Audacity

I read Barack Obama’s announcement of candidacy, but skipped watching the video. I’m hoping to postpone at least until spring the moment when I am heartily sick of hearing Obama praise his own “audacity.”

He made his announcement at the very spot where Abraham Lincoln made a speech in 1858 in a failed run for the Senate in which he called for the nation not to split. How’d that turn out again?

He mentioned his time in the Illinois State Senate, where he learned that “it’s possible to compromise so long as you know those principles that can never be compromised; and that so long as we’re willing to listen to each other, we can assume the best in people instead of the worst. It’s why we were able to reform a death penalty system that was broken.” Because when you think of uncompromised principles and assuming the best in people, you think death penalty.

Explosively foreign

Today Secretary of War Robert

held a press conference in Seville. He was asked about the much-postponed public presentation of the “proof” of Iranian assistance for Iraqi insurgents. He blamed Iran for the new bugaboo, the “explosively formed projectile,” which he seems to have called “explosively foreign projectiles.” That may be a transcript error, but I do love the idea of a projectile, or indeed anything else, being explosively foreign. [Update: it is a transcript error.]

He admitted that the evidence is “very ambiguous,” and went on to add some ambiguity of his own: “In terms of the particular, it’s the sophistication of the technology. I think that there are some serial numbers. There may be some markings on some of the projectile fragments that we found.” That’s a lot of qualifiers about a form of evidence as specific as serial numbers. And wouldn’t you think they’d have filed the serial numbers off?

Asked if he was consciously adopting a different style than Rumsfeld’s with our Old European partners at the NATO [correction: international security] meeting, he claimed not to be familiar with the man: “I wasn’t in Washington, so I don’t know very much about the style of my predecessor, by golly.” I may have added the last two words.

Gen. David Petraeus, aka Colonel Combover,


has been talking up Fallujah as the model for Baghdad. He evidently means not the part about bombing it into rubble, but the part about treating it like the Gaza Strip, with restricted access to what they’re laughingly calling “gated communities,” fingerprinting, i.d. cards, etc. Petraeus’s deputy, British Lt-Gen. Graeme Lamb (not really the butchest name, is it?), says that we know Fallujah is doing well now because the city’s Business Association now has 340 members. So it was all worth it.

Seeking to take comfort from their misunderstanding of the dialogue in this country

Ian Richardson has died. You might think that sucks; I couldn’t possibly comment.

At Wednesday’s Armed Service Committee hearings, the alliterative Peter Pace generously conceded that Congress might discuss Iraq policy (as long as it continues to obediently provide every cent asked of it and restricts itself to non-binding resolutions) (by the way, is there any sillier senatorial debate than the one over whether a non-binding resolution should be deemed to have passed, non-bindingly, with 50 votes or 60?). But he did add that “There’s also no doubt in my mind that just like we look out to our potential enemies to see division in their ranks and take comfort from division in their ranks, that others, who don’t have a clue how democracy works, who are our enemies, would seek to take comfort from their misunderstanding of the dialogue in this country.”

Speaking of taking comfort from their misunderstanding, George Bush... okay, I have nothing about George Bush right now, but I couldn’t let that segue get away.

BBC headline: “Violence at Jerusalem Holy Site.” You never hear about holiness breaking out at a Jerusalem violence site.

Fantastic places in which to learn things

A military investigation has totally and completely disproved the claims of a Marine sergeant that Guantanamo prisoners are commonly hit by guards. The investigation was thoroughly investigated by the appropriately named Col. Richard Basset, who followed up all leads, except actually talking with any prisoners. But the guards say they didn’t do it, and that’s good enough for Col. Basset, who is therefore accusing the paralegal who reported that she’d overheard guards bragging about the beatings of filing a false report.

I just found a letter to the New York Times Magazine from 7/3/05 from one Anne M. Shattuck, which I must have torn out meaning to blog, which asks if the reason gay marriage arouses such hatred is that its egalitarian model of a family, without gender-based tasks, where each partner’s paid work is valued equally, poses a threat to sexist gender roles.

Bush went to Shenandoah National Park today to praise the National Park System. He pointed out that the White House is managed by the National Park System and said that parks “are fantastic places in which to learn things”. Not that he’s learned a damned thing in the last 6 years living in a building run by the park system, of course. Bush, as is his custom, expressed his commitment to the environment by traveling to a site of natural beauty using an assortment of environmentally friendly vehicles.


But, really, Bush is quite concerned about global warming, as demonstrated by this article on the White House website purporting to demonstrate that he has supported efforts to address global warming since the very start of his presidency – only they call it climate change in the article because of course they’re not allowed to use the term global warming.

Focusing on the air in the balls, or lack thereof

In supporting the Republican refusal to allow a debate on Iraq, Joe Lieberman played his usual “not in front of the children” card: “We are being heard by our men and women in uniform, who will be interested to know whether we support the plan they have begun to carry out. We are being heard by the leaders of the thuggish regimes in Iran and Syria, and by Al Qaeda terrorists, eager for evidence that Americas will is breaking.” If the leaders of the thuggish regimes in Iran and Syria are hearing Joe Lieberman’s annoying droning voice, it jolly well serves them right, I say.

Al Kamen points out an LA Times correction to its review of the PBS series on the Supreme Court. The review “said there was a justice named Hamburger. There was a chief justice named Warren Burger.” Clearly they were mistaking him for Perry Mason’s perennial courtroom opponent Hamilton Burger.

Cute Salon story about a 2004 US army effort to win Iraqi hearts and minds by handing out flat soccer balls to children. They weren’t supposed to be flat, but the army was supplied with uninflated balls and no pumps or needles with which to inflate them, so that’s what they gave out. A spokesmodel for the division said, “To focus on the air in the balls, or lack thereof, undermines the American spirit of generosity and completely misses the point of giving.” What was that point again?

It makes it different to deal with the slices of the pie

Shrub visited Micron Technology (a company which manufactures microns, I presume) to push his proposed budget, and especially tax cuts: “I believe it is not only possible, we have proven it through a document, that by keeping taxes low and being wise about how we spend your money, we actually achieve balance in the budget.” He has proven it through a document, so it must be true.


And the time to do this is now, when the economy is totally perfect in every way. “Three months ago, we’ve added -- over the last three months, we added a million jobs*.” That asterisk was the website people indicating that what he really meant to say was half a million jobs. Any number above 5 is just “a bunch” as far as George is concerned.

And how did we create all those jobs? “It’s all due to the entrepreneurial spirit.” But it’s also all due to tax cuts. And he explained the logic of this persuasively but succinctly: “so there’s a big debate. There’s always somebody -- do tax cuts work? They work.” He then digressed to explain the politics of the issue: “I understand the politics of cutting taxes. Some like it, some don’t.” He then returned to flesh out his already persuasive case for the efficacy of tax cuts: “I just asked the American people to look at the facts. Since we cut taxes a second time in 2003, we’ve added 7.4 million new jobs. Tax cuts equaled new jobs.” See, when one thing follows another thing, the two things equal each other. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Then it was back to the pie metaphor: “we debate the size of the pie. In other words, in order to balance the budget, we need this much top line spending. But a lot of times, we don’t -- it makes it different to deal with the slices of the pie. And I believe there needs to be a process where the President has got the capacity to work with Congress to say well, maybe this slice of the pie doesn’t meet a national priority”. Dude, this is America: pie always meets a national priority. He wants a line-item veto, and to get rid of earmarks. He brought along a visual aid, which he said was all the earmarks. He did not bring any pie.

We’re going to jail, dude

I implore, nay command, my readers in the state of Washington to sign petitions for 957, the Defense of Marriage Initiative, which would annul marriages that don’t produce children within three years. It’s just common sense.

The British tabloid The Sun has video of cockpit footage from a US plane that shot up a British convoy in March 2003. It has the pilots laughing as they saw wounded soldiers being dragged out of burning vehicles and then not so much when they finally figure out who they’ve been shooting at. “Fuck. God fucking shit,” says one. “Fuck me dead,” says another. “This sucks.” “We’re going to jail, dude,” says one pilot, with a touching naivete.

The pilots (who were not court-martialed, and have not been identified) did everything wrong, and recklessly: when checking on whether there were friendly forces in the area they gave the wrong grid references; they were talking amongst themselves while on another frequency the convoy was trying to tell them to stop shooting; they saw the orange panels identifying the vehicles as coalition but decided they were orange rocket launchers; they attacked without permission.

The inquest into the death of a British soldier killed in the incident is going on now, with absolutely no cooperation from the US military (they refused, for example, to turn over this video, and the British Ministry of Defence won’t release it because “this recording is the property of the United States government”). Big story there, not so big here. Arguably, that sentence explains America’s image throughout the world: big story there, not so big here.

A good sign

Bush released his dead-on-arrival budget today. He says “I strongly believe Congress needs to listen to a budget which has no tax increase”. Also, he wants a line-item veto because “It’s one thing to get the size of the budget pie right; it’s another thing to make sure that the slices in that pie meet national priorities.” So the budget is a pie, and we need to listen to that pie.

Mmm, pie.

Asked about Iraq: “I appreciate the fact that the Iraqi government is anxious to get security inside the capital of the country. That’s a good sign. It’s a good sign that there’s a sense of concern and anxiety.”

A lesson in intellectual honesty

John McCain has attacked the non-binding resolution against the McCain Plan as intellectually dishonest, saying that Congressional opponents of the “surge” should do more than just vote resolutions of disapproval (which he opposes), but cut off funds (which he opposes). He says it would be demoralizing to the troops, but criticizes it for not going far enough. Or something. Evidently that’s what intellectual honesty is like. This is a bit like when Shrub distinguishes between “true” Muslims who don’t engage in violence and extremism and “false” Muslims, although he presumably believes that they’re both wrong in their religious beliefs and are all going to hell.

McCain even invoked George Orwell, saying that the compromise resolution (which actually is intellectually dishonest, but I have standing to say that, unlike McCain) with its listing of military objectives and benchmarks, imposes “a degree of micromanagement which is absolutely Orwellian.” Yes, I’m sure this is precisely what Orwell was warning against.

At the movies with Holy Joe

A New Yorker piece by Jeffrey Goldberg reports on some length on the fact that Joe Lieberman is a dick. Probably you already knew that, so you can skip the article. The only new thing in it is something the author observed personally:

A few years ago, I was in a movie theatre in Washington when I noticed Lieberman and his wife, Hadassah, a few seats down. The film was “Behind Enemy Lines,” in which Owen Wilson plays a U.S. pilot shot down in Bosnia. Whenever the American military scored an onscreen hit, Lieberman pumped his fist and said, “Yeah!” and “All right!”

Hmm, do you think Hillary bribed David Brooks, and Biden fell into her trap? Oh, she’s good, alright.

I signed up for the Biden campaign email list, and today he sent a video link, which I did not watch, because it was a video of David Brooks. Evidently Brooks praised Biden’s record on Iraq on one of the Sunday talk shows. Here’s the very definition of an out-of-touch politician: he thinks people can be persuaded to support him by watching David Brooks say nice things about him.

Bush plans to finance his wars and his tax cuts in part through massive cuts in Medicare and Medicaid spending. One way he plans to structure these cuts is by letting inflation do his dirty work for him, quietly and without the need for open debate, leaving no fingerprints. This will be done by 1) not altering the income threshold over which Medicare users (and people enrolled in the drug plan, if Bush has his way) pay higher premiums to keep up with inflation, so that more and more people will have to pay more, 2) not raising hospital and nursing home payments – ever. This would mean that vitally important decisions over what to pay for health care, and who should pay what premium, would be made not by our elected representatives, or indeed by any actual human being, but by the vagaries of the economy. This is an abdication of responsibility; it is political cowardice.

A post for a boring weekend

Radio Farda, which is run by Voice of America and Radio Liberty and broadcasts into Iran, is suggesting that Mossad has killed an Iranian nuclear scientist. This is either a) true, or b) a psyop.

If you missed Thursday’s McNeil-Lehrer, they re-broadcast this 1986 Molly Ivins segment on Texas art.



I’ve really got nuthin’ today. So here’s a picture of Bush addressing the House Democratic Issues Conference (House-DIC).

A monkey with a razor blade

The NYT obit of her still couldn’t bring itself, decades later, to repeat the phrase she used that led to her separation from that paper, her description of a communal chicken-killing festival as a “gang-pluck.”

A British judge decides not to imprison a pedophile, telling him instead to pay his 6-year old victim £250. “If it buys her a nice new bicycle, that’s the sort of thing that might cheer her up.” Astonishingly, the judge is married to a professor of educational psychology at Oxford.

Hugo Chavez says Bush is “more dangerous than a monkey with a razor blade”. I don’t know if this is true, but I’d pay good money to see the cage match on pay-per-view.

Speaking of dangerous, Chewbacca was arrested in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater after head-butting a tour guide. Superman was interviewed by police as a witness. My favorite bit is that they blurred Chewy’s head in this picture.


Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh cures AIDS (Mondays and Thursdays) and asthma (Fridays and Saturdays). Possibly with magic herbs, possibly with his magical healing touch. Can George Bush do that?

The best plan is to have this plan succeed

Brent Scowcroft, testifying on Iraq before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, used a familiar obnoxious analogy: “When you’re training your child with training wheels on the bicycle, how do you know when to take the training wheels off? I don’t know.”

Bushies are beginning to use admission of the mess that Iraq has become to their own advantage, by suggesting that it’s so completely impossible to comprehend what’s going on there that there’s no point in even trying to set up standards to measure whether we’re making progress or not. Chuck Hagel repeatedly asked Scowcroft for such a standard, getting this response: “It would be nice to be precise and to have all these benchmarks that everybody can see and so on. This is not that kind of a problem. We’re in a mess, and we’ve got to work our way out of it.” He went on to list various things that needed to be accomplished to work our way out of it. “Then,” responded Hagel, “how do you measure that?” Scowcroft: “The way you measure anything.”

Such a disconcertingly unhelpful response has not been heard since Rumsfeld last trod those halls.

The em-messification of Iraq is also now being used as a reason not to call it a civil war. Last year, it wasn’t a civil war because it wasn’t that bad yet; now it’s just too messy. Secretary of War Robert

this morning said that civil war is “a bumper sticker answer to what’s going on”.


Naturally, he couldn’t comment on the new National Intelligence Estimate, because he held a press conference without having read it, an old Rumsfeld trick. The NIE’s summary (pdf), the only part we’re allowed to see, while saying Iraq is actually more fucked up than the term civil war implies (“does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict”), does say that the term “accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements.”

National Security Adviser Stephen “Boo” Hadley also squirmed his way out of using the term civil war at a press briefing today:

Q: Can you call it a civil war, and why haven’t you?

HADLEY: We know what kind of fight we’re in. We know the facts. That is described well in this NIE, and we have a strategy to deal with those facts and to try to succeed.

Q: Is it a civil war?

HADLEY: I will tell you what this NIE says.

Q: I want to know why you avoid using that term.

HADLEY: Because it’s not an adequate description of the situation we find ourselves, as the intelligence community says. ... And what we’re doing is saying, if you’re going to run policy, and if you’re going to explain it to the American people, we need to get across the complexities of the situation we face in Iraq, and what is our strategy to deal with that.”

Because the Bush administration is all about getting across complexities. Known for it, really.

Hadley continued to embrace sophistication and complexity when summing up the NIE: “one of the things you should conclude from this NIE is the best plan is to have this plan succeed.”

Can we call Obama a warlord, and the Afghan warlords clean?

The warlords in the Afghan parliament have voted to make it illegal to call them “warlords.” Oh, and a complete amnesty for all crimes committed by anyone who fought against the Soviet occupation.

Joe Biden has spent all day apologizing for calling Barack Obama “clean.”

Say what you like about Biden, the race will be less entertaining when he drops out.

I’m worried about the diminution of democratic institution

Atrios pointed out the hilarious comments on Joe Biden’s blog. So very... articulate.
(Update: a few hours later, some negative comments are showing up, although possibly they were just posted after the censor went home for the night. [Update to the update: and have mostly disappeared this morning.] Here’s how you know there’s something unnatural about this comment section: almost no misspellings.)

Chavez has his powers to legislate by decree, and not just legislate: he can set taxes and compensation for nationalized industries, he can equalize income, whatever that means, and he can set the terms of a “transformation of the institutions of the state” (the powers surrendered to him by the legislature are exceedingly vague).

And Bush, in an interview yesterday on Fox with Neil Cavuto, who spoon-fed him most of his answers, agrees with me (I typed that with gritted teeth. Which I can tell you is pretty painful): “And I’m worried about the diminution of democratic institution, as well as — as well as nationalization efforts that may or may not be taking place.”

This morning Bush had an event about childhood obesity. This followed a hearty National Prayer Breakfast. That sanctimony goes straight to your thighs, you know. He exclaimed that America is “an amazing country, isn’t it, when people from all walks of life gather to recognize our dependence on an Almighty God, and to ask him for blessings in our life.” Yes, an amazing country – we invented prayer, you know. He also finds it “interesting” that “you’re working a rope line and people come up and say, ‘Mr. President, I am praying for you and your family to get a fucking clue.’” I may have added the last five words.

He also said – prepare to vomit – “During this time of war, we thank God that we are part of a nation that produces courageous men and women who volunteer to defend us.”

And, lo, the Dragon Lady sat down with the Maverick.


There was even musical entertainment. I swear to you, that’s the head of the Human Genome Project.


What is this man laughing about?


Full of prayer, or full of gas, you be the judge.

Molly

Molly Ivins has died. Grr. Some quotes:

“It’s quite difficult to convince people you are killing them for their own good. That’s our basic problem in Iraq.”

The question she’d like to hear GeeDubya (that’s one of hers) asked: “Are you the worst president since James Buchanan, or have you never heard of him?”

Her term for the Texan justice system: the cowboy gulag.

“I had a slightly insane discussion the other day with a winger who wanted urgently for me to understand that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war. Whereas I was trying to point out to him that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war.”

“Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.” (From her final column, and it might be this blog’s motto, as well.)

“Democracy... is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.”

“I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth.”

“During a recent panel on the numerous failures of American journalism, I proposed that almost all stories about government should begin: ‘Look out! They’re about to smack you around again!’”

“Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.”

Does anyone else have some quotes they’d like to share with the class?

Wherein an entirely rhetorical question is asked

Today, we are informed, George Bush will bring to Wall Street the message that CEO pay should be related to how well they do their jobs. Okay, even Chimpy can’t be so oblivious that he can say that, out loud, without giggling, can he? Can he?

You’re making interesting product

Bush went to a Caterpillar plant in East Peoria today. They let him play with a tractor.


The Chimpy Word of the Day is “product”:

• “Caterpillar can employ new people because it makes good product that people want.”
• “People say, I like what the workers are doing, I like the product that’s being put together, we want to invest”
• “a lot of the product you make here, you sell to somebody else”
• “In other words, when I talk about numbers, behind the numbers is people who are providing the service and/or making the product.”
• “Trade is an important subject here at Caterpillar, and the reason why is because a lot of the product you make here, you sell to somebody else, sell overseas to another country. That’s trade.”
• “In other words, because we lowered trade barriers, and said, you treat us the way we treat you, it has enabled this company to sell more product than ever before, which means people are working, when you have to make the product.”
• “And people want Caterpillar product.”
• “I’m confident in our ability to sell American product and services overseas if the playing field is level.”
• “When you’re dependent on a product, and you import that product, if somebody were to inflict damage on a energy infrastructure, it could cause the price of your energy to go up. Or if you’re dependent upon product from a hostile regime, it means you’re in a position of vulnerability.”
• “Fifteen years ago, or 20 years ago, if people stood up here and said a lot of people would be using a corn product to drive their cars, they’d have said, man, what -- the guy has kind of lost it, hasn’t he?”
• “In other words, you’re not only making Cats, you’re making interesting product”

Product!


And what to do with all that product? Trade it! “The temptation is to say, well, trade may not be worth it, let’s isolate ourselves. Let’s protect ourselves. I think it would be -- I know it would be a mistake for Caterpillar workers to do that.” So what you’re saying, if I understand you, is that Caterpillar workers should sell their tractors rather than keep them all for themselves. Interesting. Tell me more. “One way to look at trade is this: We’re 5 percent of the people in the world; that means 95 percent live outside of America, and shouldn’t we try to put ourselves in a position where we can sell goods and services to those 95 percent? I think it makes sense to do so.” And to sum up: “Again, I repeat to you, I strongly believe that if we can compete with people on a level playing field, nobody can compete with us.” So we’re competing, but no one else can, so we win, because it’s a forfeit, right? (Who says I don’t understand sports metaphors?)

He added, “I’m very optimistic about meeting the future, because of new technologies.” And the Rapture, that’ll be neat too.

What do you get for the dark overlord who has everything?

Today is Dick Cheney’s 66th birthday. I hereby proclaim a contest, in comments, for the most appropriate gift for the occasion, and I will make the first entry: combining the most famous description of his office with Bush’s description of him as a glass half-full kind of guy, I suggest a bucket half full of warm piss.