Thinking It Through 11-18-03

Last Update: 9:28 a.m. CST

STOP THE BLOG -- I WANT TO GET OFF 11-18-03

Well I guess it’s about time to come clean folks. I’ve loved this blogging thing over the last fifteen months but, I’m afraid to say, it’s time to hang it up.

There are several reasons for stopping it now. First of all, I’m spending way too much time on it and it’s time for me to use that time more productively. I promised myself that if it ever became an obligation or began to feel like a job, I’d have to quit.

And I’ve reached that point I’m afraid. I’m thoroughly burned out. Rick Shenkman, my editor here at HNN, suggested an extended hiatus but I’m not sure that would do any good. My wife is right. I can’t sort of “half do” this thing. I’ve either got to go forward full bore or hang it up. I am also beginning to feel like I’m repeating myself a lot of the time on this blog. In my opinion that’s a sure sign that I should hang it up.

I’ll admit that at one point a few months ago I believed I could turn this into some sort of a semi-paying gig or something. However, that apparently isn’t going to happen. I’ve faced the fact that I’m not ever likely to be an Atrios, an Eric Alterman, a Kevin Drum, or a Josh Marshall. Furthermore, I’m not sure I’ve got the time to do so even if I wanted to – and still teach my four classes every semester and do research.

And, speaking of research, I have just recently received a research grant from my university and I need to start spending my time working on that project. I applied for the grant last year but, due to budget woes, they canceled all research grants at my university. Well folks, I got a grant a couple of weeks ago and I need to work on that project. I plan to present a paper at a conference next April and it’s high time I got to working on that. I also need to start working on my next book. The research project is part of that. An essay anthology I’ve edited is hopefully coming out next year but I need to start working on an actual book. It’s about time to do so. Blogging has been a fun thing to do during the year that I didn’t get my research grant, but it’s time to start working on my project. I love doing research and scholarly writing (it’s why I became a historian after all) and it’s now time to return to it. I simply can’t keep working gratis on this blog while neglecting my research.

Furthermore, I am a great deal more busy now than when I started this blog in August of 2002. I have just been elected to serve on the Missouri Humanities Council and I’m more active in my church (I’m now a Deacon and I sing in the choir). I was doing neither of those things when I started blogging. I’ve also been exercising for at least 4-5 hours per week (I’ve lost more than 30 pounds since May) and that’s taking a fair amount of my time. During the fall and spring soccer seasons, I coach two teams and referee a game or two every weekend.

Therefore, after a lot of thought, I’ve come to the painful conclusion that something has got to give folks – and this blog, I’m afraid, is what’s got to go.

I’ve achieved a lot with this blog. Since I started this blog, I’ve had almost 500,000 (more than 497,000) unique visitors and right at 700,000 hits. I’ve been mentioned in a magazine article about the John Lott affair. I’m consistently listed as one of the top 80 or so blogs out there in TTLB’s blogospheric ecosystem – and I’m humbled by that. I’m actually hanging it up at the point at which my blog is getting the largest number of hits per day since I started last year. I spent the first four or five months struggling to surpass the 10,000 visitor mark. I now routinely get 2,000-3,000 visitors and more than 4,000 hits per day.

For my readers, I’ve appreciated your loyalty and hopefully we only have a little more than a year left in this unmitigated disaster called the Bush presidency. I know many of you use my blogroll. I believe the blog will stay here folks so you can keep coming here to use it.

As for my fellow liberal bloggers, please keep up the faith and fight the good fight. I’ll keep reading you and I’ll probably leave comments on your boards every now and then. I don’t know how to tell you all how much I’ve appreciated the blogging fellowship and reading you all every day.

I may still write the occasional piece for HNN and, who knows, I may eventually blog again (I never say never to anything) but, at the moment, it’s time for me to focus my time and energy on other things.

Happy trails everyone.

Peace.

Posted by Tom at 9:28 a.m. CSTComment

BUSY 11-17-03

'Nuff said.

Posted by Tom at 8:17 a.m. CSTComment

THE THOUGHT POLICE ARE HERE 11-16-03

Holy cow. The Marine's Girl is being intimidated into shutting down her blog because of an e-mail that's been sent to the Marine Corps.

Her sin? Well, not unexpectedly, she's committed the crime of being against W's policies while her boyfriend, a marine, is in Iraq.

I don't necessarily blame her. Who knows what will happen to her boyfriend if they decide to make an example of him.

So much for free speech, huh?

This is pretty chilling, eh?

But, of course, this isn't anything like McCarthyism.

Of course not. Perish the thought.

Glenn would probably approve -- because she's saying something against Bush. We've seen today that he doesn't really care what you say as long as you're on his side.

Posted by Tom at 1:20 p.m. CSTComment

GOVERNING WITH ALL THE KEEN SKILL OF DELTA HOUSE 11-16-03

Here's an entertaining column about the sorry state of affairs in Iraq.

Here's just a bit to pique your interest:

Isn't it amazing, and sad, that the only consistent voice with any credibility when it comes to Iraq has been 20-year-old Jessica Lynch, the former Army private who has resisted efforts by the Pentagon to turn her into a Sgt. York of the Persian Gulf?

Nearly 400 U.S. body bags later, the White House is only now concluding that it installed Spanky and Our Gang to run Iraq, led by Ahmad Chalabi, the Dennis Kozlowski of the Sunni Triangle?

Perhaps this is the inevitable, bloody, costly result of engaging in a war with less thought given to an exit strategy than Butch and Sundance pondering their options only after they've been surrounded by the Bolivian army.

So amid the fretting over an ultra- ultra-top-top-secret CIA report that was leaked faster than an Elvis sighting in News Of The World, Iraqi Viceroy Paul Bremer was hastily recalled to Washington for high-level consultations.

But in consulting with the very people who thought the conquest of Iraq would be more of a cakewalk than Cassius Clay dispatching Sonny Liston, Bremer had to feel as if he had been invited to a housewarming party at Tara.

Read the rest of it.

Posted by Tom at 9:28 a.m. CSTComment

OH, THAT MARK BYRON 11-15-03

I had forgotten that I'd had a run-in with Mark Byron (the fellow who fantasizes about killing Democratic senators) before. Longtime readers of mine might remember it.

It was more than 13 months ago. Byron put up a ridiculous post on his blog in which he insisted that liberals were overly emotional. However, he contended, conservatives, by contrast, were all about reason. (My two posts on the subject are here and here.)

His argument was bunk then and it certainly is now. Let's just use Byron himself as an example. Just a couple of days ago,"Mr. Rational Conservative" Mark Byron launched into a deranged, irrational and quite emotional fantasy about killing his political enemies in order to give his hero W a compliant congress. It was bad enough that he thought such a horrible thing but he went much further than thinking about it. He actually wrote this horrific fantasy down and shared it with thousands of people via the internet.

Anyone who thinks more than four or five minutes can realize what's wrong with posting such a story. Yet Byron, in a fit of emotional rage, shared this story with all of us.

I think it's safe to say that Byron, through his own actions, has just proved my point about how conservatives are much more emotional and less rational than liberals.

I assume he'll grant me this now. It seems the least he can do, right?

Posted by Tom at 9:07 p.m. CSTComment

MORE SIGNS OF SUCCESS IN IRAQ 11-15-03

W said"bring it on" -- and the bad guys sure keep bringing it. 17 soldiers have been killed this time. Several news services are reporting that this crash was caused by a direct hit from an RPG. I'm getting tired of this folks.

Sigh.

What a damn mess.

I'm sure Glenn will ignore this -- like the Chinookshootdown -- as well.

Posted by Tom at 6:36 p.m. CSTComment

THE"INSTY HYPOCRISY WATCH" CONTINUES 11-15-03

Still nothing as of 9:23 a.m. the next day. You'd think, as the self-appointed guardian of blogospheric propriety, this would be important to Glenn, wouldn't you?

I guess if you're a righty blogger you can post murderous fantasies about killing senators and, as long as you're suggesting only killing Democrats, I guess Glenn doesn't mind.

Update: It's not a good day for Glenn folks. Mark Kleiman also nails Glenn for questioning the patriotism of General Wesley Clark.

Predictably, Glenn is now claiming he didn't mean it like that.

Right.

Some of us remember the horrible things you said about war critics, Glenn.

Nice try though.

Update 2: Oh yeah, the day is getting worse for Glenn. Hesiod has now dropped him from the blogroll.

Hesiod said this was the last straw for him. Hesiod has a great deal more patience than I do.

Glenn was gone from my blogroll long ago.

Update 3: Still nothing on this as of 1:01 p.m.

Update 4: Still nothing as of 6:36 p.m. However, I'm sure if a liberal blogger had done something like this, Glenn would've blogged it within an hour of the post going up.

I suspect Glenn's going to ignore this one folks.

What an astonishing hypocrite he is.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Kevin nails Insty today as well.

Update 5: He finally responded at 10:35 p.m.. I'll fess up and admit sending Glenn an e-mail that tipped him. To his credit, Glenn responded very quickly after he read Byron's post.

This just seemed too damn important not to do so. Murderous fantasies cannot be allowed to pass uncondemned. However, Glenn should drop Byron from his blogroll. It seems the least he can do.

This does, however, make me wonder how much attention Glenn pays to what's going on in his own end of the blogosphere.

At times, I can't help but wonder if he just posts the stuff people send him and pays little attention beyond that.

That's pretty lazy, isn't it?

Update 6 (11/16/03): Glenn has now tried to minimize his criticism by linking in an update to a defender of Byron's. So I guess I'll have to take back the kind words.

Sigh. I can't say I'm surprised.

Jesse has a good discussion going about this here.

Update 7: You know that was such a chickenshit thing to do -- to link to a defender of Byron's post. I guess Glenn really is"objectively pro-murder of Democrats" after all.

How shameful. I should hope he's embarrassed by now.

Posted by Tom at 9:23 a.m. CSTComment

INSTA-IDEOLOGICAL BLINDNESS 11-14-03

Color me surprised but Glenn still hasn't mentioned Mark Byron's murderous fantasy yet. He's back from his"morning break" and has been blogging for nearly two hours.

Why the silence, Glenn? You are quick to jump on liberal bloggers about anything but you won't chastise the folks on your side when they so obviously step beyond the bounds of propriety?

Why not?

Why not indeed.

I'll keep watching for you and let you know if Glenn continues to ignore a homicidal fantasy by a righty blogger in favor of such incredibly important topics as the low-carb menu at Ruby Tuesday's.

Update:Nothing as of 3:55 p.m. folks.

Update 2:Nothing as of 6:33 p.m. folks.

Boy, Glenn's outrage is awfully selective, isn't it?

Someone prominently on his blogroll does something like this and he doesn't even comment? So much for being the moral conscience of the blogosphere, huh?

Update 3:Nothing as of 9:23 p.m. folks.

It's been about 18 hours since Jesse's post and nearly twelve hours since my first post -- and still no response from Insty regarding a shockingly inappropriate post by someone featured prominently on his blogroll.

However, Glenn has blogged about Native Americans genetically altering corn thousands of years ago. Now, don't get me wrong, I really do know a few scholars who would find that post quite interesting -- but very few other people.

How long is it going to take Glenn to say something about this?

Posted by Tom at 3:12 p.m. CSTComment

A SICK PUPPY 11-14-03

Jesse points us to a sick right wing puppy's blog post of a fantasy about the killing of Democratic Senators so he can get his four judicial nominees:

WASHINGTON-January 6, 2004. A paramilitary organization calling itself the Christian Liberation Front changed the balance of power in Washington by a pair of brutal attacks this afternoon. A force estimated at about 200 CLF commandos stormed the Supreme Court building, killing 35 people, including five Supreme Court Justices. At the same time, a contingent of 1,000 CLF paramilitaries attacked the Hart Senate Office Building, where a Senate Democratic Caucus meeting was being held. Approximately 50 people were killed in the attack. Once the commandos had seized the building, they systematically killed Democratic senators from states with Republican governors. Here is a list of the 21 senators killed

Daniel Akaka Byron Dorgan Mary Landrieu
John Breaux Bob Graham Blanche Lincoln
Hillary Clinton Ernest Hollings Barbara Mikulski
Kent Conrad Daniel Inouyye David Pryor
Tom Daschle Tim Johnson Harry Reid
Mark Dayton Ted Kennedy Paul Sarbanes
Chris Dodd John Kerry Chuch Schumer

Joe Lieberman was campaigning in South Carolina, and missed the assassins. The attackers turned themselves in to police, and are proudly confessing their crimes, cooperating with authorities.

If the governors appoint Republican replacements, there will be 72 Republicans in the US Senate until replacement elections can be held. Even if a few Democrats are named, there will be likely at least 60 votes to vote for cloture and appoint replacements for the slain Supreme Court justices, changing the balance of power on the court.

Jesse suggests that Glenn Reynolds comment on this since this guy is on his blogroll and he links to him fairly often.

Um, yeah. I'd think he should -- and remove him from his blogroll. I wonder if this is why Glenn took a"blog break" this morning?

This whole thing is sick and absolutely indefensible. I'm also not sure a call to the FBI would be out of line either.

I don't know how anyone could write something like this.

Update: In the comments to Jesse's post, there's an interesting (and not violent or offensive in any way) fantasy. However, when it was posted in the comments to his post, Mark Byron found it so offensive he deleted it immediately.

I'll repost it here:

WASHINGTON-January 6, 2004. A wannabe paramilitary organization calling itself the Christian Liberation Front changed the balance of power in Washington by attempting to stage a pair of brutal attacks yesterday. A force estimated at one CLF commando named Mark Byron, carrying a homemade assault weapon and screaming"My EZ-Uzi is not subject to interstate commerce laws! Just ask the 9th Circuit!" attempted to storm the Supreme Court building and kill dozens of innocent non-fetuses as well as Supreme Court justices whose rulings he considered less-than-biblical. At the same time, a contingent of one other CLF paramilitary named Ann Coulter, after getting lost while trying to find the New York Times' Washington bureau, attempted to drive a rented truck filled with fertilizer-based explosives into the Hart Senate Office Building during a caucus of Senate Democrats. U.S. Capitol Police repulsed both attacks, and because God is merciful and pro-life, neither of the attackers was turned into Swiss cheese in a hail of bullets but rather placed under arrest without anyone getting hurt.

FOREIGN PLOT

Documentation found in the suspects' computers indicated that funding for the attack came from Australia, said investigators who spoke on condition of anonymity. The investigators also were looking into the timing of the assaults, both of which began precisely at 6:02 p.m., and in particular why Fox News was reporting live from both of the scenes in a split-screen on Brit Hume's show as the assailants attempted to reach their targets.

Investigators added that the suspects' computers also held incoming emails of support for the attacks from numerous conservative Republican politicians, including current elected officeholders, appointees and other occupants of the highest levels of government, as well as from conservative Christian leaders loosely organized through the web site mostfunsincethecrusades.com."All of these messages were couched as descriptions of `fantasies' but that was the most thinly veiled attempt at code since Osama bin Laden's last video," one investigator said."The messages denied supporting the plot, saying merely that `it has a following in the darker parts of my mind,' but you know you're dealing with hardened terrorists when you see tortured use of the passive tense like that."

TIDE TURNS

The news that self-proclaimed patriotic Republicans would even fantasize about much less support an action so inimical to democracy apparently prompted a strong backlash from the American people. National polls rushed into the field last night in the hours after the startling event found widespread disgust at the attacks and at Republicans for any hint of condoning them. President Bush's job approval rating plummeted from around 50% to statistically insignificant levels, with more than 90% of registered voters saying they definitely would vote against Bush in November. By similar margins, voters said they would reject Republicans running for Senate and House; the poll numbers suggested that Democrats would easily win a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

And thus the attempted attack changed the balance of power in Washington by taking it away from the Republicans, who Byron and Coulter seemed to forget were the ones who had the power in the first place.

Now, let me get this straight. Any opposition to the posting of his pathologically violent"fantasy" is somehow violating his right to free speech and McCarthyistic.

However, at the same time, a squeaky clean satire based on his original post is beyond the bounds and therefore should be deleted from the comments section immediately!

How hypocritical is that?

Welcome to the strange ethical universe of the righty blogger folks.

Posted by Tom at 10:48 a.m. CSTComment

MORE SLEIGHT OF HAND WITH W'S POLL NUMBERS 11-13-03

You know, if the president's job rating doesn't go up, why pretend that it has? Get a load of this misleading headline regarding a recent CBS poll. If you actually read the poll in question, it has a great deal of bad news for the president -- including the fact that his approval numbers have actually gone down. Furthermore, almost all of these polls ask other questions about the Iraq situation that indicates he's in big trouble with the public.

(BTW, I am astonished that 62% of Americans still think Saddam had WMDs. I know it's always hard to admit you were gullibly led like sheep down the primrose path. However, don't you think it's about time for these folks to admit they were misled by the administration? Not that there wasn't plenty of evidence of that at the time if they'd have gotten off their lazy backsides to find it. The fact that the American people keep desperately hanging on to the hope that Saddam had WMDs demonstrates mostly that, predictably, these poor gullible souls don't want to admit their government lied to them.)

Anyway, I'm really getting tired of reading that W got a"bounce" on the economy because, once you actually read the polls in question, his approval numbers are usually holding steady or even, in the case of this CBS poll, actually going down. I commented on Newsweek's rather bizarre positive spin on their poll just a few days ago.

Why can't the media just say the obvious? If you peruse the recent polls, most of them show W's approval numbers holding steady at a rather mediocre level (mostly the low 50s) and there are no signs there will be much improvement soon.

What's wrong with just being honest?

Posted by Tom at 7:19 p.m. CSTComment

A MADE-FOR-TELEVISION EXHIBITION OF MANUFACTURED OUTRAGE 11-13-03

Surely Republicans in the Senate don't think Americans will fall for this 30 hour cry-a-thon about four judicial nominees, will they? It's also even more ridiculous when you find out that 168 of W's 172 nominees have been confirmed.

All this about four nominees -- are you kidding me?

Their case for unfairness completely falls apart when you realize that Republicans blocked 60 of Clinton's nominees.

But it'll all look good on Faux News tonight -- which I suspect is all this is about anyway.

Posted by Tom at 1:06 p.m. CSTComment

MODO RIPS OFF... 11-13-03

Josh Marshall and Gene Lyons in one column -- without any sort of attribution.

Impressive.

Posted by Tom at 10:31 a.m. CSTComment

A BIT OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE FROM GENE LYONS 11-12-03

Gene Lyons is apparently not biting on the"we're going to fight the election of 2004 on the doctrine of pre-emption" meme.

(BTW, Gene's column is about to go into syndication, so I won't be able to get it via e-mail once that starts. Just FYI.)

Anyway, here's his column for this week. I can tell the Dean supporters are going to love this one.

Gene Lyons
November 12, 2003

Howard Dean, Rebel Rouser

As a white Southern male, I'd like to explain my views about Howard Dean and the confederate flag. Here are my credentials: I've lived in Arkansas since 1972, drive a pickup truck, currently own four hunting dogs, two horses, and three shotguns. I've hunted deer and ducks, consider fried catfish a delicacy, and haven't missed a Razorback game in years. I don't believe Faith Hill's ever recorded a song worth hearing twice, but that girl's got a smile that'd make a mule get down on its knees and thank God for Mississippi.

Enough stereotypes for you? Because it's also true that I'm of Irish Catholic descent, was born and raised in New Jersey--state motto:"Oh yeah, who says?"--and hardly knew where Arkansas was until I followed my wife home from grad school at the University of Virginia. Offer me NASCAR tickets or a root canal, and I'd opt for the dental work. Does that disqualify me? Some Professional Southerners would say so, but few Arkansans.

You accept Arkansas, Arkansas pretty much accepts you. Little Rock's nothing like Richmond, or Charleston, S.C.. There's little talk about the glories of the pre-Civil War South."Arkansas aristocrat" is a phrase that won't make. Indeed,"Thank God for Mississippi" is sometimes said to be the state motto, as our neighbor to the east often makes Arkansas look, well, so enlightened by contrast. You can infer somebody's politics by whether or not they think it's funny.

Anyhow, I've been on the lookout for confederate flags over the past week, but haven't actually seen any. Not even at the feed store or the biker bar out on the old Conway highway. The old boy at the saddle shop had some baseball caps with a rebel flag motif, but didn't appear to have sold many. They looked out of place with the boots and bridles and cowboy hats. Wearing one would pretty much be the equivalent of going around with your middle finger stuck in the air.

People who act like that don't vote anyway. Even if they did, Howard Dean could win the support of every rebel flag-waving redneck in Arkansas and still lose badly--which I'm persuaded he'd do if he got the Democratic nomination, losing the presidential election in the process.

But enough about one small Southern state, albeit one whose electoral votes could easily turn the 2004 election. My larger point is that the South is a big, complicated place. Racial melodrama simply doesn't dominate public debate throughout the region anymore, as Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) did his opportunistic best to point out during the recent Democratic debate.

"The people that I grew up with, the vast majority of them, they don't drive around with Confederate flags on pickup trucks," he said."The last thing we need in the South," he told Dean"is somebody like you coming down and telling us what we need to do."

Sigh. See, in my view, the whole point of America and the Democratic party is that this kind of identity politics is a dead end. Howard Dean made his point a lot more effectively when I heard him at a Little Rock appearance earlier this year. What he planned to ask Southern white men, the former Vermont governor said, was"You've been voting Republican for thirty years, ever since Nixon. What have you got to show for it? Better schools? Better jobs? Reliable health insurance?"

Bringing a potentially divisive symbol like the rebel flag into it wasn't the smartest thing Dean's done in an otherwise cleverly innovative campaign. But his rivals' make-believe outrage made them look ridiculous. Does anybody really think that Al Sharpton and Sen. John Kerry were personally offended?

What hurts Democrats most in such charades is the absurd ritual of forcing somebody like Dean to apologize for a remark everybody knows wasn't offensive in the first place. It feeds the perception that they're fakers and panderers to trumped-up, phony grievances every one--a party dominated by sissies and snobs.

And that's an image that Republicans have become unpleasantly clever at manipulating. See, it's not race that sets the South apart these days as much as religion: specifically a suburbanized brand of Protestant fundamentalism that comforts people uneasy with rapid social and technological change, by offering rigid moral certitude and positing modernity and cosmopolitanism as the enemy.

If White House political guru Karl Rove gets his way, from Arlington, Virginia to El Paso, Texas, the 2004 election will turn not on Iraq or the dubious glories of the Bush economy but on liberal judges, partial-birth abortion, and gay marriage.

Given President Bush's manifest failures, Arkansas's not the only Southern-accented state that the right Democratic nominee could win in 2004. But Dean's vulnerability on the cultural/religious issues, I fear, could doom his candidacy across the region.

Posted by Tom at 12:09 p.m. CSTComment

THE NEW MCCARTHYISM 11-12-03

Just as in 2002, the Bush administration plans to question their opponents' patriotism in their effort to win the election:

Faced with growing public uneasiness over Iraq, Republican Party officials intend to change the terms of the political debate heading into next year's election by focusing on the"doctrine of preemption," portraying President Bush as a visionary acting to prevent future terrorist attacks on US soil despite the costs and casualties involved overseas.

The strategy will involve the dismissal of Democrats as the party of"protests, pessimism and political hate speech," Ed Gillespie, Republican National Committee chairman, wrote in a recent memo to party officials -- a move designed to shift attention toward Bush's broader foreign policy objectives rather than the accounts of bloodshed. Republicans hope to convince voters that Democrats are too indecisive and faint-hearted -- and perhaps unpatriotic -- to protect US interests, arguing that inaction during the Clinton years led to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"The president's critics are adopting a policy that will make us more vulnerable in a dangerous world," Gillespie wrote."Specifically, they now reject the policy of pre-emptive self-defense and would return us to a policy of reacting to terrorism in its aftermath."

Inviting a fierce foreign policy debate in the months to come, Gillespie continued:"The bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993, Khobar Towers, our embassies in East Africa, and the USS Cole were treated as criminal matters instead of the terrorist acts they were. After Sept. 11, President Bush made clear that we will no longer simply respond to terrorist acts, but will confront gathering threats before they become certain tragedies."

And, I might add, W didn't do a damned thing about terrorism between January and September of 2001 -- even blowing off a rather lengthy briefing on the subject by the outgoing Clinton administration officials. So trying to pin this one on the Clenis is going to be awfully hard when you so obviously spent the first eight months of your administration trying to figure out how to pay off your rich campaign supporters and energy companies who bankrolled your re-election effort with tax breaks and new energy policies. But I digress.

And, btw, as if on cue, Nick Kristof writes a column today that reads as if it was written from the RNC memo in question.

Does the RNC provide the media with everything that we read about these days? Since they more or less ran the media coverage of the last couple of elections, I'm guessing that this is now officially the case.

We saw the results of this rather immoral"win at all costs" approach to an election back in 2002 (although it is interesting to point out that the 2002 election wasn't the walkover it was portrayed at the time). I expect the Mighty Wurlitzer will pound out these notes with even more fervor next year since it's a presidential election this time.

We have an administration that will now use fear and patriotism in the most manipulative way possible folks. I would argue it provides us with a true sense of this administration's morally bankrupt nature -- they'll do anything to win. As we now know, this administration is made up of people who believing lying about the case for a war is okay. Therefore, these same people certainly won't view telling lies in order to smear their political opponents as outside the bounds of propriety.

W, Karl Rove, and their minions essentially view nothing these days as beyond the pale folks.

And that fact is truly frightening.

[Links via Atrios]

Posted by Tom at 12:02 p.m. CSTComment

WHITE HOUSE IN FULL PANIC MODE 11-12-03

Apparently, even in the eyes of the White House, the wheels are coming off in Iraq. As Hesiod notes in this excellent post, the White House is now considering firing Bremer and reorganizing our Iraq efforts yet again. What will that be, the third or fourth time?

W and the boys are also considering restarting"major combat operations" apparently. If that happens, it's an open admission this war is going poorly. No up-is-down spin will work in that instance. Furthermore, this CIA assessment is pretty scary as well -- they see the security situation worsening -- despite all of the administration's spin to the contrary.

The most recent Nasiryah bombing demonstrates, quite obviously, that the Iraq situation is dangerously close to spinning completely out of control -- if it's not there already. I don't know, 30-35 attacks against U.S. soldiers per day and multiple terrorist actions against other targets in Iraq pretty much fits my definition of a situation that's"out of control," how about you?

I think we can start using the word quagmire now folks. It's clearly reaching that point -- and we're about to pour $87B more big ones down the Iraq War hole.

BTW, this mess is exactly why you don't pursue a fool's errand of a war.

Not that I didn't warn everyone of this -- for months before this war even started.

Posted by Tom at 8:25 a.m. CSTComment

GOOD KRUGMAN COLUMN 11-11-03

Go read it.

Posted by Tom at 3:45 p.m. CSTComment

WHAT'S UP WITH SITEMETER? 11-11-03

Does anyone know what's up with Sitemeter? It has been down for several hours now. They haven't gone out of business, have they?

Posted by Tom at 1:10 p.m. CSTComment

FOX V. FRANKEN TRANSCRIPT 11-11-03

Atrios points us to the Fox v. Franken transcript. The whole thing is pretty damned hilarious but here's a particularly funny part:

THE COURT: Do you think the use of the phrase"lying liars" can be a joke?

MS. HANSWIRTH: It can be, but it isn't necessarily. I mean, look at the title of Mr. O'Reilly's book"The Completely Ridiculous and American Life."

THE COURT: Let me ask you about that: Mr. O'Reilly uses in his book"the good, the bad and the completely ridiculous." Is that not a play on"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"?

MS. HANSWIRTH: I don't know.

THE COURT: You don't know whether that's a play on"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

MS. HANSWIRTH: I don't know.

THE COURT: Well, assume that it is. Is that not a play on a trademarked phrase?

MS. HANSWIRTH: That's a title of a movie.

THE COURT: Yes. And I assume there's some kind of protection for the title of the movie"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

MS. HANSWIRTH: Your Honor, there generally --

THE COURT: I think that I have in some of the papers, it might have been the amicus brief, a representation that the phrase"the good, the bad and the ugly" is a trademarked phrase.

MS. HANSWIRTH: I don't know that that's the case. And I don't know --

THE COURT: Well, I mean, isn't Mr. O'Reilly doing exactly the same thing using a trademarked phrase in the title of his book? The good, the bad --

MS. HANSWIRTH: He's not doing it to confuse. He's certainly not using it to sell the product.

THE COURT: Do you think that Mr. Franken and the publisher are intending to confuse buyers into thinking that he, Mr. Franken, is somehow associated with Fox?

MS. HANSWIRTH: I think what they're doing is they're intending to use the trademark to sell the product. And they are. They've admitted that. The way that they've set it up is too ambiguous. Once again, it does not say parody satire. It is the only trademark on that book, unlike the O'Reilly book, which has Fox News's"The O'Reilly Factor" prominent trademark on it at least three times that I can see from here.

The whole thing is very entertaining -- and these things are usually quite boring. Go read it.

Posted by Tom at 1:01 p.m. CSTComment

TWO BUSH HAIKUS 11-11-03

I like this one:

No child left behind,
Clean skies, healthy forests and
Iraq. Pants on fire!

And this one:

Screwed the country bad
Two thousand four awaits him
He'll go just like Dad.

Indeed.

Posted by Tom at 9:34 a.m. CSTComment

A FLASHBACK 11-10-03

Jesse over at Pandagon reminds us (a repost from December 26, 2002) exactly who made the list of"The Twenty Most Annoying Conservatives of 2002."

It's great. Go read it.

He tells us he's shooting for a December rollout of the 2003 version.

I can't wait.

How'd I miss this back then?

And, reviewing the archives, I posted a bunch that day too!

That was the day that Glenn Reynolds sent me a profanity-laced e-mail.

Ah, I remember it well.

That's one of the first times it became apparent that I really get under Insty's skin -- a fact I'm quite proud of actually.

Posted by Tom at 9:10 p.m. CSTComment

W AS STUFFED SUIT 11-10-03

This is an excellent column. Here's a bit of it:

There is an old Brady Bunch episode in which Greg is plucked out of obscurity by a talent scout who says she is going to make him a rock star. It turns out his singing ability didn't attract her - a production studio would make Greg's voice sound however she wanted - but he had the right physique for the glittering costume.

This is how George Bush got to be president. He was the perfect front man for the corporate interests and right-wing ideologues who were looking for a guy who was both electable and malleable.

Like Greg, he fit the suit.

While it is true that candidate Bush with his"gentleman's C's" suffered from a lack of depth - the man had a startling lack of interest in geopolitics - the oligarchs knew that in the age of sound bites you don't need the ability to explicate at length. The mileage one could get from the meaningless phrase" compassionate conservative" would be worth a wall full of well-digested books by Benjamin Barber, Thomas Friedman and Francis Fukuyama.

Moreover, what Bush had was far more valuable: a gold-card pedigree, giving him nationwide credibility, an outside-the-Beltway Marshal Matt Dillon affectation and, it seemed initially at least, the ability to hide his fierce conservatism within a common touch.

But as the war in Iraq continues to go badly, sending back news of a daily casualty count, Bush's common-touch artifice is beginning to wear thinner than the backside of his Crawford jeans. Showing through is the real Bush, his swaggering arrogance, unidimensional understanding of issues, congenital lack of sympathy and intense pique at challenging questions.

When Bush was asked at a recent news conference whether he could promise that there will be fewer American troops in Iraq in a year, he refused to answer, calling it a"trick question." Bush has no oratorical powers to justify his policies and treats anyone who asks him to do so as his enemy.

Last Sunday, when a missile downed a Chinook helicopter in the deadliest assault on American troops since the Iraqi invasion began in March, Bush declined to comment. He made no public appearance that day, nor did he issue a statement expressing his shared grief with the families. It was explained that the president was taking a"down" day at his ranch in Texas, between campaign appearances. Only the next day, did he refer to the incident obliquely, saying,"We mourn every loss."

Go read the rest of it.

Posted by Tom at 3:36 p.m. CSTComment

LYNCHING PRIVATE LYNCH 11-10-03

Billmon has a fascinating post up about how Private Lynch has been transformed from"True American Hero" to"a disgrace and proof that women shouldn't be in the military" in the eyes of many talk radio listeners. By refusing to go along with the Mighty Wurlitzer's version of events, she's making some red state morons who listen to Rush Limbaugh very angry.

Here's a tidbit of it just to pique your interest:

I've been watching the latest twists and turns in the saga of Pvt. Jessica Lynch with growing bemusement, if not outright amusement. It's a classic example of a story that's been spun so many ways it's lost all narrative coherence -- and is collapsing back into the disconnected shards of reality from which it was originally created.

What's impressive, though, is the way Lynch herself is emerging from the wreckage of a phony story as a real person -- and a woman who seems determined to be the subject, not the object, of her own life. The finger that pulls the string, instead of the top that gets spun.

Needless to say, the people formerly doing the spinning aren't too happy to find their top now has a mind of its own. Having"saved" Private Lynch, the conservative propaganda machine is now looking for a way to destroy her. Turning Jessica Lynch into Jane Fonda may prove a little bit harder than convincing the true believers we've always been at war with Eurasia. But perhaps not much.

Go read the rest of it. Isn't it interesting how there is essentially no bloom left on the Iraq War rose?

Posted by Tom at 11:43 a.m. CSTComment

MORE ON PRESCOTT BUSH'S NAZI CONNECTIONS 11-10-03

As I've said before, this Nazi thing doesn't have anything to do with W but it is interesting. Now it appears Prescott Bush continued to be involved with these companies until 1951 -- and hid that fact from the government.

It also is interesting that we're only learning this five decades later, isn't it?

Posted by Tom at 8:22 a.m. CSTComment

DAVE PREDICTED IT 11-09-03

Yep. Dave (of Seeing the Forest) predicted back in May that the Republicans would play the"blame the Democrats" strategy regarding the investigation into cooked pre-war intelligence. He predicted they'd pretend that this bogus argument was reason enough to cancel any sort of serious investigation into how the administration lied us into the war.

Again, how can they get away with this? These really are the people who thought lying about a consensual blowjob merited impeachment, right?

Surely our media is going to call them on this, right?

Right.

I'm sure.

Posted by Tom at 1:31 p.m. CSTComment

RUMSFELD DENIES HIS OWN STATEMENTS 11-09-03

In the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said U.S. forces would be welcomed by the Iraqi citizenry and that Saddam Hussein had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

Now, after both statements have been shown to be either incorrect or vastly exaggerated, Rumsfeld - with the same trademark confidence that he exuded before the war - is denying that he ever made such assertions.

In recent testy exchanges with reporters, Rumsfeld interrupted the questioners and attacked the premise of the questions if they dealt with his pre-war comments about weapons of mass destruction and Americans-as-liberators.

You've got to read this one to believe it. You know you're in trouble when you're denying stuff that you said a few months ago, aren't you?

Damn, this makes you wonder if this guy can lie about anything, doesn't it?

It's official. Rumsfeld has become a cartoon.

[Link via Atrios]

Posted by Tom at 8:59 a.m. CSTComment

THE PRO-BUSH SPIN 11-08-03

After reading the appallingly dishonest headline"Economic Gains Bolster Bush" I'm still trying to figure out how in the world Newsweek can possibly spin these recent poll results as providing anything positive for the president.

Here's the opening paragraph:

With news that the economy grew at a surprisingly robust 7.2 percent annual rate and that some 300,000 new jobs were added during the third quarter, an increasing number of voters say they approve of the way the President George W. Bush is handling the economy, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. While more registered voters say they disapprove rather than approve of the way Bush is handling the economy (48 percent vs. 44 percent), the margin has narrowed considerably since October’s 37 percent vs. 56 percent.

Okay, so fewer people think W's an absolute damn fool with regard to economic matters. Okay, well that sounds like his public support is increasing.

However, wait a minute -- take a look at the rest of the article. Almost nothing else in the poll is positive for Bush, including the fact that his approval rating has not come up at all since the last poll:

Bush’s overall approval rating is holding steady at about 52 percent, though that’s down considerably from its peak of 88 percent in the weeks following the September 11 attacks. Half approve of his approach to education. However, approval ratings of the president policies on the following are still stuck below the halfway mark, as they have been for the past few months: taxes (45 percent), the environment (44 percent) and foreign policy in general (46 percent). Just 36 percent approve of his health care policies.

Wait. Wait. I thought they said"economic gains bolster Bush." If his approval rating remains the same and his poll results on other issues are about the same, how can they say his support is"bolstered" by the new economic numbers?

In reality, this poll has a great deal of bad news for the president and shows W has not gained an inch in support on most issues and, to top it all off, his approval rating is staying quite steady at the rather mediocre level of 52 percent.

Yet, because one poll question shows an improvement, the folks at Newsweek have spun this poll as showing his public support has been"bolstered."

How the hell can they say that?

Am I missing something?

Update:Here's a bit more about this poll -- it now shows 50% of Americans don't want to re-elect Bush. How did this poll"bolster" anything for W?

Posted by Tom at 9:26 p.m. CSTComment

THREE BLASTS IN RIYADH 11-08-03

I hear there have been some more signs of our success in the war on terror tonight in Riyadh.

Great. Just great.

Posted by Tom at 9:13 p.m. CSTComment

THEY HAVE NO SHAME 11-08-03

Knowing W will come out looking like a dishonest snake if there's any serious investigation into the lies he told about pre-war intelligence, Republicans are trying to shut down an investigation by pretending this memo indicates the investigation will somehow be a sort of political bag job.

This is pretty damn desperate, isn't it?

These really are the same guys who thought lying about a consensual blowjob (which is one hell of a lot less important than lying to get us into a fool's errand of a war) was worth presidential impeachment, right?

As Josh Marshall put it in a post last night:

Two guys walk into a ring for a fight. One knows he’s about to get creamed. But he can’t bear the shame and humiliation of walking away from a fight. So at the very last moment he whips out some phony claim that the other guy’s cheating.

He puffs himself up with forced indignation. And huffily storms off.

Everybody knows it was bogus --- the accused, the accuser, everyone else. But it gives the coward just enough of an angle, just enough of a smokescreen to get out of the place without having a glove laid on him and with a bit of his dignity intact.

This is of course more or less exactly what the Republicans are doing with the hullabaloo over this unsent Democratic staff memo.

Precisely the same.

Such appalling hypocrisy really should have a major political price.

I doubt it will -- but it should.

Posted by Tom at 10:36 a.m. CSTComment

BIG TIME BUMMER 11-08-03

Art Silber is having to shut down his blog for a while because of the transit strike. Go read his explanation here.

Welcome to life in modern Los Angeles, eh? Since only 400,000 working class and poor folks use public transit, no one in power really gives a damn about ending it very soon.

How screwy is that?

Anyway, let me second Atrios, and encourage you to hit Art's tip jar if you can.

Posted by Tom at 9:04 a.m. CSTComment

Click here for Mr. Spencer's November 2003 blog archive.

Click here for Mr. Spencer's October 2003 blog archive.

Click here for Mr. Spencer's September 2003 blog archive.

Click here to access Mr. Spencer's blog archives.