God's Grift

Perhpas the most welcome news of the past week was the well-timed revelation that Chimpco might, just might, have been playing the extra-chromosome vote for the suckers that they are. I mean, rank cynicism we can all understand; actually thinking that esoteric religious and social issues are even our hundredth biggest problem right now, not so much.

A former senior presidential aide has accused the Bush administration of using evangelical Christians to win votes but then privately ridiculing them once in office. The allegations by David Kuo, the former deputy director of the White House office of faith-based initiatives, come at a devastating time, when the administration is counting on born-again Christians to vote in sufficient numbers to save the Republicans' hold on Congress in the November elections.

In a book entitled Tempting Faith: an Inside Story of Political Seduction, to be published on Monday, Mr Kuo portrays the Bush White House's commitment to evangelical causes as little more than a cynical facade designed to win votes.

"National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ridiculous, out of control, and just plain goofy," Mr Kuo wrote, according to MSNBC television, which obtained an early copy of the book. In particular, he quotes Karl Rove, the president's long-serving political adviser and mentor, as describing evangelical Christians as "nuts".

Good. At least the elves of this administration have actually assessed something correctly. As always, it's necessary to preface that assertion with the caveat that it's not all people of faith, nor is it the having of faith itself, that is the problem. It's simply the overt politicization of faith, and that's all these hucksters really are when you get down to it -- they're politicians.

I doubt if the political blowback will be much to write home about -- at worst, the evangelicals might decide to stay home instead of voting. And again, if they are going to persist in their ridiculous misprioritization of serious national issues, good. Stay home continue the endless plaint of moral decadence and perfidy of everyone else. Shoot your television set. Whatever floats your boat. Just stop inflicting your willful ignorance on the rest of us.

I understand Barack Obama wants to reach out to these people, or at least be seen and heard talking about how much we need to reach out to them. The notion of crazed Jesus Campers laying hands on and praying over a life-size Barack Obama cardboard cutout does not make me feel any better about the process. I think we get farther by doing and saying things that will enlighten and inform people, and encourage the self-disenfranchised to want to become more involved in the political process. There, too, is the instilling of faith.

And it's alternately hilarious and telling that on their visits to the White House, the evangelicals were frequently bought off with trinkets and things like official stationery and photographs. Something to take back home to show the rubes. And you thought we got Manhattan Island cheap.

That, along with Pope Dobson's indifferently cynical response to the indisputably moral issue of Mark Foley preying on teenage pages, also demonstrates a profound gulf even between the flock and their self-appointed leaders. Dobson reflexively recognized the political gambit at play and characterized Foley's pathetic e-mail exchanges as "pranks" and "jokes" played by the pages themselves. A more organized opposition (not just to the Republican Party, but to the wild yet disciplined antics of the snake-handlers as well) would use that episode to drive a real wedge between Dobson and his millions of suckers. Then again, it may be a definitional issue with suckers -- short of a video of Dobson consummating with a nervous ungulate, they'll happily lap up everything he says, and pay him for the privilege. Pretty sweet racket, when you think about it.

And if it does affect the flock enough that they wish to start a third party, even better. I would even drop a buck in the tin cup for such a windmill tilt. It's like throwing Finding Nemo in the DVD player so you can go to the back of the house and spend a little quality time with your significant other.

The Wages Of Spin

There is much hand-wringing and statistics-mongering over the recent estimate of the running death toll in Iraq, as a direct result of our unwarranted invasion, which is about the most polite way one can put things at this late point. Expert statisticians such as noted future MacArthur Genius Grant winner Michelle Malkin loudly proclaim their misgivings at the notoriously high estimate of over 655,000 dead. At that rarefied level of death, one gets into tautological arguments over methodology and then, as some sort of rhetorical buffer, the inevitable "Saddam was worse" charge is lobbed somewhat injudiciously.

Well, then. Once again, it appears that we are dancing around the wrong bonfire. The false comparisons of Saddam's murderous behavior are almost too easily put to rest -- even giving the benefit of the doubt that the flat Stalin statistic of one million is accurate to ascribe to the Hussein mafia, it took him over two decades to tally that figure, versus some 42 months for ours. Now, it's true that it is also a false equivalence to attempt to conflate Saddam's furious malice with our noble if incompetent scheme of "liberation", but it's also not as unfair as the liberators might pretend to think to point out that had we left awful enough alone, hundreds of thousands of innocent people would not have met an awful, undeserved fate. Whether the actual toll is one hundred thousand or the six or seven posited by statistical regression analysis elides the larger point, which the liberators are understandably trying to avoid.

It's a gruesome moral calculus, but one that is necessitated by the mere act of attempting a verifiable accounting. Because once you've taken it upon yourself even to dismiss the estimate as too high, if you are at least intellectually honest with yourself (if not the rest of the world), you have to ask yourself what is "it" worth -- and what "it" is in the first place. All these terms that get chucked around like rocks skipped across the pond, indifferently, mindlessly, must be defined at some point. What are we actually trying to achieve, and how realistic are our professed goals? What is "success"? Is it merely having a standing Iraqi security force? What about the likely prospect of such an army devolving into sectarian death squads, engaging in revanchist ethnic cleansing (as has been happening)?

More to the point, how many people have to meet their fate at the business end of a power drill to make George Bush and his noisy little claque of basement keyboarders feel better in their projected certitude? Even though some five thousand people have wound up in the morgue and in the street just in the past couple months, they are unwavering in their blindered equivalences, and their abject refusal to accept statistical probability. It's all worth it for them, because they were never asked to sacrifice anything in the first place. They have no real skin in the game, just the onset of carpal-tunnel and a lot of empty 2-liter bottles of Mountain Dew to clean up.

As for Oedipus Tex, the estimate of thirty thousand -- which was generally considered rather low even back when it came out -- is apparently still his personal benchmark, when he can be bothered to revisit it in the first place. Particularly troublesome are his blasé assumptions about what Iraqis are "willing" to put up with.

I am amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they're willing to -- that there's a level of violence that they tolerate.

They're not "tolerating" it -- everyone with the means to leave is doing just that. The people who remain are stuck. Bush's condescension is upstaged only by his utter cluelessness about the whole operation. His inability to describe even basic terms of what needs to occur before not only we can get out, but that Iraq doesn't then become an Iranian proxy overnight, only cement the impression that he's just running out the clock before he can fob this off onto the next administration.

And now that the British are going to be leaving, that means that the southern section surrounding Basra -- already a nascent Iranian enclave -- will soon become our problem as well. Do we just scoop up as many juvenile delinquents and skinhead nutjobs as we can, to avoid a draft, and set them loose in the pressure cooker of Basra? Is this more of that "forward thinking" Bush is so famous for?

Just the "press conference" alone is so completely without any real value, you could spend the next week fisking pretty much every assertion, if not literally every single sentence. A cursory reading of the whole thing will illustrate that, as well as the fact that as with most things Bush, it's just not worth the time.

The main thing to take from the estimate is not its accuracy, but its implications. The "real" figure may be "only" 100,000 or even less, though I can't imagine a remotely realistic estimate at this point of less than 75,000. And that doesn't even take into account the maimed and wounded, the soldiers and civilians who are saved by the wonders and advances of medical technology, but have had their lives and bodies forever altered.

And for what? So Bush can feel tough and show us all how principled and godly he is? So the warporn enthusiasts have more wanking material, telling us how "serious" they are? If there were a realistic, attainable strategic objective to all this, I could see it. But the fact of the matter is, we're on the verge of turning a bloody dictatorship that, for all its faults, was the technological and commercial leader of the region, into a bloody fundamentalist theocracy backwater, where everyone with any skills and practical ability has gotten the hell out.

If they're lucky, and if we all step in and help, Iraq might get back on its feet in a generation. And who knows, perhaps like the Vietnamese, they'll move past what the Stratego players of this administration wrought on their country and forgive us. It's certainly more than we would do for them, if the roles were reversed. The toxic bloodlust of the past five years has demonstrated at least that much.

Northern Exposure

So let me see if I understand this correctly: the Clinton administration engaged in a flawed agreement with perhaps limited success with the North Korean government, but the results of that endeavor were a general suspension of uranium enrichment, and no nuclear program or bombs.

By contrast, the Bush administration has developed a uniquely inept combination of bluster, inaction, and refusal to deal with what they so loudly proclaim to be a brutal dictatorship. They have bravely refused to compromise or engage in any bilateral discussions, and have repeatedly upped the ante by lobbing handy little marketing terms, designed specifically to incite, inflame and embolden. End result: the North Koreans have accelerated their enrichment process, and may very well have tested an actual weapon. The last best hope for this administration, as regards North Korea, may be to try to pull up its pants already and send James Baker over to patch this thing up as best he can.

So for those keeping score on the Axle of Elvis, we have one member developing and testing its nuclear program, another right behind it in similar efforts, and the third devolved into a morass of blood and pain, with no end in sight, at the bargain price of $2bn/week to the US taxpayer. There are your Serious Thinkers, America. How do you like them?

It's no wonder that Fafblog walked away from it -- it's literally impossible to parody the enormous absurdity which circumscribes these blustery idiots running the show, and the brainless halfwits who continue to seriously think that Chimpco has any sort of plan to help this country in any area.

A World Of Shit

From the Random Clippings file, I came across this brief interview with R. Lee Ermey. Although Ermey is currently plugging the, um, prequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, he will forever be best known as the closet-case coach in Saving Silverman.

Supposedly he also had a small role in a little thing called Full Metal Jacket.

Anyway, because of Ermey's actual background as a Vietnam vet and Marine DI, the interviewer decided to ask him his thoughts about our current brush with density destiny.

Q: As a guy who still attracts a wide military following through Mail Call and volunteer work with wounded veterans and military families, your opinions hold lots of sway. What's your advice to commanders in Iraq?

A: Just stay the course. We're doing great. If you listen to the liberal media, you'd think we were losing the war. I've been to Iraq and Afghanistan several times, and I see great advancements every time I go back. War is war. People are going to get hurt. People are going to get killed. A lot of people don't agree with the war. But there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Really. So the "liberal media" is just making everything up. All the carnage and violence is just a well-coordinated illusion with a practical purpose of destabilizing the morale of the homefront. The "light at the end of the tunnel" couldn't possibly be nothing more than an oncoming train.

Maybe the nut of it is simply Ermey's basic contention that "if you listen to the liberal media, you'd think we were losing the war." Perhaps the corollary to that is that if you listen to nothing but Fox and Limbaugh and the rest of the Horst Wessel gang, you'd assume that we were winning, that the casualty rate is a mere comma in the chapter of greatness George W. Bush and like geniuses are authoring, and leaving to future administrations to figure out the ending.

But refereeing a bloody civil war is not a "course", nor is it a plan. There is an intellectually honest argument to be made that immediate withdrawal is no solution either, but this is not such an argument.

I respect Ermey's prior service, and appreciate his continued endeavors to participate and boost troop morale, seriously. But this particular Q&A was little more than a rhetorical turd in the punch bowl.



This is my rifle, this is my gun; this is for fighting, this is for fun.

Fuck The Dukestir

I'll take the high road and claim principled opposition to the prison rape, but I secretly hope Dukestir's talking about his anus:

“I hurt more than anyone could imagine and without my faith your constant cruelty would destroy me,” he wrote.

Cunningham cited his religious faith again when he wrote, “The Lord's Prayer forgive me my debts as I would forgive. My first sin each night is the failure to forgive the U.T. Not just coverage but the brutal two and three pages each week that has nearly destroyed me and my family.”

He warned that the “truth will come out and you will find out how liablest [libelous] you have & will be.”

He also complained that Stern and other Copley reporters “only want to write about how I died not how I lived.” And he rattled off a long list of honors he said he earned as a congressman – “Education Man of the Year, Impact Aide Man of the Year, Library Man of the Year,” among others.

Plus he's in the running for Turned-Out Cell Block Punk of the Year, but I don't there's any medal involved.

Seriously, fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Cunningham. May every corrupt grifter in the Duma/Politburo end up sharing a cell with you. His perfidy is well researched, documented, and annotated; he can now add Baldfaced Liar of the Year to his many notable accomplishments. Plus his wife -- who, don't kid yourself, could not have at least intuited what the fuck was going on -- is penniless.

Sometimes the system actually works.

Raiders Sucking Like Chasey Lain

Here's a quick comment I just dropped on the SF Comical's Raiders blog. If you're a football fan (or, God forbid, a Raiders fan) you may find it morbidly amusing. Or not.

I am so tired of trying to root for this gutless, incompetent team. The next time Lamont Jordan walks away from a lateral clanking off his ass, he should be benched for a full game.

There is no sense of urgency to this team. They can't count (how many false starts per game are we up to now?), can't catch (dropping as many balls as they're catching), and can't tackle. Shoulda known that Frank Gore would break his fumble streak on Duh Raiders.

Four years straight of this ridiculous nonsense is enough. I have no idea why I'm supposed to spend money watching this team stumble listlessly through every game. I'd like to think they could get their shit together and make a 9-7 or even 10-6 playoff run, but looking at the rest of their schedule, it really is possible for them to not win a single game this year. Maybe if the Lions or Titans were on the schedule, but maybe not even then.

I'm just disgusted with this level of performance. Maybe Ben Davidson will show up at practice and put the fear of God into some of these guys; short of that, see ya next year, fellas.

It may actually be even worse than that. This team has no chemistry, and is on the verge of either total meltdown or mutiny. I'm dead serious. One problem I see is that virtually all the blame is getting dumped on the quarterbacking, when the fact of the matter is that the offensive line has performed miserably. They miss blocks and constantly draw stupid, drive-killing penalties like false starts. Aaron Brooks had to run for his life the first two games, and Andrew Walter has had only slightly better protection the second two, primarily because the defenses of San Diego and Baltimore are far better than those of Cleveland and San Francisco. I have no idea why Art Shell thought dumping Marques Tuiasasopo into this mess would help anything. Hell, might as well bring back Jeff George again while you're at it.

Secondly, the receiver corps has been spotty at best. I've seen Randal Williams -- who was excellent on offense and special teams in the preseason -- drop more passes in the last two games than he's pulled in. Randy Moss had a terrific touchdown catch between the knees to put the Raiders ahead in the second quarter, but he also dropped a (for him) money shot in the end zone on the previous drive, and they had to settle for a field goal.

Finally, while the defense had two nice fourth-down stands when they needed them, they also allowed Frank Gore -- who had fumbled in each of the previous four games -- to dance all over, around, and through them. Arnaz Battle, a mediocre receiver at best, completely pwned the secondary. That's just fucking inexcusable.

Frankly, I see some imminent locker room and meeting room clashes, prison style. I can see Art Shell just walking up silently to the last guy to show up at the next team meeting and fucking deck him, just to send a message to the rest of them that punctuality is not an option, nor is paying attention. I can see Andrew Walter going up to Randal Williams or Randy Moss and telling them that the next time someone drops a pass that hits them square in the fucking numbers, someone will lose some teeth.

Okay, I'd like to see such scenarios, because I think that this crappy team has already sunk to such depths that only such drastic measures will shake them loose, but it won't happen. This is a poorly-prepared, poorly-organized, and (sadly) poorly-coached team. Dan Marino was right -- this team really might go 0-16.

So, you know, I hope Al Davis realizes that all of us Raider fans know exactly who the ultimate blame lies with, that he was stupid to let Jon Gruden go, that he's stupid to get in a pissing contest with Jerry Porter. Just between those two episodes and his old feud with Marcus Allen, Davis' ego and bullshit has cost his precious team countless wins and playoff appearances. And since it's all about the benjamins in the end, perhaps if nothing else, the thought that people might just stop showing up to watch the Special Olympics of the NFL, wasting their hard-earned money, maybe that'll sink in.

Handjob Veterans For Truth

Alicublog has a brilliant take on the sexual continuum of the frantic Foley fabulists and their compadres in disingenuous silliness.

The top conservative bloggers, despite their self-portrayal as men and women of The Peepul, tend to be professional word-workers with some education and prestige (law professors, speechwriters, journalists, students, etc). They have to know this Republican freakishness about sex is all bullshit. But they have gone along because it has been good for their Party and the non-sex-based causes it supports -- endless war on Muslims, low taxes on rich people, and such like.

By a willful misreading of the current scandal-twisted situation, some of them see an opportunity to speak up for sex without abandoning their Republican affiliation. This opportunity is so rare, and so delayed, that when they finally feel themselves free to speak out for sucking and fucking, it comes out explosively, in a pressurized stream of clumsily suggestive gibberish.

For all the harm their reign has done our country, let us be grateful at least that we are not so afflicted.

Right on the money. The more literate of the conservabloggers are actually educated and sensible enough (believe it or not) to at least understand the trade-off they have made, even if they'll never fully admit it. But the fact is that their political success is tethered to the abject, pathetic deference they show to narcissistic theocrat orcs like Tony Perkins and James Dobson, who have all of a sudden abandoned their mission of dumbing down the culture to accommodate slow eight-year-olds to instruct their minions to think that a U.S. Congressman leaving a floor vote to talk about handjobs with teenagers is some big fucking prank. So much for ideological (or even intellectual) consistency. How do they sleep at night? On a big fucking pile of money, that's how.

But this is just another episode that neatly circumscribes their convenient obsessions with other peoples' sexual habits. They couldn't shut the fuck up for two seconds about the Clenis, alternating their labors between shoveling shit and desperate fabrications, but when it turned out Newt Gingrich and his replacement (among others) had similar moral afflictions, they hemmed and hawed like nobody's business.

They know (and knew) what they had in Mark Foley -- a good earner with a bad habit, like Vito from The Sopranos. It's a devil's bargain all the way around -- the GOP loses without the gay-marriage freaks, the freaks lose without a legitimate party apparatus to carry their holy water for them. Both sides tacitly know that since politics is, as they say, show business for ugly people, that as in Hollywood, there are plenty of gay people working behind the scenes, from closet cases like Ken Mehlman on down.

Which makes the Anchoress' self-indulgent crap all the more ridiculous for its senseless insouciance. The point she deliberately elides about Corn's list is that her party has been in cahoots with the theocrat assholes to pick on gays when and where it suits them. When it turns into a Jim West or an Ed Schrock or a Jeff Gannon™, suddenly the vaunted moral values that they see fit to endlessly lecture the rest of us on are sublimated for political convenience.

As for this Simon fella, I dunno. I've never read the guy before, and I guess he's supposed to be a professional writer of some sort. If that guy is getting paid to write, I'm in the wrong fuckin' business. He appears to have borrowed Matt Drudge's stupid hat to peddle cheesy little bon mots of one or two paragraphs, and has jokingly "outed" himself, while protesting that we're not sweating the big stuff enough.

Well, you know what, bub? You're fuckin'-A skippy on that one, as far as I'm concerned. I'd love nothing more than to hear the media start questioning exactly how North Korea got to this point on The Decider's estimable watch. (Beats the fuck out of watching them pester the Amish and sift through the peanuts in Denny Hastert's ass-gravy.) I'm sure it's all Clenis' fault somehow in their world, but the fact is that checkbook diplomacy kept NK's nuke program at least somewhat at bay. Since then, the Chimpco stick has done nothing but encourage further development, and now there's nothing short of an actual nuclear strike that we can do to dissuade them.

(And even then, payback's a loaded Taepodong each for Seoul and Tokyo, with some 30 million people living those metropolitan areas. It is not for nothing that this society is perceived as a do-or-die cult led by a delusionally messianic dim-bulb. North Korea, I mean. Not us, no never.)

So as Roy points out, there are several levels of cognitive dissonance at play with these weirdos. They awkwardly and too loudly proclaim that they loves them some sex, yet they have politically aligned themselves with people whose sexual mores trump their own common sense, and whose deepest thoughts on foreign policy are found in the Book of Revelation. As such, their pathetic flailing, trying to inject a virus of teh funny into a sordid tale of a predatory congressman and institutionalized hypocrisy (on the part of the gay aides as well as the fag-bashers they inexplicably keep working for), rings false, yet strikes the dog-whistle note the faithful have trained themselves to hear.

Passive-aggressive treatises on how they'd like to fuck Derek Jeter, hailing from heretofore moralizing scolds, does not wash, no matter how hard one squints. It's nothing more than cheap choir-preaching, and considering the congregation, will no doubt be successful.

The Departed

I've been a Scorsese fan for many years, but as for many people, that has waned some post-Goodfellas. Casino left a bad taste in my mouth, both for the tiresome and predictable excesses of the movie, and the actual viewing of it -- I actually saw the initial release that hit the theaters, with the original full-contact baseball-bat scene in the end, and the head-in-the-vise guy's eyeball flopping out onto his cheek. Then exiting the theater, where some douchebag was alternately consoling and cajoling his weeping daughter, who couldn't have been more than six years old, and had just watched three hours of mayhem culminating in two guys getting graphically beaten to death in a cornfield.

Gangs of New York and Aviator were okay, but still larded with a bit too much in the way of announced expectations and preconceived notions, set pieces and performances seemingly designed to coax long-due recognition from the tools at the Academy. It's always a fool's errand, but perhaps necessary to get the suits on board with anything that doesn't feature a mildly retarded high-schooler fucking a pie or two oafs looking for strange at weddings.

So it was nice to be able to go check out The Departed before getting impressions elsewhere ahead of time, and find that Scorsese has essentially returned to the Goodfellas well, both for better and worse, but mostly for the better.

(*** Caution: Mild spoilers ahead.)
Scorsese's gangster films have always been superior because of his innate understanding and desire to show the small things that make his wiseguys tick, and he both draws from and elaborates on that formula for The Departed.

The premise, adapted from the Hong Kong gangster film Infernal Affairs (which I haven't seen but will probably Netflix now), involves cops infiltrated by a mobster's mole, a mob family infiltrated by a deep-cover cop, their efforts to root out one another, and the havoc it wreaks on their lives and psyches. That the movie takes place in the backdrop of Irish mob Boston only enriches the atmosphere of the movie. Scorsese correctly recognizes and plays on some of the similarities between the Irish and the Italian experiences in the New World, and his guinea/boyo riffs are executed with style and heft.

Strong performances abound in this movie, from Jack Nicholson's scenery-eviscerating turn as mob boss Frank Costello, to Matt Damon as neighborhood-kid-turned-cop Colin Sullivan, to Leo DiCaprio's mob mole Bill Costigan. At first, it seemed strange casting two actors with such similar physical features as Damon and DiCaprio, as well as the similarity of the character names. But as the movie progresses, and the mole characters start manifesting their increasing difficulty at compartmentalizing the escalating tension and violence, the Costello/Costigan/Colin similarities make more sense. The casting similarity presents itself in a late scene, as Damon and DiCaprio descend in an elevator, silently, oddly juxtaposed and, aside from a height difference of a couple inches, appearing more than anything else as doppelgangers. The elision of identity, memory, and personality have of course been a trope of the Dickian sci-fi genre, with varying levels of success. Here it is utilized in a more visceral, worldly mode.

This would all be enough to make The Departed movie superior to the majority of gangster movies, but what makes it special is the outstanding supporting cast of Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, and Mark Wahlberg. Wahlberg in particular is excellent in his role as Dignam, the ball-busting Southie sergeant who revels in his contempt for DiCaprio's river-crossing "lace-curtain motherfucker" middle-class Costigan. Whatever musical chum the Wahlberg boys cranked out in the '80s for dim-bulb teenyboppers, both Mark and Donnie have proven themselves as tough, adaptable actors in numerous roles, and Mark's authentic Southie upbringing serves him well here as Dignam. You want Oscar bait, you might actually have it there.

There are a few twists and turns, while avoiding the tacked-on "gotcha" feeling that has infested many recent movies (hello, M. Night Shyamalan). The soundtrack also returns to the Goodfellas well right from the get-go, with the strains of Gimme Shelter wafting through the scenery. Later songs are better, with some ethnic Irish rock, one of which I believe was Dropkick Murphys. And Vera Farmiga, while not bad, has a relatively passive, enabling role as the double-dealing police shrink. But she holds her own with a top-notch cast that understands, like true top-notch casts, that the project is the real star.

Maybe the biggest surprise with this movie is how fucking funny it is, in that darkly humorous way that the Irish mastered long ago, and Scorsese has successfully mined here and there over the years. The humor helps with the pacing and tempo of the narrative, and in leavening the tone, and by the end, you appreciate it as an integral part of the movie; they're not throwaway jokes. The final silent, lingering shot is a gem, and maybe the funniest scene in the entire movie. It's what separates Scorsese from the hacks -- it's a shot that would never even occur to a Michael Bay or a Renny Harlin, which may not entirely be their fault, but that's the way it is.

It's Scorsese after all, so in the end we know how most things turn out. But what has always informed his greatest works is the getting there, even when you intuitively sussed the ultimate destination, and that's what Scorsese has brought back to the table with The Departed.

Liberals And Their Media

So I'm watching Bob Schieffer (who I'm sure thinks he means well at least) tackle the still-building Foleygate scandal this fine morning, by having not one but two of the more reliable tools in the mouth-breathing conservatard shed to peddle their lies and propaganda. Having Tom Davis (R-VA) and Ray Lahood (R-Tard) on to speak freely with only Schieffer himself providing rebuttal. So of course it went round and round on "when did Hastert know this" and "how did the gay Democratic mafia that really runs things (which explains the current make-up of our government, if you're incredibly drunk, I suppose) time this so propitiously to damage the sainted Republicans", blah blah blah.

I've iterated this before in re the Swift Boat cocksuckers, but the same principle applies here -- only the Republicans, with their hands squarely caught in the congressional page nookie jar, preying on teenagers, would have the fucking gall to even try turn the blame around on the opposition party. And only this crop of Dems, scared of their own shadows and thinking that their goal is to bamboozle imaginary "values voters", would let them get away with it.

I know that they think that by holding press conferences and issuing stern reprimands, they think they're doing something, but as I relate everything to football, I persist in my belief that when you have a bad team down in the second half, you don't let up, you don't even give them a glimmer of hope of getting back in the game -- you jam that fucking boot square on their neck and keep them prone until time expires. It's nice that Nancy Pelosi is jacking them on their weak attempt to put Louie Freeh and his Deputy Dawg act on the case, but she also needs to find a point person to hit CNN and call these pervert-protecting motherfuckers for what they are. This gall/spinelessness paradigm persists, no matter how Republicans fuck things up, no matter how many of them go to prison, no matter how much they get caught flat-out lying about shit.

It's irresponsible for Schieffer to have on two Republicans -- and ideological hacks at that -- with no impassioned partisan response whatsoever for at least the pretense of equanimity. Hell, it's irresponsible at this point for him to have Republicans on at all to discuss anything about this issue, seeing as how they've absolved themselves utterly from any serious discussion on the matter. They hid it for as long as they could, and now that it appears that one of their own finally discovered a remaining dram of soul that Karl Rove hadn't bled out, their last desperate tactic is to blame the Democrats for all this. This should be laughed straight out of the room from the outset -- and frankly, as I also said before, if the Democrats really had managed to coordinate such a conveniently-timed attack, I'd first thank them for finally understanding the rules that are necessary for fighting these animals, and then suggest that maybe they should have waited a couple weeks more for even better timing.

But the bottom line is that there is not even the pretense of seriousness or intellectual honesty in what these people had to say. Lahood even trotted out the "gas prices are down" line, thus triggering the automatic corollary that if these chumps are responsible for the occasional (and again, conveniently timed) lowering of prices, why are they somehow never even remotely accountable for higher prices? Suddenly it becomes a case of blaming Ronald McDonald for a rancid Big Mac.

So these people have nothing to say, yet Schieffer was happy to let them say, with only mild stock rebuttals and nothing in the way of actual refutation of that which was easily refutable. I'll check the transcript when I have more time tongiht, but I seriously don't think I heard Davis or Lahood once say anything that was actually true, nor did Schieffer seriously call them on it. Then again, if he was serious about his job, he wouldn't have had these clowns on in the first place.

And the elephant in the room here, despite the ministrations of the "legitimate" media, is not sex, it's power and money, and the confluence of privilege. As I pointed out earlier, and as Billmon explained even more elaborately, this is a money game, first and foremost, and Foley was a player because he had an easy seat in a wealthy district, and he was good about kicking campaign surpluses upstairs to the big bosses. That's why NRCC chairman Tom Reynolds went out of the way to protect Foley, and ironically now why the NRCC is spending extra millions of dollars, scrambling to try to save dozens of suddenly vulnerable seats.

Really, if the media filter were ever taken off long enough to allow something remotely resembling the truth to get out, these people would be pitchforked to death. I assume that the media's glad-handing role as the enabler of stupidity and lies is, like the protection of serial predator Mark Foley, all about the benjamins in the end. The sooner people come to their senses and realize that red and blue really make green, the sooner these fuckers can either be shuttled off to prison or paper-hat jobs. Having Tom Davis and Ray Lahood asking me if I want fries with that would make my fucking year.

What About Bob?

Bob Woodward is a dickhead. (Did I just say that out loud?)

I think it's just super-swell that he's had his come-to-Jesus moment with the reptiles ruining this country. Better late than never, even when there's a financial motive. And it may even lead to Condi Rice's downfall -- though to be fair, she does seem slightly less blatantly incompetent at State than she was as NSA. Knowing this crew, they'll just rotate Fatboy Hastert into Rice's State chair, although in point of fact it may then actually have to be a bench or a bean bag.

I take no comfort in seeing the scales supposedly fall from Booby's astigmatic eyes, nor do I make any assumptions about What This All Means. Woodward really is the court stenographer, in the truest sense -- insofar as he limns the current narratives and facilitates dialogue among the elites, he more or less accurately takes the collective pulse of the functionaries who actually run the place and set meaningful things in motion. These people just rely on folks like Bob to set the terms of debate and keep the plates spinning.

So in that context, I take these momentous "revelations" (Bush is clueless and dogmatic! Rumsfeld is a flaming idiot on an ego trip! Who'da thunk it?!?) to mean that the power brokers -- the "donor" class -- have read the tea leaves and decided that messianic drivel is no longer an operative foreign policy. That it took them six long years to figure this out (or at least do the cost-benefit analysis on it) indicates that, just as youth is wasted on the young, so is a college education wasted on the privileged.

But for some reason, Woodward's utterances are treated with the utmost reverence amongst "legitimate" media scribes, who can only hope to snorkel the right amount and sequence of corporate cock to land that cherry book deal. As far as I can tell, he's just finally getting around to iterating what we already knew, that these people were an unholy trifecta of incompetence, mal-fee-ance, and bad faith.

So fuck that shit. Booby oughta be sharing his royalties with us. I could use some beer money, asshole.

Party Vegetables

It's all too easy to launch deadly scuds of teh snark at the notion of earmarking a commemoration for an event which has yet to take place -- or even be defined.

THE United States Congress has set aside $20 million (£10.6 million) to celebrate the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The funds for "commemoration of success" in Iraq and Afghanistan were included in last year's defence budget, but went unspent amid an upsurge in violence in both countries.

So the money, of course, was rolled over into next year's budget, just in case. But again, all sarcasm aside, what are the serious identifiable criteria for "victory" or "success"? This ridiculous Yogi Berra shit Bush has been pimping for three years explains nothing. What the fuck does "as Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down" mean, precisely? Does it simply mean getting them uniforms and weapons and rudimentary training, or does it mean sticking around and ensuring they don't devolve into ethnic death squads abusing their power for revenge?

And clearly "success" will probably have different definitions and criteria altogether for Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite Saddam's criminal predations and a decade of criplling sanctions, Iraq was one of the most socially, culturally, and technologically advanced countries in the region before we knocked it over. Getting Afghanistan back to where it was in 1978 (or even 1948) would be a plus. There are different measures and applications, obviously.

Well, it's obvious to sentient beings, but not so much to this maladministration. Their inexplicable (literally, since they utterly refuse to explain any of the specifics of it) one-size-fits-all policy applies even to the ceremonial victory laps, which must be rolled over in perpetuity till an actual adult comes along to clean up Mister Man's mess.

In the meantime, laissez les bon-temps roulez!

Frist Watch

Bill Frist's tacit endorsement of involving Taliban members in an Afghan unity government couldn't have been better timed to get largely ignored. Oh, it's already inspired some fits of pique and betrayal in the usual quarters, and understandably so. This is a tough one to soft-pedal; there's no getting around that the practical ramifications of Frist's statement -- no matter how he has since chosen to "clarify" it -- is that we may have to find a way to work with some of the very same people who brought down the World Trade Center, and have exhorted other terror cells worldwide to commit similar atrocities. After all we've committed to, after all the hortatory rhetoric and manly chest-beating hither and yon (mostly yon), this is unacceptable.

And yet, with suicide bombings increasing in Afghanistan at an exponential rate, a resurgent Taliban in that country, a truce between Musharraf and the Pakistani Taliban, and an increasingly impotent (if well-meaning) Hamid Karzai, the pathetic truth is that Frist may actually be right.

[Frist] later backtracked from his comments, but Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution says striking a deal with the Taliban might work. “Our true interest is in ensuring that Afghanistan does not again become a haven for al Qaeda,” he tells CFR.org. “The Taliban, under Pakistani pressure, might ensure this if its own position was secured. This is distasteful, and might mean [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai's departure, but it does preserve our one core interest in Afghanistan.”

Ethnic Pashtuns on both sides of the border sympathize with the Taliban’s cause. Experts agree any solution to the Afghan conflict must involve Pakistan, whose government stands accused of harboring terrorists. “ The real question is not whether Pakistan is or is not supporting the Taliban, but why it is doing so,” writes Frederic Grare of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. To rescue Afghan-Pakistani relations and root out the Taliban and other terrorists from the region, he suggests that military rule in Pakistan be ended and democracy installed in Islamabad.

Scary scenarios abound here, but there are relevant facts to consider. It is now commonly accepted wisdom that the insurgency in Iraq stemmed at least initially from CPA proconsul Paul Bremer immediately disbanding both the army and the Baath Party. This was a tactical mistake, but from the standpoint of the war marketeers, a necessary one. After all, you can't spend fifteen years insisting someone is the love-child of Hitler and Stalin, and not demolish his party apparatus upon deposing him. But again, operationally, hindsight suggests that we might have restored some semblance of stability early on by leaving at least the institutional shells intact, and enabling Iraqis to rebuild them from within. The problem is that we seriously thought rebuilding everything from the ground up would be a snap. Well, 3½ years into it, it's a $2bn/week snap.

So Frist might be taking that as a lesson to apply in the case of Afghanistan, and again, while in principle it's an utter abomination, it may be our only practical option remaining. See, if the Smart Set hadn't shunted that $700 mil and all those troops off to Qatar to start staging the Cakewalk, before we were remotely done squaring up Afghanistan and Pakistan, that might not be the case. But as we keep hearing, we are where we are now, and we must deal. And unless we're prepared to establish some sort of rump garrison state somewhere in Central Asia (we aren't, and no country in the region would allow us to do so anyway), this may actually be the least awful option.

Frist is a company man through and through; I doubt if he farts without prior approval from someone in the White House. Chances are he drew the short straw on test-marketing what will probably become the new operational policy, if not publicly. There's just no way around it anymore, without Musharraf's help, and while he's pretty much done what he can with what he has, he at least knows when to fold 'em.

It is time for the Serious Thinkers to really consider what they want out of all this, and then to seriously mull over whether they really think this administration is intellectually and diplomatically equipped to carry out their (or any, really) master plan. Reflexive hysterical dismissals along the lines of "Nancy Pelosi will let bin Laden rape your teenage daughters!" simply do not count anymore; the plan must be one of affirmation, not babbling nonsense.

Here are the cold hard facts:

• We are stuck refereeing a nascent civil war in Iraq.


• Our financial and military commitment to Iraq has essentially drained us, barring drastic measures (draft, tax/bond increase), of the ability to function effectively should another serious conflict arise.


• Our window of opportunity for "fixing" Afghanistan effectively started closing when we started diverting funds away for staging troops for the Iraq invasion.


• Pakistan, given the ideological makeup of its citizenry and its military, and its nuclear capacity and former prevalence in sharing their secrets with anyone with a suitcase full of money, is far and away the most volatile, dangerous nation to our interests right now.


• The fates of Pakistan and Afghanistan are inextricably entwined.


• Pervez Musharraf is the only thing holding Pakistan together right now.

Obviously, there are more, but you get the idea. What it boils down to is that our options are limited, and our time may be shorter than we think. I am not nearly as sanguine as the CEIP guy about democratic elections in Pakistan; I think this is a citizenry that would install either a populist clown or a dangerous fundamentalist lunatic at the helm of a nuclear state.

The only other thing I can think of besides screening some "Taliban types" through this initial phase of Afghanistan unity government is checkbook diplomacy, which is what we should have done in the first place. Yeah, I said it -- throw money, lots of it. The latest bill for increasing funds for Iraq brings the running total to around $400 bn and counting. And what have we gotten for it, besides bloody death and continuous brutality? Seems like $5-10 bn max would have given Afghanistan decent infrastructural systems, which has ancillary benefits, like giving citizens a sense of national unity, rather than the role of a serf trying to eke living under the radar of the local warlord. Same with the notorious "tribal" provinces of Pakistan -- help them out, bring them along at a pace that doesn't impact them too harshly.

Instead of killing thousands of people, bankrupting our treasury, and earning the contempt and fear of the entire planet, we could have spent probably 5% of that and saved countless lives and renewed the trust and love that the world once had in us.

I know it sounds all peacenik-y and hippy-dippy and shit, but better that than going broke trying to help Oedipus Tex and his henchmen resolve all their courage issues. In the meantime, the main thing to remember about Frist is that he didn't come up with that shit himself. This doesn't happen in a vacuum. We're getting ready to start backing away from the hornet's nest we stirred up -- the real trick for the Bushies is convincing the warporn enthusiasts that it was their idea. They'll come around; they always do.

Sexual Politics

Heard enough about cyberpredator/congressputz Mark Foley? Maybe not. While it's certainly fascinating to pore over the endless minutiæ of Foley's lurid IM exhortations to his pubescent protégé, and extrapolate easy numberless jokes about his creepy predilection, there's still more.

There's more than the usual frantic, projected concoctions from the usual fucktards (links via TBogg), though those are always amusing for their abject demonstrations of cheap hypocrisy and aggressive stupidity. It's to be expected that these idiots would reflexively turn to their dhimmicrats card, because that's all they've got left. Some are even trying to bring up Gerry Studds, which is not entirely unfair if you're just focusing on the sexual aspect of all this.

But I think that's the wrong area to focus on, though it's obviously the easiest. Consider how the House Republican leadership has scrambled frantically to get its story straight as to what who knew when about all this, and how long the matter sat between Dennis Hastert's gravy-soaked ham-hock asscheeks. One thing from this Moran assclown (among countless other similar assclowns of the same ilk), who is desperately trying to finger complicit Democrats in what appears to be an exclusively Republican scandal, really made me laugh, because we can always recognize these tendentious little hacks for exactly what they are:

Now I realize how eager many of you are to connect all these dots and start accusing people of all sorts of conpsiracies to keep this thing quiet. And I will happily join you in hanging by their toes the entire Republican leadership if it turns out that they knew more than what is reported here and failed to do anything.

Yeah, sure you will. So of course the first thing this moron does when that becomes more and more the exact case is he trots out paper-thin assertions about Democratic timing and complicity. Gee, how principled you are, chump. I for one am shocked at the lack of follow-through on his part there. And for the record, I hope someone did time it deliberately. I hope they go scorched-earth on these punk motherfuckers. I want them to do to these gutless authoritarians exactly what Karl Rove and Dick Cheney have been doing to all of us for the past six years.

In the meantime, Rick Moran's promise to find his principles under a rock somewhere all of a sudden are not worth the cyber-bumwipe they're printed on. And his increasingly hostile defenses just get more and more hilarious, the jabbering nonsense of increasingly ridiculous people.

So let's talk about power, and how it can be opportunistically leveraged and compromised. Let's talk about Craig Spence, about Lawrence King and the quickly-disappeared Franklin Credit Union scandal, about the easy access of potted plant Jeff Gannon™. All those things did in fact occur, because they were allowed to occur, because there is some level of practical utility in it for someone.

Some things are not easily explained here. It becomes increasingly obvious that some or all of the people in the Republican leadership of the House knew about Foley's little problem for well over a year, yet did nothing. Now, why would that be? Think about it -- how hard would it have been a year ago to just put the arm on the guy, usher him into a nice little retirement sinecure, groom a replacement for a secure seat, and should the story ever see light, the blowback (so to speak) is at least substantially mitigated. Instead, in an increasingly hostile political environment, they completely neglected to cover their asses. Either this is incredibly stupid on their part, or Foley's a bigger player than we know. He certainly seems to be a reliable rainmaker for the NRCC. Is he also one of those people who knows where all the usual bodies are buried?

Not sure yet, but as more and more bodies drop and careers are ended, the more apparent it will become that beyond the illicit sexual aspect, there's a real systemic malaise in play here. Everyone's playing their role to the hilt -- Foley's claiming a laundry list of personal problems, Hastert's desperately trying to save what's left of his job (an increasingly futile effort), and the nearest Republicans are all breaking out their best "nobody here but us chickens" excuses. Right. No one knew. Everyone knew, or at least suspected.

This is bigger than a bunch of creepy, icky e-mails. This is a prime example of a confluence of money, power, and sex culminating in endemic corruption. And once everyone's had their fun with the obvious scoutmaster-type jokes, the scandal will lose its mystique, and the lid will fall back into place, and the party will go on, albeit perhaps a bit more discreetly.

Again, the bottom line is that Foley was worth something to somebody, or they would have dumped his ass nine months ago when rumors were starting to reach the House leadership level. I think there is where you find the true measure of corruption of these people, and the system they thrive under.

Decline And Fall Of The Raider Empire

Brief football post here, just for the hell of it. In the wake of the Raiders' ridiculous collapse against the lowly Cleveland Browns, in which an 18-point lead was handed back throughout the last three turgid quarters of the game, some sort of post-mortem may be helpful. We might even draw some broader analogies if we're so inclined.

The Raiders are failing in almost every way possible, both on and off the field. Experienced receivers are not helping their new starter at quarterback, inexcuseably droppping easy-money passes, blocking poorly, and not fighting for even overthrown balls to prevent interceptions. Yesterday's game was the first in which the Raiders found their dormant running game, breaking both Lamont Jordan and Justin Fargas open for large gains. This should have been a signal to the coaching staff to stick with the running game, and use second-year QB Andrew Walter in much the same way the Pittsburgh Steelers use Ben Roethlisberger, sparingly and with high-efficiency medium gain pass plays.

Ultimately, the primary fault in letting Cleveland back in the game lies with the kickoff coverage teams, which allowed three huge returns to establish excellent field position. But the run defense also allowed a running back with a bum shoulder to gain 100 yards, when the team's average had been only 60 yards per game. Pass coverage also miserably failed to cover high-profile malcontent tight end Kellen Winslow.

So it's a failure of strategy and imagination, but also of vision. The coaching staff, made up of an admirable team of old lions, has failed to adapt both tactically and strategically. As I mentioned, instead of helping Walter get his bearings with some short-to-medium plays designed to move the chains and control the clock, the Raiders insist on riding the vaunted vertical offense right over a cliff. It's sad, because that Air Coryell shit really does look pretty damned sweet when it works. But when it's all you've got, it's pretty easy to stop with modern defensive coverage schemes. You have to make adjustments and execute them soundly, and the coaches and players are doing neither.

Perhaps the biggest elephant in the room is WR Jerry Porter, who has been inactive all three games. Porter clashed immediately with new head coach Art Shell, and made sure to piss off Al Davis during training camp by parking in Davis' reserved space. Porter has agitated to be traded, but the team has already given him a $5 million signing bonus, which they will never recoup, which naturally inflates their desired trade value for Porter beyond what other teams are willing to part with. Even more stupidly, since we're talking poor talent management, the team dealt WR Doug Gabriel, a future superstar, to New England for a second-round pick and a sack of magic beans, knowing full well that with Porter's situation, the team needed every talented wide receiver it could hang on to. Gabriel is already becoming Tom Brady's favorite target, while Oakland languishes between Randy Moss dogging it every other play, and speedster Alvis Whitted (who never met a route he couldn't mis-run) in what should have been either Porter's or Gabriel's slot.

So what to do? Well, at this point the team may as well change its motto to "Wait Till Next Year". They are sucking in every facet of the game because Al Davis is a stubborn old fool who refuses to admit that the game has changed. It's no coincidence that the Raiders were the best team in the league when Jon Gruden coached them, and have been among the very worst since he and Davis clashed and Gruden went to Tampa Bay.

I suppose there's something to be learned here about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, or about refusing to acknowledge error and take corrective action, but some things are just to obvious to be reiterated.

Jesus Cramp

So there's this new documentary out chronicling the goings-on at what is little more than an American madrassa:

You've never seen this in a movie before—young children speaking in tongues and rolling on the floor, apparently under the power of the Holy Spirit. And what is more, they're dressed in camouflage, to represent their identity as soldiers in God's army. They're asking God to fill the U.S. Supreme Court with "righteous judges." They're protesting abortion. They're shouting prayers for President Bush while they lay hands on a cardboard cut-out of his likeness. And—don't tell Al Gore—but they're being taught that global warming isn't a problem at all.

Jesus Camp is not a drama or a comedy. It's a documentary, made by award-winning filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, who follow the experiences of three young children—Levi, Tory, and Rachael—as they attend the "Kids on Fire" summer camp in Devil's Lake, North Dakota. The camp, directed by Becky Fischer, encourages children to embrace Christianity through programs of intense instruction and charismatic worship.

Some Christian media personalities are speaking out against the movie, but for differing reasons. A few accuse the filmmakers of trying to discredit Fischer and her camp, and they rush to the defense of the film's subjects, saying that their methods of worship and education are to be celebrated. Others are criticizing the film by saying that this documentary footage severely misrepresents Christianity, and that it has been framed to draw viewers into viewing Christians as lunatics.

The fact that this thing is in a place called Devil's Lake just makes the stupid-ade that much sweeter. The important thing to keep in mind is that Becky Fischer herself has already said that she thinks the film was a fair representation of what she's trying to do, which is turn perfectly good kids into drooling morons.

Look, like most of these little exercises in fetishism, this movie and this camp are not about faith. This is not a camp about spirituality, or godliness, or any sort of contemplative pursuit in seeking the inner godhead. This is a place of politics, of cheap indoctrination and rote nonsense. "Laying hands" on a cardboard Bush is not "religious", it's stupid. It's like me thinking that if I'd had a cardboard cutout of Eddie Van Halen when I was eighteen, I'd have known how to play Hot For Teacher without ever having to practice.

And rolling around on the floor babbling nonsensical syllables (aka "speaking in tongues") is the sort of behavior that used to get you locked away for your own good, but with these charismatic/pentecostal goofballs, it's more of a snake-free method of showing the congregation how freaky you can get, which in the Benny Hinn stadium shows can actually turn into a rather entertaining breakdancing-for-morons sort of competition. Nothing like watching Florida Panhandle yahoos "throw down" and try to out-do each other in the hillbilly-Aramaic spelling bee.

What sort of teenagers and adults are these kids going to turn out to be, after having crazy shit like this pounded into their heads? What the fuck is wrong with their parents, or Becky Fischer for that matter? The only other "God's Army" one regularly hears about is the one in Uganda that massacres villages and kidnaps the children to use as either sex slaves or soldiers.

It's ironic that this sort of "warriors fer Christ" lunacy thrives in precisely the regions of the country that have by far the least to worry about from religious extremism and terrorism, at least from Islamic terrorists. The Christian ones, I wouldn't be so sure about. Wait till these poor kids grow up, soundly pummeled into raptured stupidity. They will either figure out their parents' bamboozlement and wrack their imaginations for the most caustic way to rebel, or worse they'll get deeper into it, and either lash out at some unsuspecting brown immigrant, snap and kill their families, or find a like sect of goofballs to escalate a Jesusier-than-thou pissing contest with.

For people who claim to be looking forward to the end of the world, they sure do seem to be overstaying their welcome.

Bad Dog

The transcript doesn't quite do the video justice.

CLINTON: No, no. I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill [bin Laden].

The CIA, which was run by George Tenet, that President Bush gave the Medal of Freedom to, he said, He did a good job setting up all these counterterrorism things.

The country never had a comprehensive anti-terror operation until I came there.

Now, if you want to criticize me for one thing, you can criticize me for this: After the Cole, I had battle plans drawn to go into Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and launch a full-scale attack search for bin Laden.

But we needed basing rights in Uzbekistan, which we got after 9/11.

The CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible while I was there. They refused to certify. So that meant I would’ve had to send a few hundred Special Forces in in helicopters and refuel at night.

Even the 9/11 Commission didn’t do that. Now, the 9/11 Commission was a political document, too. All I’m asking is, anybody who wants to say I didn’t do enough, you read Richard Clarke’s book.

WALLACE: Do you think you did enough, sir?

CLINTON: No, because I didn’t get him.

WALLACE: Right.

CLINTON: But at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried.

So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted.

So you did Fox’s bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me. What I want to know is…

WALLACE: Well, wait a minute, sir.

CLINTON: No, wait. No, no…

WALLACE: I want to ask a question. You don’t think that’s a legitimate question?

CLINTON: It was a perfectly legitimate question, but I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of.

I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, Why didn’t you do anything about the Cole?

I want to know how many you asked, Why did you fire Dick Clarke?

I want to know how many people you asked…

Obviously, Clinton knew what he was getting into, giving an interview to Faux News. He knew he would get sandbagged in the interview, and he's clearly still pissed about the stupid ABC Path to 9/11 crapumentary, as he well should be. So he simply got the drop on them, beat them at their own game. Pretty damned sweet, really. Bush could never put anything nearly so comprehensive together ahead of time, just because of the ability required to extemporize for starters.

Compare and contrast Clenis' evisceration of that simpering little shit Chrissie Wallace with Bush's recent bouts with the three network sock puppets. The only one that challenged Himself enough to get him pissy was Matt Lauer, and Bush started crowding Lauer as he launched into the millionth refrain of Let's All Drink From The Glorious Cup Of Freedomocracy™. No one's buying that tune anymore, except the people who emotionally invested in it way too much.

Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of all this is the reaction of the usual gastropods on the right. You can set your watch by them.

Can anyone say, "the buck stops here?"

downtownlad, how many people were killed in a terrorist attack just before Clinton had to make that huge ex-Presidential response to Chris Wallace? Tu quoque is really, really unattractive as an attempt at argument, don't you think?

I've said before that in 1992 I perceived Clinton as a coward in most all (probably all) the important areas. He also appears to embody most of the worst of (my) Boomer Generation proclivities. For instance, love me for who I am not what I do.

The worst part is that we'll undoubtedly have to put up with similar stuff from Clinton for the next 30 years or so and we may even (shudder) begin to long for the good old days when Jimmy Clinton [sic] was the worst example of an ex-Pres.

This is borderline retarded, in terms of cognitive skills and reading comprehension. Clinton readily admitted that he "tried and failed" to kill bin Laden. And I distinctly recall that when he did so, when he launched missiles into Sudan and Afghanistan, the Serious Thinkers were thumbing their dicks, talking about the tail wagging the dog and how Clinton's tie was a signal to Monica.

I too found Clinton's incessant triangulations exasperating over the years, but one would think that these douchebags might at least be intellectually responsible enough to admit that Clinton found ways to give them what they wanted. Welfare reform and fiscal responsibility, and not one of these gutless cocksuckers has ever had the balls to just say, "Well, he did do that, anyway." No, it's cheap shots at how he looks (as if Ann Althouse was Heidi Fucking Klum or something) -- the guy is 60 years old and not all that far past a life-threatening heart problem and surgery.

I can only imagine what sort of ex-preznit Junior will be; no doubt a rainmaker for the scum-sucking defense-contractor class. Once a grifter, always a grifter. I honestly can't imagine him just doing something purely altruistic. But you know, let's shit on Jimmy Carter, an 80-year-old man who still goes all out to help low-income families and homeless people. What a terrible example he sets. Fuck these people.

Clinton is painfully self-aware and tiresomely self-conscious of his legacy, and he may indeed be trying to burnish it a little here. But so what? This is bigger than his legacy, and he knows that too. By walking into the poodles' den, pimp-slapping Wallace and showing these putrid little ankle-biters for what they really are, Clinton performed two very valuable services.

One, he set the record straight. Disney's piece o' crap and the attendant publicity generated a lot of needless inflammatory bullshit, and we all know it. This administration was never going to -- will never -- bother to correct such things, or even illuminate them with the free flow of archived information. They have plenty to hide, and they've made sure that we won't be able to know the truth till long after they're shoveling shit in hell. So it was an opportunity for Clinton not only to rebut the lies that had been festering in the public discourse, but to flesh out the whole story, and acknowledge that when it comes to playing the blame game, it's a big gameboard with a lot of players.

Maybe even more important is that Clinton took it upon himself to set the tone and terms for Democrats to start confronting this shit. He understands more than anyone else in his party that, once you get past red-state/blue-state tropes, people are voting with their guts, and the Republicans' mastery of visceral imagery has been winning for them. This does not mean adopting the inchoate fabulism that occupies the scream-radio shows, or the pathetic, mindless ranting of the used-up skanks peddling unreadable, plagiarized books. But it does recognize that informed, channeled anger can be quite useful and productive; it can illuminate and inspire, and it can slap down the yapping mutts that needed a good swift kick in the ass long ago.

Comma Karma

It is no longer debatable -- this man is vile.

BLITZER: Let's move on and talk a little bit about Iraq. Because this is a huge, huge issue, as you know, for the American public, a lot of concern that perhaps they are on the verge of a civil war, if not already a civil war…. We see these horrible bodies showing up, tortured, mutilation. The Shia and the Sunni, the Iranians apparently having a negative role. Of course, al Qaeda in Iraq is still operating.

BUSH: Yes, you see — you see it on TV, and that's the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there's also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people…. Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there's a strong will for democracy. (emphasis added)

Bush himself will be nothing but a smudge on this nation's history when all is said and done, despite his tiresome Churchillian pretensions. In the meantime, I sure as fuck don't see anyone from the Bush dynasty signing up to become a punctuation mark in his misbegotten footnote.

How many more people have to die for this man's abject stupidity?

Values Pimps

I don't know if this guy is the same ClownHall commenter called "Coach" whom I recently referred to as a "closet case", but it wouldn't surprise me:

Zachary Daubenmire, recently hired to teach special education at Licking Heights High School, was out on bond Thursday after admitting to downloading video of young girls having sex with adult men onto a family computer.

....

His father, Dave Daubenmire, says what happened with his son could happen to any family.

The elder Daubenmire is well known locally for being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union for conducting prayers with players before football games at London High School. He is also a longtime Christian leader who has worked to teach others about the dangers of pornography.

"Licking Heights". Jesus H. Christ, they're just begging for it, aren't they? Who names these towns, Larry Flynt?

And no, Coach Dave, it couldn't happen to "any family". It does not happen to most families. One would think that, considering Coach Dave's anti-porn focus, this event might serve him pause to contemplate things, but one would most likely be wrong. It's always the most repressed ones that end up involved in weird shit like this. Score another one for the sainted world of Bobo and Dobson.

At least teh kid wasn't watching SpongeBob SquarePants or Will & Grace. Mighta turned him queer.

Top Ten Other David Broder Complaints

10. Damn kids won't get off his lawn.

9. WaPo commissary refusing to add creamed corn to the menu just for him.

8. Woodward always got more action back in the day.

7. McCain won't let him on the "Straight Talk Express" anymore after how he nuked the shitter last time. To be fair, they had just stopped at an Applebee's. Those Riblets™ go right through ya.

6. Suggestion to include redefinition of torture as "Clay Aiken covering Celine Dion songs" was vetoed by confirmed bachelor Huckleberry Graham.

5. Nothing in DC that a good tornado or cornfield couldn't fix. Whatever happened to good ol' moxie n' gumption?

4. Milbank keeps refilling Broder's "hidden" bottle of Cutty with milk of magnesia.

3. Potty-mouthed bloggers think they're soooo fucking smart. Well, if they can't see how eminently even-handed Broder's sensible midwestern moderation is, how smart could they really be? QED, coastal elites!

2. Froomkin's Drakkar Noir making allergies act up.

1. They don't make fiery independents like ol' Joe Lieberman no more. They're just a bunch of extremists like that know-it-all asshole Kerry.



(Photo of Bush hugging and kissing somebody who knows anything unavailable.)

[update 2:10PM PDT: Forgot about the other "independent" who embraced Mister Man]


Yep, you can really feel the maverickness emanating. Independents unite!

The Stoned Age

So we have ourselves a new foreign policy kerfuffle, a "contriversy" if you will (and you might). Seems that Good Buddy Numero Uno Pervez Musharraf thinks he got the arm put on him in the wake of 9/11, courtesy of cock-headed State Department toady and recently-admitted Plame fink Richard Armitage. That's awful convenient, doncha think?

Bush met at the White House with Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who assured the U.S. president of his desire to root out the Taliban and other extremists. The visit came amid controversy over Musharraf's claims in a forthcoming memoir that the Bush administration threatened to bomb Pakistan "to the Stone Age" if it failed to cooperate with the United States against al-Qaeda and the Taliban after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

As much as I've written about the perfidious nature of Pakistan's overall behavior in this regard, I actually do believe that Musharraf himself is doing his level best to help us where he can. The problem is that he presides over a fractious, virulently anti-Western citizenry and worse, an army and intel service infested with Muslim extremists.

(And yes, don't think I disregard our own homegrown extremist elements in the military, the General Boykin loons, the wingnuts forcibly converting everyone at the Air Force Academy, etc. It's gotta stop, on both sides. But right now we're talking diplomatic triage, and our kooks at least haven't tried to assassinate their leader for not being responsive enough to their theology. Musharraf has narrowly survived two assassination attempts so far.)

And for the record, I don't think there's anything terribly controversial -- or even wrong -- about strongarming Pakistan to get them on the right side of this. They shouldn't have been enabling the Taliban scum in the first place, and they're goddamned lucky they were given a second chance, because they were up to their eyeballs in this. So frankly, that part of the equation doesn't bother me in the slightest. I would have expected us to lean on them. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that that's all it came to.

White House aides said a chunk of yesterday's hour-long meeting was devoted to Musharraf explaining to Bush the recent pact he reached with Islamic militants in Pakistan's border region. The pact requires foreign militants to leave the tribal area of North Waziristan or take up a peaceable life, and it forbids imposing draconian religious edicts. But it has been greeted skeptically by many human rights activists and regional experts as a concession to Islamic extremists that will be impossible to enforce.

Appearing with Bush at an East Room news conference after their session, Musharraf said he assured the U.S. president that the pact was intended to rein in extremist violence. "There will be no al-Qaeda activity in our tribal [area] or across the border in Afghanistan," Musharraf said. "There will be no Taliban activity. . . . There will be no Talibanization."

Bush said he was satisfied with those assurances. "When the president looks me in the eye and says the tribal deal is intended to reject the Talibanization of the people, and that there won't be a Taliban and won't be al-Qaeda, I believe him," he said.

Oh God, not another "he looked me in the eye and told me he loved me" moment. You'd think he'd have learned about that sort of fruity touchy-feely rhetoric after getting jilted by Pooty-Poot. But let's meet Mister Man halfway -- again, I can give Musharraf the benefit of the doubt and believe that he intends to resolve the issues in the tribal areas, but there are more reasons to doubt his ability to succeed than to mistake good intentions for even a partial success.

Now here's an interesting detail, which is inexplicably not fleshed out, even though it took two (2) professionally trained journamalists to slap this officially-sanctioned meeting recap together.

In the "60 Minutes" interview, Musharraf said that Armitage made the threat to Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, Pakistan's intelligence chief, the day after the Sept. 11 attacks by al-Qaeda. Pakistan was one of only three nations that maintained diplomatic relations with the Taliban government in Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda members were known to move freely in the mountainous border area between the two countries.

As was publicly reported shortly after their meeting, Armitage told Mahmood that Pakistan would have to choose sides between the Taliban and the United States, which wanted it to cut all ties with the Afghans and cooperate with planned retaliation for the attacks. Armitage described it yesterday as "a very straightforward conversation" held in his State Department office. "I told him that for Americans this was black or white, that Pakistan was either with us fully or not. It wasn't a matter of being able to negotiate it."

That's all the article has to say about Mahmood Ahmad's role in all this. It's an unacceptable and glaring omission of Ahmad's activities [link via Rigorous Intuition]. The entire timeline is well-sourced and damning, but here are a couple of choice excerpts:

October 12, 1999: General Musharraf Takes Control of Pakistan; Ousted ISI Leader Has Curious Finances

Gen. Pervez Musharraf becomes leader of Pakistan in a coup. One major reason for the coup is the ISI felt the previous ruler had to go “out of fear that he might buckle to American pressure and reverse Pakistan’s policy [of supporting] the Taliban.” [New York Times, 12/8/2001] Shortly thereafter Musharraf replaces the leader of the ISI, Brig Imtiaz, because of his close ties to the previous leader. Imtiaz is arrested and convicted of “having assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.” It comes out that he was keeping tens of millions of dollars earned from heroin smuggling in a Deutsche Bank account. This is interesting because insider trading just prior to 9/11 will later connect to a branch of Deutsche Bank recently run by “Buzzy” Krongard, now executive director of the CIA. [Financial Times, 8/10/2001] The new director of the ISI is Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, a close ally of Musharraf who is instrumental in the success of the coup. [Guardian, 10/9/2001]

So we have pre-existing fundamentalist ties between the Taliban and the leaders of the coup that installed Musharraf, especially one Mahmood Ahmad, who is practically Patient Zero for this bout of diplomatic Ebola. That seems pretty interesting. If I were a professional journamalist, I would probably want to do some digging and connect some dots, provide even a minimum of background as to what sort of character Ahmad is.

October 7, 2001: ISI Director Replaced at US Urging; Role in Funding 9/11 Plot Is One Explanation

ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed is replaced in the face of US pressure after links are discovered between him, Saeed Sheikh, and the funding of the 9/11 attacks. Mahmood instructed Saeed to transfer $100,000 into hijacker Mohamed Atta’s bank account prior to 9/11. This is according to Indian intelligence, which claims the FBI has privately confirmed the story. [Press Trust of India, 10/8/2001; Times of India, 10/9/2001; India Today, 10/15/2001; Daily Excelsior (Jammu), 10/18/2001] The story is not widely reported in Western countries, though it makes the Wall Street Journal. [Australian, 10/10/2001; Agence France-Presse, 10/10/2001; Wall Street Journal, 10/10/2001] It is reported in Pakistan as well. [Dawn (Karachi), 10/8/2001] The Northern Alliance also repeats the claim in late October. [Federal News Service, 10/31/2001] In Western countries, the usual explanation is that Mahmood is fired for being too close to the Taliban. [London Times, 10/9/2001; Guardian, 10/9/2001] The Times of India reports that Indian intelligence helped the FBI discover the link, and says, “A direct link between the ISI and the WTC attack could have enormous repercussions. The US cannot but suspect whether or not there were other senior Pakistani Army commanders who were in the know of things. Evidence of a larger conspiracy could shake US confidence in Pakistan’s ability to participate in the anti-terrorism coalition.” [Times of India, 10/9/2001] There is evidence some ISI officers may have known of a plan to destroy the WTC as early as July 1999. Two other ISI leaders, Lt. Gen. Mohammed Aziz Khan and Lt. Gen. Muzaffar Usmani, are sidelined on the same day as Mahmood. [Fox News, 10/8/2001] Saeed had been working under Khan. The firings are said to have purged the ISI of its fundamentalists. However, according to one diplomat, “To remove the top two or three doesn’t matter at all. The philosophy remains. ... [The ISI is] a parallel government of its own. If you go through the officer list, almost all of the ISI regulars would say, of the Taliban, ‘They are my boys.’” [New Yorker, 10/29/2001] It is believed Mahmood has been living under virtual house arrest in Pakistan (which would seem to imply more than just a difference of opinion over the Taliban), but no charges have been brought against him, and there is no evidence the US has asked to question him. [Asia Times, 1/5/2002] He also has refused to speak to reporters since being fired [Associated Press, 2/21/2002] , and outside India and Pakistan, the story has only been mentioned infrequently in the media since. [Sunday Herald (Glasgow), 2/24/2002; London Times, 4/21/2002] He will reemerge as a businessman in 2003, but still will not speak to the media (see July 2003).

So, since the Washington Post apparently does not see fit to flesh out exactly who Mahmood Ahmad is and what he represents in this ongoing saga, we vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers will have to it for them. Again. Can't wait for the next round of stoic midwestern harrumphing from Dean Wormer about the failure of "extremists" on "both sides", and how the "resurgent" "independents" will set things aright. Give me a fucking break.

Oh, and if you're wondering just how poor ol' Mahmood ended up, well, you'll be plenty happy to know that he landed on his feet with a little help from his friends, and a little selective blindness from us.

July 2003: Fired ISI Director Resurfaces as Businessman

Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, who lost his position as ISI Director one month after 9/11 (see October 7, 2001), resurfaces in Pakistan as the head of a subsidiary of a prominent business consortium. The New Yorker notes that it is “a position that require[s] government backing.” Ahmed was considered close to the Taliban, and according to some media accounts, ordered money to hijacker Mohamed Atta. He still apparently has not given any media interviews or been interviewed by US intelligence since his firing. [New Yorker, 7/28/2003]

As they say, oil's well that ends well.

I think it would be interesting if for once, the media did their fucking jobs and made a small effort to inform the American people about the decisions and policies being made in their names with their money. I think Americans would be interested to know the backstory behind Musharraf's not-terribly-outrageous claim, that it was conveyed from a recently-disgraced lackey who has longstanding ties to South Asian intel agencies, through a Pakistani intel director who breakfasted with two of our intel bigwigs at the very moment the World Trade Center towers came crashing down, and who was quietly fired just three weeks later, only to resurface two years later in a euphemistically- titled government sinecure. I think if the American people were informed of those facts as often as they hear about celebrities diddling each other and (gasp!) having children, fergodsake, they might be able to process just how much their own government, and by association the supposedly free press, is withholding from them.

Then again, maybe that's what the media's job really is to begin with, at this point, to conceal, rather than reveal. That explains a lot.