Dude, WTF?

Bill Kristol takes a monstrous hit of the elder bud and proclaims:

Before last night, I thought it was 50-50 that the Republican nominee would win in November 2008.

Now I think it's 2 to 1. And if the Democrat is anyone but Hillary, it's 4 to 1.

Nothing to Fear

Digby explains how the Democrats get it completely backward in acquiescing to the absurd condemnation of MoveOn's ad in the NYT. Rather than supporting this private organization's right to voice their opinion, David Obey and the Dems accuse the group of McCarthyism. This is really 'through the looking glass' sort of stuff. As Digby says:

Now, Obey is a confused sort who apparently thinks that because a civilian group criticized a general in a newspaper ad they are the equivalent of McCarthy using the coercive constitutional power of the US Senate to smear the Army as being riddled with communists. That's ridiculous, of course. The principle right minded Americans hold against McCarthyism is the use of government power to suppress dissent.

Time and again, we fundamentally misread our own history, and misuse analogy in order to end up at an absurd juncture. Digby quotes Edward R. Murrow, who famously stood up to the junior senator from Wisconsin:

His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

Consider that quote in light of the flap regarding Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia. It takes a Global War on Terra to get us to the point where we are afraid of ideas. Rick Perlstein wrote a tremendous piece in Common Sense titled "Bed-wetter Nation" in which he very effectively contrasts the nation that faced a true global menace in 1959 with the nation that we've become under this fear mongering administration. You should really read the entire piece, it shows just how far we've come from our senses.

Interestingly, though, the fear seems to have reached even the highest levels:




UPDATE: Uh-Oh. The Big Dog is pissed about the feigned outrage of the right.

Tuesday morning warmongering....

I realize that from time to time, the absurdity of the Bush administration borders on the comic, but we need to keep in mind that the stakes are incredibly high, and that young men and women are dying for no good reason. Further, these folks are not only committed to keeping this madness going until school is out and they can replenish the old coffers, but they are committed to extending their discredited neo con agenda into Iran.

There is a special place in hell for bloodthirsty old men like Norman Podhoretz. As Atrios says:

I know it's impossible for any of our elite press to actually consider news events from an alternative perspective, but it'd be nice to think for a few minutes about how Iranians - and their leaders - react when "is the US about to bomb the shit out of Iran" is a fairly regular topic of conversation in our media.

and those nuclear warheads that were mistakenly flown across the United States last month, landing at the take off point for B52 missions to the middle east? Larry Johnson calls bullshit on the notion that this could have been a simple screw up.

War Weary

It will be interesting to see how the Senate moves towards the country with regard to the lifetime engagement that we've blundered into in Iraq. Senator McCain and Warner are now putting forth a milquetoast version of a "support the troops" amendment that merely ensures that we doom more young men and women to the meat grinder indefinitely. The fact that the Republicans in the Senate have threatened successfully to filibuster any legislation that legitimately attempts to curb the administrations stubborn war-without-end policy has been successfully been spun in the mainstream media as a Democratic failure. That certainly enables Bush as he kicks the can down the road, waiting patiently until 2009, when he can party like mad, cause school is out.

But eventually, even the diehards will fold. I see more and more bumper stickers against the war each day. Cocktail party chatter (at least as far as I could describe my neighborhood parties as "cocktail parties") has changed dramatically over the past months. The topic of Iraq, which was off the table, is now not only on the table, but the "conventional wisdom", to misuse that phrase, has moved towards a broad realization that we are in the singular historical position of living during the most inept administration in the history of the republic. We'll all be telling our grandkids about W one day....

So, the Senate will come around, and the Jim Webbs and Russ Feingolds will be vindicated. But that won't matter, because by the time they come around, the Dems will be in the White House, and the dangerous question of just how we extricate ourselves from this Mess-o-potamia will be hers. And at that point, you can cue the band, and the outraged opposition will begin the familiar whine....it's all Clinton's fault.

UPDATE: Glen Greenwald eviscerates David Brook's column in the NYT. Brooks is one of the beltway pundits that deceitfully equates his own opinion with the mainstream, while clearly ignoring all factual data to the contrary. Like Congress, beltway pundits like Brooks and Broder will eventually realize that the American people are far ahead of them in their disdain for this tragic foreign policy.

General Petraeus and Bush's War

Digby quite correctly comments on the absurd hagiography that has surrounded General Petraeus' ascension of the Hill this week:

This fabulous intellectual has opened his mouth many times over the past few years, and in doing so has proved himself each time to be a hack for the Bush administration....I grew up in a military family and I'm not hostile to the services. But this phony reverence for The Man Called Petreaus is enough to make me sick. He may be a smart guy but he's as political as they come. In fact he's been pimping the white house marketing scheme almost non-stop for months, culminating in spending virtually the entire month of August glad-handing easily impressed congressmen like Brian Baird.

All this hand-wringing sanctimony about Petraeus today as if he's some sort of godlike figure who is beyond criticism is ridiculous. He's selling his war and that's his right. But when he spins and obfuscates and lies like a politician, he should expect to be treated like one.

At the same time, however, it seems as though Petreaus may have pissed off one fairly important constituency, namely, the Pentagon:

NEWSWEEK has learned that a separate internal report being prepared by a Pentagon working group will “differ substantially” from Petraeus’s recommendations, according to an official who is privy to the ongoing discussions but would speak about them only on condition of anonymity. An early version of the report, which is currently being drafted and is expected to be completed by the beginning of next year, will “recommend a very rapid reduction in American forces: as much as two-thirds of the existing force very quickly, while keeping the remainder there.”

As John Aravosis points out, somebody at the Pentagon is leaking this information to Newsweek, and they are doing it to make David Petaeus look bad. Bush set this guy up, as I pointed out in July, and it's a no win situation for Petraeus. He's being forced to own Bush's war, to a large extent. It is a war that the American public hates, and a President that the American public hates. There are undoubtedly folks at the Pentagon that will see his act as grandstanding and politicized, and that won't go unchallenged.

And count me down as skeptical that putting that monkey on the teevee on Thursday night to mangle some more English in defense of his failed strategy is going to sway anyone's opinion at this point. I agree with Atrios that the power of the "big megaphone" is lost at this point.

Friday Afternoon Luciano Goodness...

Una furtiva Lagrima - From Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore




RIP Maestro...

Reading from the wrong playbook..

Apparently, the Maliki government didn't get the memo. Commenting on the military report that found that the Iraqi forces are nowhere near ready to assume any role in Iraq, and that the police force is so badly compromised by insurgents that it should be disbanded, a government spokesmen reacted thusly:

"This is an Iraqi affair and we will not accept interference by anyone in such work, whether the Congress or others," Majid told The Associated Press by telephone. "The report is inaccurate and not official and we consider it interference in our internal affairs."

Woops. Somebody forgot to mention that W has a different opinion. Bush on Maliki:

"He's learning to be a leader," Bush said a few weeks later. "And one of my jobs as the president and his ally is to help him be that leader without being patronizing. At some point in time, if I come to the conclusion that he can't be the leader—he's unwilling to lead or he's deceptive—then we'll change course.

John Kerry was right. Not that it matters

I realize that there are alot of bad folks out there in the world, and I realize that our relative prosperity, our enviable position as the world's only true superpower, and the unfortunate foreign policy that we've adopted since 2001 (which has turned us into a global pariah) clearly puts us at risk for desperate acts by desperate people.

That said, each and every one of these "massive plots" that have been discovered quickly turns out to be a keystone cop caper that unravels upon the slightest investigation. Arthur Silber writes about "the latest Threat to Destroy All the Universes Forever and Ever":

Among the numerous futile and profoundly counterproductive effects of the manner in which the Forces of Good and Light have chosen to conduct the Global Battle against Evil and All Bad and Nasty Thingies, perhaps the most offensive are what we might categorize as the assaults on minimally decent aesthetics. Every time another of these all too predictable events occurs, I feel as if I'm watching a movie from five or six decades ago, a film that was crudely imitative, fourth-hand trash the first time and that only gets worse and cruder with each repetition.

No real ammunition. No real targets. But be afraid, be very afraid.

Remember this?:

At a nationally televised debate on January 29, Massachusetts senator John F. Kerry delivered the jaw-dropping assessment that the threat of terrorism had been "exaggerated" by the Bush administration. Terrorism, he asserted, was "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world — the very thing this [Bush] administration is worst at."

Greenwald, a bit too optimistically pointed this out, after the London bombings were thwarted:

If George Will can come out and say that John Kerry was right about how best to approach terrorism and the Bush approach does nothing but increases it, then perhaps we can soon reach the point where national journalists will understand that there is nothing "strong" about wanting more and more wars, and nothing "weak" about opposing warmongering and advocating more substantive, rational and responsible methods for combating terrorism.

I think, for once, Glen Greenwald put too much faith in the press and the administration. Take it away, David Lindorff:

While there is nothing to be done about the disaster in Iraq, which will go down in military history as one of the great defeats of all time-the most powerful military the world has ever known beaten by a disorganized assortment of ill-trained and ill-equipped guerrilla fighters-this is nonetheless a dangerous moment.

Wounded animals are dangerous animals, and President Bush and his gang of Neocon wackoes, badly wounded by defeat in Iraq, are not anxious to slither off the political stage as losers. Hence the plans in the works to go double or nothing with an all-out aerial assault on Iran.

Numerous reports, including most credibly one in The Times in London (owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.), suggest that a plan has already been laid out for a three-day massive bombardment on over 1200 targets in Iran, which would attempt to destroy not just that country's nascent nuclear processing capability, but also its government, communications, and military facilities, essentially leaving the country of 70 million a smoking ruin.

Bring on the crazy....

Godawmighty, this is scary.



Look, we're being ruled by a child. A delusional child who is trapped a dangerous phase of petulant dementia. This is what he says to the last of the "coalition of the willing":

"We're kicking ass," he told Mark Vaile on the tarmac after the Deputy Prime Minister inquired politely of the President's stopover in Iraq en route to Sydney.