aflam: juin 2005

jeudi 30 juin 2005

How to celebrate July 4

Show the wingnuts who just want to feed more kids into the meatgrinder in Iraq who REALLY supports the troops. Send a USO Care Package. For only $25, you can send a much-needed and much-appreciated package including pre-paid worldwide phone cards, sunscreen, travel size toiletries, disposable camera and a personal message from you.

So if you can, please cough up a few shekels and make this small but important gesture to show that WE are the ones who haven't forgotten them; that WE are the ones who still recognize that these kids are more than just cannon fodder. Because believe me, the wingnuts aren't doing it.

The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The B@B Index

Only for once, they're directed at the people who deserver them.

Zogby is the bearer of these glad tidings:

Bush approval rating AFTER his 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam You're Rocking the Boat speech: 43%

% of voters who would favor impeachment proceedings if it's found that Bush misled the nation about his reasons for going to war in Iraq: 42%.

% of voters in the South rating Bush's performance favorably: 51%

% of voters in "red states" who voted for Bush who now rate his job performance unfavorably: 50%

% of REPUBLICANS who favor impeachment of Bush is he is found to have misled the nation about his reasons for going to war in Iraq: 25%.

% of REPUBLICANS who would oppose impeachment if Bush were caught raping little boys and dismembering them in the choirloft: 33%. (Not really, but a full one in three would oppose impeachment even if Bush was found to have taken us to war on a lie)

Another angle on the Plame case

From "ToqueDeVille" at Kos:

All the attention has focused on Plame as victim, the CIA operative whose safety has been threatened and career compromised by being "outed" But most folks ignore her current role, as head of the CIA WMD desk. Now the current revised history from the Bush folks is that the CIA is responsible for overstating Saddam's WMD capabilities. But we know better. To understand this case you need to recall the political and intelligence context of the period just before and after the start of the war.

As confirmed by the Downing Street Memos, Bush was determined to take out Saddam, and the administration was "fixing" the intelligence to provide a justification. Unfortunately the CIA wasn't helping very much. While "everyone" "knew" that Saddam had WMD, the actual intelligence we had was really poor. Experts were sure that the evidence we ended up seeing like the aluminum "centrifuge tubes" for uranium enrichment, the Niger documents and the mobile biological labs were bogus, and the CIA didn't trust the human intelligence from Chalabi's gang of informers.

Since the CIA was shooting down reasons for war as fast as Chalabi could make them up, the Bushies (paticularly Cheney and Rumsfeld) set up the Office of Special Plans at DOD to "stovepipe" the good stuff and package it for public and international consumption. There were reports of "war" within the intelligence community between the CIA regulars and the prowar DOD. Plame was a top CIA WMD analyst. She was one of the generals on the other side.

Now the timing of the Plame leak is important. When he War began in March even skeptics expected Iraq had some WMD stockpiles. While there was some surprise that none were used, we saw throughout the fighting reports about potential exposure. When Bush declared Mission Accomplished on May 1 the official line was still that we expected to find large caches which were hidden before the war. The administration was counting on those discoveries to justify their manipulation of intelligence before the war.

Wilson's story started to reach the public in early June when it was reported that the CIA had a negative report on the now discredited Niger memos a year earlier. It blew up in early July when Wilson went public, and Novak published his column outing Plame on July 14 - Mission to Niger

At the time the administration was flush with success and still confident that they would find illegal weapons. They are sorting Washington into good guys (who supported the war) and bad guys (who questioned it). When Wilson came up they asked around "Who is this guy" and learned he was married to a CIA WMD analyst. That made him a bad guy, so they share the news with Novak, as a way of discrediting Wilson. It wasn't about retaliation, it was about tarnishing Wilson by tying him to the discredited antiwar faction at CIA. The White House knows Plame as an analyst who refused to support their prowar view. They have been fighting these internal battles for months; now that they have won the war those people are out. I doubt anyone even thought about her being covert.

Fast forward a year and things have changed. The War isn't looking like a slam dunk political winner, no WMD have been found, and folks are pointing fingers about how we could have been so wrong. The last thing in the world the Bushies want is an examination of the intelligence war between CIA and DOD. No indeed turns out it was actually CIA all along that was pushing the WMD story and the White House only doing what they thought they must in response to the flawed intelligence.

So when Patrick Fitzgerald shows up to investigate the outing of a CIA operative, the White House folks have a problem. They can hardly explain that they inadvertantly outed an agent because they wanted to link Wilson to a now discredited faction at CIA that thought there were no WMD because, well, that would mean the White House had manufactured intelligence to take us into an unnecessary and increasingly unpopular war. After all they were now blaming CIA for overstating the threat from Iraq's WMD.

What did they tell Fitzgerald's investigators? What was their Grand Jury testimony. Bet it was pretty hard to come up with a consistent story that wasn't a political disaster. How many lied?

What started as a potential case of intentionally leaking the identity of an agent has now become about perjury and obstruction of justice in an attempt to conceal White House involvement in fixing the intelligence that led to war. Cooper and Miller were all over the prewar intelligence beat, so they become keys to understanding how the White House went from propagandists fighting CIA skeptics over WMD to triumphal victors haranguing their doubtors to well meaning victims of bad intelligence. The Plame disclosure happened right in the middle of the transformation, which means that it draws attention to both the WH role in the fixing of intelligence and its efforts to deny that role.

Fitzgerald needs the reporters to contradict whatever whitewash the WH has come up with for this mess. Its not just the identity of the source, it is what the WH was saying and when that will show that they lied to Fitzgerald and the Grand Jury to cover up their manipulation of and lying about prewar intelligence. This is what happens when the administration's Orwellian alteration of history occurs in a venue where lying is a crime and providing talking points is conspiracy to obstruct justice.

If this analysis is correct, then the leaking of Valerie Plame's name may be about more than petty personal vindictiveness about her husband (which would be bad enough). If true, this is a cover-up on the scale of that of the Watergate break-in, and may involve more than just Rove being frog-walked out in the White House in handcuffs....

Is there a war going on?

The hotel at which I'm staying had 5 switches go on the fritz last night, which left me tired, trying to wind down, in a hotel room in a strange town with no internet connection and nothing on the lame-o TV but MSNBC. So I started out with the second half of Olbermann's show, where we were treated to a clip of Tweety talking to his hand-picked audience of wingnuts the other night about "IUDs". Then we suffered through Tucker the Wankboy Carlson, once again made to look foolish by Jay Severin, of all people, let alone Rachel Maddow, who provides the class on that pitiful excuse for a show. Then we moved on to Scarborough, which was "All Missing Pretty Blond White Girl Oh Do Please Tell Us the Gory Details Of What We Know Was Her Appalling Rape and Murder Oh Isn't That Awful Oh Please Tell Us All The Time", followed by Pretty Blond White Girl And A Surfer No Less Who Was Injured In A Shark Attack Last Year. Then at last we got to the Tweety rerun, where at least we had the only set of balls in the entire Democratic Party, Howard Dean, blasting Bush's Iraq policy without once saying anything that can give Joe Biden the vapors.

Nothing about the war; nothing about the helicopter that was shot down in Afghanistan, nothing about Social Security, nothing about the massive layoffs announced by corporations this week.

No wonder Americans are so ill-informed. My own brain turned to pulp after an hour and a half of this and trying to get online.

mercredi 29 juin 2005

Grab Your Diary

THURSDAY 30 JUNE 2005End of Month Eggs on Toast Extravaganza #7Cook a goog and send it to Jeanne. And it looks like this month's theme is "short dramatic works", or as Jeanne suggests, "One flew over the chicken's nest. Layer Cake. Cluck back in anger."Does My Blog Look Good in This #7The foodporniest winners are announced by Meg today at I Heart BaconFRIDAY 1 JULY 2005Omnivoribus Australia NEW!

Grab Your Diary

Just don't wait till the Friday News Dump!

The Grey Lady is going to protect Judy "Ahmad Chalabi's Groupie" Miller at all costs, but Editor and Publisher is reporting that Time may spill the beans on who leaked Valerie Plame's name:

When Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of The New York Times return late Wednesday afternoon to face the federal judge who ordered them to jail last fall for refusing to reveal confidential sources, two different outcomes may emerge.

While New York Times officials have maintained that Miller will not reveal the source who leaked to her the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, a source close to Time Inc. told E&P that the company is considering handing over documents that would reveal the source.

Cooper declined to comment.

Ted Olson, the lead attorney for Time, would not confirm or deny that report, saying "decisions have not been made in terms of what Time will do if the judge reaffirms the order. Both Time and Matt Cooper are reserving judgment on what they will do. There is no point in making a decision before it is necessary."

Asked if Time Inc. was considering revealing the source, via documents, Dawn Bridges, senior VP for communications, declined comment.

If it's Rove, I'm gonna get rip-roaring shitfaced.

This must be the new Republican meme

I wonder how long it's going to take the Bush Administration and their toadies in the House to realize that people just don't believe them anymore.

Last night Bush once again invoked the ghosts of September 11 to justify his botched and completely unnecessary war, still playing on the residual fears of Americans to give him the freedom to plunder the world and the U.S. treasury at will to dispense largesse to his cronies and friends. Today, it's a Congressman from North Carolina:

A Republican congressman from North Carolina told CNN on Wednesday that the "evidence is clear" that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.

"Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11," Rep. Robin Hayes said.

Told no investigation had ever found evidence to link Saddam and 9/11, Hayes responded, "I'm sorry, but you must have looked in the wrong places."

Hayes, the vice chairman of the House subcommittee on terrorism, said legislators have access to evidence others do not.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said that Saddam was a dangerous man, but when asked about Hayes' statement, would not link the deposed Iraqi ruler to the terrorist attacks on New York, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania.

"I haven't seen compelling evidence of that," McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CNN.

On Tuesday night, President Bush mentioned the September 11 attacks five times during his address on the war in Iraq, prompting criticism from congressional Democrats. (Full story)

The 9/11 commission, appointed by Bush, presented its final report a year ago, saying that Osama bin Laden had been "willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq" at one time in the 1990s but that the al Qaeda leader "had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army."

Americans are slowly but surely dipping their big toes back into the waters of reality, and I'm not convinced this kind of horseshit is still going to fly. If enough of it comes out of enough quarters, it's possible that the half an ear that most Americans still tune into the evening news will absorb it, and the mythical Saddam/9-11 connection will be made once again. But as more and more American kids from the very states where people believe this nonsense find themselves in Iraq, and more and more families are affected, there's only so long that this gambit is going to work at all.

Between WaPo this morning, and now this from MSNBC.com, they're losing the mainstream media too...and that spells Big Trouble in Little Penisland:

Now raise your hand if you still think Karl Rove’s 9/11 remarks last week were unintentional.

Facing mounting U.S. casualties, an increasingly skeptical public, and a growing chorus of criticism (even within his own party), a confident and resolute President Bush last night directly tied the situation in Iraq to 9/11 and the war on terrorism. To illustrate this renewed focus, he made five direct references to 9/11 and two references to Osama bin Laden. But in both his inaugural and State of the Union addresses this year, he never mentioned Bin Laden. And although he did mention 9/11 in that State of the Union, he didn’t do so until more than half way through the speech.

Some quick questions: Will this new focus reverse poll findings like the one from USA Today/CNN/Gallup, which shows that 50% of Americans now see Iraq being completely separate from the war on terror? Can the Democrats reverse the political setbacks they’ve encountered when Bush wields his 9/11 credentials? And for how much longer will 9/11 continue to be the dominant political story in America?

What's disappointing is the tepid response from John McCain. The Arizona Senator's willingness to carry water for this Administration, particularly over the last few weeks, is seriously damaging his reputation as a "straight shooter."

(hat tip: Americablog, where there's more on this idiocy.)

Iraq by the numbers

And they don't correspond with Bush's rhetoric.

(hat tip: Poetic Leanings)

Judy Miller may go to jail, but the NYT whore machine cranks on

Under what rocks does the New York Times find these guys?

Petty Officer Garcia said he thought the day when Iraqi soldiers could defend their country without help was not too far off.

"When I was there, they were very, very green," he said. "But they're smart, they learn very quickly, and from what I saw, they are eager to stand on their own."

Does he believe critics of the war who say Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?

CRITICS OF THE WAR??? Excuse me, Kirk Johnson, but it is an established FACT that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

What kind of moron is still saying that the lack of linkage is something cooked up by the A.N.S.W.E.R. left? Even C-Plus Caligula has admitted that there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11.

Is this the kind of "coverage of conservatives" that the Times has announced? If so, then the paper has definitely departed the reality-based community -- and lost a bunch of credibility in the process, despite the fact that their sleepy editorial page has finally awakened:

We did not expect Mr. Bush would apologize for the misinformation that helped lead us into this war, or for the catastrophic mistakes his team made in running the military operation. But we had hoped he would resist the temptation to raise the bloody flag of 9/11 over and over again to justify a war in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks. We had hoped that he would seize the moment to tell the nation how he will define victory, and to give Americans a specific sense of how he intends to reach that goal - beyond repeating the same wishful scenario that he has been describing since the invasion.

Sadly, Mr. Bush wasted his opportunity last night, giving a speech that only answered questions no one was asking. He told the nation, again and again, that a stable and democratic Iraq would be worth American sacrifices, while the nation was wondering whether American sacrifices could actually produce a stable and democratic Iraq.

Given the way this war was planned and executed, the president does not have any good options available, and if American forces were withdrawn, Iraq would probably sink into a civil war that would create large stretches of no man's land where private militias and stateless terrorists could operate with impunity. But if Mr. Bush is intent on staying the course, it will take years before the Iraqi government and its military are able to stand on their own. Most important of all - despite his lofty assurance last night that in the end the insurgents "cannot stop the advance of freedom" - all those years of effort and suffering could still end with the Iraqis turning on each other, or deciding that the American troops were the ultimate enemy after all. The critical challenge is to gauge, with a clear head, exactly when and if the tipping point arrives and the American presence is only making a terrible situation worse.

Note to whoever wrote this editorial: Please remind Mr. Kirk Johnson of the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Thank you for your cooperation.

Shorter George Bush

September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11 September 11

But no one's buying it anymore. Even the Washington Post, which has twisted itself in pretzels trying to accommodate the Bush Vision into something approaching sense (and erroneously gives him the benefit of the doubt on connecting Iraq to 9/11 even here, even though Bush himself is ENTIRELY, not partially, the architect of turning Iraq into a central terrorist haven), has had just about enough of this:

PRESIDENT BUSH sought last night to bolster slipping public support for the war in Iraq by connecting it, once again, to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and to the war against terrorism. That connection is not spurious, even if Saddam Hussein was not a collaborator of al Qaeda: Clearly Iraq is now a prime battlefield for Islamic extremists, and success or failure there will do much to determine the outcome of the larger struggle against them. But Mr. Bush didn't explain how a war meant to remove a tyrant believed to wield weapons of mass destruction turned into a fight against Muslim militants, a transformation caused in part by his administration's many errors since Saddam Hussein's defeat more than two years ago. The president also didn't speak candidly enough about the primary mission the United States now has in Iraq, which is not "hunting down the terrorists" but constructing a stable government in spite of Iraq's sectarian divisions and violent resistance from the former ruling elite. It's harder to explain why Americans should die in such a complex and ambitious enterprise than in a fight with international terrorists, but that is the case Mr. Bush most needs to make.

[snip]

Once again, however, the president missed an opportunity to fully level with Americans, even though some of the hard truths he elided have been spelled out by his aides and senior military commanders. The insurgency, they have said, is not growing weaker; most likely, said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, it will never be defeated by American troops, and it will continue for many more years. Iraqi troops probably will not be ready to take over from U.S. units for several years, at least. For now, the combined U.S.-Iraqi force is nowhere near large enough to hold territory taken from the insurgents or to secure the country's borders. Yet Army and Marine units are being pressed into their third tours of duty, even as recruitment of fresh soldiers at home lags badly.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that most do not believe the administration's claims of progress, but a majority still is willing to support an extended stay by U.S. forces. If those forces are to succeed in the difficult months and years ahead, Mr. Bush will need to preserve and nourish that fragile mandate -- which will mean speaking more honestly to Americans than he did last night.

People are willing to support this because they think that more time, more money, and more effort poured into this black hole will accomplish something -- and they still don't want to believe that this president is feeding American kids into a meatgrinder so that war profiteers at companies like Halliburton can have a big ol' barbecue with the resulting hamburgers -- and tens of billions of unaccountable taxpayer dollars as the reward. But avoiding the truth doesn't change it.

mardi 28 juin 2005

Next they'll just put a cardboard cutout of him across from Stephanopolous

Or else they'll have him stuffed. Same thing.

Looks like Dick "the Dick" Cheney got his bum ticker checked out last weekend after all.

Yikes.

An ominous reminder noted by Atrios:

The summer of 2001 was declared "summer of the shark" despite the fact that the number of shark attacks wasn't abnormal. Then a little tragic event happened and they shut the hell up about sharks for a little awhile.

He goes on to cite a 22-minute press conference on shark attacks that ran on CNN yesterday, and this week's Time cover on sharks as well.

Bush's approval ratings were at 49% in the summer of 2001; today they're at 46% and dropping.

On the Monday before 9/11, Newsweek released a cover story about the election shenanigans in Florida. Today, a number of Bush Administration scandals threaten to erupt this summer -- the Downing Street Minutes and related documents that indicate Bush lied us into an unnecessary war; $8 billion in Iraq reconstruction funds missing, overbilling by Halliburton; Karl Rove's frantic attempts at damage control.

If Bush spends August at the "ranch" in Crawford, watch out...and stay out of airplanes and tall buildings. Oh yeah, and nuclear power plants and ports, too.

Snapped: Water boy

Snapped at the Primo Italiano Festival, 5 June 2005A poignant appreciation for nature's most precious resource, especially given Australia's current drought crisis and Sydney's precariously low dam levels.

Snapped: Water boy

Orange Grove Markets safe for now

After a tense week of uncertainty, it appears that the organic food stalls at the popular Orange Grove Markets are safe to continue trading. Reports in the Sunday papers of 19 June 2005 indicated that the booming 100-stall market contravened the original Development Application for 60 stalls only, and that the food stalls (whose leases expire at the end of June) would be forced to relocate to

Orange Grove Markets safe for now

On the road again....

Well, I'm off today to CFUNITED, a gathering of Macromedia Cold Fusion geeks in Bethesda, MD, until Friday. I'll be blogging from there, assuming the wireless internet connection holds up. If you're going, drop me a comment. I'll be the little old lady in the sea of propellerheads.

So much for the idea of switching to natural gas

I'm one of the rare homeowners in my area that still has oil heat. I also have an electric stove, oven, and water heater, and don't even have a gas line going to the house. My plumber has nagged me to get a gas line so I can have one of those ad-hoc water heaters installed, and of course there's no getting a gas log fireplace to warm the basement family room without a gas line (no, I don't want to use propane).

The large utilities are also nagging oil heat customers to switch over, given the increase in the price of home heating oil. But I think I'll stay put, thank you very much:

After weak prices in the 1990s due to oversupply, natural gas production in North America will probably continue to decline unless there is another big discovery, Exxon Mobil Corp.'s chief executive said on Tuesday.
"Gas production has peaked in North America," Chief Executive Lee Raymond told reporters at the Reuters Energy Summit.

Asked whether production would continue to decline even if two huge arctic gas pipeline projects were built, Raymond said, "I think that's a fair statement, unless there's some huge find that nobody has any idea where it would be."

Of course, this is also a way of getting approval to drill for natural gas on lands owned by indigenous tribes in Canada, and stranded gas that exists in the Arctic; and to lobby for American action against Canada to make sure that the pipelines that would pull natural gas out of those locations get built. But take a look at the last statement I quoted. Production is going to decline even IF we take these lands and go to war with Canada over them.

You'd think it would be time for a concerted push towards alternative sources of energy and more energy efficiency. But no, the roads are still full of SUVs, and people are still buying McMansions with huge 2-story foyers that are impossible to heat, but are regarded as necessary so that on one day of their owners' daughters' lives, they can be photographed coming down the huge spiral staircase in a white gown.

They're losing the red states

When an editorial like this appears in a paper that serves Huntington, West Virginia; Southern Ohio, and Eastern Kentucky, you know the Bush agenda is in serious trouble (emphases mine):

Red flags flapping sharply in the wind signal our country is on the verge of a major political - and economic - setback.

We may now be only weeks away from a complete collapse of the Iraqi army and the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq in the face of overwhelming public pressure on Tony Blair.

That is a realistic projection based on the reports of two Washington Post reporters, whose dispatches from inside Iraqi Army units and U.S. units assigned to train and work with the Iraqi military have just been published.

What the Post reporters found was massive disenchantment on both sides: American forces bitterly disappointed with the Iraqi government forces, and Iraqi troops harboring similar feelings toward their American counterparts. Only a small percentage of all Iraqi troops are now estimated to be adequately trained to take over the defense of their country. Desertions are widespread.

More than 1,700 American men and women sent to Iraq have returned home in body bags thus far, and more than 7,000 have been critically wounded. War dead in total exceeds 25,000, including "collateral casualties." And the price tag for our military operations tops $200 billion - and counting.

Recent surveys in Iraq have shown that insurgents are overwhelmingly Iraqis, not foreign fighters. Few are associated with al-Qaida.

Since President Bush’s declaration that "major combat operations are over," three weeks or so after the U.S.-British assault on Baghdad, there has been one disingenuous statement after another from the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon.

Successive rationales for the war - finding Saddam’s cache of weapons of mass destruction, heading off an imminent threat to Israel and even to our own country, capturing Saddam and ending his bloody dictatorial reign, establishing democracy in Iraq - have been trotted out, and found to be seriously flawed or even outright wrong.

Interviews by the Post reporters show that many U.S. and Iraqi troops no longer know what they are fighting for.

The scandals of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, coupled with a burgeoning debt that likely will never be paid back by Iraqi oil and the Halliburton cost overruns ripping off the U.S. military by millions of dollars, have soured much popular support of the war.

With morale of our troops in the field trending lower by the week, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marines have missed their recruiting targets for the past four months straight. Unless something changes dramatically, a draft would seem unavoidable.

Conservative columnists and Republican members of Congress who voted for the war are now among those joining the chorus of criticism. The latest is Rep. Walter R. Jones, R-N.C., the very person who coined the term "freedom fries" for French fries served in the House cafeteria. He has matched Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and others in calling for a deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

He also wants someone in the Bush administration "to be large enough to apologize for this war." So far, the silence from the White House has been deafening.

There's a part of me that wants to say to people in these states, "What did you THINK you were voting for?" Yet the more charitable part of me feels sorry for these people, many of whom have family members in the military, who are guilty of nothing more than wanting to trust their government, and believing that the mainstream media only report the truth.

Instead, they find themselves led by a bunch of delusional wackjobs who think that simply saying that the sky is green makes it so, just because they are in power.

The one thing I can say to these people is this: You have a chance to do something about it in 2006. Take the House away from the Republicans and we can frog-march this bunch of crooks out in handcuffs. Just be sure your vote is counted correctly, because the more trouble they get into, the more the chicanery machine is gearing up.

lundi 27 juin 2005

Will this guy please make his presence known in the Senate?

Barack Obama, we hardly knew ye. May we have more of this please?

More vindication that healthy fat people do exist

Dieting doesn't make you healthier:

Overweight people who diet to reach a healthier weight are more likely to die young than those who remain fat, according to a study.
The finding needs to be backed up by further research before sweeping changes are made to public health strategies, the authors warn, but it highlights how poorly the long-term health effects of dieting are understood.

It is well proven that losing weight reduces the risk of heart disease and diabetes among the obese, but the new study suggests that dieting also causes physiological damage that in the long term can outweigh the benefits.

[snip]

The study, which was carried out in Finland, followed 2,957 overweight or obese people who had been screened to ensure they had no underlying illnesses.

Overweight people have body mass indexes (BMIs) greater than 25, while obese people have BMIs greater than 30.

Each participant was questioned about their desire to lose weight in 1975 and again in 1981. Records of their weight and general health were kept for the next 18 years, during which 268 of the participants died.

Analysis of the data showed that those who wanted to lose weight and succeeded were significantly more likely to die young than those who stayed fat.

"Healthy overweight or obese subjects who try to lose weight and succeed in doing so over a six-year period suffer from almost double the risk of dying during the next 18 years compared with subjects who do not try to lose weight and whose weight remains stable," said Dr Sorensen.

Those who gained weight also had a greater risk of dying young.

The researchers were unable to identify why the dieters were at a greater risk of dying younger, but believe it is caused by fat being lost from lean organs as well as other body tissues.

I suspect that there isn't just one reason for the risk. Most people want to lose weight rapidly, hence fad dieting, which is a shock to the body. Given that weight lost through fad dieting tends to be regained, yo-yo dieting is a repeated shock to the system.

Another reason, I would guess, is the constant anxiety and self-flagellation that comes with a lifetime of judging one's worth as a human being solely on the bases of what one eats. I can't believe that the "I was good today, I was bad today" mentality of chronic dieters, and the relentless self-loathing that accompanies it, is good for one's health long term either.

Life Imitates Art

Sauron's eye is real!

Primo Italiano, Stanley Street Festival

In an barely concealed jibe at Sydney's "other" Little Italy, Leichhardt, the recent Primo Italiano festival attempted to adamantly reinforce the reputation of East Sydney's Stanley Street as Sydney's "first" Little Italy. It was in Stanley Street where Italian immigrants first began to cluster socially, gradually building more and more delicatessens, restaurants, bars and cardhouses until the

Primo Italiano, Stanley Street Festival

Welcome, [Morning] Seditionists!

A warm and brilliant welcome to all you Morning Seditionists who came over to pay me a l'il ol' visit after the nice plug Marc 'n' Mark gave us this morning. If you're here to read the review of Marc Maron's show, you can find it here.

dimanche 26 juin 2005

Bush Administration vs. Reality

President Delusional, today:

"Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right, and we are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law."

AP:

Washington has for the first time acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said.

Rumsfeld, on Press the Meat, justifying anything that happens at Gitmo:

I think the issue that Senator Graham was raising is an interesting one, and that is the fact that the president and the attorney general of the United States made a decision at the very outset of the war that the war on terror was different from a normal war and a different--and the idea that we should use the Article III of the Constitution in the criminal justice system that we use for a car thief or a bank robber or a murderer in the United States for terrorists wouldn't work. And so they established military commissions as the method of dealing with terrorists. The purpose being with a car thief that you want to get them and punish him so they don't do it again. For the terrorist, you want to get them off the battlefield and you want to get information from them so that you know how you can stop other attacks.

The people, for example, in Guantanamo Bay, are Osama bin Laden's bodyguards. They're suicide bombers. They're terrorists. They're murderers and these are bad people. These are not good people. In fact, we've been releasing hundreds of them, and 11, 12 have already turned up back on the battlefield trying to kill innocent men, women and children.

Now, I happen to think that the president was right, that you do treat terrorists differently than you do people in the criminal justice system in the United States. And I think that the issue that Senator Graham raises is one that deserves debate and discussion. And I'm--this is--we're in a new era.

First of all, if they're Osama bin Laden's bodyguards, why are they being released? And if you know they're Osama bin Laden's bodyguards, why aren't they going to trial?

B@B@Bananas

Nearly two decades ago, stand-up comedy was anointed by critics and the new rock 'n' roll. Perhaps it was our hangover from the Reagan years, but for a while it seemed as if something in the water in the mid 1960's had created a kind of Generation of the Damned -- an entire army of side-splittingly funny people who built stand-up into an entire industry. There had always been funny guys; the "Lenny's Children" of comedy; guys like Richard Pryor and George Carlin, who represented a radical departure from the "Take My Wife Please" school of borscht belt comedy that was popular during my childhood in the 1960's.

When Mr. Brilliant and I first moved in together in 1983 and got cable for the first time, it seemed as if one could just turn on Comedy Central at any hour of the day or night and see someone who'd make you laugh. For a while it was as if comedy were a huge surprise box, and every time you opened it, there'd be someone new standing there, saying something funny. I suppose the warning sign was when the outrageous id of Sam Kinison evolved into the hatefulness of Andrew "Dice" Clay. Kinison was never my cup of tea, for obvious reasons having to do with gender, but even I could see there was a certain performance artist method to his madness. Clay was just an other obnoxious Jewish guy taking out his hatred of his mother on women at large.

Today, comedy clubs seem to have a bit of a heartbeat again, however feeble. The problem is that while there are still any number of men and women standing in front of microphones, few of them are actually funny. It's not that the broad themes of stand-up -- sex, family, work, and politics -- have become stale, or even that it's no longer possible to find humor there; it's more that like crude oil, it's become more difficult to get out of the ground and there are more people out there trying to mine it who just aren't up to the task. These are complicated times, and the simple joke-response-joke-response model of comedy just doesn't cut it anymore. The guys who can make us laugh today are the ranters and the raconteurs -- the guys who take a machete to the increasingly thick jungle of bullshit that is life in the United States in the "naughties" and get down to its purest level of absurdity -- guys like Chris Rock, Lewis Black, George Carlin (still) -- and Marc Maron.

We in the Brilliant household had never even heard of Maron prior to his debut as co-host of Morning Sedition on Air America Radio, for all that he's toiled around the comedy circuit for a number of years. But since these days I tend to change the channel as soon as I see a guy in front of a microphone telling a joke and then grinning amiably waiting for a laugh, I'd never heard his work. But Marc Maron, wired on Dunkin' Donuts coffee, cathartically spitting out bile right out of the gate at 6:05 AM every day, has become a kind of Billy Graham for the disaffected, cynical left -- which is why watching his show at the Bananas Comedy Club in Hasbrouck Heights, NJ last night was such an odd experience.

During the show, Maron covered the expected litany of subjects -- neurosis, growing up in an insane home, past drug use, sex, and of course, the current state of political and world affairs. This was clearly a Maron crowd; his biggest applause line of the night had to do with something he'd like to do to Karl Rove. In just over a year, this worried-looking man on the cusp of middle-age, free-floating anxiety almost visibly emanating from him, wearing his Jewish neurosis on his sleeve for the whole world to see, has accumulated a rabid group of not mere fans, but followers. Watching and participating in the cheers that accompanied his already-iconic catch phrases, such as "neocon death cult" and "Christofascist zombie brigade" was not much different from attending Howard Dean meetups last year -- only with booze and a leader who really IS the kind of nut the media only CLAIMS Dean is.

It's Maron's manic nervous energy and ferociously articulate delivery, in which words fly like bullets, that make him even more effective as deliverer of a message in person than on the airwaves. But while a comedy club is only going to hold a few hundred people, Air America Radio reaches millions of people -- and that's where the real potential power of a messenger like this comes in. Sure, there was the one florid, pig-faced guy, who obviously had no idea who he was going to see, who was so enraged at Maron's dissing of President Bush that he had to be escorted out of the club before trouble started, but for the most part, this show was a Gathering of the Faithful. Maron told a story of people calling into the show in the early days of Air America last year from their basements, thanking him in hushed voices for being there, and then getting off the phone lest their family members find out. This kind of thing may make for good comedy, but there's more going on here than meets the eye.

When the idea of "liberal talk radio" was first bandied about, the knock on such an endeavor was that "liberals aren't funny." Over a year after the network's launch, that notion has been shot to smithereens, mostly by the Morning Sedition crew. This program may be a collaborative effort among the hosts and the talented staff of writers, but the guy who is the load-bearing wall for this particular Church of Keeping Your Sanity Through Humor In Insane Times is Marc Maron. By making people laugh while he gets his point across, and developing such a devoted following, Maron has achieved a kind of power to create change in this country of which I'm not sure he's even aware yet. And maybe it's better that he not be. Putting a little more pressure on a guy this neurotic -- and this funny -- could be tragic. We need him too much now to take that risk.

samedi 25 juin 2005

Now just WHO's exposing our troops to unnecessary risk again?

NYT:

State Department officials traveling in Iraq use armored vehicles that are built with V-shaped hulls to better deflect bullets and bombs. Members of Congress favor another model, called the M1117, which can endure 12-pound explosives and .50-caliber armor-piercing rounds.

Unlike the Humvee, the Pentagon's vehicle of choice for American troops, the others were designed specifically to withstand bigger attacks in battlefields like Iraq with no safe zones. Last fall, for instance, a Rhino traveling the treacherous airport road in Baghdad endured a bomb that left a six-foot-wide crater. The passengers walked away unscathed. "I have no doubt should I have been in any other vehicle," wrote an Army captain, the lone military passenger, "the results would have been catastrophically different."

Yet more than two years into the war, efforts by United States military units to obtain large numbers of these stronger vehicles for soldiers have faltered - even as the Pentagon's program to armor Humvees continues to be plagued by delays, an examination by The New York Times has found.

Many of the problems stem from a 40-year-old procurement system that cannot acquire new equipment quickly enough to adapt to the changing demands of a modern insurgency, interviews and records show.

Among other setbacks, the M1117 lost its Pentagon money just before the invasion, and the manufacturer is now scrambling to fill rush orders from the military. The company making one of the V-shaped vehicles, the Cougar, said it had to lay off highly skilled welders last year as it waited for the contract to be completed. Even then it was paid only enough to fill half the order.

And the manufacturer of the Rhino could not get through the Army's testing regime because the company declined to have one of its $250,000 vehicles blown up. The company said it provided the Army with testing data that demonstrate the Rhino's viability, and is using the defense secretary's visit as a seal of approval in its contract pitches to the Defense Department.

Many officials in the military and government say the demands of war sometimes require the easing of procurement requirements like testing, and express frustration at the slow process for getting equipment.

"When you have troops in the field in a dynamic environment, where the tactics of the opposition are changing on a regular basis, you have to be nimble and quick," said Representative Rob Simmons, a Connecticut Republican on the Armed Services Committee. "If you're not nimble and quick and adaptable, people will die."

Nearly a decade ago, the Pentagon was warned by its own experts that superior vehicles would be needed to protect American troops. The Army's vehicle-program manager urged the Pentagon in 1996 to move beyond the Humvee, interviews and Army records show, saying it was built for the cold war. Its flat-bottomed chassis is 25 years old, never intended for combat, and the added armor at best protects only the front end from the heftier insurgent bombs, military officials concede.

But as the procurement system stumbled and the Defense Department resisted allocating money for more expensive vehicles, interviews and records show, the military ended up largely dependent on the Humvee - a vast majority of which did not yet have any armor - in both combat and noncombat operations in the war.

Today, commuting from post to post in Iraq is one of the deadliest duties for soldiers. At least 73 American military personnel were killed on the roads of Iraq in May and June as insurgent attacks spiked. In May alone, there were 700 bombings against American forces, the most since the invasion in March 2003. Late Thursday, a suicide car bomber killed five marines and a sailor in a convoy of mostly female marines who were returning to camp in Falluja. Thirteen others were injured. Officials said the vehicles most likely included a seven-ton truck.

Last winter, 135 convoys were attacked on the Baghdad airport road alone, and even the most fully armored Humvee is no longer safe from the increasingly powerful insurgency bombs.

Marine Corps generals last week disclosed in a footnote to their remarks to Congress that two of their best-armored Humvees were destroyed, while a Marine spokeswoman in Iraq said five marines riding in one such Humvee were killed this month in a roadside bomb attack.

Still, thousands of Humvees in Iraq do not have this much protection.

The Pentagon has repeatedly said that no vehicle leaves camp without armor. But according to military records and interviews with officials, about half of the Army's 20,000 Humvees have improvised shielding that typically leaves the underside unprotected, while only one in six Humvees used by the Marines is armored at the highest level of protection.

Now just WHO is it that wants troops to die, Mr. Rove?

IMBB #16: Tortilla Espanola

Tortilla Espanola. You may as well substitute the word tapas, just as yum cha = the ubiquitous har gow.Soft cooked potato flavoured sweetly with onions and set by a soothing blanket of egg. How can you not be transported to a lazy afternoon in sun-drenched Seville with every mouthful?So when eggs were set as the key ingredient for Is My Blog Burning #16, the flamenco had already begun.Tortilla

IMBB #16: Tortilla Espanola

Happy Birthday To Me

Today is my half-century birthday, and I am officially unable to delude myself anymore that I'm still a kid. I'm now a card-carrying member of the old people's union, and since I've been a curmudgeon since the age of four, I've finally aged into my age. Mr. Brilliant and I are celebrating by going to see Marc Maron's stand-up show here in Joisey; where due to a dinner/show package, we should be seated pretty close to the front -- something achieved a few weeks ago during the Morning Sedition live broadcast at City Bakery for just the cost of a muffin, but what the heck.

If you're inspired to help me celebrate, I have a lovely assortment of inexpensive items on my Amazon wishlist. Or, you could just lift a glass of your imbibement of choice and wish me another 50 years. Which given that both my grandmothers lived into their 90's, both my parents are still alive, and I have an 84-year-old uncle on my father's side who's still playing the cello in concerts, isn't that implausible a wish.

Today is also George Orwell's birthday, which is somehow fitting. It's also my mom's, so you take another swig for her too.

The Republican Budget in a nutshell

Here ya go:

elimination of the Healthy Communities Access Program, currently funded at $83 million, which helps communities offer health care to the uninsured.
elimination of the $205 million budget for an Education Department grant program targeted at low-income and underachieving schools
an 84% cut in training programs for doctors and nurses
$806 million in cuts in the already limited funding for the Bush-mandated "No Child Left Behind" initiative
50% cut in grants to local community action agencies that help the poor
5% cut in Centers for Disease Control funding

Now think about that $7 billion in cold hard U.S. dollars that went missing in the hands of the Coalition Provisional authority in Iraq -- and what that could pay for. Then think about the $30 million just given to Halliburton to expand the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Then think about what's going to happen to services in your state and your property taxes.

vendredi 24 juin 2005

Joe Conason: Pugilist

If you missed Joe Conason's smackdown of Hillary-basher Edward Klein on The Al Franken Show today, watch for the archive at Air America Place. I'll post a link when it's up. It was a beautiful thing to behold. Conason's on a roll today, as evidenced also by his smackdown of Pigboy in Salon.

UPDATE: Audio is up at Franken's blog...and Media Matters has a transcript.

Maybe they should just hire Phil Donohue back

Hoffmania passes on the sad story of Tucker Carlson's new show on MSNBC, which is sinking rapidly in the east:

June 13: 452,000 / 177,000
June 14: 231,000 / 87,000
June 15: 198,000 / 77,000
June 16: 202,000 / 79,000
June 17: 172,000 / 89,000
June 20: 194,000 / 92,000
June 21: 172,000 / 52,000
June 22: 148,000 / 39,000

In the month preceding the cancellation of Phil Donohue's program, he averaged 446,000 viewers per night. I'll bet MSNBC would KILL for that kind of viewership right about now. I think Phil's available, too....

A 9/11 widow answers Karl Rove

Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband, Ron, was killed while sitting at his desk at work on 9/11/01, was at one time a staunch Republican and Bush voter.

Today she responds to Karl Rove at the Huffington Post:

Mr. Rove, the first thing that I would like to address is Afghanistan - the place that anyone with a true “understanding of 9/11” knows is a nation that actually has a connection to the 9/11 attacks. One month after 9/11, we invaded Afghanistan, took down the Taliban, and left without capturing Usama Bin Laden - the alleged perpetrator of the September 11th attacks. In the meantime, Afghanistan has carried out democratic elections, but continues to suffer from extreme violence and unrest. Poppy production (yes, Karl, the drug trade) is at an all time high, thus flooding the world market with heroin. And of course, the oil pipeline (a.k.a. the Caspian Sea pipeline) is better protected by U.S. troops who now have a “legitimate” excuse to be in that part of Afghanistan. Interesting isn't it Karl that the drug “rat line” parallels the oil pipeline. (Yet, with all those troops guarding that same sliver of land, can you please explain how those drugs keep getting through?)

Now Karl, a question for you, since you seem to be the nation's self-styled sensei with regard to 9/11: Is Usama Bin Laden still important? Lately, your coterie of friends seems to be giving out mixed messages. Recall that in the early days, Bin Laden was wanted “dead or alive.” Then when Bin Laden slipped through your fingertips in Tora Bora, you downgraded his importance. We were told that Bin Laden was a "desperate man on the run,” and a person that President Bush was not "too worried about". Yet, whenever I saw Bin Laden's videos, he looked much too comfortable to actually be a man on the run. He looked tan, rested, and calm. He certainly didn't look the way I wanted the murderer of almost 3,000 innocent people to look: unkempt, panicked, and cowering in a corner.

Karl, I mention Bin Laden because recently Director of the CIA, Porter Goss, has mentioned that he knows exactly where Bin Laden is located but that he cannot capture him for fear of offending sovereign nations. Which frankly, I find ironic because of Iraq--and let's just leave it at that. But, when you say that “moderation and restraint” don't work in fighting terrorists, maybe you should share those comments with Mr. Goss because he doesn't seem to be on the same page as you. Unless of course, Porter is holding out to announce that Bin Laden is in Iran. (Karl, I want Bin Laden brought to justice, but not if it means starting a war with Iran - a country that possesses nuclear weaponry. The idea of nuclear fallout in any quadrant of the world is just not an acceptable means to any ends, be it capturing Bin Laden, oil or drugs. But, Afghanistan and Bin Laden are old news. Iraq is the story of today. And of course, it appears that Iran will be the story of next month. But, I digress.)

More to the point, Karl when you say, “Conservatives saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and prepared for war,” what exactly did you do to prepare for your war? Did your preparations include: sound intelligence to warrant your actions; a reasonable entry and exit strategy coupled with a coherent plan to carry out that strategy; the proper training and equipment for the troops you were sending in to fight your war? Did you follow the advice of experts such as General Shinseki who correctly advised you about the troop levels needed to actually succeed in Iraq? No, you didn't.

[snip]

For the record Karl, does Iraq have any connection to the 9/11 attacks? Because, you and your friends with your collective “understanding of 9/11” seem to be contradicting yourselves about the Iraq-9/11 connection, too. First, we were told that we went to war with Iraq because it was linked to the 9/11 attacks. Then, your rationale was changed to "Iraq has WMD". Then you told us that we needed to invade Iraq because Saddam was a "bad man". And now it turns out that we are in Iraq to bring them "democracy."

[snip]

Karl, you say you “understand” 9/11. Then why did you and your friends so vehemently oppose the creation of a 9/11 Independent Commission? Once the commission was established, why did you refuse to properly fund the Commission by allotting it only a $3 million budget? Why did you refuse to allow access to documents and witnesses for the 9/11 Commissioners? Why did we have to fight so hard for an extension when the Commissioners told us that they needed more time due to your footdragging and stonewalling? Why didn't you want to cooperate so that all Americans could “understand” what happened on 9/11?

[snip]

To date, you have done practically nothing to secure our ports, nuclear power plants, and mass transportation systems. Imagine if the billions of dollars you spent in Iraq were spent more wisely on those things here at home. Imagine what sort of alternative energy resources (bio-diesel, wind power, solar power, and hybrid automobiles) could have been researched and funded in the past three years. Talk about regaining the respect and support of the world, that is the one way to do it.

[snip]

Finally Karl, please “understand” that the reason we have not suffered a repeat attack on our homeland is because Bin Laden no longer needs to attack us. Those of us with a pure and comprehensive “understanding of 9/11” know that Bin Laden committed the 9/11 attacks so he could increase recruitment for al Qaeda and increase worldwide hatred of America. That didn't happen. Because after 9/11, the world united with Americans and al Qaeda's recruitment levels never increased.

It was only after your invasion of Iraq, that Bin Laden's goals were met. Because of your war in Iraq two things happened that helped Bin Laden and the terrorists: al Qaeda recruitment soared and the United States is now alienated from and hated by the rest of the world. In effect, what Bin Laden could not achieve by murdering my husband and 3,000 others on 9/11, you handed to him on a silver platter with your invasion of Iraq - a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Which leads me to my final questions for you Karl: What are your motives when it comes to 9/11 and are you really sure that you understand 9/11?

I'm quite frankly amazed that she can be so rational in addressing a man who called her, and the thousands of other family members of 9/11 victims who understand that the Iraq war has nothing to do with 9/11, traitors. If I were in her shoes, I would want to throttle him bodily.

(hat tip: Shakespeare's Sister)

Why I just donated to a campaign in Oklahoma

Because the candidate is Andrew Rice, brother of a 9/11 casualty, member of September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, and of the Forgiveness Project.

This man is a one-man debunker of the Karl Rove Doctrine of Hate, Death, and Violence, and I hope he wins his campaign.

Go read Andrew Rice's profile at the Forgiveness Project, and check out his Web site. I hope you'll be as inspired to donate as I was.

What liberals did NOT do

It wasn't liberals who sent our troops needlessly into Iraq in the first place;
It wasn't liberals who decided the troops didn't need body armor;
vIt wasn't liberals who decided to subcontract out the war to private corporations, thus introducing an unacceptable level of unpredictability into military operations;
It wasn't liberals who tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay;
It wasn't liberals who told the insurgency, "Bring 'em on."
It wasn't liberals who failed to plan for the post-Saddam era;
It wasn't liberals who botched the pre-war intelligence;
It wasn't liberals who cut VA benefits so that returning soldiers don't have adequate care;
It wasn't liberals who refused to mourn or even acknowledge the deaths of our soldiers;
It wasn't liberals who went rushing into Iraq to try and "convert" Iraqis -- including Iraqi Christians -- to American evangelicalism;
It wasn't liberals who made common cause with the international con man Ahmed Chalabi

No, Karl, it was Republicans....YOUR team...that did that.

(from The Green Knight)

Here's why Rove is so terrified

Bush's approval ratings (May results in parentheses):

Zogby 6/20-22. MoE 3.2%
Bush job ratings
Approve 44 (46)
Disapprove 56 (53)

American Research Group 6/19-22. MoE 3%:
Bush job ratings
Approve 42 (43)
Disapprove 53 (51)

Bush handling the economy
Approve 37 (37)
Disapprove 59 (57)

Harris Poll. 6/7-12. MoE 3%
Do you favor keeping a large number of U.S. troops in Iraq until there is a stable government there OR bringing most of our troops home in the next year?
Wait for stable govt 33 (40)
Bring home in next year 63 (60)

Do you think the invasion of Iraq strengthened or weakened the war on terrorism?

Strengthened 43 (49)
Weakened 44 (47)

Gallup. 6/16-19. MoE 3% (previous results from March)

Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war with Iraq?
Favor 39 (47)
Oppose 59 (47)

The sleeping giant known as the American people is waking up, and seeing a picture that isn't pretty. They see an Administration that has destroyed our economy, destroyed their jobs, in the case of over 1700 American families, destroyed their futures, and one that doesn't give a shit about any of it.

So what else is there for them to do but demonize Democrats and pass flag-burning amendments? They are bankrupt of morals, bankrupt of decency, bankrupt of any ideas that don't involve war and killing and hate.

So instead they attack the opposition as traitors.

I don't think most people are buying it.

Now Ken Mehlman agrees that Democrats want our troops to die and love Osama Bin Laden

Add another to the list of Republicans who must be fired:

Republican Party Chairman saKen Mehlman, speaking in Puerto Rico, said there was no need to apologize because "what Karl Rove said is true."

Howard Dean says that the Republican party policies represent white Christians, and this is somehow shameful and he should have to step down, even though most of the Republican leadership is white and Christia
n, and its policies are designed to benefit white males who are also Christians and want more Christianity in public life. But for this they want him shot.

But the president's deputy Chief of staff calls Democrats traitors who want our troops to die, and this is perfectly OK.

The IOKIYAR rule is alive and well.

Parsing the definition of "throes"

Dick Cheney attempts to perform a public act of cunning linguist on CNN:

On Iraq and the insurgency's "last throes":

"If you look at what the dictionary says about throes, it can still be a violent period, the throes of a revolution," he said. "The point would be that the conflict will be intense, but it's intense because the terrorists understand that if we're successful at accomplishing our objective -- standing up a democracy in Iraq -- that that's a huge defeat for them.

"We will succeed in Iraq, just like we did in Afghanistan. We will stand up a new government under an Iraqi-drafted constitution. We will defeat that insurgency, and, in fact, it will be an enormous success story."

On where Osama Bin Laden (remember him? Of course not; it's DEMOCRATS who are the real terrorists, right? He's just Bush's old friend) might be hiding:

"...we've got a pretty good idea of the general area" where al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden is hiding, but he said, "I don't have the street address."

Asked to identify the general area, Cheney demurred, saying he wouldn't talk about intelligence matters. Pressed on when bin Laden might be captured, he said, "What, do you expect me to say: Three weeks from next Tuesday?"

"I'm convinced eventually we'll get him,"
we've got a pretty good idea of the general area" where al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden is hiding, but he said, "I don't have the street address."

Asked to identify the general area, Cheney demurred, saying he wouldn't talk about intelligence matters. Pressed on when bin Laden might be captured, he said, "What, do you expect me to say: Three weeks from next Tuesday?"

"I'm convinced eventually we'll get him."

Sounds like Rumsfeld talking about how the WMD are in the area around Tikrit, doesn't it?

And who knew that Gitmo was really a 5-star luxury Caribbean resort?

"They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want,"

I don't know which is worse...the probability that he's so evil he can say all this crap with a straight face, or the possibility that he's insanely delusional enough to actually believe it.

jeudi 23 juin 2005

Upcoming events

FRIDAY 24 JUNE 2005Is My Blog Burning #15: EggsGet your eggs-quisite works of art to Seattle Bon Vivant anytime from Friday 24 June to Sunday 26 June.SATURDAY 25 JUNE 2005Bankstown Bites Food FestivalBankstown City Plaza (near Bankstown train station)10.00am-4.00pmFree one-hour food tours on noodles, tea and Asian, Lebanese and European delights will be conducted on the hour. Book in on the

Upcoming events

They're getting scared

...and a frightened, cornered animal is always the most dangerous kind.

The Iraq war has gone to shit, there have been tens of thousands of layoffs announced this week, private Social Security accounts are D.O.A., The Schiavo case blew up in their faces, and Americans are rapidly coming around to realizing that the current crop of so-called "leaders" are driving them off a cliff.

Karl Rove is getting scared, and so is George W. Bush, and so is Dick Cheney. Hence, the nuclear turd dropped on us today by Karl Rove, which declared, among other things:

that Liberals didn't understand the savagery of the 9/11 attacks. This will come as news to all the registered Democrats and other progressives in New York City and environs who didn't know if they or their loved ones were going to survive the day and who inhaled human ashes on a daily basis even six months later.
that it was not botched Bush policies or inadequate equipment, but Democrats who were putting our troops in Iraq in danger because of Dick Durbin's comments about torture at Guantanamo Bay

John Aravosis has been on this all day and has done a better job than I can in one post. So go read what he has to say here, here, here, and here. And you can check out his video link to the first part of Rove's spew here.

Or give Karl a call yourself and tell him that you don't appreciate him calling 59 million Americans traitors: (202) 456-2369

This Republican House fucklewit says Democrats have declared war on our troops. If that's the case, than so has General John Abizaid, who said today that the insurgency is as strong as ever, and new foreign fighters are flowing into Iraq all the time.

Kos weighs in here, and Joe Gandelman notes how 21st century Roveism would make even Joe McCarthy blush.

Remember when George W. Bush said he was a uniter, not a divider? Of course WE on the left knew it was bullshit. Now the rest of you know too, because Karl Rove declared war on 59 million Americans today.

Make Skippy's Day

Help Skippy celebrate his blogiversary by giving him a hit. He's shooting for a million.

Nhat Tan, Marrickville

Former home to a strong Greek community, these days Marrickville is home to a melting pot of Greeks, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Chinese and Africans.On Illawarra Road--one of the main shopping streets--Asian groceries, Greek bakeries, bubble tea cafes and Vietnamese restaurants jostle one other for over five blocks.We only had eyes for one thing though: Good pho. We were hungry. And we needed it

Nhat Tan, Marrickville

Big Brother is Watching Your Child

I guess this is how they're going to decide which kids are expendable for cannon fodder:

The Defense Department yesterday began working with a private marketing firm to create a database of all U.S. college students as well as high-school students between ages 16 and 18, to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment.

The program is provoking a furor among privacy advocates. The new database will include an array of personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and what subjects the students are studying.

The data will be managed by Wakefield, Mass.-based BeNow, one of many marketing firms that use computers to analyze data to target potential customers based on their personal profiles and habits.

"The purpose of the system ... is to provide a single central facility within the Department of Defense to compile, process and distribute files of individuals who meet age and minimum school requirements for military service," according to the official notice of the program.

The system also gives the Pentagon the right, without notifying citizens, to share the data for several uses outside the military, including with law enforcement, state tax authorities and Congress.

And of course we all know how safe data held by private third companies is, right?

Think about this, folks. They want to know your kid's ethnicity, his grades, and what he's studying. Somehow I think that black C students who are studying theatre arts are going to be the first ones targeted for the front lines in Iraq.

Eugenics indeed.

Bob Herbert on the Michael Schiavo witchhunt

Before you decide that Jeb Bush's playing Inspector Javert to Michael Schiavo's Jean Valjean (albeit one who hasn't even stolen a loaf of bread) is something that couldn't happen to you, ponder this: Here is a politician from a powerful family deciding to hound someone whose efforts have made him look bad -- and have quite possibly damaged his chances at the presidency in 2008.

Bob Herbert has more:

"Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" asked Joseph Welch in his famous confrontation with the pathologically cruel Joe McCarthy. "Have you left no sense of decency?"

More than a half-century later, I would ask the same question of Florida's governor, Jeb Bush.

In an abuse of power that has been widely denounced, and has even appalled many of his own supporters in the Republican Party, Governor Bush has tried to keep the Terri Schiavo circus alive by sending state prosecutors on a witch hunt against her husband, Michael.

The state attorney who has been pushed by the governor into pursuing this case told me yesterday he has seen nothing to indicate that a crime was committed. Nevertheless, the inquiry continues.

Governor Bush asked Bernie McCabe, the state attorney for Pinellas County, to "take a fresh look" at this already exhaustively investigated case to determine, among other things, whether Michael Schiavo had perhaps waited too long to call for help after discovering that his wife had collapsed early one morning 15 years ago.

Mr. McCabe did not seem particularly enthusiastic about his mission. "I wouldn't call it an investigation," he told me in a telephone conversation. The word "investigation," he said, "is a term of art in my business."

He then explained: "When I conduct an investigation, it would mean that I have a criminal predicate. In other words, that I have some indication that a crime has occurred. That's my job.

"In this circumstance, that does not exist at this time. So what I'm attempting to do is respond to the governor's request by conducting what I'm calling an 'inquiry' to see if I can resolve the issues he raised."

He chuckled at his use of the word inquiry. "It may be a distinction without a difference," he said.

Just hope and pray that YOUR family is never in a position in which a private tragedy can be used for political gain by the Bush family. Because these Bushes, who love to tubthump about what good Christians they are, will not hesitate to wield their power like a club to beat you unto death if that's what's necessary for their purposes.

Casualties of War

Sidney Blumenthal mentions today that the Pentagon is beginning to resort to "enemy body counts" to indicate success, while the American body count also continues to rise -- and not all of them are from the war itself:

In a little more than a week, Ann and Bill Byers lost both their sons. One died in combat in Iraq; the other was struck and killed by a pickup a few miles from home.

Sgt. Casey Byers, 22, a member of the 224th Engineer Battalion of the Iowa National Guard, died June 11 south of Ramadi when a bomb exploded under his armored Humvee.

Justin Byers, 19, who was scheduled to leave for Iraq himself this fall with an Army Reserve unit, was killed Monday night near here.

Even more devastating news came Wednesday, about an hour before Casey Byers' funeral began in Denison: Justin's death was ruled a suicide.

Crawford County Medical Examiner Dennis Crabb said Justin was upset about his brother's death and his own upcoming deployment.

Because of his brother's death in combat, however, Justin Byers would not have been required to accompany his unit to Iraq.

Evidence at the accident scene and the way Justin had been acting led investigators to conclude that he purposely stepped in front of the pickup, Crabb said.

Can it get any sadder than this? Behind every one of those 1700+ kids who have died in this illegal war, conceived on lies and fought on the cheap, is a family. Not every wife, sister, brother, parent, has become suicidal, but the grief these families suffer isn't just a question of numbers. I can't imagine being nineteen years old and being so fatalistic about even the THOUGHT of the POSSIBILITY of being sent into this meat grinder that you feel you have no choice but to step in front of a truck.

Even Republicans are worried that the war is going badly

Or at least those concerned about retaining their seats in Congress are:

increasingly, key Republicans do not see the same Iraq Bush sees, even if the GOP leadership remains lockstep behind the commander in chief. Over the weekend, Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said in an interview with U.S. News & World Report that "the White House is completely disconnected from reality ... The reality is that we're losing in Iraq." On Sunday, Sen. John McCain was asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether Vice President Cheney's comments last week that Iraq is in the "last throes" of the insurgency were correct. "No," McCain tersely replied.

That frank sentiment comes on the heels of a well-publicized reversal from an early outspoken supporter of the war, Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., who coined the term "freedom fries" to express his outrage with France. Perhaps more than many of his colleagues, Jones faces potential electoral fallout from the war in Iraq: He has three major military bases in his distinct at the eastern end of the state, and counts tens of thousands of veterans among his constituency.

Few Republicans seem prepared to follow Jones in a call for troop withdrawal. Yet their alternative is equally problematic. If Republicans maintain their support for President Bush, they will be hard-pressed to convince voters, as support for the war nears lows of 40 percent, that the war was worth the cost in lives as well as the hundreds of billions in U.S. tax dollars. And with a stalled domestic legislative agenda added to the mix, this could all add up to electoral trouble for Republicans.

"You are looking at a political problem right now," said the chief of staff of a Republican House member on the International Relations Committee, who spoke on background in order to be candid. "Iraq is conceivably a very big problem. It's one of the top three or four issues and it's not going well; the casualties are mounting and it is costing a lot of money, and the light at the end of the tunnel isn't there."

But the problems go beyond Iraq, the advisor said. "There has been no real good news in anything the Congress has done this year, and the polls are showing dissatisfaction with the president. And Republicans are starting to worry about their reelection."

This doesn't mean all rosy news for Democrats either:

Yet Democrats vocal against the war also remain in a tenuous political position. The party is trying to walk a fine line: voicing dissent on the policy while not appearing to politically capitalize on U.S. casualties. To do this, Democrats consistently reaffirm their support for U.S. soldiers as a qualification to any criticism of the war effort.

This isn't rocket science, folks, at least outside the Beltway. The 101st Fighting Keyboarders may have been the armchair quarterbacks and the cheerleaders, but it's been progressives who have been donating money for USO care packages, sending magazines and snacks to Iraq care of Eric Alterman's regular e-mail correspondent Maj. Bob Bateman (to the point where Bateman had to say, "Enough!"), and holding bake sales so local families can buy body armor for their loved ones fighting in the war. While the war's cheerleaders are wearing their Bush Administration-issued rose-colored glasses and keeping their wallets tightly shut except to spend two bucks on a meaningless ribbon magnet, it's progressives who are writing to Congress fighting against cuts in veterans benefits and financial help for military families.

Progressives learned one lesson from Vietnam -- that caring for the soldiers who are asked to fight an illegal and unjust war is an integral part of the antiwar effort. Inside the Beltway, Democrats may be cowering in fear of Tim Russert and Tucker Carlson and the big ol' Republican meanies in the House. But out here in the reality-based community, we're showing them how it's done.

mercredi 22 juin 2005

Whitewash

What part of "You're going to burn in the fires of hell" is said to another human being "without malice"?

The U.S. Air Force Academy failed to accommodate minority beliefs but there is no overt religious discrimination at the college, an Air Force report on the religious climate at the institution said on Wednesday.
The report was prompted by allegations that the prestigious academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which produces junior officers for the Air Force, promotes evangelical Christianity and a climate of intolerance toward other religious beliefs.

"There was a lack of awareness on the part of some faculty and staff, and perhaps cadets in positions of authority, as to what constitutes appropriate expressions of faith, particularly in this setting: in superior-subordinate relationships in a government institution," Air Force Lt. Gen. Roger Brady, who headed the report, told a Pentagon briefing.

The U.S. Constitution mandates a separation of church and state.

A team from Yale Divinity School said in April it found evangelical Christian proselytizing commonplace at the academy, which has about 4,400 students, and cited "stridently evangelical themes" by staff. The team described a campus chaplain telling cadets they would "burn in the fires of hell" if they were not born-again Christians.

The Air Force report said that it found "the root of this problem is not overt religious discrimination." Brady said problems were neither pervasive nor institutionalized, and that faculty and staff who acted inappropriately did not do so with malice.

This report is a complete whitewash. Fundamentalist Christians justify their "efforts at conversion" with the idea that telling people God hates them unless they toe a particular doctrine constitutes "sharing God's love." Sorry, folks, but this isn't "sharing love", this is hatemongering, and if "accommodating Christian beliefs" means allowing to tell other people that they must believe a certain way or burn in hell, well, perhaps some beliefs ought not to be accommodated. Your right to believe ends at my nose.

And a United States military that allows this kind of focus in its training can't have any credibility when it says it's not on a religious crusade.

Here's why Republicans won't send their own kids to enlist

Because the Bush Administration is still stiffing the troops on necessary, life-saving equipment:

Marine Corps units fighting in some of the most dangerous terrain in Iraq don't have enough weapons, communications gear, or properly outfitted vehicles, according to an investigation by the Marine Corps' inspector general provided to Congress yesterday.

The report, obtained by the Globe, says the estimated 30,000 Marines in Iraq need twice as many heavy machine guns, more fully protected armored vehicles, and more communications equipment to operate in a region the size of Utah.

The Marine Corps leadership has ''understated" the amount and types of ground equipment it needs, according to the investigation, concluding that all of its fighting units in Iraq ''require ground equipment that exceeds" their current supplies, ''particularly in mobility, engineering, communications, and heavy weapons."

Complaints of equipment shortages in Iraq, including lack of adequate vehicle armor, have plagued the Pentagon for months, but most of the reported shortages have been found in the Army, which makes up the bulk of the American occupation force.

The analysis of the Marines' battle readiness, however, shows that the Corps is lacking key equipment needed to stabilize Al Anbar province in western Iraq. The province is where some of the bloodiest fighting has occurred in recent months between American-led coalition forces and Iraqi insurgents aided by foreign fighters who have slipped across the border.

Maybe if we could find a way to send fetuses or people in persistent vegetative states to fight in Iraq, Bush just might equip them, since those are the only kind of life he finds sacred.

Why Bush had to invade Iraq (and it wasn't about terrorism, either)

Thom Hartmann:

...neither the "lie of convenience" nor the "lie of ignorance" were demonstrably the reasons why Bush invaded Iraq.

So why then did George W. Bush lie us into invading and occupying Iraq?

We know that Bush wanted to massively cut taxes on his corporate sponsors and people, like himself, with substantial inherited fortunes. He wanted to weaken government protections of the environment, children, the poor, the elderly, the ozone layer, and our nation's forests. He wanted his oil-rig and mining-interest friends to have more access to public lands.

We know he wanted to undo Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal by stripping the American workplace (particularly government and schools) of unions, rolling back "socialist" unemployment and Social Security programs, and eliminating SEC and tort restraints on predatory corporate behavior. He'd even campaigned on this platform - particularly Social Security privatization - back in 1978 when he unsuccessfully ran for Congress from Texas.

We know he wanted to increase the police power of the federal government, gut the First and Fourth Amendments, and thus create a "safe and orderly nation" of people under constant surveillance, who never question those in power.

We know he wanted to give billions of our tax dollars to churches he approved of, and bring their leaders into the halls of government. He wanted to pass laws incorporating religious dogma about when human life begins, what is appropriate sexuality, and free churches to use tax-exempt dollars to influence politics.

It was an ambitious agenda. In order to bring about this neoconservative paradise, Bush knew he'd need considerable political capital. And that kind of capital didn't come from his being selected as President by the Supreme Court.

Such political capital - such raw political power - would only come, he believed, by his becoming a "war president."

Bush wasn't the first to realize how war strengthened a president in power, although the Founders saw it as a danger rather than an opportunity.

On April 20, 1795, James Madison wrote, "Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few."

Reflecting on war's impact on the Executive Branch of government, Madison continued his letter about the dangerous and intoxicating power of war for a president.

"In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive [President] is extended," he wrote. "Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war...and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both.

"No nation," he concluded, "could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

But freedom wasn't the goal of George W. Bush or his neoconservative Republican colleagues. It was political power. And they were willing to lie us into a war to achieve it.

Writer Russ Baker noted in October, 2004, that Mickey Herskowitz, the man Bush had originally hired to write his autobiography ("A Charge To Keep: My Journey To The White House"), told Baker that George Bush was planning his Iraq invasion - to seize and hold political power for himself and the Republican Party - during his first presidential election campaign.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," Herskowitz told Baker. "It was on his mind. He [Bush] said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."

Not while I, and others like me, can still type, he won't.

Guess the nationality of a majority of the foreign fighters in Iraq

Iraqi? Iranian? Syrian?

Nope. Saudi.

Yes, Saudi Arabia, led by George W. Bush's tiptoeing through the tulips buddy, is contributing 55% of the foreign fighters who are now killing our troops:

An NBC News analysis of hundreds of foreign fighters who died in Iraq over the last two years reveals that a majority came from the same country as most of the 9/11 hijackers — Saudi Arabia.

Among the suicide bombers was Ahmed al-Ghamdi, a one-time medical student and son of a Saudi diplomat. In December 2004, he climbed into a truck in Mosul and blew himself up.

On an Internet video, another Saudi says goodbye to his mother, then drives an ambulance full of explosives into a building.

They are among more than 400 militants from 21 countries whose deaths were celebrated on Islamic Web sites over the last two years.

"By far the nationality that comes up over and over again is Saudi Arabia," says Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News terrorism expert.

The NBC News analysis of Web site postings found that 55 percent of foreign insurgents came from Saudi Arabia, 13 percent from Syria, 9 percent from North Africa and 3 percent from Europe.

Think about that the next time you pump 30 gallons of gasoline into your Ford Excursion -- you know, the one with the "Support Our Troops" ribbon magnet on the back.

mardi 21 juin 2005

Liars or idiots?

Which do YOU think is running the country? E.J. Dionne seems to think it's the latter:

The notion that the president led the country into war through indirection or dishonesty is not the most damaging criticism of the administration. The worst possibility is that the president and his advisers believed their own propaganda. They did not prepare the American people for an arduous struggle because they honestly didn't expect one.

How else to explain the fact that the president and his lieutenants consistently played down the costs of the endeavor, the number of troops required, the difficulties of overcoming tensions among the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds? Were they lying? The more logical explanation is that they didn't know what they were talking about.

Because the White House failed to prepare Americans for what was to come, the administration now faces a backlash. Over the weekend Bush said that the terrorists in Iraq were seeking to "weaken our nation's resolve." But the rising impatience about which Bush complains is a direct result of the administration's blithe dismissal of those who warned just how tough the going could get.

I'm not sure the incompetence possibility is in any way redeeming of the over 1700 American kids who have died for -- lies or incompetence? You decide.

Haigh's, Sydney

So it seems my information sources were wrong and Haigh's actually opened today!We ducked up at lunchtime and were impressed by the efficient but friendly staff in crisp white uniforms, the goodie filled windows and, of course, the chocolate heaven inside.I didn't realise that Haigh's are the only chocolatiers in Australia who start with raw (imported) cacao beans: roasting, grinding and then

Haigh's, Sydney

Shorter John Tierney

Employers contribute to age discrimination by continuing to give raises to older workers.

And just when I thought perhaps he might be doing an op-ed piece that wasn't completely idiotic.

Here's why they're dropping Bin Laden's name

CNN:

Nearly six in 10 Americans oppose the war in Iraq and a growing number of them are dissatisfied with the war on terrorism, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday.

Only 39 percent of those polled said they favored the war in Iraq -- down from 47 percent in March -- and 59 percent were opposed.

The poll showed that approval for the Bush administration's war on terrorism also has declined, with 10 percent of respondents saying they were very satisfied with the way things were going in the war on terrorism, down from 19 percent in a February poll.

Forty-seven percent of respondents said they were "not satisfied" with the war on terrorism -- up from 35 percent in February -- and 42 percent were "somewhat satisfied," compared to 45 percent in the earlier poll.

Even so, only 4 percent said they considered a terrorist attack in the United States over the next few weeks "very likely" -- down from 10 percent in February.

Thirty-one percent considered an attack somewhat likely and 63 percent said one was not likely, compared to 38 percent and 51 percent, respectively, in a December poll.

Fewer than four in 10 Americans said they were at least somewhat worried about becoming a victim of terror.

Not good news for Bush, and further proof that he needs Bin Laden at large, not in the docks. As long as the boogeyman is loose, Bush can always use him as a weapon. Captured, Bin Laden is of no use to him.

It is NOT encouraging, however, that the relentless parade of Jacko Jacko Jacko Runaway Bride Bennifer Natalee Holloway Jacko Jacko Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes Jacko Jacko Jacko has made people complacent about terrorism. Even those of us who think Bush's war has EXACERBATED rather than easaed the threat don't think we can afford to be complacent. We want terrorism addressed EFFECTIVELY, which Bush policies don't do. If people don't understand that Bush's policies have made the threat worse instead of better, we're in big trouble.

Even more discouraging is the one number that looks good for Bush: The poll showed that 52 percent of respondents approved of how the United States has treated prisoners at the detention camp in the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- compared to 37 percent who disapproved. This means that most Americans don't care about humane treatment of prisoners, don't care that many of the people imprisoned down there have never been charged and don't understand how this violates American precepts. It means that despite the encouraging numbers about Bush's performance, the reptilian brain is still alive and well in America.