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 Sunday, September 5, 2004
Looks like more evidence of the scummy, hypocritical nature of these liars. The same guy who a claims to be upset about Kerry's discussion of Vietnam atrocities apparently tried to order one of his own when he was there. I guess I can see why he would be upset by anyone talking about war crimes, since his actions might warrant such a review. Not noble men at all but political tools of the worst kind. 3:43:49 PM 
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FOIA Lawsuit Confirms Missing Documents in Bush Military Records. The AP reports that a government response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for Bush's National Guard records show that documents are missing--five types of documents that should have been created are not in the file. Records of Bush's... [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]
So much for releasing ALL the documents. Sometimes it is useful to have a bureaucracy. Or not, depending on your political background. 3:03:28 PM
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Wimp. Coward. No Honor. No Guts. No Loyalty. George W. Bush.
Senator Zell Miller carries the Bushies' water, and performs his designated role as attack slug. But then he discovers what the Bushies do when the going gets tough: they leave town in a hurry. Loyalty, for them, runs only one way.
From Mark Kleiman:
Mark A. R. Kleiman: A lie too far?: ...the drumroll of criticism during the day made it clear to the Bush Team that Miller had suddenly become a liability. Giving him all the loyalty a turncoat deserves, they promptly announced that Miller had been speaking only for himself and disinvited him from the family box for the acceptance speech. I'd like to think the Bushes had discovered shame, at long last, but I think it was only prudence...
Oliver Willis watches them all run like scared rabbits:
GOP Running From Zell | Oliver Willis:
Late Thursday, Miller[base ']s name was removed from the list of dignitaries who would be sitting in the first family[base ']s box during the president[base ']s acceptance speech later in the evening. No explanation was immediately offered, but the change was made only a few hours after Laura Bush, asked about Miller[base ']s deeply personal denunciation of his own party[base ']s nominee, said in an interview with NBC News that [base "]I don[base ']t know that we share that point of view.[per thou] Aides to President Bush and his campaign said Miller was not speaking for all Republicans.
FOR those playing at home, Zell Miller wasn't just a speaker at the RNC convention... he was the KEYNOTE SPEAKER. I'm 100% positive the Democratic party shares the "point of view" of our keynoter, Barack Obama. What's wrong with the RNC's keynoter.
UPDATE: More. They're running.
"Everyone read the speech in advance and approved it," said one prominent GOP lobbyist working closely with the Bush-Cheney campaign on the staging and message for the convention. The problem, he added, was that handlers did not account for the shouting voice or glowering stare with which the 72-year-old former Marine delivered his speech, or the short-tempered manner he displayed in interviews once the veracity of his charges began being challenged minutes after he left the podium.
[Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog]
He was not just ANY speker. He was the Keynote speaker, the one who is supposed to set the tone for the Convention. They all read the speech and had seen him speak (why else even have him pseak if you have never heard him talk?) Miller represents the worst of Southern Dixiecrats, and some of the worst in American political discourse. How anyone could invite him to speak says a lot. 2:59:09 PM
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Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Idiots? (Grand Strategic Defeat Department). Matthew Yglesias observes that we creep closer and closer to the precipice:
matthew: Qaradawi: As Chris Bertram says, the most recent remarks from Shaikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi pretty clearly establish that his critics during the recent fracas over his trip to the UK were in the right. Another point, however, should also be made. Before the Iraq War, al-Qaradawi seems to have been a man with some very unpleasant political views but who did not think, for example, that his followers should try and kill me (or you, the gentle British or American civilian reader). After the Iraq War, his suite of unpleasant political views has expanded to include the view that his followers should try and kill me (or you, the gentle British or American civilian reader).
When people talk about the Iraq War being a boon for al-Qaeda recruitment, this is what we're talking about. Qaradawi condemned 9-11, and favored terrorist attacks against Israel under certain circumstances. This is a point of view held by many Muslims. If we had worked harder on the Israel-Palestine conflict we might have turned these sorts of people more onto our side. Instead, we invaded Iraq, turning these sorts of people against us. Now Qaradawi thinks his followers should try and kill me. At this point, what's done is done and I'd very much like my government defend Americans against these sorts of people, but it would've been better if we'd thought harder about setting them against us in the first place.
By noon on September 11, 2001, it was clear to me that one of two wars had begun. Either we had begun a war in which the insane terrorists of Al Qaeda and their ilk struggled against the Muslim nations of the world which had the task of suppressing them in which we provided valuable aid, assistance, and occasional muscle; or we had begun a war in which we fought against a substantial chunk of the Muslim world that viewed their duty as assisting Al Qaeda and their ilk. It was clear to me that it was in our interest (and much more in the Muslim world's interest) that the war be the first war and not the second war. And it was clear to me that the key grand strategic issue for the United States was how we made it certain that the war was the first war.
Can anyone doubt that our creeping closer and closer to fighting the second war is a tremendous strategic defeat? [Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog]
By incompetance or by willful decisions, the 2nd war is much more likely because this administration does not really care what moderate muslims think. More attacks will allow this administration to gain more power. You do not gain political power with police actions. You gain it with war and thise people need the war to continue as long as possible in order to gain more power. 2:52:26 PM
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Across the great divide. 
I first pointed to this stunning Valdis Krebs infographic back in March 2004, when the New York Times published it. Krebs has long been fascinated with the clusters that emerge from an analysis of Amazon's related-purchase data. I was reminded of his chart the other day when I heard this exchange (Real, 1 min, 40 sec) between Terri Gross and Norman Podhoretz, which includes this quote:
I have almost no friends any longer who are liberal, and I suspect this is true of most people on both sides of the divide. Since the sixties, the polarization has become more intense, and there are fewer and fewer friendships that can be sustained across the divide in this country.
What religious differences used to be, and aren't any more (in our world, not the Muslim world), political differences have become. They've acquired a kind of religious intensity, and are tinged with a kind of intolerance that used to characterize religious differences. [Norman Podhoretz, inteviewed by Terri Gross on NPR's Fresh Air, Real, 20 min.]
Having lived on both sides of the chasm -- he was a radical liberal before he became a founder of neoconservativism -- Podhoretz seems to have a rare appreciation of the great divide. I suspect the majority of us, not having lived on both sides, lack that same gut-level appreciation.
... [Jon's Radio]
I know many people whose political beliefs are not mine. Politics is not yet the ssupreme test of who is my friend or not. I just do not discuss politics with my friends. It would serve little purpose. Neither of us would convince the other, just as few fundamentalists can convert Catholics, no matter how much they believe that you will go to hell without being born again. Simple manners simply states that we will avoid topics for which there is such great conflict. It reduces political discourse but allows us to maintain the facade of civility. 2:28:18 PM
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New (Saturday) attack on the southern Iraqi oil pipeline system will greatly impact exports. It interdicted the connection between the Zubeir oil fields from the southern pipeline system. Global guerrillas are now approaching a level of total control over Iraq's oil system. Rapid improvements in quality, timing, and breadth in the attack pattern due to stigmergic learning and swarming are to blame. Remember, there isn't just one group to blame. Iraq's Bazaar of Violence is thriving with entrepreneurial start-ups entering the fray on a daily basis. The end result, in the oil sector alone, will be a $15-$25 billion shortfall in revenues for Iraq (much more if electricity disruption is factored in). This revenue shortfall will fall on the shoulders of the US taxpayer to make-up. A shadow OPEC is emerging, and the US is totally ignorant of its implications. [John Robb's Weblog]
A shadow OPEC, indeed. Oil prices could be high for some time, since so much of the world's reserves are in places where the shadow OPEC can work. 2:24:03 PM
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I know little about FDR's VP in 1944, Henry Wallace, ut this Op/Ed he wrote in the New York Times on April 9, 1944, seems prescient today. How about this? The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power. Or this: American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery. I think we can substitute McCarthy demagoguery. But between Cheney-Haliburton, The Swift Boat vets, and Zell Miller, looks like a successful coalition is in place.
The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. That describes almost every speaker at the Republican convention. That is why Cheney's daughter was not out there with the rest of the families. That is why some have described the theme of convention as 'Vote for Bush or the terrorists will get you.'
The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. ... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
Sounds like the Patriot Act. 'Either you are with us or against us.' No-bid contracts. Billions of dollars missing. Tax cuts for the rich. Put current debt on to future generations. And so on.
1:29:15 PM
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