IT'S A GAS, GAS, GAS

Just to follow up on my gas prices rant...

Two stories appeared in local papers here about gas prices, one in the college paper and one in the city paper. The college paper has this to say:

The rising cost of gas is on everyone's mind, especially student commuters.According to mississippigasprices.com, the cost of gas per gallon has risen to $2.73, compared to $2.49 in August and $1.81 at the same time last year.

The gas prices have risen almost a dollar in a year's time? Is it just me or is that a gigantic increase for a basic necessity?

Here's a quote from an official with Pine Belt Oil from the local paper:

"Some have changed on us three times a day," Ellzey said. "It's just a very unique time. The fellow that founded this company in 1967 said never in the history of the gas business has he seen anything like this."

Ellzey had no idea when gas prices might subside or if they would keep going higher.

"Who knows?" Ellzey said. "If I knew what gas was going to do tomorrow, I'd be doing something else. No one knows. It's just until they see where the supply-and-demand line crosses."

A Perfect Circle Of Bullshitting And Greed

Well, I know what gas prices are going to do--keep going up. Know what's not going up? My income. Know what's going up besides gas prices? Everything. Know why everybody says prices are going up? Because of high gas prices. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Doesn't that circle of bullshit just make you giggle your ass off?

So of course gas prices will just steadily climb upward and never downward--why would a seller lower the price of something everyone needs when they know people will pay it without rioting, like students did in Indonesia? To wit:

Some of the protesters burned tires and threw rocks at riot police who responded
by firing tear gas and warning shots into the air. More rallies were expected,
and the government deployed thousands of soldiers and police at major
intersections, the presidential palace and other strategic locations.

They did this because gas prices are going to be raised by 87%. The price increase described by the college paper I mentioned is just over 50%. Got that? We're paying over 50% more for gas this year than we were last year!

Not quite (but almost) as dramatic as 87%, so maybe we aren't quite yet inspired to throw rocks at police and burn tires, but maybe we could, I don't know...impeach Saudi handholding George W. Bush and turn out the corrupt, profiteering Republican majority in 2006? And then if it goes up any more, maybe we should gather some rocks and tires and matches...

One More Thing

And here's an interesting and heartening group of comments on an earlier story from our local paper here regarding a White House directive to get power back to a nearby pipeline before worrying about getting power back to area hospitals...

MORE KATRINA PIX

Porch underneath tree one













Hallway ceiling













Bedroom ceiling













Mom and pup in front of uprooted oak tree (given "Katrina Award")

BACK ONLINE

This is my first post-Katrina blog entry...almost a month after the storm...or a little over a month, depending on how you count.

Not much to say, except that it's nice to see Tom Delay get indicted. It's nice to be able to get online at home again.

It's not nice, however, to pay $3/gallon for gas. What is the deal with that? The reasons that I hear for it are:

1. No new refining capacity has been added in the U.S. in the last 15 years or so. OK, that may be true, but if that's a cause of high gas prices, why are they making such spectacular leaps just in the last year? Why wouldn't gas prices started rising long before now. I'm not buying that load of shitsodd.

2. Hurricane Kat-rita disrupted the supply. True, but gas prices were way off the chart--well over $2/gallon (where I live, anyway) long before the storms, so I'm not buying that excuse, either.

3. There's an increased demand for gas due to the "war on terror." The implication here is that since they're fighting terror for us, we should just be so grateful that we'll pony up any amount for gas. But haven't American troops been deployed around the world for years in the same numbers, if not the same concentration as the troops in Iraq?
Could the increased demand be from all the SUVs with yellow ribbon magnets bellowing on about how they support the troops' having to fight to keep gas available for their gas guzzlers? And all those friggin' gigantic half-ton pickups that people are driving back and forth to office jobs?

What are we gonna do about it?

KATRINA REMODELING
I had planned to do a big "return to blog hurricane experience special," but let's just say that we got a tree in our house (and all of our rent houses), we're living in our front room with a tarp over the hole (actually we just got our first blue roof yesterday--nice job, fellas) and looking to buy another house.

The days after the hurricane were actually kind of harrowing, with 5 hour lines at Walgreen's and gas pumps, ice, water and food in short supply, and lots of other stressful things. I never did much chainsawing before this happened, and I hadn't done any work on a roof in a long, long time (and never put a tarp on one before).
My parents and my friends were very helpful (dad helped tarp our roofs, mom watched our son) and we met and hung out with neighbors we'd only kind of half-waved at before.

We didn't lose everything, we're just inconvenienced for a while. So I don't want to go on and on about how horrible I think our situation is, I'll just post some pictures and let them speak for themselves.

Tree number one













Trees one and two (the second tree just grazed the south edge of the house)

EVIL BROTHER PAT

Just listening to Mike Malloy on Air America...he made a good point in his inimitable way. He said that Christianity as practiced by the majority of Americans today has turned Christianity into a "gutter religion." He said "I spit on it." Amen to that, especially after Evil Brother Pat had his say the other day about assassinating Chavez.

I don't know much about Pat and I don't know much about Chavez, but I know that Pat got all cuddly with Mobutu Sese Seko, and I know that Chavez has enacted land reform in Venezuela.

Hmmm...which would Jesus prefer...consorting with dictators or helping the poor...

Glad Cindy's back in Tejas, giving 'em hell...

Try Skype and see what you think...

BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, AND MORE BULLSHIT...


So BRAC is closing down Naval Station Pascagoula, axing about 900 jobs...oh snap, that's fucking Trent Lott's home turf...see what a good job the "cat-herder" is doing for the good people of MS? He has already admitted that the Iraq war has diverted money away from Northrop Grumman , also in his home turf, and he couldn't do diddly-shit about it--and this has also cost 1,900 jobs in MS and Louisiana. O, what power he wields--is he not the Senator we need, o fellow Mississippians? Hath he not provided for thee and thine? Oh brother...where art thou?

How 'bout a Democrat in '06? Why the hell not--Lott's letting jobs leak like a sieve from the state and he's a giant jackass to boot. And what of our portly governor, Whaley Barbour? Was it not hammered home again and again during his racist ("Keep the flag, change the governor" yet extremely effective campaign how many jobs he would bring to MS and how being tight with Lott and Bush would be a boon to MS citizens? Oh, I think it was, good people. And now what have we got? Dead soldiers and less jobs. Thanks, all you "sportsmen/Eagles/Rebels/mindless cretins for Haley." Way to go--we're really on top now!

And then of course there's ol' Dumb-ya, Whaley's ol' pal...he said in a speech today that if we leave Iraq now, that country will become a "staging ground" for more terror attacks on the U.S.

We will stay on the offense. We'll complete our work in Afghanistan and Iraq. An immediate withdrawal of our troops in Iraq, or the broader Middle East, as some have called for, would only embolden the terrorists and create a staging ground to launch more attacks against America and free nations. So long as I'm the President, we will stay, we will fight, and we will win the war on terror.

Ummm, no...if leave Iraq, that will be a big incentive for would-be terrorists to think twice before attacking us...just ask Robert Pape...

Did anyone else see batshit-crazy neocon Melanie Morgan on "Hardball" last night? She spewed a lot of stupidity, but one statement took the cake:

"By the way, we‘re still going to find weapons of mass destruction [in Iraq]."

What world must this poor woman live on? Not planet Earth, that's for sure. Our guys have searched and searched and both Kay and Duelfer said there were no WMD in Iraq. Come to think of it, even though Morgan and other loonies like her like to protest that WMD weren't the only (some would add "or primary") reason that we went to Iraq, she still feels the need to make up some shit about how WMD will be found in Iraq. People like her obviously don't believe their own lies--they're just hoping we will.

Well fuck her...and God bless Cindy Sheehan--she hasn't let the bastards get her down...

And two more quick things...

Read this about "Able Danger" and how the U.S. government knew of and was tracking 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta at least as far back as 2000...the point being that we don't need a Patriot Act squashing our civil rights to prevent terrorism--we knew who Atta was and what he might be up to way before 9/11...

And then for those of you who wonder how "anti-terror"/anti-civil-rights legislation--i.e. the Patriot Act might affect you? Look no further than the case of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian immigrant who was shot in the head seven times because he was supposedly running from the bobbies, jumped the turnstile at the Tube, was wearing a bulky coat, etc.

Well, guess what? None of that shit was true and you can see a picture for yourself here. This is how the "anti-terrorist" forces commit terror--they kill you or anyone else for whatever reason they may have cooked up in their overheated brains, then try to cover it up.

Which is easy for them to do, because the media will breathlessly report the story of how a "terrorist"--by whom they might someday mean you was doing such-and-such a terrible thing so they had to shoot you in the head eleventy-million times. And all the news shows and papers and magazines pick it up and sing the praises of the police and point out that well, this is just how things have to be in this "post-9/11 world."

Only in actual fact, you did none of the things they accused you of, they had no reason to suspect you except that they needed to demonstrate somehow that they have crime and terror under control and you happen to walk out of building they're surveilling...

And then the actual truth of what happened gets a sentence on page A-20 of the Post, the blogs scream about it, and no one ever hears the fucking truth...and then those same non-hearers of the truth go "oh, we have to stop terror just like they did when they shot [insert your name here] that time--you heard he was running from the cops, etc." So when Patriot Act 10: The Enabling Act comes down the pike, they're all like "Yeah, it makes good sense to me--you can't never be too safe..."

FUCK NUKES, END THE WAR...

R.I.P P.J....

Heard a story on NPR about Iran and nukes and how that's a "crisis". What the hell is with that? Why are we constantly being told that if other countries have the bomb, it's a "crisis" for us?

The crisis, as non-nuclear countries see it, is us having the bomb, the only country to ever actually use nuclear weapons against another country--you never are reminded of that in these breathless "crisis" stories. But that's why they want the bomb, because they don't trust us. And for God's sake, why the hell should they?

In Iran, the CIA helped overthrow Mossadeq, the democratically elected leader (not that he was actually all that "democratic"), to install the Shah, who would give the West favorable oil deals. It's the same damn story with us over and over again.

Now we've invaded Iraq unprovoked, right next door to Iran, and are throwing out slander at Iran's new president, and so forth.


A little aside: As I predicted in this entry (6-30-05), it has come out that the CIA now says Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president wasn't one of the kidnappers in the embassy takeover in 1979.

And last week, a U.S. official told CNN that CIA analysis of a photograph of
a hostage-taker at the embassy, taken around the time of the siege, determined
the individual was not Ahmadinejad. But the official said it had not been
established whether Ahmadinejad had a role in the embassy takeover.

Note that this information is the last sentence in this story, not in the headline or first few paragraphs--it's just an afterthought, whereas the accusations of him being a kidnapper were headlines across the country, across the media, casting more aspersions and serving to demonize the country Puppet Bush will have us invading next--End of aside.

Of course they want the bomb. It's the best deterrent yet it's simultaneously useless. But it's the biggest stick you can wave around.

I say, the more countries with nukes, the better. Then everyone will be terrified of everyone else and we can finally leave each other the hell alone.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>And go Cindy go! <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

TAKING GOD'S NAME IN VAIN

I will tell you what taking God's name in vain means to me. It means calling yourself a follower but not really being a follower, not really acting like a follower. A good example of this phenomenon would be George W. Bush. He takes God's name in vain every second we're in Iraq.

I bring this up because I wanted to write some more about "The Christian Paradox," the great article in this month's "Harper's Magazine." There are so many good points made in it that it's difficult to pick which ones to quote...ummm, how about this one:

Despite the Sixth Commandment, we are of course, the most violent rich nation on earth, with a murder rate four or five times that of our European peers. We have prison populations greater by a factor of six or seven than other rich nations...Having been told to turn the other cheek, we're the only Western democracy left that executes its citizens, mostly in those states where Christianity is theoretically strongest. Despite Jesus' strong declarations against divorce, our marriages break up at a rate--just over half--that compares poorly with the European Union's average of about four in ten.

I actually read the Bible the other day, and I don't remember why, but I was shocked to see what I must have read a thousand times before, but just didn't remember it. Of course one always hears the part about "turning the other cheek," but the context is rarely given. Jesus says, in Matthew 5:39 not to resist evil, or ones who are evil, or evildoers, to wit:

NAB
"But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on (your) right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. "

KJV
"But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. "

More translations here.

Is this explicit instruction from Jesus why George Bush so frequently talks about "evil" and "evildoers?" Have you ever heard our great Christian leader George Bush say that we should'nt resist evil or "one who is evil?" But that's what Jesus, 'his favorite philosopher", said to do.

But hell, I didn't even plan on trashing Bush with this entry. Although did you see the news about his new lows in his approval rating? He's the least-liked he's yet been, on this the day he appoints John Bolton to the U.N. without the Senate's approval. Even people my wife and I know to have been big Bush supporters here in Mississippi are complaining about him, and that's saying something.

However, they follow such comments immediately with something inane like "Kerry just wasn't likable enough." What the fuck kind of logic is that? Were these people saying "I know Bush took us to war illegally, is fucking over the little man, giving tax breaks to the rich and all that other shit, but I just can't see myself voting against him?" People had to have been having doubts because the article about the approval rating drop points out that "Bush's previous low favorable rating came twice in October 2004, when 51% of Americans had a favorable opinion of the president and 46% had an unfavorable opinion." So something like my little screwed-up scenario must have taken place in about 3,00,000 minds (that is, if you believe the election wasn't stolen).

Gotta Go
But anyway, that's enough for tonight. But my point is that the Harper's article (written by Bill McKibben) is so right on and makes arguments so obvious that they needed to be pointed out. It's like this guy I know whose Protestant minister father made a racist remark in public. When the son pointed out to the father that maybe a minister shouldn't talk like that based on the teachings of Jesus, the father tried to explain that the racist remark wasn't really wrong and asked the son why everything has to come back to what Jesus said. And this happened only a week or so ago.

Sure, the Bible has a lot to offer the intolerant, homophobic redneck--especially the Old Testament. But Jesus, God in the flesh, contradicts a lot of that stuff. Always remember and never forget: Jesus never said the first word about homosexuality or abortion. But he did say to turn the other cheek, give people more than they ask for, treat other people how you'd like to be treated, love everyone as you love yourself, and so forth. And a lot of the most self-professed "Christian" leaders in America today are taking the lord's name in vain...for their own gain.

HARPER'S THIS MONTH...

Has two must-read articles, one about the Conyers Report and the overwhelming lack of media coverage about what was almost surely electoral sabotage if not outright theft, and the other about how American Christians kind of--aren't. The articles aren't online in their entirety, though.

If you don't feel like clicking on the link to the Jesus article excerpt, here's a sample:

Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.

This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation’s educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture.

The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.

Asking Christians what Christ taught isn’t a trick. When we say we are a Christian nation—and, overwhelmingly, we do—it means something. People who go to church absorb lessons there and make real decisions based on those lessons; increasingly, these lessons inform their politics. (One poll found that 11 percent of U.S. churchgoers were urged by their clergy to vote in a particular way in the 2004 election, up from 6 percent in 2000.) When George Bush says that Jesus Christ is his favorite philosopher, he may or may not be sincere, but he is reflecting the sincere beliefs of the vast majority of Americans.

And therein is the paradox. America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. That paradox—more important, perhaps, than the much touted ability of French women to stay thin on a diet of chocolate and cheese—illuminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, careening culture.

And here's a Mr. Fish cartoon (from harpers.org) that pretty much sums all that up...



I plan to write more on this later (tomorrow?)...it's getting late and I didn't go to bed 'til 4 last night...

TERROR ERROR

So the guy the London police shot "to kill" was an unassuming Brazilian electrician. Hoo boy...pre-emptive strikes are just looking better and better all the time, aren't they?












Meanwhile, the "terror expert" on MSNBC tonight was all like--yeah, but think if they hadn't killed him and he'd blown up a bus, then what would you be saying?" If this jackass is such an "expert," how come he can't help stop any terrorist attacks? This guy basically said that what should be done to "stop terrorism" is to keep waving guns around and shooting people with the intent of killing them and hope that the police might get it right more often than not, because bless their hearts, they're only doing the best they can.

I can help, I think, but I make no claims to be an expert on the subject. Here's my advice on how to stop terrorism--leave these people alone! Stop antagonizing the world! We cannot rule the world by force, by commerce, or by any method! The suicide bombers always tell us what they want, or at least why they blow themselves up, and it's almost always along the lines of "Pull out of our sacred land/give us our homeland" or some variation thereof. Why wouldn't we do that? Because of our "strategic interests"? By which is meant "oil?"

The oil supply is peaking, yo--we're gonna have to come up with some other energy source pretty soon anyway, so let's leave these people alone and create billions of dollars for domestic companies and providing jobs for Americans by working on renewable energy sources, popularizing them, making them convenient and affordable, and then no more worries about terrorists (except the homegrown kind).

If we really wanted to "remake" the Middle East, that's exactly what we'd do. Because then the oil they're sitting on would be about as valuable as all the sand it's under, and then we'd be selling whatever shit we came up to them and we'd be on friendly terms and we could each pursue our own crazy religions and leave each other the fuck alone.

It's like those BP commercials--"what do you want an oil company to do?" How about getting out of the business of pushing around the people of other cultures for profit so they don't get pissed off and blow themselves up in crowded metropolitan areas? That would be nice.



Those "security" cameras worked great

The CCTV installed in London sure were a big help in the terror attacks, weren't they? I mean, they really helped stop the terrorist attack...I mean, well...they didn't stop it, but...you know, they kind of help maybe now...

I don't claim to know a whole lot about the security cameras in Britain, but I know they have them in a lot of places and I know that they are installed to help curb crime. Or are they?

Because they weren't able to stop the bombings. They are, however, quite capable of intruding on British citizen's civil liberties. Just like the cameras in Chicago (notice how they're in housing developments and the mayor says in the transcript "they're the next best thing to having a police officer stationed at every potential trouble spot in our city" as though every trouble spot in Chicago is in housing developments) and other places are capable of doing.

This kind of thing frustrates me so much. Why do we allow our "leaders" to convince us to allow this kind of surveillance and so forth instead of taking the most obvious step to prevent these kinds of attacks? Why do we allow our leaders to say, in essence, "By God, the U.S. fuckin' military is going to occupy Iraq no matter if we have to install security cameras on every corner, in every home, check every bag coming in and out of every public facility, encode every citizen with a digital tattoo that contains all their pertinent info and can be scanned at the whim of law enforcement, if we have to throw out the Bill of Rights and write it out the history books, and declare the entire populations of the "blue states" to be enemy combatants, and bankrupt the country (but enrich its tax-sheltered corporations), we'll bloody well do it because Iraq had no WMD, had no ties to al Qaeda, never attacked us and never could have even if they had wanted to!"

Does that scenario--that we're living out minus the hyperbole--make a bit of fucking sense? Of course not. But that is the underlying assumption of practically every news report and every terrorism/military/corporate shill-expert that comes on television to talk about such things, that is, that we're the goddamn U. S. of A. and we can do anything we damn well please to anybody at any time. And that anyone who objects to that on rational grounds (i.e., get out of country, leave us alone, your policies are hurting us, etc.) "hates our freedom" or is a "terrorist," or some other kind of hogwash. Why are we standing for this?

ORIGINALISM IS A CODE WORD

Just watched “Meet The Press”...I’ve got to stop doing that (I mainly wanted to see what Russert would say about the contradictory testimony to the Fitzgerald grand jury–and if he would talk much about the leak). It was almost exclusively about John Roberts, and that reminded me of a caller to the Majority Report who recalled hearing Scalia speak about so-called “originalism.”

According to this caller, Scalia and the originalists say, correctly, that the Supreme Court’s function is to interpret laws passed by Congress in light of what the Constitution says. But that last part–“what the Constitution says”–is wide open to debate.

Again, according to the caller, my understanding of what he said Scalia said was that the Supreme Court can only go by the “original” words of the Constitution and I believe he said that the “intent” of the Framers should also be considered. Sam Seder rightly rebuked the caller and said originalism is bunk.

For example, it was the intent of the Framers to make black people count for 3/5 of a human being for population purposes. It was the intent of the Framers to have Senators appointed by state legislatures rather than by being elected by the citizenry. And so on. So the “intent” of the Framers is questionable, other than what they have written. Not that the Framers weren’t important, brilliant men, but we in the present cannot possibly divine their intent–we can’t even truly divine the intent of people who are living and breathing right this minute, i.e., conservatives routinely say that liberals “intend” to undermine America and all that it stands for while liberals deny this and hurl the charge right back at conservatives. So who’s right? Well, the short answer is “whoever’s in power.” But my point is that anyone can accuse a person of “intent” to do one thing or another which the accused can deny.

Why God created Brains–and Amendments

But getting back to the “original” words of the Constitution...a two-term limit for the Presidency wasn’t originally in the Constitution, the right of women to vote wasn’t originally in the Constitution, and so forth. That’s because throughout our history, people have understood that the main purpose of the Constitution is to protect the liberty of the citizens of this country. If that much isn’t clear, I can’t imagine that anything is (but as Krugman points out, these days there is no such thing as a nonpolitical truth).

In other words, the only thing set in stone about the Constitution is whether every citizen’s liberty is protected, assured, not violated–however you want to say it. The conservatives themselves know this but act like they don’t. That’s why many of them are proponents of originalism but can simultaneously propose changing the document for the stupid purposes of outlawing flag burning, outlawing gay marriage, outlawing abortion, and so forth.

This is why God gave us brains and constitutional amendments–so that we could eradicate injustice wherever we find it, even if it’s in the original words of the Constitution.

I realize that I am in fact using the original words of the Constitution to defend the idea of changing those words in some instances. Obviously the problem is that different people have different words that they want to change, but I would hope and pray that overall, everyone wants to keep the part about “securing the blessings of liberty.”

IRAQ AND DEMOCRACY?

Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com does it again! His column today shows, with extensive quotes from the Iraqi constitution that is being drawn up, that even the feeble Bushian excuse that we're in Iraq to bring democracy to that country is just as false as the claim that Iraq had WMD prior to our invasion.

Here is a particularly galling sample:

A pretty cushy deal, eh? Oh, but it gets better in Article 7:

"Iraqi citizens have the right to enjoy security and free health care. The Iraqi federal government and regional governments must provide it and expand the fields of prevention, treatment, and medication by the construction of various hospitals and health institutions".

I guess the Iraqi Founders can afford to be generous. After all, you're paying for it – yeah, that's right, you, the American taxpayer. You may be unemployed, widowed, orphaned, and eventually driven into homelessness by confiscatory taxation or just the sheer cruelty of having to keep pace with the rat race, but please rest assured that none of these terrible fates will be suffered by the Iraqis. You may be without healthcare, but no Iraqi will go without. That's what it means to be "liberated," these days – if you don't wind up as "collateral damage," you get to spend other people's money, and the sky's the limit.

That's what we're fighting for, good people--free health care for Iraqis while Bush and his HMO/Big Pharma buddies try to make it as expensive as possible to get health care for ourselves.

Raimondo goes on to point out how each grant of liberty in the Iraqi constitution is followed by a caveat that allows for it to be easily negated, as he explains here:

The apotheosis of this Islamofascist legal-political doctrine has got to be Article 13, my own personal favorite, which solemnly states:

"1. Public and private freedoms are protected provided they do not conflict with moral values and public decency."

In Basra, in the south of Iraq, the religious police are already patrolling the streets, brutally repressing all signs of un-Islamic behavior: alcohol, bright clothing, modern haircuts, men who shave their faces, unveiled women, and other such abominations. This provision legalizes these fanatic vigilante gangs and paves the way for their institutionalization as legal arms of the "Islamic Republic of Iraq."

And this brings up an interesting question--is this the first you've heard of this? Because it's the first I've heard of it. Why is MSNBC, for example, running movie preview/celebrity puff shows on the weekends instead of say, putting together a program or programs about...oh, I don't know, the contents of the Iraqi constitution?

THE NOOSE TIGHTENS...

Americablog has the scoop, as does Raw Story...somebody is lying in all this, and the only ones who really have any motivation to lie are Rove, Libby, et. al. Olbermann pointed out this evening that the Wall Street Journal will have more on the classification level of that State Dept. memo and it doesn't look good for Rove and friends, because it was marked "Top Secret" and the sentences about Valerie Wilson were marked "SNF"--short for Secret--No Foreign intelligence services can see it. By the way, Olbermann is a great broadcaster in my book.

Shit, goddamn...these Rove defenders are running out of excuses...the facts just ain't turning their way...

Here's a short list of some of the arguments/justifications they've used in the past, and even tonight on Hardball with McCain (even if he cut his losses with Bush now, he's still tarnished by his campaigning for Bush in '04 and his water-carrying for Bush ever since):

1. Plame was not undercover--the Washington Post story from today and the Wall Street Journal article from tomorrow disprove that.

2. The British still stand by the "16 words" (McCain trotted this out on Hardball tonight)...

Well, wait a second--in looking for links I ran across this summary of this debunking of the pro-Rovers. Someone's got this numbering thing all wrapped up, so I'm leaving it at that...

More Terror Attacks in London...

You know, I was a little disappointed in Jon Stewart tonight. He commented on the strategy of the bombers in London, mocking them for bombing civilians when what they want to achieve is Britain's withdrawal from Iraq. He said that commuters have no power to withdraw the British from Iraq and aren't responsible for British soldiers being there in the first place.

Well, I know he said that as a gesture of solidarity with the British people, echoing his emotional remarks after 9/11, but it wasn't funny or even that helpful. Let's remind ourselves again, these people don't want to destroy British or Western society. The successful London bombers were part of it and benefitted from it.

What they want is the West out of the East, and they know they don't have the military might to attack the leaders of the West. But they know they can attack the people those leaders supposedly represent, and so they do, hoping that will cause the represented to badger their representatives about getting out of a situation we should have never created in the first place. Because in fact, in a democracy, each of us is responsible for the policies of our government.

God knows I feel nothing but sympathy and heartache for the victims of suicide bombings. That shit is so fucked up. But if we want them to end, all we have to do is accommodate the reasonable wishes of these people. And those of you who would write me or make comments that don't agree with this will of course draw a parallel to Chamberlain and Municha and appeasement and argue that you can't negotiate with terrorists and so forth and so on--I know the drill. Spare me.

But really, what they want is so simple--it's what people everywhere want, which is to be left alone and to be free of interference from foreign governments and not to be occupied by other countries who seek to control their resources and what have you. It's actually not unreasonable at all and ought to be heeded. Don't forget the conclusions of Robert Pape in Dying to Win...

I'm in no way saying that if terrorists threatened endless suicide attacks unless America became a fundamentalist Islamic country, that we should go ahead and do it so the suicide attacks would stop. We have defend our right to exist as we see fit, just as they are doing. But demands that we leave their lands do not strike me as unreasonable, and yes, I am aware that we use a lot of their oil. But we should have gotten off oil decades ago and we should accelerate our research into renewable sources of energy and convert to them pronto and then, as Dan Bern says, we won't have to kiss the ass of whoever's got the oil...

A SUPREME CORNUCOPIA OF MUSINGS...

I enjoyed the Daily Howler's take on the Supreme Court story...When I first looked the stories last night, I thought the same thing that he elaborated on today...He says the press is already spinning Roberts' story, trying to turn him into an option that Republicans can argue no reasonable person can refuse, even though he apparently was instrumental in the Florida recount of the 2000 election...Political payback sure is sweet.

I noticed that Alterman used some of the same logic regarding this nomination as the man he vilified during the election of 2004--Ralph Nader.















Alterman takes a more or less blase attitude toward the nomination, pointing out that maybe the people who voted for Bush should get a taste of the horror they voted for, hoping that in a decade or two they'll wise up and get rid of the Bush types. Nader has been using that exact argument for a while now...I first heard him mention it in the 2000 election.

Raimondo at antiwar.com has an excellent piece on the Rove distraction. He points out how the whole investigation is not even really about Rove or Novak or Cooper or whatever, it's about finding out how we were lied into war. But Rove did in fact leak Plame's identity to Cooper and probably others.

Finding vs. Getting A Job

And then I was checking my Hotmail account and ran across this quiz. I realize they're just trying to be helpful by posting this tripe, but reading through it just made me tired and depressed and I'm not even looking for a job. But hell, if this war keeps going and this deficit keeps growing, we may all be looking for jobs soon.

It's a pretty standard "self-marketing" questionnaire--multiple choice answers to what are supposedly standard interview questions. What I don't understand is why any employers are asking such questions since there are so many resources like this quiz that tell a jobseeker what to say. And I'm sure there are some newly minted popular interview questions that aren't covered in the questionnaire. What is the hapless jobseeker supposed to do then?

I was entertained by the way the quiz's author kept saying that you should answer the questions honestly then proceeded to tell people how to bullshit effectively when questions about why you left your last job come up. The most useful thing that this article could have told a potential jobseeker is that universal, immutable truth of job-hunting: You have to know somebody on the inside to get hired.

But my point is that most people are lucky to even get an interview. There was a period in my life a few years ago where I put on the coat and tie and handed in applications for somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 jobs and got maybe five interviews. And from what recent jobseeking friends have told me, their experience has not been much different.

It's like I've always said, there's a giant chasm between "finding" a job and "getting" a job even though most people use the terms interchangeably. Anyone can "find" a job, but "getting" a job is a bitch...

UMMM...AHHH...KARL ROVE SUCKS...

So much going on I don't know where to start...

Well, first of all I'll try using the new "BloggerImage" service...

I've dropped off on my intended "Songs of 05" tidbits that I planned on dropping here and there all through the year so that when it came time to make my Top 10 list of songs and albums in December, I would have an easy way to compile it. But anyhoo, if you like indie rock that slavishly imitates Pavement but yet that is somehow refreshingly its own beast (and quite inventive, tuneful, and catchy), get the album by Hockey Night pictured here...













It's definitely a contender for my 2005 Top 10. Not that I sit around and make music lists all the time, but I was thinking today about the musical acts that are most important to me, most influential to me. So here is a short, ever-evolving list off the top o' me head:

1. U2 (every album through "Achtung Baby")

2. Beatles (everything they ever did, but especially Abbey Road and Sgt. Pepper)

3. Police (every album is great, even Zenyatta Mondatta)

4. Steely Dan (every album up to Gaucho is sheer genius--melodically, harmonically, etc.)

5. Bob Dylan (a student of my father's made me a cassette copy of the whole Biograph box set when I was in high school and I couldn't get enough of it)

6. R.E.M. (through Automatic For The People they could do no wrong--what a perfectly subversive combo of strangeness and accessibility--something I always try to achieve)

7. Firehose/Minutemen (don't make me choose--they're both Mike Watt and George Hurley playing with a singer/guitarist. Firehose is awesome because of the melodic sense of Ed Crawford, while the politics and chemistry of D. and Watt is unparalleled and irreplaceable)

8. Zappa (my favorite is One Size Fits All, but have a soft spot for Best Band You Never Heard...because it was the one that got me into his music)

9. Captain Beefheart (Trout Mask Replica and Lick My Decals Off, Baby are complete reinventions of rock & roll that not many have even heard and even fewer "get"...I didn't get it until I listened to it over and over while playing Super Mario 3 in my apartment in 1995...I had bought it long before that and was turned off every time I tried to listen to it)

10. Joni Mitchell (brilliant lyrics, crystalline voice, inventive guitar tunings--there are bright spots on all her albums, but Court and Spark and Blue are peerless works of art)

11. The Rolling Stones (their stuff is so familiar now that I thought about leaving them off just because they seem so obvious, but damn they have a ton of kickass tunes and that ragged sound is so...right)

12. Jimi Hendrix (again, this one seems to go without saying, but what a great lyricist he was, not to mention his guitar playing and his band...a lot of his solos were really good and memorable, but a lot of them not so much...but his songs and his feel and his spirit were/are unprecedented and his rhythm playing was always stellar)

Others that I just can't justify putting on the list, but that might appear on it at any time in the future...King Crimson, Sonic Youth, The Church, The Cure, and so forth.

Well, that was fun...I'll leave this as a music-only post and get back to politics tomorrow...

MEET THE PRESS WITH ROBERT PAPE

I don't usually like to watch "Meet The Press" because not only do I find it infuriating, I also find it harmful. I mean, for the most part, the people on the show have something to hide and it almost always stays hidden and/or is obscured even more by some fast talkin'. And so the harmful part of the show is that rather than being educated by it, I feel that one actually "unlearns" by watching it.

But today I watched it anyway and thought it wasn't too bad. It never ceases to amaze me how some people (since 2000, it's been almost exclusively Republicans) can be faced with a fact, dead to rights, and still act like it isn't true, it's not a fact, etc. RNC chairman Ken Mehlman did this beautifully when Tim Russert pointed out that, by the admission of all parties involved, Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source on Valerie Plame's identity ("Wilson's wife" can only mean "Valerie Plame") and was therefore at least one of the leakers.

Mehlman acted as if that fact just didn't exist and proceeded to make up his own because he knows that Rush's listeners and Fox watchers will buy into it. He said that the information now available exonerates Rove rather than implicates him. But he knows that that argument is poppycock--he can't actually believe what he's saying. He's like the stereotypical drug dealer, and lies are the drug he's peddling. He wants you to get hooked on them but he knows better than to try the junk himself.

Krugman had a column this past week that really exposed and explained this kind of behavior:

What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.

And that part in bold has been the poisoned genius of the Republican disinformation campaign that has gone on since at least the late 60s. They got their own thinktanks doing "research" and publishing "findings" that are at odds with the mainstream of whatever field you can name, and then "working the refs" for access to the supposedly "liberal media" until there are now perceived to be two versions of reality--the actual one and the crazy rightwing one (sane rightists believe in the actual reality). Indeed, these days, as Krugman points out, "the facts are irrelevant" to these crazed cons in any given argument--global warming (it doesn't exist), tax cuts (help the poor), separation of church and state (they shouldn't be separate), and so forth.

The Logic Of Suicide Terrorism

And a new book by Robert Pape explodes another cherished wingnut myth--that Islamic fundamentalism is out to take over the world through terrorist attacks. His new book is called "Dying To Win: The Strategic Logic Of Suicide Terrorism" and I have only read a few pages of the intro and seen the last ten to fifteen minutes of his appearance on "Washington Journal" this morning.

But what an intro! He says that he's compiled a list of the 315 suicide-bomb terrorist attacks that have taken place everywhere in the world from 1980-2003. That includes two Intifadas, unrest in Chechnya, and so forth and so on--I'm assuming he used '03 as the cutoff because that's when the war in Iraq started. And guess what his conclusion was? Why it's what educated, reasonable people have been saying for years and the reason that suicide bombers themselves almost always give--to end occupation of their land or to bring an end to some wrong they feel is being continuously committed against them.

And on a side note, I was surprised to read that there have been only 315 suicide attacks--of course, one is too many, but as many times as one hears about suicide attacks, it feels like there have been thousands upon thousands of them. And there have only been 315. And the group that has committed the most of these atrocities is not even Islamic. It's the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, a Marxist group.

In this interview in the American Conservative, Pape says that Islam is not necessarily the overriding motivation for suicide attacks. Here's what I thought was the relevant text:

The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign—over 95 percent of all the incidents—has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.

So the principle is as simple as this--don't antagonize people just for the sake of it, just because you can. Or, specifically in our case, don't invade Iraq just because we feel like it. They don't like that. Disagreements should always be settled in the manner that can be seen as equitable by all parties involved. For but one example of how revenge and excessively punitive measures create monsters, recall that resentment about the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles was one of the conditions Hitler was able to exploit to accomplish his malicious ends.

So I guess I gotta get the book...hopefully it will help turn the tide in favor of our withdrawing from Iraq and ceasing to antagonize other nations/people. But I doubt it--see above about the politics of truth...

WHERE TO EVEN BEGIN...

Freedom is on the march all right--away from American citizens. A U.S. soldier was arrested for questioning the mission in his blog. The soldier's name is Leonard Clark, and one of his friends has been keeping up with this situation at his blog (scroll down a little).

Is that legal? I mean, I have no idea, but I wouldn't think so. Aren't soldiers supposed to disobey orders they know to be wrong? And wouldn't that require them to be critical thinkers? And might that critical thinking bring them to a place where they don't agree with the mission? Is freedom of speech signed away when you join the military?

If so, no wonder the National Guard didn't meet its recruitment goals again.

And if Bush didn't smear himself with the blood of 9/11 victims every time someone asks him a simple question, Karl Rove would be sooo fucked. But remember, we don't have to get him fired (though that's the preferred outcome) or have him resign (another nice possibility)--we just have to smash the windshield of their credibility. Maybe also slash the tires and put sugar in the gas tank of the Bush administration. So then the press and the public won't let Bush and company pass the inspection and won't give them an inspection sticker and Bush will then be given a ticket and have a court date set.

I know it sounds vindictive, mean, and nasty to say all that, but we don't make the rules right now. Our guys aren't in charge of all three branches of government, our guys aren't spouting their ideas on every backwoods AM radio station in southern Rubetown 24 hours a day, and so forth. They make the rules, and a big chunk of the rules have to do with ending civility and rational discourse. If we put on our best suit and speak in the most precise yet polite language there is, we will only be laughed at and called out of touch with the people--see Al Gore in Election 2000.

The current rules are to be folksy and perceived as down-to-earth. You also have to be willing to fight. Pleas for civility are seen as weakness. So we only have to break out our rhetorical brass knuckles long enough to kick these motherfuckers' asses bad enough that we can get things back to how they should be. You know, where we're in control.

Always remember and never forget:

Oh yeah, and don't forget that the facts were being "fixed around the policy."

Don't forget, Iraq had no WMD, no nuclear program, no chemical weapons.

Saddam was given the key to the city of Detroit in 1980.

George Bush lost the popular vote in the 2000 election.

Bill Clinton was America's favorite president out of the last three.

America is the only country in the world that has ever used atomic weapons against another country.

Writing was invented in the area where Iraq now is--between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

A Muslim born in Baghdad introduced algebra, use of zero, negative numbers, and so forth.

The Catholic church forced Galileo to recant his heliocentric theory of the universe.

ROVE-ING TOWARD THE TRUTH (we don't have to win to not lose)

Don't have much to say about the Rove revelations that hasn't already been said. I disagree with Bob Somerby at the Howler about several things in his column today about the left's take on the Rove sitch. I think we should be making lots of noise and filling the air with a bunch of triumphalism, just like the Repukes did with Clinton. It worked, didn't it? I mean, if the beating that the Refucklicans gave W.J. Clinton didn't fuck up Clinton, the Democratic Party, and the country, then nothing did.

I say that to say that we should be foaming at the mouth for the downfall of Rove, even if it doesn't come down exactly the way we hope it will. After all, the Repukes did not achieve Clinton's removal from office, but hell, by the time they were done with him, it was almost as if he had been removed from office.

And that's the point with Rove and Bush. So what if Rove doesn't go to jail or get fired as a result of this? The point is for him to be walking wounded, so that the grilling Scott McClellan got today intensifies and Rove/Bush just becomes an untrustworthy joke, that the conventional wisdom becomes that "Bush wouldn't even fire Rove even though Rove was the leaker and Bush said he'd fire the leaker--you can't trust Bush, he says one thing and does another," etc. If the only positive thing that comes out of this is that the press finally gets its nuts back and calls bullshit on these guys as directly and fearlessly as it did today, that'll be more than we can say for the last several years.

Because frankly, this law about not outing undercover agents seems impossible to break even if you wanted to. That's how some people are talking about the Rove situation, pointing out that the law says that to violate the law, the violator has to "knowingly" reveal an agent's identity. And so far all we know for sure is that Rove referred to Valerie Plame as "Wilson's wife" in conversations with Time's Matt Cooper.

It sounds like this law was passed only for political purposes, as it is all but unenforceable. I mean, how can you prove in court that someone "knows" something? The accused can simply deny "knowing" as Rove has and then the prosecution has to find a way to prove "knowledge."

Come to think of it, that's the only way the right-wing crazies have been able to defend Bush and his lies about the Iraq war--they take the George Costanza approach, saying that a person cannot be said to be lying if they really believe what they're saying is true, as they say Bush was doing when he spoke about the threat from Iraqi WMD. That seems to me to be an all but nonexistent standard to define what a lie is--if people caught in lies have only to protest that they believed their lies to be truth at the time they were lying, then no one can ever be found guilty of perjury, one of the Ten Commandments (I don't know which number "bearing false witness" is and don't care to look it up right now) is null and void, etc.

It seems to me that a better standard is to hold a person to what they reasonably should have known or could have known. In Rove's case, for example, he claims not have known Plame's name and split hairs saying "I didn't leak her name." And that last part may actually be true, but the first part also more than likely is false--Rove was certainly in a position to know her name, having access to lots of classified material. In other words, he had the motive and the opportunity.

But that only creates a circumstantial case, but from what I have read of the wording of the law, it seems that a circumstantial case is the only kind of case that can be created regarding breaking this law.

But enough of that. Let us continue to make noise about this and not let it pass, not wait for it all to be sussed out before we pass judgment. That's how we lose. And we must remember, that we don't have to win to not lose. As long as Rove and Bush are sullied by this affair (as they should be sullied, at the very least) and the press sticks it to them harder and more skeptically, that's a victory, however small.

THE BRITS HAVE REALLY GOOD INTELLIGENCE...

...so said one of the guests on today's Washington Journal. David Heyman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies was making this point amidst talk about our own terror preparedness in this country. It was kind of an aside, but he was basically saying that the British have a lot of experience with terrorism (thanks to the IRA) and that they have accordingly developed an intelligence service among the best in the world.

Two questions came immediately to mind: 1) why then did they know not about yesterday's plot and 2) why do pro-war types pretend to not take seriously the contentions in the Downing Street memos that, among other things, the case against Saddam Hussein was "thin"?

And Justin Raimondo takes up the question of the Netanyahu warning today at antiwar.com. The first reports were that Netanyahu was warned by Scotland Yard before the attacks, then stories were changed--"clarified"--that Netanyahu was warned to stay in his hotel only after the first explosion.

Raimondo makes the obvious connection that since the conference at which Netanyahu was to speak was at a hotel above one of the subway stations that was hit that Netanyahu was being targeted.

Hmmm...this story will never make it into the mainstream media, but there it was for all to see on the AP page yesterday at news.yahoo.com.

NEVER COMPLETELY SAFE

In his Washington Journal appearance, Heyman also conceded that no matter what anyone does in any country, terrorism will never be out of the realm of possibility. Everyone knows this, yet people still want to know, as one emailer to the program did, "are our chemical plants adequately protected," and so forth.

Of course reasonable steps should be taken to deter those who might be planning to commit atrocities, but let's get it clear--there is nothing anybody, not even His Holiness George W. Bush, can do to completely stop terrorism.

But a very wise first step is to stop antagonizing other countries and other cultures--i.e., pull out of Iraq now. Not in October 2006 (the month before the midterm elections, natch), not whenever Bush decides to get around to it--now. Today. Let's have the troops home by this weekend. And then maybe we can avoid 7/8 or 7/9 or 8/14 or Terror Wednesday or Sunday Bloody Sunday or whatever we'll call the next horrible terror attack on New York or L.A. or wherever. Because they want us out and we have no reason to be there--no WMD, no links to al Qaida. Why isn't everyone clamoring for withdrawal? Bush is a fake, a dimwit, and a very dangerous person--spank his ass and get our troops home now so we don't have to live in fear.

DO WE UNDERSTAND? DO WE GET IT?

London mayor Ken Livingstone issued this defiant statement today in response to the London bombing:

"I know that you do fear you may fail in your long term
objective: to destroy our free society."

These bombers are more than likely only as interested in destroying the western concept of a free society as we are in occupying Iraq. In fact, the bombers pointed out as much, saying that their attacks were meant as revenge for British involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan:

"The time has come for vengeance against the Zionist crusader
government of Britain in response to the massacres Britain
committed in Iraq and Afghanistan."

It's fairly simple, in other words--don't attack us and we won't attack you. Let us not forget that Iraq had no WMD, no pre-9/11 links to al Qaida, and was a sovereign nation that had not attacked either Britain or the U.S.

Now, killing innocent civilians is always deplorable and horrible and inexcusable. But we need to get to a point in the West where we can view terror attacks in the same way Chris Rock talked about understanding to a degree why O.J. killed Nicole, listing some provocative things she'd done: "I ain't sayin' he shoulda killed her...but I understand."

The right thinks that view is bunk, but we're already trying it their way with the 'misunderstanding" approach--i.e., invading Iraq and Afghanistan--and that's not turning out so well, so maybe we could try something else (Robert McNamara makes this point exactly in "The Fog Of War" when he recounts how nuclear war was averted by Llewellyn Thompson's suggestion of "understanding" Khruschev, who had actual WMD 90 miles away from us). At least trying to understand your enemy's motives and asking if maybe, just maybe you might have done something to provoke that enemy doesn't get tens of thousands of your own citizens killed and wounded in a desert quagmire.

Speaking of which, another soldier from my neck of the woods ,was killed this week, leaving behind a wife and two children. He was the same age as me and his family learned of his death just hours after receiving an email from him inquiring about the family's July 4th plans.

Once again, I'll point out that this morning's explosions blow a car-bomb-sized hole in Bush's argument that fighting terrorists in Iraq keeps us and our allies from having to fight them in our own streets. If anything, as these bombings illustrate, fighting in Iraq makes it even more likely that we'll have to deal with terrorist attacks here.

And 36 soldiers from my home state have had to die to disprove Bush's theory. Enough is enough--troops out now, send aid, apologize, throw Bush and Co. in jail (don't forget the Downing Street memos), develop renewable energy sources posthaste, and spend money and manpower improving our schools, hospitals, and lives.