Rg Just Proved Once Again That Congress Doesnã¢â‚¬â„¢t Understand the Internet

November 29, 2005

More News From The Inside Of Your Mouth

This was constitute in a fortune cookie served in a New York eating place to my friend Rob:

What I find nigh interesting is the fortune's enthusiasm. I believe in that location are several possible reasons for this:

i. The simple fact of receiving a message from your teeth is heady

2. It's exciting to receive a secret bulletin from your teeth, because your teeth accept ever been notoriously indiscreet

iii. The exciting office is non receiving a message from your teeth, nor that information technology'due south hole-and-corner, merely rather the soonhoped-for-revealed content of the message: "We are going to stop eating food, and starting time eating you"

November 28, 2005

I Write Letters

Similar most Americans, I spent the Thanksgiving weekend writing a letter to Washington Post columnist David Broder.

I wonder if he'll respond. If y'all feel like contacting him yourself on this subject, his email address is davidbroder[at]washpost[dot]com

Mr. Broder,

I take a question regarding this commutation today between yourself and Tim Russert on Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: David Broder, is it possible for official Washington--the president, Democratic leaders, Republican leaders--to arrive at common ground, a consensus position on Republic of iraq?

MR. DAVID BRODER: It's possible, Tim, simply they won't get there past arguing about who did what three years ago. And this whole argue about whether there was only a mistake or misrepresentation or then on is, I think, from the public point of view largely irrelevant. The public'southward moved past that.

***

What I'm wondering is this: on what you base these statements? The reason I enquire is because the prove of which I'grand aware indicates exactly the opposite—that non only do a bulk of Americans believe the Bush administration intentionally misled us on Iraq, merely a like majority believe this may ascent to the level of an impeachable criminal offence.

Run across, e.1000., the following representative polls:

ane. ABC News

On Iraq, a new high—55 percent—say the Bush-league administration intentionally misled the American public in making its case for state of war.

2. Zogby

The poll found that 53% agreed with the statement:

"If President Bush-league did not tell the truth nigh his reasons for going to war with Republic of iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."

***

Thanks in accelerate for your attention to this. I understand y'all must be quite busy, just as this is a very serious consequence, I hope yous'll be able to accept the time to reply.

best regards,
Jonathan Schwarz

Red State Son Celebrates One Year Of Extremely Lucid Malcontenting

Happy birthday to Dennis Perrin's Red Country Son, which only turned a year old. He has some thoughts:

Early I attempted to annotate on every current event as it happened, and before long discovered that information technology was madness. Would you trust someone who has an opinion about everything? Similar the know-it-all drunk freely opining in a darkened bar at midday, bloggers who post constantly before long batter your psyche, never giving you a chance to reflect upon or assimilate whatever given topic. And while this medium thrives on instant assay and upward-to-the-minute moralizing, I'one thousand becoming more of a less-is-better blogger. Pick a subject, flesh it out, explore everything y'all can of information technology, then let information technology sit and ripen for a few days so readers may come up back to it if they wish. Allow space between posts so your voice doesn't melt into the surrounding white noise. In the frenzied online crush, standing still subsequently speaking your mind might ameliorate convey your message and meaning.

And at that place is more.

Nov 27, 2005

Happy Spiritually Evolved Thanksgiving

Has Thanksgiving happened already? I tin't remember, because I hate America. AMERICA AND ALL ITS HOLIDAYS.

In whatever case, for Thanksgiving here'due south something worth reading by Margaret Wheatley called "Letting Get of Hope." It deals with a deep, genuine problem about politics: while it'southward easy to accept a negative bear on on the world, and to understand only how you lot've made things worse, if you lot try to brand things better information technology'south much harder to tell if your efforts are paying off. This leads some people to give up.

Here's Wheatley's advice:

Vaclav Havel helped me get further attracted to insecurity and not-knowing: "Promise," he states, "is not the confidence that something volition turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out."

Havel seems to exist describing not promise, only hopelessness. Beingness liberated from results, giving upwardly outcomes, doing what feels right rather than effective. He helps me think the Buddhist educational activity that hopelessness is non the reverse of hope. Fear is. Hope and fear are inescapable partners. Someday we promise for a certain outcome, and work hard to get in happen, then nosotros too introduce fear—fear of failing, fearfulness of loss. Hopelessness is free of fright and thus can feel quite liberating. I've listened to others describe this land. Unburdened of stiff emotions, they describe the miraculous advent of clarity and energy.

I suspect this is the right way to look at it. The downside is it's literally impossible for most humans to achieve this mindset.

Withal, it's worth having it as a goal, even if you never get there. I believe this is what T.S. Eliot had in mind in his verse form "Ash Midweek":

Because I practise non hope to turn once again
Because I practice not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's souvenir and that man'southward scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things

[...]

Teach us to care and non to intendance
Teach us to sit still.

It may be significant that Eliot didn't write:

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to start a blog

In any instance, similar advice appears in the source of all human wisdom, Life and How to Survive It by John Cleese and Robin Skynner:

Cleese: So all we have to do to increase our health is to become more aware of ourselves...What tin any of u.s.a. do to increase our degree of integration?
Skynner: Sit still.
Cleese: What?
Skynner: That's what you lot have to practise. Sit quietly.
Cleese: That's all?
Skynner: Well, you might meditate, or contemplate religious "myths," or pray, but existence quiet is the best offset.

November 22, 2005

This Divided Country

I was going to limited my opinion nearly This Divided State, a documentary well-nigh a huge brouhaha at a Utah college when they invited Michael Moore to come up speak. But then I thought I should watch it starting time. I'g merely old fashioned that way.

And so, at the moment all I tin say is the DVD packaging makes it look extremely promising every bit information technology sits on my desk.

In the meantime, I advise y'all check out the starting time 26 minutes, which the filmmakers have graciously made available on their website FOR ONE Calendar week Merely.

There's no reason that had to be in all caps. I Just Like TO YELL.

November 21, 2005

Dick Cheney, Now With More Snarl!

Dick Cheney today:

"The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight. Merely whatever suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false," Cheney said in a oral communication to the American Enterprise Institute.

Cheney then added: "That was my task. I would never permit him handle something that important."

Nov twenty, 2005

No Wonder The Washington Printing Corps Has So Much Respect For Colin Powell

Back in September Colin Powell was interviewed by Barbara Walters. She asked him about his U.N. presentation on Iraq, and he agreed it would ever be "a blot" on his reputation. But and then he added this:

POWELL: George Tenet did non sit at that place for v days with me, misleading me... He believed what he was giving to me was authentic. The intelligence system did not piece of work well. There was some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not skilful and shouldn't exist relied upon, and they didn't speak upwards. That devastated me.

WALTERS: Want to name names?

POWELL: I don't accept the names. These are not senior people simply these are people who were aware that some of these sources should not be considered reliable. And they were aware that we were putting this data in the believing.

So here'due south what Powell invited the states to recall:

1. He feels he'll always have this terrible absorb on his reputation considering of some low-level functionaries
2. He's never gone to the problem of finding out who these functionaries are... despite the fact that their positions are provided in the Senate Intelligence Committee Stage I report equally the Chief and Deputy Chief of the CIA'due south Iraqi Job Force.

It'due south hard to believe that's true, and so let's inquire someone else what Powell knew. This source is quoted in today's Los Angeles Times story on the bogus WMD intelligence, and is named Colin Powell:

Powell said he was never warned, during three days of intense briefings at CIA headquarters before his U.Northward. speech, that he was using material that both the DIA and CIA had adamant was false. "As you tin can imagine, I was non pleased," Powell said. "What really made me not pleased was they had put out a burn find on this guy, and people who were even present at my briefings knew it."

Then...Powell knows these "people" were present at his briefings, and he's truly steamed up about it, only—if his previous argument to Walters remains operative—he still doesn't know who they were.

You bet.

I recollect the real question with Colin Powell is not why he has a blot on his reputation, but why he has any reputation left on his blot.

November 19, 2005

Can Bob Harris Get A Witness? Yeah; Aye, He Tin can

I concord with Bob that we should hold off on jubilant.

Also, Bob has intriguing tales about residents of his sometime apartment building.

John Hodgman Is Trying To Kill You

Impale you lot with laughter, that is.

If you are the kind of person who enjoys laughing, chortling, guffawing, giggling, tee-heeing or cachinnating—or all of them at the same time—perhaps yous should check out John Hodgman's recent appearance on the Daily Prove. (I don't know how to link to information technology directly, but you lot can go hither, choose any of the videos, so cull "view all videos from this prove" and then look for l'homme de Hodge.)

Hodgeman was on to promote his genuinely funny little book The Areas of My Expertise. Acquire more here.

Nov 18, 2005

Stuff! Stuff! Stuff!

1. Robert Jensen delivered a sermon at St. Andrew’southward Presbyterian Church in Austin final Sunday titled "Promise is for the Weak":

When I assert that hope is for the weak, there is implied no criticism of hope or the hopeful. All it means is that promise is for u.s.a. all, because nosotros are all weak. We are human being, and to be human is to exist weak at times, to struggle with uncertainty, sometimes to lose our grip on ourselves and on the world. Hope is the name we give to our power to persevere when we are weak, as nosotros all inevitably are sometimes.

And so, to merits hope implicitly acknowledges one’s weakness, which is a practiced start. Then we can see that real promise requires real humility. To claim to not need hope is the ultimate airs, a vain endeavor -- and ane that, in the end, will be in vain -- to ignore a deep yearning in us all. The weakest people in the world are the cynical, those who merits to have avant-garde beyond a need for hope. Pessimism is simply another name for moral laziness and cowardice; information technology is a way of choosing to give up without taking responsibility for the choice.

2. John Ralston Saul was recently interviewed by Female parent Jones.

3. The King of Zembla, a distant northern land, has extremely interesting news:

Tim Lucas of Video Watchblog informs united states of america that "Homecoming," the Joe Dante episode of Masters of Horror, has been warmly received at the Turin Motion-picture show Festival. We are pleased to hear information technology, because the plot -- in which fictitious soldiers, killed in a fictitious Middle-Due east disharmonize, rising from the dead to face a fictitious president, who sent them off to state of war based on a fictitious fictitious threat -- is likely to generate some controversy hither in America.

Nosotros have recently watched a screening copy of this pleasing agitprop one-act, and we can assert with some confidence that you lot will not see a more than aggressively Zemblan production this yr or next. The episode premieres on Showtime 3 Fridays hence, December 2, at ten PM EST/PST, with multiple showings throughout the weekend.

Things Are Even More Horrifying Than You Imagined

James Bamford, author of Body of Secrets and Pretext for War has written an outstanding article for Rolling Stone nearly the Rendon Group.

Who is the Rendon Group? Well, you've probably only heard of them if y'all're a genuine weirdo, because they attempt to proceed a low contour. That's because they're probably the world'due south greatest propaganda artists. While ostensibly "private," they make tens of millions of dollars on U.S. regime contracts to sell wars:

1 of the near powerful people in Washington, [John] Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His house, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when information technology was hired past the CIA to help "create the atmospheric condition for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret say-so, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they gear up out to engineer an insurgence against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs functioning to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson...

Rendon is a boxing-tested veteran who has been secretly involved in well-nigh every American shooting conflict in the past two decades. In the showtime interview he has granted in decades, Rendon offered a peek through the keyhole of this seldom-seen earth of corporate spooks -- a rarefied but growing profession. Over a dinner of lamb chops and a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape at a private Washington society, Rendon was guarded most the details of his clandestine work -- but he boasted openly of the sweep and importance of his firm'due south efforts as a for-profit spy. "We've worked in ninety-one countries," he said. "Going all the style dorsum to Panama, we've been involved in every war, with the exception of Somalia."

More than.

Nov 16, 2005

Sam Husseini Asks Judith Miller A Question

Judith Miller appeared at the National Press Club in Washington on Monday. Equally it happens, Sam Husseini'south role is in the National Press Social club, so he stopped by to enquire her a question we cooked up for her:

We decided information technology should be well-nigh her two famous "aluminum tubes" stories published in September, 2002 claiming Iraq had an ongoing nuclear weapons program.

The first story was published on September 8. It indicated the tubes were surely intended for uranium enrichment, with no hint of the vociferous debate within U.S. intelligence agencies over this. The second story, on September 13, did mention the argue -- but also included this:

An administration official called discussions almost the aluminum tubes and Iraq's intentions "a normal role of the intelligence process"... He added that the best technical experts and nuclear scientists at laboratories like Oak Ridge supported the C.I.A. assessment [the tubes were for a nuclear program].

This would seem to settle the matter for whatsoever normal reader of the New York Times—sure, there are a few uninformed holdouts, only the people who really know what they're talking virtually think the tubes are role of a program for nuclear weapons.

In that location'due south merely i problem: what this "administration official" said was flatly false. Indeed, information technology's one of the near brazen lies told past the Bush administration in the lead up to war.

As the Senate Intelligence Commission found in July, 2004 the director of Oak Ridge's Field Intelligence Element said "the vast majority of scientists and nuclear experts at the DOE and the National Labs did not agree with the CIA'due south analysis."

Several month afterward in October, 2004, the New York Times itself reported that the authorities's "A-Squad" of experts -- including the head of Oak Ridge's national security avant-garde technology group -- strongly disagreed with the C.I.A.

And so I was curious: what would Judith Miller now say about this? Would she break her confidentiality agreement with an administration official who'd given her a falsehood to help deceive the world toward war?

Find out the answer here.

November xv, 2005

I Feel Bad For Imad Khadduri's Head

Imad Khadduri'southward caput is constantly, I believe, in the procedure of trying not to blow up. Khadduri is the Iraqi nuclear scientist who escaped to Canada in 1998. Before the state of war he was telling anyone who'd listen that the whole WMD case for war was preposterous.

Thus, when George Bush says others are "rewriting history," Khadduri's caput goes on loftier alert. Yous can read its most contempo attempts not to accident up hither:

The first radio interview with Amy Goodman from Democracy Now on November 27, 2002 upon finally managing to publish my first article " Republic of iraq's non-nuclear capability " in yellowtimes.org on November 21, 2002.

The first TV interview with CTV's CanadaAm Show on Jan 31, 2003 when I decided to come out publicly in full.

A TV interview with CBC (requires RealOne Actor) following Colin Powell'southward infamous lies to the United nations Security Council on February 8, 2003. (This is the audio runway of it on Windows Media Thespian for those without RealOne Player).

Etc.

November 14, 2005

And Let Me Add together: SEPTEMBER xi SEPTEMBER 11 SEPTEMBER 11

Here'southward my favorite part from George Due west. Bush's speech today:

...only ane person manipulated bear witness and misled the world -- and that person was Saddam Hussein.

Insane projection doesn't get much more insanely projectiony than that. I simply wish Bush-league had also said:

Only one person hither is named George W. Bush-league. And that person is Saddam Hussein.

Yet More Robert Dreyfuss Again

Talking Points Memo Cafe is hosting a give-and-take of Robert Dreyfuss' book Devil'southward Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam in their volume society this calendar week. It's genuinely interesting and so far, even though they're simply on the first day.

November 12, 2005

For All Your Robert Dreyfuss Needs

I'thou a longtime admirer of Robert Dreyfuss' writing for TomPaine.com and elsewhere. Though I haven't read information technology even so, I simply bought his new book Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. So I'grand pleased to run across he'south started his own website, including a blarghh.

I was particularly interested to read this contempo post (based on his piece of work on an important commodity near the current state of the CIA):

...there are a lot of angry spooks who would beloved nothing more to come talk to the Senate almost the administration’south malfeasance.

This is interesting because both the Senate Intelligence Commission "Stage I" report and the presidential WMD commission ended at that place was no pressure level exerted on intelligence analysts. This is completely preposterous, merely it was possible for the Bush administration to get abroad with it when political conditions were different. It may not exist possible for them to go along to shove this nether the rug for the Senate Phase 2 report, even though this ground has purportedly already been covered.

There's Always Room to Become More Petty

There is nothing zilch nothing more boring and petty than the personal sniping that makes upward 98% of writing about politics. Who's more morally beautiful than whom? Who's issued the correct thunderous denunciations of others for having or not having signed the right meaningless petition at the correct meaningless time? This is particularly prevalent among groups without power, making information technology then pointless and grimly silly yous despair for all humanity.

However, merely because information technology'due south boring and petty doesn't mean I won't participate in it. So, let'southward get started!

Back in October, 2002 Christopher Hitchens was given space in the Washington Mail to explain that the International Activeness Center is a "sinister sect" and "quasi-Stalinist." This was securely significant to Hitchens because the IAC played a function in organizing anti-Iraq war protests.

Now, for all I know the IAC is sinister and quasi-Stalinist. Merely if information technology is, I will never find out, because if I'yard ever on the verge of learning that much about fringe political groups I will commit suicide.

The reason I bring it upwards is because I was just watching The Trials of Henry Kissinger—largely based on an splendid book by Hitchens—and was amused to see this sequence:

Hither's Hitchens, being interviewed outside of a hotel where Henry Kissinger is making an advent.

Hitchens is joined on the sidewalk by a group protesting Kissinger. Hither nosotros run into him enthusiastically taking some of the group's literature. Anybody in the group has the same yellow signs.

I wonder who this group is that cares then much about the things Hitchens cares nigh? Let'south take a closer look at these signs...

Wait A Infinitesimal, WHAT DOES THAT SAY ON THE Bottom?!?!

Then, there y'all take it: Concluding PROOF that, because the International Action Center criticizes Henry Kissinger, all criticism of Henry Kissinger is illegitimate. Also, Christopher Hitchens luvs the people who luv Saddam which ways Christopher Hitchens luvs Saddam!!!!!

I am and then smart and my enemies are so so stupid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...hey, where'd everybody go?

November xi, 2005

Zarqawi and Bush-league Bomb Because We Permit Them

Sam Husseini, whose male parent lived in Zarqa equally a teenager, has this to say about the Jordan bombings:

Zarqawi's bombings are being used by [Hashemite kingdom of jordan'southward] monarchy to consolidate its power; and Zarqawi uses Abdullah's complicity in the crimes of the U.S. and Israel to commit mass murder of his ain. He achieves stardom through the martyrdom of others. Others who seemingly tin no longer tolerate the oppressor's incorrect, forgo the slings as arrows of outrageous fortune and take up arms against a ocean of troubles, as so cease them; at to the lowest degree for themselves, perhaps they are certain what comes after; but they practice then shooting out worse than slings and arrows at their victims, survivors and their loved ones.

Zarqawi's also violent even for Bin Ladin; but and so he's had it a bit harder. Some warned before the invasion of Iraq that such activity would spawn more Bin Ladins, I don't think anyone suggested whatsoever of them would be more ruthless.

More.

November 10, 2005

A Shocking Outbreak Of Honesty From Ted Koppel

A few weeks ago I fabricated these claims:

The mainstream media does a FANTASTIC job. Day in and day out, they plough in an extraordinary functioning—at what they exist to practise. And that is to make as much money equally possible...

The mainstream media is made upwards of gigantic corporations. Similar all corporations, they industry a product, which is their audience. They sell this product to their customers, which are other huge corporations.

Informing people virtually the world is not simply irrelevant to the purpose of making coin, but in many ways really HURTS a corporation'due south profitability. No business goes out of its way to piss off its owners and customers...if the need for huge profits ever conflicts with belongings the powerful responsible—and it will, constantly—you really shouldn't expect up.

I'chiliad pleased to see that, now that Ted Koppel is retiring from Nightline, he is maxim just about the same affair. Too bad he couldn't tell the truth in his previous forty years of being on national telly, simply it'south better late than never:

This is an manufacture, information technology'due south a concern. We exist to make money. We exist to put commercials on the air. The programming that is put on between those commercials is simply the bait we put in the mousetrap.

If it is true that David Letterman tin can draw a lot more viewers than 'Nightline' and Ted Koppel, if yous tin can make an extra $30 meg or $50 million a year, I absolutely understand they non only take the right only the fiduciary obligation to do that.

November 09, 2005

A Triumph Of The Human Spirit

Forty-eight hours ago I tried to upgrade this site to Movable Type 3.2. All I achieved was to break everything to the degree information technology was incommunicable for me to post new entries.

Fortunately, thanks to intensive technical support from my saintly father, everything at present appears to be working again. Merely please let me know if yous encounter anything peculiar.

UPDATE: Here'south something peculiar: at least in my browser, slightly unusual characters now show upwards as question marks. For instance, if you scroll down to the November 6 entry "How Interesting," in that location'south a question mark where em dashes and quote marks belongs.

Merely...if you go to the entry private page here, everything looks fine.

So I inquire the Net Overbrain: what's going on? How can it be fixed?

November 07, 2005

They Merely Sympathise Force

Terminal year, Seymour Hersh reported that much of the Bush administration believes "Arabs only understand strength." More than recently, in the famous New Yorker article about Brent Scowcroft, Scowcroft explained that Dick Cheney feels "one of the things you've got to do to Arabs is hit them betwixt the eyes with a large stick."

Fair plenty. We all know Arabs are crazed lunatics who are incapable of listening to reason. But...are they the just people on earth who but understand force? We take many enemies, and need to be conscientious nosotros don't overlook any of them.

Fortunately, using Google, we can search for and locate everyone who only understands force. In an endeavour to protect our people, I've done only that. These unsafe maniacs are listed below.

1. Adolf Hitler
ii. Al Qaeda
3. Americans
4. Three fifths of [Americans]
five. Angloamericans
vi. Arabs
7. The Arab heed
viii. Arab social club
9. The Arab Earth
10. Arabs and Muslims
11. An Arab... like his donkey
12. Arafat'south Al-Aksa Brigades
13. Both sides
14. The Bush administration
15. Chechens
16. The Chechens... mere savages
17. The Chinese
18. The Chinese government
19. Communist china
twenty. Communist governments
21. Darl McBride and Ralph Yarro
22. Europe
23. Evil
24. The government
25. Hamas
26. The Haredim
27. The ignorant, starving peasants [of Haiti]
28. Iraq under Saddam Hussein
29. Although information technology sounds harsh—the Iraqis
30. Ishmaelites
31. Islamic Jihad
32. Israelis
33. The Israeli enemy
34. The Israeli government
35. Israel'southward determination makers
36. The imperialists
37. The Jews
38. Not just the Arabs...even Jews, even other Likudniks
39. Khartoum
40. Lenin, Stalin, Tojo, Franco, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Osama Bin Laden, etc etc.
41. Milosevic and his kind
42. Muslim and Arab terrorists and thugs
43. Democratic people's republic of korea
44. Our enemies
45. The Pakistani military
46. The Palestinians
47. People
48. The people [in the Balkens]
49. The people of Israel
50. Petty dictators in that part of the world
51. The ragheads running around Fallujah
52. Radical killers and the countries backing them
53. Saddam Hussein
54. The Serbs
55. THESE [Serbian] BARBARIANS
56. Vii different TRIBES who'southward families have obtained a Nation State condition and are seen in Saudi Araberia (Saudi family unit), Jordan, Asseriya, et. Al� the familiy nation states and their lackies
57. The Soviets
58. Syria
59. Terrorists
threescore. Terrorists and the countries who support terrorism
61. Thugs
62. Today's enemy
63. The U.S.
64. Whoever says... "They simply empathize force"
65. The world
66. Your [computer arrangement'southward] users
67. Zionist thugs

Maureen Dowd And The Tao Of Stupidity; Likewise, A Joke

There are essentially two means of analyzing the world:

one. Personal: Everything happens considering of decisions by individuals
two. Structural: Everything happens because of institutional and historical forces

Manifestly, neither of these is completely correct. Just from what I tin can tell, it'south much more #2 than #i. On rare occasions individual decisions tin can take a decisive effect—simply for the most function, even the options of the most powerful people are express. If you're the CEO of GM and want to build cars with a minimal ecology bear on, you'll get virtually three feet before the shareholders toss you out and you lot're no longer CEO. Likewise if you lot're CEO of Viacom and want expert journalism, though at that place you might only become three inches.

And nonetheless, people near the noon of power almost e'er draw things in terms of individuals decisions, with no attending whatsoever paid to institutional forces.

With that in mind, allow's examine a contempo Washington Post profile of Maureen Dowd past Howard Kurtz:

"People who criticize me say I should have focused more than on policy or numbers," Dowd says. She insists she is non a liberal columnist, has no overarching ideology and chronicles the political wars every bit a Shakespearean drama. "In American history," she says, "all of our great traumas -- Vietnam, Watergate, Islamic republic of iran-contra, Iraq, Harriet Miers -- came from presidents' personal foibles..."

What'southward interesting most this is (1) Maureen Dowd isn't an idiot but (2) what she'due south saying is truly idiotic.

Allow'southward accept one of her examples, Vietnam. Our involvement there covered the terms of six presidents: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford. And our policy through each of them was largely the same.

So...did each of these half-dozen presidents have the aforementioned personal foibles? OF COURSE NOT. However Dowd can say this without understanding how weirdly dumb it is, and Howard Kurtz can record it without understanding information technology himself.

I submit it is no accident Dowd and Kurtz accept risen to the heights of their respective institutions. I further submit this is because institutions select for individuals who do not analyze institutions. This makes them, even the ones with some native intelligence, appear especially stupid.

Also, A JOKE

Here's some other part of the profile:

Dowd defenseless fire in 1998, the year of sex, thongs and audiotape, as her mocking style seemed perfectly suited to the impeachment melodrama.

After Pecker Clinton had his dog neutered, he told the White Firm Correspondents' Clan dinner that he saw the following column: "Buddy Got What He Deserved, by Maureen Dowd."

Back when all that was happening, Mike and I wrote this (unused) joke for Weekend Update:

A White Firm source today harshly criticized Pecker Clinton, saying, "I find the president's relentless humping distasteful and embarrassing." Fifty-fifty worse, that source was Clinton's dog.

Nov 06, 2005

How Interesting

Here'south a new article past Robert Parry. I wouldn't go just past Mark Crispin Miller's word—as great every bit he is, he tin can become a little overexcited—only it's clearly not but him maxim it:

Kerry Suspects Election 2004 Was Stolen

Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, has told acquaintances over the past yr that he suspects that the ballot was stolen, merely that he didn’t challenge the official results because he lacked difficult proof and anticipated a firestorm of criticism if he pressed the betoken.

â€Å"Kerry heard all the disquieting stories” most voting irregularities in Ohio and other states, said Jonathan Winer, a longtime Kerry adviser and a former deputy banana secretarial assistant of state. â€Å"Merely he didn’t accept the evidence to exercise more.”

The Massachusetts senator conceded to George W. Bush on Nov. iii, 2004, the twenty-four hours after the election when it became clear that the uncounted votes in the swing land of Ohio were insufficient to erase Bush’south narrow lead.

The move infuriated some Democratic activists who felt Kerry should accept lived upwardly to his campaign promise that he would make sure every vote was counted. In January 2005, as Bush’s victory was being certified by Congress, Kerry also refused to back a resolution challenging the fairness of the Ohio vote.

Marking Crispin Miller, a New York University professor and author of a new volume about the 2004 election entitled Fooled Again, said he discussed the voting event with Kerry on Oct. 28 when he encountered the senator at a political event.

In a Nov. four interview on Amy Goodman’s â€Å"Democracy Now,” Miller said he gave Kerry a copy of Fooled Again, prompting Kerry’s comments near the 2004 election results.

â€Å"He told me he now thinks the ballot was stolen,” Miller said. â€Å"He said he doesn’t believe that he is the person who can get out front on the issue considering of the sour grapes … question. Only he said he believes it was stolen. He says he argues nearly this with his Democratic colleagues on the Hill. He had just had a big fight with Christopher Dodd.”

Miller and Winer said Kerry suspected possible tampering with electronic voting machines, just that he was persuaded past his campaign’south top directorate, including veteran consultant Bob Shrum, that contesting the results merely would lead to accusations that Kerry was a sore loser...

November 05, 2005

Of import News From The Land Of Tea-Drinkers

The embarrassing affair most England is they seem to have this "rule of law" matter seriously. In other words, at least some of them believe the highest officials in their government shouldn't do things that are illegal. What sissies! Someday we volition have to beat them up for this.

Chris Floyd'southward latest cavalcade is about the latest manifestation of this British weakness, ane that's been covered hither barely at all:

Final week, a legal thunderbolt struck at the center of the grubby conspiracy that led the Us and Britain into an illegal war of aggression against Iraq. But this searing accident didn't fall in Washington, where a media frenzy raged over a White House indictment, only in the deeps of southern England, in a armed services courtroom, where a alone soldier stood against the full strength of the great war-criminal offense enterprise, armed only with a single, rusty, obsolete weapon: the law.

...[I]n Wiltshire, Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith faced a court martial after declaring that the Republic of iraq war was illegal and refusing to return for his third tour of duty at that place, the Guardian reports.

He has been charged with four counts of "disobeying a lawful command." But Kendall-Smith, a busy medical officeholder in the Imperial Air Strength, says that his study of the recently-emerged evidence nigh the lies, distortions and manipulations used to "justify" the invasion has convinced him that both the state of war and the occupation are "manifestly illegal." Thus any society arising from this criminal activity is itself an "unlawful command," the Sunday Times reports. In fact, the RAF's own transmission of law compels him to refuse such illegal orders, Kendall-Smith insists...

The moral rigor of his defiance has sent tremors through the British military establishment, already shaken by the strange, unexplained shooting deaths of two war machine inspectors investigating atrocity allegations in Iraq, the Guardian reports. British brass are panicky about the Goldsmith revelations; indeed, the leader of the Uk invasion force, Admiral Michael Boyce, said he now believes the British armed services does not take "the legal cover necessary to avoid prosecution for war crimes," the Observer reports. Boyce added that if he and his officers are eventually put on trial for such crimes, he'll make sure that Blair and Goldsmith are in the dock beside them.

Read it all.

Nov 04, 2005

New Bush-league Impeachment Poll

Check out the new After Downing Street impeachment poll. Or if you lot refuse to visit any website but this i, hither are some highlights:

• 53% of Americans agree with this statement, with 42% disagreeing:

"If President Bush-league did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."

• According to a new ABC poll, 55% of Americans believe the Bush administration "intentionally misled" the nation in making the case for war.

• Comparable polls in August and September 1998 establish merely 36% supported hearings to consider impeaching Clinton, and only 26% supported actually impeaching Clinton and removing him from office.

• Democrats.com (i of the members of the Afterwards Downing Street coalition) has launched Impeach Pac, a political activeness committee trying to enhance $100,000 for 2006 candidates who'll hope to back up the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

Something To Practice

Are you lot wandering effectually in a stupor, wondering what to practice with yourself today? I know I am. If yous're like me, at present would be a good fourth dimension to visit Afterward Downing Street's folio nearly H.R. 505. H.R. 505 is a bill introduced past Dennis Kucinich requiring the Bush administration to plow over to Congress all documents relating to the White Firm Republic of iraq Grouping, or "WHIG." WHIG was the clearing house for the pre-war pour of lies about Iraq, WMD and Al Qaeda.

While at After Downing Street, you tin observe out more about H.R. 505; acquire whether your representative is co-sponsoring the bill; and follow links to either urge them to do so or to thank them for having signed on already.

P.S. After Downing Street has commissioned another poll—again paid for past private citizens who think it's important—on how many Americans think Bush should exist impeached. Cheque dorsum hither soon for the results.

Mature Audiences Only

Here'due south some video-based comedy, all of which contains profanity and/or nudity, and is unsuitable for anyone under 85.

1. John Cleese's 1989 eulogy for Graham Chapman.

2. Eric Schwartz overcomes the handicap of the shameful T in his terminal name to sing a song.

iii. I'grand not like shooting fish in a barrel to shock, but I was genuinely taken ashamed by the B Squad'due south committment to their bounds.

November 03, 2005

Bush And Nixon Battle It Out

With the latest CBS poll putting Bush's approving rating at 35%, he'southward genuinely entered into Nixon territory. Since polling began, Nixon is the only ii-term president with lower blessing ratings at a comparable bespeak in his presidency:

GALLUP
Johnson 66% (October. 1965)
Reagan 63% (Oct. 1985)
Clinton 57% (Oct. 1997)
Eisenhower 57% (October. 1957)
Truman 49% (October. 1949)
Bush 39% (October. 2005)
Nixon 29% (Oct. 1973)

So, I've helpfully graphed both Bush-league's blessing rating and disapproval rating against Nixon's. Note Bush yet has about a yr to go earlier he gets to the point in Nixon's presidency when Nixon resigned.

(All polls are Gallup.)

November 02, 2005

America: Not So Practiced At Symbolism

And then, first we took over over Saddam's old Republican Palace for our headquarters in Baghdad. Here's how the Atlantic put it, although they accidentally used "Later" when they should accept used the term "Immediately to anyone whose skull isn't filled with inert goo":

In April of 2003, every bit the U.Due south. Army's Third Infantry Partition fought its way into the Light-green Zone with heavy loss of Iraqi life, the one time privileged residents fled in haste, elimination compounds and palaces—and indeed an entire district—that therefore seemed ready-fabricated for American utilise. Later it became obvious that the determination to install the occupation regime in the center of the city and to base it in the very aforementioned buildings that had been used past the recent dictatorship was a serious blunder...

Now it turns out nosotros're holding prisoners secretly at what appears to be part of the quondam Gulag:

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its virtually important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era chemical compound in Eastern Europe...

What next? I suggest we demonstrate our delivery to freedom and democracy by:

• invading Democratic people's republic of korea and installing the Bush twins in Kim Jong Il's palace every bit absolute rulers
• ownership Tuol Sleng for utilise as a new "counter-terrorism" chemical compound
• building a George Westward. Bush-league Center for the Report of Man Excellence on the site of Ed Gein's farmhouse

Let The Thinly-Sourced Rumor-Mongering Begin!

Would information technology be irresponsible to link to a Capitol Blue story but considering information technology bolsters my conventionalities system, even though Capitol Blue has been egregiously wrong in the by?

It would be irresponsible not to:

An uncivil war rages inside the walls of the W Wing of the White House, a bitter, acrimonious war driven past a failed agenda, destroyed brownie, dwindling public back up and a President who lapses into Alzheimer-like periods of incoherent babbling...

The war erupted into total-blown shout fests at Military camp David this past weekend where decorum bankrupt downward in staff meetings and longtime aides threatened to quit unless Rove goes...

White Firm staff members say the White House is â€Å"similar a wartime bunker” where shell-shocked aides hide from those who disagree with their deportment and office pools speculate on how long certain senior aides will last.

Bush, whose obscenity-laced atmosphere tantrums increase with each new setback and scandal, abruptly concluded one Camp David coming together by telling anybody in the room to â€Å"get fuck yourselves” before he stalked out of the room.

Senior aides depict Bush as increasingly â€Å"edgy” or â€Å"nervous” or â€Å"unfocused.” They say the President goes from apparent coherent thought one moment to aimless rambles well-nigh political enemies and those who are â€Å"out to get me.”

â€Å"It’s worse than the days when Ronald Reagan’south Alzheimer’southward began setting in,” one longtime GOP operative told me privately this week. â€Å"You don’t know if he’s going to be coherent from one moment to the side by side. What scares me is if he lapses into ane of those fogs during a public advent.”

Nov 01, 2005

I'm Confused And Disoriented

Assistance! I've fallen into a bizarre alternate universe in which the Autonomous political party really has some balls!

More than on this new world we detect ourselves in hither.

Where We're Going We Don't Need Roads! Or Even The Most Basic Humanity!

I was pleased to come across this in the recent, giant New York Times story on pensions:

Critics similar Grover Norquist, the tax-cut crusader, lampoons pensions every bit remnants of a stodgy, Old World economy.

Aye! Back in olden times retirees wanted to "eat" and "not die." Some even had "families" that they "loved" and wanted to "see more than than once a decade." Fortunately, those disgusting remnants of the by will be swept away, now that we live in fusion-powered individual pods and have used genetic engineering to eliminate all human emotional attachments.

Steve Martin, Chaser At Police force

And then, now nosotros know what Scooter Libby'south defense is going to exist:

Libby, who was charged with five felonies, is putting the finishing touches on a new legal and public relations team. It will argue in court and in public that he is guilty of nothing more than than having a foggy memory...

Clearly ane of the people Libby'due south hired is Steve Martin:

Ii simple words. 2 simple words in the English language: "I forgot!" How many times do nosotros let ourselves get into terrible situations considering we don't say "I forgot"? Let'due south say yous're on trial for armed robbery. You say to the estimate, "I forgot armed robbery was illegal."

smithlibehiss.blogspot.com

Source: http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/2005_11.html

Share this post