My Response to an Iraq War Supporter

Danimal recently felt compelled to write a post to an Iraq War supporter -- yes, Virginia, there still are a few of those left -- who calls himself imjustbigboneddammit. Danimal's post featured a hyperlink to the excellent article by Professor Juan Cole which pretty much blew Christopher Hitchens' rosy take on the Iraq Debacle out of the water and into orbit.

Anyway, I wrote a comment to that post regarding Professor Juan Cole's credentials. And here is imjustbigboneddammit's response to Danimal's post and to my comment:

Are you kidding? Sorry, Dan, but I long ago closed my mind to the pompous, vile idiocy of Professor Uninformed Comment. Reasons why will follow when I am not at work. Oh, and Harold, your post (if that's you) hardly establishes Cole's credentials. Was it his admission that he lacks experience in Iraq that convinced you he was credible? Or was it the fact that the Right doesn't like him? I think I know the answer to that.

Interesting, though, that you saw the need to preempt any attacks on his credentials. The lady doth protest too much..

Oh yes -- that was me, and I don't even know where to begin, except maybe to ask whether or not imjustbigboneddammit really believes what he is saying. I mean, Ann Coulter doesn't even write like that anymore. Obviously he's playing the Devil's Advocate here, but that's OK -- because I'll play along. I live for this shit.

I mean, for Christ's Sake, imjustbigboneddammit, do you think that maybe I anticipated your attack on Cole's credentials because, after five years of all the radical right-winged extremist bullshit, maybe I'm pretty much used to the standard operating procedures of BushCo and its apologists? So no -- I'm not surprised that the radical right hates Juan Cole. Indeed, I'd be surprised if it didn't.

Let's face it -- every time someone states the obvious about the Bush Regime -- i.e., that nobody in that clueless administration would know their backside from a hole in the ground -- every time that happens in a more or less high profile way, a Reichsführer Rove-type discrediting attack is launched upon that person.

You're aware of that, right? Do you want me to give you some examples? How about this for starters: General Shinseki, Paul O'Neill, Joe Wilson, Richard Clarke, The Dixie Chicks (sorry, I couldn't resist), Juan Cole, and, most recently, Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer (more on him later).

These people all have two things in common: (1) all of them were right on the money in what they had to say, and (2) all of them were attacked by RoveCo for having the guts to come forward and speak the obvious. Given the neo-fascist circumstances we currently find ourselves in, I consider them patriots.

Are there other people in the world who might have more Iraq-related experience in the Middle East than Juan Cole? Well, yeah -- how about Hans Blix and Scott Ritter. [BTW, those are two more individuals you can put on the above list.] But my question to you is this -- are you saying that someone like, say, the idiotic Condi Rice has more experience than Juan Cole does in the region? Or the moronic Rumsfeld?

Oh, I'm sorry -- the image of Rummy shaking Saddam's hand just popped into my head. Obviously, Rumsfeld has been to Iraq -- to give Saddam nerve gas. You remember that, right?

You dislike Juan Cole because he's right and you resent him for it. After all, you have obviously spent so much time and effort supporting All-Things-Bush that it is too late for you to turn around now. Wouldn't be prudent.

By the way, do you blame anyone for that monumental clusterf@#k we are currently experiencing in Iraq (besides Bill Clinton, of course -- yeah, I anticipated that one as well), or is everything over there just going fine as far as you are concerned? Look! Isn't that a brand new school behind that blown-up humvee and the sixty-two dismembered bodies?

Take off the blinders, buddy. To paraphrase your hero-in-chief, you -- and people who think like you -- are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

And speaking of that dry drunk -- well, maybe not so dry these days -- you know, that coke-addicted piece of dreck in the White House whom you obviously thinks farts rainbows, what is the deal there? Why do you like that guy so much? Wait, I know what you'll say -- you liked the way he stood on the rubble of the World Trade Center with his bullhorn.

Well, I liked that too. I liked it a lot. But tell me -- what has he done lately?

So, to sum up, I believe that your thinking on all this is wrong, and if you don't agree with me, then I'LL SEE YOU IN . . .

. . . Las Vegas -- in about a month. Bring lots of money for craps.

Bush Nicknames

Here are some nicknames George W. Bush uses for various people (via Political Wire).

My favorites are Balloon Foot (for Colin Powell), Fredo (for Alberto Gonzales), and, of course, Turd Blossom (for Karl Rove).

The End of the Beginning?

Judith Miller, after six weeks in jail, is now free: "I am leaving jail today because my source has now voluntarily and personally released me from my promise of confidentiality regarding our conversations."

Why so late? Here's what the New York Times had to say about it:

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said that until recently, Miller had received "only a generic waiver" of her confidentiality promise, "and she believed she had ample reason to doubt it had been freely given."

"In recent days, several important things have changed that convinced Judy that she was released from her obligation," Keller said in a statement. He did not provide details of what those changes were.

This all seems very weird to me. If you believe the story everybody is telling, the only reason Miller was jailed for so long is because Miller's attorney, Robert Bennett, waited 80 days to call Scooter Libby's attorney to see whether a waiver of confidentiality -- signed by Libby more than a year ago -- was voluntary:

Over the Labor Day weekend, Miller's attorney, Robert Bennett, tracked Tate down in Martha's Vineyard to tell him she had not accepted the waiver as valid because "it came from lawyers."

"I assured Bennett that it was voluntary, and he asked, 'Would Scooter say that to Judy?' And I said, 'Scooter doesn't want to see Judy in jail,'" Tate said.

"My reaction was, why didn't someone call us 80 days ago?" he said of his conversation with Bennett.

Obviously, there is a lot more to this story than merely some attorney waiting 80 days to ask for a clarification. It's not like Bennett is a Bush FEMA appointee or something -- he is an attorney with an important client in a very big case. And I don't think Judith Miller, a warmongering journalist if there ever was one, would sit in jail for six weeks just waiting for her attorney to get on the ball and make the proper inquiries.

Miller obviously sat in jail all that time because she was protecting herself more than she was protecting any source. Did she somehow play an active part in outing Valerie Plame as a CIA operative? It wouldn't surprise me. Of all the cheerleading members of the press, Miller was the most active in helping Bush launch his illegal war. Why wouldn't she have also taken an active part is discrediting Ambassador Joe Wilson, one of the few people at that time who had the balls to call bullshit on BushCo's Iraq WMD nonsense.

Maybe we'll hear the real story to all this someday.


UPDATE: I may be wrong on some of the things I said above. A lot of my comments assumed that Miller's lawyer was at least competent. However, I just watched Wolf Blitzer interview him on CNN, and it appeared to me that Attorney Robert Bennett may indeed be a f*@#ing idiot.

By the way, he is also the brother of Bill Bennett. Although I wasn't aware of that, it certainly doesn't surprise me.

Tom DeLay: The Motion Picture

This is interesting:

For the last two years, as he pursued the investigation that led to Wednesday's indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Travis County, Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle has given a film crew "extraordinary access" to make a motion picture about his work on the case.

The resulting film is called The Big Buy, made by Texas filmmakers Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck.

Let's hope this movie closes with a jail cell door being slammed on a weeping Tom DeLay as the final credits start to roll. God, I love happy endings.

An Ann Coulter Article I Could Actually Finish

Usually I can only get through the first three or four words of an Ann Coulter piece before I am forced by health issues to cease reading. The normal effect on me when I read her stuff is similar to what happened to Ernest Scribbler in that old Monty Python bit about the World's Funniest Joke:

Voice Over: This man is Ernest Scribbler... writer of jokes. In a few moments, he will have written the funniest joke in the world... and, as a consequence, he will die... laughing.

[Ernest stops writing, pauses to look at what he has written... a smile slowly spreads across his face, turning very, very slowly to uncontrolled hysterical laughter... he staggers to his feet and reels across room helpless with mounting mirth and eventually collapses and dies on the floor.]

Voice Over: It was obvious that this joke was lethal... no one could read it and live...

* * * Colonel: All through the winter of '43 we had translators working, in joke-proof conditions, to try and produce a German version of the joke. They worked on one word each for greater safety. One of them saw two words of the joke and spent several weeks in hospital. But apart from that things went pretty quickly, and we soon had the joke by January, in a form which our troops couldn't understand but which the Germans could.

But I was able to read this Coulter piece in its entirety without suffering any ill effects, and it gave me the impression that Ann ain't all too happy with Bush and his people right now. I loved these Coulter observations regarding the Katherine Harris issue:

In 2004, Bush backed Mel Martinez for the open Senate seat in Florida and asked the magnificent Katherine Harris not to run against him, so she graciously bowed out. Martinez has since called on Bush to shut down Guantanamo. What's Spanish for "buyer's remorse"?

This year, rumors have it that Bush is again discouraging the magnificent Harris not to run for the Senate. Here's hoping she ignores him. How much would Bush's support be worth to Harris at this point anyway? If Bush really wants to keep Katherine Harris out of the U.S. Senate, maybe he should just endorse her.

Good stuff. Thanks for the link, Fredrick.

The Amazing Racist

Bill Bennett never ceases to amaze me. He was Amerika's self-appointed expert on virtue -- that is, until it was revealed that he is a compulsive gambler. Now he is attempting to establish himself as one of the great racists of our time:

Addressing a caller's suggestion that the "lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30 years" would be enough to preserve Social Security's solvency, radio host and former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett dismissed such "far-reaching, extensive extrapolations" by declaring that if "you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."

Nice.

Karen Hughes Gets An Earful in Turkey

One of the problems with having a thoroughly incompetent administration running the country is that one can easily lose track of just how incompetent such an administration really is. This is especially true when one of the president's top congressional allies is indicted. Combine this with all the reporting on the Katrina Debacle, and some important stories just get buried, and sometimes it takes an event overseas to reorient us as to just how screwed up American policy is right now. From the Seattle Times:

A group of Turkish female activists confronted Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes yesterday with heated complaints about the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, turning a session designed to highlight the empowerment of women into a raw display of anger at U.S. policy in the region.

"This war is really, really bringing your positive efforts to the level of zero," said Hidayet Sefkatli Tuksal, an activist with the Capital City Women's Forum. She said it was difficult to talk about cooperation between women in the United States and Turkey as long as Iraq was under occupation.

Although it sounds like Karen Hughes has, for the most part, taken a lesson from Bush and has only appeared in front of friendly crowds on her "Isn't America Great?" World Tour, that whole strategy appears to have broken down yesterday:

Hughes, a longtime confidante of President Bush with the job of burnishing the U.S. image overseas, has generally met with polite audiences — many of whom received U.S. funding or consisted of former exchange students — during a tour of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey this week.

In this case the U.S. Embassy asked Kader, an umbrella group that supports female candidates, to assemble the guest list. None of the activists currently receives U.S. funds and the guests apparently had little desire to mince words. Six of the eight women who spoke at the session, held in Ankara, the capital, focused on the Iraq war.

Hughes looked "increasingly pained" as she was forced to defend her boss's idiotic decision to invade Iraq. Perhaps she was angry that there was no fake Secret Service people around to remove dissenters. Anyway, thank you Turkey for helping us keep our eye on the ball over here.


UPDATE: This is interesting. The above-cited Seattle Times piece was actually a Washington Post article first put on-line late last night. The Washington Post piece has since removed the "Hughes, looking increasingly pained" language and replaced it with "Hughes, who became increasingly subdued during the session . . ."

That's quite a difference. Do you think Karl Rove might have complained? Maybe he looked "increasingly pained" as he was reading the first version of the Post article?

UPDATE II: "Oh Yeah, THAT!"

DeLay Fires Back

From Tim Grieve at Salon:

Tom DeLay has just responded to the criminal indictment against him, and he did it in his own inimitable style. The criminal charge, DeLay said, is an "act of blatant political partisanship" brought by a "fanatic" and "zealot" who is seeking retribution for the House majority leader's political successes. DeLay said the case against him is a "sham," a "reckless charge wholly unsupported by the facts" and one of the "weakest, most baseless indictments in American history."

DeLay said he has done nothing wrong and violated no law and that he was confident that the criminal case brought by Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle would be dismissed just like "every one" of the "frivolous accusations" against him have been before.

This will, of course, be the GOP's dominant line of attack, namely, that Prosecutor Earle is a partisan democrat and this is simply a political attack on DeLay. Of course, the truth really doesn't jibe with the GOP talking points (does it ever?). From Media Matters:

While Earle is an elected Democrat, as Media Matters for America has previously noted, a June 17 editorial in the Houston Chronicle commended his work: "During his long tenure, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has prosecuted many more Democratic officials than Republicans. The record does not support allegations that Earle is prone to partisan witch hunts." This assertion supports Earle's own claim about his record; a March 6 article in the El Paso Times reported: "Earle says local prosecution is fundamental and points out that 11 of the 15 politicians he has prosecuted over the years were Democrats."

Advice for Tom DeLay: Go Buy Some Soap-on-a-Rope

DeLay has been indicted. He could get up to two years in state jail. Maybe the time has come for him to resign?

UPDATE: He will step aside as majority leader (at least temporarily).

I Would Love This

Specifically, I would love it if such polling actually existed.  Unfortunately, it does not.

When Cronyism Kills

As I was watching Asshole of the Year Award nominee Michael Brown give his "my biggest mistake was not realizing that other people are even more incompetent than I am" defense in front of Congress today, it started to hit me that we are in big trouble if there are more people like him out there holding important posts in BushCo's Federal Government.

Cronyism, of course, has been going on a long time and will continue until the end of the universe. And I don't really care if Bush appoints some of his campaign people to minor positions like deputy assistant to the undersecretary of whatever-the-frack. I don't like it, but it is a political fact of life.

But I have a real problem with people as incompetent as Michael Brown being appointed to important positions, and wonder along with everybody else just how many similar appointments are waiting for the perfect moment to explode in our faces.

TIME Magazine has a piece out on this very issue, and it is aptly titled "How Many More Mike Browns Are Out There?" I found this section about the FDA's new deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs to be particularly troubling:

Nowhere in the federal bureaucracy is it more important to insulate government experts from the influences of politics and special interests than at the Food and Drug Administration, the agency charged with assuring the safety of everything from new vaccines and dietary supplements to animal feed and hair dye. That is why many within the department, as well as in the broader scientific community, were startled when, in July, Scott Gottlieb was named deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs, one of three deputies in the agency's second-ranked post at FDA.

His official FDA biography notes that Gottlieb, 33, who got his medical degree at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, did a previous stint providing policy advice at the agency, as well as at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. What the bio omits is that his most recent job was as editor of a popular Wall Street newsletter, the Forbes/Gottlieb Medical Technology Investor, in which he offered such tips as "Three Biotech Stocks to Buy Now." In declaring Gottlieb a "noted authority" who had written more than 300 policy and medical articles, the biography neglects the fact that many of those articles criticized the FDA for being too slow to approve new drugs and too quick to issue warning letters when it suspects ones already on the market might be unsafe.

FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford, who resigned suddenly and without explanation last Friday, wrote in response to e-mailed questions that Gottlieb is "talented and smart, and I am delighted to have been able to recruit him back to the agency to help me fulfill our public-health goals." But others, including Jimmy Carter--era FDA Commissioner Donald Kennedy, a former Stanford University president and now executive editor-in-chief of the journal Science, say Gottlieb breaks the mold of appointees at that level who are generally career FDA scientists or experts well known in their field. "The appointment comes out of nowhere. I've never seen anything like that," says Kennedy.

Of course, I expect BushCo to pull crap like this. After all, the neo-fascists who form the heart of the current administration aren't necessarily going to appoint competent people to important posts -- they are going to appoint people who will assist them in implementing their right-winged theocratic extremist agenda.

I guess all we can really hope for is that Congress doesn't rubber stamp these people when the ball is in its court and that the press does its job in exposing these dangerous nominees. The TIME article is a good start down that road, but once you read through the article in its entirety, you'll realize that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Great Fishing Trip, Part II

My cousin just sent me these photos from last weekend's fishing trip.




On the left is a group shot of us all at dinner on Saturday evening.




Here is a shot of Charlie and Rich on the river.



This is a picture Cousin Peter took of a trout he caught while flyfishing a wooly bugger.


Although we hooked a lot of trout while flyfishing, we probably were only able to land 50% of them or less. We had lots of break-offs.

Bush: Two Wrongs Make A Right

Heeeee's back:

CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger reports that Michael Brown, who recently resigned as the head of the FEMA, has been rehired by the agency as a consultant to evaluate its response following Hurricane Katrina. * * *

Borger spoke with a spokesman for FEMA, Russ Knocke, who confirmed that Brown remains on the FEMA payroll. He also said that technically Brown remains at FEMA as a "contractor" and he is "transitioning out of his job." The reason he will remain at FEMA about a month after his resignation, said the spokesman, is that the agency wants to get the "proper download of his experience."

When Bush announced he was going to personally investigate what went wrong with the Katrina response, I figured he was probably the worst guy anyone could ever choose to conduct such an investigation. When I reached that conclusion, I guess I never figured he'd re-hire "Brownie" to also perform that task.

Actually, the title of this post should be "Three Wrongs Make a Right."

UPDATE: By the way, I think Michael Brown is an asshole.

The True Story About Pat Tillman

I am amazed at the similarities between the late Pat Tillman's story and Jessica Lynch's experiences. Although Lynch was exploited by the Bush Regime for propaganda purposes, she ultimately proved to be beyond all of that when she denounced how she was used. And Pat Tillman is doing something similar from the grave (via Cunning Realist):

Baer, who served with Tillman for more than a year in Iraq and Afghanistan, told one anecdote that took place during the March 2003 invasion as the Rangers moved up through southern Iraq.

“I can see it like a movie screen,” Baer said. “We were outside of (a city in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on the town. We were at an old air base, me, Kevin and Pat, we weren’t in the fight right then. We were talking. And Pat said, ‘You know, this war is so f— illegal.’ And we all said, ‘Yeah.’ That’s who he was. He totally was against Bush.”

Another soldier in the platoon, who asked not to be identified, said Pat urged him to vote for Bush’s Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry.

It sounds like Pat Tillman was a pretty cool guy.

I'm Not Sure Who Thought This Up . . .

. . . but is is pretty darn funny (thanks, Roxy, for copying me the e-mail -- anyone know who wrote this?):


Bush Sells Louisiana Back to the French

BATON ROUGE, LA . - The White House announced today that President Bush has successfully sold the state of Louisiana back to the French at more than double its original selling price of $11,250,000.

"This is a bold step forward for America," said Bush. "And America will be stronger and better as a result. I stand here today in unity with French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac , who was so kind to accept my offer of Louisiana in exchange for 25 million dollars cash."

The state, ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild.

"Jack understands full well that this one's a 'fixer upper,'" said Bush. "He and the French people are quite prepared to pump out all that water, and make Louisiana a decent place to live again. And they've got a lot of work to do. But Jack's assured me, if it's not right, they're going to fix it."

The move has been met with incredulity from the already beleaguered residents of Louisiana.

However, President Bush's decision has been widely lauded by Republicans.

"This is an unexpected but brilliant move by the President," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. "Instead of spending billions and billions, and billions of dollars rebuilding the state of Louisiana, we've just made 25 million dollars in pure profit."

"This is indeed a smart move," commented Fox News analyst Brit Hume. "Not only have we stopped the flooding in our own budget, we've made money on the deal. Plus, when the god-awful French are done fixing it up, we can easily invade and take it back again."

The money gained from 'The Louisiana Refund' is expected to be immediately pumped back into the rebuilding of Iraq.


UPDATE: The piece came from this site (thanks for the info, Fredrick).

A Great Fishing Trip

I've been a little bummed out lately about my lack of outdoor recreational activity. I had planned a big backpacking trip for this last weekend -- a 22-mile trek through the heart of the Three Sisters Wilderness -- but a bad knee forced me to cancel those plans. Then last week, my cousin Peter called me to see if I wanted to join him and a couple of his friends for a weekend of fishing on the Deschutes River.

I accepted his invitation, and I am really glad I did, because it was a great trip.

We arrived at the riverfront rental house on Friday afternoon. Peter was accompanied by two of his friend, Rich and Charlie. Not much happened on Friday evening fishing-wise. Peter hooked a fish or two in the stretch of water right in front of the house, and I hooked one on a dry fly but it broke my tippet.

The real action commenced on Saturday morning. Fly fishing started out a little slow, so Peter broke out his spinning gear and started casting a chrome spinner with a green body. In no time, he landed the trout pictured above.

Peter caught another nice rainbow a few minutes later, so I abandoned my fly rod and switched over to spinning gear. I put on silver spinner with a splash of green on the blade, and walked upstream from where Peter was throwing his spinner. After a few casts, I hooked into what felt like a sizable fish. The rainbow made a couple of nice runs before I was able to get it to the shore. Charlie snapped a picture of the fish (below) and then I released him. [Although anglers fishing this section of the Deschutes are allowed to keep two trout per day, these fish must be between 10 inches and 13 inches in length.]

Fishing pretty much shut down for us when the sun hit the water, so we took a break and hit it again about 4:00. Peter and I walked downstream to a stretch of river featuring a big eddy, and although both of us hooked fish in that hole at around dusk, only Peter was able to bring one to the shore.

Peter hooked several trout while flyfishing there. I lost one on a spinner, and hooked one flyfishing a Wooly Bugger pattern. That last fish ended up breaking my three-pound test, so I decided right there to begin using a four-pound tippet. Rich got into the fish as well that evening, catching several rainbow out of a hole upstream from where Peter and I were fishing.

We had to be out of the rental house at noon on Sunday, so we hit it pretty hard on Sunday morning, starting before sunrise at the stretch of water out in front of the house. Peter struck first by landing a small whitefish on a spinner followed by a nice rainbow. I caught a 13-inch trout on a spinner soon thereafter, then lost another one that hit my lure about 10 feet in front of where I was wading.

A short while later, Rich hooked a nice rainbow while flyfishing a Wooly Bugger. The fish broke Rich's leader, but continued to leap into the air several times in an attempt to throw a hook that was no longer connected to Rich's line. It was quite a sight. Rich re-rigged, then hooked into another good fish. The picture below is of Rich playing this rainbow, which he ultimately landed and released.

Once we finished thrashing the stretch of water in front of the house, we moved down the river. Peter and I hit the big eddy hole, and I caught a 12-inch trout fly-fishing a wooly bugger. About a half hour later, I switch to a spinner and landed a 13-inch rainbow.

We continued to work our way downstream. Peter and Rich headed down this steep embankment to reach some promising looking water. I didn't want to walk down -- actually, what I really didn't want to do is walk back up it -- so I proceeded down the trail in search of a more easily accessible stretch of river.

I came upon what appeared to be the greatest piece of trout water I had ever seen. There was a big current on the opposite side of the river, but on my side the speed of the current was substantially slower and the water was fairly deep. Moreover, the water became very fishable right under an overhanging tree (i.e., lots of food for fish). And if that wasn't enough, a small creek entered the river right under the tree overhang (bringing in even more food for fish). In other words, if there is trout fishing in Heaven, all of the fishing holes there would essentially be set up like this one.

I started at the top of the hole with the idea of slowly approaching the part featuring the overhanging tree and the creek. I missed a few strikes on my fly as I worked my way down. Then, the handle broke off of my fly reel, and I had no choice but to switch to spinning gear.

On my first spinner pass under the overhang, I briefly hooked what felt like a sizeable fish. He stripped some line off my reel, then threw the spinner. Two casts later, I got a huge strike right in front of where the creek came in. A larger sized trout flew out of the water, and did a couple more jumps thereafter. This was all a bit troubling to me because the fish was catching some pretty good air, and on two of the jumps, my line actually went up into the overhanging branches. Fortunately, I didn't get hung up in them, and I ended up landing my largest fish of the trip.

I knew that no one would believe my fish tale unless I took a picture of this trout, so as I was fighting it, I pulled out the digital camera and shot the photo below. BeLIEve me, it took great concentration as well as all of my angling prowess to photograph this fish as I was fighting it.

That was pretty much it for me as far as fishing. After clearing out of the rental, Peter, Rich, and Charlie headed up river and caught several more fish before heading back home.

Anyway, it was a fun trip. The fishing was great, as was the food and the company. And, as you can see from the photos, we couldn't have asked for better weather.

Thanks again, Peter, for inviting me along. I look forward to our next trip.


CORRECTION: Due to inadvertence, the last picture posted above was not from the Deschutes River trip. Below is the picture I meant to post. I regret the error ;)

Phil Donahue Crucifies O'Lielly

This made my whole day.

Those of you out there who are as tired as I am of listening to spineless progressives and moderates cowering in the presence of loudmouth neo-fascists like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly will really dig this exchange between Phil Donahue and O'Reilly.

Too bad there wasn't more of this going on during the run-up to the Iraq Catastrophe. Indeed, wouldn't it have been wonderful if someone like Donahue had his own show on television in, say, late 2002/early 2003, and on this show, Donahue would have openly questioned the need to invade Iraq? Man, that would have been great.

Wait a minute -- Donahue did have such show on MSNBC during that time period. In fact, it was MSNBC's highest-rated show at the time. So how did MSNBC reward Phil for his ratings success? By canceling his show.

More on this later -- after I get back from a weekend of fly fishing on the Deschutes.

More On The "Able Danger" Obstruction Scandal

Last month, I asked these questions about the Able Danger cover-up:

Why would officials in the Bush Administration decide to cover up something that happened at the end of the Clinton Administration? Wouldn't something like that support the Bush Regime's dominant theory regarding 9-11, namely, that the whole thing was Clinton's fault?

Several weeks have passed, and I still haven't heard any convincing answers to those questions.

To recap: In August, members of the 9-11 Commission asked Congress to find out whether the Pentagon withheld certain intelligence information from the 9-11 Panel showing that a secret American military unit -- "Able Danger" -- had identified Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers as potential terror threats over one year prior to the 9-11 attacks.

The whole thing had a certain "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." quality about it, and the Senate Judiciary Committee took up the cause. Well, the investigation appears to be heating up:

Senators from both parties accused the Defense Department on Wednesday of obstructing an investigation into whether a highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger did indeed identify Mohamed Atta and other future hijackers as potential threats well before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The complaints came after the Pentagon blocked several witnesses from testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a public hearing on Wednesday. The only testimony provided by the Defense Department came from a senior official who would say only that he did not know whether the claims were true.

Blocked several witnesses? Obviously, there is a lot more going on here than a simple case of one part of the government (the military) not being able to tell another part of the government (The FBI) about certain information it uncovered. A former army major told the committee that he had been "'forced to destroy all the data, charts and other analytical product' in compliance with Army regulations that prohibit keeping data related to American citizens and others, including permanent residents who have legal protections. . . ."

OK, that's all very interesting -- but the question still remains: Why wasn't the 9-11 Commission told about all this? And why is BushCo's Defense Department actively obstructing a congressional investigation into this matter now?

Clearly, there is a lot more to this story left to be uncovered, and at least one senator appears to sense this:

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, accused the Pentagon of "a cover-up" and said, "I don't get why people aren't coming forward and saying, 'Here's the deal, here's what happened.'"

That's a good point, Joe. In fact, isn't that the whole point?

BushCo Phraseology Altered Yet Again

Blade is reporting that the Bush Regime has abandoned the term "Axis of Evil" and has replaced it with a phrase that is more easily understood by its supporters. This change is expected to help Americans more readily comprehend all the ins and outs of the War on Terr-, uh, I mean -- the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism (G-SAVE).

Toles Rocks

Good Article on Global Warming

OK, due to time constraints, I wasn't able to start my 14-part series on the dangers of global warming. So in its place, I'll simply refer you to this MSNBC piece on the subject.

The article starts out by noting that the occurrence of two storms like Katrina and Rita in the same season is either a mere coincidence or an indication of a huge problem that is only going to get worse:

Scientists say one season, even like this one, cannot indicate anything about climate change. But those same measurements show that in the past 50 years the oceans have gotten one degree warmer. That may not sound like much, but the experts say it is a lot of energy.

Indeed, recent studies show that, worldwide, the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has doubled with that one degree change and that’s a source of worry.

“At the moment we’ve only warmed up one,” says Dr. Stephen Schnieder, a climatologist at Stanford’s Institute for International Studies. “What happens when we warm up three or five degrees — which is projected in the next several decades to the end of the century?”

In other words, it sounds like we'll soon be in need of a few more hurricane categories above level 5.

This Was Amazing

If you missed it live, you really need to check out the video of the emergency landing that occurred at LAX a little while ago.


I'm sure this landing will will be shown on the news for the next day or so, but watching it live on TV was really something.



UPDATE: I just heard that the passengers on this flight were able to watch a lot of their ordeal unfold on CNN.

Is God Giving George W. Bush a Second Chance?

A Class 5 monster is currently bearing down on the Texican coast -- check out this satellite image loop of Hurricane Rita from the NOAA website.

This time, Bush isn't off playing guitar. He seems to be on top of things right now. Sure, his "home state" is directly threatened, but I'm certain he and Karl see Hurricane Rita as their big chance to redeem the Bush Administration in the eyes of the world.

This time, the Federal Government has "rushed hundreds of truckloads of water, ice and ready-made meals to the Gulf Coast and put rescue and medical teams on standby." And this time, enough of a military presence has been put in place for a proper response. I just read this amazing factoid on CNN:

319,000 National Guard troops are available to respond to Rita should the need arise. In comparison, 10,000 National Guard troops were dispatched across the Gulf Coast 3 days before Katrina's landfall.

Could this new hurricane save Bush's presidency? When I first heard today that Rita was heading toward the Gulf Coast after strengthening to a Category 5, that was the first thought that entered my head -- I know, that's a cold thing to think, but it is the truth. The reason I think that way is because I would consider a reinvigorated Bush presidency to present a much greater threat to this nation than pretty much anything else.

My first impression was that a competent response to Rita would perhaps improve Bush's numbers in the short term. But as I thought about it, I reached the conclusion that Hurricane Rita probably will do little if anything to improve the president's image.

First of all, most people will expect Bush to do a better job this time around. After all, the job of government is to respond to these type of events, and there is no way Bush could do a worse job with this new hurricane. In fact, an effective Federal reaction to Rita will simply remind Americans just how incompetent Bush's response to Katrina was.

Second, unless some sort of price freeze is put on gasoline (which will not happen given Bush's connections to the oil industry), gas prices will go through the roof as a result of Rita, perhaps as high as $5 a gallon. This is because refineries in the area of Rita's projected landfall -- and there are a lot of them -- are being closed down as we speak, and will undoubtedly remain closed for quite a while, particularly if this storm doesn't weaken substantially before it reaches land. Fair or not, sitting presidents always get the blame for higher gas prices, especially if they stay high for an appreciable amount of time.

Finally, no matter what Rita does, folks are going to have a hard time getting the images of the Katrina Aftermath out of their heads, particularly the scenes of bodies floating in New Orleans. We've had devastating hurricanes before -- in fact, Florida had four of them last season alone. But how many images from those Florida hurricanes are seared into your brain?

Jack Cafferty Strikes Again

Cafferty was just on CNN reading e-mail from viewers regarding what cuts should be made from the federal budget to pay for Katrina. After he finished reading the e-mail, Wolf Blitzer chimed in with something like, "But Jack, what about Tom DeLay saying that there is nothing left to be cut from the Federal Budget -- are you aware that DeLay said that?

Cafferty paused for a moment, then responded: "Has he been indicted yet?"

Blitzer tried to continue on to the next section of the show, but he lost it and started laughing. It was pretty funny.

UPDATE: Here is the video.

A Few of You Won't Like This Post, But . . .

Some of you have asked -- and by some, I mean the Fox News version of some, which is none (I just don't have all that many readers) -- why I haven't had much if anything to say about the Roberts confirmation process. Other left-leaning bloggers are going ape-shit over it. But I don't really care about it.

I think Sara is right about Roberts. He certainly appears competent enough to be Chief Justice. It just seems to me that a lot of people out there are taking the position that Bush -- one of the most right-winged presidents in American history -- should have chosen a moderate or even a liberal judge to replace Rehnquist, and Bush's failure to do so requires certain senators to vote against Roberts' confirmation.

Well, I've got some news for you -- there was an election last year and we lost. Sure, a lot of people who voted for that sonofabitch would probably love to take their vote back now that they finally understand how much of a moron Bush really is, but that storm surge has already passed under -- or should I say, taken out -- the bridge.

The forces of evil won the election last year, and certain negative things will occur as a result. And one of those negative things is that Bush gets to replace Rehnquist with another conservative; and let me tell you -- Bush could have nominated a lot worse people than Roberts.

Does that mean we should just roll over on Bush's nominee to replace O'Connor? Hell no. O'Connor is a swing vote, so the Democrats should take a stand if the person nominated to replace her appears to be a Scalia-like right wing extremist who will work to destroy the freedoms this nation has enjoyed for decades.

Am I being a bit of a flip-flopper on all this or drawing too fine of a line? Maybe, and I don't care. I guess my point is that the Democrats have to pick their fights. If they push too hard against Roberts, then any pushing they do against the next nominee will lose some of its force. The Democrats should apply just enough pressure against Roberts to satisfy their base, then start training for the next fight, because I'm pretty sure it will be The Big One that we have all been dreading.

Harold's Blog, Mark II

A reader who will remain unnamed complained that my blog is too end-of-the-worldish. So, Roxy, this one's for you: Here is Conan O'Brien's hilarious take on the whole Bush "BATHroom break" incident (from Crooks and Liars).

And, if that ain't enough lightheartedness, here's a picture of a funny-looking dog (at least I think it is a dog):



And finally, a Bush official has been arrested in a corruption probe (better late than never, I guess).

And if you liked all of that, don't forget to visit this blog tomorrow for part one of my 14-part series, "Nuclear War and Cannibalism: How Global Warming Will Slowly and Painfully Kill Us All."

Lengthy But Excellent TIME Magazine Piece on Iraq Debacle

Here is a must-read piece from TIME describing in great detail exactly how Bush's Iraq invasion turned into the catastrophe we all know and hate (four more U.S. soldiers were killed there yesterday, by the way).

I found the stuff on General (and Medal of Freedom recipient) Tommy Franks to be particularly interesting. Franks showed both great political intelligence and great military idiocy during his time as commander of U.S. forces. He was smart, not in how he ran the show on the ground, but in how he avoided using the same common-sense approach that sunk General Shinseki's career:

It is no secret that General Tommy Franks didn't want to hang around Iraq very long. As Franks led the U.S. assault on Baghdad in April 2003, his goal--and that of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld--was to get to the capital as quickly as possible with a minimal number of troops. Franks succeeded brilliantly at that task. But military-intelligence officers contend that he did not seem interested in what would come next. "He never once asked us for a briefing about what happened once we got to Baghdad," says a former Army intelligence officer attached to the invasion force. "He said, 'It's not my job.' We figured all he wanted to do was get in, get out and write his book." (Franks, through a spokesman, declined to comment for this article.)

The rush to Baghdad, critics say, laid the groundwork for trouble to come. In one prewar briefing, for example, Lieut. General David McKiernan--who commanded the land component of the coalition forces--asked Franks what should be done if his troops found Iraqi arms caches on the way to Baghdad. "Just put a lock on 'em and go, Dave," Franks replied, according to a former U.S. Central Command (Centcom) officer. Of course, you couldn't simply put a lock on ammunition dumps that stretched for several square miles--dumps that would soon be stripped and provide a steady source of weaponry for the insurgency.

Franks was stuck with a Rumsfeld-inspired battle plan that he must have known would fail in the long haul. I assume this because I just can't imagine someone rising to the rank of four-star general without having some concept of what it would take to invade and successfully occupy a country the size of Iraq. Franks brilliantly executed Rumsfeld's idiotic plan, then brilliantly got himself the hell out of there.

Franks, however, did show his stupid side when he left junior officers in charge on the ground and moved his headquarters back to the United States:

On May 1, President George W. Bush announced, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended," on the deck of an aircraft carrier, near a banner that read MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Shortly thereafter, Franks moved his headquarters from Qatar back to Florida. He was followed there in June by McKiernan, whose Baghdad operation included several hundred intelligence officers who had been keeping track of the situation on the ground. "Allowing McKiernan to leave was the worst decision of the war," says one of his superiors. (The decision, he says, was Franks'.) "We replaced an operational force with a tactical force, which meant generals were replaced by colonels." Major General Ricardo Sanchez, a relatively junior commander and a recent arrival in Iraq, was put in charge. "After McKiernan left, we had fewer than 30 intelligence officers trying to figure who the enemy was," says a top-ranking military official who was in Iraq at the time. "We were starting from scratch, with practically no resources."

Anyway, it is a good article and definitely worth your time.

The Katrina Aftermath Debacle Finally Does Us Some Good

The Bush Regime took a lot of crap last week for naming veterinary scientist Norris Alderson to replace Susan Wood as Director of the FDA's Office of Women's Health. Wood quit her post last month in protest after the FDA delayed approval of the morning-after pill.

Here is an update from Tim Greive at Salon on this whole mess:

[S]ometime Friday, the FDA put up a new press release that said that Theresa Toigo -- who is (a) a woman and (b) not an expert in veterinary science -- is the new acting director. Alderson wasn't mentioned in the release, and the release that did mention him disappeared almost immediately from the Google cache, replaced somehow by an old post about insulin. It's as if the Alderson appointment never happened, but only sort of: Alderson is still listed as the acting director of the Office of Women's Health on a Department of Health and Human Services Web page. And the news release on Toigo says, rather cryptically, "This is a revision of this statement posted earlier on Sept. 16."

So what happened? Did someone in the press office at the FDA simply screw up? Or did the FDA name Alderson to the position and then change course once the agency realized that appointing an expert in veterinary science to the Office of Women's Health might send the wrong message or invite unwanted comparisons to another Bush administration appointee who had animals on his résumé? We'd like to know, and we've asked the FDA and Alderson to explain. We'll let you know as soon as they do.

Reality Starts To Sink In

This brightened my day (from American Spectator):

[A]t this stage of the game, barring some imaginative political moves that bear some resemblance to the Bush Administration circa 2002, Republicans on Capitol Hill and even some longtime Bush team members in various Cabinet level departments say this Administration is done for.

"You run down the list of things we thought we could accomplish and you have to wonder what we thought we were thinking," says a Bush Administration member who joined on in 2001. "You get the impression that we're more than listless. We're sunk."

Too pessimistic? Maybe not. Rumors are flying through various departments of longtime senior Bush loyalists looking to jump, but with few opportunities in the private sector to make the jump look like anything more than desperation. Almost daily, complaints from Cabinet level Departments come in to the White House about lack of communication coordination on even basic policy matters.

Needless to say, this is great news. We must, however, remain vigilant -- a mortally wounded animal can be very dangerous.

Un-Freaking-Believable

One billion dollars has been stolen from Iraq's defense ministry in what is being called one of the largest thefts in history:

Senior Iraqi officials now say they cannot understand how, if this is so, the disappearance of almost all the military procurement budget could have passed unnoticed by the US military in Baghdad and civilian advisers working in the defence ministry.

Government officials in Baghdad even suggest that the skill with which the robbery was organised suggests that the Iraqis involved were only front men, and "rogue elements" within the US military or intelligence services may have played a decisive role behind the scenes.

Meanwhile, the situation in Baghdad is deteriorating rapidly. From Informed Comment:

"Five neighborhoods (hay) in Baghdad are controlled by insurgents, and they are Amiraya, Ghazilya, Shurta, Yarmouk and Doura. It is very bad. My guys there report that cars have come into these neighborhoods and blocked off the streets. Masked gunmen with AKs and other weapons are roaming these areas, announcing that people should stay home. One of my drivers in Amiraya reports that his neighborhood is shut down totally, and even those who need food or provisions are warned not to go out."

"And Most Of All . . .

. . . I'd like to thank President Bush because, as the old saying goes, you just couldn't make this shit up."

BushCo Puts A Jihad On Juan Cole

You can't really blame Karl Rove and Company for declaring war on Professor Juan Cole. After all, Cole has put almost as much effort into getting the truth out about the Iraq Debacle as the Radical Right has put into lying about it.

Senior Bush Apologist Christopher Hitchens reportedly questioned Professor Cole's credentials last Wednesday during a debate against British antiwar MP George Galloway, and undoubtedly did so in response to a Salon article posted a couple weeks ago wherein Cole blasted Hitchen's ridiculously Pro-Bush take on the Iraq War. This is from Informed Comment, Juan Cole's website:

I am told that Hitchens said words to the effect that I "claimed" to know Arabic and Persian but that I had never been in the region to his knowledge, and that I changed my mind every two seconds. * * *

I have gotten a number of emails in recent weeks from readers who said they encountered people in cyberspace who alleged that I do not know Middle Eastern languages. So regardless of what Hitchens may or may not have said, it seems fairly obvious that there is some sort of Karl Rove-type campaign of disinformation out there in which I am being attacked on my strengths. You will remember that the Bushies arranged for doubt to be cast on John Kerry's distinguished war record, while conveniently papering over Bush's own dodging of the Vietnam war and his failure to continue to report for duty even on the homefront.

Cole is right that this is a classic Rovian attack in the making. And here is his response:

It is sort of silly for me to have to do so, but I don't mind telling Mr. Hitchens about my experience in "the region." With regard to extended stays, here is the itinerary: in Eritrea (at that time part of Ethiopia) 1967-1968; Lebanon Sept. 1974- Mar. 1975, then Sept. 1975-November 1975, then summer 1977, then June 1978-April 1979; Jordan Dec. 1975-May 1976; Egypt in 1976-1978, 1985-1986, summer 1988; Pakistan Sept. 1981-Jan. 1982, March-April 1983, Jan. 1986, May, 1988; summer 1990; India (mainly hanging around with Muslims in Lucknow and Delhi) Jan. 1982-Mar. 1983. In addition, I have visited for periods between a few days and a month some of the same countries plus the following countries: Iran, Syria, Turkey, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, Gambia, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan,and Israel. I have never attempted to hide my lack of experience in Iraq. * * *

I studied Arabic at Northwestern University beginning in 1972, and went on to do a Master of Arts degree in Arabic Studies at the American University in Cairo; Arabic literature was a field for my interdisciplinary Ph.D. from UCLA. Most of my books have involved extensive reading in manuscripts, archival documents and printed works in Arabic.

Of course, Cole is absolutely right in assuming that the right-wing attacks against him will simply continue in another form now that he has once again shot down Christopher Hitchens: "Now my enemies will turn around and say that I am pompous and self-important for providing this information in the way of self-defense. Whatever."

Keep on fighting, Professor.

From R.J. Matson of The New York Observer

Reichsführer Rove Flexes His Muscle

The title for this article is "Lawyer Was Fired After Rove Called." A better title would have been "Karl Rove and Roger Williams: A Tale of Two Assholes."

Via Josh Marshall:

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove personally called the Texas secretary of state about a newspaper story quoting a staff lawyer about whether Mr. Rove was eligible to vote in the state.

The lawyer was subsequently fired.

Secretary of State Roger Williams said that he decided to dismiss the lawyer after talking with Mr. Rove but that the White House adviser didn't request that he do so.

"Absolutely not," said Mr. Williams, a longtime supporter of President Bush and a major GOP fundraiser.

This attorney was fired even though she was merely answering a hypothetical question and even though Rove's name never came up.

God, I hate these people.

Of course, Rove had his priorities straight -- his phone call to Williams "came at the height of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, the weekend after the storm struck." I wonder if Williams could hear a guitar being strummed in the background during that call?

Nice Try, George

Danimal has some breaking news about our president. [I wonder if Bush packed one of these for the trip?].

To Repeal Or Not To Repeal?

The big political question for the first several months of the Post-Katrina Era should be whether or not to repeal Bush's tax cuts for the super wealthy. Bush said yesterday that the U.S. will "have to cut unnecessary spending," but then added that "[w]e should not raise taxes."

Although Bush refrained from using the phrase "read my lips" before uttering the GOP anti-tax mantra, that famous slogan was still lurking in the background. Bush may be an imbecile, but he has a keen memory for family history. One could argue that a lot of Bush's policies stem from a strong drive to correct perceived failures of his father's presidency.

Members of the GOP, however, are currently fighting amongst themselves over whether there is anything left to cut in the federal budget. Republican Senator and ultra-extremist Tom Coburn took some time away from his crossword puzzle to take issue with Tom DeLay's recent assertion that there is no more federal fat left to cut away. Coburn used a nine-letter word that starts with "L" and ends with "S" to describe DeLay's position, and other less crossword-savvy extremists have also put in their two cents:

"There has never been a time where there is more total spending and more wasteful spending in Washington than we have today," said Pat Toomey, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania and the head of the conservative Club for Growth. "There is ample opportunity to find the offsets we need so that this does not have to be a fiscal disaster as well as a natural disaster."

Don't get me wrong -- I can't say I totally disagree with members of the extreme right who feel that there might yet be some fat in the federal budget to cut away. For example, there's some bridge construction up in Alaska that could probably be put on permanent hold.

In any event, the Democrats need to take advantage of this GOP infighting by going on a major offensive of their own, and their target should be the tax cuts enacted during Bush's first term. Yesterday, Bill Clinton took time away from acting like a diplomatic ex-president and started acting like a Democrat again. He called for the repeal of Bush's high-income tax cuts. David Sirota, in his blog, had this response to Clinton's call for fiscal sanity (via Armando at Daily Kos):

Let's hope the Democratic leadership in Congress starts to echo this and make it a central theme in the next weeks and months. Remember, as I noted in my piece, with record deficits and all the bills from Iraq and the Katrina rebuilding piling up, the Bush administration's tax cuts would give $336 billion to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans over the next 5 years. That's money we are literally going to give away to those handful of Americans who make an average of $1 million a year or more. We can't afford it - and it's time for the Democratic Party as a whole make that truth part of its core message moving forward.

Sirota is right, and any Democrat out there who thinks that calling for the repeal of Bush's tax cuts is too risky needs to read David Mamet's recent piece wherein he applies basic poker strategy to politics. Mamet writes:

Control of the initiative is control of the battle. In the alley, at the poker table or in politics. One must raise. The American public chose Bush over Kerry in 2004. How, the undecided electorate rightly wondered, could one believe that Kerry would stand up for America when he could not stand up to Bush? A possible response to the Swift boat veterans would have been: "I served. He didn't. I didn't bring up the subject, but, if all George Bush has to show for his time in the Guard is a scrap of paper with some doodling on it, I say the man was a deserter."

This would have been a raise. Here the initiative has been seized, and the opponent must now fume and bluster and scream unfair. In combat, in politics, in poker, there is no certainty; there is only likelihood, and the likelihood is that aggression will prevail.

The Democrats will not get a better moment in history to call for the repeal of Bush's idiotic tax cuts. They need to seize this opportunity immediately. The time has come for Howard Dean to take the lead on this, because I just don't think there are any Democrats in Congress who really know how to play poker.

The Two Faces of the Mainstream Press

Aaron Kinney at Salon brings up a good point about Newsweek and how it has really changed its tune about Bush. Kinney writes:

Time and Newsweek slammed the president this week in articles by Mike Allen ("Living Too Much in the Bubble?") and Evan Thomas ("How Bush Blew It"), respectively. Both accounts describe an incurious president who is cut off from reality.

But until recently, the nation's leading newsweeklies were painting a far different picture. Newsweek, in particular, has been especially deferential to George W. Bush. Witness its cover story by Richard Wolffe from Jan. 24, 2005, timed to coincide with the president's second inaugural, the subhead of which read: "He's hands-on, detail-oriented and hates 'yes' men. The George Bush you don't know has big dreams -- and is racing the clock to realize them."

Wolffe described the president as a man whose "leadership style belies his caricature as a disengaged president who is blindly loyal, dislikes dissent and covets his own downtime" -- a caricature that looks like a dead ringer after the vacationing president's reaction to Katrina.

Wolffe: Bush is "a restless man who masters details and reads avidly" and "digs deep into his briefing books." When he's not "poring over white papers," he also enjoys the occasional novel.

As I read about Wolffe's description of Bush as a "hands-on--hates yes-men" type of guy, I started wondering who it was exactly who fed Wolffe that line of bull. Maybe it was the same person who told CNN's Suzanne Malveaux to say this about Bush last night in the run-up to his Jackson Square speech:

"Even White House aides will concede this is not really the best forum for the president when it comes to communicating. He does much better when it comes to group settings, live audiences, spontaneous events, but this is the type of thing they know he has to focus -- they know its very serious, and they know that he has to deliver that message."

Excuse me? Spontaneous events? When was the last time Bush had a spontaneous event? Everything this guy does is choreographed to the smallest detail. Were those "town hall" appearances that Bush made on his epic "Let's Screw Social Security" Tour -- you know, the ones with the hand-picked crowds full of folks who'd love Bush no matter what he did -- were those the "spontaneous" speaking events to which Malveaux refers?

How about that time in Denver earlier in the year when a local GOP official impersonated a Secret Service agent and forcibly removed the "Denver Three" from one of these taxpayer-funded Social Security events simply because one of them had a "No More Blood for Oil" bumper sticker on his car. Did this happen at one of Bush's spontaneous events, Suzanne?

Texas Hold 'Em, Central Oregon Style

I played poker last night in a local saloon til 2:00 am. When I left the house at about 6:00, it certainly wasn't my intention to be out into the wee hours playing hold em. My only plan was to attend a surprise 25th Wedding Anniversary Party for my boss and his wife.

When I entered the establishment where the party was to take place, I noticed a couple of poker tables on the right. As I mentioned, I had no intention of playing; but as the surprise party was starting to wind down, Danimal's wife Liz persuaded me to play, and she fronted me $40 in chips. The blinds were $1/$2 with a max bet of $5. It wasn't a tourney -- just an on-going ring game where you could buy back in anytime you wanted if you ran out of chips.

For the first hour, I didn't get any cards. I was starting to think that I had forgotten how to play. Then I won two or three big pots, followed by a couple more nice ones a little while later, and pretty soon I was up over $150 above my initial buy-in. Then just like that, my cards turned to crap. When the table closed for the night, I tipped the dealer, then went home with exactly $100 in profit.

The interesting part about the whole experience was that, when I did get involved in a hand, there was rarely any doubt in my mind as to whether I had to fold or continue to play the hand. Everybody at the table was drinking, and a lot of them had some pretty obvious tells.

One time, I raised with pocket kings pre-flop, and the flop was J-Q-K all different suits, giving me trip kings. I raised the max, then made a maximum bet when a 2 came up on the turn. Two players called me. When a 10 came up on the river, the woman next to me -- who up to that point was reluctantly calling my bets -- suddenly perked up like she had just been hit by a bolt of lightning or had just won the lottery.
I instantly knew my trip kings were no good, so when she bet, I showed my cards to the guy on the other side of me, then folded them even though the pot was giving me at least 8-to-1 odds. He couldn't believe I had folded trip kings until she showed us her straight.

Liz wasn't real happy with me. On one hand, I hit a straight on the river to beat out the two pair she had flopped. That pretty much did her in for the night. I honestly thought I was going to lose to a flush (given that there were several player in until the end and a third club showed up on the river -- I was sure at least one player was drawing to a club flush), but it is pretty hard for me to fold a straight (that's why I only called the bet and didn't raise it). No one made a flush, though, so the dealer ended up pushing the nice-sized pile of chips my way.

The worst part of the game was how slowly it proceeded, especially once midnight hit and that great combination of fatigue and drunkenness started setting in. Although the dealer did a good job, she really needed to push the game along more than she was doing. Drunk people require control and lots of guidance (I know I do when I'm that way). Hell, sometimes they expect it and actually want it. One time, the dealer even dealt out everyone's pocket cards before noticing that one of the drunk players was still holding his two cards from the previous hand! I couldn't believe that one.

The problem with the structure of that game (i.e., $1/$2 blinds with $5 limit) is that it is almost impossible to force anyone to fold, especially that bunch of loose, drunk players. Out of all the hands that were played, I only saw one hand where the winner didn't have to show at the end, and that was only because this player (the aforementioned drunk guy who failed to give up his cards from a previous hand) was so obviously trying to act weak that everyone knew he had a monster and just let him have the small pot (which upset him big time).

Anyway, except for all the cigarette smoking and the super slow play, it was a fun time. All the people were nice -- no mean drunks -- and I'll probably play there again.

Right Wing's Post-Katrina Goals: Prop Up Bush and Promote Extremist GOP Agenda

In his speech last night, President Bush promised the nation that New Orleans and the rest of the battered Gulf Coast will "rise again" in what he claims will be one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen. He made all sorts of proposals, including "worker recovery accounts" and an Urban Homesteading Act. He promised a nervous nation that federal auditors would keep tabs on the $200 billion or so that will be spent on this extraordinary effort. It all sounded very reassuring.

And now . . . The Rest of the Story:

The first thing you need to be aware of is that, despite his total lack of experience in Arabian Horse Show Manag . . ., I mean, post-disaster reconstruction, Karl Rove will be running Bush's show:

All you really need to know about the White House's post-Katrina strategy -- and Bush's carefully choreographed address on national television tonight -- is this little tidbit from the ninth paragraph of Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson 's story in the New York Times this morning:

"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort."

What does that tell us? Well, it tells me that the reconstruction effort will have more to do with rebuilding Bush's poll numbers than anything else. As the Washington Post noted:

Bush and Republican congressional leaders . . . are calculating that the U.S. economy can safely absorb a sharp spike in spending and budget deficits, and that the only way to regain public confidence after the stumbling early response to the disaster is to spend whatever it takes to rebuild the region and help Katrina's victims get back on their feet.

Josh Marshall's translation: "What's driving this budgetary push is not a natural disaster but a political crisis, the president's political crisis. The White House is trying to undo self-inflicted political damage on the national dime."

Of course, there's a lot more at stake than merely improving the image of a wildly unpopular lame-duck president. Right Wing economic and social policies are in just as much political danger as Bush is, so radical conservatives have apparently decided that the best defense is a strong offense:

In the past week, the Bush administration has suspended some union-friendly rules that require federal contractors pay prevailing wages, moved to ease tariffs on Canadian lumber, and allowed more foreign sugar imports to calm rising sugar prices. Just yesterday, it waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region.

Now, Republicans are working on legislation that would limit victims' right to sue, offer vouchers for displaced school children, lift some environment restrictions on new refineries and create tax-advantaged enterprise zones to maximize private-sector participation in recovery and reconstruction. Yesterday, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would offer sweeping protection against lawsuits to any person or organization that helps Katrina victims without compensation.

In other words, this is the stuff that radical right wingers like Grover Norquist dream about most every night.

This whole thing kind of reminds me of the time when the NRA went ahead with its annual meeting in Denver a mere 10 days after the Columbine Massacre rocked the nearby town of Littleton. One would naturally assume that Katrina would have dealt a crippling blow to the GOP propaganda machine and would ultimately allow more moderate, common-sensical thinking to come to the front. But I think Katrina may turn out to be the gift from God that radical right-wing extremists have been praying for.

Notwithstanding Tom DeLay's recent statement that further cuts in the federal budget are no longer possible, it seems clear to me that the "more extreme Republicans" referred to in this 2003 Financial Times piece are going to use Katrina as an excuse to further weaken the federal government: As the FT article noted (after pointing out that "the lunatics are in now charge of the asylum"): "Proposing to slash federal spending, particularly on social programmes, is a tricky electoral proposition, but a fiscal crisis offers the tantalising prospect of forcing such cuts through the back door."

I think that is where we are headed, so long as the lunatics do indeed continue to run the asylum.

You Know Bush Is In Trouble . . .

. . . when a FoxNews poll has his approval rating at 41%.

Bush Has Got To Go (In More Ways Than One)

Bush wrote an interesting note (left) to Condi Rice during a meeting yesterday at the UN.


Tim Grieve at Salon finds the real story in all this:

Would a major news agency -- in this case, Reuters -- have moved such a photo if the president weren't already so diminished?

George W. Bush may be learning a lesson about the press that both his predecessor and his father learned before him: Sometimes, when it rains, it pours.

So, What's Next for Bush?

I had long assumed that George W. Bush was a mere puppet president who got his strings pulled by Cheney and perhaps others in the administration and really didn't have much control over the day-to-day running of the government. Maybe that impression was based in part on excerpts I had read from The Price of Loyalty, Ron Suskind's book about former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

Who could forget the tale of Bush's eyes glazing over as O'Neill was trying to explain something technical to him, or the time when Bush innocently questioned the need for yet another tax cut for the rich, only to be quickly straightened out by Karl Rove (or was it Dick Cheney?). And then there was O'Neill's description of Bush during a cabinet meeting: "He was like a blind man in a room full of deaf people."

That's why I was shocked to read the details of how Bush reacted (or failed to react) to Hurricane Katrina. Sure, I knew Bush wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but I figured that if something truly cataclysmic occurred, some adult would be there to show Bush where to stand and to tell him what to say and do. Now, thanks to recent articles in Time and Newsweek, I'm starting to realize that Bush has a lot more power over the people around him than I thought he had . . . and this realization is scaring the hell out of me.

Indeed, I can understand why a lot of right wingers want to ignore the grim realities of modern life with George W. Bush as our president and instead harken back to a kinder, gentler, more peaceful time -- you know, a time when you could pour yourself a nice Jack on the rocks, pick up your well-worn, extensively-highlighted copy of The Starr Report, walk out onto your newly-refinished deck, sit down on your favorite piece of outdoor furniture -- and get a good laugh reading about the wild sexual antics of Bill Clinton whilst enjoying the greatest economy our country had ever experienced.

Do you remember those days? Boy, I sure do. They are only a few years behind us, but they seem like decades ago. I miss them.

After the 2004 election, I started wondering -- along with a lot of my friends (at least those who weren't making plans to relocate to New Zealand) -- if we should simply give in and become right-winged Republican assholes. After all, my friends and I weren't exactly poor -- and the leaders in the Democratic Party had failed us -- so why not consider embracing extreme selfishness, hatred for government, and all the other core Republican principles? Why couldn't we simply drink the GOP Kool-Aid and float around on the same cloud of ultra-obliviousness that 50.73% of the country had sleepily hitched a ride upon?

Sure, the Federal government was more or less teetering on the brink thanks to an idiotic war overseas and all the looting that took the form of tax cuts for the very wealthy, but how did all that really affect us? We weren't in the military; and if there was a draft, we'd be either too old or too beat up to qualify. If there was a recession, why should we really care? We weren't poor. If Bush appointed right-wing activist judges to the Supreme Court and abortion was outlawed, so what? We weren't planning on getting any abortions.

How much trouble could these GOP "ideals" really get us into? OK, Bush's push to privatize social security could affect us in our older years, but the polls were all saying that Bush did not have the support of the people on that issue, so it didn't concern us too much. And who really cares if our kids were taught intelligent design in public school or there was a Ten Commandments monument on every corner? Hell, we'd get used to all that eventually.

Then came Katrina, and now it seems like the election of 2004 -- and all the above-described mind crap that followed -- are also part of some distant, hazy past, even though it all happened less than a year ago. Katrina, it seems, had snapped the country out of a trance.

It is too bad that it took a tragedy like Katrina to do it. The Debacle in Iraq had partially awakened a lot of Americans in the months following Bush's reelection, but I always felt that Bush -- with the help of the Corporate Media, of course -- was just one terror threat color away from coaxing us back into our national coma. Maybe the emergence of another Osama videotape would be all it would take to make us forget about Bush's incompetence.

But everything changed on August 29, 2005. The post-Katrina era was fully upon us a few days later, and it gave us a good look at the real enemy. And guess what -- he's not some dude hiding in a cave in Pakistan (or wherever the hell bin Laden is) or sitting in a jail cell in Iraq, nor is he the guy currently occupying the White House. Our true enemy is the right-wing extremist mindset that permeated post-9-11 America.

Whether George Bush wants to continue to be part of the problem is up to him.

Columnist E.J. Dionne announced yesterday that Katrina has put an end to the Bush Era, and it is pretty hard to argue with him:

The federal budget, already a mess before Katrina, is now a laughable document. Those who call for yet more tax cuts risk sounding like robots droning automated talking points programmed inside them long ago. Katrina has forced the issue of deep poverty back onto the national agenda after a long absence. Finding a way forward in -- and eventually out of -- Iraq will require creativity from those not implicated in the administration's mistakes. And if ever the phrase "reinventing government" had relevance, it is now that we have observed the performance of a government that allows political hacks to push aside the professionals.

As Dionne noted in his column, Bush himself could put the last few nails in the Bush Era coffin if he wanted to. He could fire the bulk of his advisors. Many presidents have done this -- maybe not to the extent required of Bush now, but it has been done in the past.

Bush could announce that he is really a moderate at heart, even though he foolishly surrounded himself with right wing extremists. He could admit what everybody else already knows -- his tax cuts for the wealthy and his war in Iraq were mistakes that need to be corrected immediately.

Yesterday, Bush did the most anti-Rovian thing possible and took personal responsibility for the inept federal response to Katrina. It's a good start, but if he wants to salvage his presidency, he'll need to admit that the Katrina embarrassment occurred not simply because he chose Michael Brown to run FEMA. Bush needs to admit that it was caused by a long line of wrong-headed policy decisions that were made on his watch, and he could then confess that he was indeed way too detached from it all. Once he gets all that out of the way, he could then officially inaugurate the Post-Katrina Era by firing Michael Chertoff.

As much as I dislike Bush, I would really love to see him do something like what was just described. Let's face it: he will not resign, and even if the Democrats did take over the House in 2006 and impeached Bush, the Senate would never convict him. America's only hope is that Bush chooses to re-tool his presidency. If he chooses not to, then we would be stuck with the same president we have had these last five years, which means that history will look back on 2005 as the year the American Empire officially began to unravel.

Tom DeLay: D.C.'s Newest Liberal

What a week for surprises. First, we get Bush taking responsibility for the Federal Government's bungled response to Katrina. Now, we get this from Tom DeLay:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an "ongoing victory," and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.

Mr. DeLay was defending Republicans' choice to borrow money and add to this year's expected $331 billion deficit to pay for Hurricane Katrina relief. Some Republicans have said Congress should make cuts in other areas, but Mr. DeLay said that doesn't seem possible.

"My answer to those that want to offset the spending is sure, bring me the offsets, I'll be glad to do it. But nobody has been able to come up with any yet," the Texas Republican told reporters at his weekly briefing.

Asked if that meant the government was running at peak efficiency, Mr. DeLay said, "Yes, after 11 years of Republican majority we've pared it down pretty good."

And no, that was not an excerpt from an article in The Onion. It is from the right-winged Washington Times, and I'm pretty sure it is not an attempt at satire.

I'm curious, Tom -- does this mean that you no longer support repeal of the estate tax or that you no longer advocate other tax cuts for the extremely wealthy? I mean, if there is no longer any fat to cut from the federal budget -- and taxpayers are going to have to pay $150 billion or so for the Katrina recovery -- then we can't afford more tax cuts, right? Have you told Grover Norquist about this?

UPDATE: DeLay becoming a liberal should be added to Billmon's List:



Nice work as usual, Whiskey Bar.

Right-Wingers' "Gerald O'Hara" Approach, Part II

I agree with this guy and his observation that Bush Supporters can't seem to deal with reality. He writes:

The ones I have talked to have blamed everyone but Bush for the poor response: the New Orleans mayor, the Louisiana governor, the Louisiana senator, the deserting New Orleans Police Department, and, of course, the media (always a favorite target of Bush excusers).

I was a Bill Clinton supporter. When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, it was an embarrassment to all of us. There was no justification for his behavior or his lies. There's no way around that.

His actions in that scandal will haunt him the rest of his life. It will also mar what was otherwise a fairly effective presidency, as current events and historians are already bearing out.

But despite a George W. Bush presidency filled with lies and inexcusable fiascos, his supporters usually answer with one thing: "At least he didn't use the White House to get a (insert favorite name here for Clinton's favorite sexual act)."

They will not acknowledge that this administration has been a mess. They won't truly consider the seriousness of what this administration has wrought and the lengths it has traveled to accomplish its predetermined agenda.

It continues up to the moment, with Halliburton and other Bush supporters' companies being given no-bid contracts for Gulf Coast cleanup just as they were in Iraq.

It goes on and on, but you won't hear that from the 39 percent (AP-Ipsos) who still say George W. is doing a good job as president. They'll simply continue telling us that the president is not having sex in the White House.

Thank goodness for that.

UPDATE: Add this to the Right Wing's "Let's Blame Everyone and Everything But Bush" List -- the Welfare State.

Thank you, Anonymous, for the article.

What the Hell?

Michael Brown just resigned. Sure, this was inevitable, but why now? Has Karl Rove lost his freaking mind? The Administration is right in the middle of the Roberts confirmation hearing, yet Brown resigns now, thus trumping the Roberts coverage.

I can only conclude that this must be one of those real resignations, and not some "sign-here-asshole-or-we-will-fire-you" type of resignation. Perhaps Brown was pissed off about being taken off the Katrina recovery effort, so he went off script and timed this resignation as a parting shot at Bush for embarrassing him.

UPDATE: I watched CNN over the lunch hour, and Bush was on there talking to reporters. I didn't catch it all, but he was asked whether he had heard about Brownie's resignation. Bush said he had heard about it, but then said something to the effect that he would have no comment on it until he spoke with Michael Chertoff.

It therefore appears that Bush was in the dark on this. I know -- Bush lives in the dark, and it is possible that Bush gave Chertoff full authority to get rid of Brown (FEMA is, after all, part of Homeland Security); but wouldn't someone have considered that forcing Brown to "resign" today would interfere with coverage of the Roberts Confirmation Hearing?

Herr Rove, are you out there?