You can bet

that the Liberal Media’s insistence on reporting only “bad news” like this from Iraq --

2 CBS crew members killed in Iraq bombing

A cameraman and soundman for CBS were killed and a CBS correspondent was seriously injured Monday after their convoy was struck by a roadside bomb in Iraq, the network said.

Veteran cameraman Paul Douglas, 48, and soundman James Brolan, 42, were killed, CBS said in a statement. Correspondent Kimberly Dozier, 39, was in critical condition at a U.S. military hospital in Baghdad after undergoing surgery.

Doctors were "cautiously optimistic about her prognosis," according to the statement from CBS News.

The three were reporting on patrol with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, when their convoy was hit by an improvised explosive device, CBS said.

...
In January, ABC anchorman Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were injured in a roadside bombing while reporting on the war.

They were standing in the hatch of an Iraqi mechanized vehicle, reporting on the war from the Iraqi troops' perspective, when the roadside bomb exploded. Both were wearing body armor, which doctors say likely saved their lives. Woodruff is recovering from serious head injuries.

Iraq, where 23 journalists were killed last year, remained the most dangerous country in which to report the news, according to The International Press Institute.

-- means the vital Good News stories -- like a nine-year-old in Tikrit who had his face licked by an adorable puppy -- will be spiked.

And the fact that water rations in the formerly-advanced nation of Iraq may well be increased for 1 to 1.3 hours a day will be criminally underreported.

And somewhere the plight of a blonde co-ed who got hammered and ran away will momentarily go perilously under-televised.

God Damned Angry Liberals and their God Damned America-Hating Media!

Spoiling a perfectly nice Monday when we’re supposed to take a minute or two away from the barbecue to remember those that have fallen in old-timey wars by blabbing about those that are dying here and now.

Don’t they know that all of the honoring of the dead is supposed to be packed into one special, ritualized day? Girded by speeches and wreaths and proclamations and taps, and not gummed up with a lot of hoo-ha about the "I"-word? Because while on every other day of the year, pointing out the cost of Iraq in blood and treasure is merely disloyal to the Dear Leader, on Memorial Day it is so much worse: It’s in bad taste.

It makes people uncomfortable.

It’s like the Flag.

As every loyal American knows, the function of a Flag is to provide a handy object over which you can gin up a fight with someone to question their patriotism. A totem onto which you can trowel a million ferocious words and resolutions and Constitutional Amendments to protect it from imaginary threat. A silver bullet to electorally slay liberal pedants who insist that Flag Burning Amendments are the worst sort of secular idolatry, and who whine that freedom itself is what you desecrate when you try to amend the Constitution to restrict speech and protect a symbol.

It is, however, most definitely NOT something to be shown in the Liberal Media respectfully draped over the coffins of fallen soldiers.

Why do they insist on Phelpsing our solemn, fleeting national mediation on the price of war by dragging the actual price of a particular war into it and waiving it in our solemn national faces?

Why do they trouble our Beautiful Minds with such filthy little facts?

Have they no decency at all?

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down.

Pounded out on horseback because outside it’s warm and inviting and full of waves of quantum potentiality that have not actualized into dirty dishes and unpaid bills,

Also I have a series of chats and noshes with friends set up like archipelagos over the next 48 hours.

So down into it, boys, and the Devil take the hindmost! And remember, like Slate Magazine, all quotes here are hand-hewn to a rough likeness of verisimilitude.

Or just plain made-up.


On Fox:

Herr Senator Doktor Fristy and Dick Durbin.

In which Fristy explains that he’s not really a whore because there are some things he won’t do. Like, say, anal with a Cabbage Patch Doll.

Wallace: You said this Immigration Package is a “success”. Is it a success for the American people that dirty wetbacks are coming into our glorious country, stealing Social Security from grandma? Is it a success for the American people that we now have to beg Mexico’s permission to protect our own country?

Fristy: Well, it’s not perfect and I don’t agree with everything in the bill. But it’s hard. It’s the Will ‘O the Senate (Translation: Not my fault!)

Wallace: Would you accept a bill that would take out a “path to citizenship”?

Fristy: Well, it’s not perfect and I don’t agree with everything in the bill. (Translation: Don’t look at me!) But we gotta have Death Star-strong border security. You gotta have a com-pre-hensive thing going on down there.

Wallace: Aren’t you a (insert ominous music) flip-flopper? On 10/25/05, and again in March of this year you were telling your conservative base that you wanted to ship ‘em all the fuck back.

Fristy: It’s not perfect and I don’t agree with everything in the bill. (Translation: My ass is not fat!)

Wallace: Why was it amnesty in October and amnesty in March, but now you voted for it?

Fristy: Blither, blabber, tap-dance. It’s not perfect and I don’t agree with everything in the bill (Translation: Don’t blame me. It’s not my fault. I am powerless I tell’s ya! Powerless. You should be taking this up with the Majority Leade… Oh. Never mind.)

Wallace: How much danger is the Senate is of being lost to the vile Democrats?

Fristy: Some. Of course the reason for the discontent is the mysterious increase in gas prices, dirty immigrants and people not understanding how terrific Iraq really is! And certainly not that we are led by cretins and liars whose philosophy of government is “Don’t”. (Translation: The blubbery rubes that voted us better have a care. They don’t know how good they have it.)

Then the unveiling of the New Republican Contract With ‘Murrica:

1. Gay marriage.

2. Flag Burning.

Ta da!

Wallace: Isn’t this just fucking pandering? Are these really the most important things that the Senate of the United States should be working on in the Fall or 2006?

Fristy: We have to secure “America’s values.” I’m going to Arlington tomorrow. Flags. Soldier's graves. Noble sacrifice. Terri Schiavo. It’s important because right now in this country we are being overrun by Invisible Smelly Godless Hippies who think that it is OK to desecrate the Flag! And if we have to wipe our asses with the Constitution until our Nation’s Glorious Taint bleeds to stop this massive outbreak of entirely imaginary threats, we will!

Marriage is Under Attack Today. The Fags Are Coming! By Activist Judges. Terri Schiavo!

In an alternate Universe where me and mine had no stake in the outcome, I might say that Fristy is a pitiful creature.

A man who, true or not, carefully cultivated the persona of Collegial-Integrity Guy. And now, because he wants so desperately to be the President candidate of a Party that is wholly owned and operated by the scum of the Earth, must engage in repeated, humiliating Public Show-Trial’s of Faith.

So rather than actually lead, he must sink ever lower into his own filth. Slinking away from and weakly denouncing his own beliefs and legislative initiatives, while also loudly ripping the raw flesh of Gay Marriage and Flag Burning right off of the arms and legs of the Constitution to feed to his ever-voracious Base.

Having to trot from camera to camera performing his ritual and pubic auto’s da fe by slowing strangling whatever little bit of conscience he might have once had.

But this is not an alternate Universe where one can spectate amusedly on the follies of the GOP without consequence, so fuck Frist and the Cabbage Patch Doll he rode in on.

Then came Senator Durbin.

Wallace: Border fences -- Is it the position of the Democratic Party that the the United States should not have sovereign borders?

Durbin: No. Of course not. What kind of dick-headed question is that?

Wallace: Well aren’t you nancies running to the dirty Messicans and asking permission to protect you own country?

Durbin: Quit huffing Lime-Away before you go on the air, Chris. We share a huge border with Mexico. There are towns that face each other across that border that are interrelated and cooperate for all kinds of reasons. What sort of moron would slash a wall across all of that without at least having a conversation?

Then some other crap.

Then...Obama ’08?! [In response to the HUGE headline on the front page of the Sunday Tribune. Last Sunday, if I rememeber correctly, it was pic of Hillary -- smallerm and in profile -- and a similarly speculative article.]

Durbin talks real pudry about Barack and tells the world that he thinks the Junior Senator from Illinois should think long and hard about a run for the White House. And if he runs, Durbin will stand with him.

An imploding GOP makes many things possible. Many, many things.



On Face the Nation:

Schumer and Mitch McConnell. Missed the whole damned thing, because,


On This Week, ‘twas John Murtha and John Warner.

Short version: Murtha kicked 37 flavors of ass.

Murtha (to repeat one more time, all quotes are a sense of what he said and not transcriptive):

Every day these soldiers go out and IEDs go off. Every day. One day, no one gets hurt. Next day, someone dies. Next day, someone gets mutilated. I see these kids. I visit them in the hospital, and the pressure of those kinds of days, days after day, 3...4...5 tours in a row is unbearable.

There was clearly and obviously a cover up [of the Haditha massacre]. These sort of things have to be brought out immediately, so that other Marines won’t see this as a green light for them to do likewise.

It has been six months since this happens. Who ordered the cover-up? Where up the chain of command does it end? General Pace? I don't think he knew, but where did it stop?

Other Marines knew about it, and all the Iraqis knew about it! We made payments to their families! That doesn’t happen without when only the little guys are involved. Someone higher up had to know.


Stephanopoulos: Are you sure they didn’t think they were responding to fire from the houses?

Murtha: Absolutely not. There are pictures. There is evidence. This was a massacre followed by a cover up.

Murtha: (Responding to a quote impugning his motives as ‘political’) There’s no one who has done more for the troops than I have. But this was murder, plain and simple, and there was no excuse for it.

This is worse that Abu Gharib.

Stephanopoulos: We already know a tape of this is being send by al-Qaeda to mosques all over the Mideast.


(driftglass: Let’s be clear. Murtha loves the Corps. Love it. And sees the life, honor and integrity of the thing he loves imperiled by a thoughtless, reckless and craven Administration who drop troops into the Iraqi Shredder without a second thought. He knows exactly what can kill an army quicker than ammo – duplicity, corruption, ambiguity, not holding people accountable, forcing the military to try to “fix” political problems because that’s the only tool in your toolbox that isn’t rusted rotten – and he wants the White House to stop to it.

Immediately.

Before irreparable damage is done to the military by foolish, unaccountable men who cannot tell the difference between these --


And these --


Murtha: Sewage everywhere. Water, one hour a day. Electricity below pre-war levels. Oil production below pre-war levels. We are stuck in the middle of a Civil War that we cannot fix, cannot “win” militarily. Only the Iraqis can fix this. Only they can settle this. It was a mistake to go in in the first place and we need to get the hell out of there.


Then they air-lift in the mortal remains of John Warner:

Blah blah blah particularly on Memorial Day we need to be calm and reassuring to the American People. Need to be calm. Need to let the UCMJ work before we say anything.

We need to keep reminding the troops of their oaths of office.

Stephanopoulos: [Reads a quote from a soldier serving in the Iraqi theater to the effect that, “The Geneva Convention doesn’t apply over there.”]

Warner: These are terrorists over there. Coming in from many lands to kill Americans.

Warner is, of course, an idiot, but I have to interject here that this drivel crosses the line between Warner’s usual, vacuous, arrant nonsense into the territory of incredibly dangerous bullshit.

Because what Warner is doing here is simply lying to the American public through his expensive orthodontia. He is also lying to the troops, in effect feeding them deliberately wrong intel. Telling them that they are not stuck between two home teams that are clawing at each other in a civil war, but are fighting the Brown Hordes.

That they are the thin, green line between their homeland and an undifferentiated mob of slavering Ismlaofascist first-cousins of the 9/11 murderers, topped off with the Commander-in-Chief giving the winky-winky to the whole world that the Geneva Convention doesn’t fucking count.

Are you shitting me?

If the last three years has proven anything beyond the simple fact that Liberals were dead right and the Bushies are lying incompetent freaks, it is that continuing to pump this kind of pusillanimous, politically-calculated bilge into the public conversation on the war serves only to set in motion the machinery that made Abu Gharib inevitable.

That made Gitmo inevitable.

That made secret prisons inevitable.

That makes warrantless wiretapping of Americans inevitable.

That makes the massacre of civilians inevitable.

That made Iraq itself inevitable.

Because to follow the arc of the murderous lie at the heart of this Administration’s policy –- 1) Everyone who takes up arms against Americans is a terrorist. Even if we’re in their country. Even if they have lived there for 30 generations. 2) The rules of war and civility don’t apply to terrorists, and 3) There are no distinctions between combatants and civilians -- means there is no reason whatsoever why one shouldn’t lob a few grenades into a class full of nine-year-olds, or shoot old women.

Because why not?

We have told our kids over and over again that are no rules in this war. That we're allowed to torture who we want, spy on who we want, kill who we want -- even the innocent -- and weasel out of it with a bizzard of signing statments, refusals to investigate any Republican treachery no matter how blatant, and "Mission Accomplished" banners.

So when anyone in your gunsights at any given moment MIGHT be a “terrorist” by the absurdly slack, one-size-fits-all-Ay-rabs definition of that word as used by the President of the United States, in a moment of fury, why not?

And the fault for setting the table for these crimes against humanity – which are simultaneously handing one overwhelming propaganda victory after another to our real enemies – lies stinking and maggot-riddled squarely on the desk of the Dear Leader and his wormy minions like Warner.

In the Dubya Universe, where “crime” is whatever the Dear Leader says it is today. Where any residual criminality and incompetence, when found above a certain pay-grade, is brushed off with Medal’s of Freedom and “Heckofajobs”.

“Punishment”, in Bushland, is only meted out CEO-style: to peons below a certain pay-grade for those stupid enough to get caught.

And marching armed young men and women into this swamp of calculatedly Bushian ambiguity is the poisoned tree from which each and every one of the particular toxic flowers bloom.

So to then to sit on your fat ass on the Sunday Mouse Circus and wring your spindly hands over being calm? Over waiting for the UCMJ to work its magic?

That the REAL fucking problem is that we haven’t read out that rule about “Thou Shalt Not Slaughter Unarmed Women and Children” to the Marines often enough?

To whine that you didn’t ever mean it to turn out this way?

Of course you wanted this.

Who but a Persistent Vegetative Senator could possibly still believe -- at this late date, after three, blood-soaked years -- that any Party that piles up facts, dissent, logic, history, science and the rule of law into a heap, slathers it with napalm, and then spends five years flicking lit cigarettes at the pyre...didn’t really want a conflagration.

This is an Administration that specializes in two things: Barking out their ludicrous policies and ideology in short, defiant, declarative “Bring ‘Em On” sentences...and then cowering like children and throwing line staff, soldiers and assorted other underlings under the bus when those policies inevitably crash and burn.

But hey, at least they’re not “angry”, right? Because then they surely wouldn’t be credible.

No, they slit Liberty’s throat with a giggle and a smirk, which they can manage because they know the pig people that elected them will never, ever, ever, ever hold them accountable for their malfeasance, incompetence, sadism and depravity.

But hey, at least there are no blowjobs at stake, right? Because that surely would be a real crime.

Because as we all know, in the Age of Duyba, you can either be a good American or a good Republican, but you can no longer be both.

This week’s Meet the Press featured the following line-up: Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican Representative James Sensenbrenner discuss the difference between one Republican position on immigration and another Republican position on immigration.

And since the line-up last week on Fathead’s Puppet Show was Republican Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Republican Lindsey Graham and Republican Charlie Norwood, there is really no reason to continue to pretend that Punkin’ Haid --

-- is anything more than well-compensated Republican trollop.

So fuck ‘im.

Then on to Chris Matthews who spend a goodly chunk of his 26 minutes of Sunday humping Dubya’s leg.

Short Bush “Apology” (delivered while looking squintily peevish): I’m sorry...that some people misinterpreted my words.

Short Matthews (delivered while rolling on the floor chirping his shins together like a tubby cricket): Such steely humility! We love that! So firm, so hard, so fully packed...with 'umble. Such a heavenly stud-musk coming off of that hunk of Texas lovemeat. Holy Mother of God, how I crave that man!

"I’m infested!”

Clint Howard’s greatest cinematic moment?

Or the unwelcome calling card of a creepy disease which is actually probably just one of the weirder delusions you’re likely to hear about this week.

But first, since we're striking at least a glancing blow off of the Corbomite Maneuver

to get this party started...


...you should know that this vid

is a friggin riot.

As we all know, all loyal Americans share the bond of never tiring of hearing Shatner belting the crap out of the classics.

And speaking of making one’s flesh crawl, on with our main event...

This from LiveScience should keep some of you awake tonight...

Mystery Disease Makes Peoples' Skin Crawl

Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.comFri May 26, 4:00 PM ET

Reports of a mysterious medical condition are cropping up across the country but doctors are divided on whether it is a real disease or all in their patients' heads.
Called Morgellons Disease, patients who report having it describe sensations of creepy-crawlers beneath the skin and fibrous filaments oozing out of open wounds.
Interest in the disease was recently rekindled after afflicted Texas teenager Travis Wilson committed suicide about a month ago.

Symptoms
...
The majority of reports have come from Texas, California and Florida.

Patients with the disease often describe feelings of insects or parasites scuttling beneath their skin and open lesions that heal slowly and which ooze out blue and white fibers, some as thick as spaghetti strands. Attempts to remove the fibers are said to elicit shooting pains radiating from the site.

The lesions range from minor to disfiguring in appearance and fibers appear either as single strands or as bundles. Patients also sometimes report the presence of fibers or black granular specks on their skin even in the absence of lesions. Some patients even report symptoms of the disease in their pets--dogs mostly, but also cats and horses.

According to statistics from the Morgellons Research Foundation, about 95 percent of patients also report suffering from disabling fatigue, or "brain fog," that hinders their ability to pay attention. Other reported symptoms include joint pain, sleep disorders, hair loss, decline in vision, and even the "disintegration" of perfectly healthy teeth. It appears that once patients contract the disease, they have it for life. To date, there have been no reports of spontaneous remissions.

Strange fibers

A preliminary analysis of the fibers suggests they are more than just lint from household materials such as clothing, carpets or bedding, said Randy Wymore, an assistant professor of pharmacology and physiology at Okalahoma State University and the director of research at the Morgellons Research Foundation.

"The fibers are not common textiles, nor are they black specks of pepper, as several dermatologists have proposed," Wymore told LiveScience.

Further deepening the mystery, some analyses suggest the fibers might be made of cellulose, a molecule generally found in plants.

"They're basically fibers that you wouldn't expect to see in humans," said Raphael Stricker, a Lyme disease expert at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and a medical advisor to the Morgellons Research Foundation.

...
Michael Giradi, a dermatologist at the Yale School of Medicine, had never heard of Morgellons but when its symptoms were described to him, he was reminded of another disorder that is well known to doctors.

"They just renamed it," Giradi told LiveScience. "We just call it delusions of parasitosis."

Also known as Eckbom syndrome, delusional parasitosis is a psychiatric disorder in which patients fervently believe their bodies are infected by skin parasites that do not exist.

"It's basically when a patient thinks that there's something coming out of their skin, a material or bug of some sort, when truthfully there's nothing there," said Stacy Beaty, a dermatologist at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine.

In medical schools, physicians learn to watch out for the "matchbox sign" of delusional parasitosis, when patients bring in hair, skin or clothing lint, sometimes in matchboxes, that they claim contain the insects or parasites responsible for their torment. However, when examined, the samples reveal no such thing. The lesions and scratches sometimes seen on patients with delusional parasitosis are usually self-inflicted, Beaty said.

"To rule out any infectious causes and also to put the patient's mind at ease, a lot of times we'll do skin biopsies," Beaty said in a telephone interview. "If we feel that it'll be helpful, we might also start different anti-psychotic or anti-anxiety medicines."
...

Laugh? Cry? Vote for more funding?

Damned if I have a clue.

It’s a mad world and all's I know is this;

First, any science writer who can work the word "scuttling" into a story deserves at least some consideration come Pulitzer time.

And second, when the going gets tough, there is always the Velvet Rug

to balm the torments of the flesh and make all the pain go away...

(Fumbles for speech

that he’s been rehearsing for 11 years.)

First I’d like to thank myperzunlordnsavyer, Jebus.

Then I’d like to give a shout out to Mom: Made it, Ma’. Top o’ the world!

(OK, admittedly that was a shout out to Cody Jarrett’s Mom.)

Also my eternal thanks to all the little people who made this moment possible.

General Tom Thumb for livin’ the dream!

Napoleon Bonaparte, both for the Louisiana Purchase and the ice cream.

Both Pinkie and The Brain.

Abu Gonzales.

The head of the Lollipop Guild for waiving certain regs.

A lass we’ll just call “Sally” who showed me…stuff.

I would thank one “Cordwainer Bird”, but he’s still very much alive and kicking, and I understand he still commands a phalanx of loyal Deathbird Squads, and I am wise in the ways of not gratuitously pissing off someone who A) I admire very much, and B) who can have me removed from the planet.

Yes, of course I know this was just a mindless aggregating subroutine grinding away on a slow news day that happened to pop this blog to the top of the WaPo comments on this story.

But if you don’t think I’m going to hitch my thumbs into my belt someday soon and, in my best Barney Fife, chat up some lovely lass with, “Did you catch my piece in the Washington Post this weekend. A-yep, yep, yep. That was me. Sure was.”, then you obviously have no idea who you are dealing with.

Because lemme tell ya, that moment? That short interval between laying out my smooth line of product and being hit with a face-full of mojito?

It’s golden ;-)

I cain’t keep it all straight no more.

For those playing our home edition of "Texas Fooled 'Em (formerly 'Natzee!', but there were copyright and patent infringment issues that, trust me, you'd rather not know about) ", bust open your excerpted version of Bush’s 2006 West Point Address (found here) break out your #2 pencils and box score cards, because here are today's winning totals...

Jamming “Iraq and Afghanistan” together in the same rhetorical hoagie – either literally or by parallel construction -- because, y’know, its all the same: 5.

Mentions of “September the 11th, 2001”: 2.

Use of “the long war”: 1.

Direct comparisons with the “Cold War” to try to deflect and dissolve criticism of his Administration’s lying and massive incompetence: 11.

Citations of what Democrat Harry Truman did to fight Commies, so neener-neener: 5.

Citations of what Republican Presidents have done, to fight Commies: 2.

Citations of what his Daddy – who actually presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union -- did to fight Commies: 0.

Profligate use of completely empty, jingoistic nonsense jargon like “we will never accept anything less than complete victory” without the slightest nod – after three, long, murderous years -- in the direction of identifying what in the fuck “complete victory” would even look like: Every damned sentence.

Touts of Afghanistan as an unqualified success and the Taliban as defeated and routed, despite the fact that neither of these things are remotely true: 4.

Invocation of “Saddam Hussein”: 2.

Attempts to reset for the zillionth time the Mighty Morphin’ Casus Belli for Bush’s reckless, disastrous and illegal conquest of Iraq: Too many to count.

Mentions of Osama bin Laden: Osama bin Who?


For a little perspective, Bush’s 2002 speech to the West Point Address graduation class – a little more than eight months after 9/11 -- contained the following:

Citations of what Democrat Harry Truman did or didn't do about anything: 0.

Comparisons with the “Cold War”: 4.

Mention of Afghanistan: 2.

Use of the term “terrorists and tyrants” to describe the bad guys: 2.

The 2002 speech was also full of phrases that now sound absurd -- “I've just returned from a new Russia, now a country reaching toward democracy…” – when spoken by Mr. I-have-looked-into-Putin’s-eyes!...

...and nauseating – “There can be no neutrality between justice and cruelty, between the innocent and the guilty.” – when spoken by the sponsor of an American regime of torture, extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, warrentless wiretapping and on and on and on.

It also might well mark the very last time the Dear Leader was ever publicly honest about who and what 9/11 was really about: “The attacks of September the 11th required a few hundred thousand dollars in the hands of a few dozen evil and deluded men.”

Attempts to conflate a despicable war of choice with Iraq with a war of necessity in Afghanistan: 0.

Invocation of “Saddam Hussein”: 0.

Mentions of Iraq: 0.

Chairman Kringle and the Party of God

want to know if you’ve been naughty or nice.

Know if you’ve been ranting over at Kos, burping the colonel to porncaps of Paris Hilton being slant-drilled by, well, everyone, or if your special email pal is an exchange student cruiserweight named Chad about whom your wife would not be especially thrilled to know you spend time Broke Back woolgathering.

But unlike the Original Santy Claus, these clowns will absolutely fuck with you.

Or do you think the same despicable bastards who would start a war on credit, lies and 2-a.m.-barroom-sure-I’ll-love-tomorrow-dollface-patter and then scream “Traitor” when the bill comes are gonna have a lick of trouble from their consciences about anything as trivial as applying little personal pressure to advance their Good Christian Causes?

Here’s the latest…

Gonzales pressures ISPs on data retention
By Declan McCullagh

Story last modified Fri May 26 18:15:43 PDT 2006

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller on Friday urged telecommunications officials to record their customers' Internet activities, CNET News.com has learned.

In a private meeting with industry representatives, Gonzales, Mueller and other senior members of the Justice Department said Internet service providers should retain subscriber information and network data for two years, according to two sources familiar with the discussion who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The closed-door meeting at the Justice Department, which Gonzales had requested, according to the sources, comes as the idea of legally mandated data retention has become popular on Capitol Hill and inside the Bush administration. Supporters of the idea say it will help prosecutions of child pornography because in many cases, logs are deleted during the routine course of business.

In a speech last month at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Gonzales said that Internet providers must retain records for a "reasonable amount of time."

"I will reach out personally to the CEOs of the leading service providers and to other industry leaders," Gonzales said. "Record retention by Internet service providers consistent with the legitimate privacy rights of Americans is an issue that must be addressed."
...

During Friday's meeting, Justice Department officials passed around pixellated (that is, slightly obscured) photographs of child pornography to emphasize the lurid nature of the crimes police are trying to prevent, according to one source.

A Justice Department spokesman familiar with the administration's stand on data retention was in meetings on Friday and unavailable for comment, a department representative said.

Privacy advocates have been alarmed by the idea of legally mandated data retention, saying that, while child exploitation may be the justification today, those records would be available in all kinds of criminal and civil suits--including terrorism, tax evasion, drug, and even divorce cases.

It was not immediately clear what Gonzales and Mueller meant by suggesting that network data be retained. One possibility is requiring Internet providers to record the Internet addresses their customers are temporarily assigned. A more extensive mandate would require companies to keep track of e-mail messages sent, Web pages visited and perhaps even instant-messaging correspondents.
...

You gotta love the phrase that pays -- “Record retention by Internet service providers consistent with the legitimate privacy rights of Americans is an issue that must be addressed." – coming out of the Gharib-hole of the guy who gutted the rules of so that his bosses could torture people with clean hands.

America’s Top Cop who, based on all available evidence, doesn’t think Americans have any “legitimate privacy rights” to begin with.

Spotty evident to be sure, since this is also the Administration that as absolutely fetishistic in their insistence that Americans have no fucking right whatsoever on any subject whatsoever to know what is being in their name down in the Cheney Bunker.

And of course, when the Constitutional going gets tough, will reliably stomp on the hottest button he can find to seal the deal. Whatsamatta Congressman? Why are you on the side of the terrorist drug dealers dirty wetbacks baby killers child molesters?

Here, lets rub your nose in some lightly edited kiddie porn to see where your really are.

No one is on the side of child molesters, but every red flag in the Universe should be firing off when that notorious Serial Constitution Molester, Abu Gonzales, tries to use that issue to further increase his junta’s massive power grab and daily assertions of myriad New and Exciting Imperial exceptions to the rule of law for this Administration.

Whatever pretext they pack around it today – and I think all pedophiles should slow roast in Hell – the internets are long since no longer some esoteric technology used by scientists, grad students and dorks.

This is what your Mom uses to send pictures of her vastly superior grandkids to her friends around the world.

This is what your newlywed sister uses to sent naughty notes to her husband while he’s in a meeting halfway across the continent.

This is what your best friend uses to beg his wife to come home to him because he is so, so, sorry for what he did.

This is nothing more or less than that government doing electronically what it never even dared to think about doing with stamps and envelopes and stationery: slitting open and rifling through the mail of every single American.

Period.

This alone should be sending every Constitutionalist screaming into the streets, but this plus warrentless wiretapping plus national identity cards, plus tracking every phone call made by every American, plus all the rest are nothing less than the glittering of freshly fashioned Fascist chains the GOP has carefully forged for us all.

If you’re down with that, by all means step up and loudly support Abu G and the rest of these criminals, but please quit pretending that you love this country.

Because you despise this country.

You want a nice, tidy, high-tech police state that keeps good, White Christians warm and snuggly and fuck everyone and everything else. And however despicable the means are to those ends – invading countries based on lies, debasing the Constitution, torture, murder – you are completely cool with them.

But part of the wink-and-a-nod deal you cut is that you absolutely do not want to know what horrors are being committed in your name. You are the Spineless Christian Master Race who categorically refuse to take any responsibility for the disasters your vote has unleashed. Who wants to heap the Declaration of Independence onto the pyre and then make the “anger” of those who are trying to stop you the only issue under discussion.

Which is why the same people who are so sanguine about napalming our basic rights, also go so berserk when any sliver of information about the “Who, What, When and Where” of How those rights are being bonfired leaks into the press.

Because in addition to despising this country, those who still self-identify as Republican loyalists are also cowards, who don’t have the guts to step into the light and admit that they’re just tired of the burdens of freedom. That they believe the American Experiment has failed and it's time to give up, give in, officially change our name to the People’s Republic of Jesusland and go on about the business of global conquest in the name of Exxon, Halliburton and the Prince of Peace.

Ah but that old figleaf tree is picked pretty bare these days, isn’t it?

And the Police State Two-step tactic of screaming “Wolf” every time you desecrate the graves of the Founders and “Traitor” every time you get caught is wearing paper thin.

Terrorist and child molester are despicable creatures, but how much worse are those that cower behind such monsters? That use them as cover to snipe our basic, God-given rights as Americans into confetti?

In five short years, these criminals and have done far, far more long term damage to this nation than any bomber or pedophile ever did or could, and they have done it to the cheers of their swine hordes.

And it is time for them and those that stand with them to go.

After The Fall

Came The Deal

Fitz: What did you mean by impeachable criminality, Karl?

Rove: I've been in this room for eight years now, Fitzy. I know they will never, ever let me out while I'm alive. What I want is an election. Just something local where I can shiv an honest man and get a sociopath elected mayor. I want to be in a Mayberry lockup, far away from Kenny-Boy, his bitch Skilling and the ass patrol.

Fitz: What did you mean by massive, global conspiracy?

Rove: I'm offering you a complete evidentiary profile of Cheney and Bush. I'll help you catch him, Fitzy.

Fitz: But you know what they did, don't you? Tell me how they decapitated the Constitution, Karl.

Rove: All good things to those who wait.

I've waited, Fitzy. But how long can you and old Lady Liberty wait? Our little Dubya must already be searching for that next distract-the-rubes invasion.

I Missed

the "Dubya and Tony, sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g" thingie, but apparently it looked something like this.

More words later when I have more minutes in a row.

Easily

The coolest thing



I have seen



This month.



And I parked next to Jim Lovell's car a coupla weeks ago!


Maybe.

Click here. Zoom in. Drop out.

Yeah, baby.

(May require a Macromedia plugin and ActiveX.)

OK, I give.

Where the hell is Wolcott?

Saturday everything below his two most recent posts had been truncated.

Very creepy. Very "Where's the rest of me?!" [Ronald Reagan, KINGS ROW (1942).]

I assumed it was some kind of EOF marker SNAFU (Step right up. Two acronyms; no waiting) or a pointer had gone quietly mad, but I never thought he would fall off the end of the Internet.

James?

Are you there, James?

Or have you finally achieved that state of pure, literary samurai energy. Spark-gapping like God's own Synapse on transports of adjectives never heard by the ears of Men to a different plane of existence.

A better Plane. A Plane...with no Snakes whatsoever.

To..

"...softly and suddenly vanish away,
And never be met with again!”

Man, it would suck hard ice if my favorite Snarker has gone all Boojum on me.

But in the event you've snuck into the Pantheon for drinks, for Chrissake...

Slip us a post
from the Great Writer Beyond

And tell us how Voltaire
is getting along.

And how wild is Wilde
Now that he's nothing but class.

Is Hunter Shark Hunting
Nixon's worm-eaten ass?

Did hitting the dirt
Really mess with Poe's head?

And does Bill the Shakes
Know how well he's still read?

Tell every scribe there
That we love 'em a lot
And they'd better not fuck
With our pal, Jim Wolcott.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down.

Republicans Gone Wild.

In which Abu Gonzalez is all over the Mouse Circus like a rash, McCain and Condi play Jarts on Fox, and the networks show what they mean when they say “Fair and Balanced”: Foxy Boxing among various subspecies of GOP.

And the topic for Today’s Republican Sermonette all across the digital landscape was Faith. Condi – whatever her words – was out in her Sunday Best, reformatting her features into her best “trust me” face to pimp that meta-theme.

Faith-a-faith-a-faith.

Bay-bay!

Time to mount another incredibly offensive Credibility Offensive.

Which means the Administration is leaning aaaaall the way back into the ropes and hoping they can ride out this nine-dimensional nightmare they created by trotting out the most trustworthy member of their cabal (a dubious distinction here. Sorta like placing fourth in Dick Cheney’s Annual Puppy Eating Contest. Sure you’re not the worst of the lot, but you still have blood on your teeth, and your breath stinks of puppy…) to try to go to the Well of Goodwill one, last time.

Of course the problem here is the Bush White House is Foreman, not Ali. A brutal punching machine, but with no wind and no footwork.

And watching the lumbering GOP killbot with the soft tummy trying to rope-a-dope agile, tireless Reality is comical at best.

Every day another revelation of another lie right after another demand that we all just gotta believe!

Just a few more weeks, and it’ll get Crazy Better. You’ll see!

However nonexistent their showings of proof are, believe.

However perfectly catastrophic the results have been every other time the nation has trusted them…believe.

However transparent and despicable the prewar dissembling is now shown to be….believe!

However impossible it is to buy one more lying word out of the bibble-spigot of an Administration that is bringing its knee down on the neck of anyone who dares to peek in the corners or look under rocks…believe!

Whatever the Dear Leader harks up into your mouth, just swallow it warm and wet and chunky from his belly and don’t ask no stinkin’ questions.

Sorry…

Oh but I
Need some time off from that emotion
Time to pick my heart up off the floor
And when that love comes down

Without devotion

Well it takes a strong man baby
But I'm showing you the door
...

And so forth.

Fox served up Rice Pudding with a side of McCain.

Skipping most of it. Really, what more do these Ethical Blue Screen Crashed human beings have to say?

I did watch a little of Rice talking about the new Iraqi PM.

I have looked in his eyes, Chris! This is a strong leader. A great man. Give him 4-5 days to read all the resumes for the Interior Ministry, for Christ’s Sake. There are urine tests to administer, cubicle cartoon posting rules to go over, 401K plans to set up and the whole “Getting to know your new Jeffersonian Democracy” DVD orientation session to go through.

I believe they’re up to “Chapter 7: Running a modern industrial nation on four hours of electricity a day.”

Seriously, didn’t we sorta give up on the whole Ocular Biometric Truthiness e-Metering “I saw his eyes!” thingie a year ago? After Putin just came all the way out as Czar? Along with the Ritual Kissing of the Pates of Bald Men and the “heckofajobbing” and leafleting of every dodgy fratboy Friend of Dubya with a Presidential Medal of Freedom once it became clear that this Administration’s idea of “character” judgment came down to this simple, “Fear Factor” challenge:

“Ok, Pledge. Using only your anteaterly tongue, see how much cash and flattery you can pack up ol’ Dubya’s backside in 45 seconds. Ready? Go!”

But we are again reassured that, over the next few weeks, Gen. Casey will work with the Iraqi gummint to iron out all this pesky “when are our troops coming home” shit. But it is premature to give any firm numbers regarding what a draw-down would look like.

Three years later. Nearly half a trillion dollars up in smoke. Approaching 2,500 dead. Over 17,000 wounded.

But talk of a draw-down is “premature”.

Then on to mocking the people who wrote the Human Rights report on the hellhole that is Gitmo and ask the musical question, “What will happen to the hundreds of dangerous battlefield if we close it down?”

Huh!

And Jiminy Christmas! Hundreds have already been released, so shut up already!

Think about that.

We netted enough innocent Muslims to populate a Wisconsin dairy town with enough left over to fill an Iowa community college, and after years of mute, anonymous, illegal captivity and torture, we cut ‘em loose with no charges filed.

And here is the Secretary of State of the United States, pointing to that blight on the American soul as a Good Thing. Thats how far we have fallen. That the process by which we half-assedly unfuck what we never should have fucked up in the first place is getting incrementally more efficient.

Yay!

Then Chris Wallace tosses up a “question” about Iran’s Prime Minister that went something like this: “Why are you wasting time making offers to Iran. The PW is just plain nutty! He’s Mullah Nutty Nuttington of Nuttylvania, right?

Condi: Your not going to find a President who has achieved better balance in his Immigration Politics…er…Policies….

Bwahaha! I’m surprised that little slip hasn’t been making bigger rounds in the blogosphere. That subconscious is a bitch, ain’t it?

Then Wallace gets behind Condi and plays a giggly game of Name That Tune while he braids her hair.

You like Brahms? And Cream?!

*Sigh* Is there no limit to your saucy wonderfulness!

McCain takes a few practice swings in the preschooler batting cage and then Chris Wallace feed 20” softballs into the Fox Slo Pitch Machine.

Thence came Face the Nation with Abu Gonzales, and so when I flipped over to This Week I swear I thought for a flicker of a moment I was having some kind of flashback.

Or my teevee was on the fritz.

Or that CBS has bought out ABC and was just crossfeeding the same signal.

Because there was Abu Gee, caught in the same moment, in the middle of the same paragraph of the same talking point, in the same suit, in front of the same Flag-and-Books-and-Lamp props, with the same goofy expression on his face, and as I zipped back and forth (TiVo is for the weak!) I literally could not distinguish the difference between his two-bit hustle on one network and the next.


Back on Face the Nation. There! On the horizon! Democrat sighted!

Well, sort of.

Feinstein (D) and Sensenbrenner (R) [In front of his own Flag-and-Books-and-Lamp trio]

Feh.

This Week. John Edwards.

George Bush. Worst. President. In my lifetime.

Wheee!

Hayden: I think Dems ought to be against it. I wouldn’t vote for it.

More like that. Edwards. Hmmm. Go over to C&L for the whole meal.


Meet the Press. Its Condi! Again.

Again taking time to insult-but-not-dispute the UN Human Rights findings on our own stateless, lawless “cells of Toledo”.

“Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated – fables I had always deemed them – but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper.”

But not to worry, children. In time we’ll close Guantanamo.

In time…

Really? Well what is the timetable for closing it.

I’m not going to talk about that.

And again comes the mantra: “Trust me.”

Faith-a-faith-a-faith.

So what is faith, anyway?

This idea these criminals slather over their misdeeds like Magic Philter Frosting? That they brew up into some kind of Blood ‘o the Lamb, TarnAway poteen into which they think they can dip any lie -- no matter how corrosive or ridiculous -- and out will pop a Shiny New Reality, as bright and trustworthy as a freshly minted nickel.

From the book of Hebrews, Chapter 11, verses 1-2.

“Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.
Because of it the ancients were well attested.”

Lovely poetry and not a bad definition, but I prefer this one: “Faith is belief in the absence of proof.”

Simple, succinct and defensible, as would be the converse: Belief in spite of proof is therefore not faith at all. It’s nothing but good, old-fashioned lying on the one hand, and delusional denial on the other.

A dangerous trait in a cult and a disaster in a government, but in our current circumstances its presence does have one, salutary effect.

By taking a firehose to the Bush Presidential Sandcastle, Reality has finally carved away the fluff and paint and bullshit that Rove has used to pad out Dubya’s Executive Resume these last five years, and we expose, at last, the true Base of the Republican Party.

That 48% of Republican who believe that everything is actually just right-track peachy and Dubya is an honest, humble, plainspoken, Christian man being cruelly abused by a Liberal Press.

Let no one doubt (and I’m looking at you, David Brooks) ever again that the Dominionists are the True Stalwarts of the GOP, and that the Party of Lincoln is now ruled by theocrats.

After all, who but Wingnut Christopath Thralls have been trained so to-the-bone to stand by their masters no matter how baldly they lie or how bloody they screw them?

What other class of citizen has been so carefully bred to such a perfect state of imbecile self-lobotomized obedience that they will not just ignore feculent Hurricane George even as it destroys their live and their futures, but applaud and support the destruction?

Thence came Dueling Republicans -- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA) with nary a Democrat, or Progressive, or Liberal or Libertarian, or Librarian, or Li’barian, or Barbarian or Barbarellian (that’d be your Jane Fonda of hot, hippy-chick vintage) or Barbellocrat (OK, there’s only one and his name is Ahnuld), or Blameocrat (that’d be Joey Joe Joe Junior Klein), or (swinging back around to) Democrat to be seen anywhere.

So Charlie Norwood gets asked…

Hey, Norwood. If the Sensenbrenner Bill passes, what happens to the 11 million people here illegally?

Well the Democrats…

Hey, Norwood. If the Sensenbrenner Bill passes, what happens to the 11 million?

Well the President…

Hey, Norwood. If the Sensenbrenner Bill passes, what happens to the 11 million?

Well the Law…

Hey, Norwood, how about answering the god damned question. If the Sensenbrenner Bill passes, what happens to the 11 million?

Well, nuthin’ much. Its just border security at this point. Eventually attrition will take care of this.

Hey, Norwood. If the Sensenbrenner Bill passes, what about their kids?

There kids’ll have to go too. Sorry you broke our law, but…

To which one may be forgiven for yelling, “Hey! Norwood! Leave them kids alone!” almost automatically.

Because all in all he's just a-nother dick with a wall.

Lindsey Graham believes that we gotta stop kicking the can down the road. All the cans. That there is the Law, but also Justice. Republicans have to stop worrying about the next election and start worrying about “down the road”. About the future. That we needs a comprehensive solution.

We’re in charge of the White House, the Senate and the House. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

Good for you, Lindsay. Too bad you play for the wrong team…which one may speculate is exactly why they let you off the leash every other Sunday. You run the J.C. Watts wide-out routes for the scoundrels now that he's gone and left the Big White Tent.

You’re the friendly clown makeup that your degenerate Party daubs on its rotted-out skull to make it look a little less scary in a dim light.

On Chris Matthews:

Al Gore as “Topic”. Joe Klein. Al Gore is “The Darling of the Left.” And “the Internet.” Wow. The Internet is apparently alive and making its preferences known. At least to Joe Klein.

Which is pretty exciting.

Katty Kay: The country has changed. The ideas that Al Gore have been talking about have caught up with him. And Hillary isn’t as tasty as she used to be.

But Katty is.

David Gregory: Repeats “netroots” one or a dozen times.

Matthews: Hillary is vaguely for the War. The Dems are massively against it.

Kathleen Parker: There are those who say Al Gore has lost it. Wonk. Hollywood loves him. And the Net loves him so he can score big coin.

Klein: He is still living down the 2000 campaign.

He WON Joe.

Kay: He has to overcome his bitterness.

And…

Kay: Nobody is going to vote for somebody just because they’re against somebody else.

Really? Are you insane? Since we had peace, prosperity and surpluses as far as the eye could see, the entire 2000 Republican Campaign was centered on nothing but the GOP generated “Clinton Fatigue” and returning Honor to the Government.

A strategy based on the idea that if you just lob enough Molotov cocktails around, eventually people will get so tired of fighting fires that they’ll vote for the arsonists.

And 2004 was little more than, “If you vote for Vietnam Liar John Kerry, terrorist will blow up your children.”

Gregory: I don’t believe the Democratic Party wants to embrace the Progressive Wing.

I agree.

I believe the Democratic Party will be consumed by its Progressive Wing.

Which is why opportunistic triangulating nematodes like Klein, who feel compelled to fire three rounds randomly off into the faces of his “friends” for every one they gets off at thier "foes", are getting so frantic.

Because up until recently the one group that was still safe and profitable for DINOS, Republicans, and the Mainstream Media to snipe at with relative impunity was the Left.

Because for a long time the Left didn’t hit back. We thought being civil alone would carry the day. That being polite in public life eventually paid benefits. That the chuckleheads watching Rush scramble around his cage flinging poo at everything that was Not-Rush would get bored eventually and see through his naked hucksterism.

We were wrong.

Being civil only works if it goes both ways. Otherwise, if you insist on bringing a smile and a hearty handshake to one gunfight after another, eventually you end up extinct...or you keep your principles AND learn to handle a hog's-leg.

You want to be reasonable with us? Debate ideas and keep a civil tongue? Fine.

But if you want to denigrate our beliefs and call us America Haters? Especially as part of you overall plan to wreck this country? Then these days, pal, your head's comin' right off.

Because as long as it was all one-sided, Republican slash-and-slime politics could be as reckless and savage as it wanted to be and no one said “boo”. At worst it was ‘“controversial” Radio Personality, Batshit Nutlog, said today…’ or ‘”outspoken” Teevee Evangelist Pompadoured Hairbeast said last week…’

From the floor of the Congress, to the pages of major papers, to the mantle-cracking decibels of Hate Radio, it was safe to call us loony and anti-American. Moonbats and treehuggers. Feminazis and fags. To blame us for every ill and evil including 9/11...and giggle because there was no venue from which we could strike back.

Now there is...which is why the Uprising of the Great Unwash(ington)ed has the Pundit Class so completely unnerved.

Now, after, 20 successive and successful years of Rush Hatespeech and 10 years of Newt Newspeak, now suddenly the bobbleheads have come over all concerned about all the “angry” in the air.

Angry?

Oh Bobo, you haven’t seen angry yet.

“You’re gonna need a bigger mop.”

And yes, I have used the “Rummy-as-Quint” metaphor before.

Sadly, it has only become more accurate with the passage of time. And my PhotoShopping skills have improved to the point I can let graphics carry part of the narrative without embarassing myself.

Two years ago, this was the situation in Afghanistan.

You remember Afghanistan, right?

That other war.

In that place from whence the people that actually attacked us actually received operational direction, religious justification, training, logistical support, funding and so forth?

The one that has been used again and again as the Open House model when trying to sell the rest of the bungalows of Dubya’s Mideast Hegemony Vista Estates?

The one that had elections and a fabulously teevee-friendly government and everything!

That was just a little mop-up and a new screen door away from being such a raging hard-on of a democratic beacon that you could’ve slotted it right between Wyoming and Montana and no one would have noticed?

Well consider this snip from American Progress, and note that it is from May of 2004.

Afghanistan: Waiting for the Bottom to Drop

by Mirna Galic
May 10, 2004
Afghanistan is slipping – it's low on the Bush administration's radar screen, absent from the public debate, and spiraling once again into lawlessness and poverty. Though it may not yet be the quagmire that Iraq has become, Afghanistan too is beset by an insurgency, and serious obstacles threaten the transition to stability. Yet, the country's steady decline is somehow failing to set off the necessary alarm bells in Washington and other international capitals.

President Bush and his national security team, for their part, continue to tout Afghanistan as a victory, with statements such as "its a big success story," and "by removing the Taliban out of Afghanistan and introducing democracy into this country, al Qaeda lost safe haven." But the issue is no longer whether we ousted the Taliban government. Instead, it's what we have done – or can do – to eliminate the obstacles to security and stability in Afghanistan.

It seems that the administration, grown accustomed to dealing with its foreign policy engagements only in crisis terms, is waiting for the bottom to drop out from under Afghanistan before taking appropriate action. But in a country where the narco-economy is becoming increasingly entrenched, and where militants melt into the landscape with ease, it's not a sinkhole we're standing on the edge of, but a bog. If we fail to take corrective measures now, we risk finding ourselves waist deep in a crisis and unprepared.

The real prospect of Afghanistan relapsing into a state of conflict is apparent everywhere: in the rise of militant forces, the limited international security presence, the wanton warlords and the booming drug trade. Some forty Afghan soldiers and policemen, along with two American soldiers have been killed by militants in the past few weeks alone. This year has also seen a spike in the killings of aid workers. And last week's murder of two contractors working for the U.N. election effort risks further stalling a voter registration process that is less than one fifth complete. Elections have already been postponed once because of acute logistical and security constraints.

While Afghanistan may no longer be under official Taliban control, Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives are back in the country and fattening off the mothers milk of a vast drug industry. The Taliban appear to be reconstituted to such an extent that they have spokesmen who give interviews to reporters. And these are only the developments we know of. The Tajikistan Drug Control Agency estimates that there are some 400 clandestine heroin labs in Afghanistan proper.

…

So what was happening in Afghanistan two years ago was pretty grim, right?

Big, red flares shooting off in all directions. All the “dots” not only easily and clearly connected in the Big Administration Coloring Book using information available in any media outlet that was still bothering to do reporting, but forming a Very Alarming Picture.

Massive robots scooting through the corridors of the White House, waving their arms and bellowing, “Warning George W.! Danger! Danger!”

Sure, Afghanistan has always been the hind-teat runt of the Administration’s martial litter.

And, sure, our A.D.Dear Leader was never exactly the King of Koncentration and had long since lost his adolescent Kabul Krush on Afghanistan in favor of the lusty bombshell next door with all that light, sweet crude between her legs.

But there did seem to be at least a two reason for continuing to pay Afghanistan, Plain and Tall some attention that even the “Let Everything Slide and Blame the Press When Something Goes ‘Boom’” President might actually be capable of fathoming.

The Mercenary Reason: Letting his “Model Victory” collapse back into chaos would be a huge boost and a tangible as well as moral victory for the despicable people who we are supposedly bending every effort and tapping every telephone to fight. Afghanistan, remember, was the original “Over There” under the formulation that we were going to fight terrorist abroad so we wouldn’t have to fight them here.

This clause of Bush Doctrine -- based entirely on the loony assumption that there are only a fixed number of terrorists -- is, of course, insane and massively discredited except in the dank digital halls of warbloggers. But even if one were fool enough to actually believe that the ranks of the terrorists would never grow and their tactics never change based on changing conditions and the propaganda victories that the Bush Administration seems determined to hand out to them like candy, wouldn’t that mean you must, therefore, actually be serious about defeating groups like the Taliban in Afghanistan?

The Political Reason: Right now the common wisdom is that Republicans generally and George W. Bush specifically are either corrupt beyond measure, incompetent beyond redemption, or both. Well if for no other reason than pure political calculation, consider the last time this country stood united and purposeful behind George Bush on any issue, was when he took the decision to invade Afghanistan and go directly after the people directly responsible for 9/11.

It was, in the public mind, something of a “boutique war”. An easy win and a righteous slam dunk rout of cartoon villains on horseback by the B-52s, Predator Drones and smart weapons of the most powerful and expensive military on Earth.

It was the war we wanted, we had earned and that we cheered on. A massive stomping-flat of a cave-dwelling enemy so final and definitive that they could never recover.

So if this Failed President is so inept that he can't even hang onto that tiny victory...?

If he can allow his only slam-dunk win -- and the only one that was actually solidly back by the American people -- to slip away...

This from today's Asian Times.

Taliban's new commander ready for a fight
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - The Taliban's military offensive has begun in earnest in southern Afghanistan, with many key districts already captured by the militia that retreated from power in 2001 after the US-led invasion.

The scale and frequency of the Taliban's revitalized insurgency can be attributed directly to the recent appointment by Taliban leader Mullah Omar of legendary mujahideen leader Jalaluddin Haqqani as overall military field commander.

In the latest action - the biggest since the Taliban's ousting - in Helmand province, between 300 and 400 heavily armed Taliban fighters stormed a remote village. At least 100 people were killed, including 15 or more Afghan police and a female Canadian soldier. Haqqani, a cleric, rose to fame during the decade of opposition to the Soviets in the 1980s. Coincidentally, at that time he was an ally of the United States

Mullah Omar has provided Haqqani with major powers, funds and huge stockpiles of arms and ammunition and, most important, hundreds of youths who have been trained by the Iraqi resistance in urban guerrilla warfare.

Mullah Omar has demarcated specific areas of Afghanistan to different commanders, but now Haqqani is commander-at-large. He has also been charged with coordinating suicide attackers throughout the country. He is authorized to wage battles anywhere he chooses in Afghanistan.

Haqqani was not part of the Taliban movement when it first emerged from Zabul, but he was the first and most powerful commander of the Afghan resistance to surrender to the Taliban, unconditionally, in 1995. The defection paved the way for the Taliban to secure territorial advantage and finally victory in 1996.

Haqqani, in his 50s, had stunningly captured the first major city since the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 - Khost - in 1991, from the puppet communist government of president Mohammad Najibullah.

…
After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and soon after the US invasion of Afghanistan, Haqqani was invited to Islamabad, where the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), with which he had close ties, offered him the presidency of Afghanistan, but on the condition that he break all ties with Mullah Omar and carve out a "moderate Taliban" faction. (In declassified US State Department documents, Haqqani is described as the tribal leader "most exploited by the ISI [and US] during the Soviet-Afghan war to facilitate the introduction of Arab mercenaries".

Haqqani refused the offer and went back to the Ghulam Khan mountains between Khost and Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area and began his campaign of pitched battles against US-led forces. He then became a prime US target, with a number of attacks aimed specifically at eliminating him.

But although Haqqani still commanded great respect all over Afghanistan and especially among the tribal elders of Khost, Paktia, Paktika and Gardez, he still did not belong to the Taliban core - Mullah Omar's "kitchen cabinet".

He thus was not given a central role in the Taliban resistance, although he continued to mount random attacks in his area.

Mullah Akhtar Osamani and Mullah Dadullah were the central commanders, but they were not able to make any significant military breakthroughs when the Taliban's spring offensive was launched last month. Thus Haqqani's elevation.

Fresh funds, arms and human resources, and Haqqani's unquestioned military acumen honed in years fighting the Soviets, have revitalized the insurgency. An immediate spinoff was that veteran Afghan resistance figures, such as Saifullah Masoor, the commander of the renowned resistance leader Nasrullah Mansoor, who were previously sitting on the fence in Gardez and other areas, are now hand in hand with Haqqani.

…

"Once again we are facing a mid-1990s-like situation when bloodshed was everywhere and the situation went from bad to worse and these circumstances allowed the Taliban movement to emerge and boot our government out," said former Afghan prime minister Ahmad Shah Ahmadzaid in a telephone conversation with Asia Times Online. Ahmad Shah was the acting premier before the Taliban took power in 1996.

"The Karzai administration writ is nowhere, and the Afghan nation is once again in limbo," Ahmad Shah maintained.

Solid spadework
While Haqqani has provided the spark for the resistance, he could not have succeeded had thorough groundwork not been laid over the past year or so.

The Taliban launched a major recruitment drive last year. This coincided with the government of Pakistan clamping down on jihad activities in Indian-administered Kashmir.

This played right into the Taliban's hands as many former members of Pakistani jihadi organizations, including from the banned Laskhar-i-Toiba and the banned Jaish-i-Mohamed, gathered in North and South Waziristan, where the Taliban have established a virtual Islamic state along the lines of the former uncompromising fundamentalist religious Taliban regime in Afghanistan. All have pledged their allegiance to Mullah Omar.

According to authoritative estimates obtained by Asia Times Online, about 27,000 fighters are gathered in North Waziristan alone. More than 13,000 are believed to be in South Waziristan. The Taliban leadership there had formed about 100 suicide squads by February, assembled under the motto "fight until the last man and the last bullet".
…

Consider that a genuine Afghan war hero of Soviet Occupation vintage now stands at the head of the Taliban Army. A man charismatic and powerful enough that George Bush actually offered him Karzai’s job -- the presidency of Iraq -- and who turned it down.

A man who now commands large formations (“between 300 and 400 heavily armed Taliban fighters”) in substantial battles, and wins them.

These are not the “final throes” of a beaten enemy in retreat.

This is, instead, the direct consequence of a Commander-in-Chief who never took his Drive-By war in Afghanistan or the men and women who he sent to die there seriously as anything other than the opening act for PNACs Real War -- the one they had been plotting to launch for a decade.

Who never saw the grief and rage and sincere desire of the American people to find and punish those that attacked us as anything other than emotions he could callously hijack, exploit and ride into Baghdad.

But all the Dauphin’s Horses and all of his Men are no match for Reality, and the moderate Republican and independent electorate are already skewing hard in the direction of horrified buyer’s remorse at having been stupid enough to re-elect these clowns and criminals.

So consider the political judgment that is already being rendered on this Administration, and then add in a failed state in Afghanistan. Add in as the God Damned Fucktard Cherry On Top of this disaster of a Presidency the fact that the one "good" war we thought we had already won, buttoned up, and could leave behind is now erupting as yet another Administration Levee Breach.

Because if Dubya manages to leave office with Afghanistan in chaos and the Taliban on the march, history will not have to wait a respectful few years to pronounce its verdict:

"George W. Bush -- The first United State President to quite literally fuck up Every. Single. Thing. He. Ever. Touched."

Dawn of the Ned.

The estimable Mr. Lamont needed 15% to get on the primary ballot in Connecticut against Dubya’s Pet Hamster, Kapo Joe Lieberman.

With virtually no name recognition and little funding but lots of netroots support, he got 33.4%.

And while we apparently must still wait awhile to see Rove in the public stocks, I will happily take good news where I find it.

And I found some here tonight.

So read on, crack one of the bottles of Fitzmas Ale you've been saving up, and maybe go here and give that nice Mr. Lamont some of that $44-tax-cut money that you’ve been saving.

A ringing endorsement of Ned Lamont’s campaign, and a stinging rebuke to Senator Lieberman. The convention is an inside-baseball event, and Lieberman put EVERYTHING he had into holding us below 15% ... he couldn’t. Your hard work and dedication has put Ned Lamont, officially, on the ballot.

The field operation continues plugging away tomorrow and we have an enormous headstart on-the-ground. The commercials give us a much needed boost in statewide recognition. And everyone’s read about the buzz you all are generating online.

We got the mo! This is what a movement looks like.

Fill the hat on the front page

To say the Lamont supporters are fired up would be a complete understatement. Here’s the final tally. Hat’s off to everyone out there from the campaign.

Ned Lamont: 505

Joe Lieberman: 1004

Total Needed for Ballot: 15%

Ned Receives: 505 (33.4%)

More later!

Any night that has Lieberman sweating through his “I Heart Bush” underoos and calling Rove on the Ratphone in terror for career advice is a good night.

A very good night indeed.

So one more bit of PhotoShop prestidigitation...

...for you Mr. Lamont.

For figuring out that there are indeed Democrats -- alive! -- inside the Democratic Party.

Gail Wynand

White Courtesy Phone.

I think it’s always cracking good sport when you can wallop a Conservative Republican upside his pointy, white head with citations and “lessons” from Ayn Rand.

It's a lot like lobbing their very own, Clinton-Impeachment era rhetoric about the absolute Constitutional imperative of holding any Presdient accountable for the perfect verity of every word they utter – especially when our soldiers are in harm’s way in distant lands – back into their camp...

...and then watching them run screaming from their own thunderhead rhetoric faster than if that critter from Alien had farted acid into their eyes.

Because the basic problem with Conservatives is, of course, they dare not be honest -- really, really honest -- about what drives them. Despite the groundbreaking work being done in Advanced Public Hatespeech at the Coulter/Malkin Institute for Applied Fascism, it still isn’t cool to embrace one’s Inner Klansman in the town square.

Yet.

It still isn’t OK to just come out and say that you loathe anyone who doesn’t look and act and think and pray exactly like you do. That you really, at core, despise everything this country stands for. That in your eyes, America is simply so many square miles of dirt. Not an Ideal State of Liberty and Tolerance and Equality to be proudly aspired towards and promulgated for the common good, but just so much Real Estate to be protected at any cost for the economic benefit of rich, white people.

That at a bare minimum you don’t want a single thin dime of your taxes going for anything having anything to do with “those people”. Except for fences, guns and prisons: Then, of course, money is no object.

Better still, wall ‘em off or wipe ‘em out.

And mo’ better even than that, wiping ‘em out with special gusto and under the Mandate of Heaven if they happen to be sitting on top of vast natural resources that we need to keep our profligate lifestyle propped up.

But coming out of the Blackshirt Closet is still not quite socially acceptable -- yet -- which means Conservative Republicans are forced to verbally contort themselves into all kinds of fascinating, Escher-esque configurations to pretend that what they really want, at the end of the day, isn't a nice, tidy, Christian police state. Owned and operated by unregulated megacorporation, with orthodoxy enforced by Fundy-friendly courts and cops.

Sorta Saudi Arabia v2.0.

So you end up with this kind of hi-larous column by BoBo Brooks decrying the awfulness of the selfsame perambulating slugmen who his Party has so carefully bred, fed, curried, harnessed, and ridden to one, narrow electoral victory after another. Positively stamping his widdle webbed feet and demanding that they shut up and get back in the kitchen.

And fetch him a fucking sammich!

This is trimmed from a larger block of fat in the NYT entitled “Sir Galahad of the G.O.P.”, interspersed with some observations of my own.

Speaking as the second-person narrator of “a Republican senator supporting the immigration compromise”, BoBo sez...

...

For weeks now — months, actually! — you've been besieged by the close-the-border restrictionists, who shut down your phone lines and scream at you in town meetings. You've been hit with slopping barrages of manure by Limbaugh, Savage, Levin and every other talk-radio jock in the Northern Hemisphere.

People who don't run for office don't understand how disorienting it is to have your base, your own people, suddenly turn carnivorous and out for your flesh.

They say you and your fellow immigration compromisers are performing the biggest act of political suicide in modern history, and you wonder whether they are right.

What bothers you about the restrictionists is not that they are primitives or racists. They're not.

Yes they are, and that is precisely the fucking point. Ethically cashed-in shills like Brooks WILL NOT look his Party square in the eye and see the true, naked, ugly face of the swine he has made a lavish living defending year after year.

He must not. He dare not.

Not only his pocket-book is at stake, but he risks his entire worldview going up like a flashpaper skirt at a firewalking party, and that means no matter how overwhelming the evidence to the contrary, he will not form his mouth the speak the simple truth.

And yet, because he must somehow torque his words to explain the ruin all around him, he comes perilously close to blurting it out.

Bobo continues…

It's their imperviousness, their unwillingness to compromise. They don't have the numbers to govern, but they think they have the numbers to destroy.

Oh. My. Lordy. And Bingo his name-oh.

Here Bobo briefly lays a fleeting, terrified finger right on the artery beneath which beats the poison that is destroying our country. Then he yanks it away and diagnoses the symptom correctly but lies his ass completely off about the name of the disease.

No, BoBo. It is YOU who don’t have the numbers to govern. You are riding shotgun in Jerry Falwell’s Clown Car, not the other way around. You are the one who has made a career of telling people not to mind the madmen in the basement of the GOP, as they ripped the walls out, burned the deeds and carefully mutated the Party of Lincoln into the party of Jefferson Davis.

Right before your very eyes, and you did...nothing. Worse than nothing; you told people to ignore the lump in the flesh of their Party. That it was harmless.

Just a cyst. Just the fringe.

While the carcinoma spread, people like you didn’t sound the alarm; instead you smashed the alarm to flinders and then hid the evidence in your pillowcase.

While the racists and the Christopaths metastasized, people like you told the Moderates that Dobson was just a fluke. Robertson was just a loon. Rush was just a loudmouth. Coulter is just a nut. That they could all be laughed off and ignored, and you did it for the same reason that in the old joke, the family with the crazy Uncle who thinks he’s a chicken never had him locked up: because you needed the eggs.

You cultivated these loathsome cowards with the fascist tendencies because you know without them the GOP would never, ever, ever win another election anywhere.

That is the Original Sin you dare not admit.

Bobo continues...

You haven't been able to get your restrictionist friends to think pragmatically. Do they really think they'll get a better immigration bill in the next Congress, when there are more Democrats, or under President Hillary Clinton or John McCain? Do they really want to preserve the status quo for another decade? Do they think the G.O.P. can have a future if it insults even the Hispanics who are already here?

It's almost as if they are not going to engage in any back-and-forth as a matter of principle.

Bwahaha!!! David Brooks actually has the temerity to feign shock and shed three, tiny tears that his Party (who, for the last 15 years, has proudly touted that Compromise is Treason and sunk their fangs into the flesh of any Dem that offered an olive branch) ”...won’t engage in any back-and-forth as a matter of principle.“

Well hold the fucking presses!

On Monday night, many of them approached President Bush's speech looking for things to hate. They didn't want to hear his plan for serious enforcement measures. When Bush — the man they revered until the day before yesterday — said something tough about securing the border, they assumed he was dissembling, and they lashed out in ways identical to the Bushophobic left.

Ah, Bobo; A proud graduate of the Rove/Gingrich 101 course in Reflexive Bombthrowing. When even on your deathbed, having administered the lethal dose of the smack you bought with your own money, to your own heart, with your own large-bore cardiac needle, remember that you must never missing an opportunity to take a cheap potshot at the Left and look for a way to maybe tag them with at least some of the blame them for your OD.

Do you still wonder why we despise you?

It's as if there's some displaced rage here, some anger that couldn't be expressed about other issues. Or perhaps they are punishing Bush for the sin of being unpopular, and thus robbing them of the sense of triumph they felt when the left was on the ropes.

This is no fun. Yet the worst thing would be to stop now, having angered everybody and not resolved the issue.

...

No, Bobo. Not displaced rage; just rage. Blind, vicious, useful rage, which is all your Party has had to run on for the last two decades. It is the only fuel you have left to power the GOP Machine and you feed it a constant diet of fear and hatred.

Where do you think anti Flag Burning amendments come from, Bobo? From the Magic Patriot Fairy? Or gay-hating, anti-marriage laws? They exist solely to focus all of that yummy-yummy hatred through an electoral lens. You win solely because you have made common cause with despicable, irrational people, so how fucking DARE you turn around now, at this late date, and complain that the you got burned when the boilers you keep constantly stoked finally blow up all over something you care about.

Welcome to life on the other side of Hate Radio, Brooks. The land where pig people wipe their pasty asses with appeals to reason and calls for compromise and comity.

In other words, welcome to Liberalville, bitch.

...

You know the Hagel-Martinez compromise is just a step. But there's something important in the way the Senate majority has been able to hold together amid the cacophony this week. Maybe the restrictionists are ferocious because they understand their growing weakness. Maybe Rove was right when he insisted that something can be done, even in a conference with the House.

So, braced against the storm, you trudge on.

So who in the hell is Gail Wynand? The guy after whom I sorta named this post?

He is a character from Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” (See? See how it all comes together? And you thought we were lost.)

A cynical, powerful newspaper mogul whose paper – The Banner – could best be described as a fictional combination of “The Weekly World News”, “Geraldo” and the worst of Hate Radio. It appealed to the basest, most prurient instincts of its vast readership and was, needless to say, extremely successful.

Late in the novel (as I remember it, which is sorta dodgy because while I own up to having read almost everything she wrote, I gave up reading Rand as idiotic ideology and bad prose shortly after exiting puberty, which was some time ago) Wynand has become enraptured by the pure, Randite wonderfulness of an architect named Howard Roark, who has demolished his own buildings on principle.

Wynand declares that he’ll put the weight of his whole media empire behind his new pal Howie. That “public opinion” is whatever he decides to make it.

Poor, dumb bastard.

Wynand, like Bobo, “shaped” nothing.

He made his fortune by pandering. Pandering, exactly like the Party of God, to the lowest instincts of people. And more, by telling them that noble sentiments and high-mindedness was really just so much shit made up by eggheads. That indulging their lowest instincts wasn’t something shameful no matter what the smarty-pants, know-it-all “elites” said.

That the hateful dumbasses of the world should in fact celebrate that they were better than principled sissies who lived atop some faraway mountain and laughed at the Common Man all the time.

Unsurprisingly he got a readership made up of, well, today we would call them “The Republican Base”. And when he tried to suddenly force them to behave in ways that his own paper had mocked and derided -- quelle surprise! -- they didn’t meekly obey.

They turned on him.

This Wikipedia link is a pretty fair summary that’ll spare you having to wade through pages of Rand’s turgid prose.

Suffice it to say (again) that I find it terrible funny in a terrible way when the Modern Republican Party that Rand very much midwived into being behaves over and over again in ways that are a complete repudiation and betrayal of every bone-head principle she ever stood for.

What Bobo and the rest of the Moderates will not bring themselves to face is that no matter how bulletproof you make that most Randite of delivery systems -- the “rational argument” -- and now matter how aggressively you deploy it in favor of the most basic virtues preached by Ms. Rand (such as woman’s right to choose, or letting consenting adults do what they want – including marrying who they want) it will not change one, microscopic Fundy mind in any way that is measurable by even the most delicate instruments.

Stacking one scientific journal, magazine and grade-school textbook atop another for the last 150 years hasn’t caused Conservative Christopaths to grow opposable thumbs en masse, climb down out of the Stupid Tree and stop believing dangerously lunatic trash. The only effect Reality has on these clowns is to make them feel ever more picked-on and angried-up.

They are the intractable opponents of democracy who, for example, make it their business to make it impossible to keep the Public Square neutral, because Jebus Abhors a Vacuum. Because when you believe the Absolute Truth of your God should fill all things, you will also and inevitably view neutrality-by-design as an Evil Liberal Assault on your righteousness.

We must be rid of them, and there is no cure for the chronic disease of Conservative Fundamentalism (other than a free Huckster Convention in the Utah desert, followed by a thermonuclear flash, followed by an abrupt, mushroom cloud-shaped Rapturing of the faithful up to Heaven in the guise of radioactive-ash) but a slow, deliberate, erosive process of marginalization and education.

A process that cannot even begin as long as one political Party, far from distancing themselves from the Theocratic Hordes, instead insists on selling their soul for remaindered prices by pandering to the scum of the Earth for partisan gain.

And then has the gall to be surprised that the irrational, hateful people they coaxed into the drunken, electoral bed the night before for some kinky, partisan sex insist on behaving like irrational, hateful people when the sun comes streaming in the window the next morning.

When all of a sudden up you don’t have the stomach to look at the thing you let fuck last night, do you?

You just wish it would leave.

Christ, why won’t it leave?

Why won’t it get its scabrous ass out of your face and just leave?

And then you realize to your horror that you’re in its bed, not the other way around.

And it still wants to play.