Amabo Kcarab!, or, Hillary Clinton's Best Shot at Winning

The sagacious observer of the political scene known as Fafnir offers up his suggestions about how Hillary Clinton can still win the Democratic nomination for President. Some of his ideas seem like grasping at straws, but one stands out as Clinton's best hope:

Hillary Clinton challenges Barack Obama to one last debate, where she tricks him into saying his name backwards, making him disappear into the fifth dimension in a puff of pixie dust.

It doesn't have to be a debate. Priming a campaign-trail reporter with a cleverly phrased question may be enough.

Tags: politics campaign2008 hillaryclinton hrc barackobama obama fafblog fafnir humor funny

NJ Digital Voting Machines Can't Count Accurately

Ed Felten tells us about the discrepancies in vote tallies from electronic voting machines manufactured by Sequoia Voting Systems and used in the New Jersey primary election on February 5.

Candidate totals Party totals (image source: Ed Felten)

The summary tape from a Sequoia AVC Advantage digital voting machine shows the individual vote counts for candidates: on the Democratic side, Barack Obama is shown as receiving 182 votes and Hillary Clinton with 179 votes; on the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani has 1 vote, Mitt Romney has 13 votes, John McCain has 40 votes, Ron Paul has 3 votes, and Mike Huckabee has 4 votes. The "Option Switch Totals" section of the tape shows a total of 362 votes on the Democratic ballot and 60 votes on the Republican ballot.

But 179 + 192 = 361, not 362; and 1 + 13 + 40 + 3 + 4 = 61, not 60.

(Felten provides a TIFF of the entire tape.)

Quoth Felten:

What’s alarming here is not the size of the discrepancy but its nature. This is a single voting machine, disagreeing with itself about how many Republicans voted on it. Imagine your pocket calculator couldn’t make up its mind whether 1+13+40+3+4 was 60 or 61. You’d be pretty alarmed, and you wouldn’t trust your calculator until you were very sure it was fixed. Or you’d get a new calculator.

This wasn’t an isolated instance, either. In Union County alone, at least eight other AVC Advantage machines exhibited similar problems, as did dozens more machines in other counties.

Sequoia Voting Systems doesn't understand how to handle a PR crisis. Edwin Smith, Sequoia's Vice President for Compliance/Quality/Certification sent Felten a nastygram stating that if the state of New Jersey presented Felten's group with a Sequoia machine for analysis, the state would be in violation of its contract with Sequoia. Smith goes on with a threat of vaguely-worded legal action if Felten published results from such an analysis.

Yes, that's right: Sequoia's VP for QA is attempting to suppress independent QA on his company's product. Someone should tell him about how Johnson & Johnson handled the Tylenol tampering.

Earlier in As I Please:
Howto: Hack a Diebold Voting Machine (As I Please)
How Not to Talk to Reporters

Tags: new jersey voting electronic voting machines sequoia voting systems ed felten error unreliability politics

Details Don't Add Up in ABC Report of Eliot Spitzer Bust

ABC's Brian Ross says that Eliot Spitzer, caught red-handed in a prostitution scandal, was investigated because a bank tipped off the IRS. This doesn't sound right to me.

When banks and other financial institutions are suspicious about customer transactions, they are supposed to file "Suspicious Activity Reports" with the Financial Crimes Enforecement Network (FinCEN), a unit of the Department of the Treasury that is distinct from the IRS. FinCEN reviews the information and passes it along to the appropriate law enforcement agency.

FinCEN is not part of the IRS. This is a mistake on a par with saying the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section were a part of the FBI.

Someone in the loop here doesn't understand how money laundering and other financial crimes are investigated. Maybe it is ABC's Brian Ross. Or maybe Ross is just being a stenographer for his source, and his source was being sloppy.

Or maybe his source was one of those Regent University School of Law grads who infest the Bush Justice Dept., who have a better understanding of team play and party loyalty than they do of, well, the law.

If I were trying to misdirect people away from a politicized takedown of a powerful governor from the enemy party, I would want to get the details of my cover story right.

Tags: eliot spitzer prostitution corruption justice dept scandal brian ross irs fincen suspicious activity report sar public integrity section politicization

White House Aide Nailed for Plagiarism

Tim Goeglein, Plagiarist image source: New York Times

Timothy Goeglein, the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, wrote at least two op-ed columns for the News-Sentinel of Fort Wayne, Indiana, that were copied substantially from other sources.

Blogger and former News-Sentinel columnist Nancy Nall discovered the forgery, a column that was largely lifted from an essay by Jeffery Hart that had appeared in the Dartmouth Review. A commenter in Nall's blog discovered another forgery, an column on Hoagy Carmichael that was lifted from a piece by Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post

Goeglein has acknowledged one of the forgeries, and the paper has pulled that column.

Goeglein was Karl Rove's right-hand man prior to Rove's departure, responsible for reaching out to conservative and Christian group on behalf of the White House.

It is not known how being unmasked as a plagiarist is going to affect Goeglein's status at the White House. His moral turpitude might appall ordinary Americans, but it is par for the course for the Bush Administration.

UPDATE: Goeglin resigns his White House staff position. (hat tip to David Kurtz at TPM)

(via Atrios)

Tags: tim goeglein karl rove bush white house plagiarism plagiarist scandal shame journalism nancy nall

Cat Macros Go Political: LOLcats 4 Obama

YES WE CAN HAS is a blog of LOLcat pictures promoting the cause of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Obamamania has spread as far as the world of cute agrammatical animals. Or is it that the cat macro craze is clawing its way further and further into popular discourse?

How far can this trend go? At least as far as a John McCain LOLweasel:

Earlier in As I Please:
LOLPRESIDENT!!!1 - President Macro Contest at Fark

(via Skippy)

Tags: cat macros lolcats politics obama john mccain lolweasels internet culture humor silliness

The McCain-Iseman Scandal: It's the Influence-Peddling, Stupid

L to R: Charles H. Keating, Jr., John McCain, Vicki Iseman

Scandalmongers and their eager audience are focused on the hints of sexual hanky-panky between John McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman. As Mark Klieman points out, however, the real meat of the scandal shows up clearly in Libby Quaid's story that went out over the Associated Press wire yesterday:

In late 1999, McCain twice wrote letters to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Florida-based Paxson Communications — which had paid Iseman as its lobbyist — urging quick consideration of a proposal to buy a television station license in Pittsburgh. At the time, Paxson's chief executive, Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson, also was a major contributor to McCain's 2000 presidential campaign.

McCain did not urge the FCC commissioners to approve the proposal, but he asked for speedy consideration of the deal, which was pending from two years earlier. In an unusual response, then-FCC Chairman William Kennard complained that McCain's request "comes at a sensitive time in the deliberative process" and "could have procedural and substantive impacts on the commission's deliberations and, thus, on the due process rights of the parties."

McCain wrote the letters after he received more than $20,000 in contributions from Paxson executives and lobbyists. Paxson also lent McCain his company's jet at least four times during 1999 for campaign travel.

In short, McCain intervened with federal regulators on behalf of a major campaign contributor — exactly the same as he did for Charles Keating a decade earlier. That contributor was represented on Capitol Hill by Vicki Iseman. The New York Times article coyly hints that, in McCain's confrontation with aides over his frequent association with Iseman, he "acknowledged behaving inappropriately" with Iseman. The tenor of the surrounding paragraphs implies that the impropriety was a personal one, but Libby Quaid's reporting makes it unambiguously one of quid pro quo influence peddling.

What's more, it's still going on. Today's Washington Post has a front-page story, The Anti-Lobbyist, Advised by Lobbyists, detailing the heavy-hitting lobbyist background of McCain's senior campaign advisors, at least some of whom are donating their time to the campaign.

Preaching fiery sermons of integrity and incorruptibility, while at the same time booking first-class seats on the gravy train, John McCain is the Elmer Gantry of influence peddling.

The illicit-sex angle of this scandal may be a complete red herring. In another post, Mark Kleiman quotes a lengthy comment from a female acquaintance who is very familiar with the corridors of power in Washington, D.C.:

It is equally plausible that the McCain-Iseman relationship played out differently: Iseman has a job to do so she cozys up to the Senator, they have a few drinks with a few telecomm guys. They get to know each other and like each other (think Hillary and McCain drinking vodka together and deciding the other is not so bad) — he likes having a cute young lady around who fawns over him, she likes the access.

Now she's found her "in" and exploits it. He continues to like having her around. Both know theres a flirty kind of thing going on but nothing actually ever happens. She hooks him up with people she knows and the beat goes on.

The staff, however, have a different view. They don't care what the boss is actually doing, they're worried about appearance. So they make their move and get her out of the picture. This is problematic for her because access is what keeps her bosses happy. They want to know why they had him on a jet last week and this week she can't go to the office. ...

I'm just really concerned about automatically attacking a young woman who is successful (albeit in a shady industry) for doing her job, which is to get close to these guys. Now true, perhaps her intellect should be driving this equation, but she probably made the decision that she'll play the cards she's dealt. It's her brain that will get her through the situation, but if her brain in a cute dress is what gets her there, so be it. She has a job to do. This is the system that needs to be attacked, rather than attacking every single female blonde lobbyist in town for being a vamp and determining that they must be sleeping with the guy.

(via Matt Yglesias and TPM Muckraker)

Previously in As I Please:
NY Times: John McCain Possibly Romantically Linked to Lobbyist
NY Times' Adam Nagourney Whitewashes McCain's Campaign Finance Record

Tags: john mccain vicki iseman scandal bimbo eruption appearance of impropriety influence peddling politics campaign ethics keating five lies corruption

NY Times: John McCain Possibly Romantically Linked to Lobbyist

Vicki Iseman image source: Alcalde & Fay

John McCain, the presumptive Republican Party nominee for President, is having a bimbo eruption.

The New York Times reports that Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist for the telecommunications industry, had been often seen with John McCain in the runup to his 2000 presidential campaign, visiting him in his offices, turning up at fund-raisers, traveling with him in corporate jets provided by her clients. The frequency of Iseman's presence with McCain led senior aides to suspect a romantic involvement. They warned Iseman away from McCain, and McCain away from Iseman. The Times reports that in one confrontation between McCain and his aides, McCain "acknowledged behaving inappropriately" with Iseman.

The Washington Post corroborates the story, citing a claim by former McCain aide John Weaver that he met with Iseman and told her to stay away from McCain.

Shortly after the Times broke the story, Iseman's staff biography disappeared from the Web site of Alcade & Fay, Iseman's employer. That biography remains on the Wayback Machine, however.

McCain's response to the story is his usual one to trouble: lying about it. Here is a statement from the McCain campaign:

It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career.

Can anyone believe that John McCain would have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously? At least some of John McCain's violations of the public trust are a matter of public record. John McCain did some great big favors for Charles Keating's Lincoln Savings & Loan, and if that is not a special interest then the words have no meaning. The second paragraph has a seed of truth, however: Nothing in this story violates any principles that guide McCain's career, for the simple reason that he has none.

You cannot prove a negative. Hard evidence — incriminating photographs, say, or a strand of her pubic hair entangled in a used condom containing his semen — could conceivably indicate that McCain and Iseman had a sexual relationship; but no evidence in the world can show that they have not.

But there is a very simple thing McCain can do that would convince me that there was no such sexual relationship: If he claimed that he and Iseman had slept together, I could trust that he was lying as usual.

Previously in As I Please
Open Letter to Duncan Black
McCain's Baghdad Market Stroll Evokes Memories of the 1980s
NY Times' Adam Nagourney Whitewashes McCain's Campaign Finance Record
Does Possible John Glenn Endorsement Mean Hillary Clinton Prepares to Battle McCain?

Tags: john mccain vicki iseman scandal bimbo eruption appearance of impropriety politics campaign ethics keating five lies corruption

Obama Sweeps Pakistan; Clinton Campaign Calls Foul

Voting Irregularities Cloud Obama, McCain Wins

image credit: Lynn Kendall

KARACHI - In an upset victory that took pollsters by surprise, election returns from Pakistan show Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton by a margin of 61% to 36%. Obama's victory was marred by widespread reports of irregularities in the Pakistani balloting.

On the Republican side, John McCain took 71% of the Pakistani vote, with Ron Paul making his strongest primary showing yet with 22% of the vote. Mike Huckabee's weak showing of 6% was expected by analysts, who anticipated that the Baptist preacher faced a tough sell in the Muslim nation.

The Clinton campaign was quick to respond to the loss by pointing out widespread balloting irregularities and allegations of voter fraud. While Obama's margin seems compelling to observers, the legitmacy of his win may ultimately be decided by the credentials committee of the Democratic National Convention this summer.

Tags: politics campaign obama hillary clinton hrc primaries pakistan election fraud satire humor funny

Does Possible John Glenn Endorsement Mean Hillary Clinton Prepares to Battle McCain?

Greg Sargent at TPMElectionCentral cites sources claiming that Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is about to land the endorsement of astronaut and former Ohio senator John Glenn.

This could be a sign that Clinton is looking forward to a general election battle with Sen. John McCain. John Glenn, along with John McCain is a member of the so-called Keating Five, the group of five U.S. senators who intervened with federal banking regulators to get off the case of Lincoln Savings and Loan in return for accepting massive campaign contributions from Lincoln S&L's CEO, Charles Keating.

(John McCain pulled a fast one to rescue his reputaton and career by taking up the cause of campaign finance reform like an adulterer at a tent revival meeting.)

With Glenn in her camp, Clinton is ready to respond in kind if McCain shouts "Activate Corrupt Sleaze Power!" while they battle. She will be even stronger if she can line up the support of Don Riegle and Dennis De Concini as well. (The fifth of the Keating Five, Alan Cranston, is deceased.) Gotta catch 'em all!

The Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal was the signature scandal of the Savings and Loan Crisis, the two-hundred-billion-dollar financial meltdown that plagued the administration of President George H.W. Bush. In a move that prompted many to ask, "What was he thinking?", President Bill Clinton appointed Dennis De Concini to the board of directors of the Federal Home Mortgage Loan Corporation (Freddie Mac). Freddie Mac is now up to its neck in the subprime lending crisis. It would be understandable if this constellation of facts led the more paranoid among us to construct a Grand Unified Theory of political corruption and financial malfeasance.

Previously in As I Please:
Open Letter to Duncan Black
NY Times' Adam Nagourney Whitewashes McCain's Campaign Finance Record

Tags: hillary clinton john glenn john mccain keating five lincoln savings charles keating corruption bribery savings and loan crisis subprime mortgage crisis politics campaign 08 election president

Arlo Guthrie Endorses Ron Paul

Singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie, who wrote the anti-war anthem "Alice's Restaurant," has endorsed libertarian Republican Ron Paul in his quixotic quest for the presidency.

Mark Memmott and Jill Lawrence write in USA Today's On Politics blog:

Arlo Guthrie — of Alice's Restaurant fame and son of folk legend Woody Guthrie — has endorsed Republican Rep. Ron Paul's bid for the White House.

"I love this guy," Guthrie says in a statement released by the Paul campaign. "Dr. Paul is the only candidate I know of who would have signed the Constitution of the United States had he been there. I'm with him, because he seems to be the only candidate who actually believes it has as much relevance today as it did a couple of hundred years ago. I look forward to the day when we can work out the differences we have with the same revolutionary vision and enthusiasm that is our American legacy."

via (Skippy)

Tags: arlo guthrie ron paul folksinger music president campaign republican anti-war wtf

Bush's "Christian Cowboy" Hero Was Really a Horse Thief

George Bush keeps a painting in the Oval Office depicting a rider on horseback racing up a rugged hillside, two other riders not far behind. Bush tells people that early-twentieth-century illustrator W.H.D. Koerner's painting is called "A Charge to Keep," and that it depicts a Methodist circuit-rider, a kind of Christian cowboy who helped spread the teaching of John Wesley throughout America in the nineteenth century.

image source: Slate

But in fact, the painting depicts a slick-talking horse thief fleeing an angry lynch mob. Koerner originally painted it to illustrate the story "The Slipper Tongue," which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1916.

That's the Bush Administration in a nutshell: The self-image of a high-minded doer of good deeds cloaks the reality of a thieving scoundrel one step ahead of his angry victims.

(via Avedon Carol)

Tags: bush politics president irony history w h d koerner ignorance idiocy painting horseback missionary horsethief psychology self-delusion closed-minded humor funny

The Terrible Cost of Bush Administration Lies About Iraq

"Bush Lied, People Died," the protesters' say. Have you ever wondered precisely how many people die every time George Bush lies?

The Center for Public Integrity assembled a prodigious compilation of 935 out-and-out falsehoods uttered by George Bush and seven senior Administration officials in the two years following September 11, 2001.

Based on the detailing of these lies, Lynn Kendall has done the math: Each Bush lie about Iraq has killed four American soldiers and wounded 31. Each Administration attempt to deceive us killed 86 Iraqi citizens at a bare minimum [1] Every eight lies kill a journalist. Every untruth that passed their lips cost US taxpayers more than half a billion dollars.

I mourned when Slobodan Milosevic died — because it meant that he couldn't be George Bush's cellmate when Bush is finally brought to justice, as I so fervently hoped.

[1] Kendall uses the Iraq Body Count, a summation of deaths reported in media reports, hospital and morgue data, and government figures, which is guaranteed to be undercounting violent death in Iraq. A recent survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine counts 150,000 violent deaths, almost twice the IBC number; a study published earlier in The Lancet estimated 650,000 excess deaths from all causes, including war-related disease and malnutrition, almost 8 times the IBC number.

Political Quote of the Day

"Chris Matthews can't keep Bill Clinton's dick out of his mouth." — Richard Dutcher

Howto: Hack a Diebold Voting Machine

The gap between polling and voting results in New Hampshire last Tuesday has suddenly made this picture more topical. Why settle for making just your own vote count?

How to Hack a Diebold Voting Machine
Originally uploaded by joshillustrates.

New Jersey Legislator Says US Blacks Should Thank the Lord for Slavery

Michael Patrick Carroll, a Republican member of the New Jersey state assembly, says that African-Americans should be thankful for slavery:

[I]f slavery was the price that a modern American's ancestors had to pay in order to make one an American, one should get down on one's knees every single day and thank the Lord that such price was paid.

Carroll made these remarks in expressing his opposition to a bill before the assembly that if passed would make New Jersey the first northern state to express apology for the institution of slavery. Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia have passed similar apology bills, and another is being considered by the Georgia legislature.

Yes, thank the Lord for slavery, without which it wouldn't be true that in California a black man is more likely to go to prison than to a state college. Those poor bastards who died in shackles in the Middle Passage were just unlucky. Jim Crow, segregation, lynchings, drugs in the ghetto — Praise Jesus!

(via Mary Shaw)

Billboard: Hell Is Too Good for George Bush

A billboard in New Zealand depicts the smiling face of George W. Bush, captioned: "Hell. Too good for some evil bastards." The billboard advertises Hell, a chain of pizza delivery outlets in New Zealand.

Arbitrators of Godwin's Law give this one a pass.

(via Lynn Kendall)

Ellen Tauscher Is an Ignorant Idiot

Either Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-INO) is an ignorant idiot, or the staffer on whom she palms off the job of answering letters to constituents is an ignorant idiot (which makes her an ignorant idiot of a manaager):

This is what she wrote in response to a constituent who called for her to support the impeachment of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

The Attorney General serves at the pleasure of the president in a non-impeachable office. Unless convicted of an illegal act, the Attorney General cannot be removed from office without the president asking for or accepting his resignation. However, please be assured that I will keep your thoughts and concerns in mind as I review the circumstances surrounding recent allegations of impropriety within the Justice Department.

Sincerely,

Ellen O. Tauscher
Member of Congress

The Constitution — Remember the Constitution? People say it's the highest law in the land — says:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the united States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. [emphasis added]

Ellen Tauscher should serve out the rest of her term wearing a big scarlet 'M' — for 'Moron' — pinned to her bosom whenever she either appears on Capitol Hill or returns to her district.

(via Atrios)

Where White House Bipartisanship Comes From

What does it take to get the Bush Administration to reach out to congressional Democrats on matters of foreign policy?

As Steve Benen of The Carpetbagger Report tells us, Bush will do it when the Saudis order him to do it:

The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq. ... The Saudis had requested that Congress be told about the planned sale, the officials said, in an effort to avoid the kind of bruising fight on Capitol Hill that occurred in the 1980s over proposed arms sales to the kingdom.

Congress Has the Power to Arrest, Imprison Those Who Defy Subpoenas

While the criminal gang of hoodlums and thieves known throughout the underworld as the "Bush Administration" express their literal contempt of Congress by claiming that the legal offices held by some of its members renders the gang immune to prosecution or even subpoena, the fact remains that Congress has the legal power and the legal resources to arrest and detain gang members who defy congressional orders to testify before congressional committees:

Yet under historic and undisturbed law, Congress can enforce its own orders against recalcitrant witnesses without involving the executive branch and without leaving open the possibility of presidential pardon.

And a Supreme Court majority would find it hard to object in the face of two entrenched legal principles.

That's Prof. Frank Askin, who teaches at the Rutgers University School of Law and is director of the Rutgers Constitutional Litigation Clinic, writing an op-ed in the Washington Post.

Askin reminds us that:

• Apart from requesting assistance from the US Attorney to prosecute those who defy Congressional subpoenas for contempt of Congress, the sargeants-at-arms of both the House of representatives and the Senate have the lawful power to arrest and detain those who defy those subpoenas.
• This power has been upheld again and again by the Supreme Court.
• The power of pardon constitutionally alotted to whomever holds the office of President of the United States does not extend to civil contempt. The President has no lawful authority to compel the release of a person arrested by Congress for defying a Congressional subpoena.

It is high time that Congress used this lawful power to enforce its subpoenas of those gangsters who infest the Executive Branch.

(via David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo)

Sicko Galvanizes Audiences to Activism

A spectre is haunting movie theaters — the spectre of Michael Moore's Sicko.

Cinema Blend's Josh Tyler went to a theater in a suburban Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex mall to view Moore's documentary about the state of health care in the United States. When the film was over, this is what he found in the lobby:

[T]he theater was in chaos. The entire Sicko audience had somehow formed an impromptu town hall meeting in front of the ladies room. I’ve never seen anything like it. This is Texas goddammit, not France or some liberal college campus. But here these people were, complete strangers from every walk of life talking excitedly about the movie. It was as if they simply couldn’t go home without doing something drastic about what they’d just seen. My redneck compadre and his new friend found their wives at the center of the group, while I lingered in the background waiting for my spouse to emerge.

The talk gradually centered around a core of 10 or 12 strangers in a cluster while the rest of us stood around them listening intently to this thing that seemed to be happening out of nowhere. The black gentleman engaged by my redneck in the restroom shouted for everyone’s attention. The conversation stopped instantly as all eyes in this group of 30 or 40 people were now on him. “If we just see this and do nothing about it,” he said, “then what’s the point? Something has to change.” There was silence, then the redneck’s wife started calling for email addresses. Suddenly everyone was scribbling down everyone else’s email, promising to get together and do something… though no one seemed to know quite what. It was as if I’d just stepped into the world’s most bizarre protest rally, except instead of hippies the group was comprised of men and women of every age, skin color, income, and walk of life coming together on something that had shaken them deeply, and to the core.

In all my thirty years on this earth, I have never ever seen any movie have this kind of unifying effect on people. It was like I was standing there, at the birth of a new political movement. Even after 9/11, there was never a reaction like this, at least not in Texas. If Sicko truly has this sort of power, then Michael Moore has done something beyond amazing. If it can change people, affect people like this in the conservative hotbed of Texas, then Sicko isn’t just a great movie, seeing it may be one of the most important things you do all year.

(via Boing Boing)

Gordon Brown Makes His Saving Throw

Lynn Kendall views Friday morning's bombing attempts in the UK through the lens of role-playing games:

Gamemaster Karl Rove, "Gordon is the new PM in Britain. How do you react?"

Several players confer. "We bomb him! We've got a couple of Drummer Girl car bombs — Mercedes packed with explosives. And, uh, an SUV we can set on fire."

Gordon comes to table, balancing several rulebooks, a pint of Guinness, and a plate of munchies, and whines, "I say, fellows, that's not cricket. I haven't even had a chance to finish rolling for power, status, and charm."

Terrorist gives him a long, disbelieving look. "Why are you talking like Bertie Wooster?"

"Weel, I'm trying me best. Taking lessons in deportment and eeelocution from some Sassenach. He said I should try to talk like Hugh Grant looks. Vapidly English, ye ken."

Terrorists laugh so hard one of them chokes on a Twinkie and has to be pounded on the back.

Gamemaster sighs loudly. "Well, Mr. Prime Minister, *sir*, don't worry about rolling for charm. This is a guaranteed way to get a lot of approval points fast. Just don't piss them away like Dubya there."

Dubya, drunkenly waving a whiskey bottle, "I'm a Paladin! Anything I do is right! Anybody doesn't approve, they must be the Ack-ack-axis of Evil."

Everyone ignores him.

The GM says, "To get back to reality, guys, Gordon needs to roll for damage. Roll three D20s."

"Yes! Yes! Total of four, you terrorist bastards! Hah, see what you get for attacking the British lion!"

Rove consults a chart. "Sorry, boys, your Mercedes car bombs don't make it. One gets towed, and the other is discovered and disarmed. But the SUV...."

Terrorists hold their breath.

"The SUV doesn't explode on impact, and when you set it on fire, you're caught and arrested. Now roll for damages from the flames."

George Bush, Crook

George W. Bush, nominal head of the criminal control fraud conspiracy that is bilking the American people of uncounted billions of dollars, at the expense of thousands of American lives and uncounted lives of Iraqis, has used the powers of his office to commute the sentence of his co-conspirator Scooter Libby. Libby will serve no prison time for the crimes he committed to obstruct Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the same criminal conspiracy.

This is clear-cut obstruction of justice; and since Bush obviously benefits from buying the silence of his co-conspirator, it is clear-cut conflict of interest as well.

This is the smoking gun. George Bush is a crook. He must be brought to justice.

I had a lovely time last Thursday on a day trip to the Hague. I look forward to the day George Bush arrives the Hague for a rather longer time, for a sojourn before the International Criminal Court.

Update: Josh Marshall points out that the manner of Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence violates standing policy of the Justice Department.

With a Friend Like Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby Needs No Enemies

Can't Paul Wolfowitz do anything right?

Sidney Blumenthal in Salon describes the letter Wolfowitz wrote to US Distict Judge Reggie Walton as a character reference for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Walton was about to sentence Libby after the vice-presidential aide's conviction for perjury and obstruction of the investigation of the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Wolfowitz's letter is a prosecutor's dream, providing evidence that Libby knew that Plame would be in danger if her cover was blown, and that blowing her cover would in fact be a crime, notwithstanding Libby's protestations of ignorance in the trial.

Quoth Blumenthal:

According to Wolfowitz's account, Libby was an indispensable man in ending the Cold War, winning the Gulf War and waging the "global war on terror." But he was also, Wolfowitz writes, of "service to individuals."

The leading example he offers is a stunning revelation, which does not reflect on Libby's charity, compassion and sympathy as Wolfowitz might imagine. The story about Libby "involves his effort to persuade a newspaper not to publish information that would have endangered the life of a covert CIA agent working overseas. Late into the evening, long after most others had left the matter to be dealt with the next day, Mr. Libby worked to collect the information that was needed to persuade the editor not to run the story."

Unintentionally and foolishly, Wolfowitz has hanged the guilty man again. Wolfowitz's defense of Libby is composed with the same care and skill that Wolfowitz brought to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, creating the opposite effects of what he desired. In this bizarre disclosure, rather than exculpating Libby, Wolfowitz incriminates him; for this story is damning evidence of Libby's state of mind — that he knew he was engaged in wrongdoing in leaking the identity of a CIA covert operative, Valerie Plame Wilson, to two reporters, Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time magazine, and in vouchsafing it to White House press secretary Ari Fleischer for the purpose of his leaking it to the press, which he promptly did. ...

If Wolfowitz remembers the story, and it's credible, so Libby must recall it too. Therefore, he must also have known that his defense was based on false premises contrary to what he understood to be right and how he had acted in the past. He sent his attorneys to court to make a case he consciously knew was wrong from his own prior experience of having protected a national security asset from exposure. One can only wonder if Libby ever told his lawyers the story that Wolfowitz has recounted or whether he misled them, too.

In science fiction fandom, we call this sort of thing "Gerberization," after Les Gerber, a fan active in the 1950s and 60s:

In his early teens, in the pages of CRY OF THE NAMELESS, Les defended someone so ineptly and to such excess that "to Gerberize" became the fannish verb defining this practice while "to be Gerberized" meant having the practice performed on you.

Poor Scooter Libby: Paul Wolfowitz thoroughly Gerberized him. With a friend like that, who needs enemies?

(via Avedon Carol)

Why — and How — Blogging Matters

The Huffington Post published a speech on blogging given by Jay Rosen to the International Communication Association last month. Here is the money quote:

The most famous words ever written about freedom of the press are in the U.S. Constitution: "Congress shall make no law..." But the second most famous words come from the critic A.J. Liebling: "freedom of the press belongs to those who own one." Well, freedom of the press still belongs to those who own one, and blogging means practically anyone can own one. That is the Number One reason why blogs — and this discussion — matter.

With blogging, an awkward term, we designate a fairly beautiful thing: the extension to many more people of a free press franchise, the right to publish your thoughts to the world.

Wherever blogging spreads the dramas of free expression follow. A blog, you see, is a little First Amendment machine.

I've been thinking along these lines for years. I think it is worth adding that if the server that hosts your blog is owned by Google, News Corporation, Six Apart, or any other third party coming between you and your audience, the freedom of the press is theirs, not yours, and they extend it to you only by courtesy. That courtesy can be withdrawn at any time, as we have seen so often.

Bush's Secret Plans for Massive Escalation in Iraq

Hearst Newspapers' Stewart M. Powell is reporting that the Bush Administration is developing plans to double the number of combat troops in Iraq by December:

Bush could double force by Christmas

Stewart M. Powell, Hearst Newspapers Tuesday, May 22, 2007

05-22) 04:00 PDT Washington — The Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in Iraq this year, an analysis of Pentagon deployment orders showed Monday.

The little-noticed second surge, designed to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq, is being executed by sending more combat brigades and extending tours of duty for troops already there.

The actions could boost the number of combat soldiers from 52,500 in early January to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year if the Pentagon overlaps arriving and departing combat brigades.

Separately, when additional support troops are included in this second troop increase, the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000 — a record-high number — by the end of the year.

The numbers were arrived at by an analysis of deployment orders by Hearst Newspapers.

This additional escalation in boots on the ground in Iraq, despite the current overextension of American armed forces, will be obtained by further extensions of duty tours by currently deployed units and overlapping the tours of duty of the units rotated in to take their place. This approach to extending combat manpower is the moral equivalent of a big-box retailer like Wal-Mart juicing its cash flow by delaying payments to its creditors — who have no recourse if they wish to continue doing business with the giant customer on whom their own livelihood depends. It would be the moral equivalent, that is, if it weren't for the fact that more boots on the ground in Iraq means more American deaths for no good purpose except perhaps to gratify the President's ego.

Bitter Feud Divides Historians of Buchanan Administration

Jimmy Carter's declaration that George W. Bush is the worst president ever highlights a deep division among scholars of American political history. Historians who emphasize in their studies the administration of James Buchanan, the 15th president of the United States are immersed in a bitter feud.

On one side are historians who have pinned their professional careers upon the study of the worst president in the nation's history The misdeeds and failures of George W. Bush have undermined their standing in the historical community. "For decades, our guy has been Number One" says an Ivy League historian who prefers to remain anonymous. "Now he's no longer Number One. I know younger Buchanan guys who simply aren't going to get tenure. It's tragic."

Pitted against them are Buchanan's actual supporters, historians who have found Buchanan's reputation as the nation's worst president to be a stigma that marks their own careers. One Buchanan partisan has been quoted as enthusiastically saying "Bush 43 is the best thing for Buchanan scholarship since the Harding Administration!"

Academic squabbles have long lifetimes — as long as those of their participants. We may not find out who shall prevail in this conflict among Buchanan scholars for a generation.

James Comey's Testimony Limns Presidential Felonies

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee in its investigation of the growing scandal at the Department of Justice. Comey's testimony shed new light on yet another scandal that has been sitting on the back burner for years now: illegal wiretapping and eavesdropping by the National Security Agency at the direction of the Bush Administration.

By now all political junkies know about the dramatic bedside scene at George Washington Hospital where then-Attorney General John Ashcroft lay ill and under sedation. Comey testified that he and FBI Director Robert Mueller raced to the hospital to fend off Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card, who were on their way to secure Ashcroft's signature on a document that almost certainly was the finding that the NSA eavesdropping program was legal. Comey got there first and held the fort until Mueller arrived. When Gonzales and Card got there, Ashcroft roused himself from his stupor to tell the White House staffers where they could put that unsigned document.

But the drama appears to be distracting people from the real issue. Here's how Glenn Greenwald puts it:

Amazingly, the President's own political appointees — the two top Justice Department officials, including one (Ashcroft) who was known for his "aggressive" use of law enforcement powers in the name of fighting terrorism and at the expense of civil liberties — were so convinced of [the NSA eavesdropping program's] illegality that they refused to certify it and were preparing, along with numerous other top DOJ officials, to resign en masse once they learned that the program would continue notwithstanding the President's knowledge that it was illegal.

The overarching point here, as always, is that it is simply crystal clear that the President consciously and deliberately violated the law and committed multiple felonies by eavesdropping on Americans in violation of the law. [emphasis in the original]

Greenwald and Josh Marshall are the go-to guys for this story. Go to them and read all about it.

Johanna Draper Carlson, Superhero Comics, and the Hegemony of Sexism

Comics blogger Johanna Draper Carlson is attracting attention by belaboring what may seem to be an obvious point: superhero comics are written for and marketed to boys, not girls. She has been saying it again and again, and seems to think that discussing sexism in superhero comics is a waste of time.

Quite naturally, Carlson's point of view is undergoing much rebuttal.

I read Carlson as saying, "Of course superhero comics are sexist, silly! That's a fact of life; you can't change it; and you're a fool for even trying." What she is arguing is that the hegemony of sexism is inflexible and irresistable.

I wonder how old she is — I think it is a near-certainty that she was born after 1970, and there's a reasonable shot she was born after 1980. I put the line at 1977; which would you take, the over or the under?

I say this because I was born in 1959, and the changes I've seen in my lifetime convince me that while sexism retains its hegemony, despite the feminist movement, it is most assuredly not inflexible, and that fighting it can change it. Which is why noticing and calling out the sexism — the increasing degree of sexism in superhero comics in recent years — is important.

And while crotch shots of Green Lantern are a fun and funny way of making the point, sooner or later what needs to happen is that feminist artists and writers need to produce superhero comics of their own, chock-full of the stuff that jazzes them about superheroes and at the same time consistent with their own values, to be put on their Web sites, self-published, and so on, so that the stuff is out there waiting for the lightning bolt of popularity to strike it. (This may well be happening off my personal radar.)

(via Glaurung)

Did Monica Lewinsky Save Social Security?

Andrew Levine at Democrats Now offers what has to be the best quote of the day:

I’ve long maintained that but for the lovely and zaftig Monica, Clinton would have tried, as Bush later did, to privatize social security. As a Democrat, he might even have been able to pull it off. Thus, unwittingly, she did more good for the country than a thousand Hillarys. Genuinely progressive Democrats should establish Monica Lewinsky Clubs all over the United States!

As you might guess, Levine doesn't like the Clintons very much, but in a very different way than the talk-radio dittoheads don't like them. What he calls "Clintonism" I would be inclined to call "the Democratic Leadership Council."

(via Harry Brighouse at Crooked Timber)

Bush Boogies Down in the Rose Garden

Today is Malaria Awareness Day, and President George W. Bush marked the occasion with a ceremony in the Rose Garden. Performing at the ceremony were Senegalese performers from the West African Dance Troupe. The President and First Lady Laura Bush danced along with the performers. Melissa McEwan at Shakesville has posted a series of mindboggling pictures.

But wait! There's more...! The Huffington Post has the video, ganked from CNN. "It looks like the guy playing him on the Tonight Show," says a CNN commentator.

Yes, these pictures make crystal-clear the truth of what Laura Bush was quoted as saying this morning: No one suffers more than their President and I do."

(via Atrios)

Bush Jokes Now Widely Told

In the wake of 9-11 you couldn't tell a Bush joke without being wrestled to the ground by Secret Service agents. Things have changed. The Washington Post's Gene Weingarten writes:

Then, gradually, liberals began to voice grievances, then moderate Democrats, then liberal Republicans, then moderate Republicans, and now we're seeing uber-conservative hammerheads such as Bob Novak and Rich Lowry using the I-words: "inept" and "incompetent." Foreign heads of state have started to take potshots at Bush when he's standing right next to them, during photo ops.

It's as though we've reached a tipping point. Any day we're going to see Laura in an "I'm With Stupid" T-shirt.

Weingarten follows with a bunch of Bush jokes that I hadn't encountered before. Did he make them up himself? Have the Boys in the Bus been telling these all along?

Here's an example:

Children's book, 73rd printing, revised text

. . . Then out of the box came Thing One and Thing Two,

And Sally and I did not know what to do!

They knocked Sally down, and she fell on her tush.

"I'm Cheney," said one. Said the other, "I'm Bush."

They attacked our four feet, with stompings and bites.

First they chewed on our lefts, then they trampled our rights!

They found Mother's money and flushed it away!

If we go to college, NOW how will we pay?

They smashed up our dishes, our toys and our bikes!

Our globe was on fire, and the golf bag Dad likes!

The mess they were making was torture to see,

"Torture is good," they told Sally and me . . .

(via Lynn Kendall)

What Bush Says to Americans ... What They Hear

Swopa at Needlenose has this to say about how Bush's skills as a communicator impact American's understanding of the war in Iraq:

It's kind of like the famous "Far Side" cartoon I've posted above — the Shrub-in-Chief goes around shouting, "Democrats are traitors because they want to override my presidential powers and help the terrorists by bringing our troops home from Iraq!"

But all the folks at home hear is "Democrats... want to... bring our troops home from Iraq!"

And they think to themselves, hey, that sounds like a pretty good idea to us.

(via Atrios)

CNN Uses the L-Word

CNN Uses L-Word
Originally uploaded by abostick59.


One more sign that the tide is turning: CNN has at long last used the verb "to lie" with Bush Administration officials as its subject. CBS apparently did also, but they seem to have edited it out of their Web site.

There, that didn't hurt, did it? It only took you six years.

(via TalkLeft)

White House Detonates 'Miserable Failure' Googlebomb

Googling the word "failure" once again points to George Bush, because the Bush White House can't do anything right. Some genius working for Tony Scott quoted Bonny Prince Georgie's indignant posturing in response to Congress's passing a military spending bill that mandates a troop withdrawal from Iraq: "Congress's failure to fund our troops will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines."

Google's boffins adjusted their s00pers33kr1t algorithm in January to defuse Googlebombs, including the "miserable failure" bomb pointing to Bush's biography on whitehouse.gov. The tweak did something to deemphasize the text of inbound links in favor of text actually on the page. But the use of the word failure was enough to set the bomb off again.

George Bush can run from his lifetime of failure, but he cannot hide from it.

NB: This means the the Googlebomb that I have proposed, linking John McCain to the Wikipedia page about the Keating Five, should still be effective, assuming enough people take it on, because of course the Wikipedia article, being accurate and truthful, mentions John McCain by name.

(via Steven Schwartz)

Founding Fathers' 1796 Treaty with Tripoli Asserts US Not a Christian Nation

Bubbling up on del.icio.us/popular/ is a posting of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary, drafted by diplomat Joel Barlow in 1796, read aloud on the Senate floor and passed unanimously on June 7, 1797, and signed by President John Adams, who proudly proclaimed it to the nation.

What is getting this treaty lots of attention, on the heels of Blog Against Theocracy weekend (rather tastelessly chosen to be Easter weekend), is that Article 11 of the treaty states:

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Treaties ratified by the Senate are the law of the land. Therefore the law of the land is that the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.

Attention Dominionists: Doesn't the Bible have something to say about "bearing false witness"? I seem to recall that this was carved into a rock that's stashed in a courthouse in Alabama.

How Hard Is It for a Blogger to Get the Word Out?

Avedon Carol writes about what it took to get wider attention to Orrin Hatch's lies about purged US Attorney Carol Lam:

Just as a point of reference: I tried for two days push that story about Orrin Hatch's lies about Carol Lam, and aside from Little Thom, no one seemed to notice. In despair, I tried doing the "diary" post at Kos. Nuthin' — didn't even rate a diary rescue. It wasn't until I noticed the comment counter for the last open thread at Eschaton veering up over 800 and linked to Thom's post for a new thread last night that it got any traction — and then suddenly Kos himself picked it up, and so did Think Progress, Josh Marshall, and Hilzoy. And only today did I hear the story on Sam Seder and Thom Hartmann's Air America shows, even though the original spark for the story was Rachel Maddow's show - and she'd also been trying to push the story.

I'm not saying this as a criticism of individuals, but I thought this was a good story and I have to say I find it frustrating that if Atrios hadn't given me the keys to his rig ages ago, it probably would have disappeared. I really wish I knew a better way to get a story out — this is the kind of thing Peter Daou used to use as a lesson in message spread. The Sideshow is one of the more well-known of the "smaller" blogs, but the story didn't move at all — even though it started on Air America — until it hit Duncan's front page. (It's proliferating, now.)

Avedon pushes story. Avedon guest-blogs it at Eschaton. Story takes off. Hatch winds up with egg on his face and issues a mealymouthed correction. Advantage: Avedon.

Even a year ago, Atrios, Josh Marshall, and Markos Moulitsas could sing about the story in three-part harmony every day for a month, and the only media attention it would get would be from Dan Froomkin. Things are changing, and for the better.

There's a piece of me that is wondering why Avedon is frustrated. She flogged the story for two whole days before it took off. Most of us don't have that sort of blogging mojo.

A repeating leitmotif of blogging, repeated over and over again across the political spectrum and from the A-list to the farthest reaches of the Long Tail, is "They aren't listening to me! What do I have to do to be heard?" It seems to me that Avedon is occupying this role here, and not being fully aware of the ways in which they are listening to her.

Avedon's story highlights, though, one of the issues of the blogosphere as it grows; As its higher reaches get more exposure in the wider world, what mechanisms exist for stories that start in the blogosphere's roots to bring the stories that matter up the trunk and to its higher branches to get that story? How can diarists in Kos's walled garden most effectively have their diaries rescued? How can a C- or D-list blogger craft a post so that the B-list takes notice and passes it up to the A-list? Can the social-networking and folksonomy sites like del.icio.us and Digg play a role to facilitate this? Are there pathologies of the blogosphere that get in the way of information transmission along its pathways?

I have nothing resembling answers to these questions; but it's high time people started thinking about them and discussing them in detail.

Photos Reveal Pelosi Pwns Bush

BAG News Notes shows us this sequence of photographs of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D - California) sharing a quiet word with President George W. Bush, taken last week at the Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner last week:

Photo credits: photos 1, 2 & 4: Jason Reed/Reuters; photo 3: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

I don't suppose we'll ever know what she actually said to him, but we can always hope.

Could this be the real reason Bonny Prince Georgie is laying onto Speaker Pelosi so hard about her trip to Damascus?

(via Elise Matthesen)

NY Times' Adam Nagourney Whitewashes McCain's Campaign Finance Record

Adam Nagourney, writing for the New York Times, put his foot deep into his mouth in an article about John McCain's changing fundraising strategy for his presidential campaign in tomorrow's edition:

Mr. McCain has been identified throughout his career as an advocate of curbing the influence of money in politics, notably as a co-sponsor of a landmark bill limiting political contributions. He criticized Mr. Bush, when the two were opponents in 2000, as leading overly aggressive fund-raising efforts.

McCain got religion about the influence of money in politics only after he took a lot of money in return for exercising his influence. McCain is the last member of the Keating Five, a group of five U.S. senators who received large campaign donations from Charles Keating in exchange for pressuring the Federal Home Loan Bank Board into easing off on its investigation of Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan.

McCain didn't co-sponsor the McCain-Feingold Act out of high-minded principles; it was a desperately theatrical act of contrition to salvage his political career.

Adam Nagourney should be ashamed of himself. Either he knows McCain's shady past, or he doesn't. If he knows, then he's a liar. If he doesn't, then his ignorance is tantamount to incompetence. Why does the Times pay this lummox a salary?

Organizing, Social Activism, Saul Alinsky, and the Netroots - Discussions on TPMCafe

An interesting conversation about social activism and organizing for change is going on over at TPMCafe, the online discussion and debate arm of Josh Marshall's media empire,

Marshall Ganz kicks it off with his post Organizing for Democratic Renewal. Ganz reviews the history of the agents of social change in the United States from the time of de Toqueville to the present day, and he singles out the work of Saul Alinsky from the 1940s onward.

Answering Ganz is Nathan Newman with Progressives, Power & Saul Alinsky Newman stresses the importance of power, and says that many progressives are uncomfortable with the idea of power in a way that Saul Alinsky in fact was not.

Helen Booth also replies to Ganz in Can We Win for Progressive Change? Booth looks at what is happening now to change progressive activism from thirty years of fighting holding actions against growing conservative power to an opening up of opportunity and a flourishing of organizational activity.

Ganz replies to Booth in Staying Connected to Our Moral Sources. Here he re-emphasizes the importance of keeping one's values in mind at all times. "Focusing on advocacy techniques also risks loss of connection to moral foundations and political significance," he writes. "Advocacy that is decoupled from its moral sources and from the project of building organized power can quickly becomes absorbed by the game itself, something we may have fallen into over the last 30 years." (Ganz doesn't mention any names here, but when I read this, I immediately thought of NARAL's endorsement of Joe Lieberman in the last election, despite his procedural maneuvering that allowed key anti-abortion judges onto the Supreme Court. Many people thought that NARAL was putting its status as a Washington player ahead of its actual mission and values.)

Lastly, Chris Hayes weighs in with The Internet, Alinsky and the Bourgeois Revolt. Hayes makes the observation that the best demographic understanding of the Netroots, sketchy though they are, indicate that the Internet's activists are largely prosperous, educated, middle-class, white Americans, with people from minority constituencies participating in far fewer numbers. Will the Netroots' activism advance the agendas of more marginalized groups? Can the people of the margins be brought in?

It's a fascinating discussion about social change in the twenty-first century. Anyone who is interested should read it, including the discussions in the comments.

GSA Administrator Doan 'Honestly Doesn't Remember' Illegal Meetings

Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) pins GSA Administrator Lurita Doan to the butterfly board in his questions about GSA lunchtime brown-bag lunch meetings at which political plans were discussed, in violation of the Hatch Act.

Doan "honestly doesn't remember" asking meeting participants how to help Republicans win elections in 2008, but she doesn't refute the testimony of those participants who claimed that she did so ask. She calls the brown-bag lunches "team-building meetings." Braley retorts, "the only team built is the Republican team."

(via Atrios)

Is Cruelty the Tragic Flaw of George W. Bush?

At the Huffington Post, Paul Slansky uses the unfolding and unraveling of the US Attorney purge scandal to illuminate what he sees as the essential characteristic of the Bush administration that both defines it and contains the seeds of its undoing — if you will, Bush's tragic flaw: Cruelty.

Gonzales and Co. could have just said, "We're firing these people because we can," and that would have been that. ...

But NOOOOOOO! These spiteful sadists, who so revel in causing pain that they can't let a single opportunity pass untaken, had to impugn the fitness of the fired, thus forcing them to defend themselves by attacking their attackers and elevating their dismissals to, as George H.W. Bush was fond of putting it, a media "feeding frenzy." ...

In 1967, the Yale Daily News exposed the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity's penchant for branding pledges with red hot wire hangers. The New York Times picked up the story, which featured a former president of the frat, one George W. Bush, dismissing the resulting "insignificant" wound as "only a cigarette burn" that leaves "no scarring mark, physically or mentally." So, Bush's first quote in the national press was a defense of torture.

What's obvious to all but the willfully blind is that Bush truly enjoys hurting people. His every action is designed to inflict pain, from that loathsome habit of giving people nicknames — hey, media suck-ups, it's not cute, it's contemptuous, a bully-boy saying, "I think so little of you that I'm not gonna call you by your name, I'm gonna call you what I want to call you" — to the cavalier decimation of a nation. Bush's utter heartlessness is breathtaking, though no more so than the mainstream media's craven refusal to even acknowledge it, let alone to truly do its job and relentlessly point out every instance of his wanton malice.

It is not accurate to describe cruelty as George Bush's tragic flaw. The classical conception of tragedy is that of a great person brought down by the imperfection of their character. Because George Bush is so thoroughly and unredeemedly mediocre and inadequate, he cannot be a tragic figure: he lacks even the slightest shred of the greatness needed for the role.

(via Avedon Carol)

It's the Obstruction of Justice, Stupid

Josh Marshall rises above the distractions of 3000-page document dumps and squabbles about subpoenas and exectutive privilege:

Okay, enough. The president fired US Attorneys to stymie investigations of Republicans and punish US Attorneys who didn't harass Democrats with bogus voter fraud prosecutions. In the former instance, the evidence remains circumstantial. But in the latter the evidence is clear, overwhelming and undeniable.

Indeed, it is so undeniable the president hismelf does not deny it. ...

Back up a bit from the sparks flying over executive privilege and congressional testimony and you realize that these are textbook cases of the party in power interfering or obstructing the administration of justice for narrowly partisan purposes. It's a direct attack on the rule of law. ...

It's yet another example of how far this White House has gone in normalizing behavior that we've been raised to associate with third-world countries where democracy has never successfully taken root and the rule of law is unknown. At most points in our history the idea that an Attorney General could stay in office after having overseen such an effort would be unthinkable. The most telling part of this episode is that they're not even really denying the wrongdoing. They're ignoring the point or at least pleading 'no contest' and saying it's okay.

SFGate's 'Bad Reporter' Misuses Torture Image

I had a visceral reaction to Don Asmussen's "Bad Reporter" political webcomic on SFGate this morning.

Spinning off from the the 1984 Apple/Obama ad mashup that's getting attention on YouTube, Asmussen invents a parody mashup of a Purina Dog Chow ad for his first panel. His second panel, representing the author of the mashup, is grotesque and fat-phobic, but doesn't actually push my buttons.

I found the third panel, however, deeply disturbing, angering, painful. It depicts a news story illustrated with one of the Abu Ghurayb photographs, the one where Lynndie England is holding the leash of a prone prisoner. The face of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is photoshopped over England's, and that of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the prisoner's. The caption reads "Harry Reid questioning Alberto Gonzales." (Warning disturbing imagery below the fold)

I'm finding it hard to articulate my anger and disgust at this image. It reminded me of the Joe-Lieberman-in-blackface picture on The Huffington Post and of the picture of Jessica Valenti in a burkha on Pandagon. The commonality I see is that the artist takes an emotionally charged symbol of oppression and suffering of some sort of Other and uses that charge to make a small joke hotter, because a joke that is hotter often seems funnier.

Brownfemipower said it better than I could, about Jessica Valenti in a burkha:

Because it *is* pretty funny isn’t it? The comparing of an asshole to the Taliban. But in Pandagon’s rush to make a cheap joke at the expense of women of color (because good lord, the *real* problem with anti-sex feminists is that they want to turn white women into the OTHER), Pandagon forgot something small but very important: they are feminists from and blogging within a colonizing nation. A colonizing nation that is in the process of bombing the holy hell out of the very women that they find so easy to make fun of.

Yes, we can say, this picture of Reid with Gonzales on a leash is funny, seeing the torturer tortured. But in SFGate's rush to make a cheap joke at the expense of the victims of Bush's war, SFGate forgot something important: they are journalists from and reporting within a colonizing nation that is in the process of bombing the holy hell out of, and continuing to torture and abuse, the war victims that they find so easy to make fun of.

That picture mocks and trivializes the suffering that took place at Abu Ghurayb. It reduces it to the level of the fraternity hazing hijinks to which Rush Limbaugh compared the Abu Ghurayb atrocities.

Shame on SFGate. Shame on Don Asmussen.

Leave NCLB Behind

Matthew Yglesias is blogtopia's (y!sctp!) best and brightest. He's Harvard-educated, and as well as being an A-list liberal blogger, he writes for The American Prospect. He lives in Washington, D.C. He is, in effect, a junior member of the commentariat and will eventually graduate to the weekend talking-head shows as a molder and shaper of opinion.

And he is apparently subject to the ills to which the commentariat within the Beltway is prey. Here he is, writing on the upcoming renewal of No Child Left Behind legislation:

Education Policy for the Paranoid

A lot of people look at the No Child Left Behind Act's requirement of "100 proficiency" and smell a rat; an obviously impossible goal. I would read Richard Rothstein's "'Proficiency for All': An Oxymoron" for a detailed explication of this view. Then many, including Kevin Drum, move from this to a paranoid account of the motives behind the provision. "What incentive does anyone have to label 99% of America's public schools as failures?" he asks, "That's crazy, isn't it?"

Answer: Anyone who wants the public to believe that public schools are failures. This would primarily consist of conservatives who want to break teachers unions and evangelicals who want to build political momentum for private school vouchers. The whole point of NCLB for these people is to make sure that as many public schools as possible are officially deemed failures.

I'll happily agree that this provision seems somewhat ill-advised to me. However, the "secret plot to destroy public schools" account of the whole point of NCLB has some problems. Does Kevin really expect me to believe that this is what Ted Kennedy and George Miller, the law's leading Democratic supporters in the Senate and the House, are up to? These are big-time liberals. Perhaps they're wrong — Kennedy's certainly not above criticism — but it's absurd to think that they're leading agents behind an enterprise whose whole point is to dismantle the public school system.

Why are prominent liberal Democrats identified as supporters of No Child Left Behind? For precisely the same reason that prominent liberal Democrats voted to give Bush war powers in Iraq: They were suckered.

Just about everyone working in the trenches of public education agrees: NCLB sets up schools, even the best schools, to fail. Then it publicly flags them as failures, and cuts them off from resources they need to succeed, so that they fail even harder next time. It is no secret that the conservative agenda is to cripple public education.

It isn't paranoia when they really are out to get you. The Bush Administration is a Control Fraud swindle. Anything they have done, especially if it has a high legislative profile like NCLB, should be presumed to be part of the swindle unless proven otherwise.

I would be a fool to make a medical diagnosis from a blog post, so I won't flat-out say that Yglesias is suffering from Beltway Blindness, the occupational hazard of all Washington pundits that greatly inhibits their ability to see things outside the Beltway as they really are. But I would like to warn him: Matt, try to get out into the real world, spend some time with real people. Just Say No to Cocktail Weenies! You don't want to wind up like David Broder, do you?

Let's You and Him Fight

Want to know why the Democrats backed down on Iran in their military spending bill? It's because of pressure from the Israel hawks of AIPAC. The San Francisco Chronicle buried the lede in a report by Edward Epstein on AIPAC's annual policy conference in Washington. Epstein leads out by describing how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was booed by conferencegoers when she denounced the Iraq war. Scroll down past the booing and past the standing ovation given to Minority Leader John Boehner to find this tidbit:

Aides to top House Democrats said the lobbying group helped force the elimination of a provision that would have required President Bush to return to Congress for a separate vote of authorization before launching any military operation against Iran.

Schwarzenegger and Steroids

Before I got carried away by the excellent news from Washington, I had decided to blog this silly story on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle:

Bodybuilding connection again singes governor

New winner of Arnold Classic reportedly linked to recent pharmacy steroid raids

Carla Marinucci, Edward Epstein, Chronicle Political Writers
Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger personally congratulated the massive, chiseled winner of his signature Arnold Classic bodybuilding competition in Ohio on Saturday and stood by as Victor Martinez was presented with a $130,000 first-place check, a spectacular trophy, a luxury Swiss watch and an "Arnold Classic" jacket.

Just days before, the name of the 34-year-old "Dominican Dominator" – who was caught selling steroids to a New York City undercover police officer in 2004 – appeared in published reports in New York about a major multistate investigation of steroid use related to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. ...

Heaven knows I'm no fan of the Governator politically. As a sometime weightlifter I am much more enamored of Bill Pearl's Getting Stronger than I am of the Governator's The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding. (I have watched and enjoyed several of his movies.)

The fact remains, though, that by its very nature, Arnold Schwarzenegger's career is inextricably linked with steroid use. He has never denied it, and has in fact advocated steroids for bodybuilding in the past, e.g., in his 1974 interview with Barbara Walters. Legitimate or not, steroid use has been a key aspect of competetive bodybuilding for decades.

So the winner of a bodybuilding competition bearing the Governator's name has been linked to steroid use. To grasp one's pearls with one hand, throw bring the back of the other hand to one's forehead, and profess shock that this is so is more than a trifle disingenuous. It's in the same league as professing shock that professional wrestling is fixed.

Should the Governator's name be followed by an asterisk in California political history because he juiced?

It's Morning in America Again

In addition to the Libby conviction, today is the day that Senate Judiciary Committee opened hearings on the recent purge of US Attorneys by the Justice Department. Josh Marshall describes these hearings as the most riveting congressional hearings since Anita Hill testified in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.

Paul Kiel at TPMmuckraker.com writes about a key moment in the hearings:

During his questioning, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked all four prosecutors that if they were told by a witness in an ongoing investigation that he had received a call similar to the one Bud Cummins got from Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, what would they think? All four said that they would investigate to see whether obstruction of justice or witness tampering had occurred.

Yes, that's right: Abu Gonzales's Justice Department has actively engaged in obstruction of justice and witness tampering in response to a political crisis. Not only is the gun smoking, but here are the powder burns, and the spent shell casings are here, here, and here on the floor.

As Josh Marshall puts it, running the administration as a criminal enterprise is much harder when the opposition controls Congress.

Ever since November's elections we have been waiting for the hearings investigating Bush Administration misdeeds to begin. They have begun, and the bombshells are bursting in the air. It's morning in America again. Our long national nightmare is coming to an end.

Josh Speak, You Listen!

"It's hard to imagine that there's anyone in this country not under active federal surveillance who has done more to advance the al Qaeda agenda than Dick Cheney."

What No Republican Wants to Hear

If [New Hampshire State Republican Party Chair] Fergus Cullen has the courage of his convictions, he should go enlist, because they're having trouble meeting their quota. He's young, he's single and he's healthy. If he needs to know where the recruiters are, call me.

— US Representative Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)

(Amusing though this is, doesn't urging your political enemy to place himself in mortal danger to fight a pointless and hopeless war under the command of a malign incompetent qualify as eliminationist rhetoric?)

(via Atrios)

You Just Can't Make Up Stuff This Good

Really, if someone wrote this humorous fiction, it would be immediately recognized as being too pathetically funny — and too heavy-handedly anti-Evangelical — to be plausible parody. But truth is stranger than fiction, and in this case it is more pathetically funny than fiction.

Josh Marshall tells us a richly detailed story about a message sent out under the name of a Georgia state legislator, Republican Ben Bridges that makes an astonishing claim:

Indisputable evidence — long hidden but now available to everyone — demonstrates conclusively that a so-called "secular evolution science" is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate "creation scenario" of the Pharisee Religion. This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic "holy book" Kabbala dating back at least two millennia. Evidence in the URLs below shows conclusively that "evolution science" has a very specific religious agenda and (as with "creation science") cannot legally be taught in taxpayer supported schools according to the Constitution.

The links in the message point to a Web site, Fixedearth.com, "The non-moving Earth & anti-evolution web page of The Fair Education Foundation, Inc."

Yes, that's right: in just one short hotlink we have jumped from Talking Points Memo, soberly discussing affairs of policy and foreign affairs in our nation's capitol, to deep into the wackiest heart of American darkness: the claim that the Earth rotates and that it orbits around the Sun is a lie spread by a conspiracy of Jewish physicists bent on suppressing the truth! The Web site's author supports his claim of the fixedness of the earth by posting photographs of the evidence that clearly shows, despite this obvious nonsense about the Earth rotating, the stars moving around the Earth!

If you enjoy the sport of shooting fish in a barrel with a shotgun, you could spend many happy hours tearing this Web site apart. There is a piece of me that admires the determination and dedication of the man who painstakenly collected all of this evidence and published it on the Web, in the face of all the scorn and abuse to which it has surely opened him.

The visionary behind Fixedearth.com is one Marshall Hall. Hall is married to Bonnie Hall, who is in turn the campaign manager for Georgia State Rep. Ben Bridges.

The message touting this challenge to the constitutionality of teaching evolution science in schools was sent out over Rep. Bridges' signature to a list of legislators from the states of Texas, California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

At least one of these legislators has taken an interest in the idea that Pharisee Religion is the basis of the teaching of evolution science. Texas state representative Warren Chisum, the Republican chair of the Texas state House Appropriations Committee, liked what he read, and deemed it important enough to copy the memo and distribute it to every member of the Texas state House of Representatives.

That's when the fertilizer hit the swamp cooler. The Dallas Morning News coolly reported Wednesday merely that the Fixedearth.com site contained a draft of model legislation to ban the teaching of evolution in state-supported schools. But on Thursday, after the Anti-Defamation League responded strongly to the anti-semitic content of the memo and the Web site to which it pointed, the Morning News was now saying that Chisum was "contrite" about having sent the memo. "The stuff that causes conflicts between religious beliefs, you know, I'd never be a party to that," the Morning News reports Chisum as saying. "I'm willing to apologize if I've offended anyone." The second story adds,

Mr. Chisum said he hadn't looked at the Web site and didn't realize that he was distributing that type of material. He expressed chagrin that he didn't vet the material