Hakuna Macaca

[update 8/16 5:29 PM PDT: Yeah, I updated the post title. Had to beat The Daily Show to the obvious.]

No sooner did I mention in passing the stain on Virginia's junior senator seat better known as George Felix Allen, and the guy goes and shows his true colors once again.

Webb's campaign distributed to reporters a video clip of Allen's remarks about Sidarth, a 20-year-old University of Virginia senior who spent last week videotaping Allen's "listening tour" for the Webb campaign.

"This fellow over here with the yellow shirt _ Macaca or whatever his name is _ he's with my opponent," Allen said. "He's following us around everywhere."

After mentioning that Webb was in California on a fundraising trip, Allen exhorted the crowd: "Let's give a welcome to Macaca here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."

Sidarth, who was born and raised in Fairfax County, has said he felt Allen was singling him out because he was the only nonwhite in the audience, but an Allen campaign spokesman said not all of the rest of the crowd was white.

Anyone familiar with Felix' history knows the guy is a stone cracker racist anyway, and always has been.

The AP article in the Post has a relatively benign take on all that, natch.

Allen has been accused of racial insensitivity before. He wore a Confederate flag pin in his high school yearbook photo, used to keep a Confederate flag in his living room, a noose in his law office and a picture of Confederate troops in his governor's office, but has said he has grown since then.

He's "grown"? Grown what -- a patch of hair between his shoulder blades? A third nipple? A new lynchin' tree?

Allen is the worst sort of chickenshit thug anyway. Once he realized that he could appeal to the mossback vote just enough to keep getting elected, he just kept on aw-shucksing his way through the old confederacy districts that still infest certain pockets of the South. You know the sort, assholes who insist that civil rights legislation was an unnecessary imposition by those do-gooders in Washington, that the South would have ended segregation on their own. I don't know what is wrong with such people, but it'd be nice if they'd do the world a favor and die already.

What's really cool about this "macaca" thing is how Felix and his campaign have managed to concoct three completely different excuses in just 24 hours, each of them moronically implausible. First they said that Felix was really saying "mohawk", making a jest about Sidarth's hairstyle -- except it's not remotely a mohawk, nor did what Felix said sound remotely like "mohawk". Then Felix said that one of his staffers had told him that Sidarth's name was "macaca". Then Felix said that he, Felix, had himself made up the name "macaca", and that it had no meaning.

Except it does, especially among French and Belgians wishing to express disdain with African blacks or Arabs. And coincidentally enough, Felix' mother is French of Tunisian descent, and lived for some time in Tunisia.

It's time for Felix to stand up and either claim or repudiate his long history of racial insensitivity idiocy, once and for all. Of course he can't do that without alienating the mossbacks, but he's going to have plenty of chances over the next twelve weeks.

Governor Allen, a Republican in the last year of a four-year term, urged residents on Wednesday to salute the state's ''four-year struggle for independence and sovereign rights'' during the Civil War and to respect ''the honorable sacrifices of Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens to the cause of liberty.''

I hope James Webb dogs Felix with that one right to the bitter end. Virginians are going to have to decide if that's the kind of despicable nonsense they stand for or not. Felix knew exactly what he was saying; it fits the pattern. It's time for Felix to find out that the "real world" and "America" don't stand for cheap race-baiting anymore, and have no use for animals who long for the days when Jesse Helms could stand behind Carole Moseley-Braun and whistle "Dixie".

Self-diagnosis

If DaVinci had painted it, he'd have called it the Jonah Lisa.

Via TBogg, we see that Poppin' Fresh is staying true to his usual high standards of informed discourse.

I think JPod's point is basically right, but I think it misses an aspect of the American political landscape worth emphasizing. While the numbers of people who identify themselves to pollsters as agnostics and atheists is demonstrably small — as John demonstrated — I think the number of people who are closet agnostics is probably much larger. I also suspect that a very large number of people suffer from cognitive dissonance and think they believe in God but at the same time live their lives on a daily basis as if they do not. I don't have evidence handy at the moment, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. And I think this reality results in a lot of people disliking or resenting authentically religious people for a constellation of reasons, high among them envy. And that has very real consequences on our political debates even though, according to the polls, our culture wars are between God-believers of the left and God-believers of the right.

Keep in mind that while The Corner may feebly attempt to posture as some sort of breezy middle-management table talk at some exurban strip-mall Appleby's, Goldberg actually gets paid for his opinions, and not just in Riblets™. Think about that for a second, ponder what you do to make a living, and figure whether he's working too hard for his money. He must get paid either by the baseless assertion, or the inadvertent confession that he doesn't really know what he's talking about, because he does both with such regularity, like rhetorical Metamucil.

We don't envy "authentically religious people", we simply want them and their counterfeit brethren to piss up a rope and mind their own damned business already. Seriously folks, we're not impressed at your righteousness, and we're not envious of your purity. We don't care. The stupid culture crusades keep regenerating because that's all the god-botherers have so that's all they keep returning to, like the proverbial dog to his vomit.

Perhaps Bush could take a semantic lesson from Duh Pantload; instead of prefacing his next baldfaced lie with "British intelligence has learned", he could just say "I don't have evidence handy at the moment, but I'm pretty sure I'm right", and have done with it. That's basically what he's been doing the whole time anyway.

Crisis? What Crisis?

Already this weekend's sojourn into the mingled waters of "citizen journalism" has heavily emphasized some rather egregious examples of poor journalism and half-assed pundit-mongering in the realm of the "legitimate" media.

Let's take that dynamic a step further, and do a little fisking of the latest Pravda softball, and contrast it with the new Hersh piece on the Israel/Lebanon crisis.

First, the Post profile, ostensibly a wrap-up of The Decider's break from the rigors of being expected to do something useful. There are some bits in this article that rather neatly illustrate some of the subtler points I've been making, such as the use of conditioned, weighted phraseology, needless anonymous sourcing, and the increasingly iterative process of stenographic journalism.

Other than that, it's pretty good.

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President George W. Bush faced major security challenges on three fronts on Sunday as he prepared to return to Washington after a 10-day working vacation at his ranch.

The fighting in southern Lebanon, concerns about whether there are still suspects at large in the British terror plot and the ongoing war in Iraq represented formidable issues facing the president.

One thing we've learned from these Crawford bylines over six long years of having this tool running the show is that the vacation stories are always, always scripted filler, nothing more. The only exception was last year, when Cindy Sheehan's month-long camp-in took on a life of its own, and Bush was nothing if not circumspect in not adding any fuel whatsoever to that fire. He literally just drove past the whole scene to attend the fundraiser next door. I'm sure that if his Suburban's windows hadn't been tinted, we'd have seen both his middle fingers jutting at the protesters who dared to disturb his hard-earned five weeks off from breaking shit. Then Katrina capped the whole thing off for him, for which I'm sure Bush has never forgiven New Orleans.

The three listed "crises", as mentioned, are merely a handy iteration, a cipher intended to induce the notion that Bush has active intent to do anything about any of them, as opposed to his current status as a largely passive bystander. Consider the actuality of the three scenarios:

1. The only actions the administration has taken to address the Israel/Lebanon problem is sending more weapons to Israel (already the strongest military in the region by far), then waiting around for two weeks while the situation escalated, before finally unleashing Rice -- you know, the chief diplomat -- to start crafting some sort of resolution. Several weeks since, a shaky cease-fire has finally been negotiated, and might have an outside chance of holding. If so, the French will be at least as responsible for addressing the situation as anyone in the administration.



2. Regarding the thwarted British terror plot, the biggest concern is not that there may still be a few loose ends to tie up (though of course that is a concern), but the lessons we should be drawing from it, which we probably won't. First is that this was purely a law-enforcement issue -- the British police and the Pakistani ISI cooperated, and identified, infiltrated, and captured the terrorist cells in their respective countries. There was no military action, and it had nothing to do with Iraq, Iran, or Syria.
   
   Furthermore, Blair has curtailed British civil liberties to a significantly greater degree than we have here. Perhaps this is a subject due for a serious national conversation. I have no doubt that a sizable portion of Americans will gladly submit to whatever depredations are foisted upon them just to feel safer, but whatever the case, maybe the issue needs to be discussed once and for all.
   
   After all that, sure, I suppose it's possible that there are a few remaining people from these known cells, most likely in Pakistan. All we can do is try to work with the ISI, and hope they're actually leveling with us on what they know and what they're willing to do to help. There is no reason not to be skeptical of their motives and means. Other than that, there's simply not much Bush or anyone else can actually do about Pakistan's internal affairs.



3. Seriously, the war in Iraq? What's changed? Is the course no longer to be stayed, are there no more imaginary corners left to turn? Is "civil war this, civil war that" about to be officially acknowledged? Is there some change of policy in the offing, say, an opportunistically-timed schedule for redeployment and eventual drawdown? One assumes that the main impediment is finding a palatable way to propose this without looking like complete hypocrites, not that that hasn't been finessed before.

So North Korea's newfound belligerence from last month, Iran's intransigence and sudden advantage in the region, a bursting housing bubble and the concomitant ARM foreclosures to come, a moribund economic picture, rising gas prices? Nope. Bush's three biggest concerns apparently are one problem he's enabled, one he can't do anything about, and one he's caused and seems to be hoping will go away with a policy of malign neglect and lots of finger-crossing.

Sounds like he really used his downtime to sort some shit out.

Bush puts down his summer reading -- including Albert Camus' "The Stranger," and two books on Civil War President Abraham Lincoln -- in favor of presidential briefing books.

And he is back in his limousine after days of riding ranch trails on his mountain bike, once running over an armadillo and another time crashing while trying to negotiate a steep hill.

Jesus, again with the Camus. Has he figured out yet that The Stranger's take on existentialism is completely at cross purposes with Bush's own shopworn Sunday school comfort zone of the vaunted moral compass? And since when exactly has Bush ever been known to wander even near the boundary of said psychic comfort zone? Either he read it and didn't understand it, or he didn't really read it. Either way, it sure is funny how we suddenly keep hearing about what a big-shot philosopher-king Our Boy is aspiring to be.

And crashing the bike. Again. Do these things not come with training wheels?

Bush's popularity remains in the danger zone -- around 40 percent -- heading into the election campaign, and the Iraq war could complicate the White House's hopes of U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq later this year.

Let's parse this loaded set of assertions. Bush has polled consistently under 40% -- frequently under 35% -- almost all year, generally at around -20% on the approval/disapproval over/under. And it is indisputable that the chief culprit in Bush's abject failure to resolve the invasion and occupation of Iraq is his own administration's failure to plan effectively, its refusal to listen to people who really did know better, from intel analysts to field generals. They believed Ahmed Chalabi and their own stovepiped hype. It's their own fucking fault that this might "complicate" the election season for them.

White House officials believe the importance of pursuing the war on terrorism, an issue brought to the fore by the British terror plot, plays to their favor and they plan to talk about it on the campaign trail.

"The issue's going to be discussed in the fall. ... Are you saying if the Democrats talk about the war, we shouldn't? ... We'll talk about the war, and we will talk about the consequences of the policies advocated by the Democrats," a senior Bush administration official said.

Okay, which "senior Bush administration official" said this, and why did he feel the need to remain anonymous, and why did Steve Holland feel the need to do this anonymous prick a solid, and unquestioningly stenograph his assertions? This is exactly what I've been talking about; these are all baseless assertions. How can terrorism automatically "play to their favor" anymore, when they've so clearly fucked the dog every which way for five years?

What they're banking on is one more homestretch run at the "daddy party" trope, but as I say, the actual information regarding the British terror plot (as opposed to simply saying "British terror plot" over and over again) militates otherwise, brings up a lot of rather inconvenient facts and operative patterns that they'd sooner ignore, or sweep under the rug.

Until we go through all this post-mortem bullshit again in December, when more facts come out too late to do anything about them, and more neutered weasels come slithering out of the woodwork telling us that "the only way" "we" can "win" is to puff out our chests and try to out-strut the douchebags who invented the sport. Praise the Lord and pass the bunker-busters.

Perhaps a journalist should investigate some facts, instead of taking dictation and filing anonymously-sourced press releases. This is where Sy Hersh comes in.

“The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. “Why oppose it? We’ll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran.”

A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House “has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah.” He added, “It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it.” (As this article went to press, the United Nations Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution, although it was unclear if it would change the situation on the ground.)

According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term—and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah “may be the A team of terrorists”—Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the White House about Iran. “If the most dominant military force in the region—the Israel Defense Forces—can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million,” Armitage said. “The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis.”

It would be intellectually dishonest of me, after slamming other journalists about using anonymous sources for their stories, to not mention something about Hersh doing the exact same thing. I don't like it, particularly the extensive use of these "consultants" and "former senior intelligence officials" throughout the article, but at least I understand why. Contextually, there is both a qualitative and quantitative difference between Hersh's use of these sources and the usual use of them. In the Reuters article, the source is clearly using his anonymity as cover to launch a politically-charged talking point, and the writer of the article is functioning merely as an enabler, allowing himself to be used to float what will certainly be a recurring theme in the campaign homestretch.

Hersh, on the other hand, is hunting some pretty dangerous game to begin with, and it's probably impossible to expect all or even some of his sources to go public -- though they really should, perhaps simultaneously so as to deflect undue attention on them singly. But Hersh is using their sourced information to state his overall case, plank by plank, bit by bit, to piece together a narrative that has already been largely affirmed by the administration's own actions, statements, and implied strategic objectives.

We know that the PNAC crowd that engineered this clusterfuck regards destabilization as more of a feature than a flaw. We know that they are disproportionately protective and proactive in regards to Israel. We know that they have Iran in their sights, and because they so massively screwed up Iraq, their need to double down in Iran requires instigating a massive, unmistakable provocation from Iran.

We also know that they refuse to learn lessons that do not jibe with their preconceived notions. Thus failure in Iraq is alternately portrayed as a failure of execution, a failure to follow through in ideological commitment, or a failure to come down with enough of an iron fist to put these wogs in their place for their own good. It doesn't even enter into the equation for them that it was just a bad idea in the first place, entered into in bad faith, under the flimsiest of pretenses. That is ancillary to their overall objective.

So there's no reason to assume that, even though Israel's summer incursion into Lebanon is nominally a dry run for Iran, and even though said incursion cannot be construed as a victory for Israel, no matter how hard one squints, the policy arm of this administration will learn anything from the current Levantine crisis. At most, they will simply tell themselves that Israel didn't beat Hezbollah because they just weren't ruthless enough in sacking Lebanon, therefore we have to prepare to use bunker-busters and deploy massive civilian infrastructure attacks in any Iranian campaign.

These guys don't learn anything; they just keep doubling down, like a dipshit gambler who loses his car at the roulette table in Vegas, and figures he'll win it back by staking his house.

Cheney’s office supported the Israeli plan, as did Elliott Abrams, a deputy national-security adviser, according to several former and current officials. (A spokesman for the N.S.C. denied that Abrams had done so.) They believed that Israel should move quickly in its air war against Hezbollah. A former intelligence officer said, “We told Israel, ‘Look, if you guys have to go, we’re behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later—the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.’ ”

Cheney’s point, the former senior intelligence official said, was “What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it’s really successful? It’d be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon.”

The Pentagon consultant told me that intelligence about Hezbollah and Iran is being mishandled by the White House the same way intelligence had been when, in 2002 and early 2003, the Administration was making the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. “The big complaint now in the intelligence community is that all of the important stuff is being sent directly to the top—at the insistence of the White House—and not being analyzed at all, or scarcely,” he said. “It’s an awful policy and violates all of the N.S.A.’s strictures, and if you complain about it you’re out,” he said. “Cheney had a strong hand in this.”

I don't know how many times this has to get confirmed by various people, anonymous or not, before the dots start getting connected in a more comprehensive fashion. It's become quite clear that the administration merely regards the gathering and analysis of intelligence data as a means to an end. If things aren't getting concocted outright (that we know for sure about), at the very least exculpatory evidence is getting ignored in favor of more biased analysis.

This is a very dangerous game they're playing; not only does it tend to render useless the enormous expenditures of our fifteen intel agencies, it needlessly alienates allies and squanders valuable resources. It commits money, time, and valuable diplomatic credibility to a fool's errand. It is irresponsible for them to do this, and it is equally irresponsible for the self-styled watchdogs of truth to subserviently wag their tails, rather than bark.

Wanking Together

Frankly, I'm beginning to feel a bit sheepish at the repeated iterations, but as long as useless assclowns like Choke Lyin' keep clogging up the internets, occupying positions where their asinine assertions are allowed even a trace of gravitas, then I guess we'll just have to call this Reason #4987 why the nutroots are working around the punditocracy instead of with them:

Ned Lamont's victory over Joe Lieberman in last week's Democratic Senate primary in Connecticut precipitated the expected torrent of rubbish from left-wing blognuts and conservative wingnuts. There was a nauseating triumphalism on both sides, the unblinking assertion that this one poorly attended summer primary provided a lesson of earth-shattering significance to the future of American politics. Maybe it did, but I hope not.

Oh, we certainly wouldn't want Mister Man to have to get off his high horse of neutrality and actually stand for something, now would we? But you'd think he could at least get his facts straight:

State officials said turnout was a record for a Connecticut primary. Typically turnout in Connecticut primaries is about 25 percent, but was projected to be more than 40 percent Tuesday.

Not that Klein would ever let such an, um, incriminating fact get in the way of his sneering contempt at the unwashed nutroots. Why, we're just not as qualified to register our silly opinions as he is. After all, he wrote Primary Colors, though he refused to put his name on it. Also, house liberal for Time. Suck on that, blognuts!

See if you can follow The Serious Thinker's line of logic here:

Much was made of Cheney's venting, and it is a bit too easy, after six years of this bilge, to dwell on the Vice President's aura and miss the essential felony of the Bush White House—that it has tried to run a war without bipartisan support. Indeed, it has often attempted to use the war for partisan gain. To be sure, there is some grist to the Republican portrayal of Democrats as a bunch of wimpy peaceniks.

Make up what little mind you have, asshole. First of all the "essential felony" of this administration is not that they have "tried to run a war without bipartisan support", though that's certainly one of their cardinal sins. But Klein's choice of words here not only downplays the very serious nature of the Bushies' assault on basic Constitutional principles and long-held American mores -- such as, say, not dragging innocent men off the street and beating them to death with flashlights -- but it also betrays what he blindly regards as the greatest of all political aphrodisiacs -- the invocation of his boner word "bipartisan".

Klein, like Holy Joe, like Bullwinkle and the rest of the Vichy Democrats, just don't know when to say when. They do not understand that the jig is up. People -- not the Greenwich elite, not the MoveOn millionaires, not the Hollywood libruls, but a clear and consistent majority of American citizens -- have decided that enough is enough. The Cheney administration has had plenty of chances to act in a truly bipartisan fashion (that weird sound of tweezers massaging a lotioned vienna sausage is Klein masturbating furiously upon hearing his safe word). They have consistently acted in bad faith; they have treated even mild opposition or questioning of tactics like full-blown treason. Every Democrat who has reached across the proverbial aisle over the past six Friedmans has drawn back a stump.

So fuck your bipartisanship, you greasy little hack.

There isn't much point in detailing the chest thumping of the various blognut extremists. Their reach is minuscule, largely limited to the left's upper crust, and their angry spew is beginning to seem sooo six months ago.

Exactly how is this nonsense unlike anything, say, Ann Coulter has regurgitated for Matt Lauer or any other "responsible" media entity over the past several months? It's about as factual as Klein's initial assertion about the record turnout in the CT primary, and it has much the same intent -- to demean, to downplay the message and the facts, to marginalize the messengers. For someone so smug in his love for his own "evenhandedness", Klein has no problem playing fast and loose with facts when it comes to berating his own side. (Remember, Klein's a liberal. Just ask him, he'll tell ya.)

According to TimeWarner's own website, Klein's glossy two-ply mag has a circulation of two million. Doesn't say if that's per week, per month, or just the number of regular subscribers, but let's say it's per week. How many hits do Kos and Atrios (for starters) get per day, 400-500K? That's not a "miniscule reach", nor is it the "left's upper crust", whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean. Does Klein seriously think that Eli Pariser, Kos, and Larry David have concocted some sort of "upper crust" conspiracy to pad numbers and demographics, presumably to make Klein's neutered version of "liberalism" look bad? Hell, it didn't take the nutroots to make that shit look bad; it just took them to consistently point it out and document it. It's not like Klein and his ratfuck cohorts were going to do it on their own.

But Pariser's anti-triangulation argument deserves attention because it represents the latest expression of a perennial self-destructive urge within the Democratic Party. "Originally employed as a survival mechanism by a Democratic President in the wake of 1994's Republican revolution," he writes, triangulation "no longer makes sense in an era when any attempt at bipartisanship" is seen as Democratic weakness "and exploited accordingly." He has a point. The Bush Administration has made a mockery of bipartisanship.

Read that again; not only does Klein manage to essentially contradict himself in the space of a mere few sentences, he does it with what he seems to think is some sort of rhetorical flourish (ooooo bipartisanship! he frantically typed with his free hand, trying to avoid splashing his keyboard with hot chunks of hobbit-chowder), but is nothing more than a "no shit, Sherlock" revelation. The Bushies have made a mockery of bipartisanship. You don't say.

I can see why Time shells out the large dollars for this dipshit to pitch a tent every week. It's like having a toothless circus geek in your backyard, furiously trying to gum through the chicken's neck. Fun for the whole family.

But Pariser and the MoveOniks can't seem to get Bill Clinton's success out of their craw.

Just when you think Klein can't possibly get more tendentious, he goes and finds a way. This is truly an astonishing display of abject cluelessness, and he oughta get fined by his employer for leaving that idiocy in his draft. Setting aside the obvious fact that Clenis hatred has been the fuel for current administration's electoral success and talking points, it's just a flat-out fucking lie. It is not that triangulation has been discarded as a useful political strategy; it is that there is nothing to be gained by triangulating with these people. Period.

I can't even be snarky or nasty about this point; I literally do not understand the level of cognitive dissonance from which Joe Klein, a self-professed liberal, manages to make such a ridiculous assertion. The Democrats have tried to work with the Republicans on a number of issues. Not only have their efforts failed, but they have mostly been called traitors, appeasers, and terrorist-enablers for their efforts.

But in Klein's world, safely removed from any actual action and participation, we're the assholes for not giving that nice Mister Cheney just one more chance. Well, fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Hopalong. You like these assholes so much, you give 'em one more chance.

The rest of us have a country to take back, so this smug little retard can retroactively join in on the eventual celebration, thinking we won't notice.

Last Throe Update

It's amazing how our primary conflict has been seemingly relegated to secondary coverage. I don't know if that's a reflection the media's (and in turn, Americans') short attention span, or if the ceaseless violence, by definition, has simply rendered on-the-ground coverage impossible, but it keeps on going:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Police say a series of explosions have killed 20 people and wounded more than 70 in a Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

....

As night fell, at least two mortar bombs hit an apartment building in the religiously mixed southern Baghdad district of Zaafaraniya, killing eight people and wounding 61, police said.

Earlier, three people were wounded by a roadside bomb near a Shiite mosque in eastern Baghdad, police said.

More than 50,000 U.S. and Iraqi forces are taking part in Operation Together Forward. Similar campaigns have failed in the past but Washington hopes to cut violence significantly by the end of September.

U.S. officers now talk openly about the risk of a full-scale civil war unless they can calm conditions in Baghdad.

....

U.S. troops rounded up 60 suspected militants Saturday in a security clampdown in the capital and killed 26 insurgents in a rebel Sunni stronghold west of Baghdad.

The sweep through the southern Baghdad district of Arab Jabour targeted a suspected bomb-making cell linked to attacks across the city of seven million.

“The group has been reported to be planning and conducting training for future attacks, like the attack in Mahmudiya July 17 that killed 42,” the U.S. military said in a statement.

Beefed-up U.S. and Iraqi forces this week began a systematic operation to claim back Baghdad’s most dangerous rebel strongholds in an attempt to restore security and shore up confidence in the new Shiite-led government.

U.S. officers now talk openly about the risk of a full-scale civil war unless they can calm conditions in Baghdad.

Some 50,000 U.S. and Iraqi forces are taking part in Operation Together Forward. Similar campaigns have failed in the past but Washington hopes to cut violence significantly by the end of September.

About 100 Iraqis die every day
Al-Maliki, in power since May, has had little success in bringing the country’s rival factions together, and about 100 Iraqis die every day.

A suicide bomber killed 35 people on Thursday near one of the most revered sites in the Shiite world, the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, in the bloodiest single attack since mid-July.

U.S. Marines and soldiers killed 26 insurgents and wounded six in prolonged fighting overnight Friday in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, said the military.

“Marines and soldiers...were attacked at multiple locations with rocket-propelled grenades, medium machinegun fire and small arms fire from buildings targeting outposts in the northwest portion of the city,” the U.S. military said in a statement.

I'm sure this is all somehow the fault of wacko elitist Ned Lamont, and the angry, angry nutroots who purged that nice Joe Lieberman.

The Rollout

A senior British official knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.

In contrast to previous reports, the official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.

-- 8/12/2006, NBC News, U.S., U.K. at odds over timing of arrests

Why did the Administration wait until September to make its case against Iraq? White House chief of staff Andrew Card told The New York Times last week, ``From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.''

-- 9/12/2002, CNN, Marketing Iraq



So how should we perceive the bumped-up rollout for this latest terrorism product? For one, we can think about how the success in foiling the plot is being so highly touted, yet terror alerts were raised, and security procedures have been increased in an untenable direction. (Really. So it's not just nail clippers anymore; we're confiscating bottled water and mascara? I'm sure we all feel safer already.) And of course the usual gang of tele-bedwetters are huddling together on the usual shows, telling us that the only way to press on is to live like rats cornered in a sewer. Good luck with that.

For another, we might also consider that there's only twelve weeks left before Li'l Napoleon meets his Waterloo, and no amount of secret signing statements of self-assigned superpowers will change that. Fundraising is way down for them, and as this is a money game first and foremost, perhaps this is just a prefatory hole card, before the real hand gets played out in September and October.

Strap on your hip waders, folks, because the shit's gonna pile up, and the useful idiots will be out and about, digging for that elusive pony.

Working Together

Your librul media, hard at work:

CRAWFORD, United States (AFP) - US President George W. Bush quoted French existential writer Albert Camus to European leaders a year and a half ago, and now he's read one of his most famous works: "The Stranger."

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Friday that Bush, here on his Texas ranch enjoying a 10-day vacation from Washington, had made quick work of the Algerian-born writer's 1946 novel -- in English.

Well, color me embarrassed. Gosh, I guess every single preconceived notion I ever had about George W. Bush has just been dashed against the wind-riven ricks of cold, hard reality -- because at age 60, he's made quick work of a 144-page book (an 8"x5" book at that, less than ½" thick) that's taught in most high school AP English classes.

But say, fella 'merkin, aren't you just curious as all get-out about what exactly this folksy, down-home born n' bred Texan quoted to them thar Yerapeeins? I know I am.

"We know there are many obstacles, and we know the road is long. Albert Camus said that 'freedom is a long-distance race.' We're in that race for the duration," Bush said in those remarks.

Betcha $20 that at the very least, he managed to fuck up the pronunciation of Camus' name. But seriously, what exactly is the purpose of this "story", which curiously has no byline? Is it that the "free press" might consider it bad form to put "Tony Snow" or "Jeff Gannon™" as the author of this crap, as if it is any better form to anonymously regurgitate puff pieces emanating from the White House PR department? Jesus, do these people even bother taking their kneepads off before tapping out their stupid little blurbs?

Seriously, is this the legitimate, responsible media presence that unhinged bloggers are supposed to "work with"? Um, yeaaaahhhh, right now I'm thinking something along the lines of "no fucking way". Perhaps this was an example of that "dry wit" I've heard so much about. It's hard to tell anymore, what with irony being long dead and all.

[h/t to Watertiger.]

First, They Came For The Bloggers

Despite my frequent tirades and endless vituperation toward the corporate media and its minions, I do believe Jon Carroll means well. As I've said before, there are good reasons he's the only columnist on my blogroll: he has intellectual honesty, perspective, an understanding of human nature and how it tends to operate. These qualities are quickly lost on many self-styled pundits, who are only looking to make a name for themselves by being just "outrageous" enough to get invited on all the cool screamfests, and maybe pimp a useless book or five.

But these are important qualities when it comes to digging through facts and perception, and not being distracted by truth agendas and values lectures. "Truth" and "values" are transitive in nature, anyway; they are worse than useless, they have become weapons in today's sound-bark dialogue.

So it's all the more disappointing that Carroll maybe misses some of the proverbial forest for the trees:

While the whole thing was going on, I did not understand the excitement over the Ned Lamont-Joe Lieberman battle for the Democratic nomination for senator in Connecticut. If Lamont won, it would prove that the Democrats in the Northeast are unhappy about the war in Iraq, and I think we know that already.

....

The other major story to come out of the Lamont campaign was the influence of bloggers, particularly a small cadre of anti-war bloggers who vigorously supported Lamont. I was annoyed by the usurpation of bandwidth by the Lamont story because some of my favorite morning reads -- www.dailykos.com, www.atrios.blogspot.com, www.talkingpointsmemo.com -- became heavily involved in the minutiae of the campaign, and a lot of other stories just got lost. Throw in the attention paid to the Mel Gibson nonstory -- really, the anti-Semites of significance these days are the ones running entire nations, like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran -- and you've got a less colorful and diverse blogosphere.

Couple things here, both of which are central to Carroll's take on all this. First is that while perhaps "we all know" how Democratic voters in general -- and northeastern Democratic voters in particular -- feel about the war and the administration, there is and has been a demonstrable pattern of cognitive disconnect in play here. The media reflect the mentality of the Beltway, which has been staid, clueless, diffident -- everything that the "nutroots" of the "angry left" have not been.

Bloggers have generally acted in pretty good faith in challenging the received wisdom of the media, and have gotten shit in return for it. Do the media engage in any mea culpas when caught on their bullshit, or -- more importantly -- do something about it? No, they hem and haw about validity of the complaints, mumble some useless platitudes about their version of "objectivity", and then piss and moan about the intemperate nature of their critics. Then they wonder why their profession is held in even lower regard than lawyers and turkey strokers.

The media, locked in by behavioral inertia, corporate flaccidity, and maybe even a healthy dose of Stockholm Syndrome, have shown absolutely no interest in changing the paradigm, and Carroll alludes to it himself by mentioning the Mel Gibson non-story. Who spent more time combing over this nonsense, blogs or media? I'll bet my last porno that 90+% of the politically serious blogs mentioned Gibson only as new developments initially appeared -- that is, when the story first broke, and then perhaps again when the allegations were reliably confirmed. The "responsible" media, on the other hand, milked something like two solid weeks out of it.

Now, I think the Lamont/Lieberman story, and the role of bloggers in the development of that story, holds more than just the "are the angry nutroots a force to be reckoned with, and should we all be afraid" canard the media are currently wanking. The anger throws them, for one; for all their newfound wisdom regarding the blogsurgency™, the profilers seem amazingly ignorant of the fact that many (if not most) of us started this in one form or another well before the blog paradigm started getting established. Chat fora and BBS services were around for years before Blogspot and the rest of them hit, and we proto-bloggers, one by one, jumped to the new wave. What we brought with us was the form of discourse we had cultivated -- snarky, vulgar, nasty in tone and tempo. Everything happened and continues to happen in more-or-less real time, or at least to our individual dictates. This is alien to established media presences, who are tethered to having to fulfill their revenue model to continue their legitimacy.

There is a freeing aspect to all that, which the media simply cannot approach. Bloggers assume that if they build it, people will come; the media, because they are owned and operated by corporations, are scared shitless that if they build it, a carload of freaks from the Jeebus Told Me To Boycott You If You Build It Society will gang-fax them and threaten their bottom line.

I don't have a bottom line. I don't have advertisers to please, and my policy with pleasing readers is roughly the same as Frank Zappa had with his fans -- if you enjoy it, great; if not, blow it out your ass. Blogs are the ultimate niche marketers in that regard, as Carroll recognizes, and there's freedom in that. I don't have (or want) to be everything to everyone; if someone wants to read about American Idol or underwater basketweaving or whatever, there's bound to be a blog for them out there somewhere.

It is not clear that bloggers had much real impact on the Connecticut primary, but they're a new wild card in the political process, and that makes them a story. I have always appreciated the fierce independence of bloggers, and I fear that, as they accumulate influence, they'll be co-opted in the classic capitalist way. (As soon as bloggers really influence elections, Rupert Murdoch will begin buying them by the long ton.)

He's probably right about this, but so what? If Rupert Murdoch wants to try to co-opt me by throwing money in my direction, I encourage him. I am a political capitalist in the Jesse Unruh mold -- if I can't take Murdoch's money, drink his whiskey, fuck his women, and still talk shit about him the next day, then I don't belong here in the first place. Shit, paying me to do this would just give me more time, money, and freedom to do ever more digging and writing.

I realize that not everyone is cut from the same cloth, but I submit that that's the operative dynamic of every corporate media entity anyway, so why the fuck should the truth-to-power folk starve while overpaid shitheads like Tweety and Russert gorge on lobster?

It seemed to me unwise for Markos Moulitsas to have starred in a TV campaign commercial for Lamont. It seems he wants to be a Player, and being a Player is not compatible with fierce independence. Experience suggests that, somewhere along the line, there's a price for seeking power. The price could be a loss of credibility, or a cringe-inducing compromise, or something else. I'm not saying it's happened or it will happen; I'm saying that's what experience suggests.

This is true, just as it might be true for, say, Bill Keller to appear in an actual campaign commercial. It's bad form, and perhaps dilutes the line between editorializing and electioneering. But that line gets crossed all the time in subtler, more subtextual ways, frequently with the tacit help of the aforementioned responsible media. At least Kos (who has not paid me for this tepid endorsement, damn him) put it up front, and let people decide for themselves.

And what of that decision, anyway? What of the propitiously-timed foiling of the British terror plot (coyly nicknamed "Shakes On A Plane", heh-indeedy), and VP Undisclosed Location's cheap politicizing of security information, as a way of quelling electoral dissent? Again, not possible without an understanding of the flaccid, pseudo-objective posturing routinely employed by the media.

Vice President Dick Cheney was unaware arrests in an alleged terror plot in Britain were imminent when he accused Democrats of being soft on national security, the White House said on Friday.

....

Cheney said on Wednesday the defeat of Sen. Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary on Tuesday over his support of the Iraq war could embolden "the al Qaeda types" who believe the United States would cut and run if put under enough pressure.

....

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Cheney had been briefed last weekend on the British threat but did not know the arrests were imminent when he spoke and that he was simply reacting to the outcome of the Connecticut primary.

"There was no anticipation of an operation that day," Snow said. "He had no reason, I don't think, based on my conversations, there was no strong reason to believe that something was imminent."

That's really what the CT senatorial election primary was a referendum on -- it clearly delineated the electorate between people who have enough common sense to interpret the available information, and retards who think Tony Snow and Dick Cheney have anything resembling their best interests at heart.

But that's not how it was portrayed in the "responsible" media; instead, the whole procedure was characterized as a life-or-death showdown between "serious" "moderates", who were really neither of those things, and angry elitist leftists, who despite all those marginalizing labels, hold positions which jibe with a clear majority not only of their own party, but with the entire country.

The only thing they got right about the entire dynamic was the anger part, and at this point, anger should be axiomatic. If the media spent half as much time asking why Bush couldn't be troubled to maybe postpone his vacation/fundraising trip long enough to help defuse the Israel/Lebanon crisis, as it does giving face-time to the usual gang of religious hucksters reading entrails and divining said crisis as the onset of Armageddon, we might get somewhere. But again, as Carroll himself alluded, they're content to hump whatever manufactured celebrojourno freak show they can, until it's beaten well and good into the ground.

Carroll one more time:

Nicholas Lemann in a recent New Yorker wrote an article about blogging in which he accused bloggers (or "citizen journalists") of not being real journalists. It was an interesting article, but it was hurt by its failure to define "journalism." Is Hunter S. Thompson a journalist? Tom Wolfe? Garry Wills? William Buckley? Where exactly is the line, and who draws it, and who appointed them? What is definitely true is that "citizen journalists" and salaried journalists have failed to make common cause. They each consider the other to be the enemy, and the real enemy is out there, all the people who spin the truth and bury the truth. Journalism should be about revealing the world as it really is.

Lemann didn't use his best example, a book he wrote almost 15 years ago called "The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America." It's a wonderful book, a model for anyone who wants to practice journalism. It's not reactionary, it's free from cant, and it takes the long view. We all need to learn how to do this stuff better, whether we work for ourselves or for a multinational corporation. If the truth will set us free, then we'd better start figuring out what the truth is and how to proclaim it. It would be easier if we did it together.

That's a nice idea, but I've no clue how that's supposed to occur. At this point, the media have so devalued their own currency, that I think most bloggers use them simply as a resource for cites and links. For now, that still carries some legitimacy. But consider -- the bloggers who physically went to Connecticut and followed Lamont's campaign around, why do you think they did that? Sure, it was a cause they believed in, but perhaps there's also a nugget of justified suspicion, that if someone wasn't right there on the scene to record what went down, that would leave the "legitimate" media to cover it. And then the story would be rendered useless, larded with "objectivity" tropes and plaints from the usual "anonymous sources" about those nasty ol' nutroots and their crazy candidate overturning their little corporate apple-cart.

Never forget -- Lieberman humps a lot of big-money legs to stay in office. His wife is a lobbyist for Big Pharma. Does the media cover any of that? No, they leave it to the nasssty bloggerses, to Matt Taibbi, to the last few professionals who care more about the story behind the story, than about clawing their way to the adipose tissue of the middle, the Lexuses, the beach houses in the Hamptons, the kewl kids parties with Sally Quinn. There's a lot of fucking money here at stake, and that's why even Karl Rove is reaching out to Holy Joe.

And I have no idea how we crazy bloggerses are supposed to "work together" with people who are conditioned and co-opted to represent a pre-ordained agenda from above. I have no interest in "working with" people who stenograph anonymous press releases unquestioningly, who trudge every day to the White House Press Briefing room and let themselves be abused by a piece of shit like Tony Snow.

This White House traffics in contempt, showers it in abundance upon the vaunted fourth estate, who in turn project that contempt, whether deliberately or in their usual dickless passivity, upon people like me, who do this for free, just because we love to tilt at that windmill and foolishly think that somehow, somewhere, there's value in it.

There's no value in taking even a minute of shit from the likes of Tony Snow or George Bush or Don Rumsfeld, and if the MSM wants any measure of respect and cooperation from us, then they should get up on their hind legs already, march en masse out of that dump of a press room, throw off their chains, and work with us, rather than smugly dismissing us. But it took blogs to discover that Jeff Gannon™ was a Republican plant, even though he'd been at daily briefings for two years; it took blogs less than a week to discover that the newspaper of record in the nation's capital had hired a serial plagiarist to be their trophy conservatard blogger (and then a month of obfuscating and sneering from Pravda to get past it). This bespeaks a profoundly unserious, irresponsible paradigm at work, but because I use dirty words, I'm a bad guy.

I kinda feel like the unfortunately-named Michael Bolton in Office Space who, when asked why he doesn't change his name to avoid pestering by geeky Bolton fans, defensively replies, "Why should I change my name? He's the one who sucks."

So, you know, when the so-called Headline News Network no longer marquees the screamfest bloc of assholes like Glenn Beck and Nancy Grace, when the Cable News Network finally understand that perhaps the actual news is more important than making stars out of the sock puppets who simply read it, then perhaps we get somewhere. Till then, I have no use for a profession that thinks it's great fun to help Ann Coulter sell books. The media simply have to do a better job of policing themselves, and marginalizing their own idiots, but as the saying goes, their paychecks depend on them not recognizing that.

It's a resource -- for now. At the point where actual information-gathering becomes cost-effective for the "citizen journalist" (a term which I personally have no use for), the dinosaurs will officially be extinct. That too is part of what Lamont/Lieberman presaged.

Don't Joe Away Mad, Just Joe Away

Well, the voters of Connecticut have spoken, and despite their wishes, Lieberman seems to think that they will have him to kick around for a little while longer.

The cubicle-rats and professional shitbirds at the DLC must be beside themselves at this point. After all, they went all out for their man, flooding the proverbial zone, sending every lackey and would-be consigliere out to the journalistic hustings to warn about the inherent dangers of letting the "blogofascists" and the "nutroots" (in other words, the people) have a say in their political leadership.

Note to Lanny Davis, and every other two-bit whore claiming to be one thing while acting like another -- if you want to be a "liberal antiwar Democrat", then fucking well act like one. Instead of expending time and energy penning bitchy little screeds for the Wall Street Journal op-ed page about how mean commenters at liberal blogs can be, how about talking about the war? How about talking about the indifferent, condescending attitude this administration has displayed throughout, as things have deteriorated from bad to hell? Iraq hangs at the edge of an abyss, torn asunder by death squads and militias, cheered on by a useless little man and his useless little followers, exhorted by nasty little fucks all up and down the right side of the dial -- radio loons, television whackjobs, freelance idiots -- and Davis' big concern is a couple of intemperate commenters at Kos? Seriously?

The Democratic applecart is indeed being overturned by the angry base, and for damned good reasons. This administration, from day one, has operated from a stance of contempt and dismissal. It's been going on for five years now. People have been patient long enough. The dickless DLC hacks hem and haw and preach their bland homilies of incrementalism and bipartisanship, yet seem only to engage in appeasement and capitulation. If Lieberman wants to spend the rest of his life bent over, getting swatted with the Deke paddle, grunting "Thank you sir, may I have another?" for the rest of his life, fine. Maybe he can get a job at Bob Dole's lobbying operation, and make the big bucks humping pols' legs for Big Pharma. Whatever.

We've come to expect smug condescension and belligerent ignorance from the Bushies, but when it comes from the Democrats it's just adding insult to injury. Someone forgot to remind Lieberman that they already have Republicans to defend Bush from criticism. He apparently never got the hint, he ran an amazingly tone-deaf campaign, and when it looked like he was cooked, he acted (and continues to act) like a little punk bitch.

The problem is that the DLC has convinced themselves and their members that their staid, bloodless form of corporate pseudo-liberalism is just the soothing remedy to America's ills, when in fact they are nothing but enablers. Bush needs to be challenged every step of the way on his unprecedented abuse of executive branch authority. He needs to be reined in on his regressive social agenda. He needs to be publicly humiliated over his craven attempts to give the 1% everything while the government runs record deficits, and a preponderance of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

And Lieberman refused to do any of those things, saving his smarmy contempt for his own base. This is an object lesson, folks, in the real difference between how the two parties operate -- no matter what their base does or says, no Republican ever publicly takes them to task. Ever. Yet Lieberman and the rest of the DLC shills cynically use their most impassioned constituencies, the people who are by far the most willing to contribute money and knock on doors, help spread the message, as currency to show the "serious" people how "centrist" they are.

But that's only because the "center" in this country has been dragged so far to the right over the past generation. Getting rid of Lieberman is just a start, but it's a start nonetheless. I remain pessimistic as to true balance being restored any time soon; the media fix is already in on this story. All day long today, all you heard about was Lieberman's website possibly getting hacked, as if there was actually somebody out there who was still on the fence, and needed one last joe2006.com fix before trudging down to the voting booth. Give me a break. No, this is deliberate, to start Lamont off in a hole, where even if he wins the general election (and since Lieberman has shown an unusual eagerness to sell his party down the river, nothing's guaranteed), he gets the stupid "angry nutroots" meme hung around his neck by the lazy shitheads of the corporate media.

Still, it is a start, and I hope there's more energy where that came from. It's at least as important, if not more so, to get George Felix Allen's useless rubber-stamp ass out of the Senate, and get a serious, knowledgeable person like James Webb in. And even if the midterms turn out, as predicted, to be a Democratic recovery of both houses of Congress, it's still important to keep pressuring them to do the right thing. The Democrats, like the media, seem to have a serious case of Stockholm syndrome in their dealings with the Bushies. They are afraid, intimidated by the bluster, buying into the Beltway CW that playing nice is the only way, even with people who do nothing but beat on them.

The only way to break that cycle of diffidence is to keep reminding them that we're here, we want them to do what's right, and we're paying attention. Who knows, someday they might even remember that that's the way it's supposed to be.

Kid Tested, Dipshit Approved

ClownHall retard Kevin McCullough ineptly attempts to command a veritable army of strawmen, in his futile attempt to smear the always-unnamed "liberals" of sympathizing with an admitted pedophile:

Liberals love pedophiles, because they must do so to keep their own belief system intact.

This is quite a bold contention, especially for a guy who is so fucking stupid, he blogs in a short bus. Can this contention be upheld even remotely? Of course not. Does this stop ClownHall from passing off this vicious nonsense as something resembling clear thought? Again, of course not.

Still, it's a fascinating glimpse into the recesses of the conservatard "thought" "process". Talk about ass-spelunking.

Consider the bizarre case just this week of thirty-four year old Phillip Distasio.

Distasio runs a "school" called Class Cutters near Cleveland Ohio. The goal of the school is to somehow counter the "No Child Left Behind Act" by getting kids to rush through a few academic excercises each day on the computer - and then to spend the majority of the time performing some sort of "community service." It seems to be set-up to help the child find "productive" use of their time in after school hours. On Distasio's web-site he even makes mention that even kids who attend a traditional school can join the program for the "after school activities."

A disturbing element also seems to be that Distasio seeks parent's involvement in "choosing the curriculum" that their child engages in. They even have a chatroom blog to log into the program with.

McCullough, three sheets to the wind in his "was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" breathless throes of impending librul perfidy, never quite gets around to explaining exactly why it's "disturbing" that parental involvement was actively sought to design the curriculum. If Distasio's curriculum is of an entirely elective nature, of the underwater-basketweaving sort, then sure, it's useless from an educational standpoint. But "disturbing"?

What's really horrifying is that Distasio is an admitted pedophile of 20 years who doesn't even have the decency to be ashamed of his craving for sexual activity with boys.

In fact... he embraces it.

Presently Distasio is finding himself facing 74 charges of molestation of boys in his "program." Instead of denying his guilt he's trying a new approach - claiming his sexual intent is a civil right.

Of course! Now McCullough's discursive preamble makes perfect sense. Um, no....wait. What the fuck is this clown going on about? Apparently he thinks he's connecting dots here, instead of milking yet another pedophile-cleric case to pimp his crappy book.

Yes, that's right, Dr. Strawmanstein here has penned a tome, presumably with the same great care and attention to detail he lavishes upon his columns -- which are also available in two-ply from ClownHall's ancillary-products division. Just tell 'em Heywood sent you, they'll give you the good-guy price.

In my brand new book MuscleHead Revolution: Overturning Liberalism with Commonsense Thinking I point out how painfully obvious it has become to us all that the clear-headed absolutes of right and wrong and good and evil were thrown out with the modern feminist bathwater of the 1960s. But few of us ever thought it would get to the point that we are now seeing - pedophiles claiming constitutional civil rights protections for their desire to engage in homosexual pedophilia.

So where does Distasio get the boldness to make such ludicrous claims?

How about modern liberalism, academia, and the Clinton administration?

As I document in MuscleHead Revolution, Judith Levine, the academic who released the book, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, argues that it is harmful to protect children from sexual activity. As I point out, she goes so far as to encourage adults to not think prudishly about sexual activity between adults and children. She even advocates for the "rights" of children to be able to "give their consent" for "legal" and "healthy" sexual activity with adults.

One might think that Levine is just a nutcase, except that she was published by the University of Minnesota Press. Her book was endorsed by Dr. Jocelyn Elders who also wrote its forward. Elders was the Clinton era, surgeon general.

Hoo-boy. You knew it was gonna be good, you just didn't know how good, right? Go ahead and review all that for a second -- unorthodox quasi-clerical edumacator abuses his position and molests his students. Knowing that he's about to spend the rest of his life being used as a receptacle for every prison gang in the Ohio state penitentiary system, he cravenly extrapolates a half-assed defense concocted from a very selective reading of a text which was already infamous in the usual sex-obsessed puritanical circles. The logical conclusion is tantalizingly evident -- Bill Clinton, and by association all "liberals", love pedophiles. QED, muthafuckas!

Bonus points for perhaps the stupidest name for a "revolution" -- as if some dickless turd like Kevin McCullough could ever get off his hamster wheel long enough to mount such an undertaking. His "PeckerHead Revolution" probably involves a different color of plaid, or seersucker slacks instead of the "liberal" gabardine. Guess he showed you wage slaves, didn't he?

Jeff Wells covered the Distasio case pretty well just recently, much better than McCullough could ever hope to. The case is indeed as creepy as all hell, and any rational person -- regardless of political persuasion -- hopes that Distasio gets what's coming to him. But the case, no matter McCullough's tortured rendering, has fuck-all to do with liberalism, Clintonism, or any other political or pseudo-political ism. Distasio's just another in a long line of scumbags that misused a position of trust to abuse the helpless, then tried to justify and rationalize his conduct by any means necessary. The guy's a fucking child molester; being a disingenuous weasel requires little or no effort, as McCullough is clearly aware.

And what of this text of ineffable liberalism, this tome of unspeakable dread, indifferent -- nay, exultant -- in the abject sexualization of our children?

As Levine documents throughout the book with copious studies and reviews of news sources, fears of rampant pedophilia, child abduction, ritual abuse, and Internet sexual predators are at best exaggerated, at worst completely unsupported by evidence.

For example, studies commissioned by Congress show that between 50 and 150 children are kidnapped and murdered by strangers each year, yet in a Mayo Clinic survey three-quarters of parents said they are afraid their children will be abducted. And a 1994 U.S. government report analyzing over 12,000 accusations of Satanic ritual abuse found "not a single case where there was clear corroborating evidence."

Nevertheless, parents are nervous -- even squeamish -- about their children's and teens' sexuality, often seeking to deny their offspring the sexual freedoms they themselves demanded at the same age. (Physician Victor Strasburger has even penned a paean to hypocrisy entitled "Getting Your Kids to Say 'No' in the '90s When You Said 'Yes' in the '60s."

In the past two decades youthful sexual desire has become widely pathologized. As Levine notes, "It's as if (parents) cannot imagine that their kids seek sex for the same reasons they do: They like or love the person they are having it with. It gives them a sense of beauty, worthiness, happiness, or power. And it feels good."

Keep in mind also that Levine is referring to teenagers having sex, whereas all but one of Distasio's victims was under 13 years of age. Furthermore, Levine is clearly not endorsing teen sex, but analyzing parents' paranoia about it, and the counterproductive effects that can have.

That a lying sack of shit like McCullough can't or won't acknowledge the obvious is no surprise. He's not out to find facts or truth, obviously; his goal is merely to string the usual gaggle of ClownHall rubes along on yet another snipe hunt. I don't know if it's a sign of desperation or dementia that he's led them so far afield from terra firma, but he quickly sinks in his own intellectual quicksand.

The panic surrounding youthful sexuality can perhaps best be compared to the war on drugs: Both are based on ideology rather than science, and no amount of evidence can change the minds of true believers. Both mask underlying social agendas in which concern for children is used to control the behavior of adults. And both engender problems of credibility as young people reject exhortations to "do as I say, not as I did."

Many adults recognize that they made mistakes in their youth and understandably wish to spare children similar missteps, especially in the age of AIDS. Yet too often, Levine contends, censorship and abstinence-only sex education are really an effort to hold back children's coming of age, offering parents an illusory "freedom from watching their kids grow up."

But denying young people knowledge about sex will not help them become responsible sexual citizens. As Levine notes, children today know about IPOs and the hole in the ozone layer, just as they know about abortion and sadomasochism. Parents cannot block out all uncomfortable knowledge.

In order "to give children a fighting chance in navigating the sexual world," Levine says, "adults need to saturate it with accurate, realistic information and abundant, varied images and narratives of love and sex."

If a person truly has the good of young people in mind, one would hope he or she would be interested in what research has to reveal. "Harmful to Minors" offers a plethora of findings, from studies showing that exposure to sexually explicit images does not harm children, to evidence that teens' sexual relationships with adults are not uniformly devastating, to research on the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only education in delaying sexual activity.

But more crucial than research is listening to what children and teens have to say about their own experiences, honestly acknowledging our own experiences at those ages, and applying a healthy dose of common sense. While we are constantly reminded of the importance of believing young people's allegations of coercion and abuse, too often we give considerably less credence to their avowals of consent and pleasure.

Most of us came across sexual images in our youth, and most of us did not turn out to be sexual monsters. Further, there is no evidence that cultures in which explicit sexual imagery is prevalent (such as Denmark or the Netherlands) produce more sexual pathology than those in which such material is forbidden; in fact, there are indications that quite the opposite is the case.

My own experience and development essentially mirrors this thesis, and I suspect it does for most people. Many if not most of us probably rifled through our fathers' stack of Playboy or Penthouse, or saw a movie with nudity in it, even as pre-teens. This is normal development; this is not harmful sexualization in and of itself.

Now, Levine does go further and opines that teen-adult sexual relationships are not necessarily more harmful than such relationships between peers, which I don't buy. But that is an entirely different matter than saying that Levine is endorsing the type of predatory conduct Distasio indulged in. In fact, as Jeff Wells pointed out, Distasio actively cultivated a relationship with Nambla, which tells you right where his purported sexual philosophy was at.

The truly sick and disgusting part of all this is that there is a disturbing pattern of attempting to sexualize children at younger and younger ages. But it's not from sick fucks like Philip Distasio, it's right under our noses. It's shit on the TV that we're apparently too lazy to turn from (or god forbid, turn off), but not too lazy to forward chain letters to our congresscritters about. It's clothes, especially girls' clothes, carried at every major department store across the country.

I remember the last time we went clothes-shopping for our five-year-old daughter, at Target, reputedly the bastion of middle-American values and mores. We ended up buying boys jeans for her, because everything was hip-huggers, lowered to show the proverbial coin slot (and attendant butt hat, one presumes). Either that or things like "Juicy" or "Booty" bedazzled across the ass. Who the fuck is buying this shit for a kindergartner? What the fuck is wrong with these people? That would be something worth writing a column about, but no, Shit-for-brains has to lay this, bizarrely, inexplicably, at the feet of the Clintonistas, the liberals.

For liberals to denounce pedophiles, ultimately they would have to denounce,[sic] lesbianism, homsexuality [sic], and their particular favorite - adultery. And that's just no [sic] going to happen.

At the end of the day there are such a thing as moral values, and liberals despise them - because as they see it - those moral values limit their sexual freedoms. And if this is "America" - isn't it all about the freedom to get your groove on?

Liberals love pedophiles.

This is the sort of deep thought, the level of brilliant logical thinking, that you're up against, folks. Pedophilia=homosexuality=adultery, the imputation of which alone should make at least the philandering wing of the Republican party (and their gay family members) a tad nervous. (Wonder what Moron McCullough has to say about Newt Gingrich, for example.)

Still want to meet these weirdos halfway?

High Fidelity

When the news first broke about Fidel Castro's health crisis (which, considering the political nature of his country, probably means impending death), a couple things struck me as curious. One was how weirdly optimistic the Miami crowd got, as if anything was going to change for the better. There's no reason to think that, unless we show some willingness to modify our stance and bring Cuba along the way we have with, to pull a completely random example, China, the new Cuban regime will not be just as hardline (if not more so) than the current Fidelist regime.

Whatever Castro's manifold evils, he apparently has some talent for finding sponsors, just as our regime has a brilliant knack for making (and keeping) bitter enemies out of potential entente partners. So you have new Mercosur partner Hugo Chàvez, flush with oil money and a huge chip on his shoulder at the Bushies' failed coup in '02, cutting deals with China and Iran, and bankrolling Castro. As always, nicely done, values voters, for this completely unnecessary and entirely preventable thorn in our side. Stick your vaunted "principles" in Tabasco and suck on them already, would you please?

The other thing that struck me as a bit hinky was how unaware we seemed to be at this occurrence. Castro is 80 years old, and we've tried to kill him countless times, spent inordinate amounts of time and energy propgandizing the area to keep the Miami Cubans politically solvent, and we operate a full-time concentration camp at the tip of the island. Yet Bush, always the proverbial deer in the foreign-policy headlights, seemed to have his pants around his ankles at this new development.

And since our "serious" news organizations, per usual, are too busy sniffing the ass of every two-bit crackpot over whether or not this most recent spate of 6,000 years of Middle East unrest is the absolute for-realsies this-time-we're-not-full-of-shit sign of Armageddon, we naturally have to turn to the German media for some insight on intel developments 90 miles from freakin' Florida.

"The president's comment was that everybody was caught by surprise, and we'll have to wait and see," reported US senator Robert Bennett, who discussed recent developments in Cuba with Bush on Tuesday.

"Wait and see" -- Bush's fecklessness shines through even in the official language. "We don't know what the condition of Fidel Castro is; we don't know the exact facts of this," White House spokesman Tony Snow said clumsily at a press briefing Tuesday. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack spoke in similar terms. "I don't think there are too many people outside that small core group of people who run Cuba who really know what is going on," he said Thursday.

So now -- as history arrives at the moment a whole generation once wished for -- the end of Castro's reign threatens to become a lost opportunity. Instead of reaching out to a new Cuba and playing a constructive role in the state's transformation, Washington is relying on old, unsuccessful recipes: blockade, sanctions and a hardline approach.

"U.S. policy is going to remain the same irrespective of whether it's Fidel Castro or Raul Castro in power," sighs Daniel Erikson, a Cuba expert at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank. Pride leads to stubbornness: "If the Cuban government implements a smooth transfer, that would indicate a failure of U.S. policy," Erikson says.

The fact of the matter is, there is no policy, besides merely leaving the long-standing policy on autopilot, because it is electorally convenient. This is a disservice all the way around -- to the people living under Castro's thumb, to Cuban-Americans letting themselves be played by cynical interests, and to the rest of Americans, who can do nothing but sit and watch as a senseless, counterproductive policy perpetuates itself. You want to know what the U.S.' Cuba policy is, watch the cake-cutting scene from Godfather II.

I have no illusions about Castro's workers' paradise, though perhaps there is something useful to be gleaned from Cuba's very competitive rates of literacy, infant mortality, and health care. But as with Israel and many other places, we get bogged down in false equivalences of self-styled "morality", when every single one of us knows that, if Cuba had oil or cheap labor or something else for us to exploit, we would find a way to deal with them. We find a way to deal with repulsive dictators like Teodoro Obiang, a man known to literally stake dissidents to anthills. We launder his money and enable his vicious oppression, because he has oil, and we want it.

This is why I have no patience for moral arguments that loudly proclaim "clarity" and eschew "nuance", yet are precisely the opposite when examined on substance. Castro is a goner, and we have a real opportunity here. There is nothing to be lost by figuring out what we want, sending an envoy to Cuba to talk to Raul Castro and his henchmen, and starting a dialogue. They want something, we want something. That is the beginning of negotiations.

Or we can continue the morally craven stance of pretending to be morally superior, so a claque of party activists can keep their congressional seats secure. I have absolutely no doubt as to which path we will choose. The past, as always, is prologue.

Conscientious Pantload

Apparently there is a small but growing contingent of deserters who have made it to the promised land of Toronto and Vancouver. Since this is, after all, a volunteer army, it is difficult to muster too much sympathy for what boils down to buyers' remorse. Still, there is a societal undercurrent informing the initial choice to join the service for many of these people.

Unlike the 50,000 Vietnam War draft evaders who came before them, today's war resisters aren't necessarily left-wing, college-educated and backed by a big peace movement.

They tend to be small-town America guys who volunteered for service, hoping the military would get them out of dead-end jobs and pay for the colleges and doctor visits their families could never afford.

Lawyers in Toronto and Vancouver have compared numbers and say they collectively have met with 200 Americans who have abandoned their units.

There are as many reasons to enlist as there are enlistees, I suppose, if you want to parse it finely enough. But it's not uncommon to hear about the kid who joins up simply because it's the best opportunity available at the time, because small-town America is dying on the vine, a wasteland of strip malls, Walmarts, and ignorant codgers constantly up in arms over those damned kids on their lawns.

Even the suburban/exurban paradises of the useless yuppie bobos are on the cusp of their own obsolescence, tethered as they are to a ever more unsustainable lifestyle. You think the price of gasoline is ever coming back down, you probably think David Brooks has balls, too.

And what are the economic options of these kids, in a country where their "leaders", who have voted themselves roughly $13/hour in raises in the last few years, cynically lawn-dart a proposal to raise the minimum wage to a whopping $7.25/hour by hanging the requisite "death tax" millstone on it. They can join the millions of families who get to eke their way through life while Paris Hilton gets another much-needed tax break, or they can take a chance and join the Army. Some choice.

So while I again harbor little sympathy for people who desert their team when they find out that armies, right or wrong, are sometimes expected to fight, I at least understand where some of them are coming from. They haven't been afforded the chances and opportunities lavished on the fortunate sons; Pierce Bush had to pick which college to drink himself stupid(er) for the next decade before inflicting himself on the political/business establishment like the rest of his useless tribe, while some grunt kid from Pacoima gets to choose between a life at Circuit City or whatever brass ring shines brightest at the right (or wrong) moment.

So I save the far greater measure of contempt for the legacy putzes who are too dumb to even know how lucky they've been. (Talk about your "unknown unknowns".) Most people do the best they can with what they've got and hope for the best, while smug, supercilious douchebags pontificate endlessly as if life and the world were just a big ol' game of Risk their mommy lets them play until the Slim Jims and Mountain Dew run out.

They Ask Questions

Apparently there is only so much lint to be gotten from one's navel, because there's a new kerfuffle afoot in the blogosphere. If I were twenty years younger, and had neither family, job, nor school to occupy the bulk of my time, I could take part in more kerfuffles. I suppose I am something of a blogospheric National Guardsman then, taking part in weekend kerfuffles here and there. It's either that or paintball, and those little motherfuckers sting when they hit. Take it from me, you can't get away with paintballing in your underwear with a sack of Cheetos and a vat of Mountain Dew. This alone makes the weekend kerfuffle the superior option.

Anyway, there is much ado about why Left Blogistan has been comparatively silent about the Israel-Hezbollah skirmishes. Of course, said ado is taking place in the incestuous realms of Right Blogistan, so there's that. But there is a nugget of truth to it. Billmon has contributed prodigiously to the analysis, but other than that, most of us have been perhaps a bit reticent on the subject, and not without reason.

I can't and won't presume to ventriloquize the reasoning of my peers, but I haven't said much about it because there's not much to say. These people have been at each other's throats for thousands of years, over some of the most undesirable scraps of land on the planet. Rationality is, shall we say, not a huge part of the equation.

Growing up, I was a diehard supporter of Israel, and in many ways I still am. One of my cousins is in fact a rabbi who spent about a decade on a kibbutz, and reading about the Holocaust when I was younger has always stayed with me. (For the record, as far as I know, I do not have any Jewish lineage, though I am one-eighth Polish-Russian, so it's possible.)

At this point, however, I have come to look at Israel/Palestine as an intractable situation, because of the behavior of both sides. And here is perhaps the core of people's reluctance to comment on anything to do with the situation -- the constant threat of being mired in the argument of "moral equivalence". Arabs (Palestinians, Hezbollah, whoever) deliberately target civilians; Israel never does. Well, that's not true; Israel has decimated Lebanon's recently rebuilt infrastructure, there are hundreds of thousands of internal refugees there now, and there are generations of Palestinians who have lived and died in refugee camps. There are more ways to destroy lives than by merely killing people. Collective punishment is one of them.

Anyway, so this has sparked a rather contentious debate in the recently-outed Tom Bongiovi's (sorry dude, couldn't resist) blog, with some participants from a noted righty site. As usual, the epithets were fast and hyperbolic, but I noted this more measured comment:

What do you believe is the proper course of action for Israel to take in response to attacks on it by people who come right out and say their objective is to wipe the country off the map? Do you agree or disagree with their goal?

I originally tried to respond in the comments section, but it exceeded the character limit (imagine that), and I don't want to hijack Tom's thread anyway. So here's the short answer; certainly better people than I have tried to get to the bottom of this eternal conundrum:

I don't think Israel's goal was to wipe out Lebanon's infrastructure. I think they might have been counting on the "adults" (that is, the U.S. gov't) to step in and break it up and get more talks going, as we always have in the past.

But because we have an incompetent shoe-shopper as our chief diplomat, and a cadre of Serious Thinkamatin' neoclowns forming policy, Israel perhaps got thwarted in their own goal -- by us. They can't "get rid of" Hezbollah, much as they'd like to, any more than England could "get rid of" the IRA. They know this. Bush clearly does not.

Let's take Bush's "stop this shit" comment as being logically true -- why then has nobody been dispatched to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop said shit? Why does the putatively liberal media focus on the mode of Bush's babbling, and not the functionality of the substance? If it's as simple as he made it sound to his lapdog Blair, then where's the pressure on Syria? The thing is, since Chimpco has royally fucked the dog in Baghdad, they seem to think that the only way they can save face is by doubling down in Damascus or Tehran.

You think Hezbollah doesn't realize this as well? You think they don't watch the armchair generals prancing around on Fox, acting like they're the ones about to firebomb Dresden all over again? I know Serious Thinkers like Billy Kristol and George W. Bush make it all sound so simple. It is a very seductive scam. But it ignores the possibility that maybe Bush and Kristol don't know jack shit about what they've already gotten into, much less what they want to get into next.

I think it's super that the 82nd Chairborne deems it unfortunate, yet tragically necessary, that we get ready to muster for WW3 for Israel. But I submit that Hezbollah knew exactly what it was doing by goading Israel. They knew Olmert would be pressured by the threat of a Likud takeover if he didn't respond quickly and overwhelmingly. They knew Olmert would also be counting on us to step in and mediate before shit got out of hand. And they also knew that, because this administration is desperately committed to its failed ideal of total transformation, no matter the cost, the Bushies would view all this as yet another opportunity to fuck yet another, bigger dog.

So please, neoclowns, spare the moral equivalence lectures, m'kay? We could have stopped this shit (to use your wampeter's faux-Texan parlance) two weeks ago. We clearly don't want to, and we are happy to let Israel set the stage by trying to build a buffer zone to the Litani (which essentially means just cleaning the fucking area completely out). Perhaps Syria will be provoked and defend its corner of the Litani, or the Bekaa Valley, and then we will step in. And then you get the war you crave.

Perhaps you think all-out regional war is preferable to the boring politics of incrementalism. Good luck fighting it, then.

(Incidentally, it appears that our liberated populace of Iraq has made a point of turning out en masse in support of Hezbollah. What do you serious moral thinkamators plan to do about that, now? I suspect nothing, as you clearly still don't realize that you have a tiger by the tail, and your grip is slipping. Why exactly is it that we're supposed to trust your judgment about anything anymore?)

Springtime For Gibson

I suppose I should throw my 2¢ in on the Mel Gibson deal, everyone else has. Couple things:

1. If you have problems with Jews and gays, perhaps acting in Hollywood is not exactly the best business for you to be in.


2. Gibson has been doing, let's say, pretty well in the Hollywood studio system for about two decades now. Is it really just now breaking news there that he has issues (issues hell, subscriptions) with Jews, or is this something that has been kept down for many a year? This just gets blurted out from nowhere on a fucking .12 breathalyzer? Please. There's a good chance I'm over .12 on any given post.


3. Probably the most offensive part to me was that Gibson thinks he owns Malibu, that he can just fuck any cop that crosses him. I fucking hate people like that. The Jew thing, whatever. His old man's a lifelong wacko; Mel's just been conditioned by a pro. Sad but true. But this "Don't you know who I am?" bullshit -- hey, fuck you, buddy. You got lucky. There's plenty of guys prettier and more talented than you juggling oranges on the pier. Don't fucking forget that, asshole.


4. Man, his dad musta did a real number on him. You almost feel like having an intervention to deprogram the fucking guy.

I'm just sayin'. I know, slow news week and all with the preznit ignoring the world blowing up all around his dumb fucking ass, but this weird obsession the "professional" journamalistas are having with this Sideshow Mel thing -- a little perspective, people. And hell, maybe ask the right questions at least once in a while. Of course he's contrite -- he got caught. Who gives a fuck? Grab a shovel and dig, you lazy cocksuckers.