Did He or Didn't He?

And if he did, what next?

Kate's Take

This tidbit seems to be all over the left blogiverse tonight ...

"An Alabama SC justice claims, according to a Birmingham News reporter, that Clarence Thomas told him:

...[A] judge should be evaluated by whether he faithfully upholds his oath to God, not to the people, to the state or to the Constitution."

Here, at First Draft and here, at Eschaton. I think Jesus' General might just be getting ready to rock on it too, based on comments at Eschaton.

I don't as a habit "cover" stories from other blogs here, but I really don't want to have my name changed to Ofkeys, and I look terrible in red, unless it's more of the jewel red color, among other horrible and craptacular schtuff that goes along with living in a theocracy. Dominionists... You are on notice with Hulkette. Get thee behind me-us, Satan.

A quote from The Handmaid's Tale: "The Commander explains his beliefs to Offred at the club."

Note: I used the movie poster above from The Handmaid's Tale, but if you haven't seen the film, I recommend you read the novel by Margaret Atwood first. It makes the movie better in my sometimes humble opinion.

---

Richard's Take

Via here and there, we're led to a report in the Birmingham News on the recent oath-taking of justices and judges in Alabama. Some recognizable names were in attendance at the swearing in, and another recognizable name was invoked during subsequent speeches:

The 1,200-seat theater was packed with relatives and friends of new justices Tom Parker, Mike Bolin and Patricia M. Smith, and civil appeals judge Tommy Bryan.

As would be expected. Even when the newly elected dog catcher in Hooterville is sworn in, there's a big hoe-down afterwards. That's small town / red state politics at its finest. Friends, family, consiglieres, sponsors, and benefactors are always happy to back a "winning horse".

Many stood and applauded former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore as he walked to the stage to administer the oath to Parker. Moore's action was ceremonial, since Parker took his formal oath of office Thursday before U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in Washington.

Ok, in all honesty, maybe this is de rigur for Alabama Supreme Court Justices. Hey, a free trip to Sodom-on-the-Potomac? What the hell, why not. And being sworn in by one of the true Supremes (as opposed to a tribute band)? Priceless in the personal scrapbook.

But wait. Wasn't FORMER justice Roy Moore run out of 'Bama on a rail in late 2003 because he thought he was above the law? Oh, yeah, that's right! Well, who says you can't go home again. Or still have influence beyond your meager means. Well, ol' Judge Roy hit the daily double - not only did he get tossed from the Alabama Supreme Court, but he was martyred and designated a godhead in the Konservative Khristian Kommunity.

But I digress. This isn't even the good stuff.

Parker said [U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence "Coke Can"] Thomas told him a judge should be evaluated by whether he faithfully upholds his oath to God, not to the people, to the state or to the Constitution.

Whup - wait a Birmingham minute - can we rewind the tape?

Thomas told him a judge should be evaluated by whether he faithfully upholds his oath to God, not to the people, to the state or to the Constitution.

Now, cue "Final Jeopardy" music...

"I, [NAME], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as [TITLE] under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.''

Times up. The answer is, "what is the oath, according to Title 28, Chapter I, Part 453 of the United States Code, each Supreme Court Justice takes"? (Courtesy of Ben's Guide to U.S. Government for Kids)

And there it is, from Coca-Cola™ connoisseur's lips to your eyes. In print. In a reputable paper from a reputable news organization. Thomas needs to be brought before the tribal council, and voted, errrrrr, impeached off of the island. His views clearly run counter to the oath that he was administered. In the highest court of the land, there is no higher standard other than upholding the Constitution of the United States - unless you're Clarence Thomas.

Let the impeachment proceedings begin.

Prodding the Old Guard

The Left Coaster posits that the old guard, non-net savvy wing of the Democratic Party just doesn't understand the power of the web as an organizational tool. Having been involved in online community building since before Tim Berners-Lee developed the HTTP protocol, I couldn't agree more:

...there is no agenda or leadership of the blogosphere. There is no threat at all from those who pray at the altar of political http organizing, just a recognition that the browser is a great facilitator of classic political organizing and conversation, not some hoary beast that's difficult to understand or harness.

The blogosphere likes to serve. If you know how to ask in the right way and ask for the right things you get nuclear results, like a nobody from VT becoming the Democratic candidate frontrunner and getting endorsed by Al Gore...

The entire article is well worth a read, because it's so damn correct. It's right because, in all of my time organizing and participating in virtual communities, one concept overrides all others - the ability to network and conduct activism at the grassroots level, regardless of the cause. Left (and Right) Blogistan is participatory politics at the grassroots level. More than just not "getting it", the old guard is scared by that concept - and that's true in both major political parties.

It amazes me every day that, from the time the web exploded in the mid-90s through today, only one politician seems to have successfully tapped into this network on a participatory level. Howard Dean. You'd think that the Democratic Party would have embraced the power of online networking after Governor Dean's meteoric rise in the party.

But, no.

There's a big difference between harnessing the power of online activism and exploiting it. The Dems did a great job of exploiting Left Blogistan for campaign buckage in the past election. But whether we progressives like to admit it or not, the GOP did a better job of harnessing the potential of the web in organizing and transmitting the message. Collecting online campaign donations was clearly secondary to the RNC, because they already had a big, fat, traditional money machine.

Maybe the difference between how the Dems used the web and how the GOP used the same medium was born out of necessity. Clearly, without the web fundraising effort, the Dems would have been at a distinct disadvantage money-wise. But in making the decision to use web content almost exclusively as a fundraising tool, the DNC and Kerry Campaign took their eyes off the most important aspect of any campaign: deliver the message.

No one should be suckered into the false illusion that maybe, just maybe the old guard of the Democratic Party learned anything from their failure to use the natural online network that existed in 2004. The background given in the posting on Left Coaster makes that fact abundantly clear.

The DNC doesn't know what to do with folks like us. None of the other third parties seem to be able to get past the need for ideological purity to deal with it, either. The good news is, when someone does eventually figure it out, maybe true progressives will finally find a political "home".

We've been wandering in the desert for way too long.

On the Merits of Doomsaying

Cassandra Temporarily Preempts Hulkette


Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot,
For one brief, shining moment
That was known as Camelot.

--Lerner and Lowe, "Camelot"

That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold;
Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

--William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 73"


I find me still these days in the "nothing of political importance to speak" mode. I worry that this is the kiss of death for a blogger on a progressive blog. I might call it "pulling a Billmon", except I've never been Billmon, and never had his following or his acumen.

A few days ago at work, my boss, Evie, not the most aware of creatures on my Happy Planet, commented on her sadness at seeing human beings do what I call "Entering the Depreciation Machine". As my old dad would name it : the act of going into a dive of ever-decreasing circles at ever-increasing speeds. I answered: "It doesn't bode well for people on the Happy Planet." And Evie nodded with a sigh. This was an incredible moment to me. This is a woman who readily acknowledges her love of all things "American Idol" and Survivor", and even she is seeing it.

I have no links for you. You know where the links are. You see them daily. But there is much to discuss here. To start you may talk about a comparison between the Lerner and Lowe lyrics and the Shakespeare quote. Shakespeare was actually discussing the erroding of the church via the reformation... "bare ruin'd choirs", as least as I know it historically talks about priests. You can discuss the incredible faster-than-lightspeed "depreciation machine" and how it's munching up people and their endeavors. Heck. I don't care. You can talk about "Survivor" and "American Idol". Or you can just comfort Cassandra. Encouraging words are always welcome. I forget now who the psychologist was who said that above almost all else people needed encouragement, cheerleading -- my word not his. I think it was Erikson.

Have at it. ;-)

Note: Here is the larger version of the Bosch painting, Ship of Fools, above, and my nod to the SpinDentist for reminding me how much I love Hieronymous Bosch.

Bush's Economy Built on Quicksand

This graph should tell you everything you need to know:


The accompanying article will tell you things that most Americans (with fingers firmly planted in ears, singing "la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you") don't want to know.

ASZ Payola Notice

In the wake of the expanding Armstrong Williams payola scandal, and the SCLM-generated-from-whole-cloth lefty judas equivalent, dKos / MyDD -vs- Zephyr Teachout, it seems appropriate that we here at ASZ provide a payola disclaimer:

All Spin Zone, its principals, successors, and assigns will gladly accept any payola offered. Unmarked 20's and 50's in #5 manila envelopes are the preferred method of exchange. "Dead drops" can be arranged at the convenience of the sponsor.

No one's ever offered us a dime to push our viewpoints, and we feel soooooo left out of the progressive blogging money train. You know those Google ads that were running for a week or so? Hell, we even removed them because, after roughly 7,000 page impressions, there had been a grand total of 3 clickthroughs, for a return of $.08. Bottom line, it wasn't worth the bandwidth usage. So, we went back to the TLA Video ad strip (which we hope they change soon), because it at least supports a good organization that needs your business.

We just thought we'd clear up any misconception that any of the principals at ASZ are hauling sacks of blog blood money to the bank every week. We wish. And we'll be the first to let you know if that blessed event ever occurs.

Titan - What Mankind Can Do

For a space geek like me, watching the images come in yesterday from Saturn's moon, Titan, was nothing short of breathtaking. The 360^o montage that was pasted together by the European Space Operations Centre really gives an unworldly sense that there's something worth exploring beyond the barriers of our own blue marble in space.

It took the probe that landed on Titan seven long years to reach its destination. Think about that for a moment. Think about the technology that was available when Titan was designed, probably 10 years ago. And now from 750 million miles away, we get images that look (to me) like I'd see out of the window of an airplane descending over Lake Meade into Las Vegas.

With all of the crap that we bitch about on both sides of the political spectrum, the rousing success of the 9 foot diameter "wok" shaped spacecraft, Huygens, drifting slowly down onto the surface of Titan is an example of what mankind can do in the spirit of cooperation. The mission was a joint effort between many countries, and the end result speaks for itself.

And I won't even harp today about Halliburton scrambling to nail down the methane gas export rights from Titan. I'm still too awestruck.

Michael Chertoff Update

Here's a quick update to the previous posting on the Chertoff nomination for DHS Secretary:

A sharp-eyed ASZ reader caught this article that ran in the NYTimes the other day:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 - Newly disclosed documents in the John Walker Lindh case appear to conflict with assertions made to Congress by Michael Chertoff, nominated this week as homeland security secretary, about the Justice Department's handling of ethics concerns in the high-profile prosecution...

I also received an email from Allan Duncan pointing to a current story on Operation Diamondback from Friday evening's Dateline NBC. Allan's working furiously to connect all of the dots - and it would certainly be exceptionally bizarre if Chertoff had some connection (in a Bobby Simone / Nicky Scarfo kind of way) to A.Q. Kahn's nuclear MLM scheme.

More info as it develops...

Sibel Edmonds and the Machine

The "machine" crushes anyone in its path.

The "machine" will not allow truth to out against a master plan.

We found that many of Edmonds' core allegations relating to the coworker were supported by either documentary evidence or witnesses other than Edmonds. Moreover, we concluded that, had the FBI performed a more careful investigation of Edmonds' allegations, it would have discovered evidence of significant omissions and inaccuracies by the co-worker related to these allegations. These omissions and inaccuracies, in turn, should have led to further investigation by the FBI. In part, we attributed the FBI's failure to investigate further to its unwarranted reliance on the assumption that proper procedures had been followed by the FBI during the co-worker's hiring and background investigation, which did not include a risk assessment, contrary to FBI practice. We also found that Edmonds was justified in raising a number of these concerns to her supervisors. For example, with respect to an allegation that focused on the co-worker's performance, which Edmonds believed to be an indication of a security problem, the evidence clearly corroborated Edmonds' allegations...

We are so screwed.

Social Security Pitch - Back to Rove's Playbook

Via Taegan Goddard's Political Wire (a great resource, if you haven't yet visited...):

Social Security Push to Tap the GOP Faithful:

President Bush plans to reactivate his reelection campaign's network of donors and activists to build pressure on lawmakers to allow workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in the stock market, according to Republican strategists.

White House allies are launching a market-research project to figure out how to sell the plan in the most comprehensible and appealing way, and Republican marketing and public-relations gurus are building teams of consultants to promote it, the strategists said.

The campaign will use Bush's campaign-honed techniques of mass repetition, never deviating from the script and using the politics of fear to build support -- contending that a Social Security financial crisis is imminent when even Republican figures show it is decades away...

I don't think we progressives can hammer on this enough - go back and read my earlier posting on the "sales pitch" that the Bush administration is using to cast a programatic chronic malady as an acute firestorm.

What really befuddles me is that so many people, and particularly the people that will most need it in retirement, are just going to drink the koolaid that BushCo offers on Social Security. And Ma and Pa Trailerpark are gonna drink it just because it pisses off the liberal pinko anti-dubya muthafuckers. Never mind that they're cutting off their own noses to spite their face.

There is apparently no historical perspective within the administration on why FDR made the safety net of Social Security a cornerstone of the New Deal. And there will never be - simply because a Social Security check is viewed as no more than beer money to the silverspooners running the show on both Pennsylvania Avenue and Wall Street.

If you've spent any time at all in corporate 'murica, you saw this coming from a mile (or at least a decade) away. The 401K snakeoil salesmen have been stacking the deck against Social Security for the past 20 years.

And BushCo is committed to making prophets out of the snakeoil salesmen.

Science: Queer Eye for the Enemy Soldier Guy

People will always get paid to think up weird shit. That's the nature of scientific endeavor. But horny bombs??

The Pentagon considered developing a host of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops, newly declassified documents reveal.

Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an "aphrodisiac" chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behavior among troops would cause a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale, the proposal says...

I mean, wouldn't it just be easier (and cheaper) to airdrop portable DVD players behind enemy lines, programmed with episodes of Will and Grace?

Jeebus.

Sharon Cuts Ties With Abbas

Well. That didn't take long, did it?

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has cut all contact with Mahmoud Abbas until the newly elected Palestinian leader reins in the militants, media reports said.

Taking up right where he left off with Arafat...

Poppy Pressure

Since Dubya's smirking grin first popped onto the national scene, various pundits-cum-psychologists have suggested that the prodigal son overreaches to compensate for a lousy relationship with Poppy. Indeed, Kitty Kelley's book, The Family spends many pages analyzing the relationship between Junior and his parental units, Poppy and Beautiful Mind.

So it's kind of interesting that in the past few weeks, a couple of Poppy's closest advisors (Brent Scowcroft, and now James Baker) are telling Junior it's time to get the hell out of Iraq.

What Scowcroft and Baker's words imply is that perhaps Poppy didn't think it was a real good idea to go into Iraq to begin with. But he's (in Bush family tradition) kept his mouth shut. Wouldn't want to sacrifice Jeb's chances to continue the dynasty in '08, right?

It would appear that Poppy is sending out his surrogates to challenge Dubya's policies, and that the policy rift between 41 and 43 seems to be widening:

"Any appearance of a permanent occupation will both undermine domestic support here in the United States and play directly into the hands of those in the Middle East who -- however wrongly -- suspect us of imperial design," Baker said Tuesday in a speech at Rice University in Houston. News reports of his comments were disseminated on national news wires on Thursday.

Don't forget, James Baker was the architect of the coup in Florida in 2000. So, it stands to reason that Baker's cautionary words carry even a bit more weight behind the scenes.

What Dubya most lacks as a true leader is that he continues to quarter no dissent in his administration. There's been a couple of stories over the past week or so about him basically shutting out anyone who doesn't bring him good news. Billmon at Whiskey Bar (who appears to be back , at least temporarily) points us to a chasm as wide as the Grand Canyon between Dubya and Colin Powell:

Mr Powell's bleak assessment, less than three weeks before Iraqis are due to elect a parliament, reflects what advisers close to the administration and former officials describe as an understanding in the State Department and Pentagon of the depth of the crisis. But, they say, this is not a view accepted by President George W. Bush . . .

According to Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and head of the independent Middle East Policy Council, Mr Bush recently asked Mr Powell for his view on the progress of the war. “We're losing,” Mr Powell was quoted as saying. Mr Freeman said Mr Bush then asked the secretary of state to leave.

Powell was selected to be part of the Dubya's original cabinet for one reason - Poppy pressure. It's hard to imagine that Powell, who is/was really tight with Poppy, would have been part of Dubya's cabinet were it not for pressure from Poppy's inner circle.

Are we starting to see the evolution of hopeful signs of GOP backbiting, and a widening disagreement between the true conservatives in the party (with whom we can have reasoned discourse) and the fundieneoconimperialists (who simply won't listen)? If so, this is a good thing. There's no question that Poppy still has friends in very high levels of congress and the bureaucratic halls government. And if we start to see a family feud start in the Bush clan, my bet is that George H.W. Bush wins.

Perhaps Poppy sees the U.S. poised at the edge of an abyss. It's quite surreal to think that he may be the best chance America has for pulling back from the edge - that is, if we're not already over it.

Radical Right Wing Christian Clerics Strike Again

Seems one of those Evangelical Christian Aid groups in Indonesia is trying to take advantage of the tsunami tragedy to indoctrinate and convert 300 Muslim children.

This is nothing but disgusting, as the same folks would concede were the tables turned. I assume that those parents in Indonesia, now dead, had the strong desire to raise their children in their own faith, as do these right-wing Christians. Rather than coming into the situation and respecting the wishes of these orphans parents' wishes, however, these nutballs were all about converting some pagan babies.

A Virginia-based missionary group said this week that it had airlifted 300 "tsunami orphans" from the Muslim province of Aceh to Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, where it plans to raise them in a Christian children's home.

The missionary group, WorldHelp, is one of dozens of Christian, Muslim and Jewish charities providing humanitarian relief to victims of the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami that devastated countries around the Indian Ocean, taking more than 150,000 lives.

Most of the religious charities do not attach any conditions to their aid, and many of the larger ones - such as WorldVision, Catholic Relief Services, and Church World Service - have policies against proselytizing. But a few of the smaller groups have been raising money among evangelical Christians by presenting the tsunami emergency effort as a rare opportunity to make converts in hard-to-reach areas.

"Normally, Banda Aceh is closed to foreigners and closed to the gospel," WorldHelp said in an appeal for funds on its Web site this week. "But, because of this catastrophe, our partners there are earning the right to be heard and providing entrance for the gospel."

The appeal said WorldHelp was working with Indonesian Christians in that nation who want to "plant Christian principles as early as possible" in the 300 Muslim children, all younger than 12, who lost their parents in the tsunami.

This is the worst face of "the ugly American," and the worst possible way to raise World opinion of our mostly generous country. Luckily, the Indonesian government has cottoned onto the slimey tactics of these Radical Right-Wing Christian Clerics and ended the practice. To prove that the founding of the orphanage was not a pure act of Christian charity, the "group's president, the Rev. Vernon Brewer, said it suspended fund-raising after Indonesia said Muslim children could not be raised in a non-Muslim home."

I am disgusted. Real religious leaders should be condemning this action further.

Shut up, Teddy.

Please.

MODERATOR: This person asks, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was elected with over 80 percent of the vote, and over a million of those voters were also President Bush voters. What did Senator Obama do that Senator Kerry and other Democrats not do?

And do you think the Democrats need to move toward the center to recapture the majority position?

And finally, If a Democrat wins the next presidential election, what are the most difficult problems he or she will face in 2008?

KENNEDY: There you go.

Why don't we just ask Osama bin -- Osama Obama -- Obama what -- since he won by such a big amount. Seriously, Senator Obama is really unique and special...

Free Range Blogging

Random thoughts...

...Tired of watching the inane propaganda and drivel that passes for "news" on U.S.-based outlets (broadcast and cable)? Try Deutsche Welle out of Germany, or BBC World News. I'm fortunate to be able to get them back-to-back in the market I live in, from 6:30 to 7:30. Both also have their broadcasts online, if you can't get one or the other on your scrap of the planet.

...For the dumpster diver in all of us (and who can pass up a great curbside furniture bargain that just needs a little refinishing?), there's a relatively new online "freebay" kind of website - freecycle.org. There are freecycle communities springing up all across the U.S. and Canada, so surf on over and take a look. Needless to say, it's a very "green" concept.

...And, did you hear about the Prince Harry story? Gilliard has a little bit of it over on his site. Apparently, Harry was photographed at a party wearing a Nazi officer replica shirt, complete with swastika armband. Needless to say, his act of youthful stupidity (or was it royal arrogance?) is causing quite a titter worldwide.

...Meanwhile, the Asian tsunami toll reaches 225,000 dead and missing. And you think our own American fundie xians are a bit whacked in preaching this disaster as heavenly vengeance on the godless? You ain't heard nothin' yet:

"Some of our forefathers said that if there is usury and fornication in a certain village, Allah permits its destruction. We know that at these resorts, which unfortunately exist in Islamic and other countries in South Asia, and especially at Christmas, fornication and sexual perversion of all kinds are rampant. The fact that it happened at this particular time is a sign from Allah. It happened at Christmas, when fornicators and corrupt people from all over the world come to commit fornication and sexual perversion. That's when this tragedy took place, striking them all and destroyed everything. It turned the land into wasteland, where only the cries of the ravens are heard. I say this is a great sign and punishment on which Muslims should reflect."

So sayeth Sheikh Fawzan Al-Fawzan, a professor at the Al-Imam University on Saudi / UAE's Al-Majd TV. I guess fundamentalists are the same all over the world, and sectarian allegiance doesn't even enter into the equation.

Praise jeebus allah, and pass the collection plate!

Kate Attempts to Reclaim Her Center with a Joni-fest

We Do What We Must to Stay Sane

I found out that my vinyl record of Joni Mitchell's live concert recording of the "Shadows and Light" tour from 1980 vanished into the alternative universe in my cozy little hovel. Some of you remember vinyl, yes? Please say yes, just for the sake of humoring a 52-year old mad woman. ;-) I had to do something about the disaster. But what to do? "Shadows and Light" was never put on CD. It is, however, on DVD. A few clicks, (easier than psychotherapy ... I should know... with ten years under my belt... ten years in a row), tiny little clicks and few dollars later, and the magic of Amazon.com sent it my way. It's HERE.

For the unitiated, the "Shadows and Light" tour featured perhaps one of the most impressive bands of the 80s: Joni, Pat Metheny (guitar), Jaco Pastorius (fretless bass), Michael Brecker (sax), Lyle Mays (keyboards), and Don Alias (percussion). And the DVD was worth the US Postal Service wait. If you don't want to spend the money, see if NetFlix has it, if you're a NetFlix sort of folken.

Last night I watched it a second time, transfixed. And since this morning I've been listening to earlier CDs, in particular For the Roses and Blue. I make no bones ever about thinking Joni is one of the finest musician-composer-arranger-poets of my generation. I have a friend, a former co-worker, who can't stand her. He's 45, and I can't for my life figure out why... I think he's missing some important gene. Or maybe he just doesn't like fine poetic imagery married to magnificent music. But he lately wants to immerse himself in the musicianship of the late Jaco Pastorius... so I'm going to tempt him. Here's how someone else on-line describes My Lady Joni.

So there you have it. Almost. I cannot surf in an Emersonian transcendental way the craziness of the bizarro Happy Planet as my cohorts at ASZ are able to do with aplomb. It seems like some sort of deficiency in me sometimes. Sigh. I hear and read, but have little to say anymore about it all except what I've said so many times before --how I perceive it, anyway: All the political skullduggery, all the death and violence, all the callous indifference is the status quo on the Happy Planet, same as it ever was. I know this down to the DNA level. I cannot convince anyone of this, and I know it. All I can do is stay alive and "relatively" sane, and leave you with a little Joni goodness.

"Blue,
songs are like tattoos
You know I’ve been to sea before
Crown and anchor me
Or let me sail away
Hey blue, here is a song for you
Ink on a pin
Underneath the skin
An empty space to fill in
Well there’re so many sinking now
You’ve got to keep thinking
You can make it thru these waves
Acid, booze, and ass
Needles, guns, and grass
Lots of laughs, lots of laughs
Everybody’s saying that hell’s the hippest way to go
Well I don’t think so
But I’m gonna take a look around it though
Blue, I love you

Blue, here is a shell for you
Inside you’ll hear a sigh
A foggy lullaby
There is your song from me"

And lest I forget, if you haven't ever wandered over to the big Joni Web site, it's here at jonimitchell.com

There is your song from me.

WMD Humor

Plucked out of Eschaton comments last night:

BBC TV reporter this morning (in case you missed it):

Q: "What's the difference between
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
and the Loch Ness Monster?"

A: "They're still looking for the
Loch Ness Monster."

Yes, folks, we're the laughingstock of the world.

Can't add much to that...

Michael Chertoff - Where the Questions Should Start

It's been a bit more than 24 hours since the nomination of Michael Chertoff for DHS Secretary. In that short span of time, there has been no shortage of blogosphere opinions published on the suitability of Chertoff to fill the position.

On the left, the consensus argument seems to be that he's no civil libertarian. Well, duh. If that was the criteria for denying appointment, George Bush wouldn't have a cabinet right now. In the center and on the right, Chertoff's receiving some degree of praise for his post-9/11 work, for almost the same reasons as the left is nervous about him.

Let's get past all of that for a moment, and assume that his nomination is going forward. Perhaps his nomination process should be used, in part, as forum for completing a piece of the 9/11 puzzle that remains pretty much cloaked in secrecy - Operation Diamondback. Interestingly enough, while in private practice in New Jersey back in the late 1990's, Chertoff had some tangential connections to the people and events of this clandestine attempt to infiltrate terrorist networks inside the U.S.

In an earlier posting on the Chertoff nomination, a quick link was provided to a article published on OpEdNews.com in September, 2004. The article ties together a variety of northern New Jersey "bad actors" of Arabic descent in telling a piece of the September 11, 2001 saga. Here's what it boils down to:

• In 1995, A New Jersey neurologist, Magdy Elamir (a 20 year Egyptian national resident of the U.S.) started an HMO in New Jersey which ultimately failed three years later.
  
  
• In 1998, Congressman Ben Gilman was given a foreign intelligence report suggesting that money was being skimmed from the HMO and funneled to Osama bin-Laden's terrorist network.
  
  
• The State of New Jersey ultimately bailed out the HMO and found that $16.7 million was illegally diverted, about $5.7 million of which is unaccounted for and diverted to offshore banks (in other words, impossible to trace).
  
  
• In late 1998, Elamir retained Michael Chertoff (then in private practice) as his attorney to represent him in litigation with the State of New Jersey and HMO creditors seeking reimbursement.
  
  
• Elamir's brother Mohamed was apparently up to his hips in smuggling weapons for use by terrorist networks; in fact, both Magdy and Mohamed fess up to funding at least one arms smuggler with Al Qaida connections.
  
  
• Both Elamir's (also spelled 'el Amir') figured prominently in Operation Diamondback, a well-buried precursor to 9/11 that was discussed in (apparently) some depth during the congressional 9/11 investigation, but much testimony remains classified.

Here's a brief description of Operation Diamondback:

Randy Glass is a con artist turned government informant participating in a sting called Operation Diamondback. [Palm Beach Post, 9/29/01] He discusses an illegal weapons deal with an Egyptian American named Mohamed el Amir. In wiretapped conversations, Mohamed discusses the need to get false papers to disguise a shipment of illegal weapons. His brother, Dr. Magdy el Amir, has been a wealthy neurologist in Jersey City for the past twenty years. Two other weapons dealers later convicted in a sting operation involving Glass also lived in Jersey City, and both el Amirs admit knowing one of them, Diaa Mohsen. Mohsen has been paid at least once by Dr. el Amir.

In 1998, Congressman Ben Gilman was given a foreign intelligence report suggesting that Dr. el Amir owns an HMO that is secretly funded by bin Laden, and that money is being skimmed from the HMO to fund terrorist activities. The state of New Jersey later buys the HMO and determines that $15 million were unaccounted for and much of that has been diverted into hard-to-trace offshore bank accounts. However, investigators working with Glass are never given the report about Dr. el Amir. Both el Amirs have not been charged with any crime. Mohamed now lives in Egypt and Magdy continues to practice medicine in New Jersey. Glass's sting, which began in late 1998, will uncover many interesting leads before ending in June 2001 (see also July 14, 1999, Early August 2001 and August 2, 2002). [MSNBC 8/2/02]

In looking at this whole scenario, what I wanted to dig into was Mr. Chertoff's depth of involvement with Magdy Elamir, as his attorney -- a "follow the money" approach, if you will. Here's where the story of Chertoff's involvement starts: Medical Economics magazine, Oct. 25, 1999:

The HMO Graveyard: Why was this doctor allowed to start a health plan?

In September 1995, the state of New Jersey was looking for HMOs to participate in its new mandatory Medicaid managed care program. Neurologist Magdy Elamir, who only the month before had been granted a state license to operate an HMO, was eager to take part. Initially approved to serve a single county, Elamir's HMO--American Preferred Provider Plan--was soon allowed into 13 counties and covered 42,000 Medicaid recipients.

Yet, barely three years after enrolling its first patient, APPP lay in financial ruins, its network doctors and hospitals were saddled with millions of dollars in unpaid claims, and its founder had retained the services of Michael Chertoff, a well-known criminal defense attorney. (Elamir, who declined to be interviewed for this story, continues to live and practice in New Jersey. Neither his lawyer nor the state would confirm or deny that the doctor is the subject of a criminal investigation.)...

Given that Chertoff was representing Dr. Elamir in financial legal proceedings related to the HMO, wouldn't it make sense that Chertoff and his firm would have had unfettered access to Elamir's books, particularly with the accusation by the State of NJ that $15 million was unaccounted for in "offshore banking"? Sure - and in fact, a story in The Record (Bergen County, NJ), dated 12/18/98 ¹, reported that during a hearing on the failing HMO before a NJ Superior Court Judge...

...Chertoff presented a thick document from Elamir's accountant, Mohamed Hanafy, offering explanations for the money transfers from [the HMO] to other Elamir-controlled corporations.

Neither the NJ Deputy Attorney General or the judge were satisfied with the accounting - and it turns out that indeed, Elamir had been cooking the books. On June 20th, 2000 The Record ran another article² on Dr. Elamir being sued by the state over misappropriation of money from the failed HMO. In light of the Operation Diamondback story above, perhaps this paragraph takes on a bit more significance:

The state says it traced a good deal of the money transfers to the 17 affiliates, including medical imaging centers in Paterson, Passaic, Irvington, and Summit. But at least $ 5.7 million went "to unknown parties... by means of wire transfers to bank accounts where the beneficial owner of the account is unknown," the complaint says.

In other words, an offshore account for which no U.S. government agent could obtain information. And again in this article, Michael Chertoff is cited as Elamir's attorney.

Admittedly, this whole tale begins to take on strange proportions, particularly in light of the fact that one of the supposed defining qualities which Mr. Chertoff brings to the table is his apparent post-9/11 conversion in shutting down bin-Laden's financing network. Chertoff was the Bush administration's front man for Title III of the USA PATRIOT Act (also known as the International Money Laundering Abatement and Financial Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001). On January 29, 2002 Chertoff testified before the Senate Banking Committee:

Accordingly, preventing future terrorist attacks and bringing terrorists to justice is now the top priority of the Department of Justice. Law enforcement is currently engaged in a cooperative effort to identify, disrupt and dismantle terrorist networks. Terrorism requires financing, and terrorists rely on the flow of funds across international borders. To conceal their identities and their unlawful purpose, terrorists exploit weaknesses in domestic and international financial systems. As this Committee well knows, therefore, curtailing terrorism requires a systemic approach to investigating the financial links to the terrorist organizations.

Apparently, then-U.S. DOJ Assistant Attorney General Chertoff experienced a convenient lapse of memory - he had represented a client with direct (and admitted) links to potential terrorist networks. Not only that, given the nature of the proceedings against Dr. Elamir, the representation over the course of least a two year period had to have happened with full knowledge of the financial dealings of his client.

It's difficult to say where this story leads from here. There's a lot of coincidence that leaves room for investigation into the details of Mr. Chertoff's working on at least the fringes of a terrorist network. And maybe that's where the story of his nomination should lead.

Update, 7:30PM - from Allan Duncan (the author of the OpEdNews.com piece) comes a link to an article which takes a similar view of the Chertoff nomination at Mad Cow Morning News. It's also my understanding that major news organizations are starting to sniff around this story...

-------------
¹ The Record, 12/18/1998, "Judge Orders Bond, Freezes Assets of Failing HMO'S Owner"
² The Record, 6/20/2000, "State Sues HMO Founder to Recoup Millions"

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Dr. Strangebush

In this couple years of war I have often been reminded of the movie Dr. Strangelove, especially with the propensity of the warbloggers and Administration to ignore such facts as the lack of connection between Iraq and WMD, 9/11, desire for Democracy, etc. Of course this could be a rambling discourse on the 1984ization of our political world and how it manifests itself in Bush Administration policies that make one constantly think of the Kubrick masterpiece. Shoot, we can just look at the Right Wing Clerics, standing behind a religion based in love and then excusing in the next breath actions like Abu Ghraib and Fallujah - that's a damn good start. (Perhaps the Right Wing Clerics ought to remember what the code for stopping Stragelove's Doomsday device was. . . POE . . . and it ain't the author.)

But, no. I just want to focus on Merkin Muffley, whose name equals love, at least from a perverse phallocentric angle. What is a merkin? It is, of course, a pubic hair wig. Perhaps Mr. Armstrong Williams could use one to cover up the sores he's gotten prostituting himself for the President. And of course, we all know that "muff" is yet another slang term for a woman's pubic hair. (Did you know "pudenda" means "embarrassed" in its archaic form? More phallocentrist language I believe I learned from Simone de Beauvoir.) Of course "merkin" and "muffley" do not stand for "love." Except in that testosterone soaked world of Dr. Stranglove, where 'Buck' Turgidson is there to save the day. Dang but doesn't this sound familiar?

So why bring this up? Well, what does "Bush" mean? Yeah, he's got a name with the same meaning as does the President in Dr. Strangelove. All that remains for us is to cast the other characters.

Who among the Bush cronies would play General 'Buck' Turgidson? Brigadeer General Jack D. Ripper? Who would play Colonel 'Bat' Guano?

Come on, it's a game, and while Kubrick's characters are clearly cartoonish, well, so are the Bush crew. Help me here, people!

If only the whole thing in Iraq were to end in a pie fight, as was intended by the original movie ending. . .

Strawberry Fields Not Forever

This just in. In a repeal of a cultural milepost, the Christian Group Salvation Army has announced that they are closing Strawberry Field Children's Home.

This story is symbolic, and I don't quite have my grasp on it. I remember a day or so ago some conservative in a message board forum whining because a liberal had said that conservatives both want to maintain the status quo and to revert back to a happier time. I'm pretty sure nobody to the dimwit, and maybe he has returned to loot his bible of more out-of-context ammunition for when he meets a lesbian or something. It got me thinking then about how the real issue is that they want to repeal the 60's. Strawberry Fields going into the history books does just that, at least symbolically.

I am tempted otherwise to note that this would be a good time to go nuts posting lyrics in the comment section. . . but that would be scary to suggest.

Strawberry Fields
(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)

Let me take you down, 'cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real, and nothing to get hungabout
Strawberry Fields forever

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out, it doesn't matter much to me
Let me take you down, 'cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real, and nothing to get hungabout
Strawberry Fields forever

No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low
That is you can't you know tune in but it's all right, that is I think it's not too bad

Let me take you down, 'cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real, and nothing to get hungabout
Strawberry Fields forever

Always, no sometimes, think it's me, but you know I know when it's a dream
I think I know I mean a "Yes" but it's all wrong, that is I think I disagree

Let me take you down, 'cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real, and nothing to get hungabout
Strawberry Fields forever
Strawberry Fields forever
Strawberry Fields forever

George Bush - the Crisis President

Pure punditial poetry from Harold Meyerson at the Washington Post:

...Politically, however, Social Security is facing the gravest crisis it has ever known. For the first time in its history, it is confronted by a president, and just possibly by a working congressional majority, who are opposed to the program on ideological grounds, who view the New Deal as a repealable aberration in U.S. history, who would have voted against establishing the program had they been in Congress in 1935. But Bush doesn't need Karl Rove's counsel to know that repealing Social Security for reasons of ideology is a non-starter.

So it's time once more to fabricate a crisis. In Bushland, it's always time to fabricate a crisis. We have a crisis in medical malpractice costs, though the CBO says that malpractice costs amount to less than 2 percent of total health care costs. (In fact, what we have is a president who wants to diminish the financial, and thus political, clout of trial lawyers.) We have a crisis in judicial vacancies, though in fact Senate Democrats used the filibuster to block just 10 of Bush's 229 first-term judicial appointments.

With crisis concoction as its central task -- think of how many administration officials issued dire warnings of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein or, now, by Social Security's impending bankruptcy -- this presidency, more than any I can think of, has relied on the classic tools of propaganda...

While Maximum Leader certainly isn't the first president to govern during a time of crisis, his administration is clearly the most overt in making up crisis that simply don't exist -- or perhaps more on point, blowing solvable problems out of all reasonable proportion to advance specific political or business agendas. More than anything, that's the evil genius of Karl Rove.

Rove understands that to capture the imagination of an increasingly jaded and tuned out public, and to marshall the small (but vocal) minority of activists, it's necessary to cast every issue that's important to the Bush agenda as a TEOTWAWKI* event.

If normal study and reasoned discourse of problematic topics were allowed to occur without the shrieking right wing propaganda machine, alternative compromise solutions could be developed to chronic problems. Indeed, if you think about it, every policy decision made since Bush took office in 2001 has addressed chronic, rather than acute, situations. But to push specific agendas, the situations are manipulated so as to look like our national pants are on fire.

In BushWorld, reasoned discourse just doesn't happen. A problem is identified, a single solution is developed at a conceptual level, and administration minions are left unfettered to flesh out the actions required to arrive at the predetermined outcome. Dissenting voices are either not allowed, or so marginalized as to be ineffective. Once the game plan is finalized, it's then tossed to the administration's snakeoil salesmen for manufacturing of the crisis du jour.

There was a time in the not so distant past when the U.S. government mocked the old USSR for taking an idea that was generated by Soviet aparatchiks, having it championed by the Communist Party leader, and then rubber stamped by the Politburo.

So, tell me, what's the difference between "strongman" type of government operation in the ex-Soviet Union and the management-by-crisis style of the Bush administration (and it's own congressional politburo)? Answer: very little.

Because in BushWorld, as in the communist and fascist governments that preceded it, the ends always justify the means.


*TEOTWAWKI - The end of the world as we know it

Binge and Purge

While the fat cats are binging on our tax dollars they are executing a purge of all who would blow the whistle.

STAFF “PURGE” AT OFFICE OF SPECIAL COUNSEL

Washington, DC — The U.S. Special Counsel, the principal protector of federal whistleblower and merit system rights, has abruptly ordered more than 20 percent of his headquarters legal and investigative staff to relocate or be fired. According to a letter of protest filed today by three national whistleblower watchdog groups, those targeted for forced moves are all career employees hired before Bloch became Special Counsel, as part of a purge to stifle dissent and re-staff the agency with handpicked loyalists.
...
"This crude purge attempt is just the latest stage in Scott Bloch’s reign of terror at the Special Counsel,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch who referred to Bloch’s previous issuance of gag orders to staff directing them not to discuss problems with the office. “The only thing this Special Counsel has brought to the merit system is new techniques for circumventing it.”

Whistle - gone. Blower - gone. Oversight - gone.

Let the real binging begin.

Bringing Democracy to Iraq, Bushist Style

The picture seems appropriate, given that payola is what it's about nowadays, whether it is the Bushist Education Department or the Post Baathist Allawi Administration. What better way to show that than with an album cover starring your favorite crooner and mine, Saddam Hussein?

In a startling development, and just like the practice in the old Baathist Party days, the Allawi government has begun to pay cash to reporters in order to get them to cover stories. I'm sure they thought such practice typical Baathist corruption, at least until they noticed the arrangement between the Bushist Party and reporters such as Armstrong Williams.

Apologists for the Bushists, including Williams, by the way, have said that he supported NCLB all along. The truth is coming out that he in fact changed his opinion on the issue after he got paid by the Bushist Party. There's a bit of an integrity deficit there, and engineers are working round the clock to try to figure out how to bridge it. In comments on the Armstrong Williams scandal, Scott McClellan of the White House appears to be getting ready to throw the African American columnist under the bus (likely the back of said vehicle).

But back to Allawi once more. . .

After a meeting held by Mr Allawi's campaign alliance in west Baghdad, reporters, most of whom were from the Arabic-language press, were invited upstairs where each was offered a "gift" of a $100 bill contained in an envelope.

Many of the journalists accepted the cash - about equivalent to half the starting monthly salary for a reporter at an Iraqi newspaper - and one jokingly recalled how Saddam Hussein's regime had also lavished perks on favoured reporters.

Giving gifts to journalists is common in many of the Middle East's authoritarian regimes, although reporters at the conference said the practice was not yet widespread in postwar Iraq.

All progress in spreading Democracy across the globe at the barrell of a gun or via a crisp $100 bill. Hooray for us!

Take two aspirin, a couple swallows of whiskey, and rinse. Then spit. Then rinse again. Maybe you'll get the taste out of your mouth, but I'm not guaranteeing anything.

Not Welcome at the Inaugural

Of course, Bush is the darling of the Religious Whackjob Right, but I have wondered all along if he and Karl Rove were just playing the Right Wing Clerics in order to win an election. I certainly wouldn't put it beyond them, and neither would you folks, would you? Let's face it, those Right Wing Clerics are going to vote Repug no matter what.

Interestingly, just nine months after the Passion arguably made the Cross as a symbol a major player in this election, has banned crosses from the Inauguration. Nope, you are not allowed to bring your own cross to the event. And boy those folks at Focus on the Family are PISSED!

I hope this sort of rule changes by 2008, because I intend on carrying a symbol of my religion to that event. Is there such a thing as a "Neo-Druid? And isn't their symbol an aluminum Xmas tree?

Iraq - Fallujah: The Real Fall

Here's an alert for any ASZ reader in the UK or Europe - UK's Channel 4 has what appears to be an outstanding program airing both on Channel 4 (and on Ch. 4's website), Fallujah - The Real Fall. But, drat - those of us on this side of the pond can't see it, even with a RealPlayer Superpass (Ch. 4 content isn't available to we yanks).

So, here's a plea to someone with overseas access to this program - watch it, and if you wish to file a report, drop us an email. We'll set you up with guest posting privilages on ASZ to give us your impressions. (And if anyone has a, well, "place" where this program can be viewed or downloaded, please let us know.)

For we Channel 4-less subjects in the colonies, there's an online print interview at their website with one of the reporters embedded in a Marine unit during the assault on Fallujah. Ch. 4's Tim Lambon reports. He concludes with:

There is never a military solution to anything like this...there is only ever talking at the end. Discussion, diplomacy and through that you come to a resolution and the only way to resolve the issue is to include the parties and sometimes that means you have to have the most radical ends of the two spectrums opposing each other come together and eventually when you get those two radical ends together to talk that’s the only time you find peace. It’s happened everywhere, from Lebanon to South Africa to Northern Ireland and it’s only when you get the radicals together to talk … they’ll never find common ground but if the populace gets tired enough of the war it will force the radical ends to talk and once the radical ends talk you then have peace. There is no military solution.

Never better said.

From the All Things Are Connected Files

A Chertoff Connection
The Woman Who Knew Too Much

"As Radack listened to NPR that morning two years ago, she heard that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) had never believed that the California lawyer, or any other attorney, officially represented Lindh at the time of his confession. Radack was in a position to know that this was not entirely true, and she was outraged at the government’s claim. Six months earlier she had been an attorney-adviser with the DOJ’s Professional Responsibility Advisory Office (PRAO). On December 7, 2001, she fielded a telephone call from John DePue, a prosecutor in the terrorism and violent crimes section of the criminal division in Washington, D.C., a call that would trigger two years of upheaval in her life and that would derail a promising career."

Inspired by reader Colman... ;-)

Clooney to O'Reilly -- Put Up or Shut Up!

This made me smile this morning, so I'll share.

Clooney, O'Reilly spar over tsunami telethon

"I'm booking the talent for the Tsunami event... and you, Mr. O'Reilly, are now officially invited to be a presenter... [at this point, not one of the people I've invited to donate their time has said 'No']... this way, You can personally follow up on our fund raising... this is your chance to put your considerable money where your considerable mouth is... show up... help raise money... and if we're doing something wrong, point it out."

"Either you ante up and help out AND be that watch dog that you feel we clearly need... or you simply stand on the sidelines and cast stones," he wrote.

Heh, heh.

Update 1: Here's the full letter Clooney sent to O'Reilly

Update 2: O'Reilly agrees to join arch-foe Clooney

While Canoeing On the Stream of Consciousness Do I Need Paddles?

Beyond here thar be dragons redux

I pulled this up from the archives because nothing has changed since I wrote it months ago. Your reward at the bottom for reading it again is two "news" (now called "Olds") items I caught this morning. Some folks may see them as unrelated, but not me.

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep. (Robert Frost)

This is a bit like "Being John Malkovich", except that it's not a movie, and I'm not John. It's more like being Kate Storm on a day off and the world on my mind.

First, some quotes on the nature of the human condition, perception and reality...

We are always getting ready to live
but never living.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Re-examine all you have been told at school
or in church or in any book,
dismiss what insults your own soul,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem.
--Walt Whitman

For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances,
as though they were realities, and are more often influenced
by things that seem than by things that are.
--Niccolo Machiavelli

To raise new questions, new possibilities,
to regard old questions from a new angle,
requires creative imagination and marks real advances...
--Albert Einstein

By changing the way we're seeing the world.
You see, you're still searching for the right piece to fix first.
You don't see that all the problems simply are fragments
of one single crisis—a crisis of perception.
--from the movie, "Mindwalk", based on the work of the physicist, Fritjof Capra

On the Crisis of Perception
I hope the reasons to write about perception and reality on a progressive political blog are self-evident. We at ASZ mention daily about our astonishment at the apparent inability of Joe and Joetta Citizen-Consumer to perceive as we do, and exercise their "franchise" accordingly. With frequency we're aghast and confuddled .

It comes as no surprise to me that this human problem is the stuff that occupies my mind in the wee hours. Before Richard invited me to ASZ I was thinking about the problem of human beings and perception.

"Physicist Fritjof Capra (1996) observes that "ultimately these problems must be seen as just different facets of one single crisis, which is largely a crisis of perception. It derives from the fact that most of us, and especially our large social institutions, subscribe to the concepts of an outdated worldview, a perception of reality inadequate for dealing with our overpopulated, globally interconnected world" (p. 4). The pervasive Cartesian worldview of scientific materialism, which views the cosmos as a vast machine composed of independent, externally related pieces (Capra, 1982), promotes fragmentation in our thinking and perception."

It's just worse now because ... it's worse. So I set about to compile good stuff to support my thoughts about how human beings can address some of their faulty perceptions problem ... one of which is what Alfred Lord Whitehead called the "error of misplaced concreteness". I'm just going to give you some starting places beginning with Whitehead ... things I grabbed fast because I've read them before... some of the reasons for my middle of the night wakings.

Misplaced Concreteness = Delusion
The habit of estimating things as worthless (such as ecological diversity) is potentially perilous because it often goes hand-in-hand with what the eminent philosopher Alfred North Whitehead termed the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. This fallacy involves thinking something is a 'concrete' reality when in fact it is merely a belief, opinion or concept about the way things are. And a false belief in something is a delusion - and delusions can be dangerous. Our society is riddled with deluded beliefs about the value and singular reality of the conventional wisdom (e.g. the dominant belief in the pursuit of economic growth), whilst at the same time it devalues alternatives ideas and ways of living.

Floccinaucinihilipilification
The longest non-technical word in the English language
Floccinaucinihilipilification is the act or habit of esteeming or describing something as worthless, or making something to be worthless by said means.

Next, leaping to my bail-out, no conclusion place (in a single bound), comes my cheerleading to read, read, read (preaching to the choir, I know) everything you can about whole systems, general semantics and epistemology. (Fritjof Capra, Alfred Korzybski, and Gregory Bateson are some of my favorites for research on-line and while sitting among the stacks in the public library) I guarantee them to be perspective-jogging subjects, albeit strenuous readings.

A little something to help you after...

Whole Systems
Ghost in the Machine
Institute of General Sematics
And finally from the stories of Alfred Korzybski, The Girl and the Match

Who's got the spare paddle?
*****************************
Absurb World reward: links for January 11, 2005:
Ex-Stasi Spy Chief Markus Wolf Hired By Homeland Security?

Targeting Teens for Troops

Breaking: Michael Chertoff to be New DHS Nominee

Hokay, this news is just breaking. A news conference is to be held at 10AM to announce Michael Chertoff as the new DHS nominee, after the Kerik debacle. We may have been better off with Bernie.

I'll update with more Chertoff info as discovered...add your own in the comments section.

Update, 10:55AM - here's an interesting one...apparently, Judge Chertoff represented a guy who had connections to one Mr. O. bin-Laden, and squelched an investigation into terrorist money laundering pre-9/11...

Developing...

Daily Iraq Update - The Election Nears

The insurgency is reeling.

And they even take pictures as they reel.





Note to wingnuts: keep believing it's just a few "dead enders".

From Deficient Brain:

These are a stills taken from a video supplied by an Iraqi insurgent group calling itself "Omar ibn Alkhatab brigade attached to the Islamic Anger Brigades" in Iraq, which the insurgents claim shows a stationary vehicle exploding as an American convoy passes on the northern outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq Monday Jan. 3, 2005. There was no confirmation of casualties from the U.S. military. The AP is unable to authenticate the image taken from this footage. (AP Photo/Via APTN)

And, from a Letter to the Editor printed today in the Madison, Wi. Capital Times:

Dear Editor:

The American media should be lauded for their massive coverage of the recent loss of untold numbers of human lives due to nature's wrath. What puzzles me and what should be puzzling to most people is the obvious disparity in their coverage of the number of Iraqi civilians who have died in the last 21 months.

Several weeks ago I happened upon a brief article tucked inside the pages of one of several newspapers I read daily. It noted that some experts have suggested that as many as 100,000 noncombatants - 40 percent of whom were women and children - not only were killed, but that the majority of these casualties resulted from air raids, cluster bombs and artillery from our own coalition.

Where is the outrage about these deaths? Why haven't members of the media spread this news across the front pages of our newspapers and across our TV screens? Are the lives of innocent Iraqis somehow of less value because we can justify their deaths by slapping a label on them?

Apparently the term "collateral damage," like a thick coat of paint, is able to cover a multitude of sins.

Patricia Mitchell, Mukwonago

...and this, from California:

SAN FRANCISCO - A slide in support for the war in Iraq has kept President Bush's overall job approval rating in California at just 42 percent, a new survey found.

The poll released Monday by the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University found that 60 percent of California adults disapprove of the president's handling of Iraq and do not believe that the war in Iraq was worth fighting. In September, just 54 percent said the war was not worth it...

Ok, then - where were these people before Nov. 2? Did they set their alarm clocks late?



Update, 9:30AM Lastly, via a comment on Eschaton, the chickens are indeed coming home to roost:

CERES — A United States Marine shot two police officers, one fatally, Sunday night. In a second gun battle three hours later, officers shot and killed the suspect...

...Three hours after the shooting, police shot and killed the suspect when they found him behind a nearby home. Police said Monday that the 19-year-old Modesto man, reported absent without leave from Camp Pendleton Saturday night, had served in Iraq and did not want to return.

Bring 'em on, indeed.

Memogate - Epilogue.....Well, Maybe

Quick, bury the beast before it rises!
CBS Ousts 4 For Bush Guard Story

Four CBS News employees, including three executives, have been ousted for their role in preparing and reporting a disputed story about President Bush’s National Guard service.

The action was prompted by the report of an independent panel that concluded that CBS News failed to follow basic journalistic principles in the preparation and reporting of the piece. The panel also said CBS News had compounded that failure with a “rigid and blind” defense of the 60 Minutes Wednesday report.

Hmmm, an independent panel, sounds good.

After a stubborn 12-day defense of the story, CBS News conceded that it could not confirm the authenticity of the documents and asked former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former Associated Press President Louis Boccardi to conduct an independent investigation into the matter.

Impartial? Independent? Waaaaiiiit a minute! Dick Thornburgh, wasn't he Poppy's Attorney General? Nothing like an old family friend to be impartial.

Well, so much for the independent, impartial investigation. That's the "official" story, here's another point of view:

CBS Memogate Report–An Insider’s Perspective By Paul Lukasiak

Okay, since I’m mentioned three times in the report (twice, inaccurately labelled a blogger), and I even played a peripheral role in the verification of the Killian memos, I guess I can call myself an “insider” to some small degree.

(I’m Paul Lukasiak, and my website is called The AWOL Project. It’s at http://www.glcq.com. As the report correctly notes, when CBS wanted to find more Killian signatures in the publicly released documents, they came to me–and although I didn’t know why I was being asked at the time, I was asked a number of questions pertaining to the consistency of the memos with the rest of the documents.)

And from the facts of which I’m aware, the Memogate Report can be described in one word.

Bullshit.

Hmmmm, I don't think Paul is buying the "official" story. Go finish reading his piece, he tears apart some of the conclusions reached by the panel. It's not a complete report, but I'm betting he completes his take down of the "official" version.

Lastly, here is this piece by the Columbia Journalism Review analysing "Memogate" reporting. Blog-Gate Yes, CBS screwed up badly in ‘Memogate’ — but so did those who covered the affair.

Bloggers have claimed the attack on CBS News as their Boston Tea Party, a triumph of the democratic rabble over the lazy elites of the MSM (that’s mainstream media to you). But on close examination the scene looks less like a victory for democracy than a case of mob rule. On September 8, just weeks before the presidential election, 60 Minutes II ran a story about how George W. Bush got preferential treatment as he glided through his time in the Texas Air National Guard. The story was anchored on four memos that, it turns out, were of unknown origin. By the time you read this, the independent commission hired by the network to examine the affair may have released its report, and heads may be rolling. Dan Rather and company stand accused of undue haste, carelessness, excessive credulity, and, in some minds, partisanship, in what has become known as “Memogate.”

But CBS’s critics are guilty of many of the very same sins. First, much of the bloggers’ vaunted fact-checking was seriously warped. Their driving assumptions were often drawn from flawed information or based on faulty logic. Personal attacks passed for analysis. Second, and worse, the reviled MSM often followed the bloggers’ lead. As mainstream media critics of CBS piled on, rumors shaped the news and conventions of sourcing and skepticism fell by the wayside. Dan Rather is not alone on this one; respected journalists made mistakes all around.

Is this story dead, or is there still some life there?

Get Your Death Squads Here

OK, the Blogosphere has been hot on the subject, but I can hardly bring myself to address it, perhaps because of some dead nuns. I'm not Catholic, and I'm not even especially religious, but it offends me that our country had a part in arming the El Salvador Death Squads that killed those nuns. Two of them were Maryknoll nuns, members of the order that runs the University of Notre Dame. At the time I was dating a Notre Dame weekend. I'd just visited during that season of death in El Salvador, attended a basketball game and even danced with Digger Phelps' wife.

On December 2, 1980, members of the National Guard of El Salvador intercepted the van carrying four American churchwomen as they were leaving the international airport in San Salvador. Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clark, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, and lay missioner Jean Donovan were taken to an isolated spot where they were shot dead at close range.

We should never forget that our government taught these folks their tactics, and it is some of the same members of our government who are suggesting that we start the same Death Squad Strategy in Iraq. John Negroponte was involved with our Central America policy back then.

Yo, Richard! You got more Yuengling? I gotta get this taste out of my mouth!

Carl Hiaasen Does Not Write Fiction

I keep telling this to folks, but they don't believe it. Florida is corrupt in so many ways that pulling off a coup is to be expected rather than a surprise. No, it would not be a surprise to find that a hermit played a large role, or that some issue revolved around albino voles. Carl Hiaasen does not write fiction.

This time the corruption involves Buddy Dyer, Mayor of Orlando, but the guy in question, who has given testimony under immunity, worked for tons of others, including current Senator Mel Martinez. Yeah, that Mel Martinexz the Bushies loved so much, that Mel Martinez who made his fortune in civil litigation, at the same time they tried to make hay concerning John Edwards' litigation history.

The case is about absentee ballot gathering, a practice that was so rife with dcorruption that the state banned the practice a few years ago. Seems likely that several politicains are going to be named after Ezzie Thomas, the "ballot king's," testimony comes forward.

The investigation began with questions about the 2004 election that kept Buddy Dyer in the Orlando mayor's office, but has since widened with Thomas' testimony to include other politicians.

The allegations center on Thomas, a retired businessman who for years has tried to increase voting in Orlando's black community. Thomas' election work, which often involved helping elderly residents vote by absentee ballot, was at first on a strictly volunteer basis as president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Orange County Voters League.

But in 1998, Thomas began profiting from his expertise at bringing in scores of absentee votes by hiring himself out to political campaigns looking for an edge on Election Day.

He has said he works only for candidates whom he supports. That has mostly been Democrats, but he also has worked for Republicans, including Glenda Hood -- mayor of Orlando at the time but now responsible for ensuring the integrity of Florida elections as Florida secretary of state.

On Friday, Mosley verified that Thomas' statement to prosecutors -- given with the promise of immunity -- concerned ballot-collection work for Martinez when he ran for county chairman in 1998, Hood's 2000 mayoral campaign, Siplin's and Apte's campaigns in 2002, and Dyer's mayoral campaigns in 2003 and 2004.

Equal opportunity corruption on both sides of the aisle, but it is interesting that one of the Republicans Thomas helped is the current person in charge of the vote counting in Florida, Glenda Hood, and the other is the newest Senator there, Mel Martinez. Martinez, at least, is a rising Republican star, if he escapes this with only a tinge of scandal.

Which he likely will. Carl Hiaasen, after all, does not write fiction. Loony corruption is what Florida is all about.

A Perfect Waste of Good Beer

The inside of my nose smells like Yuengling Lager right now. It was halfway down and came back up the wrong way when I read this:

...Testimony got under way Monday after opening statements in which [Spc. Charles] Graner’s military attorney, Guy Womack, defended the practices shown in the notorious [Abu Ghraib] photos as legitimate prisoner control techniques. Prosecutors also showed video previously not made public of a group of detainees being forced to masturbate...

In his opening arguments, Womack said using a tether was a valid method of controlling detainees, especially those who might be soiled with feces.

“You’re keeping control of them. A tether is a valid control to be used in corrections,” he said. “In Texas we’d lasso them and drag them out of there.” He compared the leash to parents who place tethers on their toddlers while walking in shopping malls.

Referring to stacking the prisoners, Womack said: "Don't cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year? Is that torture?"

We know about the glowsticks, but where'd they stick the pom poms? The "Cheerleader Defense". Now that's original. I'm sure Hannity and OxyMan are all over it.

Update: Here's another even more enraging report on this soulless bastard.

Dahr Jamail - The Rest of the Story

Dahr Jamail has two great columns out today. If you're unfamiliar with Jamail's background, here's a link to what amounts to his autobiography. Shorter Jamail - he's an independent American journalist doing the work that corporate media journalists in Iraq are supposed to be doing: telling the real story.

The first of Jamail's columns is published today on tomdispatch.com - and a great window it is to understand what's truly happening beyond the reach of the spin masters. It's crazy how there's been a concious effort by the U.S. propaganda machine to hide the real news from the U.S. and Iraqi citizens. But, as the old saying goes, information yearns to be free. So here's a paragraph - at no charge!

Yet among Iraqis the growing resistance was predicted long ago. One telling moment for me came last June amid daily suicide car bombings in Baghdad. While footage of cars with broken glass and bullet holes in their frames flashed across a television screen, my translator Hamid, an older man who had already grown weary of the violence, said softly, "It has begun. These are only the start, and they will not stop. Even after June 30." That, of course, was the date of the long-promised handover of "sovereignty" to a new Iraqi government, after which, American officials fervently predicted, violence in the country would begin to subside. The same pattern of prediction and of a contrarian reality can now be seen in relation to the upcoming elections.

You owe it to yourself to read the entire article, as well as this one today from Znet. Remember that last week, the governor of Baghdad province was gunned down? The MSM characterized his assassination with as much ho-hum as a crack dealer being shot in South Central LA. The assassination rated two short paragraphs in the "liberal" San Francisco Chronicle.

Jamail fills in the blanks:

...But the details on the killing of the governor from an eyewitness escaped the news. The convoy was hit by a well coordinated attack. There were two groups of fighters who manned cigarette stands which line the streets of Baghdad, awaiting the governor. In addition, there were gunmen on the tops of nearby shops…the convoy was attacked, and the governors car escaped…only to be chased down by a car full of gunmen who finished the job. The only civilians who were shot were hit by the random firing from the governor’s guards...

And this about Fallujah, where apparently a complete and total news blackout is in effect. Remember, this is a city the size of Austin, Texas that was literally wiped off the face of the earth:

The demolition of Fallujah continues. Two of my sources inside the city, who live in different neighborhoods, report that the military is now burning homes. Apparently, they are finding booby traps, so they are piling furniture up in the homes, dousing it with fuel, and burning it...

Dahr Jamail is an independent American doing the job that the mainstream media should have been doing all along. That the few of us who read Jamail's dispatches have to rely on a few brave souls like him to understand the reality of Iraq rather than the "Neverland" scenario spun by the MSM, tells you how far the MSM has been assimilated into the propaganda machine.

For the life of me, I still don't know why a government agency had to pay Armstrong Williams a quarter million dollars to get a bullshit message out. There's plenty of media whores who would / were / are doing it for table scraps in the Green Zone.

Who's Going to Conduct Iraq Elections?

Who's actually doing the planning for this election thing in Iraq?

Is anyone actually out in the field? It's looking like the only people with any sense at all are the ones who are actually scheduled to be working the polls.

I'm incredulous that both the U.S. and Iraqi governments continue to play this farcical charade. Goddammit, there's a disaster in the making because of the absolute bullheadedness of both Bush and Allawi. A lot of people are going to die on the January 30th - and in the weeks prior to the charade.

It's like watching a train wreck in slo-mo. We can see it coming, yet we're absolutely powerless to stop it.

Electoral panel resigns in force after threats:

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In another significant blow to Iraq's upcoming elections, the entire 13-member electoral commission in the volatile province of Anbar, west of the capital, resigned after being threatened by insurgents, a regional newspaper reported Sunday.

Saad Abdul-Aziz Rawi, the head of the commission, told the newspaper that it was 'impossible to hold elections' in the Sunni-dominated province, where insurgent attacks have prevented voter registration. The restive cities of Fallujah and Ramadi are located in the province.

An Iraqi interviewed at the commission's office said the members had resigned and had gone into hiding.

Unless something's changed since December, it also appears that any foreign observers of this sham election will be "observing" from Jordan, because it's too dangerous to actually observe in Iraq. That would be like observing U.S. elections from, say, Mexico.

Wait.

Wasn't the U.S. election supposed to have some international observers? Whatever happened with those guys? Were they reviewing polling irregularities over margaritas in Cozumel?

Update, 11:40AM: Michael Hawkins also picks up on the observers scam at Spontaneous Arising.

Finalizing the Coup

Well, without any fanfare, Congress has passed "Doomsday" legislation.

Congress passes `doomsday' plan

"I think (the new rule) is terrible in a whole host of ways - first, I think it's unconstitutional," said Norm Ornstein, a counselor to the independent Continuity of Government Commission, a bipartisan panel created to study the issue. "It's a very foolish thing to do, I believe, and the way in which it was done was more foolish."

But supporters say the rule provides a stopgap measure to allow the government to continue functioning at a time of national crisis.

GOP House leaders pushed the provision as part of a larger rules package that drew attention instead for its proposed ethics changes, most of which were dropped.
...
Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), one of few lawmakers active on the issue, argued the rule change contradicts the U.S. Constitution, which states that "a majority of each (House) shall constitute a quorum to do business.

"Changing what constitutes a quorum in this way would allow less than a dozen lawmakers to declare war on another nation," Baird said.

So when people were squaking about the "ethics changes" legislation, WHY wasn't this brought up? And who do you think will be the last 12 standing? Hmmmmmm?

Suicide Bombers

Here's what I don't understand.

If Rumsfeld's "dead enders" in Iraq are truly on their "last legs", and the "insurgency is reeling", where the hell do they keep digging up these guys that want to martyr themselves at a pace of 3 to 5 per day? I mean, I wouldn't think it would be easy to find a lot of people willing to strap a couple of pounds of RDX to their chest or sit in the driver's seat and push the button that ignites a trunk full of the stuff. It's a life-altering decision if you think about it.

Apparently, there's a lot of dead enders in Iraq looking for work, whatever the risk.

Suicide car bombing in Baghdad kills four police officers

Bad Moon Rising...

Total Eclipse of the Son
Much has been made of George being a born again Christian. His photographers have gone to great lengths to photograph him so his head is "haloed" by a glow, or ring of lights. These images are pre-planned, much like the photographs you see in magazines, cookbooks, or on cereal boxes. They are designed to sell a product. So with creative photography, a few assertions of being "born-again", and his massive effort to undermine the separation of church and state, the idea of George being a "very religious man" has wedged it's way into the minds of many, many Americans.

But what do we really know about George's religion? Not much really. Do we need to know about his religion? Ordinarily, I'd say no, that a POTUS has as much right to his religion and privacy surrounding it as everybody else. These are not ordinary times, and his comingling church and state should bring much more scrutiny and oversight than it has.

So what has George been doing? Why, he's been supporting the "Tear Down the Cross" movement. Most people who have been paying attention to the religious movements have been focusing attention on the fundamentalists and dominionist movements and talk of "The Rapture". Congresscritters like Santorum, Delay and Brownback provide excellent soundbite material for poking fun and elevating outrage. Do they provide more smoke and mirrors designed to distract us?

What is rarely talked about or covered in the MSM, or even in most alternative media is the long, enduring relationship between the 2 presidents Bush and the Rev. Moon. Isn't it time we started seriously looking at this relationship? Being a Christian, who supposedly believes in Jesus, why would Dubya support a movement to replace Jesus with Rev. Moon?
For more background on Rev. Moon:

• Wikipedia entry - Sun Myung Moon
  
• Consortium News - Dark Side of Rev. Moon
  
• Rev. Moon, the Bushes & Donald Rumsfeld
  
• Where in Washington, D.C. is Sun Myung Moon?