Grab Your Fork in Men's Style magazine

I don't usually make a habit to read men's magazines, but when Kat emailed me about getting a mention in Men's Style I couldn't resist a quick trip to the newsagent.A quick flip though this impressive quarto glossy, and yes, there on page 75, was a column devoted to food blogs with Grab Your Fork mentioned lucky last.In a column titled "Mouse food", Chris English "trawls the top blogs of fine

This is huge

Up to this point in the Democratic race for the presidential nomination, we had the counterintuitive phenomenon of Barack Obama having the women's vote, and Hillary Clinton having the black vote. But that seems to be changing:

The opening stages of the campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination have produced a noticeable shift in sentiment among African American voters, who little more than a month ago heavily supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton but now favor the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama.

Clinton, of New York, continues to lead Obama and other rivals in the Democratic contest, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. But her once-sizable margin over the freshman senator from Illinois was sliced in half during the past month largely because of Obama's growing support among black voters.

On the January weekend when she announced her candidacy, Clinton led the Democratic field with 41 percent. Obama was second at 17 percent, Edwards was third at 11 percent and former vice president Al Gore, who has said he has no plans to run, was fourth at 10 percent.

The latest poll put Clinton at 36 percent, Obama at 24 percent, Gore at 14 percent and Edwards at 12 percent. None of the other Democrats running received more than 3 percent. With Gore removed from the field, Clinton would gain ground on Obama, leading the Illinois senator 43 percent to 27 percent. Edwards ran third at 14 percent. The poll was completed the night Gore's documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Academy Award.

Clinton's and Obama's support among white voters changed little since December, but the shifts among black Democrats were dramatic. In December and January Post-ABC News polls, Clinton led Obama among African Americans by 60 percent to 20 percent. In the new poll, Obama held a narrow advantage among blacks, 44 percent to 33 percent. The shift came despite four in five blacks having a favorable impression of the New York senator.

African Americans view Clinton even more positively than they see Obama, but in the time since he began his campaign, his favorability rating rose significantly among blacks. In the latest poll, 70 percent of African Americans said they had a favorable impression of Obama, compared with 54 percent in December and January.

Overall, Clinton's favorability ratings dipped slightly from January, with 49 percent of Americans having a favorable impression and 48 percent an unfavorable impression. Obama's ratings among all Americans improved over the past month, with 53 percent saying they have a favorable impression and 30 percent saying they have an unfavorable impression.

The trend is that the longer Hillary's campaign goes on and the more arrogantly it behaves, the less people like her. But what's more important is that the "not really black" argument against Obama seems to be losing strength -- as well it should.

Polls this early are still about name recognition, and Hillary Clinton is still the household name in this race. John Edwards would seem to be an early casualty of the two milestone candidates and noncandidate Al Gore sucking up all the oxygen in the room. -- and his weak response to the likes of Bill Donohue hasn't helped him. But it would seem that if the mudslinging from Camp Hillary continues, Edwards stands to be the primary beneficiary if Gore does not run. I'm not one of those who sees Gore's entry into the race as inevitable. I think at this point he is very comfortable in his own skin and with his own role, and probably realizes that he can make as much of a difference without sitting in the White House -- and not have to deal with the smear machines of either the Republicans or Mrs. Clinton.

Perhaps if Bush had stayed focused on Afghanistan, this wouldn't be an issue

NY Times:

The audacity of a suicide-bomb attack on Tuesday at the gates of the main American base in Afghanistan during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney underscores why President Bush sent him there — a deepening American concern that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are resurgent.

American officials insisted that the importance of the attack, by a single suicide bomber who blew himself up a mile away from where the vice president was staying, was primarily symbolic. It was more successful at grabbing headlines and filling television screens with a scene of carnage than at getting anywhere near Mr. Cheney.

But the strike nonetheless demonstrated that Al Qaeda and the Taliban appear stronger and more emboldened in the region than at any time since the American invasion of the country five years ago, and since the Bush administration claimed to have decimated much of their middle management. And it fed directly into the debate over who is to blame.

The leaders with whom Mr. Cheney met on his mission to Pakistan and Afghanistan have appeared increasingly incapable of controlling the chaos, and have pointed fingers at one another.

Mr. Cheney said the attack was a reminder that terrorists seek “to question the authority of the central government,” and argued that it underscored the need for a renewed American effort.

His critics, on the other hand, said the strike was another reminder of how Iraq had diverted the Bush administration from finishing the job in Afghanistan.

I might remind David E. Sanger, who penned this article, that "his critics" are, in fact, correct. The Iraq war was completely unnecessary, fed by the lunatics at PNAC and a president's psychosexual issues with his father -- and it has made the entire world less safe as a result.

Instead, we have a war that is a black hole for American debt spending, as yesterday's stock market dive should remind us. This administration has not only turned the world into a more chaotic place, it has already destroyed the future of every American now living, from infants to the elderly. If it were only the remaining 28-31% of Americans that still persist in believing in this bunch that were affected, we could say it's no less than they deserve. But they are going to drag the rest of us down with them.

You know what "emboldens the enemy"?

Short-changing the troops that are involved in this so-called "surge" in Iraq by not giving them the appropriate counterinsurgency training:

Rushed by President Bush's decision to reinforce Baghdad with thousands more U.S. troops, two Army combat brigades are skipping their usual session at the Army's premier training range in California and instead are making final preparations at their home bases.
Some in Congress and others outside the Army are beginning to question the switch, which is not widely known. They wonder whether it means the Army is cutting corners in preparing soldiers for combat, since they are forgoing training in a desert setting that was designed specially to prepare them for the challenges of Iraq.

Army officials say the two brigades will be as ready as any others that deploy to Iraq, even though they will not have the benefit of training in counterinsurgency tactics at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., which has been outfitted to simulate conditions in Iraq for units that are heading there on year-long tours.

What this tells me is that either Army officials are lying, or NONE of the soldiers coming out of this training center have been appropriately trained.

This Administration gives lip service to "pertectin" the troops only when it is to its political advantage to do so. But in terms of actually protecting them by providing armor, adequate food, water that isn't polluted, medical care, and training, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the other neocon advocates of empire couldn't give a shit. They sleep the quiet, dreamless, guiltless sleep only the most evil of men know.

Chez Pok, Pokolbin, Hunter Valley

Complimentary corn bread with olive oil, dukkah and pestoIf there was one restaurant that kept popping up during my internet research on the Hunter Valley, it was the multi award-winning Chez Pok at Peppers.So with only a little gentle persuasion of my colleagues, we headed here for dinner after a boozy day out exploring vineyards, cheese shops, an Irish pub and a microbrewery. [Yes, yes, I'm

The successful un-presidency of Al Gore

Richard Cohen, who was one of the first Mean Grrrrlz, along with his good friend Maureen Dowd, to decide in 2000 that Al Gore's taste in clothing made him somehow unfit for the presidency as compared to the faux cowboy drag of George W. Bush, has had a change of heart:

Now, somebody ought to make a movie about Al Gore. I would call it "An Uncomplaining Life."

The movie would be about a man who did not quit, who came off the canvas after a painfully close election -- he won the popular vote, after all -- who accepted defeat graciously and tried to unite the nation, who returned to the consuming passion of his earlier days, the environment, and spoke endlessly on the topic, almost always for free, who starred in a documentary based on his speech and who Sunday night, before a billion or so people, won an Academy Award for his effort. This may or may not be a stepping stone to the presidency, but Gore gives us all a lesson on how to live one's life.

[snip]

Gore would not have taken the United States to war in Iraq. He would have finished the job in Afghanistan -- it was al-Qaeda and its Taliban enablers who were responsible for the attacks on us on Sept. 11, 2001, not Saddam Hussein, no matter how vile he might have been. Gore would not have dealt with the Iranians and the North Koreans in such a juvenile fashion -- axis of evil, after all -- and all over the world, wherever you and I went, we would not detect such anger toward America.

[snip]

Jimmy Carter said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that he thought Gore ought to run and had told Gore so insistently. "He almost told me the last time I called, 'Don't call me anymore,' " Carter said. What Gore told me was something similar: "I think there are other ways to serve."

We'll see. After all, Gore -- the son of a senator himself -- was raised for the presidency. But for the moment at least, he is showing all the irritating signs of a man at peace with himself. He abandoned Washington for Nashville. He has made a bundle in his investments, and he has set out to show that there is life after a failed candidacy, a purposeful life in which a man can do some good. His movie and his speeches are -- to paraphrase what Clausewitz said about war -- a continuation of politics by other means. He cannot make war but he can still make a difference.

I know -- and so does Gore -- that all this will change if he enters the race. Maybe that ol' devil of uncertainty will come creeping out of his skin, and maybe he will become shrill, and maybe he will somehow throw his voice so that it seems to be coming from outside his body. But the woman I love tells me that life is a series of little lives, and no one has proved the truth of this better than Gore. With an Oscar in his fist and triumph on his face, Al Gore is a man you can tell your kid about. That, maybe, is even better than being president.

...and more effective, too. For I'm not sure that whoever succeeds George Bush as president (and I am not certain that anyone will, as this president and his Dark Overlord in the #2 spot seem to be arming the very terrorists who will attack us again just in time for them to declare martial law and cancel the 2008 election) will be able to accomplish even half of what Al Gore can do outside the executive branch.

STFU

Last night they took Laura Bush off the thorazine long enough to make an appearance on Larry King to try to convince people that Iraq isn't completely FUBAR. C&L has the sorry video.

Money quote:

This is their opportunity to seize the moment—ahhh—to build a really good and stable country. And many parts of Iraq are stable ahh..now. But, of course, what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everybody

And Keith had a few choice words for Condi Rice.

Quote of the Day

Paul Slansky at HuffPo:

We had no trouble calling the suicide bombers crazy for believing that seventy-two virgins would be waiting for them in Heaven. Is born-again Bush any less nuts to believe he'll be rising up to Heaven during the Rapture? For all we know, Armageddon has been his intentional goal from the start. It's almost the only explanation that makes sense. America is Flight 93. It's been hijacked and it's about to crash, and every single one of us has to charge the cockpit.

[snip]

Again, to recap, one of the nation's foremost experts on the subject of Osama bin Laden says that al Qaeda is "going to detonate a nuclear device inside the United States." If that doesn't scare you, you are no longer scareable.

Well, if that doesn't scare you, maybe the fact that the Bush Administration is now funding the very Sunni extremists that are not only connected with al-Qaeda, but are also killing American troops in Iraq, will:

Sy Hersh in The New Yorker:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Let's pause and ponder that for a moment, shall we? Because the Bush Administration wants to attack Iran, which is Shiite, it is sucking up to the very Sunni extremists that they claim attacked the U.S. on 9/11.

Let's repeat that one more time: The President and Vice President of the United States are using our tax dollars to fund the very people who want to attack us again.

Do you still think that those of us who think the Bush Administration had some kind of complicity in the 9/11 attacks are crazy?

More:

One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran.

[snip]

The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser.

That's old "Bandar Bush", the Bush family's best buddy in the House of Saud.

The article is dense and detailed, because if you're going to expose this administration for what it is -- an infiltration of our government by enemies of America -- you'd damn well better do your homework, and Hersh has done exactly that. This makes Iran Contra look like a tea party, and the stakes are much higher.

So when that al-Qaeda nuclear weapon that is being funded by the Bush Administration using your tax dollars goes off in New York and kills Mr. Brilliant and leaves me a widow, or kills your loved one; or it goes off in Los Angeles, or San Francisco, or Chicago, or wherever it goes off, then see if you still believe that no government in the U.S. could do such a thing.

Obligatory Oscar® Post

I really don't have much to say, but ModFab does. So go read his recap of last night's Academy Awards. Besides, he does it better than I do anyway.

Chinese New Year Party

Why have one Chinese New Year feast when you can have two?Last Saturday was spent feasting with friends at B's. G brought along a traditional Thai fish dip, tao jeow lon, made with fish fillets, coconut milk, kaffir lime leaves, red onion and tamarind paste. A spoonful of this warmed creamy mixture was dolloped onto traditional prawn crackers (the prawniest I've had), and then topped with a few

Posted without comment

WaPo:

Dozens of high-level officials joined in a White House drill yesterday to see how the government would respond if several cities were attacked simultaneously with bombs similar to those used against U.S. troops in Iraq.

White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend and the Homeland Security Council that she heads mapped out in advance a massive disaster involving improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. The attack targeted 10 U.S. cities, both large and small, at the same time, said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Townsend presided over the three-hour exercise, which brought the government's top homeland security officials to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. All Cabinet agencies were represented by their secretaries or other high-ranking officials, with about 90 participants in all, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

[snip]

President Bush went on a bike ride yesterday morning and did not take part in the test.

Why would Al Gore want to clean up Bush's mess when he's having so much fun?

"Living well is the best revenge." -- Dorothy Parker

"Revenge is a dish best served cold." -- Oscar Wilde

Congratulations to Al Gore for An Inconvenient Truth's Oscar® win. And how much fun was it to watch him play with the whole "announcement" foofarah? The one question I have is, where the hell was this guy in 2000? If there is one lesson that this year's Democratic candidates should learn from this is to not listen to the consultants. Be yourself, and let the chips fall where they may.

As for Gore, well, I don't fault him one bit for not wanting to step into this particular cesspool again. Sometimes it's the presidency that DOESN'T happen that's the most successful.

(C&L has video.)

LIHOP, MIHOP -- will it matter when it happens again?

I think it's possible that our unwanted basement tenant, which we have pretty much decided is a squirrel, may be deceased. This of course brings an entirely new set of problems, and I have a call into an animal control guy (as opposed to an exterminator) to evaluate the extent of the other rodent problem.

But since so far the cats are alive, there are no mice on the main living level, and there's nothing much I can do at this point, let's go back to the real world and Frank Rich's bloodcurdling column in yesterday's New York Times.

Highlights:

The ratings rise of “24” has stalled as audiences defect from the downer of terrorists to the supernatural uplift of “Heroes.” Cable surfers have tuned out Iraq for a war with laughs: the battle over Anna Nicole’s decomposing corpse. Set this cultural backdrop against last week’s terrifying but little-heeded front-page Times account of American “intelligence and counterterrorism officials” leaking urgent warnings about Al Qaeda’s comeback, and ask yourself: Haven’t we been here before?

If so, that would be the summer of 2001, when America pigged out on a 24/7 buffet of Gary Condit and shark attacks. The intelligence and counterterrorism officials back then were privately sounding urgent warnings like those in last week’s Times, culminating in the President’s Daily Brief titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” The system “was blinking red,” as the C.I.A. chief George Tenet would later tell the 9/11 commission. But no one, from the White House on down, wanted to hear it.

The White House doesn’t want to hear it now, either. That’s why terrorism experts are trying to get its attention by going public, and not just through The Times. Michael Scheuer, the former head of the C.I.A. bin Laden unit, told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann last week that the Taliban and Al Qaeda, having regrouped in Afghanistan and Pakistan, “are going to detonate a nuclear device inside the United States” (the real United States, that is, not the fictional stand-in where this same scenario can be found on “24”). Al Qaeda is “on the march” rather than on the run, the Georgetown University and West Point terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman told Congress.

[snip]

The surge supporters who accuse the Iraq war’s critics of emboldening the enemy are trying to deflect attention from their own complicity in losing a bigger battle: the one against the enemy that actually did attack us on 9/11. Who lost Iraq? is but a distraction from the more damning question, Who is losing the war on terrorism?

The record so far suggests that this White House has done so twice. The first defeat, of course, began in early December 2001, when we lost Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora. The public would not learn about that failure until April 2002 (when it was uncovered by The Washington Post), but it’s revealing that the administration started its bait-and-switch trick to relocate the enemy in Iraq just as bin Laden slipped away. It was on Dec. 9, 2001, that Dick Cheney first floated the idea on “Meet the Press” that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. It was “pretty well confirmed,” he said (though it was not), that bin Laden’s operative Mohamed Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague months before Atta flew a hijacked plane into the World Trade Center.

In the Scooter Libby trial, Mr. Cheney’s former communications aide, Catherine Martin, said that delivering a message on “Meet the Press” was “a tactic we often used.” No kidding. That mention of the nonexistent Prague meeting was the first of five times that the vice president would imply an Iraq-Qaeda collaboration on that NBC show before the war began in March 2003. This bogus innuendo was an essential tool for selling the war precisely because we had lost bin Laden in Afghanistan.

[snip]

It is precisely by pouring still more of our finite military and intelligence resources down the drain in Iraq that we are tragically ignoring the lessons of 9/11. Instead of showing resolve, as Mr. Bush supposes, his botch of the Iraq war has revealed American weakness. Our catastrophic occupation spawned terrorists in a country where they didn’t used to be, and to pretend that Iraq is now their central front only adds to the disaster. As Mr. Scheuer, the former C.I.A. official, reiterated last week: “Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you want to address the threat to America, that’s where it is.” It’s typical of Mr. Bush’s self-righteousness, however, that he would rather punt on that threat than own up to a mistake.

[snip]

Yet Mr. Bush still denies reality. Ten days ago he told the American Enterprise Institute that “the Taliban have been driven from power” and proposed that America help stabilize the Pakistan border by setting up “Reconstruction Opportunity Zones” (remember that “Gulf Opportunity Zone” he promised after Katrina?) to “give residents the chance to export locally made products to the United States, duty-free.” In other words, let’s fight terrorism not by shifting America’s focus from Iraq to the central front, but by shopping for Taliban souvenirs!

Five years after 9/11, the terrorists would seem to have us just where they want us — asleep — even as the system is blinking red once again.

I disagree with Rich on just one point -- that Americans are asleep or obsessing about Anna Nicole Smith's corpse. I think that Americans have begun to despair that anything can be done to end the relentless march to ruin on which this Administration has embarked. We had an election last November that seemed to promise change, and yet all we've seen is a House that passes legislation which in turn gets bogged down in the Senate. The Senate, deadlocked between ineffectual and cowardly Democrats, Republicans who put their own careers and party loyalty ahead of the good of the country, and Joe Lieberman, who will gladly fuck whichever party gives him the most bling.

And now, as we look ahead to a presidential election, what do we see? The presumed Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, whining because a Hollywood mogul is giving money to someone else.

This is leadership?

The Democrats have been unable and unwilling to take on this Administration in the forceful way that's required because to do so requires that one admit what no one wants to admit: that the terrorism threat which met this Administration at its inception; the threat it "ignored", the threat that continues because this so-called "tough on terror" administration has instead fertilized and watered and cultivated terror not to end the threat, but to make it worse. And why would they do this? Is it sheer ineptitude? Well, that's the kindest interpretation. But when you look at Bush Administration policy in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and you ask "Who benefitted from the attacks?", there is only one answer that you can come up with, and that is administration complicity in some form with an attack on the United States. It doesn't have to mean that the attacks were some sort of psyops exercise, and that the people supposedly killed are living under assumed names in Argentina. What it does mean is that a cost/benefit analysis indicating potential gains for an administration already in trouble in the summer of 2001, with the added benefit of huge financial gains for the Vice President and the duo's campaign contributors and cronies, resulted in the attacks playing out.

I don't believe that the Bush Junta banked on the World Trade Center collapsing, but I don't think they shed a whole lot of tears for it either. But if you look at who gained from the attacks, you have:

George W. Bush -- his presidency saved, his re-election in 2004, and for a long time, skyrocketing approval ratings at the same time as he gutted environmental and consumer protection laws and gave huge tax cuts to those who needed them least.

Dick Cheney -- huge financial rewards from his continued investment in Halliburton.

The oil industry -- skyrocketing fuel prices, and now the biggest prize of all -- 75% of the profits from Iraqi oil.

PNAC -- Its empire agenda proceeding according to plan

The defense industry -- huge contracts from a war in Iraq with little to no accountability for costs or quality.

Add to the equation a frightened population willing to give all of its Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms to this bunch in return for the delusion of safety, and you can't deny that whether it was ineptitude or deliberately turning the other way and allowing the attacks to play out, it certainly worked for the Administration.

And now, once again, we have an administration on the ropes and a Republican party in disarray, poised to lose power for a generation unless something drastic is done. Yesterday, Frank Rich outlined just how eerily similar this winter is to the summer of 2001. Those in the intelligence community who are free to speak are appearing on those talk shows that will have them, with their proverbial hair on fire. And the Bush Administration continues to tell us that we're winning the Iraq war, that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are on the run, and worst of all, that Osama bin Laden just isn't that important.

Only now the situation is worse, because we no longer have allies. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, even the French said "We are all Americans." No longer. The next time the U.S. is attacked, you can count on all the allies we snubbed, all the allies that this president brushed off as if they were pesky flies, will stand by and watch. And it will be no less than this president deserves.

The problem is that he's taking the rest of us along with him.

Greetings from Casa La Freakout

It's hard to blog when you're having a nonstop anxiety attack.

Yesterday I was doing my normal yoga workout in the basement when I heard what sounded like an animal scurrying overhead in the drop ceiling. I thought maybe I imagined it until I saw said animal through the plastic cover of the fluorescent fixture. Freaked out, called the first exterminator I could find by leafing my shaking hands through the Yellow Pages that said "24 hour emergency service." Guy came out, tore out some ceiling tiles to put a net up there, couldn't catch it. I thought it might be a squirrel, he thought it might be a rat. He said we also have mice because he saw droppings on the fixture cover.

Great. Just great.

Based on what he could tell from the droppings, WHICH WERE IN MOST CORNERS OF THE LAUNDRY ROOM, he said we have many, many mice -- too many to handle with snap traps or glue traps -- and possible rats as well. So now I have a basement laundry room full of rodenticide bags, what I still think is a squirrel dying slowly of starvation in my drop ceiling, possibly rats as well, and I have to keep the cats out of the basement entirely -- and hope the mice don't come upstairs. This has to go on for 4-6 weeks.

And they're predicting snow tonight.

And I'm headed out of town for a few days on Wednesday, and Mr. Brilliant is counting the hours till I leave because I am driving him crazy freaking out about the vermin and obsessing about whether the cats will be safe. And no, there's no way I can farm them out to someone else.

And the exterminator said I can't go out with a caulking gun and seal up cracks until we get rid of the mice, because they have to go out to get water, which activates the poison.

So that's why you haven't seen me blog today on the generals who plan to quit if Bush orders a military strike against Iran; Sy Hersh reporting on how an attack plan to be kicked off within 24 hours of a presidential order to go ahead is being developed; and Frank Rich noting how the media obsession with the Anna Nicole/Britney circus is just too reminiscent of the summer of 2001, and how the Bush Administration has made us MORE, not less, likely to be attacked.

But I have new sympathy for those in charge of that KFC/Taco Bell in New York that was shut down because of rodent infestation. I'm told that this is what happens when you have a milder-than-expected winter that suddenly turns cold -- the assorted wildlife that is increasingly migrating to suburbia as its habitat is destroyed go looking for places to keep warm.

Bush isn't the only one who doesn't spend that much time thinking about Osama Bin Laden

If you needed further proof that the Bush Administration and Osama Bin Laden are just one big happy family, here you go:

The Army's highest-ranking officer said Friday that he was unsure whether the U.S. military would capture or kill Osama bin Laden, adding, "I don't know that it's all that important, frankly."

"So we get him, and then what?" asked Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the outgoing Army chief of staff, at a Rotary Club of Fort Worth luncheon. "There's a temporary feeling of goodness, but in the long run, we may make him bigger than he is today.

"He's hiding, and he knows we're looking for him. We know he's not particularly effective. I'm not sure there's that great of a return" on capturing or killing bin Laden.

I think the families who lost loved ones in the September 11, 2001 attacks, might think differently.

There's something very, very wrong when the government is fighting terrorists by monitoring the e-mail and phone calls of American citizens, but doesn't think that getting the person who ordered the worst attack on American soil is that important. And it's even more wrong when there are still people who think this somehow makes sense.

I'll believe Jeb isn't a candidate after the Republicans nominate someone else

With John McCain more unable by the day to navigate the line between supporting Bush's war and not alienating the very moderate Republicans who used to be his bread and butter, Rudy Giuliani's marital history ready to explode at any opportune moment, and the second tier just too trivial to even note, it's not unreasonable to think that the Republican Party may just have Jeb Bush up its sleeve, ready to bring him out as the Shining Warrior to Save the Party -- a sort of Christofascist Aragorn reluctantly accepting his Divine Destiny.

Eleanor Clift disagrees, but I think the reluctance she talks about it is just for show. My guess is that the plan is already in the works:

There’s one politician the Christian right could get excited about: John Ellis (Jeb) Bush. But he’s not running—surely in part because the Bush brand has been so badly tarnished by the Iraq misadventure. A handoff from brother George would have been easy—if only the president had stayed focused on finding Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan rather than rushing off to invade Iraq. But for his brother’s mess, Jeb would be a formidable candidate.

He’s still a likely contender at some point—maybe even as a vice presidential pick in ’08. He can raise money, he has a Mexican-born wife who could help with California, and he can deliver Florida. The restoration is premised on the Republican nominee needing the credibility with the religious right that Jeb could bring. The Bush family seems to be moving its chips to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Several of Jeb’s gubernatorial staffers have signed on with Romney, and Jeb’s sister, Doro Bush Koch, is cohosting a fund-raiser for him. Mom and Dad are reportedly telling friends he’s a fine man and the class act in the race. With front runner John McCain faltering and Rudy Giuliani an unlikely fit with Republican primary voters, Romney looks like the Bush Dynasty’s best bet.

Jeb’s ambition, his intellect and his tenacity have not dimmed. Combine these personal characteristics with his ability to raise money and you’ve got a potent political force, says S.V. Dáte, the Tallahassee bureau chief for the Palm Beach Post and author of “Jeb: America’s Next Bush.” The book is not particularly flattering. Dáte says Bush governed with the openness and transparency of the Politburo; that his tax cuts went to the top 4.7 percent of Floridians and that he created the lowest number of jobs of any governor since 1970. Despite that record, polls show a consistent high regard for him, especially among social conservatives who remember his tireless efforts to sustain Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman whose survival in a vegetative state—in the face of her husband’s efforts to end life supports because of the grim prognosis—became a cause célèbre for the religious right.

A strong Democratic candidate could turn Jeb Bush into Candidate More Of the Same; Candidate If You Liked Four Years Of George Wait Till You See This Guy; or Candidate Butt My Nose Into Your Family's Medical Decisions. But given the kind of mainstream media love-feast that we'd be likely to see during a Jeb Bush Candidacy (*cough* Chris Matthews *cough*), I'm not sure that even pointing out the obvious areas in which Jebbie would be a terrible choice, never mind his spouting of family values when he has not one but THREE children with arrest records, would suffice when put against this peculiar American drive to install a royal family here.

A more likely scenario, should Mitt Romney's sudden and miraculous conversions on all issues of importance to the Christofascist Zombie Brigade falter, would be a deal in which the Bush family supports John McCain, on the condition that he agree to step down after one term and make Jeb his logical successor in 2012. Assuming two Jeb Bush terms running until 2020, that would give the Bush family control of the United States (if you want to argue that George H.W. Bush ran the Administration for much of Reagan's second term) for at least thirty of the last 36 years by the time someone else assumed the office in January 2021. And after 36 years at the forefront of the Executive Branch, the Family would have undoubtedly fixed the system sufficiently that Jeb's son, George P. the Girlfriend Stalker Bush, would be the new Chief Executive as of January 2021.

Is that really what Americans want?

The Lansdowne Hotel Broadway, Chippendale

Beef burger and chips $5.00There are some places you go to because of the fabulous food. There are others you go to for the stellar service. And then there are those that are simply cheap.The Lansdowne Hotel has the budget market down to a pat. Its $5 menu is its biggest drawcard. The banner out the front is three metres high, and it has always had a strong following with uni students. Head up

Obama continues to show -- and throw -- stones

I hate to fall in with one of the two "glamor candidates", but for a senator whose first term has been characterized by an excess of caution, Barack Obama is showing some surprising balls of late. First he refused to back down to the Clinton campaign's ridiculous demand that he return David Geffen's campaign contributions, and yesterday in Austin, Texas, not all that far from the Bush/Cheney backyard, he went after the Dark Lord himself:

In his 35-minute speech, Mr. Obama took sharp aim at the Bush administration, at one point ridiculing Vice President Dick Cheney for suggesting the decision by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to withdraw 1,600 troops form Iraq was a positive sign. He noted the U.S. is sending another 22,000 troops in.

"Now, keep in mind, this is the same guy that said we'd be greeted as liberators, the same guy that said that we're in the last throes. I'm sure he forecast sun today," he said amid the Austin rain. "When Dick Cheney says it's a good thing, you know that you've probably got some big problems."

A spokeswoman for Mr. Cheney said Friday that he had no comment.

Damn right Cheney had no comment. Not even a man who believes he can create his own reality can run from his own documented words.

Good for Obama. Every time he does this, he gains more support. Even if it ends up meaning that he and Clinton suck up all the oxygen (and money) and it becomes a 2-person race sooner than we'd like, the more he shows courage like this and it works, and the more Hillary Clinton has a snit fit, the better the prospect is to have a nominee who really does represent a change.

I'm not quite ready to sign on yet, but so far I like what I see.

"All options" my ass

When Dick Cheney says that "all options are on the table", it means that he's already decided on war:

Vice President Dick Cheney on Saturday renewed Washington's warning to Iran that ''all options'' are on the table if the country continues to defy U.N.-led efforts to end Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

At a joint news conference with Prime Minister John Howard during a visit to Australia, Cheney also said Washington was ''comfortable'' with Britain's decision to withdraw troops from Iraq and that it was up to Australia to decide if it would do the same.

Cheney said the United States was ''deeply concerned'' about Iran's activities, including the ''aggressive'' sponsoring of terrorist group Hezbollah and inflammatory statements by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He said top U.S. officials would meet soon with European allies to decide the next step toward planned tough sanctions against Iran if it continues enriching uranium.

''We worked with the European community and the United Nations to put together a set of policies to persuade the Iranians to give up their aspirations and resolve the matter peacefully, and that is still our preference,'' Cheney said.

''But I've also made the point, and the president has made the point, that all options are on the table,'' he said, leaving open the possibility of military action.

Maybe it's because they've learned from Fox News not to regard Iraqis as human

Or maybe they're just morons:

Americans are keenly aware of how many U.S. forces have lost their lives in Iraq, according to a new AP-Ipsos poll. But they woefully underestimate the number of Iraqi civilians who have been killed.

When the poll was conducted earlier this month, a little more than 3,100 U.S. troops had been killed. The midpoint estimate among those polled was right on target, at about 3,000.

[snip]

The number of Iraqis killed, however, is much harder to pin down, and that uncertainty is perhaps reflected in Americans’ tendency to lowball the Iraqi death toll by tens of thousands.

Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated at more than 54,000 and could be much higher; some unofficial estimates range into the hundreds of thousands. The U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq reports more than 34,000 deaths in 2006 alone.

Among those polled for the AP survey, however, the median estimate of Iraqi deaths was 9,890. The median is the point at which half the estimates were higher and half lower.

Here ya go, trolls....here's some red meat for ya

Grab your knickers, cuz this is gonna put 'em in a twist:

(courtesy of Nicole at C&L)

How to know when you need to get out more

When you are a Mets fan playing a Sim version of the 2006 World Series that never was.

Not even a Scots accent makes alcoholism funny

Props to Craig Ferguson, who already showed last Friday on Real Time with Bill Maher that he can be thoughtful and serious, and risked career suicide on Monday by using his monologue and his own history to call into question the whole cottage industry of making fun of troubled celebrities:

I've always liked Ferguson. Part of it is that I have a weakness for Scottish accents dating back to Ewan McGregor in Shallow Grave and Billy Connolly's standup days, talking about the airline pilot who's always named Nigel. There's a reason for Mike Myers' accent as Shrek, and that's because there's something about the speech cadences of Scotland that are just innately funny. Part of it is that he's kind of dashingly, craggily handsome, of course, but it seems I was on to something. Ferguson has taken a lot of crap for his show, for unknown reasons, since he was, after all, replacing the Jackass Known As Craig Kilborn. But this is a truly extraordinary monologue. Note how the audience continues to laugh like Pavlov's dogs at the mere mention of Britney Spears' name, until they realize what Ferguson is doing -- and then he proceeds to leaven the seriousness by poking fun at not Spears', but his own alcoholism.

Ferguson deserves all the applause and all the cards and letters to the CBS brass that we can write. Because this was a brave, fearless, and unforgettable piece of work.

UPDATE: Apparently choosing NOT to make fun of a celebrity is a Very Big Deal.

What constitutes religious persecution?

Via BlueGal and The Vanity Press comes this article at Frameshop indicating a growing tendency of Christians to believe that they are victims of discrimination.

The President of the United States professes to be a Christian. So do most of the people around him. Joe Lieberman isn't a Christian, but he's every bit as much a God-thumper as those who are.

78% OF Americans are Christians.

So on what fucking planet are they the victims of discrimination? I haven't heard of anyone being unable to get a job, or an apartment, or a mortgage, or get married, because they are Christian. So where the hell is the discrimination? Or does "discrimination" mean "Unable to shove my beliefs down everyone else's throat"?

And therein lies the fundamental (heh) problem with Christianity, especially, well, the fundamentalist variety: because an integral part of the faith is "spreading the Word" (read: proseletyzing and conversion, by force if necessary), those who believe it is incumbent on them to turn everyone else into Christians are going to feel discriminated against when they, for example, are teachers not allowed to tell their students that they belong in hell if they don't believe in Jesus and that the Bible has disproven science. They're going to feel discriminated against when they aren't allowed to proseletyze their co-workers and friends and the person in front of them in the checkout line at the supermarket.

But does that mean real discrimination?

When we look at groups that HAVE been victims of discrimination -- women who were unable to vote until 1920; black Americans who weren't allowed to vote, weren't allowed to attend white schools, weren't allowed to eat at white-owned restaurants in the south and for much of American history weren't even regarded as fully human; gay Americans who may be denied jobs, housing, and the same rights of connection as other Americans; it's hard to look at Christians not being able to bring back the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Hunts, and other stellar examples of Christian Love throught the history of Western civiliation, and see how the hell they are victims of discrimination.

If they really want to feel victimized and discriminated against, perhaps they ought to convert to Wicca.

Here we go again

It takes a breathtaking amount of chutzpah to work from the same playbook as with Iraq in trying to gin up reasons to attack Iran....but that's exactly what the Bush Administration is doing:

Much of the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by US spy agencies has turned out to be unfounded, diplomatic sources in Vienna said today.
The claims, reminiscent of the intelligence fiasco surrounding the Iraq war, coincided with a sharp increase in international tension as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was defying a UN security council ultimatum to freeze its nuclear programme.

That report, delivered to the security council by the IAEA director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, sets the stage for a fierce international debate on the imposition of stricter sanctions on Iran and raises the possibility that the US could resort to military action against Iranian nuclear sites.

At the heart of the debate are accusations - spearheaded by the US - that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.
However, most of the tip-offs about supposed secret weapons sites provided by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have led to dead ends when investigated by IAEA inspectors, according to informed sources in Vienna.

"Most of it has turned out to be incorrect," a diplomat at the IAEA with detailed knowledge of the agency's investigations said.

"They gave us a paper with a list of sites. [The inspectors] did some follow-up, they went to some military sites, but there was no sign of [banned nuclear] activities.

But who cares if it's true -- what's important is that George Bush BELIEVES it to be true, and as Ron Suskind told us in 2004, when you're an empire, you create your own reality.

(hat tip: Cernig)

I wonder if when Bush said "When the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down", he was referring to penises

It sure seems that way, now that a second Sunni woman has come forward alleging rape by Iraqi security forces:

An Iraqi police official in the northwestern city of Tall Afar said Thursday that a military officer and three soldiers had admitted to raping a Sunni woman and recording the act with a cellphone camera.

The four soldiers told an investigative committee convened by the Iraqi army that they sexually assaulted the woman nearly two weeks ago, according to Gen. Najem Abdullah, a police spokesman in Tall Afar.

The soldiers' statement follows another Sunni woman's assertion this week that she had been raped in Baghdad by members of Iraq's predominantly Shiite security forces. Iraq's Kurdish president and its Sunni vice president said Thursday that a judge should investigate her case, which the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has dismissed as groundless.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said in a statement that the courts were "the only legitimate place to examine such allegations" and that the government should avoid steps that would "inflame sensitivities and create mistrust."

Talabani's stance, echoed by Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, is sharply at odds with Maliki's insistence that the 20-year-old Baghdad woman who contends three Iraqi policemen raped her Sunday is a criminal who fabricated the story to exacerbate sectarian tension and undermine a U.S. and Iraqi security plan to pacify the capital.

Nouri al-Maliki is the guy that the Bush Administration has been holding up as the leader as a new, free Iraq. I guess that freedom only applies to men, because it sure looks like al-Maliki's policy towards women who are raped by the Iraq military is to not just attack their credibility, but call THEM criminals. I wonder how the 3150 young Americans who have died in Iraq and the tens of thousands of others who left limbs or their sanity there would react to the idea that they gave their lives and limbs to make Iraq safe for rapists.

Astrologically evaluating Al Franken's chances

Regardless of what you think of astrology in general, Lynn's readings of public figures are generally spot-on. Today she takes on Al Franken and discusses the traits that will make him a viable Senate candidate -- and the ones that could stand in his way.

Friday Cat Blogging

Because what a man and his cat do in the privacy of their own home is their own business:

Somewhere in Pennsylvania or Virginia, Rick Santorum is breathing heavily.

(hat tip: Paul the Spud)

Thomas Friedman is still an idiot

It galls me that there are hundreds of thousands of bloggers toiling away every day because they NEED to, because without writing they'll go mad -- and Thomas Friedman is paid a six-figure salary to write nonsense like this:

The irony of Iraq is that it’s the one place where Mr. Bush decisively chose regime change, but he then executed it so poorly, with insufficient troops, that Iraq never stood a chance. If Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney had spent as much time plotting the toppling of Saddam Hussein as they did the toppling of Colin Powell, Iraq today would be Switzerland. Today’s Bush troop surge in Iraq is just another mulligan — the president’s trying to do in 2007 what he should have done in 2003. In between, we’ve paid a huge price.

Does he truly believe, when he looks at the sectarian violence going on in Iraq, that more troops would have turned Iraq into Switzerland? Why on earth does anyone still take seriously anything he has to say?

To Connecticut Voters (Except AHA and Melina): Are you happy now?

Joe Lieberman really, really, really wants the war in Iraq to go on forever -- using someone else's children. He's vowing to jump ship if the Democrats vote to stop funding the war:

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut told the Politico on Thursday that he has no immediate plans to switch parties but suggested that Democratic opposition to funding the war in Iraq might change his mind.

Lieberman, a self-styled independent who caucuses with the Democrats, has been among the strongest supporters of the war and President Bush’s plan to send an additional 21,500 combat troops into Iraq to help quell the violence there.

"I have no desire to change parties," Lieberman said in a telephone interview. "If that ever happens, it is because I feel the majority of Democrats have gone in a direction that I don't feel comfortable with."

Asked whether that hasn't already happened with Iraq, Lieberman said: "We will see how that plays out in the coming months," specifically how the party approaches the issue of continued funding for the war.

He suggested, however, that the forthcoming showdown over new funding could be a deciding factor that would lure him to the Republican Party.

Connecticut voters thought they were getting a Democrat, but they weren't. Harry Reid thought he was being collegial with his old Senate DEMOCRATIC buddy. He wasn't, he was being played for a fool -- as was everyone who voted for this nasty, selfish, venal man.

Frankly, the one thing that makes Al Gore still questionable as a potential future presidential candidate is what kind of awful judgment made him pick this guy to be his running mate in 2000.

But it looks like the Democrats are going to risk control of the Senate by calling Lieberman's bluff:

Determined to challenge President Bush, Senate Democrats are drafting legislation to limit the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq, effectively revoking the broad authority Congress granted in 2002, officials said Thursday.

While these officials said the precise wording of the measure remains unsettled, one draft would restrict American troops in Iraq to combating al-Qaida, training Iraqi army and police forces, maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity, and otherwise proceeding with the withdrawal of combat forces.

The officials, Democratic aides and others familiar with private discussions, spoke only on condition of anonymity, saying rank-and-file senators had not yet been briefed on the effort. They added, though, that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is expected to present the proposal to fellow Democrats early next week for their consideration.

Frankly, I think they should go ahead. Doing what's right is more important than even control of the Senate. It is the height of arrogance and hubris for Joe Lieberman to think he can hold the Senate hostage. Let him jump ship. Let Connecticut voters see what they've done (except AHA and Melina, of course, both of whom did work for Ned Lamont). Let the Republicans preside over this disastrous war for another two years. Let them have to live with this decision. It isn't like enough Republicans were going to put country over party and their own selfish interests enough to impeach this bunch of criminals anyway.

Most. Offensive. Opinion. Column. Ever.

In case you missed it elsewhere:

Michael Medved, a repulsive, mean little man who prides himself on his piety, but is every bit as much a repulsive piece of feces you'd want to wipe off your shoe as Bill Donohue, James Dobson, and the other Religious Cops of the Right:

There is no rational basis for discomfort at playing with athletes of another race since science and experience show that human racial differences remain insignificant. The much better analogy for discomfort at gay teammates involves the widespread (and generally accepted) idea that women and men shouldn’t share locker rooms. Making gay males unwelcome in the intimate circumstances of an NBA team makes just as much sense as making straight males unwelcome in the showers for a women’s team at the WNBA. Most female athletes would prefer not to shower together with men not because they hate males (though some of them no doubt do), but because they hope to avoid the tension, distraction and complication that prove inevitable when issues of sexual attraction (and even arousal) intrude into the arena of competitive sports.

Tim Hardaway (and most of his former NBA teammates) wouldn’t welcome openly gay players into the locker room any more than they’d welcome profoundly unattractive, morbidly obese women. I specify unattractive females because if a young lady is attractive (or, even better, downright “hot”) most guys, very much including the notorious love machines of the National Basketball Association, would probably welcome her joining their showers. The ill-favored, grossly overweight female is the right counterpart to a gay male because, like the homosexual, she causes discomfort due to the fact that attraction can only operate in one direction. She might well feel drawn to the straight guys with whom she’s grouped, while they feel downright repulsed at the very idea of sex with her.

Nice. It isn't everyone who manages to be both homophobic AND misogynistic in the same column. But this actually tells you far more about Michael Medved than it does about even Tim Hardaway.

An investor evaluates the CEO presidency

Warren Hellman is chairman of Hellman and Friedman, LLC, a private equity investment company. In Salon today, he evaluates this president who said he'd run the country like a business:

When advising a board on how to evaluate a CEO, I tell them to review his or her performance in the following areas: implementing the company's fiscal and monetary policies, developing and successfully executing strategic plans, seeing that well-qualified personnel and managers are appointed, ensuring stability and long-range success, and respecting and protecting the charter and bylaws of the institution. How is President Bush doing on each of those counts?

Fiscal Responsibility
George W. Bush took over as CEO of USA Inc. when the country was running substantial surpluses, rapidly paying off its debt, and moving toward a future with a balanced budget. Forecasts predicted the country would continue to grow and be debt free in the near future. Bush took charge, and the opposite occurred: the country is running record deficits; debt service is skyrocketing. Bush's most recent economic forecast (arguably optimistic) predicts a balanced budget by 2012 (contingent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan not costing the United States a dime after 2009), which is, ironically, when he will no longer be in office. The trade deficit with USA Inc.'s No. 1 competitor, China, is increasing. Interestingly, a characteristic of many failing CEOs when losses are mounting is to hide or obfuscate the real deficits. This president, in addition to incurring massive deficits, has managed to hide the magnitude of the losses by special (otherwise known as "off balance sheet") allocations of billions of dollars that do not appear in the annual budget.

Strategic Decisions
The most important strategic decision made by CEO Bush was to minimize the importance of stabilizing Afghanistan, while at the same time choosing to invade Iraq. Those choices turned out to be a perfect example of the adage "fire, aim, ready!" and have led USA Inc. into unmitigated disaster. Not only were those decisions based on faulty intelligence, but Bush also had no business plan for his new endeavor, failing to take into account what the war would cost in lives and treasure, or what it would cost this country in its diplomatic relationships with the rest of the world. He cherry-picked intelligence, like a CEO cooking the books in order to get board support for his agenda. In other words, he was ready to reject any evidence that did not support the decision to invade.

Execution of Strategic Decisions
How well did our CEO execute his decision to invade Iraq? He didn't send enough troops; he didn't equip them well; he had no plan to win the peace; and he didn't do enough research to understand just how deep the division between the various sectarian groups was. This has resulted in a war that our CEO finally admits is not going well at all. Bush has left USA Inc. with no good options as to how to fix the problem. If USA Inc. were a corporation, an effective board would almost certainly not choose to ask the executive who got the company into such dangerous trouble to be the one extricate it; the board would find a new CEO.

Personnel Choices
Excellent chief executives make excellent personnel choices; they are willing to admit mistakes and replace the occasional bad personnel choice with alacrity. This has not been the case with our chief executive.

[snip]

Bush has relied on an inner circle of like-minded cronies who have persistently belittled and then eliminated critics. For the most part, he has chosen close advisors based on loyalty and similar ideology rather than competence, experience or expertise.

[snip]

Adherence to the Institution's Charter and Bylaws
This CEO has allowed his ideology to subvert the charter and bylaws this country was built on, namely the Constitution. Americans used to believe their personal papers and privacy were protected; now the government can sneak into your home secretly, steal your papers, bug your computer, read your e-mails without ever requiring a warrant or any judicial oversight. Americans used to believe there was separation of church and state; under this administration millions of tax dollars have been diverted to church-related groups; government policies are made based on personal religious beliefs rather than the needs of the people. Stem cell research is a fine example. America is falling behind its competitors: Some of the best stem cell research and other scientific advancements are now happening in Europe and Asia rather than this country.

In addition, one telltale trait of a failing CEO is that he and those who remain loyal try to silence their critics by arguing that criticism only undermines the morale of the people trying to solve the problem -- usually meaning the CEO and his management team -- and potentially emboldens the company's enemies. This sort of complaint has become a hallmark of the Bush administration.

If Bush were the chief executive of a company, he would in all likelihood be given a good pension and quickly replaced. However, this is not the situation with the president. Although Congress does have the power to impeach him for "high crimes and misdemeanors," such a step is enormously time-consuming, requiring many hours of congressional investigations and hearings, and politically divisive. While I personally think it is possible that the president's misdeeds, especially having to do with Iraq, might well rise to the level of wrongdoing that the framers imagined when they provided for impeachment in the Constitution, at this point, leading Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have rejected the impeachment option.

But Congress doesn't have to sit by and do nothing, short of impeachment. When a company is going in the wrong direction, the board of directors has the responsibility to do everything possible to change course and move forward with better direction. Congress, the closest thing we have to a board of directors, has the constitutional responsibility to be a coequal branch of the government and be a check on both the executive and the judiciary. For the past six years, Congress has abandoned that role. (If it were a corporate board of directors, there might well be shareholder lawsuits over how it has neglected its oversight responsibilities.) But now, with new majorities in both houses, it is time for Congress to return to its rightful role, which is carefully scrutinizing Bush's plans, proposals and policies. Congress has to be willing to stand up to our CEO and to reject his ideas when they believe they are wrong. Congress has to evaluate his personnel choices from a much more objective standpoint. Congress members have to behave like the elected representatives of the American people that they are.

Enough with the bimbo dead pools already

As much as we here at B@B are Keith Olbermann's biggest non-stalkerish fans, I really think it's time to shitcan the "Keeping Tabs" section of Countdown. There may have been a time when celebrity foibles, punctuated by Michael Musto's snark, was a fun break from the horrors of Life in the Bush Years, but that time is now past.

This week Patrick Fitzgerald cast a very strong shadow over a Vice President who wasn't on trial -- yet. That Vice President is going around talking up the war as if it were still 2002. The British are throwing in the towel on Iraq, al-Qaeda is regrouping in Pakistan and Afghanistan, wounded American soldiers are getting shitty care at Walter Reed at the same time as Bush's budget cuts funding for veterans' medical benefits -- and the Bush Administration is pointing the "Not me, him" finger. And then of course there's the Administration's preparations for attacking Iran.

Yet if you watch television news or worse, listen to news radio, there just story getting attention: the public meltdown of Britney Spears. let's not even get into how disgusting it is that with one melted-down bimbo's corpse rotting into putrefaction in a Florida morgue while a showboating judge auditions for his own reality show, the media deathwatch moves on to another one, salivating at the thought that this one too might end up dead. But with a failed presidency, led by two highly delusional and evil men, planning an expanded Middle East war, there is just too much real news; too much Americans have an OBLIGATION to know, to continue feeding this absurd maw of celebrity obsession.

Bob Herbert agrees:

I imagine that there are a fair number of television viewers and newspaper readers who have trouble distinguishing the relative importance of celebrity stories, like the death of Anna Nicole Smith, from other matters in the news, like the reconstitution of forces responsible for the devastating Sept. 11 attacks.

If air time is any guide, there’s no contest. It’s been obvious for the longest time that the line between news and entertainment has vanished. News is entertainment. And the death of Anna Nicole Smith is more entertaining — for the time being, at least — than the war in Iraq or the plodding machinations of bin Laden and Zawahri.

Paris Hilton and Britney Spears were on the cover of Newsweek last week with the headline “The Girls Gone Wild Effect.” When you turned to the story, there was a full-page picture of the former best friends, with a glassy-eyed Britney looking for all the world like a younger version of Anna Nicole Smith.

The lead-in to the article said in large type: “Paris, Britney, Lindsay and Nicole — They seem to be everywhere and they may not be wearing underwear.”

The nation may be at war, and Al Qaeda may be gearing up for a rematch. But that’s no fun, not when Britney is shaving off her hair and Jennifer Aniston is reported to have a new nose and the thrill-a-minute watch over Anna Nicole’s remains is still the hottest thing on TV.

It was Neil Postman who warned in 1985 that we were amusing ourselves to death. I’m not sure anyone knew how literally to take him.

More than 20 years later, the masses have nearly succeeded in drawing the curtains on anything that’s not entertaining. No one can figure out what do about Iraq or Al Qaeda. A great American cultural center like New Orleans was all but washed away, and no one knows how to put it back together. The ice caps are melting and Al Gore is traveling the land like the town crier, raising the alarm about global warming.

But none of that has really gotten the public’s attention. None of it is amusing enough. As a nation of spectators, we seem content to sit with a pizza and a brew in front of the high-def flat-screen TV, obsessing over Anna Nicole et al., and giving no thought to the possibility that the calamitous events unfolding in the world may someday reach our doorsteps.

The problem is that when it does (probably around the time of the 2008 election), the same people devouring the latest news about Britney, Paris, or Lindsay will be perfectly willing to accept the martial law for which the Bush Administration is preparing already on the grounds that it's necessary "to keep us safe."

And somehow the fact that they were too busy devouring the latest about Anna Nicole's baby or Britney's alcoholism to pay attention to the fact that their leaders are not only not keeping them safe but actively doing what they can to make sure another attack on our shores DOES happen will escape them.

Blunder nothing...they know damn well what they're doing

Dan Plesch in The New Statesman believes (correctly, I think) that an attack on Iran is not only certain, but also imminent:

American military operations for a major conventional war with Iran could be implemented any day. They extend far beyond targeting suspect WMD facilities and will enable President Bush to destroy Iran's military, political and economic infrastructure overnight using conventional weapons.

British military sources told the New Statesman, on condition of anonymity, that "the US military switched its whole focus to Iran" as soon as Saddam Hussein was kicked out of Baghdad. It continued this strategy, even though it had American infantry bogged down in fighting the insurgency in Iraq.

The US army, navy, air force and marines have all prepared battle plans and spent four years building bases and training for "Operation Iranian Freedom". Admiral Fallon, the new head of US Central Command, has inherited computerised plans under the name TIRANNT (Theatre Iran Near Term).

Now THAT's some stones, isn't it? Giving the Iranian "mission" the same name was the original Iraq mission? Yeesh.

More:

The Bush administration has made much of sending a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf. But it is a tiny part of the preparations. Post 9/11, the US navy can put six carriers into battle at a month's notice. Two carriers in the region, the USS John C Stennis and the USS Dwight D Eisenhower, could quickly be joined by three more now at sea: USS Ronald Reagan, USS Harry S Truman and USS Theodore Roosevelt, as well as by USS Nimitz. Each carrier force includes hundreds of cruise missiles.

Then there are the marines, who are not tied down fighting in Iraq. Several marine forces are assembling, each with its own aircraft carrier. These carrier forces can each conduct a version of the D-Day landings. They come with landing craft, tanks, jump-jets, thousands of troops and, yes, hundreds more cruise missiles. Their task is to destroy Iranian forces able to attack oil tankers and to secure oilfields and installations. They have trained for this mission since the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Today, marines have the USS Boxer and USS Bataan carrier forces in the Gulf and probably also the USS Kearsarge and USS Bonhomme Richard. Three others, the USS Peleliu, USS Wasp and USS Iwo Jima, are ready to join them. Earlier this year, HQ staff to manage these forces were moved from Virginia to Bahrain.

[snip]

Any US general planning to attack Iran can now assume that at least 10,000 targets can be hit in a single raid, with warplanes flying from the US or Diego Garcia. In the past year, unlimited funding for military technology has taken "smart bombs" to a new level.

New "bunker-busting" conventional bombs weigh only 250lb. According to Boeing, the GBU-39 small-diameter bomb "quadruples" the firepower of US warplanes, compared to those in use even as recently as 2003. A single stealth or B-52 bomber can now attack between 150 and 300 individual points to within a metre of accuracy using the global positioning system.

With little military effort, the US air force can hit the last-known position of Iranian military units, political leaders and supposed sites of weapons of mass destruction. One can be sure that, if war comes, George Bush will not want to stand accused of using too little force and allowing Iran to fight back.

But hey, Britney Spears shaved her head and is in rehab! What's the news that the President of the United States is about to be the first to use nuclear weapons since Hiroshima as compared to the news that some pop music skank is having a meltdown? After all, Anna Nicole Smith is dead. So are over 3000 American kids and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, but again -- we Americans know our priorities

While wounded soldiers languish in mouse-infested VA clinics....

...the Crawford Caligula presents a budget that contains $32.7 BILLION -- that's BILLION, folks -- in tax cuts for the Walton heirs ALONE, in the form of complete elimination of the estate tax.

The link to this article by Matt Taibbi comes to us courtesy of the definitely brilliant Cernig:

On the same day that Britney was shaving her head, a guy I know who works in the office of Senator Bernie Sanders sent me an email. He was trying very hard to get news organizations interested in some research his office had done about George Bush's proposed 2008 budget, which was unveiled two weeks ago and received relatively little press, mainly because of the controversy over the Iraq war resolution. All the same, the Bush budget is an amazing document. It would be hard to imagine a document that more clearly articulates the priorities of our current political elite.

Not only does it make many of Bush's tax cuts permanent, but it envisions a complete repeal of the Estate Tax, which mainly affects only those who are in the top two-tenths of the top one percent of the richest people in this country. The proposed savings from the cuts over the next decade are about $442 billion, or just slightly less than the amount of the annual defense budget (minus Iraq war expenses). But what's interesting about these cuts are how Bush plans to pay for them.

Sanders's office came up with some interesting numbers here. If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the estimated savings to just one family -- the Walton family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune -- would be about $32.7 billion dollars over the next ten years.

The proposed reductions to Medicaid over the same time frame? $28 billion.

Or how about this: if the Estate Tax goes, the heirs to the Mars candy corporation -- some of the world's evilest scumbags, incidentally, routinely ripped by human rights organizations for trafficking in child labor to work cocoa farms in places like Cote D'Ivoire -- if the estate tax goes, those assholes will receive about $11.7 billion in tax breaks. That's more than three times the amount Bush wants to cut from the VA budget ($3.4 billion) over the same time period.

Some other notable estimate estate tax breaks, versus corresponding cuts:

• Cox family (Cox cable TV) receives $9.7 billion tax break while education would get $1.5 billion in cuts
  
• Nordstrom family (Nordstrom dept. stores) receives $826.5 million tax break while Community Service Block Grants would be eliminated, a $630 million cut
  
• Ernest Gallo family (shitty wines) receives a $468.4 million cut while LIHEAP (heating oil to poor) would get a $420 million cut
  

And so on and so on. Sanders additionally pointed out that the family of former Exxon/Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, who received a $400 million retirement package, would receive about $164 million in tax breaks.

Compare that to the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which Bush proposes be completely eliminated, at a savings of $108 million over ten years. The program sent one bag of groceries per month to 480,000 seniors, mothers and newborn children.

Now I know that there are people who have been caught up in a Kafkaesque mess as a result of the estate tax. Our own resident wingnut troll, Barry, has posted at his own blog about someone he knows who ended up with a taxable estate because of the value of a house she inherited that was also unsaleable for various reasons. So the woman was stuck with five figures in estate taxes that she was unable to pay because the inheritance that she needed to pay the taxes was in the form of a house she couldn't sell. But it seems to me that a situation like that one, where there is an illiquid inherited asset that is not easily converted to a liquid one for tax purposes, could be dealt with in estate tax law, rather than eliminating the tax entirely so that Lee Raymond's family pays $164 million less in taxes.

This is what our policy in Iraq hath wrought

Riverbend:

As I write this, Oprah is on Channel 4 (one of the MBC channels we get on Nilesat), showing Americans how to get out of debt. Her guest speaker is telling a studio full of American women who seem to have over-shopped that they could probably do with fewer designer products. As they talk about increasing incomes and fortunes, Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman, is on Al Jazeera telling how Iraqi security forces abducted her from her home and raped her. You can only see her eyes, her voice is hoarse and it keeps breaking as she speaks. In the end she tells the reporter that she can’t talk about it anymore and she covers her eyes with shame.

She might just be the bravest Iraqi woman ever. Everyone knows American forces and Iraqi security forces are raping women (and men), but this is possibly the first woman who publicly comes out and tells about it using her actual name. Hearing her tell her story physically makes my heart ache. Some people will call her a liar. Others (including pro-war Iraqis) will call her a prostitute- shame on you in advance.

I wonder what excuse they used when they took her. It’s most likely she’s one of the thousands of people they round up under the general headline of ‘terrorist suspect’. She might have been one of those subtitles you read on CNN or BBC or Arabiya, “13 insurgents captured by Iraqi security forces.” The men who raped her are those same security forces Bush and Condi are so proud of- you know- the ones the Americans trained. It’s a chapter right out of the book that documents American occupation in Iraq: the chapter that will tell the story of 14-year-old Abeer who was raped, killed and burned with her little sister and parents.

They abducted her from her house in an area in southern Baghdad called Hai Al Amil. No- it wasn’t a gang. It was Iraqi peace keeping or security forces- the ones trained by Americans? You know them. She was brutally gang-raped and is now telling the story. Half her face is covered for security reasons or reasons of privacy. I translated what she said below.

You'll have to read the rest of it here, because I want you to see the images from Iraqi television.

But it gets worse. George W. Bush's OTHER BFF, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is now claiming that Sabrine Al Janabi is lying. How does he know? Because he asked the officers and they said no.

Almost immediately, Shiite leaders lined up to condemn the woman and her charges as propaganda aimed at undermining the new security campaign. Sunni politicians offered the woman their support. Whatever the truth of the accusation, though, it played to sectarian fears on both sides.

For many Shiites, the charges appeared to be an attempt to smear them and attack the Shiite-led government; for Sunnis, the woman’s account only highlighted what they already believe to be true — that the Iraqi government cares little for justice and promotes a Shiite agenda.

Bitter exchanges between politicians of different sects were relayed to millions on television, interspersed with clips of the woman telling her story, her face veiled, just the tears in her eyes visible.

The Americans, who have advisers that work with the Iraqi National Police, found themselves caught in the middle and with no answers. The woman claimed that the Americans rescued her from the officers and gave her medical treatment. The American-backed, Shiite-led government said the Americans would show the woman’s claims to be false.

The American military said only that they were investigating the charges.

That was also the first response of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who issued a statement soon after the woman appeared on television on Monday, promising a full investigation and the most severe punishment for anyone involved.

Only hours later, however, Mr. Maliki reversed himself. His office released a second statement after midnight local time on Tuesday, this one calling the woman a liar and a wanted criminal and going on to praise the officers involved.

“It has been shown after medical examinations that the woman had not been subjected to any sexual attack whatsoever, and that there are three outstanding arrest warrants against her issued by security agencies,” the second statement said. “After the allegations have been proven to be false, the prime minister has ordered that the officers accused be rewarded.”

And THIS is the government we're supposed to support? Remember all the rhetoric about Saddam Hussein's rape rooms? And this is different -- how?

Riverbend again:

I hate the media and I hate the Iraqi government for turning this atrocity into another Sunni-Shia debacle- like it matters whether Sabrine is Sunni or Shia or Arab or Kurd (the Al Janabi tribe is composed of both Sunnis and Shia). Maliki did not only turn the woman into a liar, he is rewarding the officers she accused. It's outrageous and maddening.

No Iraqi woman under the circumstances- under any circumstances- would publicly, falsely claim she was raped. There are just too many risks. There is the risk of being shunned socially. There is the risk of beginning an endless chain of retaliations and revenge killings between tribes. There is the shame of coming out publicly and talking about a subject so taboo, she and her husband are not only risking their reputations by telling this story, they are risking their lives.

No one would lie about something like this simply to undermine the Baghdad security operation. That can be done simply by calculating the dozens of dead this last week. Or by writing about the mass detentions of innocents, or how people are once again burying their valuables so that Iraqi and American troops don't steal them.

It was less than 14 hours between Sabrine's claims and Maliki's rewarding the people she accused. In 14 hours, Maliki not only established their innocence, but turned them into his own personal heroes. I wonder if Maliki would entrust the safety his own wife and daughter to these men.

This is meant to discourage other prisoners, especially women, from coming forward and making claims against Iraqi and American forces. Maliki is the stupidest man alive (well, after Bush of course…) if he believes his arrogance and callous handling of the situation will work to dismiss it from the minds of Iraqis. By doing what he is doing, he's making it more clear than ever that under his rule, under his government, vigilante justice is the only way to go. Why leave it to the security forces and police? Simply hire a militia or gang to get revenge. If he doesn't get some justice for her, her tribe will be forced to... And the Janabat (the Al Janabis) are a force to be reckoned with.

Maliki could at least pretend the rape of a young Iraqi woman is still an outrage in todays Iraq...

This so-called Iraqi government is every bit as distasteful as the one we have here. And why shouldn't it be? It is an evil administration, installed by an evil American administration. George W. Bush has created an Iraqi government in his own image. And this is why 3000-plus American kids have died? So that Sabrine Al Janabi could be gang-raped and then be called a liar by the Prime Minister of her own country?

There was a time when

Tony Blair gives up on his BFF

Britain has had quite enough of Iraq, thank you very much:

Prime Minister Tony Blair will announce on Wednesday a new timetable for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq, with 1,500 to return home in several weeks, the BBC reported.

Blair will also tell the House of Commons during his regular weekly appearance that a total of about 3,000 British soldiers will have left southern Iraq by the end of 2007, if the security there is sufficient, the British Broadcasting Corp. said, quoting government officials who weren't further identified.

The announcement comes even as President Bush implements an increase of 21,000 more troops for Iraq.

But Blair said Sunday that Washington had not put pressure on London to maintain its troop numbers. The BBC said Blair was not expected to say when the rest of Britain's forces would leave Iraq. Britain currently has about 7,100 soldiers there.

Blair's Downing Street office refused to comment on the BBC report.

Blair and Bush talked by secure video link Tuesday morning, and Bush said Britain's troop cutbacks were "a sign of success" in Iraq.

Uh....then why are we sending more?

Again, I ask you: Moron, delusional, or both?

"the people who will plan the next attack inside the United States are those who are in Afghanistan and Pakistan"

Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, on Countdown last night:

We've always overestimated the damage we did to the Taliban in Afghanistan. We didn't close the borders there, we won the cities, but the Taliban and al-Qaeda escaped basically intact, and they've been rebuilding and re-equipping over the last five years...

This is a very strange administration, sir. But we really don't take the transnational threat seriously, the terrorist threat. We're pretty good at nation-states, but on al-Qaeda, we still have a government that as a whole, both parties, doesn't take this threat very seriously. The idea that we're going to try to do with 40,000 troops in Afghanistan what the Soviets couldn't do with 150,000 troops is a bit of madness...

The central place in terms of an attack inside the United States is Afghanistan and Pakistan. When the next attack occurs in America, it will be planned and orchestrated out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al-Qaeda values Iraq primarily for the entre it gives them into Jordan, into Syria, into the Arab Peninsula and into Turkey. For example, we've really signed Jordan's death warrant through the war in Iraq. But actually, the people who will plan the next attack inside the United States are those who are in Afghanistan and Pakistan...

This administration, sir, seems to be afraid of almost anything that moves. And certain Iraq was a containable country. The Iranians are no threat to the United States unless we provoke them. They may be a threat to the Israelis, they're not a threat to the United States. The threat to the US inside the US comes from al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan and Pakistan, if you want to address the threat to America, that's where it is....

...we don't treat this Islamist enemy as seriously as we should. We think somehow we're going to arrest them one man at a time. These people are going to detonate a nuclear device inside the United States and we're going to have absolutely nothing to respond against. It's going to be a unique situation for a great power, and we're going to have no one to blame but ourselves.

So when the next attack in the U.S. occurs (and somehow I think it's going to happen right before the 2008 election, to either give the Bush Junta an opportunity to declare martial law and refuse to leave, or else give Benito Giuliani a chance to be elected, because we KNOW that HE's perfectly willing to cancel elections), I hope Americans will think back on how George W. Bush almost completely abandoned the effort to fight al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, because instead of going to counseling for his father issues like normal people, he had to invade a country that was no threat to us, had nothing to do with September 11, and certainly had nothing to do with al-Qaeda.

Only Christians need apply for God's Anointed Army

On the other hand, if there's ever a draft, we can probably expect to see a mass conversion to Wicca on the part of young men of draft age after what's happened to Don Larsen (no, not the perfect game pitcher):

A year ago, he was a Pentecostal Christian minister at Camp Anaconda, the largest U.S. support base in Iraq. He sent home reports on the number of "decisions" -- soldiers committing their lives to Christ -- that he inspired in the base's Freedom Chapel.

But inwardly, he says, he was torn between Christianity's exclusive claims about salvation and a "universalist streak" in his thinking. The Feb. 22, 2006, bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, which collapsed the dome of a 1,200-year-old holy site and triggered a widening spiral of revenge attacks between Shiite and Sunni militants, prompted a decision of his own.

"I realized so many innocent people are dying again in the name of God," Larsen says. "When you think back over the Catholic-Protestant conflict, how the Jews have suffered, how some Christians justified slavery, the Crusades, and now the fighting between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, I just decided I'm done. . . . I will not be part of any church that unleashes its clergy to preach that particular individuals or faith groups are damned."

Larsen's private crisis of faith might have remained just that, but for one other fateful choice. He decided the religion that best matched his universalist vision was Wicca, a blend of witchcraft, feminism and nature worship that has ancient pagan roots.

On July 6, he applied to become the first Wiccan chaplain in the U.S. armed forces, setting off an extraordinary chain of events. By year's end, his superiors not only denied his request but also withdrew him from Iraq and removed him from the chaplain corps, despite an unblemished service record.

Adherents of Wicca, one of the nation's fastest-growing religions, contend that Larsen is a victim of unconstitutional discrimination. They say that Wicca, though recognized as a religion by federal courts and the Internal Revenue Service, is often falsely equated with devil worship.

"Institutionalized bigotry and discriminatory actions . . . have crossed the line this time," says David L. Oringderff, a retired Army intelligence officer who is an elder in the Sacred Well Congregation, the Texas-based Wiccan group that Larsen joined.

Larsen, 44, blames only himself. He said he was naive to think he could switch from Pentecostalism to Wicca in the same way that chaplains routinely change from one Christian denomination to another.

Chaplain Kevin L. McGhee, Larsen's superior at Camp Anaconda, believes a "grave injustice" was done. McGhee, a Methodist, supervised 26 chaplains on the giant base near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad. He says Larsen was the best.

"I could go on and on about how well he preached, the care he gave," McGhee says. "What happened to Chaplain Larsen -- to be honest, I think it's political. A lot of people think Wiccans are un-American, because they are ignorant about what Wiccans do."

[snip]

He says he understands why strangers might think "a mortar round must have landed too close to this guy." He recalls, with a chuckle, that a friend once gave him a diagnosis of "multiple religions disorder."

But the struggle between his ardent Christianity and his willingness to see equal value in other faiths was no joke -- it was a painful, internal conflict that came to a head after he arrived in Iraq in early 2006.

"In Iraq, I saw what was happening in the name of Allah and I thought, 'This has got to stop.' . . . The common core of all religions, we're saying the same stuff," he says. "I just decided that the rest of my life I will encourage people to seek out the light however they see fit, through the Bhagavad-Gita, the Torah, the writings of prophets and sages -- whatever path propels them to be good and honorable and upright."

Larsen now draws freely from all those traditions. He meditates daily, concentrating on the seven chakras that Hindus believe are the body's centers of energy.

At times, he tries to free his mind from his physical being, a New Age practice he calls "astral travel." With his 19-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son, he reads the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament. Following the Wiccan calendar, he observes eight major holidays tied to the seasons and the right times to plant, harvest and tend a flock. Imbolc, for example, is when gestating ewes begin producing milk, signaling that winter is almost over.

So Larsen finds meaning in various spiritual traditions and chooses the aspects that speak to him. Why is this a problem? I do much the same thing, with much the same traditions, except that I don't participate in any rituals.

Wiccans have been trying mightily to educate people that their religion has nothing to do with Satanism. I'll let Cernig weigh in on this front because he IS a practitioner. But I fail to understand why the notion of "Do what thou wilt, harm none" is so scary to Christians. I suspect that the people thumping the Bible the most loudly are the ones who DO need the structure of an authoritarian father figure-based religion to keep them from being in touch with what must be an extremely foul true nature. The ones who don't see how someone can live a virtuous life without what they call "faith" (faith being synonymous with patriarchal religion) fear that without the retribution that Christianity offers, they would run completely amok.

When you have 53% of the population saying they wouldn't vote for an atheist for the presidency -- a higher percentage than people who wouldn't vote for someone who is gay, one has to wonder just where a practicing Wiccan would show up on that scale. My guess is that the numbers would be much higher, largely out of ignorance. Yet It seems odd that the notion that a belief in the Great White Alpha Male in the Sky seems to still be such a qualifying factor now that we've seen the havoc that a president who professes to believe in such a being can wreak in the name of piety.