Stumbled upon a really interesting piece by Brian Eno (I'm going to assume it's the musician/producer Brian Eno, since I don't think there could be that many other Brian Enos out there) about the propaganda element to the war on Iraq. It speaks to a question I asked myself almost from the very beginning — Why did Iraq become so important all the sudden?
The Bush administration claimed that Iraq was this serious threat that had to be dealt with right away, but let's be honest here: The policy of "containment," if you want to call it that, had worked with Iraq for more than a decade: We don't bother them, they don't bother us. And even if Saddam did get some out-of-the-blue notion that he wanted to attack the U.S., all he'd have to do is be reminded of the way we routed his army out of Kuwait in 1991. What incentive would he have, then, to mount an attack that would almost certainly result in his annihilation by U.S. forces?
After getting their tails kicked out of Kuwait, the Iraqis were pretty much just sitting there for better than 10 years. They didn't attack any other countries in the Middle East. They weren't involved in 9/11. There was no conclusive proof that they were mounting a WMD program, much less one that they might actually use against the United States. So why did Bush just up and decide one day in 2002 that Iraq was a threat we had to deal with, right away, with war? And how did he get so many people to buy into that plan?
The Iraq war is like one of those videocassette rewinders you always used to see advertised in the Sharper Image catalogs and a bunch of other places. There's absolutely no need for a videocassette rewinder, because if you have videocassettes then you have a VCR, and your VCR can rewind videocassettes on its own. But somebody came up with this idea that people had to have a separate appliance to rewind their videocassettes, and not only that, he apparently got people to believe such a device was a vital necessity in their households. Now, years later, people are scratching their heads and asking, "What on earth did I think I needed this for?"
We may think we have all the answers, but I have a sneaking suspicion that 20 years from now, we're going to look back and ask ourselves, "Invade Iraq? What the hell did we do that for?" And nobody's quite going to be able to figure it out.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:36 AM
Thursday, August 14, 2003
Parting shot
If George W. Bush can take an entire freakin' month off to go chill at his ranch in Crawford, I can take four lousy days to go clear my head at the beach (and by "clear my head" I mean "sit out in the blazing sun and drink myself silly"). Given the work frustrations and the $5,720 car accident that occurred in the past couple weeks, I think I've earned as much. So basically what this means is I won't be ranting for the next few days, Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot will be on a one-week hiatus, et cetera et cetera. But I did catch a glimpse of this week's Coulter screed and I'll be happy to summarize it for you: Gray Davis sucks, Gray Davis is a friend of Bill Clinton's, Gray Davis' recall is a symbol of liberalism's failed policies in California, blah blah blah. Ever notice how when something bad happens, like California's budget crisis, it's entirely the fault of a Democrat (as opposed to a Republican like, oh, Pete Wilson, who ran California for eight years prior to Davis) -- but when something good happens, like the economic boom of the 1990s, the Democrat in office gets no credit because it's all due to Republicans who were in office a decade ago or more? Interesting concept of historic causality, that.
One aspect of the recall that's kind of flying under the radar at this point, though, is Bush's refusal to make any sort of definitive comment on the whole thing. The state GOP chairman says that's because it would put a "partisan veneer" on an event that has no partisan motivation (right, tell me another one). But an article in the July 14 issue of Time suggested that the Bush administration might not actually want a new Republican governor in Sacramento -- with the '04 presidential election coming up, it might be better to have an unpopular Democratic guv that they can continue to blame the state's fiscal disasters on. (An admission on their part that the problems are going to linger no matter who's in office? Hmmm...could be.) Oh, Arnold, I hope you know what you're getting into.
Alabama's lookin' better all the time, huh?
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 7:44 AM
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
They blinded me with science
Every time there's a particularly cold winter or a major blizzard that brings the northeast to a grinding halt, the conservatives smugly crow about how global warming can't possibly be real if there's a foot of snow right outside their door. This is sort of like saying the theory of evolution is bunk because you look exactly like your dad, but nevertheless, it's interesting that nobody on the right wing has been prompted to alter their position even in light of the massive record-setting heat wave that's killing people all across Europe. I mean, if the temperature trend in a single year is enough to prove or disprove global warming, this would pretty much be enough, wouldn't you think?
Well, no, because that's stupid. What isn't stupid is this study that predicts the polar ice caps will melt completely in 100 years if CO2 emissions continue at their current rates. Over/under on how long it will take the Bush administration to dismiss this as "junk science" or some variant thereof: 38 hours.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:40 PM
ATTENTION! ATTENTION! URGENT NEWS BULLETIN — MAJOR NEW DEVELOPMENT IN CALIFORNIA GUBERNATORIAL RECALL!
In an announcement posted under the "BREAKING NEWS" section of his Web site, right-wing radio commentator Michael "Savage" Weiner has confirmed he will not run as a candidate in California's upcoming recall election to replace Gov. Gray Davis. As an entire state stands in shock, stay tuned to GWBWYPGN for continuing updates on this stunning development, which will undoubtedly have a monumental effect on the future of not just the election but the entire state of California.
In other news, "American Idol" winner Ruben Studdard announced he will not be seeking a spot on the 2004 U.S. Olympic track and field team.
Ah, it's good to laugh again.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 2:37 PM
The Bush administration's guide to "Changing the Tone": Step 1 — Shut everyone up
An interesting analysis in USA Today about how Bush and the Republicans have been able to keep people from snooping around in stuff like the intelligence that led us to war with Iraq, Dick Cheney's dealings with Halliburton, and a host of other things. Now that the special-counsel law has expired, and the Republicans who control the White House and both houses of Congress have no desire to bring it back up again, anyone who wants an investigation into Bush administration malfeasance has to request a special counsel from John Ashcroft. And — big shocker here, so you better sit down — Ashcroft has refused them every single time, presumably because he's too busy denying legal counsel to "foreign combatants" and prosecuting terminally ill people in Oregon who want to kill themselves.
Hmmm. So we desperately needed a special counsel to issue an exhaustive report on Monica Lewinsky's favorite oral-sex techniques, but on trumped-up intelligence about Iraqi weapons capabilities and Dick Cheney's former employer getting the fattest Iraqi reconstruction contacts...not so much. Yes, I definitely like where this country's priorities are headed.
The most galling aspect, though, is the Bush administration's take on all this. With typical born-on-third-base-but-thought-he-hit-a-triple hubris, Bush is giving himself props for "changing the tone" in Washington.
"The American people want us to be forward-looking and want us to work together to get things done, not to continue to settle political scores from the past or score political points," [White House Spokesman Scott McClellan] says. "There is an ugly side of Washington's recent past, and Americans will not look kindly upon partisans or presidential candidates who seek to exploit unsubstantiated rumors or innuendo for political gain."
Oh. My. God. I didn't really just read that, did I? If I did, could somebody please beat me with a sledgehammer? Settling political scores and exploiting innuendo is just fine and dandy during the Clinton years, but now that there's a Republican in the White House we are expected to "not look kindly" on such shenanigans? It's been a long time since I've wanted to hurl myself out a 24th-floor window this bad. Standards don't get much more double than this.
For more on the contrast between the GOP's willingness to dish it out and their complete refusal to take it, peep E.J. Dionne's very enlightening column in today's Washington Post. In the meantime, I'll just remind Bush and his pals that shutting up all your critics doesn't automatically qualify as "changing the tone." And why should we give "changing the tone" credit to the right-wingers who dragged the tone down to the level of professional wrestling to begin with?
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 11:33 AM
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Fox News: You satirize. We complain.
Putting the "puh" in puh-leeze for today: Fox News is suing Al Franken because his latest book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, has the subtitle "A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." "Fair and Balanced," of course, is the slogan for Fox News. (If I didn't know better, I'd swear I sensed Bill O'Reilly's hand in this, given how Franken completely made him look like the ass that he is at their much-publicized recent joint appearance.)
Putting aside for a moment the fact that Fox News is "fair and balanced" only in the sense that the International House of Pancakes is "International," does Fox News think that just because they registered "fair and balanced" as their slogan, nobody else has the right to use those three words together ever? Are we going to have to start writing 20-cent checks to Fox News every time we use the phrase "fair and balanced" in a conversation? Registering that phrase as your trademarked slogan only means nobody else can use it as their trademarked slogan to sell their products or services. If Franken wants to use it as part of a title of a book, ain't nothin' they can do about it.
Of course, Fox doesn't actually expect to get any monetary damages out of this, they'll just wait until Franken and his finances are sufficiently worn down by the protracted legal battle that he changes the title himself. And "fair and balanced" news organization that they are, they've already gone to smearing Franken as "shrill and unbalanced." (Which prompted MSNBC's Keith Olbermann to respond: "This from the network that hired Geraldo Rivera.") But Fox News, just like Dr. Laura, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter and so many others before them, only uses tough talk to disguise the fact that they're a bunch of whiny, no-fayyyyer little bitches who kick and scream anytime something goes even remotely different from the way they'd like. So tired of liberals always being the ones slagged off as whiners. So, so tired.
And if you're interested in the truth behind the whole "liberal media" hoo-ha for which Fox News is trying so hard to be the "fair and balanced" antidote, check out the dope on this study, which says "liberal"-identified newspapers were far more likely to criticize Clinton than any of their conservative counterparts are to treat Republicans similarly. Wait, so all these "fair and balanced" alternatives are in actuality more politically biased than anyone else? You don't say!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 2:52 PM
What Have You Done for Me Lately?
Jeez, Doug, aren't you missing the bigger picture here? I mean, what has "W" done for you? Nothing short of giving you the most entertaining three years in U.S. politics since the sixties.
Sure, the response to 9/11 has been at best weak and ineffectual and at worst murderous, deceitful and illegal, and the economy may still be in the crapper, and the tax cut will benefit only the very few whose finances bear the name "portfolio" (a word most of the Americans he claims it would benefit can't spell or pronounce), and all eco-measures that have been taken amount to nothing more than giant logging contracts and attempted drilling in state parks. But come on, did anyone really expect an oil baron Texan to give a crap about the environment, especially after his first move in office was to withdraw from the Kyoto Accords?
So what has he done? What makes him still a favorite of the American people? Number one, he's a riot. Yes, whether intentional or not, whether it's him stumbling over a common phrase in a speech or tumbling off a Segway, or the few moments he causes laughter when he actually means to, the guy is entertaining. Even if he infuriates you, he gives you something to talk about.
Number two, he is the perfect ugly American. He fits the stereotype in every conceivable way: he is suspicious of foreigners; he values action over words and thought; he hates Europe but seems to be able to tolerate the British (even if Blair was a bit stuffy over the "pray with me" bit); he is a born-again Christian, and like most Americans, drugs and alcohol were the midwife; he loves junk food and his diet is the same a six-year-old would have if it were up to him/her; he distrusts intellectuals and bears resentment for them; he has a shoot first and ask questions later approach to everything; when asked to logically define his views, he wraps himself in the flag and avoids the question. To paraphrase Dennis Leary, "He likes football, and porno, and books about war." Tell me that isn't America. Tell me that is not an exact description of every middle-class schlub you've run into at a bar or in a mall or at a sporting event.
The truth is, as I pointed out in an editorial long ago, there is a cultural war going on in this country between those too stupid to live and those too smart to stay. It's everywhere. The bullet holes and bomb craters are the ads you see on TV, the reality shows, the conversations you overhear, the bestseller lists, the O'Reillys, the Anne Coulters, the Ya-Ya sisterhoods, the chicken soups for the soul, the Applebees and the TGIf's, and all the other garbage that spills forth as part of our GNP. George Bush is the perfect representative for one side, and unfortunately that's the side that's winning. The upcoming election doesn't merely represent a watershed political decision, it represents a major if not ultimate battle in this war. As we both heard from a colleague who calls herself a child of the sixties, "the country has never been this divided." Bush's re-election will signal a significant defeat of the thinking person's America, because anyone who thinks for themself couldn't posssibly vote for such a disaster of a President, but hey, isn't it fun to have somone you love to hate?
# Once again back is the incredible stanley at 12:14 PM
Blog shout-out No. 1
If you're one of the few people in the blogosphere who haven't checked out Tony Pierce's blog, you need to. Good stuff. Pierce is a dude who's kind of achieved cult status, and deservedly so.
Normally he doesn't delve too deeply into politics, preferring to stay focused on entertainment, Cubs baseball, and the legions of beautiful women packing his home turf of L.A. (for which nobody can blame him). But I'd like to quote from a recent post, if I may.
in a more logical world the end of the bush dynasty would mean the end of the republican party: nothing this man or this office has done was successful. none of it was honorable. the economy stupid is in the tank. morality is in the tank. you cant tell me that even one of those suits or skirts can communicate their vision...
...its all just capture the flag for this generation. i want i want i want. not heres what we can do. or look at that. or here you go.
Think about that for a second, GOPers, and realize the truth of what he's saying — you guys blow a gasket anytime somebody dares to criticize your heroic flight-suit-wearing Commander-in-Chief, but really, can you tell me one way in which my life is better because of something Bush has done?
Did invading Iraq make me safer? No. Have the tax cuts made me more financially secure? No. Has the gutting of environmental legislation made the world one bit cleaner? No.
I just wish someone would answer for me this question, straight-up: Why do you think Bush is a good president? Because he cares about national security? Because he cares about the economy? Well, that's sweet of him, really, but all the caring in the world isn't going to accomplish squat if the policies are asinine. (And aren't the Republicans the ones who always used to scoff at Clinton for "caring" about such-and-such and "feeling your pain"?)
If you insist on voting for W. because he's succeeded in scaring you into thinking he's the only one who can guide us through this turbulent period in history, well, I guess there's only but so much I can do to change your mind — but I'm not falling for it. And I feel sorry for you.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 11:12 AM
Monday, August 11, 2003
Like oil for democracy
NATO has assumed the peacekeeping duties in Afghanistan, we are informed. Gosh, just like I suggested doing in Iraq with the UN! But so why does the U.S. deem Afghanistan fit to be managed by people other than ourselves, while not willing to give Iraq up to the same type of system? Might it be all that oil Iraq has that we don't want anyone else getting control of? Mightn't it, indeed.
But let's not anyone get too happy about all that oil in Iraq, because apparently nobody who knows anything about Iraqi oil seriously believes that simply getting the oil flowing again (assuming we can even do that much) is going to solve Iraq's substantial problems. "Precious resources alone...rarely raise nations from poverty to prosperity," the article reads ��the implication being that all the oil revenue ends up in the hands of a few powerful people, with the middle class that would supposedly benefit from all this prosperity ending up with nothing. Heh, looks like we might end up making postwar Iraq more like America than we anticipated.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 4:34 PM
All over but the shoutin'
Republican Sen. Dick Lugar has added his name to the list of people who have noticed that the Bush administration and its pals in the Pentagon generally did a lousy job of predicting how tough it would be to stabilize Iraq once the war ended. (Although you could debate whether the war has really ended, since American servicemen are still getting popped over there. But Bush, of course, will helpfully remind us that the war's not over, just the major combat operations. That's why he strung that big-ass "Mission Accomplished" banner across the USS Abraham Lincoln a few months ago. Somehow, though, I'm still waiting with bated breath for a pursed-lip explanation from Bush about what "the definition of war is.")
OK, getting off track. The bigger issue here is that for really the first time, a prominent Republican (Lugar chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) is stepping up to say, "You guys screwed this up." You'd think it would be very risky for a Republican to criticize the presumptive leader of his party when said leader still commands such political capital.
But Lugar is speaking to a concern many of us lefties have had ever since the administration started beating the war drums: This seems to be the Official Presidency of Painting Yourself Into a Corner. Bush started yammering about what a major threat Iraq posed long before UN weapons inspectors had so much as set foot in Iraq; when the inspectors started coming up empty, of course, Bush couldn't just say, "Oh, well, guess they weren't all that dangerous after all, my bad," so he had to continue ratcheting things up. Eventually he got to the point where he was unequivocally calling for war, and even when our former allies deserted us and Iraq started dismantling missiles, Bush couldn't say "OK, well, looks like we don't need a war after all," partly because he'd look like a wuss after all his calls for just that, partly because war was what many in his administration were angling for from the very beginning. Now that we're stuck in a lousy situation where Iraq is a shambles and our troops have big bullseyes on their backs, we can't just pull out, because that would leave a huge leadership vacuum in the country, not to mention make the U.S. look like a drunk party guest that trashes the place and then leaves the clean-up for somebody else.
Bush is a guy who just refuses to leave himself an out. And when I hear conservatives applaud that intractability as a sign that he knows what he wants and doesn't stop till he gets it, I just wanted to pull my hair out by the roots. Determination is generally a good thing, but single-minded determination is somewhat less good, and single-minded determination in pursuit of an asinine goal is just plain aggravating. You may say "I know where we're going and I ain't stopping 'till we get there," but are you still saying that when your car smashes through the "Do Not Enter" barrier and heads over the cliff?
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:46 AM
Saturday, August 09, 2003
Soros to the rescue!
Billionaire progressive George Soros has stepped up to try and close the fundraising gap a little bit between the Dems and George Bush. You go, George. Bush is still way out in front, but this is a start.
Republicans aren't too keen on Soros because most of his philanthropy goes to left-identified causes, but it'll be interesting to see how much criticism he actually ends up taking from them for this latest move. Doubtless a lot of conservatives will be pissed simply because a rich guy somewhere is not pulling for them. Dammit, George, you're a billionaire now, you're supposed to be behind us now instead of slumming it with the hippies! I wait with baited breath for the inevitable snide remark from Ann Coulter, who's probably burning the midnight oil as we speak to uncover some piece of evidence exposing Soros as a commie sympathizer in some fashion. (Then again, Ann Coulter being to actual research what the DMV is to customer service, perhaps not.)
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 2:20 AM
Friday, August 08, 2003
'Just 16 little words,' huh?
This story makes it look as though the Nigerian yellowcake allegation Bush made in the State of the Union was anything but a minor part of the administration's push for war — and they were repeating it to anyone who would listen even after serious doubts were raised about the intelligence itself.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 12:11 PM
To the victor's buddies go the spoils
Halliburton is dominating the rebuilding work in Iraq to the point where even Bechtel is dropping out. Yikes.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 10:56 AM
The man who should be king
If you've heard about the stirring speech that Al Gore gave at NYU the other day and want the full text of it, here it is.
Quite a guy, that Al Gore. Wouldn't have made a bad president. Kind of wish we still had him around. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for that guy he chose as his running mate.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:28 AM
Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn’t Even That Hot: Third in a series
Here at Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn’t Even That Hot, we like to think that we’re intelligent, creative people, but we’re not magicians. When Ann decides to go on autopilot for a given weekend, shifting gears from hyperbolic, outrageous demagoguery to mere historical dead-horse-flogging (which she’s done quite a bit of since the release of her latest book, Treason), we can only make it but so entertaining. Such is the case with this week’s offering, another of her pseudo-scholarly attempts to breathe life into the decaying corpse of liberal "treason" during the Cold War and, of course, sell more books in the process.
But as Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann so often reminded us on "SportsCenter," "A good artist never blames his tools" — and we will not permit Coulter’s mediocrity to deter us from dissecting her rote right-wing histrionics. We can’t promise that her latest screed will be entertaining, not even in the NASCAR-pileup way in which all her other ones are — as far as rhetorical flaming bags of dog poop left on the doorstep of American political debate are concerned, this one’s barely smoldering. But we can promise it will be factually incorrect, logically defective, and poorly written. So without further ado, here’s "When Good Historians Go Bad":
Arnold Beichman recently wrote a column attacking my latest book, "Treason" — which he at least admits he didn’t read — claiming he has the "names of ‘innocent lives’ Mr. McCarthy ruined." I was excited to see it. I’ve been asking for just one innocent person ruined by Joe McCarthy for six weeks, but until now all I had gotten was wild speculation about my personal life.
Alger Hiss. Boom! We named one, where’s our prize? (And on an unrelated note, if Ann Coulter can toss unsubstantiated rape accusations at Bill Clinton and accuse every single Democrat of adultery, where does she get off whining about "wild speculation about [her] personal life"?
But strangely, while Beichman claims to have the names of McCarthy’s innocent victims, he declines to mention them. (It’s been almost 50 years and these people still won’t name names.) Instead he offers to send me "one of the most important testimonies about McCarthyism" by "one of our leading Sinologists" — if I provide my address. Since Beichman ain’t getting my address, I’ve looked up the article on my own.
Here’s a picture of Beichman:
Now, what is Coulter afraid of with this "ain’t getting my address" preening? That Beichman’s gonna stalk her or send her some nude pictures of himself or something? The guy’s in his sixties, for Christ’s sake! What are you, some kind of wuss? (Or just someone with an outrageously overinflated opinion of herself — yeah, that one sounds good.)
It contains the names of precisely two people allegedly destroyed by McCarthy.
Since you asked for the name of "just one innocent person ruined by Joe McCarthy," we’d say Arnie fulfilled his end of the deal.
The author of this "illuminating article on Joe McCarthy" is one Richard Walker. He didn’t allot much space for the discussion of McCarthy’s victims, inasmuch as the article consisted primarily of Walker’s reminiscences about himself. I quote:
o "In 1953 I published my book ‘The Multi-State System of Ancient China.’ The reaction from the scholarly world was very good."
o "One distinguished scholar — who shall remain nameless but who will appear in this narrative again in the context of events that happened a few years later — wrote to me, ‘I wish to send my congratulations. I find it excellent and marvel at the mass of literature you went through to reach your conclusions…’ "
o "Other reviewers praised the volume."
o "Two of my graduate students, who subsequently received their doctorates from Yale, attended the meeting and told me what transpired. Following a few toasts and rounds of drinks, professor Derk Bodde (who was one of the first to apply for the post I was vacating at Yale) rose and announced, ‘I propose a toast! We finally got Dick Walker!’ "
An author talking up his book? Well how dare he! Notice how Ann goes off on a five-paragraph tangent beating us over the head with Walker’s self-promotion, in an apparent effort to distract us from the fact that she really hasn’t got anything to say about Walker’s actual opinions.
Beichman wearily explained he refused to read my book because "life is too short." But life is not so short that it cannot be filled with days reading Dick Walker quoting people lauding Dick Walker. (How can I add my name to the list of people whose lives were ruined by Dick Walker?)
If Beichman wouldn’t read your book, what makes you think you had a gun to your head forcing you to read the column he sent? (And by the way, it took you "days" to read the column?)
But the point is, anyone who advertises his own pathological need for establishmentarian approval is not likely to be found praising Joe McCarthy. Still — though Beichman finds it absolutely urgent that I read Walker’s piece — the only specific charge against McCarthy in the entire groaning article is this: "McCarthyism destroyed the careers of a number of fine China specialists in the Foreign Service. What happened to Oliver Edmund Clubb and John Paton Davies was a discreditable chapter in the defense of State Department professionals who were rendering honest service to their country."
We're nodding off, Ann. Get to the good stuff.
Davies and Clubb were among the WASP three-names who helped relinquish China to communist mass murderers — John Carter Vincent, John Stewart Service, John Paton Davies and Oliver Edmund Clubb.
See, was that so hard? "Helped relinquish China to communist mass murderers"! We knew we’d get to some out-and-out slander eventually.
Leaving aside the intriguing facts about Oliver Edmund Clubb, this was not a case instigated by McCarthy, but rather by one of Beichman’s heroes, Whittaker Chambers.
"Leaving aside the intriguing facts about Oliver Edmund Clubb," hmmm…does it sound like she might be glossing something over here?
Indeed, Chambers says as much in his book "Witness" — a book Beichman has praised, saying "few autobiographies are as moving and as instructive about the meaning of communism." I’ve read the article by Richard Walker. Now Beichman ought to actually read "Witness."
Let’s cut the crap here: Coulter would have you believe that Beichman, because he has the gall to condemn her hero McCarthy, is some kind of lily-livered, commie-appeasing, hippie-loving traitor. But right there she has Beichman praising a book by Whitaker Chambers, the guy who achieved hero status with Coulter’s brand of right-wingers because he rolled over on Alger Hiss during the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings of the late ’40s. (Chambers said his evidence against Hiss was the real deal because he and Hiss were close friends — despite the fact that he got many critical facts wrong about Hiss in his sworn testimony.) So anyway, here’s Beichman praising Chambers’ autobiography. How could he be a soft-on-communism leftie?
Because he isn’t! Arnold Beichman is a fellow at the Hoover Institution who also writes for the right-wing Washington Times and the Weekly Standard. He has written a book called Anti-American Myths: Their Causes and Consequences, among numerous other titles. Read this Beichman column (in the National Review Online, no less), which among other things bandies about accusations of "Severe Acute America-Hating Syndrome," and see if you don’t think it could’ve been written by Ann Coulter herself.
So what’s Ann more angry about: The fact that someone’s disagreeing with her, or the fact that that person is a member of her own political ideology? Evidently Ann’s beloved concept of Joe McCarthy as Brave Communist-Fighting Hero is so warped that not even her fellow right-wingers will defend it. We bet it sucks to be hung out to dry like that, and oooohhhh, it probably makes her mad!
As for John Paton Davies, as a Foreign Service officer, he issued flagrantly pro-communist propaganda in his reports from China, insisting that the United States abandon our ally Chiang Kai-shek and work with the communists.
Given Coulter’s penchant for exaggeration, overgeneralization and slander, she might find the statement "I visited Beijing last summer and it was lovely" to be "flagrantly pro-communist propaganda," so you’d be advised to take that with a Price Club economy-sized grain of salt. And if "working with communists" is such a mortal sin, we hope nobody tells her that — get ready for this one — Russia was one of the countries who helped us win World War II.
The future of China, Davies said, is not Chiang’s, but theirs. Or, as the Washington Post put it in Davies’ obituary, Davies’ reports "advised a more nuanced approach to communism in China than was politically palatable." (In the sense that Benedict Arnold took a more "nuanced" approach toward the American Revolution than was politically palatable.)
In addition, a Senate committee recommended that Davies be tried for perjury for denying that he had recommended various communists and communist sympathizers to the CIA. He was investigated more than half a dozen times by the State Department. Eventually, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles — no fan of McCarthy’s — asked Davies to resign.
Evidence that Davies’ career was "destroyed" by McCarthy consists of rafts of platitudinous, worshipful mentions of his name, hagiographic obituaries, the "John Paton Davies Lecture Series" at Deerfield Academy — and even his return to the State Department in 1969 to work on disarmament issues.
As you can see by this document, dated 1951, it’s hard to make a real strong case that Davies was a commie sympathizer. If Davies advised against directly engaging Red China in a military sense, it’s because he wanted to avoid starting World War III (though that makes him a peace-lover, and we know what kind of contempt Ann has for wimps like that). Also note, though, Davies’ statement that if U.S. forces were caught up in a U.S.-China war, it would give Russia a convenient window to take advantage by expanding their hold on Europe. Tell us again why this guy’s a Commie-lover?
Most important, there is an iron-clad taboo against blaming communist-sympathizing Foreign Service officers like Davies for the loss of China. You can say the neoconservatives single-handedly took the nation to war with Iraq, but you cannot say that a band of pro-Mao Foreign Service agents in China had any effect on Mao’s triumph in China.
Democrats lose entire continents to totalitarian monsters, lose wars to bloody tyrants, lose countries to Islamic fascists, and then insist that everyone recite the liberal catechism: "No one lost China," "Vietnam was an unwinnable war," "Khomeini’s rise to power was inevitable." (Conversely, Ronald Reagan didn’t "win" the Cold War; it just ended.)
Conversely? No, this sounds pretty consistent to us: Neither Democrats nor Republicans can either "win" or "lose" entire countries or continents on their own. (By the way, can somebody remind us which "entire continents" Democrats lost to totalitarian monsters? We seem to have forgotten.)
Of course, if she really wants to get into a partisan pissing match over who’s the bigger geopolitical badass, then we’d get to remind her that Democrats guided the country to victory in both world wars; stared down the Russians until they yanked their nukes out of Cuba; and engineered a peaceful coexistence between Israel and Egypt. Republicans, meanwhile, pulled our troops out of that war in Vietnam she liked so much, and let that naughty Saddam Hussein off the hook in Gulf War I. Wrap your brain around that one, Ann.
At the time, the State Department even issued an 800-page "White Paper" purporting to prove the communist takeover of China was inevitable. Despite these heroic efforts, a Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans did not buy the "inevitability" excuse.
So on questions of diplomatic relations with China, we should trust not the career diplomats of the State Department, but rather a thousand or so people Gallup phoned up at random. How very democratic of her.
If Foreign Service officers like Davies can’t be blamed for the loss of China, why is Joe McCarthy blamed for the loss of Davies’ job? Maybe that was "inevitable," too.
It is not clear how one goes about delineating with absolute certainty where "inevitability" ends and "traitorous incompetence" begins. I will leave that to metaphysicians like Arnold Beichman. Still, what kind of argument is that?
Well, it just wouldn’t be an Ann Coulter column without a paper-thin accusation of treason.
The claim that nobody could have saved China is the most amazing Democratic dodge ever. Perhaps in the chaos of Weimar Republic, Hitler’s rise to power was also inevitable. But it is unlikely that we would feel much warmth toward Nazi stooges feverishly working in the State Department to reach out to Hitler on the grounds that his rise was "inevitable." Would our anger be assuaged if we were informed their hard work didn’t really help? They tried to help Hitler, but their assistance was superfluous. Let’s move on.
Did Coulter bring out one shred of evidence that John Paton Davies collaborated in any way with the Mao regime, or even that he was pro-communist in any way? If she did, we must have blinked and missed it.
Whether or not China could have been saved from communism, it is a fact that the WASP three-names like John Paton Davies weren’t trying to save it.
So even if China couldn’t have been "saved" from the commies, Ann would still be laying into members of a 50-year-old administration for not working their asses off for a futile cause. What a terrific expenditure of our national energies — and what a terrific reason to slander a former diplomat as a commie-lover. We can only guess how short on material Ann was this week if an issue like this was the best thing she could find to stir up.
We’re disappointed in your effort this week, Ann. Surely you’ve got better things to do than try to defrost a moldy old insult like "communist sympathizer" — that’s like the "solid gone, daddy-o" of political epithets. And try to come up with something more relevant than knocking the legs out from under a member of your own political party just because he doesn’t kiss an autographed photo of Tailgunner Joe before he goes to bed every night. Go home, put some Perry Como on the record player, drink a nice warm cup of Ovaltine, and get to work — we at Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn’t Even That Hot are counting on you! Ciao!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:01 AM
...And the Bush administration begs the Democrats not to throw its judicial appointees in the briar patch
Interesting take by Tom Teepen today on why exactly Bush is going through all this trouble to nominate radically right-of-center judicial appointees. Hadn't considered that he might deliberately be picking unpalatable judges not in spite of the fact that it would result in a fight, but because of.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:24 AM
Thursday, August 07, 2003
Do as I say (and what I say), not as I do
Remember all those Republican claims that they want to respect local governments, and leave decisions up to them? Well, once again it turns out that's a big load of crap. Whose fault is it this time? Why, John Ashcroft's, of course.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:37 PM
Scratch that...
Well, whatever the California recall campaign indulges, it apparently won't be Darrell Issa's hubris anymore. So the guy who got the whole recall ball rolling in the first place won't even be running...que curiosidad. Since that still leaves about 400 people in the mix for the governor's race, though, I doubt anyone will even notice.
Of course, the fact that so many people want the California governor's job (and all the baggage that currently comes with it) tends to prove how whacked California is in the first place.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 4:16 PM
Suppose they gave an election and everybody came?
While driving from Columbus, Ga., back up to Birmingham at the ass-crack of dawn today, I listened to an NPR report on the colossal farce that the California gubernatorial recall has become — at present, upwards of 300 people have declared candidacies, and the expert they talked to said she wouldn't be surprised to see as many as 500 by the time the filing deadline rolls around on Saturday. The field, as many of you know by now, includes Rep. Darrell Issa, who bankrolled the recall effort to begin with (and is so vain he probably thinks the election is about him); Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, who expects an endorsement from the Christian Coalition any day now; Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who now has to look down at his feet whenever he passes Gray Davis in the hallway; and, of course...Arnold Schwarzenegger.
If you're looking for me to ridicule a Schwarzenegger candidacy, well, you're going to have to look elsewhere. Sure, he's played characters like Conan the Barbarian and Terminator and blah blah blah, but...get past the thick-as-schlagobers Austrian accent and Ahnuld is actually a pretty intelligent guy. Knows his policy on a surprising number of issues, education being probably the biggest, and despite being a Republican, he's not a raving right-wing lunatic. Could he make a decent governor? My guess is yeah, he could. He certainly seems to express a passion for the office, which is more than you can say for poor Gray Davis.
But I can't be too hard on Gray, because he's inherited a situation for which he is but minimally responsible (and which a lengthy historical string of ballot propositions and initiatives, which come at California voters with the same frequency and regularity as their morning paper, have left him minimally able to solve). While Gray may have the passion and charisma of Al Gore on 'ludes, though, he's not stupid. He's sued to have his name placed on the list of candidates in the recall vote, which means that if the recall is approved and the state is tasked with installing a new governor, voters will have the option of selecting Gray Davis to replace himself. California — when it never rains, it never bores!
Sure, it sounds stupid, and it does display a bit of desperation on Davis' part — but as this morning's NPR expert explained, it's actually a pretty clever way for him to cover his bases. The recall vote itself requires a majority — i.e. 50%+1 of the voters must want a new governor — but if the recall wins and the voters are then presented with a slate of gubernatorial candidates, the winner of that election needs only a plurality. And with hundreds, or even mere dozens, of candidates throwing their hats in the ring, it's anybody's race. If the Republican vote is fractured among the legions of Davis-Sucks candidates, while the (admittedly small) Keep-Davis faction rallies around their guy, Davis could conceivably win the right to keep his seat with a mere 20 percent of the vote.
Which means an already almost-bankrupt state will have spent $65 million to...well, accomplish absolutely nothing other than indulging Darrell Issa's hubris. Never thought I'd say this, but Alabama's lookin' better by the day.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 11:15 AM
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
How to beat Bush: Turn right on Lieberman St., or hang a hard left on Dean?
Ted Rall poses a very interesting theory on how to win a presidential election: Long story short, match your opponent's ideological extremism exactly. If he's a moderate Republican, you're better off running as a moderate Democrat. But if he's a radical right-winger, swing for the liberal fences. Ergo, Rall says that in the face of George W. Bush's extreme neoconservatism, the unabashed lefty-ness of a guy like Howard Dean is preferable to a mealy-mouthed moderate like Joe Lieberman.
You can argue the evidence that Rall presents, but it seems Lieberman, of all people, would know better than to fall too closely in line with Bush. Part of the reason the Democrats got so royally embarrassed in the 2002 off-years is they failed to differentiate themselves in any real way from Bush, and if the public's choice is between Bush and People Trying To Be Like Bush, of course they're going to go for the genuine article. (If the name brand and the generic cost the same, who wouldn't buy the name brand?) And Bush has the advantage of being able to sell himself as The Guy Who Kicked Terrorism's Ass (even though there's very little substantive evidence to indicate he's done any such thing).
Does that mean Dean is automatically the cure for what ails the Democrats? Not necessarily -- but if Lieberman still thinks (even after the '02 debacle) that Bush Lite will win for the Democrats, he's only kidding himself.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 6:39 PM
The best-laid plans of mice and men
Disturbing piece in The Guardian today about how the neocons' dreams of Iraqi oil flowin' like a river aren't even close to coming true. It's interesting, if you think about it: This administration wants to privatize everything it can and is full of right-wingers who slap the "socialist" tag on government's efforts to run anything other than the military — yet they deemed themselves perfectly capable of running more or less the entire Iraqi oil industry.
But if the Bushies use their failure to get oil pumpin' out of Iraq as a case for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, I'm gonna be pissed.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 1:20 PM
From Liberia with love
Well, Bush's month off in Crawford appears to be at least a "working vacation" of sorts — he's approved a contingent of U.S. soldiers to "coordinate logistical support" for peacekeeping efforts in Liberia. They will not be doing any peacekeeping themselves, presumably, but they'll be coordinating logistical support for same, whatever that means. And there will be...six to ten of them, barely enough to have a decent pickup basketball game. I guess they'll have to face off against the Liberians.
Some conservatives, like Charles Krauthammer, are already jumping on the outcry over Liberia as an example of a lefty double-standard. You didn't want to go to war against Iraq, but you want us to send troops to Liberia, a country that presents no strategic interest to the U.S.? But Krauthammer's got it backward. Many of us (although not the ones he quotes in his column, conveniently) are not even demanding that the U.S. send troops to Liberia, we're simply asking why we're not sending troops when the people of Liberia seem to be every bit as bad-off as the people of Iraq. And we're asking that question because the Bush administration chose to portray Gulf War II as a "war of liberation" for the oppressed people of Iraq. If we're all of a sudden liberating oppressed peoples right and left (and doing the very "nation building" Bush said in the 2000 presidential campaign that he would not bother himself with), how come Iraq qualifies for such aid and Liberia doesn't?
I'm deliberately asking a loaded question, of course, because we all know that the Iraq invasion had sod-all to do with "liberation." That was simply the backup excuse Bush had to use when all of his other cases for war were summarily debunked. He said we knew Iraq had WMDs, and it turned out we knew no such thing; he said Saddam was in cahoots with al-Qaeda, and there's no coherent evidence to support that. So he had to go three-deep on his Case For War depth chart, and came up with liberating the oppressed people of Iraq. And now, if he gets asked "What are you going to do about this?" each and every time a civil war or human-rights atrocity flares up in some Third World country, he's got nobody to blame but himself (and maybe George Tenet, if past trends hold).
Here's another question: If Liberian peacekeeping is a job for outside forces, why can't we do something similar in Iraq to take some of the burden off our tired, pissed-off, stretched-too-thin military? Too logical a solution, I guess.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:32 AM
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
It's a shame about Joe
Why doesn't someone just tell Joe Lieberman to join the Republican Party already? In a speech to the National Press Club yesterday, Lieberman took potshots at just about every single other Democrat running for the nomination, to the point where he could've reasonably passed for a Bush administration spokesman.
Lieberman accused some Democrats of "prefer[ring] the old big-government solutions to our problems," yet conveniently failed to level the same accusation at Bush — where it would've been much more appropriate, given that Bush has hiked spending more than any president since LBJ. (Yes, that even includes Jimmy Carter. And, as we've explained before in this space, the increase is not solely the fault of post-9/11 defense hikes — not by a long shot.)
Another eye-roller of a quote: "If George Bush and his bankrupt ideology are the problem, believe me, old Democratic policies like higher taxes and weakness on defense are not the solution." Apparently Lieberman is making the mistake of equating "opposition to an unjust, pre-emptive war the current administration dishonestly manipulated us into" with "weakness on defense." So sorry to offend you, Joe, but if not wanting to just haul off and invade a foreign country simply because we feel like it makes me a wuss, then guilty as charged.
But here's a more salient question: If "higher taxes and weakness on defense" have been "old Democratic policies" all along, and they offend you so much, then what have you been doing in the Democratic Party for the past 15 years?
It kills me to do this, Joe, because I really liked you a lot when you were Gore's running mate back in 2000. But I think it's time for you to cross over to the GOP, dude. Unless you can come up with an '04 campaign slogan other than "Bend Over for Bush," you'll probably be a lot happier there.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:33 AM
Monday, August 04, 2003
DeLay: "Thanks for keeping Israel warm for us, guys"
The biggest threat to George Bush's "road map" for peace in the Middle East may not be Ariel Sharon or even the Palestinians, but rather -- surprise! -- Tom DeLay, the petty, vindictive Texas congressman who makes Newt Gingrich look cute and cuddly. DeLay has shown no compunctions about kicking the legs out from under his own party in the past; you may remember him as the fellow who ever so politely declared (back in June) that a proposed expansion of the child tax credit "ain't gonna happen," in spite of the fact that Bush himself was pushing for it. Last week, DeLay told Israel's parliament that "There is no middle ground, no moderate position worth taking" in the Mideast peace process -- which presumably means that Bush's plan, which calls for compromise and cease-fires on the part of the Israelis, is one he opposes.
As the linked L.A. Times editorial explains, DeLay's fundamentalist Christian ideology means he can't back such compromises -- Israel must be completely Jewish-controlled, according to his interpretation of the Bible, for Jesus to return to Earth and the "rapture" to occur. Putting aside the sheer lunacy of allowing such extreme personal religious views to in any way influence American foreign policy, what, pray tell, does DeLay think he's doing? The same Christian fundamentalist beliefs that demand Israel remain purely Jewish for the Second Coming also dictate that, oh yeah, all those Jews who helpfully kept Israel pure are kind of going to hell because they deny that Jesus Christ is the son of God. So DeLay is basically standing before the Knesset saying, "Y'all do a real good job now of keeping the Ay-rabs out of your country so that Jesus can come back and I can go to heaven, and have fun in hell once that happens." How dumb is the Israeli parliament for falling for this?
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:29 PM
Pryor restraints: An actual Catholic's opinion
Ever since the Republican Party started giving a rip that African-Americans never voted for them — nearly a decade now — they've been decrying the alleged fearmongering and race-baiting that Democrats (and prominent black political leaders) use to keep the black vote safely in the pocket of the Democrats. According to the GOP, the Dems use every trick in the book to convince African-American voters that conservatives don't care about them or their rights, and that the Democrats are the only ones black people can trust to stand up for them in Washington. (On the one hand, yes, there are plenty of Democrats who do a particularly blatant job of that — on the other, though, if there weren't a kernel of truth to some of it, I doubt it would bother the Republicans so much.)
It appears, though, that some conservatives might be taking a page out of that very book. Bush's nomination of Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is being filibustered by Senate Democrats who say his views on abortion and a host of other things are too extreme; Republicans are not-so-subtly trying to portray this as an example of anti-Catholic bias. And they're using that — sometimes subtly, often not — to try to scare Catholics into voting Republican. "Because of Roe v. Wade, the litmus test issue by which all prospective federal court judges are evaluated, devout Catholics may indeed be persona non grata," writes conservative Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jim Wooten, who can't type the words "Bill Pryor" without inserting "devout Catholic" either directly before or after it. (I think he may have set up come macro keystroke on his computer that just tosses it in there anytime the word "Pryor" comes up.)
As a practicing Catholic, here's my opinion: Nice try, fellas, but not good enough. Not when some of the very Democrats blocking Pryor's nomination are Catholics themselves (Patrick Leahy, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry). And to just assume that Roe v. Wade is all we care about is to pretty much insult our intelligence. Yes, as Catholics we are taught that all life is precious, and certainly the Catholic Church's opinion on abortion is quite clear. But while many of us — myself included — are opposed to abortion on a personal level, that doesn't automatically mean we feel we have the right to make that decision for every single person. And it doesn't mean we want the law of the land on abortion to be completely and summarily reversed.
Furthermore, as an Alabamian, I think Pryor is an extremist for reasons that have nothing to do with abortion. Pryor, you might be interested to know, has spoken out in defense of the chief justice of our state supreme court, Mal Moore, who has placed in his courthouse a 5,000-pound monument to the Ten Commandments. Despite being ordered by two separate courts to remove the monument — understandable, since any non-Christian in Moore's court would be perfectly justified in worrying that his rights wouldn't be respected or upheld — Moore is appealing again, this time to the U.S. Supreme Court. Pryor is defending his position. And I'm supposed to believe that, as a judge himself, Pryor would treat all religious beliefs with equal deference?
Of course, I am a little flattered that Catholics apparently are such an important voting bloc that the Republicans would go to such lengths to bait us. That said...ain't gonna work, guys. Sorry.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 2:22 PM
Powell outage
Reports have surfaced that Colin Powell's saying he won't stick around if Bush wins a second term. On the one hand, that's kind of academic, since nobody in the Bush administration was listening to Powell anyway. On the other hand, it's bad news if the departure of Powell — who's one of the few sane voices of diplomacy in Washington these days, one of the few people who doesn't have "Piss Off Another Ally" permanently marked on his to-do list — makes Bush feel like he's got carte-blanche to replace him with one of his typical fire-breathing, my-way-or-the-highway warhawks. Here's a scary quote from the story: "...[Bush] may feel free if he wins a second term to realign his foreign policy more closely to the harder-edged, conservative view exemplified by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld..." Yeah, aren't more people like that precisely what we need? Yet another reason to keep George from winning a second term at all costs (not that anyone should need one at this point, but, well, that's what this Web site is all about).
No word yet on who might replace Powell, but we won't let that keep us from pulling a few potential candidates out of thin air:
• Hulk Hogan — He'll have good name recognition among the American public, and his confrontational, no-holds-barred attitude fits in perfectly with the way the Bush administration has been shaping its foreign policy. Plus he'll have the entire State Department using 10-10-220 to make its overseas calls, which will save the government a ton of money in the long run.
• Michael Savage — Same confrontational style that's bound to appeal to the Bush administration, plus he's driven by that America-first attitude that will keep the U.S. head and shoulders above any other country no matter what we're trying to negotiate for. A bit abrasive, yes, but since when did that matter to this president? We hear he's got a little more free time on his hands these days — and plus he's got that prestigious degree in "nutritional ethnomedicine" from Berkeley, which means, well, we don't have a freakin' clue what that means.
• Dennis Miller — Oh, come on, like he hasn't been angling for a job in the Bush administration for months now.
• Miguel Estrada/Priscilla Owen/Bill Pryor — Dammit, one way or the other, they're gonna get confirmed for something!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:58 AM
Sunday, August 03, 2003
When in doubt, take a vacation
On July 24 we snickered at Dick Morris' assertion that George W. Bush "deserves" a vacation ("Don't go on vacation, as much as [you] deserve one," was Morris' advice), given that Bush has already set a record for the most vacation days ever taken by a president in a single term. Well, look who's taking an entire month off at the ol' ranch in Crawford. Bush must take his relaxation time very seriously, though, if he's having an entire physical to make sure he's in tip-top shape for all that, uh, vacationing. George seems to be setting a pattern here: If the month is "August," it's quittin' time.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 10:39 AM
Bad news: That's because 470,000 unemployed people gave up and stopped looking for work, which means they no longer fit the statistical definition of "unemployed."
More bad news: There are now 44,000 fewer jobs to look for than there were in June, even though economists had held out hope that as many as 10,000 jobs would be added.
Good news: Some people (although not as many as the first time around) will be getting another one of those nice fat checks from the government in the next few days. These checks will be made out for $400 — enough to get a nice DVD player (if you didn't get buy one with the last check you got). Score!
More good news: You'll have plenty of time to watch stuff on that DVD player, 'cause you're unemployed! On second thought, better call this one a Push.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 1:04 PM
Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot (formerly Ann Coulter Sucks): Second in a series
What do you get when you take Michael Savage, subtract about 100 pounds and the facial hair, add blond hair and tits, and take away whatever minuscule entertainment value remains? If you said "Ann Coulter," congratulations! You’re ready for our regular Friday feature, Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn’t Even That Hot — the fun new game where we take her column each week and systematically dissect it for lies, half-truths, rhetorical errors and gross overgeneralizations!
This feature used to be called simply Ann Coulter Sucks, but we decided that was a little crass and immature — in other words, the kind of thing Coulter herself might stoop to — and it didn’t really get to the heart of why she sucks, i.e. an immature, ham-fisted writing style whose witless exaggeration and groundless inflammatory accusations would get flunked out of a freshman comp class. (And no, we don’t think she’s that hot.) Get ready for this week’s barrage of name-calling and deliberate inaccuracies, and if you can keep from rolling your eyes through the whole thing, you’ll be eligible to win an advance copy of Coulter’s forthcoming autobiography, Vendetta: How Every Single Bad Thing That’s Ever Happened to Me is Somehow the Liberals’ Fault. So strap yourself in for this week’s installment, inscrutably titled "Closure on Nuance":
Another tape-recorded message from Saddam Hussein surfaced this week, making it the third audiotape he has released in the past month. If we’re really serious about finding this guy, maybe we should start searching Iraq’s recording studios.
That joke probably wouldn’t make the cut for a Jay Leno "Tonight Show" monologue, but at least it’s funnier than most of the stuff she comes up with.
On the tape, Hussein acknowledged the death of his sons Odai and Qusai Hussein and called their deaths "good news" — which is more than the Democrats have said.
This is one of those statements I honestly wonder if she really believes. Is she implying we’re sad that these two sickos got capped? Apparently Coulter won’t be satisfied until every single Democrat in Congress sends out a press release declaring that they danced for joy and killed the fatted calf at the news of the Hussein brothers’ death — but then, of course, she’d assail us for grandstanding.
He thanked God for his sons’ "martyrdom." Indeed, Hussein said that even if he had 100 other children, he "would offer them the same path." Apparently the alluring path of martyrdom is not one Saddam is choosing for himself.
Hussein praised his sons for putting up a brave fight, noting that U.S. forces had surrounded their compound with advanced weaponry, ground troops and warplanes. In case that didn't work, U.S. forces were prepared to tell Janet Reno that a small Cuban boy was inside the house.
Typical cheap shot against a Clinton appointee who hasn’t been in office for nearly three years now. Though I would point out that Reno got Elîan Gonzalez out of Little Havana alive, which is more than you can say for what we were able to do with Odai and Qusai — a shame, given all the information we could’ve beaten out of them.
In other terror news, the government issued a warning to the airlines this week about terrorist attacks on commercial aircraft being planned before the end of the summer. Al-Qaida has apparently sized up the new security measures put into place by Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and has discovered some areas of vulnerability. Among the weaknesses the terrorists hope to exploit is the fact that airlines are prohibited from looking for Arab terrorists.
No they’re not. They are prohibited from singling out suspects for no other reason than because they are Arabs, but they are not prohibited from looking for Arab terrorists.
The memo sent out by the Department of Homeland Security says groups of as few as five terrorists might try to seize planes for suicide missions soon after takeoff or right before landing. As the warning explains: "The hijackers may try to calm passengers and make them believe they were on a hostage, not suicide, mission." Norman Mineta sent out an emergency follow-up memo warning airlines not to make assumptions about whether hijackers really want to fly to Cuba based solely on their Arab appearance.
Not really related to Coulter’s larger point (if there is one), but I ask you: After 9/11, is any airline passenger with an IQ above room temperature going to believe a hijacker when he says "We’re not on a suicide mission"? The people who overtook the hijackers on flight 93 and kept the plane from being crashed into the White House (or whatever its eventual target was) were heroes of historic magnitude, and I refuse to believe that nobody else in America, if now put in a similar position, wouldn’t try to follow their example.
The Bush administration’s warning to the airlines apparently stems from the psychological makeup of conservatives. The conservative psyche was recently plumbed by some top researchers from the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University and the University of Maryland at College Park. (Profiling conservatives is OK, just not Arab terrorists.)
Well, Ann, since no conservatives were arrested and thrown into jail without any legal counsel or even any notification of what charges were being leveled against them, I’d say this simple study doesn’t quite rise to the level of "profiling." (And notice below that liberals were included in the study just like conservatives were.)
According to the study, "terror management" is among "the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism." This feature, we learn, "can be seen in post-Sept. 11 America, where many people appear to shun and even punish outsiders and those who threaten the status of cherished worldviews."
Coulter being a prime example.
Liberals, by contrast, think outside the box. For example, the left’s "cherished worldview" prohibits racial profiling. But after 9/11, liberals approached the issue with an open mind. In recognition of the fact that 19 Arab immigrants with the identical hair color, eye color and skin color, half of whom were named Mohammed, had just murdered thousands of our fellow countrymen, liberals decided to keep prohibiting racial profiling.
In fact, only one of the hijackers was named Mohamed! But I guess that’s just one of those little "nuances" Ann felt it was beneath her station to actually research. With that out of the way, let’s get real here: Now that 9/11 has happened and everyone is on the lookout for swarthy Arabs named Mohamed who all seem to be boarding flights together, how hard would it be for al-Qaeda to dye a few guys’ hair blond, give them new passports with names like Kevin Kirby and Ryan Stanton, maybe even throw a female or two into the mix, and send them into U.S. airports where they wouldn’t even merit a second glance? Make fun of our "thinking outside the box" if you like, but the fact is, Coulter’s "let’s focus solely on the olive-skinned Arab guys named Mohamed" attitude is an example of the kind of catch-up-playing, reactive (as opposed to proactive) methodology that leaves us wide-open for attacks of ever-greater ingenuity and intricacy. And if you think the idea of Arab terrorists made-up and finessed to closely resemble Americans is an unthinkable prospect, ask yourself: Before 9/11, how "thinkable" was two widebody airliners getting rammed into the Trade Center?
Meanwhile, conservatives, with their simple-minded lack of nuance, tried to "turn back the clock" to a time when angry barbarians did not fly planes into our skyscrapers. They shunned — and even punished — outsiders who threatened their cherished worldview of a country free of savage terrorist attacks.
Of course, not all of these "outsiders" threatened their "cherished worldview." Some of them were just regular shopkeepers and working Joes — or maybe working Mohameds — who found themselves thrown in jail and charged with nothing at all, just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or knew someone they shouldn’t have.
The report described "liberal" traits as including a powerful "need for closure." (I believe conservatives just want closure on the word "closure.") But in the press release, one of the researchers, Jack Glaser, said the study suggested that Bush had "ignored intelligence information" about Iraq because of the conservative "need for closure." So I guess another liberal trait is "making no sense."
How do you know Glaser is a liberal? I guess another conservative trait is "making blind assumptions as long as they support whatever it is you’re trying to do."
The study also explained that "conservatives don't feel the need to jump through complex, intellectual hoops in order to understand or justify some of their positions…" Whenever you have backed a liberal into a corner — if he doesn’t start crying — he says, "It’s a complicated issue."
The next time Coulter intellectually backs a liberal into a corner, it’ll be the first time. Case in point: That "If he doesn’t start crying" jab, an insult that not only demonstrates the maturity of a nine-year-old but is also amazingly ironic, coming from a woman who gets into such a tizzy about the way liberals call Republicans names that her head practically spins around Linda Blair-style.
Loving America is too simple an emotion. To be nuanced you have to hate it a little. Conservatives may not grasp "nuance," but we’re pretty good at grasping treason.
And there we go: Liberals Hate America, we knew we’d get around to it in this column sooner or later. In another example of one of her typical overgeneralized, inflammatory assumptions, Coulter automatically equates "not automatically agreeing with every single thing America does" to "hating America." "Understanding the nuance of complicated issues" becomes "treason." I will give her credit for this much — it’s an awfully simple, black-and-white world she’s created for herself.
As proof of the conservative lack of nuance, Glaser cited Bush’s statement, "I know what I believe and I believe what I believe is right." Not only that, but Bush once told a reporter: "Look, my job isn’t to nuance."
He also said — about a strategy for a Middle East peace crisis that is nothing but complicated issues and nuance — he’d been "nuanced to death" by numerous speech revisions. Just in case you wanted another example. I wonder, though, if Bush might’ve appreciated a little nuancing-to-death after that bogus uranium story ended up in his State of the Union address that was supposedly read and approved by so many people?
Odai Hussein didn’t need a phony study to comprehend Bush’s lack of "nuance." The London Sunday Telegraph recently reported that, soon after the war began, Odai was deeply depressed. According to the former director of Iraqi television quoted in the Telegraph, the last words he heard Odai speak were these: "This time I think the Americans are serious. Bush is not like Clinton. I think this is the end."
Yeah, ask me if I think that quote is genuine. Looking back, I’m not quite sure how we got from Odai and Qusai to the liberal/conservative dichotomy on "nuance," but you’ll have to ask Ann about that one, I guess. The "point" of this column, if I understand correctly, is that Coulter and her right-wing pals take pride in the fact that their view of America is utterly black-and-white and without nuance — "My country, right or wrong," in other words. That ubiquitous quote was originally spoken by famed naval strategist Cmdr. Steven Decatur, but there was a second part to his statement: "When right, to keep right. When wrong, to make right." But in Ann Coulter’s black-and-white world, anyone who dares express the opinion that the United States has done anything wrong — much less try to "make it right" — is an America-hating traitor. All you Coulter fans who praise her as "brilliant" and "courageous," pay very close attention — this willfully simplistic, ignorant, juvenile thought process is what you’re holding up as the shining light of truth!
But again, it’s Ann Coulter’s world, we’re just living in it — and committing treason against it, apparently. And calling us treasonous America-hating commies is something she just has to do, because if she couldn’t do that, she might actually have to approach our ideas with a remotely open mind and consider them on their merits, which is something I guess she just doesn’t have the will or the smarts to attempt. Thanks for joining us and be sure to check out next week’s edition of Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn’t Even That Hot, because a week without Ann Coulter saying something asinine and slanderous is like a day without sunshine!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:52 AM
Speaking of pointing fingers and shifting blame...
Here's a little tidbit from the president's Thursday press conference that might interest you. (The fact that this is only Bush's ninth press conference at a point in his presidency when Clinton and Bush Sr. had each held dozens might also interest you, but we'll save that for another time.)
Stevenson: Thank you, sir. Since taking office you signed into law three major tax cuts — two of which have had plenty of time to take effect, the third of which, as you pointed out earlier, is taking effect now. Yet, the unemployment rate has continued rising. We now have more evidence of a massive budget deficit that taxpayers are going to be paying off for years or decades to come; the economy continues to shed jobs. What evidence can you point to that tax cuts, at least of the variety that you have supported, are really working to help this economy? And do you need to be thinking about some other approach?
Bush: Yes. No, to answer the last part of your question. First of all, let me — just a quick history, recent history. The stock market started to decline in March of 2000. Then the first quarter of 2001 was a recession. And then we got attacked in 9/11. And then corporate scandals started to bubble up to the surface, which created a — a lack of confidence in the system. And then we had the drumbeat to war. Remember on our TV screens — I'm not suggesting which network did this — but it said, "March to War," every day from last summer until the spring — "March to War, March to War." That's not a very conducive environment for people to take risk, when they hear "March to War" all the time.
I think Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" summed it up best: "Yeah, I mean, why'd they do that? It's not like some asshole was marching the country to war or anything!"
So the economy's failure to make a swift recovery has nothing to do with a tax-cut plan blatantly biased toward corporations and the most wealthy taxpayers — the American consumer has been living in fear because of the way some network branded their Iraq coverage. And it wasn't the prospect of an impending war itself, mind you, but the way it was covered that really caused the problems. Bush Administration 3, Personal Responsibility 0.
Ordinarily Bush's remarks would be the dumbest thing you'd get to read on this site in a given day, but since it's a Friday we're also putting the latest Ann Coulter column up here, so you ain't seen nothin' yet. Stay tuned.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:30 AM
Thursday, July 31, 2003
Ha! We're two for two!
You'll recall that a few days ago, GWBWYPGN published news of the Pentagon's bizarre "Policy Analysis Market," and by 1 p.m. that same day, Paul Wolfowitz announced that the market was getting the kibosh. Well, earlier today we linked to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial calling for the firing of John Poindexter, who came up with the idea for the market in the first place...and here it is, not even 3.30 p.m., and we're already hearing reports that Poindexter will resign in the next few weeks! Yee-ha!
Clearly we've got a good thing going here. Let's see what else we can make happen:
• George W. Bush should assume full and complete culpability for allowing inaccurate information into his State of the Union address, admit that he deliberately misled the country in trumping up Iraq's WMD capability as a justification for war, and resign.
• Dick Cheney should go with him.
• As acting president, House Speaker Dennis Hastert should immediately begin negotiations for a UN peacekeeping presence in Iraq's most heavily populated areas, with U.S. forces still free to seek out and capture the remaining members of the Baath Party.
• The Georgia Bulldogs will overcome their inexperience on the offensive line to beat Tennessee for the fourth year in a row, and go on to defend their Southeastern Conference title.
George W. Bush, Will You Please Go Now?!...where all your dreams come true.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 3:29 PM
Gloomy predictions, pissed-off troops, and the Pronoun Game
Interesting take on the war today by Ted Rall, a lefty columnist who, if you look back at some of his work over the past few weeks, has demonstrated a lot more concern for our troops in Iraq than anyone in the Bush administration has appeared to.
Rall can be a tough read, because his criticisms of our Middle East policy can come off as doomsaying that's downright Eeyore-like. Then again, Rall actually went to Afghanistan shortly after the bulk of our invasion of that country had ended, so when he describes just how bad conditions there still are even after the Taliban is gone, he knows what he's talking about.
And you'll notice that Rall, despite having been completely opposed to the Iraq war from day one, doesn't play the "pronoun game" when it comes to taking responsibility for the mistakes the U.S. has made. When I was at the University of Georgia through the tumultuous Jim Donnan years, friends of mine would remark on the way all of us would say "We did it!" when the Bulldogs scored a huge upset over Florida or somebody, but when the team suffered an embarrassing loss to Auburn or Tech, it became, "I can't believe they blew it like that." But Rall never strays from the royal "we."
"You have only to look at Afghanistan to see that we're never going to build schools, skyscrapers and superhighways in Iraq," he writes. "We will never establish a democratic regime...Why not admit that the invasion was a mistake now, before more people die in a meaningless war? Cut bait and bring home the troops. Sure, the French will mock us; we deserve it..." As damning and hopeless as this prediction is, Rall doesn't try to distance himself from the rest of the country. There's no "you did this" here — whether we wanted to be or not, we're all in this together as Americans, and Rall recognizes that. Contrast that with George W. Bush, who, after his Iraq/uranium statement in the State of the Union speech started taking heavy fire, waited for weeks to pass by — and for no less than two underlings to take the fall — before he quietly "accepted responsibility" for the erroneous claim. Now, of course, Bush and his administration are settling in comfortably behind a barrage of finger-pointing between the CIA and FBI concerning Sept. 11, the uranium intelligence and a whole host of other things. Whatever happened to "personal responsibility," guys?
As for my take on the Iraq situation, I'm not prepared to say it's quite as hopeless as Rall believes it is. But I can't honestly say I think we're on the right track. I absolutely don't think we can just yank our troops out of there and leave Iraq to fend for itself, but at the same time, our troops are miserable, a sizable percentage of Iraqis don't want them there — if Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were smart, they'd bring in UN peacekeepers to handle the day-to-day work of protecting the reconstruction effort and policing the major cities in the Shi'i areas where anti-Western sentiment is not quite as strong, while keeping a rotating force of U.S. troops to root out Saddam and the rest of the Baath party in the "Sunni triangle" region. But since being smart isn't nearly as much fun as being arrogant for these guys, who see sharing power with the UN as the equivalent of having to sit at the nerd table at lunch in high school, I doubt we'll see it happen, at least while Bush is in power.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 10:58 AM
Why are you still here?
Props to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for coming right out today and saying that John Poindexter, head of the willfully Orwellian "Terrorism Information Awareness Office" and "braintrust" behind the halfwitted "Policy Analysis Market" idea, should be fired. The question that their editorial alludes to but stops short of asking point-blank is, What the hell is someone who illegally diverted funds from Iranian arms sales to Nicaraguan guerillas still doing in our government? Don't you think presidents should make not hiring criminals a reasonably high priority?
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:28 AM
Wednesday, July 30, 2003
I accept your apology. Oh and by the way: It was my fault.
How nice of George Bush to finally accept personal responsibility for the erroneous Iraq/uranium allegation in the State of the Union address. The fact that he waited for George Tenet and Stephen Hadley to take personal responsibility first, of course, means he's still a wuss. But with this president you take what you can get, I suppose. Sigh.
Well, maybe not such a wuss. Check out this fascinating piece debunking a bunch of the administration's claims concerning the war on terror — it's plenty long, but it starts off with a bang: "...Bush popped in on national security adviser Condi Rice one day in March 2002, interrupting a meeting on UN sanctions against Iraq. Getting a whiff of the subject matter, W peremptorily waved his hand and told her, 'Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out.' " Jiminy Christmas! Dubya drops the F-bomb on Condi Rice! I pray that moment was somehow caught on tape so that I can hold out hope of stumbling across it on Kazaa one of these days.
But what's really disturbing, of course, is that George had apparently decided to "take him out" in March 2002, before a single UN weapons inspector had hit the ground in Baghdad. If you still think that weapons of mass destruction had anything to do with the Iraq invasion, or that there was any action Iraq could've taken that would've satisfied the Bush administration and kept said invasion from happening...well, you're pretty much hanging by a thread.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 1:19 PM
Total recall
Excellent column by David Broder in the Washington Post today, exposing some ugly truths about the much-ballyhooed recall of California Gov. Gray Davis. I'm not a huge fan of Davis', but I do think he's having to take way more than his fair share of the blame for California's ongoing crises. Much of the facts Broder presents are depressing, yet fascinating in an impending-train-wreck sort of way; among the most interesting points:
• This recall is going to cost $65 million...Quite an undertaking for a state that's evidently so broke it can't even afford to pay attention.
• The recall is being mounted under the guise of "giving a voice to the people of California," but that kind of populism is ironic when you realize just how much money you have to have for your recall campaign to be taken seriously in the first place. Sure, Davis nemesis Darrell Issa talks about giving California's average Joes and Josephines their say, but Issa had $1.7 million of his own cash to get the petition-signing effort started to begin with. Think I'd be able to afford any publicity or high-powered legal counsel on my $35K salary?
• Davis is hamstrung in a lot of ways by pre-existing legislation mandating that he spend money on this, that or the other thing, as well as that lovable old Prop 13 that severely limits his ability to raise taxes to actually, you know, pay for all that stuff. Don't bother to raise tax revenues, but still spend tons of money anyway? Wow, it sounds like some folks in Cali have been cribbing fiscal policy from George W.
• Speaking of whom...Bush's Texas Chainsaw tax cuts have drastically curtailed the amount of money going to the states, and governors like Davis are having to take the fall when the budgets fall way short. The same thing's happening here in Alabama, where Gov. Bob Riley — a Republican — has demonstrated the cojones to call for a tax increase (currently our taxes are among the nation's very lowest) to better fund public schools that have been a national disgrace for years; but because he's proposing a tax increase (crivens!) to dig the state out of a fiscal craphole that people like Bush helped to create, he's being derided as a tax-and-spend liberal in disguise.
• When California's new governor (assuming it's not Gray Davis) finds himself just as powerless to solve the state's fiscal crisis as Davis was, will they spend another $65M to recall him, too?
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 12:07 PM
Shades of Bush the Elder
There's hope for all of us who hoped Bush II would follow in his dad's footsteps — i.e. soar to unfathomable approval ratings during an Iraq war, then plummet back to earth as the economy continues to stagnate. Here's hoping history repeats itself.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:35 AM
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Get me Rewrite!
Breaking news: Just hours after it was exposed to the world, the "Policy Analysis Market" has been scrapped. Too bad they waited until everyone found out that such a thing even existed. (By the way, you'll notice that the Market was 86ed less than three hours after GWBWYPGN's post condemning it. I like to think we had something to do with that...then again, I also like to think that Yamila Diaz is going to be waiting in my apartment with a large pizza and a case of Warsteiners when I get home this afternoon.)
Any other bright ideas, Poindexter? (I hope not.)
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 12:33 PM
The 9/11 Commission: A real American hero weighs in
Former senator and Vietnam vet Max Cleland did an interview on PBS last night, blasting the Bush administration for the delays and deliberate obfuscations in the report from the 9/11 investigatory commission. Cleland, for those of you who don't know, is the Georgian who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam and was ousted after one term as senator last year by Saxby Chambliss (no Vietnam service), who portrayed Cleland as soft on national security wth the backing of President Bush (also no Vietnam service...and that ain't the half of it).
CLELAND: ...This commission was formed about mid-December, the 9/11 Commission. We were supposed to use the joint inquiry report as a launching pad to get into this issue of not only fixing the intelligence community, but moving beyond, and getting into "What is the al-Qaeda all about? What is this terrorist global network that we're fighting?" A new kind of war and all that.
Well, the independent, bi-partisan commission, hello, didn't even get the stuff 'til a few weeks ago.
I'm saying that's deliberate. I am saying that the delay in relating this information to the American public out of a hearing… series of hearings, that several members of Congress knew eight or ten months ago, including Bob Graham and others, that was deliberately slow-walked…the 9/11 Commission was deliberately slow-walked, because the Administration's policy was, and its priority was, we're gonna take Saddam Hussein out.
Moving ahead:
FRANK SESNO: ...Financial Times today reporting on the Congressional report. Report raises new questions on Saudi role in 9/11 attacks.
CLELAND: Absolutely.
SESNO: How far into that will your commission a) be able to go, and b) actually be able to share with the public?
CLELAND: All right. We're — first thing, if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's a duck.
You can read between the lines and see that there were foreign governments that were much more involved in the 9/11 attack than just supporting Islamic fundamentalist teachings and schools. Now that has been redacted. A whole 28-page section.
SESNO: And will you have access to all the documentation, including the redacted portion…
CLELAND: We darn well better.
Moving on again:
SESNO: You have used the q-word, "quagmire."
CLELAND: It is a quagmire.
SESNO: Why? Why?
CLELAND: Because. There's so many similarities here. You have an assessment, which even Wolfowitz now realizes we underestimated the enemy. That was Dean Rusk's view a few years into Vietnam.
You get the big land force in there. You know. You don't cure the problem. And you're exposed. And then the guerrilla warfare comes after you. That's Vietnam. That's the quagmire we're in in Iraq. There is no exit strategy. Why? Because we want to do a pre-emptive war. We want to do it all alone.
SESNO: The administration would say the exit strategy is to build a fledgling democracy in Iraq…
CLELAND: Lots of luck.
SESNO: That then…
CLELAND: They're fighting 5000 years.
SESNO: …provides…that provides a beacon for the region.
CLELAND: Lots of luck. I mean, more power to 'em. You can't force or impose democracy with 150,000 troops. We tried to do it in South Vietnam. There was an election there, and all this kind of stuff. But it never worked.
Near the end now:
SESNO: Very briefly, then, what do you think should be done now?
CLELAND: First of all, you got to go back and get the UN in there. We've got to go back to the very people we dissed. And we got to say to Russia and Germany and France and the UN and the Security Council, "We're in deep trouble. Help us out." We got to make a UN protectorate, and that's gonna take a long time.
Well, Max, as you said...lots of luck. Not the way this administration operates.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 10:56 AM
With friends like these...
By now just about everyone has heard about the 28 pages on Saudi Arabia that were blacked out from the government's report on 9/11. The Bush administration, long enamored of the "What The People Don't Know Can't Hurt Us" philosophy, has refused to acquiesce to calls (from both sides of the Congressional aisle) for the information to be de-classified.
Are they afraid of losing a valuable ally in the war on terror? Yeah, Saudi Arabia has been so tough on al-Qaeda in the past. Afraid of pissing off the country we get a huge amount of our oil from? That sounds more like it.
And again, Bush proves that he and Clinton, that renowned liar, are not so far apart. The only difference is that where Clinton would try to stave off controversy by telling a lie, Bush just prefers to not say anything at all (as any journalist who's tried to get a straight answer out of Ari Fleischer will attest). As dim a bulb as Bush is, though, his strategy is clearly the more efficacious one. By saying anything at all in response to a sensitive issue, Clinton gave his opponents something they could prove empirically true or untrue; by not saying anything whatsoever, Bush robs his opponents of even that opportunity. And with nothing to prove true or false, people who doubt Bush have hardly any choice but to spin their wheels until the issue fades away (helped along in some instances by a snide "The President has moved on" comment from a press secretary).
Bush isn't any more honest than Clinton was; he just knows when to keep his mouth shut. Which, in some ways, makes him even sneakier than Clinton. If that's possible.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 10:15 AM
Gimme a thousand al-Qaedas on margin: The U.S. and the Nominal Cleaning Procrastination Theory
Remember how when you were a little kid and your mom told you to clean your room, you would spend at least the first hour or two making cleaning-like motions but not really cleaning it? Like, you'd start out by saying, "OK, I'll clean up my Legos first," but "cleaning up" the Legos quickly turned into "constructing a massive moon base out of them." "Putting away your Transformers" became "lining them up in just the right battle formation to attack and defeat the enemy." You'd take the books strewn across your floor and stack them by subject, size, color, whatever, anything other than putting them back on the shelf where they'd be out of the way. In short, your "cleaning" consisted of activities that were vaguely cleaning-like in nature but in no way contributed to the room becoming appreciably neater. I call this the Nominal Cleaning Procrastination Theory.
Well, the current administration has bought into the NCPT in a big way, as evidenced by the "Policy Analysis Market," a "stock market" set up to help the government "predict" future assassinations or terror attacks. Basically, participants can buy shares in a particular attack, assassination, overthrow or what have you, and if that event actually came to pass, the people who correctly predicted it would cash in.
I don't even have to go into how utterly tasteless this is (imagine the outcry that would have occurred if someone had hit a jackpot for predicting, say, that both World Trade Center towers would be toppled by Boeing 767s being flown into them), so I won't bother. Instead, I'll merely ask, what the hell is this supposed to accomplish? The Pentagon claims "Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often better than expert opinions," but, I mean, come on. Our rationale for gauging terrorist threats is now "Well, a lot of people are betting on it, so it must be true"? Or how about this scenario: A terrorist notices that everyone seems to be putting money on a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, but nobody's betting that a dirty bomb will be detonated in downtown Miami. So Mr. Terrorist takes advantage of the huge odds, puts his money on Miami Dirty Bomb, and then...detonates a dirty bomb in downtown Miami, thereby pulling off a horrific terrorist attack and raking in the dough in the process!
But this isn't only a monumentally stupid idea — it's emblematic of the way the Bush administration has applied the Nominal Cleaning Procrastination Theory to the "war on terror" since day one. Instead of fundamentally reforming the way organizations like the CIA and the FBI share information, the administration creates a brand-new bureaucracy in the Department of Homeland Security, where these agencies can continue their bickering and infighting under one roof. They create an utterly superfluous color-coding system for potential threats, which throws the country into a duct-tape-hoarding panic every time it gets bumped up to orange but offers no help whatsoever in actually dealing with said threat. Instead of cracking down on actual al-Qaeda cells all over the world, Bush invades Iraq, a country where exactly none of the September 11 hijackers came from and that presented a minimal threat to the U.S. mainland. And now, instead of doing the dirty work of cultivating sources and following leads, the Pentagon is using a lame-ass Hollywood Stock Exchange knockoff to predict terrorist attacks. In short, they're giving the impression of doing everything but dealing directly with the problem of international terrorism.
Do you feel any safer just because you have the opportunity to place bets on future acts of terrorism? I know I don't. Maybe this is the Bush administration's idea of "thinking outside the box," but if that's the case, I'd advise them to get back in the box right away, lest a whole bunch of Americans end up inside boxes ourselves.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:43 AM
Monday, July 28, 2003
Denny, We Hardly Knew Ye: An elegy/rant for Dennis Miller
Confession time: I occasionally watch Fox News on purpose, partly to see what the conservatives are up to, partly to remind myself just how low one can sink if they’re willing to abandon any semblance of journalistic objectivity. Imagine my surprise when I saw Dennis Miller looking out at me from the TV set Saturday morning, smirking like the cat who just ate the ecstasy-laced canary.
Dennis Miller, for those of you who didn’t get the memo, became famous for an edgy, sarcastic strain of comedy-slash-commentary that fired off more pop-culture references than the Cameron Crowe DVD box set. Those references were frequently obscure, and Miller launched them with a potty mouth acute enough to make Def Comedy Jam sound like an episode of "According to Jim," but it was smart and incisive, and if nothing else, it required you to think.
Now, I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but watching that witty, urbane motormouth not only climb aboard the Fox News bandwagon but also sign his brain over to their Bush-Can-Do-No-Wrong corporate philosophy felt like a betrayal equal to Tom Glavine jumping ship for the Mets. I don’t know how many pieces of silver Miller accepted to become the latest in Fox’s long line of GOP public-relations flacks, but as far as a comedy groupie like me is concerned, it wasn’t enough.
To put it bluntly, Miller sold out. There’s no excuse for someone like him to throw his lot in with a group of charlatans like the so-called "journalists" at Fox, a pseudo-news network that exists solely because the American right decided they needed their own Al-Jazeera. Fox has its collective nose so far up the Bush administration’s ass that Katie Couric and her colonoscopy doc should be suing for plagiarism.
But I’m too nice a guy to forever blackball Miller just for hanging out with the Fox people, or even for supporting the war in Iraq. What really stokes my personal DuraFlame log of resentment is the fact that he abandoned the principles that made me admire him so much in the first place — the belief that authority is there to be questioned, the idea that a good bullshit detector is as vital as food, shelter, or high-speed Internet access.
Watching Miller gush accolades like Billy Mays on amphetamines about how tough, presidential, and gosh-darn heroic Bush has appeared these last few months was downright embarrassing. In his rants, Miller’s rapier wit was always honed to an equally sharp edge for both liberals and conservatives, and he made it a point never to fall in love with any particular politician, regardless of their ideology. The bit of H.L. Mencken in Miller always sensed that even the most upstanding statesmen in Washington were but one white lie or blowjob away from the Gary Hart Honeymoon Suite in political purgatory. But that Saturday morning on Fox News, it appeared that Miller’s B.S. detector had been in the suitcase that erroneously got checked through to Fresno, because he was fawning like Bush had just let him wear his letterman jacket.
That’s not the Dennis Miller I know. The Dennis Miller I know would’ve been railing against Bush and Cheney for their big-oil connections from day one. He would’ve called out Bush’s tax cut as the most godawful excuse for long-term planning since the Red Sox dealt The Babe. And he would’ve demanded that the man with his finger on the nuclear button at least be able to pronounce "nuclear" correctly. But now that Dennis Miller is nowhere to be found.
Look, I know I can’t begrudge him for his opinions. I can’t single out every single Republican in this country for a Benihana skewering just because they support Bush. But from Miller, I expected better. The White House has rivaled the San Diego Zoo primate house the last few months in terms of wanton bullshit-flinging, and Dennis Miller, of all people, was the person I expected to be able to see through all that. Instead, at a time when we need another Bush yes-man like Deion Sanders needs another mustard-colored suit, Miller threw up his hands and got in line faster than Pavarotti hearing the Good Humor truck around the corner.
Now, I’m not going to point my big foam j’accuse finger at Dennis for going soft without asking why. Maybe he really did support the war from day one and is genuinely thrilled that Bush followed through with it. But if that’s the case, I have to wonder if the bizarre political situation in this country caused Miller to lose not only his courage but his smarts.
Miller’s Iraq-invasion cheerleading isn’t that different from a lot of what we’ve been hearing out of Middle America lately. But that’s precisely the problem. Read over Miller’s exhortations for the U.S. armed forces to go kick some Iraqi ass and you start to feel like there’s not much intellectual distance between him and the self-satisfied uber-patriots who get hard-ons at the mere thought of taking out some "Ay-rabs" or "towelheads."
See, anyone with two brain cells to rub together can cackle over how much fun it is to strap on the six-guns and barge into Iraq like Mike Tyson trying to get a table at the Russian Tea Room. Even our chief executive has proven himself utterly susceptible to descending into that kind of adolescent immaturity, as evidenced by those "bring ’em on" comments that are so much easier to make when you’re not actually, you know, over there with your life in danger. But while that dumbed-down all-politics-is-yokel attitude was no surprise coming from Bush, we were justified in expecting a smarter, more trenchant analysis from Dennis Miller. Instead, he’s Flowers-for-Algernon’ed his comedy down to a level whose "Kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out" philosophy is barely acceptable for a trucker hat, much less someone who until recently was one of the smartest comics in America.
Maybe Dennis felt the need to up the redneck quotient in his comedy because he was, after all, signing on with Fox News. But that’s only an explanation; it’s not an excuse.
Tony Blair claimed that even if he and Bush were wrong about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, history would still forgive them because they rid the world of Saddam Hussein. Well, I’m sure we’ll one day forgive Dennis Miller for jumping on board this bogus-ass war, maybe even forgive him for becoming Bush’s own Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf. But we won’t forgive him for willfully sloughing off IQ points like so much dead skin — and we’re certainly not going to forgive him for not being funny.
For me, Dennis Miller was always the kid at the parade who had the stones to inform everyone that the emperor had no clothes on. But now he’s stripped down and begun dancing buck-naked around the pagan maypole with the rest of them. And it really, really pisses me off. You got that, Cha-Cha?
Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 10:18 AM
Friday, July 25, 2003
Ann Coulter Sucks: First in a series
Of all the frothing, insulting, barely-clinging-to-the-fringes-of-sanity conservative pundits out there, none can compare to Ann Coulter, a radical right-winger so crazy that even shithouse rats say, "Yo, man, she crazy." Because AntiCoulter (see also Links section) is on hiatus, I’ll be taking up the mantle of Coulter Debunker, bringing you her latest bat-shit-crazy screed each week and then dissecting it, line by line, to show you just how full of crap she really is. Are you ready for the lies, slander and overblown rhetoric to fly? You are? Goody! Thus we begin with our first installment of Ann Coulter Sucks, and we present her latest column, titled (ironically) "Pot and Kettle." Yeah, this is gonna take a while, but bear with us:
The Howard Dean campaign was forced to cancel events this week in response to events in Iraq. Donations to the Odai and Qusai Hussein Memorial Fund can be submitted directly to the Dean campaign.
Hm. If that were either subtle or remotely believable, it would almost be clever.
Dean responded to the passing of these martyrs to American jingoism by angrily announcing that the ends don't justify the means. This is a war we’re talking about. Why don't the ends justify the means? (Note to the Democrats: Just because you defended Bill Clinton doesn’t mean you have to defend every government official who is reliably reported to be a rapist.)
Did you hear anyone defend the Hussein brothers? I didn’t. And who is this person who "reliably reported" that Clinton is a rapist? Do you think it’s a coincidence that he/she/it isn’t named in the column?
But as Baghdad erupted in celebrations after receiving the news that Heckle and Jeckle were dead…
Yeah, they were so jubilant that the Pentagon had to release photos of the corpses to convince people they were actually taking a dirt nap. How come I didn’t hear about this party?
…liberals were still hopping mad that last January, President Bush uttered the indisputably true fact that British intelligence believed Saddam Hussein had tried to acquire uranium from Africa.
I’ve been over the fact that the "indisputable" truth of this "fact" is neither here nor there — it’s Bush’s intent behind it that’s truly telling. But whatever.
That was, and still is, believed by British intelligence. It also was, and still is, believed by our own National Intelligence Estimate service.
Hey, "The earth is flat" was, and still is, believed by a surprising number of people.
The CIA, however, discounts this piece of intelligence. The CIA did such a bang-up job predicting 9/11, the Democrats have decided to put all their faith in it. They believe the nation must not act until absolutely every agency and every last American is convinced we are about to be nuked. (Would that they had such strict standards for worrying about nuclear power plants at home.)
Yeah, that’s precisely what we liberals believe, Ann. Yet another typical bit of completely asinine slander that’s so over-the-top and outrageous it makes Mikey Savage look like George Will.
The Democrats already explained their extremely exacting standard for responding to potential nuclear threats back before we went to war with Iraq — and Bill Clinton successfully ignored the threat of a nuclear-capable North Korea. But most of the Democrats who are bellyaching now didn't have the courage to vote their so-called "consciences" in Congress last October. Now that we've won, they have managed to produce fresh indignation about a war they only briefly pretended to support.
After years of defending Clinton, liberals love the piquant irony of calling Bush a liar. For 50 years liberals have called Republicans idiots, fascists, anti-Semites, racists, crooks, shredders of the Constitution and masterminds of Salvadoran death squads. Only recently have they added the epithet "liar." Even noted ethicist Al Franken has switched from calling conservatives "fat" to calling them "liars."
Ann, you’ve been calling us "liars," "traitors" and "the Adultery Party" for as long as I can remember. We don’t get to return the favor? Then again, I’m talking to someone who got her Ph.D. in Dishing It Out But Failing To Take It.
This is virgin territory for Democrats — they never before viewed lying as a negative.
Oh, ha-ha-ha, aren’t we clever. Meh.
Their last president was called "an unusually good liar" by a sitting Democratic senator. Their last vice president couldn't say "pass the salt" without claiming to have invented salt.
Hmmm, might we be talking about Al Gore’s "invented the Internet" statement here? Only Gore never said the words "I invented the Internet" — look up the transcript of the show in which he allegedly said it if you don't believe me. Coulter is either a miserably bad fact-checker or — irony alert! — a willing liar.
Having only just discovered the intriguing new concept of being offended by lies, the Democrats are having a jolly old time calling Bush a liar. But they can't quite grasp the concept of a lie as connoting something that is — at a minimum — untrue.
OK, blah blah, we get it, you’re trying to be clever, you’re trying to call liberals liars without actually saying "liberals are liars." We get it, move on.
Sharing a chummy laugh about Republicans on "Meet the Press" last Sunday, NBC's Tim Russert asked Joe Biden what the Republicans would have done if a Democratic president had uttered 16 mistaken words about national security in a State of the Union speech. Senator Biden said: "This is going to be counterintuitive for Biden to show his Irish instinct to restrain myself, you know the answer, I know the answer, the whole world knows the answer. They would have ripped his skin off."
At least Bush put it in his own words — if you know what I mean. Perhaps Biden is annoyed that Bush merely cited the head of the British Labor Party rather than plagiarizing him.
Huh? An unattributed, unsubstantiated plagiarism charge? Well, that’s a new one.
Back to Russert's challenge, I shall dispense with Clinton's most renowned lies. (Every Democrat commits adultery and lies about it. Fine, they've convinced me.)
Again, huh? Who said every Democrat commits adultery and lies about it? Oh, that’s right, you did. So…you lied.
Clinton also lied every time he said "God bless America" though he doesn't believe in God or America…
Another over-the-top, gratuitous, unprovable slander. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a hat trick!
…and I don't recall any Republican ever ripping his skin off about that.
WHAT?!?! Lady, are you new?! You guys did nothing but try to tear Clinton a new one the entire eight years he was in office. You didn’t even wait for any actual scandal to pop up, you just started in on him from day one. Now you’re trying to shrug and pout, "I never said anything bad about Bill Clinton"? Sorry, did I put on my "I’ll believe anything" shirt by accident this morning?
But how about a lie in a major national speech slandering your own country? In Clinton's acceptance speech at the 1996 Democratic National Convention, he said:
"We still have too many Americans who give into their fears of those who are different from them. Not so long ago swastikas were painted on the doors of some African American members of our Special Forces at Fort Bragg. Folks, for those of you who don't know what they do, the Special Forces are just what the name says; they are special forces. If I walk off this stage tonight and call them on the telephone and tell them to go halfway around the world and risk their lives for you and be there by tomorrow at noon, they will do it. They do not deserve to have swastikas on their doors."
Clinton was referring to an alleged act of racism in which the prime suspect had already been determined to be one of the victims himself — a black soldier known for filing repeated complaints of racism. The case had been under intense investigation and the fact that the leading suspect was black had been widely reported in the news. But a Democratic president dramatically cited a phony hate crime in order to prove that his own country is racist. (And he used a lot more than 16 words to do it.)
All Clinton said was "some swastikas were painted on the doors of some African American members of our Special Forces." Which actually did happen. Did he say our armed forces are racist? No. Did he even say a white person painted them? No. Whatever the backstory behind the swastika-painting turns out to be, what Clinton said was no more false or misleading than "The British government has learned…" Never mind that something Clinton said seven years ago doesn't have a flippin' thing to do with Bush allowing what he knew to be a sketchy statement into his State of the Union speech. But whatever.
Also, notice that while Coulter bandies about the term "prime suspect" like it was going out of style, she never says that the black soldier in question was actually found guilty of anything. Hmmm…
Democrats didn't mind a president using cooked evidence in order to defame his own country.
Who defamed the country? I didn’t hear anybody defame anyone’s country. What Clinton actually said was that he admired the Special Forces' bravery and that they "do not deserve to have swastikas on their doors." That actually sounds pretty respectful of our military — more respectful than, say, using an aircraft carrier and its entire crew as a prop for one's re-election campaign, delaying their homecoming in the process.
They reserve their outrage for a president who defames the name of an honorable statesman like Saddam Hussein by suggesting he was seeking uranium from Africa on the flimsy evidence of the findings of British intelligence, the findings of our own NIE, the fact that Israel blew up Saddam's last nuclear reactor in 1981, and that we learned about Saddam's reconstitution of his nuke program only in 1996, when his son-in-law briefly defected to Jordan. (The Mr. Magoos from the U.N. Weapons Inspection Team had missed this fact while scouring the country for five years after Gulf War I.)
If the UN Inspectors are "Mr. Magoos," our own WMD-hunters must be Stevie frickin’ Wonder. Unless we actually found some nukes in Iraq just now and nobody bothered to tell me.
Apparently the ends do justify the means, but only if the end is to slander America — the country we're supposed to believe liberals love every bit as much as the next guy.
And there’s Coulter’s trademarked money shot, ladies and gentlemen: Liberals Hate America. The most asinine, over-the-top, hateful straw man of a pseudo-argument ever. ’Cause once you say that Liberals Hate America, you can pretty much accuse them of anything from increased drug use to the heartbreak of psoriasis. Coulter’s not just a shrew, she’s lazy — or she’d be supporting her viewpoints with something more substantial, and intelligent, than this kind of third-grade name-calling.
Pot and kettle indeed, Anniekins — if we turned this column into a drinking game called "Spot the Lie," I’d be so drunk right now they’d have to cart my ass out of here on a stretcher. Well, I hope you guys have enjoyed this inaugural installment of Ann Coulter Sucks — we’ll be back next week, same Coulter-time, same Coulter-channel!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 4:56 PM
George W. Bush gets his first look at the Qusay/Uday death photos.
A mea culpa of sorts is in order, as I did find the death photos on Yahoo!'s "Most Popular" page this morning. Strangely enough, though, all four iterations of the death photos put together still were not as popular as the picture of the polar bear whose fur turned purple, or the picture of the '51 Chevy truck some Cubans converted into a boat and nearly managed to float to Miami. Go figure.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:43 AM
Thursday, July 24, 2003
Fox News: We disgust. You recoil.
If you went hunting for Qusay and Uday's death photos the minute they were released — and you're one of only about 150 million Americans who did — you were not disappointed by the number of Web sites offering views of the pictures. The pictures of the dead brothers were more than a little on the bloody/gruesome side, so most sites (MSNBC, Yahoo!, CNN.com, f'rinstance) made you click on a link to take a gander at them. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution even took you to a page warning of "explicit, graphic content" before it would let you satisfy your urge.
But as of noon today, you could go to Foxnews.com and be immediately confronted by grainy but still less-than-pleasant photos of Uday and Qusay, both having kicked the oxygen habit, right on Fox's home page. Discretion? Taste? Nah, this is Fox News, we don't have time for any of that crap! It should be pointed out that by 4 p.m. Fox had taken the photos off the home page (replaced by a photo of some people looking at the death photos on a TV, presumably tuned to Fox News — how very existential of them). But still, gack. Never underestimate Fox's ability to be boorish, overdone, and proud of it.
This might not have anything to do with anything, but as of 4:30 p.m., none of the Uday/Qusay death shots had made it onto Yahoo!'s "Most Popular" page of the day's most frequently e-mailed photos. I find that a little hard to believe, since photos of Saddam's demon spawn all bloodied up and taking a dirt nap seem like precisely the kind of thing we Americans would be gleefully e-mailing all over the place the minute we could find them (and I'm not judging here — deriving joy from the deaths of those two assholes is something I won't judge anybody for). But people either were too grossed-out to e-mail them or figured any idiot with Internet access could find the photos himself, or Yahoo! made the executive decision not to include them in a place as easy-to-access as the Most Popular page. Whatever the case, you suck, Fox.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 4:31 PM
Qusay tomato, I say tomahto
Well, Uday and Quday Hussein are dead. Pardon me if I don't shed any tears. I do find it interesting, though, that Bush picked this event to say that "the former regime is gone and will not be coming back." So now it's gone? It wasn't gone on May 1, when you took your plane ride and strung that big "Mission Accomplished" banner across the USS Abraham Lincoln?
No thanks, we can screw this up just fine on our own
As usual, Seymour Hersh has written an excellent story in this week's issue of The New Yorker (Hersh, you will recall, is the writer deemed "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist" by former Defense Policy Board chair Richard Perle, presumably because Hersh dares not to write precisely what the Bush administration would like him to). The story details how the Syrian government approached the U.S. about creating a "back channel" through which they could funnel intelligence about al-Qaeda, but thanks to pressure by the Pentagon, the Syrians were effectively told to go screw themselves. If the Syrian government were to help us round up dope on al-Qaeda, of course, that would tend to counter the idea that Syria is a terrorist state or a country whose government directly sponsors terrorist activities, and then Rumsfeld and his pals wouldn't be able to take the hard line on Syria they'd been angling for practically from the minute Saddam's statue came down in Baghdad.
The way this administration tossed aside an offer of help from Bashar Assad — who, despite whatever youthful shortcomings he may have as a president, appeared to genuinely want to help the U.S. in its attempts to root out al-Qaeda — speaks not just to the arrogance but the bizarre idealism of the Bushies. It's not just cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-own-face, it's cut-off-your-nose-because-we're-the-United-States-goddammit-and-we-don't-need-a-nose. Yes, Syria is a country we've had our disagreements with in the past. But they're offering to give us al-Qaeda intelligence we might not be able to get any other way, and what's more, it could lead to the kind of U.S.-Mideast partnerships Bush couldn't even buy with thirty billion dollars (see Turkey). As much as we've pissed off the rest of the world with our diplomatic intransigence, here's a country — a Muslim country, no less — who wants to help us fight the war on terror and could be a major partner down the road in that effort, and what do we say to them? No thanks, it's been much more fun hating you guys for the past few months, we're gonna stick with that. But anyway, kisses. Love you.
Does Bush want to fight the war on terror, or doesn't he? Evidently he'd rather invade countries that have only the most tenuous of connections to al-Qaeda and hope that that does the job. Well, that's one strategy.
Which rock did you crawl out from under again?
Caught Dick Morris on "The Daily Show" last night. You feel a little icky just looking at this guy. He appears to have gained a lot of weight since the days in which he got famous for paying a prostitute to suck his toes, and he was unabashed in talking to Jon Stewart about how he'd worked for Clinton even though he didn't particularly like Clinton, and then jumped right back over to the conservative side once Bush came into power. Quite the opportunist, then. With his big hair and constant smug grin, he looks like the car dealer who knows you don't want the undercoating and the rear spoiler and the "protection package" and whatnot, but also knows the only car left on the lot is a model that has all that stuff and you're going to buy it because you just want to seal the deal and get the hell out of there.
Anyway, it was interesting to see Morris spar verbally with Stewart, and gratifying to see that Stewart didn't bother to hide his incredulity when Morris made outlandish claims like the advances in the peace process would never have been possible if Bush hadn't invaded Iraq. Sure, dude, whatever. But then, Morris never seemed like one to particularly care whether what he says makes any sense or not, as evidenced by his recent column in the New York Post in which he discusses the possibility of a Hillary Clinton presidential run. I don't know enough about Hillary's presidential aspirations (or lack of same) to be able to tell how full of crap Morris is when he implies that a Hillary '04 campaign is all but imminent, but it's the "solution[s]" he offers to Bush at the end of the column that really interest me:
* Focus on the Palestinian-Israeli talks and emphasize that no cease-fire would have been possible while Saddam Hussein was still writing checks to suicide bombers. There's that old canard again. Did anyone stop to think that maybe the reason no progress had been made in the Israel-Palestine peace process before the Iraq war was that Bush never bothered to get off his ass and get involved? You would have had an easier time getting Ari Fleischer to answer a question than you would have trying to get Bush to attempt any sort of intervention in the Iraq-Palestine conflict. The Bushies say that's because deposing Saddam was an absolutely necessary step before any peace efforts in Palestine could proceed, but...well, I guess we'll never know for sure, will we?
* Play a more active and visible role in dealing with North Korea. As long as there is a perceived threat to our security from terrorist nations, the American people will never vote for an untested president. Or, hell, play a role, period. But what really gets me about this one is the second sentence in Morris' statement. It's the most undisguised phrasing yet of what many of us have feared was the Bush administration's strategy all along: As long as people are scared, you've got it made.
* Don't go on vacation, as much as Bush deserves one. ... Well, that's an ironic bit of advice, given that in his first year in office Bush set the all-time record for most days taken off by any president in American history. That includes the entire month of August 2001, which he spent at his ranch down in Crawford. But hey, at least he made it back in time for Sept. 11.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:58 AM
Wednesday, July 23, 2003
What's worse than a tax-and-spend liberal? A don't-tax-but-spend-anyway conservative
There's a terrific column by David Broder in today's Washington Post about the lunacy of the Bush administration's fiscal policy. According to Broder, it's getting to the point where even some conservative think tanks are calling Bush out for sending the country down the road to financial ruin.
Of course, it doesn't take a nuclear physicist to figure out that if you have less money coming in but spend more, you will end up with debt — in our case, $455 billion. OMB Director Josh Bolten says the deficit is "manageable." Well then, buddy, you better start managing.
Of course, Bush does have to spend more on defense now that he's starting a war every time his Magic 8-Ball comes up "It is decidedly so." But you might be interested to find that under Bush, discretionary (i.e. non-defense) spending has increased 18 percent. I didn't pull that number out of my rear end, either — it came from the Cato Institute, an organization that cannot exactly be described as full of wild-eyed lefties.
Oh, budget surplus. It was nice knowing you. Those were the days. As it stands now, looks like the only one running a surplus these days is the Bush re-election campaign.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:35 AM
Irony: It's what's for dinner
The good news, for President Bush, at least: A former president has stepped forward to defend his inaccurate statements on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
My reaction is something akin to that of Phil Hartman's character from "NewsRadio": "This is deliiicious." On the one hand, the White House has to be like, Hooray, someone's finally standing up for us! On the other hand, Oh, crap, didn't we build our entire presidential campaign around wiping the country's collective memory clean of this guy because we said he was a dishonest turd?
Welcome back, irony. We missed you. If it's not too much trouble, could you make sure Ann Coulter writes a column on this topic? That's something I'd pay to read.
At the same time, though, I won't hold my breath for it.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:50 AM
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
When in doubt, change the subject: Pat Buchanan's "Crossfire" strategy lives on
A few weeks ago I wrote a letter to my congressman, Republican Spencer Bachus of the Alabama 6th district. I was urging him to support an effort by Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) to open an independent investigation into intelligence handling leading up to the war in Iraq. Since Bachus is an Alabama Republican, I didn't honestly expect him to write back and say, "That's a terrific idea, Doug, glad you suggested it" — I just wanted him to know what my feeling was on the subject.
I got a reply back yesterday. It began:
Thank you for contacting me to express your thoughts concerning the Head Start program. Soon Congress will be voting to reauthorize the Head Start program. I support this reauthorization in hopes that...
Honestly, I'd have felt better if he'd just sent me no reply at all. Either his office just made a mistake and sent me Constituent Form Letter #936, or they read my letter and decided a pinko leftie like me just wasn't worth two seconds of their time. Either way? Pissed. Off. I don't ride the short bus to school and I don't cut with the blunt scissors, so I'm not going to just sit back and say, "Oh, well, at least he supports the School Readiness Act" (which, by the way, contains a nasty loophole that would permit federally funded religious organizations receiving Head Start money to discriminate against Head Start teachers and parent volunteers based on their religion).
I'm sending another letter, hand-written this time, politely explaining that, uh, my first letter wasn't about Head Start, and if Rep. Bachus has an opinion on the Waxman bill, I wouldn't mind hearing it. We'll see what happens.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 1:12 PM
Welcome home, sorry for the delay
The papers today are full of happy-fuzzy stories about Pfc. Jessica Lynch's return to her hometown in West Virginia. What none of them go into is the bizarre circumstances behind her rescue from an Iraqi hospital — no, you have to go to that old standby, The Guardian (UK), to read about how the Army staged a massive, guns-blazing raid on the hospital even though it had been deserted days before by the Fedayeen Saddam troops that had previously been occupying it. The closest thing I've been able to find in the American press is this Seattle Times article, but even that story doesn't mention how the "Wag the Dog"-style rescue of Private Lynch came only after an Iraqi doctor tried to bring Lynch to an American encampment himself...and was fired at by American troops.
Movies are already being planned about this amazing rescue, but I have to ask, why? Why bother making a Hollywood blockbuster when the whole purpose of the rescue was so that the government could make one of its own? Yeah, the rescue was a terrific story, and I hate to poop on anyone's parade, but it was bunk. And Lynch and her family deserve a lot of credit for not being more pissed off than they are, that their daughter was forced to languish in an Iraqi hospital for a few more days just so that the Pentagon could plan an especially photogenic raid that would really "pop" on the TV screen.
Stuff like this is why I open my mouth, stick my finger in, and make the Vomit Face every time some conservative whiner says something about the "liberal media." Kids, if the media was really that liberal, we'd have had stories coming out the wazoo about how this whole thing was just a rigged-up pseudo-rescue concocted solely to inject some human triumph into an invasion that, at least at the time, wasn't going so hot. But the "liberal media" took the time they could've used to expose the rescue farce, and instead used it to give Michael Savage his own TV show. I didn't just fall off the turnip truck, dig?
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:39 AM
Monday, July 21, 2003
Oh, now you want help!
Bush and his administration went out of their way to belittle and insult other countries who didn't support the invasion of Iraq, but now he wants other countries to chip in with the occupation. This wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that the occupation is cleaning us out to the tune of about a billion dollars a week, would it?
Hey, baby, it's me, the United States. Baby, I'm sorry. You know when I called you "Old Europe" and stuff, I didn't mean it, right? I just say stuff like that when I'm scared, but you know I love you...baby, can you hook me up with a hundred billion dollars, just 'till I get my next paycheck?
But just so nobody gets the wrong idea about this thing, Bush is careful to remind us that those countries will not be in the running for reconstruction contracts, 'cause it "shouldn't be viewed as an international grab bag." This grab bag is for Bechtel and Haliburtononly, bitches!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 5:47 PM
Meanwhile, in other news...
OK, so we've established that misleading the American public is apparently grounds for impeachment. How nice that Bob Graham has the stones to point out that this is also the case when a president misleads people about his case for war, and not just about his penchant for blowjobs. Graham's profile isn't high enough to make serious waves in the presidential campaign — not yet, at least — but whoever ends up getting the nomination would do well to choose him as a running mate.
"Our morale is not high or even low. Our morale is non-existent . . . The 3rd Infantry Division soldiers feel betrayed, and forgotten."
It'll be interesting to see how the military ends up voting in '04. All through the '90s you got to hear the Republicans boast about how they can count on the GI vote because the Republican Party is the only one with any respect for the military. But after reading some of the reports coming back from the troops stationed in Iraq, I've concluded that the Republican definition of "respect for the military" is "sending them halfway around the world at the drop of a hat for dubious reasons," and not "giving one tenth of a shit about their morale or welfare." Read this story filed by a journo embedded with the 3d Infantry and see if it sounds like these guys would line up to vote for Bush. Who would you think has greater empathy for the military: someone like John Kerry, who actually got shot at in Vietnam, or someone like Bush, who somehow managed to swing a cush assignment to an "active but non-flying" Alabama Air National Guard base in '71 and then forgot to show up?
Don't confuse me with facts when I've already made up my mind
Then, of course, we have this National Intelligence Estimate report that began circulating on Oct. 2 (five days before that Cincinnati speech in which Bush deigned to mention Iraq's alleged uranium purchases), saying that invading Iraq and overthrowing Hussein might actually be more dangerous than just leaving Iraq be, at least in terms of WMD. To wit, if Saddam actually had weapons of mass destruction, he would be unlikely to use them if he wasn't provoked, but a pre-emptive invasion would be the perfect opportunity for him to dish them out to terrorists, so that there wouldn't be any when the troops rolled in. I feel safer already!
Wow, the Bush administration can stonewall the congressional probe into pre-9/11 intelligence snafus but couldn't even get this little NIE nugget hidden from the press...someone's head is gonna roll for that one.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 4:13 PM
This post approved in advance by George Tenet
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." As Condoleezza Rice has maintained, yeah, it's just 16 words out of the president's entire 2003 State of the Union address. But that's neither an explanation nor an excuse.
The Republicans can claim all they want that there's nothing at all misleading about that statement. But if Bush thinks that dumping responsibility on the Brits gets him off the hook, he's wrong. The Bush administration had been warned repeatedly that the British intelligence was crap — first by former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who reported to the CIA in March 2002 that the allegations were "bogus and unrealistic"; George Tenet, who's somehow riding the rap for this whole thing, intervened with an aide of Condoleezza Rice's to remove a reference to the uranium in a speech Bush gave in Cincinnati in October; and a CIA official (not Tenet) specifically objected to the uranium line when he reviewed the State of the Union speech in January '03. But the White House wanted it in anyway.
Think about that for a minute. The Bush administration had been assailed for months with doubts about whether the uranium intelligence was true, but they included it anyway. And no, it doesn't matter that he attributed it to the British. No matter who Bush said came up with the intelligence in the first place, he still had some idea it was wrong, and used it anyway to bolster his case for war. If Sally tells me that Bobby kissed Mary Sue behind the jungle gym, and I have serious doubts as to whether Sally is telling the truth but I go ahead and spread the rumor, how does that make me any less culpable in a falsehood getting spread — even if I tell people, "Sally told me she saw Bobby kissing Mary Sue..."?
And then, of course, we have Colin Powell dropping the uranium claim from his speech to the U.N. Security Council just eight days after the State of the Union, because he didn't think it was solid enough "to present to the world." Eight days! Eight days is all it took for this "darn good" piece of intelligence to get dropped like a bad habit.
So, no, it doesn't matter that it was only 16 words. It doesn't matter that Bush attributed it to the British. If anything, that makes it worse: Bush had what he knew to be a very shaky bit of intelligence, but he was so desperate to use it in his case for war that he threw it into his speech anyway, and knowing that the lid might get blown off the whole thing sooner or later, he made sure the British attribution was in there as a cover-your-ass so that when the poop hit the fan, he could say it was the limeys who steered him wrong. Never mind that he'd done plenty of the steering himself.
And then, of course, question must be asked: If the Bush administration was willing to put what they knew to be a sketchy statement in a speech that would be seen by millions of people around the world, who knows what else they stretched the truth about? Or outright lied about?
If you're reading this column and you voted for Bush in 2000 because you thought he was an honest, upstanding guy, so much more truthful than that slimeball Bill Clinton, congratulations: You just got played.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 2:04 PM
Sunday, July 20, 2003
When Bill Clinton lied, it was to save his ass. When George W. Bush lied, it was to start a war.
When Bill Clinton lied about a blowjob, he got impeached. When George W. Bush lied to start his war...uh, what happened? Nothing yet, unfortunately. Somehow we doubt he'll get impeached. But no way in hell can we let his ass get re-elected -- sorry, re-selected -- in 2004.
This site is a running commentary on the process by which, with any luck, Bush's lies and "definition of is" truth-twisting eventually will get exposed and punished. But while the Iraq war, the bogus reasoning behind it, and the egregiously botched occupation will be the main thrust of what we go into here, it's not going to be the only thing. Depending on what other events pop up, we'll go into the disastrous effects of Bush's idiotic tax cut, his flagrant abuse of the environment, and the other infuriating ways in which Bush's administration is allowing the right-wing lunatics to run the asylum.
There will be comedy (some of it even intentional). There will be 'toons, when we can find them. And there will even be an e-mail address where, if you're a fellow Bush antagonist, you can send questions, issues you want raised, news you think we should know about, love letters, dirty jpegs, credit-card numbers, anything you want. Heck, if you're a Bush lover who wants to send a typically semiliterate rant about what a bunch of pinko Saddam-loving commie traitors we are, hey, have at it. Whatever your position, you can send e-mail here.
So that's the intro. Is it 2004 yet?
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 7:08 PM
