Unintended honesty watch

From Dan Froomkin's column today talking about the meeting between Bush and al-Maliki he quotes that infamous SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: "...And I also wouldn't agree with your characterization of tinkering. These are the, as I said, sort of the nuts and bolts of getting the tools in place to deal with the security situation. There was, as I mentioned, quite a fulsome conversation about the situation in Baghdad..." [Emphasis mine-CK]

From Answers.com: ful·some adj.
1. Offensively flattering or insincere. See synonyms at unctuous.

I had a vision of Bush and al-Maliki tossing spin and platitudes at each other and thought, yeah, that sounds about right.

A long strange trip

Well, it's been a week now and past time to gather my thoughts on the election.

It's been a long time coming.

Wow.

To put things in proper perspective I should note that I've been interested in politics since I was a young lad following the exploits of McGovern v. Nixon.

And, as you might have guessed from that, shall we say, inauspicious beginning, seldom have my political desires been much more than disappointing.

I was pleased when tricky dicky go this comeuppance, but seeing a president go down in disgrace was hardly a booyah sort of moment.

I suppose I might have been more excited over Jimmy Carter if a) I wasn't so suspicious of his evangelical roots and b) I wasn't at the time a hormonal 17 year old male with much more important things on my, er, mind.

Then Ronald Reagan happened. The dangerous dolt who'd been my governor was now the dangerous dolt who ran the country.

A cold cheerless morning in America indeed. 8 years of cold cheerless mornings.

Then it was on to Bush 41 and the videogame war in Iraq. Fear sets in that America will never see a Democratic president. Which fear is confirmed by the election of...

Bill Clinton.

Bill, Bill, Bill.

12 years in the wilderness and "Don't ask, don't tell" is the best we can come up with? Triangulation? A healthcare plan destroyed by its own efforts to appease unappeasable insurance companies? Reforming welfare on the backs of the poor?

Sigh.

And then there was Bush 43. Our naked emperor.

I'll not even get started on BushCorp™'s bumbling CEO, I've written plenty elswhere.

But the last straw was the 2004 election when despite the fact that George II's faults were clearly on display for all with eyes to see, he was none the less re-elected.

And it was that election that convinced me to start this blog, so that I could a)keep my head from exploding and b)do my small part to educate, to cheerlead, and to encourage those who might be tempted to join the reality-based community to do so.

So to my vast readership, thank you for your patience.

And you're welcome.

And Congratulations

to Majority Leader Reid.

Speaker Pelosi

Has a nice ring to it doesn't it?

Cornered Dogs Part 3: Election Night Edition

Just thought I'd spend election night keeping track of all the GOP vote suppression activities. (I know, I know, keep track of ALL the GOP dirty tricks?!)

If you happen to hear of anything I've missed please let me know.

Here we go:

• George Allen's Campaign Attempts to Supress Democratic Votes


• Wingnut talkshow host encourages phonejamming scam


• RoboPhone Harrassment


• Voter disenfranchisement in Wisconsin


• Attempted Voter Suppresion in Yonkers


• Denver seeing massive problems - 2 Hour Extension DENIED by judge

And the ugliest so far:


• Men With Guns Harass Latino Voters

Like I said, cornered dogs.

Please don't vote

I know it's standard practice to encourage everyone to vote on election day.

So I know it's borderline unpatriotic, but I wanted to take a moment to encourage some of my fellow Americans not to vote tomorrow.

If it doesn't bother you that the world's fisheries will be gone in a few decades 'cos, well, you don't like tuna anyway please don't vote.

If you think that it's important to preserve the right of blastocysts the size of the period at the end of this sentence to be thrown in the garbage rather than used to cure disease please don't vote.

If you're proud that your government believes it's OK to torture please don't vote.

If you think the US should invade some country every few years just on general principles please don't vote.

If your main source of information is either Fox News or your local TV news please don't vote.

If you don't believe in global warming, but do believe in the rapture. If you don't believe in survival of the fittest in biology, but do believe it in business. If you believe in doing whatever it takes to protect our children except making sure they're properly fed, clothed, educated or have a clean environment and a debt free future. If you believe anything said by the lying sack of shit currently occupying the whitehouse or any of his enablers please, please, I beg you please stay away from that voting booth tomorrow.

Please don't vote.

Nuke Primer Published by GOP

Oh great.

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

So, in a vain effort to prop up their illusory claims that Saddam had WMDs, and over the objections of then DNI John Negroponte, congressional Republicans, with whitehouse backing, got these docs up on the internets.

Just great.

I suppose Bush discovered the error while using the google.

I did not have sex with that man

Just a paraphrase mind you, but the jist of monstrous hypocrite Rev. Ted Haggard's clarification of his relationship with an admitted male prostitute.

And for today I'm not going to rail on about the hypocrisy of it all or wonder about Haggard's close ties to the whitehouse.

No, today its just a little snark.

When I saw the WaPo headline: Minister Admits to Buying Drugs and Massage, the only thought that popped into my head was to wonder whether the story had a happy ending.

Army Times to call for Rumsfeld's resignation

Stunning.

One of the true greatnesses of the American experiment is the subsurvience of the military to its civilian leadership.

And make no mistake, this is a value more deeply ingrained in the US military than any other: that they serve at the discretion of the civilian leadership.

And it is a tribute to both the wisdom of our founding fathers, and the unparalleled discipline of our uniformed military that the US has never succumbed to easy choice of military dictatorship, even at the very worst of times.

We may believe our present difficulties in Iraq and with terrorists are a trial. But I cannot believe they come even close to the disasters of, say, the Civil War, or World War II. But even in those most potentially disasterous of times our military has kept faith and served the dictates of its civilian leadership.

But now, though we face a lesser threat than those two disasters, the greater disaster, the more real threat is the leadership of George W. Bush. The failure of leadership I should say.

And it is evidence of the magnitude of that failure that the US military feels the need to call for the replacement of its civilian leadership.

Let us hope that BushCorp's incompetence doesn't provoke a more devastating response.

Yawn, another day, another right wing scandal

Is it me, or does it seem that all the most vehemenent GOP gay-bashers are closeted homosexuals?

Poor GOP still can't catch a break.

On a day which they'd clearly planned the news cycle around Alberto Gonzales latest dragnet, the Haggard story breaks.

It's too bad that the stories on the end of the world's fisheries as well as the kidnapped GI in Iraq will also get overwhelmed as well.

On the bright side, I guess this is the end of the Kerry foot-in-mouth episode.

Attention pop-psychologists!

If, like myself, you've heard the latest of Bush's latest protestations of unwavering support for the likes of Don Rumsfeld and wondered, what's wrong with the man, Lance Mannion has a suggestion:

What I used to think of as monstrous vanity and arrogance I now suspect is actually delusion. Wolfe writes that for Bush believing a thing to be true is as good as its being true. Reality for him is what's inside his head. Wolfe attributes this to a combination of Bush's own character flaws and the tendency of the sycophants and machiavellians around him to keep him isolated. He's trapped inside a bubble of his own and his aides' making and he is too vain and too stubborn, and too weak, to see it or want to break out of it.

But I can't help thinking that he was born trapped inside that bubble. There is a clinical term for people who live inside their own heads, who can't interact completely and normally with other people, who seem to have no empathy with others and no sense that what they think is going on might not be what in fact is going on, who get angry and act out when the reality intrudes and they are forced to choose between the world inside their heads and the world outside.

That word begins with an A.

And I'm not thinking of alcoholic, although Bush's behavior is in many ways that of one still, even though he has supposedly sobered up. The dry drunk syndrome is an established fact.

You'll have to read the entire (two) oustanding posts for the answer, something I highly recommend.

Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.

Know thine enemies

At the General's suggestion I'm posting some helpful links for the various Republicans running for election this year.

They all provide useful information that somehow escaped the attention of the webmasters of their official websites. I guess they're just too busy slandering their opponents to keep up.

Senate races:

• WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
  
• VA-Sen: George Allen
  
• TN-Sen: Bob Corker
  
• RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
  
• MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
  
• MO-Sen: Jim Talent
  
• MD-Sen: Michael Steele
  
• AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl

House races:

• WA-08: Dave Reichert
  
• VA-10: Frank Wolf
  
• PA-10: Don Sherwood
  
• PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
  
• PA-07: Curt Weldon
  
• PA-04: Melissa Hart
  
• OH-18: Joy Padgett
  
• OH-15: Deborah Pryce
  
• OH-02: Jean Schmidt
  
• OH-01: Steve Chabot
  
• NY-29: Randy Kuhl
  
• NY-26: Tom Reynolds
  
• NY-20: John Sweeney
  
• NY-03: Peter King
  
• NV-03: Jon Porter
  
• NM-01: Heather Wilson
  
• NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
  
• NH-02: Charlie Bass
  
• NC-11: Charles Taylor
  
• NC-08: Robin Hayes
  
• MN-06: Michele Bachmann
  
• MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
  
• KY-04: Geoff Davis
  
• KY-03: Anne Northup
  
• KS-02: Jim Ryun
  
• IN-08: John Hostettler
  
• IN-02: Chris Chocola
  
• IL-14: Dennis Hastert
  
• IL-10: Mark Kirk
  
• IL-06: Peter Roskam
  
• ID-01: Bill Sali
  
• IA-01: Mike Whalen
  
• FL-22: Clay Shaw
  
• FL-16: Joe Negron
  
• FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
  
• CT-04: Christopher Shays
  
• CO-07: Rick O'Donnell
  
• CO-05: Doug Lamborn
  
• CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
  
• CA-50: Brian Bilbray
  
• CA-11: Richard Pombo
  
• CA-04: John Doolittle
  
• AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
  
• AZ-01: Rick Renzi
  

If you have a blog or website and would like to help spread this information read Chris Bowers' article here.

Daily Show as Substantive as Network News

From the "I always thought as much" file, a study by Indiana University shows that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart contains as much news as a big 3 network news show:

Julia R. Fox, assistant professor of telecommunications at Indiana University isn't joking when she says the popular "fake news" program, which last week featured Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as a guest, is just as substantive as network coverage.

While much has been written in the media about The Daily Show's impact, Fox's study is the first scholarly effort to systematically examine how the comedy program compares to traditional television news as sources of political information.

Like I said, I don't find this too surprising, given TDS' fondness for using real news segments as foils for its satire.

And frankly, given the rank hypocrisy and corruption of so much of today's news and today's newsmakers, it seems to me that satire is a much more honest and accurate way to depict the news than the repetitive, "he said/she said" blather so frequently practised by straight journalism.

Perhaps there's hope for this country yet.

State of Denial

Many of us on the left, myself included, criticized Bob Woodward's previous books about the Bush administration. Too chummy, too cocktail party gossipy, too inside the beltway.

Well we were right, but then so too was Bob Woodward. With his latest book, Woodward uses all those inside connections we so rightly criticized, and puts them to devastating use against the Whitehouse.

(Some review and analysis here, here, and here).

In retrospect I have to wonder whether Woodward was consciously or unconsciously setting BushCorp™ up. Perhaps his reporter's instincts simply told him that to ultimately get to the evil heart of the Bush crime family he would have to go into deep cover, if you will, by pretending to buy their load of bull, and convince them that he was indeed buying sincerely.

But regardless, as the flurry of Whitehouse denials indicates, Woodward has indeed struck a nerve.

Torture

As the congress of the United States of America, representing YOUR interests and wishes, decides this week to approve the President's use of torture, it would be well to consider what your silent acquiessence to this decision says about your own character.

Sorry if you'd rather not think about it, but really you ought to.

And for those of you who think torture is a necessary evil in these frightened times, ponder the words of some military leaders here: Why Retired Military Brass Don't Want Torture

Or some words from a first hand witness of torture's effects here.

And think of this, even if you ignore the fact that torture doesn't work, and that iti is an evil that souldn't be inflicted on ANY human, no matter how evil, think of this: what does your approval of torture say about you?

9/12

When you think abput it, the things that piss so many Americans off about BushCorp™ are not its myriad sins in their details, but one big sin, the missed opportunity of the day after 9/11.

On 9/12, echoing JFK's words beside the Berlin wall, the world as one said, "we are all Americans".

What Bush and cohorts have done with that missed opportunity is beyond criminal.

To get a real feel for the then and now of it watch first Jon Stewart's first broadcast after 9/11, then watch Keith Olbermann's broadcast today.

The saddest thing is that both are true.

And for that I will never forgive George W. Bush.

[Videos courtesy of the ever necessary Crooks and Liars blog]

A few thoughts on 9\11

As we remember those who lost their lives that day, let us also remember those who suffer as a result of this administration's misguided attempts to continue to reap political benefit from the tragedy of 9/11.

Let us remember the thousands of troops whose deaths now outnumber those who died that day.

Let us remember the 10s of thousands maimed as well.

Let us remember their families and friends.

Let us also remember the 10s of thousands of Iraqi souls, civilians whose reward for surviving Saddam was to become the "collateral damage" of the US occupation.

Let us remember their families as well.

And let us finally remember that, since the goal of terrorism is to inspire fear, both BushCorp and the American press are now doing their best to do bin Laden's work for him.

Let us remember that this November.

Patriotic Liberals

NO it's not an oxymoron, nor should it be, as Geoffrey Nunberg points out in his LA Times op-ed:

POLITICAL ATTACKS that sounded sinister in the McCarthy years now sound merely outlandish, as conservatives try to explain liberals' lack of patriotism as just another one of those blue-state lifestyle traits, like an aversion to Lynyrd Skynyrd or macaroni and cheese. Writing shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the National Review's John O'Sullivan explained that liberals' anti-Americanism was the reaction of snobs who believed that "the patriotism of ordinary people is something simplistic, vulgar and shameful," which is why liberals are more comfortable taking the side of "medieval Islamists" than of "a hard-hat construction worker or a suburban golfer in plaid pants."

You can't trivialize love of country more than that. If liberals are capable of bailing out on patriotism simply because it's tacky, how strong a hold could it have on any of us?

But then patriotism has never been so low-maintenance as now. Time was when "supporting the troops" obliged you to buy war bonds or go out on scrap drives. Now you merely have to slap a bumper sticker on the back of your Hummer. And even for the able-bodied, it's enough to support the troops from afar — you don't see conservative young women out in the streets handing out white feathers as emblems of cowardice to men who aren't in uniform.

The less it costs to proclaim yourself a patriot, the less someone else has to do to be accused of being unpatriotic — it's enough that he questions the wisdom of a policy or leaves his lapel pin on his other suit. That isn't how it was going to be.

Item: ABC (a Disney company) to air pro-GOP 9/11 "documentary"

With friends like these...

So, it seems that Pakistan, W's good friends and "allies" in the Glorious War on Terror©, are giving safe haven to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.

Imagine that, BushCorp™ betrayed by a military dictator who from the beginning has had no other goal than to save his own skin. If this doesn't rate a Rumsfeldian "heavens to betsy!" I don't know what does.

Then again the Bushies have never been too lucky in their choice of friends, Putin, the House of Saud, even the bin Laden family itself.

On the other hand it does support the BushCorp™ theory that questioning its ability to wage the Glorious War on Terror© plays into our enemy's hands.

I mean seriously, can pointing out that the leader of the free world is an idiot really be good for our country?

Especially since the rest of the world knows that it's true?