current events

I suppose I should be used to it by now, but I’m not.

When it comes to policy matters, the mainstream media will sit on its thumbs indefinitely, taking a position that purports to be objective but is in fact a form of cowardly post-modernism–that there is no true and false, no right and wrong, but that there are simply two sides to every story.

But when a juicy personal scandal comes along–one that is tangential or irrelevant to policy, then the press extends its claws.

I speak, of course, about Bush’s history in the “champagne unit” of the Texas Air National Guard, his, uh, undocumented presence for duty, and the newfound interest in it.

It’s a bit of a mystery to me why this wasn’t an issue in 2000, or before for that matter. It’s been known, and it’s been covered intermittently since then, with some interesting angles. Something–I don’t know what–poked the press in the side and whetted their interest in this. Which is fine in and of itself: as a bellicose president, Bush of all people should be held up for close scrutiny when it comes to his own military service. But there have been so many issues of more immediate concern during the past four years that went underreported that the renewed interest in investigative journalism comes across as tawdry.

So said Jon LeibowitzStewart of the White House press corp’s recent conversion from stenographers to journalists, with regard to the President’s murky National Guard service record.

My mother, not known for her tinfoil millinery, mentioned to me that someone official had predicted that the U.S. would nab Osama bin Laden within the year.

She speculates that if this is being publicly predicted, then the government already has him in the bag and is waiting to unveil him at the moment when it will do GW’s poll results the most good (say, November). On the one hand, I don’t put anything past the current administration. On the other, I pointed out to her that a number of people speculated that the U.S. military captured Saddam long before it was made public. This apparently was not the case, but what’s interesting is the number of stories (mostly outside the USA) indicating that the Kurds caught him and then handed him off.

So who knows what the hell is going on. The source of the ObL prediction is a Lt Colonel. I have no idea how I should read that. What to make of the fact that it’s not a senior officer or senior administration official? Clearly senior administration officials are quite happy to stick their feet in their mouths to score political points. So I wouldn’t put it past them to leak this if it were true. Then again, intentionally leaking it via a Lt. Col. would be smart, as it keeps the higher-ups out of the mess, makes it easier to bury the story, and may give it more credibility because the leaker is close to the action. Then again, this may just be an officer being cocky. The military may have some useful intel on him, but his mouth is writing checks that his troops may not be able to cash. Certainly, this is the most plausible scenario. Or perhaps this is an officer being sloppy. ObL really is in the bag, and this guy can’t keep a secret.

You just can’t tell with these guys.

I had dinner last night with some friends, Drew and Farooq, and rather than watch George II deliver a pack of lies, platitudes, and empty promises, I insisted that we talk.

Inevitably, talk turned to politics. Now, neither of these guys has any love for our current Dear Leader, but I was surprised at their antipathy towards Dean, which was not so much because of any of Dean’s policies, or even his personal style, but what the mainstream media has told us his style is: angry.

This surprised me on a couple of levels. Both of these guys are much smarter than me, and generally very well-informed. But in this case, they were making a judgment A) based not on platforms and policy, but on personality, and B) based not so much on the person’s actual personality as the conventional-wisdom story of that person’s personality.

Now, I’ve been impressed by Dean–I haven’t decided for certain that I’ll vote for him, but it is looking that way. So I have my own biases. But when Farooq showed us how Dean is depicted on the Drudge Report, of all sources, to back up his point, I was a bit appalled.

Aside from cracking that Dean’s too unstable to be the man with his finger on the button, both of them seemed to believe strongly that we need a safe bet candidate like Kerry to have any hopes of defeating Bush in November. I’ve been thinking about this, and I don’t agree.

I suspect that if the election is anything but a blowout (which is very unlikely), it will be rigged. All it will take is a discreet call to Wally O’Dell and some voting machines “patched” in some close races.

Which is why we would need to gamble on a blowout. A safe candidate like Kerry might edge Bush in a fair fight, but without a blowout, and–in a rigged election–certain to lose. A riskier candidate like Dean might have a greater chance of losing a fair vote. In an election, though, where the opposition can rig the outcome a little but not a lot, we need someone who has some chance at beating the spread.

This tinfoil-hat logic isn’t the reason I’m tending towards Dean, but it is something I’m tossing around.

The measures that the Bush administration wanted to put in place to ensure his safety on his visit to the UK are almost beyond belief: closing the London underground, immunity for snipers who accidentally kill protesters, and the use of battlefield weaponry against protesters. Contrast this with GW’s eye-roll-inducing declaration that he is looking forward to visiting a country where people have the right to protest.

Or maybe not: he has cancelled a planned address to the two houses of the UK’s Parliament, no doubt wanting to avoid a repeat of his embarrassing heckling when he addressed Australia’s.

For passing the broadcast flag.

This gives the Hollywood regulatory oversight over not only digital television, but anything that can play a digital video file, including computers, some cellphones, etc (here’s an interesting wrinkle).

Hair-metal rock. Leg warmers. Tiered miniskirts. Mullets. And of course, a cretinous, right-wing president. The 80s? Yes, but apparently there are nefarious forces at work in the world today that want to make sure that those who are too young to remember (or appreciate the horrors of) the first go-round will get a chance to do so now. I’ve been seeing all this stuff around.

I remember during the 80s, an article in Esquire dubbed the 80s “the Re Decade” (in contrast to the 70s, which was “the Me Decade”), the point being that the 80s was recycling pop-culture from previous eras, especially the 50s. So we’re re-recycling now, which is fitting, since we’re re-redistricting.

Break out your headbands and fold your lapels up.

What are we doing in Iraq again? Stopping the imminent threat posed by Saddam’s WMD’s? Nope. Stopping his WMD programs? Nope, that’s not it either. Liberating the oppressed Iraqi people? Yeah, that must be it. No, wait:

In a sign of frustration, he offered an unorthodox military solution: “If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens. You’re dealing with insane suicide bombers who are killing our people, and we need to be very aggressive in taking them out.”

I suppose this is that “we had to destroy the village in order to save it” logic.

This turd just got deposited in my in-box through the unlikely vector of the local mailing list for freaks.

From the Republican Liberty Caucus of Austin:

This Friday, October 24th, is United Nations Day. 
I hope you can join us  and Several pro-liberty
 and pro-American sovereignty groups in making 
this  dismal day an exciting and fun one, with a 
good old fashioned UN Flag  Burning! 

WHAT: UN - Flag Burning - Day
WHEN: This Friday, October 24th at 6PM
WHERE: 11th Street, in front of the south 
State Capital, Austin, Texas

Bring your marshmallows, some friends and a camera!

[PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO ALL PATRIOTS]

For whatever it’s worth, you can look these nitwits up online. What are you going to do with these people? Perhaps introduce them to these guys (there’s someone in my neighborhood with a yard-sign from them). I’m sure they’d get along famously

A politically active religious zealot has publicly and repeatedly advocated the use of nuclear weapons against the U.S. government. Interestingly, he did so within American borders, and continues to walk around a free man.

One might expect him to be hustled off to Gitmo where he’d be fitted for an orange jumpsuit, but because this particular advocate of terrorism happens to be Pat Robertson, it’s not likely to happen.

Everyone knows the Democrats couldn’t agree to Republican plans for Texas congressional redistricting. And many of you know Republicans in the state House can’t agree with their counterparts in the state Senate, for arcane reasons. They’ve been bickering so long they’re on the verge of postponing elections so they can settle the squabble.

“We’re just praying the Democrats will leave again, to take the heat off of us,” Smithee said.

Just too rich.

Bush has asked for $87 billion to rebuild Iraq. Actually, that’s a lowball figure–he really wants more like $150 billion, and once you add in the interest payments, it will be many times that. But let’s stick with $87 billion. Of that, most of it will go to pay for American forces over there; the rest will actually be used for reconstruction (that is, Halliburton contracts).

But even the $20 billion or so for actual reconstruction is a lot of money, and some Democrats have shamefully proposed–and some Republicans supported–the idea that the money should be treated as a loan to Iraq, which that country would repay.

Now, never mind the whole blood-for-oil slogan. Never mind that the administration mistakenly thought that the Halliburton welfare project rebuilding effort could be paid for out of oil revenues. The idea that one country would invade another, blow it up, and then charge it for repairs is appalling. The Mafia has it figured out: they charge you protection money up-front, so that nothing…unfortunate happens to your country. We could save everybody a lot of trouble if we’d just extort rather than invade and then try to take money.

I’ve written before about the “senior administration official” leaking the identity of a CIA covert operative to the press, as revenge for her husband embarrassing the White House, a story Robert Novak ran. The story-behind-the-story was astounding, but got very little press at the time. Now that the CIA has requested a Justice Department investigation (which in fact has been underway for a while), and has publicized that request in the media, the media is reviving it–a little bit.

Billmon has been beating the drum on this story for the past couple of days.

One of Billmon’s commenters wondered, if the administration is willing to pull a dirty trick like this over a relatively piddling matter, what are they doing with the really important stuff? One shudders to think. And we can clearly drop the “if”: The fact of the CIA’s request makes it clear that the story is not bogus. Someone in the administration who is placed highly enough to find out Wilson’s wife’s secret identity, and vindictive enough to violate federal law and put her and her contacts’ lives at risk just to get back at her husband: Carl Rove comes to mind.

Later: Even some well-connected Republicans are appalled:

Compared to this, all of Clinton’s peccadilloes look like an mildly diverting scene from an Oscar Wilde production … Let me make this as plain as possible — I was an unpaid advisor for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, and I know and respect some high-ranking people in the administration. And none of that changes the following: if George W. Bush knew about or condoned this kind of White House activity, I wouldn’t just vote against him in 2004 — I’d want to see him impeached. Straight away.

There’s lots, lots more out there in the blogosphere, but this is some of the juicy stuff.

Via the always-interesting six different ways, I ran across pollkatz’ pageload of presidential-poll data. The Bush approval-rating graph in particular is interesting. Taken out of context, we see that whenever his rating gets near 50%, something happens to give them a big boost, after which they resume the prevailing trend: steady decline. Of course, context helps: the first boost was 9/11; the second, the invasion of Iraq.

Right now his numbers are perilously close to 50%, making me wonder what he’s got up his sleeve for the immediate future. The military’s already overextended, so I don’t expect he’ll invade anyone. Another terrorist attack would probably give him some altitude, but look at the glide slope he’s on: it would need to be a really serious incident to kick him up high enough to avoid a hard landing before November ’04. Either that, or he’ll need a succession of smaller incidents.

Read this. Then try to wash the slimy feeling off.

I’ve pretty much quit blogging about national politics. The news is so uniformly awful, the principal actors so bogglingly loathsome, the agendas so completely evil, and the real truth so hard to pin down that it just doesn’t seem worth it.

Or as Teresa Nielsen Hayden put it, I deeply resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist.

When people seriously consider the possibility that Bush intentionally started forest fires as window-dressing for his forest “thinning” plans, when former insiders and former generals are blasting the Bushies over Iraq, and when previously sympathetic British government officials suggest administration complicity in the 9-11 attacks, then you know the distance between you and the wearers of tinfoil hats is…the thickness of a tinfoil hat.

Marriage is not about affirming somebody’s love for somebody else. It’s about uniting together to be open to children, to further civilization in our society.

Santorum’s remarks (of which this is a comparatively inoffensive sample) are burning up the blogosphere. I’ve been married before–and will be again–without being “open” to kids. If we’re going to have “defense of marriage” laws (or, worse, a constitutional amendment), going by Santorum’s dubious logic, shouldn’t we restrict it to people who are fertile and plan on having children? Why not exclude straight people who are infertile (because of age, biology, or sterilization), or just don’t want kids?

Gwen wondered how Santorum’s wife might feel about his loveless theory of marriage. I suggested she probably reconciled herself to that a long time ago.