Real Genius

Uhm...

2006-11-10T20:34:00.000-05:00

I don't understand why Billmon insinuates that there might be something wrong with fancying foot.

The Root Cause

2006-11-08T15:25:00.000-05:00

I stopped watching the television and reading my RSS updates some time between 3 and 4 am last night, and have been trying to understand what the root cause or causes were, that resulted in last night's staggering election outcome.

Rather than the Iraq War that has left all but a tiny portion of the electorate (a portion including but not limited to the Beltway pundit and Beltway pundit-wannabe class) bitter and angry, than the right-wing agenda finally showing its ugliness to a sufficient portion of the electorate (though the foaming at the mouth should always have been a subtle hint), than economic policies that have been eating away at the middle class and completely obliterating the poor; the outcome on election day has been primarily the result of the disparity between the two parties' abilities to energize their respective bases and appeal to their key constituencies.

The GOP lost the election because it lost its appeal to more than a few (surgically small, but) key constituencies:

1. The teen molester constituency,

2. The wife-beating constituency,

3. The wife-spitting constituency,

4. The mistress-strangling constituency and last but not least,

5. The gay meth-enthusiast evangelical pastor constituency.

And I think perhaps the scandals may have had a thing to do with this too...

Dana Bash...

2006-11-08T00:20:00.000-05:00

... just now on CNN, says something to the effect of "Republicans ran against Nancy Pelosi as the boogeyman blah blah blah and she will have to reach across party lines blah blah blah as Speaker of the House blah blah blah."

How the fuck is it that when the American people reject, by an overwhelming fucking margin, the idea of Nancy Pelosi demonized by the right-wing GOP, that she has to be all bipartisan and please those evil motherfuckers?

The right-wing fucking lost to Nancy Pelosi.

Get it? So just STFU and keep your worthless commentary to yourselves.

Fucking idiots.

WaPo, Front Page, Above the Fold

2006-10-22T16:39:00.000-04:00

About a year after our first lecture in the series Headline Writing 101, whoever came up with the title "In a Land Without Order, Punishment Is Power" for Anthony Shadid's decent --and entertaining, but in my opinion somewhat redundant-- article makes us add one more golden rule to a list of arduous, complicated entries like not misleading your readers and not flat-out making shit up:

Try to research the histories of concepts a bit before you construct slogan-like generalizations even if you think their reference to something in the article (in this case the Southern Iraqi saying "No one pays respect to the saint who won't mete out punishment.") is clever.

You see, while this may sound original and insightful to you, a lot of people would find it uninspiring and ordinary, because they may have, say, unlike you, considered the connection between punishment and power before they first heard about it in the Iraqi saying. You know, after having read Max Weber's Politik als Beruf or something:

a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory

... or having heard something about modern Western political science.

Quote of the Day

2006-09-05T10:32:00.000-04:00

From Dr. Cole:

Bush's refusal to rethink his Iraq strategy may have an unexpected side effect-- of uniting the Democrats.

I know that it sounds absurd to talk about Democrats uniting. But if W. could unify the Iraqi Sunnis--who are notorious for their feuds and infighting-- he can unify the Democrats.

Yeah, Baby!

2006-07-27T08:42:00.000-04:00

Dr. Doran sticks it today to every idiot from Michael Crichton to Ann Coulter who misrepresented or flat-out lied about his findings on the climate of Antarctica: (emphasis mine)

In January 2002, a research paper about Antarctic temperatures, of which I was the lead author, appeared in the journal Nature. At the time, the Antarctic Peninsula was warming, and many people assumed that meant the climate on the entire continent was heating up, as the Arctic was. But the Antarctic Peninsula represents only about 15 percent of the continent’s land mass, so it could not tell the whole story of Antarctic climate. Our paper made the continental picture more clear.

My research colleagues and I found that from 1996 to 2000, one small, ice-free area of the Antarctic mainland had actually cooled. (...) Our summary statement pointed out how the cooling trend posed challenges to models of Antarctic climate and ecosystem change.

(...)

Our study did find that 58 percent of Antarctica cooled from 1966 to 2000. But during that period, the rest of the continent was warming. And climate models created since our paper was published have suggested a link between the lack of significant warming in Antarctica and the ozone hole over that continent. These models, conspicuously missing from the warming-skeptic literature, suggest that as the ozone hole heals — thanks to worldwide bans on ozone-destroying chemicals — all of Antarctica is likely to warm with the rest of the planet. An inconvenient truth?

Also missing from the skeptics’ arguments is the debate over our conclusions. Another group of researchers who took a different approach found no clear cooling trend in Antarctica. We still stand by our results for the period we analyzed, but unbiased reporting would acknowledge differences of scientific opinion.

The disappointing thing is that we are even debating the direction of climate change on this globally important continent. And it may not end until we have more weather stations on Antarctica and longer-term data that demonstrate a clear trend.

In the meantime, I would like to remove my name from the list of scientists who dispute global warming. I know my coauthors would as well.

Beautiful Op-Ed piece in the Times --there's nothing like starting one's day with a fresh bit of good, cheerful news, is there?

This is funny...

2006-06-08T00:58:00.000-04:00

I passed you en route to the buffet table TWICE
Reply to: pers-169228830@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-06-07, 11:56PM EDT

Me: Moderate Republican, Chairman of important Senate Committee
You: Baldheaded, trigger-happy veep

Why didn't you call me?!

* this is in or around GOP Caucus Lunch

Age

2005-12-23T09:12:00.000-05:00

Regarding Atrios' link to Kos' post on the remark about blog readers' age in the Washington Monthly profile...

The profile in the Monthly specifically refers to Kos' audience, so they don't have an excuse, but I think the underlying assumption comes from thinking of bloggers and blog readers in general. It's a medium used quite widely by the younger generation and overall the age average is low.

This, however, does not mean that the same is true for readers/writers of political blogs...

Headline Writing 101

2005-11-03T11:04:00.000-05:00

The link on CNN.com reads "Two 'Gang of 14' members: Alito filibuster unlikely".

Now, is it just me, or does it sound like at least one of the said members is a Democrat, in which case this would be newsworthy and the title apt.

However, when you follow the link and read the piece you see the following:WASHINGTON (AP) -- A group of centrist senators who halted a previous filibuster fight is making plans for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, but at least two of the group's Republicans say their decision is already made: no filibuster.
"I don't believe that, with all sincerity, I could let that happen," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, a member of the so-called Gang of 14, said after meeting with the federal appeals court judge whom President Bush nominated to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Graham and Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, were taking their anti-filibuster message to the other Senate centrists at a meeting Thursday. But the group's Democrats were urging them to withhold judgment, saying Alito has been the nominee only since Monday.
Y'see, it was Republican senators Graham and DeWine that pleaded nolo filibustero but once again, the sole headline insinuates otherwise.

These misleading headlines are way too common for me to reasonably conclude that they're mere coincidences, but in any case, I think they should include a course entitled Headline Writing 101 at all J-schools. I will take the time to write the kind and totally-not-sarcastic textbook The Absolute Fucking Idiot's Guide to Headline Writing.

I promise.

Turdblossom Sighting

2005-11-03T10:55:00.000-05:00

No, no, not today. Not even this week. It was on Sunday, in Middleburg, VA. What would otherwise have been a wonderful afternoon with my companion in the historic town was interrupted by the sight of the Rove-man in an independent Williams-Sonoma type of store. He was looking at a few things, we were looking at him, another couple was looking at him, other people were looking at him, and wait... My afternoon was wonderful after all: Everybody was giving him dirty looks. He went out and across the street and was walking west on the sidewalk looking at his blackberry later on, and if memory serves, he was wearing a dark brown sportsjacket and a beige pair of pants. Can't remember the color of his shirt. And I noticed another thing: I must have gotten used to seeing his face in pictures, and his face alone, so I expected him to look a lot less slim. Only his face --still-- looked fat. Perhaps the kidney stones plus the Fitzey stones have been taking their toll.

Harriet Miers Withdraws

2005-10-27T10:04:00.000-04:00

Says the Post:Miers told the president in a letter of withdrawal that she was "concerned that the confirmation process presents a burden for the White House and our staff that is not in the best interests of the country."
Bush responded that he was "reluctantly" accepting the decision.
"I nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court because of her extraordinary legal experience, her character, and her conservative judicial philosophy," he said in a statement. But, he said, "I understand and share her concern . . . about the current state of the Supreme Court confirmation process."
Yea.

I believe that like I believe there's a god. And like I believed Dubya had nothing to do with the swiftboat ads. And like I believed he didn't ask Kerik to step down when the shit hit the fan, but Kerik withdrew on his own.

Standard operating procedure: Failing nominees take the fall on their own, and the nominator remains unscathed. Lowlies do the dirty work as they're ordered, and Mr. above-the-foray admits no direct connection.

Though this does remind me of the way a good ole' Italian institution conducts business...

Indictment Bingo

2005-10-26T10:52:00.000-04:00

1. Karl Rove

2. Lewis Libby

3. John Bolton

4. Steven Hadley

I'm basing the "count" on what Steve Clemons heard and wrote in TWN.

I think the most likely charges for Rove and Libby are perjury and obstruction of justice, respectively. Though I still think it's Fred Fleitz who filled Bolton in on Plame's situation, I have a feeling he flipped. Like Wonkette was quoting a reporter yesterday, "these slimy thugs are turning on one another like runner-ups in a beauty pageant". I think Fleischer, Fleitz, Hannah, Wurmser and a couple of Rove's aides and ex-aides flipped, and I think Bolton's never having given a Grand Jury testimony had to do with the fact that he was a target all along.

Of course, I'd give up either of numbers (2) and (4) above for Cheney, Rice or Bush, but I think they'll get away with having only been named unindicted co-conspirators, that being more likely for the first two than Bush.

Bobo's World

2005-10-20T23:10:00.000-04:00

Topeka, KS Edition(emphasis mine):
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - City narcotics officers regularly tampered with drug evidence and falsified records, yet supervisors failed to discipline anyone, a prosecutor said Thursday.
(...)
Hecht said that drugs that were being held as evidence were taken for personal use and that officers gambled and drank on duty, falsified records about their activities, and failed to properly oversee money for drug buys.
Two officers have previously been charged. Hecht's report did not identify other officers allegedly involved in the misconduct.
Former officer Thomas Pfortmiller was sentenced last month to 16 months in prison after Hecht's office found that he stole $20,000 meant for undercover drug buys and falsified records claiming that drug buys had occurred. His former partner, Bruce Voight, was charged with 61 felonies, including falsifying evidence.

Golden Ssshhhh....

2005-10-15T16:09:00.000-04:00

You know, I was reading MoDo's column today and something stuck out like a sore thumb:
But the reverse playbook got washed away with Katrina, when Karl Rove and W. did not jump to attention at the word hurricane. W. ended up with a job approval rating of 2 percent among African-Americans, according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. He missed the golden hour, as it’s called in combat medicine, the precious time when acting fast may save those in jeopardy.
W.’s presidency has become branded with rushing into one place too fast and not rushing into another fast enough.
Now I'm not going to suggest that it completely destroys the flow nor that it is irrelevant to the context, but it still somehow felt out of place, somehow not entirely needing use, as if it was placed there for another purpose.

Then I realized how similar to another phrase Golden Hour sounds, especially when I tried to pronounce it in my head instead of just reading it.

It's just one brief consonant short of a Golden Shower, isn't it?

I'm probably wrong but I'd like to think that it's not just a coincidence.

Okay, I'm done being a disgusting asshole for the day.

The Beginning of The End - II

2005-09-04T21:42:00.000-04:00

Since the beginning of the Iraq War I had pretty much concluded that there would't be a significant terrorist attack on US soil in the foreseeable future.

That was mainly because the War On Terra had been started, fought and lost. As we repeatedly said, this conflict was not brought upon us by a finite number of "evildoers" who sought to do us harm and "hated our freedoms". Christ Almighty, is there a single person with at least a double-digit IQ who ever believed that explanation? It was in fact played out according to well-known and studied strategic plans.

Therefore, once the US suffered immense casualties and decided to shift its forces away from the muslim holy land --and invaded the wrong muslim country, pissed away the goodwill the entire world offered us after September 11, obliterated all international treaties and conventions and still managed to let UBL and his top lieutenant get away unscathed, there remained no viable reason for al Qaida to strike again (Granted, there have been some successes, like consecutive captures of all five-or-so of the number three men of al Qaida.).

My conclusion also led me to believe that the Dubya gang was going to be able to get away with the "not on my watch" illusion as the dittoheads pounded away with "Oh, then, oh, why hasn't there been a terrorist attack on the United States since then?" at every Democratic politician who tried to explain how badly Bush and his ilk were screwing up homeland security.

I even remember a conversation with a colleague, in which he said "There will be one terrorist attack on US soil again, and that'll be the end of Bush" and I responded with the thoughts above...

I think this disaster (and the resulting obliteration of New Orleans) will prove to be that terror attack on US soil, without the terrorists perpetrating it.

The Beginning of The End

2005-09-04T21:19:00.000-04:00

For what it's worth, it looks as if the mainstream media (print and tv news) may just have entered the very early stages of slow backbone-formation --something that would do the country a world of good... would that it were true.

Notable, I think, were Anderson Cooper bitchslapping the hapless Bush groupie Mary Landrieu, Miles O'Brien bitchslapping the fatass Haley Barbour --he of the friends of the ever-lovable Council of Conservative Citizens, and the old grunt Jack Cafferty finally putting his crankiness to good use.

The Domesticated President

2005-08-30T19:00:00.000-04:00

The way Froomkin's column appeared on my browser today:

No comment.

Kyra, Kyra, Kyra

2005-08-30T15:10:00.000-04:00

Right up there with Daryn Kagan:
I'm being told now we have Lieutenant Colonel Jordan Jones at Camp Liberty in Baghdad on the phone. You may be wondering, in the middle of Hurricane Katrina, why we would go to Baghdad to do this interview. But there's an interesting twist. Lieutenant Colonel Jordan Jones is actually the commander of the 101st Battalion, 256th Louisiana Brigade. And he and his men and women are set to come home in eight days from Baghdad.

And, Colonel, I'm curious, you're coming from this war on terrorism in Baghdad, back home to Louisiana, where you see what's happening here to Americans. And I'm curious if you're going to have to get right back into a different kind of fight once you're home in eight days. [emphasis added]

Riiiiight.

Oh, and we weren't wondering:

The moment you said "in Baghdad on the phone" we knew.

Cutting It Short

2005-08-30T15:01:00.000-04:00

Yep.

By two days out of more than four weeks of vacation.

Or three days after he could've first come back to take charge.

Don't let CNN's title fool you:

Bush to return to Washington early

Whichever way do you wanna look at it?

Calling Somerby

2005-08-25T07:12:00.000-04:00

Y'know, the GOP doesn't have to do much to distance itself from Pat Robertson regarding the assassination remarks.

That's what we have the WP Editorial Page for.

HBO - Rome

2005-08-24T22:30:00.000-04:00

The theme music seems to have been lifted right off the soundtrack of Bourne Identity.

Anyone else notice that?

Homonyms

2005-08-17T09:13:00.000-04:00

Correcting punctuation at Starbucks has to be one of the most anal things I've done in a while; but wouldn't you do the same if you were standing just a foot away from an incredibly irritating dot of chalk for an apostrophe that you could obliterate with the touch of a finger, thereby rescuing the homonym?

Greetings to Kevin Drum.

Chef's Fusion Chicken Salad

2005-07-23T13:47:00.002-04:00

Real Genius' Fusion Chicken Salad

Ingredients (for two):

1 1/2 packets of European-style salad mix
14-15 cherry tomatoes
1 1/2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
lemon juice (2 teaspoonfuls)
olive oil (2 teaspoonfuls)
Thai peanut sauce (3 tablespoonfuls)
spicy ginger teriyaki sauce (3 tablespoonfuls)
crushed red pepper (1/2 teaspoonful)
paprika (1/2 teaspoonful)
oregano (1/3 teaspoonful)

Mix the salad and tomatoes with olive oil and lemon juice thoroughly, then add 2 tablespoonfuls of the peanut sauce and mix again. Set aside.

Thinly slice the chicken breasts, then season them with the ginger sauce, oregano, paprika and crushed red pepper (spicy ginger teriyaki sauce comes with crushed red pepper in it, so the amount of additional pepper should be used to control the overall spiciness of the salad), tossing the slices of chicken well to coat them sufficiently with the sauce. Drain the excess sauce off the container and throw the contents into a hot skillet (at medium-high), carefully flipping the slices frequently until cooked.

Spread the salad mix on the plates and place the chicken slices on the bed of greens. Slowly spread the remaining peanut sauce on the chicken slices/salad. Additional peanut sauce can be used to decorate the plates.

Bon Appetit.

Yellowcake on 60 Minutes

2005-07-19T00:22:00.000-04:00

Digby makes an excellent observation about the fate of that story and TANG...

Go read.

Plame

2005-07-07T04:25:00.000-04:00

Since Plame's identity is probably not something you (or Miller) would casually come across on the wmd beat as a reporter, I wonder if her source at the State Department was Bolton and Bolton's masters in the WH triggered this circular leak to assure deniability for themselves.

I just wonder...

(VRWSC) Vast Right-Wing Swinging Conspiracy

2005-05-12T14:47:00.000-04:00

By now I'm sure you've all heard the stories about Plato's Retreat and Bolton.

Just wondering who else has made the connection...

There's just another fine gentleman, a Republican operative by the name of Roger Stone, who took part in similar activities, though granted, his wife Nikki was complicit in these dalliances whereas it's alleged that Christina Bolton was not.

You know what else these two men have in common?

One led the mob that stopped the Miami-Dade recount and the other, well, he said:

"I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count."

Spooky, isn't it?

UK War Memo

2005-05-12T03:57:00.000-04:00

Reports CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Eighty-nine Democratic members of the U.S. Congress last week sent President George W. Bush a letter asking for explanation of a secret British memo that said "intelligence and facts were being fixed" to support the Iraq war in mid-2002.

The timing of the memo was well before the president brought the issue to Congress for approval.

The Times of London newspaper published the memo -- actually minutes of a high-level meeting on Iraq held July 23, 2002 -- on May 1.

British officials did not dispute the document's authenticity, and Michael Boyce, then Britain's Chief of Defense Staff, told the paper that Britain had not then made a decision to follow the United States to war, but it would have been "irresponsible" not to prepare for the possibility.

The White House has not yet responded to queries about the congressional letter, which was released on May 6.

The letter, initiated by Rep. John Conyers, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the memo "raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your own administration..."

"While various individuals have asserted this to be the case before, including Paul O'Neill, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, and Richard Clarke, a former National Security Council official, they have been previously dismissed by your administration," the letter said.

Good for Conyers.

Victor Navasky...

2005-05-09T21:28:00.000-04:00

... was just about the sweetest old man I've met in a long, long time. He was at Politics & Prose to talk about his new book, A Matter Of Opinion, and he was everything I expected and more.

As I was sitting, Chris Hitchens came in and stood up, immediately to my right, with a white plastic cup in his hand, making me wonder what was in it. My impulse to go up and talk to him and compliment him on his impeccable obit-writing skills, "all politics aside", unfortunately faded away as I noticed a number of people with whom he seemed busy chatting after Navasky's talk, and his rather-conspicuous scratching of his back through his shirt, over his shoulder. I abstained from an introduction which would inevitably call for a handshake.

Yea.

OCD.

Blatant Discrimination or Stealthy Eugenics?

2005-05-05T22:56:00.000-04:00

A new FDA provision will recommend that no man who's had gay sex in the previous five years be allowed to "donate his essences":

NEW YORK (AP) -- To the dismay of gay-rights activists, the Food and Drug Administration is about to implement new rules recommending that any man who has engaged in homosexual sex in the previous five years be barred from serving as an anonymous sperm donor.

The FDA has rejected calls to scrap the provision, insisting that gay men collectively pose a higher-than-average risk of carrying the AIDS virus. Critics accuse the FDA of stigmatizing all gay men rather than adopting a screening process that focuses on high-risk sexual behavior by any would-be donor, gay or straight.

The archaic mentality that states that homosexuality is a choice, of course, would not accept that the trait exists in one's genetic makeup, hence this sounds more like discrimination than an attempt to perform genetic cleansing, but let us ask again:

Blatant discrimination or stealthy eugenics?

We report, you decide.

Heads Up

2005-05-05T22:53:00.000-04:00

Something happened on February 28th. More has been happening since, and perhaps in time we'll go into that.

For now, my apologies...

David Neiwert's Latest Masterpiece

2005-02-28T10:05:00.000-05:00

The brilliant Mr. Neiwert has finally posted the PDF version of his award-winning essay, The Rise of Pseudo Fascism, as part of a fundraising drive he's started. I don't need to go into details about why support of such independent work is so fundamental in the advancement of our collective intellect and shaping the political discourse in a healthy manner --or did I just do that; he does a very humble, eloquent job of explaining that himself. But aside from such deep thoughts, his prose is simply very enjoyable to read and the topic he discusses is just incredibly interesting.

Go see how he did the painstaking research and connected the dots, and how scary our political landscape really looks.

And please support his work.

Dr. Alterman v. Boston Globe

2005-02-15T12:49:00.000-05:00

Please go ahead and read the full text of Dr. Alterman's exchange with the Boston Globe upon being slandered by Cathy Young on their op-ed pages. Here's his full response to Young:

To the editor:

It is quite painful for a proud, practicing pro-Zionist Jew who was Bar Mitvah, educated in Israel, lights candles on Shabbat, attend shul regularly, contributes to the Forward, and educates his own child into the religious tradition, to be accused publicly of anti-Semitism. It has happened to me on occasion in extremely obscure, right-wing websites, but only twice in the mainstream media. Both times it has been done by Cathy Young on the editorial page of The Boston Globe. The last time I was denied the courtesy of a response. I hope that will not be the case today.

As most people are aware, the accusation of anti-Semitism, like that of anti-Americanism, can be employed by people to stifle debate and stigmatize points of view with which they disagree. In this case Cathy Young seeks to silence anyone who recognizes the reality of Jewish responsibility for Palestinian suffering. This is unfortunate, for many reasons—one cannot hope for peace in the Middle East without a mutual recognition of the pain the conflict has caused—but more to the point, phony accusations of anti-Semitism have the effect of weakening societal strictures against the real thing. By employing this slander against me, now twice, Cathy Young is actually aiding and abetting the anti-Semites by robbing the term of any coherent meaning.

Here, for the record, is the entire text of the blog text that has led Young to call me these horrid names. .

“I’m a Jew, but I don’t expect Arabs to pay tribute to my people’s suffering while Jews, in the form of Israel an its supporters—and in this I include myself—are causing much of theirs. Would Andrew [Sullivan] want to go to a service in honor of the suffering of gay bashing bigots? (Wait, don’t answer that. Would a gay person who didn’t regularly offer his political support to gay bashing bigots want to go?) Anyway, I’m sure what I’m saying will be twisted beyond recognition, and so I suppose that makes it stupid to do, but I’m sorry. The Palestinians have also suffered because of the Holocaust. They lost their homeland as the world—in the form of the United Nations—reacted to European crimes by awarding half of Palestine to the Zionists. They call this the “Nakba” or the “Catastrophe.” To ask Arabs to participate in a ceremony that does not recognize their own suffering but implicitly endorses the view that caused their catastrophe is morally idiotic—which is why, I guess, I’m not surprised Andrew’s doing it. Also via Little Roy, here’s another conservative Jew joining David Horowitz in endorsing Mel Gibson's anti-Semitism and even William Donahue’s disgusting anal-sex-obsessed anti-Jewish attack, which was broadcast on MSNBC and implicitly endorsed by Pat Buchanan. “

You can see from the above while the item does recognize the political folly of demanding that Arabs who have suffered their own catastrophe at the hands of Jews, be demanded to pay fealty to Jews without any recognition of their own suffering, the item also contains an attack on the genuine anti-Semitism of both the Passion of the Christ and the Catholic League’s William Donahue blaming America’s moral ills on “Hollywood’s secular Jews,” whom he informed MSNBC’s Buchanan, “like anal sex.” Nowhere do I, as Young accuses, hold “Jews responsible for ‘much’ of the suffering of Muslims everywhere,” as I was clearly talking about Palestine, and nor, for the same reasons can I be accused of arguing that “every Muslim is justified in viewing every Jew as the enemy.” As for her accusation that I actually blaming “long-dead Holocaust victims,” well, it boggles the mind that your editors would allow this hateful poison into your newspaper, whatever Young’s motives may be for spreading it.

That a newspaper with the reputation of the Boston Globe would allow itself to be used for Young’s vicious vendetta against me, now twice, is both shameful and shocking. I would appreciate a retraction and apology.

Sincerely,

Eric Alterman

New York, New York

Schutzstaffel

2005-02-04T21:35:00.000-05:00

I'm afraid the press is going to provide Bush with all the cover he needs on Social Security.

The somewhat-decent piece in the Times today by Richard Stevenson was encouraging on some of his fact-checking about Bush's numbers, but reading the second editorial in the Post right after that made my stomach turn. It's quite amazing, really. The Post has some of the best reporters in the business, and they often provide better material than The Gray Lady even --and today Jonathan Weisman has a very good article on SS-- but their editorial page has become more and more lockstep Republican on almost any issue except the environment in the past few years.

So, coming back to Social Security, the majority of the people in this country get their news from TV and TV news media have major problems in doing any actual reporting instead of being stenographers for the administration. They've already partly bought into the crisis rhetoric even though the WH is now shifting away from it, and they cannot even see that Bush's social security tour around the country right now is not to convince the opposing Democrats, but to get members of his own party to agree with him.

And if Bush can get the press to amplify his agenda in full, it should only be a matter of time before polls start showing that people believe in his plan and the need for privatization, which would be followed by Democrats defecting, and as long as there are Democrats on their side, more Republicans would join them and they would collectively destroy Social Security "as we know it", in order to save it.

It's quite like Iraq, really. A crisis was concocted, it was propagated by the press, public opinion was conveniently shaped, thus the Congress agreed, and we found ourselves in this mess. And the press asked Kerry for his plan to get us out of the mess BushCo made, just as they're asking Democrats now for "their plan to fix Social Security" that will be an alternative to privatization.

I think it'll all come down to how much the facts will make it to the SCLM outlets and how firmly the congressional Democrats will stand their ground. If they can sustain a united front, they'll stop the demolition plan in its tracks. If they cave in, game's over.

Fifth Time's A Charm

2005-01-30T21:33:00.000-05:00

Frank Rich's first paragraph alone cracked me up:

JAN. 30 is here at last, and the light is at the end of the tunnel, again. By my estimate, Iraq's election day is the fifth time that American troops have been almost on their way home from an about-to-be pacified Iraq. The four other incipient V-I days were the liberation of Baghdad (April 9, 2003), President Bush's declaration that "major combat operations have ended" (May 1, 2003), the arrest of Saddam Hussein (Dec. 14, 2003) and the handover of sovereignty to our puppet of choice, Ayad Allawi (June 28, 2004). And this isn't even counting the two "decisive" battles for our nouveau Tet, Falluja. Iraq is Vietnam on speed - the false endings of that tragic decade re-enacted and compressed in jump cuts, a quagmire retooled for the MTV attention span.

Go read the rest.

You Gotta Love This

2005-01-30T10:53:00.000-05:00

Didn't read much of that day's print edition, but I wonder which genius really thought they were actual supporters:

(...) The Post got fooled in its special inaugural edition Jan. 21. It published a picture of a middle-aged guy in a tuxedo waving his wallet at an anti-Bush protester and saying he wanted to thank the president for the tax cuts. The man was identified in the caption as Rich R. Danu of Detroit. Thanks to Erik Wemple of Washington's City Paper, we now know that Rich R. Danu was part of a group called "Billionaires for Bush, a bunch of lefty satirists who parade around in jewels and rich-person outfits pushing their 'agenda.' " Other members' names include "Ivana Moore-Enmoore, Robin Eublind and Fillmore Barrels."

CNN Again

2005-01-25T20:30:00.000-05:00

What kind of network security do these people use anyway?

The team at The Onion seem to have hacked into their servers yet again. The title reads "Democracy finds hope in Iraqi town":

KARMA, Iraq (CNN) -- The concept of democracy appears to have taken root in the dusty town of Karma, a predominantly Sunni community of 75,000 people about nine miles (15 kilometers) northeast of Falluja.

(...)

But many villagers are not as interested in talking about the elections as they are about the lack of petrol, gas, electricity and work. They say they receive their information about the elections from TV and say no one has campaigned or even hung campaign posters in their community.

Although most say they don't know who the candidates are or where to go to vote, they say they will vote come January 30.

(...)

Abd Al-rahman, a 24-year-old Iraq Force Protection Services employee says he'll vote for interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. He says he has received a 200,000 Iraqi dinar bonus from him.

(...)

Farther down the road, Iraqis are also preoccupied with what's lacking. They tell Col. Tucker they want to vote but don't know who to vote for.

"We get our information from the TV. But then the power goes out and we have no TV," one man says. Abd Al-Khadar Ali Khayab, a butcher and father of nine, says he'll vote for one of the sheiks of his tribe he has heard is running. But he doesn't know which list he's on or who any of the others on the list are.

(...)

"Of course I am going to vote. We need something to change, we can't live like this," he says. But he does not know whom he'll vote for or who the candidates are. A man standing near him said "Allawi, al-Yawar, it doesn't matter. I am not going to vote."

"Do you know when the elections are?" Col. Tucker asked a group of five men. "Yes, it's the 29th," one answered.[emphasis added]

Come to think of it, that does sound an awful lot like the "concept of democracy" in these parts... which kind of dissolves my Onion theory, doesn't it?

This Woman's Gonna Kill Me

2005-01-23T02:41:00.000-05:00

MoDo writes today about --what else-- SpongeBob:

It took Dr. James Dobson, the conservative Christian leader and gay marriage opponent, who claims the president's re-election was more a mandate for his ideas than George Bush's, to point out the insidious underside of the popular cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants. It takes a sponge to brainwash a child.[Emphasis added.]

And it took Maureen Dowd, the "liberal" New York Times op-ed columnist, who, as we were approaching the election, constantly tried to "be one of the cool kids" as I recall Somerby once say in Daily Howler, and spared no effort to jump down Kerry's throat, imitated in her own little way and her prose what most major reporters of her paper and the Washington Post did by showing two sides of every story in equivalence even when such equivalence was not remotely present, to imply that the election was a mandate for George Bush's ideas and Bush's using the Christian right for his election in every possible fashion somehow does not give the wingnuts the right to claim what they bought with their votes and now own.

A lot has been said about this, and I hope to add some of my own remarks some time soon, but in the mainstream press lies our fundamental problem. And as long as we remain unable to tame them into fairly covering the news, we will suffer. The country will suffer, and as we shall see in the next 4 years in unprecedented examples, the whole world will suffer.

I'm watching Runaway Jury now for the umpteenth time and in the finale, as Rankin Fitch (Hackman) talks to Nick (Cusack) and Marlee (Weisz) in the bar, he asks how they swung the jury their way. Nick says he didn't do anything:

- I let them vote their hearts. That means you lose.

The situation is exactly the same here. The last election was the largest false marketing campaign in history. And the right's disinformation and disenfranchisement of the electorate worked mostly because we failed to goad the press into doing their job properly. We expected them to report the truth fairly and we didn't do everything in our power to ensure that. "The facts" were "biased" as Stephen Colbert once so aptly put in The Daily Show and we remained inert and did not shout out at the top of our lungs that fact at every opportunity we got. Not that that is the appropriate thing to do: It was just the way to win the battle.

And please, please, do not to take the "vote their hearts" expression in its entirety. It is a fact that when they're left alone with their proverbial hearts, most people will vote their instincts and from that we can spiral into an entire bullshit argument about moral values. No, the "vote their hearts" expression here signifies voting what's good and right for them. But of course you must've noticed that construct if you already got this far in reading this post.

White-out

2005-01-22T17:08:00.000-05:00

The Other Side Of Abu Ghraib

2005-01-16T21:25:00.000-05:00

As Graner gets his sentence handed down, The Guardian/Observer tell us how harshly poor CACI and Titan are also being punished:

Two US defence contractors being sued over allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison have been awarded valuable new contracts by the Pentagon, despite demands that they should be barred from any new government work.

Three employees of CACI International and Titan - working at Abu Ghraib as civilian contractors - were separately accused of abusive behaviour.

The report on the Abu Ghraib scandal implicated three civilian contractors in the abuses: Steven Stefanowicz from CACI International and John Israel and Adel Nakhla from Titan.

Stefanowicz was charged with giving orders that 'equated to physical abuse', Israel of lying under oath and Naklha of raping an Iraqi boy.

It was also alleged that CACI interrogators used dogs to scare prisoners, placed detainees in unauthorised 'stress positions' and encouraged soldiers to abuse prisoners. Titan employees, it has been alleged, hit detainees and stood by while soldiers physically abused prisoners.

Investigators also discovered systemic problems of management and training - including the fact that a third of CACI International's staff at Abu Ghraib had never received formal military interrogation training.

Despite demands by human rights groups in the US that the two companies be barred from further contracts in Iraq - where CACI alone employed almost half of all interrogators and analysts at Abu Ghraib - CACI International has been awarded a $16 million renewal of its contract. Titan, meanwhile, has been awarded a new contract worth $164m.

It must be painful.

It certainly pains me!

Herr Billmon ist zurück

2005-01-16T13:36:00.000-05:00

I just noticed today, someone has some really juicy comparisons. And a brand new bumper sticker.

Take a look.

Absolutely

2005-01-14T03:32:00.000-05:00

Dr. Cole's quite remarkable remark (emphasis added):

Bush has figured out, apparently, that the American public responds, rather like the apes to which they deny they are related, to posture, grunting and body language rather than to reason and evidence. When I see him smirking and gesturing, I can't help thinking of the ape General Thade (Tim Roth) in Tim Burton's remake of the Planet of the Apes, which used scientific findings about primate behavior and hierarchy to inform the acting.

"Absolutely" used in this way is a vocalization that actually functions as an intimidating agonistic display meant to close off further dialogue by the silverback.

Read the rest.

Just what exactly did he mean by that?

2005-01-13T23:22:00.000-05:00

Reports James Lakely of the Washington Times:

"I think people attack me because they are fearful that I will then say that you're not equally as patriotic if you're not a religious person," Mr. Bush said. "I've never said that. I've never acted like that. I think that's just the way it is."

Let me repeat that:

I think that's just the way it is.

I know we're used to expressions not being where they're supposed to be in sentences or things frequently not coming out right when unscripted, but what exactly do you think was meant by that?

Verfallen

2005-01-11T21:59:00.000-05:00

Gotta start some way, some day.

Yes, I'm broken. In many of the possible ways.

But the fight goes on. I took a longer break than most, and for mostly work-related reasons, and I'm back.

And off we start with fresh news from across the Atlantic: The Guardian tells us that it looks like the MI6 are going to have themselves a new R that will assess the quality of the intelligence they gather:

MI6 has taken the unprecedented step of appointing a senior "quality control officer" to monitor the credibility and veracity of its secret intelligence, the Guardian can reveal.

The senior official, who will be known as "R" - standing for reporting officer - will be responsible for reviewing secret information provided by British spies and agents in the field, according to intelligence insiders.

MI6 has also appointed what they call a "non-executive director", a high-flier from the private sector with the task of trying to ensure our spies gather secret information as efficiently and effectively as possible.

The moves come in the wake of the fiasco of the government's dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and of sharp criticism in the subsequent Butler report of the way MI6 sources and intelligence were handled.

Also reports the Guardian:

The Butler committee questioned the credibility of the few agents MI6 had in Iraq, describing one of its "main sources" as "unreliable".

It disclosed how MI6 withdrew reports from its agents about Iraqi weapons, but only in July 2003, after the invasion.

Lord Butler added that the MI6 sources whose reports formed the basis of Tony Blair's claim that Iraqi forces could fire chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to use them "must be open to serious doubt".

His report also concluded that warnings about the limitations of MI6 intelligence on Iraq were not made clear in the dossier, describing the failure as a "serious weakness".

You know, heaven forbid, they wouldn't want to give bad intelligence to 10 Downing Street now, would they? After all, it's not unheard of for such intelligence to make its way to speeches out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!

I Hereby Predict...

2004-11-01T15:53:00.000-05:00

... that JFK II shall be our 43rd president-elect with at least 3-4% more of the popular vote than the incumbent and between 292 and 326 electoral votes.

The Good Doc

2004-10-31T09:15:00.000-05:00

I'd have to say my favorite congressional villain is Bill Frist. That's right folks; not the Hammer. The Doctor.

DHS Presser

2004-10-30T16:03:00.000-04:00

Just listening to John Brennan next to Secretary Ridge now... It appears as if he's a tired and frustrated real intelligence professional who's doing his best to keep his frustration with this administration from emanating from his speech.

Interesting... We'll look at the transcripts.

sigh

2004-10-29T22:50:00.000-04:00

The Master rises from the grave and lands an extraordinary one-two punch on all of those who haven't taken a step back to look at the big picture, his prose crisp as ever, making me cringe in pain as we speak. Then again, I was this way when I read Peter Galbraith's article in the Globe the other day too. So I guess it's not my glass of extra dry martini that's causing it?

State-sponsored and Non-state-sponsored Terrorism

2004-10-22T14:48:00.000-04:00

Kevin Drum has a great post today, referencing a Washington Post article that once again recalls the state-sponsored-terrorism-driven mindset dominating this administration. If memory serves, both he and Josh had commented on it a while back as well.

I have no disagreement with any of Kevin's points except for the single sentence that reads:

Again: it's not that they aren't both important.

Please... It's this kind of forced evenhandedness that we're all criticizing in the mainstream media: Of course state-sponsored terrorism is something important that needs to be dealt with, but that goes without saying! International law and order have long laid the foundations for fighting and preventing such terrorism, and rules of engagement are clearly --and sometimes not-so-clearly-- outlined therein.

But, when you're talking about the dangers of non-state-sponsored terrorism, bringing up the state-sponsored version is no different from my saying the following:

You know, The woman of my dreams is very intelligent and beautiful. She is articulate, cultured, well-read and talented in at least one form of art. She is at least bilingual and enjoys talking about history and politics. She knows how to dance and enjoys it, she doesn't have to cook well at all, but she at least has to have a taste for gourmet food.

Oh, and something else that's very important for me: She's honest, nice and a kind person overall.

Get it?

October Surprise

2004-10-17T14:55:00.000-04:00

Or perhaps I should've picked "Voter Registration Fraud and Sinclair Broadcast Group" as the title of this post, because I've long made up my mind that those two really are the October Surprise we've all been expecting.

Now I'm asking out of honest curiosity. What do you think?

E-mail me people.

A Little Word Counting

2004-10-14T15:11:00.000-04:00

Here's what I did...

First, I divided the answers into three types for each of the candidates:

-- The "answer" that was 120 seconds

-- The first rebuttal that was 90 seconds

-- The second rebuttal when there was one, that was 30 seconds

Then, I counted the number of words in each section (actually, Microsoft Word did).

We're talking about a matrix with 21 rows here --one for each question and the closing-- and 12 columns, that's not sparse, but has more empty cells than not. Empty cells exist for the obvious reason. A total of 400 words in two minutes is a good-enough ceiling value, so this is the normalization I made:

-- For two-minute answers, I simply divided the word count by 400

-- For 90-second rebuttals, I divided the word count by 3/4 first, then by 400

-- For 30-second rebuttals, I divided the word count by 100

Keep in mind that since this is simply normalizing the number of words spoken in a given amount of time, in essence it's comparing speed.

Then, I plotted the x-y pairings, for the abscissa spanning 1 through 21 and the ordinate containing values that vary between 0.1 and 1.1, roughly. And finally, I fitted a polynomial curve to each of the data sets, which, although not very reliable, is quite good in telling the untrained eye of trends.

Comparing Word Counts

The normalized values that you see in the legend are all called mu, the letter "k" is for Senator Kerry and "b" is for President Bush. Finally, the numbers in the subscript denote the number of seconds of speech (interval) the data point represents.

As I saw, and so should you, Senator Kerry had a very solid, stable and low-variance profile in all three types of answers and managed to put in more words per minute than his opponent did at every answer except one. His profile shows a warm-up towards a modest peak, stays there and then gradually declines to its starting point. And notice how close the fitted curves also are.

Now look at President Bush's curves. Notice anything special? Aside from the fact that his values are rather erratic, higher-variance than his opponent's and lower in general, it's also quite visible that his main answers are in a steady decline in density whereas his first rebuttals are increasing.

What does that tell you about a man who has not much to say about his own record but sings like a bird when it comes to trashing his opponent?

What does it tell you about his national campaign?

The Morning After

2004-10-14T14:33:00.000-04:00

Many people have been doing a terrific job of fact-checking the debate and I thought I'd look into something that I paid as much attention to during the debate, thanks to Somerby's posts about Bob Schieffer.

Here are my question-by-question remarks... Enjoy.

Senator, I want to set the stage for this discussion by asking the question that I think hangs over all of our politics today and is probably on the minds of many people watching this debate tonight. And that is will our children and grandchildren ever live in a world as safe and secure as the world in which we grew up?

Granted, it's an important issue. Why bring it up again when this issue has been repeatedly discussed in the previous debate? Why add homeland security/terrorism to the list of questions in a domestic debate, when every single poll shows that fighting terrorism is the only remaining issue where Bush isn't doing worse than Kerry? I think this question was clearly tilted towards the President.

New question, Mr. President, to you. We're talking about protecting ourselves from the unexpected, but the flu season is suddenly upon us, flu kills thousands of people every year, suddenly we find ourselves with a severe shortage of flu vaccine. How did that happen?

Yes, vaccine shortage is something that happened on this administration's watch and it shouldn't have, but because of the specific nature of the subject it was a softball to the President --shortage can be blamed on contaminated supplies of foreign provider and not directly on administration policies.

All right. Senator Kerry, a new question. Let's talk about economic security. You pledged during the last debate that you would not raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 a year. But the price of everything is going up and we all know it. Health care costs, as you all are talking about, is skyrocketing, the cost of the war. My question is how can you or any president, whoever is elected next time, keep that pledge without running this country deeper into debt and passing on more of the bills that we're running up to our children?

I think here Schieffer was blatantly trying to corner Kerry for his pledge. And I also believe the word skyrocketing was a carefully selected buzzword from the tort-reform-to-reduce-medical-malpractice-liability playbook. Oh, and by the way "Bob", healthcare costs are skyrocketing, not is.

Let's go to a new question, Mr. President. Two minutes. And let's continue on jobs. You know there are all kind of statistics out there, but I want to bring it down to an individual. Mr. President, what do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who's being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States?

This was a more-or-less fair question, I'll have to admit. However, he could've stated a clear case of the total number of jobs lost, referred perhaps again to Hoover, preempting Kerry --and possibly saving him from the troublesome task of reminding all the IQ-deficient members of Schieffer's brethren, repeatedly, that this President has lost near two million private sector jobs on his watch. And while we're at it, I'd like someone to tell me why noone's ever explaining the difference between private sector and government job losses and gains. Since this tax cut-happy recovery recipe was supposed to encourage investment/spending/hiring in private businesses, why should referring to the job losses therein be a poor way of explaining the situtation?

New question to you, Senator Kerry, two minutes, and it's still on jobs. You know, many experts say that a president really doesn't have much control over jobs. For example, if someone invents a machine that does the work of five people, that's progress. That's not the president's fault. So I ask you is it fair to blame the administration entirely for this loss of jobs?

Whatever should one say? I think I was in college, prepping for the panel-interview of a graduate scholarship when I last heard this stupid question. The answer lied then, as France had discovered at the time, and does now, in understanding the dynamics of labor.

Mr. President, let's get back to economic issues but let's shift to some other questions here. Both of you are opposed to gay marriage. But to understand how you have come to that conclusion I want to ask you a more basic question. Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?

Um... What's that I hear? "Wedge"? Yes, that's what I thought.

Senator Kerry a new question for you. The New York Times reports that some Catholic archbishops are telling their church members that it would be a sin to vote for a candidate like you because you support a woman's right to choose an abortion and unlimited stem cell research. What is your reaction to that?

Meant to burn Kerry, again. So wonderful that stem-cell research, that is such a sweet issue that the Senator could hit Bush with, came dissolved in a direct attack and could not be used as a point by Kerry.

Mr. President, let's have a new question. It goes to you and let's get back to economic issues. Health insurance costs have risen over 36 percent over the last four years, according to The Washington Post. We're paying more, we're getting less. I would like to ask you who bears responsibility for this? Is it the government, is it the insurance companies, is it the lawyers, is it the doctors, is it the administration?

Again, setting him up to talk about lawsuits...

Let me direct the next question to you, Senator Kerry. And again let's stay on health care. You have, as you have proposed and as the president has commented on tonight, proposed a massive plan to extend health care coverage to children. You're also talking about the government picking up a big part of the catastrophic bills that people get at the hospital. And you have said that you can pay for this by rolling back the president's tax cut on the upper 2 percent. You heard the president say earlier tonight that it's going to cost a whole lot more money than that. I'd just ask you where are you going to get the money?

The underlying assumption in the interrogative sentence is that what Bush said was true, and leads the listeners to believe, a priori, that Kerry's characterization of his tax rollback was wrong, Bush's is right, and puts Kerry on the defensive.

Mr. President, the next question is to you. We all know that Social Security's running out of money and it has to be fixed. You have proposed to fix it by letting people put some of the money collected to pay benefits into private savings accounts. But the critics are saying that's going to mean finding a trillion dollars over the next 10 years to continue paying benefits as those accounts are being set up. So where do you get the money? Are you going to have to increase the deficit by that much over 10 years?

This question... I don't know what to say. Is it reasonable to think that he wanted to allow an advertisement of the social security privatization plan? Or does it make more sense to consider the opposite, i.e. the plan more-or-less suggests that 1+1=4 (Hello, Dr. Krugman!), so he was trying to get him to talk positively and hopefully and promisingly about another impossible? I think in the next question to Kerry lies our answer...

Let me just stay on Social Security with a new question for Senator Kerry because, Senator Kerry, you have just said you will not cut benefits. Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, says there's no way that Social Security can pay retirees what we have promised them unless we recalibrate. What he's suggesting: We're going to have to cut benefits or we're going to have to raise retirement age. We may have to take some other reform. But if you've just said you've promised no changes, does that mean you're just going leave this as a problem, another problem for our children to resolve?

I'm both sick of Schieffer's repeated attempts to corner Kerry, and pleased that every time he tried, 44 managed to rise to the occasion and explain himself brilliantly. First of all, Alan Greenspan didn't just say "Social Security", he said "Social Security and Medicare", a trick that they very often use to increase the magnitude of the object to create a false sense of direness. Second of all, everything Kerry said is true! Noone seems to remember how desperately Dr. Death was talking up the tax cuts to Congress. And noone seems willing to make the clear point that the deficit-hawk Greenspan, who was very careful in guiding the Democrats to fiscal responsibility during the Clinton years turned into such an obedient troop once C-Plus Augustus and company made it into the office.

Let's go to a new question. Mr. President, I got more e-mail this week on this question than any other question, and it is about immigration. I'm told that at least 8,000 people cross our borders illegally every day. Some people believe this is a security issue, as you know; some believe it's an economic issue; some see it as a human rights issue. How do you see it, and what do we need to do about it?

Hmmm.... Might be a good one. Finally!

Next question to you, Senator Kerry. The gap between rich and poor is growing wider. More people are dropping into poverty. Yet the minimum wage has been stuck at, what, $5.15 an hour now for about seven years. Is it time to raise it?

Another good one for Kerry, are we finally being fair?

Mr. President I want to go back to something Senator Kerry said earlier tonight and ask a follow-up of my own. He said, and this will be a new question to you, he said that you had never said whether you would like to overturn Roe v. Wade. So I'd ask you directly would you like to?

And yes, believe it or not, I also think this was a good one for Kerry (given the electorate's general opinion on the issue). And I loved Kerry's quiet arrogant moment with Schieffer (of the kind that only experts of that arrogance can recognize)... (I didn't ask you what the question is, idiot, I just asked you how long the answer's going to be.)

All right, let's go to another question, and it is to Senator Kerry. You have two minutes, sir. Senator, the last debate President Bush said he did not favor a draft. You agreed with him. But our National Guard and Reserve forces are being severely strained because many of them are being held beyond their enlistments. Some of them say that it's a back-door draft. Is there any relief that could be offered to these brave Americans and their families? If you became president, Senator Kerry, what would you do about this situation, holding National Guard and Reservists for these extended periods of time and these repeated call-ups that they're now facing?

Could've been a ditch, Kerry still pulled out nicely.

Mr. President, new question, two minutes. You said that if Congress would vote to extend the ban on assault weapons that you'd sign the legislation. But you did nothing to encourage the Congress to extend it. Why not?

Yes, another one sort-of trying to corner the President.

Let's go to a new question for you, Senator Kerry, two minutes. Affirmative action: Do you see a need for affirmative action programs or have we moved far enough along that we no longer need to use race and gender as a factor in school admissions and federal and state contracts and so on?

Kerry did well, it was an okay question, but I'm surprised he didn't bring up the administration's filing of an amicus brief for the U of Michigan case.

Mr. President, let's go to a new question. You were asked before the invasion or after the invasion of Iraq if you had checked with your dad. And I believe, I don't remember the quote exactly, but I believe you said you had checked with a higher authority. I would like to ask you what part does your faith play on your policy decisions?

Wedge again. Nothing to say. Luckily, Kerry pulled it off rather eloquently.

Senator Kerry, after 9/11 - and this is a new question for you - it seemed to me that the country came together as I've never seen it come together since World War II. But some of that seems to have melted away. I think it's fair to say we've become pretty polarized, perhaps because of the political season. But if you were elected president - or whoever is elected president - will you set a priority in trying to bring the nation back together or what would be your attitude on that?

Time to stick the "uniter not a divider" slogan in, and twist the blade... Good question.

We've come gentlemen, to our last question. And it occurred to me as I came to this debate tonight that the three of us share something. All three of us are surrounded by very strong women. We're all married to strong women. Each of us have two daughters that make us very proud. I'd like to ask each of you what is the most important thing you've learned from these strong women?

Now, given the facts there are two possibilies: Either Bob Schieffer is aware the answers (and facts) are so obviously tilted against Bush that he's throwing Kerry hardballs in order for the Senator to rise better and brighter after the answer, or he's simply protecting his close friend, and fellow Texan, against a Northeast liberal, just like he said on Larry King Live. I choose to believe the simplest explanation.

Coming up: A tiny little mathematical analysis of the debate.

But of course...

2004-10-07T10:19:00.000-04:00

Just when everything is going the way it is --gigantic deficits, hundreds of soldiers dead in a quagmire, a report that puts to rest all shreds of possibility that the invasion might have been warranted in the first place, the KE04 ticket gaining a much-deserved momentum-- you would need something like this to set the balance, right? You know, to put the lefty folks in their place, in case they're getting hopeful. Even if the text isn't entirely unfair, the title is, and the title is as deep as most people would ever read in this country anyway, is it not?

In the Gray Lady, of all places.

Guess by whom?

Tomorrow Night

2004-10-04T05:13:00.000-04:00

Anyone worried about what might transpire must rest assured that it'll all be just good...

John Edwards is one of the best trial lawyers in this country. Trial lawyers, by definition, are people who have the ability to master any topic in depth in a relatively short amount of time so as to broaden their range of lawsuits. This should lay to rest any and all concerns that John Edwards might not have a stellar performance against Darth Vader. And people who are still delusional enough to think that he is to be worried about should go ahead and read and re-read Josh's skillful article in the Washington Monthly or see the equally brilliant more recent work of T.D. Allman in Rolling Stone Magazine.

Update: I thought I should add, after discussing with some friends, on whether being restrained to sit down will be such a disadvantage for a trial lawyer like Edwards. I have one word for you:

Deposition.

This man knows how to sit across the table from chairmen, CEOs, presidents and other corporate bigwigs that have screwed the helpless little guy in one way or another. He does.

Wow...

2004-09-25T01:06:00.000-04:00

What an incredible thing it was, wasn't it?

I mean, you know, the PRIME MINISTER OF IRAQ coming to the US and talking to the press in the White House, I mean, like, it was huge, man!

Age the rhetoric up a little bit, trim down the redundant phrases here and there, and that's exactly what you heard from John King yesterday after the press conference.

The weird thing is, back when Suzanne Malveaux was CNN's WH correspondent, she used to do the same thing and aimlessly parrot on administration spin points without any real thought or checking (what is known in the civilized world as "reporting") and get on my nerves, and when I saw her talk at the Unity conference last month, it significantly changed my opinions of her towards the positive.

Now this John King, wasn't he the same guy who was questioning Bush's using the verb "guess" about his own intelligence agency's reports, just minutes before the outrageously stupid uncombed thoughts he uttered towards his fellow newspeople?

Reels, etc...

Anonymous

2004-08-20T09:42:00.000-04:00

First time I'm seeing Anonymous identified as Mike Scheuer in a major newspaper. Albeit from across the Atlantic.

"'Data Quality' Law Is Nemesis Of Regulation"

2004-08-16T09:39:00.000-04:00

... says Rick Weiss of the Post. Read and vomit.

And He Finally Comes To His Senses...

2004-08-05T09:43:00.000-04:00

I used to love him dearly. I used to be able to tell --and I still am, I think-- from the first sentence of his op-ed whether it was going to be about another dream of his with his grandfather voicing things so witty and insightful that it made almost no sense to have them pronounced by a mortal. However, he started to really turn me off --along with so many I've spoken to and can imagine-- during the run-up to the Iraq war, and has continued ever since, including true gems like his recent column about Ron Reagan, Jr. and the one with the halfhearted mea culpa that Atrios properly castigated him for. Or has he...?

Sweet Euphemism for "Enemy"

2004-07-30T09:14:00.000-04:00

E.J. Dionne Jr has another one worth reading today, as he almost always does. Here's how he concludes it:

This was the convention of a party that thinks discontent with President Bush could move the political argument in a different direction and new constituencies the Democrats' way. A party so accustomed to beating back the attacks of others has made clear that this time it is taking the fight to its adversary.

One Week Later...

2004-06-22T21:26:00.000-04:00

His prose rips straight through General Crisco again:

Writing about John Ashcroft poses the same difficulties as writing about the Bush administration in general, only more so: the truth about his malfeasance is so extreme that it's hard to avoid sounding shrill.

Dr. Krugman

2004-06-15T09:23:00.000-04:00

He's incredible today, as usual.

You know, I try not to read his column late the preceding nights so I have something to look forward to on Tuesday and Friday mornings... Believe it or not.

Washington Journal

2004-06-13T08:27:00.000-04:00

If you're up, watch Michael Hirsh of Newsweek ripping the administration a new one...

Chris

2004-06-11T04:33:00.000-04:00

I was browsing through my cable channels tonight when I saw Scarborough Country on MSNBC.

For starters, I never watch Scarborough Country. Along with Fox News, MSNBC between 6 am and whenever (IMUS In The Morning), People in the News on CNN (Paula Zahn has pissed me off enough for a lifetime during her days on American Morning with her endless Clinton-bashing), etc. I don't watch or read the "other side" perhaps as much as I ought to. If my work tempo allowed me, I'd probably do what I used to do a while ago, i.e. really do follow what they are writing about closely, follow it line by line, identify the inconsistencies or the moments of flat-out dishonesty and refute their silly arguments by pure facts. I cannot begin to tell you how much fun that is, or how easy it is to build upon point after point once you're on to someone or something. That said, I do usually have a pretty good idea of what they are up so, thanks to the blogosphere. That's one of the functions of this new era I find most fascinating. There are a number of great sources that follow everything, and I mean everything regularly, which implies that you don't have to visit pages whose counters you'd rather not increment, or sites whose appearances flat-out repulse you.

Back to Scarborough. Seeing the title would've been enough for me to go browse on, past MSNBC. But seeing Hitchens' face and the word "Reagan" was enough to stay on, and I did until the end of their discussion,

I didn't use to follow what Christopher Hitchens was up to back during the Clinton years. Only after I read David Brock's Blinded by the Right did I learn all about his incredible hostility towards 42. He used to impress me a lot with his prose and thoughts on the Nation, that is, until the nation started gearing up for the war on Iraq. His closeness to his Kurdish buddies and his fantasy world took over the marvelously articulate and intelligent Chris we know and installed some wacky figure in his stead... I shall, though, quite comfortably state that Hitchens writes some of the best obituaries I've ever read, anywhere. I am "the kind" that doesn't think death grants one the immunity from criticism, especially if that person has done much to affect the lives of others. His pieces after Bob Hope's death and Mother Theresa's were not only strikingly accurate, but also his ability to fuse sarcasm and elegance so seamlessly makes almost everything he writes so pleasant to read. That was what I expected when I saw his piece after the Gipper's passing. Well, it wasn't just an "expectation", given that the title was "Not Even a Hedgehog - The Stupidity of Ronald Reagan".

Please read... I urge you. I wasn't disappointed.

Book TV - CSPAN2

2004-06-06T10:12:00.000-04:00

They just froze the live feed from Jon Stewart's talk on BookExpo when he said something to the effect of "A lot of people think George W. Bush is stupid. We don't."

Did anyone else experience that at all?

Sea, Sun and Sand

2004-05-17T04:36:00.000-04:00

I'm glad I watched Troy before my trip to my homeland this Wednesday, and not after it. It would've really made me miss the Mediterranean badly. It already did, but because I knew I am visiting soon, it didn't bother me that much.

Should you go see the movie too? Absolutely. Should you have high expectations? Absolutely not.

The war scenes are truly moving. You will find yourself amazed at your ability to guess that the first fight you ever see Achilles in will last for just a few seconds; and if you're anything like me, you will sigh of frustration for not being able to capture every detail of the amazingly rapid, blood-drenched fight scenes.

You will see in Hector's eyes that same soft, cautious, forgiving warmth that puts comradeship --or brotherhood, here-- and love of a cause above all... Just like you did with that Delta Force SFC in Black Hawk Down with his soft Southern drawl. (Speaking of his eyes... Why was Hulk decorated with such blue eyes in the movie?)

You will see more kindness in Achilles' eyes than perhaps ought to be; a fighter resigned to his fate cast upon him by the gods, he is ever so generous in letting us know, every once in a while, that he has generous feelings of mercy too.

The movie is fun to watch; it especially should be for anyone with a specific interest in Brad Pitt --his golden hair more golden than ever, his blue eyes bluer than ever, he really does appear to be the closest a man could come to the incarnation of a Greek semi-god. On the other hand, some scenes feel a little too contrived to expose just this aspect of his physique.

I think they could've cast someone who's more attractive than Orlando Bloom as the man able to eternally seduce a woman who can launch a thousand ships. By that, I mean his facial features. Yes, they've gotten the youth right. And the naive appearance. But the rest? Come on!

And the women... You wanna know something? I've always thought Saffron Burrows could have used some reconstructive chin surgery when she was young (oh no, I don't think she's old --if I did, I'd have to admit that I am too, being just a year younger than she, and I honestly don't). Then again, I'm sure she's grown comfortable with that feature of her otherwise-nearly-flawless face over time, you know, being a top model as well as an actress and all. Besides, she has plenty of other features to compensate for anything, like growing up as a socialist-feminist activist kid.

And about Diane Kruger I am in almost complete agreement with this article in Slate that more-or-less made me want to write this post in the first place. Her eyes are truly dazzling, especially when she is about to cry (which is almost always the case in the movie). I'd have to say, though, that her nose is not entirely perfect. And although completely new and unconventional (to the Hollywood eye), she's far from being "perfect", or anything that could launch a thousand ships, for that matter. But the movie makes it brilliantly clear that that is not really the reason why we had Agamemnon knocking on the doors of Troy.

After re-reading this last paragraph, I thought perhaps that you folks might be smiling, and probably thinking that I'm being too picky. Well that's because she is as perfect as I've told you she is.

My main complaint about the movie is on the dialogues; they, and the way they were acted, seemed more superficial than one would expect from a production of this magnitude.

But go watch. And tell me if you also thought it reminded you of the Mediterranean scenes of Derek Jarman's Sebastiane.

One final thing: I think it was rather poor casting to have two major characters from Braveheart appear in this movie too.

Book to Listen To

2004-05-09T13:51:00.000-04:00

I have the hardcover version of Richard Clarke's fabulous Against All Enemies, but for anyone who might be interested in a dazzling audio experience, I strongly recommend buying the book on CD. I did, soon after finding out that it was read by the author himself. My local B & N didn't have it and I needed to buy it right away, and found it at Politics & Prose, a DC bookstore that's not unfamiliar amongst inhabitants of the area from our political persuasion. Ever since (that would be since yesterday afternoon) I've been extending my drives for no other reason than to listen to it uninterrupted and staying in my car a few seconds more than I need to just to hear another sentence or two. I was amazed at his testimony before the commission as many others were and had found Frank Rich's comments in the New York Times on April 4 right on:

With his sonorous voice, secret-agent aura and vaguely intimidating body language, he's as commanding in his weird way as Orson Welles in full noir.

(Interestingly, part of this sentence seems to be among parts of Rich's column that were taken out of the International Herald Tribune's summary-version in their archives online, but I am keeping the link anyway to give you a general idea about the piece. I've been meaning to mention the column ever since I read it in the print edition... Now I wish I'd done that on time.)

Meet the Press

2004-04-11T11:25:00.000-04:00

Didn't Paul Bremer look like he's not getting much sleep lately?

He had a cute slip of tongue while talking about the driver who, despite having spent two years in prison during the Saddam regime, thinks Americans are worse than he. But because of my patriotism I'll refrain from... well, here it is; his reaction to the driver's comment, explained to him by Russert, was that it was great that he was able to freely express his ideas to a Western journalist.

He would've had his tongue cut out.

was what he'd originally wanted to say, but at the first take, something like this came out:

He would've had his cunt tug out.

Pardon the expression.

Testimony

2004-04-11T11:17:00.000-04:00

I know I'd said before that I was going to write more about it, but "Rice Sliced and Diced", as well as many other works out there make a very good job of analyzing the testimony. And by the way, I think you should all sign up for the progress reports of The Center for American Progress.

Ann Coulter

2004-04-11T11:07:00.000-04:00

Wouldn't you know it... I had considered it a waste of time when Atrios had mentioned it, but I felt like I could spend those few minutes when I saw the Which Town Hall Pundit Are You? test again while catching up with Body and Soul. You can guess who I am now, can't you?

Attacked Us For Who We Are

2004-04-09T02:30:00.000-04:00

Sorry... I'm sure the expression deserves a substantially more analytical response, but how can someone who is a "political scientist" (and not because they have an undergraduate degree from a pol-sci department but because they hold a PhD degree in the field) utter a sentence like this, even if their boss has a world view that has to dilute issues down to notions that are oversimplified in order for his capability to assess not to be "overheated" in the process of perception? Yes, I promised a more detailed "response", but I had no idea some things in her testimony would be so appalling. Still watching the rerun; Roemer is grilling right now.

Here's Your Interruption

2004-04-09T01:50:00.000-04:00

Well, as bad a junkie as I am, it's clear to me that even when I'm most intensely focused on politics and events, I can and do allow other "thoughts" to rip through my psyche when they appear. It might be time that it's clear to you too:

The sight of her eyes makes my heart beat in ways that I would never imagine possible before. Watching her face makes me realize that I knew no true beauty until I tasted the exquisiteness of the lines and curves that make up hers. Hearing her voice quenches my soul of a thirst that drowns me in my loneliest hours, haunts me through my coldest nights. And one touch, one kiss, even just one breath of her flawless skin makes me surrender to sleep with the most soothing of contentments at night... and wakes me up in the morning to be the strongest man who ever lived; existing to conquer everything that's bad, to right everything that's wrong, and to change everything that's before us: For a better, brighter, more beautiful future - for us, and for the rest of the deserving world.

Iraq Accounts

2004-04-09T01:44:00.000-04:00

The Guardian has a decent report on the latest status in Iraq. There's much in it that one could quote from, instead I'll suggest that you just go read the whole thing. Seriously.

And sorry for the sequence of posts that could've been compacted into a single one with somewhat better planning but I'm on a roll and do not want to interrupt my pace...

The Testimony on Thursday

2004-04-09T01:34:00.000-04:00

I was at work and luckily able to listen to most of it thanks to C-SPAN and shall have more to say about it when I have more time (watching its after-midnight reruns on C-Span right now.), but for now, please take a look at the piece by Fred Kaplan who went to graduate school with Richard Clark, and oh yes, the lead editorial from tomorrow's New York Times. I would've also linked to the lead editorial of tomorrow's Pravda on the Potomac, but the appraisals at the intro have somehow turned me off on some of the truly good points that came later on in the piece. Also, William Saletan seems to have something promising, but given how frequently he's managed to piss me (and probably so many others among us) off in the recent past, I'd say read it at your own peril. It's 1:30, I still have some actual work to do, and I'm really tired, so I won't be able to get to it until, perhaps, Friday afternoon.

Uniter not a Divider

2004-04-09T01:02:00.000-04:00

Billlmon had written beautifully on signs of this before, along with thorough, realistic viewpoints on the tactical issues underlying the matter. More news seems to be coming along those lines now:

When the United States invaded Iraq a year ago, one of its chief concerns was preventing a civil war between Shiite Muslims, who make up a majority in the country, and Sunni Muslims, who held all the power under Saddam Hussein.

Now the fear is that the growing uprising against the occupation is forging a new and previously unheard of level of cooperation between the two groups — and the common cause is killing Americans.

"We have orders from our leader to fight as one and to help the Sunnis," said Nimaa Fakir, a 27-year-old teacher and foot soldier in the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia. "We want to increase the fighting, increase the killing and drive the Americans out. To do this, we must combine forces."

This new Shiite-Sunni partnership was flourishing in Baghdad on Thursday. Convoys of pickup trucks with signature black Shiite flags flapping from their bumpers hauled sacks of grain, flour, sugar and rice into Sunni mosques.

The food donations were coming from Shiite families, in many cases from people with little to spare. And they were headed to the besieged residents of Falluja, a city that has now become the icon of the resistance, especially after the bombing on Wednesday of a mosque compound there.

"Sunni, Shia, that doesn't matter anymore," said Sabah Saddam, a 32-year-old government clerk who took the day off to drive one of the supply trucks. "These were artificial distinctions. The people in Falluja are starving. They are Iraqis and they need our help."

But it is not just relief aid that is flowing into the city.

According to several militia members, many Shiite fighters are streaming into Falluja to help Sunni insurgents repel a punishing assault by United States marines. Groups of young men with guns are taking buses from Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad to the outskirts of Falluja, and then slipping past checkpoints to join the action. "It's not easy to get in, but we have our ways," said Ahmed Jumar, a 25-year-old professional soccer player who also belongs to a Shiite militia. "Our different battles have turned into one fight, the fight against the Americans."

American leaders had been concerned that the rival sectarian groups would not find a common cause. Now, it seems, they have found a common enemy. "The danger is we believe there is a linkage that may be occurring at the very lowest levels between the Sunni and the Shia," Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of the occupation forces, said on Thursday. "We have to work very hard to ensure that it remains at the tactical level."

I will also quote the last two paragraphs from this article in tomorrow's New York Times before I underline the one sentence that says it all:

Until last week, the Shiite groups had mostly sat out the resistance. Many Sunni fighters were loyal to Mr. Hussein. That alienated Shiites, who had been ruthlessly persecuted by the former Iraqi leader.

All that changed this week when Mr. Sadr activated his militia at the same time Falluja faced its biggest battle. Now, the two sides have joined. There were even reports on Thursday of armed men from Falluja escaping to Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad. Mr. Hussein is no longer mentioned. Fighting the infidels is.

And yes, here's what I'm sure you've all bitterly read and re-read:

Now, it seems, they have found a common enemy.

As "Cyrus the Damn Virus" would appreciate: "Nice work, Poe. Truly nice work."

Presidential Debates

2004-04-09T00:37:00.000-04:00

I know with all the noise with the September 11 Commission and the catastrophy in Iraq it's been kind of hard for the Kerry campaign to voice anything that wasn't immediately drowned by the media. I do think, though, with good timing, Kerry should reiterate his call for monthly presidential debates, perhaps phrased as follows:

"I suggest that we hold monthly debates with the president on issues facing our country now and in the future. And if he's not totally comfortable with the idea, he can bring Mr. Cheney along too."

Which NYT Columnist

2004-04-04T20:27:00.000-04:00

I, too, took the test, thanks to Atrios, and I'm Dr. Krugman. Oh, and I think the answer choices for the question "What's your take on the war in Iraq?" are quite orthogonal. Don't you?

Separation of Powers

2004-04-04T11:04:00.000-04:00

Why does everyone let them (Karen Hughes on Meet the Press, this time) get away with claiming, that Rice's testimony before the Commission has something to do with separation of powers between the executive and the legislative branches, every time they do? Why?

Thursday's Testimony

2004-04-04T10:55:00.000-04:00

Peter Bergen and Scott Armstrong are op-ed contributors in today's New York Times with a total of fifteen questions they suggest for the National Security Advisor. Check it out.

Tim Russert

2004-04-04T10:34:00.000-04:00

Someone teach that fella the concept of a follow-up question.

My Two Cents

2004-04-03T01:07:00.000-05:00

Folks, amidst all the talk about what the administration was up to and what they were not on and before September 11, 2001, I thought I should remind everyone of some things that I just remembered today, thanks to Senator Biden's appearance on Air America Radio.

Both the legal and budgetary implications of the NMD (National Missile Defense) program were being debated in the months leading up to September 2001. Everyone can and will remember the budget talks, NMD funding, etc.

Does everyone also remember how eager the administration was in their plans for deployment in the coming years? Good.

Does everyone remember the ABM Treaty complications they were trying to take care of?

I didn't, until Google took me to a news article by the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers on the Council for a Livable World's website. And here, friends and foes, are a couple of remarks on the administration's NMD passion:

Sen. Joseph Biden (DE), Ranking Democrat, Foreign Relations Committee, May 1, 2001:

We should not head down the "Star Wars" road again. The fundamental question regarding a national missile defense system is whether it would make us more secure or less secure. We must decide if the investment of tens of billions of dollars in what the Pentagon thinks is the least likely threat to our security - an ICBM attack by another nation - is appropriate, or whether we should defend ourselves against the threat of terrorists, who have the ability, for example, to inflict devastating damage by placing a "dirty atom bomb" in the hull of a ship in New York harbor.

Sen. Dick Durbin, Select Intelligence Committee, May 2, 2001:

The Pentagon itself has said that a missile strike with a "return address" from a rogue state is among the least likely threats it faces. Worse, such a system could give us a false sense of security - our own Maginot Line - and be completely ineffective in countering threats that simply go around it - like the terrorist with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. It could be totally overwhelmed by intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) held by Russia.

Now fast forward to September 11...

I recall having a hard time trying to keep worried, e-mailing friends overseas up-to-date on what was transpiring here in DC on that fateful day, communicating with my mother on Yahoo Messenger and with my then-girlfriend in New York on MSN, who was filling me in on what was going on in Manhattan.

One of my first reactions was: "This was done [by the terrorists] as if to say to this administration: 'No matter what kind of shields you surround yourselves with, we will find a way to penetrate them and hurt you.' " (For all the idiots who want to misinterpret my self-quotation: I did not mean that al-Qaida attacked as a response to the NMD efforts or talks or that the plans for the attacks could have been conceived during that brief time period. Notice the "as if"? Sorry everyone else, I'm still adjusting the magnitude of my own Doctrine of Pre-emption.)

And then I found an e-mail --a forwarded article-- that I'd sent those friends as a little note about NMD, that made me think that perhaps that was why the NMD issue was so fresh in my mind. I called it their "NMD passion" a moment ago; on September 5, 2001, MoDo had called it His Magnificent Obsession:

It is hard to fathom most obsessions from the outside.

Why did Proust's Swann swoon over the sharp-featured Odette, when he knew he was wasting years of his life longing for a woman "who didn't even appeal to me"?

What made Aschenbach follow a blond boy in "Death in Venice" in such a state of distraction that "he could no longer think of anything except this ceaseless pursuit of the object that so inflamed him"?

Why did Humbert Humbert devour himself over the sulky "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul"?

Why did the otherwise cool Oscar Wilde wreck his life over the callow Lord Alfred Douglas so that, as he wrote in "De Profundis," "I became the spendthrift of my own genius"?

Why did the whale engender a "special lunacy" in Ahab that "stormed his general sanity, and carried it and turned all its concentrated cannon upon its own mad mark"?

And why can George W. Bush think of nothing but a missile shield? Our president is caught in the grip of an obsession worthy of literature.

W. seemed like a simple man, who did not get ardently aroused over anything except Little League, clearing Texas brush and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

But it turns out that he is darker and more complex than we thought. He is seized by a desire that defies the laws of politics and physics, a hunger that fills him with elation and despair, a thirst for an attainment that seems so close and yet so far.

While we may not understand W.'s urgent, self-destructive craving for his ineffectual missile shield any better than we understand Scarlett's urgent, self-destructive craving for her ineffectual Ashley, we must stand in awe before the purity and grandeur of his obsession. He would rather risk the world being destroyed than slow his race to build something to protect it.

Consider the hurricane of global emotions that W. has whipped up to construct The Defense That Doesn't Work against The Threat That Doesn't Exist.

The White House has signaled China that it's O.K. to build up its nuclear arsenal if it makes China feel better about W.'s Junior Star Wars. And if this leads to China's improving its nuclear warheads and to a renewal of nuclear testing, well, the obsession can justify that. And if this leads to India's and Pakistan's accelerating an arms race, well, the obsession can justify that, too. And if American kids have to go back to duck-and-cover drills, well, same deal. And if W. squanders $60 billion that could have been spent on education on technology that doesn't work - because our sophisticated antimissile interceptors can't stop primitive, wobbly missiles from rogue nations, much less germ warfare from terrorists - ditto.

W. is now at a "Blue Angel" Lola Lola level of obsession, but instead of his blood running fast for Marlene Dietrich, it's running fast for a missile doily.

He has made the Europeans angry and alarmed. He has made Vladimir Putin and Jiang Zemin much closer, and Russia is once more playing the China card. He has driven Russia and Germany closer, a pairing that caused, as his father would say, "a splash" of trouble in the past. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are furious that W. wants to downsize the services and use that money for his missile shield. Colin Powell, who is in no rush to throw weapons into space, has been sidelined in favor of Rummy and Condi and others who feed W.'s ecstatic fantasy.

Because W. has restructured the entire international security system - reviving scary alliances and threats that had faded - we may end up needing a larger military, not a smaller one.

The last time a president became infatuated with Star Wars, the obsession was easier to understand. Ronald Reagan was by temperament a utopian. He believed that the unattainable was attainable. He confused real life with the movies.

But W. - whence his magnificent obsession?

I can only speculate that it's filial, stemming from his fear of repeating his father's fatal mistake of alienating the right wing.

As much as it is reassuring to see the usually disengaged president become so deeply engaged in an issue, the world might be a safer place if W. stuck with his other obsession: demanding that the White House mess offer up three kinds of jelly with its pb&j's.

What do you think? One more paragraph before I close for the night; this one from David Corn's The Dark Smoke, from the October 1, 2001 issue of the Nation. You may remember that plain but striking black-and-blue cover with the Twin Towers:

Do not be surprised if the national security establishment even tries to accelerate its push for Star Wars II before the debris is cleared. The event tragically demonstrated the limits of a national missile defense system. (And consider how much worse the day would have been had the evildoers smuggled a pound of uranium onto any of the hijacked flights.) But the loudest theme in American politics--perhaps the only audible theme--in the time ahead will be the quest for security. With those drums beating, the fans of national missile defense will continue to argue that this remains a dangerous world full of suicidal maniacs wishing the United States harm and that all steps must be taken as fast as possible.

Now pretty much everyone knows --or thinks-- they were only interested in toys that one can show off --no matter how unusable-- and not real work against terrorism, concededly because they just didn't think it was that important; and they will continue asserting that they did take it seriously and did real work and planning. Which leaves one burning question...

Why do they seem to have convinced everyone so solidly that NMD was all that they cared about?

Allocated funds, published articles, speeches... All point to one and only one obsession they had, which, um, wasn't exactly fighting terrorism.

Hence, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to suggest a new phrase that can hereinafter be used for their ambitious efforts which seem to be nowhere except in their recent claims: Faith-based Counterterrorism Initiative

Anyone with a better idea, or evidence that this idea is not new, please let me know.

Crisp

2003-08-26T05:04:00.000-04:00

Perhaps I should've never started this. I knew I'd have trouble posting regularly, but such an immense gap between the posts? I'm going to blame it on the really elevated intensity of my work and the breathtaking rhythm my social life has gained recently.

Am I happy with all this intensity?

At work, yes. I'm one of those people who do better and feel more comfortable under more pressure --think Jon Anderson's voice and George Carlin's infatuation with chaos. And luckily, the "pressure" is from very interesting research topics.

Socially? Maybe not as much. I am doing enjoyable things for the most part with a brilliant group of people, but I am missing those long Saturdays or Sundays that I would have all to myself. I seem to have lost almost all of my "creative" time. Even when I didn't feel like writing or painting, I used to have long drives, and when one does not have anything to do but drive, the mind becomes surprisingly liberated. Those drives used to be my hours and hours of thinking, just about anything, from perhaps-never-to-be-delivered campaign speeches to conference presentations, from last words never uttered to an old lover to songs sung to a nonexisting new one.

Maybe it's good that I cannot have time alone, because it wouldn't be creative anyway. You see, I cannot really function well and creatively in hot and humid weather. And everyone knows how the past several weekends have been in the DC Metro area. Therefore even if I had spent these weekends alone, they probably wouldn't have been as pleasant as they would have had the weather been more lenient.

Which brings me to the title of this post.

I don't know whether it will really last, and it's been a long time since I stopped following the weather closely too, but yesterday morning I really felt like the fall has arrived.

It was the breathable crispness of the air that got me the most. Then perhaps my longing for the colors of the fall and hours spent driving or guarding coffeehouse corners or walking.

I hope to be proven wrong; I don't think I can handle the emotional intensity the fall seems to push me into yet.

Special Thanks

2003-08-24T12:08:00.000-04:00

I'd like to thank both Kimmy and Graham for not only being so kind but also for the impressive speed with which they got back to my question.

2003-08-05T16:20:00.000-04:00

Day 1.

I've been contemplating this decision for months now; i. e. the decision about beginning my weblog, my desire for which has been severely impeded with my predicted inability to afford the amount of commitment a good blog would require. Nonetheless, blogosphere, here I come.

And for those who will remember the silly 80s Val Kilmer movie, the title/blog name has no connection to it; except perhaps for the fact that the author happens to have watched it.

Real Genius

Uhm...

The Root Cause

Dana Bash...

WaPo, Front Page, Above the Fold

Quote of the Day

Yeah, Baby!

This is funny...

Age

Headline Writing 101

Turdblossom Sighting

Harriet Miers Withdraws

Indictment Bingo

Bobo's World

Golden Ssshhhh....

The Beginning of The End - II

The Beginning of The End

The Domesticated President

Kyra, Kyra, Kyra

Cutting It Short

Calling Somerby

HBO - Rome

Homonyms

Chef's Fusion Chicken Salad

Yellowcake on 60 Minutes

Plame

(VRWSC) Vast Right-Wing Swinging Conspiracy

UK War Memo

Victor Navasky...

Blatant Discrimination or Stealthy Eugenics?

Heads Up

David Neiwert's Latest Masterpiece

Dr. Alterman v. Boston Globe

Schutzstaffel

Fifth Time's A Charm

You Gotta Love This

CNN Again

This Woman's Gonna Kill Me

White-out

The Other Side Of Abu Ghraib

Herr Billmon ist zurück

Absolutely

Just what exactly did he mean by that?

Verfallen

I Hereby Predict...

The Good Doc

DHS Presser

*sigh*

State-sponsored and Non-state-sponsored Terrorism

October Surprise

A Little Word Counting

The Morning After

But of course...

Tomorrow Night

Wow...

Anonymous

"'Data Quality' Law Is Nemesis Of Regulation"

And He Finally Comes To His Senses...

Sweet Euphemism for "Enemy"

One Week Later...

Dr. Krugman

Washington Journal

Chris

Book TV - CSPAN2

Sea, Sun and Sand

Book to Listen To

Meet the Press

Testimony

Ann Coulter

Attacked Us For Who We Are

Here's Your Interruption

Iraq Accounts

The Testimony on Thursday

Uniter not a Divider

Presidential Debates

Which NYT Columnist

Separation of Powers

Thursday's Testimony

Tim Russert

My Two Cents

sigh