Nucking Futs

And this guy has another twenty months to go unless Nancy Pelosi finds her spine or the 25th Amendment is invoked:

And so, on the one hand, you have weakened societies vulnerable to the "new answers" of "new insurgencies," and on the other hand, you have Iraq set up as a school for terrorists with American troops and policy providing the constant inspiration for their fight.

This, of course, is not the way the Bush administration sees it.

The White House sees terrorists as born, not created by history, bearing the mark of Cain, not the mark of circumstance. There is a scarlet "T" written on their foreheads at birth and the only answer is to destroy them. This kind of thinking, of course, relieves the thinker of any responsibility for the presence of the insurgent-terrorist-whatever in our innocent midst.

What's more, there is not much real give in the administration's policies. True, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other American diplomats met Memorial Day weekend with the Iranians in Baghdad (a good first move but limited, since the Iranians have most of the power because of our incredible stupidity in Iraq). But by all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness.

Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny."

Congratulations, Republicans. You have spent the last six years supporting a president whose MISSION was to wreck EVERYTHING -- and he's succeeding. How do you feel?

ThinkProgress has more:

This is the second time in recent weeks that accounts have surfaced of Bush lashing out or “ranting” in private meetings when responding to criticism of his Iraq policy. Chris Nelson of the Nelson Report offered a similar account earlier this month:

[S]ome big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House. The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he’s doing things would be OK…etc., etc. This is called a “bunker mentality” and it’s not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous. Apparently the Texas friends were suitably appalled, hence the story now in circulation.

It isn't just a bunker mentality -- the guy is absolutely, 100% batshit crazy. Add to this fact the many drugs they probably have him on to keep him from melting down entirely, and we are in a world of shit

Japan day three pics are up

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A good analysis of John Edwards

Steve Kirsch has done an analysis of why he believes John Edwards is the candidate who should be the Democratic nominee; the one who can defeat any of the Republicans (including Fred Thompson). The analysis focuses on global warming and Iraq, and points out where both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been at best timid on these issues.

Right now I'm leaning towards Edwards myself, though I can't say it's with the same kind of "YES! That's the guy!" fervor with which I signed onto the Dean campaign in 2004. I don't dismiss lightly the criticisms that my sister and others from North Carolina have about Edwards; that he ran for Senate and before his first term was even up he was already running for president, then bailed after that defeat. Of course, Illinois residents could say the same thing about Barack Obama. There's also something just a wee bit glad-handing about Edwards, a nagging sense I have of a bit of incipient phoniness. I haven't forgotten Edwards' initial support of the war, something that was supposed to be an irrevocable dealbreaker in my mind. But a blunt admission that he was wrong, rather than the kind of "If I'd known then..." tapdancing that Hillary Clinton is doing goes a long way towards earning my forgiveness.

All that said, when I look at my options, and especially when I look at how the Republicans are STILL beating his infamous haircut to death, I keep coming back to Edwards as the guy I'd like to see win the nomination. Part of this is that I'd like to see a guy who comes from humble beginnings, made a shitload of money and didn't become an "I got mine and fuck you" Republican out there on the campaign trail as a continued reproach to the notion that wealthy people must by definition be Republicans. And part of it is that the obsession with the haircut, like the obsession with the "Dean scream" in 2004, tells me loudly and clearly that Edwards, not Clinton and not Obama, is the Democrat they fear the most.

(h/t: Nicole Belle at C&L)

Shorter Sam Brownback: "I don't understand it....it must be MAGIC!"

Sam Brownback tries to sound a bit less like the Christian Dominionist nutball that he is:

People of faith should be rational, using the gift of reason that God has given us. At the same time, reason itself cannot answer every question. Faith seeks to purify reason so that we might be able to see more clearly, not less. Faith supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of values, meaning and purpose. More than that, faith — not science — can help us understand the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love. Faith and science should go together, not be driven apart.

The question of evolution goes to the heart of this issue. If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.

There is no one single theory of evolution, as proponents of punctuated equilibrium and classical Darwinism continue to feud today. Many questions raised by evolutionary theory — like whether man has a unique place in the world or is merely the chance product of random mutations — go beyond empirical science and are better addressed in the realm of philosophy or theology.

The most passionate advocates of evolutionary theory offer a vision of man as a kind of historical accident. That being the case, many believers — myself included — reject arguments for evolution that dismiss the possibility of divine causality.

Ultimately, on the question of the origins of the universe, I am happy to let the facts speak for themselves. There are aspects of evolutionary biology that reveal a great deal about the nature of the world, like the small changes that take place within a species. Yet I believe, as do many biologists and people of faith, that the process of creation — and indeed life today — is sustained by the hand of God in a manner known fully only to him. It does not strike me as anti-science or anti-reason to question the philosophical presuppositions behind theories offered by scientists who, in excluding the possibility of design or purpose, venture far beyond their realm of empirical science.

Biologists will have their debates about man’s origins, but people of faith can also bring a great deal to the table. For this reason, I oppose the exclusion of either faith or reason from the discussion. An attempt by either to seek a monopoly on these questions would be wrong-headed. As science continues to explore the details of man’s origin, faith can do its part as well. The fundamental question for me is how these theories affect our understanding of the human person.

The unique and special place of each and every person in creation is a fundamental truth that must be safeguarded. I am wary of any theory that seeks to undermine man’s essential dignity and unique and intended place in the cosmos. I firmly believe that each human person, regardless of circumstance, was willed into being and made for a purpose.

Well, gee whiz, doesn't Sen. Brownback sound like one of those adherents to the self-esteem movement decried by people like Jeffrey Zaslow?

There is no incongruity between the science of man's evolution from the primordial ooze and man's essential dignity. It's interesting to note, though, that Sam Brownback is frantically trying to spin himself as a moderate, despite his history of painting himself as God's anointed representative to the senate. Funny, though, how his voting record indicates that "man's essential dignity" seems not to extend to the poor, and part of his vision for the country involves a complete dismantling of the social safety net.

(hat tip: Marc Maron, for the quote in the title of this post)

Just wondering, is all

Would one of the wingnuts that visits this site from Memeorandum or Real Clear Politics please explain to me why Fred Thompson is viewed as some kind of Republican Savior?

UPDATE: Ah. Glenn Greenwald explains it all for us. In short: Republicans are so moronic they can't tell the difference between a character a guy plays in movies and on TV and the real thing. But then, they (and their lackeys in the media -- *cough* Chris Matthews *cough*) are the same people who were bamboozled by a Connecticut trust fund boy in a cowboy hat and a flight suit.

"When are we going to get out of here?"

Doesn't Joe Lieberman have any children of military age that he can send to Iraq?

As this country's military's mission remains to allow their Commander-in-Chief and his lackeys, like Joe Lieberman, to remain in their bubble, undisturbed.

Spc. David Williams, 22, of Boston, Mass., had two note cards in his pocket Wednesday afternoon as he waited for Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Williams serves in the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., the first of the five "surge" brigades to arrive in Iraq, and he was chosen to join the Independent from Connecticut for lunch at a U.S. field base in Baghdad.

The night before, 30 other soldiers crowded around him with questions for the senator.

He wrote them all down. At the top of his note card was the question he got from nearly every one of his fellow soldiers:

"When are we going to get out of here?"

The rest was a laundry list. When would they have upgraded Humvees that could withstand the armor-penetrating weapons that U.S. officials claim are from Iran? When could they have body armor that was better in hot weather?

Williams missed six months of his girlfriend's pregnancy when he was given six days' notice to return to Iraq for his second tour. He also missed his baby boy's birth. Three weeks ago, he went home and saw his first child.

"He looks just like me," he said. "I didn't want to come back. . . . We're waiting to get blown up."

[snip]

"We're not making any progress," Hedin said, as he recalled a comrade who was shot by a sniper last week. "It just seems like we drive around and wait to get shot at."

But as he waited two chairs down from where Lieberman would sit, Hedin said he'd never voice his true feelings to the senator.

"I think I'd be a private if I did," he joked. "It's just more troops, more targets."

In the past two months, the unit has lost two men. In May alone, at least 120 U.S. troops died in Iraq, the bloodiest month in 2007 and the highest number since the battles of Fallujah in 2004.

Spc. Kevin Krasco, 20, of Medford, Mass., and Spc. Kevin Adams, 20, of Moosup, Conn., chimed in with their dismay before turning the conversation to baseball.

"It's like everything else in this war," Adams said, referring to Baghdad. "It hasn't changed."

Then Lieberman walked in, wearing a pair of sunglasses newly purchased from an Iraqi market that the military had taken him to in southeast Baghdad. He'd been equipped with a helmet and flak vest when he toured the market, which he described as bustling.

Earlier, Lieberman had met briefly with Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi police at a Joint Security Station; there are 31 throughout the city now. The senator, who's steadfastly supported the Iraq war along with the current surge of more than 28,000 additional American troops, said things were better.

"I think it's important we don't lose our will," he said. "To pull out would be a disaster."

The soldiers smiled and greeted him, stood with him for pictures and sat down to a lunch of roast beef and turkey sandwiches. It was unclear if they ever asked their questions.

(h/t: ThinkProgress)

The tipping point of evil

A concerted Administration effort to blow the cover of a covert CIA agent involved in counterproliferation wasn't enough. Lying us into war wasn't enough. Turning the Justice Department into an arm of the Republican party to disenfranchise Democrats wasn't enough.

What will it take to arouse the ire of the American people so that they demand that Nancy Pelosi put impeachment back on the table? How high do the crimes have to get?

How about sending amputees back into combat:

In the blur of smoke and blood after a bomb blew up under his Humvee in Iraq, Sgt. Tawan Williamson looked down at his shredded leg and knew it couldn't be saved. His military career, though, pulled through.

Less than a year after the attack, Williams is running again with a high-tech prosthetic leg and plans to take up a new assignment, probably by the fall, as an Army job counselor and affirmative action officer in Okinawa, Japan.

In an about-face by the Pentagon, the military is putting many more amputees back on active duty — even back into combat, in some cases.

Williamson, a 30-year-old Chicago native who is missing his left leg below the knee and three toes on the other foot, acknowledged that some will be skeptical of a maimed soldier back in uniform.

"But I let my job show for itself," he said. "At this point, I'm done proving. I just get out there and do it."

Previously, a soldier who lost a limb almost automatically received a quick discharge, a disability check and an appointment with the Veterans Administration.

But since the start of the Iraq war, the military has begun holding on to amputees, treating them in rehab programs like the one here at Fort Sam Houston and promising to help them return to active duty if that is what they want.

Well, why not? If you're recruiting criminals and the mentally ill, why not hold onto amputees? After all, it's one less limb they have to get shot off.

Or perhaps spending $592 million dollars to build a palatial embassy in Baghdad, one that will cost over a billion dollars a year to run, as you plan to turn Iraq into the new South Korea?

Or maybe it'll be when they do Norman Podhoretz' bidding and bomb Iran to smithereens?

Or when people start dying of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease because the Administration helped out their rancher friends and vowed to fight all attempts to test all beef cattle?

Or when a child is killed with a gun because the Republicans passed an amendment to an appropirations bill 4 years ago that restricts the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) from sharing crime gun tracing data with law enforcement officials and the public.

What's it going to take?

Another one from the "Blame the Boomers" file

In a column excoriating George W. Bush's fiscal policy, Andrew Sullivan remembers that he's supposed to be a wingnut and finds another scapegoat:

Be afraid of what this man has done to our long-term fiscal health. Be afraid of the massive tax hikes he has made inevitable. USA Today tells the truth:

[snip]

I also noticed in my latest letter from the Social Security Administration that, as currently configured, I'll get 76 percent of what I'm due if and when I retire. My bet is that it will turn out to be less than half. The boomers are going to hog all of it for themselves.

Oops. Andy's birth date is August 10, 1963. Guess what that makes him. (Hint: The baby boom years are usually categorized as 1946 to 1964.)

(via Kevin Drum)

Japan day two pics are up

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Want to know why American college students don't want to major in computer science?

Here's one reason (via the Programmer's Guild Blog):

The bill would increase the number of visas for highly skilled workers, a goal long sought by the high-tech industry. Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, won adoption of an amendment that would increase the fee charged to employers for such a visa, known as an H-1B, to $5,000, from $1,500. The money would be used to finance scholarships for American citizens studying engineering, mathematics, computer science or health care.

Robert P. Hoffman, a vice president of Oracle, said the higher fees represented “an onerous tax increase on America’s most innovative companies.”

Sayeth Kim Berry in response:

Compete America, headed by Hoffman, claims that “too few American students are seeking degrees in science, engineering and mathematics.” (Public Policy Institute of California recently made a similar claim.) But rather than support a $15,000 annual scholarship so that Americans can attend American universities, Hoffman proposes that “the H-1B and green card programs should exempt foreign-born Masters and PhD graduates of U.S. universities from arbitrary visa caps."
(The Programmers Guild refutes that there is any shortage of Americans students, citing declining salaries and tech workers over age 40 unable to find jobs. A recent Duke University study reached the same conclusion: "we did not find any indication of a shortage of engineers in the United States.")

As I discovered when I turned 40, Information Technology, and especially web development, is a young person's game. It gets wearing to go to work every day when you're on grants, living in terror that if the grant money runs out, YOU will be the one deemed expendable, and knowing that if that happens, your career is over. Ads for tech jobs contain code words like "fun company" and "Friday tailgate parties" that make the message clear. I used to think that it was possible to be the coolest old person around. But I came to realize that no matter how cool you are, to the 25-year-old in the next office, you are "Mom."

This country is full of tech workers over 40 who have given up on their careers because they are tired of being humiliated on job interviews, and are working for seven bucks an hour at Circuit City or at Trader Joe's. There is no shortage of IT workers, there is just a shortage of IT workers willing to take 50% pay cuts to be competitive with H-1Bs brought in who can be worked to death and then discarded.

Politicians in both parties are giving lip service to the notions of "retraining" and "education" as a panacea for the employment problems in this country; problems hidden by the way "unemployment" is calculated. But young people aren't stupid. They see what's going on. And while we tend to think we'll be young forever when we're young, these kids ARE able to look down the road and see what's coming. And why should they bust their asses preparing for a career in which they can be replaced tomorrow by someone from an H-1B body shop?

Have voters had enough of a president they want to have a beer with?

The conventional wisdom is that George W. Bush in 2000 was the guy you wanted to have a beer with, that his brand of towel-snapping familiarity played to a population that for some reason associated policy wonkery with Bill Clinton's sexual escapades. That the notion of the smart guy getting all the girls flies in the face of everything that Bush voters believed never occurred to them. A guy who was Just Like Them was running against a guy who had all of Clinton's intelligence and all of his wonkery, but little of his charm.

Now there is a maelstrom swirling around Al Gore yet again, as he promotes his new book, The Assault on Reason and as the spectre of an inevitable Hillary Clinton nomination and equally inevitable loss at the hands of whatever Iraq-bot gets the Republican nomination stares us in the face.

Last night Gore appeared on Countdown, and while I'd like to believe that Americans have moved beyond falling for the smirk, the grin, the cheap rhetoric delivered at a first-grade level and the platitudes and fearmongering that are the stock in trade of the Republicans, I still do not believe that they're ready for Al Gore's professorial delivery:

None of the Republicans currently running are as utterly moronic as George W. Bush clearly was in 2000, but I don't think they're ready to heed the call of someone who still sounds like a particularly dry economics professor.

The problem is that we've seen that Gore can be funny and charming when he wants to be -- but when he's on the spot, as he was last night, and he knows that every word he says is going to be immediately scrutinized by the likes of Chris Matthews (and as we noted yesterday, David Brooks) and immediately branded as "weird" -- or worse.

I don't think Gore is simply being coy when he refuses to say whether he's planning to run in 2008. I think Gore is very well aware both of the minefield that awaits him should he decide to run -- a minefield that he can avoid by keeping in the public eye without declaring -- and of the huge mantle of Hope that sits on his shoulders from a Democratic base that last week was told to go fuck ourselves by the Democrats in Washington; even those we fought so hard to elect. I think Gore is also painfully aware that he is not "made for television", and what we saw on Countdown last night is, for all his good intentions, the Al Gore that turned into the homoerotic male news media's favorite whipping boy; the "beta male" that they wanted to see beaten up for his lunch money by the Strapping Phony in the Cowboy Hat. In fact, it has already begun, as Newsweek plants the "loser" meme in people's minds right out of the gate with this ridiculous article claiming that beta is the new alpha.

For all that there would be a lovely kind of karmic justice to a resurgent Al Gore returning to claim what was rightfully his in 2000, it's clear to me at least so far that there many obstacles in young Frodo's path as he ventures to throw the Ring of Absolute Power and Authoritarianism back into the fires of Mount Doom where it belongs.

Both Bush and the Democrats are out of touch on Iraq

With last week's Iraq supplemental vote, Democrats forgot that it's 2007 and had a mass delusion that it's still 2002, that Bush is still sitting with 70% approval ratings, and that questions about the war are still regarded as treasonous by a frightened populace.

With even Republican representatives feeling the heat, it becomes ever more evident that the Democrats are owned by the very same defense contractors and others making money off the Iraq carnage as Republicans:

While a majority of Republican voters continue to support Mr. Bush and the Iraq war, including the recent increase in American troops deployed, there are concerns that the war is undermining the party’s political position. A majority of Republicans who were interviewed for a New York Times/CBS News poll this month said that things were going badly in Iraq and that Congress should allow financing only on the condition that the Iraqi government met benchmarks for progress.

In a poll in March, a majority of Republicans said that a candidate who backed Mr. Bush’s war policies would be at a decided disadvantage in 2008. They also suggested that they were open to supporting a candidate who broke with the president on the war.

That change of heart can be seen in many ways around the country. When the North Shore Women for Peace, a small group of antiwar activists from around here, first stood in the breezeway of a high-end strip mall in nearby Highland Park in the months leading up to the war, they drew sneers, expletives and many a thumbs-down.

By 2005, members said, they had found a more neutral audience, given to stares but little else. Recently, people smiled in support, honked their car horns and volunteered to join the cause at a peace rally.

“Anything I can sign?” asked one shopper, Lynne Black, a retiree from Wilmette. “I feel desperation at this point.”

Those feelings are reflected in Congressional districts across the country where Republican backers of the war are taking more political heat. Mr. Kirk would not be interviewed, but one of his biggest backers, the mayor of nearby Kenilworth, Tolbert Chisum, a Republican, described as “remarkable” the meeting between the 11 congressmen and Mr. Bush.

“Given a choice, none of us would want to be at war,” said Mr. Chisum, the committeeman of the largest Republican organization in the North Shore suburbs.

Mr. Chisum expressed confidence that Mr. Kirk would win re-election in 2008 but acknowledged that the battle was shaping up to be fierce, particularly since Democrats won control of both houses of Congress last November.

“I’m a realist,” Mr. Chisum said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen between now and the next election. Who would have thought there would be a complete rollover in the House and Senate?”

Interviews with voters, elected officials and others in Illinois, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania — home to 4 of the 11 Republican congressmen who met with Mr. Bush about the war — suggest that more Republican voters are opposing the war, and that independents who might have voted Republican are moving toward supporting a Democrat.

Exactly. So why on earth would the Democrats have chosen to continue funding this war that no one wants with absolutely no accountability? And let's not let the Democrats in the Senate fool us; "voluntary" compliance by the Bush administration is no compliance at all.

It took a long time, but the American people have finally woken up from their slumber, or just snapped out of their Bush-exacerbated post-9/11 night terrors, and realized that this war has nothing to do with stopping terrorists, that it's bankrupting the country for generations to come, and that it's serving only to make Bush/Cheney cronies even wealthier. And almost three-quarters of us want it ended.

So tell me again why the Democrats folded.

Thanks Blogger

Whoah. Grab Your Fork is today's Blog of Note, compiled by the team at Blogger. No wonder my hit rate has just quintupled.Thanks Blogger! You guys rock!New here? Welcome. Hope you stick around :)

Not that this will matter one iota to the apologists for the Bush Administration

Well, well, well, so Valerie Plame was covert at the time she was outed by Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Scooter Libby after all. Not just a secretary, or a desk jockey, or the coffee girl, or whatever pejorative the wingnuts have thought fit to use to describe her:

An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003.

The summary is part of an attachment to Fitzgerald's memorandum to the court supporting his recommendation that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former top aide, spend 2-1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak investigation.

The nature of Plame's CIA employment never came up in Libby's perjury and obstruction of justice trial.

The unclassified summary of Plame's employment with the CIA at the time that syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14, 2003 says, "Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for who the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States."

Plame worked as an operations officer in the Directorate of Operations and was assigned to the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) in January 2002 at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The employment history indicates that while she was assigned to CPD, Plame, "engaged in temporary duty travel overseas on official business." The report says, "she traveled at least seven times to more than ten times." When overseas Plame traveled undercover, "sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias -- but always using cover -- whether official or non-official (NOC) -- with no ostensible relationship to the CIA."

So, there we have it. Valerie Plame was a covert agent, always using official or nonofficial cover, and the Bush Administration put her life and her work at risk for cheap political revenge.

There's no way to put lipstick on this pig. This is treason, plain and simple -- treason and impeachable. And that the Democrats lack the balls to do something about it is appalling.

UPDATE: Just in case the gasbags on the right start denying that they ever said Valerie Plame was not covert, Glenn Greenwald kindly documents many of the instances of wingnuts talking out of their asses on the subject -- to save you the trouble of looking them up yourself.

Because big words, are, like just too hard to read

David Brooks runs this year's Al Gore meme up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes: Al Gore is Weird.

But, hey, nobody ever died from contact with pomposity, and Al Gore’s “The Assault on Reason” is well worth reading. It reminds us that whatever the effects of our homogenizing mass culture, it is still possible for exceedingly strange individuals to rise to the top.

Gore is, for example, a radical technological determinist. While most politicians react to people, Gore reacts to machines, and in this book he lays out a theory of history entirely driven by them.

He writes that “the idea of self-government became feasible after the printing press.” With this machine, people suddenly had the ability to use the printed word to debate ideas and proceed logically to democratic conclusions. As Gore writes in his best graduate school manner, “The eighteenth century witnessed more and more ordinary citizens able to use knowledge as a source of power to mediate between wealth and privilege.”

This Age of Reason produced the American Revolution. But in the 20th century, television threatened it all. In Gore’s view, TV immobilizes the reasoning centers in the brain and stimulates the primitive, instinctive parts. TV creates a “visceral vividness” that is not “modulated by logic, reason and reflective thought.”

TV allows political demagogues to exaggerate dangers and stoke up fear. Furthermore, “conglomerates can dominate the expressions of opinion that flood the mind of the citizenry” and “the result is a de facto coup d’état overthrowing the rule of reason.”

Brooks has a serious problem with this notion. The loss of reason has allowed Fox News to spin utter horseshit as fact and allows George Bush to declare that Americans agree with HIM on Iraq. But the loss of reason has also allowed David Brooks to make a handsome living pretending to actually think while writing some of the most moronic columns in the history of opinion journalism.

In today's column, Brooks resembles nothing so much as the high school lunkhead who refuses to do the assignment because the big words are just too hard to read. And besides, there are poetry nerds and science geeks out in the quad who need to be beaten silly. And after school, there's pizza to be eaten with Maureen Dowd and the rest of the Heathers.

Heckuva job, Georgie

Captain Codpiece's little adventure has created a refugee crisis as those who can get out of Iraq are doing so. Many are going to Syria. And this is what those refugees are reduced to:

Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl, modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before classes.

But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm Hiba’s elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes.

Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers. She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed in colored light.

As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls.

“During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” She insisted on being identified by only part of her name — Umm Hiba means mother of Hiba.

For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore.

Even in central Damascus, men freely talk of being approached by pimps trawling for customers outside juice shops and shawarma sandwich stalls, and of women walking up to passing men, an act unthinkable in Arab culture, and asking in Iraqi-accented Arabic if the men would like to “have a cup of tea.”

By day the road that leads from Damascus to the historic convent at Saidnaya is often choked with Christian and Muslim pilgrims hoping for one of the miracles attributed to a portrait of the Virgin Mary at the convent. But as any Damascene taxi driver can tell you, the Maraba section of this fabled pilgrim road is fast becoming better known for its brisk trade in Iraqi prostitutes.

Many of these women and girls, including some barely in their teens, are recent refugees. Some are tricked or forced into prostitution, but most say they have no other means of supporting their families. As a group they represent one of the most visible symptoms of an Iraqi refugee crisis that has exploded in Syria in recent months.

According to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, about 1.2 million Iraqi refugees now live in Syria; the Syrian government puts the figure even higher.

Given the deteriorating economic situation of those refugees, a United Nations report found last year, many girls and women in “severe need” turn to prostitution, in secret or even with the knowledge or involvement of family members. In many cases, the report added, “the head of the family brings clients to the house.”

This president used to give a great deal of lip service to stopping human trafficking. Now his policies have forced people out of their own country and into the sex trade, just to survive. The article above refers to Syria as being a big sex trade destination for Saudis. I wonder how many of those Saudis are Bush family friends.

The Stepford Wife

It looks like there's a bug in the software that's still keeping the new Michelle Obama-bot from being as docile as she's supposed to be; as evidenced by the last paragraph below. Interesting that it's the software bug that people like:

When someone in the audience asked Michelle Obama why voters should vote for her husband, she walked confidently onto the stage, took the microphone and smoothly answered.

He's a man who has put his values before his profit," she said. "He's not running for president because he wants to president. That's sort of the irony in it. He's running for president because he believes we can do better as a country."

The line brought a standing ovation.

"I think maybe we should stop there," Barack Obama said.

But he took another question: How would Michelle Obama serve as first lady?

Returning to the stage and the microphone, she was a little less reverent.

"You may sit down," she told her husband.

Roars of laughter from the crowd.

"I come to this with a lot of interesting talents, but I think it would be unfair of me to say today what I would do in a couple of years," she continued. "I need to be prepared to do what the country needs me to do at the time.

"Whether that's baking cookies or serving as a wonderful hostess, that's my job. I have to be prepared to do what's necessary. And we won't know what that's going to be until we get there. I will be staunchly invested. It is a joint project."

Notice how using her mind and professional talents aren't even allowed to be mentioned.

Sad.

In the First Church of Jesus H. Bush, the numbers are what THEY want them to be

And the number of American dead in Iraq must always be less than the number killed in the 9/11 attacks. That's the rule:

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff dramatically underestimated the number of deaths of US Armed Service-members in the Iraq War. The gaffe came as General Peter Pace appeared on CBS News Monday morning to discuss Memorial Day.

"When you take a look at the life of a nation and all that's required to keep us free, we had more than 3,000 Americans murdered on 11 September, 2001. The number who have died, sacrificed themselves since that time is approaching that number," General Pace told CBS Early Show's Harry Smith. "And we should pay great respect and thanks to them for allowing us to live free."

General Pace's remarks were erroneous on several counts.

First, the website Iraq Coalition Casualty Count puts the number of US service-members killed since the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 at 3,455. The Pentagon only lists it as 3,441, with 14 deaths not yet being confirmed by the Pentagon. With either number, the total number of fatalities long passed the count of victims who died on 9/11.

Second, the General overestimated the number of deaths on 9/11. The website September 11, 2001 Victims states that 2,996 died in the attacks, rather than "more than 3,000 murdered" that Pace cites.

Finally, many of the victims who died on 9/11 were not American citizens. The aforementioned website lists 209 of the victims as foreign nationals.

General Pace has previously referred to the number of fatalities in the war on terrorism surpassing the number of 9/11 victims.

"It's now almost five years since September 11, 2001...And the number of young men and women in our armed forces who have sacrificed their lives that we might live in freedom is approaching the number of Americans who were murdered on 9/11 in New York, in Washington, D.C., and in Pennsylvania," Pace said in August 2006, according to a September 2006 CNN news report when the number of troops killed in action in fact passed the number of 9/11 fatalities.

Soon they'll just have to stop counting.

A few things you should read

Been thinking you should go vegetarian, maybe eat more soy protein instead of melamine chicken, melamine fish or mad cow and E coli-tainted beef?

Fugeddaboudit.

Have I mentioned lately how much Driftglass rocks?

I think Cindy Sheehan may have made the mistake of succumbing to the siren song of the A.N.S.W.E.R. left, but this makes me sad.

I had a productive weekend. I did some housework, caught up on ironing, spent some quality time with Mr. Brilliant, and got enough sleep. I even caught up on some work left undone last week by my problems keeping focused. I needed a three-day weekend. That said, there's something about the callers to WFAN wishing Steve Summers a "happy Memorial Day" that bugs me.

When a president betrays both the people he serves and the military he leads

Krugman:

Future historians will shake their heads over how easily America was misled into war. The warning signs, the indications that we had a rogue administration determined to use 9/11 as an excuse for war, were there, for those willing to see them, right from the beginning — even before Mr. Bush began explicitly pushing for war with Iraq.

In fact, the very first time Mr. Bush declared a war on terror that “will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated,” people should have realized that he was going to use the terrorist attack to justify anything and everything.

When he used his first post-attack State of the Union to denounce an “axis of evil” consisting of three countries that had nothing to do either with 9/11 or with each other, alarm bells should have gone off.

But the nation, brought together in grief and anger over the attack, wanted to trust the man occupying the White House. And so it took a long time before Americans were willing to admit to themselves just how thoroughly their trust had been betrayed.

It’s a terrible story, yet it’s also understandable. I wasn’t really surprised by Republican election victories in 2002 and 2004: nations almost always rally around their leaders in times of war, no matter how bad the leaders and no matter how poorly conceived the war.

The question was whether the public would ever catch on. Well, to the immense relief of those who spent years trying to get the truth out, they did. Last November Americans voted overwhelmingly to bring an end to Mr. Bush’s war.

Yet the war goes on.

To keep the war going, the administration has brought the original bogyman back out of the closet. At first, Mr. Bush said he would bring Osama bin Laden in, dead or alive. Within seven months after 9/11, however, he had lost interest: “I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at the center of any command structure,” he said in March 2002. “I truly am not that concerned about him.”

In all of 2003, Mr. Bush, who had an unrelated war to sell, made public mention of the man behind 9/11 only seven times.

But Osama is back: last week Mr. Bush invoked his name 11 times in a single speech, warning that if we leave Iraq, Al Qaeda — which wasn’t there when we went in — will be the winner. And Democrats, still fearing that they will end up accused of being weak on terror and not supporting the troops, gave Mr. Bush another year’s war funding.

Democratic Party activists were furious, because polls show a public utterly disillusioned with Mr. Bush and anxious to see the war ended. But it’s not clear that the leadership was wrong to be cautious. The truth is that the nightmare of the Bush years won’t really be over until politicians are convinced that voters will punish, not reward, Bush-style fear-mongering. And that hasn’t happened yet.

Here’s the way it ought to be: When Rudy Giuliani says that Iran, which had nothing to do with 9/11, is part of a “movement” that “has already displayed more aggressive tendencies by coming here and killing us,” he should be treated as a lunatic.

When Mitt Romney says that a coalition of “Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda” wants to “bring down the West,” he should be ridiculed for his ignorance.

And when John McCain says that Osama, who isn’t in Iraq, will “follow us home” if we leave, he should be laughed at.

But they aren’t, at least not yet. And until belligerent, uninformed posturing starts being treated with the contempt it deserves, men who know nothing of the cost of war will keep sending other people’s children to graves at Arlington.

Of course this requires that Americans begin to question some of the notions we've held most dear -- that our leaders act in our own best interest. That a president and his vice president take seriously their oaths of office instead of regarding them as license to plunder an entire planet for their own personal gain, whether emotional or financial. That our government is basically good. The Bush Administration has put this notion to the test more than any administration before it, even that of Richard Nixon. The American public has begun to wake up, but the so-called loyal opposition has yet to realize that. Or maybe they have, but they don't care, in which case we are even worse off than we thought.

But it's one thing to sit here in my comfortable home on a day off from work, ordering USO care packages and preaching to the choir. The real sufferers of the consequences of the Administration's corruption and the Democrats' spinelessness are the men and women like this one:

My name is Donald Hudson Jr. I have been serving our country’s military actively for the last three years. I am currently deployed to Baghdad on Forward Operating Base Loyalty, where I have been for the last four and a half months.

I came here as part of the first wave of this so called "troop surge", but so far it has effectively done nothing to quell insurgent violence. I have seen the rise in violence between the Sunni and Shiite. This country is in the middle of a civil war that has been on going since the seventh century.

Why are we here when this country still to date does not want us here? Why does our president’s personal agenda consume him so much, that he can not pay attention to what is really going on here?

Let me tell you a story. On May 10, I was out on a convoy mission to move barriers from a market to a joint security station. It was no different from any other night, except the improvised explosive device that hit our convoy this time, actually pierced through the armor of one of our trucks. The truck was immediately engulfed in flames, the driver lost control and wrecked the truck into one of the buildings lining the street. I was the driver of the lead truck in our convoy; the fifth out of six was the one that got hit. All I could hear over the radio was a friend from the sixth truck screaming that the fifth truck was burning up real bad, and that they needed fire extinguishers real bad. So I turned my truck around and drove through concrete barriers to get to the burning truck as quickly as I could. I stopped 30 meters short of the burning truck, got out and ripped my fire extinguisher out of its holder, and ran to the truck. I ran past another friend of mine on the way to the burning truck, he was screaming something but I could not make it out. I opened the driver’s door to the truck and was immediately overcome by the flames. I sprayed the extinguisher into the door, and then I saw my roommate’s leg. He was the gunner of that truck. His leg was across the driver’s seat that was on fire and the rest of his body was further in the truck. My fire extinguisher died and I climbed into the truck to attempt to save him. I got to where his head was, in the back passenger-side seat. I grabbed his shoulders and attempted to pull him from the truck out the driver’s door. I finally got him out of the truck head first. His face had been badly burned. His leg was horribly wounded. We placed him on a spine board and did our best to attempt "Buddy Aid". We heard him trying to gasp for air. He had a pulse and was breathing, but was not responsive. He was placed into a truck and rushed to the "Green Zone", where he died within the hour. His name was Michael K. Frank. He was 36 years old. He was a great friend of mine and a mentor to most of us younger soldiers here.

Now I am still here in this country wondering why, and having to pick up the pieces of what is left of my friend in our room. I would just like to know what is the true reason we are here? This country poses no threat to our own. So why must we waste the lives of good men on a country that does not give a damn about itself? Most of my friends here share my views, but do not have the courage to say anything.

I hope that every Democrat who voted to give this president a blank check to continue this war with no accountability, no timetable, and no benchmarks for accomplishment other than the one that will give most of Iraq's oil profits to George W. Bush's friends in the oil industry, because they were afraid that conservatives would say mean things, thinks about Donald C. Hudson, Jr. today -- and thinks about what he or she would say to Pvt. Hudson were they to meet face to face.

I don't have the same hope for Republicans, because they have already shown us over the last five years that they plainly don't give a shit.

(h/t: Americablog)

The loss most of us can't even fathom

These are some of the faces of war that we don't see and that the Bush Administration, as they wave their flags and talk of valor and sacrifice and try to stoke the fears of Americans in order to continue to slake their bloodlust.

Deanna Salie, Iraq widow:

My husband was certain that he was going to die in Iraq.

Sgt. 1st Class David J. Salie had been an American soldier for almost 17 years. He'd deployed many times, and he'd been to war before. He'd parachuted into Panama with the 82nd Airborne Division, served in the Gulf War and gone to Haiti with the 25th Infantry Division. But he'd never been so certain that he was going to die that he prepared for death.

David told me that he wouldn't be coming back. I didn't believe him. I felt that he was just under so much stress thinking of our children and me, and about the 40 soldiers in his platoon who were his responsibility.

In the month before he left for Iraq with B Company, 2nd of the 69th Armor, 3rd Infantry Division, David went over his will with a fine-toothed comb, and he checked out his Survivor's Group Life Insurance, which provides protection for military people.

David even gave away some of his personal belongings. He also checked on the death benefits that a soldier's family receives.

My husband came home and proudly announced that if he died in Iraq, his family would be taken care of. I tried to tell him that he shouldn't worry about things like that. He said that every soldier going to war worries about his family and wants to make sure that if he's killed, his family will be taken care of just as they would be if he were still alive.

We were "all squared away," David told me.

I wish I could say that he was wrong about dying and right about the rest of it. Instead, he was correct in his premonition about his own death, but wrong in his belief that we were "squared away."

On the evening of Feb. 14, 2005, a little after 9 p.m., I heard a knock on the front door of our house at Fort Benning, Ga. I got up from the couch in the living room, where I'd been resting with a sick child, and I saw two soldiers in dress green uniforms standing on the front porch.

After making it through my husband's funeral, I was greeted with mountains of paperwork.

I was escorted from office to office by my casualty officer as my military identification card was changed and reissued; as I signed up for the Veterans Administration's Dependency and Indemnity Compensation and the military's Survivor's Benefit Plan.

I reviewed the paperwork after all of these appointments, and I was shocked to discover that David had been wrong: We weren't going to be cared for as if he were still alive.

My husband didn't know that dependents' compensation offsets the Survivor's Benefit Plan. If he'd known that, it would have made him very angry.

DIC is a payment made to widows, their children and some parents who've lost a husband, father or son. Widows are entitled to the benefit for the remainder of their lives, unless they remarry. DIC comes from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

SBP pays a deceased soldier's income, and it comes from the Department of Defense.

The offset, a dollar-for-dollar deduction, is supposedly intended to prevent double-dipping from two similar benefit plans.

But the Survivors Benefit Plan and Dependents Indemnity Compensation are provided for different reasons, and the offset leaves many military families with no survivors' benefits at all. Others receive only the pittance that's left over after the offset is deducted.

As we try to rebuild our shattered lives, the offset deals us a second blow. Grief and loss are hard enough to handle, but now we have more important worries, such as providing homes, food, clothing and schooling for our families.

This is not a partisan political issue. This is not a matter of whether you're for or against the war in Iraq. This is about those who died serving our country, standing between our enemies and us and believing that their families would be cared for if they gave their lives.

It's a shame that that isn't true.

Andrew J. Basevich, grieving father:

When my son was killed in Iraq earlier this month at age 27, I found myself pondering my responsibility for his death.

Among the hundreds of messages that my wife and I have received, two bore directly on this question. Both held me personally culpable, insisting that my public opposition to the war had provided aid and comfort to the enemy. Each said that my son's death came as a direct result of my antiwar writings.

This may seem a vile accusation to lay against a grieving father. But in fact, it has become a staple of American political discourse, repeated endlessly by those keen to allow President Bush a free hand in waging his war. By encouraging "the terrorists," opponents of the Iraq conflict increase the risk to U.S. troops. Although the First Amendment protects antiwar critics from being tried for treason, it provides no protection for the hardly less serious charge of failing to support the troops -- today's civic equivalent of dereliction of duty.

As a citizen, I have tried since Sept. 11, 2001, to promote a critical understanding of U.S. foreign policy. I know that even now, people of good will find much to admire in Bush's response to that awful day. They applaud his doctrine of preventive war. They endorse his crusade to spread democracy across the Muslim world and to eliminate tyranny from the face of the Earth. They insist not only that his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was correct but that the war there can still be won. Some -- the members of the "the-surge-is-already-working" school of thought -- even profess to see victory just over the horizon.

I believe that such notions are dead wrong and doomed to fail. In books, articles and op-ed pieces, in talks to audiences large and small, I have said as much. "The long war is an unwinnable one," I wrote in this section of The Washington Post in August 2005. "The United States needs to liquidate its presence in Iraq, placing the onus on Iraqis to decide their fate and creating the space for other regional powers to assist in brokering a political settlement. We've done all that we can do."

Not for a second did I expect my own efforts to make a difference. But I did nurse the hope that my voice might combine with those of others -- teachers, writers, activists and ordinary folks -- to educate the public about the folly of the course on which the nation has embarked. I hoped that those efforts might produce a political climate conducive to change. I genuinely believed that if the people spoke, our leaders in Washington would listen and respond.

This, I can now see, was an illusion.

The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as "the will of the people."

To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me.

To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.

Yes, we do now know. We always suspected, but now we know. So to whom do we turn to right the many, many wrongs that have been perpetrated upon America's soldiers, their families, and indeed the millions of American citizens in whose name our own government has committed such heinous crimes? To whom can we turn? How do we right the wrongs when every corner of our government is as rotten and putrid and filthy as the occupiers of the executive branch?

So...if a Republican president is responsible for Al Qaeda in Iraq, why should we trust a Republican to keep Al Qaeda out of the US?

I know that fear is all the Republicans have to sell, but do they have to continually insult our intelligence?

In defending the Iraq war, leading Republican presidential contenders are increasingly echoing words and phrases used by President Bush in the run-up to the war that reinforce the misleading impression that Iraq was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In the May 15 Republican debate in South Carolina, Senator John McCain of Arizona suggested that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden would "follow us home" from Iraq -- a comment some viewers may have taken to mean that bin Laden was in Iraq, which he is not.

Former New York mayor Rudolph Guiliani asserted, in response to a question about Iraq, that "these people want to follow us here and they have followed us here. Fort Dix happened a week ago. "

However, none of the six people arrested for allegedly plotting to attack soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey were from Iraq.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney identified numerous groups that he said have "come together" to try to bring down the United States, though specialists say few of the groups Romney cited have worked together and only some have threatened the United States.

They want to bring down the West, particularly us," Romney declared. "And they've come together as Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, with that intent."

Assertions of connections between bin Laden and terrorists in Iraq have heated up over the last month, as Congress has debated the war funding resolution. Romney, McCain, and Giuliani have endorsed -- and expanded on -- Bush's much-debated contention that Al Qaeda is the main cause of instability in Iraq.

[snip]

But critics, including some former CIA officials, said those statements could mislead voters into believing that the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks are now fighting the United States in Iraq .

Michael Scheuer , the CIA's former chief of operations against bin Laden in the late 1990s, said the comments of some GOP candidates seem to suggest that bin Laden is controlling the insurgency in Iraq, which he is not.

[snip]

The belief that there is a clear connection between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks has been a key determinant of support for the war. A Harris poll taken two weeks before the 2004 presidential election found that a majority of Bush's supporters believed that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks -- a claim that Bush has never made. Eighty-four percent believed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had "strong links" with Al Qaeda, a claim that intelligence officials have long disputed.

But critics have maintained that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney encouraged these ideas by using misleading terms to describe the threat posed by Iraq before the war.

Bush, for instance, repeatedly spoke of Hussein's support for terrorism -- which many Americans apparently took to mean that Hussein supported Al Qaeda in its jihad against the United States. The administration, however, sourced that claim to Hussein's backing of Palestinian terrorist groups targeting Israel.

Now, some GOP presidential candidates refer to "the terrorists" as one group, blurring distinctions between Al Qaeda, which has attacked the United States repeatedly, and groups that former intelligence officials say have not targeted the United States.

Romney said Friday: "You see, the terrorists are fighting a war on us. We've got to make sure that we're fighting a war on them."

Romney's comment in the earlier debate that "they've come together as Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda" struck some former intelligence officials as particularly misleading. Shia and Sunni, they said, are branches of Islam and not terrorist groups. There are an estimated 300 million Sunni Muslims in the Middle East, many of them fighting Al Qaeda.

[snip]

No point has been emphasized more strongly at GOP debates than the link between the Iraq war and Al Qaeda. During the debates about war funding, GOP leaders have downplayed the role of sectarian violence in Iraq and emphasized the role of Al Qaeda.

On Friday, McCain called any attempt to cut Iraq war funding, "the equivalent of waving a white flag to Al Qaeda."

But specialists say that the enemy the military calls "Al Qaeda Iraq" is a combination of Iraqi jihadists and an unknown number of fighters from countries throughout the Middle East. "AQI" came together after the US invasion. And while there is evidence that AQI members coordinate attacks among themselves, there is little evidence that they coordinate closely with bin Laden.

In pressing his case for continued war funding, Bush last week said a previously classified intelligence report indicated that bin Laden had sent a messenger in early 2005 to urge the late Iraqi terrorist chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to aim more attacks at the United States.

But there is no further evidence that bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, exerts control over Al Qaeda Iraq, according to a senior military official in Baghdad in an interview last week.

"We don't have any direct information that would link Al Qaeda Iraq to getting e-mails, memos, whatever, from bin Laden," the military official said, speaking under condition of anonymity.

Not one of these idiots has the slightest idea what he's talking about. So why on earth should we trust them with the keys?

The casualties all the politicians will want to forget tomorrow

Here's one of them:

His name was Sergeant James Dean, but everyone called him Jamie. He was the farm boy who fished, hunted and tossed a horseshoe like nobody else. He was the guy at the end of Toots Bar, nursing a Bud and talking Nascar. He was the driver of that blue Silverado at the red light, his hands on the wheel, his mind on combat horrors that made him moody, angry, withdrawn.

Now here he was, another American soldier, dead. Only Sergeant Dean was killed at the front door of his childhood home, the day after Christmas and three weeks before his redeployment, shot by a sniper representing the government for whom he had already risked his life in Afghanistan. His wife and parents received the news not by a knock on the door, but by gunfire in the neighborhood.

“If they had just left him alone,” says his wife, Muriel.

[snip]

A few days after Thanksgiving, a FedEx truck delivered an envelope to the Dean farm just as Jamie was about to go hunting. It was a form letter of redeployment, as impersonal as a bank statement.

“It was downhill after that,” Muriel says.

He withdrew from the present, it seemed. He drank more, and took his medication less. Finally, on Christmas Day, he and Muriel returned from a family gathering with plans to watch his favorite football team, the Dallas Cowboys, on television. He went out to buy some beer — but went to Toots Bar instead.

She called him, and he came home, livid. He smashed some glasses, said something about winding up in a body bag, and sped away in his Silverado. He wound up at the family home, alone, talking on a cellphone with his sister, Kelly, saying things like: “I just can’t do it anymore.”

When his sister heard a gunshot, she called 911. The deputy sheriffs arrived at the isolated farmhouse around 10 p.m. and quickly determined that Jamie was drunk, agitated and carrying a shotgun. He told the deputies to back off.

Based on something a family member had said, the police knew that Jamie had other shotguns in the house, but they mistakenly believed he was an Army Ranger. “Rambo,” his mother says ruefully.

At 4:19 in the morning, the police shot dozens of tear-gas canisters, smashing the windows in front of Jamie’s horseshoe trophies, piercing walls decorated with garland. Several minutes later, Jamie fired shotgun pellets in the general direction of a police car parked at least 50 yards away. Then he sat down on the back porch.

A situation in which an armed man was in his own house, alone and a threat to no one but himself, had now escalated into a military action. On the ground, men with guns; in the sky, the whop-whop of helicopters. Now and then, Jamie would respond to some movement or sound with a shot into the ground or into the air.

[snip]

Around noon, two negotiators pulled up to a family friend’s garage, where Jamie’s loved ones were cloistered a half-mile away. His wife was pacing. His mother was bracing herself. His father, Joey, was staring into the woods.

[snip]

At 12:25, a negotiator talked briefly by telephone to Jamie, who indicated he might come out; “I’m going home,” he said. Then the police cellphone’s battery died.

At 12:34, Jamie was reached again by telephone, but the volume was low and the negotiator could not make out what was being said.

At 12:45, the police cut power to the house and began shooting more tear gas through the front and the back of the house.

At 12:47, an armored vehicle called a Peace Keeper pulled up to the house. Jamie opened the front door and, according to the police, pointed his 20-gauge shotgun at the vehicle. A state police sniper, positioned in a garage 70 yards away, took aim.

Later, a spokesman for the Maryland State Police would say the department was reviewing its actions, but would refer to a statement by its superintendent, Col. Thomas E. Hutchins, in which he said that Sergeant Dean bore “sole responsibility.” The police could not walk away, the colonel had said, because the soldier had the potential to do harm to himself or to others.

Later, Richard D. Fritz, the state’s attorney for St. Mary’s County, would criticize the state police as using tactics that were “progressively assaultive” and “most unfortunate.” In the end, he would say, this paramilitary operation was “directed at an individual down at the end of a dark road, holed up in his father’s house, with no hostages.”

I can't remember another Memorial Day weekend in which I felt so utterly, completely just.....sad.

Around the blogroll and elsewhere

One of the great things about Memorial Day weekend in my neighborhood is that enough people go away or decide to just relax that the relentless sounds of lawnmowers, gas-powered string trimmers, leaf blowers, and assorted power tools take a break for a few days. Right now the only sounds outside are a few birds and the hum of the filter in the pool next door; a pool seemingly built for the sole purpose of keeping up with the Joneses across the street, because the denizens of the residence next door almost never venture in.

Our cleaning and decluttering frenzy is showing some results and Maggie the Idiot Cat is in her window perch, looking insufferably pleased with herself after having bagged her second pantry moth in the last twelve hours. She may be the Dumbest Cat Alive, but she is a damn fine predator -- unlike Jenny, who despite having been stray for at least a year, has made it very clear that she is retired from all active duty. Pantry moths are the bane of my existence, but for some reason always seem to follow a trip to Trader Joe's. I'm able to keep them under control with these, but occasionally a hardy moth with no sex drive is untempted by the pheromones in them and ventures out for a spin.

But since it's Sunday, and Sunday seems to be my day to take a spin around the blogosphere, here's what people are talking about today.

Larisa Alexandrovna has a must-read piece at HuffPo about the signs of our national nervous breakdown. She's definitely on to something here. I've noticed a vague undercurrent of barely-suppressed rage just about everywhere I go. I live in a town that used to seem frozen in 1947, where boys actually rode their bikes to go fishing in the pond, and dog walkers, joggers, and exercise walkers all said hello to each other whether they knew each other or not. Now those boys ride their skateboards in the middle of the street, glaring at motorists who have the gall to want to get home from work. The walkers now glare at each other for having the temerity to want to tresspass on the same strip of street. And we are just one terrorist attack (which I feel is inevitable now because they will once again allow it to happen) or hurricane away from National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20.

Cernig warns of the massive public health problem we face from the horrific incidence rates of PTSD among those troops who manage to survive George W. Bush's American Youth Meat Grinder in Iraq.

Another reason to keep your eyeglasses: The Crone Speaks on yet another recall -- this time of contact lens solution linked to a rare fungal infection.

George over at Skippy's place notes what Iraq benchmark #1 is -- and it's got absolutely nothing to do with supporting the troops, training Iraq troops, or anything having to do with the men and women who will be used as political props in tomorrow's parades.

There's a letter in today's Record by a guy who probably supports everything the Bush Administration does in the name of "fighting terrorists" but invokes Benjamin Franklin about seat belt use. I think this guy would beg to differ:

Litbrit has another reason why a crackdown on Chinese imports is necessary. In short: don't eat the monkfish. (Note to Democratic presidential candidates: It might not be a bad idea to start talking about overhauling the FDA so that it does its fucking job.)

Buh-buh-but what about the Bible she was carrying in the footage shown on Olbermann th eother night? DBK on the sullying of an ancient and venerable spiritual system being corrupted by yet another seeker of a way out of trouble. (Where she gets the connection between "nun" and Buddhism is anyone's guess.)

Glenn Greenwald on the "defunding the troops" myth. You know, if the reason for this vote is because The Decider Guy is batshit crazy enough to leave the troops there even if the money runs out, don't the Democrats have an obligation to impeach the bastard? Just askin' is all.

Doghouse Riley sends a letter to Keith Olbermann.

EEEWWW! Old folks are.....doin' it! Tata on the televised message: "Abstinence -- not just for teenagers anymore."

Amanda writes about the REAL issue at the heart of the abortion debate.

College kids are finally waking up. ThinkProgress has the video of Andrew Card being booed at UMass graduation. What the school's administration was thinking in giving an honorary degree to this clown is anyone's guess.

Thank you, Hoffmania! For showing us Rachel Maddow's Campaign Asylum. And there's a bunch more of the Awesome Ms. Maddow here. (Hey, MSNBC....still looking for someone for that morning slot? Hmmmm??? Sam Seder's still available too.)

And finally, if you're looking to observe Memorial Day by doing something to help Real Live Troops instead of participating in any of the Two Minutes Hate events around the country tomorrow, IAVA has a handy list of groups they have vetted. "Adopt-a-Sniper" seems to me to be a bit much, but for those seeking something a bit warmer and fuzzier, there's a lot from which to choose. And while you're at it, save a few minutes to think about the eight families who are going to get the guy in the uniform at their front doors this weekend.

Hey, Democrats, are you happy now?

YOU now own the war, and this week you gave the Bush Administration the ability to own the withdrawal -- just in time for the 2008 election:

The Bush administration is developing what are described as concepts for reducing American combat forces in Iraq by as much as half next year, according to senior administration officials in the midst of the internal debate.

It is the first indication that growing political pressure is forcing the White House to turn its attention to what happens after the current troop increase runs its course.

The concepts call for a reduction in forces that could lower troop levels by the midst of the 2008 presidential election to roughly 100,000, from about 146,000, the latest available figure, which the military reported on May 1. They would also greatly scale back the mission that President Bush set for the American military when he ordered it in January to win back control of Baghdad and Anbar Province.

The mission would instead focus on the training of Iraqi troops and fighting Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, while removing Americans from many of the counterinsurgency efforts inside Baghdad.

Oh, you can comfort yourself with the idea that the president will start drawing down troops while John Boehner cries in the halls of Congress about abandoning those left there and John McCain insists that we still have to win in Vietnam. You can delude yourself that it was your courageous actions this week that pushed him towards withdrawal. But you'll be wrong on both counts. Because the American people won't see it that way. They will see George W. Bush drawing down troops and the Republican Party painted as the Party of Peace.

And you, my erstwhile representatives in Washington, will have no one to blame but yourselves.

Saturday musings

It's been a tough week to be sitting on the left-hand side of the fence. I don't know about anyone else, but I've had a difficult time focusing on work, what with the beautiful weather here in Pnoo Joisey and walking around being undecided at whom I'm more angry -- the Republicans, who are just doing what Republicans do, or the Democrats, who......well, OK, they too are doing what Democrats do.

There was a time when I had Air America Radio to help me keep sane, but now there's no funny in the morning because there's no Morning Sedition, there's no Sam Seder except for a few stolen hours on Sunday as Seder hangs on by his fingernails so that he can have health insurance for his not-quite-two-year-old, and WWRL's signal goes down to nothing at night -- not that it would matter, because the station thinks we would rather listen to a rerun of Sam Greenfield and Armstrong Williams after Rachel Maddow goes off the air. So I'm often reduced to listening to old Morning Sedition podcasts (which sound as if they could have been recorded last week, that's how little the situation in Iraq has changed) or the nonstop tomfoolery of the Seditionist Radio stream. And sometimes it just reminds me of what we're missing, and then I think about how much we need to feel just some scintilla of hope, and I wonder from whence that hope could possibly come.

At least I don't have children to worry about, because one of the least talked-about side effects of Bushonomics has been the decline in the incomes of ordinary people at the same time as corporate executives are raking in the bucks at an obscene rate:

The American dream has always held that each generation will enjoy a higher standard of living than the previous one, and that is still true, as measured by household income.

But the generational gains are slowing, and the increased participation of women in the work force is the only thing keeping the dream alive, according to an analysis of Census data released Friday.

A generation ago, American men in their thirties had median annual incomes of about $40,000 compared with men of the same age who now make about $35,000 a year, adjusted for inflation. That’s a 12.5 percent drop between 1974 and 2004, according to the report from the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Economic Mobility Project.

To be sure, household incomes rose during the same period, but only because there are more full-time working women, the report said.

"This suggests the up-escalator that has historically ensured that each generation would do better than the last may not be working very well," said the report by Isabel Sawhill, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, and John Morton, director of the Economic Mobility Project.

The report also found that many countries, including Denmark, Norway, Finland and Canada, offer far more economic mobility than in the United States when measuring by the income differences between generations.

[snip]

Of course, the men who run American companies don’t have too much to complain about. CEO pay increased to 262 times the average worker’s pay in 2005 from 35 times in 1978, according to the report’s analysis of Congressional Budget Office statistics.

Yes, folks, the Bush Administration has taken one of the fundamental assumptions of the American Dream -- that this is a land of opportunity in which those who work hard and play by the rules can better themselves. To be sure, there are still success stories, like the guy from Paterson who bought a minibus and now operates a jitney service to Manhattan that carries more commuters than New Jersey Transit. But as a society, the perception that we adults are spinning in place and that future generations will find less opportunity and lower incomes isn't just paranoia.

All this of course explains the Republican hammering of the illegal immigrant issue, as if the guys cutting your lawn or replacing your roof are the sole reason your kids are going to be struggling the way your grandparents did. Anything to take attention away from the corporatist greed that compensates executives based on cronyism rather than performance, that buys your Congresscritters, that outsources high-paying jobs so that the only opportunities available to your kids will be to sell hamburgers and cheap crap to other people scrambling for the same leftover scraps from the corporatist groaning board. The Republicans are behaving true to form in trying to redirect your attention down the economic ladder to distract you while they pick your pockets from above.

Of course, the decreasing opportunities in this country are the perfect storm to foster greater enlistment in the perceived Last Bastion of Opportunity: the military. With an attack on Iran virtually certain, presumably by September (just in case the Democrats should somehow miraculously be able to find their balls by then), and a reluctance to initiate a draft (something politically unfeasible when you have a 28% approval rating), the military is going to be perceived to be the only choice for many American young people. At that point, the challenge for the media is going to be to keep applying the Tangee to the pig that is the American war effort. Expect more stories like this one:

Iraq puppy adopted by fallen soldier's family
He was photographed with dog from litter the day before he was killed

The family of Army Spc. Justin Rollins finally got to hold one of the last things he held.

A female puppy the 22-year-old nuzzled the night before his death in a roadside bombing in Iraq frolicked Friday in New Hampshire, completing a nearly 6,000-mile journey that Rollins' family and girlfriend began pushing for after seeing photos of him with a newborn litter.

"It was the last bit of happiness Justin had," said Rollins' girlfriend, Brittney Murray.

Rollins and some other soldiers from the 82nd Airborne found the puppies outside an Iraqi police station March 4 but weren't allowed to bring them back into their barracks. Rollins was killed the next day in Samarra.

After Murray saw the photos, she sought help finding the short-haired dog, named Hero as a reminder of the man who planned to propose to her on his next visit home, she and his mother said. U.S. Rep. Paul Hodes contacted the U.S. Central Command, which ordered the 82nd to retrieve the pup and turn it over to delivery company DHL.

Hero arrived Thursday night at Kennedy International Airport in New York, visited a veterinarian and arrived in New Hampshire overnight. The floppy-eared pooch — mostly white, with brown spots along the right side of its muzzle and paws still too big for its 15-pound body — was a hit Friday as she sniffed around Hodes' office, pausing to piddle on the carpet.

Awwwwww.....ain't that sweet? Doesn't that just warm the cockles of your little heart? And see? The death of a 22-year-old soldier is a GOOD thing! Without his death, this little dog might still be in Iraq, instead of here in the USA, where he can enjoy some good, wholesome, melamine-tainted dog food.

Look, folks, I love a cute animal story as much as the next person, and more than some. But when you have to hide the death of a 22-year-old behind a cute, fuzzy dog, you're scraping the bottom of positive spin.

But then, what else can we expect from the media, now that the groundwork is being laid for yet another round of Clinton investigations. Say this for the Republicans and their lackeys in the media -- they don't let any grass grow under their feet. Though I have to admit, I can't wait to see how Hillary Clinton answers questions about why she's taking cash from the CEO of a company that counts outsourcing among its services and is setting up technology schools in India.

Perhaps this is what the latest flurry of housecleaning at the Brilliant residence means -- it's an attempt, however feeble, to try to have an organized, calm oasis in a world gone mad.

Japan day one pics are up

Click here

Shorter Reuters: Just because its futile doesn't mean you shouldn't still try to look like a model

Hot on the heels of Gina Kolata's new book Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss — and the Myths and Realities of Dieting comes a new study indicating that even when overweight people exercise, they get less benefit than thin people:

Overweight and obese people get less out of resistance training than leaner people do, researchers said on Friday in a study that suggests the overweight may have to try harder to get results.

But it does not mean they should give up, said the researchers, who noted the differences were small.

“People who are overweight and obese experience numerous health benefits from exercise training programs even in the absence of significant amounts of weight loss or improvements in cardiopulmonary physical fitness,” Linda Pescatello of the University of Connecticut and colleagues wrote in their report, published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

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They tested 687 adults aged 18 to 39, measuring their body fat and using magnetic resonance imaging to look at their muscles and fat.

The volunteers did 12 weeks of 45- to 60-minute workouts of their upper arms, working the biceps and triceps.

Everyone gained strength and muscle. But the overweight and obese volunteers gained 4 percent to 17 percent less than those of normal weight.

Differences could be genetic, the researchers said.

“People with overweight and obesity have alterations in skeletal muscle structure and function compared to those who are normal weight that could also contribute to variability in the exercise response,” they wrote.

In other words, MAYBE WE ARE JUST FUCKING BUILT DIFFERENTLY!!!

When you look at what overweight people are faced with every day -- job discrimination, total strangers telling us what we should and shouldn't eat, hot and cold running diets, more time spent exercising than many of our thin friends, the relentless parade of salads and measuring and having every meal out be a minefield -- it's hard to imagine that anyone would think that someone would CHOOSE to be overweight. The idea that perhaps some of us can't, or shouldn't try to constantly fight our own bodies never seems to occur to the medical profession, when it's so much easier to put people on diets that don't work and exercise programs that produce limited results.

I'm not saying people should eat junk food and sit on their asses all the time. But at some point, this society is going to have to accept that it's possible to be healthy without being a sixe six and without working out for an hour and a half every day. And that some of us just might be built to be healthy with a larger body mass than others.

I keep thinking back to my own gynecologist, who lost forty pounds on a starvation diet and after twenty years of never once giving me shit about my weight, decided I should go on this diet too. I wonder if she's keeping the weight off without making the lives of everyone around her miserable. And I also wonder if I'll be able to find a new doctor who can accept that if my lipids are OK and my blood pressure is OK, I just might be healthy without a crash diet.

At least they could have gotten a guarantee that the money would be for the soldiers

Which Bush crony will get the bounty from the Iraq supplemental? It sure as hell isn't going to pay for troop needs. They haven't given the soldiers what they need up until now, what makes anyone think that will change?

AP:

The system for delivering badly needed gear to Marines in Iraq has failed to meet many urgent requests for equipment from troops in the field, according to an internal document obtained by The Associated Press.

Of more than 100 requests from deployed Marine units between February 2006 and February 2007, less than 10 percent have been fulfilled, the document says. It blamed the bureaucracy and a "risk-averse" approach by acquisition officials.

Among the items held up were a mine resistant vehicle and a hand-held laser system.

"Process worship cripples operating forces," according to the document. "Civilian middle management lacks technical and operational currency."

The 32-page document - labeled "For Official Use Only" - was prepared by the staff of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force after they returned from Iraq in February.

The document was to be presented in March to senior officials in the Pentagon's defense research and engineering office. The presentation was canceled by Marine Corps leaders because its contents were deemed too contentious, according to a defense official familiar with the document. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The document's claims run counter to the public description of a process intended to cut through the layers of red tape that frequently slow the military's procurement process.

The Marine Corps had no immediate comment on the document.

...and it looks like my suspicions that this president has no qualms about leaving these guys there with nothing are spot-on.

On Memorial Day Weekend

Like most Americans, Memorial Day has mostly meant to me a day off from work, and a time when aging veterans shake down drivers for donations in return for a paper poppy. This changed after the Iraq War, when I started actually buying the poppies and even going out of my way to approach a guy standing outside an Eckerd drugstore so that I could make a donation and talk to him a bit. I guess we all deal with our guilt over this war in different ways.

This year, more than any other, Memorial Day feels like a Day of Atonement; a day when I feel there must be something I can do to atone for having even a scintilla of trust that the Democrats in the House and Senate would do the right thing. I wouldn't put up with the kind of treatment these Democrats have given us from a spouse; why on earth should I put up with it from the people who represent me in Washington? There comes a time when even the most battered spouse realizes that no, baby, it's not going to be different this time. In cases of domestic abuse, that spouse leaves at that point.

Yesterday only 14 Democrats had the courage to face their fears of David Broder, Bill O'Reilly, Tim Russert, and Karl Rove saying mean things about them. Among Senate Democrats, only Boxer, Clinton, Dodd, Feingold, Kennedy, Kerry, Leahy, Obama, Whitehouse, and Wyden, plus Bernie Sanders, voted against giving President 28% a blank check -- and I don't count Obama's and Clinton's votes as acts of courage, because they voted AFTER the measure already had enough votes to pass. Looking even worse are those who didn't even vote on this most important measure of the year, among them Chuck Hagel, who derailed his own "straight talk express" by voting to continue to allow Captain Codpiece to feed American young people into a meatgrinder, Chuck Schumer, who never met an excuse to speak into a microphone he didn't like until now, and Norm Coleman, who obviously isn't quite sure yet how a vote for continued funding would play against Al Franken's annual USO tours.

I expected this kind of craven action by Sen. Clinton, but despite his past association with Joe Lieberman, I had hoped that Obama would have shown more courage. Among the currently-sitting Senators running for president, this round goes resouncingly to Chris Dodd.

So what do Democrats who are tired of being abused by our own party do now? If we sit on our hands, are we, as Chris Bowers said last night, simply playing into the DLC's hands and turning the party over to them? The MyDD boys have already decided that surrender = death, but rather than realizing that the two so-called frontrunners for the Democratic nomination only cast their votes after it was "safe" to do so, they're comforting themselves with Obama's and Clinton's post-vote statements. After all, without a role in Democratic politics, what is MyDD's raison d'être? On the other hand, what good has the money we have donated and the sweat we have expended to elect Democrats accomplished? Jim Webb has over the past month succumbed to the "defunding the troops" rhetoric, though his web site is not yet showing a statement explaining his vote last night. Jon Tester's posted activity from yesterday omits the Iraq supplemental vote. No one was deluded that either of these guys were Bernie Sanders-type lefties, but after all of Webb's impassioned talk about ending our involvement in Iraq, to see him succumb to the "defunding the troops" meme is disheartening -- unless, as I opined last night, these guys know something we don't, something about which John Boehner may have spilled the beans last night -- that defunding the war effort will not bring the troops home, because the Psychopath-in-Chief WILL leave them there with no bullets, no weapons, no food, no water, and no uniforms -- leave them there high and dry to be massacred -- JUST so he can blame the Democrats.

When you put a psychopath in the White House, that's what happens.

But if the Democrats (and the Republicans for that matter) know this, why aren't they speaking out? Don't the American people have a right and an obligation to know about the Madness of King George?

Just for giggles, I decided to take a walk on the wild side, over to the "Only Slightly Batshit Insane" neighborhoods of Wingnuttia, to see what's being said, and found very little. Most of the wingnuts are still frothing at the mouth over Marauding Mexicans.

But this is Memorial Day Weekend, and after last night's vote, it seems appropriate to do something beyond putting some burgers on the grill and spending fifteen minutes in the local rah-rah war is great celebration that most Memorial Day parades represent.

For one thing, you could do what I'm going to do, and send an appropriately angry e-mail to the senators who sold you out and make it clear that they can no longer rely on your support as a result of this vote and will be supporting a primary challenger next time. (Yes, Messrs. Lautenberg and Menendez, I'm talking to you.) If you know a family who has a loved one in Iraq, do something nice for them this weekend. Send a USO care package . Donate to IAVA. Find another group that sends packages, books, or letters.

We don't have to continue to blindly support the party that sold us out last night, but the effort to put an end to this madness goes on.