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Friday, June 30, 2006 GONE FOR A BIT I had more posts planned, but I never got around to them, and now I'm heading out on a short break. I'll be back on July 8 or (more likely) July 9. Thanks again for dropping by. Happy Fourth. **** By the way, if you're 100% certain that we're facing an enemy capable of destroying the West as we know it, read this. On the other hand, if you're 100% certain our side is winning in Iraq, read this. posted by Steve M. | 2:20 PM | SCRAPBOOKING FOR FASCISM Well, not scrapbooking exactly: Some idiot from Free Republic took a cutesy-wootsy thank-you card, added text to it, and posted it on eBay under the heading "Osama thank you card sent to treasonous NEW YORK TIMES." Bids are up to thirty bucks. Text of card: Billy: Praise be to Allah the most merciful. As I continue to hide in caves, live with real smelly women, and run from the American infidel swine, I don't often receive good news. My heart sunk lower than camel dung when I heard what they did to the Z-man's safe house. Praise be to Allah, may he be enjoying the virgins. May Allah heap rewards on you for your story that leaked what your government was doing to my friends' money. Thanks to you, we have renewed hope, and with Allah's great power, we will drive the infidels out of our sacred land. We will beat them like a mullah would beat his Persian rug or teenage daughter who dared to show her knee. As Allah is my witness, when it is time for us to strike again deep into the heart of the infidel, we will do our best not to destroy your New York Times building. Just in case, my brother in law sells insurance. You two need to talk. Don't worry, I've told him about you. He won't slit your throat. Please pass friendly greetings for me to The Murtha, The Perky One, The Perjuring One, and The One Who Flies on a Broom. May Allah forgive me, but I could tell you stories about how I defile the One Who Flies on a Broom in my dreams. She is so hot and would look wonderful in a burqa. Your pal forever, Osama Thirty bucks. Someone would pay thirty bucks for that. Right-wingers sure know the value of a dollar, don't they? (By the way, for those not hep to the lingo, "The One Who Flies on a Broom" is Hillary. "The Perjuring One" is probably Kerry, and "The Perky One" is, if I'm not mistaken, Katie Couric; it is generally assumed on the right that Couric consults regularly with Michael Moore, Dan Rather, Pinch Sulzberger, John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, and Ward Churchill on plans to hand America over to the dark lords of Islamofascistan. I can't believe I know all this.) posted by Steve M. | 12:56 PM | BLOCK THAT METAPHOR Lead paragraphs of Richard Brookhiser's current column in The New York Observer: In 2001, scientists exploring murky river bottoms in Indonesia found a new creature, the mimic octopus, normally a bland, brown mollusk about two feet long. But by manipulating its tentacles and changing color, it can imitate deadly sea snakes and lionfish. The two Democratic Party resolutions on Iraq that the Senate rejected last week were mimic octopuses, efforts to imitate a foreign policy. But perhaps Team Bush is also a mimic octopus, promising us a war on terror while leading us into uncertainty instead. A mimic octopus? I don't think that's what Team Bush is. What's the sea creature that, when attacked, goes after its attacker, then gets bored and goes after some completely unrelated creature, gets pummeled, winds up beached on the shore, and uses all this as a sexual display? What creature is that? That's what Team Bush is. I'm sure I'll think of the name eventually. posted by Steve M. | 8:27 AM | Thursday, June 29, 2006 HOW CAN WE MISS YOU WHEN YOU WON'T GO AWAY? From the Palm Beach Post: Gov. Jeb Bush has used his recently revived nonprofit foundation to pay a former campaign finance director and two former campaign aides. Although Bush has said his Foundation for Florida's Future is not a way of keeping his political machine intact after he leaves office early next year, recent disclosures on the foundation's Web site show that it paid: • Nearly $99,000 to Ann Herberger, Bush's campaign finance director during two campaign and a longtime political fund-raiser for his family. • Nearly $70,000 to Neil Newhouse of Washington-based GOP Public Opinion Strategies group for polling last October. • $48,000 for "management services" to a lobbying and public-affairs firm whose staff includes Mandy Clark and Mandy Fletcher. Both worked on Bush's reelection campaign and on his brother's presidential reelection campaign. • $23,500 for "legal services" from the Washington law and lobbying firm Patton Boggs. • $20,000 in February to GOP political strategist Adam Goodman's The Victory Group Inc. ...Bush also has tapped three "Rangers" -- fund-raisers who brought in at least $200,000 for President Bush's 2004 campaign -- to sit on the foundation's board.... ... when asked about the subject of the $70,000 poll, Bush said, "I'm not going to tell you." Bush had said he resurrected the foundation to campaign for a constitutional amendment to allow the state to pay for private- and religious-school tuition for children in failing schools.... He's running for president -- it's only a question of when. And if he runs, you know he'll win. Even if he loses. (Via DU.) posted by Steve M. | 11:30 PM | PROMISES MADE, PROMISES KEPT -- NOT The Bush administration has been unable to muster even half of the 2,500 National Guardsmen it planned to have on the Mexican border by the end of June. As of Thursday, the next-to-last day of the month, fewer than 1,000 troops were in place, according to military officials in the four border states of Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona.... Some state officials have argued that they cannot free up Guardsmen because of flooding in the East, wildfires in the West or the prospect of hurricanes in the South.... Bush's plan for stemming illegal immigration by using National Guardsmen in a support role called for 2,500 troops to be on the border by June 30, and 6,000 by the end of July. But National Guard officials said Thursday that they probably won't reach the 2,500 target until early to mid-July and won't make the 6,000 deadline, either. Also, they said the number of troops will fluctuate from week to week over the course of the two-year mission.... --AP The Bush administration: the gang that couldn't pander straight. posted by Steve M. | 6:30 PM | DEATH THREAT Well, I wondered who'd say this first, and of course it's the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: The Supreme Whores are in dire need of Intervention by Lynch Mob™. The next McVeigh will have his and other right-wing blogs bookmarked. posted by Steve M. | 3:15 PM | "WE HATE AMERICA NOW," SAY RIGHT-WING SOLDIERS Check out the reaction to the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision by Oak Leaf at Polipundit: (FLASH) Instrument of Surrender Signed by SCOTUS This morning, the United States of America signed the instrument of surrender with al Queda and all affiliated terror organizations. The signatories representing the United States were Anthony Kennedy, Steven Bryer, John Paul Stevens, Ruth Ginsburg and David Souter. The reason for this unconditional surrender was that while the Supreme Court Justices "support the troops" and particpate in drives to send old magazines to soldiers, they do not "Trust the Troops."... I wasted 12 months of my life in Afgahnistan for this. Support by the military in the GWOT is going to collapse. UPDATE: This opinion will go from a ripple to a wave throughout the uniformed military. We were slapped by John McCain last December. Today, we are slapped by the Supreme Court. This afternoon, I am removing myself from the volunteer list at Human Resources Command-St. Louis to re-deploy. I will not be the only one. UPDATE: I have received three e mails so far from guys in Afgahnistan on my ".mil" e mail. The sentiment is as follows: $%^& the supreme court. They have no idea what we are going through. Major xxxxxxxxx My third tour for what? SHIT!!! Captain xxxxxxxxxx I want to go home to my family now. Master Sergeant xxxxxxxxx Unbelievable -- the Supreme Court wants the provisions for dealing with suspected terrorists to stay within the rule of law and these guys want to take their ball and go home. (But maybe I shouldn't blame them -- after all, the right-wing noise machine, including mid-Atlantic headquarters in the White House, has been telling them for years that the only alternative to Bush dictatorship is total surrender to Pure Evil. It's understandable that these guys don't think there's anything in the middle.) posted by Steve M. | 1:39 PM | SUPPORTING THE TROOPS You remember the Bush administration's recent little slip-up on personal privacy: Personal data on about 17.5 million veterans, including their birthdates and Social Security numbers, was stolen last month when a burglar took a laptop containing the information from the home of an analyst for the Department of Veterans Affairs.... And you probably also remember that the Bushies vowed to make amends: The Veterans Affairs Department offered to pay for a year of free credit monitoring for the veterans, which it said would cost about $160.5 million. You may not remember exactly how the Bushies wanted to make amends: Last week, the department said it would cover most of that cost by taking money from accounts that pay health and other benefits for veterans. Some people got upset at that. Democrats in particular complained. But not to worry! Now we're assured that the cost of this isn't going to come out of other veterans' programs: ... In a letter on Wednesday, Rob Portman, director of the White House Office of Management, recommended paying for the monitoring by taking about $130 million from a food stamp employment and training program, a farmers' assistance program, student loans and a program for young people released from prison. Ah, much better, right? The Bush administration: champions of ordinary Americans. Not like those damn elitist Democrats. **** UPDATE: The VA says the stolen laptop has been recovered and (per AP) "there is no evidence that anyone accessed Social Security numbers and other data on the equipment." What do you think happens next? Think they'll try to charge the vets for the data protection that's already been extended to them? Think they'll try to cut the $130 million from the other programs anyway? **** UPDATE: More bumbling was revealed at hearings today: Under House questioning, the VA also: Disclosed it had lost sensitive data in at least two other cases. In Minneapolis, a VA employee put a laptop containing data for more than 60 veterans in the trunk of his car, which was then stolen. There have been two reports of identity theft from that incident, according to Buyer. In Indianapolis, a back-up tape containing files on as many as 16,357 legal cases involving veterans was lost from a VA regional office. Nicholson said authorities and the VA inspector general were investigating, and those whose information was lost would be provided credit monitoring. D'oh. posted by Steve M. | 12:25 PM | REPUBLICANS: WE ARE ALL ANN COULTER Peggy Noonan today, writing about Hillary Clinton: She does not seem like someone who would anguish and weep over sending men into harm's way. ... Maybe a lifetime in politics has bled some of the human element out of her. Maybe there wasn't that much to begin with. Maybe she thinks that if she wept, the wires that hold her together would short. Peggy Noonan today, writing about The New York Times: Frank Rich is running around with his antiwar screeds as if it's 1968 and he's an idealist with a beard, as opposed to what he is, a guy who if he pierced his ears gravy would come out. What the hell is this? Noonan, the high and mighty defender of human modesty and dignity, the one who threatened that if another airport security person touched her she'd shriek, "You are embarrassing the angels" -- suddenly she's Don Rickles? Suddenly she's doing fat jokes? Once only Ann Coulter, among mainstream pundits, declared that political opponents deserved death on charges of treason; now everyone's doing it. Coulter's use of the term "infallibility" as a weapon is now entrenched in our political language. And now this -- politics reduced to cheap riffs on appearance and personal affect -- from someone who used to pretend to be above such rhetoric. Coulterism is now utterly, irreversibly mainstream. **** On the other hand, Noonan is still Noonan. Here she is in her attack on Hillary today, citing presidents who, presumably unlike Hillary, have grieved at having to send soldiers into combat: LBJ felt anguish; there are pictures of him, head in hands, suffering. Bush the Elder wept as he talked, with Paula Zahn, about what it was to send men to war. Bush the Younger would breastfeed the military if he could. That last sentence? Eeeeuuuuw. posted by Steve M. | 8:11 AM | Wednesday, June 28, 2006 Somewhere in hell, Joseph Goebbels is saying, "Nice work." posted by Steve M. | 6:09 PM | NEW NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST Well, Coulter's back at #1. But Ron Suskind's #5, Greg Palast is #11, and another Calvin Trillin verse collection from The Nation (this ine's called A Heckuva Job) is #13. And Al Gore's slipped a wee bit on the paperback list, but just to #2. (This list will be up on the Times site over the weekend.) posted by Steve M. | 5:31 PM | I'm hearing buzz about a protest in front of the NYTimes soon. Stay tuned. --Rumor posted at Free Republic Oh, man ... where's Diane Arbus when we really need her? posted by Steve M. | 3:48 PM | WHERE ARE ALL THE STAND-UP DEMOCRATS? They exist in one place, and one place only: in the fevered imaginations of right-wingers. ...If they start prosecuting journalists, it’ll lend surface credibility to all the whining about creeping fascism. Some independents will respond to that, and we’re in a tough enough position electorally right now that that’s not a risk that should be taken lightly. Would you prefer having an obstructionist Democratic Congress passing presidential censure resolutions to mark the occasion every time one of these articles is published? Oh, that's rich. Democrats in Congress actually defending newspapers that expose illegal usurpations of power? And maintaining enough party discipline to get such resolutions passed? Stop, you're killing me. **** The guy quoted above also says, Fifty percent of the population is fighting a war on Bush -- and, well, there it is: half of America is guilty of treason, according to right-wing logic. (To right-wingers, "war on Bush" is shorthand for "war against the war against terrorists." No criticism of means and methods is permitted.) One might imagine that if we could get to 50.1% we'd get to determine what's in the best interests of the country, but these are parlous times, so I assume we simply can't let democracy get in the way. **** (Source of quotes above: comment at the link time-stamped June 23, 2006 at 9:20 PM.) posted by Steve M. | 1:15 PM | OF COURSE TERRORISTS KNEW ABOUT THE BANK SURVEILLANCE On Hardball last night, Chris Matthews discussed the subject with Ron Suskind, author of The One Percent Solution (link via the Mahablog): ...MATTHEWS: Well let me just tell you what you said [in your book]. "Eventually not surprisingly," and we're talking about electronic transfer surveillance, "our opponents figured it out. It was a matter really of deduction. Enough people got caught and a view of which activities had in common provides clues as to how they may have been identified and apprehended. We were surprised it took so long," said one intelligence official. So in other words, the bad guys figured out how we were catching them. SUSKIND: Right, it's a process of deduction. After a while, you catch enough of them, they're not idiots. They say, "Well, we can‘t do the things we were doing." They're not leaving electronic trails like they were. MATTHEWS: So what's Cheney beefing about here? SUSKIND: The fact is -- look, I'm sure... MATTHEWS: Or President Bush. That the bad guys found out about it before the "Times" did. SUSKIND: I'm sure the program is of some value, but I think the White House ought to be straight with people, that this has been a thing of diminishing return for several years now, this kind of electronic surveillance. MATTHEWS: ... you knew that the bad guys, al Qaeda and there are other people like them around the world trying to hurt us, had resorted to carriers, to physical people, human beings, carrying stuff around. They used to use the Western Union, which I find fascinating, like reporters used to just file dispatches, they used Western Union and then they used electronic transfers. And then they got smart because they knew we were watching them. SUSKIND: And the common knowledge in the tops of the intelligence community. Over time, they got smart. They adapted.... MATTHEWS: Do you think, Ron Suskind, that when the president got up today and got excited about this enough to go on television and blast "The New York Times," that he knew that the al Qaeda forces are against us in the world, already knew about this thing months ago, they didn't need to pick up "The New York Times" this weekend. SUSKIND: I'm not sure what the president knew or didn't. But the fact is this is common knowledge, what's in this book at the top as I see it, the intelligence community, I'm sure he must have known that. Newsweek's Evan Thomas, also on the show, concurred: THOMAS: ... I just don't think that this disclosure -- I think as Ron Suskind was saying earlier, I think al Qaeda has known for a long time, has assumed that we -- the United States government does it kind of thing. After all, we've trumpeted the fact that we do track the terrorist money, that that's one of our tools, so I'd be very surprised if the bad guys didn't know -- didn't already know that they were doing it. They didn't need "The New York Times" to tell them that. Note (as Matthews does) that Suskind wrote what he wrote in his book well before the appearance of the recent newspaper stories. Now, you don't have to join me in donning the tinfoil hat, but I'm leaving mine on -- I still think it's quite possible the administration wanted to leak knowledge of a secret program that had outlived its usefulness, in order to attack the Evil Liberal Media. posted by Steve M. | 10:02 AM | Tuesday, June 27, 2006 I approve: A week after the GOP-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Senate Democrats on Tuesday vowed to block pay raises for members of Congress until the minimum wage is increased. "We're going to do anything it takes to stop the congressional pay raise this year, and we're not going to settle for this year alone," Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said at a Capitol news conference. ... During the past nine years, as Democrats have tried unsuccessfully to increase the minimum wage, members of Congress have voted to give themselves pay raises -- technically "cost of living increases" -- totaling $31,600... I have an idea: Let's link congressional pay raises to the minimum wage permanently. If Republicans want to block a minimum-wage increase, fine -- they get no pay raise. No minimum wage increase for a decade or two? No pay raise for a decade or two. And what happens if some future libertarian-leaning Congress manages to abolish the minimum wage altogether (which I wouldn't rule out)? Well, if the minimum pay for ordinary citizens is left strictly to the discretion of employers, then the same thing should happen to congressional pay: Leave it to the discretion of Congress's employers, i.e., the voters. Put congressional pay up for a vote. I don't think most members would like the result of that. **** Democrats are fighting for a minimum-wage increase and improvements in the Medicare drug benefit while Republicans have devised a Contract with America's Right-Wing Lunatic Fringe: ... One [GOP bill] would ... strip the Supreme Court and other federal courts of jurisdiction over cases challenging the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance. The legislation is a response to a 2002 Appeals Court ruling that held the pledge is unconstitutional because of the presence of the words "under God." ... Another measure would block the payment of attorney fees in challenges to the display of the Ten Commandments in public areas and other, similar church-state lawsuits. An abortion-related proposal would require that some women seeking to end their pregnancies be informed the procedure "will cause the unborn child pain" and they have the option of receiving drugs to reduce or eliminate it. A separate measure would ban human cloning, a prohibition that cleared the House in the previous Congress. ... One [bill] would prohibit the confiscation of legal firearms during national emergencies, barring practices such as the one that officials said arose in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit.... House Republicans also said they would hold a vote on legislation to apply gambling laws to the Internet. Good grief. If you went out into the general public and asked Americans to rank-order these issues along with, say, 125 other issues, in order of importance, these would all rank way down in the triple-digit range. Yet on the wingnut lunatic fringe -- trust me, I lurk at Free Republic and Lucianne.com all the time -- these are the pressing issues of our time. In Wingnuttia, they'd rather see these laws passed than see cancer cured. (Well, maybe not the gambling law -- I don't know where the hell that came from. Oh, wait -- yes I do.) Sneering mainstream pundits denounce Democrats as selling out the unwashed crazies every time they move an inch to the left of right-center -- yet the GOP panders to far-right crazies this way and no one says a word. Court-stripping, Joe Klein? Unrestricted guns in a disaster zone, Mark Halperin? Your thoughts? posted by Steve M. | 10:50 PM | A constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration died in a Senate cliffhanger Tuesday, a single vote short of the support needed to send it to the states for ratification a week before Independence Day. The 66-34 vote in favor of the amendment was one less than the two-thirds required.... --AP So the Republicans finally scared up a problem to which their electoral success in November could conceivably be a solution -- "Just vote for one more of us and we can stop those filthy hippies who burn maybe five flags a decade!" (They were hoping for such an outcome with the gay-marriage vote, but they fell so far short of two thirds that I'm not sure it's even mathematically possible to elect enough Republican senators this year to rescue America from the gay barbarians.) But Is this actually going to work? With everything that's going on right now, are there people for whom the deciding factor in casting their vote will be one hairy guy every two or three years burning a piece of cloth? Well, to point out the obvious, we've voted based on stupider things, and for higher office. posted by Steve M. | 7:27 PM | ...What was Rush doing in the Dominican Republic? Why was he returning from a country known for its thriving sex trade, with a bottle of Viagra that didn’t have his name on it? ... what was Rush doing with it, whether he went there to get it or took it there with him, in a country described back in 2001 as a place "where the pimps roam free"? ... ...What was Rush doing with a Viagra prescription in a country that one christian aid organization described as having the highest number of people working in the world working in the sex trade, including children? ... Interesting question from Terrance at The Republic of T. **** There have always been consequences to having sex. Always. Now, however, some of these consequences are severe: debilitating venereal diseases and AIDS. You can now die from having sex. It is that simple. If you look, the vast majority of adults in America have made adjustments in their sexual behavior in order to protect themselves from some of the dire consequences floating around out there. For the most part, the sexual revolution of the sixties is over, a miserable failure. Free love and rampant one-night stands are tougher to come by because people are aware of the risks. In short, we have modified our behavior.... The fact is that abstinence works every time it is tried.... I have stated elsewhere in this book, and I state it again here, that there are many people who wish to go through life guilt-free and engage in behavior they know to be wrong and morally vacant. In order to assuage their guild they attempt to construct and impose policies which not only allow them to engage in their chosen activities but encourage others to do so as well. There is, after all, strength in numbers. Promiscuous and self-gratifying, of-the-moment sex is but one of these chosen lifestyles.... --Rush Limbaugh, The Way Things Ought to Be posted by Steve M. | 2:36 PM | INFALLIBILITY Gee, I'm so glad those principled conservatives wouldn't stoop to using a victim to score political points: Bush To Jog With Soldier Who Lost Both Legs In Iraq President George W. Bush is set to go jogging Tuesday with a soldier who lost both legs to a roadside bomb in Iraq. Weather permitting, the president will take a spin on the White House track with Army Staff Sgt. Christian Bagge. The 23-year-old Eugene, Ore., native was riding in a convoy near Kirkuk a year ago when a blast tore apart his Humvee.... In 2004, Bush jogged with a soldier who lost a leg to a landmine in Afghanistan and met the president at Washington's Walter Reed Army Hospital.... Oh, forget I brought this up -- Ann Coulter has explained that the moral distinction is that if Bush does it, it's OK: [ALAN] COLMES: ... President Bush ... ran a commercial using a little girl who lost her mother during 9-11 and used that and that helped sell him to the American people. Was that using 9-11? COULTER: No, you refuse to grasp the distinction -- COLMES: Was that using the tragedy to promote a political agenda? COULTER: No. He's the commander in chief. Do you think FDR didn't run on World War II when he was running for president? He's the commander in chief.... COLMES: So it's OK to use someone's tragedy if you're the commander in chief -- COULTER: You never see conservatives doing this. COLMES: -- and running for office? COULTER: No, he's not using someone's tragedy. He's talking about the war on terror, which we are in the middle of -- He's the commander in chief. Got it. (Via DU.) posted by Steve M. | 12:38 PM | Maybe we're not all that close to theocracy if even Brit Hume of Fox News thinks this Utah Republican is making a fool of himself: As if beating a five-term congressman wasn't hard enough, John Jacob said he has another foe working against him: the devil. "There's another force that wants to keep us from going to Washington, D.C.," Jacob said. "It's the devil is what it is. I don't want you to print that, but it feels like that's what it is." Jacob said Thursday that since he decided to run for Congress against Rep. Chris Cannon, Satan has bollixed his business deals, preventing him from putting as much money into the race as he had hoped. Numerous business deals he had lined up have been delayed, freezing money he was counting on to finance his race.... Asked if he actually believed that "something else" was indeed Satan, Jacob said: "I don't know who else it would be if it wasn't him. Now when that gets out in the paper, I'm going to be one of the screw-loose people." ...Jacob explained that, when people try to do something good, there are frequently forces that align to stop them. "We have a country that was created by our Heavenly Father and it was a country that had a Constitution and everyone who came to America had strong faith. If that can be destroyed that would be the adversity. . . . Whether you want to call that Satan or whoever you want to call it, I believe in the last eight months I've experienced that." You have to admit -- most big-league pols still aren't quite this bad. Bush, for instance, doesn't say Satan hid the WMDs. (At least he doesn't say that in public.) Though I wish I didn't have the sinking feeling that, in a generation or two, all U.S. politicians will talk this way. Then again, maybe Brit posted a snickering link to this story only because he's standing up for GOP incumbency protection -- the congressman Jacob is trying to unseat, Chris Cannon, is a fellow Republican. (Cannon's been deemed not conservatively correct on immigration. Alas for Jacob, his hard-line immigration stance is undermined somewhat by possible immigration-law violations on his part. I guess those must have been Satan's fault, or maybe it was Satan's fault that he got caught.) Jacob is still supported by the Godfather of Immigrant-Bashing, Congressman Tom Tancredo, and Pat Buchanan's sister Bay, who've endorsed Jacob via their Team America PAC. (I love the fact that Tancredo's PAC has the same name as that movie by the guys who created South Park.) **** UPDATE, 6/28: Jacobs lost the primary. Satan was not available for comment. posted by Steve M. | 10:10 AM | Monday, June 26, 2006 I guess it was fun while it lasted... Mass. Defaults Reaching 'Epidemic Level' At least three sources are calling attention to rising foreclosures in the state of Massachusetts today. ForeclosureS.com, a California-based real estate investment advisory firm and publisher of foreclosure property information, reported today that foreclosure activity in Massachusetts was reaching an epidemic level and clogging the court system. "Our Massachusetts research team spent four hours on June 8 with clerks and judges in the District, Superior, and Land Courts and learned that the courts have a 30-45 delay in even issuing docket numbers for foreclosures across the state," said ForeclosureS.com president Alexis McGee. She went on to say that her information indicated that foreclosure filings for Massachusetts in the month of May were at the highest level for a single month since a similar financial crisis in the mid 1980's. ... May 2006 foreclosure filings are 105 percent higher than May 2005 and over 165 percent higher than May 2004 levels. "We expected foreclosure rates to increase again this year, but the levels we are tracking outdistance our earlier predictions," said Jeremy Shapiro, president and co-founder of ForeclosuresMass.com. "It is clear that many homeowners, especially those with adjustable rate mortgages, are being pushed closer to the edge as interest rates rise at such a consistent clip. We may be witnessing a 'perfect storm' scenario where a flat real estate market, higher interest rates, rising energy costs and specialty loans are causing significant difficulty for thousands of Massachusetts property owners." ... As Paul Krugman has noted, maybe 30 percent of Americans live in parts of the country where housing prices have gone up the way they have until recently in Massachusetts -- but the value of homes in those areas is more than half the total market value of homes in the U.S. (because the houses are so pricey). And now -- in Massachusetts, at least -- the bubble seems to be bursting, very rapidly. And the housing market doesn't have to implode everywhere to have a widespread effect. (Via DU.) posted by Steve M. | 11:25 PM | Hey, Richard Cohen -- ... anger [is] festering on the Democratic left.... I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era.... The hatred is back. I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during antiwar demonstrations.... -- any chance you'd be willing to write about a real lynch-mob mentality? 'Denver Post' Publishes Letter That Advocates Beheading Editors, Pundits Did The Denver Post go too far in publishing a letter to the editor today that advocates the beheading of editors, commentators, and politicians who have criticized the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay?... The letter was written, ironically, by a resident of Littleton, Colo., site of the bloody Columbine High School shootings in 1999.... "Why have those who have continually howled at our treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo met the recent kidnapping and sadistic and brutal murders of our two young soldiers with deafening silence?" the letter began. "Where is your outrage now?" It then stated that the U.S. "should" behead 100 prisoners in retaliation, as well as " editors, commentators, college professors and left-wing congressmen who would suddenly break their silence to come out in support of these enemy jihadists. We need to stop listening to these sanctimonious hypocrites who apply the rules of war only to our side." ... It'd be nice if you would, though I won't hold my breath. **** UPDATE: I'm way behind on my cultural references. Until now I've avoided reading this Lee Siegel "blogofascism" blather: I am overwhelmed by the intolerance and rage in the blogosphere. Conscientiously criticize, in the form of a real argument, blogospheric favorites like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and the response isn't similar criticism, done conscientiously and in the form of an argument, but insults, personal attacks, and even threats. This truly is the stuff of thuggery and fascism..... And on and on. But our friend from Littleton, for all we know, doesn't even own a computer. Lee Siegel, your thoughts? posted by Steve M. | 4:38 PM | I'm with TBogg: I don't think this Meghan Daum column about Ann Coulter in the L.A. Times is funny or smart. Sure, it may seem clever to say this about Coulter: imagine having a wit so dry that even you haven't yet realized you're a satirist. But then Daum goes on to quote Davey Horowitz and a few others: On "Larry King Live" last week, David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, declared Coulter "much funnier" than Bill Maher and Al Franken combined and decreed "Godless" "absolutely" a work of satire. Republican strategist Karen Hanretty appeared on "The O'Reilly Factor" a week or so earlier and characterized Coulter's work as "tongue-in-cheek." Even a few common citizens got the joke. A letter to the editor of the Arizona Republic criticized columnist Leonard Pitts for showing "his own ignorance by failing to recognize Coulter as a satirist, in the mode of Jonathan Swift." Here at home, a reader responded to L.A. Times columnist Tim Rutten's suggestion that Coulter was essentially in the pornography business with: "Coulter isn't selling pornography, she's selling satire — and doing it with great success." It would be helpful if Daum understood that "satire" is not an exact synonym for "comedy" -- satire is an assault on a target that's intended to be taken seriously, even as it gets laughs. Horowitz and the two letter writers say "satire" as if that means we can just shrug off what Coulter says as nothing but madcap fun. That's wrong -- satire is meant to wound. There's really no such thing as an unwitting satirist. Coulter knows exactly what she's doing: she's engaging in deadly-earnest character assassination, and she's doing it with punchlines (a) because that gives her the out of "It was a joke -- can't you take a joke?" and (b) because getting a mob to laugh at her targets is sick fun. Feel free to call that satire, but don't tell me that it's all harmless. Then again, Daum gets off on the wrong foot right from her opening paragraph: LIFE IS HARD for satirists. Like high school poets or people who get aroused when they put on furry mascot costumes, no one understands them. Back in 1729, Jonathan Swift was almost universally reviled when he suggested, in "A Modest Proposal," that the antidote to urban squalor was to eat the children of poor Irish immigrants and use their skin to make "admirable gloves for ladies and summer boots for fine gentlemen." That's absolute bollocks: Swift became a national hero of the Irish with his Drapier Letters (1724) and his bitterly ironical pamphlet A Modest Proposal (1729), which propounds that the children of the poor be sold as food for the tables of the rich. --The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition ...in the 1720s he resurfaced as a champion of the Irish people.... 'A Modest Proposal' (1729), a bitterly ironic tract in which he suggested that the starving Irish sell their children as meat, further enhanced his reputation as 'the Hibernian Patriot.' --biography at the Web page for the Knopf edition of Gulliver's Travels Swift's readers understood what satire is. Daum doesn't. posted by Steve M. | 1:29 PM | MATH IS HARD! From today's New York Times: ...Despite the violence that has plagued Iraq since the American occupation began three years ago, its schools have been quietly filling. The number of children enrolled in schools nationwide rose by 7.4 percent from 2002 to 2005 ... The increase, which has greatly outpaced modest population growth during the same period, is a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy landscape ... ... According to American government estimates, Iraq's population grew by about 8 percent to 26 million from 2002 to 2005. ... Just to summarize: 7.4 percent "greatly outpaces" 8 percent. Got it. (Actually, the overall numbers given elsewhere in the story do seem to indicate a big jump, 27%, in attendance at secondary and high schools, but an increase in primary-school attendance, 5.7% -- 3.5 million to 3.7 million -- that doesn't even keep pace with the population increase. I don't know where the hell 7.4% comes from. Would it kill The Greatest Newspaper in the World to get hold of the raw numbers and hand them to an intern on 43rd Street who knows how to check them with a calculator?) posted by Steve M. | 9:51 AM | IRAQ: WHAT'S THE BIG WHOOP? YOU COULD BE RITUALISTICALLY BEHEADED ANYWHERE Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists mutilated two U.S. soldiers, and an al-Qaeda-linked group now claims to have killed four Russian hostages, beheading two on video. Fortunately, according to Lorie Byrd at the righty blog Wizbang, that's not a particularly bad thing: Those politicians and journalists who use such media-driven atrocities as an indication of the overall situation in Iraq or of the status of the War On Terror (and there were many of them last week) mislead their readers/viewers/voters. Iraq is a very dangerous place, at least certain cities there are very dangerous, but what happened in Iraq could just as easily have happened down the road from me in Jacksonville or Fayetteville, NC. It would probably even be easier to snatch a couple of soldiers or Marines in one of those two U.S. cities, while they are going about their business in town -- banking, shopping or stopping off for a beer or two. Just look at what Jeffrey Dahmer did in Wisconsin, and there was only one of him. There really isn't much to keep a group of determined jihadists with the proper weapons from doing the same to someone, even a soldier or sailor or Marine, here in the States. Yeah -- probably seven or eight people have been ritually beheaded in this country while you were reading this sentence. But the goal is not to convince the American public that the U.S. military is failing in Jacksonville or Fayetteville, NC, is it? The goal is not to create public pressure on politicians to cut off funding or to call for a pullout of the troops based at Fort Bragg or Camp LeJeune. Evidently, the U.S. media does not grasp this concept because if they did so many would not have reported the heinous, barbaric murders of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas Lowell Tucker in the context of the status of the war effort in Iraq. Instead they would have focused on the desperation those in the jihadist movement must be experiencing to have to sink to such depths of depravity and brutality in order to draw attention to their cause, which is experiencing major setbacks every day. They might also have done a few pieces about how a movement claiming religious motivation could employ such sub-human methods. If such terrorist attacks were reported in that context, there wouldn't be as much point carrying them out in the first place either though, would there? OK, I have an idea. Let's just ask the troops to put down their weapons and allow themselves to be captured, tortured, and killed. Maybe if the "MSM" sees enough of this kind of brutality it will finally get the message: the torture and barbarity is a sign of failure and desperation, and the more of it there is, the clearer it is that we're winning. posted by Steve M. | 8:06 AM | Sunday, June 25, 2006 ANN COULTER, DEADHEAD Well, maybe that explains her personality. She insists in this interview with Jambands.com that she never did drugs at any of the dozens of Dead shows she attended over the years -- but maybe she just thinks she never did drugs. Maybe somebody dosed her chardonnay with some reject hallucinogen from a particularly bad batch, and the result is the cackling character assassination addict we know today. By the way, she lists a lot of fellow Deadheads of her political persuasion, and they sound just utterly charming: Jim Moody, MIT grad and libertarian attorney (and Linda Tripp's lawyer); Gary Lawson, former Scalia clerk.... I believe the great New York subway vigilante Bernie Goetz was a Deadhead. And the first one she mentions is Peter Flaherty, President, National Legal And Policy Center Fun fact about Peter: he once issued a press release denouncing Lehman Brothers for apologizing for participating in the slave trade. I'm not joking. He thought that was a bad thing to do. So much for the spiritual power of the Dead. (Sorry, they're OK, but I've never been a real fan.) posted by Steve M. | 10:13 PM | THIS AGAIN Jeff Jacoby in today's Boston Globe: In truth, ... most Americans have never thought about what it would mean if the terrorists really did win -- if militant Islamists were to succeed in their quest for political control of the United States. It isn't something that elites in academia, government, or the media generally like to talk about, for fear of being branded racist or "Islamophobic." I'll speak just for myself, Jeff: it's true -- I haven't really thought about what it would mean if the terrorists won. But it's not out of "fear of being branded racist or 'Islamophobic.'" It is, rather, for the same reason that (in the words of the noted philosopher Wayne Campbell) I haven't really thought about what it would mean if monkeys flew out of my butt. In both cases, I haven't considered the possible consequences because these things will never happen. What's inspiring Jacoby is The Book That Won't Die, Robert Ferrigno's novel Prayers for the Assassin, which envisions an Islamicist takeover of the U.S. I've written about this book a few times, and I'm sticking with what I said before: Islamicists might destroy this country, but they'll never conquer it. Maybe they could lay waste to America, given access to enough weapons -- but Americans who are fighting with one another now would unite and fight a repressive Islamist regime. We'd have our government's weapons, individual weapons, and vastly superior knowledge of the terrain. We would not lose. Now, I'll confess I still haven't read this damn book, but every detail I learn about it makes it sound more and more preposterous. This is what Jacoby says Americans would meekly accept: ... university professors can lose their jobs for being "insufficiently Islamic," cellphone cameras are illegal, and men can only dream of "loud music, cold beer, and coed beaches." ... In one scene, ... a cabbie tunes his radio to a popular call-in show called "What Should I Do, Imam?" As Ferrigno's heroine listens from the back seat, a caller asks whether there are any kinds of music that one can listen to without running afoul of Muslim law. "Good question, my daughter," the imam answers. "The Holy Qur'an is quite clear that music is forbidden...." ...Life is especially hard for women, who may not leave their homes without written permission from a male relative, and even then risk being whipped by the Black Robes -- the Sharia-enforcing religious police -- if a lock of hair slips out from beneath their head scarves, or they neglect to keep their ankles covered.... Oh, good grief. We have 200 million privately owned firearms in this country right now, we have 5,300 operational nuclear warheads, and we'd just put up with no rock or country or hip-hop, no bare midriffs, and no brewskis? Give me a freakin' break. But, as I've said before, this scenario seems plausible to right-wingers because the moral dictates of Islamicists are kind of appealing to the right. Jeff Jacoby is no exception. He writes: [Ferrigno] is also quite aware of Islam's appeal. Many converts to Islam find comfort and reassurance in its moral certainty and firm standards, and Ferrigno underscores the point. "Don't tell me about the old days, girl, I lived through them," says one character, a top government official. "Drugs sold on street corners. Guns everywhere. God driven out of the schools and courthouses. Births without marriage, rich and poor, so many bastards you wouldn't believe me. A country without shame. Alcohol sold in supermarkets. Babies killed in the womb, tens of millions of them.... We are not perfect, not by any measure, but I would not go back to those days for anything." This is Jacoby thinking, "Gee, that does sound appealing ... prayer in the schools, no abortion, no brews at the convenience store -- that's the world I've been trying to create for years in my columns!" I don't think Jacoby, or most of the other people who think Ferrigno's scenario is plausible, are (as Atrios would put it) "bedwetters" or" whiny-ass titty babies." They don't fear this. They find it rather inspiring. It's normal to enjoy fictional villainy while also recognizing it as evil, but most villains to whom we respond violate taboos. Ferrigno's villains impose taboos -- and that gives readers like Jacoby a vicarious thrill. posted by Steve M. | 2:30 PM | This week, we learned that the most powerful unelected, unappointed Republican in America, a man with extremely close ties to the Bush White House, was a bagman for the notorious felon and sleazebag lobbyist Jack Abramoff. We also learned that a top liberal blogger responded to an embarrassing story about a colleague by recommending that other bloggers not write about it -- a recommendation that was sometimes ignored. Guess which one of these circumstances prompted David Brooks to resort to 1940s crime-beat language in his Sunday New York Times column? The Keyboard Kingpin, a k a Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, sits at his computer, fires up his Web site, Daily Kos, and commands his followers, who come across like squadrons of rabid lambs, to unleash their venom on those who stand in the way. And in this way the Kingpin has made himself a mighty force in his own mind, and every knee shall bow. This is what I'm always talking about -- the ability of the GOP noise machine to turn all prominent Democrats into dangerous freaks, people with pathological or neurotic personalities who can't be trusted anywhere near power, while our side can't ever seem to do the same to even the worst Republicans. (Notice that Kos, in this passage, is both dangerous -- a "Kingpin" -- and ludicrous -- "a mighty force in his own mind." Getting both of these notions into one paragraph makes this a classic dangerous-freak narrative.) This kind of Republican attack happens all the time -- frequently, as in this case, just as the subject is making his way onto the national stage (think of the snickering about Wesley Clark just as he entered the presidential race in '04 or the pre-convention hit jobs on Kerry); the Republican attack machine defines the person before the person can define him- or herself. There's never a slip-up on our side without this kind of response. You know the famous line of political advice, ascribed to James Carville --"When your enemy is drowning, throw him an anvil." Well, it's as if Republicans are able to monitor every body of water on the planet, and whenever a Democrat, or even someone who can be associated with Democrats (Jacques Chirac, Ward Churchill), stumbles, they're immediately on the scene with half a dozen anvils and a video camera, broadcasting the flailing in the water to the nation and saying, "Can we really afford to have people like this as lifeguards?" Meanwhiler, here's Grover Norquist, a felon's bagman, about whom Brooks chose not to write: In Jack Abramoff's world, prominent Washington tax-cut advocate Grover Norquist was a godsend. Moving money from a casino-operating Indian tribe to Ralph Reed, the Christian Coalition founder and professed gambling opponent, was a problem. Lobbyist Abramoff turned to his longtime friend Norquist, apparently to provide a buffer for Reed. The result, according to evidence gathered by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, was that Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform became a conduit for more than a million dollars from the Mississippi Choctaw to Reed's operation, while Norquist, a close White House ally, took a cut.... Here's more: ... Blunt e-mails that connect money and access in Washington show that prominent Republican activist Grover Norquist facilitated some administration contacts for [Jack] Abramoff's clients while the lobbyist simultaneously solicited those clients for large donations to Norquist's tax-exempt group. Those who were solicited or landed administration introductions included foreign figures and American Indian tribes, according to e-mails gathered by Senate investigators and federal prosecutors or obtained independently by the Associated Press. "Can the tribes contribute $100,000 for the effort to bring state legislatures and those tribal leaders who have passed Bush resolutions to Washington?" Norquist wrote Abramoff in one such e-mail in July 2002. "When I have funding, I will ask Karl Rove for a date with the president. Karl has already said 'yes' in principle and knows you organized this last time and hope to this year," Norquist wrote in the e-mail.... And here's how plugged in Norquist is to the all-GOP federal government: The "Wednesday Meeting" of Norquist's Leave Us Alone Coalition has become an important hub of conservative political organizing. President Bush began sending a representative to the Wednesday Meeting even before he formally announced his candidacy for president. "Now a White House aide attends each week," reported USA Today in June 2001. "Vice President Cheney sends his own representative. So do GOP congressional leaders, right-leaning think tanks, conservative advocacy groups and some like-minded K Street lobbyists. The meeting has been valuable to the White House because it is the political equivalent of one-stop shopping. By making a single pitch, the administration can generate pressure on members of Congress, calls to radio talk shows and political buzz from dozens of grassroots organizations. It also enables the White House to hear conservatives vent in private -- and to respond -- before complaints fester...." And yet Kos is the big thug. And, to Brooks, the big story. I keep thinking that the power is the left blogosphere needs is that it can be part of a message machine to rival that of the Republicans -- we generate a lot of ideas and messages, and if our side had a better radio/TV/print/Internet/think tank infrastructure, what bloggers do could feed into it much more effectively and help change Americans' perceptions. But that's not what people like Kos and Jerome Armstrong are stressing -- they think the left blogosphere needs to focus on electoral politics. (I think: If that's such a good approach, why aren't the Republicans doing it? They know how to win elections.) So I've disagreed with Kos-ism, and haven't been a Kossack. First I want that damn message machine. And now it seems to me that Kos and Jerome are victims of the far superior one the Republicans have built. posted by Steve M. | 10:54 AM | Saturday, June 24, 2006 OUR TIMETABLE IS GOOD, YOUR TIMETABLE IS TREASON From The New York Times: The top American commander in Iraq has drafted a plan that projects sharp reductions in the United States military presence there by the end of 2007, with the first cuts coming this September, American officials say. According to a classified briefing at the Pentagon this week by the commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the number of American combat brigades in Iraq is projected to decrease to 5 or 6 from the current level of 14 by December 2007. Under the plan, the first reductions would involve two combat brigades that would rotate out of Iraq in September without being replaced. Combat brigades, which generally have about 3,500 troops, do not make up the bulk of the 127,000-member American force in Iraq.... Oh. So I guess all that talk about timetables "emboldening the enemy" is no longer operative, right? (Yeah, I know: according to the rest of the article, this is just a plan for a timetable. It's supposed to be conditional -- we'll only do it if, among other things, the insurgents mellow out. But why, if I were an insurgent, would I think I could continue to fight while waiting out a Democratic timetable but not think I could stop fighting temporarily while waiting out a Bush administration timetable?) posted by Steve M. | 11:53 PM | LEAKING IN ORDER TO DISCREDIT THE LEAK RECIPIENT: THE MARK OF ROVE? Yesterday I said it seemed possible that the Bush administration leaked the story of U.S. surveillance of financial records to the press in order to arouse GOP voters' anger at "liberal media traitors." Would the Bushies leak a story just so they could discredit the recipient of their own leaks? Well, there is this story from Karl Rove's past, assuming it's true: In 1999, St. Martin's Press published a critical biography of Bush titled "Fortunate Son". The book quoted an unnamed "high-ranking advisor to Bush," who revealed Bush's 1972 drug bust.... Hatfield later revealed that his source was none other than Karl Rove.... [L]eaking the story to Hatfield essentially discredited the story and sent it into the annals of conspiracy theory. Soon after the book was published and just as St. Martin's was preparing a high profile launching of the book, the "Dallas Morning News" ran a story revealing that Hatfield was a felon who had served time in jail. In response, St. Martin's pulled the book. "When the media stumbled upon a story regarding George W. Bush's 1972 cocaine possession arrest, Rove had to find a way to kill the story. He did so by destroying the messenger," says Sander Hicks, the former publisher of Soft Skull, which re-published "Fortunate Son." "They knew the stories of Dubya's cocaine and drink busts would come out, so they made certain that it would come out of the mouth of a guy they could smear," said journalist Greg Palast, who wrote the forward to the final edition of the book. The circumtances aren't exactly comparable, but Rove knows his base considers The New York Times as sleazy as many mainstream observers found Hatfield. Would the Bushies accuse their enemies of violating privacy when the violation was their own doing? Well, there's this story from Karl Rove's past: Rove Allegedly Bugged His Own Campaign Office To Distract From A Debate. During the 1982 Clement campaign, Rove discovered an electronic listening device in his campaign office. While an FBI investigation was inconclusive, rumors later swirled that Rove in fact had planted the bug himself in order to distract from an impending debate. The local DA concluded that "Rove had hired a company to debug his office, and that the same company had planted the bug,"? according to one unnamed DA's office source. [The Nation, 3/5/2001, New Yorker, 5/12/2003, Washington Post, 10/7/1986] Karl Rove is a small-time political dirty trickster who's been given access to all the levers of power of the imperial presidency. It's like giving Beavis and Butt-head the nuclear launch codes. And it's even worse than that, because Rove got access to this power at a moment in history when allowing the White House to do just about anything seems justified in a lot of people's eyes. I think this is a sleazy local political operator's tawdry little dirty trick -- but it's done in an incredibly high-stakes game in which the chump doesn't lose a local political race, he could lose his life. As TBogg notes, the righties are actually talking about vigilante murders of journalists: I truly believe that the only tangible impact should be the judicious and righteous exercise of our Second Amendment rights against [New York Times reporters Eric Lichtblau] and [James] Risen. We are at war and I can easily make a perfectly legal case for the termination of saboteurs by any means necessary. Even if nobody takes a shot at these guys now, Politics Rove Style will persist (it's so successful, after all), and sooner or later some operative (Rove or an emulator of Rove) is going to paint a target on a political enemy's head and someone's going to hit that target. **** NOTE: None of this is meant to imply that Rove leaked this story himself. But you know the man's rep -- he leaves no fingerprints. posted by Steve M. | 12:01 PM | Friday, June 23, 2006 This story was in today's New York Times: Iran Aiding Shiite Attacks Inside Iraq, General Says Iran has stepped up its support for violent Shiite groups in Iraq and is providing the weapons and training so they can attack American troops, the top American commander in Iraq said Thursday. "They are using surrogates to conduct terrorist operations in Iraq both against us and against the Iraqi people," the commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., told reporters. "It is decidedly unhelpful." He said that the Iranian assistance had increased since January and that this had emerged as an important factor in weighing further reductions in American forces in Iraq.... "We are quite confident that the Iranians, through their covert special operations forces, are providing weapons, I.E.D. technology and training to Shia extremist groups in Iraq," the general said.... Here's what I find strange about this: only a week ago, we were being told we should believe in the genuineness of a letter found in Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's safe house, which suggested that Zarqawi was deceiving us about Iranian ties to the insurgency: The question remains, how to draw the Americans into fighting a war against Iran? ... it is necessary first to exaggerate the Iranian danger and to convince America and the west in general, of the real danger coming from Iran, and this would be done by the following: 1. By disseminating threatening messages against American interests and the American people and attribute them to a Shi'a Iranian side. 2. By executing operations of kidnapping hostages and implicating the Shi'a Iranian side. 3. By advertising that Iran has chemical and nuclear weapons and is threatening the west with these weapons.... 5. By declaring the existence of a relationship between Iran and terrorist groups (as termed by the Americans).... I had my doubts about the authenticity of that letter, as I said when it was released. (I like what one of my commenters said: "We need to start making body armor from terrorists' papers and passports. Those things are indestructible.") But it was widely assumed to be genuine. (It was very comforting to think so, because the main thrust of the letter was that Zaqawi was saying, "We suck as terrorists.") So, which is it? Are the Iranians involved in the Iraqi insurgency? Or is the Zarqawi letter legit? posted by Steve M. | 11:46 PM | KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A purported spokesman for the Taliban said Friday that the militant group had beheaded four Afghans it accused of spying for U.S.-led forces. The men were abducted at gunpoint by armed men and their headless bodies were dumped in the southern province of Zabul and found Thursday and Friday, said Ali Khail, a spokesman for the provincial governor. --AP Kinda gives a whole new meaning to the expression "Iraq the Model," doesn't it? posted by Steve M. | 3:34 PM | U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta submitted his resignation effective on July 7, White House spokesman Tony Snow said on Friday. --Reuters In case you've forgotten, he's another person whose death Ann Coulter has envisioned with glee: According to initial buoyant reports in early February, enraged travelers rose up in a savage attack on the secretary of transportation. Hope was dashed when later reports indicated that the irritated travelers were actually rival warlords, the airport was the Kabul Airport, and Norman Mineta was still with us. Yeah, being beaten to death by a mob is suitable punishment for the crime of making blondes go through airport security. posted by Steve M. | 3:30 PM | THE NATIONAL ENTERTAINMENT/SECURITY STATE I don't know about you, but the existence of this event -- which is going on as I type this -- creeps me out:  RushLimbaugh.com explains the event: Starting at 10AM ET, live from Washington, Rush moderates a discussion featuring the brains behind "24" -- Joel Surnow, Robert Cochran and Howard Gordon -- your favorite "24" cast members, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Heritage Foundation analysts, more... So this is cross-marketing for Rush, 24, the Heritage Foundation, and the Bush administration. Oh, and it's taking place at the Ronald Reagan Building in D.C., which is owned by the General Services Administration. Your tax dollars at work! I know Taylor Marsh insists that Jack Bauer is a Democrat, but it looks as if he's a wholly owned subsidiary of the GOP. posted by Steve M. | 11:00 AM | Well, you probably know about this by now: Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.... --New York Times The administration is furious about the fact that this has come to light, right? Well, yes, that's what we're told: Administration officials ... asked The New York Times not to publish this article, saying that disclosure of the ... program could jeopardize its effectiveness.... On Thursday evening, Dana Perino, deputy White House press secretary, said: ... "The president is concerned that once again The New York Times has chosen to expose a classified program that is working to protect our citizens." Am I crazy to suspect that that's not exactly true? Am I crazy to suspect that the administration might want this and other privacy stories out there now? Consider the reaction in the right blogosphere, which is as expected: I'll resist the temptation to say Ann Coulter was right about where Timothy McVeigh should have gone with his truck bomb. I'll say only this: it's becoming increasingly clear to me that the people at the New York Times are not just biased media folks whose antics can be laughed off. They are actually dangerous. It's hard to imagine that this program could still be effective. If it worked at first, as the article suggests it did, surely terrorists would have changed their methods of shifting money around to escape detection. So it's reasonable to think that the program isn't very useful anymore. Except as a spur to right-wing rage. I think the administration is feeding stories like this to the press right now as part of the '06 campaign. The GOP base doesn't differentiate between the media and the Democratic Party -- they're all treasonous lefties. But you still have to fire the base up, give them a reason to vote Republican. Feeding a story like this to the Times and then denouncing it as an attack on national security in a time of war would certainly accomplish that. posted by Steve M. | 8:15 AM | Thursday, June 22, 2006 A PORN FANTASY ...for right-wing rage junkies, from the comments at the righty blog Wizbang: Lets take a page from Uncle Joe Stalin's playbook: punishment battalions. The Soviets would take political prisoners and put them in the front line against the Germans. Behind them were better armed secret police troops. The politicals were given a choice, fight the enemy and perhaps survive or try to turn tail and face certain execution. So lets draft the left wing scum, send them out to fight the terrorist scum ( with bolt action rifles)and shoot on sight any deserters or stragglers. Dead terrorists, dead lefties. A win-win situation and inspired by one of the chief commie gods Joseph Stalin. Posted by: cubanbob at June 22, 2006 11:25 AM Here, cubanbob -- you need a towel? Get used to this, folks -- the eliminationist rhetoric from the right is only going to escalate. If we're lucky, no one will actually act on it. And no, the escalation won't mean they'll stop calling us "unhinged." posted by Steve M. | 10:23 PM | Amnesty International on the killings of Privates Menchaca and Tucker: Amnesty International Deeply Disturbed by Reports of Brutal Torture of 2 U.S. Soldiers Wed Jun 21, 1:36 PM ET Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA's executive director, made the following statement in response to the alleged killing and torture of two U.S. soldiers in Ramadi, Iraq: "Amnesty International, first and foremost, extends its sincerest condolences to the families of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker for their tragic loss. We are deeply disturbed by reports that these two soldiers were brutally tortured. These reports, if proven true, may rise to the level of war crimes. Amnesty International condemns the torture or summary killing of anyone who has been taken prisoner and reiterates that such acts are absolutely prohibited in international humanitarian law. This prohibition applies at all times, even during armed conflict. There is no honor or heroism in torturing or killing individuals. Those who order or commit such atrocities must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law without recourse to the death penalty. Amnesty International again calls on armed groups in Iraq to immediately cease all executions, torture or ill-treatment of people. Armed groups, like other parties to the conflict in Iraq, are required to comply strictly with international law and remain accountable for their actions." Amnesty International released a report, Iraq, In Cold Blood: Abuses by Armed Groups, in July 2005. For a copy of the report, contact the AIUSA press office at 202-544-0200 ext. 302. Gee, I thought groups like this only complained about Americans. Right-wingers told me so -- it must be true, right? Here's that AI report "Iraq in Cold Blood." Sample passage: Thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed and thousands more injured in attacks by armed groups in the past two years.... Many of the killings of civilians were carried out in a perfidious way, with suicide bombers or others disguising themselves as civilians, or were marked by appalling brutality -- as in the cases of hostages whose deaths, by being beheaded or other means, were filmed by the perpetrators and then disseminated to a wide public audience. Many of these killings by armed groups, in Amnesty international’s view, constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity. You may not like the measured tone of all this, or the aversion to the death penalty, but this is the tone AI takes in its reports as a rule, including the reports that upset right-wingers, such as this one on torture in Iraq's prisons (which, by the way, also condemns the targeting of civilians by insurgents as "crimes against humanity"). posted by Steve M. | 5:57 PM | REALITY IS FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN'T HANDLE CONSERVATISM If we ever wondered how right-wingers see the world, well, this quote from a right-wing blog tells us everything we need to know: I notice in the news today a lot about Gitmo and the treatment of terrorists. I notice a lot about how bad the economy is (which is an out and out lie). I notice a lot of interviews with democrats like hillary and john kerry about how we need to get out of the ‘quagmire’ of Iraq. I notice there are reports about the outrages our troops are doing to the poor terrorists. I see NOTHING about our Soldiers being captured, tortured, having their eyes gouged out, and finally being murdered by decapitation. That by itself is enough for a declaration of war. I guess it never occurred to this blogger to, y’know, read a newspaper, or turn on a news broadcast, or go to a news site on the Internet, given that those are considered among the best ways to find a news story, if a news story is what you’re looking for. Here are 3,490 Google News hits for "Menchaca" (the surname of one of the soldiers in question). And here's yesterday’s front page from an obscure paper called The New York Times, which had as its lead story "U.S. Says 2 Bodies Retrieved in Iraq Were Brutalized." Naah -- if you're a right-winger, you pay no attention to any of that. It doesn't exist. Instead, you declare war. On your countrymen. For failing to do something they've actually done. Rage junkies. Blinded by rage. (Via Hotline's Blogometer.) posted by Steve M. | 1:40 PM | LIES THE WINGNUTS TOLD ME First, the truth: Condoms Found to Block a Virus Harmful to Women The consistent use of condoms protects against human papillomavirus, a cause of warts and cervical and other female cancers, researchers are reporting today. In the study, which independent experts said was the most conclusive to examine the role of condoms in preventing infection with the virus, women whose male partners used condoms every time they had sexual intercourse had less than half the rate of infection as did women whose partners used condoms less than 5 percent of the time. ..."The findings are definitive," said Dr. James R. Allen, president of the American Social Health Association, an organization in Research Triangle Park, N.C., dedicated to the prevention of sexually transmitted infections. ... no malignant or precancerous cervical lesions were detected in 32 patient years at risk among women reporting 100 percent condom use by their partners. That compared with 14 such lesions in 97 patient years at risk among women whose partners did not use condoms or who used them less consistently. The study "provided a very clear answer" to the question of the protective benefits of condoms and papillomavirus infection, said Dr. Allen of the American Social Health Association.... **** And now, the lies: HPV differs from other STDs in that condoms offer virtually no protection against infection. According to John V. Dervin, M.D., associate specialist in radiology and assistant clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco, "Human Papilloma Virus, thought of as the 'seed' of cervical cancer, is a regional rather than localized disease, and its infectivity is not contained by condoms." --Independent Women's Forum article, September 22, 1999 Led by then-Rep. Tom Coburn (R-OK), a physician and staunch proabstinence opponent of government-funded family planning programs, [social conservatives] were successful in attaching an amendment to the House version of the Breast and Cervical Cancer Treatment Act mandating that condom packages carry a cigarette-type warning that condoms offer "little or no protection" against an extremely common STD, human papillomavirus (HPV), some strains of which cause cervical cancer. Although this directive was removed before the bill was enacted, Coburn and his allies were able to secure a requirement that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reexamine condom labels to determine whether they are medically accurate with respect to condoms' "effectiveness or lack of effectiveness" in STD prevention. --Guttmacher Report, Alan Guttmacher Institute, March 2003 In its first public response to a 2000 law, the FDA is proposing a revised set of condom labeling requirements.... After five years of review, the agency is proposing adding the following messages on condom packages: ... * Condoms "cannot protect" against herpes and HPV, which can be transmitted by skin-to-skin contact outside covered areas. Still, "using condoms every time" will provide "some benefit." ... --HHSWatch, November 2005 Condoms, whether used correctly and consistently or not, do not prevent the spread of HPV. --Family Research Council article archived July 13, 2005 The reality is that HPV can exist outside the area covered by a condom, so condoms aren't 100% effective in preventing transmission. But clearly they lower the odds. A lot. And a lot of people wanted (and still want) you to think otherwise. posted by Steve M. | 11:07 AM | "MESSAGE COORDINATION? GLAD TO HELP OUT, KARL." "WHY, THANK YOU, ADAM." Lovely to see that Karl Rove got Jim Rutenberg and our old friend Adam Nagourney to retype a big fat list of GOP talking points on the war and plop them in the middle of this article, "Rallied by Bush, Skittish G.O.P. Now Embraces War as Issue," which is the lead story on the New York Times Web site as I write this: ...meetings were followed by the distribution of a 74-page briefing book to Congressional offices from the Pentagon to provide ammunition for what White House officials say will be a central line of attack against Democrats from now through the midterm elections: that the withdrawal being advocated by Democrats would mean thousands of troops would have died for nothing, would give extremists a launching pad from which to build an Islamo-fascist empire and would hand the United States its must humiliating defeat since Vietnam. Republicans say the cumulative effect would be to send a message of weakness to the world at a time of new threats from Iran and North Korea and would leave enemies controlling Iraq's vast oil reserves, the third largest in the world.... "The fundamental question," [Republican chairman Ken] Mehlman said, "is if you think the enemy is more brutal than before, is the answer that you should surrender?" And it's curious that this happens at the exact moment when Senator Santorum and Congressmen Hoekstra are suddenly rising up to talk about very old, degraded chemical weapons in Iraq as if they're newly discovered, dangerous WMDs and thus a justification for the war. And the radio ad I mentioned in my last post -- the one from the allegedly "non-partisan, not-for-profit organization" Move America Forward? Well, that ad was one of three MAF announced yesterday. The other two are a TV ad and a radio ad ticking off all the nasty terrorists and dictators we've rolled up in Iraq (and Afghanistan), and all the lovely schools and roads we've built. (Watch the TV ad at YouTube here.) Clearly the Republican effort to make the Iraq War seem like an excellent idea moved forward on several fronts in the last day or two. And good old Adam Nagourney did his bit, telling us that Republicans are saying, "Yeah, I support the war -- you got a problem with that?" Getting this story into the Times was as big a part of the GOP reelection effort as the MAF ads or the Santorum/Hoekstra announcement. Nice of Nagourney and Rutenberg to make it so easy. posted by Steve M. | 7:24 AM | Wednesday, June 21, 2006 INFALLIBILITY New from the pro-Bush propagandists at Move America Forward: Radio Ad 1: "Winning the War Against Terrorism" Description: Features Joseph Williams, father of Marine Michael Jason Williams who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Williams asserts that the war in Iraq has helped to make America safer. Also features Deborah Johns, mother of Marine William Johns, who is returning to Iraq for his THIRD tour of duty. Urges the American people to pull together as a nation to show the terrorists that we are in this fight to win. 60-second radio advertisement. But wait! Didn't Ann Coulter tell us that only liberals use spokespeople like this? And didn't a whole lot of pundits and conservative operatives tell us she was right? So how can this ad even exist? (MP3 of the ad here.) posted by Steve M. | 11:36 PM | NEW NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST Just e-mailed out a couple of hours ago. The good news: Ann Coulter drops to #2, after only one week at #1. The bad news: She's been replaced at #1 by Tim Russert. (Oh, but Al Gore's #1 on the paperback list..) (The list will be up at the Times Web site over the weekend.) posted by Steve M. | 7:50 PM | TABLOID FRONT PAGES The New York Daily News today:  The New York Post today:  Why does Rupert Murdoch hate the troops? posted by Steve M. | 4:52 PM | Sure glad we're letting the free market work its magic: Drug Prices Up Sharply This Year Prices of the most widely used prescription drugs rose sharply in this year's first quarter, just as the new Medicare drug coverage program was going into effect, according to separate studies issued yesterday by two large consumer advocacy groups. AARP, which represents older Americans, said prices charged by drug makers for brand-name pharmaceuticals jumped 3.9 percent, four times the general inflation rate during the first three months of this year and the largest quarterly price increase in six years. ...Over all, AARP said, higher prices mean that the cost of providing brand-name drugs to the typical older American, who takes four prescription medicines daily, rose by nearly $240 on average over the 12-month period that ended on March 31. ... a separate study, by Families USA, a patient advocacy group, found similar inflation rates among brand-name drug prices. This isn't a bug, of course -- it's a feature: Congress barred [Medicare] from negotiating prices with drug makers when lawmakers devised the new so-called Part D drug program. Good thing, too. Look what happens you do give the government the power to negotiate drug prices: The federal Department of Veterans Affairs, which is able to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical makers, is paying 46 percent less for the most popular brand-name drugs than the average prices posted by the Medicare plans for the same drugs, [Ron] Pollock [of Families USA] said. Can't have that in Medicare! Heaven forfend! posted by Steve M. | 1:53 PM | I'm afraid Republicans just won the '06 midterm elections: In a defeat for President Bush, Republican congressional leaders said Tuesday that broad immigration legislation is all but doomed for the year, a victim of election-year concerns in the House and conservatives' implacable opposition to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants. I really hoped the old arm-twisting Bush would reemerge and force the House and Senate to compromise -- I thought that would at least seal the doom of Senate Republicans, who'd be blamed for the "sellout" by the GOP's immigrant-bashing zealot base. Apparently that's not to be. I know, I know: polls says Americans favor a balanced approach. But emotion drives voting decisions, and there's a lot more anti-immigrant emotion in this country among voters than pro-immigrant emotion. From gun control we know, or ought to know, that an obsessed minority can easily trump a non-obsessed majority. As a regular lurker at right-wing Web sites, I can assure you that anti-immigrant zealots are as passionate as Second Amendment absolutists. In typical shameless fashion, Republicans plan to attack Democrats for essentially agreeing with a Republican president that illegal immigrants aren't Satan incarnate: Some officials added that Republicans have begun discussing a pre-election strategy for seizing the political high ground on an issue that so far has served to highlight divisions within the party. Among the possibilities, these officials said, are holding votes in the House or Senate this fall on additional measures to secure the borders, or on legislation that would prevent illegal immigrants from receiving Social Security payments or other government benefits. "The discussion is how to put the Democrats in a box without attacking the president," said one aide, speaking on condition of anonymity. That, and not fact-finding, is obviously the point of this: ... House Republican leaders said Tuesday that they would hold summer hearings around the nation on the politically volatile subject.... "We are going to listen to the American people, and we are going to get a bill that is right," said Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, who said he had informed Mr. Bush of the plan.... Hmm -- I wonder which hotly contested congressional districts those hearings are going to be held in. And gosh, Republicans seem to be experiencing a weird amnesia about the involvement of members of their own party in the Senate bill: In a swipe at the Senate version, Representative Deborah Pryce of Ohio, a senior member of the Republican leadership, labeled the legislation the "Kennedy bill" -- a dismissive reference to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who helped write the measure in cooperation with Republicans including Senators Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and John McCain of Arizona. And here's another amnesiac: Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean deliberately referred to the Senate measure as the "Kennedy'' bill, instead of the Kennedy-McCain bill, signaling the polarizing political dimensions of the road ahead. Must be the heat that's causing all this memory loss. You know what's happening, don't you? Immigration is becoming like Iraq or abortion -- an issue on which the public is split, but the Republicans have declared themselves the Champions of Normal Americans, while painting the Democrats as the party of the fringe. Eventually the Democrats will be cowed into silence, just as they have been until recently on Iraq, just as they are on abortion, just as they are on gun control. Therefore, even members of the public who disagree with the Republicans won't rally to the Democrats. The odd detail this time is that Bush supports a path to citizenship. But that's not going to stop the GOP from attacking Democrats. Remember that Bush opposed the formation of the Department of Homeland Security, then supported it -- and then the GOP (successfully) made Democratic opposition to provisions in the final bill an election-year issue. Here's what Democrats should do, but won't: on the day of each hearing on the GOP's tour, a full-page ad should appear in every local paper. The ad would be a dignified portrait of President Bush surrounded by bunting, with these words under it: The vast majority of illegal immigrants are decent people who work hard, support their families, practice their faith, and lead responsible lives. They are a part of American life. --President George W. Bush, May 15, 2006 or Illegal immigrants who have roots in our country and want to stay should have to pay a meaningful penalty for breaking the law, to pay their taxes, to learn English, and to work in a job for a number of years. People who meet these conditions should be able to apply for citizenship. --President George W. Bush, May 15, 2006 That's it. Just that. People should also volunteer to stand up at the back of each hearing holding up signs identical to the ad. They should do so silently, and in a dignified manner. If they're denied entry or arrested, they should go quietly, but there should be an effort to make sure the incident is publicized. If Republicans are going to hang immigration around anyone's neck, the neck of the leader of their own party should not be spared. posted by Steve M. | 10:20 AM | IRAQ LANGUAGE I keep wondering what would happen if the Democrats framed the Iraq debate using language we already know is politically potent: the language of public assistance. What would happen if pro-pullout Democrats, accused of advocating a "cut and run" strategy, simply changed the metaphor and said Iraqis need to know there's a limit to our "security welfare"? You'll say that the presence of U.S. troops is making Iraqis less secure, but never mind: the official line is that Iraqis still need us to keep order -- and maybe that should just be called "welfare." Americans hate "welfare." They hate "government handouts." Republicans trained Americans to hate "welfare" and "government handouts." These Republican language-weapons could be turned against Republicans. Democrats could talk about the "culture of dependency" our deployment is creating. Those for whom the way of speaking comes naturally (not you, Senator Kerry) could talk about ending the Iraqis' dependence on "Uncle Sugar." Just a thought. posted by Steve M. | 7:21 AM | Tuesday, June 20, 2006 STAB IN THE BACK It appalls me to think it might happen, but I wonder if Karl Rove will recognize that the brutal deaths of Privates Thomas Tucker and Kristian Menchaca may have greater potential to motivate his party's base than more positive developments such as the formation of the new Iraqi government and the killing of Zarqawi. The folks over at Lucianne.com "know" who really killed and mutilated these two soldiers: John Murtha and The New York Times: We need to let fighters fight -- and we need seditious Congress members and "journalists" in the dock! Start with Sandy Berger and Pinch Sulzberger. **** The MSM is more concerned about Muslims who get pink panties put over their heads. **** Next up, the NY Times editorializing on the torture at Gitmo. Time's cover on the horrors of Haditha. Newsweek's scoop on how Bush lied. **** They know exactly what to do to turn Murtha, Kerry, Reid etc into blithering idiots. I hold them an others like him for their death. THEY are the ones that encourage such subhuman activities. How many others have died and will die due the the encouragement given to the enemy???? **** Well, you know what the MSM will say, that this was done because of the grave US abuses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Haditha. So the US will still be to blame, once again. And Murtha and Co. will say this is more evidence that the US is not wanted. **** And after Sandy Berger is frog marched away, a fighter jet on maneuvers should take out the NY Times as the mouthpiece for the terrorists. It's also time to fight back against the fifth column inside the US that would condemn us all to the slavery of communism/socialism or the barbarism of Islam. **** Perhaps if we could defeat the media savages and their political brethren first we could move on to finding the terrorists in Iraq without so much trouble. One thing that is beginning to tell the real story is the media and the democrats has found themselves with no place to hide. Their statements and actions are printed in indelible ink and splashed across the pages of America on a daily basis. The Democrats have had ample countless chances to back away from the media's lies but have chosen not to. They've essentially said..."Ta' Hell with America, We're with the terrorists", Media and 'Rats...we've known this from the gitgo! Count your days as numbered! Eventually, as Kevin Baker argued recently in Harper's, the right in America will fully embrace the notion that what went wrong in Iraq was the result of a "stab in the back" from effite liberals who hate America. The Lucianne crowd clearly isn't waiting for "eventually" -- and that's the crowd Rove needs to drive to the polls in November. Rove isn't going to admit defeat anytime soon, or even acknowledge that the war plan isn't working, but this is a bloody shirt he could wave while still claiming that victory is in sight -- and I wonder if he'll do just that. I wonder if the the soft-fleshed little noncombatant will invoke these two young men the next time he gives one of his Democrat-baiting neo-McCarthyite war speeches. Or maybe he'll wait till late October or the first couple of days of November. posted by Steve M. | 6:50 PM | WE'RE SCREWING UP A WAR WE SHOULD HAVE WON, DRUG LORDS AND EXTREMISTS ARE GAINING STRENGTH, BUT THE NAMES OF OUR OPERATIONS SOUND LIKE VAN HALEN SONGS, SO EVERYTHING'S COOL Suspected Taliban guerrillas in the southern province of Helmand ambushed and killed 32 people on Sunday, all of them relatives and tribesmen of an influential member of Parliament, among them a former local government official, the legislator said Monday. The attack, in broad daylight, was the latest sign of the strength of the suspected Taliban insurgents in Helmand, a poppy-growing province where NATO and the Afghan Army have recently increased their troops in an effort to contain the spreading insurgency.... --New York Times In their biggest show of strength in nearly five years, pro-Taliban fighters are terrorizing southern Afghanistan -- ambushing military patrols, assassinating opponents and even enforcing the law in remote villages where they operate with near impunity. "We are faced with a full-blown insurgency," says Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil & Fundamentalism in Central Asia. Four and a half years after they overthrew the Islamic militia that had controlled much of Afghanistan, U.S.-led forces have been forced to ramp up the battle to stabilize this impoverished, shattered country. More than 10,000 U.S., Canadian, British and Afghan government troops are scouring southern and eastern Afghanistan in a campaign called Operation Mountain Thrust.... --USA Today posted by Steve M. | 1:19 PM | Ann Coulter really likes to promote herself, and she really likes to get herself photographed with Marines in uniform. Her fans at Free Republic expend a great deal of effort aiding her in these twin endeavors: Recent photo at a party for her new book. Photo from last year. More photos from last year (scroll a bit). The last two links are from a party that followed her appearance on Craig Ferguson's Late, Late Show on NBC. The Freepers say they had a big contingent in the audience, pointedly including uniformed Marines: Perhaps [Ferguson] decided NOT to attack her as aggressively as he intended -- when he found out that there were a LOT of "Ann Coulter fans" in the audience -- including TWENTY Marines, just back form Iraq, in their full dress uniforms. Hmmm -- what do Marine Corps regulations say? 1. Members of the Marine Corps and Marine Corps Reserve, including retired Marines, are prohibited from wearing the Marine Corps uniform while engaged in any of the following activities, functions or circumstances unless specifically authorized by the CMC (Public Affairs(PA): a. Soliciting funds for any purpose from the public outside of a military base or establishment. b. Participating in any type of show or event which is commercially sponsored for advertising purposes, where it could be implied or construed that the Marine Corps "endorses" the product advertised. c. "Endorsing" commercial products in such ways as to involve the uniform, title, grade or rate, or in any way establish or imply their military affiliation with such products. d. Appearing or participating in any event in public that would compromise the dignity of the uniform. (Emphasis mine.) Ann Coulter's books are commercial products, as is Ann Coulter's overall work as a pundit. Is somebody inviting these Marines to TV show tapings and after-parties and encouraging them to show up in uniform to spread the notion, highly beneficial to her career, that she's the voice of The Few and The Proud? If so, why do the Freepers besmirch the honor of our troops? **** BY THE WAY: Do I need to point out that a woman who goes out of her way to pose with Marines who've served in the Iraq War has a goddamn nerve criticizing Max Cleland, John Murtha, Cindy Sheehan, and the Jersey Girls as unattackable? posted by Steve M. | 11:07 AM | The two U.S. soldiers missing since an attack on a checkpoint last week were found dead near a power plant in Yusifiyah, south of Baghdad, according to an Iraqi defense official. General Abdul Aziz Muhammed, head of operations at Iraqi Ministry of Defense said in a news conference in Baghdad this afternoon that the soldiers had been "barbarically" killed and that there were traces of torture on their bodies. --Washington Post This is the reality of Iraq right now, not Bush sneaking into Iraq and prancing around as if he owns the place. America gets it, which is why Bush didn't get a bump in the polls for his surprise-visit stunt -- we've seen this kind of thing before and we know the bloodshed never ends in Iraq. And yet I see no evidence that Americans are actually cheering on the notion of withdrawal, even if they're coming around to it. I'm waiting for a sign that America is truly capable of shutting down its emotional investment in the fighting of this war -- that a large majority of citizens are capable of saying, "Our leaders, those bastards, sent our kids off to die in that hellhole, and for nothing." Instead, there's still a large chunk of the populace that thinks of this as our war, and that reacts to every soldier's death primarily with outrage at the killers, and only then, if at all, with exasperation at the American leaders who sent the soldiers into the killers' paths. The tradeoff is still "Let's keep fighting" versus "Let's admit we made a mistake" -- and while the "mistake" faction is growing, there's no pride in it, except for those of us who are angrily anti-war. So Bush's hapless stutting is still capable of holding voters, which is why Republicans aren't doomed in '06. (I don't think the problem is that Democrats haven't truly joined together in opposition to the war, because America thinks the Democratic Party is full of war opponents anyway.) I've always thought Bush and Rove -- Rove, certainly -- could see this from the beginning. I think their plan was to keep fighting optional wars if Iraq really did turn into a cakewalk, and fight them in part to keep the majority of the country wary of Democrats, a party that could be characterized as full of war skeptics even if only a few Democrats expressed skepticism. I think the White House wanted to create a generational fault line, whith Republicans on the side of fighting and pride and vengeance and Democrats painted as the other side. I'm afraid it's still working, if barely. Bush may never again be a popular president, but Americans either have to stick with his party's approach or embrace an alternative that's dispiriting -- which means he may still have us where he wants us. posted by Steve M. | 8:40 AM | Monday, June 19, 2006 Sorry, it was a busy day for me and I'm beat -- I'll be back posting normally tomorrow. posted by Steve M. | 11:27 PM | Sunday, June 18, 2006 The New York Times has an article today about people who make amateur star Trek videos. There are accompanying photos. Say, is that George W. Bush on the left? It does kinda look like him.... **** And on that high-minded note, I'm outta here till Monday night. posted by Steve M. | 10:50 AM | Saturday, June 17, 2006 Yesterday morning I watched Ann Coulter's appearance on The Tonight Show (I think this YouTube link still works). Coulter slunk out on stage in her usual black cocktail dress -- but what's odd is that there's nothing genuinely charismatic or sexy or radiant about her. I've watched far too many starlets making talk-show entrances over the years, and they exude not just sex appeal but vitality and a glow of health. Coulter, by contrast, is frail -- she all but tottered out, on Karen Carpenter legs. If you didn't know who she was and you'd been told she was a well-known abuse survivor making the TV rounds and putting on a brave face, you'd believe it. You'd write off the cocktail dress as an eccentricity; you'd think she's had a hard life and just doesn't know any better than to wear her hair in a style suited to a twelve-year-old girl. She got off zingers, but her delivery was awful. At one point, commenting on a joke Jay Leno had previously told in which he'd compared to her to the Wicked Witch of the East, she asserted -- no, she proclaimed -- that she disagreed with the point of the joke and thinks of herself as Dorothy. Hearing this proclamation was like hearing a joke at an office party from the shy person who never tells jokes and is, temporarily and ill-advisedly, feeling confident about public speaking; Yes, you're telling a joke, but you're also telling us you're telling a joke. That's why it's not funny. But when Coulter did it, the audience roared approval. I think I understand this. Her appearance of ill-health, her odd grooming choices, her deficiencies as a public speaker -- I think all this makes her seem like the victim, the underdog, the embodiment of How The Liberals Beat Us Down. She's not the sex bomb of right-wing vitriol -- she's a plucky little girl surviving in a liberal world she never made. Yes, I know -- her fan base doesn't think of her that way. Her fan base thinks of her a sexy, tough, gun-totin' dame. But I think her fan base is responding to the victim as much as to the dame. She is who they think they are (victims) as well as who they'd like to be. Somewhat similarly, the alpha male of her pack, Rush Limbaugh, regularly declared during his rise to fame both that he was a guy with "talent on loan from God" and that he was "just a harmless little fuzzball." He was (and is) both aggressive and rotundly asexual. He was (and is), for his fans, the picked-on fat kid from fourth grade speaking truth to power. Preceding both of them as right-wing victim-heroes, of course, were Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan; the former was successful only temporarily, the latter until his death (and even beyond). Nixon obviously couldn't sustain an air of innocence; Reagan exuded innocence and frailty and eventually suffered a literal gunshot wound, so he seemed like a plucky Boy Scout or toothless grampa even as practically every word out of his mouth accused liberals of some crime or other against humanity. There are other approaches to creating an air of right-wing victimhood that don't require the victim to seem weakened -- Bill O'Reilly, for instance, has mastered the Put-Upon Dad, tut-tutting in a disgruntled way (when he's not verbally kneeing interviewees in the groin) -- but top-dog status on the right requires some show of being hobbled or wounded and yet soldiering on bravely. That's what, Michelle Malkin, say, doesn't understand, and Ann Coulter apparently does. posted by Steve M. | 8:42 PM | REALLY BRIEF HIATUS I've had a combination of Internet glitchiness and real-life complications. The computer glitch has resolved itself, so I'll post something I had ready before I lost service. After that, I'm not sure how much posting I'll be doing until Monday night. (Don't worry -- there won't be a test on any of this.) posted by Steve M. | 8:41 PM | BRIEF HIATUS Well, it's a complicated weekend. Barring unforeseen circumstances, I won't be posting till late Monday. See you then. posted by Steve M. | 3:18 PM | Friday, June 16, 2006 I GUESS THEY ALL LOOK ALIKE TO HIM In the self-blame department, White House spokesman Tony Snow had a political doozy. ...Last week, Snow gave reporters a routine account of a meeting President Bush conducted with members of Congress on Iraq. In the retelling, Snow confused one African-American Democratic female lawmaker for another. "Cynthia McKinney made the point yesterday in the meeting with the president that the one thing they had gotten from generals there were thorough and honest assessments of what's going on," Snow said then. But it was [Sheila] Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat, who had made the point. McKinney, a Democrat from Georgia, wasn't at the meeting. Reporters were unaware of Snow's mix-up because they had never seen the private session. Snow said his mistake "prompted a phone call from Representative Jackson Lee, who was absolutely charming, and we had a wonderful little conversation."... Despite the comity, the incident was poorly timed for Snow, the former news commentator who, in his first day on the job last month, raised eyebrows with his use of the phrase "tar baby." "I don't want to hug the tar baby," Snow said at the time, sidestepping a question on an intelligence program that was in the news.... --Houston Chronicle Er, both McKinney and Lee have been in Congress for more than a decade. I think Tony Snow has had enough time to learn how to tell them apart. posted by Steve M. | 1:45 PM | HO-HUM -- ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER PERSON TARGETED FOR DEATH BY ANN COULTER Coulter's description of John Murtha in a recent interview: "The reason soldiers invented 'fragging.'" I don't really have the time to do it, but I think -- for lazy journalists -- there's a real need for a Web site called "Ann Coulter Body Count." It would total up the number of people Ann Coulter has said deserve to be killed (e.g., Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and all of these people). Where she's demanded mass casualties, an attempt would be made to estimate the bloodshed. Anyone who wants to take this idea and run with it, be my guest. Just for my own edification as a New Yorker, and in order to grasp the depths of Coulter's depravity, I'd particularly like to see an estimate of the bloodshed if a Timothy McVeigh-style truck bomb really had been driven up to the New York Times building, a scenario that was one of Coulter's most gleeful fantasies. Keep in mind that the Times building doesn't stand alone on a plaza -- it's on a narrow side street where buildings are wedged together, offering the potential, I think, for some nasty collateral damage. Also note that the OKC bombing happened at 9:03 A.M -- a time when, on a typical weekday in New York, there are still a lot of people streaming to work. (New Yorkers tend to get to the office a bit late and then stay late.) I don't want to go asking around about this -- that's all I need, to be the weird guy who wants some demolition expert's opinion on how much damage a fertilizer bomb could do to a New York office building -- but I've always wondered about this. It was an appalling thing to say, and she's never paid in the slightest for saying it -- it would be interesting to know how much death she was really talking about. *** UPDATE: Here's Mickey Kaus in Slate a couple of days ago, comparing Ann Coulter to Kos: I rag on Markos Moulitsas for his 2004 "screw them" comment about the four American security contractors killed in Fallujah. That comment was more offensive than anything Ann Coulter's book is currently being criticized for. Right -- pull up the worst remark from Kos ever, but limit your Coulter search to what's in her current book, excluding her past remarks and, for instance, what she's saying in interviews now (see the Murtha quote above). Yeah, that's fair. posted by Steve M. | 10:23 AM | Thursday, June 15, 2006 Awesome -- Zarqawi left behind a document saying he was the biggest screw-up in all Jihadistan! The document describes "the current bleak situation" and says, "Time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance."... The document cites the improved Iraqi national guard, massive arrest operations, a crackdown on financial contributions, as reasons for the crisis. And guess where this document was found? ABC's Brian Ross will tell you: Iraq's National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie produced the document this morning in Baghdad, saying it was found on a computer disk in Zarqawi's pants. His pants! Ha-ha! Just like Sandy Berger! Hilarity ensues! Er, unless what we're being told about this oh-so-conveniently gloomy pants document isn't true: Iraqi officials said there was no question of the document's authenticity. "Well, if I find something in your pockets, then that's authentic, isn't it?" al-Rubaie said. But U.S. officials said the document was not, in fact, found on or near Zarqawi's body but in a raid three weeks earlier on other targets. "But as far an analysis, we haven't done it yet," U.S. Major General William Caldwell said. And the English translation was devoid of the usual elaborate phrasing and religious references typical of previous al Qaeda and Zarqawi communications. "This letter clearly stands out in its language from all the letters that we know Zarqawi has written or has received," Alexis Debat, Senior Fellow at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant, said. Oh, but come on! Shouldn't we just believe? After all, Bush needs a win, and any story that links the bad guy and the word "pants" is just too good to check! posted by Steve M. | 10:35 PM | We reached another unfortunate milestone today in Iraq, as the Pentagon announced that the number of U.S. military deaths has reached 2500. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow was asked if the president had "any response or reaction." Snow responded: "It's a number, and every time there's one of these 500 benchmarks people want something." --The Carpetbagger Report What would be happening if a Democrat had said something like this? Already, Fox News would have dispatched reporters to the hometown of casualty #2500 to elicit expressions of outrage that he or she had died defending our country but had been "reduced to a number." Top Republican congressional leaders would be demanding apologies, and a resignation. Bill O'Reilly and Hannity & Colmes would be putting together shows with the theme "Democrats: Disrespecting Our Troops Again?" Joe Klein would be hard at work on a column for Time about how the "Howard Dean wing" of the Democratic Party sees all the troops as numbers and can't even acknowledge the humanity of those who serve our country. The resignation would be a done deal by Monday. posted by Steve M. | 7:08 PM | COULTER: YESTERDAY'S SOCIOPATH? Interesting take on Coulterpalooza from Michael Cader at the book publishing newsletter Publishers Lunch (current content subscription only): Conventional press wisdom holds that Ann Coulter and Crown are masterful at marketing even if vile in the one-liners they use to get there. But Bookscan figures show opening week sales of over 48,000 copies for GODLESS--actually down significantly from her best opening week, at the same time of year, for TREASON in 2003, which sold 69,000 copies. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but this strikes me as a failure in many ways. The recurring tactic of outrageous quip-tossing and fight-picking with icons is losing its appeal to her core audience, or else that core is shrinking--at a time when Republicans and conservatives are supposed to represent the majority. Sure her numbers are still good, but they are a fraction of what Limbaugh, O'Reilly or even Fox News can attract. Along the way, she's marginalized herself from a provocative analyst to just plain provocative at any cost. No one needs to pay for that. So her first-week sales are down 30 percent? Hmmm ... I did not know that. Clearly, some conservatives are distancing themselves from Coulter. Now, if only the mainstream media would do the same. posted by Steve M. | 4:22 PM | LIBEL Next time you hear a right-winger whining about those vicious moonbat Democrats who get away with calling Republicans outrageous names, remember that today Michael Reagan -- talk radio host and son of the former president -- published this column: Democrats Behave Like Sunni Insurgents I've been wondering why there is something familiar about the behavior of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, and suddenly it dawned on me that we have our own similar insurgency right here at home -- it is called the Democrat Party. Think about it. Both are operating under the same motivation -- an unrequited lust for lost power. And both will do just about anything to retrieve it.... Saddam may have ordered the atrocities, but it was the Sunnis who carried them out, torturing, beheading and otherwise brutalizing the Shia and the Kurds and looting the nation's treasure. They were very well compensated for their services -- and since being ousted by the U.S. invasion and the deposing of their benefactor they have been unable to accept their current powerlessness. They are, as the liberals like to say, "in denial." They just can't live with their loss of authority and act as if they can somehow regain what they lost by mounting an insurgency against the new Iraqi government.... Like the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the Democrats cannot accept their minority status.... Like the Sunni insurgency, the national Democrat Party and its congressional contingent has demonstrated time and again that they will willingly sacrifice the welfare and security of the American people to get their way. ...In the end, all that matters to them is regaining the power the American people took from them in 1994, and, thank God, have kept it out of their hands ever since. He won't ever be asked to apologize for this, either. And if he is, he'll refuse. And there'll be no negative consequences for that. Republicans: The Ann Coulter party. posted by Steve M. | 12:30 PM | I know Chuck Schumer isn't likely to take advice from little old me, but if he decides to support the increasingly-likely independent run from Joe Lieberman he's really going to regret it. He'll regret it doubly when Joe bolts the party AND loses. --Atrios Loses? Let's look at the latest Quinnipiac poll, dated June 9: In possible general election matchups: ...Running as an independent, Lieberman gets 56 percent, to 18 percent for [Ned] Lamont and 8 percent for [Republican challenger Alan] Schlesinger. (Emphasis mine.) And his overall approval-disapproval in Connecticut is 59%-37%. His approval is dropping, but it's still high. Look, I'm sick of the sanctimonious little twerp, too -- but if he stays in this race, it appears now that he'll win in a landslide. And, of course, if he does win, it appears he'll still caucus with the Democrats, thus contributing to a possible Senate majority -- which I thought was the point for people like us this year. Though I guess there's no guarantee he'll stick with the Dems. Schumer, I suppose, is trying to make sure that happens. I have to tell you I will be furious if this winds up a 50-50 or 51-49 Senate and a newly reelected independent Lieberman decides to tip the balance to the GOP by caucusing with the Republicans. I don't think that will happen, but I'd welcome some assurance that it won't. In the abstract, of course it would be wonderful to get rid of Lieberman. But it's a safe seat for Democrats when the numbers are what's important, when we're clawing and scratching just to get to 51. Why did this race become Priority #1 for so many angry progressives? (Nothing wrong with anger, of course -- but it should be used more effectively than this.) posted by Steve M. | 7:30 AM | Wednesday, June 14, 2006 I hate these people: Bill would limit consumers' credit rights Congress is considering pre-empting laws in 17 states that allow anyone to freeze their own credit and instead restricting the privilege to ID theft victims. ...A credit freeze cuts off access to your credit history.... Under the bill, backed by the financial services industry, simply having your data lost or stolen isn't enough. You must file a police report describing a specific instance of it being used to commit a crime. "It's like telling someone you can't put a deadbolt on your front door until after you've been burglarized," says Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna. ...The bill also would pre-empt laws in 29 states requiring companies, institutions and agencies to notify individuals about security breaches compromising their data. It sets national criteria for data protection and breach disclosures, and puts banking and Treasury officials in charge of compliance.... For "national criteria," read "whatever lax standard the financial services industry would prefer." The bill, by the way, goes by the Orwellian name "Financial Data Protection Act of 2006." posted by Steve M. | 11:27 PM | NOT THAT YOU DIDN'T KNOW THIS WOULD HAPPEN The new New York Times bestseller list is out -- and, yeah, Coulter's #1. In fact, Coulter, Anderson Cooper, and Tim Russert are 1-2-3, with Thomas Friedman at #5, John Stossel at #7, and William Bennett at #13. You may want to rethink your citizenship. (Interestingly, though, Greg Palast's Armed Madhouse is #10.) You'll be able to see this list on the Times Web site this weekend. posted by Steve M. | 5:41 PM | A FOLLOW-UP TO THIS POST When things have been truly desperate in Iraq -- in 1959, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1980, 1988, and 1990 -- long queues of Iraqis have formed at the Turkish and Iranian frontiers, hoping to escape.... Since the toppling of Saddam in 2003, this is one highly damaging image we have not seen.... --Bush defender Amir Taheri in Commentary (UPDATE: Try this link instead.) In one of the first comprehensive tallies of Iraqis fleeing Iraq since the American-led invasion, an American refugee advocacy group has counted 644,500 Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan in 2005. The figure, provided by the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a nongovernmental group based in Washington, is equal to about 2.5 percent of Iraq's population, and substantiates the overwhelming evidence of an exodus that has been accumulating in Iraqi passport offices and airline waiting rooms in recent months. ... In all, as of the end of 2005, 889,000 Iraqis have moved abroad as refugees since 2003, according to the group's tally, more than double the 366,000 counted at the end of 2004. "It's the biggest new flow of refugees in the world," said Lavinia Limon, the committee's president.... In Baghdad, evidence of the departures abounds. Faris al-Douri, a travel agency director, said on Tuesday that airline tickets are booked weeks in advance, and that airlines have added flights to Jordan and Syria. Passport offices are packed. "As if we were giving out cars, not passports," said Maj. Gen. Yassen al-Yassiry, director of passports for the Iraqi government.... --New York Times today I guess Faris al-Douri and Major General Yassen al-Yassiry hate freedom. posted by Steve M. | 2:51 PM | BODY ARMOR-GATE? The helicopter ride was uneventful and lasted about seven minutes. Everyone on the helicopters was in body armor except for the White House aides, who wore business suits but no armor. Bartlett had earlier said that POTUS would also not be wearing body armor, though we could not verify that for ourselves. --pool report on the Bush trip to Baghdad Five helicopters met the traveling party to ferry them under extraordinary security to the Green Zone several miles away. Fighter jets above provided cover. Inside the helicopter, presidential aides Tony Snow and Dan Bartlett in body armor and helmets. It's not known whether the President was wearing a protective vest. --Martha Raddatz of ABC News When the president choppered into the Green Zone from the Baghdad airport, he was wearing twenty-five pounds of body armor. --Jim Axelrod of CBS News (text and video not available online) Hands up: Who thinks Bush and the aides made the whole trip without protective gear? Funny, the only people whose hands I see are wingnuts and flightsuit-loving reporters. posted by Steve M. | 9:47 AM | UNASSAILABLE SPOKESPEOPLE Jake Tapper, ABC News podcast, June 9, 2006: She [Ann Coulter] has a -- she has a perfectly acceptable argument, a perfectly intelligent argument in her book Godless.... And the argument is that the Democratic Party and the liberals constantly bring out spokespeople whom [sic] are unassailable: Cindy Sheehan, John Murtha, the 9-11 widows, etc. And -- and it becomes -- any time you question what they're saying -- "How dare you question these people?" And that's a -- that's a perfectly respectable and honest argument. Jake Tapper, Salon, August 25, 2000: Meanwhile, another independent, pro-[George H. W.] Bush group, Committee for the Presidency, funded a $2 million speaking tour [in 1988] headlined by Clifford Barnes and Donna Fournier Cuomo, the sister of [Willie] Horton's original murder victim, around the country. The Committee for the Presidency, formed by a Los Angeles GOP consultant with -- again -- no direct or provable ties to the Bush campaign, also broadcast two ads, one with Barnes claiming that "Mike Dukakis and Willie Horton changed our lives forever," the other with Cuomo saying that "Dukakis let killers out of prison ... Willie Horton stabbed my teenage brother 19 times." Though there was no evidence of any collusion between any of these independent groups and the Bush campaign, Atwater had told GOP officials, "By the time this election is over, Willie Horton will be a household name." The use of tear-jerking "spokespeople whom [sic] are unassailable" in recent American presidential politics began with Willie Horton; not only does Tapper know this, he once wrote about it, for crissakes. Yet he feigns amnesia and parrots Coulter's line, wrinkling his nose as if this is an unsavory new practice dreamed up by those awful Democrats just a couple of years ago. What a GOP whore Tapper is. posted by Steve M. | 7:18 AM | Tuesday, June 13, 2006 NOT ALLOWED TO RESPOND Don't put up someone I am not allowed to respond to without questioning the authenticity of their grief. --Ann Coulter ***** U.S. intelligence officials are upset over the possibility that Congress will open its public investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with testimony from victims' families. ..."Who's running this investigation, Oprah?" complains one exasperated government official, who spoke on condition that he not be named. "The goal is, 'Let's see who we can get to cry on camera.' The next day they will have witnesses from U.S. intelligence come in to explain why all these people are widows and orphans."... --USA Today, August 14, 2002 In fact, they found some family members - and I'm going to say this - they found some family members who seemed to have more concern over who the president of this country is than over the sanctity of the loss of their own family members. It is beyond the pale that this could happen. It is beyond the pale, yet people cooperate with it, and so much more has been learned about this since. ...it turns out that a lot of these 9-11 family members are part of a political organization that is funded in part by Teresa Heinz-Kerry! Well, this stuff is incestuous! You know, these people are poisoned. They have literally been poisoned by their hate. They have been poisoned by their rage. It is unbelievable, the depths to which they will sink. --Rush Limbaugh, March 9, 2004 The 9/11 Widows: Americans are beginning to tire of them. ...A fair number of the Americans not working in the media may, on the other hand, by now be experiencing Jersey Girls Fatigue... Nor can anyone miss, by now, the darker side of this spectacle of the widows, awash in their sense of victims' entitlement, as they press ahead with ever more strident claims about the way the government failed them. Or how profoundly different all this is from the way in which citizens in other times and places reacted to national tragedy.... --Dorothy Rabinowitz in The Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2004 Yet again, Chris Matthews was interviewing widow/aspiring politician Kristen Breitweiser just now. Why don't they just hire her as an NBC News Consultant? Just pay the girl for her round-the-clock, 3,000-murdered-on-Bush's-watch talk. Matthews actually asked blandly for a response on the great Dorothy Rabinowitz slam today, and Breitweiser actually laughed dismissively (just like an aspiring politician) as she repeated: I know terrorists killed my husband, but Bush failed to save lives, yada yada yada.... --Tim Graham at The Corner, National Review Online, April 14, 2004 Having listened to them myself, I believe it is fair to say that they are all anti-Bush and anti-Iraq War. They accept everything Richard Clarke says without question and take it as an article of faith that the Bush administration is engaged in some sort of conspiracy to cover-up pre-9/11 failures by senior Bush officials. For these widows, it appears to be a given that the 9/11 attacks were entirely preventable and primarily the result of failures by the Bush administration.... Quite a few of their statements on Hardball last week were absurd, including unsubstantiated accusations that John Ashcroft was warned not to fly commercial aircraft prior to 9/11 and did not do so. --Robert Cox of the National Debate, quoted by Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post, April 16, 2004 Anti-Bush 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser had never met a camera or mike or editorial writer she didn't like. --Charlotte Hays at the blog of the Independent Women's Forum, May 13, 2004 Wall Street Journal editorial board member Dorothy Rabinowitz read an op-ed submission by 9/11 widow and incessant Chris Matthews' Softball yakker Kristen Breitweiser. When Rabinowitz inadvertently emailed her critique to Breitweiser rather than to the Journal editor for whom she had reviewed the submission, her critique became public. Anyone who has been subjected to Breitweiser on Softball knows that Rabinowitz hit the nail on the head, describing Breitwiser's piece as "total and complete... repetitive...nonsense from people given endless media access to repeat the very same stupid charges, suspicions and the rest...this is just an opportunity for these absurd products of the zeitgeist -- women clearly in the grip of the delusion that they know something, have some policy, and wisdom not given to the rest of us to know -- to grab the spotlight. Again." --Scott Johnson at Power Line, May 15, 2004 Debra Burlingame, whose brother Frank was the pilot of the American Airlines jet that was flown into the Pentagon by hijackers, spoke at the GOP convention in New York. She, too, has been fiercely critical of the five New Jersey widows, calling them "rock stars of grief" and accusing them of taking cheap political shots. --UPI/Washington Times, September 14, 2004 On his show this morning, [Bush] apologist Glenn Beck called Cindy [Sheehan] a "tragedy slut". He said the term also applies to the 9/11 families (aka The Jersey Girls) and Michael Berg, because they're all using someone elses death to forward their own political agenda. --Terri in S.Fl., comment at Brad Blog, August 15, 2005 Just a few things that were somehow said about people we're told no one is allowed to criticize. posted by Steve M. | 6:59 PM | ANOTHER DISPATCH FROM RIGHT-WING CLOUD-CUCKOOLAND Neal Boortz explains to us that it's not just the 9/11 widows -- guess who else can't be criticized? The fact is that in her general comments about these 9/11 widows, Coulter got it essentially right. The left most definitely has refined the technique of taking someone deserving of a great deal of public sympathy, and then turning that person into a propaganda machine for the left. The obvious goal here is to create a spokesman that cannot be attacked ... one who's essentially bulletproof.... When you think about it, Hillary Clinton has even approached this bulletproof status in some ways. She's a woman, and she's a woman who has endured public humiliation at the hands of her philandering husband. As such, some would say that she is beyond criticism. Yeah, she certainly is beyond criticism, isn't she? Why, no one would ever even dream of uttering an unkind or unflattering word about her. posted by Steve M. | 12:04 PM | "They're for more spending. We're for less spending." --Karl Rove attempting to contrast his party with the Democrats in his New Hampshire speech last night  The rest of the speech appears to have been the same Ann Coulter Lite crap he's been slinging in other speeches. Hey Karl, are you running for something? **** UPDATE: Skimble has more on the disconnect between Karl Rove and economic reality. posted by Steve M. | 10:33 AM | SUMMER RERUNS Sick of "surprise visits to Iraq"? Bush assumes you aren't -- he just made another one. Um, who's still impressed by these cheap stunts? Oh, yeah, I forgot -- the press. Terence Hunt of AP was so dazzled he described the trip as "a dramatic move by Bush" twice in a 334-word story. Take a chill pill, Terence, and try to stop thinking about that dreamy flight suit. **** UPDATE: The link above (from Yahoo) has been updated to extra "dramatic move," but you can see the repeat in the Breitbart.com version of the AP story. posted by Steve M. | 9:47 AM | Rove Won't Be Charged in C.I.A. Leak Case --story just posted at the New York Times Web site Well, I said a long time ago that we shouldn't expect Patrick Fitzgerald to be Santa. The "Fitzmas" moment was not the left's finest hour, and I take some satisfaction in knowing that I didn't really join in the giddiness. Look, let's move on and hold these bastards accountable for their horrible judgments and incompetence. (How many people died in Kirkuk today?) It was foolish to think we could just be magically delivered from Bushism. posted by Steve M. | 7:35 AM | Monday, June 12, 2006 THE NEXT GENERATION? Maybe you know Debbie Schlussel, an Ann Coulter wannabe last seen around these parts trashing the memory of Marla Ruzicka, a humanitarian-aid worker in Iraq who was killed in a car bombing. (Schlussel calls Ruzicka "Treasonatrix Barbie.") Now Schlussel claims to know the identity of a forthcoming Bush judicial nominee -- and she's not exactly shy about expressing her disapproval: BREAKING SCHLUSSEL EXCLUSIVE: Bush to Nominate PORN ADDICT, TERROR SYMPATHIZER, RACIST to Court of Appeals Oh, don't hold back, Debbie. Tell us what you really think. Here are a few of the Schlussel's claims about the alleged nominee, Stephen Murphy (the sources for which are primarily Schlussel's earlier Web postings and an anonymous e-mail): * Spent his days as an Assistant U.S. Attorney showing fellow U.S. Attorneys his favorite porn on the web. (Sources say he may have done the same as U.S. Attorney.) * Broke federal law by leaking federal grand jury proceedings to Detroit News reporter (and fabricator) David Shepardson. * Repeatedly hosted HAMAS and Iraqi Insurgent financiers and anti-Semites in his office and repeatedly praised them. * Deliberately sat on multiple terror indictments and waited until Hezbollah terrorists were safely out of the country before he chose to do anything against them.... Are these outrageous charges? Sure. Are any of them true? I couldn't possibly know. What I do know is that this is where the right is headed if Republicans continue to encourage the angriest voters and if they continue to defend their most vicious mainstream attack dogs. If prominent Republicans keep defending the likes of Ann Coulter, while encouraging the rank and file to think like Ann Coulter, eventually there'll be more and more people who try to become Ann Coulter by outdoing Ann Coulter -- people like Debbie Schlussel. There are going to be a lot of Schlussels in the near future -- and isn't that what the right says it wants, with its relentless sneering about the "MSM"? But therer's no reason to think that the people in the next wave are going to hold back just because fellow Republicans might get hurt. They're conservative fundamentalists -- and they will enforce the faith. Schlussel may not do any real damage to Murphy or anyone else this time, but future Schlussels might draw real blood -- especially if, in the future, some Republican naively believes its possible to deviate from the True Faith and get away with it. True Believers have already scorched Bush on the Harriet Miers nomination, immigration, Dubai, and gay marriage; future Republicans could get hit with worse -- from monsters that came out of their own party's lab. posted by Steve M. | 9:40 PM | Violent crime rate takes first big jump since '93 Murder rate climbs in smaller cities For the first time in 13 years, the violent crime rate has jumped significantly in the United States, with the biggest increase in the Midwest, according to figures released by the FBI on Monday. The murder rate in the United States shot up 4.8 percent last year, and overall violent crime was up 2.5 percent for the year, marking the first significant annual increase in crime in the United States since 1993, the FBI said. ...FBI officials who compiled the figures supplied by local police departments noted sharp variations among cities, and even among categories of crime within cities, leaving few discernible patterns. In Detroit, where murders declined, robberies increased sharply. In most of the nation's largest metropolitan areas, overall crime declined, while in many small to medium cities crime, including murders, increased. Authorities said the spread of gangs into smaller cities with fewer police resources may account for some of the violence. In Memphis the number of murders rose from 107 in 2004 to 136 in 2005. In Norfolk, Virginia, murders rose from 35 to 58; in Tulsa, from 48 to 58; and in St. Louis, from 113 to 131... --CNN Well, I can't figure out what's really going on here -- but wasn't the expansion of "right to carry" gun laws supposed to just keep reducing crime until the last "gun grabber" was shamed into silence and a fully armed, crime-free America was finally achieved? I can't help noticing that every city cited in this article is in a state that, according to the map at the link, has a "shall issue" law, which is the gun lobby's ideal. John Lott, your thoughts? posted by Steve M. | 2:44 PM | I'm trying not to lapse into conspiracy thinking with regard to the Guantanamo suicides; the problem is, I can imagine a conspiracy. What I mean is, obviously these are suicides, but I wonder if anyone in Washington would get the notion that it might be a good idea for Gitmo guards not to try all that hard to prevent inmate suicide attempts, on the assumption that deaths at Gitmo might inspire outrage among war critics -- which, in turn, would get the GOP base angry at all those dirty America-hating peaceniks, and remind them once again that the GOP and George W. Bush are on their side. It's probably a silly and irresponsible notion -- here's a lawyer for one of the detainees, telling The New York Times that preventing self-harm is difficult in Gitmo: Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer representing Jumah Dossari, a Guantanamo inmate who has attempted suicide numerous times, said he had been told that guards were expected to keep close watch on prisoners, observing them every 30 seconds. But he said the procedures were difficult to follow in practice. But I'll note that the following paragraph says this: While visiting his client last November, he said he found Mr. Dossari in a bathroom trying to hang himself and slit his wrists. Even though a video camera had been installed in the bathroom, Mr. Colangelo-Bryan said guards did not respond until he called them. And that's followed by this: Though the Bush administration has been under pressure -- from the United Nations, European countries and the International Committee of the Red Cross -- about the Guantanamo detention center, White House officials did not indicate that they viewed the suicides as a major political problem. Yeah, I bet they don't, and I don't just mean that they don't consider these people to have even the minimal human rights accorded Zacarias Moussaoui or the Unabomber. I mean that they may really want to get attacked by international human-rights organizations and American liberals and French people. Look what's happened since the Haditha story broke: Bush's Gallup poll numbers have gone up 5 points (and that's before Zarqawi was killed), and Gallup tells us that the "gains are due largely to the increased support among Republicans." This is exactly what Karl Rove wants -- Republican voters returning to the fold. And I absolutely believe Haditha is a big part of the turnaround. The Haditha narrative that's getting out to the GOP rage junkies via talk radio and all the other usual suspects is that the America-haters are turning on the troops, libeling them to bring about America's defeat. Nothing gets the base's juices flowing like that kind of story. And now here's another one. Maybe it's paranoid to suspect that Gitmo guards would be asked to look the other way while detainees killed themselves (although I can't help thinking about the way guards in U.S. prison seemed curiously unable to prevent the murders of, say, Jeffrey Dahmer or pedophile priest John Geoghan). At the very least, though, I think Karl Rove considers the Gitmo deaths a big win for his side. posted by Steve M. | 12:26 PM | In case you've forgotten, Ann Coulter's first post-9/11 column -- the one which she notoriously wrote, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" -- was written as a tribute to Barbara Olson, Coulter's friend and fellow anti-Democrat attack dog, who died in one of the hijacked planes. Er, Ann, haven't you been saying that invoking the death of someone close to you to buttress a political argument isn't cricket? posted by Steve M. | 8:26 AM | Sunday, June 11, 2006 TEXAS IS THE REASON An anecdote from today's New York Times Week in Review: ...one day last year the credibility gap at the American command's weekly press briefings led to one of the war's best-remembered exchanges. The spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, had produced yet another handsome chart... [It showed] the men of Mr. Zarqawi's network, dead or detained. If accurate, the chart seemed to portend just what Gen. Lynch said, big trouble for Al Qaeda. So the general, a Texan who allies a liking for Jack Daniels and Harley-Davidsons to a distaste for vapid thinking, was not pleased when a reporter asked how it was possible for so many Qaeda loyalists to be eliminated, and for the group's killing to be unabated. ... "Ma'am," the general said, advancing on the questioner, "the reason Al Qaeda is continuing to spread its terror across Iraq is because Abu Musab al-Zarqawi" -- here he paused, as if savoring the self-parody and signalling the futility of any answer -- "just...ain't...payin'...attention." Perfect: a macho jerk arrogantly declaring that we were winning, goddammit, and if that damnfool Zarqawi would only figure out that obvious fact, he'd stop killing people. If that's the prevailing mode of thinking, no wonder we've been up to our necks in this quagmire for three years. posted by Steve M. | 10:41 PM | SHORTER JOE KLEIN REVIEWING PETER BEINART'S NEW BOOK Peter and I agree that the Vietnam War and Iraq War were disasters, as is George W. Bush's foreign policy in general. Liberalism really ought to rid itself of the influence of the disgusting people who understood these things from the beginning. posted by Steve M. | 2:16 PM | WHAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK You know that infection I had in my upper body a few years ago? The one Dr. Bush refused to treat? Well, he finally gave me something to clear it up. Unfortunately, since then it's spread throughout my body, and I'm still really, really sick. Oh, and it was contagious, so now other people have it. But at least the original infection is finally gone. Dr. Bush is a great doctor! posted by Steve M. | 9:48 AM | Saturday, June 10, 2006 AP tells us that a city councillor in Philadelphia has asked owner Joseph Vento to remove the "Speak English" sign from Geno's Steaks -- that's "asked." Not "ordered." Not even "introduced legislation requiring." Just "asked." Michelle Malkin calls this "The Attack on Geno's." That's right-wing logic. Ann Coulter viciously refers to 9/11 widows who are critical of the Bush administration as "harpies" and "the witches of East Brunswick" and says they probably would prefer their current status to having their husbands back, and the worst we get from a prominent right-wing defender, Mary Matalin, is that her "verbiage is a little stressful." But an elected official makes a polite call for tolerance and it's an "attack." Incidentally, that AP story points out that other cheesesteak sellers in Philadelphia aren't following suit: Competitors are seizing on the controversy, too. Tony Luke's issued a statement saying its shops welcome all customers "whether or not they speak a 'wit' of English." And a manager at Pat's said the shop welcomes people of all tongues. So buy where you like. posted by Steve M. | 9:50 AM | Friday, June 09, 2006 FORMER TOP WHITE HOUSE AIDE: OBJECTIVELY PRO-CHARACTER ASSASSINATION From NewsMax: Former White House advisor Mary Matalin offered a partial defense for firebrand conservative author Ann Coulter on Friday, saying her comments about four Bush-bashing 9/11 widows weren't as bad as some of the things liberals say about Republicans. "People run around calling [Republicans] extra-chromosome and Hitlers and Nazis," Matalin told radio host Don Imus. "And nobody says anything." "She calls someone a harpie and you'd think that the whole world's on fire," Matalin complained.... Oh yeah, nobody ever even dares to say anything when a Democrat uses the word "Nazi. " No one would say a word if there were an attack on a Republican in which the name "Hitler" was used. Nobody would utter a peep if a Democrat referred to "extra-chromosome" Republicans. Coulter isn't calling a certain group of 9/11 widows harpies. She's calling them harpies who are exploiting their husbands' deaths, and who might not want their husbands back if it meant losing their current status. She's not saying all this in a heated moment; she's not backing down in response to criticism -- these are her selling points, this is the rhetoric she thinks is a winner for her, and she's repeating over and over and upping the ante every chance she gets. That's what you're defending, Mary. I think every Republican and conservative in America who takes questions in any forum should be asked to defend or condemn Coulter. Laura Bush? Sure. Poppy and Bar? You bet. Bill Frist and Mike Huckabee and George Allen and John McCain? Yes, get 'em all on the record. Which side are you on, all of you? posted by Steve M. | 6:14 PM | Typical: COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- A TV station ... [is] refusing to run an ad sponsored by a liberal activist group that targets Republican U.S. Rep. Deborah Pryce because of questions about material the group provided to back up the ad's claims. The group MoveOn.org is spending $300,000 on ads targeting Pryce and other lawmakers. The ads say they accepted thousands of dollars in donations from defense contractors and then "opposed penalties for contractors like Halliburton who overcharged the military in Iraq." Tom Griesdorn, president and general manager of WBNS-TV, said the station didn't air the ad because its attorneys "did not feel comfortable with the documentation provided by Moveon.org," he said.... Funny thing, WBNS didn't seem to have a problem taking $286,790 for four separate ad buys from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth back in 2004. I wonder if anyone at the station "didn't feel comfortable with the documentation" backing, say, this ad -- George Elliott: "John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam." Al French: "He is lying about his record." Louis Letson: "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury."... -- which was thoroughly debunked months before the ad buy. Two-tier freedom of speech -- get used to it. posted by Steve M. | 2:18 PM | A MISSED OPPORTUNITY Tom DeLay left Congress yesterday with a farewell speech in which he sounded like a thug rapper trying to ramp up a beef: ... In preparing for today, I found that it is customary in speeches such as these to reminisce about the "good old days" of political harmony and across-the-aisle camaraderie, and to lament the bitter, divisive partisan rancor that supposedly now weakens our democracy. I can't do that. Because partisanship, Mr. Speaker - properly understood - is not a symptom of a democracy's weakness, but of its health and strength - especially from the perspective of a political conservative. Liberalism, after all, whatever you may think of its merits, is a political philosophy - and a proud one with a great tradition in this country - with a voracious appetite for growth. In any time or place, on any issue, what does liberalism ever seek, Mr. Speaker? "More." More government, more taxation, more control over people's lives and decisions and wallets. If conservatives don't stand up to liberalism, no one will! ... Had liberals not fought us tooth and nail over tax cuts and budget cuts and energy and Iraq and partial-birth abortion, those of us on this side of the aisle can only imagine all the additional things we could have accomplished. But the fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, they didn't agree with us.... (Now, it goes without saying, Mr. Speaker, that by my count our friends on the other side of the aisle lost every one of those arguments over the last 22 years... but that's beside the point!)... He was still trash-talking after the speech: "The hatred is amazing ... "The Democrats hate losing. They hate being out of power," he said. Nancy Pelosi, alas, apparently didn't come up with anything better than the usual line: She ... said DeLay's legacy "will be a culture of corruption that he built here in the Congress." Please, Nancy -- stop. That line just doesn't work. Americans think both parties are corrupt. Here was a chance to say something new. After the preening of another GOP trash-talker earlier this week, in your place I would have said something about "the Ann Coulter/Tom DeLay Republican culture of all-out partisan warfare and character assassination." I would have said that "it's a culture of gloating in victory and bitter resentment in defeat, and no compromise, ever." And I would have added, "If you don't think things are done very well in this city, this is a big part of the reason why." Here was a chance to address Americans who regularly tell pollsters they hate partisan bickering. I think it was an opportunity missed. **** DeLay also said this: Conservatives, especially, less enamored of government's lust for growth, must remember that our principles must always drive our agenda, and not the other way around. For us conservatives, there are two such principles that can never be honorably compromised: human freedom and human dignity. Yeah, right, Tom: turning Terri Schiavo into a political pinata and trying to seize power from her husband and the courts was a real blow for human freedom and human dignity, and a real sign that you hate "big government." posted by Steve M. | 11:00 AM | The right is appalled that some reactions to the death of Zarqawi are not ecstatically correct, particularly the reactions of Democrats -- whoops, sorry, of two Democrats (plus two who say "we have a long way to go," which is pretty much exactly what President Bush said) -- but, er, Michael ("Anonymous") Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris, thinks this could make things worse, as he told Bob Schieffer of CBS News: SCHIEFFER: ...Michael, I want to ask you: It's my understanding you believe this might actually increase danger for U.S. troops? SCHEUER: I think that's probably the case, Bob. Zarqawi was really off the reservation for Al Qaeda in terms of his willingness or eagerness to fight Shias. That is Al Qaeda's worst nightmare, a Shia-versus-Sunni civil war, because it'll detract from the focus on the United States, and with him out of the way, I suspect the next Al Qaeda leader in Iraq will focus more on American forces and the Iraqi government than actually just fighting against the Shia.... SCHIEFFER: What do you think the real significance of all this is, Michael? SCHEUER: Any day you can kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a good day for Americans, sir, but in the long run I think it's a great tactical victory. Strategically it's not very important. Al Qaeda always plans for succession, and the next person they put in there is less likely to be trying to provoke a civil war with the Shia, which means the Shia insurgents and the Sunni insurgents probably will refocus their efforts on American forces, British forces, and the forces of the Iraqi government. Righties, enforce conformity! Attack the pundit infidel! (Video here; scroll to "Impact Of Zarqawi's Death." The Scheuer interview follows a much more optimistic interview with Thomas Friedman.) posted by Steve M. | 7:44 AM | Thursday, June 08, 2006 From Lucianne.com:  Yeah, those Reuters guys -- such nitpickers. Always worrying about trivial details like the fact that a guy who murdered three thousand people is still at large. posted by Steve M. | 6:16 PM | THE PERMANENT REPUBLICAN MAJORITY A coalition of grassroots organizations and labor unions sued in federal court Thursday to challenge a new Florida law.... The law in question, which took effect Jan. 1, imposes fines that begin a $250 for each voter registration form submitted more than 10 days after it is collected from a person. The fines can reach $5,000 for forms that are never submitted. No excuses are permitted.... The suit contends that violates the Constitution's free speech protections by deterring voter registration drives, which could suppress political speech for thousands of people -- especially the poor, elderly, minority groups, rural residents and the disabled.... The new registration law's impact could be devastating on the budget of a grassroots voter registration organization, said League of Women Voters of Florida President Dianne Wheatley-Giliotti. The league's entire operating budget is about $80,000, or about 16 lost registration forms.... --AP, May 18 Shops [in Florida] that sell hunting and fishing licenses, including Wal-Mart, are now required to offer customers voter registration applications that they could take home and submit later. The law went into effect immediately.... --"Six Bills Backed by NRA Are Law," St. Petersburg Times today Making it harder for people you don't like to vote while greasing the skids for people you do like -- it's so much easier than winning elections in an actual democracy. posted by Steve M. | 4:43 PM | HALF-NAKED BREASTS ON TV: APPARENTLY WORSE THAN CARBON MONOXIDE IN COAL MINES Responding to a spate of accidents that have killed 33 coal miners this year, the House gave final approval Wednesday to the most sweeping overhaul of mine safety regulations since the federal mine safety agency was created nearly three decades ago. ... The maximum civil penalty for violations of mine-safety regulations will rise to $220,000, from $60,000.... The law ... was unanimously passed by the Senate in May.... --New York Times today Vowing to clear the public airwaves of prurient and vulgar material, Congress has overwhelmingly approved legislation to increase by tenfold the fines that broadcasters could face for indecent programming.... The bill would increase the maximum fines the Federal Communications Commission may levy for indecent content from the current $32,500 to $325,000 per incident..... --AP today Nice to see our government still has its priorities straight. posted by Steve M. | 1:27 PM | I don't know how significant the death of Zarqawi will turn out to be, but yeah, sure, it can't be bad news. I will say, though, that some of the people crowing about this the most now were telling us a couple of months ago that Iraqi Sunnis had already made Zarqawi persona non grata: Captain's Quarters in January. Captain's Quarters now. John Hinderaker at Power Line in March. Hinderaker now. GOP Bloggers in March. GOP Bloggers now. OK, let's add this up: Last month was the worst month for multiple-fatality bombings in Iraq since the start of the war. It was also the deadliest in Baghdad since the start of the war. And it was the bloodiest month for British forces since the start of the war. All this during a period when -- according to right-wing bloggers -- Zarqawi was on the run not only from Coalition forces and the Iraqi government but from Sunnis. Therefore, according to these commentators, the impact of his death on the violence is likely to be what exactly? (I was skeptical of those rift reports, as I said here back in April. On the other hand, I do think there's a hell of a lot more to the Iraq chaos than Zarqawi.) posted by Steve M. | 10:40 AM | Wednesday, June 07, 2006 Under the leadership of Our First M.B.A. President, the federal government shows it really understands money: The FBI and the Department of Veterans Affairs are offering a $50,000 reward for the return of a laptop computer and external hard drive stolen from the Aspen Hill home of a VA employee on May 3. The equipment contained personal information -- including names, Social Security numbers, home addresses, birthdates and disability ratings -- of 26.5 million veterans, including everyone discharged since 1975.... Let's see: The computer has information on 26.5 million veterans (and active-duty personnel). Over here, we have a report of people paying up to $60 per record for stolen personal data; over here, between $40 and $70. Hmmm ... six times four, carry the two ... the way I figure it, those 26.5 million records could be worth between $1.06 billion and $1.855 billion. Yeah, $50,000 will get that computer back -- no problem! posted by Steve M. | 10:55 PM | Not that I want to help pump up Ann Coulter's book sales by drawing even more attention to her latest faux-sociopathic publicity stunt, but I notice that her opinion that political advocates take advantage of the status of 9/11 victims ("This is the Left's doctrine of infallibility.... when we respond, 'Oh, you're questioning their authenticity'") was something she kept to herself a couple of years ago: It's only fitting that Mason, Ohio, teenager Ashley Faulkner will get a chance to see President Bush's inauguration firsthand this week. Ashley Faulkner was the focus of Ashley's Story, a pro-Bush campaign ad that aired nearly 30,000 times in the month before the election Nov. 2. In the Faulkner family's own words, it told how Ashley had lost her mother, Wendy, in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. When President Bush learned of this at a Lebanon, Ohio, campaign rally, he gave her a spontaneous, emotional hug. Her father snapped a photo that became the centerpiece of the ad many observers deemed the most moving of the campaign. "He's the most powerful man in the world," Ashley said in the ad, "and all he wants to do is make sure I'm safe, that I'm OK." ...  (Full transcript and video here.) Did this bother you, Ann? Did you say this qualified as "the right's doctrine of infallibility" in action? If so, I guess I missed it. posted by Steve M. | 2:50 PM | 49 MINUS 48 EQUALS 7 A constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is headed toward certain Senate defeat, but supporters say new votes for the measure represent progress that gives the GOP's base reason to vote on Election Day.... Supporters say the amendment will win as many as seven new votes from freshmen elected after the amendment received its last vote in 2004. Their support is expected to produce a majority for the amendment in the 100-member chamber.... "We're building votes," said Sen. David Vitter, R-La.... --AP this morning Vote in 2004: 48 in favor, 50 against. Vote this year: 49 in favor, 48 against. (Via Washington Monthly and Atrios.) posted by Steve M. | 12:42 PM | We keep losing the elections we hope will be signs of a seismic shift -- Jean Schmidt vs. Paul Hackett last year, Ciro Rodriguez vs. Henry Cuellar in a Democratic primary earlier this year, and now Francine Busby vs. Brian Bilbray. People aren't happy with Bushism, but it sure seems as if there's a glass ceiling for Bush opponents in a lot of districts. Does anyone else wonder if this "netroots" strategy is perhaps not all it's cracked up to be? We've all known for years that Republicans dominate American politics in large part because they have an extraordinarily effective, hydra-headed message machine -- yet many in the left blogosphere seem to want to use our blogs not primarily as a foundation for a message machine of our own, not to get ideas and stories out into the world, but first and foremost to get people to the polls. What I keep thinking is: If it were such a great idea to make electioneering the central focus of blogs, wouldn't Republicans be doing it? After all, they're the ones who seem to know how to win elections. Still. The main narrative of the GOP message machine, as I'm always saying, is: Democrats are dangerous freaks, people who are always doing something neurotic, bizarre, beyond the pale, or contrary to America's national interest -- or all four. I think we won't break the glass ceiling until we make Republicans seem like dangerous freaks and make Republicanism seem beyond the pale. When Jean Schmidt attacks a decorated veteran's patriotism, it's not a deal-breaker because she's a Republican and Republicans are, by definition, not people who go over the line. But when Francine Busby flubs a line and gives an opening to illegal immigration hard-liners, that's quite possibly the deal-breaker for voters in her district -- because she's a Democrat, and Democrats, as we're forever being told, just can't be trusted. I know it's not either/or; I also know that we don't have large, vital components of the machine (talk radio in every market; we Fox; and so on and so on). Still, it seems to me that getting out a narrative is much more important -- the electioneering is reaching out only to the like-minded, and clearly we're not going to win heretofore safe districts until we flip a few people who until now haven't been like-minded. We're not going to do that until we give them a different way of looking at the candidates they've been in the habit of voting for. We have a bit of power here -- but I'm afraid we may be squandering it. posted by Steve M. | 11:07 AM | Tuesday, June 06, 2006 A WORD TO THE WISE If, in your Net travels, you stumble across rumors that George W. Bush is actually gay or bisexual, and the evidence given includes the following -- Why is Bush so hostile to the idea of gay marriage? Perhaps because until 1987, George W. Bush was gay. According to a group of 29 Yale classmates who comprise Gay Ivy Leaguers for Truth, Bush was "known to be at least sexually experimental throughout his time in college." One of Bush's alleged former boyfriends, Anthony Berusca (class of '70), told The Dallas Morning News that Bush was "deeply conflicted about being gay, even somewhat self-hating." -- please understand that the source of this passage is a 2004 parody post at Fanatical Apathy, the blog of comic/radio humorist/soon-to-be-published comic novelist Adam Felber. And if you read that Kitty Kelley's book The Family reports that George W. Bush was given the nickname "Lips" while in college for his gay sexual skills, and that Kelley also reports an affair between Bush and Victor Ashe, the former mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee, please understand that neither rumor appears in the book, nor does Victor Ashe's name appear anywhere in the book. (Trust me, I checked both a physical copy and the Search Inside version at Amazon. On page 256, Kelley does quote an Andover classmate who says his wisecracks earned him the nickname "the Lip," but that's about it). And therefore, when the Wayne Madsen Report floats the rumor (June 1, 2, and 3 here) that Bush is having an extramarital affair with Condoleezza Rice, I have to say I don't buy it at all, because Masden also (June 4) reports the bisexuality rumors. Not that it wouldn't amuse me if all this were true, of course, especially given the sorry shenanigans taking place in the Senate right now, with Bush's approval. **** UPDATE: A bit more on the Bush-is-gay story: Masden cites this press release, in which "Leola McConnell, Liberal Democratic Candidate for Governor of Nevada," claims to have watched George W. Bush "enthusiastically" have sex with Victor Ashe in 1984. It turns out that a couple of years ago Leola McConnell (aka Leola "Muscles" McConnell, aka "Mistress Lee") also claimed to have been a dominatrix involved with William Bennett. The blogger who first published this claim later concluded that the whole thing was a hoax -- see this follow-up and this one, as well as this Wonkette post. Enough -- this is nonsense. posted by Steve M. | 10:20 PM | Amir Taheri, who recently made news for spreading false rumors that a law had been passed in Iran requiring the country's Jews to wear identifying markers, now slings more B.S. in an article for Commentary* (B.S. eagerly seized upon by the right): When things have been truly desperate in Iraq -- in 1959, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1980, 1988, and 1990 -- long queues of Iraqis have formed at the Turkish and Iranian frontiers, hoping to escape.... Since the toppling of Saddam in 2003, this is one highly damaging image we have not seen on our television sets -- and we can be sure that we would be seeing it if it were there to be shown. Er, Amir? Little known to the rest of the world, the recent war in Iraq has created large numbers of refugees who have fled to Syria, escaping the lawlessness, harassment, and persecution that has followed. Iraqis, some accused of supporting the Americans, cite attacks, kidnappings, and threats of murder by insurgent groups upon themselves and their families as reasons for their flight.... Now totaling an estimated 500,000, only a small fraction of these refugees have approached the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to apply for temporary protection from refoulement.... --Refugees International report, November 15, 2005 "We're very concerned because the displacement doesn't seem to be subsiding," said Dana Graber, IDP monitoring director for the International Organization for Migration in Iraq, which is tracking displacement trends and working with non-governmental organizations on relief efforts. IOM estimates that 70,000 people have been displaced since the February mosque bombing, and more than 165,000 individuals have left their homes since the war began. Bill Frelick, the refugee policy director of Human Rights Watch who just returned from a trip to Jordan to assess the refugee situation from there, said his group estimates at least 750,000 Iraqi refugees are living in that country today. --Fox News, May 17, 2006 An Iraqi vice president said on Friday 100,000 families -- perhaps some half a million people -- are living as refugees because of sectarian violence wracking the country.... --Reuters, April 28, 2006 See this on our TVs? Hell, we hardly see any Iraq news on TV at all these days. (Via Memeorandum.) **** *UPDATE: Try this link instead. posted by Steve M. | 12:23 PM | Be afraid. Be very afraid.  Here's the lead paragraph from the accompanying Fred Barnes article: IF ONLY HIS LAST NAME WERE SMITH. He'd not only attract national attention as the popular and successful governor of a difficult-to-govern state. He'd be viewed sympathetically as a leader who had dealt with family issues--his wife's aversion to politics, his daughter's bouts with drug addiction--without losing his grip on the governorship. And he'd be the prohibitive frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. Kill me now. Some reasons why Jeb is so great, according to Barnes: Florida was a weak-governor state when Bush arrived. No more. It had cabinet government with six elected state officials besides the governor. Now the cabinet has been reduced to three members plus Bush, and power is not shared equally. Bush rules. He removed the bar association from a role in naming judges and now controls the selection process. He also eliminated the state board of regents, took control of the board of every public university, and gained the right to name the state education commissioner. Great -- another dictator wannabe. Just what America needs right now. He stubbornly fought a high-speed train connecting Miami, Orlando, and Tampa. It was approved in a 2000 referendum, only to be rejected in 2004 at Bush's urging. Drive, dammit! Use more imported oil! Trains are for French people! Medicaid: Bush's bold experiment, due to begin in less than a month, has important national implications. In Broward and Duval counties, Medicaid recipients will choose among 19 insurance plans. I guess if you really, really enjoyed trying to figure out Medicare Part D, you're going to love this. So why are we hearing Jeb's name so much these days? Grover Norquist ... has tried to persuade Bush to run for president in 2008.... Ah, Norquist. He's not elected, he's not appointed, he's not a captain of industry (has he ever even held a real job?), he's not a recognized leader of a large voting bloc, and yet he's one of the most powerful men in America -- and, given the electoral haplessness of the Democratic Party, he'll probably remain that way for the foreseeable future. How do we term-limit this guy? Meanwhile, there's this: After Senator John McCain, the Republican frontrunner in 2008, visited Bush here this spring, rumors of a deal spread: Bush would back McCain for the nomination in exchange for being his vice presidential pick. As far as I can tell, that's not true. Bush, though, had extremely kind words for McCain when I talked to him a few weeks after his session with the Arizona senator. "I like McCain," he said. "I like the fact that he doesn't like pork. I'm upset with Washington and this passionate defense of overspending, as though there's a clamoring in the land to do this." (Remember, McCain will be 72 years old on Inauguration Day 2009 and he's already survived two rounds of malignant melanoma.) Please tell me I don't have to worry about this. Tell me there isn't going to be a softening in attitudes toward George W. Bush by 2008, signaled, perhaps, by newsweekly cover stories with titles like "Survivor" and "The Lion in Winter." Tell me that won't happen and pave the way for another Bush vice presidency that could lead to another Bush presidency. Never mind. I'm renewing my passport. posted by Steve M. | 9:48 AM | Monday, June 05, 2006 In case you missed this last week: A federal judge ruled yesterday that Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries and the state of Iowa violated the Constitution by setting up a government-funded program to rehabilitate prison inmates by immersing them in Christianity.... In a 140-page decision, U.S. District Judge Robert W. Pratt ruled that the InnerChange Freedom Initiative program at Iowa's Newton Correctional Facility violated the constitutional ban on government establishment of religion because it was state-funded, pervasively sectarian and aimed at religious conversion. "The overtly religious atmosphere of the InnerChange program is not simply an overlay or secondary effect of the program -- it is the program," Pratt wrote.... The people running the program are not taking it well: If Judge Pratt's ruling is allowed to stand, says Prison Fellowship president Mark Earley, it will "enshrine" religious discrimination. Yes, poor dears -- this activist judge is discriminating against them by not letting them use our tax dollars to do this: One inmate [at Iowa's Newton Correctional Facility] reported during discovery that an InnerChange staffer told him, "Catholics aren't really Christians." Another inmate wrote in his journal, "Today we had some serious Catholic bashing in class. It hurt me very deeply. Never before had I heard serious criticism toward my faith. Spent the rest of the day trying to sort it out in my...mind and put away the bitterness." At trial, inmates testified that InnerChange personnel likened the pope to Hitler and to the Antichrist. Other inmates testified that InnerChange staff asked Catholics not to read from their version of the Bible. A manual used in the program advised readers to be wary of "pronouncements of church officials such as bishops, cardinals, popes."... Another InnerChange book goes beyond Catholic bashing and includes a "Spiritual checklist" of groups to be wary of. Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, Unitarianism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, New Age, Buddhism, Bahaism and Native American faiths all made the roster. We have to stop these activist judges -- if we don't, before you know it people from every religion in America will start thinking they're just as good as right-wing evangelical Protestants! We can't have that! **** UPDATE: I almost left out this information about Prison Fellowship's Mark Earley: In 1994 [Pat Robertson] made an emotional plea on The 700 Club for cash donations to Operation Blessing [his charitable organization] to support airlifts of refugees from the Rwandan civil war to Zaire (now Congo). Reporter Bill Sizemore of The Virginian Pilot later discovered that Operation Blessing's planes were transporting diamond-mining equipment for the African Development Corporation, a Robertson-owned venture initiated with the cooperation of Zaire's then-dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. After a lengthy investigation, Virginia's Office of Consumer Affairs determined that Robertson "willfully induced contributions from the public through the use of misleading statements and other implications." Yet when the office called for legal action against Robertson in 1999, Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley, a Republican, intervened with his own report, agreeing that Robertson had made deceptive appeals but overruling the recommendation for his prosecution. Two years earlier, while Virginia's investigation was gathering steam, Robertson donated $35,000 to Earley's campaign--Earley's largest contribution.... (Earley is now president of Prison Fellowship Ministries....) (Via World O' Crap.) posted by Steve M. | 11:20 PM | What a great Bush-era headline: Ballot counting could delay Calif. results Yeah -- as they say in Ohio, it's so much more efficient if you just make the numbers up. posted by Steve M. | 2:59 PM | Righty blogger Cori Dauber at Rantingprofs: There has been far too little attention paid in the American media to what has been uncovered about Saddam's victims. Little reporting about the testimony at his trial, and little testimony about the work excavating the mass graves found in the country, so I'm glad to see this front-page, above the fold story in today's Times about the forensic teams working on the mass graves around the country. Righty blogger Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard: Frankly, This Surprises Me I honestly would not have believed the New York Times would publish a story about the mass graves being unearthed in Iraq where victims of Saddam Hussein were disposed of. Then I guess you'll be really surprised to learn that this is the second Times story about the search by Michael Trimble's team for evidence of Saddam's mass killings -- here's the first -- or that Trimble's work has been covered by The Boston Globe, MSNBC, The Telegraph, Agence France-Presse, and USA Today. For more New York Times reports on mass graves in Iraq, try this. I know, I know -- for the right, that isn't enough. The right wants images of the mass graves playing on telescreens everywhere in America 24/7, along with all the positive postwar stories it says "MSM" journalists ignore. I'm grateful to Frank Rich for noting this yesterday: Now more than 70 journalists have died in Iraq, more than in any modern war, including two members of a CBS News crew killed in the bombing that injured the correspondent Kimberly Dozier. This tragedy ... took place on Memorial Day, which Ms. Dozier was honoring by trying to do one of those Iraq "good news" stories that the administration faults the press for ignoring: the story of an American soldier who, despite having been injured, was "fighting on in memory of those who have fallen," as she had e-mailed colleagues. You know what, reporters? Don't bother. Whatever you do, it'll never be enough for the right. posted by Steve M. | 2:02 PM | Standing by the president: ROURKE PLEDGES SUPPORT TO BUSH Movie & Entertainment News provided by World Entertainment News Network (www.wenn.com) MICKEY ROURKE has pledged his support for US President GEORGE W BUSH's controversial foreign policy in Iraq. The SIN CITY actor, who is famed for being for being outspoken, has come forward as one of the few stars to support the war on terror. The former boxer says, "George is doing a hell of a job during very difficult times, more power to him. Screw all them people who don't like him."  Well, Rourke is a self-involved substance abuser with a petulant streak (did he really walk off a movie set because the filmmakers refused to cast his Chihuahua?), yet he's been given nearly limitless opportunities to make a comeback -- so, in a way, it's a perfect match. (Oh, except for the fact that Rourke is worshipped by the French.) posted by Steve M. | 8:25 AM | Sunday, June 04, 2006 In her final White House column before going on leave to write a book about Condi Rice, Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times decided to list a few "misperceptions" about the White House beat. Near the top of the list was this: The White House doesn't care about the press. Who on earth believes that? This White House spies on the press, and threatens the press with prosecution; no one could possibly believe that the Bushies don't care what reporters say and do. No one, that is, who isn't steeped in White House spin. Bumiller is in that category. The White House wants everyone to think that its occupants live true to their own moral compass, manfully sticking to their guns like Western heroes while ignoring the cavillers and naysayers who try to distract them. No one outside the administration hothouse still believes that, but she's been immersed in the B.S., so I guess it still seems plausible to her. Bumiller also gives us a snapshot of Bush that's much more negative than anything she's shared up to now, although, still experiencing the Stockholm syndrome, she suggests that his peevishness is her fault: ... like just about everyone, he can be short-tempered, impatient and brusque.... One time I had my own little encounter. I was leaving the Rose Garden in May 2002 when I turned around in a corner of the colonnade and found myself face to face with Mr. Bush. Startled, I blurted out: "Hi, Mr. President. What are you doing here?" This was not a good question to put to the actual occupant of the White House. Mr. Bush testily shot back, "What are you doing here?" Er, this was not a good answer to put to someone who, in effect, works out of the White House. Bush was rude to you, Elisabeth. I think just about every president of at least the past 75 years would have reacted to a question like that with grace and humor. Bush is just a sullen brat. posted by Steve M. | 10:21 PM | Saturday, June 03, 2006 CAPTAIN ED, GIVE ME A FREAKIN' BREAK As you probably already know, Canada is claiming to have broken up a major homegrown terrorist cell. The Toronto Star says that a key role in the investigation was played by Internet monitoring: ...The chain of events began two years ago, sparked by local teenagers roving through Internet sites, reading and espousing anti-Western sentiments and vowing to attack at home, in the name of oppressed Muslims here and abroad. Their words were sometimes encrypted, the Internet sites where they communicated allegedly restricted by passwords, but Canadian spies back in 2004 were reading them.... Righty blogger Captain Ed wags a finger: The issue of Internet monitoring has some in the US uncomfortable about breaches of privacy.... Should the Canadians have eschewed their investigation -- and waited until this group killed hundreds or thousands of people before knowing anything about them? The Internet is not a private network, as some could argue the phone systems provide. Communications are not point-to-point but broadcast, and the expectation of privacy in Internet communications should have disappeared long ago. If we want to catch these people before they strike, then we had better know when, where, and how they communicate for coordination and recruitment, and be prepared to stop them as the CSIS [Canadian Security and Intelligence Service] has apparently done today. Er, Ed? I don't know anyone who's arguing that governments shouldn't be monitoring suspect Web sites. It's the unrestricted warrantless dragnets that get us cranky, not cops finding their way to chat rooms where people are talking jihad and making their way in. I cite last summer's New Yorker article about New York's counterterrorism efforts all the time, but it's relevant here: The intelligence division [of the NYPD] ... has officers fluent in the relevant languages poring over the foreign press or surfing the innumerable jihadist Web sites and chat rooms. ... "When we started, in 2002, we didn't really know what we were doing," Reza, [an] Iranian-born officer, said. "It was trial and error. Viruses beyond belief. But we got the medicine now. We go into the worst chat rooms." "We're always being tested," Maged, [a] detective from Egypt, said. "You know you passed the test when suddenly somebody gives you a password to a chat room you didn’t know existed." He went on, "We're familiar with the tradition, the background, we speak the slang."... The cybercops told me that each of them belonged to more than thirty separate e-mail groups, or chat rooms. "It can take a long time to work your way up the ladder," Maged said. "At first, it might be just some guy in Texas talking with some guy from Saudi, anti-government shit. But other people are listening, and if they see you coming back every day, and you seem serious, they might invite you somewhere else." "Ninety-seven per cent of the juicy stuff is done P.M.--personal message," Reza said. "Not in chat rooms. But it takes a lot of time -- months, maybe years -- to get this kind of trust." ... Remember the huge outcry from civil libertarians when that article appeared, Ed? Me either -- because there wasn't one. If this is what the CSIS did, good for the CSIS. That's not the same as what the Bush administration is doing. posted by Steve M. | 7:45 PM | ENGLISH-ONLY? Here's something I found in Ronald Steel's review of a new William Jennings Bryan biography in The New York Review of Books (subscribers only), about what the Republicans did after the Democrats made Bryan their presidential nominee in 1896: They reacted by organizing, under the leadership of Mark Hannah, the most sophisticated political campaign Americans had ever witnessed. Hannah ... distributed 120 million pieces of literature, including pamphlets in nine European languages.... (Emphasis mine.) Gee, I thought everybody who came to this country instantly spoke English as soon as they set foot on our shores. I thought reaching out to non-English speakers would lead to the immediate destruction of America. (Mark Hanna, of course -- whose name Steel misspells -- was Karl Rove's role model. It's ironic that one of the last nails in the coffin of the Bush presidency might be his loss of his conservative base because he's sticking with a strategy of outreach to first- and second-generation Americans, possibly at the behest of Rove; that's one of the few non-reprehensible strategic choices these guys have made, and it's killing them.) posted by Steve M. | 6:33 PM | Friday, June 02, 2006 Well, I suppose this is a lovely gesture: Lexington, KY (PRWEB) June 2, 2006 -- ... "Compassionate Conservative" is a familiar slogan to those on the Right, and an oxymoron to those on the Left. Yet ACC Studios, publishers of the world’s first Conservative comic book: Liberality For All, is trying to give new meaning to the phrase in an effort which both political parties can agree on. Until further notice, www.accstudios.com is donating 100% of the proceeds from their website to the relief efforts in Bantul, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Why? Bantul is the home of Liberality For All comic book artist Donny Lin, without whom the LFA comic book would not be possible.... And that comic book, "Liberality for All"? Er, not lovely exactly. Pathetic -- yes, "pathetic" hits the nail on the head. If you kidnapped an aspiring child cartoonist, locked the kid in a basement, and force-fed him LSD while blasting right-wing talk radio at him 24 hours a day, by age 18 he'd probably be drawing something like this: America’s future has become an Orwellian nightmare of ultra-liberalism. Beginning with the Gore Presidency, the government has become increasingly dominated by liberal extremists. In 2004, Muslim terrorists stopped viewing the weakened American government as a threat; instead they set their sights on their true enemies, vocal American conservatives. On one dark day, in 2006, many conservative voices were forever silenced by terrorist assassins. Those which survived joined forces and formed a powerful covert conservative organization called “The Freedom of Information League”, aka F.O.I.L. ...Our weakened government has willingly handed the reins of our once great country to the corrupt United Nations. The Department of Political-Correctness is required to assist U.N. monitors to properly edit all print and broadcast media. Live broadcasts are a thing of the past; all transmissions are monitored by the U.N. and any 'offensive' material is dumped. Rupert Murdoch’s decision to defy the "Coulter Laws" hate speech legislations, has bankrupted News Corporation. George Soros has bought all of News Corps assets and changed its name to Liberty International Broadcasting. LIB’s networks have flourished and circle the globe with a series of satellites beaming liberal & U.N. propaganda worldwide. Hang on. It gets even better. You haven't met the superheroes: The New York City faction of F.O.I.L. is lead by Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North, each uniquely endowed with special abilities devised by a bio mechanical engineer affectionately nicknamed "Oscar". Yes-- or as it's put here, Hannity, Liddy, and North are all "bio-mechanically enhanced conservatives." (I really don't want to know the details of that.) ...Two decades of negotiation with the U.N., and America's administration of 2021 (President Chelsea Clinton and Vice President Michael Moore), has culminated in a truce with fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, or so America is told. The honorable ambassador from Afghanistan has come to NYC to address the U.N., his name is Usama Bin Laden.... Just days before his arrival in NYC, Bin Laden made a brief visit to Iraq, now a nuclear power that is run by the vicious Uday Hussein. In Iraq, Bin Laden received a tactical nuke that is now contained in his private diplomatic briefcase. Bin Laden plans far more than an apology....  Wow, 2021 sounds like a trip -- bin Laden wants to nuke a country that (per right-wing logic) is the dream collaborator for Islamic extremists (i.e., run by liberals, the UN, and Jews); he's also (finally!) in cahoots with Iraq -- and Uday is The Man in Iraq even though by that time he'll have been deceased for 18 years. Rape Rooms of the Undead! But there's more to buy at ACC Studios than just this comic. There's, er ... well, there's not much more. But there is a limited-edition lithograph series of "Roswell Art":  "Survivor" Roswell, New Mexico, 1947 - Lithograph Signed & numbered by Larry Elmore, Ltd to 1,947 Painted by Larry Elmore - Produced by ACC Studios Awesome. And for a good cause. posted by Steve M. | 3:54 PM | Finally, shared sacrifice: Web users to 'patrol' US border A US state is to enlist web users in its fight against illegal immigration by offering live surveillance footage of the Mexican border on the internet. The plan will allow web users worldwide to watch Texas' border with Mexico and phone the authorities if they spot any apparently illegal crossings. Texas Governor Rick Perry ... announced his plans for streaming the border surveillance camera footage over the internet at a meeting of police officials on Thursday.... The cameras will cost $5m (£2.7m) to install and will be trained on sections of the 1,000-mile (1,600km) border known to be favoured by illegal immigrants. Web users who spot an apparently illegal crossing will be able to alert the authorities by telephoning a number free of charge. Mr Perry, a Republican, is running for re-election in November.... Yes, at last we have a war the 101st Fighting Keyboarders can help fight without having to go to the trouble of putting on pants. posted by Steve M. | 11:30 AM | I wonder if the cut in the feds' antiterrorism funding for New York had anything to do with this New Yorker article on the city, which ran last July. An excerpt: ...[New York police commissioner Raymond] Kelly has been sharply critical of the Bush Administration’s failure since September 11th to help New York protect itself. When I saw him at his office, where he sits at the desk that Theodore Roosevelt used when he was Commissioner, I asked him if the Administration had begun to do more. "We've seen some improvement," he said. "But it's not nearly what it should be, in my judgment. We're still defending the city pretty much on our dime." He glanced out the window at downtown Manhattan. "We’re defending the nation here," he said. "These are national assets." ... Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, in 2002, there has been one large, inert, misshapen bureaucracy that, for New York, at least, symbolizes the extent of the Bush Administration’s neglect. When Kelly says that New York is having to defend itself "pretty much on our dime," he is referring, primarily, to the budgeting formula under which homeland-security funds are disbursed. In fiscal year 2004, Wyoming received $37.74 per capita, and North Dakota $30.82, while New York got $5.41. Among the fifty states, New York’s per-capita allotment was forty-eighth. This bizarre formula is, from New York’s point of view, only slowly improving. Also quoted is David Cohen, the city's deputy commissioner for intelligence: Cohen went on, "Manila ferryboat explosion, hundred dead. Reported as industrial accident. Then they picked up a guy who said it was an Abu Sayyaf job." Abu Sayyaf is an Islamist guerrilla army in the Philippines, and an Al Qaeda ally. "We dispatched someone within the day. Any ferryboat incident anywhere, we want to know about it. It's not the F.B.I. or the C.I.A. or the Homeland Security Department down in the subway tunnels. It's the N.Y.P.D....." Suggesting to a reporter that you're more on the ball than the Bush administration, while grumbling to that same reporter about the Bushies' spending priorities? That could have consequences -- it was nearly a year ago, but the Bushies have long memories. Would they reapportion dollars based not on the most likely way to prevent the possible wholesale slaughter of innocents, but on who did and didn't kiss the ring? I wouldn't be surprised. posted by Steve M. | 10:14 AM | Hey, I'll participate in this: ...Sen. Hillary Clinton and Rep. Pete King ... teamed up Thursday to write Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff postcards from famous New York landmarks, in a dig at the agency's finding the city has zero national monuments or icons at risk of terror attack.... Clinton and King, the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, also are showing their postcards on Clinton's Web site to encourage New Yorkers to write their own.... "Dear Secretary Chertoff," the cards begin. "Just a quick note from one of New York's many national monuments and icons." The cards then offer descriptions of the landmarks, such as the fact that the Brooklyn Bridge sees 144,000 vehicle crossings on the average work day. "Wish you were here! Hillary and Pete," the postcards end....  More postcards on display here. posted by Steve M. | 7:09 AM | Thursday, June 01, 2006 Maybe I should have been paying more attention, but I confess I didn't realize she'd actually sign it: Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Thursday that she'll sign a near-total ban on abortion - without exceptions for rape or incest victims - that is nearing final legislative passage. The Louisiana House and Senate have approved the measure by Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, but it awaits one final approval from the Senate of House changes before it reaches Blanco's desk. It only would allow abortion in cases where the woman's life is in danger or when childbirth would permanently harm her health. The bill could only go into effect if the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision is overturned. "I anticipate signing that bill. It's got a safety measure for extreme situations for the life of the mother and some other health issues," Blanco said in an interview with The Associated Press. She said she believed an exception for rape and incest victims to get an abortion, a proposal rejected by both the House and Senate, would have "been reasonable," but she said she wouldn't reject the bill for that reason.... This appears not to be an expression of the popular will. As The Boston Globe noted a couple of years ago, Even in Louisiana, one of the least abortion-friendly states in the country, 52 percent of registered voters in an October poll said abortion should be "sometimes legal" (13 percent said "always legal," 31 percent said "never legal"). But when a minority is hell-bent on doing something, don't count on the will of the majority prevailing. And it's a Democrat who spearheading this in the legislature, and a Democrat who'll sign the bill. Sigh. posted by Steve M. | 10:53 PM | GEORGE W. BUSH: OBJECTIVELY PRO-HEAD LICE And I mean that literally. The full Wall Street Journal article is behind the subscription firewall, but Free Republic has an excerpt: ... to the dismay of many parents, ... "no nits" policies are disappearing as school districts face state and federal pressure to reduce absenteeism and boost academic achievement. No Child [Left Behind] requires that 95% of students be present for mandatory achievement tests. It also allows states to use attendance to help determine whether school districts are making adequate educational progress under the federal law. Those that don't do so face sanctions that could include state takeovers of their schools. At the Todd County Public Schools, a rural district based in Elkton, Ky., students found to have lice often used to miss a week or more of school. The old rules barred them from school until they could produce a letter from a doctor or a public-health agency certifying them lice- and nit-free. Under new guidelines, a box top from an over-the-counter lice treatment does the trick. Bruce Gray, the assistant Todd County superintendent who spearheaded the change, says pressure to reduce absenteeism and boost student achievement was a big consideration. "The more your students are out of school, the less likely you are to meet the academic goals of No Child Left Behind," Mr. Gray says.... Meeting rigid, arbitrary attendance goals is more important than protecting health? Gee, I can't wait till bird flu gets here. posted by Steve M. | 10:21 AM | Joseph Vento was profiled in The Philadelphia Inquirer on Tuesday; he owns the famous cheesesteak stand Geno's Steaks, and despite the fact that his Italian-born grandparents spoke broken English (just like my Italian-born great-grandparents), he posts a sign at his shop that reads, This is AMERICA WHEN ORDERING "SPEAK ENGLISH" (Love those extra quote marks, Joe.) Geno's sits at Ninth and Passyunk, the hub of Little Italy turned home to thousands of Mexicans. Some try to order a cheesesteak. And it bugs Vento if they can't ask for American cheese, provolone or the classic -- Cheez Whiz -- without pointing. "If you can't tell me what you want, I can't serve you," he said. "It's up to you. If you can't read, if you can't say the word cheese, how can I communicate with you -- and why should I have to bend? "I got a business to run." Best comment on that is from The Philadelphia Weekly's blog: how does a deaf person order at Geno's? Vento's a real charmer: He has driven through South Philadelphia blaring through the SUV's P.A. system denunciations of neighborhood business owners who hire illegal immigrants. Again, from the Weekly's blog: Ahh, yes, the old American tradition of going around a neighborhood and blasting your stereo and telling your neighbors you hate them. And there's this: Vento is lashing out at ... self-assertion by immigrants: "I don't want somebody coming here to change my culture to their culture," he said. In that case, Vento, don't you think you ought to take the pizza steak off your menu? Oh, and lose the provolone. That stuff's Eyetalian food! This is America, dammit! (Links via Daou Report and A Big Fat Slob.) posted by Steve M. | 8:42 AM | |
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