Blond Botoxed Media Whore Idiots of Mass Destruction

I hope you all watched Keith Olbermann's systematic evisceration of Bill O'Reilly tonight. If not, I'll post the link as soon as it's up on the inevitable Crooks and Liars.

You want to know what Keith is talking about regarding CNN?

Here ya go:

During CNN's live coverage preceding President Bush's January 31 State of the Union address, co-host Paula Zahn claimed "a lot of people out there" are saying that "if you vote for a Democrat, that basically you want to be bombed." Zahn also purported to identify a "perception" that Democrats are "reactive, not proactive, that they have no agenda of their own, and ... that basically the only thing they're good at is blasting the president."

[snip]

But security is still going to be a huge issue in this country, and whether you like it or not, you've got a lot of people out there saying, if you're Republican, we're going to keep the country safe, you know, if you vote for a Democrat, that basically you want to be bombed.

And they want to know why no one takes CNN seriously anymore?

UPDATE: Here's the Crooks and Liars link to Olbermann's O'Reilly smackdown.

Liveblogging the SOTU

In case you missed it:

9:13: starts sotu by mentioning Coretta Scott King and hoping for a reunion with her husband at the Rainbow Bridge. Sam Seder: Too bad he named a Supreme Court Justice who's going to reverse most of the gains MLK made.

9:14: Calls for civil tone in debate. OK, Republicans, you go first.

9:16: Invokes 9/11 and mentions terrorism.

9:17: Mentions the fight against terror

9:17: Third mention of the word "freedom"

9:18: Mentions purple ink on Iraqi fingers

9:19: Mentions that half of people live in Democratic nations. Does not mention that the U.S. is no longer one of them.

9:20: Says terrorists are trying to break our will. Could not see if the hula jaw was working.

9:21: Gotta get 'em there so they won't come here.

9:21. Workin' the jaw.

9:22: We will never surrender to evil. Translation: We will be at war forever, and I can do anything I want while we're at war.

9:22: That jaw is really working.

9:22: Lies that we have killed or captured many terrorist leaders.

9:22: Says we have a clear plan for victory in Iraq. Says we are continuing "weconstruction efforts." Does not mention whether it's wabbit season in Fallujah.

9:23: Mentions Iraqis showing their courage. Does not say it's because they might get blown up on their way to work.

9:23. Says work in Iraq is difficult because enemy is brutal. Does n ot say it's because he doesn't know what the hell he's doing.

9:24: Says he's confident in Iraqi victory. Says we are winning. Does not mention "truthiness." The morons present give him a standing ovation. Says Iraqi forces are increasingly taking the lead. Tell that to Bob Woodruff, asshole.

9:25: Closeup of jaw working. He stops when he realizes it's a closeup.

9:25: Brands anything that disagrees with him as defeatism. Works the jaw.

9:26: Says those in public office have a duty to speak with candor. As of when, Georgie?

9:27: Smirks.

9:27: Invokes the sacrifices of the soldiers. Says they know what it's like to fight house to house....to see a comrade killed. That's more than he knows.

9:28: Invokes Dan Clay, who was killed in Fallujah last week. Dan's father Bud is present. Applause. (Snarky trivia note: "Bud Clay" is the name of Vincent Gallo's character in The Brown Bunny, which Roger Ebert regards as the worst movie ever made. In the film, Gallo receives a blowjob from Chloe Sevigny.)

9:29: Mentions terror. Says we support democratic reform across the Middle East. Does not mention that he favors dictatorship here.

9:31: Mentions Hamas. Take two drinks. Says Hamas must recognize Israel. Huge ovation.

9:31: Lauds "first steps to reform" among his buddies in Saudi Arabia.

9:32: Mentions "small clerical elite" holding Iran hostage. Does not mention the small clerical elite which holds our government hostile.

9:32: Says we will not allow the Iranian regime to obtain nuclear weapons. Speaking directly to citizens of Iran, he says we respect their rights to choose their own future, as long as they choose a free and democratic Iran.

9:33: Mentions AIDS again. Does not mention the $15 billion he promised last time that he didn't deliver on.

9:35: Gets belligerent, claims that other presidents have done the same warrantless searches he has. Says that if you are getting calls from Al Qaeda, he wants to know about it "because we will not wait to be hit again." Presumably if you are getting calls from Cindy Sheehan, he will want to know about it too.

9:38: Implies that warrantless spying is going to go on indefinitely.

9:38: Says our economy is healthy, talks about creating 4.6 million new jobs. Does not mention how many jobs were lost and what those jobs pay compared to the lost jobs.

9:39: Implies that everyone who lost a job to India is a bigot.

9:39: Says this economy could not function without immigrants. Republicans applaud politely, confused.

9:41: Asks for tax cuts to be made permanent. Yes, creating an even larger deficit is the way back to prosperity. Says this year he will cut programs that are performing poorly. (Translation: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Veterans' benefits)

9:42: Jesus H. Christ...he just asked for the line item veto. Under what rock in the Rose Garden did he find that one?

9:43: Whoa. Designated Family Shithead joke. Says that two of his father's favorite people are approaching retirement age -- himself and Bill Clinton. Makes dire remarks about Social Security; Republicans erupt in enthusiastic applause. I wonder how watching these guys go nuts over Social Security privatization is going to play in Peoria. Gets even more hysterical as he continues talking. His bold plan: Create a commission to study the problem. Oy.

9:47: Here comes his health care plan. Make wider use of electronic records to control costs. Calls for health savings accounts "so that people can buy insurance with the same benefits that big corporations get." (How is that going to happen?) Calls for tort reform this year. He spends 1-1/2 minutes on health care, which means he hasn't got a frickin' clue.

9:47: Announces that we are addicted to oil. Announces a 22% increase in energy research, invest in coal-fired plants, wind power, and nuclear energy. Talks about hydrogen and hybrid cars. Wants more research into ethanol. Sounds like Archer-Daniels-Midland got hold of him. Calls for reducing oil imports by 75% by 2025. This is all well and good, but how is he going to do this and keep his contributors in the energy industry happy? Or are they going to get all this government investment?

9:52: Says we're going to keep our edge in education. Announces American competitive initiative, including giving American children "a firm grounding in math and science." Does not say whether this includes the study of so-called "intelligent design." Supercomputing is a "promising technology"? Does the name "Cray" mean anything to him?

9:54. Calls for children to opt for more math and science curricula and institute rigorous standards. Does not say whether this includes intelligent design. Dobson must be having a coronary.

9:55: Talks about the U.S. as a compassionate nation. Touts drop in welfare cases, but does not mention the people tossed off the rolls. Says the number of teenaged pregnancies has dropped over 12 years. Gives credit to commitment to "a life of personal responsiblity" and abstinence education. Does not mention that abortions have INCREASED during his term over the number of abortions during the Clinton years.

9:57: The Alito welcome: Talks about judges who won't legislate from the bench. Gives thanks to Sandra Day O'Connor for her service and for retiring, thus allowing him to name Strip Search Sammy the Stem Cell Alito to the court.

9:58: Calls for a ban on human cloning, including human/animal hybrids. This is ostensibly aimed at Rick Santorum's attempt to locate a cross between a woman and a collie, allowing him to have man-on-dog sex while still not committing bestiality.

9:59: Tepidly says he supports ethics standards strengthening. This is met with equally tepid applause.

10:00: Encourages adults to get involved in the lives of children, including an initiative led by Pickles, who looks drugged. His speech is getting really slurred. Funny...when Hillary Clinton used to talk about this, it was called "It takes a village to raise a child" and everyone laughed at it.

10:01: It's been about 45 minutes. He's starting to head into Clinton territory, with none of the Clinton substances.

10:02: Calls for reinstatement of the Ryan White Act to provide for better access to AIDS drugs. This is met with very tepid applause from Republicans, who want the wages of sin to be death. Talks obliquely about prevention, which may be translated as "keep your legs closed, bitch!"

10:04: He's starting to sound like Bluto, exhorting the troops to a really futile and stupid gesture.

10:04: It's over. Thank God. Brian Williams is already fellating him on the air, Timmeh belabors the obvious by noting the divide in Congress. These guys think he has little chance of getting any of this through. Andrea Mitchell says there was nothing conciliatory about this speech and his military vision is "We can't retreat" and nothing more. David Gregory comes along. He notes the mix of conciliation and confrontation. Wonders if it's too far into the Bush presidency for him to get the parties to come together. Williams says Bush is frustrated with what he sees as a large part of the population that doesn't agree with his message, that this is a nation at war.

Timmeh says that he should then ask for sacrifice from Americans. Notes that he was flanked by the Congressional leadership that Bush says was informed about the eavesdropping. Timmeh says it's going to go to the Supreme Court, and that what the Court says about this eavesdropping will determine the Bush legacy. Of course, with Sammy Alito on the Court, we all know how they will decide.

OK, I've had quite enough of this.

Anti-War BannersT-Shirts of Mass Destruction and open thread

MSNBC just reported that Cindy Sheehan has been arrested for unfurling an anti-war banner from the gallery of the Capitol, where she had been given a pass by Rep. Lynne Woolsey.

Any bets on how long it takes before he talks about spreading freedom around the world, after jailing a dissident only moments before his speech?

Rant 'n' rave about the State of the Union Address in the comments. I'm working on my blog template and listening to The Majority Report, so I'll liveblog whatever of this crap they actually play.

UPDATE: Turns out Cindy Sheehan did NOT unfurl a banner, but was wearing an anti-war T-shirt. She was not asked to leave, she was not asked to cover up the shirt, she was arrested. Nice way to introduce the idea of spreading democracy. Either that or they hired Carson Kressley to enforce tasteful attire. If that's the case, then what was with Elizabeth Dole's suit?

Kristof's prescription for national health

Since I started to ride this particular donkey last weekend, let's follow through with the latest installment of Nick Kristof's series on improving American health, shall we?

Nothing much to get hot under the collar about today:

First, a quiz: What "vegetable" do American infants and toddlers eat most?

Weep, for it's the French fry. A major study conducted by Gerber found that up to one-third of young children don't eat any vegetable daily, but that the French fry is the single most common one they do consume. And among children age 19 months to 24 months, 20 percent eat French fries at least once a day.

This is truly appalling. First of all, it's appalling that there are parents in this country who think that french fries qualify as a vegetable. It's also appalling that so few kids will actually eat vegetables. I'd be interested in hearing from parents who have dealt with this particular adventure, because I have no first-hand experience. I do have a theory, though, based on the experiences of a co-worker.

It seems to me that most children get their first taste of vegetables via some variation of Gerber strained baby food. I'm skeptical as to how much this stuff tastes like the real thing, and I wonder if when the kids DO see the real thing after being fed this slop, they respond in the standard kid fashion to things unfamiliar.

The aforementioned co-worker makes her own strained vegetables by cooking real vegetables and then pureeing them in a food processor. This is no supermom; she works a 32-hour week with an hour drive each way. But her kids have absolutely no qualms about eating real vegetables, because they're used to how they taste.

Back to Kristof:

Ban soda, potato chips and other unhealthy snacks from American schools, and discourage them in the workplace. It's unforgivable that our schools help to send children on the road to diabetes. Obesity kills far more Americans than heroin does.

I still think Kristof is painting "obesity' with too broad a brush, but his point is well-taken anyway. Schools should not be purveying the kind of crap they do as food. The film Super Size Me had an excellent segment on school lunches and what's offered, and showed that children who went to a school in which lunches were prepared on-site and were well-balanced, without unnecessary fat and sugar and white flour, had less behavior problems than their pizza-and-Ding-Dong-eating peers.

Sell cigarettes only in pharmacies and raise cigarette taxes. Smoking still kills 440,000 Americans a year, including 50,000 nonsmokers. One study found that raising the federal excise tax on cigarettes by 75 cents a pack would generate $13.1 billion in additional revenue per year and cut youth smoking by 13 percent and adult smoking by 3 percent, saving 1.2 million lives. Let's do it.

I'm there, dude.

Tax junk foods. Some 19 states already impose taxes on particular junk foods, like soda, and a nickel-a-can tax on soft drinks would generate $7 billion in revenues. In particular, we should tax high-fructose corn syrup, which is used as a sweetener in a vast array of products and is a major culprit in the fattening of America.

Alas, this is where some well-meaning but misguided people on my side of the political fence are likely to scream bloody murder, branding this a regressive tax on the poor, who have better access to junk food than they do to healthier choices. I would prefer to see some serious restrictions on the use of high-fructose corn syrup, which is metabolized differently from sucrose and has been linked to high levels of triglycerides. However, high-fructose corn syrup is cheap, so the big Frankenfood companies prefer to use it instead of sugar. I wouldn't look for a Republican government to demand that the food industry use a more expensive sweetener.

Promote jogging and biking. Since we pay for all the consequences of inactivity (like those heart bypasses), we should encourage exercise. We should build more bicycle paths and turn more streets over to bikers, skaters and pedestrians — starting with Sixth Avenue in Manhattan.

Encourage exercise breaks. Governor Huckabee gives state employees a 30-minute daily "exercise break" that is modeled on the smoking breaks that smokers take. It's a good idea.

I love the idea of more bike paths. I work 9 miles from my home. In theory, I could ride a bike to work in the nice weather, if a) showers were available where I work; and b) I wouldn't be taking my life in my hands bicycling on the main roads I drive on to get to work.

As for exercise breaks and in-company gyms and such -- I wouldn't use them. I used to work for a company that had a very elaborate in-house gym, with fluffy towels and showers and toiletries and gym shorts and T-shirts provided, and a trainer to work up a program for you. And I never went, because I was working 12-14 hours a day in this place, and it was pretty obviously designed for the already fit and fabulous. I work out at home by myself and I'm much happier that way.

Distribute fruits and veggies to certain low-income people, as Maine does in FarmShare, a potent antipoverty program.

Fabulous idea.

Expand P.E. It's ridiculous that schools have been cutting back on P.E. when students need more of it. Likewise, kids should be encouraged to walk to school. When my eldest son attended a Japanese elementary school in Tokyo, the school required him to walk or bike to school beginning in the first grade.

As someone who hated P.E. in school, I don't know how I feel about this. The problem with school physical education classes is that they force kids to do things they hate, and expose them to ridicule for things they can't do. When I was in school, I was ridiculed for my inability to do pull-ups or climb a rope. I was ridiculed for my fear of gymnastics equipment. I was ridiculed for my lack of ability to hit a ball. I hated, hated, hated gym class. Now if I'd been able to do something like lap swimming at the Y, or go ice skating, or something else to fill the phys. ed requirement so that I didn't have to feel "Can't win....don't try" -- perhaps I would have adopted a fitness regimen much earlier on.

As for walking to school, I'm all for that. In my neighborhood, I see parents driving down one block and up the next one to take their kids to school. Put the baby in a stroller, put a leash on the dog, and everyone could get a walk in when your kids go to school.

I understand that parents fear their kids being snatched by predators right off the street, and that's why the kids are chauffeured the 1/4 mile to school. Much of this fear is fed by television, and it doesn't explain why a 16-year-old high school kid still needs a ride or a bus when he lives four blocks from the school.

Most of Kristof's suggestions are good ones, but they don't address some fundamental problems in our culture. One of those problems is that people, especially parents, are just stretched too thin. I covered this in my earlier blog on this issue. At a time when jobs that pay enough to support a family are becoming more scarce, and workers are afraid to take sick days or vacation days for fear of being deemed expendable, and more people are cobbling together an income working multiple jobs, something's got to give -- and nutrition and exercise are often what's deemed jettisonable.

Coretta Scott King

There's nothing I can say to add to this.

Charles Pierce demolishes Carville and Begala

Thus proving that no one is more of a true believer than a convert, repentant Clintonistas James Carville and Paul Begala have penned a book full of DLC garbage, which they are pimping all over the place.

Charles Pierce, who is almost as mandatory reading as James Wolcott, demolishes this intrepid duo in a piece in The American Prospect:

These are two guys with permanent seats at the Beltway Cool Kids table, but they can publish an entire chapter -- and cite my friend Eric Alterman in doing so -- on how conservatives "work the refs."

This is in a book in which Tucker Carlson is "a good guy." And Gary Bauer is "a good guy."

And Tim Russert is "indefatigable" in his pursuit of Republican miscreants. And Mark Halprin of The Note is "one of the smartest people we know in the media."

And Don Imus impresses Bill Clinton with "his grasp of the issues and his uncanny ability to sum up a situation or a person with a single, cutting phrase." This example is cited as a measure of how Bill Clinton brilliantly used the media in "a populist way," and as a cautionary tale for Democrats who "don't want to do farm radio or be in the local paper."

Glorioski, Don Imus. Populist media. I mean, there's triangulation and there's triangulation, and then there's Pythagoras on crystal meth.

Gonzales lied under oath? What shall we tell the children?

WaPo:

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) charged yesterday that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales misled the Senate during his confirmation hearing a year ago when he appeared to try to avoid answering a question about whether the president could authorize warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens.

In a letter to the attorney general yesterday, Feingold demanded to know why Gonzales dismissed the senator's question about warrantless eavesdropping as a "hypothetical situation" during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2005. At the hearing, Feingold asked Gonzales where the president's authority ends and whether Gonzales believed the president could, for example, act in contravention of existing criminal laws and spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant.

Gonzales said that it was impossible to answer such a hypothetical question but that it was "not the policy or the agenda of this president" to authorize actions that conflict with existing law. He added that he would hope to alert Congress if the president ever chose to authorize warrantless surveillance, according to a transcript of the hearing.

In fact, the president did secretly authorize the National Security Agency to begin warrantless monitoring of calls and e-mails between the United States and other nations soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The program, publicly revealed in media reports last month, was unknown to Feingold and his staff at the time Feingold questioned Gonzales, according to a staff member. Feingold's aides developed the 2005 questions based on privacy advocates' concerns about broad interpretations of executive power.

Uh....this is pretty cut and dried, folks. Unless Gonzales can show some pretty compelling evidence that he was not aware of the warrantless surveillance, this is a pretty clear cut case of lying under oath. And it was Republicans who decided during the last presidency that ANY kind of lying under oath warranted serious punishment. So their inevitable claims of "no harm done" are going to ring hollow here.

Not that I expect any Democrat other than Feingold to have the stones to follow up....

Was Bob Woodruff set up?

This post at Kos by a recent returnee from Iraq makes a compelling case for the ambush that injured ABC news anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Douglas Vogt being the result of insurgent spies working within the Iraqi army that the U.S. is supposedly training:

Bob Woodruff was set up.
by tricky dick
Tue Jan 31, 2006 at 12:11:19 AM PDT
As some of you know, I recently returned from Iraq. This Bob Woodruff story has been bothering me. Something about it stinks.

I have a theory about what likely happened. I think it's worse than we know.

Update - I suspect that Bob Woodruff was set up by insurgent spies working within the Iraqi Army, and that the US Military was unable to protect him. I want to be clear, this is no conspiracy theory. I am in no way suggesting that Bob Woodruff was working on behalf of the US government, as some are suggesting in the comments. I have the utmost respect for Bob Woodruff and do not question his journalistic integrity. I wish him a speedy recovery.

tricky dick's diary :: ::
The biggest problem with Iraq is that the Iraqi Army (IA) is a complete joke. This is why the US Military is stuck there for the next decade, guaranteed. The GOP will get clobbered in the mid-terms if they can't figure out a way to convince the gullible Amercan public that things are improving. That means some artificial troop reductions and a carefully orchestrated PR campaign... along with a significant amount of praying. We know the US is involved in negotiations with various insurgent groups, hoping to cut a deal with them. In short, the Bush Asministration is terrified of losing the mid-terms and will do anything necessary to turn the tide with regards to the domestic political situation. They are desperate.

Tonight is the State of the Union Address. I believe that Woodruff was meant to be embedded with an IA unit in order to give the impression that the IA is making "good progress" in "standing up" so that the US can "stand down". Of course it's all a con game. I believe Bob Woodruff fell victim to an ill conceived attempt at propaganda.

First of all, I should tell you that while in Iraq, I was stationed at an IA training base in Diyala Province. I saw the IA train everyday. What first grabbed my eye about this story was that Woodruff was riding in an armored vehicle which was supposed to belong to the IA. The problem is that the IA doesn't have any armor. They drive around in Toyota pickup trucks. They are white with brown stripes and usually have M-60's (or a Russian equivalent) mounted on the back. They have zero tactical vehicles. I can't imagine they have aquired them in the last 90 days.

So where the hell did they get the armor?

My guess is that some IA unit was selected for a crash course in "how to drive a 113" or whatever in the hope of giving ABC News the impression that the IA was indeed becoming mechanized, which is an absolutely vital step towards them becoming effective. In short, this would have been very irregular and conspicuous activity for the IA to be engaged in. Again, the IA NEVER TRAIN IN OR OPERATE ARMORED VEHICLES!!!

Second, the IA is completely compromised by the insurgency. Once insurgents within Woodruff's embedded unit saw what was going on, it would have been all too easy for them to get the word out and set up an ambush. It certainly would have been in their interest to do so, they well understand the information war that is going on. They are probably aware that the US Government is actively engaged in PSYOPS against the US Public. They would have desperately wanted to kill Woodruff even as the US Military hoped to show "progress in Iraq".

Now look, I know I am speculating. But I don't think you people know how unlikely this attack was to be random. The area Woodruff was in is not that bad. It's not as if every single convoy gets nailed every time out. In 11 months, my vehicle was never directly targeted. The odds that the insurgents would happen to hit that particular convoy in that particular area is remote. The odds that they would hit Woodruff's vehicle is also a long shot. And they must have hit it hard. They inflicted serious injury on personel who were riding in a well protected vehicle. Naturally the Army wouldn't send Wooodruff out in a Toyota, they sent him out in a vehicle that was a hard target.

You see, most of the IED attacks in Iraq are ineffective. They usually wouldn't kill an armored vehicle. They are becoming more and more lethal, to be sure. But it is actually unusual, in my experience, to come across one that is potentially this destructive. This, however, was a complex attack. It was an (especially effective) IED attack followed by small arms fire. That, contrary to what you might think, simply does not happen every day. I don't believe that this is a coincidence.

For Woodruff to be out on patrol with an armored IA unit (which is something I have NEVER heard of) the day before the SOTU address, and then for him to be nailed by a devastating complex-IED attack... it stinks to high heaven.

This isn't tinfoil hat stuff, nor is it vague mumblings about some kind of Administration setup. If true, what it points to is a serious infiltration of the Iraqi army by the insurgency -- with Woodruff and Vogt being made an example of just who's running the show.

Chinese New Year Eve: the build-up

Chinese New Year festivities always involve food. And lots of it. Of course they should!Our family doesn't make a big deal of Chinese New Year, but luckily for me, I have friends who do! Friends who cook! Obsessively! And who think nothing of ordering a whole suckling pig for a modest New Year gathering just because we can!As we raced to Bankstown late on Saturday afternoon for some last minute

Chinese New Year Eve: the build-up

Chinese New Year festivities always involve food. And lots of it. Of course they should!Our family doesn't make a big deal of Chinese New Year, but luckily for me, I have friends who do! Friends who cook! Obsessively! And who think nothing of ordering a whole suckling pig for a modest New Year gathering just because we can!As we raced to Bankstown late on Saturday afternoon for some last minute

The Passion (for George Bush) of Chris Matthews

Chris Matthews' lust for George W. Bush is COMPLETELY out of control:

Yes, it's that bad. After his on-the-air gay-bashing, his creepy stereotyping of Latinos, his incredibly offensive comparisons of peaceful Americans to Osama bin Laden, and his ever-growing right-wing bias, MSNBC's Chris Matthews has gone off the deep end.

Crooks and Liars has the video. On tonight's "Hardball," Matthews discusses US Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito's wife, and how she'll likely be featured during the State of the Union:

MATTHEWS: ...won't they say something up beat and (bucking up)... isn't she a great woman, didn't she stand up-and then they'll put the camera right on Ted Kennedy and show how he was the guy that molested her basically-that's the way they'll play it...

This is journalism? Making light of the sexual abuse of women on national TV? And accusing a sitting US Senator of the offense, to boot (and no suprise it was a Democratic Senator).

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Kennedy men, women, William Kennedy Smith Mary Jo Kopechne.

Now that those irrelevancies are out of the way, will someone please explain to me how even the most blowhardy bombast directed at Martha-Ann BombBomb's husband is some how equivalent to sexually molesting HER?

Every time a progressive says anything against a Republican, it's hate speech. But in the last few days, we've seen Ann Coulter call for someone to put rat poison in Justice Stevens' coffee and call it a "joke", we've seen a Republican fundraiser which crowed until the mention was taken off the RNC's web site that it would feature a Jesse Jackson pinata in a fun re-creation of the good old days of lynching, and now Chris Matthews is calling the Judicial interrogation process a sexual molestation of the nominee's wife, and that's perfectly OK.

I'm going to go stick an icepick in my forehead now.

Remember this guy?

Remember that guy? At the time this photo was taken, he was Lance Cpl. Blake Miller, age 21, and the photo became an iconic image from the early, heady days of the Iraq war.

Here he is today:



Only now he's suffering from PTSD:

The photograph hit the world on Nov. 10, 2004: a close-cropped shot of a U.S. Marine in Iraq, his face smeared with blood and dirt, a cigarette dangling from his lips, smoke curling across weary eyes.
It was an instant icon, with Dan Rather calling it "the best war photograph in recent years." About 100 newspapers ran the photo, dubbing the anonymous warrior the "Marlboro Man."

The man in the photograph is James Blake Miller, now 21, and he is an icon, although in ways Rather probably never imagined.

He's quieter now -- easier to anger. He turns to fight at the sound of a backfire, can't look at fireworks without thinking of fire raining down on a city. He has trouble sleeping, and when he does, his fingers twitch on invisible triggers.

The diagnosis: post-traumatic stress disorder.

[snip]

When Miller returned to America, he brought back a big duffel bag packed with numerous letters and gifts from those who had seen his photo. It was only later that he discovered he'd brought home some of the war, too.
None of the Marines talked much about the strain that war puts on one's emotions, Miller said. The "wizards" -- military psychologists -- gave the returning troops a briefing on the subject, but nobody paid much attention. Even guys who were taking antidepressants to help them sleep didn't think much about the long-term consequences.

"What the hell are those people going to do once they get out? They ride it out until they get an honorable discharge, and then they're never diagnosed with anything," Miller said. "How the hell are you going to do anything for them after that? And that's how so many of these guys are ending up on the damn streets."

Miller dismissed the early signs, too. When he and his buddies reacted to a truck backfire by dropping into a combat stance and raising imaginary rifles, well, that was to be expected. And when his wife, Jessica -- the childhood sweetheart whom Miller had married in June -- told him he was tightening his arm around her neck in the night, that was strange, but he figured it would pass. So would the nightmares he began to have about Iraq, things that had happened, things that hadn't.

Then one day, while visiting his wife at her college dorm in Pikeville, Miller looked out the window and clearly saw the body of an Iraqi sprawled out on the sidewalk. He turned away.

"I said, 'Look, honey, I just got to get out of here.' I couldn't even tell her at the time what had happened," he said. "(I thought), 'Well, that's it. That's my little spaz I'm supposed to have that the psychiatrists were talking about ... I'm glad I got it out of the way."

But he hadn't. Jessica, a psychology student, tried to help with a visualization technique. But when he looked inside himself, Miller found a kind of demonic door guarded by a twisted figure in a black cloak. Under the cloak's hood, he spotted the snarling face of the teufelhund, a Marine Corps icon -- the devil dog.

"So I come out again, without closing the door," he said. "After all this happened, my nightmares started getting a lot f -- ing worse."

Finally, Miller went to a military psychiatrist, who diagnosed him with signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. Miller thought that meant he could not be deployed. But in early September, he joined a group of Marines headed to police New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

"I really didn't want to go. ... There was a possibility we would be shooting people," he said. "We could be going into another (urban warfare) environment just like Iraq, except this would actually be U.S. citizens.

"Here we go, Fallujah 2, right here in the states."

Not long after they arrived, as Hurricane Rita bore down on them, the Marines were packed into the amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima to wait out the storm offshore. And one day, as Miller headed for the smoke deck with a Marlboro, a passing sailor made a whistling sound just like a rocket-propelled grenade.

"I don't remember grabbing him. I don't remember putting him against the bulkhead. I don't remember getting him down on the floor. I don't remember getting on top of him. I don't remember doing any of that s -- ," Miller said. "That was like the last straw."

On Nov. 10, 2005 -- the Marine Corps' 230th birthday and one year to the day after the Marlboro Man picture appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Miller was honorably discharged after a medical review. His military career was over.

Needless to say, the New York Post, which used the earlier photo as part of its rah-rah war dick-waving, has no use for Lance Cpl. Miller anymore.

Why not grab the wives, they're just extensions of their husbands anyway

Amanda makes a very good point about why the Bush Administration thinks that seizing the wives of insurgents as a tactic to get them to surrender is perfectly OK:

While I’m sure it’s all thrilling in neocon dreams to have romantic plots where one’s enemy is defeated because you exploit his foolish love for a mere woman, in real life once you open up the door to treating women’s bodies as strategic weapons against the enemy, you’re opening yourself up to moving onto the next level of war atrocities.

Of course, this is the administration that is about to appoint Strip Search Sammy, who argued that women should be required to tell their husbands about getting an abortion. In the BushCo worldview, women aren’t people with minds of our own that are responsible for ourselves. We’re just extensions of men, available to be seized as property in order to punish them.

And men like this are not worth a woman's time

Mr. Brilliant has many wonderful traits, not the least of which is his demented, snarky sense of humor. Another of his wonderful traits is that he appreciates women who are smart and funny and who can make him laugh. This makes him different from most representatives of his sex, apparently, who seem to feel that a woman should be simply an audience; a receptacle for their own witticisms instead of a witty person in her own right:

Hundreds of men and women in their twenties were questioned. Asked if they found a sense of humour to be attractive in women, most men said yes. But when they were asked if they would want to be with a woman who cracked jokes herself, the answer was a resounding no.

"When forced to choose between humour production and humour appreciation in potential partners, women valued humour production, whereas men valued receptivity to their own humour," said Dr Martin.

More than half the men who took part in the survey revealed that a witty woman was not what they were looking for in a partner. Dr Martin said the findings suggested that men see themselves as the ones who should be delivering the lines and feel threatened by humorous women.

The revelations came as no shock to some of Britain's funniest females. Meera Syal, who co-wrote and starred in the BBC comedy show Goodness Gracious Me, said: "The idea that men are more interested in having an audience rather than sharing banter doesn't really surprise me.

"Women see men with a sense of humour as dangerous and sexy, while men see it as threatening. Basically, what it comes down to is that humour is a mark of intelligence. Many men don't really want to be the recipient of a cutting remark in public that will make them look small or stupid."

Good Lord, are men really that insecure? Another reason to be glad that I am middle aged and are fortunate enough to live with the kind of guy who, when asked at various times who he finds sexy, has answered people like Linda Ellerbee and Emma Thompson. Oh sure, he appreciates a bikini-clad babe as much as any red-blooded male, but he knows that if you're going to live with someone for two decades, it's much easier when that person can make you laugh.

Eat Our Words

Australian food bloggers get a bite of the glossy magazine action in the latest issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller.Journalist and fellow food blogger Ed Charles from Tomato has written a long overdue article on the Australian food blogging scene, giving some much deserved exposure to our own Aussie-based burgeoning talent.The two page spread includes a lovely glossy photo of the hardworking

Eat Our Words

Australian food bloggers get a bite of the glossy magazine action in the latest issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller.Journalist and fellow food blogger Ed Charles from Tomato has written a long overdue article on the Australian food blogging scene, giving some much deserved exposure to our own Aussie-based burgeoning talent.The two page spread includes a lovely glossy photo of the hardworking

Krugman slams whore journalists who repeat the "bipartisan scandal" meme

Krugman channels the on-book-leave Frank Rich today, slamming the irresponsibility of media whores like Deborah Howell and Katie Couric who insist on repeating the FALSE meme that Jack Abramoff gave to both parties:

How does one report the facts," asked Rob Corddry on "The Daily Show," "when the facts themselves are biased?" He explained to Jon Stewart, who played straight man, that "facts in Iraq have an anti-Bush agenda," and therefore can't be reported.

Mr. Corddry's parody of journalists who believe they must be "balanced" even when the truth isn't balanced continues, alas, to ring true. The most recent example is the peculiar determination of some news organizations to cast the scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff as "bipartisan."

Let's review who Mr. Abramoff is and what he did.

Here's how a 2004 Washington Post article described Mr. Abramoff's background: "Abramoff's conservative-movement credentials date back more than two decades to his days as a national leader of the College Republicans." In the 1990's, reports the article, he found his "niche" as a lobbyist "with entree to the conservatives who were taking control of Congress. He enjoys a close bond with [Tom] DeLay."

Mr. Abramoff hit the jackpot after Republicans took control of the White House as well as Congress. He persuaded several Indian tribes with gambling interests that they needed to pay vast sums for his services and those of Michael Scanlon, a former DeLay aide. From the same Washington Post article: "Under Abramoff's guidance, the four tribes ... have also become major political donors. They have loosened their traditional ties to the Democratic Party, giving Republicans two-thirds of the $2.9 million they have donated to federal candidates since 2001, records show."

So Mr. Abramoff is a movement conservative whose lobbying career was based on his connections with other movement conservatives. His big coup was persuading gullible Indian tribes to hire him as an adviser; his advice was to give less money to Democrats and more to Republicans. There's nothing bipartisan about this tale, which is all about the use and abuse of Republican connections.

Yet over the past few weeks a number of journalists, ranging from The Washington Post's ombudsman to the "Today" show's Katie Couric, have declared that Mr. Abramoff gave money to both parties. In each case the journalists or their news organization, when challenged, grudgingly conceded that Mr. Abramoff himself hasn't given a penny to Democrats. But in each case they claimed that this is only a technical point, because Mr. Abramoff's clients — those Indian tribes — gave money to Democrats as well as Republicans, money the news organizations say he "directed" to Democrats.

But the tribes were already giving money to Democrats before Mr. Abramoff entered the picture; he persuaded them to reduce those Democratic donations, while giving much more money to Republicans. A study commissioned by The American Prospect shows that the tribes' donations to Democrats fell by 9 percent after they hired Mr. Abramoff, while their contributions to Republicans more than doubled. So in any normal sense of the word "directed," Mr. Abramoff directed funds away from Democrats, not toward them.

True, some Democrats who received tribal donations before Mr. Abramoff's entrance continued to receive donations after his arrival. How, exactly, does this implicate them in Mr. Abramoff's machinations? Bear in mind that no Democrat has been indicted or is rumored to be facing indictment in the Abramoff scandal, nor has any Democrat been credibly accused of doing Mr. Abramoff questionable favors.

[snip]

...the reluctance of some journalists to report facts that, in this case, happen to have an anti-Republican agenda is a serious matter. It's not a stretch to say that these journalists are acting as enablers for the rampant corruption that has emerged in Washington over the last decade

It's interesting that the so-called journalists who are repeating this meme are perfectly willing to either be known as blatant shills for Republican corruption, or else too stupid to understand the difference between legal campaign contributions and illegal ones -- and too lazy to explain said difference to their audiences.

It was an ominous development when we found out that people were getting their news from The Daily Show -- not because Jon Stewart's program is a bad program, or even misinformative, but because even with Stewart's disclaimer that TDS is a fake news show, people still believe it's real. It's an even more ominous development that the terminology of fake journalism -- "fact-esque", "truthiness" and "biased facts" -- have become the Holy Trinity of mainstream news reporting.

So much for "going after the people who attacked us on 9/11"

We already know about how the Bush Administration let Osama Bin Laden get away in Tora Bora. But today we're finding out that in December 2001, OBL's right-hand man, Abdallah Tabarak, was captured, held at Guantanamo Bay for three years, then released:

For more than a decade, Osama bin Laden had few soldiers more devoted than Abdallah Tabarak. A former Moroccan transit worker, Tabarak served as a bodyguard for the al Qaeda leader, worked on his farm in Sudan and helped run a gemstone smuggling racket in Afghanistan, court records here show.

During the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, when al Qaeda leaders were pinned down by U.S. forces, Tabarak sacrificed himself to engineer their escape. He headed toward the Pakistani border while making calls on Osama bin Laden's satellite phone as bin Laden and the others fled in the other direction.

Tabarak was captured and taken to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was classified as such a high-value prisoner that the Pentagon repeatedly denied requests by the International Committee of the Red Cross to see him. Then, after spending almost three years at the base, he was suddenly released.

Today, the al Qaeda loyalist known locally as the "emir" of Guantanamo walks the streets of his old neighborhood near Casablanca, more or less a free man. In a decision that neither the Pentagon nor Moroccan officials will explain publicly, Tabarak was transferred to Morocco in August 2004 and released from police custody four months later.

Tabarak's odyssey from Afghanistan to Guantanamo and back to his native land illustrates the grit and at times fanatical determination of one bin Laden recruit. Yet his story also shows how little is known publicly about al Qaeda figures who were captured after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Major gaps remain in his account, and terrorism experts and intelligence officials continue to debate whether he was a member of al Qaeda's inner circle or its rank and file.

His case also highlights mysteries of U.S. priorities in deciding who to keep and who to let go. As the Pentagon gears up to hold its first military tribunals at Guantanamo after four years of preparations, it has released a prisoner it called a key operative. At the same time, it retains under heavy guard men whose background and significance are never discussed.

[snip]

A review of Moroccan court documents, including records of his interrogations by Moroccan investigators, shows the U.S. military had good reason to consider Tabarak a valuable catch. In addition to his firsthand knowledge of how bin Laden survived Tora Bora, he had worked for the al Qaeda leader since 1989 and was often at his side as he built the terrorist network from bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan.

According to the documents, details of which other foreign intelligence officials confirmed, Tabarak served as a jack-of-all-trades for members of the inner circle. For several years, he received his orders and a regular salary from Saeed Masri, an al Qaeda financier, military training camp leader and relative of bin Laden.

We invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, toppled a leader who had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and then we allow the so-called mastermind behind the attacks to get away and release his right-hand man?

What do Al Qaeda leaders know about this Administration, or what is their relationship with the Bushies, that real Al Qaeda are treated so cavalierly while completely unrelated people are held indefinitely?

(An aside: Is anyone actually planning to watch the movie about Flight 93 that's running tonight on A&E? Just the radio spots are making me cringe. Why on earth would anyone want to watch a speculative re-creation of the last minutes of the flight as evening entertainment?)

Who said the blogosphere is homogeneous?

John Aravosis makes a pretty good case against the way the filibuster against Strip Search Sammy the Stem Cell Alito is going.

I haven't beaten the filibuster drum here all that much because the words of Oscar Wilde keep coming to mind: "There are two tragedies in life: One is not getting what you want. The other is getting it."

I agree with John that a well-organized filibuster which communicates to the American people the danger of this nominee, and gets them on board, is an effective technique. This particular effort, about which even those Democrats who have agreed to aren't enthusiastic (I'm talking to you, Sen. Obama), is going to fail, and it is going to reinforce the idea of the Democrats as an ineffective party.

I also agree that John Kerry's sudden enthusiasm for the netroots is less a function of a true belief in the danger of a Supreme Court nominee who believes that a president is a king, and more a function of trying to get a database of names for his next presidential run. Kerry can talk about a filibuster all he wants, he's a day late and a dollar short, and as I've said before, if he'd done his fucking job as a candidate, and NOT allowed the Swiftboat liars to smear him without a response, and NOT tried to look like the blue collar tough guy he isn't, and if he hadn't tried to finesse every goddamn issue until even I didn't know where the hell he stood on anything, we wouldn't even have to talk about a filibuster. So if Kerry thinks he can undo that damage now and I'll slap a Kerry sticker on my car in 2008, he'd better guess again.

Sam Alito, or someone like him, was a foregone conclusion when John Kerry took his $14 million of leftover campaign money and left Ohio, while his running mate was still telling supporters that the ticket would not give up until every vote was counted.

George W. Bush is never going to name a consensus nominee, and Capitol Hill Republicans aren't going to make him. He may have a 36% approval rating, but he he thinks he's the King of America, and he's going to continue to behave like one until he either leaves the White House in 2008 or cancels the election. If the Alito filibuster should by some miracle be successful, then we'll get Janice Rogers Brown, and then there's NO chance of a filibuster, because the Mighty Wurlitzer is already warmed up and ready to brand the Democrats as the party of racists and misogynists.

The time for hue and cry was November 2004.

John's bottom line, and I concur:

But, you need to recognize that those are not the only two options available to us. There's a third. Destroy the Senate Democrats who did nothing to launch a REAL campaign to convince the American people that Alito must be defeated. Destroy the traditional non-profit advocacy groups who took our millions of dollars and did NOTHING to launch a real campaign to win the public to our side. And go after the rich donors who continue to enable these failed Democratic politicians and these failed advocacy groups like some addict who only needs one more fix, then promises he'll get better. If we do not go after them, if we do not force them to change or get out of the way, the same problem, the same failure, the same ineffectiveness will continue to plague our party and our movement, with no change in sight.

We have a choice. We have the ability to make change in our party. We have the power to make the Democrats stand up and fight like real Americans for real principles in a way that shows how fierce and tough and committed we can be.

I'm not convinced that we have the time or the ability to do this before the Bush unholy combination of fascism and royalism comes to pass and we no longer have choices because we are At War In Perpetuity. But if you aren't as much of a pessimist as I am, and if you believe that we will continue to have elections that aren't completely rigged, the fact of the matter is that the Old Guard of the Democratic Party must go. This means John Kerry and Joe Biden and Dianne Feinstein and every pussy-ass Democrat who is content to nibble table scraps from the corporate table as long as it means re-election must be dumped from office as quickly as possible, replaced by candidates who fight for Americans, not corporations. We want elected representatives who can clearly articulate why progressive values are the values Americans want, and who can remind them that the things they take for granted as emblematic of the good life in this country were all progressive initiatives -- public education, clean water, clean air, public transportation, Social Security, Medicare, Head Start, voting rights -- all progressive triumphs.

Lyndon Baines Johnson was a Texas Democrat who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 even though he knew it meant losing the South BECAUSE IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO FOR AMERICA. When was the last time you saw a Democratic presidential candidate with that kind of courage? I'll tell you when: It was early 2004, and the candidate was named Howard Dean, and the campaigns of John Kerry and Dick Gephardt got together and ran negative ads in Iowa that worked. Then John Kerry left his testicles in Des Moines and now he thinks he can go through the motions of filibustering Alito and it makes everything OK.

It doesn't.

I don't oppose the filibuster with the vehemence that John does. I think that doing SOMETHING, even if ineffective, may be necessary at this point, not to keep the netroots supporting this old guard of political hacks, but to make SOME kind of stand against this spoiled brat of a president who's used to getting his own way. And if by some miracle the filibuster is effective, then this party has to get its ass in gear immediately and educate the American public about what the Unitary Executive theory is and why it's so dangerous to everything this country stands for.

I just don't have a whole lot of faith that this bunch can do it.

A terrible price

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have had a rollicking good time poking gentle jibes at new ABC Nightly News anchor Bob Woodruff. As recently as last week, Stephen Colbert was inquiring of NBC correspondent David Gregory whether Woodruff was an anchor-bot.

No one is going to be laughing now, as it seems Woodruff has paid a terrible price for the pursuit of journalistic cred:

The new co-anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight", Bob Woodruff, was seriously wounded with his cameraman in Iraq today when the military convoy they were traveling with was struck by a roadside bomb, the network announced.

Mr. Woodruff and the cameraman, Douglas Vogt, were assigned to cover an American military unit in Taji, near Baghdad, but they were actually traveling with an Iraqi unit on patrol when the blast occurred. The two journalists were reported to have severe wounds and were being treated at an American military hospital in Iraq.

ABC's White House correspondent, Martha Raddatz, said this morning on the network's "This Week" program that the two journalists were in the convoy as part of their assignment to report on the activities of the Fourth Infantry Division. They had originally been in an American armored Humvee truck, but decided to switch to a more lightly protected Iraqi vehicle to travel with and observe Iraqi forces that the American military is training.

[snip]

She [Martha Radditz] said that both men were wearing protective body armor, helmets and eye protection but that they had nonetheless sustained severe shrapnel wounds, some of them to the head. She did not mention whether any of the Iraqi soldiers were injured or killed.

Both Americans were quickly evacuated by helicopter to Balad, north of Baghdad, where they underwent surgery at an American hospital, she said.

Initial reports said that they hit an improvised explosive device, or a homemade roadside bomb, which was followed up by small-arms fire.

"This is very common over there now," Ms. Raddatz said. "These attacks are planned, and this is a secondary attack. Sometimes when medical personnel come in, they'll have small-arms fire following up on that."

This is the kind of thing that our troops have to face every single day they are in Iraq, with no end in sight.

Our thoughts today are with the Woodruff family -- and the families of ALL the American men and women who face this worry every day as this war with no point and no end drags on and on.

Getting in touch with my inner 25-year-old

Yes, I know full well that most young people these days regard baby boomers as Demons Incarnate. We are responsible for all the evil in the world, we've all sold out, we elected George W. Bush (WE didn't, THEY did -- and so did their grandparents), we crucified Jesus, we kidnapped the Lindbergh baby. If you're a Jewish baby boomer, you get double the guilt for your money.

Because I don't have children, I have been able to delude myself for a long time that I am still cool. And there are people who allow me to continue that delusion -- my Gen-X friends at Cinemarati, who, like the anti-Semites I went to college with, insist that they don't mean ME when they talk about Evil Boomers; the kids at the gas station who are amused because I am this short, middle-aged woman pumping her own gas in the last full-serve state in the country; and I would dare say most of the people who read this blog.

I'm not a complete idiot, though. I look in the mirror every day and wonder who that person with the encroaching jowls is. Then I get in the car, pop in something like Nimrod and sing "Minority" at the top of my lungs all the way to work and try not to think about it.

In short, I am one of those insufferable middle-aged assholes that Ameriprise is targeting with their awful commercials that make even me want to put my fist through the TV.

So when a Real And Actual Young Person thinks enough of this here blog to blogroll me, it allows me a few minutes of believing that even if I am not Still Cool, I am at least the Wise Old Tribal Elder surrounded by wide-eyed young people hoping to learn from my vast experience.

I don't add people to the blogroll very often, and when I do, it's usually serious blogs dealing with the Major Issues Of Our Time. But this morning, while sighing over yesterday's diminished traffic because the New York Times seems to have gotten wise to me, I found a referral from leftygrrrl and decided to take a look. And I read her entire first page. Leftygrrrl is, apparently, a coffee bar barista with some political awareness. Those of us who are still lucky enough to work in professional jobs really don't have any idea what it's like to be 25 in the job market of the Bush years. I think it's good for us to take a peek into that world, and so I'm adding leftygrrl to our blogroll today.

Swell. Another voice claiming you can't be healthy if you're not a size 4

I'm what's known in this country as overweight. I've tried mightily my whole life not to be overweight, with limited success. The only time in my life that I've had what the actuarial charts call a healthy weight was for about five minutes back in 1983, when I went on the Cambridge Diet, took aerobics five nights a week, weighed 105, and was absolutely miserable. I met Mr. Brilliant at that time, and I would sit in restaurants with him and cry because I was so hungry but I was afraid to eat because I might gain weight.

But that is how the "experts" would have me live.

I don't smoke. I don't drink. I don't take drugs. I do a healthy mix of cardio and weight training workouts 4-5 mornings a week. I've taken exactly four sick days in five years. My blood pressure averages around 120/70, except just after we return from Jamaica, where the food is salty. These days I have a tendency towards elevated cholesterol, but if I stay away from trans fats for a few weeks, that seems to take care of itself.

And I'm overweight.

My mother is 78, overweight, a lung cancer survivor, and still smoking. My father is 80, overweight, and healthy.

We come from a long line of Russian and Polish peasants, and this is how we are built.

I have slim friends who are on blood pressure medication, asthma inhalers, migraine medications, statins, and any number of pills for any number of ailments.

I take a Benadryl most days, occasionally I take Advil, but that's the extent of my medications most of the time, other than a multivitamin and a calcium supplement.

But I'm overweight. I'm preposterously healthy, but I'm overweight. The government says people like me cannot exist. Yet here I am.

Nick Kristof today takes up Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's obesity drumbeat.

In 2003, Mike Huckabee, the governor of Arkansas, learned he had type 2 diabetes.

His doctor told him he would probably be dead in 10 years — and that terrified him enough to start exercising, eschew sugar and lose about 110 pounds (at 5 feet 11 inches, he's now 180 pounds). His first attempts at jogging left him dizzy after a few hundred yards, but now he is running marathons.

That would be a nice, inspiring tale if it ended there, but instead it has been the starting point. Mr. Huckabee has become a health care policy wonk, and with the help of national experts he has begun a series of clever initiatives to fight obesity. They are among the most creative steps under way in America at any level of the political process.

Arkansas has become a national laboratory for using policy levers to try to encourage healthier lifestyles. Other states and the federal government should adopt the same steps — like curbing soft drinks in schools, informing all parents of their children's body mass index as a step to encouraging fitness, giving exercise breaks as well as smoking breaks, paying for preventive health checks like mammograms and prostate examinations, subsidizing efforts to quit smoking and seeking to give food stamps more purchasing power when they are used to buy fruits or vegetables.

I know all this sounds banal. Perhaps I should be using this journalistic real estate to thunder about grand issues like the Iraq war or Middle East peace or corruption in Congress. But remember that fat kills far more Americans than terrorists. Indeed, The New England Journal of Medicine reported last year that because of rising obesity, life expectancy in the U.S. might soon stop rising and could drop.

[snip]

"I don't want to be the sugar sheriff," Mr. Huckabee explained in an interview in his office. "I don't want to be the grease police. That's not my job. But when I look at our state budget, and I see that every year our Medicaid budget is increasing by 9 to 10 percent, and I look at state employees' health plans and I see that those costs are escalating at double digits and twice the rate of inflation — as a fiscal manager, I have not only the right but frankly also the responsibility to see what can we do to improve this bottom-line cost."

Repeatedly, Mr. Huckabee came back to the same argument: Obesity is reducing not only the quality of life of Americans, but also the fiscal soundness of our government and the competitiveness of our businesses.

Heh. Now that's the rub -- the cost to business.

I'm not claiming that obesity isn't a problem. I'd love to lose about 30 pounds. But when I already live a reasonably healthy lifestyle, I don't eat fast food and don't eat sugary sodas, how realistic is that? Like Oscar Wilde and the curtains, I've been fighting a battle with my weight my whole life, and my weight wins every damn time. My fat loves me as much as does my cat Maggie, who similarly wants to be plastered to my hip 24 x 7. It doesn't want to leave.

That said, I realize that I'm the exception rather than the rule. I work out regularly because I enjoy working out at home, alone, and I've found a video series that I like and that I can stick with. Most people need the motivation of a trainer or a group -- but what overweight person has the guts to huff and puff through a workout class full of marathon runners? Still, I would say that unhealthy lifestyles, rather than strictly obesity, is the real culprit. Usually the kind of sedentary life and high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar eating habits so many Americans have result in obesity. But I would guess that there are plenty of size sixteens eating fresh fruits and vegetables and lean meats and fish, and plenty of size fours chowing down Egg McMuffins for breakfast every day and able to demolish a fat panini sandwich at lunch -- then go home and eat dinner. I know they're out there, I work with one of them.

All too often, obesity is blamed on sheer gluttony -- and yet we live in a society that says, "Eat, eat, eat -- but don't you dare get fat." Restaurant portions are ridiculous. I usually eyeball my plate the minute it's put in front of me and mentally partition off the part I'm going to eat and the half to 2/3 of it I'm going to take home. But frankly, I'd just as soon pay five bucks less for the plate and not have to do this.

Food is plentiful, available, and cheap; and in busy households it's all too easy to just go through the drive-thru on the way home than to go home and cook a meal. Children's diets go from milk or formula, to commercial baby foods, to fast food. No wonder they won't eat broccoli -- they never learned what real broccoli tastes like because everything they've put in their mouths since the day they were weaned was produced by some big food processing company.

Parents put their kids in complete body armor before letting them ride a bicycle up to the corner, but they pump chemicals and fat and salt into their kids night after night by feeding them fast food. It's not that they don't care, and it's not that they don't WANT their kids to eat right; they're just too damn busy to start chopping vegetables after working all day, and they can't cook a meal and work on the kind of "family homework" that schools parcel out these days.

Ever tried to shop looking at labels? Especially when you're in a hurry? If you want to stay away from partially hydrogenated oils and trans fats and high fructose corn syrup, you can forget about buying anything that might mean you could get out of the kitchen before eight o'clock at night.

What worries me about columns like Kristof's, and the series likely to follow, is that they focus on weight itself, rather than the overall health of the population. If you tell a parent who's up at 5 AM, gets the kids ready for school, is on the train by 7, works all day, gets home at 6:30 and then has to help kids with homework, get them fed and ready for bed before collapsing in an exhausted heap that she should make time to get to a gym, she's going to head right to the A&P for a pint of Ben & Jerry's. Yes, Frankenfood is a problem. High-fructose corn syrup is a huge problem. Lack of exercise is a problem. But the bigger problem is what we as a society can do to give Americans the breathing room they need in an average day to plan and prepare healthier meals, to get out for that brisk walk, to learn to savor the fresh produce that's better for them than the processed crap they eat now. But instead we have a government that's completely in the pockets of the very food companies which perpetuate the problem, and a president who praises a mother working three jobs as "uniquely American" instead of realizing the strain that three jobs puts on family life. You can bet that mother is a regular patron of the drive-thru, and you can also bet that the closest she gets to the gym is the drive home from her third job.

A big change is coming to B@B

We've sold out!!

In the next day or two, you're going to see a big change here at B@B. For the first time, we will be accepting advertising.

Now don't all line up at once, but sometime very soon, perhaps even today, when you come here for the scintillating rants you've come to expect from B@B, you'll be surprised by a completely new design -- one which includes a prime location for your ad. So if you'd like to reach the growing audience of intelligent, witty, cultured, and just plain fabulous people who have made Brilliant at Breakfast part of their daily routine, watch for the appearance of the magic link where you can reach them.

Did you know you are overinsured?

I'm lucky in that I have a very good medical plan where I work. Yes, we have to deal with the usual in-network/out-of-network BS, but it's a good plan. I pay about $3600/year in premiums, and the total premium is about $10,000 including what my employer pays.

George W. Bush thinks I'm overinsured. And if you have any health insurance at all, he thinks you are too.

Josh Marshall explains:

...the core premise of the policies the president is about to lay out is that Americans are over-insured when it comes to health insurance. Over-insured. Got too much insurance.

These aren't my words. These are the words used by the conservative policy-wonks who came up with the president's proposals. Just hop over to Google and start googling the phrase 'over insured' along with 'health' and 'conservative'. This what they think; and what the president thinks. It's why he's behind these ideas.

So the president thinks the problem is that people have too much health insurance. People are over-insured.

I don't think that's how most Americans see the problem, do you? I'm confident that they don't. Really confident.

But let's let them decide.

The president wants to make health care his political issue this year. No Democrat should open their mouth this year on this topic without first saying this: The president thinks the problem is that Americans have too much health insurance; we don't.

Bush of course thinks that the answer is health savings accounts and high-deductible insurance policies. Perhaps for people in HIS circle,, and arguably even in mine, using health savings accounts to pay outine medical expenses instead of $14 co-pays would make people think twice about using medical services. But is asking people to pay for preventive care out-of-pocket really cost-effective? Or will such a policy give people like me yet another excuse to put off having a colonoscopy as long as possible?

When a routine blood draw and lipids profile, or a mammogram, or an annual physical, or a pap test, is paid for by insurance, it's an incentive to obtain such preventive care. When it's an out-of-pocket expense, the "I Feel Fine" defense kicks in and people tend to defer such screenings, which means even MORE expense later on, after the heart attack, the stroke, the hysterectomy, the mastectomy, or the colostomy.

Another problem is that Bush's plan would put more people into the hunt for private insurance, and as we all know, anyone with a pre-existing condition -- which may be defined as anything from diabetes to high blood pressure to carrying 10 extra pounds -- is going to have a hard time finding insurance at an affordable price. For families trapped in the downward wage spiral of the global economy and tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy, there just isn't money for health insurance, let alone health savings accounts. The result? More uninsured people, fewer people obtaining preventive care, more emergency room visits, more costs for preventable catastrophic illness.

Whether the Republicans want to believe it or not, free market solutions don't apply to health care. If you need it, you need it. Period. I'm all for getting employers out from under the burden of providing health care benefits, but the answer is to allow the economies of scale that a national health insurance program can provide -- not nationalized health care, but nationalized health insurance -- one which spreads the risk across the young and old; the sick and the well; the poor and the rich -- so that NO ONE has to decide whether to buy shoes for her children or get a pap test.

Green Mango Salad

Nothing says summer like a green mango salad. With its hot, sour, salty sweet explosion of flavours, this salad is the perfect antidote for those sticky, sweltering days of humidity.I made this twice in two days: the second version was a much tastier success, as I made sure to dress the mango shreds at the last possible moment, minimising any sog factor.I brought the leftovers into work the next

Green Mango Salad

Nothing says summer like a green mango salad. With its hot, sour, salty sweet explosion of flavours, this salad is the perfect antidote for those sticky, sweltering days of humidity.I made this twice in two days: the second version was a much tastier success, as I made sure to dress the mango shreds at the last possible moment, minimising any sog factor.I brought the leftovers into work the next

The straight poop on the "Jack Abramoff gave money to Democrats too" meme

It's bullshit. We always knew it was bullshit, but now it's documented. Of course this won't matter wo the whores like Katie Couric, Timmeh, and Chris Matthews, but let's get the truth out there.

A new and extensive analysis of campaign donations from all of Jack Abramoff’s tribal clients, done by a nonpartisan research firm, shows that a great majority of contributions made by those clients went to Republicans. The analysis undercuts the claim that Abramoff directed sums to Democrats at anywhere near the same rate.

The analysis, which was commissioned by The American Prospect and completed on Jan. 25, was done by Dwight L. Morris and Associates, a for-profit firm specializing in campaign finance that has done research for many media outlets.

In the weeks since Abramoff confessed to defrauding tribes and enticing public officials with bribes, the question of whether Abramoff directed donations just to Republicans, or to the GOP and Democrats, has been central to efforts by both parties to distance themselves from the unfolding scandal. President Bush recently addressed the question on Fox News, saying: “It seems to me that he [Abramoff] was an equal money dispenser, that he was giving money to people in both political parties.”

Although Abramoff hasn’t personally given to any Democrats, Republicans, including officials with the GOP campaign to hold on to the Senate, have seized on the donations of his tribal clients as proof that the saga is a bipartisan scandal. And the controversy recently spread to the media when the ombudsman for The Washington Post, Deborah Howell, ignited a firestorm by wrongly asserting that Abramoff had given to both. She eventually amended her assessment, writing that Abramoff “directed his client Indian tribes to make campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties.”

But the Morris and Associates analysis, which was done exclusively for The Prospect, clearly shows that it’s highly misleading to suggest that the tribes's giving to Dems was in any way comparable to their giving to the GOP. The analysis shows that when Abramoff took on his tribal clients, the majority of them dramatically ratcheted up donations to Republicans. Meanwhile, donations to Democrats from the same clients either dropped, remained largely static or, in two cases, rose by a far smaller percentage than the ones to Republicans did. This pattern suggests that whatever money went to Democrats, rather than having been steered by Abramoff, may have largely been money the tribes would have given anyway.

The analysis includes a detailed look at seven of Abramoff’s tribal clients, and a comparison of their giving with that of approximately 170 other tribes. (Abramoff is often said to have had nine tribal clients. But Morris omitted two of the tribes – the Pueblo of Santa Clara, whose donations were virtually nonexistent, and the Tigua Indian Reservation, because it isn’t listed in Federal lobbying files as having a lobbyist and Abramoff worked on contingency. At any rate Santa Clara’s post-Abramoff donations to the GOP were overwhelmingly higher than to Dems, so including them would have added even more to the GOP side of the ledger.)

The analysis shows:


in total, the donations of Abramoff’s tribal clients to Democrats dropped by nine percent after they hired him, while their donations to Republicans more than doubled, increasing by 135 percent after they signed him up;

five out of seven of Abramoff’s tribal clients vastly favored Republican candidates over Democratic ones;

four of the seven began giving substantially more to Republicans than Democrats after he took them on;

Abramoff’s clients gave well over twice as much to Republicans than Democrats, while tribes not affiliated with Abramoff gave well over twice as much to Democrats than the GOP -- exactly the reverse pattern.
“It’s very hard to see the donations of Abramoff’s clients as a bipartisan greasing of the wheels,” Morris, the firm’s founder and a former investigations editor at the Los Angeles Times, told The Prospect.

Bloomberg News published a similar, more limited analysis last month, which relied on a small amount of data also from Morris’ firm.” But that analysis didn't look at all of Abramoff's tribal clients, and didn't provide a detailed year-by-year analysis of their donations or a detailed comparison to other tribal giving. Since then, some observers, such as blogger Kevin Drum, have argued that a comprehensive look at the donations of all of Abramoff’s tribal clients would help shed light on the scandal.

The Prospect asked Morris to do two things: First, compare the contributions of all of Abramoff’s tribal clients before they’d signed on with Abramoff versus after they’d become his client. And second, compare the contributions of all Abramoff tribal clients with the contributions of all non-Abramoff tribes.

Go here to see the rundown of said donations.

As the above numbers show, four out of seven tribes -- Saginaw, Chitimacha, Coushatta and Mississippi – saw their contributions to Republicans increase significantly, even vastly, after they became Abramoff’s clients.

At the same time, two of those four tribes -- Saginaw and Chitimacha -- saw their giving to Democrats drop or remain static. The other two -- tribes Coushatta and Mississippi -- did see their giving to Dems rise under Abramoff, but by amounts that were dwarfed by the increases in giving to the GOP.

These patterns strongly suggest that Abramoff’s representation of the tribes manifested itself largely in a dramatic rise in contributions to the GOP. And it also suggests it’s likely that Abramoff had little impact on giving to Democrats.

Nor does it appear likely that Abramoff steered contributions to Dems from the remaining three tribes who didn’t see their giving to the GOP climb. Of those three tribes, one tribe -- Pueblo of Sandia -- saw a negligible shift in donations to both parties. The second -- Agua Caliente -- slashed its contributions to both parties, but even so, the percentage of that tribe’s giving that went to Republicans still rose dramatically. The third -- Cherokee Nation -- simply stopped giving altogether.

The big picture is also compelling. Taken together, Abramoff’s tribal clients gave $868,890 to Dems before hiring him; afterwards, they gave $794,483 -- a decrease of nine percent. By contrast, the tribes’ donations to Republicans went from $786,560 pre-Abramoff to $1,845,975 after he became their lobbyist -- an increase of 135 percent. In other words, when Abramoff entered the picture, contributions to Dems dropped, while donations to Republicans more than doubled.

Adding to the case, the Morris firm also did a year-by-year analysis, from 1991 to the present, of the giving of scores of tribes -- Abramoff’s clients included. The firm’s look at the year-by-year giving of his clients is eye-opening. It shows even more clearly that in some cases clients’ giving to the GOP jumped dramatically just after Abramoff signed them.

Let me repeat what is the main source of the use of this meme -- the notion that because tribes that were clients of Jack Abramoff gave LEGAL campaign contributions to Democrats, it is exactly the same as if Abramoff had given the money himself. Another part of this claim is that Abramoff directed the donations to Democrats and the tribes did his bidding. Both of those assumptions are demonstrably false.

God knows there have been plenty of financial scandals involving Democrats, and the issue isn't that Democrats are pure as the driven snow. But the Abramoff scandal involves corruption at the highest levels of government to an extent we rarely see. This scandal is breathtaking in both its breadth and its utter shamelessness. The broacast whores of the mainstream media have been given their marching orders to repeat the false meme in perpetuity. But here in consensus reality, we still call a lie for what it is: a lie. It's not "another viewpoint" or even the Colbertian "truthiness." It's a falsehood, plain and simple.

Bushie, you're doing a heck of a job

George W. Bush and his Vice President, Dick Sidious, have taken to warning Americans once again that they are not safe, that the terrorists are yet still coming, and that they are the only thing that stands between Americans and certain annihilation by Evil Brown-Skinned Islamic Hordes.

If their response to the Gulf Coast is any indication of the kind of performance we can expect from this bunch of miscreants, we're all fucked.

Nearly five months after Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans, President Bush's lofty promises to rebuild the Gulf Coast have been frustrated by bureaucratic failures and competing priorities, a review of events since the hurricane shows.

While the administration can claim some clear progress, Bush's ringing call from New Orleans's Jackson Square on Sept. 15 to "do what it takes" to make the city rise from the waters has not been matched by action, critics at multiple levels of government say, resulting in a record that is largely incomplete as Bush heads into next week's State of the Union address.

The problems include the slow federal cleanup of debris in Mississippi and Louisiana; a lack of authority for Bush's handpicked recovery coordinator, Donald E. Powell; the shortage and poor quality of housing for evacuees; and federal restrictions on reconstruction money and where coastal communities can rebuild.

With the onset of the hurricane season just four months away, there is no agreement on how to rebuild New Orleans, how to pay for that effort or even who is leading the cross-governmental partnership, according to elected leaders. While there is money to restore the city's flood defenses to protect against another Category 3 hurricane, it remains unclear whether merely reinforcing the levees will be enough to draw residents back.

Then of course there's the issue of WHICH residents the Administration wants to lure back. I can't imagine that Karl Rove, ever-concerned with Republican electoral fortunes, is going to allow Bush to go along with any plan that returns the largely black, largely Democratic voters of New Orleans' Ninth Ward to return -- not when turning New Orleans into a Republican property developer stronghold is an opportunity right there for the asking.

Here's a status report on the Bush response to the disaster:

Below are some of the major promises Bush made in his Jackson Square speech, and how the government has fared:


· Housing. Bush promised to empty shelters quickly, meet the immediate needs of the displaced, register victims, and provide housing aid in the form of rental assistance and trailers.

In Mississippi, 33,378 occupied trailers are meeting 89 percent of the estimated housing needs. But there have been 34,000 repair requests and maintenance complaints, according to Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.).

In Louisiana, trailers have been provided for about 37 percent of the estimated 90,000 displaced families in need of housing. Officials acknowledge production bottlenecks and in-state battles over sites. Trailer costs have swelled from $19,000 to $75,000 apiece.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Administration are struggling to meet unprecedented demands. FEMA is providing rental assistance to 700,000 families, but about 75,000 people are still in hotels. In some places, there is a shortage of rental housing available for evacuees.

As of Jan. 16, 18,943 applications for rental help had yet to be processed. As of this week, the SBA said that 190,000 of 363,000 applications for disaster loans to homeowners and businesses are still pending.

Cleanup. The president vowed "to get the work done quickly . . . honestly and wisely," but a key first step -- cleanup -- has not gone smoothly.

Thirty million cubic yards of debris remain uncollected -- enough to build a five-sided column more than 50 stories tall over the Pentagon -- provoking environmental concerns, fears of runaway spending abuses and a spirit-sapping despair. Layers of subcontractors have caused debris removal costs to quadruple from $8 per cubic yard to $32 per cubic yard, said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who visited the region on Jan. 17 as part of a Senate delegation.

Rebuilding. On the broader question of rebuilding, Bush promised "a close partnership" with state and local leaders, with the federal government playing a secondary role. But the U.S. government is the key player because it provides money, determines access to flood insurance, and takes primary responsibility for infrastructure and cleanup.

Reimbursement. Bush said the government would reimburse states for the costs of taking in evacuees and cities for emergency costs. But Mississippi and Louisiana officials say their needs are greater and will continue for years.

There's more...

When you think about the ways the Bush Administration has played on Americans' fears to its own political advantage -- fear of terrorists; fear of waves of immigrants; fear of avian flu -- and relied on Americans' primal desire to have a Big Daddy figure to make the boogeyman go away, one need only look at the Gulf Coast to see what we're all in for, should any of these threats actually materialize. Because it's clear that the only thing the Republicans want to keep safe is their own political power. The rest of us can all go to hell.

Someone had to say it

Ever since the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration meme has been "9/11 changed everything", and it has beaten that particular drum to justify all of its efforts to bankrupt the country, oil-grab in the Middle East, and eliminate the rights that Americans have enjoyed as codified in the Bill of Rights for over 200 years.

Did 9/11 change everything? Or have Americans responded to a horrific attack that just happened to play out on national television in a way that is out of proportion to its importance when played out against the larger framework of history?

Joseph Ellis, a Mount Holyoke College professor, thinks it's the latter:

Whether or not we can regard Sept. 11 as history, I would like to raise two historical questions about the terrorist attacks of that horrific day. My goal is not to offer definitive answers but rather to invite a serious debate about whether Sept. 11 deserves the historical significance it has achieved.

My first question: where does Sept. 11 rank in the grand sweep of American history as a threat to national security? By my calculations it does not make the top tier of the list, which requires the threat to pose a serious challenge to the survival of the American republic.

Here is my version of the top tier: the War for Independence, where defeat meant no United States of America; the War of 1812, when the national capital was burned to the ground; the Civil War, which threatened the survival of the Union; World War II, which represented a totalitarian threat to democracy and capitalism; the cold war, most specifically the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which made nuclear annihilation a distinct possibility.

Sept. 11 does not rise to that level of threat because, while it places lives and lifestyles at risk, it does not threaten the survival of the American republic, even though the terrorists would like us to believe so.

My second question is this: What does history tell us about our earlier responses to traumatic events?

My list of precedents for the Patriot Act and government wiretapping of American citizens would include the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which allowed the federal government to close newspapers and deport foreigners during the "quasi-war" with France; the denial of habeas corpus during the Civil War, which permitted the pre-emptive arrest of suspected Southern sympathizers; the Red Scare of 1919, which emboldened the attorney general to round up leftist critics in the wake of the Russian Revolution; the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, which was justified on the grounds that their ancestry made them potential threats to national security; the McCarthy scare of the early 1950's, which used cold war anxieties to pursue a witch hunt against putative Communists in government, universities and the film industry.

In retrospect, none of these domestic responses to perceived national security threats looks justifiable. Every history textbook I know describes them as lamentable, excessive, even embarrassing. Some very distinguished American presidents, including John Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, succumbed to quite genuine and widespread popular fears. No historian or biographer has argued that these were their finest hours.

What Patrick Henry once called "the lamp of experience" needs to be brought into the shadowy space in which we have all been living since Sept. 11. My tentative conclusion is that the light it sheds exposes the ghosts and goblins of our traumatized imaginations. It is completely understandable that those who lost loved ones on that date will carry emotional scars for the remainder of their lives. But it defies reason and experience to make Sept. 11 the defining influence on our foreign and domestic policy. History suggests that we have faced greater challenges and triumphed, and that overreaction is a greater danger than complacency.

Ellis is 100% right. We are living in a country in which people who are at most risk of being hit in another terrorist attack -- those living in large cities -- are going about their business, cognizant, but not obsessed, with the threat which may loom. And these people are not voting for the totalitarian policies of George W. Bush and his fascist minions on the right. They are governed by Democrats or by moderate Republicans like George Pataki and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mike Bloomberg, and they elect people like Barack Obama to Congress. Like the Israelis, who really DO live every day with the possibility that they may be blown to bits while going to work, they don't obsess about the risk because if they did, they'd never get out of bed in the morning.

It's in the reddest of red states, and the "red areas" within the states -- the farms and suburbs of the heartland -- where the "9/11 changed everything" meme has taken hold -- in places that are more likely to be destroyed by an asteroid than by a terrorist attack.

Bush policies that do surveillance of antiwar groups and vegans, who brand as credible threats 15 people standing outside a military recruiting station with a banner reading "Bush Lied" and about as many handing out peanut butter sandwiches outside of Halliburton headquarters; that justify pre-emptive wars and warrantless searches; and that generally serve only to make us less free and keep people frightened while Bush cronies pick their pockets, are NOT justified by the events of 9/11.

If 9/11 changed everything, it's only because we allowed it to; because we were too frightened to question what our own government is doing to us.

So I guess they'll shut us all down before taking us off to the camps

From the BBC, via Hoffmania:

A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" - from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.

The document says information is "critical to military success"

Bloggers beware.

As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer.

From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.

The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap". It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.

Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it.

The "roadmap" calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military's ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare. And, in some detail, it makes recommendations for how the US armed forces should think about this new, virtual warfare.

The document says that information is "critical to military success". Computer and telecommunications networks are of vital operational importance.

Propaganda

The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.

All these are engaged in information operations.

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads.

"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.

Psyops? You mean like "new tapes by Osama Bin Laden"?

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone.

It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system.

"Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it reads.

The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the roadmap.

And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum".

US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum".

Consider that for a moment.

The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.

Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandising bureaucrats? Or are they real?

The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon.

And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched only by the US military's ambitions for it.

You knew they wouldn't allow blogs to stay online forever...not once the power of bloggers became known.

This country is being led by some pretty crazy-ass motherfuckers.