Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Robert J. Elisberg: It's a Small Reality-based World After All. Several months back, I noted that as much as necons wanted to create their own reality - as a White House aide expressed in Ron Susskind's 2004 article for the New York Times Magazine - reality remains...well, reality. Necons may happily ridicule those who live in the "reality-based world," but reality will always find a pesky way of ridiculing back. Indeed, unless you plan to live your life in a sci-fi fantasy world on distant galaxy Nebulon 9 battling Morgs in the hidden recesses of your dreams and imagination, reality will always rear its ugly head and win. You can create your own reality, but reality will always send you crashing deep into the vortex. If, in your own created-reality, you can walk off the edge of a cliff because you've constructed an invisible, magical bridge, that's fine - but the moment you actually step off that ledge, reality will hurl you to the bottom of the hellish pit. And that is precisely what's happened to the neocons now. Necons, meet reality. You can create your own reality where everything is going gloriously in Iraq with flowers and Milk Duds strewn o'er the realm, and there is no civil war. But when September, 2006, has the most-ever U.S. deaths in the war, reality will say otherwise. You can create your own reality where your efforts to confront terrorism win you sainthood. But when the National Intelligence Estimate reports that the Iraq War has made the situation worse, reality will say otherwise. You can create your own reality where the Speaker of the House, House Majority Leader and Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) do their showstopping impersonation of Sgt. Schultz on "Hogan's Heroes" ("I know nothing! Nothing!!"). But when the people who told them come forward and provide evidence, and the Mark Foley emails show up, reality will say otherwise. You can create your own reality where it's those devious Democrats who leaked the Foley scandal. But when the reporter who actually broke the story states that it came from Republicans, reality will say otherwise. You can create your own reality that the President is beloved. But when polls show it's only 33%, reality will say otherwise. And you can create your own reality that Iraq is THE imminent threat to the United States with its WMD. But when North Korea is the country that explodes a nuclear test, reality will say otherwise. Dangerously. Reality is a demanding mother. You can hope to fool others and hide reality for a long time (for instance, oh, until after the next Administration arrives), and sometimes that will work. That doesn't change reality, of course, it just puts a silk scarf around the pig's neck and calls its snout an upper-class snoot. But the reality is that it's still a pig. And it will always be a pig. And it will act like a pig wherever you drag it. And even if you fool enough people to get you voted into the Social Register, eventually the pig will start to roll around in the mud and relieve itself all over the historic furniture and eat the by-laws, because that's what pigs do - and you will not only get kicked out, but blackballed in infamy along with your heirs for what you tried to foist upon that noble institution that so many hold so dear since the days of its founding fathers. This is reality. And right now it's smacking the Bush Administration, neocons and the Republican Party right in the face. Because reality is a demanding mother. And she doesn't like being lied to. George Bush likes to pontificate about what history will decide. But before you start lecturing others about history, you should learn from it yourself first. At least you should learn the lesson from the father of your own party. As Abraham Lincoln said, "You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time." But okay, if that's too hard and scholarly for you, you should at the very least be able to learn the lesson of a TV commercial, for Chiffon margarine: It's not nice to fool Mother Nature. Because reality is a demanding mother. And the Bush Administration has shown it is unable to deal with it. So, someone else has to come in and clean up the mess. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 12:48:49 PM    comment []

"Nothing says 'I am ashamed of you my government' more than 'Stewart/Colbert '08," quips Jon Stewart, dispelling a rumor that he has designs on the Oval Office, even as he continues to garner praise and media attention as a serious journalist. [Cursor.org] 12:47:13 PM    comment []

An editor at Reuters suddenly finds himself without a job after his bosses see a copy of "Brainless," his new book on Ann Coulter, but what exactly happened remains unclear. Plus: Ex-CIA operative told "we will have no more books." [Cursor.org] 12:45:11 PM    comment []

As Ted Turner flags a problem, the AP picks up on Keith Olbermann's anti-Bush commentaries, one week after "Cable News Confidential" author Jeff Cohen wondered: 'Is Olbermann on Thin Ice?' [Cursor.org] 12:26:52 PM    comment []

U.S. 'won't bend to N. Korean bullying'. North Korea's reported threat to fire a nuclear missile is an attempt to bully Washington into face-to-face talks with Pyongyang, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said. [CNN.com - World] 12:24:19 PM    comment []

Cenk Uygur: NYT Buries the Lede -- The People Who Shot the Iraqi VP Were Speaking English. This morning on The Young Turks we focused on the fact that the Iraqi Vice President's brother has been assassinated. You might wonder why since unfortunately this is not big news. This is the third sibling of the Vice President who has been shot and killed. There is near chaos in the streets of Baghdad. Political and ethnic murders are now completely commonplace. But there was something extraordinary in the New York Times story. And, of course, they buried it in the thirteenth and fourteenth paragraphs of the article. Witnesses say the men who shot the Iraqi VP's brother were speaking in a foreign accent and -- in English! Here are the relevant paragraphs from the NYT article: In interviews on Monday, five of Mr. Hashemy's neighbors, four of whom said they saw part of the attack, provided an account. From 20 to 25 men uniformed men arrived in about eight sport utility vehicles. They surprised his guards and chased him onto the roof, and then to the roof of a neighbor, Abu Amar, residents said. It was there that the attackers shot him in the head, the witnesses said. The men then seized two neighbors, their children, one of their wives and an elderly man, a baker, all of whom witnessed the attack. The men sounded like they were speaking Arabic with a foreign accent, residents said. After they took Mr. Hashemi's guards, one was heard shouting to another, "go, go," in English. There are many different possibilities. The witnesses could have been mistaken or perhaps they were even lying for another purpose (to make the Americans look bad by implying they were part of this heinous act). It's, of course, possible that the men really were Americans or Brits (or from other English speaking countries). And if they were, it doesn't mean they were part of our military. They could be private contractors doing work for the highest bidders in war torn Baghdad. I'm not sure which implication is worse. The idea that US or other international mercenaries have started farming out their services to local Iraqi militias sounds awful. Some of the other possibilities are nearly unthinkable. It seems to me that this is a story worth following up on. Were these executioners really speaking English? And if they were, what implications does that have? And most importantly, who are they and who hired them? The Young Turks [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 11:52:36 AM    comment []

Web Redesign Shows Fox News' True Colors?. Conspiracy theory of the day, courtesy of advertising/branding blog Snark Hunting: Gearing up for November[base ']s elections, Fox News has quietly morphed their corporate color scheme, replacing nearly all of the red with blue. Hey, when your brand is all about championing the powers that be, being a chameleon is your only survival option. Sure enough, its web site has lost a lot of its once red-blooded palette. And I don't think it's because they're Billy Bragg fans. (Above: FoxNews.com before and after.) [MotherJones.com | MoJo Blog - Social Issues and Political Commentary] 10:08:52 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2006 Patricia Thurston.