Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Looks like the USA Today did a nice little favor for the administration today. Check the headline: Attacks down 22% since Saddam's capture

I thought that sounded a bit odd when I read it, b/c wasn't everyone in agreement a couple of weeks ago that the capture of Saddam hadn't made our troops and the people of Iraq any safer? Wow, looky that, prominently placed, just below the fold of the cover - nishe.

Well, as Greg Palast always recommends, I decided to read the fine print. First, I check the percentage. Check. 22% is correct. Let's call it minus twenty-two percent, or -22%, for short, since it does indicate a dropoff in attacks. The dropoff is from 23 attacks per day to 18 per day. Good job USAT. Next, let's look at the important numbers.

During the same periods, U.S. combat injuries dropped only slightly, from 233 in the four weeks before Saddam's capture to 224 in the four weeks after.

Wow. If we do a percentage based on the number of injured troops, our percentage is not -22%, but -4%. Let's do some more lookin.

And the attacks remain deadly: 22 troops killed from Nov. 16 through Dec. 13 and 31 in the comparable period Dec. 14- Jan. 10.

Wow, again. Number of deaths - that's probably a fairly important stat. Instead of -22%, that's....+41%!

Just a little friendly reminder to help you see the importance of owning your own one-of-the-most-widely-distributed-newspapers-in-the-world. Let's face it, USAT is no Yomiuri Shimbun (circulation 14 Million), but it's not too shabby (5.6 Million).

Cato finding a voice?

I'm shocked yet again by the folks over at Cato. Kos has helpfully pointed out a screed by the once-GOP-loyalist-Cato Institute that just torches the Bush Administration. Now, please tell me, how does a true Republican defend this little ditty?

But the fact is we have mounting deficits because George W. Bush is the most gratuitous big spender to occupy the White House since Jimmy Carter. One could say that he has become the "Mother of All Big Spenders."

Niiiice.

Back to Covered Wagon!

Oh, that Drudge. He is a bit of a gangster, but he's entertaining, and he's right wing, and he actually publishes some headlines that are anti-right wing. That is unbelievable to me! Would you expect to see an anti-right wing headline on Rush's website? Anyway, I also like Drudge because he believes in civil liberties - you know, privacy and all that junk.

On that whole civil liberties thing, Drudge tonight is talking about the implementation of the CAPPS 2 system (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II). Referencing a Washington Post article, Drudge is not liking the idea of being colored a green, or a yellow, or a red. It's all scary stuff. So Drudge is thinking about his alternatives to flying and starts to exhort, 'Back to Covered Wagon!'. I love it! He was talking about setting out for the West coast (Go West young man!)in April and arriving sometime in August. Soooo great! Can you imagine? A right-winger and left-winger completely agree on a topic? It's almost too much to handle.

Man, I so wish Amtrak wasn't so incredibly inept! I think there may be a real business opportunity here. I'm talking about express bus service on some popular plane routes. You know - DC to Boston express - no anal probes! And no stopping at every East coast redneck town north of the Mason Dixon!

My favorite quote on the topic of airline security and the perfunctory pre-boarding festivities is from the ever-combative Jim Bovard. I don't have the exact quote but I can get pretty close. In response to an audience member's question about his rights when dealing with those dingleberry airport security personnel, Bovard had this to say:

Rights? You have the right not to fly.

And there you have it ladies and germs. I couldn't agree more.

Clark, the anti-war candidate?

I recently read a post on Joshua Marshall's blog, Talking Points Memo, that got my back up. I thought he made at least one statement that was inaccurate about both Howard Dean and Wesley Clark. Marshall sourced an AP article that talked about Dean's 'attack flyers' against Clark. Dean responded as follows:

If the fliers said that General Clark was originally for the war and now is against it, that's accurate...

To this, Marshall says:

I hesitate to call it a lie because I don't know if Dean knows it's false, though he should.

The falsity of the claim is well-known to anyone who closely followed the debate over Iraq in the lead-up to the war and particularly Clark's role in that debate.

Well, I thought I followed the pre-Iraq debate fairly closely, and there was a time when I would have said, yeah, Clark is anti-war - that is, he was against the Iraq War, but I wouldn't say that anymore (see details below).

Now, there's the debate about whether Clark is actually anti-Iraq War, and then there's the time-wasting task of analyzing whether or not Clark, or any of the candidates for that matter, is just plain 'ol 'anti-war' - as in the 60's sense of the term - meaning, someone who opposes every war all the time, without exception. So, I take Marshall to task on whether Clark was (or is) anti-Iraq War, but it seems like Marshall is somehow hung up the impropriety of Dean's folks calling-out Clark's folks' claim that Clark is anti-war, when in fact Clark is not actually anti-war, he is/was merely anti-Iraq War. At least, this is what I think Joshua is getting at because, honestly, I don't understand all of his post. If you can figure out the passage below, please drop me a line - I don't have my PhD yet, so you'll just have to bear with me until then - count on, oh, 2030 or so.

There's a lot of foolishness being peddled to the effect that Clark is claiming he's an "anti-war" candidate when he's not. (This is the upshot of the flyers Dean campaign workers are distributing at Clark rallies.) This is a very loaded term. One can believe this whole enterprise was badly misconceived and handled even worse and not have that sentiment diminished by not singing folk songs.

So, is Clark anti-war? No. Is Dean anti-war? No. Is Kucinich anti-war? Maybe. Is anyone else anti-war? Probably not. Great. Glad we solved that. The point of this little exercise is that nobody is trying to push Clark as a purely anti-war guy, and nobody is claiming that Clark claims he himself is anti-war. Great, glad we solved that. Now, is/was Clark anti-Iraq War? A simple yes or no would be ideal, but I'll even accept caveats at this point.

A few weeks ago I read an interesting, and ultimately depressing, article on General Clark. I actually liked the guy, and still like him, I just like him a lot less now. The article details Clark's seemingly-wavering position on the War in Iraq. Of course, Clark is now known as one of the major 'anti-war' candidates - right behind Dean (both, actually, right behind Kucinich in terms of the strength of their anti-war stance).

The FAIR organization is one I'd heard about before, and I was honestly disappointed, in a way, that they did an exposé on one of my candidates. Well, as they say, though the heavens fall. It seems to me a 'fair' article. I actually went through the article, line by line, and pulled out every reference to every quote/clip and found them reproduced in many other publications around the Net - national and international sources - at least some of which could be called 'well-respected'. It's tight - I believe it.

Among the statements that Clark made that show he wavered on the issue of the War on Iraq, depending on how well things were going for the troops over there, follows. Neither quote says "Yes! Attack! Attack!", but they certainly say, "Yes. Attack."

• The credibility of the United States is on the line, and Saddam Hussein has these weapons and so, you know, we're going to go ahead and do this and the rest of the world's got to get with us....




• I probably wouldn't have made the moves that got us to this point. But just assuming that we're here at this point, then I think that the president is going to have to move ahead, despite the fact that the allies have reservations.

Now, probably the scariest quote from Clark came from an article he wrote for The London Times. Here you can really see the pride that Clark takes in the U.S. military and its power to conquer. I don't have too much of a problem with this, in and of itself, but Clark wrote this article on 4/11/03 - just after the fall of baghdad - just after America took on a defenseless, sovereign nation and blasted it back into the stone age, killing thousands of innocents - collateral damage as it were:

The campaign in Iraq illustrates the continuing progress of military technology and tactics, but if there is a single overriding lesson it must be this: American military power, especially when buttressed by Britain's, is virtually unchallengeable today. Take us on? Don't try! And that's not hubris, it's just plain fact.

I'll go ahead and say it - this quote is Hitler-esque. This guy is scary. He must've been feeling 'the power' when he wrote this article, and that scares me. George W. Bush certainly felt 'the power'. Yes, the U.S. military is God-like in its power - we can decimate at will, and we have, and if Bush or Clark get to office I'm afraid we will again.

That's why I changed my mind about Clark. He seems like a fairly upstanding guy, but he's too militaristic - doesn't value human life enough for my likes.

(John) Buchanan for President!

It seems George W. Bush has a competitor for the nomination of the Republican Party - John Buchanan. Buchanan gained some notoriety when he published an expose on how the grandfather and great-grandfather of President George W. Bush helped finance the rise of the Nazi regimes. If you've heard about this - it's actually not a joke - it's actually true, and actually scary, but not too surprising if you've been tuned into the truth about the Bush family.



New Hampshire has their primary coming up soon and John Buchanan is running for the Republican nomination. I can't imagine how much better the world would be if we had John Buchanan, a real Republican, in office. Among his other campaign pledges, Buchanan has promised to get to the bottom of 9/11 - no more stonewalling by Bush and his cronies. I gave Buchanan $10 for his campaign. Why not? If I had a choice for my next President to be locked-into John Buchanan right now, or to have a chance to run against Dubya in the Fall, I'd take Buchanan right now - hands down. Check out his website.

Boondocks on Mad Cow Disease

I'm not overly surprised that more people don't know about Boondocks yet because I haven't read a comic strip in, oh, ever. Well, almost. But I saw the Boondocks book in a bookstore here in DC and cracked it open - it was really good! But with that, it's kind of right up my alley - it makes fun of Bush, and it's very 'hip-hop' - or maybe I just think that because the comic seems to consist of mainly black characters - two kids and their grandpa, who is their primary caregiver. The older kid is an intellectual along the lines of Malcolm X and his little brother, while also intelligent, is more concerned with being respected as a thug/original gangsta/etc. Check out this one I just ran across:





I'm gonna venture that this is the main site for Boondocks.

I am Moopheus, and I know a lot about you...

Someone put a lot of work into this flash animation, The Meatrix, that talks about the horrific treatment of farm animals - of course, it's a spoof of The Matrix. I'm not quite a militant fruitarian, but I do believe in animal rights - to a certain extent. I can't say I care about independent farmers vs. big corporations, but I think it's pretty sad that I force myself to stay ignorant about these horrific animal farm stories so I can still enjoy a chicken sandwich when I want one. Everyone has their own level of hypocrisy, I guess...

Who loves ya? ME loves ya!

This flash animation comparing George W. Bush and the Right Wing to Gollum and the Ring from Lord of the Rings. You *have* to listen to the soundtrack after the animation looks like it's over. Too funny.

It's the ring ring, and the bling bling, and the power thing, and the right wing.

Why you (not) frontin'?

It's a well-known conspiracy theory that Karl Rove can pull a headline out of his *ss whenever he needs one in order to offset any really bad news that might take the cover story of the next day's papers. Negative press about the war in Iraq, for instance, is major cause for concern, as is any announcement about any of the ongoing investigations of wrongdoing in the Administration (e.g. Plamegate). Yesterday I theorized that Rover would successfully bury the Helicopter crash and the Carnegie Report that concludes that Bush lied us into war. It seems that, in general, I was wrong? Not good. Well, I guess it might depend on your political stance, but decide for yourself.



The context is this - two potential lead articles for the next day's papers, both of which, by themselves, are devastating articles for the current Administration, but together, could actually wound - could actually make the press corps ask a couple of questions. From a previous post - the headlines are: 1) Copter crash in Iraq kills 9, and 2) Report: No WMD in Iraq. Now, given the importance of current U.S. foreign policy, I would think each of these headlines is massively important - but let's examine the implications of each, in turn:



1) The copter crash shows the escalating nature of the insurgency in Iraq. It is a severe indictment of post-war planning, or lack thereof. The cost of the occupation of Iraq is skyrocketing, and it's hitting American taxpayers in the pocketbook - whether they feel it just yet or not. The situation in Iraq is perilous, and getting moreso every day, it seems. The U.S. and British militaries have already promised to be there for years - the U.S. already making plans to establish long-term military bases there, a la Saudi Arabia. But how much will the occupation continue to cost U.S. taxpayers? How many more innocent Iraqi civilians have to suffer and/or die because of the occupation? How many more U.S. soldiers will be killed in what has become known outside the U.S. as an illegal war of aggression - either for oil or against Muslims?



2) The Carnegie Report concluding that no WMD existed in Iraq prior to the invasion is a devastating indictment of our our intelligence-gathering services, our Administration, or both. Are the intelligence services (e.g. CIA) competent? Was the Administration duplicitous in their bold and sure statements about the existence of Iraq's WMD? The only way the Administration has been able to avoid serious scandal is by owning the major media outlets and by owning both houses of Congress, but these facts don't make this report any less damning. Will the intelligence services be held accountable for their mistakes? Will there be major restructing? Firings? And how about the Administration - will they be held to account for their mendacity? Will there be firings? How about Cheney's covert pipestoving intelligence-gathering and influence-peddling operation inside the Pentagon and at Langley? Will he be held to account for greatly diminishing the profile of once-credible U.S. intelligence? What does such a bleak report on America's intelligence services say about our policy of pre-emptive or limited war? In other words, without reliable intelligence, how can we invade sovereign countries based on perceived threats? And what about that shaky policy of pre-emption? Will it stand the test of time? It's been proven a horrendous failure, yet it is still pimped by the current Administration. Will it be modified in any way, killed outright, or will intelligence-gathering become obsoleted - subservient to the political will of the serving President and his henchmen?



So, in short, I think these articles deserver front-page headlines today, and follow-on headlines every day hereafter until we get to the bottom of all of these issues. Foreign policy is the number one issue heading into the next presidential election - this stuff should be front and center every day.



In doing some research on this topic, I found what seems to be a list of the 'five national newspapers'. They are, in no particular order: The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. Slate.com does a daily today's papers feature with a rundown with what each of these nationals is running, and where. It can be semi-informative on the nature of the editorial reigns at each of these important publications, and is usually accompanied by a catchy article title - e.g. in reference FDA's surprise decision to continue the ban on use of silicone breat implants, just a few weeks after an internal FDA advisory group said they were safe: 'Silicone Volley'.



At the bottom of this Slate.com feature is a glossary of terms used in the text that are apparently industry terms. It's informative, and useful if you want to talk about information placement.



Here are the ways these above-mentioned articles were covered on each of the papers' front pages, respectively, to the best of my knowlege:



Below I've ranked the coverage of these two major stories in each of the five majors. A grade of 'A' represents, in my opinion, the perfectly fair coverage - no more, no less.

Paper	Grade	Details
USA Today	C-	lead story is the FDA rejection of silicone implants - which I have to admit - is worthy, but above the fold (on the front page) is the Mars stuff - with a massive visual, with significant space dedicated to the copter crash below the fold. No mention of Carnegie Report.
LA Times	B	leads with the copter crash; no mention of Carnegie Report.
The Washington Post	C	stuffs the copter crash down into a tiny box at the bottom right-hand corner of the front page - but provides a picture; no mention of Carnegie Report.
The Wall Street Journal	C	how can anyone tell what the lead story is in this paper? - mentions the copter crash in a fairly prominent position near the top; no mention of Carnegie Report.
The New York Times	N/A	N/A

Those cover pages I did find were at Newseum.org - I can actually get pretty ready access to print editions of all these 5 majors, and should have - will next time for sure!



So, there's seems to be sporadic mention of the Carnegie Report on Iraq - most of the articles that I've found on the net that mention the Report are more concerned with Powell's assertion, like that of Bush's a couple of months ago, that there was no direct evidence linking Iraq and Al Qaeda, despite all the rhetoric. The headlines run something like 'Powell refutes report', or 'Powell says no link'. Powell maintained, of course, that the invasion was necessary.



The first associated press article I read yesterday of the helicopter crash that killed nine GI's was titled something like 'Helicopter forced to make emergency landing. 9 Dead'. Now, you tell me what's wrong with this. I guess eventually the folks at the AP saw the ridiculousness of the title and changed it to something about a 'crash'.

Timing is Everything

Check out the following stories that could be headlines tomorrow if Rove didn't own the media:

Copter crash in Iraq kills 9
Report: No WMD in Iraq

Double ouch. On the same day. That is NOT good news for Bush. More helicopters down, and MORE evidence that Bush lied us into war and is indirectly responsible for the deaths of 9 more American soldiers?? NOT GOOD.

But wait! Rove found a headline to take the primary headline tomorrow! I told you not to think the ridiculous meter was near the top yet. Check out the headline in tomorrow's newspapers:

Bush to Unveil Mars Mission

I'm not joking.

And not to pat myself on the back for prescience, but how good was my previous post on think tank reports never seeing the light of day?

Denial is not a river in Africa

In a story titled 'Powell Refutes Think-Tank Report on Iraq', he says:

"In terms of intention (to produce WMD), he (Saddam) always had it," Powell said. Of Carnegie's finding that Iraq posed no imminent threat, Powell said: "They (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) did not say it (the imminent threat) wasn't there."

Ummm, actually, sir, they did - in the very first 'key finding' of the report:

Iraq’s WMD programs represented a long-term threat that could not
be ignored. They did not, however, pose an immediate threat to the
United States, to the region, or to global security.

Well done, Powell. You've disgraced yourself, your family, and your country. You were not only complicit in the illegal invasion of Iraq, you were an active participant. Bravo.

Powell reminds me of a quote by George Bernard Shaw:
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

What will his memoirs say?

Those Loser Border Guards

Having crossed the Canadian/U.S. border several times before and after 9/11, I've had the pleasure of many run-ins with the border guards - both U.S. and Canadian - who seem to take triumphant joy in humiliating and badgering all who dare to cross into their land. It's as outrageous as these 'guards' are pathetic. I ran across a good story that I would say is fairly typical.

Shoot, I remember one time I didn't think I was going to get back into the U.S. - and I'm a citizen! So, enjoy the reading. So happy that Brazil started badgering entering U.S. passengers. Hopefully the whole world will soon have to put up with loser border guards until someone of true power gets strip-searched, and things finally change. That will happen - it's just a matter of time - so let's hope it's some stodgy, old, rich, white guy from the Bush Administration who gets strip-searched and is revealed to be wearing women's panties. Doh! :D

UN-'Think'able?

Yes, very punny, I agree.

I'm curious how think tank employees/experts live their lives knowing that all their research might never see the light of day. I love the idea of a bunch of intellectuals getting together to try to make the world a better place by closely collaborating and attempting to form a consensus of ideas that will benefit all mankind, regardless of one's particular political stance, but the thought of all my work not being used by anyone - tough. Maybe this think tank stuff is not for me. It would be great, for a while, to sit around all day and read blogs and books and pat myself and my colleagues on the back for knowing the answers to all the world's problems, but I think that would only last so long - because we'd be watching the world accelerate towards disaster. Hmmm...

This story in the Financial Times and a similar one in the Washington Post comment on a report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The report once again talks about the politicization of the intelligence process and goes on to call for a full study of the effectiveness of the UN inspections process.

I haven't read the full text yet, but let's take a quick look at the summary as I'm curious if there will actually be any new/useful info in this report. I've been curious about this CEIP organization as I like the name, I cruise by the nice building it owns in the Dupont area of DC about once a week, and found it mildly interesting that it is located directly next to the Brookings Institution - another left-of-center think tank.

Key findings of the report follow. Hold on your hat. Check out this link for access to the full report.

• Iraq’s WMD programs represented a long-term threat that could not be ignored. They did not, however, pose an immediate threat to the United States, to the region, or to global security.



• With respect to nuclear and chemical weapons, the extent of the
  threat was largely knowable at the time.



• The uncertainties were much greater with regard to biological weapons.



• The missile program appears to have been the one program in active
  development in 2002.



• It is unlikely that Iraq could have destroyed, hidden, or sent out of the
  country the hundreds of tons of chemical and biological weapons,
  dozens of Scud missiles and facilities engaged in the ongoing production
  of chemical and biological weapons that officials claimed
  were present without the United States detecting some sign of this activity
  before, during, or after the major combat period of the war.



• How much radioactive and biological material have been lost and
  whether they have fallen into the wrong hands remain crucial unknowns.



• Prior to 2002, the intelligence community appears to have overestimated
  the chemical and biological weapons in Iraq but had a generally
  accurate picture of the nuclear and missile programs.



• The dramatic shift between prior intelligence assessments and the October
  2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), together with the creation of
  an independent intelligence entity at the Pentagon and other steps, suggest
  that the intelligence community began to be unduly influenced by
  policymakers’ views sometime in 2002.



• There was and is no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between
  Saddam’s government and Al Qaeda.



• There was no evidence to support the claim that Iraq would have transferred
  WMD to Al Qaeda and much evidence to counter it.



• The notion that any government would give its principal security assets to
  people it could not control in order to achieve its own political aims is
  highly dubious.



• Today, the most likely source of a nuclear terrorist threat would be
  from theft or purchase of fissile material or tactical nuclear weapons
  from poorly guarded stockpiles in Russia and other former Soviet
  states, including Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. The security
  of Pakistan’s nuclear assets, including technology and know how, is
  also a major concern.



• Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from
  Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile programs, beyond the intelligence
  failures noted above, by:
   Treating nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as a single “WMD threat.”
  The conflation of three distinct threats, very different in the danger they pose,
  distorted the cost/benefit analysis of the war. (p. 52)
   Insisting without evidence—yet treating as a given truth—that Saddam
  Hussein would give whatever WMD he possessed to terrorists. (p. 52)
   Routinely dropping caveats, probabilities, and expressions of uncertainty present
  in intelligence assessments from public statements. (p. 53)
   Misrepresenting inspectors’ findings in ways that turned threats from minor to
  dire.
  While worst case planning is valid and vital, acting on worst case assumptions
  is neither safe nor wise.



• The assertion that the threat that became visible on 9/11 invalidated
  deterrence against states does not stand up to close scrutiny.



• Saddam’s responses to international pressure and international weakness
  from the 1991 war onward show that while unpredictable he was not
  undeterrable.



• The UN inspection process appears to have been much more successful than
  recognized before the war.



• In addition to inspections, a combination of international constraints—
  sanctions, procurement investigations, and the export/import control
  mechanism—also appears to have been considerably more effective
  than was thought.



• The knowledge, prior experience in Iraq, relationships with Iraqi scientists
  and officials, and credibility of UNMOVIC experts represent a vital resource
  that has been ignored when it should be being fully exploited.



• To reconstruct an accurate history of Iraq’s WMD programs, the data
  from the seven years of UNSCOM/IAEA inspections are absolutely
  essential.



• Considering all the costs and benefits, there were at least two options
  clearly preferable to a war undertaken without international support:
  allowing the UNMOVIC/IAEA inspections to continue until obstructed
  or completed, or imposing a tougher program of “coercive inspections” backed by
  a specially designed international force.



• Even a war successful on other counts could leave behind three significant
  WMD threats: lost material, “loose” scientists, and the message that
  only nuclear weapons could protect a state from foreign invasion.



• The National Security Strategy’s new doctrine of preemptive military action
  is actually a loose standard for preventive war under the cloak of
  legitimate preemption.



• In the Iraqi case, the world’s three best intelligence services proved unable
  to provide the accurate information necessary for acting in the
  absence of imminent threat.

Well, it seems like a lot of the same to me, but I did notice that 'preventive war' thing again. Maybe the term is finally about to make its way into the mainstream. Is it scary to anyone else that the public is becoming more educated in military concepts like 'preventive war' and 'preemptive military action' than, say, 'conflict resolution'?

Costs Mounting From Terrorism Alert

A couple of days ago I referenced some news material that talked about the costs associated with the radical U.S. Foreign Policy and the consequences of a never-ending War on Terror. I was alarmed when I saw that an oil shipping port (or similar) had been temporarily closed in Alaska due to some terror 'chatter'. I don't know much about the oil/shipping/refining/distribution business, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that costs associated with shutting down *any* operation for a day or so is going to cost a lot of money. I figured the delay of planes might not be too costly because mostly planes were just sitting on the runway and the overhead of running an airport had to be dealt with regardless of whether planes landed on time.

Here's a snapshot of some of the figures being thrown around:

The overtime bill for New Orleans police the week of the Sugar Bowl — where federal officials had specific worries — could reach $300,000. Protection for Las Vegas celebrations rang up more than $400,000 in bills.

"We've always heard freedom isn't free. No kidding," said Jerry Bussell, Nevada's homeland security adviser.

Some smaller cities, too, said stepped-up security would hit their bottom lines. Portland, Maine, spends $5,000 a week for each alert, said Police Chief Michael Chitwood.

The AP article has some other pretty scare quotes, from a civil liberties point of view. George Foresman, Virginia's special deputy for preparedness, talks about the normalization of security procedures.

"As a nation, we're developing a good battlefield tempo," Foresman said. "We've taken the time, we've done deliberate planning, we've done training. ... We call it the new normalcy."

Ladies and germs, welcome to the West Bank.

the cheating culture

I thought this new book was about ethics, etc. - do the conservatives care about the same things the liberals do? If so, then strengthen law enforcement, etc.

FOW !!!

Don't even front. I mentioned previously that I was excited about this flick - and it delivered on my expectations. Fog of War, featuring former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, was a great flick. Very informative. Very interesting. Sometimes funny. Often shocking and brutal and realistic. I even learned something about conflict resolution. Nice! And the music is haunting - kind of like that piano-ish track from Eyes Wide Shut.

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy!

From the USA Today:

A dozen or more congressional Republicans will gather at a resort in balmy Phoenix this week to hear the legislative wish lists of Western coal, power and mining companies - and raise money from them.

The four-day conference begins today with a $1,500-per-person round of golf and private dinner, dubbed "Mulligans and Margaritas." The money raised from industry officials will be divided among the re-election campaigns of the lawmakers, most of whom serve on committees that oversee the mining and energy industries.

Shweet!

Oh my goodness...

UPDATE: 10/16/05. Not sure why, but USA Today made the origina link to this article point to somethig else. What's up with that? Anyways, here the original.

Beverly Eckert's spouse died in the 9/11 attacks. In this USA Today Op Ed she says that her silence will not be bought - that her husband's life was priceless. She refused the government payoff. This is the mark of a true hero - a hero's hero. (article)

Holy frashizzle - this Kristen Breitweiser is no joke...

Here is a transcript of a 9/11 widow on Hardball with Chris Matthews. I've heard a lot about this lady and her friends - fellow widows and widowers (sp?) - they're in touch with the White House - probably because the White House sees it to their strategic advantage to attempt to placate these blustery ladies (and men?), but their time is running out - the widows, that is. Will the press hear their story? Who knows? But check out the transcript. I'm gonna try to find the video clip - but DAAAANG - she's tearing these people a new one. Seems like she's got her facts straight. Well done.

Key passage, near the end of the seemingly-short segment, with Kristen talking about what would have happened had the Bush administration warned the public about the imminence of the 9/11 attacks:

BREITWEISER: They would have acted more decisively. Lives would have been saved. I would have informed the public.

MATTHEWS: It sounds like the problem is at the top.

BREITWEISER: It does.

Boom. That's gonna hurt good-ol Bush. Let's wait and see if she ends up on the campaign trail with Dean. I presume, from listening to her talk, that she is not a Republican - so the GOP will be able to use the old she's a liberal-lefty-commy-America-hating-pinko attack, but I wonder if that'll backfire? Could Condi finally get pressured to resign? Wow. We'll see.

Sin City guest list demanded by federales...

I love it.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI demanded Las Vegas hotels turn over their guest lists leading up to New Year's Eve to check against a U.S. master list of suspected terrorists, a law enforcement official said on Sunday.

This whole privacy thing is getting better and better all the time. It's hard for people to understand how 'liberty' is undermined when our privacy is undermined - it just doesn't seem to ring true for people. Everyone is so scared they just think screw privacy, i am not doing anything wrong, I don't have anything to hide. let Bush & Co. search away. i don't care. just don't let Sadaam bomb us again! I've actually gotten this response fairly consistently from the Fox-type folks at work. It's natural, I guess. I try to relate to them the seriousness of what is happening by asking them if they'd mind if it was Bill Clinton who was currently in power and wanted to grab all this personal information. The response is usually a slight-delayed, but brave sure, no problem., but it's obvious that their passion for unlimited search and seizure drops dramatically when someone not idealogically in-sync with themselves is holding the highest office in the land.

I can see the rational that these people are using, in a way, because even I have difficulty articulating to people why privacy is such an important issue. America is slowly getting transformed into a police state, but Americans don't have any experiece with totalitarian regimes - at home. We've been taught that totalitarianism==communism==osama==terrorism==saddaam==fidel==evil, but not too many of us can really explain why. It's like listening to the Mr. Mackey, the schoolteach, from SouthPark: Drugs are bad, mmmkay?
Over and over and over again. If you repeat something often enough, weak minds will fall in line. (WMD, anyone?)

In my not-so-humble opinion, most Americans are woefully uninformed about the basic tenets of democracy. If you asked someone on the street why communism was bad, here are some of the responses you'd get:

• Because.


• I dunno. It's bad. It's like Hitler and stuff, and he killed a bunch of people and stuff.


• It doesn't work. Democracy works. America's the best. That's why we rule the world right now, because we're not a communist country.


• What the f*ck you think, dude? Are you a liberal?!

So, the point is, that American individual freedoms are being stripped away a little bit at a time - and this will ultimately lead to the crushing of political dissent - which leads to a totalitarian state - which yields, evil.

Still hoping to get Jim Bovard to eventually start a blog. He's the Che Guevara of privacy! We need someone with his purely anti-government approach to get more press. My favorite line of his:

Nothing happened on 9/11 that made our government (the government of the United States of America) more competent.

Niiiice. Very nice.