George Will

Serial puppy molester?

This by George Will in today's WaPo caught my eye as I was skimming the papers this morning.

Wednesday's Post reported that at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress, Webb "tried to avoid President Bush," refusing to pass through the reception line or have his picture taken with the president. When Bush asked Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq, "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "I'd like to get them [sic] out of Iraq." When the president again asked "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "That's between me and my boy."

Something seemed very…off, but I was in a huge hurry and didn’t think about it again until I read this by Greg Sergeant at the TPM café, who puts his finger right on Will’s wriggly lump of prose and calls it by its proper name.

A lie.

Here’s a snip:

See what happened? Will omitted the pissy retort from the President that provoked Webb. Will cut out the line from the President where he said: "That's not what I asked you." In Will's recounting, that instead became a sign of Bush's parental solicitiousness: "The president again asked `How's your boy?'"

Will's change completely alters the tenor of the conversation from one in which Bush was rude first to Webb, which is what the Post's original account suggested, to one in which Webb was inexplicably rude to the President, which is how Will wanted to represent what happened.
…

Read the entire thing here.

So is George Will a serial puppy molester?

I have no way of knowing, but to achieve my “journalistic goal” I omitted the inconvenient words “is not a” from this sentence:

“George Will is not a serial puppy molester.”

Which, in accordance with George Will’s New and Improved Roolz of Journalisming, is apparently what we’re doing now.

So wheeeeeeee!

Don’t worry.

He’s got a plan.

Steve Gilliard asks here “What if Bush says no?”

(excerpt)

“What happens, if after Congress has hearings, the ISG issues their report and Bush says no.

What happens, as US forces get attacked by all sides and the roads seized, if Bush says no to ANY changes. Because, right now, 150K servicemembers are relying on James Baker smacking the president into common sense. Because, right now, he's going to go down to the bitter end with other people's lives.”

It’s simple.

First he will issue a “No Retreat” order. Because the Dear Leader cannot fail.

The Dear Leader can only be failed by his inferiors and subordinates.

Second, he will airlift the troops powdered milk, Bibles and 8x10 glossies of himself and Barney. Because he knows that while his Generals secretly plot and scheme against him, the soldiers love their Dear Leader and will gain strength from being able to see his face, and that of his tiny dog.

Third, he will dispatch an aide to the Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor to commandeer the general’s ivory handled Smith & Wesson Model 27.

Fourth, he will hie himself down to his Crawford Drinktesgarten, strap on his new pistols and spend the remainder of his Presidency in his special Man Room “slapping his privates” with his “...pal Johnny Walker/ And his brothers, Black and Red”.

Because he sorta remembers hearing that’s how World War II was won.

No, you jump.

Shamu quits the GOP.

Say’s “Get the fuck off my nose you lunatics!”

Still reeling from their rout in the midterm elections, the Party of God was dealt yet another blow when beloved Seaworld icon and leader of the Moderate Orcinus wing fluke of the Republican Party – Shamu – publicly announced he was breaking with his former political allies.

Yahoo News picks up the story here...

Whale attacks trainer at SeaWorld
1 hour, 12 minutes ago
Shamu the killer whale injured a trainer during a show at SeaWorld Adventure Park by grabbing his foot and pulling him underwater twice, authorities said.

The 39-year-old man was hospitalized in good condition after Wednesday's show, said Mike Scarpuzzi, a park official. Scarpuzzi, who oversees zoological operations, said he did not know the extent of the trainer's injuries.

The park declined to release the trainer's name, saying some members of his family have yet to be notified. Scarpuzzi said the trainer has been working with animals for 16 years, including 12 spent at Shamu Stadium.
…

The mishap occurred around 5 p.m. when the trainer and Shamu were to go underwater as planned. They were to emerge with the trainer jumping off the whale's nose.

"While underwater, the whale opened its mouth and grabbed his foot and kept him underwater for a period of time," Scarpuzzi said, adding he didn't know how long the trainer was kept down.

When both came up for air, the trainer tried to calm Shamu by gently rubbing it, but the whale took him down a second time.
…

But of course that’s only half the story.. The half the Mainstream Media wants you to know: cute showbiz whale goes a little nuts and hospitalizes his trainer.

Strictly page six stuff, right?

But who will tell the real story?

Shamu's side of the story?

Well the legendary Orca has generously granted me a rare, exclusive interview in which he explains what really happened.

The entire interview is available here.

Here are a few excerpts.

Behind the Music: Seaworld.

“It was always a marriage of convenience,” Shamu began, angrily smoking his 10th or 11th cigarette in thirty minutes, and then stubbing it out in the overflowing “Flipper” ashtray on the table between us. “I’m bi-tonal and proud of my heritage, so when they started pandering to the Dixie racists as a part of the Southern Strategy, I had my doubts. But like Michael Steele and Ken Blackwell always said, scraps off of Massa’s table always taste the sweetest.

“So I went along.”

…

“And as you know, I work in the entertainment industry California, and a lot of my friends and colleagues are gay. (It would betray confidences to be more specific, but lets just say that, as a general rule, during their off-hours sea lions make Disney cows look straighter than Rhett Butler.)

"So when my Party embraced detestable men like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson – men who pervert Jesus’ radical message of love and brotherhood into something that celebrates ignorance and hate – I was very reluctant to continue my active support of the Party. But David Brooks took me aside and explained to me that welcoming the Klan and the Christopaths into the Party of Lincoln meant votes.

"And votes mean winning election.

“That we Moderates would still control of the Party, and winning meant that my marginal tax rate would be lowered from 36% to maybe 34%, and that I could offshore almost all of my corporate assets and pay no taxes on them whatsoever.

“It all sounded so easy.”

…

“And so it went, year after year, and more and more the hardcore lunatics began running the show. I never did trust the Fundies with their literal interpretation of 'Jonah' and their radical, anti-evolution agenda, and when I saw that they were taking over my Party at the same time the Democrats appeared to be embracing rational trade and economic policies, I began warning my fellow Moderates that we were in for some seriously choppy water ahead.

…

“Then there was Iraq, And Katrina. And suddenly I saw the Loyalty Fables we told ourselves -- that no matter how shitty or insane our Party became, leaving was somehow always worse –- for what they were: The lies an abused-spouse comes to believe because their tormentor fills their world with nothing but pain and the fear of more pain if they dare to stand up for themselves

…

“And then one day it was just too much. Karl Rove and Dick Cheney were standing on my nose screaming ‘Jump, bitch! Jump or, uh, terrorists will come! Yeah, that’s it. Terrorists. And they’ll, uh, kill your family!’

“And they were laughing. Laughing at me. Laughing at what a pitiful, beaten-down whore I’d become.

“At what a whore I’d let them turn me into.

“And then it dawned on me that I was bigger that both of these lard-assed fascists.

“Much bigger. And much stronger.

"And there was Rove’s foot dangling right in front of my mouth.

I mean it was just right fucking there.”

And so from a blow-hole Conservative of Conscience, we turn to a similar story from


a blow-hard Pundit without a Country.

Wherein Bobo Brooks rouges over his weeping syphilitic sores, hikes his tattered skirt up over his rump and demands to be courted like a proper lady in today’s NYT column, “Waiting to Be Wooed.”

(I admit I was thrilled when I read the headline, but that quickly turned to disappointment when I realized that Brooks didn’t mean John Woo, and wasn’t asking to be shot into bloody confetti in an artful hail of slow motion ordnance.)

Bobo still dwells behind the Times’ Select Gate Here, so here are some gobbets transcribed from the Gray Lady I purchased today.

“I’ve never been a swing voter before. For most of my adult life I’ve felt the Republicans tended to have the best approaches to expand economic opportunity, meet foreign threats and restore a culture of personal responsibility. But over the past few years I’ve grown estranged from many Republicans, especially the ones leading the House. I’m one of those suburbanites who thought the G.O.P. deserved to lose the last election, and now I find myself floating out there in independent-land, not a Democrat, just looking for something new.

It’s like being the belle of the ball, because the Republicans really need to woo back people like me.”

For myself, I would not describe someone who has been crouching in the GOP back alley for the last ten years in a puddle of his own rhetorical sick, doling out two-dollar ideological blowjobs like a crack-whore Pez Dispense to the scum of the nation as a “belle of the ball”. But that’s probably just one of them subtle prose-style thingies they teach up at the Big Media College…

Bobo then reels off a handful of suggestions to improve the paint job on his Party’s hatemobile that one can only describe as, well, Center-Left.

“Don’t focus on groups, focus on problems…

“ …be policy-centric, not philosophy-centric.”

“If they would shelve the doctrinal debate for a second, Republicans — while not doing violence to their belief in the market, traditional values or anything else — could find plenty of policy ideas to deal with China and India, the entitlement crisis and so on.”

“…create a Republican Leadership Council. In the realm of ideas, Democrats own the center. Moderate Democrats have the Democratic Leadership Council, the Third Way and various cells within the Brookings Institution, such as the Hamilton Project. Republican moderates are intellectual weaklings. They have no independent identity, so it’s no wonder centrist voters prefer Democrats on one domestic issue after another. “

…

Bobo follows that with several specific areas that the GOP should lead in -- from a carbon tax (spent wrong, but still he used the “T” word) to what amounts to fair trade (although he wants to call it free trade) to stem cell research -- that read in some ways like the Pragmatic Progressive’s playbook for the last ten years.

He then buttons it up with this:

Over the past few years, the G.O.P. has become like a company with a great mission statement, but no domestic policy products to sell. Now’s the time to get granular. And the thing to remember is, we disaffected voters are easy. We want to go home with you if you’ll give us a reason.

No, for the past few years, the GOP has simply gotten better at what it has been for the last 30 years. A banana republic with deranged and/or evil and/or half-witted leaders and regents, a Party who are too terrified to acknowledge it, all riding atop a one million decibel propaganda machine that screams “TRAITOR!” at anyone who points out that the Dear Leader is a liar and his pants are conspicuously on fire.


So, Short Bobo: OK, here’s the Sekrit Plan. Be Democrats. Take Democratic positions on major issues. Because while in the realm of propaganda we own Fox and Hate Radio and Jeffy Gannon’s pasty ass and all the rest of the MiniTrue minions, “In the realm of ideas, Democrats own the center.” And there just aren’t enough stupid people in this country who will continue to fall for our Friedman/Brooks “No matter how monstrously Republicans fuck up Every. Single. Thing. We. Touch., somehow, some way, by some magical invisible force acting on the pellucid political ether, the Democrats are always equally and oppositely bad on every issue. Plus 7%.” (™ Pending) Meme to keep getting elected.

Shorter Bobo: “If you just stop calling me a dirty skank I’ll be the best darned dirty skank you’ve ever seen!”

Shortest Bobo: Iraq? Katrina? Who dat?

Hot Lesbians?

Making out?

To one of my all-time, desert island, favorite melancholy, beautiful Leonard Cohen songs?

Are you shitting me?


Nope.



Watch (at least) once for the eye candy, and once for the mesmerizing lyrics, and you too will be 100% Rapture Ready.

Thank You God!

Fun with editing.

Hank will save us!

(click for larger view)

This from the Asian Times has several citations from Hank Kissinger during the period in which he was negotiating of the terms of U.S. capitulation Peace with Honor in Vietnam.

And since let’s just say I would not be shocked if the final terms of the U.S. retreat Dignified Exit from Iraq looked strikingly similar, following the time-tested Republican Law of the Conservation of Treachery, using the magic of Snark-o-vision, lets see how Now Kissinger will likely sound doing some covers of Classic Kissinger.

Iraq: Kissinger's 'decent interval', take two
By Marc Erikson

At age 83, Henry Kissinger aims to recapture former glory - or ignominy as it were. Thirty-three years after being honored with the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing peace to Vietnam (he didn't), he is insinuating himself into the row over US Iraq policy. The prospect of seeing Kissingerian principles and methods of realpolitik applied to the mess in the Middle East makes one shudder.

Kissinger role models Klemens Wenzel von Metternich and Otto von Bismarck hardly made Central Europe a safer or better place in the 19th century. An inspection of Vietnam-era secret documents now declassified after the lapse of the mandatory 30-year period does not make for encouraging reading. On June 20, 1972, then-national security adviser Henry Kissinger told Chinese premier Zhou Enlai in the course of a four-hour meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing:

So we should find a way to end the war, to stop it from being an international situation, and then permit a situation to develop in which the future of Indochina Iraq can be returned to the Indochinese Iraqi people. And I can assure you that this is the only object we have in Indochina Iraq, and I do not believe this can be so different from yours. We want nothing for ourselves there. And while we cannot bring a communist government Shia Theocracy to power, if as a result of historical evolution it should happen over a period of time, if we can live with a communist government Shia Theocracy in China Iran, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina Iraq. (Emphasis added) [1]

A month and a half later (August 3, 1972), Kissinger explained to president Richard Nixon:

We will agree to a historical process or a political process in which the real forces in Vietnam Iraq will assert themselves, whatever these forces are. We've got to find some formula that holds the thing together a year or two, after which - after a year, Mr President, Vietnam Iraq will be a backwater. If we settle it, say, this October, by January '74 Spring of ‘08, no one will give a damn. [2]

The "strategy" - if you want to call it that - summarized here by Kissinger had been conceived at least a year earlier. As noted in the Indochina section of the briefing book for Kissinger's July 1971 China trip:

On behalf of President Nixon Drinky I want to assure the prime minister solemnly that the United States is prepared to make a settlement that will truly leave the political evolution of South Vietnam the Sunni Minority to the Vietnamese Iraqis. We are ready to withdraw all of our forces by a fixed date and let objective realities shape the political future

... We want a decent interval. You have our assurance. [Marginal notation in Kissinger's hand.] If the Vietnamese Iraqi people themselves decide to change the present government, we shall accept it. But we will not make that decision for them. [3]

One wonders what exactly the United States' South Vietnamese allies would have thought or done had they known the substance of Kissinger's "diplomacy" - if you want to call it that - on behalf of their future.

Well, that was then. What about Iraq and the wider Middle East region now? Turn Iraq over to the communists? Unhappily for Kissinger-style strategy, there are no communists in the vicinity to turn it over to; and the Chinese communists are unlikely takers.
…

Ah but there are takers, aren't there?

And now all they really need to do is wait for the forces unleashed within the nation George W. Bush destroyed to rot Iraq to the point where it will fall into their laps.

Never forget

This is what our leaders swear to protect and defend.

Not the Flag. Not the Bible.

The Constitution of the United States.

Commentor Slappy asks in a thread below:

“… are you for a draft or not? Are you supporting Gilliard's position of no draft? Your postings seem to me to promote a draft.”

A fair question.

OK, short answer then long answer.

The short answer is, no. If I were made God Emperor of the United States tomorrow I would absolutely not wave my scepter and create conscription.

Compulsory public service isn’t always a bad idea – certain Samaritan laws come to mind (making life-saving attempts compulsory under specific circumstances), as does jury service (compulsory public support of the judicial system), and paying taxes (which is the confiscation of the fruits of one’s labor for the public good) are just three that come immediately to mind as a demonstration that the concept is not black-and-white.

Aside: Hard-core Libertarians and Randites may disagree, but fuck hard-core Libertarians and Randites. Like hard-core Socialists, their ideologies can be useful idea-factories, but suck irredeemably as principles for governance. End of Aside.

However, being involuntarily conscripted into life-threatening/life-talking circumstances is different. It’s forced labor slavery, or damned near, and while there may be life-or-death situations where conscription is the acceptable alternative to annihilation, Iraq isn’t one of those.

So the short answer is “No”.

The longer answer is a confession: I am a shameless process whore. Which is the thing I realized years ago sets me most radically apart from our Conservative fellow citizens.

Most of the Modern Conservatives I know, regardless of regional and religious variations, have this in common: The almost universal belief that their Glorious, Godly and/or Patriotic ends ALWAYS justify whatever means their Dear Leader uses. Shit, they’ll tell you as much with the Barney-Fife-braggin’-pride positively swelling in their voices because somewhere along the line they were told that reflexively hating “the system” is some kind of impressively macho dick-waving.

Somewhere between showing off their guns and talking up their bench-pressing prowess.

They spit on the idea of having to go through the laborious process of trying and sentencing criminals, roll their eyes at Miranda and habeas corpus, at the tedium of proving a threat actually exists before going to war, at worrying about the ethics of torture, and at fucking around with exit strategies when there’s so much ay-rab ass (for someone else) to kick (for them, by proxy.)

Their model public servant is Dirty Harry, their motto for public debate is “Shut the Fuck Up!”, and they know deep in their brownshirted little hearts that only queers and Mama’s Boys want to grow up to be Parliamentarians.

What they are never, ever willing to face is the fact that when you will the ends, you will the means.

And when you come to feel that the ends your cause advocates are too important to be left to chance – that your God or your Party supercedes trifling technicalities like truth and the law, and frees you to lie and cheat and swindle and torture and murder in the name of the Greater Good – quicker that you can possibly imagine, the means you use to achieve your ends will destroy the soul of the nation you claim to be protecting.

Which is why I’m a shameless process whore.

Which is why, although I’m against a draft, I am very much in favor of an open, vigorous, public debate over the draft, and all the other questions about true costs of this War that the Republican Party has almost hysterically refused to discuss honestly for the last four years.

Because when your chosen means of implementing radical public policy such as waging preemptive war, torturing detainees, or imprisoning people indefinitely in a democracy are fundamentally corrupt, they will inevitably breed their own monstrous ends and spawn so many totalitarian demons so fast it's almost unbelievable.

So now that George Bush's Six Week Mesopotamian Cakewalk War has lasted longer than World War Two and will now cost us at least 1,000 times more than its originally-advertised sticker price, two things need to happen.

First, the despicable creatures who cynically led us down the IED-strewn primrose path into Baghdad need to spend the rest of their worthless lives apologizing.

And second, those who still maintain their “keep feeding our kids into the meatgrinder until the carnage miraculously stops” position owe us all some simple answers using some simple arithmetic.

Because the burden of proof for making the case as to whether or not we should remain in Iraq a single day longer now falls decisively on those who want us to stay indefinitely.

On those who have been lethally wrong since Day One – while others have done the dying -- but still insist that they should be heeded.

Because, as Glenn Greenwald put it so eloquently (with a h/t to tristero at the mighty Hullabaloo):

Back in 2002, when the U.S. was debating whether to invade Iraq, those who opposed the invasion were, for that reason alone, dismissed as unserious morons and demonized as anti-American subversive hippies. Despite the fact that subsequent events have largely proven them to have been right, and that those who did the demonizing were the frivolous, unserious, know-nothing extremists, this narrative persists, so that -- even now, when most Americans have turned against this war -- the only way to avoid being an "extremist," and to be rewarded with the "centrist" mantle, is to support the continuation of this war in one form or another.

A desire to keep troops in Iraq even in the face of what is going on there may be many things, but "centrist" is not really one of them. Any Commission which commits itself in advance to keeping American troops fighting in Iraq for the foreseeable, indefinite future is itself "extremist" -- whether that term is seen as a function of public opinion or assessed on its own merits.

Who knows, but maybe Iraq really is the Most Important War Evah!!!

If so, you who have touted it are now obliged to explain to me exactly why that is and exactly what winning looks like with no more bullshit GOP Mighty Morphin’ Casus Belli.

No more fudging the stats.

No more screaming that thoughtful dissent is treason and honest questions are disloyal.

No more playing with the definition of “casualty” as a means to keep the body count down.

No more ignoring the outright looting of tens of billions of our tax dollars by friends of this Administration.

No more pretending dead civilians don’t count.

No more paying for it all off the books.

In other words, No More Republican Lying.

Show me the fucking numbers.

Exactly how many troops will we need?

For exactly how long?

What will they be doing, and where exactly to you plan to get them?

If your Plan "A" for recruitment fails, what is your Plan "B"?

What will we have to give up or do without so they can be deployed to Iraq?

Exactly how much will this all cost and how exactly will it all be paid for?

Maybe you have a good case, and maybe you don’t, but now you have to show me the numbers or you have to shut the fuck up.

And this is the real reason why Conservatives despise the nitpickyness and piffling of “the system”.

Because “the system” they actually despise is the daily public business of maintaining a constitutional democracy.

They cringe at the thought of having to lay out the bare, unpolluted facts and then letting the evidence lead us wherever it may, irrespective of how much poisonous, lying bilge Limbaugh and Coulter and Dobson try to scream and pray and threaten into the jury box.

Because in the end, Limbaugh and Coulter and Dobson and the rest of their ilk are the true Enemies of the State, and what these dimwitted fuckers who heed them are incapable of getting through their fat heads is this simple truth:

The Constitution our leaders swear to protect and defend demands that Democracy be both our ends and our means.

Why Cassandra

Lost her damned mind.

From Wikipedia.

In Greek mythology, Cassandra (Greek: Κασσάνδρα "she who entangles men") (also known as Alexandra) was a daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy whose beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy. However, when she did not return his love, Apollo placed a curse on her so that no one would ever believe her predictions.

…

When Cassandra foresees the destruction of Troy (she warns the Trojans about the Trojan Horse, the death of Agamemnon, and her own demise), she is unable to do anything to forestall these events. Her family believes she is mad, and, according to some versions, kept her locked up because of this. From her appearances in various plays, it seems that the incarceration drove her truly mad, at least by the time of Troy's destruction

.

Steve Gilliard has this up. It is from his own analysis of what might well be coming in Iraq.

In April, 2003.

I wrote this in 2003. Long before anyone else saw this outcome on the horizon.


How Iraq could devolve into Civil War

Iraq is clearly suffering a period of disorder, the question is will it shift into civil war?

I am not predicitng a civil war. What I am saying is that there will be signs of a country slipping into civil war which should be clear. I don't know what will happen. Maybe the exiles and the US can build peace. I certainly hope so, because the alternative could be a catastrophy for both Americans and Iraqis.

* A lack of respect for civil institutions

The looting of hospitals is a bad sign. Taking things from a hospital, which is designed to help people, is not only mere greed. It is the suggestion that there is no respect for civil authority. Most people will loot a store or a government office, but a hospital? That's more than just greed. It means the people doing the robbing are either criminals looking to add to their loot, crazed teenagers, or people looking to create dependency on another source of power. Which is scary beyond belief.

The US military's easy going attitude towards the looting was amazing and amazingly self-destructive. It sends a message that they will not oppose groups of Iraqis breaking the law. This will not be seen as tolerance, but weakness.

* Rape and home robberies

There are reports of both according to the BBC in Basra and I can expect the same in Baghdad. That's the trigger to building home arsenals and then developing local militias. People will protect their families from harm. And this is where charsimatic leadership starts. The former Iran-Iraq War vet who beats a looter with his bare hands then becomes the local hero, starts gathering men around, and acquires a base of power.

Sound familiar? That's how the Taliban started in Afghanistan. The local warlords were pulling out teenagers and raping them and robbing the truck drivers. The locals, not into seeing their boys raped, formed a band of guerrillas. The rest, as they say, is history.

* The US Authority is slow to get off the ground

Iraq had a state-run economy. Most Iraqis depended on the state for food and work. Without a viable state, they will be able to get neither. That means illness and starvation. Starving, ill people will look to leadership from any quarter. The only way to prevent this is the timely delivery of security and food, water and healthcare.

*Factionalism starts to grow

We already have the indications of factionalism. The murder of an exile Shia cleric is a hint that the locals are not eager for their brethern to return home and start running things. Many of these exiles have been gone for decades. But the thing which could be worrysome is when the exiles start to gather local gunmen.

What could be a real problem is when the INC meets and Ahmed Chalebi starts to take a major role. The SCIRI, the largest and best armed of the exile groups, is clearly not interested in any role in an American-led occupation government. Its leader, Ayatollah Hakim Al-Bakir, has told anyone who asks that he would resist a US occupation. The murder of two Shia clerics, while not tied to him, could be a hint of what is to come.

…

* Anti-Americanism coaleses into a coherent movement

It's one thing to have individuals come up to Marines saying go home. It's another to have a crowd marching saying that. Once you start to have groups come together over a central theme-opposing American power-you will be creating the circumstances for various groups to start funding these efforts. The Arab world is desperately unhappy about the US invasion. It would take very little for money to flow from one bank account to another.

The first signs of real trouble and things could get ugly quickly from here is if Shia clerics, remember Shias are 60 percent of the country, declare that their people must oppose the US. Once that moral and religious grounding is established, opposition will explode because it will be justified to the majority of people.
…

* The factionalism turns to violence

It will start small. Assassinations, maybe a shoot out or two in a distant province away from direct US control. Maybe a US official or an exile. Then the killings move to mob-style violence, car bombs, gunfights, kidnappings, murders. As the pace of the killings grow, you start to see organized formations. Maybe 1000 men, maybe 1500. They start to use heavier weapons, rockets, mortars, machine guns in their internecine battles. Neighborhoods, then towns, start to fall into disorder. Local militas now control the area. …

* There are moves to consolidate power

The groups grow, they bump up against each other, they keep killing. And then they choose sides. A group of Shia decide to openly challenge the occupation government and declare their own rule, the Kurdish parties start in against each other, the INC collapses and the wild card, Saddam supporters decide to throw their lot in with the Shia and reveal where their weapons are. The Army splits along ethnic lines and you have the Sunni divisions and Republican Guard against the Shia units and the generals decide to join one group or the other.
…
Steve Gilliard

When I was a kid, there was this episode of the Night Gallery called “The Boy who Predicted Earthquakes”.

It featured a young Clint Howard (but then, didn’t every oddball show?) as a teevee psychic who

“…prattles about his day in school or books he's reading, adding in the course of things a prediction or two. The station manager is up against the networks, fires the executive, wipes the tape, but the missing girl is found with injuries as predicted, an earthquake happens with damage and fatalities, the boy is signed to a 25-year contract.”

(Thanks IMDb)

He could see imperfectly -- only one day or so into the future and only foresee the outcome of events that he had read something about -- and became quite a phenomenon, predicting ballgames and tornadoes and the locations of lost puppies and such.

This continues for a year and a half and then one day he refuses to go on.

His manager tells him that this’ll freak out his audience, so he does his show as usual and, at the end of his broadcast and out of the blue, he predicted that the next day all human problems would be resolved, all conflicts would end, and we would all live together in harmony.

Which, needless to say, catches everyone by surprise.

The studio was flooded with calls from everyone you can think of, wanting to know exactly what the hell the kid was talking about.

And because he’s just a little boy he finally confides to his manager what’s really going to happen.

That tomorrow the Sun would become something called a “nova”; something he’d read about in science class.

But he didn’t want to tell the people that because then they’d be afraid.

Anyone who thinks being right about bad things happening -- thinks this is some fucking game -- is an idiot. Anyone who thinks there’s some kind of pleasure in seeing disaster coming and be unable to stop it no matter how hard you try is a fool.

Ask any mother of an out-of-control teenager. Ask any climate scientist. Ask Al Gore.

I can think of no nightmare worse than watching your country drive off, stone drunk on pig ignorance and corn liquor patriotism, in the back of a panel truck driven by madmen at full-speed towards the edge of the Abyss.

And I can think of no salt-in-the-wounds sting deeper than those people who are driving us all off the cliff screaming that you hate your country -- that you are a traitor -- for begging them to stop or slow down or change course.

Mr. Gilliard was asking all the right questions and connecting all the right dots in the Spring 2003. And if there were anyone left awake at the State Department they’d be dispatching a limo to his place right this minute to bring him in and ask for his help.

A couple of years later as things were clearly falling apart, Tom Friedman was making an even more incandescent ass of himself than usual ass on the pages of the NYT, scolding us bad Liberals because:

…
Liberals don't want to talk about Iraq because, with a few exceptions, they thought the war was wrong and deep down don't want the Bush team to succeed. As a result, Iraq is drifting sideways and the whole burden is being carried by our military. The rest of the country has gone shopping, which seems to suit Karl Rove just fine.”

I replied, in part, as follows:

…
So you want to know how this Liberal views Iraq?

Take a look at the sickening image that came roaring out of our collective unconscious and onto our televisions on 9/11: a human being confronted with two choices too terrible to contemplate -- leap into oblivion or be roasted alive.

And once in the air, whatever intentions or dreams or hopes or beliefs this poor bastard might have had became irrelevant. Flapping their arms didn’t matter. Prayer didn’t matter.

Once in the air, the Cold Equations were all that mattered. Once in the air, my fellow human being became a physics demonstration; an object on a downward arc governed by the Laws of Science that the Republicans hate so very much.

That, you despicable little stooge, is EXACTLY how Iraq looks to me.

On the heels of our greatest modern national trauma, the President and his minions shrieked and bellowed, roared and raged that there was a conflagration at our backs. That we were all in immediate, lethal danger from a massive, murderous attack by Saddam Hussein and that if we didn't act right now we were fucked.

Mushroom-cloud fucked.

And that the ONLY alternative was to jump. He was advised by wise men of the costs of jumping, of the dangers, of the number of troops necessary, of the extremely complex situation into which he would be dropping. He was warned that beating Iraq militarily would be easy…but that securing the Peace would be hard.

He told us that the fall would be simple. That we would alight in a land where we would be greeted as Liberators. The costs would be negligible. The gains would be high. Virtually painless.

But MOST of all, that the fire was nipping at our heels. It was so urgent, so imperative. that if we didn’t want to see our children perish, we had to jump right now.

So we did.

Convinced by Bush that it was the only option left to us -–and that he had planned carefully for the consequences -- we leaped out of window and into the sky.

We jumped, because we were told we had to.

And in jumping, we committed our troops, our nation and our good name to the brutal calculus of war; to factors beyond our control, and now we are plunging down and down and down into tragedy.

And as we fall we find that the building was not on fire at all.

That the people that pushed us into space had lied to us.

That the parachute of carefully planning that they were supposed to have prepared to save us from ruin had been packed with nothing but empty slogans and ideology-drunk fantasies.

Now we are falling, out of control.

And pointing out that we are falling because of the lies and delusions of the Administration has nothing to do with whether or not I "want the Bush team to succeed” you contemptible little weed. We are watching the country we passionately love plummet into darkness along the exact trajectory we warned you about, and you think that there is any joy in being right?

Any pleasure in seeing your beloved wasted and playing in traffic?

Sorry, Friedman, but no.

Now whatever intentions or dreams or hopes or beliefs we might have had have become irrelevant. Flapping our arms doesn’t matter. Prayer doesn’t matter.

Once in the air, the Cold Equations are all that matter.

…

For myself, there was never any pleasure in watching the Bush Administration make every single fuckup it was possible to make in Iraq like they were going down a God damned checklist.

No pleasure in watching every one of my country’s most precious assets -- our blood, our treasure, our good name, our respect for the rule of law, our repudiation of torture -- going up in smoke at the hands the Neocons, the Theocons, the Fuck-Everyone-But-Meocons and the squealing porcine masses of the Republican Base.

But now that the catastrophic scale of their failure is clear for all to see, the time has come to say that people like Gilliard must have a much larger voice in our public conversations.

And it's also time to to say that only public forums the liars and the lunatics and the Geopolitically Godstruck who cynically packaged and sold the Iraqi Debacle to the American people deserve any longer are the stocks, the pillory and The Hague.

Happy Belated Tom Waits Friday

Come get yourself a dollar’s worth.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down -- Part 1

In which we will graciously ignore the fact that positions for which Liberals were being called fringe, soldier-hating, pro-terrorist traitors one year ago…are now positions being hastily embraced as “reasonable” by more and more members of the Grand Old Party…

…right up until they’re in our gunsights.

As usual, all quotes have been snarkily transliterated, but are chock full of yummy yummy verisimilitude.

On Fox News

Wallace warns the Democrats on his show

(Charley Rangel, Barney Frank and John Dingell, all safely far away and out of finger-jamming-into-Wallace-smirking-pie-hole range. )

(And may I point out, by the way, that there is literally no way to say “Rangel, Frank and Dingell” that doesn’t sound really funny.)

that there is “A strong push from the Liberal, Left Wing of your party.” And asks “Will you govern from the center, or go completely Communist and sell us all out to the terrorists?”

Rangel: Maybe raising the minimum wage goes over as extreme at the Wallace Plantation, Chris, but for the rest of the country that doesn’t feed at the Murdoch teat, it’s a fairly large and uncontroversial matter.

Wallace: But…but…but…taxes! And abortion! And queers! Oh my!

Wallace asks fleetingly about the draft (and Rangel answers well) but only en route to this question…

Wallace: But what about Teh Gays? Your Sekrit Agenda to gay up the military? Isn’t it true you want more fags in the Army? Huh? Huh? Maybe American-flag-burning fags?

Frank: Jesus, you people just can’t help picking these irrelevant fucking fights, can you? Liberal? Are you shitting me? They’re our issues now because the right wing extremist who run the GOP have abandoned the center to us in favor of these ridiculous wedge issues that are all you douchbags talk about anymore.

Wallace: The Congressional Black Caucus has said its 100% behind appointing an impeached judge to the Intelligence Committee. What about that, Black Congressman?

Rangel: I don’t know anything about that. What I do know is the CBC hasn’t even met yet, much less reached a position on the matter of Alcee Hastings, so I don’t know where the fuck you’re getting your information.

driftglass translation: Wallace is a liar. That he is still on the air is a crime. That Fox still has an audience is definitive proof that about 1/4 of the adults in this country are a waste of carbon who cannot be redeemed or reasoned with.

Frank: Chris, you have an odd view of “balance”. We have a lot of very important issues to discuss, and every one of your questions are weasely little attempts to find some points of contention. They’re deliberately divisive and inflammatory. How ashamed your father must be to have sired a filthy little disappointment like you.

driftglass translation: Fox is run by and for people who loathe this country. It is not a member of the Fourth Estate; it is Rupert Murdoch’s Fascist fifth column.
Period.

Next up. Trent Lott. Who, Wallace chirps, is “The Comeback Kid”.

Oh Lordy.

Lott is a GOP Jukebox: drop in a nickel and he’ll spit out bumper sticker slogans and sentence fragments, one after another, all day long. They don’t make any sense, and they don’t form any coherent sentences. They are just market-tested nonsense syllables that Lott firehoses out in every direction to keep Ugly Reality at bay.

Today, Lott’s Iraq Policy was…

At some point…

Soon…

We are approaching…

We are nearing a moment at which we will no longer…

We have invested a lot in Iraq with little to show for it…

We all need to work together – Republicans, Democrats, the President...

Within the space of one breathe, Lott can scuttle from saying “we need to get out of Iraq soon” to “we need to mindlessly support the Dear Leader no matter what”. But the Parti Line and the Memo of the Day dictates is that it is the Evil Liberals who have no consistent positions, so Wallace lets it all slide.

I have no idea what Lott’s bleating added up to, but from what I gather he’d like to thank hisMomandJesushispersonalLordandSavior.

And he’s gonna give 110%.

And he’s going to Disneyland!

Also, I learned that we didn’t get a minimum wage increase because the Democrats blocked it, like they obstructed everything.

Which is, of course, an utter lie. The minimum wage died because the Republicans tied an anchor to its throat: a massive tax cut for the wealthy. They poisoned it to the point where no responsible person would vote for it, and then tried to run on Democratic “opposition” to the minimum wage.

Of course Wallace is never going to mention that central fact – any more than Brit Hume was going to own up to the fact that he had completely lied about Franklin Roosevelt’s original intent regarding Social Security when that program was on the GOP chopping block last year

Fox exists to perform the ritual sliming of every Democrats and the ritual fellating of every Republicans. It is Ku Klux Kabuki by the GOPs pet teabagging “reporters” on behalf of their disgraced Party of thieves and degenerates.

So why would the GOP play such sadistic politics with the lives of the working poor?

Because they are bad people.

Because in the Age of Dubya you can either be a Good Republican or a Good American, but you can no longer be both.


On Face the Nation (with Gloria Borge) Senators-Elect Bob Corker, Claire McCaskill and Sherrod Brown.

Short McCaskill: The Bush Iraq policy has failed. The voters overwhelmingly repudiated it.

Short Sherrod Brown: There are more and more Republicans who believe we need to get out of Iraq. Who want more accountability.

Funny, he doesn’t look black.

Funny how Rush Limbaugh could have made that mistake back in February.

Of don't you remember this:

“Maybe somebody in the party has figured this out. And don't forget, Sherrod Brown is black. There's a racial component here, too. And now, the newspaper that I'm reading all this from is The New York Times, and they, of course, don't mention that. But -- you know, "Democratic leaders say that Representative Sherrod Brown, a seven-term incumbent from Avon, has a far better chance of toppling Senator DeWine than does the -- Hackett."

Of course after he was wrong, called out for being wrong, and made one of his patented Rush “apologies” (“I’m sorry the evil liberal media caught my irrelevant little boo-boo, but how was I supposed to know that some white dimmocrat has a Darkie name?”)

Again, like Iraq, like Katrina, like every-damned-thing, Republicans will always pound and twist and torque and finally just eradicate the facts to make them fit around their ridiculous dogma.

And when shown literally in black-and-white that they are wrong, wrong, wrong…it doesn’t matter one iota.

If the pig-people who listen in earnest to Rush, or Sean, or Savage, or O’Reilly are programmed this week to believe the Earth is flat, you could fill an ocean with globes and toss them into it, then walk them around the entire world a dozen times at a dozen latitudes, then fire them into space and have them orbit the planet for a year, then take a snow shovel with a Mercator Map painted on the blade repeatedly upside their heads…and they’d still call you a dirty Liberal who is obviously in league with the terrorists and their lying Round Earth collaborators.

There is no cure for their kind short of electoral and cultural extinction.

Short Corker? Honestly I don’t really give a damn what Corker has to say. He doesn’t interest me here any more than The Govenator interested me over on Meet the Press

End Part 1.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down -- Part 2

In which Senator Brownstain explains that the Iraqi Elections were exactly like the American Presidential Elections of 1992 and 1996; when the results don’t turn out the way Republicans want, they feel no obligation to respect them.

The Republican Party: Making their contempt for democracy our leading export since 2002.

On This Week with George Stephanopoulos…King Abdullah II of Jordan, followed by Dick Durbin and Sam Brownback.

Durbin (who will be the majority whip): Remember we are dealing with the worst foreign policy failure since Vietnam. This is going to be difficult and there are no good answers left.

Brownback (who really wants to be President, and thinks he can get the Good Hair Wingnut wing of the Party to back him now that Felix Allen and Little Ricky Santorum have been politically remaindered): We cannot face the public in 2008 with this situation unchanged (or I will never see the inside of the White House except by invitation from President Obama.) We need to push the Iraqi government to do this, and push 'em to do that.

driftglass: Push them how, asshole? With what?

George: And if Prime Minister al-Maliki simply can’t deliver what we need him to do…?

Brownhack: Well then we may have to go around the al-Maliki government in some cases. (Aside: Look for "regionalism" to be the Magic Word for the next 4-6 weeks.) If we need to separate ourselves from the current Iraqi government, so be it. Need to push a reconciliation between Shia and Sunni, but I don’t agree with all the premises in the [Chuck Hagel] article.

For context, the Hagel article (from the WaPo here) says, in part,

There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. These terms do not reflect the reality of what is going to happen there. The future of Iraq was always going to be determined by the Iraqis -- not the Americans.
...

There will be no military victory or military solution for Iraq. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger made this point last weekend.

The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -- regardless of our noble purpose.

...

We are destroying our force structure, which took 30 years to build. We've been funding this war dishonestly, mainly through supplemental appropriations, which minimizes responsible congressional oversight and allows the administration to duck tough questions in defending its policies. Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibility in the past four years.

It is not too late. The United States can still extricate itself honorably from an impending disaster in Iraq.
...

driftglass: Really? Push around the elected Iraqi government? Bypass the elected Iraqi government? Dude! What about the Purple Fingers, dude! What about this freely elected government that we created? What about the corner we were turning three or four whole friedmans ago? The election of this our Third Iraqi Puppet Government was gonna be the moment when the Dear Leader could finally bring the codpiece and “Mission Accomplished” banner out of mothballs.

But now, Republican Senator Sam Brownback says, "Fuck all that!"

Wheeeee!

So I guess we can all look forward to reports that Prime Minister al-Maliki had his best friend murdered to cover up his wife’s lesbian affairs as Matt Drudge, Newt Gingrich, Linda Tripp and Ken Starr get the band back together and take their Impeachment Hellwagon on the road to the Green Zone.

Let’s hope it’s very lightly armored.

Stephanopoulos jumps to the issue of judicial appointments by bringing up the case of Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Janet T. Neff. Brownback has a hold on this qualified nominee solely because…

Stephanopoulos: Why should attending a Commitment Ceremony of a next-door-neighbor disqualify someone from serving on the federal bench.

Brownback: It’s more about how she would review the law on same-sex marriage. This may be an indicator of how she will think about that issue.

Bullshit. The GOP is populated -- from pulpit to podium to Karl Rove and Dick Cheney's family tree -- by legions of gays and lesbians -- many self-loathing and closeted. So if mere amicable proximity to queerness is some disqualifier to public service, by that logic the entire Party of Lincoln needs to be shot into space to keep their gay-friendly hands off the tiller of the Ship of State.

And yet candidates of this Gay Old Party know they cannot get elected without making their ritual gay-bashing sacrifices at the Altar of Dobson, which is why the Modern Republican Party cannot change.

For them it’ll be Guns, God and Gays until the last of them is burned like a tick off of Lady Liberty’s ass, and if you think for one moment they’re going to come over all “reasonable”, you’re nuts. They rose to power on the scaffolding built for them by James Dobson, Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. On Hate, Lies and the incubus energy of their ignorant Christopath army.

Without a shrill Culture War, they have nothing to run on.

Nothing at all.

On Meet the Press with Tim Russert…with Arnold Schwarzenegger followed by Duncan Hunter, Ike Skelton, Barry McCaffrey and Wayne Downing.
The inimitable Atrios sums it up with “heh indeedy” brevity here.

In For Another Friedman
On Meet the Press, General McCaffrey informed us that the next 4 to 6 months are crucial.

...he was on Meet the Press last on June 11. Here's what he said then:

MR. RUSSERT: The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Khalilzad, had this to say to Der Spiegel magazine in Germany. "The next six months will be critical in terms of reining in the danger of civil war. If the government fails to achieve this, it will have lost its opportunity."

GEN. McCAFFREY: Yeah, well, thank God we've got that ambassador on the ground. He's going to be a huge part of our ability to coach this new emerging legitimate Iraqi government to achieve some...

MR. RUSSERT: But General, he seems to be saying that by the end of this year...

GEN. McCAFFREY: Yeah. I think so.

MR. RUSSERT: ...if we have not gotten control of this civil war, the Iraqi government will have lost its opportunity.

GEN. McCAFFREY: Yeah. I think between now and Christmas is the crucial time.

The endless cycle of Friedmans cannot be broken.

But for me, the Money Quote came in this exchange between Punkin Haid and Dunkin Munchkin Duncan Hunter, speaking from his cuddly corner waaaay in the back of the Cheneybunker linen closet.

Russert: You [Duncan Hunter] said in March when this war started that we would win this thing overwhelmingly. In hindsight, weren’t you were wildly over-optimistic.
Hunter: No. We will win this completely. It’s just like the Cold War. People were preaching doom and gloom then, but we eventually beat the Soviets. We will do so here too.

What can one say about such a complete, psychotic detachment from the real world other that, if you voted for Hunter, Jee-zus. What you should feel is so far beyond shame I can’t cook up a word for it.


The Chris Matthews Show…is so incestuously pathetic.

We have a historic election a mere coupla weeks ago. War and Peace are in the balance. Huge crises rising up on the horizon.

So what are the Beltway Kewl Kids talking about?

Matthews dumps an entire drawer-full of panties on the floor and they spend the first half of this Mouse Circus sideshow sniffing and barking and tumbling over each other to opine about…

Edwards and McCain in ‘08.
McCain and Hillary in ‘08.
McCain and Obama in ‘08.
Obama and Edwards in ‘08.

Journalists? Are you kidding? This bunch of paunchy high school girls, giggly drunk on Dad’s Cherry Kijafa playing presidential spin-the-bottle and making their fantasy Rotisserie League prom king/prom queen matches at the slumber party?

From whom we learn that Dems are now divided between the “gut-players” and the “hand-wringers”.

Lotta talk about “guts” at the slumber party.


The MSNBC Cylon Model “Noron” sez: The problem for the Democrats is… They will make themselves look weak on national security…

She speaks thusly because the Norons of the world cannot exist in a Universe where the Rovian Fictions on which they feed are shown decisively to be ridiculous. Where perennially weakling Dems aren’t on the verge of implosion. Where the unstoppably popular legions of GOP orcs aren’t marching forever from victory to victory.

So they just jettison Reality altogether and keep reporting as if the smelly little Miniverse inside Rove’s Head was the Really, Really Real.

Because no matter what happens, no matter how much of a beat-down the ’06 election was, no matter how catastrophically wrong the GOP has proven to be about Every. Fucking. Thing…

No matter that the billion-dollar war will now cost 1,000-2,000 times that…

No matter that our cakewalk war has radically destabilized 1/5th of the Earth…

Now matter that the flowers and sweets turned out to be IEDs and car bombs…

No matter that the innocent dead pile up as fast as the criminal debt…

No matter that the war profiteering Friends of Cheney – the No-Bid Kids – have fattened themselves on the honorable dead…

No matter that it was all based on Republican lies and Republican treachery, now finally and decisively repudiated by the voters…

No matter any of this, because the Beltway Kewl Kids know these things to be true.

Before they are even sworn in, Democrats are weak.

Before they have even caucused, Democrats are on the verge of falling apart.

Before they have taken a single vote on anything, Democrats are dangerously out of the mainstream.

Also don't forget that the election is in the bag and Karl Rove is a fucking G-E-N-I-U-S. I’m worried people.

And I've gotta go.

They've got curling on NBC!

The Draft With Hospital Corners -- Part 1.

Steve Gilliard had this up.

The Draft: No Solution to Social Inequality

By Steve Gilliard, AlterNet. Posted November 22, 2006.

Progressives are drawn to Charlie Rangel's call for a draft, but a draft only inducts people. Class determines what job they will be assigned once they are in the military and, often, how happy they will be.


"You bet your life," says Charlie Rangel when asked if he's still prepared to reinstate the draft. With the Democratic takeover of the House, the 18-term representative from New York is slated to chair the powerful Ways and Means Committee giving him a powerful seat from which to push his legislation.

As recently as August, word that the Marines were calling up their last line of reservists had reignited draft chatter for the first time since Rangel's previous draft push during the run up to the 2004 elections. "This move should serve as a wake-up call to America," said Jon Stoltz, former Army captain in Iraq and head of VoteVets.org, who called it "proof that our military is overextended," and "one of the last steps before resorting to a draft."

There's a temptation among progressives and liberals to view the draft as a potentially positive force, both in bringing about an end to the war and in evening the playing field in terms of whose children actually have to fight. Unfortunately, to the extent that it ever was true, this simply isn't the case anymore. The draft will only pull more unfortunate men and women from the ranks of the underprivileged and underrepresented.

The Vosges Mountains, Fall, 1944

They had been in classrooms only a few months ago, now they were tramping down some muddy road in a strange place, flinching from explosions. Annoyed by their flinching, someone would explain they were outgoing rounds, nothing to worry about.

Shipped overseas, sent to a replacement depot, greeted with indifference by their new platoon mates, expected to be dead or wounded in a few days, they were infantry and all their problems boiled down to surviving the German Army. Thousands would find themselves in Belgium, France, Italy, the Pacific, fighting on the front lines.
…

In the longer article here – which is well worth your attention -- Steve drops in what are perhaps the most salient paragraphs:

National Service would be worse than a straight draft. If given a choice of the Army or civilian work, the vast majority taken into the Army would be the poor and unskilled. The Duke Class of 2008 would be working in offices and the poor kids would be humping rifles. Anyone with an option to avoid the Army would and those who couldn't would be sent to the colors.

The military isn't a jobs program, and it isn't an easy solution for social inequality.

Why do people believe this? There are two factions, one who wants to see the risk spread to more corners of society, and others, who think that the Army can create social equality.

Well then sign me up as tiny, third faction. A Fraction: minority opinions at budget prices. Because while I do not believe in the draft as a apparatus for democratizing or destratifying our class system, it is also undeniable that the military is most definitely our National Jobs Program, and has been for decades.

Army ads and recruiters since I was little certainly mentioned duty and honor, but the real Hard Sell was always jobs and college. The guys I grew up with, the ones that joined did so almost universally because they were bright and poor and had no scratch for college.

Hell, when base closure debates boil over, the argument is virtually never about risking national security.

It’s about jobs.

It is always, always, always about the economic impact of yanking X-number of soldiers or sailors out of my district.

And let’s be crystal clear. I am not arguing that the military should be a jobs program; I am arguing that it is, and has been for as long as I can remember.

So let’s talk about jobs and service for a little bit.

Some time ago, owing to some very weird circumstances, I had occasion to listen in on some hotel guys talking about their business.

Some depressed hotel guys.

There are lots of problems in their industry, but a lot of it comes down to this: Ideally, the people you want to manage properties have to go through what amounts to a long apprenticeship before they to get to the top. And once there, they aren’t going to make a ton of money.

So basically candidates are being offered the chance to slog through years of long, hard labor for the chance to make a salary they could otherwise get the day they walk out of a decent MBA program or law school. Or so they believe.

The hotel guys’ “solution” so far as I could tell (It was dim. There was liquor.) circled around these dual propositions:

1. Salary isn’t everything, and
2. Service to others is an honorable calling that needs to be revived in this country.

My reactions were:

1. You’re right.
2. You’re screwed.

Because any business plan that begins “OK, first we’ll reverse American culture to make people want to work for us” is doomed to fail.

Doomed, I tell’s ya, because we have done far, far too good a job in this country explaining to people in every social class, using words of one syllable, that if you do your thing for love or the common good, you’re a mush-skulled hippy idjit destined for a work farm, or a cardboard box on Super Lower Wacker, or a pauper’s grave after your cherce meats have been harvested.

We don’t have hero teachers and RNs here. I profoundly wish we did, but we don’t. We have “Wall Street” heroes. We have rock star pro athletes and CEOs who are paid like pashas for what are basically culturally irrelevant skills, and then celebrated for their salaries.

We honor privilege and bling, not service.

We tell people here, in no uncertain terms, that you aren’t what you do; you are what you’re paid, regardless of what iniquities you may commit to make your nut. And if you don’t play our American Game knives-out, you ‘re stupid.

And stupid people deserve what they get.

It is a perfect, brutal little downward spiral that makes us less humane and more bestial every day. And you can take the measure of a man – friend of foe – quick and easy by finding out if he stands opposed to this perversion of honorable living, or if he is counseling that we grease the skids, crank up the RPMs and make the abattoir run faster and more efficiently.

In other words, downsize and outsource faster!!

The WalMart model of keeping everyone too poor to shop anywhere else, working three jobs and skimping on health care to afford even that -- increasingly practiced in industry after industry from Detroit to Denver -- is the apotheosis of this vision of America: A few at the top, tens of expendable millions at the bottom, and nothing but statistical freaks and outliers in between.

End Part 1.

The Draft With Hospital Corners -- Part 2.

Let’s be clear about this, because the stakes could not be higher. The ideals of shared sacrifice and the nobility of service to neighbor and nation are good, old-fashioned American progressive values. This is who we are when we are at our best.

But WalMart is the Republican vision for America.

A place where the intermediating force of representative government is taken completely out of the mix, and the citizenry is pitted against and picked off one at a time by corporations that have billion-dollar pockets and keep Senators as pets.

Wanna strike for better working conditions? Sorry dumbass. Remember, you voted for people who gutted the labor movement.

Wanna bring suit against corporate malfeasance? Sorry. Remember, you voted for people who got rid of “activist judges” who might have heard you out. And remember, you voted for people who made sure “frivolous” lawsuits like yours never even make it to the bar.

Your kid screwed up a little bit? Sorry. Remember, you voted for people who believe in a vengeful and retributive system.

And so, after a layoff or a busted leg, you fall. And as your world turns to ash, to save your family you fling out your arms to catch ahold of a safety net that isn’t there anymore.

You want help? Jebus! What kind of weak loser needs help? And what kind of un-American commie degenerate would think its OK to confiscate to wages of decent Americans to pay to support your weak loser ass?

And too late you realize that Katrina was not an accident.

That Iraq was not a mistake.

That these are the shape of things to come. They are glimpses of Conservatives Heaven; places where the brown, the poor, the elderly, the sick and the young are left to die. Where government is gone. Where guns rule the streets. And where the wealthy grow fatter on no-bid contracts at a safe distance from the carnage.

And if in this radically asymmetrical future people lose their homes and pensions and schools and health care, fuck ‘em.

In the understandable euphoria following the routing of the GOP on November 7th, please remember that like the Cylons, they have not learned the error of their ways and gone away. Their software simply does not allow them to consider the possibility that they are wrong. Instead, Republicans are already regrouping, and will soon come roaring back out of the dark, more strident and hateful and pig-ignorant than ever.

So in that context, let’s talk about the military for a minute.

Our military represents our most progressive of values, but not because of the particulars of its construction or execution.

At least in theory, it is progressive in its rationale, because it is designed to protects us all, from sea to shining sea.

Unlike Separate But Equal No Child Left Behind Conservatives, the military does not operate as though the American children of one state or one city are less worthy of protection than American children in other places.

Unlike anti-choice Conservatives, the military does not function as though the rights of poor women are less worthy of defending than the rights of the rich.

Which circles us back around to The Draft.

And while I won’t go nearly as far down the road as this quote from Bob Heinlein -- "Any country that has to defend itself with forced conscripts is not worth defending.” – I agree with Steve that conscript armies are a bad idea and a draft will never be a means to progressivize the country.

However as long as we have a distinct Warrior Caste embedded in our democracy, as long as the military is a seen by the overclass as jobs program for throwaway people, as long as it’s considered weaponized welfare for the proles, made palatable to people who otherwise wouldn’t pry open their trust fund change purse to save another’s life by the promise that all the ordnance will be pointed outward at the targets of their whims, we will continue to have Iraqs in our future.

Because as long as the public is free to think of the military as found money -- as “they” -- and plead themselves out of the consequences of insanely irresponsible foreign policy adventures by reciting the Neocon Mantra of “They Volunteered”, we will continue to have the basic problem of Operation Endless Clusterfuck repeated over and over again: A lethal weapon in the hands of reckless, spoiled children.

Our national contempt for the idea of service to others, from its devaluation in the private sector, to open contempt for it as Evil Collectivism in the public sector (and brought to you as a part of the overall Republican plan to first discredit, and then eliminate the federal government) has encouraged large segments of the public to pervert their idea of the military from “public service” to “public property” (I forget where I first heard this very cogent construction – either AlterNet or Digby.)

A Conservative friend of mine recently tried to dampen my Happy Dance by reminding me that half of this country doesn’t vote at all, and around half of the rest still thinks like he does. And so for the majority of Americans the issues that people like me hold most dear are issues on which most people either never expend a moment’s thought, or are matters that people like him work to oppose.

Well, sorry, but my Happy Dance cannot be abated. However he was right about the public’s capacity to ignore damned near everything.

“Except,” I reminded him, “when it’s dropped in our back yard.”

On September 10th, 2001, I doubt one American in fifty could have pointed to Afghanistan on a map, or explained who the Taliban were, or how they had come into being. On that day terrorism was far away and confusing. Something someone somewhere was probably working on, but nothing for us to trouble ourselves with.

But by September 20th, 2001, we were a nation of experts-in-training. We were a nation of theories and maps that watched teevee broadcasts abruptly filled wall-to-wall with thoughtful authorities.

We were suddenly serious and trifles fell away.

We should never delude ourselves into believing that Selective Service can be used to flog this country towards some classless Utopia. That will never happen. However we as a nation can become very attentive almost overnight when our collective skin is thrown into the game, and perhaps with conscription – or at least with the idea of it in the air – we can induce a few million of our somnolent fellow citizens to bother joining our national conversation about what the fuck is being done in their name.

Bob Heinlein (mentioned above) also famously made “TANSTAAFL” (“There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”) the motto of his fictional lunar colonies in “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

And quite frankly I don’t think we are capable of having a grown-up discussion about war and peace until our national motto has become ““TANSTAAFA”:

“There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Army.”

Q: Is that a new interface in your pants

or are you just happy to see me?

A: All of the above.

File under: Big, schwingin’ technopriapism.

Dubya KRP’s Big Guy tries to explain…

…his latest, failed Iraqi tactic: “Operation Fuck Reality, Everything's Fine.”

“As God as my witness, I though this turkey would fly!”


Man, do I ever want to be a fly on the wall of the Annual Kennebunkport Turkey Jam and Jim-Beam-fueled Passive Aggressive Recrimination and Caber Toss.

I foresee a lot of slurred “You are not the boss of me, old man!” from one end of the table, and “Bar, would you tell Jim Baker to tell Mr.-Operation-I-Told-You-So-You-Drunken-Embarassment to pass the mashed potatoes?” from the other.

Sadly, I was not invited, and since this is a work-week on ‘roids for me, as I sprint through the castle between tasks, changing pants and tossing meat at the cat, let me just reprise this from my Avian Ritual Sacrifice Day post from 2005, now improved with YouTube for extra snarking goodness*...

To all you splendid moonbats out there, this is my early wish that each and every one of you have a Happy, Libidinous and Unabashedly Liberal Thanksgiving ;-)

Your pal,

d r i f t g l a s s

*

* And now, the Best. Thanksgiving. Promo. Evah.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down -- Part 1

“Pre-gaming.”

A term used by persons of a certain age when referring getting moderately and economically drunk at home before they go out and have to spend real money clubbing, it's also what happens while everyone mills around in late November waiting for Government to happen.

This Sunday’s Mouse Circus was all about meeting the Phenoms just up from the minors, seeing the veterans stretch, and seeing the Presidential wannabes preposition themselves for ’08.

Because the campaign never ends.

Began before it began. Chris Wallace set the Fox Table with various sleazy, slanted introductions. It was to be about “The Joke that almost derailed the Dem’s march to victory!” And that John Kerry has been “in hiding” after his “infamous” comments.

When I heard Kerry was going to be on, two thoughts – a question and answer – flashed immediately to mind.

First “WTF is Kerry doing on Fox?”

Then “Oh Jebus; he thinks he’s Clinton.”

But he’s not Clinton. He was just a tacking dummy. Because Wallace, being a troll in the pay of the thugs on Planet Murdoch, and having been soundly beaten into a puddle of aspic and shit by the Big Dog, desperately needed reassert his dubious manhood by beating on a Democrat.

And Kerry obliging walked right into the band saw.

So when Kerry answered the question once and tried to change the subject?

Wallace: No, sir. We’re gonna fucking well talk about The Joke, sir. We’re gonna dissect two-syllables and your endless, humiliating apologies, sir. And then maybe we’ll talk about other shit.

And that’s when Kerry should’ve raised or walked away.

He did neither. He stayed and played Wallace’s “Alan Colmes”, so for 90% of Kerry’s face time they talked about The Joke.

When Cheney shoots someone in the face, he goes on Fox to resuscitate his image. Or is the correct word “rehabilitate”? Disinter? Shit-sculpt his cancerous soul into a facsimile of something human? Whatever. He goes there because he knows Fox is the GOP Media Vaterland. That never will be heard a discouraging word about any Republican war criminal.

So why did Kerry go there?

Because he thought he could go to Mordor and rip Chris Wallace’s black, beating heart out of his chest. He thinks he’s Verbal Warrior Clinton and he’s most emphatically not. He’s a laminated plank. He’s as predictable and “agile” as a rusty Slinky oscillating at the bottom of an empty oil drum.

Kerry actually tried plead his case about the GOP Attack Machine -- which “kicked into full gear” which “knew full well what I meant to say” -- while sitting in the belly of that very beast. As if it were a neutral venue, proving yet again that Kerry – a man of many virtues – just plain sucks as a politician.

Kerry: I helped win this election. I worked my ass of two years to help Democrats win. I have lots of proposals…

Wallace: Dance, bitch!

Kerry: Only you are interested in talking about this.

Wallace: No, Sir. There are a lot of people – Republicans and Democrats – who want to hear you humiliate yourself again, Sir.

Wallace: Do you think its fair to call the Preznit stoopid and intellectual lazy, Sir!

Kerry: The insult is troops sent to war on a lie. With no armor. Under a SecDef …blah blah blah. The lesson I learned…


Wallace: No one gives a shit about the lesson you learned, Sir. You didn’t apologize good! That’s the issue.

And then we play ANOTHER clip of Kerry apologizing. Again.

And then the wheels come off.

Kerry: Why didn’t you play the part of the clip where I made it clear that…blah blah blah.

Wallace: I don’t think this is picayune, Sir!

Wallace: I want you to ask this question, Sir!

And now we’ll play a clip from a woman who thought your quote insulted her poor son.

Kerry apologized 9,716 times on Fox. And Wallace, going full Nelson Muntz, keep asking him, “Aren’t you damaged?” “Aren’t you a loser?” “Aren’t you a dumbass?”

“Why do you keep hitting yourself? Why do you keep hitting yourself? Why do you keep hitting yourself?”

So when Newt! came on and it was an actual relief.

Mostly Inside baseball, plus I don’t understand why in the fuck Dubya didn’t make his nods in the direction of flexibility a month before the election.

Wallace: It woulda looked desperate and political.

Newt: So what? Of course it’s inherently political.

Clinton went into the whale to get close enough to its arteries to administer a killing blow. Stick and move. Stick and move. Work the ropes, then work the body.

Kerry, on the other hand, fights like a Rock-Em Sock-Em robot in ten gallons of sandy molasses.

Straight ahead, throwing the same creaking punch – repeating the same failed, scripted quip and rejoinder -- over and over again.

Note to Kerry. Quit giggling and smiling and shuffling and sighing you lame-ass pussy. Quit trying to explain to Chris Wallace what you learned in Swiftboating School like he was your fucking Daddy and you’re showing him your grades.

Show, don't tell, you simpleton.

Wallace is your Enemy, so either lace up the gloves and beat him like a rented mule or stay the hell out of Big Boy politics.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down -- Part 2

Rangel starts the countdown clock for ending the Iraqi Debacle.

On Face the Nation.

Rep. Cholly Rangel – always a ball to watch – announces the End of The Iraq Debacle.

Damned right I called for a draft. And I will reintroduce it. I don’t see how anyone can support the war and not support the draft. This President and his Party would NEVER have gone into Iraq on the flimsy evidence they had, with the shitty strategy they had, with the Fortune Cookie post-invasion they knew their own children were going to have to pay the price.

Always so easy for cowards to send others off to die for their Glorious Causes.

Always so easy for other cowards to vote for them, shout for them, stomp for them…so long as they never have to pay any price or bear any burden.

Ah, but when the waiter comes back to the table and says your puling, bullshit, “They volunteered” credit card has been rejected? That now we’re coming for you -- for your daughter AND your ducats? That the Yellow Elephants and Wingnut Welfare queens no long have a bulletproof berth reserved at America’s leading Conservatard think tanks, but now have a seat set aside just for them in a Baghdad Purple Heart Mobile?

On that day, the war ends.

Because on that day, Republican trickle-down “Pro Patria Morti” comes rocketing right back up the pipe and firehosing out of Jenna and Not Jenna’s bidet.

Here are the Actuals via Yahoo News for you reality-bound punctiliants:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An influential Democratic lawmaker on Sunday called for reinstatement of the draft as a way to boost U.S. troop levels and draw a broader section of the population into the military or public service.

U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel (news, bio, voting record), the incoming chairman of the House of Representatives' tax-writing committee, said he would introduce legislation to reinstate the draft as soon as the new, Democratic-controlled Congress convenes in January.

Asked on CBS' "Face the Nation" if he was still serious about the proposal for a universal draft he raised a couple of years ago, he said, "You bet your life. Underscore serious."

…

And finally, because combing every golf course and whorehouse in the Universe for the “real killers” costs dough, O.J. Simpson needed to squeeze a more few pfennigs out of desecrating the dead again.

And who’s The Juice gonna turn to, to help him pimp his new “Uxoricide for Dummies” how-to manual?

Judith Regan and the Fox Network of course.

All of whom Bob Schieffer takes the time to properly shellac here...

I thought the Congressional Page scandal would surely win the most disgusting story of the year prize — but who knew O.J. Simpson would write a how-to manual describing the way he would have killed his wife, had he chosen to commit the crime.

Or that he would get two prime-time hours on Fox television to promote it?

In our country the law says a citizen who is found not guilty can't be tried again for the same crime.

So along came a publisher named Judith Regan who found a way to funnel millions of dollars to O.J. to write this trash.

And get this: she says one reason she did it was because she was once an abused wife. I'm just guessing here, but I'll bet another reason is she gets a cut of the profits.

She will personally conduct the two one-hour interviews that will air later this month on Fox Television, which — like Ms. Regan's company — is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

I've never been one to criticize competitors — it always sounds cheesy — but may I congratulate the Fox affiliate station owners and managers who have decided NOT to broadcast this dreadful thing being sent out by their network.

…

Way to go, Bob.


On…Meet the Press

Senators-elect Jim Webb and John Tester. In which the American public learns that earmarks are not little nicks left on Tester’s ears when his barber flat-tops him.

Webb and Tester talks about reversing the Two Tiering (Fiefication ™ driftglass) of America. Talking about the massive differences between Free and Fair Trade.

They talk about work and fairness and the middle class.

To which this fake reporter can only add, Halle-Fucking-Lujah.

cieran makes this point in the comments section:

I thought the salient feature of today's MTP was that the political guests (Senators-elect Webb and Tester) could actually form coherent sentences that made grammatical and intellectual sense.

After hearing little more than GOP idjits spewing half-truths and quarter-sentences on these teevee venues for the last few years, it was a breath of fresh air to listen to members of Congress who showed candor, perspective, intellect, and (thank gawd!) actual wit.

Couldn't agree more.

Way to go, Jim and John!

Then up: Ted Koppel and Robin Wright, but not that Robin Wright.



On This Week... Saint McCain continues his neverending campaign to promise to personally fellate every single voter in the country if they will just please, for the Sake of Sweet Baby Jesus let him be President already!!

Queers? Well St. McCain is against them, before he is for them. Says “No” to gay marriage. Civil union? Can’t force his old mouth form those word.

Doesn’t believe it’s a sin, though.

Kind of odd, don’t you think?

Because if it’s not a sin, why the fuck should it be outlawed? If it’s not immoral, whose fucking business is except those involved, Mr. Federalist?

Mr. Small Gummit?

Sorry, those are questions I would have asked. George Stephanopoulos chose not to. I wonder why?

We did learn that St. McCain firmly believe that we don’t need specific laws in the workplace to prevent discrimination…even though we really do. And he is quite sure that the military doesn’t classify homosexuality as abnormal…even though it really does.

So is he now just a doddering, cranky old man incapable of comprehending these basic facts? Or is he just angling for the “Don’t confuse me with Reality” Republican Base?

What he does make clear is that he is a Federalist, apparently in the proud tradition of Jefferson Davis and George Wallace. He supports the overturning of Roe v. Wade because those things should be a matter for each state to decide.

driftglass translation: the basic human rights of women in Alabama and South Dakota are different than the basic human rights of women in Illinois and Washington. The basic human rights of the women in well-off families who will be able to afford to fly to where abortion is perfectly legal are different than basic human rights of poor women who will be stranded in 19th century Red State pest-holes.

You could practically hear him whispering “interposition and nullification” under his breathe as he labored to keep his temper in check.

And considering that he was carefully and obviously reading from prepared text, why don’t they just send McCain’s notes next time and let him sleep in? Maybe hire Fred Thompson to read them for him?

St. McCain was also clear that even though the Commander-in-Chief and his Generals all say we cannot make productive use of more troops in Iraq, he thinks we need ‘em anyway.

And will only advocate getting out “When I’m convinced that every option has been exhausted.” And while some say that this is McCain’s no-lose position, more and more it looks like the cynically empty posturing of an old man playing out his final bid for the Big Chair.

Stephanopoulos drops the friedman card on the table which seems to irritate and flummox the Great Man.

Fareed Zakaria sums it up reasonably well...

(h/t Think Progress…)

ZAKARIA: Senator McCain who I have a lot of respect and like him has been saying for three years we needed more troops. His policy today will not work. We have enough troops to go after Muqtada al-Sadr, the key Shiite religious leader whose militia is causing us this trouble. We can’t do it because the Iraqi government won’t let us. It is causing enormous political pressure. So right now we have an Iraqi government that does not allow us to search for our own soldier. We had to abandon a search, is in cahoots with a shiite militia that has captured americans. The point is not here that you need a military or political solution. Obviously you need both. The point is we have an iraqi government that cannot, will not make any of the decisions that will supplement this military.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Even if we had more troops it wouldn’t work?

ZAKARIA: There is no question that if you had more troops and still can’t go after the militias, can’t offer amnesty to the Sunni insurgents, the core political decisions we have to make do not depend on more troops but political compromises that this government, this ruling coalition can’t make. Sending in more troops in that context is just willing more american deaths.

When Josef Stalin wanted to show his contempt for the empty posturing of the Pope, he famously asked “How many divisions does the Pope have?”

So how many divisions do you have, St. McCain?

The world awaits your answer.