1/9/08- So what's supposed to happen when the neocon's Gulf of Tonkin
incident finally happens in the Persian Gulf? Is the US response supposed
to be proportional to some rational defensive need? Will events be driven
by some coherent strategic framework within a context of global security,
or will Bush just kill them all and let god sort them out? Is any politician
anywhere going to speculate about for instance what in the world we should
actually do in response to an incident of this and such sort, or are we
all supposed to just wait until the first young fervent fear upped sailor
on either side actually lets fly, and then anxiously wait to see what in
the name of sweet Mary our spectacularly discreet and gifted de facto warlord
decides to do? Is that the "plan"? Because it sure seems like it.
You getting any of this Bob?
12/15/07- "...for the moment declaring further funding contingent
upon withdrawal over the coming year". (11/17/06 below)
Uh, yeah.
12/6/07- John Bolton, who is a piece of work, was on Fox
News a couple of days ago doing his neocon storm trooper act, trying
to paper over the awkward revelation that Iraq stopped its nuclear weapons
program in 2003, and part of his routine was complaining that the intelligence
community "politicized this intelligence and politicized these judgments
in a way contrary to where the administration was going".
Because, see, we all know that intelligence, in the words of the Downing
Street memo, is supposed to be "fixed around the policy", not away
from from it.
But like I write on the Iran page, "it makes no real difference whether
Iran is pursuing a peaceful or military nuclear capability". I like to imagine
Bush and company no longer have the wherewithal to pull off an attack on
Iran, but if they can they will.
11/17/07- It seems we Democrats may finally have taken Bush's leash on the war, for the moment declaring further funding contingent upon withdrawal over the coming year, in time with the below prediction of a year ago today. Both sides will now maneuver for political advantage around this latest demarcation, but beyond the rhetoric and the posturing and the pandering and the spinning lies the simple reality that it's over. When the principal question of the war has become how best to prolong it, then but for the remaining death and destruction, it is for all practical strategic purposes. Over.
11/9/07- Here's
how a Democratic Congressman needs to sound. Maybe the Party should just
turn the mic over to Kucinich.
And Mukasey's in as AG, since he's the only person in the country who doesn't
know waterboarding is torture. Just musing, but maybe the notion is to keep
Bush's various pots simmering until the White House is won, and then take
out the prosecutorial knives. Because let's just admit that Hillary and
Bill have one or two scores to settle.
11/6/07- Why is everybody freaked out that Musharraf has seized
absolute control of Pakistan? He's a military dictator. That's what
they do. That's what he's done, on our nickel, for eight years now. Never
mind what Bush and Condi yap yap yap. Money talks, and Musharraf's their
boy. Democracy is optional. Power isn't.
I was thinking how Wolfowitz underestimated the cost of the Iraq war by
something like 2000% and climbing, or more like infinity and climbing
if you figure the war was going to pay for itself, and his reward for this
astonishingly bad bit of accounting, perhaps literally the worst in history,
was to be made president of the World Bank. It really is like something
from a Doonesbury comic strip.
10/26/07- The Bush administration has delivered the
latest slapdown to Iran, in the form of sanctions which bar or seize
this or that. Of course Washington's paper flurrying won't appreciably change
the basic dynamic of the Iranians selling their oil and using the money
to buy things, but it's another example of the now common use of what amount
to bills of attainder, a sort of guilt by writ used to confiscate property
or impose penalties without due process. Such writs are explicitly prohibited
by the Constitution, and for good reason.
Ah yes, the Constitution. Good times.
Putin delivers the best line of the article- "It's not the best way to resolve
the situation by running around like a madman with a razor blade in his
hand." Putin's like a wry and maybe not quite as evil version of the bad
guy in a James Bond movie. He's a cool dude.
And somebody needs to mention the relentless irony of Congress caving on
a do nothing resolution condemning genocide against the Armenians, so as
not to upset an ongoing genocide of sorts against the Iraqis, done arguably
in consequence of a genocide against the Jews, all of which currently stands
to propagate into something of a genocide against the Iranians, and who
knows but maybe even keep going from there into a full scale global glow
in the dark genocide, which I guess will just about do it. Maybe Dylan will
write a song about it someday.
10/25/07- A
neocon explains how the Wehrmacht needs to get back on the road.
Get in touch with it, everybody- Israel needs the West enmeshed in the
Middle East. That's what we're doing there. Yes, oil is good. Yes, giving
everybody weapons makes the war companies go round. Yes, power is in and
of itself a sweet sweet thang. But insofar as there is an actual strategic
point to the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the impending war on Iran,
the realpolitic toward Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc., and the fear mongering
toward everybody else, insofar as there is a strategic point to it all the
point is Israel. Bob isn't allowed to speak this simple truth, he's not
allowed to talk about why American soldiers are being sacrificed, why we've
spent a trillion dollars spraying blood across the Middle East, and why
you have to throw away your shampoo at the airport, but there it is. Whether
or not it's worth doing is a political question. Whether or not it's worth
talking about isn't.
10/22/07- Cheney gave another war
drum beating speech against Iran yesterday, on the heels of a similar
bit of ratcheting from Bush a few days ago. It looks like they're going
to attack. The oil market obviously thinks so. Maybe they'll launch a limited
strike in hopes of provoking the Iranians into a response that can be used
to justify a full scale attack. The Iranians can for their part be counted
on to not cooperate with whatever the "plan" turns out to be, and we can
of course expect it to unravel more or less as it's taken out of the box,
at which point the Republican party might as well go ahead and down the
sleeping pills with a fifth of gin. If you're reading this Bob, and you're
uncomfortable with the thought of dangling at the end of it come next election,
all morality aside you might want to make a squeak or two while there's
still time. And like I've written before, you and your colleagues need to
draw a clear bright Congressional line against using nuclear weapons. You
won't, but you should.
addendum: Ran into Brandon Brown this evening and got his endorsement.
10/14/07- So to summarize: Bush is poised to hit Iran because the Israeli lobby wants him to, and the Dems won't stop him because the Israeli lobby doesn't want them to and because the Dems want to clean up, politically if not literally, and the Republicans of course won't stop him no matter how much they need to, and the war in Iraq is going to continue because the Dems won't stop it because the Israeli lobby doesn't want them to and because the Dems want to clean up, politically if not literally, and the Republicans of course won't stop it no matter how much they need to. Tra la la. And how much longer this bloody merry go round will continue under the next President is a matter of speculation, but she may not be able to keep it going much longer.
10/11/07- (Reuters) US forces killed 19 insurgents
and 15 women and children in air strikes north of Iraq's capital targeting
suspected leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq .....
If the "leaders of al Qaeda" were "suspected", were the "insurgents"
confirmed? And were the children confirmed, alleged, suspected, charged,
or some combination thereof?
Tell me again what we're doing in their country?
10/8/07- Significant statistics department: black enlistment rate down 58%.
10/6/07- All the talk about the war seems like a bunch of people
standing around a pre Wright brothers contraption trying to figure out why
it won't fly. It won't fly because it won't fly.
The 1967 Israeli attack on the USS
Liberty is in the news again, and Ray McGovern observes
that the main data point in the attack is the thoroughness with which the
Israeli lobby managed to bury it. There seems a convergence of opinion the
Israelis knew they were attacking a US ship, and it can scarcely be doubted
this wasn't going to be the official US finding. That Israel would in wartime
attack a foreign vessel for some seemingly compelling military reason is
true as a matter of course. That America would be both victim and enabler
is a bit harder to fathom.
10/3/07- So it turns out that unleashing mercenaries on a civilian population and explicitly placing them completely beyond any legal restraint whatsoever is bad. Now we get to watch the utter gibbering farce of a bunch of lawyers claiming they didn't understand this. And the worst part is a lot of them may be telling the truth.
9/29/07- The Iraqi parliament, such as it is, along with the Gulf
Cooperation Council resoundingly rejected the US senate's 75-23 vote Wednesday
to break Iraq apart.
We can speculate why the senate would go out of its way to further alienate
everyone in an already failed situation, but like I wrote Bob a few years
ago, the Balkanization of Iraq isn't in anyone's interests. The Iraqis and
everybody else in the region know this, even if the senate seems not to.
And apparently the divide and conquer play is going to be harder than they
thought.
9/26/07- Griff says he'll kick in $500 and help out if I go for
the Democratic nomination. So I could actually be a serious contender for
high office. Good grief.
Discussing health care, we agreed the system is broken and Bob isn't going
to fix it.
At Coffee Underground writing this, and a member of the press just encouraged
the candidacy. Of course he may just want to sell newspapers. And that's
OK.
9/14/07- Here's
a darkly amusing example of a neocon spokesman in the State Department doing
spadework for an attack on Iran/Syria. He slips up toward the end and claims
there are North Koreans in Iraq, which of course there aren't, since we've
been occupying that country going on five years now and they build more
IEDs than nuclear bombs lately. Semmel is thinking pre 2003, when the task
was to pump up Iraq. Note the references to Israel and the various nefarious
dealings he can't rule out. It's a good example of framing the issue, spinning
the non facts, and funneling it through an obedient press. (Here's
another example)
They're not done.
9/13/07- I was at a meeting this evening with Brett Bursey (yes,
that Brett Bursey), who I personally know, trying to wring a definition
of progressive, which he is, out of him, and it occurred to me driving home
that one distinction between libertarianism and progressivism, whatever
it is exactly, is that libertarianism is bounded while progressivism isn't,
in the sense that if libertarians advocate minimal government then that
case is at least limited by zero, while progressivism, insofar as it may
advocate more government, has it seems essentially no upper bound, particularly
when used without a clear definition. Which Brett said he would email me.
In other news, I just skimmed a report about Bush's speech this evening
on Iraq, and he's either a laughably transparent con man or on crack. It's
either or. Unless it's both.
8/25/07- Bush's party line is that the war on al-Qaida/terror/Iraq/etc. is completely different from any other conflict in history. Except it's the same as WW II. And Vietnam, only in a good way. All of which makes a certain sense really, inasmuch as war usually is after all fairly crazy. Makes you wonder which war or wars Bush's war with Iran will or won't be like.
8/18/07-Just ran across this quote and Googled it, hit #1 was the
White
House-
All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have
been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate.
Let's put it this way -- they are no longer a problem to the United States
and our friends and allies. (Applause.)
That's a line straight out of a gangster movie. Just how many "suspects"
were murdered (Applause)? But this boast wasn't made by a cheap thug in
a back alley. It was made by the President of the United States, in a state
of the union address.
8/13/07- How is Gonzales still in office? A Republican Senator,
one of his own tribe, asked him on camera what credibility he had left.
Asked this of the Attorney General of the United States. How is he
still in office? Oh wait, I remember- the system is out of control.
addendum: Should have checked the news first, but Rove's out. So
that he can, and all together now, spend more time with his family. Spaaaaalaash!
I hope the sinking ship doesn't turn into a flaming wreck.
8/9/07- (AP) "Polls suggest that Bush has
had some degree of success in linking Islamic militants in Iraq with the
al-Qaida terrorist movement."
This is as much as anything the core of the problem. The machine attempts
literally, it seems even in its own mind, to substitute perception for reality.
The linkage between al-Qaida and the Iraqi resistance is in fact substantially
nonexistent, but in politics perception trumps reality. War, on the other
hand, is a different matter altogether. Which explains year after year of
pop-eyed surprise.
7/15/07- The White House now says
"The Administration also notes that provisions of law that purport to direct
or prohibit international negotiations, covert action, or the use of the
armed forces are inconsistent with the Constitution’s commitment exclusively
to the presidency of the executive power, the function of Commander-in-Chief,
and the authority to conduct the Nation’s foreign policy."
That alone is grounds for impeachment. Indict in the morning, convict by
lunch, out by COB. Sometime before Bush crashes into Iran would be best.
7/3/07- The President commuted Libby's sentence to keep him from
singing.
The President. Of the United States.
Somebody turn out the lights.
addendum: Keith
Olbermann sums it up.
6/28/07- So Cheney says
the VP's office isn't part of the executive branch. Huh.
OK .... is that enough? Will that do it?
6/24/07- Ravenel should just be glad he's not a black teenager facing
a coke charge.
Here's
my view of the drug war. Without looking it up, we can assume Ravenel's
public position is, or at least was, the opposite.
Cry me a river, white boy.
6/6/07- Has anybody else noticed we're putting missiles in Poland to intercept nukes we're not going to let the Iranians have? What's up with that?
6/4/07- The media/government seem to habitually hype terrorist threats that defy the laws of physics. As others have pointed out, jet fuel in a pipeline needs oxygen to burn, and water doesn't flow uphill. But, regrettably, the plain physical impossibility of an act appears to make little difference in the molding of public opinion about it.
5/31/07- Jesus God, Jim DeMint's a clown.
addendum: I was going to take this post off because I couldn't remember
what it was about and the link had gone dead, plus it seemed a bit harsh,
but looking at the code I see the link title is "DeMint rips war 'wimps'".
So it stays up.
5/28/07- There are two groups of politicians running for the White House- Ron Paul and everybody else. I'm a Ron Paul fan from way back, I link him on the site. I can't imagine him becoming President, but then again I could never figure him being in Congress either. It's an overused cliche, and I may be overusing it myself, but the next election may be the most significant of our time. And if enough people vote for him, Ron Paul will win it.
5/25/07- So the Dems have officially caved on stopping the war, Pelosi saying "the president's policy is going to begin to unravel now". Meanwhile, in the other corner, Republican leader McConnell says "I think the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall and I think the president is going to lead it". So the Dems are letting the Commander in Chief "unravel", while the Republicans are by god sure the C-in-C is going in some different direction in a few months. And they're talking about war. One that's going on right now. And I'm not making any of this up.
5/23/07- Looks like the Dems have decided to let the war drag on
and slide into power on the blood (see below post of 11/17/06). You
go, girls.
The exchange between Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani in the Republican debate
last week merits wider attention. Paul observed that 9/11 was motivated
by US actions in the Middle East, which prompted Giuliani to interject his
dismissal of this reality as something he had never heard before, presumably
holding to the official position that 9/11 was motivated by a sort of blobby
Islamic hatred of America. The crowd and the media jumped four square into
Giuliani's shrill, demagogic corner, while the public, or at least such
part of it as is online, came down just as squarely in the real world they
share with Paul. It was a case study in what's wrong with American politics,
and a clear indication of how starkly the line is drawn. It's us against
them.
Here's a succinct analysis of the issue by the former head of the CIA’s
Osama bin Laden Unit- Why
They Attack Us
5/14/07- Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, discussing the
difficulty in Iraq, says today "I want to assure you, if they vote to ask
us to leave, we'll be glad to comply with their request." Couple this with
the below post about the Iraqi parliament being poised to show us the door,
and I think we may have a winner of a withdrawal path.
Those ungrateful Iraqis. See if we ever invade them again. No sir. Harumph.
On the other hand, and there'd just have to be one, Mitch also says "If
we give up prematurely, we go home, declare it over, will they be back here
on the -- in our own country? And I think the chances of that are overwhelmingly
likely."
I guess we all remember the Great Iraqi Invasion of Maryland back in 1998,
bloody business that, but put 2 and 2 together and what the good senator
is saying is that he's putting our sacred national safety is in the greasy
swarthy hands of a bunch of hadji legislators. Which I guess is OK, if you're
a Republican. And need a way the hell out of Iraq. (see: Republican
senator slams Iraqi government)
5/11/07-Baghdad (AP):
"The violence came as radical Shiite politicians
pressed for legislation demanding a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal and
a freeze on the number of foreign forces already in the country.
The proposed legislation, drafted by the parliamentary bloc loyal to anti-American
Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, was signed by 144 members of the 275-member
house, parliamentary officials said Thursday."
So how's that for a concept- a radical majority. Hm.
And, OK, we now have both the US and Iraqi legislatures voting against
the war.
Not making any of this up.
addendum: Shortly after posting, the above AP quote acquired a few
words from the Kurdish president about saying "goodbye to our friends".
Sniff.
4/23/07- Just back from Bob's talk at the Ham House, and the war fever has plainly broken. It remains to be seen how many more Iraqis will die of it.
4/15/07- Doing my taxes, of course, a stack of forms with big fat instructions, and it occurs to me that if we hadn't all been doing this our entire adult lives we might think it outlandish that we actually have to do the paperwork for them. I suspect Washington and Jefferson would be slack jawed with incredulity at it.
3/15/07- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sure is confessing to an awful lot, at least according to the censored alleged transcript. You might too.
3/13/07- WASHINGTON (AP)
-- "Democratic leaders are stripping from a military
spending bill for the war in Iraq a requirement that President Bush gain
approval from Congress before moving against Iran."
Spineless, spineless, spineless cowards. A simple resolution in affirmation
of the Constitution they're sworn to uphold, a resolution that tries to
restrain our colossal failure of a warlord, a resolution that may save millions
of lives, is a little too much for them. And why is that?
"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and other
leaders agreed to remove the requirement concerning Iran after conservative
Democrats as well as other lawmakers worried about its possible impact on
Israel, officials said Monday."
Make no mistake. We. Are. Israel's. *****.
3/1/07-So the Greenville News is casting about for someone to write
a favorable guest column about Inglis' vote against the troop bump, and
the one person they can find in all of Greenville is named "Ali".
Just so you know which side Inglis is on.
How very nearly subtle.
2/17/07- Bob voted a couple of days ago against the escalation in
Iraq.
Good going Bob.
1/18/07- So are we going to war with Iran, and is it going to be
nuclear? It may actually be a question of whether the President can get
away with it.
The public has turned decisively against Bush and his war, his party is
in disarray, and yet there seems a sense of helplessness in what may well
be our slide into genuine catastrophe. How can America to appearances remain
so substantially under the power of someone like Bush? And if we are indeed
sliding into catastrophe, will Inglis do more than issue a vaguely contrite,
spin based press release about it afterwards? Can he really not offer his
constituents better leadership than Bush?
12/12/06- Just browsed through the Iraq Study Group Report, commissioned
by Congress as a laughable alternative to taking the keys from Bush. The
funniest part is their necessary prerequisite that the public have "a broad,
sustained consensus" on the war. I guess if you're going to dream, dream
big. And get this- the Iraqi government is holding the US military hostage!
So how about that.
The commission members were almost all lawyers, they were all politicians
or political appointees, they represent the top of the military/industrial/academic/
foreign policy pyramid, and for all their years of experience, for all their
gray haired sage like eminence, for all their fat salaries and lengthy titles
and tailored suits as far as I know not a single one of them had the foggiest
idea of what their nation was leaping into four years ago, not a single
one of them could see the obvious future that was all but in the headlines
before the war started, and not a single one of them did the slightest thing
to try and stop it. Why anybody should care what they think now is beyond
me.
11/17/06- The President was insisting today on the absolute necessity of staying in Iraq, and he was doing this while physically standing in Vietnam.
I personally think he should come right out and start wearing a clown suit.
The Republicans need to end the war and blame it on the Democrats, the Democrats need to let the war drag on and blame it on the Republicans. The Republicans for their part may be scheming enough to follow my suggestion, except their President is in the way. Their second best strategy is to let the Democrats let the war drag on and try to blame it on them, with a side dish of we would have won it by now but for their meddling. The Democrats on the other hand will probably manage by simple blithering most of what they haven't the ruthless political sense to pursue. I expect both sides will manage to look more or less equally incompetent, but the bulk of the blame will continue to cling to the Republicans, who stand to go from minority to oppressed minority. We might in two years be forced to simply drag them all out of office, sell off the furniture, and declare the war over.
I expect what will happen over at least the next year will be more of the same. Politicians will continue to flail about in search of a politically palatable and non-existent exit from a situation they have never understood and had absolutely no business getting into in the first place. Most will persist in their curious reluctance to join a widening majority of the electorate on the other side of the war fence, presumably lest they face reproof from the dwindling minority on their current side. It's enough to give one a military-industrial complex.
By the next election, politicians may actually be talking about the war in pig latin. Assuming of course it hasn't disintegrated entirely.
11/9/06- Had lunch with Bob today, and it turns out my brother in
law's brother bought Bob's old house on Ben Street. I think I slept on Bob's
former floor. Or it might have been the couch.
It's a small world after all.
11/7/06- I'm thinking maybe run under the Democrat label next election. I'd still be an independent, just not a write-in one. Griff has been up front about using the Democratic party as a mailing address, which might even be more anti-partisan than staying outside. The parties themselves are just vehicles. Maybe drive next time.
10/21/06- This is a good read by Pat Tillman's brother Kevin- After Pat's Birthday.
10/11/06- The Lancet estimates 655,000 total war dead in Iraq so far. "More or less".
10/5/06- Just read where Foley was the House "deputy whip".
Good Lord, what next?
addendum: What
this guy said.
10/2/06- Talked politics with Griff today, we had a frank exchange of views. He's certainly less political than Bob.
10/1/06- The war is spiraling out of control, with dozens tortured
to death daily in Baghdad, and I go to Bob's
website and it's not bad enough that he makes not the slightest mention
of what is by a wide margin the most significant issue in the country right
now, a war in which thousands of Americans have now died, it's not bad enough
he makes not the slightest mention of the troops he professes to support,
but I go to Bob's website and he's quite literally dancing across the screen.
In bright green sunglasses. The theme is "America's Sun is Still Rising"
(see: Hirohito
Effect). Except for the lack of music it's very nearly an actual
song and dance.
Bob appears to have officially made the jump into hyperspace.
9/28/06- Inglis voted for HR
6166 yesterday. I don't know if he's read it, but I just did. When it
makes it onto the books, which should be in a few days, the country will
be under de facto martial law. Among other things, it allows confessions
obtained by torture, and it substantially eviscerates the Geneva Conventions.
The President can lock up who he pleases. You. Me. Any time. Any place.
Any reason. Not making that up.
In other news, Inglis voted today ... well dip me, I just looked it up and
Inglis actually voted against the "Electronic
Surveillance Modernization Act". It passed
the House anyway. It lets Bush listen in on your phone calls and read your
emails, but only if he "believes an attack is imminent" and (get this) claims
so every 90 days. Guess we'll just have to get another word for "imminent".
I'm not a big fan of Democrats, but Republicans have really sunk into the
abyss with their shameless fear mongering.
OK, I see Inglis has updated his campaign
website from the last election. Very positive, very upbeat. Still no
mention of the war that's the number 1 issue with voters. Nearing 3000 sons
and daughters, husbands and wives lost so far, hundreds of billions wasted,
uncounted thousands of innocent dead, and it doesn't get so much as a single
solitary footnote from the Congressman.
This is ridiculous. Flat out ridiculous. And shameful. Let's not leave that
out.
9/23/06- Bush was "taken
aback" by the Pakistani president's claim that the US government threatened
to bomb his country "back to the stone age".
Just wanted to mention that.
9/16/06- So now we (you and me) are buying torture
insurance for government employees to pay their legal bills in case
we decide to spend millions of dollars prosecuting them. For torture. That
we pay them to do.
Even if you're pro torture, which personally I'm not, we're pushing the
waste envelope here. Maybe we should imprison government torturers and then
pay them to torture the other prisoners. And then prosecute them for that.
And then make a sort of paste out of money and spread it on their lawyers.
And then do a sort of dance.
9/14/06-When's Bob going to update his campaign site from the last
election?
Come on, Bob .... get in the ring.
9/07/06- So the President now says
we don't torture people anymore, we use a secret "alternative set of procedures".
Ah.
8/30/06- Bob Inglis is in
the paper again today, and it turns out that "stay the course"
was actually the Iraqi government's idea. Who knew?
It's your war, Bob. Take responsibility for it.
8/26/06- Got an email from the League of Women Voters this evening saying to get into the debate requires a showing of 6% support in a poll by September 28. So anybody who wants to forward the site before then, feel free.
8/21/06- Got posted on the FOX site this morning. And Bob's in the Greenville News today (analysis) saying Iraqis "must move quickly to write a constitution that lays out how the various religious and ethnic factions will share power as well as oil revenues". Hello, Bob- they wrote and ratified a constitution last year. Tape a copy to your flak jacket.
8/16/06- We seem to be moving toward an absolute frenzy of fear mongering. Republicans be warned- it's a fine line between hysteria and comedy. Not that there's anything wrong with comedy.
8/11/06- So I guess no more liquids on planes anymore,
since the government just now figured out there are liquid explosives. Oh
well. What's left? Maybe terrorists will plot to set their clothes on fire
next and we'll all have to fly naked.
And what's with all the machine guns at the airports? How many bombs do
they plan to shoot? And if they've known about the plot for months, why
is it suddenly a huge media deal?
Because it's not about safety. It's about politics. And fear. Venerable,
staid Scotland Yard warns of "mass murder on an unimaginable scale".
Indeed. With 3,438 confirmed dead in Iraq last month, with perhaps as many
as a quarter of a million dead in that country so far, with warfare raging
in Afghanistan, with bombs raining down on the citizens of Lebanon, nobody,
least of all the Moslems, has to imagine anything.
As if on cue, the Greenville
News this morning dutifully and shrilly vilifies the "Islamic fascists"
who "devote their lives to killing those who do not share their beliefs".
Why the faraway bad people aren't bothering the even more infidel Germans
and French is left unanswered, as is the question of how killing people
in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon is going to keep British citizens from
blowing up planes in Britain.
No one should underestimate the significance of the coming election to those
in the White House. If they lose control, and they well may, it's within
the realm of possibility they will at some point be indicted as war criminals.
And I suspect a little bit of fear goes a long way with them. Those who
can see through the political fear mongering leading up to the election
need to try and keep a wet blanket on it to keep things from getting any
further out of hand.
8/8/06- A
Harris poll has found that half of all Americans still believe Iraq
had WMDs. It's a testament to the corrosiveness of party politics that a
few abandoned and long since useless artillery shells can be so successfully
spun as a massive ongoing weapons program. I guess it's like Goebbels said-
if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth.
7/25/06- Has anybody else noticed how we're rushing 100,000 medical kits to Lebanon to treat people wounded by the bombs we're rushing to Israel? Has anybody else noticed that? Is that OK? Even assuming money actually does grow on trees and all the IRS has to do is pick it off the branches, is this what we want to do with it?
7/19/06- Americans need to look past the spin and see the obvious truth that Israel killing 300 innocent people (so far) to supposedly secure the release of 2 captured soldiers is immoral butchery. Period. They also need to be angry with the American government for not only letting the slaughter happen but actually blocking diplomatic efforts to stop it, even as thousands of Americans attempt to flee the war zone.
7/18/06- Some 25,000 Americans are in Lebanon right now with American supplied bombs raining down on them from American supplied jets, courtesy of the Israeli Air Force, and the American government is actually blocking any diplomatic attempt to try and stop it. Thousands of Americans are in immediate danger in Lebanon and the American government, with the full co-operation of the Democrats, instead of stopping the killing is actually doing what it can to keep it going.
If anybody ever needed a picture painted for them of where the actual priorities of the American government lie, there it is.
The Israeli attack on Lebanon is less about getting a couple of soldiers back and more about demonstrating that if you are within range of Israeli weapons then you have a functioning modern country at their discretion. No one in the Middle East is going to accept this in the long term, any more than we would. The Israeli butchery has a sense of flailing about it, all the more disquieting for Olmert not being a career military man. Like Bush in Iraq, he has no real hope of destroying Hezballah, but one objective that he could well achieve is getting a war on with Syria and/or Iran and getting the US involved in it. The Israeli cover story that their ship was hit with an Iranian supplied missile is consistent with this objective. Hopefully things won't go nuclear.
7/15/06- So fifty-five people killed in Lebanon and one person killed in Israel is reported as "a total of 56 killed on both sides", and the picture on the front page of the Greenville News today isn't a van full of Lebanese children killed by an Israeli F-16, but an elderly Israeli gentleman shaken up by a Hezbollah rocket.
The Israeli onslaught against Lebanon is supposedly intended to punish the Lebanese people for events which most everyone agrees they have no great control over. But that's OK. Indeed, if the Lebanese government is to blame for not stopping the abduction of two Israelis, then who's to blame for not stopping the abduction of over thirty people in Baghdad today? How can the Lebanese, or the Iranians or Syrians for that matter, be expected to completely stop the sort of resistance in Lebanon that the combined firepower of the American military has never come close to stopping in Iraq?
Israel creates conditions which make some level of armed conflict inevitable, then uses that conflict as an excuse for further violence. And we foot the bill. We pay for the weapons to bomb a power plant in Gaza, a blatant act of collective punishment plainly against international law, and then since we wrote the insurance policy we get to pay to rebuild the plant we paid to destroy. An annual budget deficit in the hundreds of billions every year, our own infrastructure in need of repair, and we have to pay to build, destroy, and then rebuild infrastructure on the other side of the world, all in the service of a country with which we have no defense treaty, and which in fact routinely spies on us. Hopefully it's a conspiracy, because otherwise it's just plain insanity.
But the icing on the cake is that when asked at a press conference about the bombing of Beirut International Airport and the devastation being wrought against a fairly helpless country, our President honest to God made a joke about carving a pork roast. Honest to God. As if all the carnage and waste and dishonesty and incompetence weren't bad enough, on top of everything else our President is an ass. Just a flat out ass. You can say what you want about Hitler, but he didn't make jokes about pork roast at international press conferences. Repeated jokes. Jesus. What an ass.
7/11/06- This just in ... deficit plunges to 300 billion! National
debt slightly less out of control than usual!
You know, I think the dumbest thing they get away with is their claim that
cutting taxes actually decreases the deficit. Maybe if we eliminated taxes
completely we'd even have a surplus. Makes me wonder what kind of math they
learned in first grade.
7/6/06- Went to Bob's WalkTalk this evening at the library, and how
do politicians get away with complaining about their own status quo? Why
do I have to listen to Bob, whose party has been running the country for
years, complain to me about how high my taxes are? And how
can Bob actually complain about inadequate funding for immigration control?
Who does he think decides how much to spend on it? Were we supposed to write
him a check? Does the media know about this?
Let's just say this, get it out in the open- politics is mostly a hustle.
It just is. It's mostly smoke and mirrors and talk and money and politicians
exploiting ignorance and gullibility and fear like any other snake oil salesman
that ever lived. Let's admit this and deal with it.
6/27/06- Saw Attorney General Gonzales announcing the arrest of a
terror discussion group in Miami, and when asked by a reporter if the group
had any connection to Al-Qaeda Gonzales actually turned and asked someone
before answering.
..... Al-Qaeda?
Involved? Uh .... dunno ... lemmie ask ... uh ... uuuh. No.
You know, when Clinton lied you almost felt like he believed it himself.
He was like the Muhammad Ali of lying. The latest bunch are just disingenuous
hucksters.
The Miami 7 were obviously nowhere close to actually doing anything, if
indeed they ever would have. If the government was serious about fighting
terrorism the undercover asset would have been left in place and the surveillance
continued in pursuit of a stronger case, and more importantly in pursuit
of connections to other and more credible groups, some of which might actually
stage an attack. And they probably won't be a bunch of losers living in
a warehouse in Miami.
But it's not about terrorism. It's about politics. And fear. Plain. And.
Simple.
4/25/06- Just had coffee with Congressman
Inglis and Libertarian candidate John
Cobin, who I initially mistook for security (sorry John) (actually,
you wouldn't be bad at that). It was a good and, believe it or not, nonrancorous
discussion. They didn't convert me to faith and I didn't convert them to
hard objectivity. Bob didn't convert John or me to Republican conservatism.
John didn't convert me or Bob to theological libertarianism. I'm not sure
if I disagree more with Bob's pragmatism or John's dogmatism, which is at
least dogmatic, but we didn't come away any further apart, and it was good
to get acquainted. We decided we should have a televised debate. And we
of course talked about Griffith
a fair bit, since he wasn't there.
3/24/06: Got a call from Congressman Inglis yesterday wanting to
meet for lunch today, along with the current Democratic nominee contender,
William Griffith. Actually, I got the call around 2:30 this morning, which
is when I got home from the hospital following my sister's all day labor
and eventual C section last night. About the time I'm wondering if I have
enough brain cells left to update the new niece's website, I checked the
answering machine and may have very briefly thought that political recordings
were really getting sophisticated. Bob thought it would be a good idea for
the contenders to have a familiarization lunch at Stax, where I've wanted
to go for awhile anyway. Seemed like a good idea to me and I called Bob
back this morning, but he said Griffith's schedule is too busy at the moment.
Checked my email a short while ago after another day at the hospital and
Bob had forwarded me Griffith's email saying he has "too many pending speaking
engagements to do anything next week." Just too dang busy to have a sandwich
with a congressman he's running against. Anyway, the project remains in
work, and Bob thinks we should do lunch even if Griffith can't make it.
I emailed him back I'm generally free, let me know.
2/22/06- Genie Murphy is sending in the first ballot petition
form being returned, so she gets her name up and in bold.
2/17/06- Talked to the state election commission about the mechanics
of submitting the ballot petition. Sounds straightforward.
2/14/06- Talking to the state election commission about getting on
the ballot, expecting a call back. Added Dylan and Brian to the list of
people getting ballot petition signatures. Working on an incentive program,
the first phase of which includes mention on the website.
1/31/06- Turns out you don't have to register as a federal candidate
until you've spent $5000, so still another $4,987 to go before all the forms
have to be filled out. Which is a relief, because they're really quite ....
well, federal.
Got a speaking engagement with the Quakers, who ought to be a receptive
antiwar audience. So a good introduction to the public speaking area.
