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KR Washington Bureau | 10/30/2003 | U.S. warned of more suicide attacks in Iraq:
"Rumors are swirling around Baghdad that foreign terrorists are likely to initiate another massive wave of suicide bombings in the Iraqi capital within days and weeks as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan continues.

A shadowy Iraqi nationalist resistance group known as 'Mohammed's Army' used an intermediary to pass on word that a foreign Islamic terrorist cell based in the western Iraqi town of Ramadi plans to carry out bombings on Saturday and Nov. 13, striking Baghdad police stations and other targets associated with the U.S.-led coalition.

'They will not care about bombing mosques, primary schools, civilians, women and children,' said the intermediary, who said he was quoting a cell leader who claimed to have knowledge of the plan. 'They said this will be a gift for the coalition.'"

The article says that this may be just a rumor, may be false, may be true. Let's hope for the sake of everybody in Iraq, American and Iraqi, that it's false.

But it's another indication of what a complete botch we're making of things there that our folks in Baghdad apparently have no idea whether it's true or not.

But a senior coalition official, who also asked not to be named, acknowledged Thursday that intelligence on the Iraqi resistance remains poor.

"We don't have enough humint (human intelligence or informants) to really know," the official said.

That lack of informants is a major handicap for U.S. intelligence, something unlikely to be helped by a range of new technology being sent to Iraq to help track anti-coalition groups.

Great. Just great. Well, it goes right along with the stuff I'm hearing now about Saddam being personally involved in the attacks. What does it say about our position in Iraq if he can operate that freely and we haven't been able to find him in six months? Jeebus. And people think the Republicans can be trusted with national security? I wouldn't trust this bunch to keep an eye on my lunch while I got a napkin. This, from the comments on an item at Atrios, was just too good to pass up. Thanks, Ras_Nesta, whoever you may be:

Here's a great exchange from last week's "Now". Joseph Hough is the president of union theological seminary in New York, called there from retirement after a lifetime as dean of the Vanderbilt Divinity School in Tennessee, and the Claremont School of Theology in California.:

---

MOYERS: Again, I come back to the paradox, which is that these policies to which you are protesting, which you say are immoral were enacted by a Congress and an Administration elected to a significant degree with the support of the religious right — Conservative Christians who got active in politics and saw that their candidates were elected, and they're seeing now the policies that they believe they elected those officials to carry out.

HOUGH: Well. That's true, Bill, but my Dad, as I told you, is a Baptist preacher. He was until he was 84. And there was a notorious drunk in town who when he got drunk, he really went after preachers. But he said he was born-again Christian. And one day, someone asked my father if he thought Brother Suggs was a born-again Christian. And my father said, "Only God knows that."

But, you know, the Lord Jesus said, "By their fruits, you shall know them." And speaking as a humble fruit inspector of the Lord, I'd say that if this person is a born-again Christian, there's a mixed signal somewhere." I feel the same way.

If Tom Delay is acting out of his born-again Christian convictions in pushing legislation that disadvantages the poor every time he opens his mouth, I'm not saying he's not a born-again Christian, but as the Lord's humble fruit inspector, it sure looks suspicious to me. And anybody who claims in the name of God they're gonna run over people of other nations, and just willy-nilly, by your own free will, reshape the world in your own image, and claim that you're acting on behalf of God, that sounds a lot like Caesar to me.

Why is it, do you suppose, that Bush has attended no, zip, nil, nada, military funerals for our soldiers who have been killed in Iraq? Do you suppose he's afraid someone will hang a "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him?

Here's today's episode of Through the Looking Glass:

Rice Faults Past Administrations on Terror:
"President Bush's national security adviser said on Thursday that the Clinton and other past administrations had ignored evidence of growing terrorist threats and that despite repeated attacks on American interests, 'until Sept. 11, the terrorists faced no sustained, systematic and global response' from the United States."

I'm sure this is going to expose just lots of semantic arguments from the wingers about whether the response from the Clinton administration was "sustained, systematic, and global". That's a sideshow from the basic point, which is that Condi's statement is a steaming load of fetid dingos' kidneys. For a bit farther down in the same article, we find this:

In the past she has said that a detailed plan to counter Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups was on her desk, approved, when the attacks occurred. That plan became the basis for the decision to drive Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan and topple the Taliban.

There's more, including parts where she appears to differ with the President himself in describing what happened while Bush pere was in office, but she (predictably) saves most of her shots for the Clinton administration, recycling this piece of trash:

"It is now undeniable that the terrorists declared war on America and on the civilized world many years before Sept. 11, 2001," she said in remarks delivered to the legal center at the Waldorf-Astoria. "The attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, the bombing of Pan Am 103 in 1988, the World Trade Center in 1993, the attacks on American installations in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000: These and other atrocities were part of a sustained, systematic campaign to spread devastation and chaos. Yet until Sept. 11, the terrorists faced no sustained, systematic and global response."

It's remarkable in that she conflates all these incidents as though they were committed by the same (or at least closely related) groups, while some of them occurred at a time when we were funding al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. It also recycles the meme that "Clinton didn't do anything to respond to terror attacks during his administration. To put it bluntly, this is bullshit. It looks like SEIU, the largest union in the AFL-CIO, is moving closer to endorsing Howard Dean in the primaries! According to CNN, a union spokesbeing said "It's Dean or no one." Say hi to the 386,000 new jobless, down by 5,000 from last week's figure that was revised upward by 5,000.

It's a nice gimmick. You get to issue press releases saying the number of jobless claims has fallen, when they're actually the same.

The Kiddies over at the Corner have finally spoken up about Luskin's Lunacy. Well, at least a couple of them have. Props to Johnathan Adler and Robert George. A sneer to Jonah Goldberg, as usuall, for trying to excuse it as "a classic new-to-the-web blunder". No, a "new-to-the-web blunder" is reading anything Jonah's written. Threatening a lawsuit is crazy. ...think twice. Under current law, this fellow very likely would have been executed by now.

Judge tosses ex-CIA agent's Houston conviction (Houston Chronicle):
A federal judge in Houston has thrown out the 20-year-old arms smuggling conviction of a former CIA agent, outlining in scathing terms how federal officials knowingly used a false affidavit at his trial and concealed the act through years of appeals.

Edwin Wilson was convicted in Houston in 1983 of smuggling arms to Libya at a time when the threat of Libyan terrorism was major news. Congress was mounting investigations into controversial CIA activities around the globe, and CIA administrators were actively trying to deflect criticism.
...
But U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes spelled out in his order vacating Wilson's conviction, that the CIA forwarded a memo to the U.S. attorney's office a few days after he was convicted -- but before he was sentenced -- alerting them that they had since discovered at least five projects Wilson had worked on for the CIA after 1971 -- including a planned trip to Iran with the CIA's deputy director.

The CIA forwarded the memo to the U.S. attorney's office, Hughes said, but after debating the issue for months, decided not to inform Wilson's attorneys. Wilson appealed, but the government failed to acknowledge that the affidavit was false.

Think this sort of thing isn't still going on? Ask Joe Wilson.

I just went over and slogged through things at NRO's Kiddie Corner, so you can spare yourself that distasteful task, to see if they had anything to say about the Luskin business. It seems that they're all much more occupied with Paul Krugman's cat and crowing about the one-quarter GDP increase in much the same way a boy entering puberty might exclaim over the first whisker on his chin. And they get paid for this.

From Ananova:
Sigourney Weaver has revealed she lived in a tree when she was a student.

The 54-year-old actress, who was studying at Stanford University at the time, said she and her boyfriend moved out of college accommodation to set up home in the tree.

She told German magazine Gala: "We didn't have a tree house, it was just a platform."

Weaver also revealed she used to dress in costume to go to lectures: "I sometimes dressed as an elf, but also as a tiger," she said.

Bush in a Hurry to Train Iraqis in Security Duty:
"The Bush administration has told the Pentagon to revamp and accelerate its plans for putting Iraqi security forces on the streets of Baghdad and other areas where American forces have come under attack, even if their training is significantly shortened, according to military and administration officials."

Somehow, I can't see anything good coming of putting under-trained Iraqi security personnel in charge of keeping order. And I wonder how much easier this "accelleration" is going to make getting a few of the "bad guys" into the security force.

As part of a plan the Pentagon is still developing, thousands of Iraqis who are now acting essentially as security guards — at oil operations, pipelines and other potential terrorist targets — would be given a few weeks of training in Iraq and neighboring Jordan. They would then be put on the front lines as militiamen, chiefly in the Sunni-dominated area northwest of Baghdad where the attacks have intensified the most in recent days, officials say. Later, their old jobs would be filled with recruits.

The reorganization is part of a broader military strategy to change the mix of Iraqi security forces — which include border guards, civil militiamen, police officers and army units — to combat the insurgents. A major goal is to rapidly increase the number of militiamen, and one option under consideration is to recruit former soldiers from the disbanded Iraqi Army, a senior Pentagon official said Wednesday.

For those of us old enough to remember, this just screams "Vietnamization". And we remember how well that worked. Karen Hitchcock, President of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany, has resigned. Rumors abound that she was forced out by SUNY Chancellor Bob King, a political ally of Gov. George Pataki, who would like to replace her with a more political appointee. Local radio host Dan Lynch says he's heard talk around the Capital that Hitchcock will be replaced by Lt. Governor Mary Donahue, which would mean that if Gov. Pataki gets a job in the Bush administration, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno would become Governor for the remainder of the term. Bruno, nearing retirement, has had his eye on the governor's mansion for a long time, but isn't likely to want to run for a full term as governor at his age.

It's going to be very interesting to see how this plays out.

First, this, from Yahoo News, about people in Italy making a big deal over making ice cream with liquid nitrogen. They say they're going after a patent, but the kind of folks I hang around with have done this for a while. But the best thing about the article is the accompanying photo:

With the caption, and I am not making this up, "Nitrogen Symbol Photo".

Meanwhile, some enterprising folks at the University of Arizona apparently absconded with a cylinder of liquid nitrogen and made what the article says was a "dry ice bomb", but which I bet was actually some liquid nitrogen poured into a plastic soda bottle, which they then capped and tossed. As the nitrogen boiled, the pressure built up until boom!

Reading about the reaction sure makes me glad I went to college well before the War on Terror.

Donald Luskin, a scribbler for National Review who seems to have the same sort of relationship with him that John Hinckley did with Jodie Foster, has decided to go all O'Reilly on Atrios, apparently with the idea that Atrios would get all a-quiver at receiving a letter from an attorney. It's a nuisance suit, pure and simple. Luskin doesn't have a leg to stand on, and the National Review should be ashamed to continue publishing his drivel.

Gee, I thought right wingers were against frivolous lawsuits.

More money out of my pocket for Halliburton. And they probably won't even send me a Christmas card.

Halliburton's Iraq contract extended:
Citing new damage to Iraq’s oil industry from saboteurs, the Bush administration Wednesday delayed its planned replacement of a lucrative no-bid contract that was awarded to Halliburton Co., Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company.

I loved Being John Malkovich. And his video with Christopher Walken for Fat Boy Slim's Weapon of Choice [thanks for the correction] was terrific. But I don't know about this.

Director Spike Jonze (BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, ADAPTATION) has found his next job, and it's adapting Maurice Sendak's classic childrens book WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE as a live-action movie for Universal Pictures. Tom Hanka and Gary Goetzman will produce the film through their Playtone Productions company. Sendak is also a producer on the film as well as John Carls.

Trent Lott, former U. of Missisippi cheerleader and noted for his lack of service in Vietnam, has this to say:

GOP Unity is strained by attacks:
“Honestly, it’s a little tougher than I thought it was going to be,” Lott said. 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.”

Update, due to after-the-fact brainstorm.
You want an unorthodox solution? How about we drop Trent and a enough of his GOP chickenhawk buddies over there to make up a platoon. Equip them each with an M-16, inadequate body armor, and a copy of the Geneva Conventions. Let's play Chickenhawk Survivor!

What's that, bubbie? You say none of the current candidates spins your fan? You want a candidate with military experience? And celebrity? Who's really forward thinking? Is that what's troubling you?

Well, here's your guy.

George Bush, in a press conference on 28 October 2003:

Q Mr. President, if I may take you back to May 1st when you stood on the USS Lincoln under a huge banner that said, "Mission Accomplished." At that time you declared major combat operations were over, but since that time there have been over 1,000 wounded, many of them amputees who are recovering at Walter Reed, 217 killed in action since that date. Will you acknowledge now that you were premature in making those remarks?

THE PRESIDENT: Nora, I think you ought to look at my speech. I said, Iraq is a dangerous place and we've still got hard work to do, there's still more to be done. And we had just come off a very successful military operation. I was there to thank the troops.

The "Mission Accomplished" sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished. I know it was attributed some how to some ingenious advance man from my staff -- they weren't that ingenious, by the way. But my statement was a clear statement, basically recognizing that this phase of the war for Iraq was over and there was a lot of dangerous work. And it's proved to be right, it is dangerous in Iraq. It's dangerous in Iraq because there are people who can't stand the thought of a free and peaceful Iraq. It is dangerous in Iraq because there are some who believe that we're soft, that the will of the United States can be shaken by suiciders -- and suiciders who are willing to drive up to a Red Cross center, a center of international help and aid and comfort, and just kill.

Keepers of Bush image lift stagecraft to new heights
By Elisabeth Bumiller New York Times, Friday, May 16, 2003

The most elaborate — and criticized — White House event so far was Mr. Bush's speech aboard the Abraham Lincoln announcing the end of major combat in Iraq. White House officials say that a variety of people, including the president, came up with the idea, and that Mr. Sforza embedded himself on the carrier to make preparations days before Mr. Bush's landing in a flight suit and his early evening speech.

Media strategists noted afterward that Mr. Sforza and his aides had choreographed every aspect of the event, even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush's right shoulder and the "Mission Accomplished" banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot.

U.S. Official Still Convinced Iraqis Moved WMDs:
A top U.S. intelligence official said on Tuesday he remained convinced that low-level Iraqi officials hid and destroyed evidence linked to weapons of mass destruction in the months before the war began.

Retired Air Force Gen. James Clapper, director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, told reporters he was not surprised that U.S. forces had not discovered any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq, citing a big increase in the number of vehicles heading to Syria before the war.

But Clapper, whose agency analyzes satellite imagery and produces maps, acknowledged that the images of the Iraqi vehicles did not show what cargo they were carrying.

President Bush justified the war in Iraq largely based on a perceived threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons have been found.

"I think probably in the few months prior to the onset of combat, there was probably an intensive effort to disperse to private homes, to move documentation and materials out of the country," Clapper said.

He said some of the widespread looting that took place after the war began may also have been a tactic to hide weapons or documents.

Clapper does not address the issue of how and/or where they might have hidden the factories for producing the weapons, why the Kay report didn't find any evidence of weapons or active weapons programs, or why none of the Iraqi scientists and leaders we have in custody have come forth with information about WMD. Other than that, it makes perfect sense.

Please?

This, from Ankara (all emphasis mine):

Turkey slams US "ineptitude" in request for troops to Iraq (Yahoo news):
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul charged that the United States had been inept in handling a request for Turkish troops to be sent to neighbouring Iraq to help its forces there, Anatolia news agency reported.

"Of course, there is ineptitude here. First they came, very enthusiastic, and said 'please do not be late' and then they saw that there are many different issues. They have many hesitations themselves," Gul was quoted as telling reporters.
...
"The Americans do not know the region very well. They did not pay much attention to the advice given to them. If the officials who are currently administering Iraq had known the region better, things would be better today," Gul said.

You know, I really want to be proud of my country, but sometimes it's awfully hard.

The Bush administration's spinmeisters are grabbing onto any halfway-decent numbers they can gin up to show that "the economy is getting better. No, really. Don't pay any attention to those homeless people. Look! Weapons of Mass Destruction!" Bob Herbert gives 'em what for...

There's a Catch: Jobs:
In the real world, which is the world of families trying to pay their mortgages and get their children off to college, the economy remains troubled. While the analysts and commentators of the comfortable class are assuring us that the president's tax cuts and the billions being spent on Iraq have been good for the gross domestic product, the workaday folks are locked in a less sanguine reality.

It's a reality in which:

• The number of Americans living in poverty has increased by three million in the past two years.
• The median household income has fallen for the past two years.
• The number of dual-income families, particularly those with children under 18, has declined sharply.

The administration can spin its "recovery" any way it wants. But working families can't pay their bills with data about the gross domestic product. They need the income from steady employment. And when it comes to employment, the Bush administration has compiled the worst record since the Great Depression.
...
Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, has taken a look at the hours being worked by families, rather than individuals. It's a calculation that gets to the heart of a family's standard of living.

The declines he found were "of a magnitude that's historically been commensurate with double-digit unemployment rates," he said. It was not just that there were fewer family members working. The ones who were employed were working fewer hours.
...
Meanwhile, these are some of the things working (and jobless) Americans continue to face:

• Sharply increasing local taxes, including property taxes.
• Steep annual increases in health care costs.
• Soaring tuition costs at public and private universities.

More here (the economy), and here (on jobs). The always-readable E.J. Dionne has a particularly thought-provoking column on Gen. Boykin, fundamentalists, and religious freedom today.

Taking Satan Seriously:
But without intending to, Boykin has revealed the difficulties with our usual arguments on behalf of religious liberty.

For the administration, it's not just that Boykin presents a political problem, because the most loyal part of Bush's base is made up of evangelical Christians, many of whom share Boykin's views. Even more important, it is highly likely that Bush himself, a genuinely devout Christian by all accounts, agrees with at least some, perhaps much, of what Boykin said. In particular, it's pretty certain that Bush believes that Satan is in some way implicated in the troubles the United States now faces. That is not an eccentric view among Christians. It is rather orthodox.

It covers some very important ground about the difference between how fundamentalists and those of us with more liberal theological views (and non-believers) view the idea of "religious liberty", which could help us all understand each other a little bit better. This from Barry Crimmins:

It's too bad the White House isn't as good at protecting the identities of intelligence officials as it is at protecting the identity of senior White House officials that out intelligence officials that are married to whistle-blowers.

There's a movement out there, started by Old Fashioned Patriot, to get folks to link to http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html with the text Miserable Failure. The goal is to make that the first site that comes up on Google with those search terms.

Are we making progress?

Could the people who exposed Valerie Plame be prosecuted under the Patriot Act?

Newsday.com - Spy Leak May Violate Patriot Act:
"Section 802 of the act defines, in part, domestic terrorism as 'acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state' that 'appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.'

Clearly, disclosing the identity of a CIA undercover agent is an act dangerous to life - the lives of the agent and her contacts abroad whom terrorists groups can now trace - and a violation of the criminal laws of the United States."

The article is by Sam Dash, who was chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973-74.

Not that this is ever going to happen under Lord Protector Ashcroft, but it's an interesting idea. The whole article is worth a read.

Latest from the "vermin that other vermin cross the street to avoid" category, it seems that the "Rev." Phelps' offspring have come all the way to Long Island with their "God hates fags" message:

Newsday:
Protesting what they believed to be an "abominable sin", eight members of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas picketed outside of W.C. Mepham High School in Bellmore this morning.

The protest, countered by hundreds of members of various gay, lesbian and transgender associations as well as parents and students of the high school, was organized in response to the alleged sodomizing of three freshman football players by three varsity football players at a camp in Preston Park, PA in August.

"This school has bought upon it everything that happened when parents taught [their children] that it is OK to be gay," said Becky Phelps-Davis as she stood outside of Mepham at about 7:00 a.m.

The other seven protestors, including four young children, were also members of the Phelps family. While Phelps-Davis stopped short of calling the students involved in the hazing incident homosexuals she did say, "It ain't very far from being [one] to sodomizing your fellow student."
...
After relocating the protest from the high school to the district administration building on Meadowbrook Road, as they had planned, the Phelps family made a show of stomping on rainbow colored gay pride and American flags before packing up their signs, waving goodbye and at about 8:30 a.m., disappearing as quickly as they had come.

What a bunch of young fascists in the making, eh? Desecrating the flag, holding "God hates America" signs. And shouldn't those "four young children" be in school? Perhaps someone should have a talk with the Topeka Child Protective Services.... More reasons I think Iraq, bad as it is, will not be the prime issue in the 2004 election:

Boston Globe:
After a summer of tax cuts and home refinancings, U.S. consumers seem poised for a winter of shopping. But if job growth doesn't start soon, analysts worry spending will dry up and threaten the economic recovery.

For a long time, the appetite of the American shopper has seemed insatiable. Consumers spent the country out of the 2001 recession, barely stumbled during the Iraq war, and hit the mall again armed with tax-cut checks and refinancing cash.

But with the unemployment rate hovering at 6.1 percent and the jobless recovery emerging as a major election concern for President Bush, policy-makers have warned that a weak labor market could sap consumer spending.

"Probably the biggest downside risk in the near- and intermediate-term economic outlook is the possibility that the job market will remain relatively sluggish," Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Alfred Broaddus said this week.

Having watched 2.6 million jobs vanish since he took office, Bush will likely soon be the first president since Depression-era leader Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs in his first term. Desperate to halt the decline, Bush has cut taxes to help goose consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.

So far it has worked. Aided by mortgage refinancing and still-strong home buying, the tax cuts likely pushed annualized consumer spending 5.7 percent higher in the third quarter, said John Lonski, chief economist for Moody's Investors Service.
...
But Lonski warned the extra cash in the economy will not be enough to offset consumer uncertainty if new hiring does not pick up by at least 100,000 jobs a month the end of the year.

"That's the critical element here. If you take that away, what that tells me is this latest dose of fiscal policy failed to get the U.S. economy out of its rut ... and we'll probably see a notable slowing in consumer spending by the first half of 2004," Lonski said.
...
"It sounds very simplistic, but people who don't have jobs typically don't spend as much money as people who do," said Tannenbaum. "That's where the risks come in for me. For spending to sustain itself it is essential that we have job creation."

...almost 6 minutes of revenue!

Grand jury, Wal-Mart investigate hiring of workers:
A federal grand jury in Pennsylvania is listening to secretly recorded conversations that allegedly suggest Wal-Mart executives knowingly hired cleaning-crew contractors that employed illegal immigrants, federal sources say.

Immigration agents arrested 250 custodians Thursday at 61 Wal-Mart stores nationwide on charges of working in this country illegally. Ten workers were employed by Wal-Mart and the rest by contractors that supply custodial services, a company spokeswoman said Friday. None involved stores in the Pacific Northwest.

The world's biggest retailer is conducting an internal investigation and plans to review the citizenship status of all 1.1 million U.S. employees, company spokeswoman Mona Williams said.
...
The detained workers, primarily from countries in Eastern Europe and Latin America, were taken to Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the 21 states where they were arrested. Some were still being held, bureau spokesman Garrison Courtney said.

Workers could face deportation, and Wal-Mart or any contractor that knowingly hired illegal immigrants could be fined up to $10,000 per worker.

Some interesting thoughts as we enter into the "long slog" period in Iraq, and many of us wonder how long it will be until we start seeing body counts and hear the phrase "light at the end of the tunnel".

Now Remind Me: Why Did We Bomb Laos?:
I don’t think that Americans quite grasp that countries don’t like having foreigners bomb them. We tend to justify our wars in terms of abstractions: We are attacking to defeat communism, impose democracy, overcome evil or, now, to end terrorism. The countries being bombed, devastated, and occupied usually think they are fighting invaders who have no business being there. The distinction is lost on many.

Gee, maybe it wasn't about getting back at Joe Wilson after all. Maybe it was about getting back at the CIA because they weren't producing the "right" intelligence. Didn't George's daddy ever tell him not to fuck with the CIA?

Financial Times:
Vince Cannistraro, former CIA operations chief, charged yesterday: "She was outed as a vindictive act because the agency was not providing support for policy statements that Saddam Hussein was reviving his nuclear programme."

The leak was a way to "demonstrate an underlying contempt for the intelligence community, the CIA in particular".

He said that in the run-up to the Iraq war, the White House had exerted unprecedented pressure on the CIA and other intelligence agencies to find evidence that Iraq had links to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and that Baghdad was trying to build a nuclear bomb.

While the intelligence agencies believe their mission is to provide accurate analysis to the president to aid policy decisions, in the case of Iraq "we had policies that were already adopted and they were looking for those selective pieces of intelligence that would support the policy", Mr Cannistraro said.

In written testimony, he said that Vice-President Dick Cheney and his top aide Lewis Libby went to CIA headquarters to press mid-level analysts to provide support for the claim. Mr Cheney, he said, "insisted that desk analysts were not looking hard enough for the evidence". Mr Cannistraro said his information came from current agency analysts.

Now that we know that even David Kay hasn't turned up any evidence of an extant nuclear program after 1991, this looks even worse. I'm just waiting now for the spin that the Financial Times is just part of the "liberal media" and how Cannistraro, who served on Reagan's NSC, is a partisan Democrat.

Beyond that, I'm getting really, really sick and tired of case after case after case where it's clear that this administration views facts only as things that can be pressed into service to support their predetermined ideological courses of action.

via Mark Kleiman

A pumpkin-carving robot at the Detroit Science Center carves Jack-o-Lanterns in 2 minutes flat using a drywall saw. Much other cool pumpkin stuff at that site. I'm not terribly bothered by the fact that Dick Cheney is receiving significant "deferred compensation" from his position as Chief Pimp at Halliburton. The explanation that he's taken an insurance policy to ensure that he gets his regardless of what happens to Halliburton is OK with me. The issue of the 400,000+ stock options that are currently in a charitable trust but will eventually revert to him, on the other hand, stinks. But here's one with even a stronger aroma: Cheney owns, according to his financial disclosure statements, somewhere between $18M and $78M worth of the Vanguard Group. The Vanguard Group owns 7,600,000 shares of Halliburton, worth about $176,000,000, which is enough to make them the 10th largest shareholder.

Newsday.com - Clinton: NY Leaders Holding Back Security Funds:
" Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized New York State officials yesterday, saying they are holding up the distribution of millions of dollars in homeland-security funds.

The New York Democrat released her own study showing that only three of 52 large cities, towns and counties had received a portion of the $97 million the state got this spring from the Department of Homeland Security.

'I think it's designed to keep the money in Albany because of [state] budget problems,' Clinton said, noting that federal law called for the funds to be allocated by Aug. 21. She's pushing for the money to go directly to localities instead of through states."

In classic Republican fashion, the Pataki "administration" responded not with any substantive criticism of her study, or even an assertion that she was wrong, but with a complaint that she was "playing politics with homeland security." Hey, Elmer: she's done her homework on this one. If anybody's "playing politics" it's you. I've been making a bunch of changes here at the ol' blog recently, and I'd really like to know if they're making things better? Worse? Is it easier to read? Anything I should add to the left bar, either in the blogroll(s) or as a blurb in the top left segment?

I've gotten hooked in to Bloglines and have an RSS feed available there. If you haven't tried an RSS aggregator, I recommend giving it a try, especially if you (try to) read a lot of blogs. The cool thing about Bloglines is that you read the aggregator in your browser through them, so it's not tied to your particular system. This means, for instance, that you can get your feeds at home and at work.

That's the title of a post at Blogs for Bush, a bad neighborhood I stumbled into recently. The post is, not surprisingly, bashing Democrats. But let's look just a bit deeper. This is from the post:

One would think that Howard Dean and the rest of the left wing would be happy about the most recent economic numbers (they are not). Not only do interest rates remain near historical lows, but the Dow is up roughly 34 percent and the tech heavy NASDAQ is up around 45 percent. Professional economists, who work for a living rather than teach classes at Berkeley, will tell you the cause of those great numbers was the President Bush’s tax cuts. JFK's tax cut and Reagan's tax cuts had the same result - a full-blown economic recovery. In baseball, when a player goes 4-for-4 and hits the game winning home run, that player is the hero. Folks look up to that player and want him on their team.

Now you might think that someone going on about the truth would also consider the unemployment numbers or the fact that Dean isn't really "left wing", but we'll give that a pass for a moment.

That link under "Professional economists" goes to a story at money.cnn.com. How well does it support the claims being made? I report, you decide (as they say). All excerpts below taken from the article:

At the urging of President Bush, Congress has passed tax cuts in each of the past three years that, combined with a recession, a bear market in stocks, terrorist attacks and wars, helped to turn a $127 billion budget surplus in 2001 into a projected budget deficit of more than $400 billion in the fiscal 2003, which ends Sept. 30. [Gee, that doesn't look like "a full-blown economic recovery to me. -ed.]

"By 2005, I expect the economy will be stronger, more fully utilized" but still not up to full strength, said Citigroup senior economist Steven Wieting.... [OK, there's a "professional economist", and gee, it doesn't sound like he's talking about a "full-blown economic recovery" to me, either. -ed.]

"Like it or not, rich people are the ones who save and invest. If you give people who accumulate capital a tax cut and take it back, you send the message that they can't trust the government," said Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University in Atlanta. "That's not good for capital accumulation, which is needed for investment in the long run." [Well, here's someone who favors keeping the cuts, but I still don't see an endorsement of any "full-blown economic recovery. But hey, wait a minute! This guy is teaching classes, if a bit east of Berkeley, so we apparently shouldn't be listening to him. -ed]

"I don't buy into those supply-side, trickle-down ideas," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com. "Those arguments might have made some sense 25 years ago, when the top tax rate was 70 percent, but not today, when the top rate is half of that." [OK, now I'm confused. Here's a bona fide professional economist, and he's arguing against the tax cuts. -ed]

You know what I think? I think it's just more faith-based economics.

At this point, if a Republican told me the sun would come up in the east tomorrow morning, I wouldn't believe him until I had enough light to read my compass.

Latest Zogby poll in NH has Dean leading Kerry by 40 to 17 percent among likely voters.

Dean campaign blog:
Pollster John Zogby: “This is stunning. Dean leads 43-20 among Democrats and 35 to 11 among Independents. He hits 40 among all age groups, union and non-union voters. His lead is 57-17 among self-described progressives, 50-20 among liberals, and 34-14 among moderates. Married voters give him a 38-13 edge and singles a 45-21 point lead. He holds huge leads among all education groups, among investors and non-investors, men and women. This qualifies as juggernaut status. Can he be stopped?”

The UCSF Hospital outsources its medical transcription work to a company in Sausalito. That company maintains a roster of subcontractors, including a woman in Florida named Sonya Newburn. Ms. Newburn also used subcontractors, including a man in Texas named Tom Spires. Spires also used one or more subcontractors, including a woman in Pakistan named Lubna Baloch.

With me so far? Well, it seems that in early October Ms. Baloch took exception to the fact that she hadn't been paid by Spires and couldn't contact him and did what, to her, was an eminently reasonable thing. She wrote the following to UCSF:

"Your patient records are out in the open to be exposed, so you better track that person and make him pay my dues or otherwise I will expose all the voice files and patient records of UCSF Parnassus and Mt. Zion campuses on the Internet."

I wonder how often things like this are going to happen before it dawns on people that sending sensitive intellectual property (including not only this kind of thing, but tax returns, company finance information, and key software) out to people who are likely to send it on to God-only-knows-who in who-knows-where is not really a very bright idea.

Arnold gets his first dose of reality. From Calpundit. The Bush administration has dropped its opposition to Israel's construction of a "security fence" in the West Bank. The actor playing Jesus in Mel Gibson's new movie has been struck by lightning on the set. The assistant director has also been hit twice. Whatever happened to Katrina Leung?

To my surprise, there's actually a bit of new news from the San Jose Mercury News:

The case of alleged Chinese "double agent" Katrina Leung is so complicated that her trial may be delayed past next summer, attorneys told a judge Thursday.

Past the election, perhaps? How....convenient. Ah, you say, it's just Krugman being shrill again. Au contraire, mon frere.

John Snow, the Treasury secretary, told The Times of London on Monday that he expected the U.S. economy to add two million jobs before the next election — that is, almost 200,000 per month. His forecast was higher than those of most independent analysts; nothing in the data suggests that jobs are being created at that rate. (New claims for unemployment insurance are running at slightly less than 400,000 a week, the number that corresponds to zero job growth. If jobs were being created as rapidly as Mr. Snow forecasts, the new claims number would be closer to 300,000.)

Faith-based economics at its finest. What, new jobless claims data is 33% too high to support your claims? Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes?

But let's back up a minute. Be charitable. Assume Mr. Snow is prescient. As of right now, we're down 2,600,000 jobs from when Bush took office. Even if we add Snow's two million jobs, Bush will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to end a term with fewer jobs than when he started. And that's if he's right.

But wait, there's more. The population isn't stagnant, you know. The economy needs to add about 130,000 jobs/month to keep the unemployment rate steady because of the growth in population. Which means that in order to maintain the same unemployment rate, we'd need to add about 7,000,000 jobs between now and next November.

Jobs. No Saddam. Lies about WMD. The Plame affair. No Osama. Taliban still active in Afghanistan. al Qaeda still active in Afghanistan. Gen. Boykin still has a job. Over 300 dead US soldiers in Iraq. Over 7,500 Iraqi civilian deaths. A half trillion dollar budget deficit next year.

Are you happy now? If so, you probably work for Halliburton. Give a few bucks to the Democrats (the "Boot Bush" button), or to the Dean campaign. Let's let the grownups run things again. Please?

...if it wasn't so pathetic. The entire crowd who used to bash Bill Clinton for "parsing" his speech is now clinging desperately to the fact that Bush, personally, never used the exact words "imminent threat" regarding Iraq. What a crock. From the estimable Daily Howler:

Did the Bush Admin see—and suggest—an imminent threat? It’s hard to suppress those mordant chuckles when one sees how many people thought so. Last October 7, for example, Dave Boyer of the Washington Times reported that a few “key lawmakers [had] declared their support” for the pending Iraq war resolution. Why had Dick Armey decided to back it? Boyer told you—in the Washington Times:

BOYER (10/7/02): House Majority Leader Dick Armey, one of the few Republican lawmakers who had voiced concerns about attacking Iraq, said the White House has convinced him that Saddam’s weapons buildup is an imminent threat to the United States and Israel. “I’m convinced the snake is out of his hole,” said Mr. Armey, Texas Republican. “So we have to kill him.”

Boyer, at the Washington Times, seemed to think the concern was an “imminent threat.” And why wouldn’t he think such a thing? Here’s what his colleague, Joseph Curl, had reported just one day before:

CURL (10/6/02): President Bush yesterday said Saddam Hussein has a history of attacking his enemies first and could inflict “massive and sudden horror” on the United States, offering a new reason for a pre-emptive military strike against the Iraqi leader.

Mr. Bush said the Iraqi dictator has a “horrible history” of attacking his enemies first. “We cannot ignore history. We must not ignore reality. We must do everything we can to disarm this man before he hurts one single American,” the president told hundreds of cheering police and National Guardsmen.
Gee! Any way you could think that Saddam posed a threat, or that the threat might be immediate? And was there any way to get that idea from Bush’s speech in Cincinnati, given just one day later? Here was Curl’s opening paragraph:

CURL (10/8/02): President Bush last night said Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is a “murderous tyrant” who could attack the United States “on any given day” using unmanned aerial vehicles loaded with chemical or biological weapons.

That was the opening paragraph, in the Washington Times, about Bush’s biggest fall speech on this subject! Of course Curl himself—at the Washington Times—had long thought an “imminent threat” was at issue. Here’s what he’d written weeks earlier:

CURL (9/21/02): Administration officials have in recent days ratcheted up talk about unilateral U.S. action in the event the United Nations fails to deliver the type of resolution Mr. Bush desires…[S]enior administration officials, including Vice President Richard B. Cheney, have laid out the case for pre-emptive strikes to deal with imminent threats to the United States.

Gee, after reading that it's tough to imagine why anyone would think that Bush was making the case that Saddam posed an "imminent" threat to the US. And that's before you get into any number of statements by Condi "Smoking Gun" Rice or Don "no metric for success" Rumsfeld. Just to prove that not everything from Texas is dumb as a stump or mean as a snake, here's the beginning and end of Molly Ivins' latest column. Go read the rest. It's time well spent.

Star Telegram | 10/23/2003 | Ready to pick your jaw up?:
"What I like about the new radical, right-wing Republican takeover of this country is how easily they blow past all our defenses against deja-vu, they-all-do-it cynicism.

There you are -- thinking you're way too old and have been around this block too many times to suddenly up and evince moral outrage over a little callousness here or a dollop of favoritism there. Suddenly you find yourself whomperjawed, outraged, stupefied with disbelief."
...
OK, now that you have been fully prepped on this deal, I give you the Outrage Moment. One Jonathan Grella, spokesman for Tom DeLay, when asked about all this, said: "It's wrong and unethical to link legislative activities to campaign contributions."

Let's make sure we all understand what is being said here. Grella asserts that there is no conflict of interest between a public official using his power to change the law in exchange for a hefty campaign contribution -- the immorality occurs when the press and/or public interest groups point out this connection. That's when I went slack-jawed.

All I have to say is, "I want it."

The Ultimate Laser "Printer": "The VersaLaser looks like an oversize printer without feed or output trays. It accepts paper, wood, a variety of plastics, leather, some coated metals, and even stone and marble."

The built-in 25W laser is powerful enough to burn quickly through paper and cardboard without leaving so much as a charred edge. It can cut through wood 1/4 inch thick or more. The thin beam barely discolors the edges of the top surface but leaves the sides of the cut a rich, dark brown. Acrylic plastics such as Plexiglas cut easily, too. The beam moves with surprising speed for wood and paper but slower and at lower power for plastics, so the heat from the beam can melt the plastic edge and leave a smooth, polished surface.

n engraving/etching mode, the beam sweeps back and forth across the workpiece, burning a raster image of your artwork into its surface. Or in the case of anodized aluminum, it bleaches the color out of the anodized layer, leaving the aluminum protected but with the wording or images of your choice shining through in the areas struck by the beam.

A manga about blogging. Or a manga blog. Or a blog of mangos. Or something.

via BoingBoing

They're not evil, you know, just misunderstood.

Louisville KY Courier-Journal:
Jefferson County Republicans intend to place Election Day challengers at 59 voting precincts in predominantly black neighborhoods, a move that NAACP leaders yesterday called blatant intimidation.

The GOP election workers, most of whom live outside the targeted precincts in western and central Louisville, Portland and Newburg, will be on hand to challenge voters who they suspect aren't eligible.

Jefferson County GOP Chairman Jack Richardson IV said the precincts were chosen at random or because the Republican Party has had trouble finding registered voters in those areas to serve as election workers. The challengers, who will receive the same training as precinct workers, could fill in if needed.

Richardson said the precincts weren't chosen because of their racial makeup or voting patterns. Using challengers is a "legal, proper and permissible" way to ensure that voters are bona fide, he said.

Do these people even read what they write? From CNN.com:

Graf 1:
A memo from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to his top deputies asking tough questions about the war on terrorism was mostly consistent with his public statements.

Graf 3:
Rumsfeld has not characterized it that way in public, but Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has used similar words.

USA Today
The United States has no yardstick for measuring progress in the war on terrorism, has not "yet made truly bold moves" in fighting al-Qaeda and other terror groups, and is in for a "long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a memo that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent to top-ranking Defense officials last week.

"No yardstick" means that we really don't know whether we're making progress or not, which means that all the claims that such-and-such "is necessary" or "means we're winning" is basically reagent-grade bullshit. I'm working on de-uglifying the Blogger template I've been using, which means mostly

• using <div>s and <span>s for layout instead of many, many tables, and
• getting rid of lots of cruft and setting up a real stylesheet.

The downside is that the site may look a bit weird as I experiment with some things. The upside is that when I'm done things should be a lot cleaner, and hopefully render a bit faster and look a bit nicer. Modulo css bugs in your browser, of course. Out of morbid curiosity, I tuned into whoever was today's stunt Rush on my lunch break, and caught him going on (and on, and on....) about the CBS Reagan biopic coming up in November, and how dreadful it was going to be in part because James Brolin, yes, Mr. Barbra Streisand, was going to be playing Reagan. Earth to wingnut: he's an actor. What, you think he's going to be making snippy liberal asides to the audience?

Anyway, the guy was going on about how it was important for the liberals to be able to deny that Reagan's marginal tax rate cuts created the economic boom of the 80s (which they didn't -- the boom didn't start until the subsequent tax increase), because if they could do that, they could also deny that Bush's tax cuts caused the economic boom of this decade.

Exsqueeze me? The only "economic boom" in this decade is caused by the air rushing in to fill the gap of the jobs going overseas.

Notice any similarities between these two maps?

OK, I haven't actually been counting. But beyond his positions on the issues, there's a connection here. Something that makes me feel positive about things political for a change. Something that makes me feel like there's somebody running who remembers that politics isn't just a game, isn't just about paying back your friends and donors, but that it affects the real lives of real people every day. This is from The American Prospect, which has rapidly become my favorite political magazine.

TAP: Vol 14, Iss. 10. Shock of the Old. Garance Franke-Ruta. :
"One astute observer has credited Dean's appeal to the doctor's grasp of psychology and the contemporary rhetoric of self-empowerment that laces many of his speeches. But Dean's grasp of the American political psyche is firmer than that: Dean's bet is that somewhere -- buried in some back corner, under layers of Oprah and American Pie, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Eminem and the latest Field Poll from California -- there's a little bit of Thomas Paine in each of us."

OK, if this isn't the just flat-out oddest campaign poster I've ever seen, I'll (print it out and) eat it.

But I really like it.

From John DeRosier, the cartoonist for the Albany Times Union:

More evidence that the Bush White House just doesn't hear anything it doesn't like.

State Dept. Study Foresaw Trouble Now Plaguing Iraq: "A yearlong State Department study predicted many of the problems that have plagued the American-led occupation of Iraq, according to internal State Department documents and interviews with administration and Congressional officials.

Beginning in April 2002, the State Department project assembled more than 200 Iraqi lawyers, engineers, business people and other experts into 17 working groups to study topics ranging from creating a new justice system to reorganizing the military to revamping the economy.

Their findings included a much more dire assessment of Iraq's dilapidated electrical and water systems than many Pentagon officials assumed. They warned of a society so brutalized by Saddam Hussein's rule that many Iraqis might react coolly to Americans' notion of quickly rebuilding civil society"

It truly is a medieval administration, that prefers revealed truth and the things that are "known" by the President and the people he trusts to uncomfortable reality. On the list of "things I never knew."

Margaret Cho BLOG: "The latest trend in South Korea is getting pubic hair transplants. One would think that it would be the opposite, with salons all over the West serving up specialties like the 'Barely Legal,' in which all hair is removed from the area, designed to replicate the genitalia of an underage girl, as statutory rape seems to be all the rage, the Playboy, which is a very clever strip of hair, like an arrow pointing down to alert you to the point of entry, plus a variety of novelty designs that can be pretty much anything you can make a stencil for, from celebration of holidays (Christmas Tree, Easter Egg, Jack-o-Lantern, Turkey) to one's own initials, various allegiances to sports teams, the @ symbol. you name it, you got it, on your pussy."

Man, I just get my hair cut. I don't know whether to call it "professional blogging" or a busman's holiday, but here's a list of "J-blogs", or blogs kept by journalists. Some interesting stuff in there. A few, like The American Prospect's Tapped and Eric Alterman's Altercation already appear in my blogroll (<--- over there). I've just found this site, which looks to be most cool. Check out GNOD, the Global Network of Dreams. If you're a neophile, you'll probably think it's pretty cool. The Java app showing how "close" a particular author or musical artist is to a bunch of others is particularly neat. How nice of Neil to give such a wealth of advice to workers in the service economy. He does seem to have a blind spot, though: when he says

Neil Cavuto: Smile while you work: "The problem with attitude is that, good or bad, it's contagious. The kid who treats you like crap, treats the next person like crap, who likely treats other people like crap. Then before you know it, everyone is treating everyone else like crap. Here's what I say: Cut the crap."

He never seems to consider that perhaps the problem starts with the management treating (and paying) the workers like crap. It might be a lot easier for the workers to be cheerful if they weren't worried about how they were going to pay their rent and their kids' medical bills.

Just a thought.
via World O'Crap

Former HealthSouth Chairman Joins Long List of Executives Taking Fifth Amendment - from Tampa Bay Online: "Former HealthSouth Corp. chairman Richard Scrushy asserted his constitutional privilege against self-incrimination and refused to answer lawmakers' questions at a hearing Thursday."

He's not the only one, though. The list of those who have done likewise includes Ken Lay, Andy Fastow, Michael Kopper (Fastow's top lieutenant), David Duncan (Andersen's top auditor at Enron and the only person at Andersen to have been charged with a crime), Bernie Ebbers, Scott Sullivan (WorldCom CFO), and Sam Waksal. MSNBC has a good piece on her and how she came to be Howard Dean's director of online organizing. Michael Kinsley puts his finger on a big part of the problem with Bush.

TIME.com: Why Bush Angers Liberals -- Oct. 13, 2003
We also thought that Bush's apparent affability, and his lack of knowledge or strong views or even great interest in policy issues, would make him temperate on the ideological thermometer. (Psst! We also thought, and still think, he's pretty dumb — though you're not supposed to say it and we usually don't. And we thought that this too would make him easier to swallow.) It turns out, though, that Bush's, um, unreflectiveness shores up his ideological backbone. An adviser who persuades Bush to adopt Policy X does not have to be worried that our President will keep turning it over in his mind, monitoring its progress, reading and thinking about the complaints of its critics, perhaps even re-examining it on the basis of subsequent developments, and announce one day that he prefers Policy Y. This does not happen. He knows what he thinks, and he has to be told it only once.

This dynamic works on facts just as it does on policies, making Bush a remarkably successful liar. This too is unexpected. There seemed to be something guileless and nonneurotic about Bush when we first made his acquaintance. It was the flip side of his, um, dimness and seemed to promise frankness if nothing else. But guess what? Ignorance and lack of curiosity are terrific fortifications for dishonesty. Bill Clinton knew that he had had sex with that woman and had to work hard to convince himself that he hadn't. Bush neither knew nor cared whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or close connections to al-Qaeda when he started to say so, and once he started, mere lack of evidence was not going to make him stop.

Just this week, responding to the brouhaha about the alleged White House outing of an undercover CIA agent, Bush declared that he takes leaks very seriously and deplores them. Liberals across America screamed into their TV sets, "But that leak was in the papers two months ago, and you did nothing about it until the fuss started last weekend!" If Bush could hear them, he might furrow his brow in puzzlement and say, "And your point is?" Steeped as liberals are in irony, it took us a while to learn what a powerful tool an irony-free mind can be.

Orcinus has some interesting words about them. Look, I know it's A Big Deal when one of The Kool Kidz at National Review gets a book published, even if it is by Regnery, but do they have to turn their blog-like thing (the Corner) into a bad imitation of a public radio fund drive? Jeebus, guys, you have day jobs. Phew! Almost missed it. But, to make up for that, let me point you to some fascinating thoughts about Marriage Protection Week over at World O'Crap. Pandagon has some interesting thoughts on this gem from Ken Adelman:

The more glaring the any disease, the more obvious its diagnosis but the more difficult its treatment. By the time a doctor is certain that a patient has lung cancer, the time for effective treatment probably has passed. The best presidents, like the best doctors, act when their evidence is still inconclusive. Otherwise, the window for effective action passes.

No, he's not giving the reason the Bush administration has suddenly done an complete about-face on global warming, he's defending the war against Iraq. At least, he thinks he is....

Ananova - New car's name causes blushes in Canada : "A new car is having to be renamed for the Canadian market after the manufacturers were informed of an unfortunate double meaning.

General Motors are still working on the new name for the LaCrosse after learning the word is slang for masturbation in French-speaking Quebec."

What a series. Unforunately, it didn't end quite the way I would have liked. But congratulations to the Yankees for surviving it. So far this has been the best, most dramatic, hardest fought postseason in baseball since 1986. Let's hope the Series lives up to it. While I have very little doubt that if they played 50 games both the Giants and the Cubbies would win more of them than the Marlins, the rules say you have to win 3 of 5 and 4 of 7, and they went out and did that. They're a better team than a lot of people give them credit for, but I have to wonder why none of the Cubs starters came in out of the bullpen last night.

Now, tonight. Clemens vs. Pedro. Sox vs. Yankees for all the marbles. It doesn't get much better than this.

This, from Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winning economist and former chief economist for the IMF:

The harsh truth is that neither the IMF nor the Bush administration really believes in free markets. They interfere with markets when it suits their purposes. Bush supported bailouts for airlines, unprecedented subsidies for agriculture and tariff protections for steel.

It's amazing to me that they actually get paid for writing this stuff. Tim Graham over at the Kiddie Corner this morning gives us this gem:

Reilly Capps reports in today's Washington Post that Joe "Have You Heard About My Wife?" Wilson has won the first Ron Ridenhour Award for Truth-Telling. The Post headline is "Paying Homage to Truth and Its Consequences."

Hey, Tim? Wilson never talked about his wife until somebody in the Administration committed a felony by exposing her as a CIA agent. Try keeping your eye on the ball next time.

Yes, America, meet your new undersecretary of defense, Lt. General Jerry Boykin. He's the former head of Army Special Forces, and he has some...interesting...opinions.

In June 2003, Boykin spoke to a church group over a slide show:
“Well, is he [bin Laden] the enemy? Next slide. Or is this man [Saddam] the enemy? The enemy is none of these people I have showed you here. The enemy is a spiritual enemy. He’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan.”
Why are terrorists out to destroy the United States? Boykin said: “They’re after us because we’re a Christian nation.”

Hmmm....wouldn't you just love to ask him why the terrorists are after Israel and not the Vatican, on that basis?

During a January church speech in Daytona, Fla., Boykin recalled a Muslim fighter in Somalia who bragged on television the Americans would never get him because his God, Allah, would protect him: “Well, you know what I knew, that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.”

What. An. Idiot. Though I do now have the bizarre experience of having the "My God's bigger than your God" line running through my head to the tune of the old Ken-L-Ration ads.

Boykin also routinely tells audiences that God, not the voters, chose President Bush: “Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.”

You'd think that God could have come up with a better scenario than butterfly ballots, suspect voter rolls scrubbing, and Katherine Harris....

But hey, it's ok, because...

Boykin tells NBC News that, given his new assignment, he is curtailing such speeches in the future. He says, “I don’t want … to be misconstrued. I don’t want to come across as a right-wing radical.”

Somehow, I don't think the problem comes when he's misconstrued.

2 in House Question Halliburton's Iraq Fuel Prices: "wo senior Democratic congressmen are questioning whether Halliburton is overcharging the United States government in the procurement of gasoline and other fuel for Iraq, which is now importing oil products to stave off shortages.

In a letter sent yesterday to the White House Office of Management and Budget, the two lawmakers, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California and Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, contended that 'Halliburton seems to be inflating gasoline prices at a great cost to American taxpayers.'

'The overcharging by Halliburton is so extreme that one expert has privately called it `highway robbery,' ' the letter said.

According to the two lawmakers, Halliburton has charged the government $1.62 to $1.70 a gallon for gasoline that could be bought wholesale in the Persian Gulf region for about 71 cents and transported to Iraq for no more than 25 cents. The fuel was sold in Iraq for 4 cents to 15 cents a gallon, the letter said."

Of course, at $.15/gallon, those contributions to the Bush campaign and the value of Cheney's stock options would be a lot less certain. I can't believe it. The Cubs come back from being ahead 3 games to 1, at home, with Mark Prior and Kerry Wood starting, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Marlins to the World Series. Just amazing.

Oh, and the Red Sox aren't giving up, either. Pedro vs. Clemens tomorrow, game 7. Of course, true Sox fans know that they always drag it out to seven games. But hope springs eternal....

Personally, I think I can usually tell. But if you need some help, the Japanese have come to the rescue. Behold the Bow-lingual.

Every day, the people who were opposed to the war, who didn't believe the administration, are more and more vindicated.

CBS News | Ex-Aide: Powell Misled Americans | October 14, 2003 19:22:41
The person responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Colin Powell says the Secretary of State misinformed Americans during his speech at the U.N. last winter.

Greg Thielmann tells Correspondent Scott Pelley that at the time of Powell’s speech, Iraq didn’t pose an imminent threat to anyone – not even its own neighbors. “…I think my conclusion [about Powell’s speech] now is that it’s probably one of the low points in his long distinguished service to the nation,” says Thielmann.

Pelley’s report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes II, Wednesday, Oct. 15 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

Thielmann also tells Pelley that he believes the decision to go to war was made first and then the intelligence was interpreted to fit that conclusion. “…The main problem was that the senior administration officials have what I call faith-based intelligence,” says Thielmann. “They knew what they wanted the intelligence to show. They were really blind and deaf to any kind of countervailing information the intelligence community would produce. I would assign some blame to the intelligence community and most of the blame to the senior administration officials.”

Steve Allinson and a dozen other U.N. inspectors in Iraq also watched Powell’s speech. “Various people would laugh at various times [during Powell’s speech] because the information he was presenting was just, you know, didn't mean anything -- had no meaning,” says Allinson.

Pelley asks, “When the Secretary finished the speech, you and the other inspectors turned to each other and said what?” Allinson responds, “’They have nothing.’”

Allinson gives Pelley several examples of why he believes Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. One time, he was sent to find decontamination vehicles that turned out to be fire trucks. Another time, a satellite spotted what they thought were trucks used for biological weapons.

“We were told we were going to the site to look for refrigerated trucks specifically linked to biological agents,” Allinson tells Pelley. “…We found seven or eight [trucks], I think, in total, and they had cobwebs in them. Some samples were taken and nothing was found.”

Can we just do away with the preposterous notion that this administration is competent at anything? It looks like we underestimated the amount of conventional weapons lying around as badly as we overestimated the amount of WMD.

: "The two most recent suicide bombings here and virtually every other attack on American soldiers and Iraqis were carried out with explosives and matériel taken from Saddam Hussein's former weapons dumps, which are much larger than previously estimated and remain, for the most part, unguarded by U.S. troops, according to allied officials.

The problem of uncounted and unguarded weapons sites is considerably greater than has previously been stated, a senior allied official said.

The U.S. military now says that Iraq's army had nearly a million tons of weapons and ammunition, as opposed to the as much as 650,000 tons that General John Abizaid, the senior American commander in the Gulf region, estimated only two weeks ago."

What I want to know is, is our intelligence really this bad, or was it ignored? If the former, I want heads to roll in the intelligence community. If the latter, I want the policymakers who advised Bush gone. A "PR offensive" is not an appropriate response in either case. If the Republicans can get away with calling the estate tax "the death tax", then I think the Democrats should start calling the deficit "the birth tax". Here's why:

It droppeth like a stone on Jonah Goldberg:

The Corner on National Review Online: "I want to write my syndicated column on the drug-problem hooplah. If you've seen particularly nasty celebrating about the guy's misfortunes, please send examples (as always, preferably with URL, dates etc) to GFilecorrections@aol.com by noon. Thanks."

Wonder what he's going to do with the motley collection of scurrilous and mis-remembered items he's likely to get? Suppose he'll confirm them before printing them? I didn't think so either. When one of the Kool Kidz (Lucianne's crotchfruit in this case) fails so miserably at being Kool.

The Corner on National Review Online: " His column would read pretty poorly if he'd cited Jimmy Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Brian Jones, Sid Vicious, Janis Joplin or that guy from Blind Melon."

Emphasis (but not spelling) mine.

The Village Voice: Features: The Widening Crusade by Sydney H. Schanberg
If some wishful Americans are still hoping President Bush will acknowledge that his imperial foreign policy has stumbled in Iraq and needs fixing or reining in, they should put aside those reveries. He's going all the way—and taking us with him.

Drop in and read it all.

People close to the president say that his conversion to evangelical Methodism, after a life of aimless carousing, markedly informs his policies, both foreign and domestic. In the soon-to-be-published The Faith of George W. Bush (Tarcher/Penguin), a sympathetic account of this religious journey, author Stephen Mansfield writes (in the advance proofs) that in the election year 2000, Bush told Texas preacher James Robison, one of his spiritual mentors: "I feel like God wants me to run for president. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. . . . I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."

Be afraid.

In his new book, Winning Modern Wars, retired general Wesley Clark, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, offered a window into the Bush serial-war planning. He writes that serious planning for the Iraq war had already begun only two months after the 9-11 attack, and adds:
"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan. . . . I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned."

Be very afraid.

Consider dropping a few bucks to Howard Dean, or to your favorite candidate, or to the Democratic party in general (see left sidebar). And vote in 2004.

Yep. Julian Sanchez at Reason magazine makes it.

Reason:
"At present, the alliance (such as it is) between libertarians and the GOP seems to consist of the following compromise: we hold our noses and vote for Republican presidential candidates in close elections, while they agree to pay lip service to our cherished ideals of limited government. This seems like a fair enough trade on its face, but as 'no new taxes' taught us, the lips of Republican elected officials are typically disconnected from their arms when it comes time to sign legislation. Perhaps it's time for libertarians to stop getting starry-eyed over the candidates who write us the prettiest love poems and begin comparing policy outcomes."

Voyage to Our Hollow Earth:
"Would you be interested in a once-in-a-lifetime chance to discover Our Hollow Earth first hand? If so, we invite you to join us for an expedition to the North Pole with Steve Currey, one of the leading river explorers in the world!"

Hey, you never know. Osama might be there. Or Saddam. Or maybe that's where he hid the WMD.

Wonder what Rush would sound like today if Bill Clinton had just confessed to an addition to prescription painkillers? Bill McClellan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has the answer.

via Atrios.

Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, a right-wing think tank, tells us that facts are "stubborn things" in the current Insight magazine. Insight, of course, is part of the Washington Times/Moonie publishing enterprise. Gaffney is a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy during the Reagan Administration and has been described as a protege of Richard Perle.

Fair Comment'Stubborn Facts' in Iraq Report Ignored by Bush Bashers: "While the president's critics may not wish to be bothered by the facts, they are, as the saying goes, 'stubborn things.' And those laid out by Kay and his colleagues paint a picture of Saddam as a despot relentlessly engaged in the pursuit of the most devastating weapons known to man. The ISG's inability to date to locate the weapons the United Nations previously determined were in Saddam's hands should be a matter of grave concern - and redoubled effort. Its report certainly is not cause for, as some have suggested, shutting down the ISG and reallocating its resources elsewhere."

Gaffney goes on to point out that

• Kay's team has only been able to examine 10 of 150 known ammo depots in Iraq,
• there is an unknown number of hidden ammo caches, and
• the things we're looking for are small (the "would fit in a two-car garage" talking point makes an appearance here).

All reasonable points, if one overlooks a few other "stubborn facts":

• Before the war, we were told by folks like Don Rumsfeld that we knew where the WMD were.
• The chemical weapons themselves may be small, but what about the facilities for producing them?
• What about all the cooperation we were told to expect from the top Iraqis we have in custody? Why hasn't even one of them rolled over and told us where the WMD are? After all, Bush said that more time was not what was needed, cooperation is what was needed.

See what riverbend has to say about cutting down people's orchards. Folks, this is bad. And likely a war crime.

Independent News: "US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.

The stumps of palm trees, some 70 years old, protrude from the brown earth scoured by the bulldozers beside the road at Dhuluaya, a small town 50 miles north of Baghdad. Local women were yesterday busily bundling together the branches of the uprooted orange and lemon trees and carrying then back to their homes for firewood.

Nusayef Jassim, one of 32 farmers who saw their fruit trees destroyed, said: 'They told us that the resistance fighters hide in our farms, but this is not true. They didn't capture anything. They didn't find any weapons.'"

Collective guilt. Assumed guilt. Taking away people's means of making a living. And people are supposed to look at us as liberators?

The naivete is impressive, though. "They didn't find any weapons." Tell it to Saddam, buddy. We took his ass out without finding any weapons, you think it's going to save you?

And our military is quite clear that this was done as punishment, not because we thought rebels were hiding there or anything:

Sheikh Hussein Ali Saleh al-Jabouri, a member of a delegation that went to the nearby US base to ask for compensation for the loss of the fruit trees, said American officers described what had happened as "a punishment of local people because 'you know who is in the resistance and do not tell us'." What the Israelis had done by way of collective punishment of Palestinians was now happening in Iraq, Sheikh Hussein added.

And hey, what about that Iraqi free press?

When a reporter from the newspaper Iraq Today attempted to take a photograph of the bulldozers at work a soldier grabbed his camera and tried to smash it. The same paper quotes Lt Col Springman, a US commander in the region, as saying: "We asked the farmers several times to stop the attacks, or to tell us who was responsible, but the farmers didn't tell us."

How far is this from "we had to destroy the village in order to save it?"

P.S.

Article 33, Geneva Convention IV. No protected person (i.e. civilian) may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. Interesting take from Bob Wallace about the origins and character of chickenhawks. The Matrix in ASCII art.

We have a TV in our house, but we only use it for watching movies on tape or DVD. The cable only goes to the computer for broadband. I don't think we're missing a thing, and our kids are better off for it. Here's an article about other folks who have made the same choice.

The Miami Herald | 10/11/2003 | Pull the plug on television, without regrets: "''I stay at home and my oldest goes to school. We recently eliminated television from our children's lives, 100 percent, and we have had nothing but positive results. At first the children whined and complained of having nothing to do, but they quickly learned that if they told me they were ``bored,'' I would put them to work.

``It only took a week for them to completely turn around. They stopped asking me to find things for them to do and began entertaining themselves like never before. I think it is so sad that today's children, because they rely so much on television, video games and the computer, are not learning to entertain themselves. My husband and I unplugged the television because of your advice and we are very grateful. We have been television-free for seven months now, and we will never go back!''"

The good folks at World O'Crap have decided that Being There for Rush is the right thing to do. Check it out and see if you don't agree. The list of "ways dittoheads are defending Rush" is well worth the price of admission.

USATODAY.com - Rumsfeld 'surprised' by Saddam loyalists: "'I suppose on reflection the thing that probably surprised me the most is the ability that the so-called Fedayeen Saddam people had to terrorize and frighten the rest of the Iraqi people and cause them to not come over to the other side,' Rumsfeld said in answer to a question from the audience."

Yes, America, that's your Secretary of Defense. One of the sorts of smart people we were told that "CEO of America" George Bush would surround himself with so we didn't need to worry about whether he knew who was running insignificant little places like Pakistan. How dare you expect that a busy man like that should know before we invade a country a bit more about what things are going to be like there after we invade.

CNN.com - Powell: Iraq action 'was fully justified' - Oct. 10, 2003: "Earlier Friday, Cheney told the conservative Heritage Foundation that terrorists are 'doing everything they can' to get weapons of mass destruction that could kill hundreds of thousands of Americans 'in a single day of horror.'"

Gee, doesn't that make it A Really Bad Idea for the administration to be exposing undercover CIA agents working on preventing WMD from getting into the hands of terrorists? Charles Krauthammer establishes himself as a True Believer with today's column, finding much to worry about in David Kay's list.

WMD In a Haystack (washingtonpost.com):
"Kay's list is chilling. It includes a secret network of labs and safe houses within the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi foreign intelligence service; bioorganisms kept in scientists' homes, including a vial of live botulinum toxin; and my favorite, 'new research on BW [biological weapons]-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin' -- all 'not declared to the U.N.'

I have been to medical school, and I have never heard of Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever. I don't know one doctor in 100 who has. It is a rare disease, and you can be sure that Hussein was not seeking a cure."

Now it seems a bit funny to me that Krauthammer - who's been to medical school - doesn't understand the difference between botulinum toxin and botulinum bacteria, which was what was actually found in the scientist's home. Not only that, but it was the less virulent strain of the botulinium bacteria, which could probably be found in any yard in the US including at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Add in a round of "I've never heard of it so it must be dangerous"; the Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever certainly sounds awful, but there's nothing in the article to show that. A couple of moments with Google would turn up some information that it's apparently a pretty unpleasant disease, but that the mortality rate is only 15-30%. Ebola, by comparison, is fatal in 80-90% of cases. Plus, we get another rendition of the "move the goalposts" ploy, where evidence of actual weapons is exchanged for evidence of "research".

All in all, a bravura performace by Krauthammer.

I guess the GOP election season has officially begun, as Bush begins pandering in earnest.

Newsday.com - Bush Promises Tighter Embargo of Cuba: "'Clearly, the Castro regime will not change by its own choice. But Cuba must change,' Bush told an invited audience of Cuban exiles, anti-Castro groups and others during a Rose Garden ceremony."

In a move strangely reminiscent of the USSR's eternally-new Five Year Plans, Steve Ballmer today announced once again that security is Microsoft's Top Priority...without actually saying what they were going to do about it. He did say that he wishes the people who publish information about security holes in Microsoft products "just would be quiet." Maybe they could call it the O'Reilly strategy?

Yahoo! News - Microsoft Outlines Security Plan
Microsoft chief executive Steven A. Ballmer said yesterday that there is "much, much, much" left to do to protect computer users from viruses, worms and other malicious software.

He outlined new steps the company plans to take to address this problem -- while acknowledging that these changes can't solve it.

I've just been reading Greg Palast's book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, and I've become convinced that the shenanigans in Florida before the 2000 election were even worse than I'd thought.

Parents sue school district for Wi-Fi use | CNET News.com: "Parents of students who attend an Illinois school district are suing over the use of Wi-Fi technology in classrooms, alleging that exposure to the low-level radio waves may be damaging to students' health."

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Vatican: condoms don't stop Aids: "The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which the HIV virus can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk.

The church is making the claims across four continents despite a widespread scientific consensus that condoms are impermeable to the HIV virus.

A senior Vatican spokesman backs the claims about permeable condoms, despite assurances by the World Health Organisation that they are untrue."

As a Catholic, I find this completely disgusting. Words fail me.

New York Daily News - Home - Daily News Exclusive: No spy rap vs. cleric?: "Army investigators are leaning toward filing slap-on-the-wrist charges versus a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay who was investigated for espionage, a military source told the Daily News yesterday.

The 'handful' of minor charges against Capt. Yousef Yee could be leveled by next week and are not expected to include the more serious allegations of spying, sedition or aiding the enemy, according to the source familiar with the probe.

'It's very weak,' the military source said, saying the charges are likely to be related to dereliction of duty and disobeying a general order. 'It's nothing compared to espionage or anything like that.'"

Hardly seems commensurate with the breathless bombast his "capture" was announced with, does it?