VP Joe Lieberman: where have I heard that idea before?

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Oh dear. Is it possible that Joe Lieberman might have a place on the Republican ticket this fall? Can't be, because neither Tim Russert nor Tony Snow told us it could happen before they each went off to wait at the Gates of Hell for John McCain's torturers to show up.

But wait a minute: there was one observer who suggested way, way back in December 2007 that everybody be on the lookout for this development. Who could it have been? Oh, now I remember.

I'll cop to modifying The Most Awesome Political Prediction Ever later, as more recent events have prudent. My original premise still holds, though: that no one who has been considered Republican presidential timber by the serous media would be strong enough or even untainted enough to win the general election against a strong Democrat. At that time I felt Lieberman might jump his party early to settle in as a Republican, but he didn't. Instead, he spent his time laying groundwork for jumping the party in September. Furthermore, back in December I felt that Petraeus might effectively play the strongman role as Lieberman's VP, in a reprise of the Imperial Vice Presidency. For the past few weeks, though, I've suggested that there is no need for such a role reversal, and that Petraeus/Lieberman '08 would be a stronger ticket for the Republicans. I still believe that.

The only objection I've gotten to my P/L '08 scenario that even begins to hold water, in my view, was from a blogger named Dan Solomon. He raised a technical issue related to the legalities and tradition of military retirements relating to whether Petraeus would be eligible to run for President in September. My original reply to Solomon was that an Executive Branch that gets away with launching wars that are illegal in the view of many unbiased experts, breaking U.S. treaties (impeachable offense, by the way), etc., can certainly find a way to finesse the legalities of a general's retirement... when the Justice Department and the Supreme Court have been thoroughly politicized. My secondary reply, offered now, is that McCain could still make it into the general election cycle in September and not be there in October. Abracadabra.

Again, for any slow learners out there, I'm not suggesting this scenario as something that any sentient citizen of a democracy would like to see. I'm suggesting it because it's as plausible as what we're looking at right now --- a morally and mentally bankrupt former war hero with no real constituency running the high ground against an up-by-the-bootstraps, relatively conservative young black family man. My overall point is that Obama would be prudent to have a coupla people in his boiler room working on a plan for shifting strategic gears if he found himself running against a freshly retired Four-Star General. I may be wrong, though, because Steve Benen, Josh Marshall, and Bob Cesca all have failed to reply to my email on the topic. I'm not bona fide, you see.

Anointing his successor

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Oh, looky who's right at the top of John McCain's list of wise people: why, it's Gen. Dave Petraeus! At least that's what he tells the rich, fancy Orange County preacher man. (Search on "Petraeus" after you click through to the page.)

Please let me know if you think McCain has said or done anything in the past week to make Petraeus/Lieberman '08 seem more farfetched than you already think it is.

Eternal truths

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Chicken can taste pretty good even if it smells funky before you grill it.

Most constructive invention of 1877

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I can't believe I did not know this, but barely a century before disco swept the nation, the word "hello" was apparently a rarity in the American vernacular. According to Wired online, Thomas Edison is credited with suggesting that people answer the telephone using this salutation instead of Alexander Graham Bell's preferred greeting, "ahoy, ahoy." Wired writer Tony Long tells us, in fact, that initially people did answer their telephones with "ahoy," but Edison's suggestion quickly superseded it. Hello, he says, did not enter the dictionary until 1883 even though earlier uses are documented.

Montgomery Burns, who I believe was born about 12 years after Bell applied for his patent, still answers the horn the correct way to this very day. I can't explain, though, why our parents (or I) answer with "nnnyellllo."

Photo credit: from itspaulkelly's photostream on Flickr. Uploaded it to prevent link rot.

Pop quiz

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Bruce Ivins is to the 2001 U.S. anthrax attacks as Lee Oswald is to:

a. Paris Hilton's pudenda
b. American Idol
c. the Lone Gunman Theory
d. Mexican Idol

Eternal truths

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You have the right to remain funky. Your funkiness can not and will not be used against you in a court of law.

Things I did not know about England

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Dan Solomon, an expatriate American blogger living in the U.K., offers us this fascinating report about the ubiquity and characteristics of propaganda posters in England. Most of his examples read like something from the backgrounds in "V", but I found the poster reproduced at upper left to be especially... something or other. Click through and check it out; Dan notifies us that there is at least one "western democracy," as we still call them, that is even better than our very own Republicans at fearmongering to promote social control. The general message of British propaganda seems to be: We see what you're doing. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?

Edwards: "I, imbecile" (updated)

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I agree with the concision of Atrios pertaining to the "public" John Edwards. What kind of fool does a guy have to be to run for President right after carving a new notch on his bedpost next to his wife's ear?

I'll grudgingly give Edwards credit for having the sense to cop to his affair on a Friday afternoon in the background of pointless Olympics media hoopla. In order to bury news like this about one of their own, by contrast, the Republicans will generally launch a new war or something.

With the Edwards affair now out in the open and lacking the news "legs" to sustain much public interest beyond the Olympics, the corporate media are now free to fully report on the case of John McCain's missing lobbyist girlfriend, Vicki Iseman. I wonder why the courageous Huffington Post isn't following up Chris Kelly's lead on that topic.

Update: Haha --- I beat Josh Marshall to the punch on the Iseman angle! That guy had better get on the ball with Petraeus/Lieberman '08!

From the Petraeus/Lieberman '08 comments

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A blogger named Dan Solomon, whose site you can visit here, raised an interesting objection to my current metaparanoid scenario involving the drafting of Petraeus and Lieberman as the 2008 Republican presidential ticket out of the thin air of left field. I'm reproducing Dan's comment and my reply here at the top level because I think it's interesting.

I'll add something here that I forgot to address in Dan's comment. I think the disruption of the GOP convention would not necessarily be disadvantageous. It could be stage-managed into a groundswell of "spontaneous" enthusiasm (never mind where all those Petraeus posters suddenly came from). I believe that the Republican lumpen proletariat is naturally self-selected to be a top-down, hierarchy-awed, order-taking lot. Compliance is mandatory; resistance is futile.
________________

dansolomon said...

To follow-up from Bob Cesca's place-

Petraeus couldn't just announce -during- the convention, he'd have to announce beforehand, by the end of August. And he'd be breaking military custom to do so (generals aren't required to announce their retirement sixty days ahead of time, but they almost always do, barring cancer or something), which is a big deal. There's really just not enough time- we're three weeks away from the point at which he'd have to enter the race, and he's nowhere near announcing his retirement. Keep in mind that, if he announces his retirement, he's in effect declaring himself for the nomination (why else would he retire suddenly, in a break from custom?). Which means that McCain has to spend the rest of August as a lame duck that everyone -knows- is lame, so effectively the Republicans have no nominee between Petraeus retiring and the convention. Retiring late in the month would make him look like the scheming-est politician in the world (a real risk anyway), and there's nowhere for him to go.

If he were already a retired general, I think you'd be on to something. But this would be totally unprecedented (and seen by many to be a push toward Martial Law) and it'd disrupt the Republican party in ways that wouldn't be advantageous to them. It'd be a huge gamble, in entirely new ways, and I don't think McCain's polling makes it seem particularly attractive. Remember, his biggest problems come from a lack of a ground game, and that's something that'd be hampered even more by a switcheroo.

--d

07 August, 2008 06:03

Blogger StuporMundi said...

Dan,

You've raised a procedural barrier that I hadn't thought of, and I hope it's as large of a barrier as you think it is. But I don't think so. Consider the real stakes here to the current players. It's not the war, it's keeping the executive investigative and law-enforcement power out of Democratic hands. It's probably not a stretch to say that every senior administration leader is vulnerable to investigation and prosecution for violation of oath, dereliction of duty, obstruction of justice, garden-variety corruption, and so on. My theory is based on this premise.

My theory is also based on the power of television to affect the behavior of the so-called swing voter, which is likely the low-info voter who gets most of his or her information from the TV. Those are the people who are most impressionable to powerful TV images of "leadership" and "presidential" comportment.

Another premise of my theory is that, if I'm correct, this strategy was thought of and planned long ago. Any disruption of the convention process would actually be part of the plan since it will be stage-managed by whatever cabal is wanting to "draft" Petraeus.

Would it be a big gamble? I don't think so. But consider this: to reasonable, impartial people, the Republican brand is ruined. These are the people who have put the country on the "wrong track," and everybody knows it. McCain doesn't have much more dignity or credibility to lose; he will be completely out of it by the time the GOP convention starts. If McCain is the nominee, the Republicans will lose, and the GOP knows it.

Yes, you and I would consider this act to be a precedent-erasing move toward overt martial law. But who are you and I? Just two guys who won't vote for a Republican. All this move requires is a procedural irregularity and a violation of military tradition, neither feat being too difficult for people who have been pulling the President's strings for 8 years. There would be some tut-tutting. Henry Waxman would hold a hearing.

Your point about the Republicans having no ground game is dead-on, and that's another reason why I fear this Petraeus '08 possibility. The only way the GOP can win is through a spectacular, unprecedented media campaign. September would be a great time for them to roll out their new product: a bloodless military junta for America.

Thanks for commenting on this. I surely hope that you're correct and that I am dead wrong.

Apropos of nothing

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Because I'm currently tired of speculating about the earth-shattering importance of America's future herself, here is The Studebacher Hoch Dancing Lesson and Prayer for Guidance, Roosevelt Auditorium, Chicago, circa 29 May 1971 (a few weeks before being recorded in New York for "the white album with the pencil on the cover). Note: photo taken before the prayer became "Cosmic" at the Fillmore East.

Words and pictures

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About the role of pictures in a presidential campaign, versus words.

McClatchy has a nice article on Big Oil interests possibly "laundering" oer $61,000 in McCain campaign contributions through the bank account of a middle-class New York family.

If the story is true, the reporting will not hurt John McCain in the slightest. The only way McCain will be hurt by this story is if Helen Thomas, when she returns to work, sucker punches him with a question about it on camera. You know: asking McCain if his flipflop on offshore oil drilling was related to the influx of Hess Corp. campaign contributions a few days earlier. Watch McCain stammer. Watch him turn red. Watch him call Helen a "cunt" when she returns to work. Now that would be a picture what is a picture.

But I may be wrong, because I'm just a simple country editor....

More Petraeus/Lieberman '08 talk

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In the comments section under my previous post on this topic, Big Otis suggests that Democrats could negate the benefits of drafting Petraeus for a Republican "Unity '08" ticket by running Wesley Clark (retired General) or Jim Webb (retired Admiral) as VP. I disagree for several reasons. (Reason 0: Webb has stated that he will not accept the nomination because he is afraid it would serve to muzzle him.)

Clark might help Obama with some voters (not me), but not as much as Petraeus would help the Republicans. First, Clark's most renowned military accomplishments, in the public's view, was as a NATO Commander (i.e., bossing around "gay" Europeans in Bill Clinton's Kosovo adventure), not as a two-fisted four-star General Officer in charge of the most lethal U.S. Army command in world history, as Petraeus currently is. In Stratego terms, Clark is a General (Ret.) and Petraeus is a Field Marshal (active duty). Field Marshal wins.

With Petraeus as GOP presidential nominee and Clark as Democratic VP nominee, Clark couldn't lay a glove on Petraeus even if he wanted to --- and I do not think that he would want to. Even if he did, it would make Obama look weak, as if hiding behind General Clark's kilt (or whatever former NATO commanders wear after hours).

I have much more to say on this, but I'm going to give it a rest for a bit. Last night I floated my theory to Josh Marshall and Bob Cesca by email, but neither one replied. I am not surprised --- this idea is still too far away in left field. Meanwhile, John McCain continues to self-destruct, today jokingly (I assume) pimping his wife out to the titties and beer crowd at Sturgis. But the more damage his campaign does to Obama through racist invective and slander, the more Obama looks like a "divisive" candidate to the corporate media once all the superstar journalists and pundits have their novel, shiny plaything, starting around Labor Day, in the form of Unity '08: a reluctant warrior willing to hang up his spurs in order to save the nation from... a Xenobamislamofascist presidency. The "moderate, undecided voters" will be hypnotized by the exciting and glamourous images on TV, as usual.

And if that were to occur, it would take Josh Marshall and Bob Cesca and the Democratic Party and everybody else except readers of this blog 2 months to figure out what happened. It's really a deadly simple strategy, though: a Petraeus/Lieberman "Unity '08" Republican ticket would instantly, for almost 2 months, wipe out or obscure all GOP negatives in a cyclone of hype, media man-love, corporate media "bipartisanship," and other sleight of hand. And 2 months is all they need.

Eternal truths

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John McCain offered to let his wife flash 500,000 bikers at Sturgis because he thinks she is a "cunt."

Revisiting Petraeus/Lieberman '08

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On 16 December 2007, in an early blog post characterized by mediocre writing, I presented my reasons for predicting that a brokered Republican National Convention would result in a ticket of Joe Lieberman and General David Petraeus. I'm sure everybody thought this was quite cute.

Today, with John McCain becoming an object of open scorn for some members of the elite Washington media, and even Paris Hilton's mother, I'm afraid (scared to death, actually) I'm going to have to "double down" on my prediction. Forget the stupid polls that say McCain has a nominal lead over Obama --- Zogby's polls have been wrong about pretty much everything all year. I am convinced that John McCain will not be running for President in October 2008.

First, the Republicans cannot afford to cede the Executive Branch and all the law enforcement and judicial appointment power that comes with it. The Republicans will not lose this election without trying tricks that aren't even in the book yet (outside of this blog). Everyone knows that McCain will lose against Obama no matter what pollsters or pundits say. Want proof? Just think about it for a moment. War, economy, energy: nobody on earth really thinks John McCain has any idea what the problems are, let alone the solutions.

Second, the Republicans have literally no one to run for President who is both well known and untainted by scandal, historical incompetence, etc. That is why McCain is the nominal candidate. But the GOP needs a real candidate and a off-the-scales strategy for winning the November election.

I believe they have that strategy.

Right now, John McCain's bigoted, incompetent campaign serves two Republican purposes. One is that Rove and his proteges are damaging Obama with the standard GOP bigotry and smears; the other is that Republicans are desperate for anyone to deliver them from the disaster of a McCain candidacy. They need someone who will unite the militarists, the corporate interests, the fundamentalists, and low-information "independent voters."

McCain's purpose --- damaging Obama --- will run its course soon, let's say around Labor Day, during the GOP convention, when it is finally time to start the real election campaign they've been planning along. Now imagine this: an "asymmetric" political strategy that begins with McCain dropping out at or shortly before the convention. Maybe he becomes unable to continue his campaign, ostensibly (or in fact) for health reasons.

National drama! The Republicans will have to rally around someone fast --- a devil we don't know, so to speak. The convention ensures maximal prime time viewing for all us suckers out here in TV land. What to do? Draft the only prominent Republican personage who no one would dare to criticize: Dave Petraeus. During the run-up to our annual September 11 fetish, The Architect Of The Surge, a telegenic general who both Republicans and the corporate media love, rides in on his White Horse.

There would be a month-long love affair by the press just because of the novelty of it all. Obama's campaign strategy, whatever it is, would be null. His message and voice would be drowned out for weeks on end. His strategists would be in disarray over how to handle the General. Anyone who wants an excuse to vote against Obama would have one. And Barack, to paraphrase what Hunter Thompson once said of Hubert Humphrey after being stabbed in the back, would look like he'd been sprayed in the face with shitmist.

As a side note, consider that Petraeus recently promoted to head CENTCOM, which Time correctly calls "the core of the U.S. military's current operations". No General in DoD has more power. And, unlike even McCain and Bush, General Petraeus will hear none of this "timetable" crap.

Of course Petraeus will need an inoffensive running mate, perhaps a moralistic, comparatively clean nebbish who is nominally a Democrat. One whose name begins with "Lie". One to whom the General can "reach across the aisle" to construct the Dream Unity '08 Ticket.

This idea truly frightens me. I have to come back later and edit this mess when I'm not feeling sick.

Eternal truths

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Many people refer to food prepared in a wok as "stir fry," but no one refers to food prepared in an oven as "bake."

Big Rock Head was here

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Eternal truths

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Orthopedic radiologists cannot find my acromioclavicular joint because I have a "muscular chest."

Now Obama has a case of the stupids

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First, regarding my previously posted eternal truth, here's this from the AP via HuffingtonPost:

"Democratic candidate Barack Obama said Saturday that Republican rival John McCain's campaign is not racist but is cynical in trying to divert voter attention from the real issues of the presidential campaign.

"Obama met with reporters for the first time since the McCain campaign claimed that the Illinois Democrat had "played the race card" by warning that McCain would try to scare voters about how Obama looks unlike "all those other presidents on the dollar bills" --- all of whom are white men."

Yes, it would be a rookie mistake or Obama to be lured into the McCain/Rove trap of making this election campaign all about race. But it is just plain stupid for Obama to give professional Republican bigots cover in order to deflect false accusations that Obama is "playing the race card." Backing down will not win Obama points with the corporate media, but it will undermine his own appearance of candor toughness.

In other stupidity news from AP via HuffPost, Obama yesterday said "he would be willing to support limited additional offshore oil drilling if that's what it takes to enact a comprehensive policy to foster fuel-efficient autos and develop alternate energy sources." His point was that, in order to avoid Republican gridlock on energy policy, he wants to avoid being "so rigid that we can't get something done."

So here's the scenario as Obama sees it: He is elected President in November 2008 and has a veto-proof majority in the Senate. The Bush Administration also has done him the unsolicited favor of inflating the perceived importance of the Executive Branch to the status of a virtual monarchy. The Republican Party, meanwhile, has been undeniably exposed as a corrupt and incompetent little cabal of excessively wealthy men who do the bidding of transnational oil corporations and Saudi princes at the expense of U.S. citizens. And yet President Obama will work hard with these same toads to reach a compromise on offshore oil drilling despite the preponderance of facts and economic analysis stating that harvesting offshore oil will have no significant impact on global supply or price relief, either now or in the future.

I think someone may have poisoned Obama's morning orange juice with Stupid Pills. Or else he is listening a little too closely to Hillary Clinton's advisors. Watch for the term flipflop to appear soon in the ongoing political narrative about Obama.

Eternal truths

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If John McCain were to accuse Barack Obama of being a "lazy coon," the corporate media would applaud McCain as "a straight talker who isn't afraid to call a spade a spade." If Barack Obama were to reply that McCain's accusation was self-evident hate speech, the corporate media would assert that Obama is playing the "race card" once again.

As seen via Eschaton

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A Wall Street Journal story today asks whether a nation of obese slobs would stand for a president like Barack Obama, who apparently has very low body fat content. It's supposed to be a serious story, actually. Atrios points us to an explanation, on SadlyNo, of how the WSJ reporter did her research.

The reporter first asked a leading question about Obama's physique on a Yahoo financial message board, and then based her story largely on one probably prankish reply she received that met her need for a "news hook." That reply indicated that the reporter's source, one "onlinebeerbellygirl", would prefer a doughy, potbellied chief executive to "any beanpole guy." The other responses posted to that same thread were from "people saying that the question is stupid, and/or making fun of [the reporter]," SadlyNo informs us. Ample documentation is provided. Arabesques of stupidity will stream through your power cord like beer flowing over your grandmother's paisley shawl.

I must say I completely agree with Alex from the SadlyNo comments thread, who sums it up like this:

If McCain were a homosexual, the WSJ would be questioning whether Obama sucked enough cock to be President.

Water ice on Mars: confirmed by NASA

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Lost in the unprecedented shocker about John McCain injecting racial smears into his presidential campaign against Barack Obama comes a news note from The Red Planet. NASA tonight announced that the Phoenix lander has collected ice from martian soil, melted it at 32 degrees Farenheit, and documented the presence of water molecules in the experimental chamber. Really. From the Associated Press. Ho hum.

If the water on Mars story were ever to gain traction, which it won't because it's not mentioned by God in the Bible, McCain can always pick up and run with this related story from a blog called "The Jed Report". In addition to Jed's photographic evidence of Obama's alien connections, the name "Barack" clearly has a Cardassian sound to it. Look for McCain to play the Xenobamislamofascist card right soon.

Cockroach ranchers

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Apropos of the 1990s Rwanda talk radio man who incited the Hutu majority to exterminate the "cockroach Tutsis" (not to mention raping, hacking apart, and burying them alive), Media Matters for America traces the short but continuing history of a persistent McCain campaign smear of Barack Obama that has been spread and perpetuated relentlessly by the corporate media even though it has been authoritatively debunked by the likes of DC celebrity pundit Andrea Mitchell. And Mitchell is no lefty fellow traveler --- she regularly appears as an Atrios "Wanker of the Day." (Sorry, I can't find an example of Mitchell's wanking because Atrios doesn't provide us with a search engine for his site.)

This is how it's done by genocidal dictators: transform the mass media into an unrebutted echo chamber for hate speech. Create a scapegoat class through broadcast slander and then sic the fear-addled bigots on them. Are we almost there yet? With one more stolen presidential election, maybe.

Nighty night.

Big Rock Head was here

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As reparations for making Big Rock Head frown at me, provoked (for once), I herewith reproduce a scan of one of his recent hilarious cartoons. This one was sketched on the top of a foam fast food doggy box.

Eternal truths

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A contribution from that Master of Science and all-around West Iowan worthy, Big Otis. Take it away, Big Otis:

American humans may be more ignorant about cause and effect than many insects.

Eternal truths

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A poignant milestone in the life of any father is the night No. 1 son announces that the house is running low on gin, tonic, and limes.

Accessories to terror

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Apropos of the hideous Unitarian church shootings in Tennessee over the weekend, R.J. Eskow makes a point about right wing media that I've made for years at neighborhood happy hours and elsewhere. The basic point is that words matter, especially when they are scripted subject to editorial review by media corporations before broadcasting to a mass audience.

The corporate infotainment industry has long-since debased the journalism profession to the point where reporters simply cannot be assumed to have their facts straight or to be working impartially. But it's much worse than that: millionaire propagandists posing as journalists have drifted over into packaging hate speech and calls to violence as conservative political punditry. This is simply not an exaggeration and cannot be denied in good faith: it's an obvious fact. Eskow cites some examples:

...right-wing rhetoric toward liberals and humanists like those who attended the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church has been exceptionally violent for years. Liberal groups are often called "Nazi" or "Nazi-like" by [Bill] O'Reilly.... [Michael] Savage says he'd "hang every lawyer" who tried to establish constitutional rights for Guantanamo prisoners, describes Obama as an "Afro-Leninist," and said the folks at Media Matters were "brownshirts"....

He reminds us that Sean Hannity has said "there are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of 'em is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn't become the speaker (of the House)." And that Ann Coulter has shared her considered opinion that "liberals should be beaten with baseball bats and tried for treason." Soulless, whoring, tax-evading former Bill Clinton advisor and Republican hater Dick Morris says "liberals are 'traitors' who should be decapitated," according to Eskow.

Commentary on this sort of right-wing incitement to violence against liberals has been easy to find on lefty blogs for years, and Media Matters for America frequently documents prominent national examples. It's not a secret.

So how do the networks who employ Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilley and Ann Coulter retain their sponsors? How does this content make it past network Standards and Practices departments when an extemporaneous "fuck" issuing from Bono's mouth can cost a network half a mil in fines (until the ruling is laughed out of court on appeal)? As "Stone Cold" Steve Austin would say, "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHY THESE THINGS HAPPEN!" It mainly matters just because they happen. (See keywords below anyway.)

I wonder how long many of these right-wing pricks would keep their jobs if broadcast executives were held liable as accessories to terrorism in cases such as the Knoxville church shootings.

Note about image: found on Bob Cesca's blog, it's an actual McCain political poster curently marketed by an outfit called ConservativeBuys.com. Yours for 18 bills.

Eternal truths

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If we've learned anything at all from Popeye it's that we can render a steer into link sausage and steaks if we punch it hard enough.

Balls of purity

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Time has a big takeout on this new conservative family activity called "purity balls," during which the paterfamilias takes his virgin daughter, sometimes as young as 4 years old, to a formal dance in which a herd of like-minded dads swear their female offspring to sustain their own purity until marriage. The title of the article, "The Pursuit of Teen Girl Purity," pretty well nails the sleazy double entendre --- unintentionally, of course --- that characterizes these events.

I have nothing to add either to the blog post linked here, at Feministing.com, or the commentary that follows it, except for one thing: the Time photo included with the Feministing post seems reminiscent of "Sisters," David Hamilton's 1972 erotic photography monograph depicting young women as totally innocent, sexually overripe vixens, probably with lesbian tendencies. But in the Time treatment, there are highly respectable geezers in the pictures, dressed in James Bond drag.

Saturday night fever

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Oops. Looks like someone has jacked up John McCain's weekend. I'll bet McCain calls Nuri al Maliki a "trollop" before Monday comes. I'd also give even odds that Cheney has al Maliki's head shipped to him in a Rubbermaid canister by DHL within that same "general time horizon".

Eternal truths

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As Red China becomes more like the United States, the United States becomes more like Red China.

And speaking of dead assholes...

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When I first read the news about North Carolina Sen. Liddy Dole wanting to name an international HIV/AIDS medical aid act after the late Sen. Jesse Helms, I reacted somewhat like Atrios. I thought it was amusing that the name of this homophobic cadaver would be associated with legislation intended to prevent the spread of HIV. He would be certainly be mortified by the development were he not already mort-ified.

But because I am not gay or lesbian, my first reaction to the story lacked empathy for the victims of Helms' epic style of sociopathic, bigoted politics. Pam Spaulding at Pandagon explains it so the rest of us can understand, though, with some NC-level political tinge, to boot.

Afterword: For readers who are on Blog Inconsistency Patrol at this moment, I do not believe that the tone of this post is out of keeping with what I wrote yesterday about dead people who are horrible. My tone is overtly vulgar here because Helms' life work deserves no respect by any stretch of civility. Neither Helms himself nor any of his loved ones could seriously believe, in good faith, that there was any moral content whatsoever to the dead senator's soul. I'm not the judge, but I'm not responsible for the discredit he brought upon himself through a lifetime of peddling hatred to his enablers in return for income and political power.

Late update: I hereby honor Senator Dole by naming an important component of my home infrastructure after her. We shall heretofore refer to the seat of our busiest porcelain throne as the Liddy My Toilet. That something y'all can get behind, North Carolina?

Eulogizing bad people

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I don't speak ill of the dead unless I would have spoken ill of them while they were alive.

Tim Russert was the moderator of venerable Sunday public affairs show Meet the Press which, to his embarrassment (presumably), was revealed during the Scooter Libby trial as Dick Cheney's favorite venue for launching new partisan political narratives and slanderous whispering campaigns disguised as news commentary.

Tony Snow was a right-wing media personality who used his talents to promote illegal war, inhumane economic policies, and perpetuate an ideology that empowers and invites transnational corporations do whatever they wish with our democratic republic while Grover Norquist's cosa nostra tries to twist its frail neck shut forever.

Media commentaries like this one after the death of people like Russert and Snow, by one Bob Franken, are to be expected, I suppose, if the author happens to be an "Emmy-award winning reporter, recently inducted into the Society for Professional Journalists Washington Hall of Fame." I accept Franken's assertion that Russert and Snow were both, on a personal level, nature's noblemen; all Hall of Fame Washington journalists have probably shared many liters of alcohol and buckets of chicken wings with both of the late worthies. And, no doubt, both Russert and Snow "squeezed every last bit of pleasure" from their work, as the Franken notes, with a concomitant amount of joie de vivre.

Well, why wouldn't they enjoy their privileged lives to the hilt? Both Russert and Snow must have felt indescribable thrills with each success catapulting the propaganda on behalf of absolute power. But Tim and Tony were not "champions of the honorable disagreement, where skeptical reporters and passionate advocates could hash out the best solutions to society's problems through intense debate", as the eulogist Franken wants us to believe. Russert was a skilled interviewer who used his position to deny adequate access to opposition points of view, and too often played "gotcha" journalism with them when he did invite them. Tony Snow was a political propagandist who promoted a right-wing agenda in every public appearance I ever saw or heard. Russert and Snow were champions of the "honorable disagreement," as Franken calls it, only because they could easily afford to patronize the guests they vanquished with sophistry, phony civility, and by owning their own venues.

The families and loved ones of such men must grieve for their loss because (1) nobody can choose their family members and (2) the deceased were no doubt kind and generous to a fault... to those who belonged to their tribe. Josh Marshall, who may be the most authentic gentleman among liberal bloggers, characterized the loss of Tony Snow to cancer at age 53 as "sad news." But the news was not sad for me. Just to be clear, the news was not happy for me either, even though I do not hesitate to say good riddance to both.

In his 18 months as the senior propagandist for the Bush administration, and as a substitute host for Rush Limbaugh, and as a right-wing commentator for Fox and CNN and syndication, Snow must in the end accept his share of blame for thwarting the public will for affordable universal health care, and for undermining the public's faith that the U.S. government is capable of providing it. I think it is safe to assume that Snow's health care never suffered as a result of government policy. And the administration's efforts to promulgate illegal war, torture, and cataclysmic economic policies never suffered as a result of the decisions Tony Snow made about how to use his media talents.

Russert, who gave more-than-equal time to our government's worst sociopaths and corporate looters, as well as their enablers and hangers-on --- while shutting out or piling on those with opposing voices --- can petition his sky god for entry through The Pearly Gates despite his role in neutering the press in the service of absolute power. His professional malfeasance, in my opinion, is even worse than Snow's. A constitutional democracy can't survive without a robust, independent press that questions authority and doesn't accept the propagandist's answers at face value. Russert, for reasons unknown to me, chose to abet power instead of the everyday people with whom he claimed to be as one.

Without meaning to denigrate anyone's personal grief for either man, I see nothing wrong with stating my belief that America is a better place today without Tim and Tony. Both men contributed directly or indirectly to the misery of untolled thousands (at least) throughout the world... and the grief of the many must count for much more.

NPR Fuct Check: the U.S. Constitution

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All Things Considered reporter Tom Gjelten extruded a Grand Old Piece of crap this afternoon in his puff piece about an outstanding new idea by aged establishment hacks James Baker (R) and Warren Christopher (D). These former U.S. Secretaries of State (who served, respectively, under Bush I and Reagan II --- I mean Clinton) think we need to replace the unconstitutional yet ineffectual War Powers Act of 1973. I say "unconstitutional" because the Act enables a President to attack a sovereign nation without seeking a Declaration of War from Congress. I say "ineffectual" because the so-called safeguards built into the Act have never been complied with. Nevertheless, this democracy-eroding law has facilitated a sense of normalcy in the American psyche regarding "fine little wars" that the President says are beneficial to us, and that is bad. Given that the War Powers Act has facilitated the transformation of this nation from a republic to an empire, it's hard for me to understand why people corporate imperialists like Baker and Christopher can't just be happy with the way things are.

But judging from the tone of his dutiful reporting, Tom Gjelten sounds sold on the idea that what America needs now (instead of that musty, outdated Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution) is "a special joint congressional committee made up of House and Senate leaders, as well as the chairmen and ranking members of key committees" that the President "would have to consult with that group before sending troops into any 'significant armed conflict.' "

Former Secretary Christopher tells us that this new War Powers Consultation Act is necessary "[s]o that when the president decides he wants to go to war he has to take into account the independent views of the members of Congress, and not just any members of Congress, but this selective group of the leaders of both parties of Congress and of both House and Senate." "Selective." That's a good one.

Achtung, assholes! Consult this: "The Congress shall have Power... To declare War...." There is no "question of how a U.S. president and Congress should approach war decisions," as Gjelten asserts on the basis of having found a presidential historian to tell us that Thomas Jefferson himself desired to circumvent Congress when waging war. The only people who question the plain language of the Constitution regarding the separation of war powers are imperialist Presidents, their co-conspirators, and their media apologists. This separation is not an "ambiguity," Tom Gjelten: it is an intentional limitation on both branches of government.

This kind of reporting infuriates me. It contributes to the mass-culture idea that the President is the supreme source of authority in the United States. If Tom Gjelten is confused about the plain language of the U.S. Constitution, maybe it's time to reassign him to a less challenging beat such as spitting into the burritos at Taco Bell. What a d-bag.

Eternal truths

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The more syllables you need to order your coffee drink, the "gayer" it is.

Simpler times

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Of topical interest, our Fifty50 Military History Correspondent provides a clipping from page 4 of The Fort Riley Post (23 August 1963) giving an account of “‘Realistic’ POW Conduct Training” offered to unsuspecting soldiers of Company B, 8th Infantry, in West Germany. During a training-oriented deception operation, the soldiers were ambushed, captured, blindfolded, shackled, and detained in a barbed wire compound. The putative POWs were then given the business, thusly:

A good-cop interrogator offered the prisoners “liquid refreshment” (read “booze”) and cigarettes and conversationally probed them for religious and racial prejudices and “other possible character weaknesses.” Next, the men were moved to a venue where they were questioned by an attractive female, “dressed only in a negligee.” Then, because not everything was Rat Pack and Camelot during the Kennedy Administration, geopolitically speaking, the captured soldiers were moved to a “‘torture area’ where they were given a modified water torture and shock treatment.” Even then, the U.S. Army had lots to teach soldiers that previously had been learned from the Commies.

It would be interesting to know if torture has ever been documented to produce any outcome other than the confession that the torturer had expected to extract in the first place. Along those lines, it also would be interesting to know whether that preordained confession might be produced more quickly and humanely through a judicious offering of vice. U.S. military and civilian intelligence agencies must have catacombs full of data on this very subject (as do the Chinese). For more information on the subject, be sure to file a Freedom of Information request (with the Chinese).

Eternal truths

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Women with perfect hair and makeup at a coffee shop on a weekend morning prefer men who wear khaki-colored cargo shorts.

[Note to regulars: Yes, this is one of my "new features." It took me 2 months to think of a title other than "Deep Thoughts," which has already been claimed by Jack Handy and Atrios.]

SCOTUS, not VP

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To this, I say this: I think the Clinton for VP issue is a red herring. There's no way she'll get the VP nomination, and I'm sure she doesn't want it. There's a much bigger incentive for her to go out and help nail down the "bitter" vote for Obama: SCOTUS. And after replacing Stevens, she would even be in a position to make history for women by, later, being named the first female Chief Justice (after Roberts and Alito are impeached for being "disingenuous" during their confirmation hearings). In this way she could easily trump the so-called legacy of her peckerwood husband.

[I said it first in a comment on Bob Cesca's blog because I wasn't thinking fast enough for my own good. That's just how selfless I am with my bon mots.]

War hero?

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Just wondering....

Infrared

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The photo below is by my little pal Nadia J., longtime friend of my family. I loaned her my Sony Cybershot, and she immediately went to work documenting artifacts around my house using the "night vision" mode. This mode records a scene at the infrared wavelength by emitting said radiation to reflect off objects within a few yards of the lens. It works best when there is little or no ambient light.

Nadia's little pictures are brilliant, and they make me feel dumb for never having tried the same thing during some otherwise boring rainy evening. This particular one radiates a certain amount of social commentary, which is to me all the more poignant for the fact that it probably was not the motivating intent for creating the image. I think Nadia may be the Cartier-Bresson of my bungalow, curiously finding the "decisive moment" in creating her little still lifes using the junk laying around here. I'll post more of these periodically because I like them, and I hope you do, too.

This tinto tastes like paint!

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Actually, the Spanish wine I'm drinking at Kopi right now tastes more like Pixie Stix. And that's not all bad, flashwise regarding taste. Much better than vinegar or a gym bag.

In my most recent blogging hiatus I have been planning for the future, blogwise. I've been dissatisfied with how much attention I felt compelled to focus on Hillary Clinton's self-obsessed behavior during the latter half of the Democratic primary process. Too much vitriol from me, as well as Clinton. So I just wanted to say "hi" and assure you that great new features are coming your way!

But for right now I want to post one awesome idea for Barack Obama: a deal that he might make with Hilary that would get her out on the campaign trail and truly working hard to help him sew up the bitter middle-age female and hillbilly vote. He should offer to nominate her for the first SCOTUS vacancy! That would provide Senator Clinton an escape hatch from some discomfort that awaits her in the Senate, and would install her at the highest level of one of our three coequal branches of government. I'll bet she'd go for that. Now, I don't trust her for a second in any elected capacity, but I do think it's possible that an appointment to SCOTUS would allow her to revisit her youthful idealism and dedication to liberal democratic principles. And maybe even give her an opportunity to dump her peckerwood husband. So how about those apples, My Friends?

It was a simpler time

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From the Science & Engineering Desk, and apropos of nothing (as our correspondent often says), I present to you an invention for the ultimate in comfort and convenience during the reportedly grueling act of childbirth: behold U.S. Patent 3,216,423 --- Apparatus For Facilitating the Birth of a Child By Centrifugal Force (1965). Notice the cruciform plan of said apparatus, providing subliminal reassurance to all of an immaculate delivery, if not conception. And, no, it's not a nutty idea, regardless of what you may think! Click the image to enlarge detail. My favorite feature is the safety net for Junior.

Listen, I'm a busy man!!!

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I must apologize for using my discretionary time for activities other than blogging.

I have been busy with some side work that will enable me to feed my addictions for another month. Hopefully, these addictions will destroy me before I feel the need to overwork myself to such an extent again.

Very late update: This is my occasional reminder that, as a Simple Country Editor, I edit. To include judicious deletions, and stuff like that there. It is hoped that not even regular visitors will have any idea what I am taking about at this point.

All you need to know about primary coverage

Click through this link for a first-rate primer on the job that insider campaign spinners and the official media do on John Q. and Mary S. Public every day there is a presidential primary election in the United States. Gullible "political junkies" who get their juice from the likes of Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, and Cokie Roberts need to consider the possibility that their chosen narrators of life are unreliable with the facts and untrustworthy in their motives.

Concurrent update: Apologies for filing this link after the Tuesday primaries, but it really pertains to the political media-industrial complex in perpetuity.

WPE cafe blogging!

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I heart my new MBP and am taking a smidgen of time away from the Simple Country Editor grind to blog, just because I can now, in style.

A certain meme, documented in this case by Atrios, has been floating around since Our President has fallen into disfavor with a majority of die Volk. Specifically, the meme is that George W. Bush is the most unpopular president "in modern times." I wonder: why the qualification? Do we really know of any president who has been more unpopular? A more important question, in my opinion, is why it took a majority of the people 7 years to reach this opinion. Everything about Mr. Bush --- literally everything --- was apparent on its face since before his election, when I remember news reports of him standing at a Florida stock car track or something, repeatedly bleating "W" in high-school Spanish to a crowd of frothed-up Cuban exiles, with the learned media commentators asserting that this behavior displayed not only Governor Bush's fluency in a foreign language, but also his deep connections to the "Hispanic" community.

I believe there is one, and only one, reason why Mr. Bush's popularity ratings are so dismal: people are afraid that they can't afford all their great stuff any more.

Acronym alert: for the benefit of all you puny humans out there, WPE means "Worst President Ever."

Assignment desk: Question for McCain

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In a Florida speech today, John McCain said it's time to put Americans "back in charge" of their own health care. The idea is that you and I are in the best position to shop for healthcare insurance. If by "are in the best position" he means "don't know crap about how to", then he may be right.

I respectfully suggest that a reporter ask McCain if he has ever shopped for his own healthcare insurance, and whether he had any difficulties selecting a plan. Then ask him if all of his "friends" can sign up for the same healthcare plan that he is covered by, for an affordable price. And whether he supports full, immediate enrollment in that same plan for all combat veterans from all wars as a paid-in-full benefit of the GI Bill.

PS: click through to the NPR transcript and get a load of the commentary by one Regina Hertzlinger, a Harvard Business School professor and "leader in the consumer-driven health care movement." Something about people wanting a Toyota when their employer would rather buy them a tricked-out Harvardmobile, and how that would be a shame, or something. I think Dr. Hertzlinger might be better described as a " leader in the right-wing idiotic simile movement."

Scribefire!

Pay no attention: I'm just trying a Firefox plug-in called Scribefire, which supposedly will let me post to this blog without actually logging in. The purpose of this technology? I have no idea. But it's sure awesome!

Immediate update: Scribefire messes with my precious ledding (that's line-spacing to you nonspecialists). Therefore, my interest in it has seriously declined over the past 90 seconds.

Fifty50 in-depth analysis: Pennsylvania Democratic Primary

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You've heard the liars and BS craftsmen spinning their primary analysis to the craven official media. Everybody wants to tell you what it all means. Well, allowing for the fact that I have my own biases, I think a few basic facts are hard to dispute. And the meaning is self-evident to us rubes in Champaign, Illinois, if not the bitter imbeciles of central Pennsylvania and the Beltway Cocktail Circuit.

First, look at these Pollster.com charts. I'm not good at this stuff, and these are probably not the best charts to use, but they look good enough to show that Obama has been steadily been closing the gap on Clinton's lead since the beginning of 2007 or the beginning of 2008 --- take your pick. As far as I can tell, that fact has not been widely reported, or reported as being significant. You may remember that a similar failure of communication led to stories about how Obama got trounced in the New Hampshire primary, even though he steadily gained on Clinton up until primary day. (Obama got "trounced" because he did not live up to the hype or inaccurate opinion polling after the Iowa caucuses.)

Second, there is some irritating and disingenuous "conventional wisdom" being dispensed about how the Democrats are doing themselves tremendous harm through self-destructive negative campaigning tactics. Well, no, that's not really true: Hillary Clinton and her peckerwood husband, and their surrogates, have been directly appealing to the bigot vote by invoking the names of Scary Negroes and their purported association with Obama. Then there's her disingenuous shot-and-beer pandering to morons who think Chablis and Merlot are not manly, and her ridiculous purported love affair with guns. And she has been aided in her tactics by the official media, especially Gibson and "George" on the ABC debate. As far as I can tell, Obama has retaliated by referring to Hillary as "Annie Oakley."

To summarize, both a casual and a careful reader of the news would be justified in concluding that after months of throwing the kitchen sink, all the rolling pins in the drawers, and a bushel of bigoted personal attacks at her opponent, Hillary Clinton was not able to stop the slow and steady gains made by Obama in Pennsylvania over the past year or two.

Update while I'm still writing the original post: now The New Republic is comparing Obama to McGovern, meaning that he is a Don Quixote figure with an increasingly isolated band of fanatics as his only support. Expect to hear a lot of this "meme" in the next two weeks and beyond. Obama will be portrayed as the Democrat who is tearing the party apart.

Bill Clinton: against fearmongering before he was for it

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Josh Marshall, my online journalistic hero with at least one editorial foot of clay, posted this video flashback of Bill Clinton yesterday. It's from 2004; click through after you read Josh's introduction.

It's difficult for me to understand why smart younger guys like Marshall, as well as Atrios and others, still lionize the Bill Clinton of the past and to this day cannot understand that they bought a Bill of goods back in the early 1990s. The words Clinton speaks in Josh's video clip are fine words, and true, even if they reflect irony on the campaign of his wife today, 4 years hence. But those fine and true words were uttered by a slippery peckerwood who has even stopped trying to sound sincere since he started earning $50K/hour flicking his silver tongue at corporate audiences following his "retirement."

Look, fellas: Bill Clinton was never a liberal, and was never even a "progressive." His program has always been basically the same as the Rockefeller Republicans, including their twisted heirs such as G.H.W. Bush. Not liberal. Not progressive. Not concerned in the slightest about you or me. This fact was obvious to liberal adults in 1988 and 1992 and 1996. So guys, stop waxing nostalgic about the "old" Bill Clinton. The "new" one is same as the "old" one.

Do you disagree, Puny Human? OK: send me one example of any truly liberal or progressive initiative that arose from either of the two Clinton administrations. And Al Gore accomplishments don't count. Neither do things that just look liberal in comparison with the Reagan/Bush administration. Neither do botched healthcare policy reforms....

A Brooks & Shields joint

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Driving south on Prospect last night I had the misfortune of punching the radio through a transcription of the PBS NewsHour, and some insane punditry by Mark Shields and David Brooks. You just have to listen to it to appreciate the, what --- I don't know: stupidity, mendacity, mental illness? Depends on who was talking at a given moment. Examples:

1. Listen to how Shields immediately goes off the deep end in renouncing debate moderator questions about flag lapel pins while at the same time implying that people who agree with his opinion may be internet-based left-wing conspiracy nuts.

2. Marvel at how smarmy Brooks sounds right out of the gate, lecturing Shields (but really lecturing all of us rubes in the audience) about how important it is for moderators to ask presidential candidates questions to discover whether they are really like "us," possibly not aware of the fact that most of "us" wear lapel pins of any kind, and even fewer wear lapels.

3. Wrap your puny human mind around this bit of analysis by Shields: Pennsylvania have lost 237,00 manufacturing jobs since the beginning of the Bush administration; change has not been good for Pennsylvanians, and change is not a welcome message for these people because change has hurt them. Therefore, Pennsylvania is a "good fit" for Hillary Clinton. [I solemnly swear that my paraphrase of his clanging is accurate.]

4. Mystify yourself wondering why Brooks thinks it's appropriate to slip in an endorsement of retired Senator and unretired DLC A-hole Sam Nunn for VP. What?! That's some nice "being in touch," there, fella.

The insight of the evening, which both of these soiled specimens seemed to think they were uttering for the first time in American history: these (Democratic) people will just say whatever it takes to get elected without any regard for what they would actually have to do once in the Oval Office! Next week: Soylent Green is PEOPLE!

Epiphany

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Small-town crackers are so stupid that they need elitist pundits to convince them that Barack Obama condescended to them.

Should-Never-Have-Left Department

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Jeez, I take a sabbatical and the political discourse becomes so unimaginably stupid that I'm literally frightened to say anything about it.

I believe that thinking people, and especially people of good intentions, are natural suckers in what passes for political discourse today. We behave all politely and try to address the disingenuous points made by professional right-wing liars and troublemakers. We try to play by civil rules of discourse, and observe the principles of logic. And they don't. I wonder when a political leader or presidential candidate will just say to Russert or Matthews or Stephanopolous, live on TV, that no, he or she will not answer the moderator's carefully engineered double-bind question because it was deliberately contrived to elicit an answer that can be interpreted by the elite media to offend a significant portion of the population. Or that it is just too stupid to answer, and that an answer would offend the intelligence of the viewing audience. What would someone like Obama have to lose with a statement like that? Really.

It terrifies and sickens me that the elite media present right-wing talking points as if they're the touchstone of fact that we must all acknowledge before we are allowed to utter a sound. I can assure all you young people out there that there was a time when journalism and public discourse at least resembled a truth-seeking activity.

Yes, all that I'm presenting here are gross generalities, but it's time to jump back into the blog again, so this is where and when I choose to do it. Consider this a bit of throat-clearing. But, really, where can I intelligently begin when the hottest topic in the establishment media for the past week has been an off-the-cuff remark by Obama, taken entirely out of context, liberally spiced with dog-whistle racism and anti-gay subtext, courtesy of the sociopaths running Hillary Clinton's campaign (i.e., the Clintons) and the sociopaths who make their living talking on your TV, your radio, and probably, soon, in the fillings of your molars?

My fervent hope is that, finally, we are on the verge of a watershed event: someone (the Republican/DLC establishment) may finally go broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American people. First chance I get, I'm sending $25 to Obama, if for no other reason than I'm awed by his ability to maintain his dignity so far.

Will return soon

Occasionally, regular, hideous life takes a front seat to blogging. This past week has been, collectively, one of those occasions. I promise to return soon in order to provide more of the mature commentary and creative fugues that you have come to expect.

Executive summary on Reaganomics

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Jane Smiley is a novelist who writes really clear-headed and lively commentary for HuffingtonPost. Her latest post is a brilliant and concise description of... well, just go read it. I have some younger readers, and I hereby command them to click through and get a short course in post-1970s American political economy. Don't worry, kids: it's actually quite entertaining.

In my opinion, Smiley's column covers everything a regular, everyday person needs to know about Reaganomics, other than the self-evident observation that it has been a miserable failure in all it ever has attempted, even by its own standards, except its efforts to dismantle U.S. democratic institutions, transfer public wealth to private corporations, and maintain a perpetual state of war. And fear. And pestilence.

I do disagree with one detail in Smiley's analysis, though. The ultimate problem really isn't the sociopathic economists, but the transformation of the free press into a house organ for the Reagan Revolution over the past 25 years. These free-market goons would have been humiliated and laughed off the stage by real, two-fisted reporters even before they had their right foot out of the green room two decades ago.

Funny

Hillary Clinton supporters are staging a writer's strike at DailyKos. They feel they are victims of meanness.

Doodooodoot duhdootdoot! I interrupt this blog to bring you a special bulletin: No One Cares.

Hillary Clinton: monster

Actually, much worse than a monster: Republican.

Geri Ferraro: bigot

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Much comment on the racism of our first-ever female vice presidential nominee (1984), Geraldine Ferraro, can be found on the web tonight. Here's a representative one --- a Daily Kos link with commentary from Bob Cesca, illustrating that Ferraro has a long history of this kind of race-baiting.

Obama's campaign doesn't need to be demanding resignations from Hillary's campaign, but they do need to point out what the Clinton campaign has become: monstrous. And then they should hire back Samantha Power and give her a raise.

Erratum and update: Well, it appears that Geri Ferraro was not the first-ever female vice presidential nominee after all. StuporMundi apologizes for his error. However, Ms. Ferraro was, as far as StuporMundi knows, the first-ever female vice presidential candidate to end up being such a clueless, bigoted asshole.

Warrantless wiretapping thought experiment

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It's audience participation time! You are invited to help with my domestic wiretapping thought experiment! Let's get started!

Suppose you are the U.S. Attorney General, in charge of a Justice Department that believes it has the power to conduct warrantless wiretaps of any telephone conversation that takes place in the United States. Suppose further that your department has in the past investigated and prosecuted domestic political enemies for the sole purpose of removing them from elected office. Also suppose that you had spent the previous 20 years as an ultraconservative judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and may or may not harbor feelings of animosity about a flashy, arrogant liberal prosecutor (now the Governor of your state) who in the recent past caused considerable trouble for some of the nice men who toil on Wall Street.

Given those assumptions (here comes the audience participation part), could you think of any reason not to allow the G-men to prosecute Eliot Spitzer on the basis of evidence that may have originated with an illegal wiretap? As a corollary experiment, can you think of any reason why Pat Fitzgerald's investigation of Karl Rove may have gone suddenly, inexplicably limp a coupla years ago?

All this is just the basis for a "hypothetical," of course, not a "conspiracy theory."

Update: Well, dagnab it, Jane Hamsher beat me to the punch with this nice post at FireDogLake that includes other, more wonky, Spitzer-type hypothetical questions for you to ponder. I hope our heroes at TPM Muckraker dig into it.

A little Obama history

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The link below goes to Bob Cesca's blog. It reprints an October 2002 antiwar speech by Barack Obama. Read the text. At the time Obama gave the speech, while he was still serving in the Illinois legislature, Senate Democrats were falling all over themselves to stand up and be counted by President Bush. (Yes, that's right: falling all over themselves to stand up.)

Then, if you like, you can follow another link provided by Cesca, this one directing you to the text of a speech Hillary Clinton gave on the floor of the Senate about a week later. It includes this line:

If we get the resolution and Saddam does not comply, then we can attack him with far more support and legitimacy than we would have otherwise [emphasis added].

She made that foreign policy speech less than 2 years after her first election to any public office. Some may attribute the poor judgment shown in that speech to her lack of experience.

Today's doke

Update: Hat-tip to Big Otis for pointing out some "slipshop" editing in the text of Today's doke. I have corrected the error. Thanks, asswipe.

Looking back on Huckabee

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He said he majored in miracles. But he didn't say whether he stayed awake during class.

A difference between Clinton and Obama

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Putting aside ideas and policy, an area where political competition is obscured by pointless nuance and deliberate ambiguity, I see one revealing difference between Clinton and Obama. It is evident in the basic strategy and tactics used by each campaign.

Obama seeks support through his personal charisma and giving inspirational speeches. He puts together strong local campaign organizations, including effective get-out-the-vote operations. His goal seems straightforward: to attract the most voters and make sure they get to the polling place on primary day. His campaign treasury is rich largely because hundreds of thousands of everyday people are contributing small amounts in direct response to the message they hear.

Clinton relies heavily on party establishment types and their established political organizations, which can be assumed at least in part to depend for their power on patronage at the city, county, and state levels. She entered two rogue Democratic primaries, in Michigan and Florida, in defiance of the national party and all other competing candidates, and is now lobbying to change the rules pertaining to whether her delegates from those states may be counted. Behind the scenes, her campaign has been trying to lean on party "superdelegates" to snatch the nomination if Obama gets to Denver with more regular delegates than she has.

In other words, Obama is working hard and playing by the rules to win the nomination; Clinton is working the establishment, gaming the system, and operating through back-channels to get what she wants.

"I heard it on NPR"

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Back-to-back stories on All Things Considered this afternoon:

First, a strangely objective update on an under-reported story about a "loner," found comatose in a Las Vegas motel room, in possession of (1) firearms, (2) undisclosed amounts of the neurotoxin Ricin, (3) castor beans, from which Ricin is synthesized, and (4) an "anarchist-type textbook." Although the man's ethnicity was not reported, we can be fairly certain that he does not come from any brown-skinned, funny-accented region of the world. Why? Because, according to ATC co-host Melissa Block, Vegas police have stated that "it doesn't make you a terrorist to have an anarchist-type textbook." No word from John Law on whether it makes you a criminal to possess a deadly illegal poison previously used in terrorist attacks.

The frame for this first NPR story was something to the effect that, 'well this is certainly an interesting mystery, isn't it?' The report does represent an admirable presumption of innocence by an often-hysterical press in This Time Of War. They give us this tale of a simple country pizza delivery guy, living in his cousin's basement, taking his anarchist's cookbook and his castor beans and his guns along with undisclosed amounts of illegal neurotoxin on a road trip to Vegas, just minding his own business and living there with no visible means of support, when he mysteriously goes into a coma. Maybe he was "just trying to do harm to himself," one reporter mused. There are probably easier ways to do that, but who knows?

Second, a strangely sanctimonious story about a New York cabbie, briefly hailed as a hero for having rescued an infant abandoned in his taxi, until it was discovered that he was indirectly acquainted with the baby's father. NPR calls the story "Taxi Driver Arrested for Helping Girlfriend Ditch Kid." Nice. ATC co-host Robert Siegel clumsily walks the listener through the convoluted facts by asking the New York Daily News police reporter he's interviewing questions such as, "Is he from Ecuador, is that what I read?" Ah-HA! (How the hell should the police reporter know what Siegel read?)

As near as I can tell, here's the story. The father of an "angelic" 5-month-old baby girl tells his sister he can't care for the baby himself because he works construction and the underage mother has left him. This guy's sister tells her boyfriend, the Ecuadoran taxi driver, that they must bring the baby to a city fire station, which is reasonably in sync with the intent of the city's safe harbor law if not the letter of it. The immigrant does this, but he fabricates a story about how the baby was abandoned in his taxi, presumably to protect the brother of his girlfriend. Bad call, of course. But before the cabbie confesses to his fib, the heartwarming story hits the press: Ecuadoran Samaritan Toast O' Town --- Read All About It! But then the fairy tale is spoiled by an inconvenient detail, and everybody feels chumped. So the cabbie loses his livery license and faces prosecution for filing a false police report. Forget about the fact that this guy actually did take charge of an abandoned baby and did the right thing --- he made an error doing it. Let's pile on and strip him of his livelihood, then send him back where he belongs. Unless he has an apartment full of guns, castor beans, and an anarchist-type textbook.

International Journal of Nana Studies 1(4)

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Proposed: A Fifth Law of Thermodynamics

Background

Nana has developed and proposed a new Law of Thermodynamics, the acronym for which is DENOLT (Double E's Negative- Oneth Law of Thermodynamics. This new law of physics, in its draft form, may be described as follows: The entropy of an isolated thermodynamic system decreases in direct proportion to the amount of time heat transfer occurs within the system.

Discussion

Initial development of DENOLT took place at a traditional American pancake house located in Champaign, Illinois, on 10 February 2008. The thermodynamic system described in the original embodiment of the theory consisted of natural gas from a conventional municipal gas main, a small source of heat to ignite the gas into a sustained flame, a steel restaurant cooking grill, a film of vegetable-based cooking oil, and diced Idaho russet potatoes.

Nana [poking at hard potato cubes within a "Farmer's Scramble"]: This is why we waited so long.
SM: What do you mean?
Nana [continuing to poke at the hard potato cubes]: They started with raw potatoes.
SM: They always start with raw potatoes.
Nana: No they don't.
SM: Are you saying that they grow potatoes already cooked?
Nana: No. But they had to cut them up.
SM: Do you mean that they can't cut up well cooked potatoes?
Nana: Oh, you know what I mean!

Analysis and Conclusion

Because cooked-in-the-dirt russet potatoes harvested from Idaho are demonstrated to become more heterogeneous the longer they are grilled at high temperature, the entropy of the system of which they are a part has been demonstrated to decrease in proportion to the amount of heat transferred. The proposed new thermodynamic law, DENOLT, assumes that said precooked-by-nature potatoes are cut up at some time between when they are harvested and when they are introduced to a hot grill.

Although DENOLT may currently be regarded only as a hypothesis, it is considered probable that research scientists and engineers will be able to test and replicate the initial results through controlled experiments at any traditional pancake house. Theoreticians may be expected to employ these data to codify and refine DENOLT as a scientific theory. Upon subsequent rigorous testing and observation by the scientific community worldwide, confirmation of DENOLT as the fifth confirmed Law of Thermodynamics should be expected within the century.

Afterword

"Double E" is an alias by which Nana is sometimes identified for purposes of confidentiality and protection of intellectual property.

Afterword II: Erratum

A commenter who should be able to grasp esoteric thermodynamic theory was confused by this account of the draft DENOLT. Part of the confusion may be attributed to the author's incomplete description of the cubed potato (CP) properties. The CPs were not cold, and their hardness was attributable to a state of rawness not explainable by the established Laws of Thermodynamics (Nana 2008a).

Beyond "Good to Great"

From The Salt Lake Tribune, via TPM and reader DB (where I saw the relevant Trib excerpt), comes an account of a next-gen employee motivation program.

In the long term, employee motivation through management-initiated waterboarding is probably a welcome development for several reasons. First, it will weed all the sissies out of the sales team and put them on the streets where they really belong to begin with. Second, it will finally rid us of impermanent, namby-pamby management fad thinking epitomized by Harlequin-style boardroom romances such as Good to Great. Third, it will help to rip the grinning, baboon-like happy-mask off the Reagan Revolution and reveal just what it's always been about: applying wealth and brute force to deceive the innocent, intimidate the weak, and redefine human beings as an expendable capital resource for use by a handful of degenerate plutocrats and their enforcers.