March, 2007 archive

What is wrong with this picture?

Jon Swift dissects the evidence:

But (Josh–ed.) Marshall and his reporters, who apparently don’t have anything better to do and may be slightly unstable, kept pushing this story until another U.S. Attorney, David Iglesias, went public with his suspicions about why he was fired. But even then Carney remained steadfast, writing skeptically, “If Iglesias names names, and others tell similar stories, I will take my hat off to Marshall and others in the blogosphere and congratulate them for having been right in their suspicions about this story from the beginning.” Of course, he still wasn’t prepared to waste his valuable time looking into the matter himself and he couldn’t resist getting in a little dig at bloggers, pointing out that “Suspicions aren’t facts,” which bloggers apparently don’t realize because they didn’t go to journalism school.

Now Gonzalez has been forced to admit that “mistakes were made” although he didn’t know anything about them. He pointed out that there are 110,000 people working in the Justice Department and he can’t possibly know what they are all up to. Unlike bloggers, Attorneys General and Time correspondents have real jobs and they can’t be expected to know everything.

For those who are interested in such things, of course.

Here.

The five stages of spin:

1. Ignoring
2. Belittling
3. Blaming the Media
4. Evoking Bill Clinton.
5. Boredom

That last stage allows the sufferer to return to stage 1 and ignore the issue. Also note that righties don’t necessarily go through these stages in order or even one stage at a time.

Via Digby.

. . . of measuring US Attorneys on political loyalty:

It gives Vince “Other People’s Money” Fumo’s “it’s just politics” defense strategy legs.

Fumo’s actually someone who deserves to be investigated and prosecuted for screwing taxpayers and misusing funds, and thanks to Abu Gonzalez, he stands a better chance of walking.

OMG.

Not.

In related news, Phillybits reports that the Wiki Wars are spreading.

The Bushies have cornered the market.

On occasion, I receive emails from Bush fans who complain that I have not been giving “equal time” to “Democrat scandals,” now that the Democrats have been in power on Capitol Hill for…oh… two whole months. I understand their concern. But here’s the problem: Every time I start to look across the aisle at the blue team, that wacky Bush team (which, after all, has dominated Washington for the past six years) comes up with yet another new way to embarrass itself.

Follow the link for the full post. It’s a hoot. But I just had to quote this part, because it fingers something that was bothering me all day (emphasis added):

The Passive Voice defense. He (Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez–ed.) confessed that “mistakes were made here,” the usual form of words that is meant to suggest that maybe the mistakes sort of happened by themselves, that no actual human being had specifically made them. Republicans might be well advised to remember that this was the same form of words used by Ted Kennedy right after Chappaquiddick.

Oh, my.

There are conservatives who believe in the Rule of Law.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer group of guys:

The Minuteman Project, an anti-illegal-immigrant organization that has monitored the southern border, is embroiled in a nasty legal fight over accusations of financial improprieties that has splintered the group and probably will sideline it during the busiest time of the year for border crossing.

Former leaders of the Minuteman Project accuse founder Jim Gilchrist, 58, of using $300,000 of the group’s money to support his pet causes, including promoting a book he co-wrote and funding an unsuccessful run for Congress in a 2005 special election. Last month, saying they are the group’s board of directors, they took over the Minuteman Project Web site and bank accounts, and fired Gilchrist as president.

Blogthings thinks it knows:

You Are 24% Politically Radical

You’ve got a few unusual political ideas, but overall you’re a pretty mainstream person. Chances are that you’re turned off by both the radical right and looney left.

Oh.

Yeah.

Tag!

With a tip to Phillybits.

I will not comment on whether I agree or disagree with what he said, at least not in this post.

I will say that I think “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is stupid seriously flawed.

In a newspaper interview Monday, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had likened homosexual acts to adultery and said the military should not condone it by allowing gays to serve openly in the armed forces.

In a statement Tuesday, he said he should have focused more in the interview on the Defense Department policy about gays _ and “less on my personal moral views.”

I do think those who demand that he apologize for his remark are missing the point. He was asked a question and he answered honestly. He should not have to apologize for being honest.

It’s one thing to say, “I disagree with you, and here’s why.”

It’s quite another to say, “I disagree with you, and demand that you apologize for your beliefs,” especially as regards what is one of the hot-button moral discussions of our time, one on which people of good will sincerely disagree (we will ignore the people of ill will).

Let us look in the bright side.

Someone appointed to his job by the Current Federal Administrator told the truth.

That is cause for celebration.

Because the Current Federal Administration does not:

Some soldiers of the Army’s 3rd Infantry at Fort Benning, Ga., say they are being redeployed to Iraq, despite being injured. According to medical records, some of those being sent back into duty are not in good enough condition to wear their body armor. Mark Benjamin, who has written about the story for the online magazine Salon, talks with Madeleine Brand.

The hypocrisy of the Current Federal Administration makes me gag.

Oil services giant Halliburton Co. will soon shift its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Mideast financial powerhouse of Dubai, chief executive officer Dave Lesar announced yesterday.

More to the point, does the United States have an extradition treaty with Dubai? Inquiring minds want to know.

I finally got a decent radio for my little yellow truck. It’s a Cobra.

Live action here.

Lucy was drowning and turning blue, so Randy Gurchin recalled his Air Force training on mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

It didn’t matter that Lucy is a 10-month-old English bulldog, because he and Lucy are “best buddies.”

And Phillybits found this:

A house cat attacked its owner, sending her to the hospital by ambulance with more than 20 bite wounds.

The cat, a black and white domestic male, went on the rampage Wednesday when a neighbor showed up at the door with a different cat, mistakenly thinking it belonged to the woman.

We had a little discussion about Fox News the other day.

This casts some light on how Fox operates–the evidence is in the crawl. Note that the poster used to work for Fox.

Until I can get my comment spam plug-in working properly again (or get a new one that actually works, unlike, apparently, the one that’s currently activated), I will attempt to keep a close eye on comments–I’ve killed approximately a dozen spam comments in the fast few days.

In the meantime, if you see a comment that you believe is spam, please use the Email link at the top of the page, above the picture of Pine View Farm, to notify me; please include the title of the post to which the comment was posted or the trackback URL from beneath the post in the email.

I want all the BS on this blog to be my own.

Thanks all.

Addendum, 3/11/2007:

I’ve installed Spam Karma 2. That’s the same spam killer that Susie uses. If anyone has any problems posting comments, please use the email link to let me know.

Robert Kagan concludes that battlefield conditions are improving in Iraq:

Four months later, the once insurmountable political opposition has been surmounted. The nonexistent troops are flowing into Iraq. And though it is still early and horrible acts of violence continue, there is substantial evidence that the new counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the infusion of new forces, is having a significant effect.

Professor Cole is not so optimistic:

With plenty of warning of the U.S. escalation, the Shiite Mahdi Army is lying low. Meanwhile, the Iraqi army and the much better equipped and trained U.S. military have made no appreciable progress against the real drivers of the country’s civil war, Sunni Arab guerrillas, who have so far adapted successfully to the new deployments. And perhaps most important, a new spate of massive and deadly bombings has spread insecurity and further compromised the Iraqi government. ‘

For the sake of the living, I hope that Kagan is correct.

Nevertheless, the success of the s(pl)urge is irrelevant to the issue: the War in Iraq was conceived in lies, born in deception, and reared with incompetence. Its midwives cannot escape their actions.

Addendum, 3/11/07:

Glenn Greenwald has another take on it.

No rational person would believe a word Robert Kagan says about anything. He has been spewing out one falsehood after the next for the last four years in order to blind Americans about the real state of affairs concerning the invasion which he and his comrade and writing partner, Bill Kristol, did as much as anyone else to sell to the American public.

In April, 2003, Kagan declared the war over and said we won. Since then, he has continuously claimed that things were getting better in Iraq. He is completely liberated from any obligation to tell the truth and is a highly destructive propagandist whose public record of commentary about Iraq ought to disqualify him from decent company, let alone some sort of pretense to expertise about this war.