Enemy Combatant
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
The Best Damn Newspaper In The English Language
Here's a contest: Name the best damn newspaper, in your opinion, published in English. (Specify whether you're referring to the online edition, the "hard copy" version, or both.)
My nomination: The UK's Guardian, "hard copy" version. It puts our American dailies to shame.
Well-written, color photos on every page (and great photography, too); a science and technology section pullout, complete with several pages of website reviews; the occasional Sidney Blumenthal column, political cartoons by Steve Bell – what more could you ask for? If I had a daily paper in Northern California like this, I’d be in hog heaven.
Monday, June 27, 2005
Dubliners
It's certainly not the city Joyce left on Bloomsday, any more. Dublin is a multiracial, multiethnic boomtown, half under renovation and its streets clogged with tourists, where you're more likely to hear Russian or Croatian on the street than Gaelic (though Ireland's radio and television, RTE, with its sappy Gaelic soap operas and dubbed kung fu movies, keeps up its valiant mouth-to-mouth). The city is so far north, twilight comes at about 9:30 p.m.; it's ready made for nightlife. However, what gets billed in the tourbooks as harmless good craic in the Temple Bar, looks more like Spring Break/Fort Lauderdale debauchery up close. I'll be blogging more about England and Ireland in the days and weeks to come, but just wanted to check in, as (I believe) our first "foreign correspondent."
Friday, June 17, 2005
The Revelation Will Not Be Televised
Once again, Billmon over at Whiskey Bar, in the midst of tossing off amazing aperçus like this one, points out that the Iraq War -- judged strictly as a television show -- is dangerously close to jumping the shark:From the very beginning, of course, the Bush administration has shown a pronounced tendency to treat the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq as if they were gigantic back-to-back episodes of America's Most Wanted. And the media (which, after all, invented the genre) has been only too happy to oblige.The Keystone Crips running this country are very close to discovering that you can coast by on the three "b"s -- bluster, bullying, and bullshit -- for only so long.
From the Pentagon's point of view, though, the biggest problem with the plot is that it isn't going anywhere. That might not be so bad (in 14 seasons of Bonanaza, the only place the Cartwrights ever went was back to the ranch) but this is a war/spy show, and those are always tricky -- to hold the audience, you need progress towards victory, even though you can't actually get there until the final episode, which in this case might be a long way off.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
The Chickenhawks Are Coming Home To Roost
And the numbers are not pretty . . .
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
With Apologies To CSN&Y
So your brother's bound and gagged
And they've shut his hearings down
Won't you please come to the District
Just to sing
In a land that's known as freedom
How can such a thing be fair
Won't you please come to the District
For the help that we can bring
We can change the world -
Rearrange the world
It's dying - to get better
Politicians sit yourself down,
Help us end this war
Won't you please come to the District
Start today
Don't ask Bush to help you
Cause he'll turn the other ear
Won't you please come to the District
Cut your ties to Tom Delay
We can change the world -
Rearrange the world
It's dying - if you believe in justice
It's dying - and if you believe in freedom
It's dying - let a man mourn his own wife
It's dying - Bush prevarications, who needs them
Open up the door
Somehow people must be free
I hope the day comes soon
Won't you please come to the District
Show your face
From the bottom to the ocean
To the mountains of the moon
Won't you please come to the District
No one else can take your place
We can change the world -
Rearrange the world
Open up the door
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Governater II -- Wise To The Machines
Der Governater sure hit obsolescence like a brick wall:Schwarzenegger Jeered at Graduation SpeechYep, another "special election." We couldn't possibly wait until the regular election next year to pass this second round of half-baked short-term solutions, because -- well -- California's new "paper-trail" ballots kick in then, so the moneyed interests behind the Governator have got to ram through as much of the wingnut wishlist as they can, while they still can "tweak" the blackbox voting one last time . . .
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) - Politics followed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to his alma mater Tuesday, where he was jeered relentlessly by protesters while delivering a commencement speech.
His address to 600 graduates in blue robes and caps at Santa Monica College turned into an exercise in perseverance, as virtually his every word was accompanied by catcalls, howls and piercing whistles from the audience of several thousand people watching the graduation.
Inside the stadium, the drone from hundreds of rowdy protesters threatened to drown out the governor's voice at times. Many in the crowd erupted in boos when a police officer pulled down a banner criticizing the estimated $45 million cost of the special Nov. 8 election that Schwarzenegger scheduled Monday.
Monday, June 13, 2005
Downing Street Maps All Lead Back To The White House
It occurred to me, today, that for the American public to believe that the Bush administration is not guilty of impeachable offenses, they have to swallow the story that the official daily diaries of our closest allies, their recounting of meetings with American officials which they themselves attended (and we speak the same language!) are somehow less accurate than the thirdhand hearsay rantings of an erratic alcoholic emigre named "Curveball" . . .
Sunday, June 12, 2005
The Tea Is Already In The Harbor
In the course of arguing that there are short-term, pragmatic benefits for Democrats in pimping impeachment the way the neocons pimped WMDs (i.e., every time they open their mouths in front of a camera or microphone), That Colored Fella points out that we've already got Article IV of the Impeachment Articles written -- hell, it's probably still on House word processors; we just "cut and paste" from the last presidential impeachment:Abuse Of Power
- The President made false and misleading statements for the purpose of deceiving the American people
- The President made false and misleading statements to members of the Cabinet and White House aides
- The President frivolously asserted executive privilege
- The President made perjurious, false and misleading statements to Congress
(This is also intended to head off the inevitable wingnut pirouette, tomorrow, when for the first time in history they start to argue, "Hey, that's not an impeachable offense!")
How Long Can The Indiligence Of Hacks Be Blixed Around The Fallacy?
With the Downing Street Memo finally starting to get some traction in the American press, so many shoes are dropping around D.C. that it's looking like a Thom McAn's in the middle of an earthquake. The latest article to begin connecting the dots in a comprehensive, coherent way is The Secret Way To War, published in the most recent New York Review of Books.
And, of course, there's that little bit of street theater Congressman Conyers plans for this coming Thursday, which will follow on the heels of substantive hearings into the BushCo lies leading up to the Iraq war. One can only imagine the false terror alerts this will provoke from the White House, as well as the ostrich-like cowardice of the mainstream media, as it once again goes into full Missing-White-Woman-Du-Jour mode.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Conquered Coalition
Anybody here remember the Concord Coalition? They were a (so-called) bipartisan group founded by former Senators Warren Rudman (R-NH) and Paul Tsongas (D-MA), advocating for a balanced federal budget. They were all over the airwaves during the Nineties, giving Clinton holy hell until the budget first balanced, and then went into surplus.
Apparently they're still around, although I sure don't see them tearing their hair out because of Bush's LBJ-on-steroids budgets, with our Dinghy of State precariously adrift on an ocean of red ink.
For a "cowboy" afraid of horses, George W. Bush sure knows how to geld all the mavericks in D.C.
Friday, June 10, 2005
This Is NOT What Democracy Looks Like!
Watch as GOPolitburo thug James Sensenbrenner (Fsc-WI) purports to gavel to a close a hearing of the Judiciary Committee today, on the subject of . . . wait for it . . . whether to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act, a hideous mishmash of authoritarian paranoia containing several new goodies that would have made Torquemada blush.
When the testimony doesn't go to his liking, he decides he (and the Congress for which he slams the door) has heard enough, and walks out. As do all the other Fasci-uh, Republicans present.
Then something interesting happens. The Democrats stay, and apologize to the witnesses who showed up on short notice at 8:30 a.m. to testify, only to be cut off, repeatedly, midsentence by the rude, imperious Mr. Sensenbrenner.
It all seemed so reminiscent of Bill O'Reilly's meltdown on his AllSpin show, when Jeremy Glick was his invited guest. Mr. Glick's father died on 9-11, but do you think that would have bought his son any respect from Mr. Falafel? No, Bill screamed at Mr. Glick to "Shut up, shut up!" then shouted at his crew to cut off Glick's mike.
So, Republicans who pretend to be our elected representatives, just like Republicans who pretend to be independent journalists, clearly don't "do" free speech and democracy. Worse, they don't seem to know the first thing about how free speech and democracy work, or if they know, they don't care if we keep them or lose them.
Keep this in mind when you're in the voting booth next November.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
How We Win In 2006
1. Talk about our exit strategy. Democrats need to have one, and it can be comfortably vague with a few preconditions for each phase, but we need to emphasize one message: We. Need. To. Get. Out. If we insist upon talking about it, the GOoPers will be forced to talk about it, and we win.
2. Talk about the GOP draft. Well, they may not have one yet, but they will if they win again in 2006. Talk about the end of legal abortion, more wars, less money, fewer jobs -- you know, the GOP Plan for 2006.
3. Go to every war-dead funeral in your district/State. If you're a Congressional candidate (incumbent or not), you start going to every soldier funeral in your district (getting the family's permission ahead of time, of course). If you're a Senatorial candidate (incumbent or not), start going to every funeral you can manage (which means, if you're in California or Texas, maybe a representative few. If you're from New Hamster, you better get your butt to every one.)
Don't crow to the press about it; keep it under your hat, in fact. Let them encounter you already doing it. Local media will cover these funerals, especially if politicians start to show up; the national media have proven themselves the kept mistresses of BushCo, so fuck 'em.
Oh, and nobody says anything to the press about it while at the funeral, except the same two words: "Constitutent service."
4. Talk about how we fix Social Security. It's simple, really: Raise the $90,000 FICA tax cap. A graduated FICA tax on income would solve the problem, easy peasey. The way to explain it, is to pull out some calendars and graphs and show that the top CEOs in the country, each year, pay off their entire year's FICA taxes by January 2nd or 3rd. Oh, and you don't call it, "raising the cap." You call it, "closing the tax shelter."
5. Move the discussion light years ahead: Discuss whether we should impeach Bush only for WMD lies, or broaden the Articles to include other atrocities (torture, utter incompetence on 9-11, etc.). First of all, a few Republicans will simply sputter, turn red, appear to choke, and have a coronary. (Let's hope the Dickster is among them.) Second, they'll realize they've got to rebut the claims, at which point they'll find, with alarm, that they're discussing the minutiae of impeachment while running to get back into office.
6. Adopt the GOP 11th Commandment. I cannot emphasize this enough . . . Biden? Leiberman? Obama? Pelosi? When you hear something Howard supposedly said, even if your jaw is all warmed up, and even if you think you disagree with it -- take a deep breath, count to ten, then --
Slam the piehole shut! Zip it! STFU!
Aim your fire outside the tent! That's where the enemy is.
"We Gotta Get Outta This Place" -- A Useful Exchange Of Views
Steve Gilliard and driftglass have an eloquent debate about when America might come to its senses, and how we might then go about unscrewing the pooch. (driftglass thinks liberals and conservatives are so far apart in perceptions, it's like we're different computers running on completely different operating systems.) From driftglass:Most of these people [Bush voters] are not Nazis, but they are the perfect raw material for our own, homegrown American Rightwing Demagogues; obedient, stupid, bigoted and easily frightened.There's much more useful stuff here, about the fundie mindset, and the shitstorm we can expect from them when their Potemkin facade collapses. Go. Read.
And because everything – their very souls – rest on the foundation of the infallibility of Dear Leader, they’ll happily kill anyone in any numbers who might force them to face up to the fact that Dear Leader is a duplicitous, lying sleazebag who has played on their fear and ignorance and patriotism to turn them out like $2 crack whores.
* * *
The bad news is, until they wake the fuck up, these people are slaves, and there is no one so ferocious as a brainwashed thrall defending his owner.
The good news is, we are still 49% of the game; wake up and pick off a mere 100,000 and we can begin to turn a lot of thinks around. The more gooder news is that our O/S thrives best when saturated in pure, clean Reality, and theirs rust and rots and flies apart at the seams when the lies that insulate it are peeled away.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Funny. My Bible Seems To Be Missing Those "Jesus, the Holy Gunslinger" Passages
Note that the gun does not point at the fetus, the family, or the flag . . .
Saturday, June 04, 2005
A Modest Proposal
I have an idea that just might tear the attention of the American media away from runaway brides, missing Caribbean vacationers, Kobe Bryant trysters, etc., etc. -- and force them to cover, oh let's say, the implications of the Downing Street Memo:
GPS chips, to be implanted -- "preemptively," if you will -- in every white woman in the United States.
Think about it: No more Shondra Levys; no more JonBenet Ramseys; no more Elizabeth Smarts. We'll be able to instantly track every single white woman's whereabouts in this country, at all times.
All the anxious busybodies in Congress who passed the Terri Schiavo legislation ought to be pleased with this plan. And the rest of us will appreciate having significantly less "pseudo-news" crap constantly fouling up our airwaves.
Friday, June 03, 2005
Drip, Drip, Drip . . .
"Phone call for you, Mr. Conyers. He says he's one of the -- 'plumbers?'"
Thursday, June 02, 2005
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being G. Gordon Liddy
As we careen from one disaster to the next, in the hellbound handbasket we call the Dubya Era, one small forensic detail of the Watergate break-in should be kept foremost in mind:While doing his rounds at the Watergate Hotel in the early morning of June 17, 1972, security guard Frank Wills came across a door, located between the basement stairwell and the parking garage, that was being prevented from latching by a piece of tape. He removed the tape and continued his rounds. Returning to the same spot later, he discovered that someone had re-taped the door. His curiosity now aroused, he called the police.Yes, wingnuts (like the Liddy Black Bag Brigade, as well as the current Neocon Death Cult) are batshit crazy. Yes, they love to play at this kind of cloak-and-dagger, national-security stuff.
But here's my point (and I do have one): Fortunately for us, they're ludicrously incompetent. At the Watergate hotel, they managed to get caught by desultory-to-the-point-of-incompetent private security policing. Taping over the lock on that door the first time was just stupid. Taping it over the second time, without (evidently) trying to figure out who removed the first tape, was pathologically idiotic. (Freud might well say that, on some level, the Watergate burglars wanted to get caught.)
So take heart, liberals: The Bush crowd, in their arrogant ignorance, apparently learned not one single thing from the Vietnam War. What makes us think they've learned anything from the fall of the Nixon presidency?
