Why Democrats Will Lose Seats in 110th Congress

Via Seeing The Forest...

Over at Daily Kos, there is a clear and easily comprehensible explanation for why Democrats will lose seats in the 110th Congress— even if the integrity of the vote could be protected against Republican fraud.

Those of you dragged over to The MojoWire by our taunts on right-wing blogs will have nothing to learn by reading this article. My left-of-center friends, who certainly know many Democrats that remain unconvinced of the essential truth of this, should read this guy's take. The Democrats have already lost the 2006 mid-terms— it's over already. The best you can do is an inspiring defeat. This guy explains why. He's right, and you all know it. You don't have to admit it in public, but you better believe it in private. If you don't, you're going to lose the 2008 elections, and every election after that until you do believe it.

Take it from a guy who knows what it's like to work for a company with branding trouble, and who has seen what it takes to turn that around with his own eyes. Democrats have major branding issues— especially on the Iraq War™. Your product line is too complicated. You have no way to reach your customers directly. Your retailers and distributors are actively hostile to presenting your products in a fair light. You have good ideas, and your products should be competitive, but the market won't switch from brand R to brand D just because your product is better. It needs a better brand.

On A Lighter Note...

Here's a political stunt by some Texan atheists who've just earned mad props in my book. They're encouraging people to trade in their hardcopies of holy scripture for pornography. (I'm actually wondering if there isn't an arbitrage opportunity there somewhere...)

Outrage!

Look, there are some cases that are just so clear cut that they defy left and right posturing. And you know this is the case here when the Mojowire and Instapundit are on the same page, something has gone seriously wrong.

Here is the gist from Battle Panda:

Cops mistakenly break down the door of a sleeping man, late at night, as part of drug raid. Turns out, the man wasn't named in the warrant, and wasn't a suspect. The man, frigthened for himself and his 18-month old daughter, fires at an intruder who jumps into his bedroom after the door's been kicked in. Turns out that the man, who is black, has killed the white son of the town's police chief. He's later convicted and sentenced to death by a white jury. The man has no criminal record, and police rather tellingly changed their story about drugs (rather, traces of drugs) in his possession at the time of the raid.

Can you possibly get anymore whack?! I am glad to see some redstaters coming correct about the whole gun rights thing here. Yeah, this is what happens in an armed society when the cops go rogue. Not saying it's a good thing, just an inevitable thing.

But more to the point, people need to get jacked about this one. I know there are so many examples across the United States of racist cops treating the justice system like a two-dollar hooker during fleet week, but here is one that is so clear cut and is such an example of how far gone some places in this country are, that if we don't draw a line here, then where? If not this case, then which case?

Time to suit up for this one...

mojo sends

Update 1.0: Please take a moment and break off an email for Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and let him know that the world is watching!

Update 1.1: Punk Ass Bitch! has disabled his e-communications part of the website. But at least the phone number and address are listed...

Update 1.2 According to kind commenter Mr. Stephen Gordon, of the fine libertarian blog Hammer of Truth, Gov. Barbour can be contacted here. Please let him know what you think...

Fuan no Shotai!

I am vastly amused by this analogy put forward in an opinion piece carried by Asahi Shimbun.

Kiichi Fujiwara, a University of Tokyo professor, observes in his book "Fuan no Shotai!" (The real cause of anxiety!) from Chikuma Shobo that the way international politics is being run by the United States today is similar to how the Tokugawa shogunate-and-domain system worked in Japan in the Edo Period (1603-1867).
[...]
There is growing censure against the "shogun." It is time for Japan to stop being his loyal vassal and map out its own withdrawal strategy.

Via pessimist writing at The Left Coaster.

Game Theory For Dummies

We're finally starting to see the War™ party talk about "victory" in Iraq.

In some ways, this can be really maddening. The typical left-of-center reaction to this kind of talk has been to remark that "victory" in Iraq remains a nebulous and ill-defined concept, and to wonder aloud what the fsck the War™ party is talking about.

The President, his administration, and their supporters have taken great pains and gone to extraordinary lengths to stand on the principle that it would be a grave and terrible mistake to set goals and objectives for the War™ mission in Iraq upon which progress can be measured, evaluated and compared against what was budgeted. (You remember the budget, right? It's that thing that conservatives believe liberals never think about.) Put simply, setting goals and objectives are the last things these people want to do— it would, they insist, signal the terrorists what it would take to force the occupation to concede defeat.

I am, of course, puzzled by the War™ party's approach. To me, as a guy whose résumé includes a stint working alongside professional game designers, the word "victory" is a technical term. The War™ party, however, doesn't seem to use the word with anything near the technical precision I prefer. Victory is a terminating condition when one or more players achieve their game objectives. It is to be compared with Defeat, which is a similar condition when one or more players fails. It's all about whether players achieve their objectives or not. Contrast this with the explanation of Victory as it pertains to the mission of the War™ party in Iraq.

I recently heard the definition of Victory in Iraq explained by a certain nationally syndicated radio talk show host with tens of millions of daily listeners who regularly claims his talent is "on loan" from God. He said, definitively, "Victory... is what we are trying to achieve." (By "we," of course, it should be assumed he means the United States, its armed forces, the President, and their political supporters— even though, he's clearly not any of the first three, and we should all be dubious whether the fourth really has very much to do with it.)

Those of you in the Reality-Based Community who are noticing the tautological nature of this argument are probably suspicious that our unnamed radio host was just vamping, filling space between thoughts with empty blather in order to prevent dead air while he searched for the words to use.

Wrong.

This really is the working definition of Victory in Iraq. "Victory is what we are trying to achieve. Fullstop." Okay, not quite a full stop there— because, immediately after defining Victory as whatever it is that the War™ party is trying to achieve this week, he proceeded to add this qualification: "And, it's what Democrats are trying to undermine." That only adds to the tautology.

The logic is really quite impressive when you unpack it. Not only has the War™ party established how the objectives for terminating the operation in Iraq are the achievement of whatever unspecified conditions they may find politically convenient for, well, terminating the operation, they have also defined the conditions in such a way that whatever the Democrats can plausibly be said to be "undermining," that's what they're trying to accomplish.

It's beautiful, really. Whenever they finally decide it's expedient to terminate the operation, they'll be able to declare it a Victory by choosing the terminating conditions for the Iraq operation from the set of objectives that can plausibly be said 1) have been already met, and 2) were at one time or another discounted as unlikely, unrealistic or undesirable by their political opponents.

If worse comes to worst, they will finally declare the victory condition to have been the comparatively simple task of removing Saddam Hussein from power and rebooting the Islamic totalitarian dictator software. While Democrats and other opponents of the War™ party have expressed basically no objection to the bare fact of Saddam Hussein's fall from power, they have expressed the undesirability of various outcomes, especially the most likely ones. The narrative practically writes itself. Now, the War™ party doesn't want to settle for that outcome as their victory condition just yet, because they're still hopeful they can get a result that won't make them ashamed to look in the mirror every morning— but, mark my words, if they have to settle for that, they will.

Once again, I would remind our friends that the way to challenge these views— that the difference between Victory and Defeat literally is the difference between the President's plan for redeployment of N thousand troops, over a time interval of M weeks and months, tied to event milestones X, Y and Z, and the same redeployment over the same time interval and event milestones proposed by the President's opponents— is to ask what is the pure cash value of the Victory they envision in Iraq over and above the cost of Defeat.

What should we expect to get in exchange for the $XXX+ billion we are spending on the project?

They're supposed to be conservatives. Let them tell us how much insurance we're expecting to have to buy. We're smart people. We can decide for ourselves whether the up front premiums are worth the coverage we're supposed to get in exchange.

If the terminating conditions for the operation are supposed to result in the achievement, rather than failure, of the War™ party objectives— and it's important to keep the objectives secret from the insurgents for fear they might learn ahead of time what conditions will force the occupiers to concede defeat— then we must at least have some idea how much the Victory should be worth in dollars.

That conservatarians can't place a dollar figure on the value of the Victory they insist must be achieved is, I think, a good argument they really don't place any value on it at all. They're more interested in attempting to manufacture a reality in which, whatever the conditions are in Iraq when the operations are terminated, those are the conditions that are declared to be Victory, because the important thing is not terminating the operations— the important thing is being able to declare the end of operations a Victory and have everybody believe that Defeat has been averted.

The one little bug in their process is... for the Victory to be worth something, it has to be worth something.

Assistance Requested

The flag should never be displayed with the union down,
except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.
—THE FLAG CODE, Title 36, U.S.C., Chapter 10, § 176 (a).
As amended by P.L. 344, 94th Congress, approved July 7, 1976.
I am posting this on the blog in opposition to The Patriot Act, which represents an extreme danger to the life, property and liberty of all persons living in the United States.

Latest From Asshat Wingnuttery Land...

This is from an ongoing "conversation" I am having with the cadre over at Junk Yard Blog. We have been talking about Iraq and the various specious arguments and mendacity that lead us there. Let's pick things up midstream...

...
First: Nice take, but contemplate using the [return] key once in a while. It makes it easier to read.

Next: "We went to Iwo Jima as part of a grand strategy to defeat fascism abroad." This seems to be the main thread of your equivalence argument. However, this is not what I was addressing when responding to B’s idiotic words above.

But since you so bravely volunteered to carry water for him, then fine. (And I will have a longer take on this on my blog, not that B. Preston, Jimbo, AOG or the others have the stones to roll in there and mix it up…)

You essential pre/post 9-11 world take is well put. My only question is then “who’s next?” Because I have a whole list of countries that should be receiving a visit from my friends down the road at Camp Pendleton, even here in our own back yard so to speak.

But on the subject of threats, then here is an interesting question. What would you say to immediate pre-emptive war against a country that 1. possesses and has used weapons of mass destruction, 2. has committed attrocities both on the battlefield as well as against civilian populations, 3. has made war directly on the United States, and 4. has committed genocide?

Would this country be one of the post 9-11 nations whose mere existence we can not risk?

"Liberals are quick to point out that there “are no links between Al Queda and Iraq”, but fail to admit to even themselves that this conclusion was reached only in the sense that there was no proof of any operational links between the two in any single attack on the US."

Well, yes, we would prefer to make war on those who are actually threatening us. And your laundry list of alleged links between Saddam, is both suspect and could also be equivocated into a list of activities that encompass most of the countries in the region… Or are you saying the Iraq was the only country besides Afghanistan that had Al Qaeda members roaming around in it.

Aswer al Islam is a different story though. As far as getting “poison gas” tech from Iraq. I am dubious of that claim, especially, given that they were equally as hostile to Saddam’s regime as they were to their primary targets, the Kurds, and really had little to do with Iraq as a corporate political entity one way or the other.

"You say Iraq doesn’t rise to the level of comparison in the War on Terror to Iwo Jima. I say it surpasses it, favoring comparably to Germany in WWII. There are greater links between the two we face now."

Well, you can go ahead and say it. I still say it’s a stoopid comparison being used to by an increasingly desparate faction of the right to grasp at some sort of moral imperative for the failed policy of the Iraq conflict and convince an increasingly skepitcal public that the various bits of lies and mendacity that lead us to this point were unimportant and that we should remain in Iraq.

And we haven’t even addressed the issue of what victory looks like, (and we knew what it would look like in WWII) because if you listened to President Chimp’s speech the other day, he as much said that the Iraqis are about ready to take over for themselves.

So why the hell are we still there?
...

And it is this final question that seems to evade them most of all. I mean, if the idea of WWII is to defeat fascism, and that conflict is more urgent today than then, why aren't actively whacking out regimes all over the world right now? It's not like there is any shortage of violent totalitarian a-holes out there who need beat down.

But this idea is ludicrous. This is not WWII. It's not in the ball park, not in the same league, not even in the same sport. And the more the other side tries to hide the ball on why we're there, the more the moral bankruptcy of their cause becomes apparent. First it was Al Qaeda in Iraq, then it was Saddam's WMDs, then it was spreading democracy, now it's WWII all over again...

Fortuantely, the American public is catching on to the various lies told to get us into Iraq, and the various lies being told to keep us there. If I was still in the service, I would be raging mad at this administration for this. These young men and women deserve better civilian leadership than these clowns.

And the very worst part of all of this is that the crew over at JYB still won't answer my most pressing questions...how typical is that?

mojo sends

Chip Berlet's Dominionism 101

Given recent events here at the online presence of MojoWire, I think it would be helpful for our new commenters to review an introduction to some of the terminology we use around here that may not be familiar to them. One of them is "dominionism," i.e. the political tendency that channels the apocalyptic religious energy of conservative evangelical Christians into participation in elections and legislative campaigns.

Over at the Campaign To Defend The Constitution, Chip Berlet has written Dominionism 101, a nice introduction to the subject and a short, simple taxonomy for separating the sheep from the goats. If you haven't read it, you should. I just read it, and I've decided it's time to increase the frequency of my visits to the shooting range.

Whaaa????

Caption contest underway here (at LeftInSF.Com).

Is It Time To Defect To The West Yet?

Consider the following [edited] news article. We've changed the language to disguise from the reader the identity of the country where this is happening. See if you can guess. (Answer will follow the excerpt.)

CAPITOL CITY - The Ministry of Foreign Policy has been using political litmus tests to screen Imperial citizens before they can be sent overseas to represent the Empire of Foo, weeding out critics of the Brutus administration's Eurasia policy, according to ministry officials and internal e-mails.

[...]
Current and former officials involved with the overseas speakers program of the Ministry of Foreign Policy said potential candidates were vetted -- via Internet searches, for example -- for any comments or writings that criticized Imperial policy.

"There's definitely a political litmus test. You don't have to be a Party Member, but you better not have said anything against them," one official said.

The official said he knew of no blacklist of banned scholars. "But there certainly is a 'white list' of those who can go," he added.

He and others agreed to discuss the Ministry of Foreign Policy practices only on condition of anonymity, saying they feared retaliation for exposing them.
[...]

Here is the original article in the Duluth News Tribune.

Okay, Just STOP right there!

Josh Marshall points to a story making it's way through the belly of the media snake about bedrooms kept on hand by Brent Wilkes for use by Republican Congressman. How they exactly they used them I leave to your imagination.

I just want to say that while I appreciate the efforts by the GOP congressional leadership to annihilate themselves, I absolutely draw the line at their sexual escapades. Nothing is more grotesque than the thought of these fat GOP slobs pawing 300/hr Beltway hookers dressed in their finest rented SS Uniforms. That is below average GOP. I know you want to self-destruct, but show some freakin mercy and stop with the Prostitutes.

I cannot be any clearer here. I don't want to know ANYTHING about the sexual habits of GOP Congressman. Look GOP, if some lobbyist offers you a free rented bedroom and a posh Washington Hotel, and sends you on up to meet a "friend" of his, just turn back around, head back to the office and screw that nice intern you've been canoodling with, I'm sure he'll be happy to oblige. Now, if you want to take bribes and waste our precious national security resources to personally enrich yourself, you clearly don't need my permission. I'm happy to allow you to cut your own throats in that way.

If you cannot keep your little Limbaugh in your jockey shorts, then go ahead and get a nice BJ from a sweet California girl like Billy Clinton. A hummer and a money shot in a well apportioned office I can handle. But I suspect that allowed to cut loose in a alleged secret hotel suite with someone else paying the "escort" rates was not a PG13 sexual escapade, but a night of weirdness that would make Caligula puke.

So Cut it the hell out GOP.

Why Leave Iraq Now?

Retired Lt. Gen. William Odom has some pretty good answers to that question.

And listen Redstate, this guy is an old cold warrior of the Reagan/Bush years, serving as a line officer in Vietnam, and director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1985, he served as assistant chief of staff for intelligence, the Army's senior intelligence officer. From 1977 to 1981, he was military assistant to the president's assistant for national security affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

This is not the anti-American ranting of some slack-jawed pinko hippies, like us here at the wire... this guy is the real thing. And he has arguably one of the most solid takes for getting out of Iraq we have read in a long time. (Granted a lot of the ideas are ones we have been going on about for a while now...)

mojo sends

Attention, Ignorant Jethroes!

This article and its attendant comment thread at the excellent Making Light contain several important lessons in how not to reveal— to everyone and their posterity, for all time— that you are a benighted lummox.

Sayeth Patrick Nielsen Hayden:

An exchange in the comments section of Don’t Bomb Us: A Blog by Al Jazeera Staffers:

Anonymous: Though you broadcast these screeds in detail because it is “news” that you have a “duty” to report, when I search the Al Jazeera site for the phrase “honor killings” I get nada. Not a single hit. Don’t you think that the murder of women throughout the Islamic world by their uncles and fathers and husbands because these women have the audacity to date who they want or express what they think is newsworthy?

Mohammed [of Don’t Bomb Us]: You make mention that our website does not mention “Honor Killings”—that is true since we don’t use American English—we use English English. Try your search using “honour” instead—or just click here for Google results.

You see, sometimes little cultural misunderstands can cause such a big fuss.

Let’s keep talking. Enjoy the weekend…!

Take the hints, Jethroes... there's plenty for everyone.

Dark Comedy Friday

In lieu of a MojoWire radio program tomorrow. Cope.

(Image courtesy Jesus' General, or somebody he knows— it's not clear. Mail me, and I'll fix the attribution if PatriotBoy confirms.)

The People! United! Will Never Be Defeated!

Okay, this is kinda weird...



(Via our new favorite toy, TheRobb.)

The Nashville Municipal Auditorium doesn't appear to be publicizing this as an event open to the public. So, gee— thanks Robb, but I'm not exactly sure why I should be marking my calendar. How far are we expecting this revolution to go? I mean, is it expected to be confined withing the auditorium, or can I expect it to spread? Is there anything in particular I should bring? Ammunition, maybe?

Update 1.0: I changed the link now that I've found the original source of the poster. And yeah— it's what it looks like. The Tennessee Baptist Convention is hosting another event for the Youth Evangelism Conference (beware that link if you don't have much patience for xtian fascists— it's a d10/d6 sanity check).

Please Introduce Yourselves to TheRobb

Everyone, your attention please...

I have been exchanging plesantries with "TheRobb" over at The Perspective, for the past couple of days, and he was kind enough to come here and leave a comment in a piece I wrote on 60 minutes a couple of weeks ago.

Please take a moment to go to his blog and read, and drop him a comment or two... as a neighborly, friendly gesture...

mojo sends

Thrill-Kill-Drive-Bys...

I hate to say it but WE FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!

Tip of the hat to Bare Knuckle Politics for putting up the video of these hideous redneckistanis allegedly from Aegis Specialist Risk Managment, which on its website claims to oversee more than 20,000 mercenaries working in in the exciting and growing field of private security in Iraq.

Oh my freeking God, this makes me pig-biting mad, and for no less a reason than that I, Sean and in particular the dread Dr. Strychnine have been raging about this for years and been told we were nothing more than slack-jawed conspiracy minded America hating pansies who want nothing less than total defeat for our valiant fighting men and women in Asia.

All the while, Bubba and the rest of the gang decide to grab a 12-pack of cheap foul smelling beer, grab a camcorder, some old Elvis 8-tracks, and go grease some random hajis for shits 'n giggles on a Saturday afternoon after church.

mojo sends

Update 1.0: And this is how the asshats are responding to this latest outrage. Pretending that a thrill-kill trophy video somehow represents documentation of a valid military operation. And the Elvis? Who knows...

Could This Be Any More Weird?

Did President Bush seriously consider bombing the Al Jazeera corporate headquarters in Qatar last year?

Bill O'Reilly is a puke!

Via Crooks and Liars, it appears that William is cooking up a nice little blacklist of Web sites that "smear" him (call him out for being a worthless puke). I say: We need to be on this list.

C'mon William, sign us up! Please put "The Mojowire" at the top of your list of Web Sites that regard you with contempt and amusement.

And have a "Happy Holidays"!

60 Minutes Shilling for DHS

Last night, the CBS flagship news magazine 60 Minutes aired a hideous piece of pro-administration propaganda, trotting out a couple of violent a-holes in a piece on so-called "Eco-Terrorism," and making sure that everyone knows that they are the "Number one domestic terror threat in the United States."

Not neo-Nazis, the Klan or anti-abortion extremists... no, the Earth Liberation Front and their swirly-eyed co-conspirators at the Animal Liberation Front...

And at no point, did the report even attempt to draw a distinction between out-of-touch violent sociopaths with delusions of political grandeur and the legitimate political movement in this country to change environmental policy and preserve environmental quality.

Please contact CBS' 60 Minutes and express displeasure with their capitulation to the Bush Administration.

mojo sends

Sometimes, You Feel Like A Nut

I occasionally post comments at a religious blog called Stones Cry Out. Don't ask me why— I can't quite figure it out myself.

Recently, one of their editors produced this lovely gem of wisdom, which I will reproduce in its entirety below so you don't have to click through the link and feed them additional advertising revenue.

Derb On Torture

This pretty much sums up my thoughts. Liberal readers, fire away.

We here at MojoWire relish invitations like that.

Even better, Derbyshire's pet homunculus followed up this noxious little dropping with a comment of his own. Here it is for your convenience:

I condemn that sort of thing that happened at Abu Ghraib. The other stuff...I think our laws should allow some leeway when interrogating high-ranking terrorists who are likely to have knowledge of terror plots.

At that point, I snapped and fired off a heated rejoinder. You can see what I wrote in the comments. As of this posting, I haven't seen a response.

So, I taunted him a second time. Here's a reprint.

I didn't think you'd have any words of condemnation for holding family members as hostages, or beating prisoners to death, or smothering them to death with sleeping bags, or drowning them within an inch of their life, of solitary confinement for several months at a stretch, or any of that other stuff that Americans have done and continue to do.

The good news is that we only have the word of highly unreliable and self-interested, corrupt officials that the dead and tortured victims of this policy were actually "high-ranking" terrorists and enemy fighters. Sure, the Supreme Court insisted that the administrati recognize the habeus corpus rights of the remaining detainees who haven't yet been tortured to death— but, the GOP Chamber of People's Deputies is getting ready to "overrule" their interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. This is, of course, good news for you because it provides you with a transparently thin veneer of cover for your anti-Christian bloodlust, which allows you to argue that you only support officially sanctioned torture and murder of the Enemies to the State when they can't prove their innocence.

Don't look now, Matt. That might be Moloch you're worshipping, not Christ.

And these people call us a fifth column.

Update 1.0: Fixed the link to the comment thread.

Pravda On The Potomac Has Flipped

Ever since 9/11, the Washington Post has been a determined and unrelenting supporter of the Administrations response both in Afghanistan and Iraq. As the war in Iraq devolved into the chaotic mess it has become, the Post consistently stood by the Administration, echoing it's agitprop and talking points as if Karl Rove were writing the editorials themselves, not to mention the dishonest and to be quite frank, worthless journalism by several reporters convering the Administration and the Pentagon. We won't even start on Howie Kurtz and their stable of pimps in the Op/Ed section such as Cohen, Will and Ignatious. So you know, when these people ultimately flipped on the White House, they were going to flip hard.

From the Washington Post:

VICE PRESIDENT Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans. "Cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the United States. The State Department annually issues a report criticizing other governments for violating it. Now Mr. Cheney is asking Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of torture.

His position is not just some abstract defense of presidential power. The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention centers abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors. Its prisoners have "disappeared," like the victims of some dictatorships. The Justice Department and the White House are known to have approved harsh interrogation techniques for some of these people, including "waterboarding," or simulated drowning; mock execution; and the deliberate withholding of pain medication. CIA personnel have been implicated in the deaths during interrogation of at least four Afghan and Iraqi detainees. Official investigations have indicated that some aberrant practices by Army personnel in Iraq originated with the CIA. Yet no CIA personnel have been held accountable for this record, and there has never been a public report on the agency's performance.

It's not surprising that Mr. Cheney would be at the forefront of an attempt to ratify and legalize this shameful record. The vice president has been a prime mover behind the Bush administration's decision to violate the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and to break with decades of past practice by the U.S. military. These decisions at the top have led to hundreds of documented cases of abuse, torture and homicide in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Cheney's counsel, David S. Addington, was reportedly one of the principal authors of a legal memo justifying the torture of suspects. This summer Mr. Cheney told several Republican senators that President Bush would veto the annual defense spending bill if it contained language prohibiting the use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by any U.S. personnel.

The senators ignored Mr. Cheney's threats, and the amendment, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), passed this month by a vote of 90 to 9. So now Mr. Cheney is trying to persuade members of a House-Senate conference committee to adopt language that would not just nullify the McCain amendment but would formally adopt cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as a legal instrument of U.S. policy. The Senate's earlier vote suggests that it will not allow such a betrayal of American values. As for Mr. Cheney: He will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture.

I think it's clear, the Post has been listening to the Wire. We've never been able to account for all the listeners. We just assumed it was DHS. About Freakin' time guys.

What He Said!

CNN reporting on W's attempt to bail out a sinking a ship actually quoted the President as saying the following:

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began."

Truer words never passed his pie hole!

mojo sends

I Sing This Song Every Year On 11-11

And The Band played Waltzing Mathilda

Now when I was a young man, I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of a rover
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback
Well, I waltzed my Mathilda all over
Then in 1915, my country said son
It's time you stopped rambling, there's work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat, and they gave me a gun
And the marched me away to the war
...
[get the rest of the lyrics from the official site, linked below]

(Eric Bogle)

Did The GOP Just Go Crazy and Pass Out in Front of Me?

It looks like the GOP on the hill is about to eat itself. This bit from AP via Yahoo.

WASHINGTON - House Republican leaders canceled a planned vote Thursday on a $51 billion budget-cut package in the face of a revolt over cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and student loans.

The story, which is still developing, apparently, would naturally represent a serious bitchslap from a cosmic pimp hand for the House leadership, particuarly Hastert, Blount and their cadre on the Conference committee...

Look, I hate to chortle about this...

No, who I am fooling ... I will gleefully chortle about this...

But amidst my chortling, I am forced to ask the questions: Did last Tuesday's election results get the attention of some folks on the Hill? Are they a tad less swaggering today than Monday?

I am going to want to see who the leader(s) of the rebel faction is(are)... hard to read too much more into it right now other than that the GOP leadership cadre seems to be in the midst of a train wreck of epic proportions. We'll update as we get more...

Update 1.0: Just get on over to Comrade Joshua for a pretty good take on what's going on... namely that W's ship of state is rapidly taking on water and the First Class Passengers have just noticed the captain and crew jumping over board... Here's the money shot: "Tax cuts used to be a cakewalk for W, now he can't even get them out of committee."

Yeah, Joshua, pass the popcorn...

mojo sends

"That's No Moon" —Obi-wan Kenobi, A New Hope

Update on the French rioting... apparently, the editorial board at Le Monde is having the same bad feeling as me.

...Si le pays veut éviter le renouvellement de la catastrophe électorale de 2002, où Jean-Marie Le Pen avait été présent au second tour, il serait temps que ceux qui aspirent à le diriger oublient la politique-spectacle pour réfléchir sans complaisance aux banlieues et à la reconstruction d'une partie de la société française qui les attend.

(Almost unbearably bad machine translation is here.)

If the country wants to avoid the renewal of the electoral catastrophe of 2002, where Jean-Marie the PEN had been present at the second turn, it would be time that those which aspire to direct it forget the policy-spectacle to reflect without kindness on the suburbs and the rebuilding of part of the French company which awaits them.

Yeah. Why do I have this nagging feeling that somebody with a political agenda might be deliberately trying to escalate the violence in France to provide exactly the subtext here that Le Monde is warning about? After all, I'm sure it isn't hard to find people here in America as well as in Europe who would regard a Le Pen victory in the next election cycle as quite the opposite of a catastrophe.

"I Have A Bad Feeling About This..." —Leia Organa, Empire Strikes Back

It's what? Thirteen days of rioting in France, and only now are the curfews going into effect? [Original French edition here.]

I'm starting to get the nagging worry that maybe there's more to this story than we're ever likely to see in the media coverage. My concern is about the inevitable reaction to this violence at the polls. I'll bet Jean-Marie Le Pen is laughing until he wets his pants. The socialists are so going to blow this one.

Le Parti socialiste s'est inquiété lundi du respect des «principes de liberté» alors que le président du groupe socialiste à l'Assemblée nationale Jean-Marc Ayrault a jugé mardi qu'il serait «indécent» d'en faire une «opération politicienne» et que «l'heure des bilans viendrait».

It would be "indecent" to make a "political operation" out of these events. My god. Could you people be any more dumb? We are so doomed. If France goes blue, then the EU will be torn apart. Just what everyone needs. (AAIEIEE!)

When Torture Is Officially Sanctioned...

...we should not be surprised when stories like this start making the rounds.

The FBI and Capitol Police are investigating the vicious attack of a top Senate staffer at her home last week amid concerns that the assault might be related to her work on the Finance Committee.

Emilia DiSanto, chief investigator for committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), arrived at her suburban Virginia home after work Wednesday about 6:30 p.m. As she was unloading belongings from her car, a 6-foot-1-inch white man dressed in black struck her repeatedly with an unidentified object believed to be a baseball bat.

After she screamed to her family inside the house, the assailant fled. DiSanto was transported to Inova Fair Oaks Hospital, where she was treated for significant upper-body injuries. Nine staples were needed to close her head wound.

(Via Comrade Joshua.)

Here's the paragraph that caught my attention (emphasis mine):

Grassley is known for his aggressive oversight of the public and private sector. Over the past year, he has scrutinized healthcare fraud, organ-donation procedures used by hospitals, drug-safety matters and the use of nonprofit groups related to former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Purely coincidental, I'm sure.

"We Do Not Torture"

Maximum Leader Speaks:

I'll save you the trip, though; here's the money shot:

We are gathering information about where the terrorists may be hiding. We are trying to disrupt their plots and plans. Anything we do to that effort, to that end, in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law. We do not torture.

That's just fscking precious... Anything we do, as long as it can somehow be filed under the rubric of anti-terrorism where no accountability exists is, by default, legal

Outstanding! Quick, rescind the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878! I can't wait to see what Maximum Leader and Vice President Big Time will decide what's legal next.

Good thing their gettin' those votes on the Supreme Court...

mojo sends

Bush Lied, And Your Sons And Daughters Died.

We told you. (It's not in the archives, apparently, but we did tell you in one of the radio programs.)

Remember the certification that George W. Bush was required to send to Congress before launching the invasion of Iraq? We were pretty sure at the time that it contained a bald-faced lie. We couldn't prove it, mind you— but we told you to pay attention. Sooner or later, we said, that certification would likely bounce back and bite the Neocon cabal in their collective ass.

Now comes The Left Coaster with this excellent report to show that the President has a real problem on his hands. Apparently, Senator Carl Levin has got hold of a recently declassified document that catches C+ Augustus in the Big Lie for which no one yet dares call him out in public.

From The Left Coaster:

...

This latest revelation means that at the time Bush justified the commencement of war against Iraq consistent with what was required under Public Law 107-243, he certified things not in evidence, and made claims to Congress (Saddam’s active operation of a WMD program and Saddam’s assistance to Al Qaeda) that he, Cheney, and Rummy already knew were false.

He lied to Congress to start the war. And now 53% of the American public says that if it is clear that Bush lied, they would support Congress considering impeachment proceedings against the president.

...

We told you the certification was a lie. Now, we know the President lied. We told you.

Now can we please, finally, for once, talk seriously about possible articles of impeachment?

To Nuke or not Nuke?

I tend to agree with James previous post that utilizing the filibuster as a key strategy in defeating the nomination of Alito would be a perilous idea. It is a distinct possibility that Democrats could end up trying to filibuster, lose it in the exercise of the nuclear option, and still end looking like demented chumps to the public. Another likely possibility is that a filibuster is attempted, but Democrats can't hold together to sustain it. In any case, the filibuster is too unpredictable to rely on as a central strategy. Judge Alito's record needs to be carefully reviewed and opposition needs to be tied to key Progressivebedrock ideas. His record on worker rights, for example, could be used to justify strong opposition as part of the Democratic parties support for the rights of workers in the face of employer abuse. Support for Roe and Griswold is another area to rally around. Opposition must be grounded in real progressive ideals and not in terms of arcane process or procedure, such as document withholding.

That being said, the filibuster could be threatened in a scenario where Democrats could be assured the public regards their opppositon as principled rather than politics. Also if they believe many Republicans are afraid to trigger the nuclear option in the possibility of losing the Senate. But keep it off the table, at least in public. Democrats too often telegraph their strategy to the White House, making it easy to counter. Harry Reid demonstrated today that surprise tactics can work.

IT'S ALIVE!

It's official, Senate Democrats do have a pulse. Harry Reid detonated a parlimentary stinkbomb in the Senate today, forcing a closed session. He kicked it off with a rant about the manipulation of Intelligence by the Administration and failure of Congress in it's oversight responsibilities.

Dick Durbin then upped the ante with this statement

"It is within the power of the majority to close down the closed session. They can do it by majority vote to return to the legislative calendar," Durbin said. "We're serving notice on them at this moment: be prepared for this motion every day until you face the reality. The Senate Intelligence Committee has a responsibility

Welcome to the fight Dems. Better late than never....

No Nukes!

I've thought about it some, and I'm inclined to come out and say I think it would be bad politics for Democrats to filibuster Scalito.

Yes, I understand he's a scary monster. He's virtually guaranteed to be the deciding vote that reverses many if not all of the progressive judicial victories of the last eighty years. He's young enough, just like John Roberts, that he could be a source of trouble for progressives on the Supreme Court for the next sixty years. (Remember, kids— this is the 21st century, and we are getting a lot better at extending the life spans of rich people.) He is— as the Rude Pundit would say without editing it for passage through profanity filters— a mthrfsckr.

Except... I'm concerned about the political fallout. The GOP reactionary factions love Scalito more than they love Bush, so don't expect Scalito to need any help from a weakened White House, entangled in scandal. If Democrats attempt a filibuster— assuming they can peel five of their seven members out of the Gang of Fourteen, enough to sustain one— then Republicans will only need three more of their own to invoke the so-called "nuclear" option. That would be a Revolution in the U.S. Senate. In other words, we'd get two revolutions for the price of one.

I don't think Scalito can be stopped without also defeating a move to invoke the "nuclear" option, and I don't think the "nuclear" option can be defeated here.

So the question is: Scalito? Or... Scalito and reactionary control of the Senate? Remember, cloture is the principle mechanism that enables minorities in the Senate to prevent the worst excesses of extremists among the majority. The "nuclear" option erases the 60-vote cloture for judicial appointments, but more importantly, it sets the precedent that any debate can be stopped by a simple majority with a procedural trick.

Given my assumption above, it makes sense to look at who will get the blame for what when the dust settles. When Americans decide the court has been packed with reactionary fscknozzles, I don't think many of them will blame Democrats for deciding not to filibuster them. They'll blame Republicans for appointing such fscknozzles and making a reactionary ideological litmus test a requirement for Presidential candidates.

On the other hand, when the train wreck of gerrymandered House districts collides with the natural conservative bias of the Senate supercharged by eliminating the 60-vote cloture with the "nuclear" option, the narrative will be that Democrats brought on the imbalance by launching "too many filibusters" of judicial appointments. Think ahead, kids— by the time this clusterfsck is apparent to everyone, the filibuster will be a distant memory of how business was conducted back when the U.S.A. was ostensibly a "two-party" republic. We will be firmly in the land of National Bolshevism, and the Party [of which there will be only one that counts] will be the main engine of policy development— not the Congress or the Cabinet.

Some will say that Democrats have to decide where they will stand and fight. Progressives can't allow themselves to be pushed around by the mere threat of the "nuclear" option. I beg to differ. They can. At the moment, the explicit threat is just to eliminate filibusters for judicial appointments. The reactionaries are still nervous about pulling the trigger on cutting off the minority in all Senate debates, and that's an advantage progressives would be stupid to sacrifice— even if they had a real chance to stop a monster like Scalito from ascending to the court with it, which they don't.

Bush and his supporters can be blamed for Scalito. Progressives have to believe they can win back the Congress and/or the White House eventually— the alternative leads to highly non-pragmatic thinking. Let's make sure we can still do something useful in the Senate while we are still the minority. Let's give over the SCOTUS to the reactionaries without a pointless fight we are doomed to lose. It's time to face reality: we lost that fight when Bush was returned to office in 2004.

There. I've said my piece. You may now commence the beatings until I repent and join the rest of the progressive on the barricades for the final battle against evil.

"Did The Mules Get Out?"

"Miners frequently complained that company mules were treated far better than their human counterparts. Years after cave-ins or mine explosions, miners' anecdotes recount the first words of the coal operators when a mine collapsed: did the mules get out?"

—Wikipedia, The Ludlow Massacre

I spent the late evening and early morning hours one weeknight not long ago talking on the telephone to a friend of MojoWire, whom we believe is either retired from one of the various American intelligence services, or retired from a service that works closely with agencies that employ non-official cover operatives. We're not sure which service, and frankly we hope we never find out.

Our friend is deeply— let me reiterate that for effect, deeply— angry about the public posturing of the Bush administration and its apologists in reaction to the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on five separate criminal charges related to the cover-up of who mishandled the classified identity of Valerie Wilson, destroyed her career as a non-official cover operative of the CIA's counter-proliferation division, and burned her front company and its entire network of contacts. The phrase I kept hearing come over the wire from our friend was pretty stark: "They're telling us that we're not even worth as much as a three-dollar crack-whore."

This is, of course, a step down— again, in our friend's view— from where they stood when Reagan was willing to trade a missile battery or a squadron of helicopters to get them back.

Now, apparently, our President and his senior officials are willing to spend them for nothing more than a bit of domestic political payback. I have to admit, if I had been in the line of work that many of Valerie Wilson's associates did— who are now either dead, in prison or living lives of quiet desperation in some suburb somewhere waiting for the man in the black turtleneck to show up with silenced pistol— the righteousness of my pissed-offness would legendary.

(To be fair, I have to admit my still considerable pissed-offness is probably not as righteous as our friend's, principally because I lack the requisite personal technical experience to comprehend fully the deepness and hardness of the extent to which Libby and whoever else was involved has screwed the people who do have it.)

I am, of course, reminded of the quote from Wikipedia that introduced this article. Deep in my cynical, obsidian, ultimately very civilian heart, my reaction to our friend's troubles is to say, "You're just now noticing that when the mine collapses, the first thing the boss wants to know is whether you got the mules out?"

That's too flip, though. Our friend is the one I blame for giving me the following axiom:

Patriotism is the delta between what you got paid and what your services were worth on the open market.

And now, I suspect there are a lot of people like our friend— people with training in some very black arts, who have been employed to do questionable things for patriotic ends— who are watching how the civilian governing elites in America are managing the Valerie Wilson affair, and they are thinking that their services are apparently not worth very much on the open market anymore.

Yes, the CPD will have to close out all its accounts with Brewster Jennings, but DID WE STOP JOE WILSON FROM MAKING TROUBLE OVER THOSE FORGERIES FROM NIGER?!???

I mean, come on fellas— what could have been the worst that could have happened if you had done the right thing and kept Valerie Wilson's classified identity protected? Do you really want to continue trying to tell us that it was necessary to disclose her identity so that Americans would get the message that Joe Wilson only went to Niger because it was a boondoggle set up by his CIA wife?

Because that is such obvious bullshit.

Here's what we all know was really on the table, and I'm going to say it because no one else will: the administration desperately needed to discredit Joe Wilson to prevent the possibility of an investigation of how the Niger forgeries were inserted into the policy making process that led to the Iraq War. Why? Because somebody— or several somebodies— were up to their necks in a conspiracy to pass those forgeries off as genuine, and if Joe Wilson wasn't discredited, then somebody would have to be held accountable for that.

Has anybody been held accountable? No. Has there been any substantial effort to investigate that matter? No. Is there any effort underway now to find out who was responsible and hold them accountable? No.

Looks like it's working so far...

Rather than allowing whoever was responsible for the pushing the Niger forgeries to be held accountable and do the time for their crime, the administration burned a CIA operative in a demented scheme to cover it up. You fsckers burned Valerie Wilson's entire network just so you wouldn't have to go to Federal prison.

Come on, guys. It's not like the Federal pen is anywhere near as hardcore as a state prison. You probably would have been able to cut a deal and stay in jail only a few years.

Oh, no— you are clearly saying— that would have been more than you could be asked to sacrifice for your country— contrasted with what you feel completely comfortable asking people like our friend on the telephone Valerie Wilson's burned network to sacrifice for your country.

Patriotism is the delta between what you got paid and what your services were worth on the open market.

"Did the mules get out?"

Tactical Nuclear Syntax

The Rude Pundit arises and roars mightily on the subject of Bush administration appointments and judicial nominees.

As Atrios noted, His Rudeness is bringing to our attention that Samuel Alito wants employers to be able to fire people solely for contracting HIV, because he thinks it's appropriate to recognize their right to take steps in reaction to their fear of contagion— whether that fear is reasonable or not.

However, I wanted to bring this post to your attention because of its final paragraph. It is an exercise in rudeness that turned even my stomach. I will not quote it. It is probably the most "not safe for work" thing I have seen written in English all year. Don't skip ahead to the last paragraph. Read the whole article.

He's righteously pissed-off, and his rage burns like the radiance of a hundred thousand class O stars. I can't condemn him for deploying tactical nuclear syntax.

One down, many more to go:

Scooter gets bitchslapped with a 5 count indictment. One count of obstruction, 2 counts of false statements, and 2 counts perjury. The indictment looks solid and Libby is going to be hard pressed to resist accomodating the prosecutor in some way. He may force a trial and risk doing 30 at Leavenworth. If he forces these people to go all the way, I suspect he will not be sipping herbal tea at Club Fed. He will be making a shank out of his own femur in hard time lockup. He might do it and hope for a pardon or simply lean into the strike zone for the movement. These guys really are that whacked.

This isn't over. More deep hurting from Fitzilla will be delivered in coming weeks to deserving scumbags. What a fine, fine, sunny day.

Avedon Carol Goes On The 12-Step Program

"We're the United States of America, and we're helpless."

No Fitzmas? Have Some Art Instead!

An appropriate image for our times from our good friend, the mad genius Tom Payne at Eyeball Press.



This piece is entitled Greed.

Pretty wild, eh? You haven't seen anything. Buy art from this man now, before he is so famous that you can't even afford to buy blank sheets of paper from him.

Miers Throws Herself Under the Bus

CNN reporting this morning that Harriet Miers was jettisoned, even as more and weirder stories about AmericaCo.'s CEO twitchy behavior are starting to surface.

Check out Miers withdrawal letter at the Post and the Maximum Leader's statement on accepting her political Seppuku. Draw your own conclusions.

Check out Paul Begala's post over at TPM Cafe this morning about how the White House is whinging these days.

I can hardly wait to see what radical wingnut, or quiet loner next gets prodded out into the forum at the tip of spear... This should be hooorrrrrible...

mojo sends

Now This Is Better...

Richard Sale, intelligence correspondent for the Moonie UPI says Patrick Fitzgerald has requested the impaneling of a new grand jury. What special prosecutors ask for they usually get— and it looks like Fitz wants to know more about how this clusterfsck got off the ground.

To that end, eRiposte at The Left Coaster brings the hardcore noize on the subject that has all the mystery fans glued to their browsers, the origin of the infamous "sixteen words" claim in the State of the Union Address. (Yes, the British are full of shit— they never had anything beyond the forged Niger memos. Go see for yourself.)

Is there a pulse?

Congressional Democrats fight and win a battle in the House for the right cause and the right reasons. George Miller, Democrat from California led the fight to restore the prevailing wage in the Gulf Disaster Zone as dictated by the Davis-Bacon Act. In the face of possible legislative defeat, the Administration rescinded their previous waiver.

This exactly the kind of battle Democrats should be picking with the Republican leadership. They squandered the opportunity to battle over the genuinely evil bankruptcy bill, well, sold out really. A small start, but a start nevertheless....

Nice job Dems, keep it up.

Rosa Parks Has Died

A moment of silence, please, while her perisprit assumes its rightful place in the firmament.

Survey Says!

I thinks it pretty clear now that Scooter Libby is going to be indicted. Also, if you buy into the stories about Hannah and Wormser, they will probably plead out to a lesser charge and probably not serve any time, although that's not a given in a federal prosecution of this scope. Karl Rove has a better chance of slipping the noose, since he's been granted numerous oppoturnities to "correct" his grand jury testimony. However, if he is caught on perjury, Fitz has a wide range of testimony to work with.

I seriously doubt anyone higher than Rove or Libby would be labled an unindicted co-conspirator. But I suspect that PR flunkies like Mary Matalin better reach out for quality legal representation.

I've Got A Premonition

Fitzgerald indicts only a handful of low-level players and names no "un-indicted co-conspirators". Media respond with collective, "Is that all there is?" Everyone goes back to sleep.

It's just a premonition.

Update 1.0: Now, Billmon is suggesting I've been visited by the ghost of White House scandals past, in the form of John Dean, who says:

It is difficult to envision Patrick Fitzgerald prosecuting anyone, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, who believed they were acting for reasons of national security. While hindsight may find their judgment was wrong, and there is no question their tactics were very heavy-handed and dangerous, I am not certain that they were acting from other than what they believed to be reasons of national security. They were selling a war they felt needed to be undertaken.

In short, I cannot imagine any of them being indicted, unless they were acting for reasons other than national security. Because national security is such a gray area of the law, come next week, I can see this entire investigation coming to a remarkable anti-climax, as Fitzgerald closes down his Washington office and returns to Chicago.

Night of the Long Knives...

Yeah... who didn't see this one comin':

Karl rove trying to space Scooter Libby out the airlock.

Just priceless... I wonder who else is planning on bilging their comrades...

mojo sends

You Spin Me Right Round Baby Right Round...

Amey Stone, one of the rotating columnists in Hot Property at BusinessWeek Online is concerned about the spectre of mortgage abuse. She digs out from the comments in some thread somewhere the following anecdote:

I am a lawyer and I represent illegal aliens in deportation. In all but one of 35 cases I currently have on docket the illegal owns a home. But it is the loan terms that fascinate me. One lady finished school at second grade, speaks no English, and works for a recycling company binding cardboard boxes. She makes about $30K per year and is a single mom with three children. She has a $430K interest only loan that she used last year to buy a $430K condo - 100% financing - she paid $3,000 in closing costs. I tried to explain that her monthly payments will rise substantially in four years. She does not believe me, did not understand what I said and told me the loan and real estate agents specialize in real estate and would have told her if her payments could go up. If 34 of my clients with risky loans and no school past at best eighth grade are surprised by rising loan payments, we should be afraid. This is the last group desperate lenders pander to, meaning we're near the end.

Think about the credibility of the source of this information before you get too cranked about it, but the problem I want to highlight is that this story seems pretty damned plausible. It shouldn't be.

If this story turns out to be true, and anywhere near representative of how bad the mortgage abuse problem has become, then we are looking at a blockbuster of an economic horror show opening soon in a theater of operations near you. I have a very bad feeling about what may happen when millions of Americans find out all about how the Enron decade isn't over yet.

Miss Run Amok

Laura Rozen points us to a note from a former New York Times UN Bureau Chief that puts little Miss Run-Amok in an interesting light.

via Romensko,

From BARBARA CROSSETTE, New York Times UN bureau chief, 1994-2001: Obscured behind the large issues of weapons of mass destruction and Joseph Wilson's links with the CIA is another story. Over the last year or so, Judith Miller also wrote a series of damaging reports on the "oil for food" scandal at the United Nations -- in particular, personally damaging to Secretary General Kofi Annan because the reports were frequently based on half-truths or hearsay peddled on Capitol Hill by people determined to force Annan out of office. At the UN, this was interpreted as payback for the UN's refusal to back the US war in Iraq. As a former NYT UN bureau chief [now retired] I have been asked repeatedly by diplomats, former US government officials, journalists still reporting from the organization and others why Times editors did not step in to question some of this reporting -- a lot of it proved wrong by the recent report by Paul Volcker -- or why the paper seemed to be on a vendetta against the UN. The Times answered that question Sunday in its page one report on the Miller affair. Ms. Run Amok had at least one very highly placed friend at the paper, and many Timespeople were afraid to tangle with her because of that. Note also, that Ambassador John Bolton, a severe critic of the UN and a figure so controversial he could not face a confirmation hearing in the Senate, was one of the administration officials who took time to visit Miller in jail. [Permalink

Gives a lot more credence to the notion that John Bolton was more heavily involved in this farce. And apparently, a Bolton staffer worked for the CIA, in WinPac, where as luck would have it, Valerie Plame worked. DOH!

Are We Back From Yom Kippur Yet?

Good. You may want to remember this now.

Oh, that's right. Good Christians don't observe Yom Kippur. What was I thinking?

And The Hits Just Keep Coming...

The National Park Service is now requiring candidates for mid-level management positions and above to be filled only with the approval a political appointee. Here's an excerpt from the press release from an outfit called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

Washington, DC — The National Park Service has started using a political loyalty test for picking all its top civil service positions, according to an agency directive released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Under the new order, all mid-level managers and above must also be approved by a Bush administration political appointee.

The October 11, 2005 order issued by NPS Director Fran Mainella requires that the selection criteria for all civil service management slots (Government Service grades or GS-13, 14 and 15) include the “ability to lead employees in achieving the …Secretary’s 4Cs and the President’s Management Agenda.” In addition, candidates must be screened by Park Service headquarters and “the Assistant Secretary [of Interior] for Fish, and Wildlife, and Parks,” the number three political appointee in the agency.

Ah yes— the “ability to lead employees in achieving... the President’s Management Agenda.”

That should give all those tree-hugging, dirt-worshipping hippies some newfound respect for their betters. When we tell you the Intelligent Designer carved the Grand Canyon with His divine chisel, you will better well not argue with us. WE PAY YOUR SALARIES, YOU PATHETIC MEWLING SCRUBS!

The Iraqification Of New Orleans

My radical tree-hugging dirt-worshipping hippie comrades in the Green Party are sounding the alarm about the "Iraqification" of disaster areas.

This excerpt from their press release lists the specific bits of concern:

Incursion by Blackwater and other private security forces, which already have contracts to provide security in Iraq; such firms are not held to the same standards of accountability as service members of the U.S. Armed Forces.

The cruel neglect of prisoners in Louisiana, documented by Human Rights Watch and the ACLU , during the hurricane and its aftermath, with inmates locked in cells as floodwaters rose, deaths, and inmates still missing -- recalling official toleration and encouragement of prisoner abuses in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and Afghanistan.

No-bid rebuilding contracts for companies like Halliburton/KBR, which have already profiteered to the tune of billions off the Iraq invasion and occupation, with similar no-bid contracts; award of federal contracts to favored white-owned firms and disregard by FEMA for requirements that contracts go to some minority businesses. According to The Wall Street Journal on September 23, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson said that "his staff has been unable to locate any federal contracts for Mississippi that went to minority firms".... "During a recent New Orleans City Council hearing... a half-dozen minority business owners said they were being left out of the rebuilding effort, and Council President Oliver Thomas told Mayor Ray Nagin that he was living in 'Neverland' for thinking black businessmen would receive a significant number of government contracts."

President Bush's appointment of White House advisor Karl Rove -- an administration 'crony' with no known expertise in urban policy or engineering (and who has been implicated in the Valerie Plame scandal) -- to supervise the rebuilding of New Orleans.

Cuts proposed by Republicans, eliminating as much as $40 billion from Medicare and other social spending to pay for clean-up -- just as they diverted funding from social programs for the military venture in Iraq. "Elderly people who lost their homes and health care providers as a result of the hurricane will bear the brunt of the Medicare cuts," said Leenie Halbert, acting co-chair of the Green Party of Louisiana. "The failure to protect and care for people whose lives have been devastated by the hurricane the repeats to failure to protect and care for soldiers and their families most affected by the war "

Proposed suspension of environmental protections, with a waiver of EPA rules, in areas hit by Katrina, comparable to the disregard of the environment in war zones.

Click through and read the whole press release. Feel free to get on the horn and chew out your representatives.

Where Does Miers Stand On The Dred Scott Decision?

I think America really wants to know whether Harriet Miers believes any of the rulings in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case should have been overturned, and— if so— which ones.

Somebody should make sure she gets a question about that during her confirmation hearings.

Why Not Just Start Requiring Loyalty Oaths at the Airport?

This is excellent!

Now airlines are kicking people off flights for having anti-Bush sentiments on their t-shirts... Outstanding! Why not just start having people sign loyalty oaths in order to finalize an airline ticket transaction?

Is it me, or have things just gotten unspeakably weird in this country in the past couple of weeks?

mojo sends

Gospel According to William: There was no slavery!

Via Media Matters, Fresh from the midden heap that Bill O'Reilly keeps locked in his cranium because brains are cost prohibitive, the *truth" about the history of African Americans in America.

My people came from County Cavan in Ireland. All right? And the British Crown marched in there with their henchman, Oliver Cromwell, and they seized all of my ancestors' lands, everything. And they threw them into slavery, pretty much indentured servitude on the land. And then the land collapsed, all right? And everybody was starving in Ireland. They had to leave the country, just as Africans had to leave -- African-Americans had to leave Africa and come over on a boat and try to make in the New World with nothing. Nothing. And succeeded, succeeded. As did Italians, as did -- and I'll submit to you, African-Americans are succeeding as well. So all of these things can be overcome I think, [caller]. Go ahead.

Ummm...WTF is going on in the right? I mean, I know these people have stripped away the veneer of Liberal Democracy to expose their creamy facist center, but now we're going to pretend Slavery never happened? There is virtually nothing analogous to the diaspora from Ireland as a result of the Irish Potato famine and the systematic kidnapping and forced servitude inflicted on the peoples of West Africa by the American Slave Trade.

For Christ's Sake! Racial Genocide fantasies? Claiming Slavery never happened? And don't even Freakin start me on recent blogposts supporting the Bell Curve. These people really are starting to come unglued...

My Brain Hurts

This morning, just before I arrived in the office, I tuned into The Glenn Beck Program on one of my local FiveMinuteHate™ radio stations. I couldn't believe what I heard.

Glenn Beck, while babbling about the new torture legislation, interviewed someone purporting to be a military intelligence officer who claimed to have been a specialist in extracting information using techniques he openly called torture. The guest gave his name as Mitch, but averred that this was a pseudonym. He claimed to have used, or having been involved in the use of, a variety of torture techniques under orders from the U.S. government, and he gave the following techniques as examples: 1) using 1200 psi pressurized air hose to blow out a prisoner's eardrums; and 2) using a drill to open up live, healthy teeth.

Now, I don't believe for a minute that Mitch was telling the truth. He was trying to sound convincing, and he wasn't at all successful with me, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more stupid listeners in Glenn Beck's audience were completely taken in by his act. That Glenn Beck would put this guy on the air and let him put on an act like this came as no surprise to me.

Here's what nearly made me turn around and go back to the City for my wife and a jump kit to head for the Canadian border: Glenn Beck himself appeared to take the guy completely seriously and proceeded to shower him on the air with admiration, to praise him for his heroism, and to thank him explicitly for torturing people in all our names.

I sincerely hope Media Matters caught this act at the end of his show today. If they did, I will link to whatever they put up about it later today. I don't understand why Americans don't punish anybody who sponsors this bastard's radio program with a crushing boycott. This makes no sense to me.

Update 1.0: Okay, this is unacceptable. I've been banging on Media Matters all day trying to get somebody there to tell me I'm not crazy, that I really did hear Glenn Beck do this. No response. This is completely unacceptable. Yeah, I understand that people are going ballistic over William O's latest nonsense. Getting them to focus on the problem of continuing escalation in the overt political support for using torture as a matter of official policy might be a little too much to ask. My point is that it shouldn't be. My god. We're talking about torture for fsck's sake! TORTURE! The man is selling TORTURE as a positive ideal! I'm serious here. This is life and death stuff, people— I cannot remain at peace with a people who condone this. Do NOT test the limits of my pseudo-pacifism, you bastards. I have a breaking point, and you really don't want to find out what I'm capable of doing when I decide that I'm going to be an asshole.

Update 2.0: In my grief, I was expecting way too much from the nice people at Media Matters. Mojo just called me on the telephone to inform me that they have indeed found the transcript and done a very nice job documenting it. I am only slightly crazy, but I really did hear him say those terrible things.

WTF is up with blogspot?

WTF is up with blogspot?

Whatever Happened To The Snowdens Of Yesteryear?

Go read the latest polemic from Albert Gore, Jr. on TPMCafe. Here's my favorite paragraph, but you're welcome to find your own.

...
Campaign finance reform, however well it is drafted, often misses the main point: so long as the only means of engaging in political dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue by one means or another to dominate American politics. And ideas will no longer mediate between wealth and power.
...

I wish Gore had been this good when he was the candidate in 2000.

And no, don't try to hand me any crap about how if it wasn't for Nader, then Gore would have won Florida and Bush would have never been installed in the White House. While that's a true statement, it's irrelevant. The Albert Gore you see today is not the Albert Gore that we would have gotten if he had won that election. So all you pinheads who still can't forgive the Greens for the Y2K Presidential election, you can blow me.

It's the End of the World as We Know It...

Okay s9... the die might apparently really be cast...

Remember a couple of weeks ago on the wire, I was absolutely thrilled with the President calling for the end to the Posee Commitatus Act?

Well, today, apparently, the President openly called for using the U.S. Military including federalizing the National Guard for quarantining sections of the country in the event of an outbreak of avian flu...

Here's yer money graf:

One example: If we had an outbreak somewhere in the United States, do we not then quarantine that part of the country, and how do you then enforce a quarantine? When -- it's one thing to shut down airplanes; it's another thing to prevent people from coming in to get exposed to the avian flu. And who best to be able to effect a quarantine? One option is the use of a military that's able to plan and move.

And so that's why I put it on the table. I think it's an important debate for Congress to have. I noticed the other day, evidently, some governors didn't like it. I understand that. I was the commander-in-chief of the National Guard, and proudly so, and, frankly, I didn't want the President telling me how to be the commander-in-chief of the Texas Guard. But Congress needs to take a look at circumstances that may need to vest the capacity of the President to move beyond that debate.

Well, that's the ballgame, isn't it? I mean, if they are planning this, like they planned the search for "weapons of mass destruction" then I am definitely getting that sinking fnordy feeling...

Dude this is insane! They cannot honestly be thinking this!

And this is why you put a Harriet Miers on the court. Someone who will make sure that no court in the land interferes with W's coup d'etat!

Makes it all lawfulized and shiny... get yer sandbags today and avoid the rush...

mojo sends

Did You Get That Thing I Sent You?

Freeperville has gotten the memo this morning. [No link, because I don't link to them anymore.]

Miers is an anti-abortion extremist. Extremist. As in, a big believer in the Texas Republican Party platform plank about abortion. What does that platform say?

The Party affirms its support for a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse making clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection applies to unborn children.

These people want to turn every miscarriage into probable cause for a murder investigation— and the word is going out among the conservatarians today that Harriet Miers is secretly on their team in ways that nobody with any real qualifications for the court could possibly be.

Remember: you heard it here on MojoWire first.

Update 1.0: I see that Billmon has noticed as well.

The Hammered (Redux)

CNN is reporting this afternoon that Ronnie Earle has struck again, this time bringing the real heat to DeLay with a grand jury indictment on money laundering charges.

Yeah... the schadenfreude is running a little thick around here this afternoon...

DeLay's legal pimp is saying "he hopes for a trial by the end of the year..."

whatever...

mojo sends

Update 1.0: If you want, Comrade Joshua has a pretty good take on this second indictment. Money shot: It looks like there might be a technicality surrounding the effective date of the conspiracy statute, so this might be a bit bet hedging, according to the Austin Statesman. But the Houston Chronicle piece reports it a little different in an interview with a UT law prof who seems to think the timing on the statute is not the "get-out-of-jail-free" card that the thug's law pimps seem to think...

October Surprise?

I have been going over much of the coverage from the MSM as well as in the various alternate realities of the Blogiverse about the nomination of Harriet Miers to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's size 15 fetish pumps on the Supreme Court.

And while some in and around blogovia have been thinking that this is all a plot on the part of the Rovians to put up as straw man who will get batted out of the park, somehow making way for a real extremist like a Janice Rogers Brown, I just don't know.

I think, myself, that this really is the nomination that administration wants, and is now openly displaying contempt even for their own base. Read through Free Republic, or Southern Appeal, or Junk Yard Blog...

These people are gripping and gripping hard... they are (literally) losing their collective religion over this.

Quite frankly, I am enjoying their discomfiture to an unseemly extent.

Anyway, the point is, that the Bush Administration feels no need to bring someone to the Senate with the proper ideology. In fact, the Bush administration prefers their nominees to be certified ideology free. The only ideology a Bush judge needs is supplied to them by the Rovians and only when they have need of it.

That is why Roberts had problems answering ideological questions and why Miers will have similar problems. They're not hiding their ideology... they have no ideology, other than getting over and serving their master.

Other than that, a high functioning brain and moral compass just isn't that necessary for a Bush judicial nominee. The only character trait a Bush nominee needs to bring the table is an unwavering desire and fuctionally demonstrated ability to do the President's bidding when ordered, no questions asked.

That's what Miers brings to the table. She is nothing more than another sycophantic hand puppet.

The Hammered

Breaking News...

CNN reports that Tom "Those Darn Minorities Took All the Good Vietnam Combat Jobs, So I Can't Go" DeLay has been indicted...

You got that?

INDICTED!

On one count of criminal conspiracy by a Texas Grand Jury...bitch...

You will be telling your grandchildren where you were on this day...

Updates as information becomes available.

Update 1.0: The Washington Post has a story up now off the AP wire to wit:

WASHINGTON -- A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, an indictment that could force him to step down as House majority leader.

DeLay attorney Steve Brittain said DeLay was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, looks on during a news conference regarding Hurricane Katrina on Capitol Hill in this Sept. 2, 2005 file photo. A Texas grand jury's recent interest in conspiracy charges could lead to last-minute criminal indictments, possibly against DeLay, as it wraps up its investigation Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2005, into DeLay's state political organization, according to lawyers with knowledge of the case.

The indictment against the second-ranking, and most assertive Republican leader came on the final day of the grand jury's term. It followed earlier indictments of a state political action committee founded by DeLay and three of his political associates.

The grand jury action is expected to have immediate consequences in the House, where DeLay is largely responsible for winning passage of the Republican legislative program. House Republican Party rules require leaders who are indicted to temporarily step aside from their leadership posts....

Woot!

Update 2.0: CNN is reporting that Tom Delay has announced that he will step down as Republican Majority Leader "temporarily" as David Drier steps up to replace him.

Woot! again

Update 2.1: It would appear that House Majority Whip Roy Blunt is going to space David Drier out the airlock and seizes power himself. This is important. Drier was largely seen as a place holder, a warm body to occupy the seat until DeLay got back. Blunt on the other hand is the logical choice for the next HML, and if DeLay ever gets back, too bad, it's now Blunt's ball... the implication is that in choosing Blunt, it is not expected that DeLay will get back, and could even possibly be pushed into resigning or being forced out on rules regarding felons in Congress.

Woot! once more

When do they send Godzilla and Monster Zero?

From USA Today

just feel the burn...

"an Idaho weatherman says Japan's Yakuza mafia used a Russian-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina in a bid to avenge itself for the Hiroshima atom bomb attack — and that this technology will soon be wielded again to hit another U.S. city."

Outstanding! Finally someone out there really GETS IT! When in doubt, blame the Japs and the Russkies, right Red State? Get off FEMA's back hippies. It's not the morally bankrupt and clownish incompentence of the Bush Administration in the face of a natural event. Hell NO! It's a super-secret, ultra -groove Russkie SuperWeapon in the hands of tatooed Japanese gangsters.

Doesn't this sound like an episode of the Six Million Dollar Man or some other ridiculous 70's or 80 TV show? "Steve, you and Jamie need to parachute into Tokyo to prevent the Yakuza from destorying New Orleans. "

We MUST get this weatherman to Los Angeles. He will fit in perfectly among the horrific NewsBots that spend three hours a day scaring the shit out of Southern California with stories about drive-by's, murders and lost white women. I might actually watch local affiliate news if the weatherman was likely to break off a Russian Super Weapon forecast. As a matter of fact, give him Al Rokers job. They need a ratings bump and it' wouldn't be the most craven thing the morning network circle jerks have done for ratings.

War all Cold War Retro Weatherman conspiracy theories...

out...

Do I Have To Support THESE Troops Too?

Via Digby, whose article behind that link ought to be required reading for every WireHead™, we find this post from the otherwise painfully unreadable Andrew Sullivan:

CORPSES FOR PORN? What on earth is this website [link elided] doing? U.S. soldiers can post pics of the corpses of Iraqis killed in war on a website devoted mainly to amateur porn. I clicked through and saw just a couple of pics which are beyond appalling and distressing. The section for corpses - and it's not clear whether they are of insurgents or just civilians - has this introduction:

Pictures in this forum are submitted by U.S. Soldiers from over in Iraq and Afghanistan and will probably be a little gory. So if you get sick easy or have a problem with dead terrorists please don't look here.

If you send in pics of dead insurgents or Iraqis, you get free access to the porn part of the site. The pics that are appended have names such as "What every Iraqi should look like," "DIE, HAJI, DIE," and "Cooked Iraqi." I would think this violates the Geneva Conventions, not that the U.S. under this president cares about those very much any more. But it's also beyond depraved. Eric Muller sounded the alarm. Like the pictures from Abu Ghraib, these images are also a propaganda coup for Zarqawi and his monsters - a consequence of war in the Internet age. Have we really sunk to this?

Yes, apparently— we've really sunk to this. Drink it in, Americans. This is your patriotic glorious all-volunteer military. These are the people your President thinks are the only people really prepared to deal with the logistical requirements of a major natural disaster in your neighborhood.

America really is an exceptional country, isn't it?

Update 1.0: I've been behind a web proxy all week, and I'm not seeing this article show up on the MojoWire front page. Strangely, it went straight to archives. I wonder if something inside Blogger doesn't like the 'P' word.

Update 2.0: It finally happened. I scooped Billmon. Go read his take— it's better than mine.

Mojowire Podcast for 09/17/05

Well, here it is, the terrible, yet dread podcast of this week's Mojowire, brought to you by the fine folks at The Darkling Eclectica

Happy listening...

mojo sends

Blame The Tree-hugging Dirt Worshippers!

Via Josh Marshall, we find a newspaper in Mississippi claiming to have acquired evidence that the Bush administration is looking to blame environmental activist groups for the New Orleans flood.

The Clarion-Ledger has obtained a copy of an internal e-mail the U.S. Department of Justice sent out this week to various U.S. attorneys' offices: "Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the (U.S.) Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation."

Finally! The tree-hugging dirt-worshipping hippie fanatics are exposed! They've been plotting the wholesale destruction of American cities for decades, and now there's a chance of finally catching them in the act! This is a great fscking day!

I hope the Rovians are successful with this line of attack. If they successfully pin the blame for the flood of New Orleans on environmental groups, then Americans will finally be forced to reckon with the awesome power of Greenpeace!

Quake in fear, America! We environmentalists can strike at any time, anywhere, with hurricanes, fires, floods, tornadoes— the full array of Nature's wrath! Come to heel or we will DESTROY YOU ALL!

A Cold Chill...

Did anyone else get that cold chill up the spine when Maximum Leader said this last night:

"It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces -- the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice."

Yeah... that's just what I wanted to hear, a guy who has attorneys writing half-bright treatises on Presidential perogative for torture now wants broader authority to order the military into action in the United States...

And as a tangent, check out Blackwater Security and check out their latest battlefield... I really like the fact that they are also being contracted by the insurance companies to determine claim validity. I also like the fact that they are being used for "crowd control."

mojo sends