Balls Out

The death of Patriots WR Darryl Stingley, who had been paralyzed by an infamous hit from Jack Tatum in a preseason game in 1978, brought back some old debates and emotions in some people. Tatum himself has remained stoic for the most part, accustomed to the critiques thrown his way, many by people who turn right around and applaud the violent action on their screens every Sunday.

"They said on ESPN the other day that I hit him in the back and that's just a lie," Tatum said. "It's amazing to me that they lie like that when they can just look at the hit. They have it on tape."

Tatum was made responsible because no one else, much less the fans and the NFL itself, wanted to look at themselves and think for one second about what they've created.

"Yeah, everybody is supposed to play really hard and then get up at the end like nobody is hurt," Tatum said Friday from his home in Oakland, Calif. "It's unrealistic. If you want to play football for a living, you're going to get injured.

"If you went out worrying about getting hurt, you couldn't be a player. You certainly couldn't be a great player."

This isn't to say that Tatum doesn't feel bad about what happened to Stingley. But for Tatum, there is a line between sorrow and guilt.

"I feel sorry for what happened to him," said Tatum, who lost his left leg recently because of diabetes. "I tried to apologize to him a number of times, but people around him wouldn't let that happen."

Tatum said he spoke with Stingley's attorney several times over the years, but nothing ever happened. In a TV interview several years ago, Tatum expressed sorrow again. That part was cut out, Tatum said, because of his steadfast defense of the deeper issue.

Tatum, as he has said many times, will never apologize for how he played. He didn't then and won't now. He is defiant in that regard.

It is impossible to be human and not feel a wellspring of sympathy for what happened to Stingley, and the cataclysmic turn his life took in one fateful split-second impact. But we are talking about a sport where large men are trained to aggressively assault other large men.



This is what Jack Tatum, and thousands of others just like him, have trained ferociously to do for a living. And especially in the '70s, hard hitting was highly prized, as opposed to the current (and better) priorities of coverage, pursuit, and actual tackling. But Tatum was not an anomaly, just extremely effective at his job. It could have been any other two people involved in that fateful collision, and indeed, there are plenty of football casualties out there, men in their 50s who walk more like someone 30 years older; men with serious damage to organs, to brain tissue, to spinal tissue; men who count their bone surgeries in double digits. Hell, given Tatum's penchant for spearing throughout his career, it's a minor miracle that he himself wasn't severely injured at some point.

I enjoy the strategy side of football, the play-calling, the execution, the development of the right formation and the right play to counter what the opponent is doing. There is a cerebral side to the sport, believe it or not. But it's true that most of the mileage is on the marquee plays, mostly offensively, but those plays embarrass their counterparts in the defensive secondary, who have to play faster and more aggressively to keep from getting burned again, and so on.

I've been to three Raider games since they returned to Oakland in 1995; because we live three hours away and want to make it worth the drive, we've always gotten very good seats, literally directly behind Oakland's bench. Legendary players roam the sidelines during pre-game warmups, talking to players and fans.

At one game against the Rams in 1997, Tatum came into our section and talked to us for a few minutes. Nothing profound, just a brief nice-day-enjoy-the-game type of thing, but I grew up watching the guy, so it was kinda like meeting Elvis, or at least Eddie Cochran. But from reading articles and profiles over the years, I felt like I at least realized the weight the guy carried, perhaps a mix of personal guilt and public expectations, which he had to work out for himself. He was quiet, humble, soft-spoken, nice. You would hardly guess that twenty years before, he was one of the most genuinely feared men in professional sports.

I think Jack Tatum has refused to apologize publicly because, while he understood that he owed Darryl Stingley the most profound expression of regret he could muster, he owes the public nothing. He is not a totem for absolution for self-righteous commentators or fans, nor would his abject contrition in a public arena change anything. Whether he absolves himself is between him and Stingley's family, but there's no doubt that it can never absolve us for craving our gladiator spectacle.

It's a tough call, morally. Some days I think I'm better off just firing up a round of Madden on the PS2.

[Update 4/15: SF Examiner columnist Glenn Dickey, who was actually at that 1978 game and has spoken with Tatum many times over the years, has essentially the same take on the hit, and the man who delivered it.]

Getting The Story Straight

That is I think I know tune in
But it's all wrong
That is I think I disagree -- Frank Zappa, What Kind of Girl?

Looks like Poor Ol' Straight Talk just wants to instinctively reach for his favorite shovel so's he can keep on diggin':

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Senator John McCain (news, bio, voting record) said in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday he misspoke in his recent upbeat comments about security in Baghdad, where he traveled under heavy military protection.

The Arizona senator, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, maintains progress has been made in the U.S.-led war in Iraq, according to comments to be aired on CBS' "60 Minutes." Excerpts were released on Friday.

McCain said he regrets comments he made after a tour of Baghdad last Sunday, when he said he could see progress and the American people were not being told the "good news" about the war, according to excerpts of his comments and a press release provided by "60 Minutes."

"Of course I am going to misspeak and I've done it on numerous occasions and I probably will do it in the future," said McCain, according to "60 Minutes."

The excerpted quotes provided by "60 Minutes" did not indicate which comments McCain thought were misspoken.

No shit. How about all of McCain's comments? So let's see if we have this straight now, Straight Talk -- can you or can you not walk down the streets in "some" -- or even any -- neighborhoods anywhere in Baghdad, without having to worry for your imminent safety? Why did Mike Pence lamely offer a Baghdad-Muncie comparison, then immediately bolt from it as if someone with a backpack had penetrated his security detail at the photo-op?

Y'all just let us folks know when you get your talking points good and dialed in. Maybe you should consider road-testing some of this stuff before you go on the teevee shows and spout poorly-phrased rhetoric that adds nothing to the real-world debate. Keep in mind, this whole thing is snowballing because Ol' Straight Talk had to front for one of the shows and talk about how safe it is there, so safe that a guy only needs two helicopters, three gunships, and a 100-troop security detail to take his good friend Huckleberry Graham out to buy hisself some rugs. Yup, that shore sounds jes like Anytown, USA by my reckoning.

Your Librul Media

Let's face it, Matt Lauer is a hack:

In his first question, Lauer claimed Pelosi has gotten off to a rough start because of criticisms from a baseless Washington Post editorial, Vice President Cheney, and the conservative editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal:

....

With his second question, Lauer asserted that “a lot of people think [Pelosi] messed up on this one,” and then asked “what’s the impact for the Democrats overall?” Lauer never mentioned the fact that five Republicans — Reps. Frank Wolf, Robert Aderholt, Joseph Pitts, David Hobson, and Darrell Issa — visited Syria this week.

Who's "a lot of people", Matt -- Rush Limbaugh and his oxy dealer? Seriously, the only people I have heard bitching about Pelosi's visit are the usual gang of buffoons who normally infest our radio and cable carny-news outlets. I think Lauer owes his viewers some detailed insight on exactly who this "lot of people" happen to be.

If it's the predictable list of cartoon characters parading through the circle-jerk chat shows, who gives a shit? I expect Newt Gingrich to hypocritically bitch about these things; I stupidly expect supposed professionals like Ponyboy Lauer to have enough goddamned sense to keep it straight. Seriously, pal, way to afflict the comfortable. Go interview a moonstruck Sanjaya fan or something. The actual adults will just have to hash this out among themselves.

Christ, some days I really just loathe the very existence of some of these assholes. They are nothing but bugs on the windshield of common sense and intellectual honesty.

A Mighty Whinge

SF Chronicle Usetabee columnist Cinnamon Stillwell (link via Mick LaSalle) watches 300 and reads herself some Victor Cotton Hill Hanson, predictably extrapolates practically everything completely ass-backwards, and mangles her own premises. Let's watch the fun, starting with the standard "they think they're smarter'n yew, Cletus!" boilerplate:

When it comes to the offerings of Hollywood, rarely does a film resonate strongly with both mainstream America and the largely liberal world of film critics. For the two seem to inhabit different universes, particularly when it comes to depictions of patriotism, war, religion and the age-old struggle between good and evil.

Jesus, the very first paragraph needs to be unpacked. For one, as LaSalle rightly points out, exactly what makes Stillwell so certain that film critics are "largely liberal", and what exactly does that mean, in terms of scope and degree? Of course it means nothing; it's just that it's easier to simply preach to the choir with the usual assumptions.

And maybe these negative characterizations of "patriotism, war, religion" yada yada were simply the result of them not being all that entertaining, or that they were simplistic or heavy-handed, or carried their own transparent agenda. Whatever. But because the neoclown kulturkampfers predicate their entertainment choices on how closely they jibe with their own preconceived political agenda, it doesn't even occur to them that maybe it was just an honest, objective assessment.

When bad reviews and huge box office numbers coincide, the gulf between critics and audiences is laid bare. Such was the case with "The Passion of the Christ" and "National Treasure," both of which Americans flocked to see even as critics shook their heads in disbelief.

The unprecedented success of the recent film "300" is further evidence of this pattern. While critics have largely panned "300," Americans clearly haven't been listening. The film's opening weekend brought in $70 million, with all 57 of its early IMAX midnight showings selling out, making it the highest-grossing March opening ever and third-highest opening for an R-rated feature. And its box office numbers have remained high ever since.

Uh, yeah. You could say the exact same thing about Wild Hogs (17% critics' rating, $135 mil box office in just five weeks) or Big Momma's House 2 (5% critics' rating, nearly $28 mil opening weekend). Perhaps these nameless smug, effete librul water-carriers just have it in for Martin Lawrence.

(Incidentally, Passion of the Gibson has a 51% critics' rating, while National Treasure (aka Indiana Cage and the Mope of Doom) has a 42% rating, not stratospheric but not universally panned, either.)

So. Three paragraphs so far, chock-full of bold assertions, and not a single one of them true. This is quite a batting average. Amazingly, it gets even worse, if you can do worse than zero.

While critics described the film as overly violent, juvenile, stupid, macho, right-wing, race-baiting and, according to Stephen Whitty of the Newark Star-Ledger, an expression of "Saturday-matinee xenophobia," "300" clearly has resonated with the masses. The reasons for this are obvious, at least to anyone who doesn't inhabit the ranks of the intellectual elite. The film's time-honored themes of bravery, honor, camaraderie, sacrifice, courage against all odds and, above all, the struggle between good and evil, are tailor-made for mainstream America during a time of war. Its success bespeaks a yearning for stories that tap into the ideals of a nation fighting for its survival.

Throughout "300" are references to the sort of absolutes and eternal values that undoubtedly led to the discomfort of some of its liberal critics. The militaristic Spartan culture, where young men were raised from birth to be warriors in service to protecting the city-state, is portrayed in all its brutal glory.

Is she serious? A nation of fat people drive fat cars to air-conditioned googolplexes to veg out and throw popcorn for a couple hours. Is there some sort of rallying cry all of a sudden for college Republicans to abandon their keg stands and internships and enlist in the Great Cause, or did I blink and miss it?

It seems safe to posit that perhaps Stillwell is projecting her own yearning for the transformative power of an epic cartoon to mobilize idealism, galvanize a populace entrenched in an existential struggle. The notion seems to be that this stylized distillation of the necessary John Wayne tropes can steel the proles' nerves for What Is Necessary. For people who get their foreign policy views from comic books and cartoons, this actually makes sense.

The film is definitely a bloody affair, and there are moments when the violence is almost pornographic. But given that it depicts battles fought with swords, spears, shields and, at times, bare hands, the film's gory details are likely historically faithful. Other sword-and-sandal epics have covered similar territory. Unlike films where the violence is gratuitous, the violence in "300" is part and parcel of the story and to omit it would be to omit the nature of the beast.

This is a crude bluff, and it should be called. This flies square in the face of every "what about all the good news" plaint, if you want to get right down to it. Why is "almost pornographic" violence practically a necessity to communicate the import of this false dichotomy they present us with in the cinematic portrayal, yet such stuff in the context of actual news reporting would be treated as demoralizing at best, and likely treasonous? We likes our blood and gore in CGI just fine, but don't show us the real thing, thank you very much. This is a peculiar tack to take for one who is steeling oneself for noble effort and sacrifice.

The whole article is worse than a mere lie, it's an abuse of language, of the reader's intellect. It's cheap sophistry and hortatory rhetoric poorly disguised as thumbnail scholarship. It presents a false choice between having to fight or having to capitulate, and couches it in the moral certitude of a cartoon based on a comic book. And that's just nonsense. We don't have to steel our nerves to be willing to fight, we have to do so to be willing to kill, to start another fight after getting tripped up in the last one we started, and they know it.

But they know deep down inside how repulsive that is, so they hide that impulse with these lame stabs at art criticism, in which a work is expropriated for their propaganda purposes, and imaginary liberal critics are calumniated for the same reason. We are not on the verge of being decimated by overwhelming forces; we are bogged down in a swamp batting at numberless mosquitoes with pipe bombs and AK-47s. We are being steered toward another pre-emptive war of choice by a crew of fools who said from the start that the destabilization they've created was a feature, not a bug. We are being lied to point-blank by politicians who use Baghdad shopkeepers for their despicable little stunt photo-ops.

This is the moral cretinism that runs our country and whose acolytes crave authorship of something, anything that might have a whiff of cultural importance. But because actual art and actual craft require some degree of observation and perception, they don't typically intersect with the inherently soothing cadences of true propaganda. That is, 300 might be a perfectly good movie; I might get around to catching it on HBO someday. At the very least, it looks extremely well-made. But whatever its qualities, they are not found in the squinting of the kulturkampfers, poring over an endless beach with their detectors, always sure that the next beep they hear will be that hidden treasure, and not yet another rusty bottle cap. They are sloppy thinkers, constructing shoddy arguments on flimsy premises.

The enemy with whom we are engaged have their own word for an epic, existential struggle between absolute good and evil, in which only perseverance and rightness of character can truly prevail. That word is jihad.

Can I Watch?

Apropos of nothing:

Carmen Electra has a same sex crush on Scarlett Johansson and Jessica Alba. The former 'Baywatch' beauty, who was rumored to be having a lesbian relationship with rock star Joan Jett, has now admitted she fancies the two Hollywood beauties.

Carmen said: "Scarlett is hot. Her sexiness is totally appreciated by girls like me.

"Jessica is naturally pretty, she's very sweet. I feel in love with her because she's the nicest girl. She's sexy and has an incredible body."

All major credit cards accepted.

Axis Of Weasels

Of all the worthless, cheap stunts we see politicians pull with stunning regularity, McCain's little shopping trip is one of the lowest in recent memory. This is all a crass ploy to try to legitimize McCain's careless characterizations of "safe" neighborhoods in Baghdad.

So he proves his point exactly how, with gunships, helicopters, and a security detail of 100 soldiers, some of whom secured the area beforehand? Is McCain really so delusional that he thinks this somehow supports his idiotic contentions, or is he so far beyond cynical that it just doesn't matter anymore? Apparently both, and it's utterly contemptible.

Equally as contemptible is Matt Drudge who, as if trying to illustrate the point I made just the other day, fabricated and circulated a quickly-disproven lie that poor ol' Straight Talk got hisself heckled by that meanie Michael Ware. Naturally, when the video disproved Drudge's useful calumny, he and the rest of the Dolchstosslegende propagandists said nothing, as if anyone expected anything differently.

Whether the story was factual was beside the point for them; the entire (and I do mean entire) point for them is merely to discredit and declaim anyone perceived to be in opposition -- or even just not gung-ho enough for their liking. All most of them have ever been in the first place is liars, authoritarian cultists of the lowest order. Getting caught just means finding something else to pull straight out of their asses, and they never run out.

What's really strange about all this is that McCain thought it would do him any good with anyone. He's been a few degrees behind the arc for quite some time; he's stuck now with carrying the Bushies' water, even though their mojo's long shot and they can't stand him anyway. But his craven tacking to the right has all but eliminated his mainstay independent vote.

McCain is truly in a pickle of his own creation -- not enough of a fellow traveler for the extra-chromosome diehards, too much of a gutless opportunist and closet authoritarian to bring back the non-aligned middle that idolized him a mere half-decade ago. Too bad, so sad, don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya.

And this assclown, while it's nice that he's having his come-to-Jesus moment (oddly, just as he finally has some actual skin in the game), it's too little, too late. We're gonna need more than a nice publicity blitz to convince us, doubting Thomases that we are these days.

Till then, as Roy once so poetically put it, you made your bed, Hoss -- now die in it.

(The Other) Mission Accomplished

Looks like Afghanistan is well on its way right back to square one:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The Taliban on Sunday executed three men accused of spying for NATO and government forces in southern Afghanistan, a local militant commander and villager said.

Separately, a suicide car bomber blew himself up Sunday near an Afghan army convoy in eastern Laghman province, killing five civilians, police said.

The three men from the southern province of Helmand were arrested and allegedly "confessed to their crime" of being spies for NATO and the Afghan government, said Mullah Abdul Qasim, a Taliban commander in the north of Helmand. Qasim said information from the three men led to the deaths of two Taliban commanders.

A villager from Musa Qala, Namatullah Khan, said the lifeless body of one of the men hung from the town's main street for three hours before villagers took him down and buried the corpse.

Hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of lives, immense loss of standing and credibility -- and not a goddamned thing to show for it, really. This is what happens when you have in charge a petulant child with no reckoning of the forces he sets in motion. This is what happens when people vote out of id and spite and ignorance.

Like Iraq, Afghanistan is becoming our mess again, whether we like it or not. And patronizing homilies about not wanting to babysit these societies we upturned are especially unhelpful -- not only does it further inflame sentiments in the region, but it results in a strongman who works both ends of the table, between our interests and those of the insurgents. The problems get deferred, instead of resolved.

It was obvious the day Bush first declared his candidacy in the 2000 campaign that he would be in over his head. More and more, that appears to be a tragic understatement, and contrary to some assumptions at the time, he did not surround himself with capable people who could offset his destructive incompetence. He and his crew have proven themselves to be spectacularly ill-equipped to deal with this (or pretty much any) situation, and if they spent half as much time figuring these things out as they have in politicizing every damned thing, they might actually get somewhere.

Meanwhile, the downward spiral continues.

Hope They're Foolin'

Reprinting items from the Russian and Iranian media is always a dicey proposition at best, but the Jerusalem Post does exactly that, with some very dangerous allegations:

The United States will be ready to launch a missile attack on Iran's nuclear facilities as soon as early this month, perhaps "from 4 a.m. until 4 p.m. on April 6," according to reports in the Russian media on Saturday.

According to Russian intelligence sources, the reports said, the US has devised a plan to attack several targets in Iran, and an assault could be carried out by launching missiles from fighter jets and warships stationed in the Persian Gulf.

Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted a security official as saying, "Russian intelligence has information that the US Armed Forces stationed in the Persian Gulf have nearly completed preparations for a missile strike against Iranian territory."

The Russian Defense Ministry rejected the claims of an imminent attack as "myths." There was no immediate response from Washington.

Of course, there's a lot of room between "has contingency plans for attack" and "plans to attack next week". At this point, it's very difficult to contemplate the Cheney administration having anything remotely resembling the political will to do something of that nature.

Some have seen the Iranian kidnapping of British sailors as a sort of potential Gulf of Tonkin incident, or an opportunity to talk about the Geneva Conventions in one regard or another. But clearly, the purpose of seizing the British sailors was political, not military, and as such, there's no reason to assume that they will be treated badly. There's no upside for the Iranians to do anything untoward; this seems like a pretty naked ploy to wedge the Brits further away from us, and isolate us in the region.

The fact that we've mostly shown restraint in this episode is probably more indicative of our limited range of viable choices, than any honest desire to work things out. We're stuck; Blair no longer has the credibility to anything but negotiate from a weakened position, nor can we get anything out of him by leaning on him from the background. The Iranians don't have to get all Jack Bauer on anyone; they're holding most of the cards right now

Seen in that context, and in the context of the surge conditions clearly worsening as the whack-a-mole game continues, the shit-or-git window for any "hope" of effective aggression against the Iranians is closing, not opening. And again, as much as the Cheneyites would like to indulge their "flight forward" impulses, that window has pretty much closed as well. They are politically stuck, hobbled by effective opposition even within their own party, and the clear pattern of corrpution and loyalty over competence as an operative dynamic. The usual rally-round-the-flag dynamic, present in even bullshit military actions, would likely be nonexistent in this climate, if we decided to do a surprise bombing run on the Isfahan facility or some such thing.

Still....

The reports come as the Iranian chief of staff, Hassan Fayrouz Abadi, was quoted on Saturday by Iran's Fars news agency warning leaders of Arab countries that Israel plans to open a "suicidal attack" on its neighbors this summer, to "prevent the withdrawal of the US troops from Iraq and the area."

"I warn the dear leaders and Muslim brothers in the neighboring countries of the occupied territories that this suicidal attack of the Zionists is threatening them," he said.

The countries in danger, he said, were "Lebanon and Syria, and later Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia."

This is the usual internal rabble-rousing Iranian officials indulge in on a regular basis, just as we do here. Still, it may end up being pretext for another summer of love on the Lebanon-Israel border, which as always could erupt in a wider conflagration.

Also, any future plans for American drawdown or withdrawal are going to have to take into account Iraq's near-future situation as a proxy fight between Sunni Saudi and Shi'a Iran, with the oil supplies of all three countries plus Kuwait instantly thrown into contention should the proxy fight heat up. There's just no way around that, and it's entirely likely that such a situation could quickly draw Israel into the mix. Big fucking problem.

Thanks again, values voters!

No Foolin'

So let me get this straight -- pretending to cook the body of Christ into a wafer, okey-fine. Making a chocolicious representation of Him, not so much.

A Manhattan art gallery cancelled its Easter-season exhibit of a life-size chocolate sculpture of a naked Jesus on Friday after an outcry by Roman Catholics.

The gallery's artistic director tendered his resignation to protest the cancellation.

The sculpture "My Sweet Lord" by Cosimo Cavallaro was to be exhibited for two hours each day next week in a street-level window of the Roger Smith Lab Gallery in Midtown Manhattan.

The display had been scheduled to open on Monday, days ahead of Good Friday when Christians mark the crucifixion of Jesus and Easter Sunday when they celebrate his resurrection.

But protests including a call to boycott the affiliated Roger Smith Hotel forced the gallery to scrap the showing.

Is there a point at which rational people stand up and repudiate the endless torrent of vicious nonsense spewing from the cakehole of Bill Donohue? Why do supposedly reputable media entities even give this cheap sideshow huckster the time of day? Isn't there a guy on the sidewalk with a sandwich board who can pretty much fill the same need?

And hey, kudos to the art gallery as well. Way to stand up to the intellectual bullies in the room. They've made their point abundantly -- you can't get away with this shit in Muslim countries with representations of Mohammed, nor can you get away with similar actions here. Congratulations, you've finally become what you profess to despise. Most galling is the idea that they deserve some sort of credit for not murdering and decapitating the ChocoJesus artist, which is like being proud that you don't shit your pants in public.

I realize that these people literally make their careers out of being provoked and hysterical, but that's no reason to continue enabling their public displays of stupidity.

Foolin'

Well, folks, as they say, the big money's on the other side, and I am only (well, mostly) human. So I'm selling out -- I've signed on as an independent consultant with Jonah Goldberg's publisher to help him craft the remainder of his unfinished symphony, the serendipitously titled Are You Gonna Finish That?

I held out as long as I could, believe me, but as Geddy Lee once advised, ten bucks is ten bucks. So thanks for rolling with me, and if you see someone flipping you off in your gutter, from the comfort of a 7-series Beemer, rest assured it's me. Here is where I start clawing my way to the middle, chumps.

Also, this is probably considered proprietary information, but a rumor at the publisher is that Goldbleg is getting a sex-change operation, and is insisting that everyone call him "DoughBerta". Make of that what you will.

The Winamp Shuffle

Haven't done one of these in a while, so here ya go:

Eidolon -- The Parallel Otherworld
30 Seconds to Mars -- Edge of the Earth
Primal Fear -- Thunderdome
Iron Maiden -- Sea of Madness
Sparta -- Taking Back Control
Muse -- Map of the Problematique
Motorhead -- In the Name of Tragedy
Bruce Dickinson -- Power of the Sun
Kyuss -- Green Machine
Mastodon -- This Mortal Soil
Tool -- Right In Two
Geto Boys -- Die Motherfuckers

This must be one of those eat-shit-and-die playlists that come about subconsciously. I love it when that happens.

Some of these bands, such as Eidolon and Mastodon, have been thrashing around for a while, and deserve greater recognition. Everything I've heard from them is great. Actually, all of them have been around for some time, and all deserve more play. Check 'em out. I'm not trying to out-hip you with the next Aztec Camera, I just think that if you're into heavy music, you'll like all of these bands. This is how the new revenue model is going to roll, just you watch.

Breast Defense

The latest bit of entertainment in our little blogonaut meta-ecosystem, the recent Althouse temper tantrum, really captures something special. Her unprovoked tirade against Garance Franke-Ruta (who, incidentally, kinda scratches a hot-librarian itch I didn't even realize I had, sexist pig that I am) has become the butt of many well-deserved pokes. Dave Neiwert has the transcripted rundown of the hissy-fit.

Here's the thing. Paranoid temper tantrums aside, what really gets me about Althouse's bluster is the persecution complex she works herself into. All the horrible, mean things the evil bloggerses on the left -- who, naturally, are much bigger meanies than those warm and fuzzy gents on the right, paragons of virtue, reason, and inventive spelling that they are -- are saying about her. So cruel, so terrifying.

Bullshit. I remember the original kerfuffle she stirred up, talking about Jessica Valenti's so-called breast-blogging, and her supposedly provocative pose in front of that awful Clenis, and on and on, how it set back the cause of feminism six generations, blah blah blah. As if stocking the courts with evangelicals and Opus Dei retreads, or spasms of stunt legislation from the prairie states weren't doing exactly that on an actual policy level. Anyway, it's not to hard to dig up the original posts Althouse launched to get this all going, which sorta cinches the deal.

(I'm not exactly Phil Donahue when it comes to feminism and decorum, nor have I ever pretended to be. I'm not going to turn away in horror if I see an attractive woman with a nice body. Nor am I instantly going to assume it either endorses or repudiates feminist orthodoxy. Maybe she's heterodox in how she expresses her feminism. Maybe she doesn't want to hide her light(s) under a bushel. If good-looking women embracing their assets is wrong, then I for one don't wanna be right. If a man can't have the freedom to grind his loins against his monitor every so often, what's the point of the internets in the first place?)

So anyway, this is indeed a spat of Edna Krabappel's (brilliant coinage, that) own creation. That she prefers to run from it is unsurprising. But again, Krabappel's main problem is this ridiculous notion that she's had to endure some sort of vicious slander, rather than just a lot of jokes made at her expense, mostly with her own unwitting help.

Let me tell you something, honey. Having people tell you for four goddamned years that you're a traitor, that you hate your country and are rooting for it to fail, that you want American soldiers to die and your country to be embarrassed by a bunch of creeps who decapitate contractors and blow up children -- that's some truly messed-up shit. Watching pile-on after pile-on at numberless right-wing boobyhatches, "joking" about lynching journalists for not being propagandistic enough, laughing at Ann Coulter's vicarious sadism, guffawing and nodding at Rush Limbaugh's empty-headed spiteful bullshit, that's creepy, that's the ugly taint of American soapboxing.

These are the internets. They're not a bunch of trucks, nor are they a lawn party with king-size martinis and cucumber-and-watercress sandwiches, and a bunch of douchey pecksniffs playing bocce. They're a series of tubes, sure, but they're a playground, first and foremost, and when someone consistently engages in smug, ill-informed narcissism to make poorly-considered brownie points, they should not be surprised when the inevitable electronic pimp-slap stings their cheek.

Snide comments about one's personal appearance is about the least one expects, especially when the argument in question was initiated by comments about someone else's appearance. Perhaps Althouse thought the breast-blogging controversy was dead and buried; you'd think she'd have gotten the memo by now. Nothing stays buried forever, not here, not when it's an episode that so richly informs the context of one's own complaints about civility. Civility is for suckers with selective hearing, who still take people like David Broder seriously.

It's pretty simple. If you don't want people to accuse you of being a goofball, then quit saying goofy things, and maybe don't drunk-vlog yourself watching American Idol. Don't start fights you don't really have the stomach for. And for Christ's sake, grow a hide already. Jesus, it's just a blog.

According To Jim

You know, just the fact that the Redneck Pope has a problem with Fred Thompson not being Christian-y enough -- not even as good of a Christian as Newt Gingrich, if you can believe that motherfucking bullshit and I'm sure you can -- actually makes me have a little grudging respect for Thompson.

Of course, that will quickly fade as one of two things (or, more likely, both) happen: Thompson has to genuflect before the little douchebag to get some evangelove; and Thompson turns out to be little more than a CPAC stalking horse to keep the kids from jabbering too much about the unelectability of their current front-runners, or the utter paucity of actual ideas not based on comic books or Ayn Rand fever dreams.

Even better, someone actually steps in and defends Dobson, apparently confusing Dobson's right to speak his mind with the rather despotic wielding of his unelected influence. There's nothing to confuse with "Christianity" or even "conservatism" here. Gingrich made haste to kiss Dobson's ass and seek his benediction; Thompson's been a bit slow on the draw(l), seeing as how filling Paul Harvey's sans-a-belts for a lunar month has got to be about the most mind-numbing experience this side of watching Dennis Miller scrounge for work.

Tool Time

Joan Walsh damns Politico with faint praise, I suppose, which sounds about right. The first couple times I came across the site, I was seriously underwhelmed at the pure fluff I encountered.

I don't want the E! channel covering politics. There are enough ninth-grade Heathers out there in poli-journo land trying to out-cat each other and figure out who next to paste up in their slambook. If I want that shit I'll just go read Perez Hilton or some such. Seriously. It's not that I'm above gossip per se, but I do expect serious people to cover serious issues in a serious (though not solemn) manner. I've got hands; I can jerk myself off.

I will say that the site looks better now than it did several weeks ago, when I last checked it out. But I can see where people would be unhappy with this sort of thing. It's a stretch, especially this early in what shouldn't even be a campaign yet. Allen's trying to make something out of nothing, and it shows, especially when Allen himself acknowledges that "[Obama's] rhetorical miscues have been more curiosities than obvious political blunders", in apparent contrast to the rather problematic verb of the article's title. One is not typically "plagued" by "curiosities" and "rhetorical miscues", unless one is trying to inflate the usefulness of one's tenuous evidentiary connections.

It's hard to fault Politico, really. They're a natural symptom of the smug, insular dynamic of horse-race journalism, whose grand priority in life is to Be Objective At All Costs. They're not bullshitting about that, either. That's why you get Dean Broder harrumphing at what is and is not acceptable discourse, that no matter how factually correct the vituperative ruffians of the blogosphere might be, he will have none of it, because it would interfere with his incessant poll-stroking and What It All Means For The Democrats.

That's how you get Andrea Mitchell lying through her teeth about what polls reported on a majority of Americans supporting the prosecution of Scooter Libby for his clear misconduct. That's how you get an editor from Time lying about the proportion of Americans who actively support the current investigations in Congress, and then lamely whinging that he said that in his capacity as a citizen. Fine. I'm a fucking citizen, too; strangely, I have yet to get an invite from Tweety in such a capacity.

And it's how you get Sunday morning circle-jerks apparently trying to help a thuggish piece of shit like Tom DeLay rehabilitate himself by getting his side of things. Great, maybe we should get Dracula's side of things while we're at it, or Henry Lee Lucas' (the only death sentence commuted by G. W. Bush as Texas governor, incidentally) side of things.

Objectivity, like civility, is nice to have, but is somewhat overrated in terms of necessity. Sometimes "objectivity" just means giving the cold, hard truth and a flat-out lie equal time. We used to count on journalists to exercise such discretion competently and professionally; now we just cross our fingers and hope they get it closer next time.

And they wonder why we don't want to pay for content anymore.

Update: Perhaps I gave Politico a bit too much benefit of the doubt, as they have apparently ingratiated themselves to Matt "80% accurate; close enough!" Drudge, who, to put it mildly, is part of the fucking problem.

This is also part of the problem, this schmoozy, boozy, self-indulgent kabuki of collegiality they indulge in periodically. Hey, assholes, politicians are not your friends. The fact that you even need to be told that explains a lot.

Surge And Destroy

More of that good news they keep holding out on us:

Shia police rampaged through a Sunni district in the north-western city of Tal Afar killing at least 33 people in the streets and in their homes in revenge for devastating car bombs in a nearby Shia neighbourhood earlier in the day.

....

Estimates of the number killed vary. "I wish you could come and see all the bodies," said a doctor at the local hospital. "They are lying in the grounds. We don't have enough space in the hospital. All the victims were shot in the head. Between 50 and 55 people were killed. I've never seen such a thing in my life."

The killings went on for two hours as policemen roamed the streets looking for Sunni men to kill. Later army troops arrived to stop the massacre.

....

There has been a reduction in the number of sectarian killings in Baghdad since the start of the US security plan for the capital. This is largely because the main Shia militia the Mehdi Army has been stood down by its leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Observers believe that sectarian warfare could explode again if the Sunni fundamentalists continue to detonate large bombs in Shia districts without US and Iraqi government forces being able to stop them.

The claim by the Republican Senator John McCain that an American could now walk unharmed through several districts of Baghdad was heard with bemusement by Iraqis. He would certainly be murdered or kidnapped by Sunni insurgents, Shia militiamen or criminal gangs before he had taken more than a few steps.

This is the "stand up/stand down" plan, and it appears to be going just as predicted. Just one or ten more Friedman Units, and all will be well.

It's My Party And I'll Cry If I Want To

Shorter Little Lord Pissypants: I'm the Decider, not you! I don't have to do what you say! Waaaahhh!!!1!@!

Whatever, cuz. You can get as tough as you like with the beef association (or as Jon Stewart hilariously referred to them, MOOBLA). But Nancy Pelosi's got five kids. She sounds like she's got your number there, Chief. When you stop throwing cereal in the supermarket aisle and stamping your feet, then maybe you can get a nice cookie next time if you behave. Till then, no one wants to look like a hapless parent, but it beats the hell out of acting like a spoiled little brat.

War On Error

The friendly-fire killing of Pat Tillman was bad enough, but it was not the biggest crime here. The Pentagon's investigation of itself changes nothing. The real crime all along was the Pentagon's and the administration's ease in continuing to use Tillman's genuine sacrifice as a sordid prop, knowing full well what had really happened, cocnealing the truth even from Tillman's own family.

And if not for his family's diligence and insistence on getting to the bottom of all this, the Pentagon and the Army would never have fessed up. Tillman's death could perhaps be charitably attributed to "error", in that his platoon-mates certainly didn't mean to shoot him, but there was no mistake about what the Army and Pentagon did and tried to do in the immediate aftermath and ensuing weeks. They knew what they were doing when they tried to destroy the evidence, and they knew what they were doing when they were handling the media during Tillman's funeral service.

There was no mistake about any of that. They meant to do that shit. Let's at least be clear about that, before the Pentagon gets too caught up in absolving itself.

Idiocracy

Why do I know who this person is? Why is it considered newsworthy when dippy 13-year-old girls act exactly as you'd expect them to?

What sort of weirdos and morons are asking her for her autograph? Television appearances, "news" articles acting as if something that sensible people would be embarrassed for is somehow noteworthy, free shit, free notoriety -- for what? For crying like an idiot at some goofball's god-awful rendition of You Really Got Me? Are you fucking kidding me? Of course you're not kidding me; why would I even bother asking such a dumb question anymore?

I'm past the stage of wondering why I bothered to learn how to write; I pretty much have no idea any longer why I learned how to read. The whole thing, this is just flat-out retarded. I have no doubt that if some reality-show whiz decided to air this kid doing nothing but picking her nose and sorting her sock drawer, people would watch it, and worse yet, so-called "news" people would write about it.

At least I now have a better idea of what to watch out for with my own kid in about seven years. Maybe I can train her to do something utterly pointless, and parlay all that free publicity into some coin. Oh yeah.

Islamabadnews

Ahmed Rashid lays out the scary scenario currently forming in Pakistan, for those of us who had quite enough of this Sanjaya person just from watching him on The Soup:

Since March 9, when Musharraf suspended the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, public protests have escalated every day -- as has a violent crackdown by the police and intelligence agencies on the media and the nation's legal fraternity.

....

Musharraf's desire to replace Chaudhry with a more pliable judge has badly backfired. After just 10 days of protests, lawyers around the country have made it clear to the senior judiciary that they will not tolerate further legal validations for continued military rule or tolerate Musharraf remaining as president. At least seven judges and a deputy attorney general have resigned in protest.

It would be helpful if Rashid would provide some clarity as to whether Chaudhry represents the sharia/Taliloon brand of "law", but he sticks with the power-struggle nature of the feud, that Chaudhry refuses to serve as Musharraf's rubber-stamp, and that the players in the legal system are backing Chaudhry over Musharraf.

Still, the sharia question is important. We have allowed Pakistan a lot of leeway as we conduct our War on Some Terror, because even a military despot like Musharraf is far preferable to the scores of Taliscum sympathizers waiting in the wings.

But Pakistan, given its geopolitical importance and steadily increasing population, needs to get serious about modernizing outside the cities. This tribal troublemaking in the hinterlands is not going to cut it for much longer, and Musharraf has been about the only outlet for us to exercise even modest (if expensive) amounts of relatively soft power. So, given its developed legal and judicial system, it is critical that it does not get stocked with a bunch of retrograde medievalist sympathizers.

The second element is the country's three intelligence agencies, which are at loggerheads over control of Musharraf, Pakistan's foreign policy, its political process and the media. Military Intelligence and the Inter-Services Intelligence are military agencies, while the largest civilian agency, the Intelligence Bureau, is now run by a military officer. Ironically, Inter-Services Intelligence, the most powerful agency in the country, has been the moderate element urging Musharraf to open up the political system to the opposition parties. The other two agencies are the hard-liners and are urging Musharraf to adopt even tougher measures.

I imagine that characterizing the ISI as the "moderate element" in all this is comparative; the agency has been notorious as a hotbed for extremist sympathizers, some of whom aided the 9/11 attackers directly, and still walk the planet as free men.

The third loss for Musharraf has been the unqualified international support he has received since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Anger in the U.S. Congress and media, and particularly among members of the Republican Party, toward Musharraf's dual-track policy in Afghanistan -- helping to catch al-Qaeda members but backing the Taliban -- is making it difficult for President Bush to continue offering Musharraf his blanket support.

That was the tough-love message that Vice President Cheney delivered to Musharraf in Islamabad last month: Unless Musharraf goes after the Taliban, the Bush administration can no longer protect him.

Any loss of Western support will be critical to the army, which is on an arms-buying spree and depends on annual U.S. military aid of about $300 million. Musharraf has balanced the pro- and anti-American factions in the army's officer corps, but if both sides see him as a lame duck, unable to deliver the goods or stabilize the country, their support will dwindle.

I've picked on Musharraf a bit in the past, but I certainly realize that he's by far the best out of a lot of bad options there. We tend to view Pakistan, like we view every other country, primarily in terms of anti-American sentiment, and what we can do to advance our own interests there. But obviously, given the region, there are a lot of externalities in play. Both Pakistan and India view Afghanistan as a buffer state, and so engage in proxy machinations over it, while that poor country itself continues to drift back toward civil war and barely-controlled chaos. Russia and Iran are constantly maneuvering over commercial and geopolitical interests. And no one in the area seems ready to moderate their sectarian/cultural hostilities.

And if Musharraf goes, and Pakistan and its nukes and madrassas and seething populace fall to the wrong hands, some shit will roll down somewhere along the line, probably sooner rather than later. I don't know what the answer is to this one, but I do think that in the general sense, awareness turns into concern, and thence to some sort of meaningful, comprehensive actions or policies somewhere down the line. Right now the region seems caught in its own peculiar inertia, settling back into old ways and bad habits. We need to provide some positive momentum to get the ball rolling in the right direction.

The trick is that actual democratic elections would likely bring another set of mullah assholes to power. But Musharraf is no longer seen as his own man by his own countrymen, and perhaps allowing real elections to take place, coupled with a plan to immediately start dealing proactively with the winner, engaging rather than further isolating them, is going to be the only meaningful solution beyond the very short term.

American Grandstand

My favorite part of Gore's appearance before Congress to discuss global warming and communicate ideas has to be this little stunt by noted stunt legislator Lynn Westmoreland:

As Gore visited with former colleagues on the House floor around lunchtime, Rep. Westmoreland argued that the Democrat was violating recently enacted ethics rules rescinding floor privileges for former congressmen working as agents of a foreign government.

Because Gore serves as an adviser to Britain on climate change, Westmoreland said, he shouldn't have been allowed.

"It is in total violation of the House rules," Westmoreland, a third-term lawmaker from Grantville, said in an interview after raising a parliamentary inquiry on the issue. "They don't even pay any attention to their own rules."

Democrats called Westmoreland's interpretation absurd, saying Gore works with Britain in an informal, unpaid role and is not a registered foreign agent with the Justice Department, as the rule requires.

You might recall Westmoreland as the bozo who was unceremoniously exposed on The Colbert Report as a typical grandstanding little weasel poseur:

Imagine you are a rookie congressman with nothing to show for your first term in office just as elections are set to take place in the fall. Finally, you get a brilliant idea that you know will sell well in your socially conservative district: make it a law to have the ten commandments posted in all federal buidlings. And, just when you're set to go, someone asks you to name the 10 Commandments. Don't you hate it when that happens?

....

Unfortunately, for someone so enthusiastic about getting on TV and promoting his very own bill, Westmoreland was only able to name three of the ten.

I think that's flat-out hilarious pathetic. Even on half a bottle of anything, I'm good for at least eight of ten, at the drop of a hat. It's not that complicated, godless heathen atheist sumbitch that I am.

Yet a representative from one of the buckles of the bible belt can't even be bothered to be marginally competent at comprehending the scope of his own piece of two-ply legislation? Why we are where we are is not secret; why we keep allowing morons like this guy to lead us further down that road is the question.

Sponge Logic

It's been a while since we've taken a run at DoughBob LoadPants™, who appears to more adept at making excuses for failing to complete his long-awaited opus, the serendipitously-titled Are You Gonna Finish That?, than much of anything else. And when it comes to critiquing the Democrats -- who, mind you, have been in power all of about twelve weeks -- he has his rubber-glue shields at the ready:

So here’s the ironic part. Suddenly, it looks as if the Democrats are the Republicans on fast-forward. It’s early yet, and the Democrats did finish their mini-Contract with America — the so-called first 100 hours — with mixed success on the substance but great fanfare in the media. Yet items like upping the minimum wage and shafting oil companies, although certainly not insubstantial, were primarily symbolic.

"Shafting" oil companies? Seriously? The most rapacious, profiteering club of hustlers to set hoof on the planet, and they're being shafted? Hey asshole, I'm paying forty-five bucks to fill up a fucking Honda Accord so I can get to work, you want to talk about "shafting". I got your symbolism right here, Lunchbox.

Things like "defending" marriage and taking on the growing threat of flag burning or video games are "primarily symbolic". In fact, they're totally symbolic -- they serve no practical utility whatsoever. Helping out the growing underclass just a sliver, and taking a mild run at an industry that gives its CEOs half-billion dollar golden parachutes -- they're not enough, but they're a start.

But look at how the Democrats are behaving. They’ve completely failed to stop the surge, and their latest efforts to derail the war are so convoluted — timetables on top of timetables — that even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a co-sponsor of legislation to withdraw troops by September 2008, can’t explain them.

CNN’s John Roberts played a clip on Late Edition from a news briefing in which Obey muddled nearly every detail of the Democrats’ plan. Roberts then asked Sen. Joe Biden, “How do you pass or enforce something you can’t even explain?” It’s a good question.

Uh-huh. This is sort of like how we've been hearing about "winning" for four years going now, without much in the way of an explanation or definition, much less a plan.

He goes on like this, reciting the usual litany of "they do it too" tropes, again ignoring that the Democrats have had a congressional majority for all of twelve weeks, after twelve years of post-Trotskyite Gingrichism. The permanent revolutionaries have finally been kicked out on their snouts, and they're still trying to steam-clean the hoofprints out of the furniture, and here's Helpy Helperton smugly asking why everything's the same as it ever was.

Don't you have a book to finish, Jethro, or were they just expecting you to design the cover, and let the lower-rent hacks take it from there?

Wanted: Fred Or Alive

This is what happens when conservatives try to be funny and/or invent new facts to confirm their political stances:

NASA says the Martian South Pole’s “ice cap” has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter’s caught the same cold, because it’s warming up too, like Pluto.

This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.

Heh-indeedy. If only we could have every drowned polar bear carcass deposited on Fred's doorstep, or on the hood of his Suburban. Look, despite the valiant efforts of Phil Cooney to favorably edit the facts, the data's in, and the results are observable. The only question is what's to be done, which in Thompson's case is to slap together smartass retorts that don't even seem to have a point, much less a joke.

Which makes him a natural to continue hosting Paul Harvey's show, and I think his bumptious retrograde muse will serve him well on the campaign trail. It's looking to be quite the lineup for the Republicans next year. Time to stock up on popcorn, and maybe a dog-whistle/English dictionary.

Where There's Smoke

So just yesterday I was presuming, given its track record, that the administration was frantically trying to cover for a lot more than just the attorney purge, that that was just the tip of the proverbial corrupt iceberg.

I suppose this will suffice as initial confirmation of that fairly obvious presumption:

To recap, the White House awarded a one-month, $140,000 contract to an individual who never held a federal contract. Two weeks after he got paid, that same contractor used a cashier’s check for exactly that amount to buy a boat for a now-imprisoned congressman at a price that the congressman had pre-negotiated.

Coincidences abound, do they not? And this one has Big Time's hoofprints all over it. The cover story has been that Lam had gotten stuck in some sort of ex post facto pissing contest with Darrell Issa over whether she was prosecuting immigration cases aggressively enough, because that was their hobby-horse issue for the last election cycle. Now it turns out that it was the Dukestir case after all.

Perhaps if Cunningham is tired of being traded around the cell block for packs of smokes and jugs of pruno, he might want to do some talking. It doesn't sound like the chain ends with lackeys like Dusty Foggo and Mitchell Wade.

Bush can whine about this being a "fishing expedition" all he wants, but it's undeniable that this is rapidly turning into a busy hole to start reeling in some bigger fish. Time to start casting a wider net.

I Got Your Varnish Right Here

One cliché that I've been beyond sick of since literally the first days of this administration is the ugly notion that the people -- you know, the putative bosses of the country -- should simply expect not to be entitled to basic notions of accountability and probity when it comes to the frequently suspect advice exchanged in the decision-making process.

This began most notoriously during Big Time's much-vaunted Energy Task Farce, which included such forward-thinking luminaries as Ken Lay. And we were told, right up through Cheney taking Combover Tony Scalia pheasant hunting, that it was none of our business, that the only way the panel could be successful is if its members could count on their advice remaining off-the-record and confidential. It was the only way the Deciders could ever count on receiving "unvarnished" advice.

I seriously don't get how they keep getting to foist that nonsense, even now with the U.S. Attorney purge. Does anyone really believe such a thing, and if so, what the fuck are they doing working in government? We are not talking about classified information with national security ramifications; we are talking about policy panels being larded with people whose financial and power interests lies in said panels going in certain directions. We may never know what took place in Cheney's ETF, and if we ever do find out, by then Cheney himself will have long since taken his eternal place shoveling shit in hell.

This is a very dangerous, fundamentally undemocratic sentiment, that every policy-making decision is somehow exempt from basic oversight and due diligence. And when there is just cause, as there is now (yet again), scrutiny is reasonably expected.

It is about high time that the obvious starts being more publicly acknowledged and re-iterated -- that these people are liars and hypocrites. They were all very much for sunshine and openness during the awful, awful Clenis era. Now, not so much. We children are not supposed to expect a forthright explanation from the adults.

And that's worked out pretty well, hasn't it?

Binge And Purge

I haven't really chimed in on the Da Abu G purge of Outer Party members in the DoJ, primarily because Josh Marshall has pretty much covered every factual base worth noting. It's a real example in how and why the small furry mammals of the internets can and should have old media dinosaurs looking over their shoulders, and the TPM crew deserves a hell of a lot of credit for laying such a solid case, plank by patient plank.

Too many of these stories can get lost (for non-political junkies, anyway) in all the inside-baseball esoterica. Even many people who pay attention to current events and such may tend to subconsciously write off stories like the attorney purge as just more internecine kremlinology. TPM's coverage, I think, has helped keep the facts vital and interesting, and moving the narrative forward with considerable (and increasing) momentum.

Another reason I hadn't bothered with the story yet is that, well, it just seemed so "water is wet". This is the same administration that vetted contractors in Iraq on their views on Roe v. Wade. It would be more surprising if they hadn't tried to stuff every available orifice in the bureaucracy with outright hacks and toadies. And it would be even more surprising if all the executive privilege reasoning they bitched about during the Clenis era weren't suddenly rendered inoperable. There may have been some point in time when I posited that these people about nothing at all besides the retention of pure power, and perhaps at least hoped that I was being a tad polemical or satirical. Obviously, even being perfectly literal about such a fundamental observation anymore is a tragic understatement.

And as this thing spreads and continues to envelop the moldering carcass of this administration, it becomes clearer that the problems are systemic, that they run much deeper and throughout the operational "principles" of this gang of buffoons. Toadyism is how they've done everything all along, from energy task farces to war planning to disaster relief.

As such, they are now beyond simple damage control on this (if that were the case, they would have dumped Gonzales by now and found some other lackey to serve as a buffer for the duration) and into crisis containment mode. All that is left is to find the chain of documentation between Rove, Miers, and Gonzales. And chances are that that will abut yet another festering scandal waiting to be brought to light.

The creeping desperation was most abundantly on display in yesterday's hissy fit/press conference, in which Bush acted like he seriously thought that, at ~30% for the past 18 months, he was in any position to bully or even negotiate over any of this. The only game the guy knows is Texas Hold 'em, and it's much too late for that. His magnanimous offer of an off-the record handjob from Miers and Rove has already been tossed aside like the used spunk rag it was. There will be no constitutional showdown, podna; there will only be disclosure and retreat, and endless re-circling of wobbly wagons. Even the press has started getting up on their hind legs about this, openly challenging Phony Blow for being the sniveling, hypocritical shit he's always been.

The temper tantrums and bluffs about constitutional showdowns are no longer anything more than a sideshow. It's pathetic to watch a snotty third-grader swaggering and expecting people to believe he's Gary Cooper or something. Mister Man can smack his wittle spoon on the high chair all he wants, but after six years of insular clubbiness and incompetent nepotism, the actual adults are re-asserting themselves.

Subprime Homesick Alien

I live in a town where you can't smell a thing.
You watch your feet for cracks in the pavement.

Up above aliens hover, making home movies for the folks back home,
of all these weird creatures who lock up their spirits,
drill holes in themselves, and live for their secrets. -- Radiohead

There's a crisis looming, and we spent part of our afternoon Saturday looking at new houses. Bad, bad liberals. We are in an odd spot, economically, geographically, demographically. Being in a small town that has decided that it is happy with being a bedroom community has some advantages. I would rather not have to commute roughly 90 minutes per day to work a job where I can make a living wage, but there are worse things.

Anyway, one thing that has worked out advantageously is that, as a bedroom community, developers swooped in during the boom of a couple years ago. Prices have not collapsed around here the way they have in many areas, but they have stalled. And now that developers have suddenly realized that they overbuilt and saturated the market, many partially-developed lots lie incomplete, many houses half-finished, and the developers are looking to unload.

Living in casino country, I know all too well that there are some industries out there that count on, that thrive on people being ignorant with money. Subprime lending is one such industry; credit cards are another. Even car companies, to a certain extent, fall into this category -- people don't need a new car, they want one. And the vehicles themselves are something of a loss-leader at this point; the real money is in financing.

Many of these companies, even though they rely on people to be suckers and operate on the margin of scruple at times, do actually prefer that their customers remain on board. It's a pain in the ass to foreclose on a house and turn it around, generally at a loss. But these companies -- and again, their customers -- have played into market forces that are beyond their control. It is not the customers' fault that their wages don't keep pace with price increases, particularly energy and food. Nor is it their fault that the companies turned around and bundled their securitized subprime loans, and sold them to investment firms, who promptly bought sacks of magic-bean derivatives that didn't quite pan out. Obviously, the investment weasels are not going to bear the brunt of their speculative decisions; they never do. Ask the LTCM boys.

It's a tricky bet, no matter how you slice it. Companies are simply not going to enter into higher-risk loan markets if they can't fob off the risk to taxpayers when shit doesn't roll their way. And there are tragic stories of people who did their level best and still lost everything, but I also personally know people whose household income is double my own, and they're on the verge because they keep fucking around with their finances, refi-ing their houses to buy new cars, using high-interest credit cards to go shopping, stupid shit like that. They're murdering their equity by leveraging non-fungible assets, and wondering why they're weeks away from a cardboard box on the sidewalk. You feel for them, and yet you recognize that they need an intervention.

Instead, we'll bail them out, modify a few things here and there that will take another few years for predatory lending companies to work around, and go right back to where we were -- glutting the market with McMansions and SUVs and unecessary toys, enabling Wall Street wizards to make imaginary billions by diddling percentage points and screwing people on the margin. Except this time, since it's becoming more and more clear that the economic "boom" or "recovery" has been mostly air and squinting, and that the housing slump very likely gives momentum to an impending recession, one with gas already over $3.00/gallon here in California.

Me, I just want a decent 1800-sq. ft. house closer to where I work, in a neighborhood, where my kid can ride a bike without some inbred cocksucker screaming by at 70 mph on a country road. Twenty years ago, I had greater aspirations and dreams, but I can live with fulfilling this one now, and doing it without letting some pencil-pushing thug hose me with Tony Soprano interest rates.

There is a kind of devil-take-the-hindmost resignation to all that, but as long as we keep our priorities clear, as long as we figure that if we can give Paris Hilton multiple tax breaks while fighting two wars, then we can make the effort to help the people at the bottom of the ladder. The trick is to give them another chance without putting yet more money in the pockets of point-stroking weasels and grifters, glorified bookies.

We might even have to get the big bad gubmint involved in this, as we typically do when the vaunted privateers screw the pooch, and everyone pretends it was accidental.

It's A Miracle

By the grace of God Almighty, and the pressures of the marketplace,
The human race has civilized itself. It's a miracle. -- Roger Waters

Good luck with that.

Vote Different (Hillary 1984)

This is not an endorsement of Obama, nor a slam at Hillary. I just thought it was an innovative effort at cultivating a new electoral dynamic, one that might even affect the urge (or need) to spend half a billion dollars to get elected to a $400K/year job.

An Inconvenient Truth

Led Zeppelin didn't write tunes everyone liked.
They left that to the Bee Gees. -- Wayne Campbell.

Really, I thought I'd had my fill of the N8r-b8ing the last ten days or so. I guess I genuinely am simply surprised that anyone is still fretting over Big Bad Ralph's refusal seven long years ago to understand his place in the food chain, and just leave the Serious Parties to their Serious Discussions. Such as whether Algore wore too many earth tones, or whether a south-of-100-IQ political carny like George W. Bush even had any business whatsoever being fielded as a candidate to run a Serious Country.

But people are still fretting over such things, and God bless 'em, I guess. I certainly understand where The Editors are coming from, and no one loves a gross-out get-into-granny's-panties political metaphor more than I, but it was strange and discouraging to see how quickly the discussion turned into, yes, another round of Nader-baiting. Let's be honest here, the whole point of Nader's candidacy was to hate the game, yet seven years later here we are, still hatin' the playa, even though he has long since been rendered ineffective, while the game trucks on as mighty as ever.

The truly irritating thing about the whole Hillary-responds-to-Pace issue was how something so inconsequential managed to get traction by the candidate's own ineffectual response. What is the complicated fucking problem here? Pace has a right to speak his mind; the candidates have a right to speak theirs. There were a variety of ways Hillary could have gotten a sensible centrist handle on this right from the get-go. None of them would have required catering to some imaginary biddy who is probably going to pull the lever for Fred Thompson (that nice fella from Law & Order) or Sam Brownback (that nice fella from Domino's Pizza) anyway -- unless, of course, Pat Buchanan (that nice fella from Palm Beach) is on the ballot again.

Taibbi sussed this one out right away.

Still, within that comment Hillary managed to call gays and lesbians "patriotic," and she also seemed to come down quite unequivocally on the right side of the nature-nurture question about homosexuality, making sure to identify homosexuality as "who you are," not "who you choose to be." With that statement alone, she basically alienates every born-again Christian in the country. Which makes it all the stranger that, when Tapper asked her if homosexuality was "immoral," she answered as follows:

"Well I'm going to leave that to others to conclude," she said. "I'm very proud of the gays and lesbians I know who perform work that is essential to our country, who want to serve their country and I want make sure they can."

Let me get this straight. Hillary Clinton wants the most powerful office in the world, but she can't make her own decision about the morality of homosexuality? She's got to "leave that to others"?

Let's unpack this a bit. First, the "nature vs. nurture" canard, the eternal question for Serious Thinkers who never seem to want to confront a more central question -- what if, for some people, homosexuality is a choice? What of it? Who gives a shit, besides the usual hand-wringing ninnies? Do consenting adults still have the right to "the pursuit of happiness", or has Cheney wiped his ass with that section of our founding documents as well?

Concerning oneself with whether gay people are "born" "that way" or "choose" it -- it's nothing more than a time-wasting knuckle-shuffle on your piss-pump, podna. There are only political reasons to be dicking around with such questions, and fundamentally, either you believe it's a human rights issue or you don't.

But Taibbi's essential point is correct -- Hillary first dropped just enough rhetorical boilerplate to gin up resentment among the so-called Edith Whitehead vote. Fair enough. It should have been all downhill from there, a smooth coast to a polished finish. When asked whether she, Hillary Rodham Clinton, agreed with General Peter Pace that homosexuality is immoral, all she had to say was "yes" or "no". Again, she had already laid the groundwork for a simple conclusive answer. Instead, she punts on first down.

How's this: "While I certainly feel that General Pace is entitled to his own opinion, official military policy is not generally, as I understand, constructed around personal morality. The current policy against openly gay servicemembers is officially supposed to stem from concerns of unit cohesion. If General Pace has commissioned or wishes to commission a formal study to confirm or debunk that assertion, I endorse such an effort. As far as a question of my own personal morality, no, I am not conflicted or concerned by the existence of homosexuals. I have what is known in some circles as a 'life'."

That supplants her milquetoast dodge with a firm, unequivocal answer on the question of "morality", and pushes the issue forward in a politically utilitarian way. "Unit cohesion" was also why blacks were kept in segregated units until the late '40s, but if proponents of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy wish to solidify their claims, then they have an opportunity to either shit or get off the pot, and no one has to extend their precious political neck for anything resembling actual principle.

Jesus, if this is what it's going to be like on the small potatoes (and don't for a second think that any of this, starting with Pace's statement, is just a coincidence; it's a fucking wedge test for the conservatard claque), can't wait until the heavy questions start rolling in.

I finally got around to getting An Inconvenient Truth via Netflix, and we will be watching it in a couple of hours (please, don't spoil it for me), after I get some black & tans going. Now, it occurs to me that the reflexive Nader-baiting all of a nonce stems from seemingly practical, utilitarian concerns about political realities. It's a cynical notion that claims that the best way to play the odds is to gratuitously cater and genuflect to the most regressive elements in our society. That they do it with their fingers crossed -- or better yet, never quite get around to saying exactly where they stand on something -- is said to be the height of political sophistication. Al Gore is the sine qua non of this carefully-tended school of thought, the prize orchid in the hothouse of poaching demographic slivers with soothing homilies.

Bollocks. I think we can all agree that, whatever misgivings many of us had about Gore's viability and worthiness for the role back in 2000, he has acquitted himself wonderfully. But how exactly has he gone about this task? By saying what he fucking well meant, for Christ's sake. Gore has found his issue, his mission, and has tackled it with guts and honesty. We can say now in retrospect that he could do that because he had nothing to lose, since he wasn't running for anything, but we didn't (and don't) know that for sure. Even with the extended primary and campaign seasons, Gore could very well wait until the end of this year, and then say he's in, and he'd be an instant front-runner. This in spite of him daring not to cower to the mossback vote.

I'm telling you, there is no upside to this tiresome litany of gutless incrementalism and puling half-steps. What if we piss off the Edith Whitehead vote? Well, fuck the Edith Whitehead vote, m'kay? I may not like what the Republicans stand for, but for the most part, I know what they stand for. That's why they keep winning the coveted senile-granny vote, because even people who don't fucking pay attention to anything know what these assclowns are all about. Whether or not they actually mean it is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Goddammit, if we can't just point at the enormous track record of failure and irrelevance six years of Republican incompetence has put us through, and explain to people how they keep voting against themselves, then exactly how are we being an effective opposition party? Why keep playing these stupid little finger-crossing games, for the sake of people who (as has been said of the Naderistas, but is much more true of the Bushies and swingers) apparently regard the voting process as therapy?

The difference is laid stark; there should no longer be such a need for playing footsie with boobism and slackjawed stupidity. Maybe when the "intelligent design" "controversy" comes up, the Democratic nominee can artfully parse how we should "teach both sides" of the "controversy", and how "both sides" have "valid arguments". It will be at that point that I officially say "fuck this" and throw my endorsement to Donald Duck. As Harry Truman once said, given the choice between a fake cartoon character and a real one, people will usually choose the real one.

Meanwhile, we are all quite resolute about traveling back in time to push Ralph Nader in front of a train so's he can't spoil 2000 for us, even though Fredo and his merry band of swing-voter goobers were the real problem there. Enough already. Get off your fucking cross, folks; the rest of us could use the wood.

[Update: Watched the movie, and came away impressed, feeling like it was everything I'd hoped it would be, and then some. It is by turns sobering, impassioned, serious, some injections of humor, and relentlessly fact-based. It points out the liars and mendacious boobs for exactly who and what they are. It does not attempt to dick around with finding some sort of middle ground with pud-pounding idiots such as James Inhofe, nor should it have. The mossbacks are entitled to their own opinions; they are not entitled to their own facts -- on anything. They do not deserve an inch of ground, nor are they in any position to bargain for it. I'd just as soon tie 'em up in a gunny sack and toss 'em into a ditch as waste time trying to find a way to work with 'em.]

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Fred

Future preznit and current conservatard darlin' Fred Thompson, sitting in for The Cryptkeeper Paul Harvey (at annual bath in special beads made of breast milk and puppy DNA re-embalming), has some choice words for you damned dirty hippies:

Besides coolers and mattresses, protesters have brought along a giant paper mache statue of Mahatma Gandhi, who is pretty much the symbol of the anti-war movement. Code Pink was founded on his birthday, and when Saddam Hussein was being given a last chance to open Iraq to U.N. weapons inspectors, posters appeared around America asking “What would Gandhi do?”

And that’s a pretty good question. At what point is it okay to fight dictators like Saddam or the al Qaeda terrorists who want to take his place?

It turns out that the answer, according to Gandhi, is NEVER. During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” “Collective suicide,” he told his biographer, “would have been heroism.”

Speaking only for myself, I am not and never have been a pacifist. It has always been left to semiotic tricksters on the right to ascribe such noble altruism to those who simply refuse to allow themselves to be rolled by cheap hucksterism. For the record, if Gandhi did in fact say such things, they deserve repudiation. But those particularities do not necessarily inform nor implicitly ventriloquize the sentiments expressed by the antiwar protesters in question.

I would safely presume that Gandhi was intimating that passive resistance helps enumerate quite clearly exactly which side is responsible for a particular violent incident. Personally, I think this is foolish -- there are few more efficient ways to get your skull bashed in than to tell a pure thug that you love him and respect his feelings as a human being, blah blah blah. As another wise man once said, fuck that noise. This does not obviate Gandhi's general point about violence begetting more violence, but sometimes, people have to make unfortunate choices between survival and death, or even between merely surviving and actually living.

But the bottom line is, the majority of protesters -- and the clear majority of American citizens, including those in the vaunted heartland -- are not ANSWER dupes or Gandhi disciples. They are people who understand fundamentally that a nuisance was sold as an existential threat, and that the world is now worse off for it all, and that the fools who initiated this mess have no clear (nor even a nebulous) plan to end the cycle they started.

And it's not if Thompson doesn't know all this; he may be a lot of things, but he's not an idiot. Yet he counts on his listeners and readers to be exactly that.

Godless

Good for Pete Stark:

Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), a member of Congress since 1973, acknowledged his nontheism in response to an inquiry by the Secular Coalition for America. Rep. Stark is a senior member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and is Chair of the Health Subcommittee.

Although the Constitution prohibits religious tests for public office, the Coalition's research reveals that Rep. Stark is the first open nontheist in the history of the Congress. Recent polls show that Americans without a god-belief are, as a group, more distrusted than any other minority in America. Surveys show that the majority of Americans would not vote for an atheist for president even if he or she were the most qualified for the office.

This is so painfully obvious that it scarcely merits mentioning, yet it deserves repeating. Americans routinely proclaim just how pious and godly we all are, yet statistically are routinely boggled by even the simplest of questions that even godless atheist heathens like myself know the answer to. And if this whinging response is any indication of the theta patterns over at Jeebus King of America, Inc., it's no wonder that we are where we are.

Well, God is crying, and I can't stand it. All that work for nothing -- trees and flowers, oceans, lakes and rivers, to say nothing of the stars; not even a proper "thank you." The atheists can scurry for proof, but this kind of press coverage tells me they don't know even what they are looking for.

It is precisely this sort of ideological and ontological incoherence they look for in a candidate, which is why we're constantly overrun by moralizing bozos, instead of, say, responsible adults who can keep their crushes to themselves and just attend to the business of running a statist construct for the common weal.

Seriously, this broad would not be out of place on one of The Onion's Two Cents parodies. Her own invocation of the wonderment of the celestial firmament pretty much obviates the necessary singularity of earthly humans being the apotheosis of creation.

The only other possibility is that every other habitable planet is also overrun with hand-wringing, pearl-clutching ninnies who can't get out of their own way, in which case a reverse big bang might not be such a terrible idea.

Movin' On Up

One of Corporate America's most esteemed paragons of virtue and excellence is packing up for -- where else? -- Dubai:

HOUSTON, March 11 — Halliburton, the big energy services company, said on Sunday that it would open a corporate headquarters in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai and move its chairman and chief executive, David J. Lesar, there.

The company will maintain its existing corporate office here as well as its legal incorporation in the United States, meaning that it will still be subject to domestic laws and regulations.

Although the announcement of the new Dubai arrangement took many by surprise, Halliburton said that the move was part of a strategy announced in mid-2006 to concentrate its efforts in the Middle East and surrounding areas, where state-owned oil companies represent a growing source of business.

....

The Dubai announcement, which Halliburton made at a regional energy conference in Bahrain, comes at a time when the company is being investigated by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations of improper dealings in Iraq, Kuwait and Nigeria. Halliburton has also agreed to pay billions of dollars in settlements in asbestos litigation.

Halliburton would not elaborate on Sunday on what the shift of its top executive might mean for some of the issues it faces. The move seemed to raise questions about whether Halliburton might gain tax advantages or other benefits.

....

Despite its recent problems, Halliburton posted record revenue, net income and margins last year.

Yeah, they really took it in the shorts on all those no-bid contracts, didn't they? But I'll wager that at the end of the day, this is not just about oil or profit margins, or even tax advantages. It's about oversight, and staking your claim in this century's Wild West is a great way to avoid the snoops in the SEC, or at least make them work harder.

It's a pretty sweet racket they got going there.

Fatal Attraction

I know I just did some God talk at Doug Giles' expense, but the latest visit by evangelical stadium tour BattleCry featured a, shall we say, unusual concept.

Several popular Christian bands, including POD, Casting Crowns and Unhindered, sang rock songs with choruses such as "I'll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon that cross." A Christian comedian delivered stand-up lines. The crowd did call-and-response chants about Jesus, using the rhythms normally found at a Giants game.

"We will not allow the enemy to steal this generation," Luce said.

He spoke to the audience about levels of belief, dividing Christians into three categories. "Seekers" are Christians who regularly attend church and study groups but waver when it's convenient. "Students" are Christians who aggressively try to read the Bible and learn more about Christ's teachings.

But Luce wanted those gathered to strive for the apex: "stalkers."

As the word "stalker" flashed on the giant video screen, Luce elaborated.

Criminal stalkers, Luce said, "are so committed to finding out information, they find out stuff no one else knows." He said Christians should pursue God with that same passion.

As he read verses from the book of Psalms, Luce said, "That's a stalker talking."

"Will you go way out into the deep and be a stalker, a stalker of God?" Luce asked.

Many shouted with approval.

Lorena Covarrubias, 18, said she identified with Luce's message.

"I consider myself a 'student,' but I want to be a 'stalker,' " said Covarrubias, who attends Servants of Jesus, a Mission District church, which brought 60 teens to BattleCry. "I used to read the Bible a lot, but I never sought God with all my heart the way Ron Luce describes a stalker follower. I want to grow in my love for God."

The first two appellations make sense I suppose, but "stalker"? What kind of goofball wants to "stalk" God or Jesus? Are they aware of what actual stalkers do, which is harass and terrorize their target in increasingly desperate attempts to win them over? Are they planning on driving by God's house at 3:00 AM, to make sure no one else is over there? Maybe go down to Jesus' place of employment and get in His grille while His co-workers back away slowly and one of them tries to dial 911 without you seeing?

Seriously. There are plenty of names and methods one can devise to demonstrate their devotion and commitment to their spiritual beliefs. I think it says more than these people realize that they think "stalker" is the most accurate way of expressing that. It's not just the unhealthy connotation with the real-world definition of the word, but the clear indication that becoming an unquestioning automaton is some sort of spiritual goal.