OK Go Away Now
I am.
It’s The Internets Fault
Whatever it is, that’s it.
Serious Criticism Of The Media
I tend to tease and tease and then say something really snotty about the media, but this post is really serious and looks into a systemic failure of the media for decades.
The media is an excellent example of this. In the 1990s, the media led the charge to depose Bill Clinton. As Gene Lyons meticulously documented in Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater, the New York Times and Washington Post persistently, repeatedly, and egregiously misreported virtually every major aspect of the so-called “Whitewater scandal.” When that failed, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal emerged in its place, dozens of leading newspapers editorialized that Clinton should resign. Sixty percent of the American people disagreed, but they couldn’t get a word in edgewise-which is where, when and how MoveOn.org was founded.
In contrast, George W. Bush has not merely subverted the most central aspects of our constitutional order with his dictatorial theories of unchecked executive power, he has shredded the Magna Charta as well as the Constitution, and yet the media persists in lying that only the “loonie left” thinks that there’s anything amiss.
I think the savings and loan scandals had such an impact on Americans that the news had to be covered, but after doing research I was surprised out how much information failed to penetrate into the public conscience.
I can’t even get into too much detail in this post without bring up the Keating Five, two of whom have run for President. You can’t mention Iran Contra without mentioning Ghorbanifar, who is now involved with passing Iranian disinformation to the current Bush administration previous to the war in Iraq.
You can’t dig into BCCI without winding up in the nine eleven commission report.
None of this stuff should have been the sole domain of books. Hegemony appears to be the correct term to use, but it carries a neutral connotation and when we look at the corruption being reported today we have to wonder how much is not being reported on, and why not. How is the dying of the older media not a good thing?
We Are Special
via Oliver
Update: Of course with the primary over …
I can see why none of this clip makes it onto the air. If I were Obama or McCain I would know all about the underground city of Washington DC. I would even make a game out of sneaking up behind them.
Awesome!
That is one helluva woman.
Update: I was somewhat amazed I had nothing to say about Bobby yesterday. Now I know why.
Electric Prunes
I deleted “I had to much to dream last night” for all sorts of puns and reasons. This is a serious policy blog.
Meanwhile At Stately Clinton Manor
Batman ponders the motorcycle parked in the driveway.
Chris Wallace May Be Wrong
But he thinks Hillary will concede today.
Know Thyself, Is Difficult At Best
How many years did it take for you to start thinking in tandem with your spouse?
Hillary Clinton: An Appreciation
I mean, how the hell would they really know? I don’t think I’ll be revealing anything new by pointing out that most of the time, people’s public images are bullshit. Fergawdsakes, we’ve just about endured eight years of a president whose public image was sold to us as a regular guy who was like regular people, and he was anything but — more like a rich frat kid on steroids.
Baby You Can Park That Car
So consensus from the assignment desk thread is that you all want to know what’s up with oil, and in particular, the $11 jump in prices today. Honest answer? No idea, and I don’t think anyone else really knows either. But if you’re interested in picking through some theories, you could do worse than checking out The Oil Drum.
Mexicans, Like Iraqis, Want To Be Like Us
Somewhere in the American psyche is a little voice that tells us other people in other nations want to be just like us. Mexico accuses U.S. of meddling in drug war
MEXICO CITY: Few slights irk Mexican politicians so much as when Washington treats Mexico like a backward country in need of outside guidance, and that anger raged full throttle in the past week as top Mexican officials threatened to walk away from a major U.S. aid package to help defeat drug traffickers.
The reason: Democrats in the U.S. Congress have tied the aid to guarantees that the police and military will not violate human rights. Officials from President Felipe Calderón on down have assailed the idea that the United States would withhold a quarter of the aid for Mexico if it did not meet human rights standards, calling it an attack on their sovereignty.
Of course everybody wants to drink liquor like you do too. Ask Al Capone.
Living In A Black Hole
Hints of ‘time before Big Bang’
The CMB is relic radiation that fills the entire Universe and is regarded as the most conclusive evidence for the Big Bang.
Although this microwave background is mostly smooth, the Cobe satellite in 1992 discovered small fluctuations that were believed to be the seeds from which the galaxy clusters we see in today’s Universe grew.
Dr Adrienne Erickcek, and colleagues from the California Institute for Technology (Caltech), now believes these fluctuations contain hints that our Universe “bubbled off” from a previous one.
Maybe dark matter is the stuff outside the bubble.
They Aim For Me, I Go Bang
For a long time MSNBC was catering towards moderate Republicans, as CNN was “left,” Fox was “right,” and the sweet spot was center right. In reality they were catering to the biases of their very Washington-centric world, where center right convential wisdom prevails. In other words, they were catering to themselves.
Wonder where the market share went. Bong Along Beck!
Oil: Supply Versus Speculation
There is quite a bit of pushback on this from the CNBC crew. YMMV
Hedge funds and big Wall Street banks are taking advantage of loopholes in federal trading limits to buy massive amounts of oil contracts, according to a growing number of lawmakers and prominent investors, who blame the practice for helping to push oil prices to record highs.
The federal agency that oversees oil trading, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has exempted these firms from rules that limit speculative buying, a prerogative traditionally reserved for airlines and trucking companies that need to lock in future fuel costs.
The CFTC has also waived regulations over the past decade on U.S. investors who trade commodities on some overseas markets, freeing those investors to accumulate large quantities of the future oil supply by making purchases on lightly regulated foreign exchanges.
It is an unfortunate situation, but supply and demand doesn’t do what just happened.
Update: Of course I could be wrong, as this Economist article points out.
Back to basics
Mr Harris of the CFTC, for one, believes that the oil price is still a function of supply and demand. For the past few years, the world’s production capacity has grown only sluggishly. Meanwhile, demand, especially from the developing world, has been growing faster. So there is hardly any slack in the system. Only Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are thought to be able to increase their output from today’s levels, and even then, there are doubts, since Saudi Arabia, in particular, is secretive about the state of its oil industry.
That leaves the oil market at the mercy of even small disruptions to supply. Prices tend to jump each time militants sabotage an oil pipeline in Nigeria, bad weather threatens production in the Gulf of Mexico, or political clouds gather over the Persian Gulf.
The problem is exacerbated by a growing mismatch between the type of oil being produced and the refineries that must process it. The most common benchmark prices, including the one used in this article, refer to “light” crude, the least viscous sort, which produces the most petrol and diesel when refined. “Heavy” oil, by contrast, yields more fuel oil, which is used mainly for heating.
At the moment, diesel is in short supply and there is a glut of fuel oil. That makes processing heavy oil unprofitable for some refineries, since the gains from diesel are outweighed by losses on fuel oil. As refineries turn instead to lighter grades, it pushes their prices yet higher. The discount on heavier crudes has risen to record levels. But even then, points out Ed Morse, of Lehman Brothers, another investment bank, Iran is having trouble selling the stuff. It is storing huge quantities of unsold oil on tankers moored off its coast.
I read over thirty articles, but this is the best I think at explaining what is going on. That too, is my opinion, but most of what I read in fits and starts is all in this one.
I’m going with the CNBC guys for the time being.
Hillary and NOW
Why is Hillary Crashing? by Sara
Again, in a sense, this is a book review, the book in question being one I gave to five friends for Xmas this year. “She’s No Lady: Politics, Family and International Feminism” by Arvonne Fraser, Nodin Press, 2007. There is a part of it I believe may help us understand how and why the plus 100 million Hillary Clinton Campaign is on the verge of Crash and Burn. Garrison Keillor wrote the introduction, and has done a couple of hour long interviews with Arvonne on Public Radio as part of the “virtual book tour.”
So who is the Author of this political biography? Garrison calls her “Saint Arvonne of the Church of Perpetual Responsibility” and it is a pretty good characterization. Post College, she went to work as the Office Manager for Hubert Humphrey’s Senate Campaign in 1948, from there to Office Manager of the DFL, and then she married one of HHH’s staffers, Don Fraser, and quickly had six children. Between taking care of kids, sewing all her own clothes and those of her kids, (no, she hates to cook), she mastered the art of campaign management, eventually getting Freeman elected Governor, helped elect Gene McCarthy, Organized JFK’s 1960 Campaign, and got her Husband elected first to the State Senate, and in 1962, to the House of Rep. Moved to DC, she took over managing the office on the Hill, but quickly got interested in the emerging Feminist Movement, and after organizing Hill Staffers, she moved on to help birth NOW, the National and Minnesota Womens’ Political Caucus, the Women’s Equity Action League, and many other key feminist groups. In 1977, Carter appointed her Assistant Secretary of State for Women’s Affairs. In between she wrote the language for Title IX, and got it through Congress. When Reagan eliminated the position in State in 1981, she brought many of the programs back to Minnesota, put them into the Humphrey Institute where she was appointed, raised the money to run them over the next 12 years.
*In 1993, after Clinton’s election, considerable lobbying went into getting the new administration to appoint her as the US Delegate to the UN Commission on the Status of Women — and she was appointed. But after about three years, Hillary had Arvonne fired just before the Beijing UN Conference. According to Arvonne, Hillary did not want to bother with all the linked up Feminist Organizations that had carried this effort over the bad years of Reagan and Bush I, and thus decided Arvonne had to leave. She did. Arvonne did not exactly appreciate the fact that Hillary had one of Arvonne’s best friends do the honors, and in addition have other Clinton people in State see too it that the US lost its seat on the UN Commission by not attending the meeting where nominations were done.
Hillary mentioned a couple of years ago that her biggest problems would come from the left, but I don’t think many younger people understand what she meant.
A lot of the top tier bloggers came of age during the Clinton’s years, and although quite able to distinquish the policy positions of the DLC they may not really have had a clue about this aspect of the Clinton machine.
Maybe Big Tent Democrat will consider this as well.
*I went and picked this up for clarity.
Update: Note the date of Sara’s post, and then ask why I never linked it before.
More Your George At Work
Medvedev warns against Nato entry
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has warned Georgia and Ukraine of serious consequences if they press ahead with plans to join Nato.
Mr Medvedev and his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Georgia’s president that joining the alliance would lead to a “spiral of confrontation”.
Mr Medvedev said Ukraine would be in breach of a friendship treaty if it joined Nato, Mr Lavrov said.
Besides the English speaking nations, is there anyone Bush hasn’t pissed off?
A Rabbi, an Imam and a Priest Write a Book
A rabbi, an imam and a priest discuss their ‘painful verses’
A rabbi, an imam and a priest on Thursday sat down to discuss the most sensitive parts of their sacred scriptures, the verses that offend or anger other faiths.
But instead of the Catholic criticizing Koran quotes or the Jew complaining about a Gospel, each took objectionable passages from his own holy book and tried to explain them to the others.
Unfortunately,
“For a real dialogue, we have to have the courage to confront difficult things,” the rabbi of the International Jewish Center in Brussels said at a presentation of the French-language book in Paris on Thursday.
Most of us will have to wait on the translation.
On Being A Man
For the first, I tell them to imagine themselves as parents whose 12-year-old son asks, “Mommy/daddy, what does is mean to be a man?” The list I write on the board as they respond is not hard to predict: To be a man is to be strong, responsible, loving. Men provide for those around them and care for others. A man weathers tough times and doesn’t give up.
When that list is complete, I ask the women to observe while the men answer a second question: When you are in all-male spaces, such as the locker room or a night out with the guys, what do you say to each other about what it means to be a man? How do you define masculinity when there are no women present?
The students, both men and women, laugh nervously, knowing the second list will be different from the first. The men fumble a bit at first, as it becomes clear that one common way men define masculinity in practice is not through affirmative statements but negative ones — it’s about what a man isn’t, and what a real man isn’t is a woman or gay. In the vernacular: Don’t be a girl, a sissy, a fag. To be a man is to not be too much like a woman or to be gay, which is in large part about being too much like a woman.
Don’t you just hate it when people make you think?
Walk It Back Gentlemen
Updated: McCain says,
“Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war,”
Rumors of War: Is Bush Gearing Up to Attack Iran?
The May 8 letter from U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., chair of the House Judiciary Committee, to George W. Bush received virtually no media coverage, in spite of the fact that it warned the president that an attack on Iran without Congressional approval would be grounds for impeachment. Rumor has it several senators have been briefed about the possibility of war with Iran.Something is afoot.
I’m still waiting on that Jewish genius thing to show up. Now would be a good time.
NIE Sausage Making Exposed!
Thomas Fingar on National Intelligence Estimate Process
This is really worth watching — not only to learn about the framework, process, and analytic standards of NIE production but to learn about his views about the flawed Iraq WMD NIE and the 2007 Iran NIE of which he was lead author.
interesting to learn were the existence of a classified intelligence version of wikipedia called “Intellipedia” and that the Iran NIE report was more than 1500 pages in classified form — and distilled down to three and a half pages for the public release.
Israel to attack Iran unless enrichment stops
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
Update: Don’t like the UN, huh?
Come, let us eat our cake and have it too, together.
The Heretics of the Enlightenment
Having seen how following Bush’s gut has worked out, I would hope the Israelis would understand why some of us are not too interested in following their gut feelings towards Iran.
Just Out at the Forward: “The Operator: The Double Life of a Military Strategist.” A propos of the Senate Intelligence committee’s Phase II report release today, a profile of a Washington military strategist with a double life. The Niger forgeries? Italian intelligence showed them to him before Dick Cheney heard about Iraq and yellowcake. (He refused to back channel them). Abu Omar rendition? He knew about it as it was going down in Italy. Back when he was House Intelligence committee minority leader, Cheney even told him what Iran Contra operation wasn’t authorized and notified to Congress. And recently, the consulting services of the author of “coup d’etat: a practical handbook” have been in demand from groups seeking to overturn the Iran regime.
The Real McBush
How John McCain courts the base. This is pretty much in line with what I was discussing about objectification.
Must be nice to be served by a moron pretending to be a piece of meat. On the other hand, how many women would volunteer to be that piece of meat?
via Taylor Marsh
McCain: Wrong Twice In One Article
II suppose this is experience at work,
McCain, who was with Bush on Monday and yesterday for a swing through New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, pointedly addressed AARP, the 35 million-member group for people 50 and older that has galvanized opposition to Bush’s plan among senior citizens. Choosing his words carefully, McCain accused opponents of wanting to wait to make a change until 2042, the year its reserve funds are projected to be depleted, leaving it with more financial obligations than money.
“I want to say to our friends in the AARP, and they are my friends, come to the table with us,” McCain said. “We not only have an obligation to seniors, but we have an obligation to future generations.”
Also yesterday, McCain said the conclusions of a commission investigating intelligence failures on weapons of mass destruction should not lead to new questions about whether the Iraq war was justified.
“America, the world and Iraq is better off for what we did in bringing democracy,” McCain said.
The dude just says whatever he thinks the audience wants to hear.
Iran Won The Iraq War
We just fought it.
It doesn’t matter if we never leave ala McCain, or pull out tomorrow.
None of this matters either.
What A Sexy Looking, Anti-Misogynistic Bitch
Catchy titles I am told. The buzz thing, we’re looking for a new fad dad.
One of the problems that many males may have, I know I do, is where in the hell to draw the line when it comes to women and women’s issues. In presenting themselves to the world, women and men all dress and groom for success, but with women I have a hard time discerning where dressing to be sexually appealing separates itself from dressing to be a sexual object.
I have the benefit of being a WASP male, so in many respects the fundamentals are the same for me across a wide range of the positions, in dealing with all of the subsets of the human family, not Wasp’s. I can empathize with, but not participate in being a non WASP, or female.
Just as is the case with an individual relationship, I cannot predefined the parameters of proper conversation or activity towards any subset or group either. As we are over informed, no subset is monolithic, and the individuals within a group may change their opinion as to what is proper depending on if a thing is said on this blog, or at Christmas party after everyone has a buzz. Context is important.
Update: More on the issue here, here, and here of course.
Progressives need to wake up and realize they’re being played and refuse to buy into toxic crap that they should not, must not, be about. At some point we need to stand back and take stock and realize that damage has been done and it needs repairing, both for the short and the long term.
Jack Turner the other day had a terrific, must-read post reflecting on this:
Last week, after talking with several Hillary Clinton supporters, I had an epiphany: that which I most dislike about the darker sides of her and her campaign is just what some people see in me. It’s the worst feeling, to end up displaying traits you deplore, and I’d like to explore it a bit as we move to the general election.
Conservatives Endless Loop
McCain was followed by a panel discussion which included vice-presidential daughter and former State Department official Liz Cheney, who asserted that “the time for diplomacy with Iran is rapidly coming to an end,” suggested that the presidential candidates “should take lessons from this administration,” and extolled how the Bush Administration “has gotten it right” and has “been less successful when less bold.”
I thought we didn’t talk to the Iranians, since that would be appeasement.
So how has the time for diplomacy come to an end? I mean short of calling her a complete moron for asserting that threats of war carried in newspapers is diplomacy?
Well At Least He Didn’t Bring Hagee Along
The nice thing about the speeches at AIPAC is that we know our dear leader, whomever that may be, will avoid entangling foriegn alliances that lead us into fighting other peoples wars. That would be bad.
Convergences
Just think, today may be the first day in history when the blogosphere was as dull as the M$M.
Nobody Cares What Robert Johnson Thinks
Just saying
Most Excellent
“Oh, Go with the Green Background”
“It’ll make you look like the cottage cheese in a lime jello salad” Always a good look for an older gentlemen.
More:
Late Update: Here’s how bad it is. All the Fox commentators are giving competing explanation for why McCain’s speech sucked.
More, more: Media reviews: “Put McCain’s speech against Obama’s – and this was a wipe-out.”
McCain’s speech was slammed Left and Right (except by Harold Ford). Obama’s was given his due, even by those who don’t like him.
Well, on second thought then, more like it John!
So Is There Any News This AM?
Just wondering.
The Way I See It
Whose on stage last?
Oh, Well, That’ll Save The Polar Ice Caps
Army: Sun, not Man, is Causing Climate Change
In the March, 2008 issue of Physics Today, West, the chief scientist of the Army Research Office’s mathematical and information science directorate, wrote that “the Sun’s turbulent dynamics” are linked with the Earth’s complex ecosystem, and that these connections are what is heating up the planet. “The Sun could account for as much as 69% of the increase in Earth’s average temperature,” West noted.
So instead of counter acting the sun’s effects, we should argue over whether it is bovine flatulence or coal fired electric plants.
I’ve changed my will and will be leaving the canoe to the grandkid so he can use it on the beach near the land we just bought in Colorado.
Knock Off The BS
The Obamabots who continue to send me vile, profane, but also threatening emails. So you’re all on notice. Personal threats will be turned over to the police, and since we have your IP and other information it won’t be hard to do.
Good lord, get a friggin blog.
Do Chickens Have Lips?
Yes.
On the other end of the bird.
Dead Conservatism Makes Dead Republics
Usually, the last thing I expect when I read a gun magazine is a lesson in how screwed the GOP is. But the June issue of S.W.A.T. has quite the instructional demonstration.
As I will further show in coming columns, the infrastructure of our Constitutional Republic is being torn down and replaced with something else — and that something is fundamentally unsuited to a free people and incompatible with liberty. We are seeing a constitutional republic in its final death throes, being killed by a thousand treacherous cuts, with the final slashes being inflicted by cold reptilian lawyers who fancy themselves “conservatives.”
You know there are a lot of stupid fuckers who think the left doesn’t need guns, in nearly the same number who think we don’t have them, I suppose.
As I’ve said before, I can understand how different locations may have different needs in regulating firearms since stupid seems to come in many forms. In many ways I think the lack of a war on our own soil has made us a little soft in the asses when it comes to firearms, and the various social ills have made some of us take life too lightly, especially other peoples.
American Leaders Are Mad, As In Insane
Can’t Be Bothered With Accuracy
Indeed. The IAEA has various complaints about Iranian nuclear activities, and it makes sense for the United States to vigorously pursue those complaints. It’s also true that given Iranian history on this issue and the nature of the Iranian regime, it’s smart strategy for the United States to seek nuclear concessions from Iran that go beyond what’s strictly required by the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But the Intelligence Community has assessed that current levels of scrutiny and pressure caused the Iranians to cease their weapons program back in 2003.
It’s worth considering how the refusal of American politicians to acknowledge this must look in Teheran….
We Americans are fortunate to understand that they are crazy, a distinction without difference to Iranians I would imagine.
Oh, Do Let Us Begin The Post Mortem
You won’t have to read very far to know why this is linked from Diablo Orante’s place, but then you will understand why I still think Wolcott, along with BillMon, could write about arranging their shoes in the closet and still keep my attention.
I am of course one of those namby pamby bloggers who failed to leap into the breach, debating within the confines of my own little pea brain whether I was getting too big for the liberal blogospheres breaches, or had just obtained to my own peak of blogosophy, which allowed me to cope with my annual spring funk. Fortunately my grammer and spelling did not improve.
A Campaign to Hate?
Most of you will have a hard time getting past the false elitism of the opening graph, but this is an election year and everyone is a comedian. Fortunately Mr. Cohen is used to the Flip-flop express and leaves McCainus out of his dirge.
Personally I’m glad the depths of racism and misogyny in America was exposed. I thought that we were further along too.
But I’m glad the process lasted as long as it did, and given the coverage of it, the American people are a lot more aware of how the sausage is made in American politics, which will be helpful in addressing the issues.
Beyond the myth of a liberal media being exposed, the MSM did ratchet it up a notch from previous campaigns and I think some of Cohen’s frustration is warranted in the face of the increasing pressure of competition from citizen journalists and pundits. ( I saw some of the Today show on CNN half an hour earlier in the central time zone because of “breaking news.”)
I have to admit that the primaries were more interesting before Texas had theirs, and after that it began to wear, so it may have been benficial to have been in the latter states.
In the end I would give the coverage of the campaigns mostly Bs, although CNN did an outstanding job covering the different candidates and their events, even as I disagree with the interpretations of some of those events.
Hell of a show.
Socialist Repay JUCOs
Student Loans Start to Bypass 2-Year Colleges
Some of the nation’s biggest banks have closed their doors to students at community colleges, for-profit universities and other less competitive institutions, even as they continue to extend federally backed loans to students at the nation’s top universities.
Assholes.
Back In The US, Back In The US
Back In The USSR, It Isn’t Magic: Putin Opponents Are Made to Vanish From TV
Senior government officials deny the existence of a stop list, saying that people hostile to the Kremlin do not appear on TV simply because their views are not newsworthy.
In interviews, journalists said that they did not believe the Kremlin kept an official master stop list, but that the networks kept their own, and that they all operated under an informal stop list — an understanding of the Kremlin’s likes and dislikes.
A distinction without difference to what the capitalist are doing in America.
Perspectives On The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee
The “Protesters” at Saturday’s Rules and Bylaw Committee Meeting
Toward the end, when Clinton supporter and committee member Alice Huffman was booed for supporting the Florida compromise, she admonished the Clinton supporters by telling them their conduct wasn’t helping their candidate. Most of the Clinton people seemed to recognize that Huffman was correct. In the end, the disturbances came mostly from a couple guys heckling from the audience, and maybe a dozen or so women in the back of the room making a bunch of noise and chanting about taking the fight all the way to Denver.
For much of the media, what happens with a couple dozen rabid partisans points to huge conflicts within the Democratic party. How they extrapolate from those couple dozen to the entire Democratic coalition, who knows.
It works.
I think most of us understand that protesters are the only aspect of the meeting that provided what could be described as good television and radio material, and that’s what most people are going to see and hear unless the two formats have reporters that actually explain to their audience who and what they are watching. Otherwise it conveys a false impression of what is actually happening.
It is sort of like being swept up in the ubiquitous M$M.
Note To John McCain: This Guy Is In Charge of Iran
Iran ‘not seeking’ nuclear arms
Iran’s supreme leader has insisted it will continue its nuclear activities for civilian purposes only and will not manufacture nuclear weapons.“No wise nation would be interested in making a nuclear weapon today. They are against rational thought,” said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a speech.
Oil Slickers May Cause Crash
Oil prices: George Soros warns that speculators could trigger stock market crashAccording to the FT, Soros will warn that there could be very serious consequences for global stock markets if the institutions suddenly began betting on a fall in the oil price.
He compares it with the stock market crash of 1987, which was partly caused by a sudden rush of money into portfolio insurance – which institutions used to protect themselves against a fall in share prices.
“In both cases, the institutions are piling in on one side of the market and they have sufficient weight to unbalance it. If the trend were reversed and the institutions as a group headed for the exit as they did in 1987 there would be a crash,” said Soros, in remarks prepared for a committee hearing later today.
How come no one ever questions the patriotism of capitalists?
It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over
As an Obama supporter, I think people ought to have high hopes and low expectations of Hillary withdrawing, because a lot of the evidence being presented is just the spin of what the Clinton’s are saying.
Having said that, the netroots really needs to pull their collective heads out of their asses. One M$M full of makers of Presidents is enough, and there is only so much stupid the people can be subjected to before they loose interest in the democratic process.
What? No Corks?
Why We Need National Healthcare
Talk about having your cake and eating it, too! Doctors are performing excessive and often unnecessary C-sections to avoid insurance claims, and the insurance companies are now rejecting women who’ve had C-sections. Is this a great country, or what?
And here’s the kicker: They’ll take you if you get sterilized!
Update: What she said.
Kennedy Surgery Successful
Bump and Update: Surgery a success
Good news is hard to find.
DURHAM, N.C. – Sen. Edward M. Kennedy underwent what his doctors called successful surgery Monday to treat his cancerous brain tumor, and told his wife shortly after that he felt “like a million bucks,” a family spokeswoman said.
Blame The Christians Themselves
That Hagee and/or his enablers are taken seriously in American politics these days is prime evidence that the Far Right has taken this country to a very sick, very dangerous place.
If they won’t read the Bible then they are going to be subjected to all the wallet twisting Christ mongers will throw at them.
My readers know it, I would hope, but what book in the Bible mentions the Anti-Christ? Is it an individual?
If you do not love your enemies as Christ commanded his followers to do, does that make you anti-Christ?
Hollywood For Ugly People
Why Democrats Won’t Stop the War
Media coverage is currency in the nation’s capital. There, celebrities are people like Washington Post columnist David Broder, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Time magazine’s Joe Klein — people known to almost no one in the country at large.
Within the Beltway, however, they are influential celebrities because they appear on obscure chat shows, from C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” to Fox News’ “Special Report” to MSNBC’s “Hardball.”
Our nation’s capital has become Hollywood for ugly people.
Actually there is some very interesting points being made in the article. Those of you accustomed to two sentence paragraphs may have problems with the article.
Speaking Of Charles Manson
If Vincent Bugliosi were prosecuting George W. Bush for the murder of the more than 4,000 American soldiers who have died in Iraq, he would seek the death penalty.
“If I were the prosecutor, there is no question I would seek the death penalty,” Bugliosi told Corporate Crime Reporter in a wide-ranging interview.
Bugliosi is the author of the just published book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder (Vanguard Press, 2008).
So I took off my hat and said imagine that, me working for you.
Between Woodstock and Bill Clinton’s Wiener
As recently as April 25, his nominal boss, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen, invited the press to what was supposed to be a well-oiled show-and-tell exercise “in a couple of weeks,” to display a multitude of captured weapons from Iran.
But the show did not go on; it had to be canceled when the weapons that had been found proved not to be of Iranian origin.
For most of you young people who missed Woodstock, most of us old people did too. Hard to believe, I know. Most of us didn’t care, we were freeks not hippies. I know less about Woodstock than Bill Clinton’s big ten inch record of the band playing the sax too. I am a well informed American, my MSM tells me so. Oh Yeah, Jesus loves me too.
Meanwhile back at the BE HERE NOW, goddammit.
Foisted On Our Own Petard
They wouldn’t do that here. After all they’re Muricans. Never under estimate the ignorance of American capitalists.
Uhh
Download al Qaeda manuals from the DoJ, go to prison?
Reg readers know now that reading the wrong stuff in the UK gets you on the fast track to prison for one possession of something likely to be of use to potential terrorists. Technically, get-out-of-jail-free cards have been issued for journalists and academics, both of which have a well-defined public interest in writing about and analyzing such documents. However, under the current climate it’s inevitable that those with good reasons for possessing jihadi electronic documents will find themselves in anti-terror cross-hairs.
The paradox in this case is that the source of the so-called al Qaeda manual. According to UK reports, Sabir downloaded it from the US government.
Is this a great nation or what?
No Safari For Yous
Microsoft urges Windows users to shun ‘carpet bombing’ Safari
Microsoft’s security team is advising users to stop using Apple’s Safari browser pending investigation into a quirk that allows miscreants to litter their desktop with hundreds of executable files.
Windows users who visit a booby-trapped site with Safari could be forced to download and execute malicious files with no prompting, Microsoft says. The “blended threat” is a result of the default download location in Safari and the way the Windows desktop handles executable files.
Who Dat?
Jefferson: a lesson for Europeans
Jefferson’s response to the news of Napoleon’s seizure of power was virtually a cry of pain. The event forced him to reconsider his whole position. He wrote to Dr Bache: “You have seen the afflicting details from Paris. On what grounds the revolution has been made, we are not informed, and are still more at a loss to divine what will be its issue; whether we are to have over again the history of Robespierre, of Caesar, or of the new phenomenon of an usurpation of the government for the purpose of making it free.
“Our citizens, however, should derive from this some useful lessons. They should see the necessity to rally firmly and in close bands round their Constitution; never to suffer an iota of it to be infringed; to incubate on minorities the duties of acquiescence in the will of the majority, and in the majority a respect to the will of the minority; to beware of a military force even of citizens; and to be wary of too much confidence in any man.
Should I say it? What more questions?
Aussie’s Depart Iraq
US Iraq deaths ‘at four-year low’
US military deaths in Iraq are said to have fallen to their lowest monthly level for four years, after about 20 soldiers were reported killed in May.
leads into,
Meanwhile, Australia has begun withdrawing its contingent of about 500 combat troops from Iraq.
The pullout honours a pledge made by the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, when he was elected last November.
The Australian troops had been mainly playing what they call an “overwatch” role, assisting Iraqi forces.
All my rowdy friends have settled down.
A Study For Noun Substitution
Entitled to Their Opinions, Yes. But Their Facts?
Luttwak said the scholars with whom I spoke were guilty of “gross misrepresentation” of Islam, which he said they portrayed as “a tolerant religion of peace;” he called it “intolerant.” He said he was not out to attack Obama and regretted that, in the editing, a paragraph saying that an Obama presidency could be “beneficial” was cut for space.
Imagine that.
Comments Closed: FOOD Fight!!!!!!!!!!
Unity In the spirit of the times, I’ll agree that Big Tent Democrat is half right. If both are qualified to be leaders then one would expect them do so.
The Last Months Will Be Grating
During a recent interview with the Washington Post, CIA Director Michael Hayden said that al Qaeda is “essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world” including the areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. “On balance, we’re doing pretty well,” Hayden said. The Post even described Hayden’s view as a “strikingly upbeat assessment.”
But Sen. John Rockefeller (D-WV), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a letter to Hayden that he is “surprised and troubled” by his comments to the Post, adding that his assessment of al Qaeda’s worldwide strength is at odds with intelligence briefings to Captiol Hill:
I live in a country where the next government next year is far more important to watch than the current one.
What’s A Middle Aged White Goy Supposed To Do?
I am of course all those things that everyone hates because I hold anti-________(fill in the blank) views that somehow mean I am acting on my prejudices, which are detrimental to your favorite_______ .
Being older and wiser than most, I must inform you that I planned it to work like this so that you might re-examine your assertions about my anti_________ .
I have had to constrain myself for your benefit, because as we all well know you cannot be pro semitic, pro feminist, pro professional opinionators in this ‘ere format, although you could be anti-blog or anti-blogger and have a blog that succinctly so states. (This is a contradiction, maybe even a contradiction of life, or with luck, a contradiction of many lives depending on religious persuasions.)
Fortunately I have got around to thinking about the right wings criticism of me and my ilk. It is all my fault so don’t blame the ilk. I will now rip an SBD and contemplate the lefts criticisms of me and my ilk, knowing that I will not come out of it smelling like a rose.
I just want you to know and understand me and my feelings here, as I do yours.
Obama Resigns From Church
CNN is breaking a Roland Martin story.
You have to consider that Americans really are narrow minded red necks. Seriously, if the American people can’t handle this sort of thing being said about them, (and no one is suggesting they like it or agree,) then we ought to be giving them lollipops with the information.
4:50P
Update: I screwed things up and all the newer posts are ending up below. In order to bring order and harmony to the blogosphere and calm the karma pool, I’ll see ya tomorrow.
Knee Jerk Liberals and Pacifists
‘The Truth Shall Set You Free’
The question I have is: why do we have to hear this from him? What’s really extraordinary is how few prominent pundits and columnists have gone even half the length that McClellan has in acknowledging that they got things utterly wrong when they gave their full-throated support to Bush’s still-unexplained turn toward Saddam after America’s “victory” over the Taliban in Afghanistan. Consider just one example: The New York Times’s Thomas L. Friedman, one of the most famous columnists in America and maybe in the world today. Here is Friedman writing on March 13, 2003, seven days before the Iraq invasion: “This war is so unprecedented that it has always been a gut call—and my gut has told me four things. First, this is a war of choice. Saddam Hussein poses no direct threat to us today. But confronting him is a legitimate choice—much more legitimate than knee-jerk liberals and pacifists think. Removing Mr. Hussein—with his obsession to obtain weapons of mass destruction—ending his tyranny and helping to nurture a more progressive Iraq that could spur reform across the Arab-Muslim world are the best long-term responses to bin Ladenism.”
Except for the ignoring of the Constitution.
Meanwhile…Back At Rancho Arbusto de los Iraquero
Iraqi checkpoint ‘hit by bomber’
A suicide bomber has killed at least nine people at a police checkpoint in western Iraq, local officials say.
The attack reportedly happened in the town of Hit in Anbar province, 170km (105 miles) west of Baghdad.
Why I’m Not On TayVay
Clinton asked the crowd to remember “every time you turn on the television and you listen to one of those people dissin’ her, they all have a college degree. They’ve all got a good job. They all got health care. And they’re having no trouble fillin’ up their gas tank.”
I haven’t got any of that stuff. On the other hand my old man would have raked me over the coals for some of the things I’ve posted, and the step father, whooey, he would have literaly kicked my ass. That is one advantage that Hillary and her supporters never considered either, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts. There are certain things you just don’t say about or to women, “I don’t give a damn who you are.”
Update: I haven’t got a clue as to why this posted way down here.
Update II: A Little Civility, Please, Lanny…
Lanny, Lanny. Please. In the words of a wise man, can’t we all just get along?
My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I spent campaigning for a longtime friend, Joe Lieberman.
I’m glad the MI FL gig is settled. FWIW, I didn’t interject myself into the Lamont/Loserman campaign because I didn’t feel like it was really any of my business who MassachusettsConnecticut eventually elected to the Senate. I have knocked Joe for his war.
All Things MSM
It is a rarity for this site, but; “Media Matters”; By Jamison Foser;
When important stories have been reported, they have quickly been swept under the rug by the rest of the media. That’s what happened when The New York Times revealed previously secret ties between the Pentagon and military analysts who appeared regularly as impartial experts on television news programs despite having financial ties to defense contractors that stand to profit from the war. Reports that the Pentagon cannot account for $15 billion in Iraq spending were likewise met with a yawn.
Pretty well lays out the lefts beef with the MSM, IMO.
I am reminded of the blinders, put on horses pulling carriages, to keep them from spooking and running off. When did the US government become do no evil?
How the very real need for eyeballs and subscriptions for revenue is hypotonically injected into individuals gages of their own self worth is easier to understand. I was not aware that perfection was a qualification for being a journalist, however.
Mistakes are going to be made, but it is a little immature to think that they will be ignored by the public at large. It is also a little immature not to acknowledge them when one discovers them within ones own work and personality, and do something to correct those things.
It would be helpful if the national media outlets would quit trying to be our friends with folksy settings and crew repoirtoire, which is a facade, and just be human beings that bust their asses to do their jobs, sometimes poorly.
The left doesn’t “hate” the MSM, we just want one that functions. I don’t even have a problem with the overt Republicanism of FOX, although it bothers me that their viewers wind up less or mis-informed than the rest of the nation on major points such as Saddam’s WMD or involvement with the Sept. 11 attacks, which is basically where a majority of Americans still are on the Pentagon Propagandists.
Update: Mas aqui
All Things Comcast
FBI Agents Hunt for Comcast HijackersFBI agents and local police in Northern California are taking the lead in investigating Thursday’s hijacking of Comcast.net, the FBI told THREAT LEVEL on Friday.
The Bureau’s cybercrime specialists are joining with the San Jose Police Department in Silicon Valley to try and track down the culprits in the case, according to FBI agent Joseph Schadler. “We are working closely with our local partners,” Schadler said.
It was not immediately clear why the case is being investigated by Silicon Valley law enforcment. A police spokesman was not immediately prepared to comment.
Juxtaposed I suppose with this, Comcast Is Hiring an Internet Snoop for the Feds
Wanna tap e-mail, voice and Web traffic for the government? Well, here’s your chance. Comcast, the country’s second-largest Internet provider, is looking for an engineer to handle “reconnaissance” and “analysis” of “subscriber intelligence” for the company’s “National Security Operations.”
Day-to-day tasks, the company says in an online job listing, will include “deploy[ing], installing] and remov[ing] strategic and tactical data intercept equipment on a nationwide basis to meet Comcast and Government lawful intercept needs.” The person in this “intercept engineering” position will help collect and process traffic on the company’s “CDV [Comcast Digital Voice], HSI [High Speed Internet] and Video” services.
Overstuffed Oversold Status Of Force Agreement In Iraq
Dr. iRack wanted to call readers’ attention to some ongoing negotiations in Iraq. As many of you know, the United States and Iraqi governments are currently negotiating two agreements. Most folks are aware of the Status of Forces Agreement (or SOFA) talks.
…
Less known, but perhaps more important, is a second agreement under negotiation: the Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA). The SFA is meant to clarify and codify the “Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America,” signed by Bush and Maliki last November.
Just a little heads up on what’s what and who’s who going into the long term.
Update: Juan Cole has more.
Freidman Units Birthdays & Oh Yeah, Ma’am, Just The Facts
If you’re not going to use the cash McClellan, can I borrow it for a while?
We confess that here at McClatchy, which purchased Knight Ridder two years ago, we do have a dog in this fight. Our team – Joe Galloway, Clark Hoyt, Jon Landay, Renee Schoof, Warren Strobel, John Walcott, Tish Wells and many others – was, with a few exceptions, the only major news media organization that before the war consistently and aggressively challenged the White House’s case for war, and its lack of planning for post-war Iraq.
Here are Bill Moyers and Michael Massing on the media’s pre-war performance.
Enough self-aggrandizing trumpet-blowing. OK, Scott, What Happened?
Here’s what happened, based entirely on our own reporting and publicly available documents:
When you stop and think about it on a large scale it almost reminds me of the report of those who become sleep deprived and so float in and out of sleep while appearing to be wide awake. America needs to put down the Viagra and grab Valiums.
This proves the point there fellows, that you can’t stand on your dicks all night and your feet all day. No man is that powerful. Pretty rude. My bad.
Slow Learner
National Defense Is His “Strong” Suit
Check out this limp response from the kids at the Weekly Standard:
Does the Obama campaign really want to go there?Team McCain just held a media conference call with the campaign’s foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann and Senator Jon Kyl, who conclude that no, Obama doesn’t want to go there. “It’s instructive that the Obama campaign, rather than deal with that real issue and Obama’s lack of experience, is trying to nitpick the verb or the tense of the verb about the surge troops being home,” said Kyl. Obama hasn’t been to Iraq since January 2006, and McCain has been five times since then.
Maybe he needs to make all those trips because he is a slow learner? I mean, five trips, and he still doesn’t know wtf he is talking about. So, yeah. Obama does want to “go there,” wingnuts.
I can’t top that remark.
Riding Off Into The Sunset
I started this blog as a joke – hence the tongue-in-cheek name – and have been shocked to discover that a year and a half on, we have a dedicated readership whose numbers have been growing exponentially. I’ll never forget the day Dave Kilcullen sent me three separate emails complaining about some smart-assed post I had written. “When did people start taking us seriously?” I angrily demanded of Charlie in an email that day.
Bueno bye, AM
John McCain’s Second Divorce
Heard it in an old country song,
Yesterday, CNN’s Michael Ware dismissed Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) recent assertion that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) travel to Iraq in order to get a better sense of the war. Ware said that U.S. officials’ trips to Iraq are usually “divorced from reality” adding that its “impossible” to “get much of a real picture.” Ware then noted that McCain’s own trips to Iraq have not helped him get a sense of the realities in Iraq:
I wonder if Cindy was aware of this?
I Suppose I Should Remark On The Polygamist Case
Fools Rush In Where Angels Dare Tread! (?)
Let’s Do Iran
McClellan: Take The Bush Administration’s Claims On Iran ‘Very Seriously And Be Skeptical’
Bush administration officials have been ratcheting up harsh rhetoric on Iran signifying that, like McClellan said, they are still in “campaign mode.” In fact, the Jerusalem Post recently reported that Bush will attack Iran before the end of his term. But while White House press secretary Dana Perino told reporters that the article “is not worth the paper its printed on,” others like Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) agreed with the Post’s report.
But it seems Bush is taking his own rhetoric seriously because just two weeks ago, he claimed that holding talks with countries like Iran would be akin to appeasing Adolf Hitler. Indeed, as McClellan wrote in his book, Bush “convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment.”
You know it isn’t just with Iran either, don’t you? How about the administrations economic reports?
So long as we are in campaign mode…
Another Misspoke In The McWheel
But today on a conference call with reporters, the McCain campaign tried to dismiss this factually inaccurate statement. “So what?” said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), a strong McCain supporter. “What does that amount to?” He added that McCain just “misspoke.” According to adviser Randy Scheunemann, McCain meant to say that troops will be eventually drawn down to pre-surge levels. From his response to the AP’s Liz Sidoti:
What were once vices have become habits with Sain’t McCain. The guy eventually will need to quit running for Senator of the United States and get with the program. He isn’t running for cammander in chief either, as he likes to assert, but for President, of which, being commander in chief is a function of.
(Hint: read the high schoolers blog John, we’ll keep you on the straight and narrow baybay.)
Alas, They Catch Up
So who is slower in picking up on this ‘ere blog, the blogs or the MSM?
The Real McCain
Maybe now we can find out if McCain’s base is really a base in the political sense or the al Qaeda sense.
Let’s return to McCain for a moment. Regarding the “straight-talker,” maybe what Jon has put together will help convince you of the need to investigate Mr. McCain:
All We Are Saying
I have always been one of those who felt that the country would be better off if we just had a news media that did its job. I didn’t want our “own” network, so much as I wanted a functioning press corps. But if it was decided that the only thing to do was create a balance, I would have hoped it would be because of ideological sympathy, as Fox is, not because it is the latest fashion subject to change at the whim of a fickle public. The thing to remember is that it was only a very short time ago that MSNBC was using the same arguments they are today to impeach a president, help the Republicans steal an election, flog Bush’s war as hard as possible, firing reporters and pundits who refused to adhere to the party line.
One of the primary reasons for reading the blogs was the fact checking aspect of them. OK maybe right wing blogs were out to destroy the liberal media, but for those of us who were not participating in the incipient revolution, merely reading of it, that’s what blogs were doing for us.
The thing is, as I recall, is that the media was in fact in diverse places with diverse voices pointing out the flaws in the administrations arguments and gaining traction out in the cyberdocks but not in the main routers of information. The information the antiwar movement relied on was made available to the MSM by the MSM. I’m sure that some opinions and personalities were given latitude and higher profiles to advance the prowar positions because of the judgement calls of corporate elites.
The question is how to move forward.
Rationalization Rears It’s Ugly Face
The right-wing Politico cesspool
Politico reporter Mike Allen, formerly of The Washington Post and Time, appeared yesterday on the show of right-wing radio host Mike Gallagher. The two of them guffawed together at how absurd are Scott McCellan’s claims that the media was “deferential” to the Bush administration and then Allen said this:
ALLEN: And indeed, Scott does adopt the vocabulary, rhetoric of the left wing haters. Can you believe it in here he says the White House press corps was too deferential to the administration?
Mr. Allen seems to already have missed the point, that being the left wing “haters” appeared after the media failed abjectly in its’ obligation to its end users, (I hate to use the term customer since the media conglomerates considers those to be their advertisers,) largely due I would imagine to their own lack of ability with the google.
Fact of the matter is that many people were raising objections to the evidence that the administration was presenting and that people like Mike Allen were aware of those objections. They made judgements that they felt would enhance thier own positions and they were wrong. Now they want to shift responsibility to the straw man of the hateful left.
Wrong about the war, and clueless about the internet.
Not Really Shocking
This is important to some extent, but many of us knew this was going on, and to some extent are quite convinced that it still is, and lordy, lordy will always be. People have to eat. CNN’s Yellin: Network execs killed critical White House stories
On Wednesday night, CNN’s Jessica Yellin talked to Anderson Cooper about Scott McClellan’s tell-all memoir and agreed with the former press secretary that White House reporters “dropped the ball” during the run-up to war.
But Yellin went much further, revealing that news executives — presumably at ABC News, where she’d worked from July 2003 to August 2007 — actively pushed her not do hard-hitting pieces on the Bush administration. [UPDATE: Yellin now says it was MSNBC execs, not ABC]
I think to fair we need to distinquish between those reporters with editoriol control over their work and those without. People without do what they are told to do.
We can debate their wisdom, but those that were free to write and say what ever runs through their little p brains, are another story. Admittedly I am a little biased in favor of CNN’s crew.
Update: There is more here as well. This and the next post are really closely linked.
(I would imagine this is going to go on during the election as well, so Atrios assertion about the media may be more accurate than I was willing to give it credit for previously.)
EXCLUSIVE: Congressional Republicans To Cut Gas Prices!
We have it on exclusive interviews with unidentified people you should trust that Congressional Republicans will introduce legislation to require retailers begin selling gasoline by either the quart or liter, which is at the moment a hanging point in the caucus.
Civilized Nations Ban Cluster Bombs
Diplomats meeting in Dublin agreed to back an international ban on the use of the controversial weapons following 10 days of talks.
But some of the world’s main producers and stockpilers – including the US, Russia and China – oppose the move.
Yeah, Im Shocked
Researchers: City residents produce less carbon
WASHINGTON — While cities are hot spots for global warming, people living in them turn out to be greener than their country cousins.
Each resident of the largest 100 largest metropolitans areas is responsible on average for 2.47 tons of carbon dioxide in energy consumption each year, 14 percent below the 2.87 ton U.S. average, researchers at the Brookings Institution say in a report being released Thursday.
Those 100 cities still account for 56 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide pollution. But their greater use of mass transit and population density reduce the per person average. “It was a surprise the extent to which emissions per capita are lower,” Marilyn Brown, a professor of energy policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-author of the report, said in an interview.
Yeah, just think if you lived in a county with six thousand people and large coal fired electric generating stations for cities, (which if you look at the map are not “rural” in any sense of the word,) then I would think it would skew things in a per capita sort of way.
DC Discovers Obama Is A Centrist Democrat
Wait until they find out he actually wants to help people not in McClellan’s book.
The Shelf Life Of Self Service
Old Meters Mean Double the Price at the Pump
For a brief moment on Wednesday morning, the gas pump at Gary Staiano’s Texstar service station in Bellerose, Queens, turned into a time machine. After 11.3 gallons was pumped into a Pontiac Grand Am, the meter read $23, or $2.03 a gallon, a price not seen in more than three years.
Then Mr. Staiano transported his customer back to reality when he doubled the total at the cash register. Using pumps so old that the meters go only as high as $3.99 a gallon, Mr. Staiano began pricing his gas by the half-gallon this week, just as station owners did when gas prices skyrocketed a generation ago.
You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.
Note To John McCain
This is the man that would like to be sitting next to the man who is making all the decisions in Iran, feller by the name of Ayatollah.
He is considered close to Ayatollah Khamenei, who has the final word on state matters. Mr. Larijani remained Ayatollah Khamenei’s representative at the Supreme National Security Council despite his October resignation.
If it it will make it any easier, tell people Joe sent me.
What He Said
I’m going to try and keep this as apolitical as he did.
Have You Read It?
Just wondering.
Personally, I think most people try and do an honest job for their bosses, just as they always seem to be able to eat mountains of shit from them. ( Most people really do amaze me in the latter.) Scott McClellan’s is proving to be no exception.
Once we get past the political fog of it all we may actually learn something about collective mistakes made and how to prevent them in the future, for the good of the nation. Maybe there is something in it for those not named George W. Bush or Scott McClellan.
How The West Was Won
Beep beep
Indiana Malkin and the Slightly Scary Neckware of Doom
To bring America to its knees, all Bin Laden must do is make his next video while drinking from a can of Coca Cola. The nation would erupt in chaos; Coca Cola sales would vanish into nothingness. In his next video, he could casually munch potato chips; the entire snack industry would collapse. One after another, he could film himself driving an American car; he could insert himself into a Girls Gone Wild video; he could appear next to a caveman, or a gecko, or Captain Crunch; he could enroll in DeVry University. On the day he refinanced his home at new historically low rates, the United States housing market would collapse irretrievably. One by one, he could decimate the entire economic fabric of America merely by association. Not one person in fifty would be willing to buck social trends and still buy Coca Cola if Bin Laden was seen drinking it; our consumer-based economy would be destroyed.
Thubba thub
Reliable Nuclear Power
British Energy races against time after worst power cuts in a decade
British Energy today vowed to get the Sizewell B nuclear power station working again within days after Britain suffered its worst blackouts in a decade.
Half a million people were hit by unscheduled power cuts on Tuesday after seven power stations, including Sizewell B in Suffolk, unexpectedly stopped working within hours of each other.
Price Of Cheese Whiz To Soar
We focus on gas because it’s easy to track day to day and it’s something most of us consume regularly. But rising oil prices are of course going to impact a lot more than gas if they do indeed continue to rise.
Interesting
Israel imposes a 10-year ban on American critic of Israeli policiesOn Friday, Israeli security forces, Shin Bet, detained Norman Finkelstein when he tried to enter Israel, kept him in an airport holding cell for 24 hours, ordered him deported from the country, and then imposed a 10-year ban on his entry. Finkelstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor, is a Jewish-American author and academic who has frequently criticized the Israeli Government and provoked extreme animosity among right-wing factions in the U.S. He had flown to Israel 15 times previously without incident and was never charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime.
…
UPDATE II: The Jerusalem Post reports that Finkelstein’s exclusion was, in fact, based on the government’s dislike of his political views:
American political scientist and fierce critic of Israel, Prof. Norman Finkelstein, was denied entry to Israel and deported from the country early Saturday morning. Officials said that the decision to deport Finkelstein was connected to his anti-Zionist opinions and fierce public criticism of Israel around the world. . . .
Democracy! In! The! Middleast!
Hell I’ll bet Finklestein has a longer ban on American TV than ten years.
BTW: If these sorts of issues are not fully vetted in public discourses then how will they ever be resolved satisfactorily in the public mind?
Primary Election Coverup
Voter-befuddling tricks moving online
The conundrum in anything to do with voting: the people who write the election laws are the ones who won the election. What motive do they have for changing the status quo?
Nearly eight years after the voting fiasco of the 2000 Presidential election, two disturbing US trends were highlighted at last week’s Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference. First: a variety of deceptive practices designed to keep “the wrong sort” of people from voting are moving online. Second: the revamping of America’s voting machines mandated by the Help America Vote Act in 2002 is a mess.
Wow! I’m going to email a reporter on this!
Update: Too late.
Missing MSM Linkage
Bush-McCain Fundraiser Scaled Back Due To Lack Of Takers
A planned mega-fundraiser for the GOP, featuring President Bush and John McCain, has now been scaled back in the face of a daunting problem: Too few people actually wanted to buy tickets.
Odd, that. All I heard and saw on the television news, (and I sample them all,) was that McCain likes to do fund raising on the QT, doesn’t want pictures with the President and him hugging, etc.
This reassures me that only adults work in the news business, and that those ill informed citoyens are better off for it.
Everything Interesting Has Already Occurred
There will be no news today. Opinions on that and other opinions on those opinions will be opined instead.
The Last Bar-B-Que
Contrary to the insider’s thinking, I think that McCain had the Governors down to the ranch to figure out how they won their respective statehouses, and how he can fold that into his campaign. As far as running mates go, the three governors are zeros.
American Double Standard
Iran ‘withholds nuclear details’
The UN nuclear watchdog has said it believes Iran is still withholding information on its nuclear programme.
In a report, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says Tehran’s alleged weapons development studies remain a matter of serious concern.
Israel ‘has 150 nuclear weapons’
Ex-US President Jimmy Carter has said Israel has at least 150 atomic weapons in its arsenal.
The Israelis have never confirmed they have nuclear weapons, but this has been widely assumed since a scientist leaked details in the 1980s.
This is a big turd in the punch bowl that no one who is more reliable and credible than I wish to flush out into the public sewer.
Yet they are all very serious people about war and peace and honesty and honor and truth,justice and the ubermano ways. That is why my support for the existence of Israel is suspect.
Update: According to the “Situation Room” Bob Graham needs to read this blog. According to EZSmirkzz, this is the first time the “Situation Room” has been on his tv since the Pentagon Propagandists story broke. That makes Wolf better than Drudge.
Update II:Ezsmirkzz thinks Bob Graham ought to read a fucking newspaper. Pick a rag, any rag.
Update III: Sargeant Shultz Lives!
Haircuts! My Greatest Failure
Drudge still fails to rule my world. I should have picked an endless debate with Glenn over labor, that would have pegged my blogometer on smart.
*Truth be told: Drudge was one of the original ten blogs I recommended to Kimoco when forums still ruled and blogs were just a twinkle in old man Kos’ eyes. He is also the only one of the ten that I haven’t read in five years too.
Real Anti-Patriots Fly Their Flags Inside Out
I like dictatorship! And so do you, if you know what’s good for you!Roses are red sometimes, violets are too, take off your glasses, I’ll read it for you.
Your Job Mr. Phelps, Should You Decide To Accept It
write with your feminine voice.Cheaper than surgery.
Big Oil Wants Cash From Airlines Upfront
Fuel suppliers demand airlines pay cash in advance
Airlines are being forced to pay cash in advance for jet fuel as the major oil companies tighten the screws on an industry that is being crushed by an extraordinary surge in the price of crude oil.
Sources within the airline industry indicate that credit is being denied to most of the leading American carriers and the practice is moving to Europe and Asia. So uncertain is the cash solvency of the industry that jet fuel suppliers insist on prepayments into special bank accounts.
…
The need to put up money before delivery of fuel is a huge financial burden that has been shifted from the oil companies to the airlines. According to John Armbrust, a US jet fuel consultant, the oil industry had $5 billion (£2.5 billion) of jet fuel credit outstanding to airlines before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Now they are demanding that airlines leave cash on deposit.
No subprime loans here folks.
More? You want more?! George Soros: rocketing oil price is a bubble
Speculators are largely responsible for driving crude prices to their peaks in recent weeks and the record oil price now looks like a bubble, George Soros has warned.
Germany in call for ban on oil speculation
German leaders are to propose a worldwide ban on oil trading by speculators, blaming the latest spike in crude prices on manipulation by hedge funds.
It is the most drastic proposal to date amid escalating calls from Europe, the US and Asia for controls on market forces, underscoring the profound shift in the political climate since the credit crunch began. India has already suspended futures trading of five commodities. (emphasis mine)
I’ll Stick With What I’ve Got
via someone with sense, I am informed yet again by the MSM, More On That “Internet Effect” Thing (Correction Appended)
As Harris explains:
As leaders of a new publication, Politico’s senior editors and I are relentlessly focused on audience traffic. The way to build traffic on the Web is to get links from other websites. The way to get links is to be first with news — sometimes big news, sometimes small — that drives that day’s conversation. We are unapologetic in our premium on high velocity. In this focus on links and traffic we are not different from nearly all news sites these days, not just new publications but established ones like The New York Times. There are probably a dozen websites with a heavy political emphasis whose links are sought by all for the traffic those links drive.
Three years ago it was decreed that the pseudonymous blogger would not be acknowledged by the fourth estate by a well meaning journalist or editor, for all the various reasons of credibility,( unlike, say unnamed Pentagon sources and insiders of government that we as readers of the fourth estate are assured wouldn’t lie to reporters and by extension us,) those sorts of references may impugn.
Of course none of that has stopped the fourth estate from reading the anonymous coward’s posting, and doing that journalistic voodoo of checking the sourcing, reporting it as if they had discovered the tidbit all on their own so other fourth estators would link to them and make them famous, popular and insightful researchers into all things inner tubed. Oh to be young again, he said. Besides, one must be careful not to fuck oneself over using links from foul mouthed bloggers talking like we do, if only we were allowed to say shit if we had a mouthful of it, but alas I have a degree.
That’s their game, and to some extent it may actually be true for some of the top of the line, first rate blogs, needing links to drive traffic and hence advertising revenues. Hell, I’m all for everyone who wishes to make a nickel on the net doing so too, and if my linking them helps then good on them. But it is not the only reason to blog, or write. The fact that what I write can and is picked up by other people and from there the point is propagated to the wider world accomplishes all I would hope for.
Hamas, America’s Ally In Iraq
‘Like A Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone’
One of the factors Lehr credits for his brigade’s success is the Sons of Iraq militia program. But when I asked him about its potential to create the next generation of Iraqi warlords, he sounded another note of caution:
Not all Sons of Iraq are created equal. There are two distinct groups: one, mainly associated with the rural areas, are more tribal [inaudible]. In my opinion, they’re easier to work with, and not tied to any political parties. The ones in the urban areas [like Baquba]… are more politically aligned. There are four major political groups in Baquba with [Sons of Iraq militias]: Saladin, the 1920s Revolution, the Mujahideen and Hamas of Iraq. They’ve confederated into, as I say, a confederate organization referred to as the People’s Committee.
We do have strange friends, don’t we?
Just Wondering
Has it occurred to anyone else that no matter what policies the presidential candidates propose, those policies will still need to be run through the Congressional filter before they become law, and that in many respects presidential candidates are fronting their wish lists?
Dick Martin Passes Away
TV’s ‘Laugh-in’ comic Dick Martin dies in California
Dick Martin, the zany half of the comedy team whose Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In took television by storm in the 1960s, making stars of Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and creating such national catch-phrases as “Sock it to me!” has died. He was 86.
Yeah, But, He Was A Sorry Author!
The invasion of Iraq by Britain and the US has trebled the price of oil, according to a leading expert, costing the world a staggering $6 trillion in higher energy prices alone.
The oil economist Dr Mamdouh Salameh, who advises both the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), told The Independent on Sunday that the price of oil would now be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had not been for the Iraq war.
Some of you may remember when Rupert Murdock supported the war because oil would go to twenty bucks a barrel.
Karl Rove informs me on “This Week” that Obama has an experience problem with big issues.
Advantage: Blogs
Web users ‘getting more selfish’
“People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience,” he said.
“I do not think sites appreciate that yet,” he added. “They still feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them.”
Web users were also getting very frustrated with all the extras, such as widgets and applications, being added to sites to make them more friendly.
Such extras are only serving to make pages take longer to load, said Dr Nielsen.
Of course with all the traffic this site generates, I should have an opinion huh? Wait! I Too Am A Web Surfer!
I’m pretty sure that what I post up has changed since we went from dial up to hi-speed, especially pictures and Utubes. But then there has been a huge amount of turmoil in my personal life this year which has also affected what I post up as well. The truth is that I don’t have the time to devote to surfing that I once had, and I don’t have the desire either, which makes EZ a dull boy.
I would also be lying if I didn’t mention that gaining some audience share didn’t fuck up my head either. So there are a lot of reasons that visitors will stick around a lot less than previously, and some will not come back. I’m very much like my own audience in that regard. That was one big advantage for me over at blogspot, since you actually have to make an effort to track traffic, while over here I almost have to see page views. At least I don’t know the RSS numbers. My ego needs less deflating when I’m guessing, because I believe I’m pretty intense about things I know. In many ways the needs of a writer to have their work read is counter productive to people like myself who also need not to know those things too.
But of course I digress, which I’ll forgive myself in this instance, since it is after all, my blog. YMMV.
Update: I suppose this could be construed as an apology for being an egotistical asshole.
What American Liberalism?
Divided by zeros,
The Death of American LiberalismNow a word about the wider picture: There’s certainly no effective liberal, let alone left presence in mainstream American politics any more. The political primary season, now in its final throes, has resoundingly buttressed this fact, albeit disguising the process by the crafty expedient of making a black man the all-but-certain Democratic nominee.
Take the scene in Portland, Oregon last Monday, on the eve of a vote in that north-western state which sent Barack Obama one step further in formally clinching the Democratic nomination. CounterPunch coeditor Jeffrey St Clair gave a most amusing and enlightening account of it this last Wednesday. How did Hillary Clinton try to remind Oregonians of her claims to be the authentic rep of white working-class America, without whose votes no Democrat can ever win the White House?
She held a press conference in the upscale Portland suburb of Beaverton, in a subdivision where $500,000 homes have gone unsold for the past year. She spoke movingly of the pain being experienced by the developer. A few miles north, homeless Oregonians were besieging the offices of Portland’s mayor, Tom Potter.
This is probably a topic I’ll be coming back to more often once all the walls are torn out and replaced with fancy new sheet rock on them, and grandma in her new room. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the kids.
UD: More here
Little Davey Horowitz’s World
Maybe Dave doesn’t listen to Lewis Black. If he did, he would stick to his own books.
The Incubator
by digby
In response to my question about how the new Muslim Apostate meme got started, Gavin at Sadly No emailed with this link to Jihad Watch from David Horowitz’s FrontPage magazine. This makes sense. After all, David Horowitz has made his career out of being an apostate so it figures his project would be behind the propagation of this nonsense. It’s his thing.
In Essence, No
Update: Minor editing done to clear things up, and I turned the comments back on.
Has the primary race affected your surfing habits?
Just curious. It has mine. There are several sites I used to read regularly that I just don’t visit anymore. A couple of them I actually refuse to visit again. I keep my bookmarks organized into two basic folders on my toolbar in Firefox. One is my regular reading list and the other is for dumping new finds into. I occasionally reorder them based on how often I return to certain sites, keeping them handy. I’ve noticed that my ‘top 20′ have changed dramatically leading me to wonder if this is true for others and whether or not this election is changing the landscape of the blogosphere.
There is more here than I linked to, so you may want to check it out. But the election has not changed the sites I visit, just the enjoyment of doing so.
Back in the old days when it was bad form to blog roll conservative sites I did anyway, because I have always believed you needed to understand the oppositions positions and why they held those positions.
This posts observation,
1) Neither Clinton nor Obama is a progressive or a liberal. They are both centrist democrats with the voting records of centrist dems. However, between the two of them, Clinton is the more liberal.
is pretty accurate.
I think anyone who isn’t learning something from all of this is the loser, but if anyone isn’t learning anything at all, especially in, like my case, about sexism probably isn’t worth having for a reader either. In that respect I’m just not sure anyone really understands how historic both the Obama and Clinton candidacies have been. Just because one considers themselves a lefty progressive, liberal doesn’t mean that they don’t need to do some internal work on those issues. It is called growth.
Six years ago I recommended 10 blogs to a friend when blogs were relatively new and she was just becoming aware of them. Of those ten Drudge was one, and the only one I no longer frequent. I still do Instapundit, and the other eight were liberals.
But there isn’t any particular blog that at some point hasn’t written and posted up something that pisses me off. In fact I can think of a dozen reasons to quite linking to, and referring others to some of these blogs, but then it isn’t any of my business to tell my readers what to read and whose opinions to share and concur in.
The plain fact of the matter is everyone has written stuff that is less than progressive in some shape or form, but none of them have seemed to make a habit out of it. No Quarter is still one of my favorite blogs, but to be sure, the anti-Obamaramaism of the writers is boring, and I’m not sure why I find it to be so.
Perhaps in advocacy of one candidate over another some have gone to far into personalities, a dangerous place to go with people we only know peripherally. But I just don’t see getting my knickers in a knot over it too much. I’m just not going to spend an inordinate amount of time knocking other people, especially other progressives who blog, for failing to adhere to my ideological standard of purity. They may not even be aware of it, but I have pointed criticized Atrios and Kos, once lumping them in with Instaredundant and little green foosballs. (That should be a trifecta of some sort.)
But to stop reading those blogs, or even some on the right, is to abdicate opportunities to influence their thinking and hence the readership that they enjoy as their popularity warrants. In short, you just can’t take politics too personal. The objective is not to be the most righteous blogger, but to be the most informative and instructive blogger.
For myself, there is a big difference between how I read a blog and how I read or listen and watch the MSM, since most MSM have a large infrastructure and editorial filter to run news and opinion through, while most bloggers have to rely, now, on a few others in their network, or like myself on our own singular judgements as to what is or isn’t crossing the lines of decorum with other people we only know peripherally, again, in a more informal setting.
All I really can hope for is that progressives aren’t intentionally going out of their way to say racist and misogynistic things, and I work on the assumption that they are not because I live in a world where conservative and reactionaries control the megaphones and that they are intentionally so.
To get back on point, neither of the Democratic candidates are bloggospherically progressive, and not all of the progressive bloggosphere is so always either. Therein lies the rub. We are not involved in this movement to perfect it, we are involved to make it grow into a majority outlook and opinion.
The thing about the Presidential campaign is that the supporters of all the losers and left behinds will be able to point out various failures with the winner with the old reliable “I told you so,” even though it has been noted twice in this post that neither candidate is exactly progressive. That is a drawback of focusing too much on one office and one personality when viewed in context with the entire movement. It is also a reminder to us old farts that this thing is still relatively new, and this modern progressive movement will not only have to undergo these growing pangs, but many more to come.
11:32 AM CST
Terry McAuliffs’ Magic Math
I know this has been well smothered,
Terry’s New Goalposts
If I’m not mistaken Terrry McAuliffe just announced two new goalposts.
1. Hillary has gotten more votes and delegates since March 4th.
2. Hillary has gotten more votes in a nomination race than anyone in history. “Hillary Clinton has now received more votes than any candidate ever running for president in a primary.”
So where’s the beef?
Mind you, it helps to be agile in the maths department to see quite how she gets to her claim that she is ahead in the popular vote – this table is useful if you really want to follow her logic.
You’ll note that her best figure excludes the caucus-goers and includes the two states the party decided should not be included (Michigan and Florida).
Feeling smarter?
.
As Scott says, it isn’t trivial and it’s destroying the respect I once had for a group of people.The central premise here is a Grade A, or a Jeff Jacoby, level of illogic:
Joe Klein Dings Big Mac
Here’s the youtube link to my questioning of McCain about Ahmadinejad yesterday. Once again, before a Latino audience today in Miami, McCain used his standard line about Ahmadinejad as the leader of Iran and added, “What are they [Obama and Ahmadinejad] going to talk about, the destruction of Israel?” That got a laugh. I’ll have more in my print column this week.
Then Again: McCain used to know who the actual rulers of Iran are, via Adam Blickstein of Democracy Arsenal.
If we’re talking sandlot baseball Joe and Blickstein just hit back to backs, both balls landing in big fresh sloppy pies falling from ol Flossie and kin.
As A Southern Democrat
One of the things I’m hearing (yeah, blame it on Cavuto,) is that this Democratic Party is not the Democratic Party that “I” once knew, they have left “me.”
Poor sweet babies. After forty years, I would guage they are coming back.
Just so Sheppard Smith can get in on it, I hope Geraldine Ferraro keeps on working on sexism issues, even as I disagree with some of her observations about the current campaign regarding it, particularly on dismissive remarks directed at women candidates that would also be directed at men in similar circumstances.
God Bless The MSM
Yesterday, the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss noted that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) often incorrectly portrays Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as if Ahmadinejad has a significant role in formulating Iranian foreign policy. He doesn’t. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Iran’s National Security Council set Iran’s foreign policy.
Yesterday, Time’s Joe Klein pressed McCain on the issue, but McCain refused to concede he was wrong, saying he disagreed that Khamenei runs Iranian policy behind the scenes. McCain added that because the “average American” thinks Ahmadinejad is Iran’s leader, that’s good enough for him:
Oh yeah?! Well what does Howie Kurtz say about all of that?
Today, Washington Post reporter Howie Kurtz talks about the press’s infatuation with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ):
This approach contrasts sharply with the popular image of McCain as enjoying a cozy relationship with media organizations that he has jokingly called “my base.” That image is rooted in reality: McCain allows reporters to question him for hours at a time, is a frequent talk show guest and mingles easily among the media elite. On the trail, journalists enjoy his sarcastic sense of humor and have provided him with generally favorable treatment.
You know, people are going to be people. McCain can bullshit his way past a lot of Americans only if certain Americans allow him to do so. The contest is between personal judgement and professional responsibilities, which given my limited understanding of corporate America, also includes the factoring in of who signs the check and what is their position, politically.
You know reporters are for the most part OK people, but corporations are soulless bastards.
ROFLMAO
On Fox News, Rove and Ingraham Criticize MSNBC For Blurring The ‘Line Between News And Commentary’
Update: You know this crap reminds me of what I was saying about Dobbs. Maybe this blog really, no really, I’m serious, really sucks if Karl or Laura read this blog. Give me back my Hillary!
YA Must Read
Israel’s ‘American Problem’ By JEFFREY GOLDBERG Via TPM
Other Israeli leaders have spoken with similar directness. The former prime minister, and current defense minister, Ehud Barak, told The Jerusalem Post in 1999: “Every attempt to keep hold of this area as one political entity leads, necessarily, to either a nondemocratic or a non-Jewish state. Because if the Palestinians vote, then it is a binational state, and if they don’t vote it is an apartheid state that might then become another Belfast or Bosnia.”
If you think this stuff is tough on Jews, you ought to walk a mile in a concerned goyim’s shoes. No Alexander’s knife edge here folks, move ahead.
What’s With Democratic VP Nominees?
Geraldine Ferraro, the outspoken former Democratic vice presidential candidate and a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s White House bid, told the New York Times she may not vote for Barack Obama should he be the party’s nominee.
Must be something in the second banana.
Kristol’s Math
Kristol’s Third Strike: Weekly Standard Editor Gets The Facts Wrong In His New York Times Column
In his New York Times column today, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol tried to find reasons for conservatives to be optimistic about 2008 elections, despite the claims of some Republicans that “the Republican brand is in the trash can.” To support his argument, Kristol pointed to Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) 41-point loss in the West Virginia primary:…On Feb. 5, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney beat presumptive GOP nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) by 85 points in the Utah primary:
Heh.
Afghanistan Justice
I was tortured to confess, Pervez tells appeal court
Pervez Kambaksh, the Afghan student sentenced to death after being accused of downloading internet reports on women’s rights, yesterday pleaded innocent to charges of blasphemy. He told an appeal court in Kabul that he had been tortured into confessing.
Mr Kambaksh, 24, vehemently denied that he had been responsible for producing anti-Islamic literature. He insisted the prosecution had been motivated by personal malice of two members of staff and their student supporters at the university in Balkh, where he was studying journalism.
He was convicted in proceedings behind closed doors in a trial which he said had lasted just four minutes and where he had been denied legal representation.
So our troops guard poppy fields to defend this?
Under Islamic law, stipulated in Afghanistan’s constitution, blasphemy is punishable by death. Two other Afghan journalists, accused of blasphemy and sentenced to death, escaped prison and have been given asylum in the West.
Mr Kambaksh’s case has been raised with President Hamid Karzai by Foreign Secretary David Miliband and the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.
Mobile Phones Jack The Kids
Update: Dr. Sanjay Gupta on the Morning Show informs us that there is no cause and effect evidence. (For those of you who remember the bees, no prob.)
Warning: Using a mobile phone while pregnant can seriously damage your baby
Women who use mobile phones when pregnant are more likely to give birth to children with behavioural problems, according to authoritative research.
A giant study, which surveyed more than 13,000 children, found that using the handsets just two or three times a day was enough to raise the risk of their babies developing hyperactivity and difficulties with conduct, emotions and relationships by the time they reached school age. And it adds that the likelihood is even greater if the children themselves used the phones before the age of seven.
CNN did a report on the mother’s stress affecting the unborn this morning, so hopefully she isn’t arguing with the ol’ man on on a mobile.
The research – at the universities of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Aarhus, Denmark – is to be published in the July issue of the journal Epidemiology and will carry particular weight because one of its authors has been sceptical that mobile phones pose a risk to health.
UCLA’s Professor Leeka Kheifets – who serves on a key committee of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, the body that sets the guidelines for exposure to mobile phones – wrote three and a half years ago that the results of studies on people who used them “to date give no consistent evidence of a causal relationship between exposure to radiofrequency fields and any adverse health effect”.
I’m sure the original Easter Islanders were confident that cutting all the trees down was proper too.
Brits Love Their Cluster Bombs
Britain obstructs global ban on use of cluster bombs
The two sets of weapons at the heart of the argument are the M85 and the M73, munitions fired, respectively, by artillery and rockets. British officials claim these are “smart” weapons which minimise the risk of “collateral damage” and are essential for military operations. The M85 is meant to self destruct and not pose a lingering threat to civilians. However, according to the United Nations, 300 civilians were killed or injured in Lebanon, where Israel used the weapons in 2006.An Apache helicopter can launch 684 M73 bomblets in one attack. They were used by the Americans in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Their use was criticised by US forces, who had to negotiate unexploded cluster munitions on their way to Baghdad. The first two British soldiers killed in Kosovo were casualties of Nato cluster bombs they had been trying to clear. Senior Foreign Office sources said the UK was not prepared to give up the M73 and the system was “non-negotiable”. There was said to be flexibility over the M85, but the Ministry of Defence is expected to resist losing them.
The UK is said to be under strong pressure from the Americans – who are not taking part in the Dublin talks –…
The problem with the Brits and Americans is it has been too long since war was actually fought on their own territory. I doubt we would be so dead set on keeping these munitions and depleted uranium weaponry if it were our children picking them up or breathing their toxic residue.
Onward Through The Blog!
As much as I am inclined to stop, blogger I must be.
All We Are Saying
Israel to agree unofficially to Egypt cease-fire deal; skeptical Barak to discuss plan with Mubarak Monday By Amos Harel and Barak Ravid
Palestinian troops arrest two Islamic Jihad leaders in Jenin
In a separate incident, IDF forces in Jenin arrest a senior Islamic Jihad militant as well.
Amos Harel: Is Israel breaking its own taboo on talks with Hamas?
… A letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the details of which were revealed Friday, called for the indirect and secret talks with Hamas to be recognized. As for Israel’s greatest concerns – that Hamas will use a lull in hostilities to rearm and that Egypt’s promises to fight weapons smuggling bear no weight – the writers of the letter offered no solution.
Among the signatories’ names, that of MK Yossi Beilin (Meretz) is to be expected. More surprising are the names of the former Shin Bet [sic] chief Ephraim Halevi, who has actually been calling for talks with Hamas in recent months, along with former chief of staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and Brigadier General (res.) Shmuel Zakai, a former Gaza Division commander. This is an attempt to provide a military stamp of approval to a step Israel has officially sworn it would not take. What was taboo two years ago is no longer.
HT Laura Rozen
Now if we can only get high profile US politicians to STFU.
Yes, We Have No Bananas
Updated: U.S. credit crunch fallout not over yet: Buffett
A tale of two woes,
ECB head: Credit crunch ‘ongoing’
The credit crunch is continuing and it is not evident that the worst is over, the head of the European Central Bank has told the BBC.
Jean-Claude Trichet said we were seeing “an ongoing, very significant market correction,” during an interview with the BBC business editor Robert Peston.
He warned that if central banks were tempted to cut interest rates now, more serious problems could follow.
followed by this;
Economists see credit crisis nearing end
WASHINGTON (AP) — First the good news: The worst of the painful housing slump and the credit crunch might come to an end this year. Now the bad: The economy will weaken further and unemployment will rise.
That’s the latest outlook from forecasters in a survey to be released Monday by the National Association for Business Economics, also known by its acronym NABE. It will take time for any rays of light to poke through the economic clouds, though.
A growing number of economists believe the country is on the brink of a recession or in one already, dragged down by all the problems in housing, credit and financial markets. Now 56% of the economists think the economy has started or will enter a recession this year. That’s up from 45% in a survey in February. If there is a recession, it probably will be short and shallow, economists said.
Nothing like information you can take to the bank.
Blog!@#Wogged!@#On
It’s been a long and occasionally painful life lesson, but I’ve learned that rage, like fear, is an emotion best denied public expression. I now seldom go in for that sort of outburst unless it’s absolutely essential. I believe in the truth of the old maxim: losing the rag usually means losing. In my youth, I recall several half-arsed fights spent rolling around in gutters with unremarkable strangers over some real or imagined petty slight that I’d either suffered or issued. With violence, like other things, you tend to find your own level, and I was a crap fighter who usually fought other crap fighters. Nonetheless, there’s something very demeaning about it. And it’s never a good idea to give away what makes you angry. It only encourages people to wind you up.
I’ve generally ceased challenging those who make racist remarks in pubs as I’ve realised that they tend to be simpletons. Most real racists (those with fascistic or supremacist beliefs) now have more sense than to do monkey chants or verbally abuse black footballers – at least in the UK. This is now solely the preserve of educationally subnormal half-wits, desperate for some sort of reaction. It’s better to either ignore them or laugh in a way that lets them know that they are the fitter target for derision.
Read the article, or insert Instapundit like gnomish observation here_________>
Missing Accomplished
Looking back I think ahead
was it something left unsaid
or just the sequence in a dream
unwinding before it was ever seen,
dawning before it could slide
forgotten into mental suicide?
Here We Go Again
Conservatives are passionate about attacking liberals, and whining about how out of step the media is in portraying conservatives, and conservative positions. I see them on TV all the time. They invite other conservatives on to explain this to me. They tell me that what Republicans say that is really stupid is really a mis- understanding/speaking, (apologized for, gee whiz!,) fair and impartial really because, or not to be mentioned in polite company. Democrats have insulted the religious sensibilities of the American people, no matter what they say.
Democrats caused the Republicans to obstruct legislation because they had slim or meaningless majorities in the Congress the last two years, so they were in charge. The last seven years, especially the middle four, don’t count.
The grown ups that got us in to this seemingly intractable mess will flutter to foreign lands and call people names, which imply serious issues to Very Serious People. This will call for seriously new and personal ad hominems to raise issues about any particular Democrats suitability to obtain to office, high or low. In lieu of natural disasters or missing white girls, these very serious issues will consume undue amounts of bandwidth, creating the next internet killer app, blogcasting, when the networks discover they have invented it.
Oil Whatever
Saudi Arabia raises oil output
Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, has increased its output to meet rising demand and to compensate for declining production from other countries.
Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, said on Friday that from May 10 the kingdom had raised supplies by 300,000 barrels per day.
Saudi Arabia’s output in June will reach 9.45 million barrels per day, al-Naimi said.
Meanwhile CNN informs me that OPEC will not increase production.
Problem? Both reports could be equally accurate.
Stack It, But Don’t Try To Add It Up
McClatchy: U.S. Ditched Chalabi to Satisfy Maliki
Yesterday, NBC reported that the U.S. had finally cut off ties to Ahmed Chalabi because of “unauthorized” contacts with Iranian officials. Newsweek reported the same today, but said that Nouri al-Maliki’s government had acted first. McClatchy’s take is even clearer:
A State Department official said that this time the U.S. cut off Chalabi, who was appointed in September to head Maliki’s Services Committee, which is meant to help usher services into communities after they’re secured by U.S. and Iraqi troops, in deference to Maliki.
Not because he fed the US “intelligence” services false information or gave the Iranians a heads up on our breaking their code, but because a puppet resents a pretender to the throne.
This is insanity on so many levels.
Right On
When he was put onto these national platforms, with all lights on him, Jeremiah Wright was given a teaching moment, one in which he could have introduced the American Hegemony Project into the public discourse. As Glenzilla likes to point out, this topic is simply not permitted by the Serious People who serve as gatekeepers.
This observation isn’t exclusive to Rev. Wright either, and in fact it could be argued as a failing of all Christians, who invariably passs up teaching moments for something that is far more important to them personally. It’s the infielder throwing the runner out, in his head, even as the hot grounder is still coming towards him and then booting the play.
Politics seems to be the perfect catalyst for separating the faithful from the faith, and in many instances politics ultimately defines the religion. Will Durant’s observation that it was a long road from Jerusalem to Nicea is only factual in worldly context. The heart condition of the travellers had severed the branch from the vine previous to the journey.
Tweety!, or Return of the Red Headed Stranger?
Chris Matthews Stumps Right-Wing Radio Host: ‘Tell Me What Chamberlain Did?’ ‘I Don’t Know’
Matthews rebuked his clueless guest — and the entire Bush administration — for being “blank slates in terms of history”:
You don’t understand there’s a difference between talking to the enemy and appeasing. What Chamberlain did wrong, most people would say, is not talking to Hitler, but giving him half of Czechoslovakia in 1938. That’s what he did wrong. Not talking to somebody. Appeasement is giving things away to the enemy.
Like fuel oil in exchange for nuclear weapons programs?
UD: Chamberlain doesn’t get much credit for his appeasement of India either.
Your Iranian Slip Is Showing
Maliki Stalls US Plan to Frame Iran
Early this month, the George W. Bush administration’s plan to create a new crescendo of accusations against Iran for allegedly smuggling arms to Shiite militias in Iraq encountered not just one but two setbacks.
The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused to endorse US charges of Iranian involvement in arms smuggling to the Mahdi Army, and a plan to show off a huge collection of Iranian arms captured in and around Karbala had to be called off after it was discovered that none of the arms were of Iranian origin.
Ooops.
The Myth of the Iranian Sanctuary
The Iranians have already achieved political victory in Iraq. All they want now is to create long-lasting stability. The last thing the Iranians would do is create a new “Viet Cong” to undermine the government of Iraq. Thus, if one accepts the premise of the United States that it is Iran which is responsible for funding and training forces hostile to the government of Iraq, then one would have to accept the notion that Iran is at war with…Iran. This is, frankly speaking, absurd in the extreme.
Tangled Web of Allegiances Leads Back to Tehran
Declarations by both the US and al-Maliki’s government about Iranian sponsorship of Sadrist activities are often used to paint Iran as a destabilizing force in Iraq – the meddling neighbor encouraging unrest to boost its own influence. US-backed Iraqi government excursions against Sadr are defended by citing unsubstantiated evidence of Iranian agents’ influence.
But this perspective has yet to be explained in terms of one of Iran’s closest allies in Iraq, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), who, as part of al-Maliki’s ruling coalition, also happen to be one of the US’s closest partners.
Just so you know these things.
I think the larger picture of the Likuditics is to create an Israeli hyper power in the MidEast, which has short term policy advantages I suppose, but basically the shell game is to get the US to do the heavy lifting for the project.
With over 200 warheads of the proscribed kind alledgely in their arsenal it would seem that Israel already has acheived that goal.
What is germane to me, is how do we guarantee the long term security of Israel when conventional war is not the war it will face in the future? How much less assymetrical will any of these policies make the current hostile activities. They are already confronting a situation where their adversaries are using the tactics and MO of a weaker force against a larger stronger force. Increasing the strength of the stronger will not reduce those efforts of the weaker.
So what is the real goal of all of this propaganda and bombast? How does any of this improve US national security?
I guess a large part of the question for me is, what would Israel do if it didn’t have the skirt of the United States to hide behind? the US wasn’t part of the equation? ( I really phrased that poorly.)
US Navy Bombs Florida
Let’s see here. Some dude gets arrested for throwing a molotov cocktail and starting a small fire, and the US Navy drops a laser guided bomb in the wrong place, (which ought to be a story in itself, collateral damage being what it is to COIN operations,) starting a large one.
Qatari Prime Minister Other Appeasers End Lebanon Violence
Arab Mediators Reach Deal to End Lebanon Violence
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Arab League mediators announced a deal on Thursday to end Lebanon’s worst internal fighting since the civil war, after the U.S.-supported government backed down in its conflict with Hezbollah.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani also summoned Lebanon’s government and Hezbollah-led opposition to Qatar for talks to resolve a broader political showdown which has paralyzed the country for 18 months.
“We declare an agreement sponsored by the Arab League to deal with the Lebanese crisis,” said Sheikh Hamad, who led the Arab mediators. “The parties pledge to refrain from returning to the use of weapons or violence to realize political gains.”
Talking to the Hezbollah.
Crazy Man, Crazy Ants
Since it is news now, we have had those crazy ants for a couple of years now. They are really fast little critters. They seem to me to stand up and move like daddy long legs on speed, but with a body like sugar ants, (piss ants in some places.) I killed the local colony when I inadvertantly spilled a cup of gasoline on them during the swarm season this spring.
Being In A Big Hurry
Instead of eating a tuna fish sammich with eggs and relish, I’m just going to us potato chips and eat it right out of the can.
Mmmmm. Taste like chicken!
DOH! I could have had a free Micky Ds
McCain’s Base Starting To Crumble
McCain campaign threatened to cut off Newsweek’s access.
Earlier this week, after Newsweek published a cover story examining the hardball tactics conservatives might use in the general election, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) “true partner” and longest-serving aide, Mark Salter, fired off a stinging retort that accused the magazine of being “biased.” Today, a Wall Street Journal profile of Salter reveals that he also “threatened to throw the magazine’s reporters off the campaign bus and airplane“:
I think because he’s gone green McCain is looking for excuses to get smaller planes. When it gets it down to using Denny Hasterts old plane, then IMO things will be just about right.
And It Only Took Seven Years
Bush administration has reportedly cut off Chalabi.
NBC News reports “that as of this week American military and civilian officials have cut off all contact with controversial Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi” due to “‘unauthorized’ contacts with Iran’s government, an allegation Chalabi denies.”
Let’s see here. Democrats are appeasers because they will engage in diplomacy with bad people, like Iranians, even though the Bushco has engaged in diplomacy with bad people, like Iranains.
Chalabi suckers them into the biggest strategic mistake in our history and they keep him on even after he was reported to have blown our cracking of the Iranian codes to the Iranians.
Today he gets fired.
Too Stupid To Be President
Same as it ever was. (Yeah, I’m your huckleberry CNN)
Updated: (because every good blog deserves an update,)
Obama Gets Triple-Teamed on ‘Appeasement’ Whence the three yo-yos on one string explain what the previous posting was about.
First, George W. Bush takes a swipe:
Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared:
(
Prescott Bush ? )His business dealings, which continued until his company’s assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
One of the things I noted was the standing ovation Bush got for his remarks. not.
Update II: Look a Balloon!
Get Yer War On
The sense of threat here is vivid, it is deeply felt, it is completely comprehensible, and it rises occasionally, or more than occasionally, to a well-nigh hysterical pitch–so much so that the Amerian strategist Edward Luttwak arose Monday night at a banquet at Peres’ house to warn assembled luminaries against fearing annihilation at the hands of an Ahmadinejad who, after all, was not Hitler but Mussolini, and an inept one at that. It is not lost on any Israeli that Ahmadinejad, in his usual delicate manner, last week called Israel a “stinking corpse.”
Weirdly, at a Wednesday afternoon workshop, the selfsame Luttwak declared that Iran’s reformers would actually welcome a sharp outsider’s attack on their nuclear facilities. No other panelist disputed his suggestion, which was greeted with much applause from a largely Israeli audience.
Sure, the reformers will greet you with flowers.
Look! A Bust!
The dude looks deranged to me.
He was a military leader turned dictator who had such a complex about his receding hairline that he perfected the Roman comb-over and liked laurel crowns that disguised his bald patch.
Anyway, there’s your daily Julius.
Like I Said, Soon Enough
TX Appeals Court Overturns Vioxx Verdict Against Merck
Via How Appealing, a Texas Court of appeals has reversed the verdict against Merck in the Vioxx case. I found this interesting:
Really worth a peek.
Blow Up The TV, Throw Away The Papers
For those of you still wondering why Freidman got Atrios’, “Wanker of the Day,”,
Did Tom Friedman really just describe Future TV as “progressive”? Really? Progressive in, uh, what way? Because it has the word “future” in its name?
Abu Muqawama thought Hizbollah shutting the station down was just as cowardly and thuggish as anyone, but let’s be honest — Future TV and al-Mustaqbal newspaper are sectarian propaganda organs for March 14th and the Hariri family.
Contrary to most editorial page editors current belief in the editorial page belief system, most of us expect the columnists that write for them to be better informed of the facts than their readers. I am coming to the conclusion that once a member of the media has paid their dues and reached a certain stature amongst their peers they are free to write and say anything, bullshit included, so long as they don’t get the company they work for sued.
Maybe some of the decline in revenue isn’t because people prefer the internet so much as people prefer the internet because it gets vetted in real time in multiple locations. I can see why these folks don’t like the internet too, whether politicians or professional journalists. The thing is though, the internet is not going to modify its’ behavior, so perhaps the politicians and journalists at the apex of their profession might ought to.
Tale of Two Headlines
Gaza Rocket Hits Israeli Shopping Mall, Wounding Several
Suspected U.S. Missile Hits House in NW Pakistan
Americans may not see the connection.
Simple Times
Let’s play connect the dots!
Qustioning the Value of Our Culture – ?
After a recent talk at a small college, a faculty member in the business sciences asked me if I had really meant to say that the Iraqis and other Middle Easterners did not want to be “us.” When assured that I had meant it, he said that this was most disturbing and that the thought had not occurred to him before. He continued that such a notion was threatening because, if believed, it would require a re-appraisal of the worth of Western culture.
The dictators we supported grasped our instruction and went into action with total freedom of action, unfettered by moral or legal limitations. As a result, counterinsurgency turned ugly as anti-communist zeal led to the imprisonment, torture or death of innocents among the thousands that perished in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and throughout the region. Sadly, it wasn’t until the Carter Administration and the War in El Salvador that human rights became a cornerstone of U.S. counterinsurgency planning and execution.
Today, we see the Children of the Left, now adults, (whose parents were disenfranchised or worse) finding their voices in Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and elsewhere. As a result, Latin America is increasingly drifting towards building new economic, diplomatic and military relationships, diminishing US influence in the region.
Interesting how many people don’t want to be like us, even at our insistence. What goes around, comes around.
If Iran had a viable candidate for ayatollah apearing on television advocating bomb bomb bomb Tel Aviv, or threatening the US with obliteration if it interfered in Syrian internal affairs then Americans might understand how those people feel when American war mongers, for whatever reason they think valid, say things that they do.
Really think about it, do we really want them to be like us??
Operation Paper Clip Part II
Twenty-four days of silence and still counting.
That misses the point. Yes, our government did not begin engaging in this kind of media-mediated propaganda on September 12, 2001. Starting in the 1950s, for instance, the CIA eventually put together a cohort of 400 American journalists at highly respected newspapers that it could count on to provide information about countries they visited and leaders they talked to as well as to get story angles the agency wanted published into print.
Probably just an update to the previous post, but there is absolutely nothing anyone could do to stop the three letter boys from sticking a sock puppet blog on the tube and then the traditional media driving traffic to that blog. Tin foil hat region to be sure, but given the unchanging nature of power, well within the price range of the commodity under discussion.
I’m off to read Glenns post noted in this post by MB, because Kurtz did bring it up.
I wonder if the tell tale sign of a traditional media blog in the future will be an inability to admit mistakes, which will provide some demarcation for savvy internetters, and whether they continue the practice under Democratic administrations, or expose themselves as political tools as opposed to journalism.
I may start watching TV again just to see.
Update: This article is more devastating than most, and hence the least likely to be addressed.
Clear Rift?
There are some brilliant observations circulating about a clear rift in the Democratic Party, and shudder me timbers, a rumor of schisms in the liberal blogosphere.
First of all, the sea change in the body politic since 2006 is extraordinary, and the current Democratic Party and liberal blogosphere are aggregates of those changes and what existed before. In short, the party and sphere are both weighted further to the right from the Republican defections to the party, and conservative defections to the liberal blogosphere.
Neither of these things have done anything to change the core makeup of either group that was extant in 2006. Personally, I would imagine that at this time next year I will be reading and commenting at both No Quarter and TalkLeft, because when they are not entirely focused on being pro Hillary anti Obama, then there are multiple areas of convergence of opinions and positions. At this point, the lack of variety is more of a factor in not reading them than any particular opinion they express.
Too, one should also take into account that the Democratic and liberal agendas are on the ascendant and that there are some who will not make the transition from opposition to advocate with the same ease as others. It is quite easy to be critical.
The blogs have reached a critical mass which may be deduced from either their advertising revenue and other old time metrics of influence, or the simple fact that the traditional media has had to move into the niche of the blogs, which may redefine what a blog is too. Two years ago they had barely started to rip the blogs off, but the commercializationis well under way now, along with the blogification of the traditional media.
In any case, it is the traditional media trying to redefine the political narrativeto fit an older paradigm, by absorbing both issues and formats of the new. One can only wonder how long it will be before the blogs being quoted by the traditional media are blogs being produced by the traditional media as well, and that what cannot be absorbed is obscured by blogs like the HuffingtonPost. This is pretty much what happened to the forums as the blog comments community absorbed their communities.
In the end I don’t see the current situation as a rift, so much as different data sets determining the shape of the current political fractal, a realignment of the political center as moderate conservatives and moderate liberals move chairs around and loudly declare where they will stand.
Light Posting Yada Yada
There is a lot going on in my personal life right now, some of which I can’t really outline since I don’t know anything specific about those particular situations. I suppose it is akin to seeing a lot of smoke on the horizon, which doesn’t signify anything good, but also doesn’t convey any details either. Suffice it to say it cuts across many different levels of being, all ending at the quick.
Fortunately it is not affecting my powers of observation or memory. Those who know too much ought to bear that in mind.
War Drums Beat
War With Iran Might Be Closer Than You Think
There is considerable speculation and buzz in Washington today suggesting that the National Security Council has agreed in principle to proceed with plans to attack an Iranian al-Qods-run camp that is believed to be training Iraqi militants. The camp that will be targeted is one of several located near Tehran. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the only senior official urging delay in taking any offensive action. The decision to go ahead with plans to attack Iran is the direct result of concerns being expressed over the deteriorating situation in Lebanon, where Iranian ally Hezbollah appears to have gained the upper hand against government forces and might be able to dominate the fractious political situation. The White House contacted the Iranian government directly yesterday through a channel provided by the leadership of the Kurdish region in Iraq, which has traditionally had close ties to Tehran.
You know for people who don’t want to pay for anything when it comes to fighting this series of wars, they sure are good at spending down the future.
I don’t think it is a question of Very Serious People in DC doing the thinking anymore, but the very deranged people in DC and the media that think we can continue down this road as blissfully as if it were a matter of sending in Iron Man and out for popcorn.
Note To Malachi
Can you hear me now?
What War On Terror?
Abu Muqawama informs me
At the same time the U.S. government is dismissing one of the world’s best analysts of jihadi websites due to a shrinking budget — because, make no mistake, the U.S. government is 100% dedicated to winning the War on Terror — another jihadi scholar, Will McCants, has just started a website of his own, jihadica.
So from Abu to Abu,
I’ve linked several times to the outstanding work done by RFE/RL analyst Daniel Kimmage on al-Qaeda’s internet operations, including his definitive study of Iraqi insurgent media (with Kathleen Ridolfo) and his more recent report on al-Qaeda’s internet media production network. There are very few people inside or outside the government who have worked harder or thought more deeply about how jihadists use online media, drawing on the original Arabic sources rather than from second and third-hand conjecture. It is clear that everyone working on the issue has learned a tremendous amount from those reports, even when we don’t agree on how to interpret his findings.
Just because Bush is a lame duck doesn’t mean he isn’t still a lamer. I swear they must have hired someone to just sit around in DC thinking of ways to piss me off.
Update: I Forgot, the Grand War on Terra is Over
Consternation
I’ll probably, maybe, could happen, get back into a regular blogging groove which would show up here first.
Hat Tip Howie or Kudos Kurtz?
Two titles for the price of one, I comport, you decide.
Glenn Greenwald rips into the domestic propaganda program, and Larry Di Rita’s responses to questions about the “military analyst” program on CNN with Howie Kurtz. First I should at least acknowledge that CNN investigated all of this, how extensively remains to be seen, but I would be surprised to see a special on it, even though in my mind it would be a fascinating story to see exposed in the visual mediums half hour format.
This is one of those stories that makes you wonder why they are not receiving more coverage, especially since the US government went out of its’ way to intentionally hoodwink the American public using someone else’s money to do so, because these networks paid these analysts 500 bucks a pop to come read inside the beltway memos to their viewers, instead of using the regular scheduled paychecks of the stenography/pentagon correspondents.
It would be nice if from now on the national media would vet their experts before actually allowing them to speak to a national audience on matters of importance. If no one believes your stories, then what is the point of the presentation. If that is the reason this story doesn’t get more traction it might be understandable, but for us old news junkies regaining credibility is the row they must hoe. If they do that, who knows, maybe I’ll go back to watching television news. Until then it is just people wearing make up getting people killed with made up reporting, by people slightly more played than the audience they are playing. Hardly a professional relationship.
I’ll Think About It Later
I was walking on water
I was walking on air
I was walking away
and I didn’t care
I was talking of leaving
your talking of despair
Everbody gots one
Everybody gody gots one.
I was taking on water
I was taking on air
I was looking for a crash landing
just this side of sideburns and hair
I was talking of leaving
your talking of despair
Everbody gots one
Everybody gody gots one.
The next verse would be sort of like the first two.
Pentagon Propaganda Dump Needs Divers
Remember the New York Times story about Pentagon ties to retired military officers who spouted the DOD line in the press? Well DOD just did a huge document dump on the program. Help me dig through this crap! Highlight good stuff in comments.
Apparently there is some sort of tie in with NBC,
Such is the state of affairs at NBC News, where last week it was not only reportedly boycotting Huffington, but also steadfastly boycotting a blockbuster New York Times report from April 20 that detailed how the Pentagon, during the run-up to the war with Iraq and for years after that, had worked closely with retired military officers now working as talking heads. The Pentagon selected scores of officers, many of whom had defense industry clients, and worked to “transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks,” according to the Times. The Pentagon did that by, among other things, treating the analysts to special briefings and taking them on guided tours of Iraq.
But this wasn’t simply a fact-finding initiative. According to the Times, when at least one of the analysts eventually began to criticize the war, he was promptly suspended from the Pentagon program.
NBC isn’t alone in this stuff either, so the document dump ought to be fun reading for those of you who like that digging stuff. This story must have a lot more behind it than the Pentagon duping the media into fronting the political generals, because the silence is deafening from them.
Hillary, Dillary, Dock
Clinton ran out of clock.
There, I’ve put my two cents worth in on the issue of whether Hillary should go away mad, or just go away.
Personally I have no intention on saying anything else about it all, unless on of her surrogates just says something so stupid that it needs to be noted by myself as well as everyone else in the blogosphere.
She ran a hard race, and came up short. That’s all there is to it. Her viability now rests more with disaster happening to Obama than anything she or her campaign can say.
Stay or go, the story has already ended. Hopefully she won’t wake up in the front yard like a hard drinking friend on New Years day wondering what happened to the party.
Oh Yeah, I Almost Forgot
I’m still going to be futzing around with the camera.
For The Foreseeable Future
There will be light posting, mostly because I’m not into it right now. Call it spring fever, that’s what I’m going to do. It has nothing to do with OPEC revenues of over one trillion dollars.
We Bomb Them, So We Don’t Have To Bomb Them
THOMAS: Yesterday, according to The New York Times, we dropped a bomb on a home in Sadr City and burned alive a pregnant woman and her children. How long is the siege of Sadr — how long are we going to keep bombing Iraqis?
PERINO: Well, I’m not aware of that particular report. I have not — I’ve not seen it.
THOMAS: Well, it was pretty buried in the story.
PERINO: Okay. Well, the operation against the militias in Sadr City will continue until they root them out. And that is expressly in order to protect people like you just mentioned.
The whole exchange is weird. You can almost see the little psuedo reality shell Perino lives in when she addresses the media.
So What’s Next?
Between now and the next media induced Obama controversy? I mean will we be able to stomach the talking heads sagely informing us all that all along they knew it!, knew it was going to come down to this wire!, no, not that wire!, this wire!!!
I think the media is going to miss the Clintons more than anyone else. There is an expectation of a news story that hoovers around that family, especially when they are running for office, that Obama and McCain just don’t generate on their own.
I Thought About Blogging Earlier
Then, I didn’t.
Actually, I’m busy, either cleaning out the car port, or painting the kitchen.
I know I ought to be delving into every detail of the last days of the campaign, and then artfully avoid criticizing Clinton as I move on to point out what a wanker McCain is and then my perfunctory jab at the mainstream media not reporting on what is important so that they could fill in the spaces with some more useless information for the bananas for Hanna Montana or other useless art posing as entertainment news.
I am such a slacker.
I think I’ll take the rest of the day off.
The Cost, Plus, War Party
Bush is asking for another $70 bn. for next year, most of it for the Iraq War. Will the next president have the courage to put the war in the regular budget and not disguise the costs as a “supplemental”? (Even a lot of smart people get fooled by this, talking about how the budget deficit shrank, even as they neglected to include the war expenses.)
Supplemental used to be popular subject.
I Had Thought About Posting Earlier
But then I didn’t.
Based On The Data, And Recurring Blog Posts
Operation Anti-Chaos: The Narrative on “White Voters” Is Fiction
So, to sum up: Look at the damn graphs. You can see that Clinton is in a staggering free-fall among African-American voters, her favorability is down 36 points while 17 percent view her more negatively than before, while Obama’s favorable and negative ratings among whites have paired at five point increases. You can even see the small dip – about two percentage points – in his popularity among whites that can be attributed to the news cycles about his ex-pastor, and see that it has leveled out and is now on a straight horizontal line (meanwhile, Clinton’s numbers among blacks continue on an extreme downward precipice). The greater context is that even including Obama’s slight dip, he’s more popular today among white voters than he ever was prior to February.
I used to get a kick out of the media narrative being exposed as ill informed, until what were once vices became habits.
Even so, today we are being regaled YA with the Jeremiah Wright story by people who don’t have a preacher of any sort, or if they do they don’t pay any attention to them, and if they do they should stop if this is what they are learning from that thar preacher of thern. (Colloquialisms free for old Pegs. All others 2 cents.)
On the bright side Howard Kurtz has picked up on the story of dying while blogging, I think it is the toilet bowl clean keyboarding from the dumper that’s doing it. Probably all those dirty hands on all that pristine American ass.
Pssst. Can You Keep A Secret?
The traditional media can, that’s why there’s blogs, doncha know. Secret Bush “Finding” Widens War on Iran
Just so the grandkids have to live with blowback too, I suppose.
Ouch!
And people think this woman and her team are ready on day one to lead this country? Some days I wonder if we might as well just keep Bush.
Pentagon’s Domestic Propaganda Operation Investigation Demanded
House members press Pentagon for propaganda investigation.
Yesterday, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and 40 other lawmakers sent a letter to the Pentagon’s Inspector General demanding an investigation into the department’s propaganda program, which was first revealed by The New York Times on April 20. From their letter:
Well maybe the Pentagon will fess up in the end. Now the media on the other hand….
Hear, Hear!
The Holocaust and The OccupationThanks to War and Piece for staying up all night reading.
Oh, Still My Beating Heart
So far this morning both Brooks and Friedman of the NY Times are making sense, although Brooks has to throw his usual wankery in at the end, blaming us Democrats for not noticing what I’ve been saying for the last five years about him. Anyway, here they are; The Cognitive Age by Brooks and Who Will Tell the People? from Friedman.
(Fortunately, if experience is good for anything, this won’t last very long.)
While America Slept
Fox’s Faux Populism vs A Shadow Elite–Pt. 1
Yesterday, at DKos, No one could have predicted…, Kagro X noted how Clinton and Obama’s appearances on Fox were covered by the LA Times (“Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton embrace Fox News”) and the NY Times (“Democrats and Fox News Make Friends”). Particularly noteworthy was the LA Times deck: “Both Democratic contenders have stepped up their appearances, reaching out for swing voters who might be watching the populist-oriented channel.”
If you read the entire post at OpenLeft,
This is a very old game, and it’s way past time we got a better handle on it. Before getting into any sort of messy details, it’s important to note–ala my diary two weeks ago, “The Ontology of Snark: A Prelude”–that there’s a common ego defense mechanism in play here:
and you should have BTW, then this little gem,
Real, actual conservative elites have been using displacement as a stock in trade for millennia, creating ghost elites for unwitting populists to misdirect their anger at. It was virtually inevitable that Obama’s “new politics” of “change” would be targetted with this ancient charge. It was not inevitable that it would have such a weak response. But, then, the consultant class that crafted it really is part and parcel of the Versailles elite. So what could we expect?
All in all, what we are starting to see is the elite defining what is and isn’t populist, (see Lou Dobbs,) what is and isn’t conservative, (see Faux Knews,) and what is and what isn’t acceptable liberalism, (see DLC, HRC,) and the startling thing about it is the penetration these tin pans get with people who should know better, (see TalkLeft,).
In the end what the American people will have to decide is whether another four more years of Clinton-Bush versus four more years of Bush-McCain, is an acceptable level of progressive movement, as opposed to the much over-hyped liberalism, progressiveness of Obama.
The fact that Obama is just not that liberal, and the notion that Hillary is, and of course that McCain and her are somewhat more centrist is the elite moving the goal posts to the right to define centrism.
I’m sure to some extent the elite have had their feelings hurt by the constant bombardment of the press from the left, partially because there is a laziness on everyones part, myself included, to distinquish between various media, and various individuals in those media etc, etc. The people who read a blanket charge of media bias and then look immediately or feel an immediacy to the personal attack may be acting within the range of normal human emotions, but one, emotionalism shouldn’t be a factor in reporting, and two, perhaps their halos are fitting a little too tight here on Earth and it reaally is all about You.
One can only keep pointing these things out, especially to an inquisitive public, and hope that someone somewhere is putting this issue in a way that they can grasp just how pernicious this activity is, and that those of the elite, many whom have risen to that status from skill, hard work, knowing how politics is played may take it to hearts and minds that most people wish to believe them and their efforts are honest and untainted work.
It isn’t IMO, a matter of pointing out where the media is wrong so much as pointing out when they cross the line from journalism to editorializing without informing their readers/viewers that they are doing so. Again, and I hate to go back to the dry well on this, but if Lou Dobbs were a reporter then the slave labor that manufactures so much of American’s imports and consumer goods in China and the Marianna’s would be a prominent part of the whole war on the middle class meme that he is working. American business isn’t just off shoring jobs, they are replacing American labor with slaves, something a little bit more morally repugnant than a pilgrim sneaking across the border to build you a cheap house or pick your lettuce.
This sort of remark gets you in a lot of hot water with the Dobbs, and along those veins, with many in the elite, who have earned a position that they think entitles them to replace your judgment with theirs, and your basis of facts with those they wish to present to support what is in fact an editorial and not a report. Let’s not kid ourselves either, these people do have real stroke with those people who cannot or will not do any individual investigation on their own.
Morality is not lost in a night, but occurs over time, and it is an impossibility to instill ones own back into someone that may have lost it, or is in the process of losing it, even in such mundane things as an office affair. It may in fact cause them to project their own self anger on to those who have pointed out these moral failings, which are failings that had they presented themselves earlier would have excluded them from the elite to begin with. You can laugh at the co-worker having an affair with the boss, but never at the boss.
One can hope to shame them, however, into recalling the morality that got them to the top in the first place. Failing in that it may be time to become more pointed and much more specific.
To Dream, To Hope, To Not Laugh Out Loud
Creating JobsYou really ought to read the post.
The soulless gasbags of the Fox News moneypig shows are arguing this morning that the rebate checks should be “put into the wallets of the wealthy because they’ll spend it on discretionary items while the poor will just turn around and just spend it on filling their gas tanks.” You see, “the rich create jobs” which is how you stimulate the economy:
Actually necessity creates jobs. One doesn’t necessarily have to be rich to hire labor to complete any number of contracts. Most employers, IIRC make some money on labor, such that in the construction business the bid will figure x amount of time at y amount of pay. The push is then on to finish the job before the x amount of time is up, in which case all the labor cost bid beyond that point becomes profit for the contractor. The same basically holds true in the Y variable, in that all labor is bid at say $30 per hour, put the hired hand will receive much less than that. Included in that bid price is the employers part of your Social Security etc, but it will always include a percentage that is profit to the employer for you merely showing up on the job. When a contractor can get a cost plus job, then it is more important for the employee to show up for work than it is for any work to actually be done. This probably what is going on in Iraq and the reconstruction effort there.
The contractors are getting paid cost plus, and padding the payroll, much as the government there pads it’s police payrolls. There is no job creation involved however.
Perhaps this is why trickle down economics doesn’t work, because hand in hand with deregulation and lack of oversight encourage theft and theft encourages greed. Greed goes hand in glove with capitalism, so the cost plus efforts in Iraq basically are just a money laundering scheme, or as they like to call it, a tax rebate.
Between the two major points lies the shadow of intellectual property rights, which basically begins after someone steals your ideas. We keep hearing about how creative the American people are, but I think for the most part they are more exploitative than creative. I’m not sure there is a good/bad dichotomy even in this thought, just an observation that tends to piss off Americans.
Social Security In Context, Review
On of the things I like about Josh’s place is he isn’t always just posting up stuff that chaps his ass, something the blogs have gotten better at over the years. Probably even mine.
Now, an interesting point of comparison is the projected shortfall in the Social Security budget, which is on the contrary tabulated on highly pessimistic assumption. That number over 75 years is projected at $4.7 trillion.
Now I hasten to add, again, that the Iraq numbers are highly optimistic and the Social Security ones highly pessimistic. If we do a simple back of the envelope calculation we get the 75 year cost of Iraq would be $3 trillion.
One would think that the major media wouldn’t have a dog in the Social Security hunt, but since they never do any of this sort of stuff on their own they leave themselves open to all sorts of credibility problems. Seems that they had lost enough cred already too.
One can only hope that professional pride kicks personal pride out of the way soon in the American mediums.
Hillary Introduces Chicken In Every Pot Bill
Clinton to Introduce Gas-Tax Holiday BillStill we wonder why we can’t get any decent Presidential candidates.
Maybe if we mocked the Very Serious People when they come up with a bill to line the oil companies pockets under the Very Concerned With The Working Class give aways they would stop doing this stuff.
It hard not to make a mockery of the American political system when the leading figures of the political class do it and the American press carries their water for them while they do.
We are governed by idiots and informed by fools.
The Tater Wing Of The Wing Ding Wing
Still competing with Faux Knews. It is a good business model to run off your customer base. I do it with my blogging, but then I am not in this for the money and don’t have stock holders to answer to.
Nothing New Under The Sun
The Insurgent as Counterinsurgent
A new reportfrom Refugees International, released Apr. 15, assessed that Sadr “provides shelter, food and non-food items to hundreds of thousands of Shi’ites in Iraq,” making it “the main service provider in the country.” Among Sadr’s more recent efforts has been the active resettlement some of the two million Iraqis internally displaced by the continuing conflict. Refugees International found that while Maliki’s efforts have been lacking, Sadr provides not just cost-free housing but also food and a modest income stipend. In other words, according to the report, Sadr provides better governance than the Iraqi government.
I’m not knocking Spenser’s article, in fact go read it, you may learn something, but for all the talk of counterinsurgency tactics, this one I’ve highlighted is the same one used by Hamas, and Hezbollah, and OMG, was one of the guiding principles of the early Christian church.
That was before Christians started committing genocide, pedophilia, of sleeping around with church secretaries, or having been born American, such as Beck, Ingram, and Hagee, received the divine right of judging people of all sorts, as Christ was obviously falling down on the job in condemning people to hell.
The Digital TV Divide
Juan Cole points it out,
For those of you with access to BBC World, the best 24 hour news channel in the English-speaking world check out the Doha Debate this weekend. I was one of the debaters in Qatar.
This news isn’t exactly getting any airplay either,
In a sign of a reinvigorated American Left, longshore workers declined to come to work on Thursday, paralyzing ports along the West Coast from Los Angeles to Seattle, in protest against the Iraq War. The union workers complained that “many of the big shipping companies are profiting from the war.”
Somewhere between the digital black holes of Faux and CNN the information age lies. You can pick up more news in ten minutes on the blogs than on TV all day long.
I like the new blog
I can cheat the title and I like the color but truth be told I like it mostly because I can write without someone looking over my shoulder. Present company excluded of course.
This is where I get to say things like you ought to buy Laura and Jenna Bush’s book. No one is asking you to read it either. I just think that if a cause is just then it ought to be supported. Illiteracy is the mind killer, IMHO.
Update: 11:09 WPMT I think this baby just found a name!
It’s Not Like I Don’t Care
But the issues and framing of those issues are locked in the sixties yet again. The problem with Hillary and McCain is most evident in their word choices which were scarcely uttered by Americans or Soviets in the former longest war, the Cold one, and their solutions to problems are rooted there as well.
They are not too old in years, but in mindset. Their belligerence toward one and all, near or far, friend or foe is because they cannot see the world in any other way. While they are banging their shoes on desktops and cultural revolutions, the world has turned and belongs to those who must live with the consequences of these would be strong Presidents, those who are not baby boomers.
As a baby boomer, all I can do is help things along.
Republican Obstruction Hits The CQ
Why whatever do they mean?In an article that should have been written last year….
Lou Dobbs World
China probes report of hundreds of children ’sold like cabbages’
China is investigating whether hundreds of children, most between the ages of nine and 16, were sold to factories in the southern province of Guangdong over the past five years to work as virtual slave labourers, state media said Wednesday.
The probe was launched following the publication Monday of an investigative report by Southern Metropolis, a state-run daily in Guangdong. The report said the children were “sold like cabbages” by their parents to gangs who in turn sold them off to employment agencies or directly to factories hundreds of kilometres from their homes.
It’s like the Marianna’s, under reported, under the radar, underwear.
Shades Of Jimmy Carter
KHENJAKAK, AFGHANISTAN — Canadian troops are reaching out to the Taliban for the first time, military and diplomatic officials say, as Canada softens its ban on speaking with the insurgents.
After years of rejecting any contact with the insurgents, Canadian officials say those involved with the mission are now rethinking the policy in hopes of helping peace efforts led by the Afghan government.
This wouldn’t be news if governments had any f’n sense. In fact this wouldn’t be news if we had a media that pointed out when government officials didn’t have any f’n sense.
Seems to me like the press ought to worry less about its’ access to politicians and let the politicians worry more about having access to them.
We like to blame the elected for the wars, and blood, and the mucussy warmness of it all. But it is actually a coalition of media, religious, and political fairies wishing to be right about something larger than themselves, that what did you do after school stuff that colleges think are important in students who have never been expected to think for themselves, and are not expected to think for themselves afterwards either. What do you do when they are wrong? They are the experts!
Imperial blowback only happens to other empires.
All The Gushing Hero, Smilin’ Sidney’s Now Their Man
‘Mission Accomplished’: How the Media Covered the Bush Pronouncement 5 Years Ago — and its Aftermath
Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a “hero” and boomed, “He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.” PBS’s Gwen Ifill said Bush was “part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan.” On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, “The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a — on a carrier landing. This must be very meaningful to the United States military.”
As per the notes on experts below in the previous post, now these same people are gushing over McBush.
Don’t Do This At Home, Trust Us We’re Experts!
Information Flow Charting
So Abu Muqawama got into a semi-public argument with one of the world’s leading al-Qaeda experts today about a subject he wants you guys to weigh in on. Basically, Abu Muqawama advanced what he did not think a controversial proposition: that the internet is used by terror groups and guerrilla groups to spread TTPs — tactics, techniques, and procedures.
This appears to be the either or phase of the discussion, which will be decided by the natives to be either one and the other or both, while the immigrants continue to insist on their expertise and training environments as the only possible vector of conveyance because we have always done it this way.
If it weren’t true then I would, being an immigrant, wish for the disinformation to continue, making the wannabes more obvious and open to action on or upon. Disinformation always works in the authorities favor, and when it is deployed in the Mainstream media as propaganda it can make other “immigrants” to the national security issues debate, easy marks.
Disinformation is, as a commodity, no different than information. Some choose to rely more on the MSM, others on the specialists and experts in the blogosphere. Given differing people’s abilities at learning from one medium over another, an expert and very smart person that cannot learn online will be inclined to conclude that online education and information distribution is a poor substitute for their own preferred method.
As far as this stuff goes, it only takes one or two who can learn and apply that information garnered off the net to make all other points of view moot.
Another problem with assuming too little about the nets ability to distribute information is to foster an attitude of superiority that may not be warranted, and so that particular person becomes a target of personal abuse within the medium they eschew. Self inflicted blog shot wounds.
The internet provides a very fast way of distributing ideas that may or may not survive scrutiny, but it is at least open to scrutiny from both peers and novices willing to spend the time digging into the subject. The stuff the experts deals with has to have a controlled access schema, whether in jargon, or in this case, national security classification. Experts don’t like to see their bailiwick being bandied about in public, especially when that novice analysis contradicts the experts analysis, and even more so when the novice’s analysis is the more correct one as events unfold.
The political blogosphere is used to this now. The inability of any of the three remaining viable candidates to fully use the internet to it’s educational potential is astonishing. One they remain woefully ignorant as individuals about the flow of information, and secondly they ignore those opinions that do not necessarily meet their predefined concept of expertise.
No one at Microsoft ever understood the ping of death until they discovered they had built it into their own systems, which made the novice an expert for a while. The concept merely needed a batch file to inspire the patch file. The expert in AM’s case may discover that what is true for computers is also true of the internet. It’s what you don’t know that can hurt you, and experts don’t know a lot of things about a lot of things. they may even not know a few things about their own field that someone has stumbled across on the net and put together on their own.
Maybe We Should Leave
Deployment of aircraft carrier a US ‘reminder’ to Iran, says Gates
In the past few days senior administration officials have made a series of pointed remarks about the Iranian role in Iraq. Gates himself claimed: “What the Iranians are doing is killing American servicemen and women inside Iraq.”
Really?!
Since they are there under the pretext of lies, but that is an old story, Mission Accomplished!
No one could have foreseen this thing happening to me.
Just when the Pentagon quit sending defense industry insiders to the media with a bag of beans too!
Victims and Viewers II
The media keeps informing us of the news they wish us to hear, and none of what we need to know.
They look at the ratings and decide we are enjoying it.
Victims and Viewers
I am reminded this morning that big shipping can’t slow down their vessels in the areas where right whales traverse as it would cost them money. Same thing they say about raising their taxes.
They never say they pass this expense off to the consumers, with the 1.3 markup.
Log Rolling Media
White House Asked About Propaganda War
Yeah sure, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but that doesn’t mean we’re deserving of manufactured analysis posing as something it isn’t.
I can fully understand the White House wanting to appear on the up and up about this, and so who better than Dances With Balloons to shake her pretty head and say something so devoid of coherence as this;
MS. PERINO: Look, I didn’t know — look, I think that you guys should take a step back and look at this — look, DOD has made a decision, they’ve decided to stop this program. But I would say that one of the things that we try to do in the administration is get information out to a variety of people so that everybody else can call them and ask their opinion about something.
No one asked if the DoD had stopped the program.
The problem, besides using propaganda for domestic purposes, (which seems to bother no one in the media or government,) is that the press didn’t vet these little goebells, continues to ignore their culpability in exposing the people of the United States to massive lying, and wishes to report on everyones errors but their own.
Reverend Wright should have it so good.
Let’s Not Suspend The Gas Tax, And Pretend We Did
Let’s suspend disbelief, and think of that as a viable sensible policy thought, instead of a cheap political ploy akin to promising to put a chicken in every pot.
McCains Free Ride Express
It seems the AP has fallen for the McCain campaign’s and the RNC’s effort to prevent anyone from using McCain’s own words against him during the 2008 presidential campaign. As noted earlier, what the McCain campaign is pushing for here is a standard in which any negative ad targeting McCain must be delivered with the McCain camp’s own spin included in order to be within bounds — a standard few politicians, to say the least, have ever been granted. And even though the political press has been highly indulgent of the McCain campaign on this issue, I don’t think I’ve seen any news organization so egregiously buy into McCain’s false statements as the Associated Press.
The AP article lede reads: “The Republican National Committee demanded Monday that television networks stop running a television ad by the Democratic Party that falsely suggests John McCain wants a 100-year war in Iraq.”
So, as you can see, the AP begins by stating as fact the McCain camp’s claim that the ad is false. Then it actually directly misstates what the ad says.
McCain may have earned the nomination, although with press like this it’s hard to see how that would be the case given his campaigns resurrection from the dead, but that doesn’t mean he deserves the Presidency just because he is your buddy.
Wright Within His Rights
To distinguish himself as a man of God, and the pastor of a church, from a politician running for any office, including president. I am reminded the Holy Spirit moves like the wind where I cannot see it, and touches all whom God is pleased to give as is His want, I know no more. The things of God are the things of God.
Obama is also within his rights to attend and accept any teaching from the pulpit as is his want, and fit his spiritual needs. The people also have a right, and have come to expect a President of the United States to be informed of his duty to the things of the state as well. Barack Obama would not have advanced politically if he had been inattentive to his duties.
Whites may call it a dialog and blacks a discussion of discrimination but the theological and political levels should remain separated. When the Greek Christians complained to the Apostles that their widows were being overlooked in the distribution they appointed Stephen, who saw the Lord, to oversee the distribution of these necessary things, that they might attend to the preaching of the good news.
7:35 PM
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