Politico uses the "T" word

Politico isn't exactly known for using hyperbole where the right wing is concerned, so it's all the more amazing to see this over there:

The tea party's terrorist tactics

As we stumble closer to Aug. 2, it has become clear that many in the tea party are willing to inflict massive harm on the American people to obtain their political objective of a severely shrunken federal government. Their persistence in rejecting compromise, even as the economic effects of the phony crisis they have created mount, has taken their radicalism beyond tough negotiating, beyond even hostage-taking.

As markets fall in anticipation that there may not be a timely resolution; as credit agencies issue dire warnings that the U.S. political system has become so dysfunctional that a credit downgrade may be inevitable, and as America looks weakened in the eyes of the world, the tea party’s hostage-taking has evolved into the intentional infliction of harm on innocent Americans to achieve a political objective – terrorism.

Terrorism is a tough term, but, unfortunately, it describes tea party tactics precisely.

[snip]

Even in the absence of default, credit agencies would almost surely downgrade our credit worthiness, producing increases in interest rates that would slow the economy, increase unemployment and force families into foreclosure and bankruptcy.

As the markets dropped, families would watch their retirement and education savings and their dreams disappear.

Rather than reject the unthinkable, the tea party harnessed this potential harm as its weapon of mass destruction.

[snip]

The challenge for America is to stand firm in the face of terrorism, no matter the source.

So now we have Fareed Zakaria saying that teabag members of Congress will "blow up the country" if they don't get their way, and even Politico is getting nervous.

The press has no one to blame but itself for the inflated importance of a relatively small group of extremists. From the day Rick Santelli ranted on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the 24-hour cable news cycle has treated a fringe bunch of lunatics as The Next Big Exciting Thing. Even Chris Matthews had a thrill of orange pekoe going up his leg at the thought of a big noisy even faux-populist effort. In Congress, the Not Quite So Insane caucus thought they could control the lunatic froth-mouthed minions that spout nonsense and are taken seriously by the frightened the the stupid. But the monster has been unleashed, and there may be no stopping it. It is a small monster, to be sure, but it is fierce and it has already caused much trepidation among the townspeople, who are too dispirited and confused now to go after it with pitchforks and torches and tar and feathers.

I Really Do Not Care...

...about Tiger Woods.

That is all.

Pet Nazis, or "No Dog for You"

I haven't really followed the whole Ellen DeGeneres/dog story. I try to make a habit of avoiding tabloid stories whenever possible because it only encourages them. I have a loose policy of "No tabloid figures" on this blog, because the attention given to whether Britney gets custody, or whether Amy Winehouse is on drugs again, unless they can be tied to some larger current issue, are better left to the TMZs and the Perez Hiltons of the world, and besides, they are much better at it than I am.

But since I've been on both sides of the pet adoption issue, and after reading Heather Havrilesky's self-justifying critique of animal rescue groups, I thought I'd weigh in on what the real issue is: the responsibility of pet adopters and the responsibility of the rescue groups.

In the 1980's, I volunteered every Saturday at the Bergen County Animal Shelter through its associated volunteer arm. Every weekend we'd see families with crying kids as the parents led in terrified dogs, giving them up because "he dirties up in the house" or "he barks" or "the landlord won't let us keep him" or "we're going to have a baby" or "we don't have time for him." I always wondered what these crying children thought about their busy parents taking their beloved dog to the pound because they take too much time, and whether they wondered when they too would be shuffled off.

Sometimes the animal control guys would bring in a dog that had been found wandering on Route 17 -- dropped off on a highway by people who thought it was more humane to abandon a dog by the side of the road than to take it to a shelter where it might be euthanized -- or because they could delude themselves that some nice person would pick the dog up and give him a good home.

We'd also see people returning pets they'd adopted: "He's too scared." "My husband doesn't like him." "The kids are allergic." When we went through the few minutes of training required at the time, we were told that a family looking for a dog where the parent said to the kids, "Now remember, he's YOUR responsibility" was a giant red flag.

Because animal shelter volunteers are exposed to the irresponsibility, cruelty, and just plain stupidity of people every day, they do, after a while, start to assume that everyone is an idiot and no home is good enough. When you're a volunteer and you reach that point, it's time to take a break. I have a friend who after her second miscarriage years ago decided she wanted to adopt a dog. She went to the shelter and filled out the application. She had a full-time job, but her husband worked locally and came home for lunch every day. But because there wasn't someone at home all day, her adoption was denied. Although I no longer worked at the shelter, I knew the volunteer who denied her adoption, and yes, she was LONG past the point at which it's time to step away. The postscript to the story is that my friend ended up going to a pet shop and buying a puppy. I never knew if the three-year-old dog she'd been trying to adopt ever found a home. I didn't want to know.

I've been lucky with pet adoptions. It helps that we adopt cats, where housebreaking is not an issue. It also helps that I have shelter experience as well as a track record of pet ownership. I know that when you adopt a pet, or even if you buy one from a reputable breeder, the agreement always states that if for some reason you cannot keep the animal, you must return it. I think this is a reasonable policy. It protects both those who care about shelter pets and those who adopt. It gives the adopter an escape clause in case for some very good reason the adoption just doesn't work out. Shelter volunteers may be overzealous at times, but all they want is to see the animals in their care go to good homes. And when an adopter gives the pet to someone else, the shelter can't live up to its screening responsibility.

In this particular case, the smart thing would have been for the shelter to vet the family to whom the dog was given before simply yanking the dog away from them. But because everyone handled it badly is no reason to either drive people to pet stores where money talks and no questions are asked rather than go through the Spanish Inquisition in order to adopt a pet, or to call a well-meaning shelter with death threats. I also think it's incumbent on shelters to recognize when their volunteers are starting to go off the deep end and behaving in a manner that is not conducive to what the shelter's mission should be, which is placing animals on good homes -- and ask them to remove themselves for a while until they regain some perspective.

My New Hero

Tommy Chong:

And the report that started it all:

Flustering the anchor indeed.

(via the marvellously-named Jazz from Hell).

A rich white heiress in jail is more newsworthy than a missing black woman

This is your "news" media, folks. David Ovalle of the Miami Herald:

I'm livid. I agreed to conduct a last-minute interview with MSNBC about the case of missing Stepha Henry, the 22-year-old college grad who went missing May 29 from Miami-Dade. I rushed to MSNBC's studio but a few minutes before the interview, I was told that it was off -- Paris Hilton coverage was more important.

Turns out, I'm not the only one. Miami-Dade police lead spokeswoman Linda O'Brien was canceled by MSNBC the hour before me. She tells me:

"I am upset because MSNBC called me and asked me to go to their studio in Broward County, 30 miles away from my office. I was there for a total of 45 minutes, was already seated and had the mic ready for the interview. As I waiting to be interviewed, I was listening to the Paris Hilton coverage to include discussion to the effect if anybody had seen or knew the whereabouts of her Chihuahua.

"Then they tell me they have to cut the piece, cut my interview because they’re doing constant coverage of Paris Hilton. I’m appalled that a missing woman cannot get even 60 seconds of air time because the priorities of MSNBC was to have footage of the front gates of Paris Hilton’s house. They asked me to come to the interview and I’m going out of my way to do every interview to keep in the public eye that Stepha Henry, a bright beautiful woman, is missing and we need help in this case."

I’m through with cable TV news. It’s a joke.

For her part, O'Brien tells me she will be on NBC's Today Show at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow with reporter Kerry Sanders. Part of the story will focus on TV media coverage of this missing black woman.

Does anyone doubt that if Stepha Henry were white and blonde, she would merit as much time as Paris Hilton? The whole Hilton circus is disgusting enough, and chillingly reminiscent of the summer of 2001, when the disappearance of Chandra Levy (another young WHITE woman), speculation about her relationship with Gary Condit, and shark attacks saturated the news airwaves. That a network is deliberately refusing to cover the disappearance of a young woman who is just as young, just as pretty, and just as worthy as Natalee Holloway, to run nonstop coverage of the female version of young George W. Bush, tells you everything you need to know about racism in this country.

Young woman disappears without a trace while on vacation, media are silent.

In 2000, travel writer Claudia Kirschhoch disappeared from the Beaches resort in Negril, Jamaica. Media coverage of the case was extensive.

In 2005, Natalee Holloway disappeared while on a class trip to Aruba. Media coverage was even more extensive.

On May 29 of this year, John Jay College honors graduate Stepha Henry disappeared while in Miami visiting a relative. Note the date of the story linked to here.

Have YOU seen any significant national coverage of this case?

I thought not. Neither have I.

This is Claudia Kirschhoch:


This is Natalee Holloway:


This is Stepha Henry:


Any questions?

When the tabloids reported on Clinton, the MSM picked it up

Yet they've been curiously silent about the persistent reports in the tabs about Captain Codpiece being back on the sauce again and Laura headed for a hotel, if she's not already there.

E! Online is hardly more than a shade above the National Enquirer, if that, but gossipmonger Ted Casablancas has now picked it up:

This distresses me quite a bit. You know how I adore Prez Dubya so. Yes, you do—as I’ve utterly applauded his actions in Iraq for eons. Just love how he’s got us over there killing people (them and us), occupying a country we have no biz being in. But, alas, this is a goss column, people want to laugh and point fingers, I keep forgetting.
So, let’s aim a few digits at ol’ Georgey-Porgey himself! This too-fun-fer e-words begins with the following quote:

“She's staying at the Hay-Adams. I don't know how many people know...but it's probably not many.”

That’s my Desk DeeCee, hard at busybody work, informing me further of what this column has more than hinted at before: that the U.S. Chief of Grief, George W. Bush, has a wife (by the name of Laura, ‘course) who’s so damn put out by the teetotaling Texan’s return to drinking that she had to get outta the White House. Woo-hoo! That be first-class First Lady dish there, my darlin’ goss lovers!

“She just couldn’t take it anymore,” whispered a former White House staffer who remains superclose to Miz Bush. “She’s had it.”
Like most of the rest of Bush’s constituents haven’t?

Kinda weird, though, as Laura-doll reportedly used to smoke fags, ya know. But whatev, guess she got squeaky clean and expects her hub-unit to do likewise (would it mean he’d get us the hell outta Iraq, already?). You go, barely elected girlfriend!

Oh, for the official record, neither the president’s press office nor the president’s wife’s press office would comment. Which I find damn insulting, as I help pay those persnickety peep’s salaries!

Paparazzi P.S.: Hate to blow Laura’s cover ‘n’ all, but look, you stalkers of all things Hollywood—if you want an exclusive snap of L.B., she’s not exactly using the posh inn's front door, ka-peesh?

Now perhaps you think a Very Serious Site(® me) like this one shouldn't stoop to gossipmongering. But when the state of the Clintons' marriage is fair game for the New York Times, shouldn't the mainstream media be picking it up when rumors of our dry drunk president being back on the bottle and our family values president's Stepford wife hightailing it to a hotel are this persistent?

As Jim Henley notes:

But if the man who has the authority to launch nuclear weapons all on his say-so is an alcoholic who has gone back on the sauce because of the pressure of his job, that seems to me to be fucking news! The public has the right to know that. And from what I can tell this seems to be the open secret among journalists that some people claimed Valerie Plame’s real job was, something “everybody knows” but nobody is saying. A president who has claimed absolute power based on a couple of stray clauses in the Constitution and a couple of dodgy recent laws is an addict who has fallen back into his habit.

That seems important.

Maureen Dowd Is Not Our Friend

It's been tempting during the past six years to think that Maureen Dowd was a voice for sanity with some of her columns about the Bush Administration. But no one should succumb to the siren song of the Fading Flirt, for as the 2008 race gets going, MoDo is sharpening her claws for Democrats only. Last week she picked up Ann Coulter's "John Edwards is a faggot" meme by suggesting that Edwards is somehow not manly enough to be president because he doesn't have a nice military buzzcut like Jon Tester. Today she goes after Michelle Obama:

I wince a bit when Michelle Obama chides her husband as a mere mortal — a comic routine that rests on the presumption that we see him as a god.

The tweaking takes place at fundraisers, where Michelle wants to lift the veil on their home life a bit and give the folks their money’s worth.

At the big Hollywood fund-raiser for Senator Obama in February, Michelle came on strong.

“I am always a little amazed at the response that people get when they hear from Barack,” she told the crowd at the Beverly Hilton, as her husband stood by looking like a puppy being scolded, reported Hud Morgan of Men’s Vogue. “A great man, a wonderful man. But still a man. ...

“I have some difficulty reconciling the two images I have of Barack Obama. There’s Barack Obama the phenomenon. He’s an amazing orator, Harvard Law Review, or whatever it was, law professor, best-selling author, Grammy winner. Pretty amazing, right?

“And then there’s the Barack Obama that lives with me in my house, and that guy’s a little less impressive. For some reason this guy still can’t manage to put the butter up when he makes toast, secure the bread so that it doesn’t get stale, and his 5-year-old is still better at making the bed than he is.”

She said that the TV version of Barack Obama sounded really interesting and that she’d like to meet him sometime.

Many people I talked to afterward found Michelle wondrous. But others worried that her chiding was emasculating, casting her husband — under fire for lacking experience — as an undisciplined child.

Ooh. She's good, isn't she? This is the best use of the Fox News "Some people say..." construct since Katie Couric's hatchet job on the John and Elizabeth Edwards on 60 Minutes.

Then she blames Michelle Obama for not having the foresight to anticipate the indictment of Tony Rezko.

Does anyone smell a Bill and Hill Reduz on the Land of Mo[r]Do[r] here? That Obama is within seven points of Hillary Clinton in South Carolina obviously made it more urgent for MoDo to unsheath her claws on him than to do another snarky Hillary column in response to Clinton's statement about using her husband as a roving ambassador if elected.

If I were going to guess who Dowd is supporting for 2008, I would say it's probably Rudy Giuliani. She loves all that tough talk stuff.

Flood update and elsewhere

Well, after about 14 hours of nearly continuous ritual of either vacuuming up water from the laundry room floor or tap dancing on towels in the family room in what I fear is a vain attempt to save the carpet, we finally collapsed in utter exhaustion last night as water continued to seep into the house.

Today more rain is predicted.

At least the morning paper offered an explanation as to why, with five inches less rain than was dumped on us in 1999 when Tropical Storm Floyd paid its unwanted visit, the flooding was so much worse. Back then, we were in a drought summer, the ground was parched, and reservoirs were nowhere near full. Last week we had 1.5 inches of rain on top of the big ice storm six weeks ago. So when an average of eight inches of rain fell on Sunday (9.3 inches the highest recorded total, in River Vale), there was nowhere for it to go except as unwanted guests in people's houses.

This morning I am hoping to go downstairs and find that perhaps the seepage by some miracle stopped during the night. I am not optimistic, given the wet sidewalks and driveways this morning indicating more rain during the night (and more predicted today and tomorrow). We do not have flood insurance because we do not live in a flood plain, not that it would have helped because flood insurance covers only structural damage and damage to operational things like furnaces and water heaters. My water heater is in a 2" deep tray, an overpriced-but-worth-it $60 add-on when we last had it replaced, along with a battery-operated alarm that goes off when there is water in the tray, thus giving us advance notice when it gives up the ghost. And my furnace, with barely 1/4" of water around it, was chugging along merrily last night.

But now some decisions have to be made and some money spent. Because the seepage is largely at the front of the house, it seems more productive to attack the source of the problem, however intermittent, and enhance the drainage, rather than paying some charlatan tens of thousands of dollars to dig up the basement and install God-knows what. So that means calling out a landscaper who does this sort of thing. It also means calling someone in to either extract the water from the carpet and de-mildew it or pull it up entirely and de-mildew it and then decide what to do about flooring. At any rate, it's going to be expensive, and while I had planned to put money into the house this year, it's not where I'd planned to put it.

It could have been worse. The Bergen Record has a photo this morning of a house in River Vale submerged nearly to the top of the garage. Yesterday people in New Milford were being rescued in boats. With a brook and two reservoirs on my way to work, and my route going through the aforementioned River Vale, it remains to be seen if I could have even gotten through. Today I'll head in, if only because there doesn't seem to be a point to be one of Mickey Mouse's brooms with buckets for a second day as water contineus to seep in.

And this is why I really don't have much to say about yesterday's shooting at Virginia Tech. I did have MSNBC on during my towel dancing on the carpet yesterday, but the "If it bleeds, it leads" coverage excluding all else seemed like just more Atrocity Droning, not unlike the nonstop coverage of last year's shooting at an Amish school. What stood out most frighteningly were the calls by talking heads for so-called bulletproof security on college campuses. Look, folks, this is a tragedy by any measure. But when the network that continually tries to pump up a failed president's ratings by casting him as a strong, resolute leader in the face of The Terrorism Of Which We Must Be Afraid All The Time calls the shooting "an act of evil on a scale that we've never seen in this country before", I think we've entered the realm of tabloid journalism hyperbole, and I'm not going to pay any more attention to that than I am to the continued attempts to flog the corpse of Anna Nicole Smith.

This sort of thing is nothing new. In 1966, ex-Marine Charles Whitman killed 15 people and wounded 31 before he was shot by police. In 1984, James Huberty killed 21 people and wounded 19 others in a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California. In 1991, George Hennard shot and killed 22 people in Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and wounded 24 before committing suicide in the 1999 Columbine shootings that politicians are still flogging. When something like this happens, whether on a college campus or not, I don't think the relative body counts are what's important. Whitman was clearly nuts. Harris and Klebold were certainly extremely disturbed young men. And it's interesting how eight years later, the talk of the "bully culture" that spawned the Columbine massacre has fallen silent. I guess it's hard to rail against bully culture in the schools when a 67-year-old radio personality is calling a women's college basketball team "whores".

But what's most disheartening is the implication by the tablonews networks that the fact that the shooter, apparently a student at the University, may have been "a 24- year-old Chinese national who arrived in San Francisco on a United Airlines flight Aug. 7 last year on a student visa issued in Shanghai" is somehow significant. I suppose if we can chalk this up to some "damn fur'ner" we won't have to look at either the pressures on college students or accept the fact that there will always be people who go nuts and act out.

I'm not trying to belittle the horror and the loss for Virginia Tech students and the families of the dead and wounded. But the frenzy surrounding this incident seems to be more about cable news wanting to deliver eyeballs to advertisers than about any need to cover developments in the case.

By all means, let's ask questions about the response of campus security, and whether students should have been warned earlier. But it would be tragic if college campuses were turned into police states as a result of one tragic, horrific incident.

UPDATE: Perhaps the same cable news-bots who are flogging the Virginia Tech massacre might want to consider, as Larry Johnson has, that what happened in Virginia would be just another day in Iraq under the U.S. occupation.

Here's why journalists "aren't covering the good news" in Iraq

Maybe it's because there isn't any...and because it's just too dangerous:

Before Rick Jervis heads out into the streets of Baghdad, he makes an important telephone call. Not to his editor back in USA Today's newsroom, but to his security consultant, a pipeline to the murky world of kidnappers, militias and other indiscriminate killers. If there is a rise in car bombings or assaults on foreigners, the reporter wants to know which routes to avoid before he takes off with a driver and bodyguard. He doesn't wear a flak jacket because that would draw too much attention.

[snip]

Though journalists struggle mightily to cut through the fog and spin, Americans are left without a complete account of a prolonged, bloody war that is devouring billions of taxpayers' dollars. Correspondents are hamstrung when it comes to independently verifying information from military press briefings or rhetoric from the Pentagon. Without risking their lives, they can't go into the festering city of Fallujah or certain Baghdad neighborhoods to conduct their own investigations (see "Out of Reach," April/May 2006). Embedding is an alternative, but it offers a limited view under scrutiny of the military.

"The whole thing seems so confusing," says Getty Images photographer Chris Hondros a few hours before heading back to Baghdad. He described this scenario: "A bomb blows up an American convoy. Who did that? The Sunni insurgents or the Shia or some other player? We have no idea and no way to figure it out... This is a profoundly different war."

No one sees the situation improving. Many news organizations have escape plans should American and Iraqi forces completely lose control of Baghdad, a squalid city brimming with weapons and sectarian animosity. For the media, security concerns have become an obsession.

Before they go out on assignments, correspondents work through a litany of questions: Where is it? What time is it? How can I get there? How can I get back? Who can I talk to? Who controls the neighborhood? Who guards the checkpoints? Is there enough fuel in the car and plenty of air in the tires? Is this story worth the risk?

[snip]

The heavily protected Green Zone, the core of U.S. operations where journalists routinely go for briefings and to obtain press credentials, has become a favorite target. In his first-person account "Life in Hell: A Baghdad Diary," Time correspondent Aparisim Ghosh described an attack just 100 yards from the main entrance where twin blasts--one a car bomb, the other a suicide bomber--killed 16 people. It happened near small shops where journalists emerging from the Green Zone on hot afternoons stop to buy cold sodas.

For the fourth consecutive year, Iraq in 2006 ranked as the world's deadliest spot for the media, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Since the invasion, 133 journalists and media support workers have been killed; 83 percent were locals, many with ties to Western media outlets. The Associated Press lost two Iraqi staffers in December and January. CPJ reports that for the first time, murder has overtaken crossfire as the leading cause of deaths.

[snip]

To be killed or injured, "All you have to do is make a wrong decision," says Richard Engel, NBC's Middle East correspondent, who has survived attempts on his life and seen friends kidnapped and killed during his four years in Iraq. Testimony from other journalists bears him out.

"You cannot move; you cannot go anywhere on your own," says Detroit Free Press photojournalist David Gilkey, who returned from his eighth trip to Iraq in January. Deadly strikes, he says, can come from any direction--an IED planted underground, a sniper on the roof of an apartment building, a gunman hiding in the trunk of a car, a teenager strapped with explosives, a car bomb set off by remote control as the killers sip tea nearby.

"Every time you get out of the vehicle, you are almost paralyzed, with your eyes darting around looking for where the shot might come from. Every time you are riding around it's all you can do to keep from plugging your ears, waiting for the blast to happen," says Gilkey, who survived an IED explosion on his last trip.

Photographer Samantha Appleton has been to Iraq five times for Time and The New Yorker. In 2003, she roamed freely with minor concerns about security. A year later, when foreigners became favorite targets, she began wearing an abaya, hoping to deflect attention as she documented the lives of Iraqi civilians, mostly in the Baghdad slum Sadr City. She now finds it impossible to travel by road anywhere outside of Baghdad. "Iraq is a country that hears and sees everything. A foreigner cannot blend in," Appleton wrote in an e-mail. She says it is common to travel with a minimum of two cars and three to five gunmen. "Few wars have required that," she says.

Besides being the most dangerous war for journalists, this also has become the most costly. Foreign editors for good reason are reluctant to discuss the specifics of their security strategies or what they pay to protect their staffs. It is no secret that companies like AKE Group Ltd. or Backwater USA charge around $1,500 a day for each member of a personal security detail. Armored vehicles can cost $100,000 or more, depending on the level of protection.

All but a handful of media organizations have been driven out by the high cost and risks. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the AP, and the broadcast and cable news networks are among the stalwarts. Even for those willing to bleed dollars for top-line security, newsgathering remains a struggle. The networks, whose crews are highly visible when they are covering a story, participate in a weekly conference call to share the latest intelligence reports.

[snip]

Earlier this year, NBC's Engel sent a memo to his bosses telling them that as Iraq changed, he had changed. He had no semblance of a personal life, and the war had cost him his marriage. "Violence and cruelty now seem, to me, to come easily to mankind; a new belief that disturbs me," he wrote. Engel is based in Beirut but continues to cover Iraq.

And that, my friends, is the difference between the Bush Administration and the journalists like Richard Engel and Borzou Daragahi and Michael Ware and the other less-familiar stalwarts who continue to do what little coverage of the war they can in the face of constant threats to life and limb, and corporate masters who refuse to broadcast their stories if they are too disturbing to the established order and the Bush Administration's agenda. The journalists still have their souls, and are hoping to still have them when they come home. The men and women in the Bush Administration, and their shills like John McCain, lost theirs a long time ago, and have decided to embrace the violence and cruelty as the natural order of things.

The psychopath-in-chief

Though technically psychopathy is not an "official" DSM-IV category of psychological disorder, the term is often used interchangeably with "sociopath" and the "official" term, antisocial personality disorder. Yet through common use it's become a far more weighted term, and so we will use it here for the purpose of describing the man with his literal finger on the button; the man half of American voters believed not once but twice was the best man for the job.

Psychopathy is diagnosed using Robert Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). It would be interesting to see how the current president would score if administered this particular diagnostic instrument. Hare describes psychopaths as:

"...intraspecies predators who use charm, manipulation, intimidation, and violence to control others and to satisfy their own selfish needs. Lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they cold-bloodedly take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret." (The Harvard Mental Health Letter, September 1995)

Remember the Washington Correspondents Dinner where George Bush joked about not being able to find Iraq's WMD and looking for them under his desk? That was just a taste of this president's pathology. Dan Froomkin reports on Bush's visit Wednesday to Fort Irwin in California's Mojave Desert:

Is Bush taking all this seriously enough? Or is it all just a game? In his tour of the deadly-serious training facility yesterday, Bush repeatedly joked around, with journalists serving as the brunt of his humor.

"The first stop was a card table set up in front of a cinderblock-type hut," New York Times reporter Jim Rutenberg wrote in his pool report. "Sitting on top of it were suitcase devices used to view the images sent back from predator drones. 'Train it on Holland,' POTUS said as a soldier held up the drone, about two feet long and pointed it at Steve Holland of Reuters. Peering into the image received in the suitcase device's monitor, POTUS said to Holland, 'You're as rough looking here as you are regular.'"

Later, Rutenberg writes: "We arrived at another display of robotic rovers built to handle and search for road side bombs. With your pool assembled before him, POTUS grabbed the joy stick on a remote control and started sending a rover with a grab claw into the photographers, telling Jason Reed of Reuters - who was right in its path - 'You're not debris, you're still a human being.' . . . POTUS then turned his attention to your humble pool reporter, 'Rutenberg, come here,' then saying, 'Put your hand there by the claw.' LOL."

Rutenberg left out what happened next, but local reporter Tatiana Prophet of the Victorville (Calif.) Daily Press was fascinated by the conduct of the White House press corps, and wrote a story about them: "While this administration has been characterized by a ban on reporters' questions outside of a formal news conference, the media nevertheless have a familiarity with the commander-in-chief. . . .

"'Rutenberg, come over here,' Bush said to New York Times reporter Jim Rutenberg. 'Put your hand up right by the claw.'

"The 'claw' was a robot arm of the Talon 3, a diminutive robot designed to disarm improvised explosive devices, which have become the biggest threat to troops involved in the Iraq War. . . .

"Rutenberg, kneeling in the desert dust, was a good sport as the president sent the robot toward him, to laughter from the soldiers and the media as well."

Nothing like a little physical abasement to keep the president in good spirits.

Disgusting. The way this president has had the White House press corps tap-dancing to his tune for the past six years; the way he goes to military bases and mock-threatens reporters with weapons and goes to tractor factories and tries to run over them while test-driving a tractor reminds me of this guy:

Even NBC's David Gregory, who's been known to ask Bush a tough question every now and then, can be reduced to playing Stepin Fetchit in a tux for this president.

What on earth are these people so afraid of? Is it all about access? Is it about losing access to this president? What kind of access do they have now, where they are only permitted to regurgitate what the Administration wants them to write? What kind of access is this? Or is it that like a harem of abused wives, they regard the jokes and the nicknames as some kind of expression of affection?

Whatever it is, it is doing the American public a profound disservice. History has told us that Henry VIII was fond of dressing up in disguises and surprising people, and a popular account of his first meeting with Anne of Cleves has her mistaking the by then obese and malodorous king for a particularly repulsive kind of commoner and being as repulsed by him as he was by her. Novelist Philippa Gregory adds a fanciful spin to this in her most recent Tudor novel, The Boleyn Inheritance, by having Henry's revulsion a result of Anne spitting into her hand after being manhandled and kissed by the disguised Henry -- and this gesture causing the veneer of pretending among those present that still reflected back to this most egotistical of kings his illusion that he was still young, virile, and attractive to fall away. But whether Anne simply ignored him because she did not recognize him without his finery, or something more, the likelihood that the aftermath of that less-than-auspicious meeting went the way the Tudor court equivalent of the White House Press Corps, Spanish Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys described it, is small:

And on New Years Day in the afternoon the king's grace with five of his privy chamber, being disguised with mottled cloaks with hoods so that they should not be recognized, came secretly to Rochester, and so went up into the chamber where the said Lady Anne was looking out of a window to see the bull-baiting which was going on in the courtyard, and suddenly he embraced and kissed her, and showed here a token which the king had sent her for New Year's gift, and she being abashed and not knowing who it was thanked him, and so he spoke with her. But she regarded him little, but always looked out the window.... and when the king saw that she took so little notice of his coming he went into another chamber and took off his cloak and came in again in a coat of purple velvet. And when the lords and knights saw his grace they did him reverence.... and then her grace humbled herself lowly to the king's majesty, and his grace saluted her again, and they talked together lovingly, and afterwards he took her by the hand and led her to another chamber where their graces amused themselves that night and on Friday until the afternoon.

It was one thing to need to placate a king who was by then pretty much acknowledged to be more than a wee tad fickle of nature and volatile of temper. But George W. Bush is not a king, no matter how much William Kristol might want him to be. And it is the job of the press corps not to indulge this president in his worst behaviors in exchange for the privilege of kissing the ring, but to keep Americans informed of what this man is doing in their name.

When Headlines Attack

I'm sure WaPo "journalist" Jonathan Weisman thinks himself oh-so-clever with this headline:



No editorializing here, right? Casting Democratic efforts to restore the Constitution as a war against the poor, innocent, beleagured George W. Bush?

Even as their confrontation with President Bush over Iraq escalates, emboldened congressional Democrats are challenging the White House on a range of issues -- such as unionization of airport security workers and the loosening of presidential secrecy orders -- with even more dramatic showdowns coming soon.

For his part, Bush, who also finds himself under assault for the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, the conduct of the Iraq war and alleged abuses in government surveillance by the FBI, is holding firm. Though he has vetoed only one piece of legislation since taking office, he has vowed to veto 16 bills that have passed either the House or the Senate in the three months since Democrats took control of Congress.

Despite the threats, Democratic lawmakers expect to open new fronts against the president when they return from their spring recess, including politically risky efforts to quickly close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; reinstate legal rights for terrorism suspects; and rein in what Democrats see as unwarranted encroachments on privacy and civil liberties allowed by the USA Patriot Act.

Message to Weisman: Oscar Wilde you're not, pal.

I'm sure that with articles like this Weisman is attempting to cast himself as the Jon Stewart of the Washington Post -- witty, cheeky, irreverent. Actually, he's ending up sounding more like Dennis Miller -- smug, lame, and desperate.

Apparently this is nothing new for this so-called journalist. In 2004, Jessica Wilson at For the Record chronicled Weisman's feud with economist Brad DeLong. Apparently DeLong had the temerity to point out that Weisman and fellow so-called "journalists" Mike Allen and Fred Barbash, in reporting on Captain Codpiece's 2004 budget, did little more than repeat the White House spin.

And just last Friday, Weisman penned an article with the headline "Liberals Relent on Iraq War Funding" -- a piece peppered liberally (sorry) with that word that is to conservatives as a red flag is to a bull. Jonathan Weisman clearly knows who his audience is.

When people visit this blog, they have a pretty good idea early on what they're getting. I don't pretend to be an objective chronicler of events, nor do most bloggers. But at least we're honest about what we do. While mainstream outlets like the Washington Post wring their hands and call for conferences into blogger ethics, they are touting guys like Jonathan Weisman as "objective journalists" even as these guys rewrite the press releases given them by the White House media affairs office.

Physician, heal thyself.

Enough with the bimbo dead pools already

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

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

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

Bob Herbert agrees:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I swore I wouldn't do this, but...

I'm going to do a post on Anna Nicole Smith.

There's something truly disgusting about the media frenzy about the death of a very troubled young woman taken within the context of a week that saw Tim Russert have to testify in a Washington DC court in a trial which is showing pretty clearly that the Vice President of the United States committed treason for a petty personal grudge. The Libby trial has not exactly shown so-called media journalism in its most flattering light, and the desecration of Anna Nicole Smith's corpse is just the final nail in the coffin of what used to be an honorable profession.

As I write this, there are ten - count 'em - ten articles on MSNBC.com about this woman's death, with "Pentagon provided 'dubious' intel" below the fold, right underneath "Congress' ratings up; majority still disapprove", "Judge refuses to order DNA test on Smith" and "Sen. Johnson recovering, works from hospital", and right above "Russert says testifying 'not pleasant'"

It's quite horrible when you think about it -- we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Iraq War is a sham, entered into based on cooked intelligence....and all the media cares about is Anna Nicole Smith.

What is it about this woman that generates this kind of media frenzy? Part of it is that this story at the moment hits the trifecta for tabloid journalism deliciousness -- sex, money, and death. But there's more than meets the eye here. There's a certain glee underlying the relentless coverage, a sense that the media are portraying the death of this troubled woman from Texas as "the wages of sin".

I've never been sure what made Anna Nicole Smith the favorite whipping girl of the tabloids, more so than either Britney Spears OR Paris Hilton. She always seemed kind of pathetic, even in her ridiculous, gleefully and unabashedly gold-digging marriage to an 89-year-old billionaire. It wasn't by accident that she played up a passing resemblance to Marilyn Monroe, right down to her unfashionably curvy figure.

Anna Nicole Smith was like a sex toy come to life -- the huge breasts and prominent hips of a comic book vixen, the lipstick-red moue, the platinum hair, the ditzy blond demeanor. But where Marilyn Monroe tried for respectability as an actress during her life, Smith always knew her limitations, and was perfectly willing to settle for notoriety instead of fame.

Sometimes it seemed that all the fear and loathing of women that pervades our society was fixated on this one woman. That 51% of women are living without a spouse is a number regarded as horrifying by the likes of David Brooks. If these women decide they can live without a man, where are men supposed to get their power? Yet here was a woman who obviously felt she NEEDED men -- many of them, from what we're seeing now -- and every time she was linked with another one, she became more of a laughingstock.

Here was a male sex fantasy come to life -- a stripper, a big-breasted Playboy Playmate of the Year, a woman who fucked -- and everone, including the very men men who read playboy, who fantasize about the twins in the Coors ad, who go to strip clubs, and who profess to want women who fuck laughed at her. They laughed when she was fat. They laughed when she was thin. Whatever she did was ridiculed.

And now the woman is dead, her sad, fucked-up little trainwreck of a life over, and people now feel they have to kick the corpse. One would expect the men she was involved with, the ones fighting to be proven her 5-month-old daughter's bio-daddy so as to be co-heir to the Marshall Millions that may yet be up for grabs, to kick the corpse. But for an entire nation to do it, especially at arguably the most dangerous time in our nation's history, a time when we are led by men who are corrupt, greedy, AND crazy, is just reprehensible.

Enough already.