redout

According to SurveyUSA, aWol has a positive net approval (more approve than disapprove) in only seven states (Nebraska +1%, Mississippi +2%, Oklahoma +2%, Idaho +3%, Alabama +5%, Wyoming +7%, and Utah +13%), with only the last three giving him an approval rating over 50% (as of 3/15/06). In Florida, a state which allegedly voted for Bush in 2004, 37% approve of W while 59% disapprove. In Ohio, another alleged red state, 34% approve, 64% disapprove.

From Tom Toles.

Want to get away for a while?

Don't fly. George Monbiot details how air travel is a disaster in terms of global warming:

It's not just that aviation represents the world's fastest growing source of carbon dioxide emissions. The burning of aircraft fuel has a "radiative forcing ratio" of around 2.7. What this means is that the total warming effect of aircraft emissions is 2.7 times as great as the effect of the carbon dioxide alone. The water vapour they produce forms ice crystals in the upper troposphere (vapour trails and cirrus clouds) which trap the earth's heat. According to calculations by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, if you added the two effects together (it urges some caution as they are not directly comparable), aviation's emissions alone would exceed the [British] government's target for the country's entire output of greenhouse gases in 2050 by around 134%. The government has an effective means of dealing with this. It excludes international aircraft emissions from the target.

It won't engage in honest debate because there is simply no means of reconciling its plans with its claims about sustainability. In researching my book about how we might achieve a 90% cut in carbon emissions by 2030, I have been discovering, greatly to my surprise, that every other source of global warming can be reduced or replaced to that degree without a serious reduction in our freedoms. But there is no means of sustaining long-distance, high-speed travel.

Civil war defined

From Juan Cole:

J. David Singer and his collaborators at the University of Michigan (where I also teach) have studied dozens of such conflicts and have offered a thorough and widely adopted definition of civil war. It is:

"Sustained military combat, primarily internal, resulting in at least 1,000 battle-deaths per year, pitting central government forces against an insurgent force capable of effective resistance, determined by the latter's ability to inflict upon the government forces at least 5 percent of the fatalities that the insurgents sustain." (Errol A. Henderson and J. David Singer, "Civil War in the Post-Colonial World, 1946-92," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 37, No. 3, May 2000.)

Cole concludes: "Iraq is incontestably in a civil war."

Separation of church and state

AWol is for it in Afghanistan; against it here. Yesterday, he addressed the case of the man in Afghanistan who may face the death penalty for converting to Christianity.

"It is deeply troubling that a country we helped liberate would hold a person to account because they chose a particular religion over another," Bush said on Wednesday.

"We have got influence in Afghanistan and we are going to use it to remind them that there are universal values," he said.

Yeah--like against torture, against preemptive war, and against being such a hypocrite that one can claim to have "liberated" a country while discussing clear evidence that the country is not liberated at all.

And executing someone who has converted to Christianity? That's just plain wrong--at least without mocking her first.

And, speaking of Afghanistan, I saw Russ Feingold's interview on the Daily Show last night. Very disappointing, I thought. Especially when he credited the Bushies for having done "a good job, at first, with Afghanistan and so on." (I'm paraphrasing--the clip doesn't seem to be available at Comedy Central.) Gee, Russ. We killed a whole bunch of people, not including the guy we supposedly went after, and installed a puppet regime which rules one corner of Kabul and uses its sovereignty to persecute Christians. We've put Afghanistan back in the opium business. We've probably killed more Canadians and football players than we have terrorists who had any connection to 9/11. What would a bad job have looked like?

Feingold's probably the best out of 100 senators, but he still sucks.

The fate of puppets

The US put Saddam Hussein in power with two CIA-backed coups, encouraged him to attack Iran and Kuwait, supplied him with weapons (of mass destruction and otherwise), and did him the great honor of sending Donald Rumsfeld to visit him as a personal envoy of President Reagan. Then, in 1990, we pulled the puppet out of his happy play (for him) and started dangling him over the fire. We told him to get out of Kuwait, and then destroyed a lot of his toys when he didn't do so fast enough. We told him to get rid of even more of the toys we gave him, and, being a good puppet, he did. But we still dangled him over the fire for twelve years before dropping him into it in 2003. Chris Floyd recounts transcripts of discussions in Iraq in the 1990's:

"We don't have anything hidden!" the frustrated Iraqi president interjected at one meeting, transcripts show. At another meeting, in 1996, Saddam wondered whether UN inspectors would "roam Iraq for 50 years" in a pointless hunt for weapons of mass destruction. "When is this going to end?" he asked.

In another meeting, deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz (a Christian by the way; when do you think we'll next see a Christian as deputy prime minister of Iraq?), pipes up: "We played by the rules of the game. In 1991, our weapons were destroyed."

They didn't realize that when you play with the US government, every game is Calvinball.

From Lloyd Dangle.

From Signe Wilkinson.

From Matt Davies.

From Pat Bagley.

From Sandy Huffaker.

Still not a vegetarian???

From R.J. Matson.

From Jeff Parker.

From Stephanie McMillan.

Hillary the Hawk

Justin Raimondo writes in The American Conservative, quoting from her recent speeches and the speech she gave when she voted for the Iraq war, a vote she still defends. And there's this:

Hillary's newfound centrism isn’t completely insincere. Her bellicose interventionism has a history: it was Hillary, you’ll recall, who berated her husband for not bombing Belgrade soon enough and hard enough. As Gail Sheehy relates in Hillary's Choice:

Hillary expressed her views by phone to the President: "I urged him to bomb." The Clintons argued the issue over the next few days. [The president expressed] what-ifs: What if bombing promoted more executions? What if it took apart the NATO alliance? Hillary responded, "You cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major holocaust of our time. What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life?" The next day the President declared that force was necessary.

Hillary and her $21 million are currently the biggest obstacle to any chance the Dems have of nominating a good anti-war candidate in 2008. We need to make it clear to her and her fellow Dumbos that she is NOT an acceptable candidate. She probably couldn't win the election, and wouldn't be much of an improvement if she did.

Quote du jour

I'm always amazed by the way we kid ourselves about the influence of the Military-Industrial Complex in our society. We use euphemisms like supply-side economics or the Laffer Curve. We never say: We're artificially making work. If the WPA [Works Progress Administration of the Great Depression] was often called a dig-holes-and-fill-em-up-again project, now we're making things that blow up and we sell them to people.

-- Chalmers Johnson, in an interview at TomDispatch.

More from Johnson:

So what kind of empire is ours? The unit is not the colony, it's the military base. This is not quite as unusual as defenders of the concept of empire often assume. That is to say, we can easily calculate the main military bases of the Roman Empire in the Middle East, and it turns out to be about the same number it takes to garrison the region today. You need about 38 major bases. You can plot them out in Roman times and you can plot them out today.

An empire of bases -- that's the concept that best explains the logic of the 700 or more military bases around the world acknowledged by the Department of Defense. Now, we're just kidding ourselves that this is to provide security for Americans. In most cases, it's true that we first occupied these bases with some strategic purpose in mind in one of our wars. Then the war ends and we never give them up. We discovered that it's part of the game; it's the perk for the people who fought the war. The Marines to this day believe they deserve to be in Okinawa because of the losses they had in the bloodiest and last big battle of World War II.
...
Militarily, we've got an incoherent, not very intelligent budget. It becomes less incoherent only when you realize the ways it's being used to fund our industries or that one of the few things we still manufacture reasonably effectively is weapons. It's a huge export business, run not by the companies but by foreign military sales within the Pentagon.

This is not, of course, free enterprise. Four huge manufacturers with only one major customer. This is state socialism and it's keeping the economy running not in the way it's taught in any economics course in any American university.

Aaargh!

Yes, the moron is still our pResident. Helen Thomas asked him why we attacked Iraq, and he used it as yet another opportunity to demonstrate what a criminal buffoon he really is.

THE PRESIDENT: Helen. After that brilliant performance at the Grid Iron, I am -- (laughter.)

Q You're going to be sorry. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Well, then, let me take it back. (Laughter.)

Q I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet -- your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and so forth -- what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil -- quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it?

THE PRESIDENT: I think your premise -- in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist -- is that -- I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect --

Q Everything --

THE PRESIDENT: Hold on for a second, please.

Q -- everything I've heard --

THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me, excuse me. No President wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it's just simply not true. My attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th. We -- when we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people. Our foreign policy changed on that day, Helen. You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life. And I'm never going to forget it. And I'm never going to forget the vow I made to the American people that we will do everything in our power to protect our people.

Part of that meant to make sure that we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy. And that's why I went into Iraq -- hold on for a second --

Q They didn't do anything to you, or to our country.

THE PRESIDENT: Look -- excuse me for a second, please. Excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where al Qaeda trained --

Q I'm talking about Iraq --

THE PRESIDENT: Helen, excuse me. That's where -- Afghanistan provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where they trained. That's where they plotted. That's where they planned the attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans.

I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That's why I went to the Security Council; that's why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences --

Q -- go to war --

THE PRESIDENT: -- and therefore, we worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did, and the world is safer for it.

Q Thank you, sir. Secretary Rumsfeld -- (laughter.)

Q Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: You're welcome. (Laughter.) I didn't really regret it. I kind of semi-regretted it. (Laughter.)

That is just so wrong I don't know what to say. Reading further in the press conference, the lies just never stop:

"We've got the Patriot Act reauthorized over the objections of the Democrat leadership in the Senate." -- I WISH Russ Feingold was the Democratic leadership in the Senate. Several Republicans supported him more than most Democrats did.

"War creates trauma, particularly when you're fighting an enemy that doesn't fight soldier-to-soldier, they fight by using IEDs to kill innocent people. That's what they use. That's the tool they use." -- Unlike missiles fired from unmanned aircraft at civilian houses.

"I meet with too many families who's lost a loved one to not be able to look them in the eye and say, we're doing the right thing." -- Of course, not that Sheehan woman, or anyone else who disagrees with me.

"This is a country that's walking away from international accords; they're not heading toward the international accords, they're not welcoming the international inspections -- or safeguards -- safeguard measures that they had agreed to." -- Which would have been true, if by "this...country" he meant the US (see for example the International Criminal Court, Kyoto, the Nonproliferation Treaty, and of course the UN charter). But of course he was talking about Iran.

He also "quotes," several times, the bogus statements from the bogus Zarqawi, just as Rummy did a few days ago.

The US won in Vietnam

A few days ago, I linked to an essay entitled The End of Civilization by Dave Eriqat, in which he suggested that the Bushies DO know what they're doing--Making sure that the corporate elite survives and profits from the upcoming collapse of society. I suggest you read it now if you haven't already. After that you should read Chris Floyd's account of how the US actually WON the war in Vietnam. Dirt-cheap labor without rights working for multinational corporations--it was the goal all along. All the profits made during the war were an added bonus to the murderous cretins running this country.

From Don Wright.

From David Horsey.

From Tom Toles.

Just as soon as I finish blogging...

From Boondocks.

We could be ineffective for so much less money

A comment from SandSkeptic on Juan Cole's Top Ten Catastrophes of the Third Year of American Iraq:

Over half a million man-years of US military and intelligence presence in Iraq have not resulted in the capture of one particularly nasty Jordanian, whom most Iraqis apparently can't stand either. That's so sad on so many levels.

The US military isn't going to intervene in any civil war that may eventuate.

So why is the US military there at all, at great cost in lives and treasure?

Couldn't we not catch Zarqawi and not intervene in a civil war, for say $4 billion a year instead of $300 billion? Half the savings could even go in further tax cuts to the super-rich and we'd all still be better off.