Alert

Fitzgerald's grand jury may get a look at some interesting papers, 250 pages of them, in fact. It could be that a second shoe is about to drop in the Plame case.

If you're a Jackson Browne fan

or even if you're not, check out this song and video.

Really scary

To me the most chilling part of this awful report of the killings in Iraq yesterday is the story about the 47 dead bodies found beside a highway. Apparently, some group (who knows of what, if any, affiliation or identity or purpose) set up a fake roadblock and then mowed down the drivers who stopped. Imagine the terror when, driving along with your family, you spot a roadblock ahead. You can't turn around, and you can't accellerate, for fear of it being a "legitimate" roadblock set up by the US, who routinely shoot at any cars that do that; and if you proceed and it turns out to be a fake roadblock, you're dead.
I suppose all you can do is slowly approach, invoking Allah, bigtime.

The state of the nation

There are many ways to measure how the US is faring, among them its position in the world, its freedoms and security, and the truthfulness, fairness and good will of its representatives. Okay--we're in terrible shape on those counts. But what about our economy, specifically, the condition of our wage-earners, the middle class that for decades has made the US so vital and strong?

Well, I gotta tell ya, it sucks. Check out this report which, from top to bottom, lists scary data about our citizenry. The median income of the middle class is stagnant, its net worth is stagnant, its savings is nonexistent, its debt is at sky-high levels, and the gap between rich and poor is higher than ever--by far. And this is no crazy-liberal report, this is the Federal Reserve's annual fiscal report, as digested by an Associated Press economic reporter.

As it suggests, when the real estate bubble bursts, and as interest rates and inflation rise--as is already happening--the middle class is in big, big trouble. Let's hope they have enough gasoline money to get to the polls.

If it walks like a duck...

Let's see. One hundred twenty-seven dead Iraqis today, slain in various sectarian bombings and shootings throughout the country, but it's not a civil war. What is it, then. A platypus?

On the ground when the bombs went off

Here's an authoritative report from someone who was there (albeit in the Green Zone) when the bombs went off in Baghdad, wrecking the Shiites' major mosque. Read the entire post, please, including the ominous language of Shiite Cleric al-Sistani at the end. If that doesn't mean civil war, I don't know what.

For another on-site report, this from a resident of Baghdad, read this. Does it sound ominous? Kinda like a quote from Anne Frank's diary, maybe?

Call me crazy, call me stupid

In fact, you can call me sick and cynical and things like that, but get this:

You know how I've been saying (posting) repeatedly for years that the continued strife in Iraq is just what Bush wants, because it perpetuates his power and allows the US to remain there, build bases, exercise its dominion over the area. (A corollary being that Osama bin Laden wants it too, because it serves his purpose of fomenting and training his functionaries.) Well, I still believe that's what Bush/Cheney/Rummie and the NeoCon bureaucrats had in mind to begin with, for the first couple of years after the invasion.

But now I think they've had enough, and now earnestly want the battling and bickering between the Iraqis to end because it's becoming an albatross for Republican candidates in the upcoming Congressional elections.

Well, too bad, gang. You've gotten on a horse you can't get off. At this rate, with mosques being bombed, with Sunnis and Shias attacking each other daily, with the Iraq government unable to come up with a cohesive administration, there ain't no end in sight to that nation's unsettled state, and all the reconstruction and investment in the world ain't gonna change that, certainly not in time for the midterm elections in the US, and not even for the presidential elections in 2008.

Well, the cynical part is this. I want the strife to continue now. I want the Iraqis to go through the same turmoil that other democracies have had to endure in order to prevail. France? Ten years of hell, followed by empire and finally relative peace and freedom. The US? Fifteen years between the earliest stirrings and adoption of the constitution, with the War of 1812 as a capper and a bloody civil war to follow. Mexico, Latin America, South America, Africa, Asia--name a nation (besides, maybe, Canada) where the transition to cohesion and democracy was other than turbulent and protracted.

Why do I want this? In large part so that we can get Bush and his gang of warmongers out of office, but also because the situation in the Middle East can no longer be papered over by our Western ways. When the Brits drews the lines in the sand and created various "nations" after World War I, it gave no regard to the aspirations or allegiances of the indigenous people. In Iraq, for example, it lumped together Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds and Assyrians, and told them they were a nation. Well, now we know better. The Arabs have no historical connection to the Kurds, indeed, have strong antipathy; the Sunni Muslims have strong objection to core beliefs of the Shia Muslims, which have been exacerbated by the U.S. occupation; the Assyrians and Turkmen have their own allegiances in the north and northwest of Iraq, and on and on.

Yeah, if there's to be a semblance of cohesion and cooperation in Iraq, it's going to have to come from the Iraqis, not from extortionate pronouncements by the occupiers, and not in a matter of months. Unfortunately, for Bush and the NeoCons, not in a matter of years, either.

Bluffing

Condi and our ambassador to Iraq are telling the Iraqis that they'd better get their act together or we'll pull out our resources, financially and otherwise.
Right.
We'll leave a failed state, to be taken over by terrorists, leaving a hotbed for anti-US militants.
Right.

I love this. Love it even more than the Cheney/quail shooting

Bush's latest blunder, letting Dubai take over our ports. What an idiot lives in the White House!

Shell game

Bush's previous budget cut so much money from research for alternative fuels that the Department of Energy had to lay off 5,000 employees from one of its facilities. But today, Bush is visiting the facility to give a speech to tout his new-found love for non-fossil-fuel sources, and so that facility, really quick, dredged up some money from other projects and hired back the 5,000 researchers in time for Bush's visit. Now that, ladies and gents, is straight out of Goebbels' handbook.

No surprise at all

Jack Straw, British Foreign Minister, makes another "surprise visit" to Iraq, this time to try to iron out wrinkles in the post-election governance. And you think your job stinks? Imagine waking up in the morning to head off to Baghdad, wearing your three-piece suit, to try to make nice with the same folks whom your soldiers have just beaten up on tele. I think I'd rather stay in bed.

Coverage of coverage?

I'm listening to (can't bear to watch) a television show on CNN the subject of which is "was too much coverage given to the Cheney shooting incident?" I suppose next week the networks will air programs asking, "was too much coverage given to the question of whether too much coverage was given to the Cheney shooting incident"? And the following week the question will be...

If you don't believe me...

Believe this study of the political leanings of guests on the Sunday morning talk shows on MSM television showing that the guests, as well as the commentators on the CBS, NBC and ABC shows tilt distinctly to the right. No, tilt isn't the word. Nor is lean. It's wallow. It was so even during Clinton's terms, but since Bush took office it's now even more obvious--and now documented.
And, note, please, that this study doesn't include the most-wallowing, and most-watched network, Faux, which is so right-wing that you can almost hear the Sieg Heil's in the background, so safe for the Bush administration that Cheney was willing to appear on it to "explain" shooting his buddy in the face.
Bush and Cheney lie--but the numbers in this study don't. Just watch tomorrow and make the count yourself.

It makes you want to weep

Is it a case of "unintended consequences"? Is it "the price of liberation"? Whatever it is, the widening of the divide between Sunni and Shia arabs in Iraq is a sad product of our invasion. Sad, sad, sad.

Okay, they've finally got my interest

I've so far stayed away (to the extent it's possible) from the "Cheney-shot-an-old-man-in-the-face" story, including the odd sequence by which it was reported, but these latest two observations have me wondering.
First, why didn't they have Whittington airlifted from the accident site to a hospital? As this post points out, choppers are on standby whenever Cheney's at large, and surely if Whittington's wounds were so serious that they in fact did airlift him to a large hospital within minutes of his arriving--an hour after the accident, by ambulance--at a local hospital, why didn't they airlift him in the first place?
Second--and the possible explanation for everything: the shooting and the various delays afterward--is that Cheney was intoxicated by the mixture of drugs and alcohol. He admitted to having "one beer" at lunch (Who in the world has one beer? How many times have cops heard, "I just had one beer, officer"?) Cheney has to pop so many pills that his "one beer" could well have affected his shooting and/or his judgment. To race to the microphones immediately after the shooting would have been impossible.
I have one more observation. There've been raised numerous questions about the "30 yards" between Cheney and Whittington when the shot was fired, focusing on the severity of the wounds and the scattering of the buckshot at that distance, opining that at thirty yards the shot would have been more widely scattered and would not have penetrated as deeply, through clothing, as it apparently did. Interesting, to me, but not conclusive. To me, what's noteworthy is that if Cheney hit a man in the face at thirty yards, he had to be aiming at ground level, not at all skyward. To be sure, quail, when flushed, do fly low, but that low? I think Cheney was shooting at the birds on the ground, that's what. Sounds just like him, just like bombing WMD-less Baghdad.

The Clinton effect

This essay is right on about the stifling effect on Democratic politics of the McGovern effect ("weakness of national security spells disaster at the polls), and the Nader effect (not supporting a centrist Democrat elects Republicans). To which I add the Bill Clinton effect, viz:

Because Clinton managed to win two presidential elections by sliding toward the center on most issues, Democrats believe that's the recipe for victory. What they forget is that in neither election did he win a majority of the total votes cast (Perot's presence on the ballot accounted for this); and they fail to recognize the effect of his enormous charisma, overwhelming both of his adversaries, Bush I and Dole. Gore and Kerry were no Bill Clintons when it came to charisma, that's for sure, but had they truly taken command of the left and those with lower incomes--had they made the elections a class war--the would have won handily.

Abu Ghraib revisited

Finally, some of the additional photos of the prisoner abuse are emerging. (Viewer discretion advised.) I understand there are others, including video, that are even more ghastly. Just in time, too, because the Muslims' outrage over the Muhammed cartoon mess was dying down.

What's in a name?

Like "permanent bases in Iraq." This article by Tom Engelhardt details not just the obvious fact of Bush/Cheney's plan for a permanent presence in Iraq, but the MSM's utter silence on the issue. Like the air war--the escalation of bombing and missle strikes by drones--the "enduring bases" go unmentioned, ignored, while billions of our tax dollars support them.

I can't believe it

After all that sturm and drang last month over Bush/Cheney's illegal wiretapping, and various lawmakers' calls for Congressional hearings, now it looks like there won't be any hearings after all. The dog and pony show the administration put on has cooled the Republicans on the idea, so we'll never learn details of the program, and, for all we know, it will continue unabated, uninvestigated, unknown.

Come to think of it, I do believe it.

Well, whaddya know!

The American Bar Association, my former colleagues (although I was never a member of that particular body) have told the administration that its warrantless eavesdropping on US citizens is illegal. Not maybe, not kinda. But illegal. Good job.