The GripeVine

2003-10-13T12:27:00.000-04:00

CALPUNDIT EXPLAINS WHY I have a problem with some factions of the hard right.

2003-09-29T16:18:00.000-04:00

I SUPPOSE IT IS TOO MUCH to ask of those of you, who so fortunately find youselves completely above the political fray, but can I get a shout out to the White House on the Plame/Wilson thing? You know, this whole thing about a senior Administration official exposing Joseph "Niger didn't sell Iraq Uranium" Wilson's wife as a C.I.A. operative? It really is quite an unbeleivable story. (Nice to see the press corps have located their scrota.)

If you want the news about it, go to any news site on the web, if you want some opinion and implications go read Josh Marshall or Kevin Drum.

2003-09-29T12:42:00.000-04:00

MAYBE THEY SHOULD TRY SOME Nation Building at home, eh?

2003-09-26T16:43:00.000-04:00

IMPRESSIVE CREDENTIALS.

Granted some of these accomplishments are based solely on the author's opinion, but most of them are factually accurate. Like I said, impressive.

2003-09-26T16:19:00.000-04:00

THIS IS JUST BEAUTIFUL:

Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, last night defended the Bush administration's request to Congress for $87bn (£52bn) to spend on Iraq and Afghanistan, saying the US would not get involved in nation building and that the funds represented an "exit strategy" for American troops.

"We are not in Iraq to engage in nation building," Mr Rumsfeld told a Washington conference co-hosted by the US army and attended by its top officers. "We are there to help Iraqis build their own country."

No nation building.

I think this story makes it easy to understand this ingenious pre-planned "exit-strategy".

Those details include $100 million to build seven planned communities with a total of 3,258 houses, plus roads, an elementary school, two high schools, a clinic, a place of worship and a market for each; $10 million to finance 100 prison-building experts for six months, at $100,000 an expert; 40 garbage trucks at $50,000 each; $900 million to import petroleum products such as kerosene and diesel to a country with the world's second-largest oil reserves; and $20 million for a four-week business course, at $10,000 per student.

Building planned communities, roads, schools, clinics, temples, prisons, is not nation building. Do you understand? Let me repeat: THIS IS NOT NATION BUILDING. This is exit strategy.

I'm waiting for them to tell us that they are not using our tax dollars to fund any of this stuff.
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BTW I just ripped this whole post off Arthur Silber I figured I would save you the trouble of having to link over to his peice. Also, he scares me a little sometimes.

2003-09-26T13:06:00.000-04:00

WHAT UP, WHAT UP, WHAT UP! Now that my riveting year-end audit is complete I can refocus my attention on bothering you all here. I don't really have anything to comment on at the moment, so I think I'll just write this to say hello. Hello!

Have you noticed how Douchebag McMonkey Fuck Fuck and his band of Soon to be enjoyiong an eternity of anal fisting at the hands of Lucifer himself Assholes lie about everything? And how they are destroying our democracy? I'm sure you've heard by now that both Condi Rice and Coly Powell said before 9/11 that Saddam and Iraq posed no threat to us or anyone else. What? You didn't hear about this? That dammned liberal media!!! Well as a good consevarvative with a mind for Fair and Balanced news reporting, I will reproduce Mr. Powow's statement for you here:

SECRETARY POWELL:.... We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction....And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors....

Soooooooo, check out what happens when a reporter (yes, journalists still exist, they just don't really do anything anymore) asked Monkey Fuck Toy what changed between those speeches and the U.N. "We must save the world from the most dangerous man ever to live" speech:

Q: Mr. Dribble Dick Numbnuts, in February of 2001, your Secretary of State said that the sanctions against Iraq had prevented Saddam from developing any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. A year-and-a-half later, before the U.N., you called Saddam a grave and gathering danger. And I'm wondering, what changed in that time? Was it the nature of the threat? Did you get new intelligence? Or did 9/11 put a new -- set a new playing field for those --

THE HALF-WIT SHIT EATER: Yes, the Secretary of State said the same thing, as well, that Saddam was a threat. Nine-eleven changed my calculation. It made it really clear we have to deal with threats before they come on our shore. You know, for a long period of time we thought oceans could protect us from danger, and we learned a tough lesson on September the 11th. It's really important for this nation to continue to chase down and deal with threats before they materialize, and we learned that on September the 11th.

Translation:

Q: Why the discrepency?

A: Yes. I've wanted to bomb that camel jockey for a long time, it is so totally awesome that 9/11 gave me a excuse to get away with it. Actually it has given me an excuse to get away with pretty much anything I want. Prett cool, huh? Oh yeah, and you guys not bothering to call me out on any of it helps too. Thanks.

I also believe it is very important to continue to chase down the threats before they materialize. So I ask this: When can we start dealing with the current (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, North Korea, Indonesia blah, blah, blah) and potential (Canada, Argentina, Sweden, Bora Bora, Nepal, Hawaii, Luxembourg, the Vatican City, Thailand, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Tierra del Fuego, San Remo, Poland, Iceland, and California) threats? We could invade all those places, right? Unlike Iraq, as Mr. Poowell explained, some of these countries really do have weapons that can kill us, or at least have the potential to start thinking about desinging weapons that might possibly one day be used against us. That is a pretty serious threat if you ask me. Think about it, Canada is pretty much right next door, and they have way worse shit than Saddam did. Shouldn't we be occupying Ottawa right now?

Oh, wait...I forgot. Iraq is just the staging ground for our larger war terror. I tell you what. It is a good thing Dumbfuck and crew did such a good clean job getting us set up there. Imagine if all of our troops had to stay there for years instead of getting busy fighting terrorists. That would totally defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?

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Hoooo! I feel better already. I guess I should invite Steve back now so he can tell me why I am such an idiot. That's always fun!

2003-09-08T13:29:00.000-04:00

THIS IS JUST TOTALLY WRONG.

What possible gain does Davis thing will come from saying, in reference to Ah-nuld:

"you shouldn't be governor unless you can pronounce the name of the state."

???????????

This is not the kind of thing that the Governor of a state with an enormous foreign polulation should be saying. Scratch that, it is not the kind of thing anyone who claims to embrace the rich cultural diversity that makes our country so great should be saying. This is exactly the type of statement I usually jump on wing-nut conservatives for saying, and I just want to say that I am no less appalled by it just because a Democrat governor said it.

2003-09-05T14:42:00.000-04:00

93,000 JOBS LOST IN AUGUST but unemployment numbers are down? The lede explains how it is possible.

The U.S. economy unexpectedly lost 93,000 jobs in August, the most since March, and the unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent as more discouraged workers dropped out of the labor force, government figures showed.

Unless I am mistaken, that means that significantly more than 93,000 people got fed up and decided to stop looking for jobs. In August alone. That does not sound too promising for the economic recovery we are all hoping for.

The good news? Well it depends on how you look at it, but the main reason given for the drastic job loss is increased productivity and automation and, by extension, a cheaper labor force. Combined with extremely low borrowing rates, these conditions are supposed to indicate an economy in a strong position for recovery and growth. So what's going on?

``What we're seeing now is the dark side of rapid productivity growth,'' said Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services Inc. in Boston. ``Businesses across the board are figuring out ways to do more with fewer people. We may be further than we thought from a truly sustainable economic recovery.''

Got that? We're losing jobs because businesses are getting more efficient. That makes a lot of sense to me until you read this:

...today's report extends the total number of positions lost since President George W. Bush took office to 2.7 million.

How many jobs did we lose from the increased efficiencies wrought from the inception of the Internet and the rapidly advancing computing technology in the 1990's?

The Longest Peacetime Expansion in History -- Nearly 18 Million New Jobs, Lowest Peacetime Unemployment in 41 Years, and Real Wages Rising Jobs

Alright, it is more than a little unfair to compare "The Longest Peacetime Expansion in History" to post dot.com bubble/post 9/11 America. But...

The U.S. has now lost 1.4 million jobs since the economy emerged from the latest recession in November 2001.

Wait a minute? Emerged from the latest recession in November 2001? That means, of the 1.3 million jobs were lost between January 2000 and November 2001, pretty much all of them were lost before THE DAY THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING. Then we recovered from the recession and lost another 1.4 million jobs.

I'll give the first two quarters of 2000 to the previous Administration, so that's only 650,000 jobs lost in Bush controlled pre-9/11 America. That's not so bad considering we were in a recession.

Regardless of all that, the rough total numbers while sitting in office are:

Clinton: +18 million jobs
Bush: - 3.7 million jobs

So, here's a point I'd like to make. If you think the Clinton Administration was responsible in any way for creating jobs, you must also agree that the Bush Administration is in some way responsible for losing jobs.

If you think that neither one of them had any influence on job creation or loss, then you also must think there is no reason for economic policy promoting employment since the President can't make any difference anyway.

UPDATE: Forbes says maybe globalization has something to do with it.

2003-09-05T13:09:00.000-04:00

ANTI MISSLE SYSTEMS ON BRITISH AIRWAYS PLANES? According to the BBC, it is at least being seriously considered.

I know I would feel safer flying in a plane that had such a system in place, especially since that guy was caught trying to smuggle SAMs into the U.S. It is encouraging to see the airlines take the necessary precautions to combat those those threats.

2003-09-05T12:45:00.000-04:00

CONGRATULATIONS, STEPHEN. Your have successfully removed yourself from The GripeVine.

Tired of hearing me write the same old shit?

Fuck off, and start your own blog, then.

2003-09-01T23:45:00.000-04:00

BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE: So I finally saw the Best Documentary of the Year last night. And the best I can say for it is that it's worth seeing. It has it's good points, which are that it highlights the perplexing problem of gun violence and of the distorting effects of media coverage. But I can't help but think that those problems have been highlighted many times before in many venues, most notably in a high school or college classroom at some point or another in any person's academic career. And considering that, it's bad points make trying to form an opinion on any of the issues covered in the film worse than useless.
I copied an article about Michael Moore's numerous factual errors and tricks below, but beyond those errors, Bowling for Columbine's worst feature is its rambling, shallow script (or whatever you call the narration/organization of a documentary.) Near the beginning of the film, there's this catalog of atrocities committed by the US government (ie "1963: The US sponsors the assassinat of Vietnamese dictator Ngo Dinh Diem. 1962-1975: US kills 4 million Asians.) Leaving aside the fact that the US only reluctantly approved the coup ousting Diem (his assassination was not part of the plan, even if it was a likely outcome) and that that 4 million killed includes all the Vietnamese fighting in the war - what's the point? If the point is that the global violence perpetrated by the American government all over the world influenced the Columbine killers, it's not a point that Moore makes.
There's more of the same when Moore begins talking about the disproportionate attention the media pay to crime and other scares (ie Summer of the Sharks!) Just when it starts getting interesting, there's a digression about Bush's increase in military spending and corporate crime. There's even a bit featuring Moore dressed up in a cop outfit for "Corporate Cops," a parody of the TV police show "Cops." He talks with the producer of the show first about whether the show demonizes blacks and hispanics (a point marginally related to the overall narrative) but then moves on to whether the public wouldn't rather see something like his "Corporate Cops" show. Whether that's true, or whether corporate crime is a big problem is beside the point, and it's also beside Moore's point.
Not that, ultimately, he has one. I think that he'd like to say that he wants the audience members to make up their own minds. But if that were really the case, then why not present more relevant facts (or rather, fewer irrelevant ones) and some analysis, instead of a few glib one-liners and quick cuts?
I was predisposed to hate this movie because of what I'd read about it, and it was not even close, really, to how bad I thought it would be. It's thought provoking, and it's entertaining. But it's not a particularly good documentary.

And here's more on why:

By Ben Fritz
Ben Fritz is co-editor of Spinsanity (www.spinsanity.org). Portions of this article first appeared there.

It's no exaggeration to say Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" has had the greatest impact of any documentary in this country since his own "Roger and Me" 14 years ago. After winning a special prize last spring at the Cannes Film Festival, Moore's exploration of the reasons behind America's high rate of gun violence went on to break "Roger and Me's" record for the highest box office gross of any nonmusical documentary. Now it's won the prestigious National Board of Review's "Best Documentary" prize, made over 100 critics' Top 10 lists, and been voted by members of the International Documentary Association as the best documentary of all time. But in their praise of Moore's provocative and often hilarious filmmaking style, critics have neglected the fact that "Bowling for Columbine" fails at the most basic task of a documentary: telling the truth.

Perhaps most egregiously, Moore has apparently altered footage of an ad run by the Bush/Quayle campaign in 1988 to further implicate then-Vice President George Bush in the Willie Horton controversy. Trying to make a point about how racial symbols have been used to scare the American public, he shows the Bush/Quayle ad called "Revolving Doors," which attacked Michael Dukakis for a Massachusetts prison furlough program by showing prisoners entering and exiting a prison. Superimposed over the footage is the text "Willie Horton released. Then kills again." This caption is displayed as if it is part of the original ad.

However, existing footage, media reports and the recollections of several high-level people involved in the campaign indicate that the "Revolving Doors" ad did not mention Horton, unlike the ad run by the National Security Political Action Committee (which had close ties to Bush adviser Roger Ailes). In addition, the caption is incorrect - Horton did not kill anyone while on furlough (he raped a woman).

Similarly, during a stylized overview of American foreign policy, Moore claims that the U.S. gave $245 million in aid to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001. The Taliban aid tale is one Moore has repeated in many media appearances over the past year. But contrary to his claim, the aid did not go to the Taliban - it actually went to famine-relief programs administered by the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations.

In a recent article for Forbes, Dan Lyons found even more distortions in Moore's documentary. The film makes reference to "weapons of mass destruction" being manufactured in Littleton, Colo., and questions whether there is a connection between that activity and the Columbine High School shooting. In actuality, the Lockheed Martin plant in Littleton makes space launch vehicles for satellites. The much-celebrated scene at the beginning of the film where Moore receives a gun at a bank in return for setting up a certificate of deposit turns out to be false as well. In reality, customers at the branch where Moore shot the scene are normally required to pick up their guns at a local store. An executive at North Country Bank said the scene where Moore is handed the gun at the bank was staged at his request (and a mistaken belief by the bank that it would be good publicity). Yet Moore makes it look like it's standard practice to receive a gun right there, even joking before he walks out, "Here's my first question: Do you think it's a little dangerous handing out guns at a bank?"

Beyond his errors and distortions, what Moore likes to call his "hard-core analysis" is contradictory and confused. He claims that excessive coverage of gun violence by the media makes Americans scared of each other and therefore more violent. This circular argument doesn't make any sense. If gun violence is really so bad, shouldn't the media be covering it, and don't citizens have something to be afraid of? And if the media are indeed overcovering it and America is safer than we think, why did Moore make this film?

Contradicting himself doesn't seem to be a problem for Moore, though. Nor does he lose sleep worrying about his growing reputation as someone who makes things up and passes them off as fact.

When questioned last year about distortions in his best-selling book, "Stupid White Men," Moore hid behind the excuse of satire. "How can there be inaccuracy in comedy?" he said on CNN. Yet in an interview with the Contra Costa Times, he expressed an opposite sentiment: "I always assume that only 10 to 20 percent of people who read my books or see my films will take the facts and hard-core analysis and do something with it. If I can bring the other 80 percent to it through entertainment and comedy, then some of it will trickle through."

Most critics, it seems, land in that latter 80 percent. But when you're giving out prizes for a documentary, shouldn't facts count for something?

2003-08-31T12:38:00.000-04:00

JESUS !@$#ING CHRIST!:
Nothing makes me want to see Arnold Schwarzeneggar become governor of California more than this 1979 interview. An excerpt:

"Bodybuilders party a lot, and once, in Gold's gym - the gym in Venice where all the top bodybuilders train - there was this black girl who came out naked. Everybody jumped on her and took her upstairs, where we all got together.
OUI: A gang bang?
SCHWARZENEGGAR: Yes, but not everybody. Just the guys who can fuck in front of other guys. Not everybody can do that. "

But Arnold can. And if he can do that, you bet your ass he can balance a budget!
I never wished I lived in Cali more than I do today.

2003-08-30T18:05:00.000-04:00

AN INTERESTING INTRO to a very long article by famous historian Niall Ferguson:

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. ... It is [not] the wish of [our] government to impose upon you alien institutions. ... [It is our wish] that you should prosper even as in the past, when your lands were fertile, when your ancestors gave to the world literature, science, and art, and when Baghdad city was one of the wonders of the world. ... It is [our] hope that the aspirations of your philosophers and writers shall be realized and that once again the people of Baghdad shall flourish, enjoying their wealth and substance under institutions which are in consonance with their sacred laws and their racial ideals.

-- General F. S. Maude to the people of Mesopotamia, March 19, 1917

The government of Iraq, and the future of your country, will soon belong to you. ... We will end a brutal regime ... so that Iraqis can live in security. We will respect your great religious traditions, whose principles of equality and compassion are essential to Iraq's future. We will help you build a peaceful and representative government that protects the rights of all citizens. And then our military forces will leave. Iraq will go forward as a unified, independent, and sovereign nation that has regained a respected place in the world. You are a good and gifted people -- the heirs of a great civilization that contributes to all humanity.

-- President George W. Bush to the people of Iraq, April 4, 2003

From the paragraphs following it, it appears Ferguson is NOT going to make the point that the lower-case American empire resembles the upper-case British Empire of yesteryear. I haven't read it yet, so God knows whether that's true.

UPDATE: The link doesn't work, but nobody's going to read this anyway, so I won't try to fix it. If you really want to read it go here and click on the Niall Ferguson piece link.

2003-08-29T02:17:00.000-04:00

LEN PASQUERELLI NEEDS AN EDITOR. Besides the fact that no other sportswriter in the country owes Roget's Thesaurus an annual royalty, Len's latest opus on the Eagles -though right in its assessment- contains this puzzler:
"Since the 1970 merger, there have been seven occasions in which a franchise has appeared in three consecutive NFC championship games, but only the Dallas Cowboys (1993-95) and Green Bay Packers (1995-97) have accomplished that trifecta during the age of the salary cap."
Forgive me if I'm mimicking the immortal Easterbrook here, but what exactly is Len trying to say? Is it that, in the 33 years since the 1970 merger, seven teams have appeared in three straight NFC Championships -which is to say that, out of the last 33 years, two-thirds of the NFC Championships have featured a team that played in the last or would play in the next championship game? Or is he saying that since the salary cap era (which began in '94), half of the NFC Championship games featured a team that had played in the last game or would play in the next game (not even counting the Eagles of 2001-2002)?
Is the argument that, since the salary cap era, good teams have only a 50% chance of returning to the NFC Championship game, as opposed to a 66% chance?Is THAT fuckin' parity?
I'm drunk right now, so I could be missing something, and for that I beg your forgiveness, but I think that the whole parity thing is a little overrated. The bottom line is that, at the end of every year, most of the playoff teams will have been picked to win at the beginning of the season. But because some of the teams picked to win at the beginning of the season don't make it (ie the Pats and Dolphins of 2002) and some teams not picked to win do (ie: the Jets of 2002,) we feel that we have this incredible parity that is unique to this era of football. But I think if you look at the postseason of the years since the institution of the salsry cap, you'll find that there's not as much flux in teams represented from year to year. As for the Super Bowl - it is a little odd that the Ravens, Rams, and Pats -ridiculous underdogs all of them- won three years straight. But I think that's more of an exception than a trend.
Apologies for gaps in logic or facts. I'm plowed, and I don't feel like doing research.

2003-08-27T16:52:00.000-04:00

WHICH OF THE LAST FOUR PRESIDENTS was/is the biggest liar? No surprise, Washington Monthly say it is Jr. But don't take their word for it, go vote for yourself and see what the web community thinks.

2003-08-25T11:10:00.000-04:00

JUSTICE IS SERVED.

2003-08-22T01:00:00.000-04:00

WHY STATES RIGHTS IS BULLSHIT: I'm pretty sure that you won't be able to access this Gregg Easterbrook article at TNR.online, so I'll copy it below. If you don't want to read it, here are a few snippets that illustrate something that I learned in my short time as a reporter: Local governments can borrow but can't run a deficit, which is okay, because they get a good third of their money from states, which can borrow but can't run a deficit, which is okay because they get a lot of their money from the federal government, which can borrow AND run a deficit, which turn out to be roughly the same thing.
So, the snippets:

"Ever since World War II, the nation's governors, Republican and Democrat alike, have relied on a bookkeeping switcheroo in which Congress taxes Americans (that is, residents of states) at a higher rate than the federal budget actually requires and then sends some of the revenue back to states. This arrangement allows governors to denounce the big spenders in Washington while simultaneously relying on the big spenders in Washington to keep state budgets in the black. It also allows state income taxes and other local levies to be artificially lower than if they reflected the true cost of state spending, while focusing voter rage on a federal tax line that is artificially high ... Blaming Washington for money problems that localities have brought upon themselves simply feeds the unhealthy, but fashionable, pretense that government spending can go up while taxes go down, without consequences. "

"National budgets in the postwar era have often dipped into the red owing to federal support of the states. In fiscal 2002, Washington gave $412 billion to the states, more than it spent on defense, while running a $158 billion deficit. Had federal income tax funds not been channeled to states, the fiscal 2002 national budget would have shown a huge surplus; federal taxes could have been cut and the central government still been comfortably in the black. Instead, the U.S. Treasury went into debt to support the states and their cities, while the federal income tax was higher than it might otherwise have been, focusing voter rage on Washington as states could post lower taxes than actually needed to support their spending."

And so on. Here's the whole thing, which you should read because it's good:

STOP BLAMING WASHINGTON FIRST.
States' Rites
by Gregg Easterbrook

Want to know why Gray Davis may soon become only the second governor in U.S. history to be popularly removed from office? One reason may be California's $38 billion deficit. And, while governors in other states are not about to be recalled, many other state budgets are troubled--48 of the 50 are currently in the red. In the new fiscal year, which began recently for most, states face an estimated $70 billion shortfall, and the majority have already spent their rainy-day funds while exhausting the accounting gimmicks that can be used to postpone days of reckoning. Regardless of who ends up governor of California, state deficits will be among the country's leading domestic political issues for the next several years. The National Governors Association warns that states face the "most dire fiscal situation since World War II."

The problem, many insist, is a lack of federal largesse. Writing from his home state of Oregon, Nicholas Kristof declared in a recent New York Times column, "Washington is not just aloof from the pain out here in real America, but is making matters worse." A series of Doonesbury cartoons suggested George W. Bush was personally responsible for the early closure of Portland schools. Governors and mayors now call on Washington to channel them aid. Washington could, of course, rescue the states by throwing them money. But that solution presents a problem of its own: To bail out the states, the federal government would have to obtain money from taxpayers. Taxpayers who live in--states.

Ever since World War II, the nation's governors, Republican and Democrat alike, have relied on a bookkeeping switcheroo in which Congress taxes Americans (that is, residents of states) at a higher rate than the federal budget actually requires and then sends some of the revenue back to states. This arrangement allows governors to denounce the big spenders in Washington while simultaneously relying on the big spenders in Washington to keep state budgets in the black. It also allows state income taxes and other local levies to be artificially lower than if they reflected the true cost of state spending, while focusing voter rage on a federal tax line that is artificially high.

A better--and more honest--policy would be for states, cities, and counties either to cut their budgets or to tax themselves at whatever level is needed to support their spending habits. Blaming Washington for money problems that localities have brought upon themselves simply feeds the unhealthy, but fashionable, pretense that government spending can go up while taxes go down, without consequences.

'm the only candidate in this race who has ever balanced a budget," Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis memorably claimed during the 1988 presidential contest. In the current primaries, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean has bragged, "I'm the only candidate in this race who has ever balanced a budget." In truth, neither Dukakis nor Dean ever came remotely close to balancing a budget, at least in the sense of raising as much money as he spent. The Massachusetts and Vermont ledgers, like all state budgets, were in the black only because of federal aid. In fiscal 2001, 21 percent of state revenue came as federal grants for education, transportation, Medicaid, and a range of other programs. Were it not for such donations from the U.S. Treasury, all states would run perennial deficits.

In turn, national budgets in the postwar era have often dipped into the red owing to federal support of the states. In fiscal 2002, Washington gave $412 billion to the states, more than it spent on defense, while running a $158 billion deficit. Had federal income tax funds not been channeled to states, the fiscal 2002 national budget would have shown a huge surplus; federal taxes could have been cut and the central government still been comfortably in the black. Instead, the U.S. Treasury went into debt to support the states and their cities, while the federal income tax was higher than it might otherwise have been, focusing voter rage on Washington as states could post lower taxes than actually needed to support their spending.

Of course, some state spending, such as that for Medicaid, is mandated by federal law, and Washington should fund what it mandates. But this problem has declined since Congress passed the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act of 1995; meanwhile, the share of state revenue that comes from Washington has steadily increased. According to the Council of State Governments, states' receipts from Washington increased more than 50 percent, in real-dollar terms, during the '90s, in part owing to the funding of what had been unfunded mandates. Washington does impose ever more rules on the states but also grants ever more money.

In truth, many local governments brought their budget woes upon themselves. State spending has increased faster than inflation every fiscal year since 1982. In the decade leading up to fiscal year 2001, when the current recession hit, federal spending rose by about half, while state and local government spending rose 78 percent. State and city government employment has increased in the past decade as federal government employment has declined. For example, in the past four decades, New York City private-sector employment has shown zero growth, while city payrolls rose 20 percent, adding some 90,000 workers whom the same-sized pool of private employees must support.

States also cut taxes during the late '90s by $40 billion--an amount that almost equals the $50 billion budget shortfall states faced at the beginning of fiscal 2003, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Throughout the past three decades, Americans paid on average 11 percent of personal income as state and local taxes; but, owing to recent state and local tax cuts, Americans currently pay 10.6 percent of their income in this category. That fourth-tenths of a percent works out to about $35 billion annually, a sizable portion of the current problem. Governors wanted to cut taxes; now they want to hand Washington the invoice.

Current state-budget woes are even less defensible given that states recently gained two significant sources of revenue. They took in about $30 billion in gambling proceeds in 2001, up almost half from the total of five years before, and they also now benefit from the tobacco settlement, in which the major cigarette companies agreed to pay states about $246 billion over 25 years.

Nevertheless, some maintain that the states should receive the next grand federal bailout. Felix Rohatyn, the financier who supervised New York City's financial recovery in the late '70s, has proposed a federal bonus of up to $75 billion per year to the states--a bonus to be paid for by expanding the federal deficit.

But, if borrowing is the answer, why shouldn't the states do it themselves? The answer bailout supporters give is that state constitutions require balanced budgets. Every state except Vermont has a constitution that mandates a balanced budget. But that hasn't prevented states from taking on debt; in 2000, states owed about $548 billion, mainly as development bonds. Financing the construction of schools or highways using bonds, rather than appropriations, moves spending off the part of state books that is governed by balanced-budget rules. Lots of debt can be issued this way, even under a balanced-budget state constitution, since most such clauses have loopholes. Star-crossed California, for example, hopes soon to sell $10.7 billion worth of bonds to keep Sacramento from going into receivership.

Moreover, states make their own constitutions, which can be changed; they already are changing at a dizzying pace. According to Janice May, a professor of government at the University of Texas, in 2000 and 2001 alone, states amended their constitutions some 154 times, including 25 amendments regarding finances. In most states, amending the state constitution requires nothing like the elaborate process required to amend the U.S. Constitution, because state constitutions are mostly administrative boilerplate. If states wanted to do away with their balanced-budget requirements, they could do so easily.

There are signs that a few state and local governments are beginning to shoulder more of their own budgetary burdens. At least 15 states have raised taxes this year or effectively done so by increasing fees or altering assessment formulas. Republican governors in Alabama, Idaho, and Maryland are among those favoring tax increases; the Republican mayor of New York City has raised some taxes and wants to raise more.

Needless to say, no one likes tax increases, but reducing federal contributions to the states, while revamping the system so that state and local taxes rise while federal taxes fall, would be attractive on several levels.

First, it's honest. Voters should know what government costs. The current bookkeeping switcheroo makes state and local governments seem cheaper than they really are, while making the national government seem more expensive than it really is. Small wonder, then, that voter anger is directed toward Washington. Artificially boosted anger toward the federal government distorts politics by lowering public respect for Washington institutions, which must have played some role in making the United States the greatest nation on earth. Artificially increasing the cost of national government also guarantees the endless tedium of presidential candidates running against Washington. Many recent presidents--Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush--were governors who ran against Washington while boasting of how well they administered their own state's fiscal houses. This simply is not honest, yet the bookkeeping is set up to encourage such deceit.

Second, to the extent the U.S. federalist system gives states many freedoms, it ought to give them equal responsibilities. States want their views respected, and it is not only Southern politicians who speak of states' rights: Nearly all governors praise the states as "laboratories of democracy." But, if states want to make up their own minds, they ought to pay their own way; if they want to conduct experiments, voters ought to know what the experiments really cost.

Some federal aid to states is justified by the equity principle: Other things being equal, well-to-do states ought to help out poorer ones. But the equity principle applies only to programs specifically designed for the needy, such as Medicaid, not to general state-budget lines, such as transportation funds. It has never been clear why, to use a current example, taxpayers across the nation should bear most of the expense of improving Boston highways so that local drivers don't get stuck in traffic. And consider that, in January, voters in high-quality-of-life Oregon rejected a referendum that would have raised state income taxes to solve state-budget problems and fund a full school year. Already, Oregon has no sales taxes; now, Oregon voters want to shift the cost of their budget dereliction onto voters in other states.

In states and cities across the country, the dynamic is the same. Everyone wants needed money to come from the federal government, which would get it from voters who live in--states. But why should federal taxpayers generally be hit with extra obligations so that California or Alabama or Oregon or any particular state doesn't have to tax itself at the level necessary to support whatever services its voters demand?

"The governors are very much appreciative of the fact they will not have to make draconian cuts or enact tax increases to balance their budgets" quite yet, Kentucky Governor Paul Patton, chair of the National Governors Association, wrote to Congress in June after it passed a littlenoticed $20 billion special appropriation for states. Governors may be appreciative now, but soon they'll likely be asking the federal government for still more--so they can "balance" their budgets and return to denouncing those big spenders in Washington.

2003-08-21T01:42:00.000-04:00

YET MORE ON ... Agricultural subsidies!!!
Here's a TNR Online column about the evils of the Farm Bills:

Agricultural protectionism--the combination of quotas, tariffs, and subsidies for farm products--may be the purest example of destructive special-interest politics ever created. Rich countries--with a few exceptions, such as Australia--burden their own populations three times over. The policies cost taxpayers directly--the atrocious 2002 U.S. farm bill is slated to cost $180 billion over ten years. (Worse, annual unbudgeted "emergency" farm spending during the late 1990s accounted for a great deal of the spending boom that squandered much of the predicted budget surplus long before the first Bush tax cut took effect.) In return for their largesse, taxpayers get the privilege of paying higher prices as consumers (and, of course, inflated prices for basic foodstuffs hit the poorest proportionately hardest). And, by locking up an excess of labor and capital in an agribusiness sector that couldn't turn an honest profit on its own, agricultural protectionism inhibits productivity growth, preventing shifts in employment and investment to more productive parts of the economy.

It's funny. I never hear a good word said about this stuff, and yet there seems to be absolutely no prospect of it changing anytime soon. Is the farm lobby really that powerful? Or is it just that there's no domestic special interest group that would benefit from their abolition?

PS: Click here for a devastating expose of the New Jersey agriculture industry, written by yours truly back when I had a real job. And no, this really has not all been a ploy to plug my own work.

2003-08-16T23:14:00.000-04:00

I AGREE WITH MOST of what Josh Chafetz says here in his evisceration of the BBC. I wonder, though, whether there would have been such an outcry if the BBC had been biased to the right instead of the left. People laugh about FoxNews, but not a lot of people take it too seriously. Might there been such a fuss if the BBC were also "fair and balanced?"
It's tough to say, of course. Maybe it's because I lean a little to the right, but I think that the BBC's biases and that of the NY Times (not as biased, but biased nonetheless) are more pernicious than those of FoxNews and the NY Post, precisely because we all recognize the latter as right-wing propaganda machines, whereas the BBC and NY Times are actually SUPPOSED to be fair and balanced. So when they're not -and they are often not- it's more damaging. As Mickey Kaus says of media bias: "Better blatant than latent."

2003-08-16T22:56:00.000-04:00

I’M NOT EVEN PARTICULARLY INTERESTED in this anymore, but I have to admit that I was aroused by Brian’s thought-provoking rebuttal to my suggestion that the rabid, pathological hatred that numerous Republicans had for Bill Clinton might have some parallel in the visceral antipathy many Democrats now feel for President Bush.
For those of you not paying attention, I’ve included most of Brian’s response here:

"There is a paralell in as far as there were people who disliked and mistrusted Clinton and there are also people who feel the same way about Bush. The argument breaks down under any kind of scrutiny of the actual numbers, of the issues involved, of the tactics chosen by the opposition, of the popular sentiment of the people of this country...
It doesn't matter whether it is a Dem or a Rep saying it, it just doesn't hold up if you look at the facts involved. The basic difference of course being that Clinton only lied about getting a blowjob whereas Bush has lied about pretty much everything since being in office, except the tax cuts. They attacked Clinton because they hated him. We are attacking Bush because he and his cronies lied to all of us and because they are trying to undo 70 years of political and socio-economic progress by rewriting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. 9/11 my fucking ass, the neo-con agenda is bad, bad, bad, for everyone, and any attack them should be viewed as a defense of America against those who would try to destroy it. The Reps were wrong about Clinton, we'll have to wait to see if the Dems were wrong about Bush."

The “scrutiny of the actual numbers” so pointedly lacking in my own comments is reproduced here:
"Clinton: Highest Approval Rating of All Time, loved by everyone except right-wing conservatives. Bush: so-so approval ratings which continue to drop, hated by everyone except right wing conservatives (who's #'s post 911 have increased granted). This whole argument is a decent attempt by moderate cons to gain points for their side, but it is
pretty much completely bogus."

So, for the record, I’d like to try to scrutinize some “actual numbers” myself.

According to this table, Bill Clinton’s approval ratings are far from the highest ever. (The source is ABC News, circa 2000. That Bush is George Sr)
Career Job Approval Ratings:
Kennedy 70%
Eisen. 65
Bush 62
Johnson 56
Reagan 56
Clinton 56
Nixon 49
Ford 48
Carter 46

This shows that Bush’s approval ratings, -which have fallen over the last few months- are still higher than Clinton’s, and the average is 67.6%. (That’s for the first table listed, but if you scroll down, you’ll see that all the other tables show more or less the same thing.)Again, if you don’t want to look at the table yourself, it shows that Bush’s approval ratings have fallen from a high of 86% just after 9/11 to their current level of 57%. It also shows that for his entire term, the number hasn’t been below 55 % since Jan 2000. So, according to the “actual numbers” Bush’s average approval rating (albeit over a much shorter period, but there’s not much to be done about that) is 10 points higher than Bill Clinton’s average approval rating, and hasn’t been more than three or four points below it since the first month of his term.

So, what does that show? In my opinion it shows at the very least that Bill Clinton was not “loved by everybody except right-wing conservatives.” It also shows that George Bush is not hated by everyone except right-wing conservatives.”
Now, what could make someone miss a point as seemingly obvious as this?
Once again, let me state that all I originally said was that the hatred many Dems feel for George W. Bush reminds me a lot of the hatred that the Republicans felt for Bill Clinton. What I didn’t say is why one reminds me of the other.
They aren’t similar because the two men pursued similar policies, or endured similar political scandals, or enjoyed similar support from their own parties. I believed that was obvious enough that I didn’t have to say it.
They are similar in that as far as someone who feels said hatred for Bill Clinton is concerned, the man is the Devil, capable of any misdeed, deserving of no praise. And there are a lot of people who feel exactly the same way about President Bush.
For instance, what to make of a nakedly partisan statement such as “They attacked Clinton because they hated him. We are attacking Bush because he and his cronies lied.”
Not to parse, but which President was it who was actually impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice? I’m pointing this out not to show that Clinton was worse than Bush or vice versa, but to show that the lack of objective truth in this statement betrays exactly the kind of partisan blindness that I believe exists on both sides of the political aisle and is the source of the parallels between Clinton-hating and Bush bashing. After all, look at that quote again, transpose the words “Clinton” and “Bush” and all of a sudden you’re listening to Rush Limbaugh. (Yes, Clinton’s cronies didn’t really lie, but you see my point.)
And Brian, if this seems aimed solely at you, it isn’t. But when I simply made an observation about politics that wasn’t meant to be a shot in our grand War of Political Philosophy, you had to go and call me “a fucking idiot” and point out my “inability to think critically.” That’s not very nice.

2003-08-15T15:57:00.000-04:00

SO THAT BLACKOUT WAS KINDA COOL, HUH? Atop the list of things I saw in New York last night that I will probably never see again has to be ... the STARS! Among the other things were shirtless white dudes with blue glowsticks beating drums and dancing, screaming "Once in a lifetime!" That was on Rivington Street, the one street in the city that was not jam packed with cars, and was thus totally without light, except for the glowsticks. I walked up Bowery from Chinatown to Houston, and none of the cars, trucks, or buses trapped there moved even an inch.
And, I got to sit on the the corner of Houston and Essex -literally, I mean on the curb- drinking a can of PBR in full view of at least five cops. I'm glad the power is back on and everything, but it WAS kind of cool witnessing history and all that.
Anyway, here's a list of Top 10 Reasons for the Blackout.
And I am eagerly awaiting a post from the Cunte explaining why this is all because of Bush and the NeoCons. I'm assuming it has something to do with their "aggregious" governing.

2003-08-15T15:38:00.000-04:00

IT COULD BE WORSE: This survey shows that New York is ONLY the eighth most expensive city in the world. I'll bet most of us could have guessed that Tokyo was number one. But seriously, where the hell does Oslo get off being the second-most expensive city in the world?

2003-08-15T11:26:00.000-04:00

"I MEAN THIS IS A DREAM COME TRUE ...." Michael Vick says in all seriousness that being on the cover of Madden 2004 ranks among the greatest accomplishments of his life, in this Slate article about the rise of the Madden franchise. Apparently, it's in the Hall of Fame.
My favorite part is the little shout out to FIFA at the end. It's still the best-selling game worldwide.

2003-08-11T14:35:00.000-04:00

CALPUNDIT'S ANALYSIS OF THIS MORNING'S LA TIMES OP-ED about Howard Dean's chances and effect on the race is worth reading. But I think the point that they both miss is that Dean won't be running against George Bush in the primary they all think he won't win. If Dean wants to take one for the team and dedicate his campaign to savaging Bush, the president might be as damaged as KD says. But I don't think he'll want to do that.
I think that one of the advantages of incumbency is that, through having a virtual lock on the primary nomination, a candidate has to pander to the far-right/left less than he would if he had to make sure of majority support from only those in his party. I'm not sure Bush has to work too hard to lock-up hardcore conservatives (and may not have to spend "spend the autumn of 2004 in the Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago suburbs defending his stance on creationism, his ties to flaky preachers and the faith healer he's appointed to an advisory board for the Food and Drug Administration.")since it's unlikely they'll throw their support to the Democrats. Dean may have to do more to consolidate his liberal base (ie. defend his stance against gun control.)
Of course, the problem with Bush has always been his willingness to do whatever it takes to placate his fellow right-wing nutcases. (Note: Political epithet applied without irony.) So since there's a chance he actually believes it, it's possible he WILL spend the summer talking about Adam and Eve.
And for the record: Barring some unforeseen incident, I will not be voting for George W. Bush in 2004.
UPDATE: Slate has a pretty funny round-up of the array of opinions and comparisons the Dean candidacy has inspired.
UPDATE: I don't plan on linking to Dan Drezner every time I take to blogging, but since this is on topic: He makes something of the same point here, although he actually presents some evidence and comes to, like, a conclusion. Which is pretty neat.

2003-08-11T14:19:00.000-04:00

IT'S SO HUMID that the bloody bogroll on top of my toilet is waterlogged beyond utility. That's just gross.

2003-08-11T14:15:00.000-04:00

I DON'T WANT TO START A DISCUSSION ABOUT THE ADVANTAGES/DISADVANTAGES OF STANDARDIZED TESTING by posting this link to a mathematical gaffe made by the creators of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test. I do want to say that this made me realize how much the portion of my brain dedicated to solving mathematical problems -never large or well-developed- has atrophied. I can spell "sine" and "cosine" but I no longer have any meaningful knowledge of what they measure. GRE's, here I come!

2003-08-11T13:57:00.000-04:00

SHOULDN'T YOU EXPECT S0METHING BETTER from a writer such as Arianna Huffington than this nebulous, hackneyed campaign platform? Corporate fat cats?We the People? Maybe her campaign slogan ought to be "A cliche in every paragraph!"
And she actually makes talking point #4 "To make it clear that George Bush’s reckless policies are the main cause of California’s current crisis." How is five years of fiscal profligacy the fault of a president who's been in office for only two and a half years? Political ties to Enron are not evidence that an energy crisis that occurred before the president was in office had anything to do with him. But I'll stop before anything begins to look like an irrational hatred for Bush. Because that's just a fantasy.

2003-08-11T13:14:00.000-04:00

THE FUNNY THING ABOUT CONTEXT:
Regarding my quoting a post by on Dan Drezner's site about the parallels between the Democrats' demonization of George Bush and the Republicans' rabid hatred and persecution of Bill Clinton in the '90s, my esteemed fellow blogger had this to say:
"This whole argument is a decent attempt by moderate cons to gain points for their side, but it is pretty much completely bogus ... Nice try, no way this is going to fly outside the ConBlogdom."
Now what I missed in the post because I was pissed out of me brain, and what Cunte missed for reasons known only to him is that the crux of the argument, faithfully reproduced here:
"Here's what's weird about this, though: no one seems to mention how deeply this parallels the situation which prevailed through most of the 1990s between core Republicans and President Clinton. It wasn't simply that hardcore partisans then and now despised the president. But there was perhaps a third of the electorate that believed deeply in the president's illegitimacy (then Clinton, now Bush) and were driven further into that belief by the fact that they could not manage to get the rest of the electorate (say 60% or so) to see the man in the way they did. The difficulty of unmasking him became a sign of his political sins. ..." was actually written by Josh Marshall, who is one of the most reliable Democrats in the blogosphere (a label I slap on Marshall without judgement or bias, seriously) and certainly not a member of ConBlogdom (which sounds like a lower-intestinal disease, doesn't it.) Drezner's point was only that the lesson to be drawn from the parallels might be that if the Dems keep up the virulent Bush-bashing, they will be out of power for the next five years -as happened with the Reps in the '90s, although to be accurate, they did manage to win and keep control of the House of Reps and were thus not as powerless as the Dems are right now. (Apologies for the long-ass sentence.)
Maybe now we can have an actual discussion about this since the point was made by a smart, open-mided liberal instead of a Pavlovian conservative salivating at the chimes of the right-wing bell.

2003-08-07T18:50:00.000-04:00

YOU KNOW, I'M NOT SURE HOW MUCH I AGREE WITH THIS, but James Lileks makes an interesting point about Rev. Gene Robinson, who is apparently the first openly gay man to be elected bishop (of what church I have no idea, because it sure ain't the Catholic one.)
"This story has irritated me from the start, and it has nothing to do with Rev. Robinson’s sexual orientation. The guy left his wife and kids to go do the hokey-pokey with someone else: that’s what it’s all about, at least for me. Marriages founder for a variety of reasons, and ofttimes they’re valid reasons, sad and inescapable. But “I want to have sex with other people” is not a valid reason for depriving two little girls of a daddy who lives with them ... I know, I know, his daughters love him & support him now. So what. Hitler’s dog went to his funeral. (No, that doesn’t make sense, but it’s my favorite wrench to throw in conversations this week.) If he’d cast off his family to cavort with a woman from the choir, I’m not sure he’d be elevated to the level of moral avatar – but by some peculiar twist the fact that he left mom for a man insulates him from criticism. It’s as if he had to do it. To stay in the marriage would have been (crack of thunder, horses neighing) living a lie, and nowadays we’re told that’s the worst thing anyone can do. Better to bedevil other lives with the truth than inconvenience your own with a lie. Right? If others are harmed in the short run, eventually they will be happy because you’re happier. Right?"
Like I said, I'm not sure how much I agree, but it's an interesting point. The latest Bleat also has some interesting comments on the Schwarzeneggar thing.

2003-08-06T04:58:00.000-04:00

THE REASON THAT I LOVE/HATE DAN DREZNER: I love the guy because he's an honest, realistic conservative (not like those guys that the Cunte hates) who seems always to make the same points I make about the things we seem both to be interested in. I hate the guy because the same vague epiphanies I have are revealed in asides while Dan makes some real points over at Drezner.com.
Case in point: I've always been struck by the similarities between the current Bush-bashing and the Clinton-hating of the past. It's too obvious a point for a lot of people to have passed over, but this is one of the first critical treatments of the idea that I've seen. I pasted it all below because I have a feeling nobody follows the links.
And Cunte: Make sure and check out the links you can get at the abouve site. It's the discussion that makes Drezner the shit.

Posted 1:06 PM by Daniel
THE TROUBLE WITH ANIMUS: Josh Marshall bats .500 in this post on Democratic animus towards the Bush administration. The key section:

There are more and more articles being written about the intense animus toward president Bush among Democratic partisans....

Here's what's weird about this, though: no one seems to mention how deeply this parallels the situation which prevailed through most of the 1990s between core Republicans and President Clinton. It wasn't simply that hardcore partisans then and now despised the president. But there was perhaps a third of the electorate that believed deeply in the president's illegitimacy (then Clinton, now Bush) and were driven further into that belief by the fact that they could not manage to get the rest of the electorate (say 60% or so) to see the man in the way they did. The difficulty of unmasking him became a sign of his political sins.

This was certainly the case with Bill Clinton. And there are at least hints of that now with Bush. If anything the depth of the enmity against Clinton was far more in-grown and aggrieved. But the parallel is so strong, the dynamics so similar, that the fact that it's gone so little mentioned really points to a blindspot among the folks who think up these ideas in the Washington press corps and commentariat.

Marshall is absolutely correct on the animus parallels. However, he whiffs in failing to mention the logical conclusion of this parallel -- that if the Democrats keep this up, they'll be out of power for the next five years.

Clinton-hating did not serve the Republicans well. Yes, the GOP took both houses of Congress in 1994, but that more to do with the combination of low voter turnout, the Contract with America, and the Clinton administration's early missteps than efforts to make Clinton look illegitimate. In 1996 and 1998, the Republican encouragement of the anti-Clinton hysteria achieved less than zero in terms of electoral results.

Say what you will about Bush's policies -- most of the public has a favorable view of him. A campaign dominated by over-the-top attacks on an incumbent president will likely alienate far more voters than it will attract.

Marshall is correct to point out that the Dems are not the first party to get bent out of shape about the sitting president. He should also have pointed out that Republican critics are neverthelesds correct in saying that this is not a good thing for the Dems' electoral chances.

UPDATE: A lot more on this throughout the blogosphere. Megan McArdle, James Joyner and Pejman Yousefzadeh agree with me. Kevin Drum laughs in my face.

2003-08-04T09:28:00.000-04:00

BECAUSE I KNOW WE'RE ALL INTERESTED: There something vaguely fascinating about the budget crises among the various United States. Maybe it's because they all have the same problem for the same reason and are taking the same irresponsible and harmful measures to do something about it. Anyway, I just thought that this quote about the California budget crisis was pithy enough to note:
"The state, in effect, has paid off its credit cards by pawning some valuables, getting a second mortgage on its house and obtaining the rest in a questionable deal with the loan shark down in the seedy part of town. But the government is still spending so much more than it's taking in that within a few months the credit card balances will be back again -- and the few remaining options for dealing with them will be that much more difficult to enact."
Reminds me vaguely of my life.

2003-08-01T09:56:00.000-04:00

GET TO DA CHOPPA! DO IT NOW!
Arnold Schwarzeneggar will not be running for Governor of California in that state's bizarre re-call election (which I still don't understand.) The folks at Reason Online are displeased.

2003-07-30T11:10:00.000-04:00

THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF FUCK, FUCKER AND FUCKING FAG. The coolest lawyer in the country, Eric Vanatta explains.

2003-07-24T13:53:00.000-04:00

RABID DEMOCRATS WONDERING why reasonable people accuse them of intellectual dishonesty.

2003-07-24T12:57:00.000-04:00

WHY DOES DONALD RUMSFELD HATE OUR TROOPS? Ralph Peters of the (ralph) NYPost explains.
How awesome is this:

Rumsfeld needs to go, and all his key subordinates need to go with him — with the single exception of Paul Wolfowitz, who may be the only strategic visionary in Washington.

It's like saying Johny Kowalski may be the only kid in the Special Olympics who can tie his own shoes. Except, of course, if that is true, Johnny actually accomplishes something.

2003-07-24T12:19:00.000-04:00

ACCORDING TO THE 9/11 REPORT, there was no evidence linking Saddam to Al-Qaida.
I don't know how convinced I am about the alleged training on those planes or the meetings in Sudan. It is certainly not the iron-clad, bullet-proof evidence that Dick would have had you believe, but it does sound pretty suspicious.
At any rate, this excerpt sums up what Stephen would describe as the normal method for entering a standard issue American war such as Gulf War II.

"They take a fact that you could draw several different conclusions from, and in every case they draw the conclusion that supports the policy, without any particular evidence that would meet the normal bar that analytic tradecraft would require for you to make that conclusion."

Faith-based foreign policy. Bush in 2004!

2003-07-17T13:32:00.000-04:00

ATRIOS PICKS UP ON SOME OF THAT time honored intellectual dishonesty. What is it with Dick Armey and the rest of those Democrats anyway?

2003-07-17T12:14:00.000-04:00

POKEMON PROVE EVOLUTIONISM IS FALSE. This might be the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life it it were not serious. Because it is, I think it might be the scariest thing I have ever seen in my life.

(Scroll down to the 2001 Prize Winners)

UPDATE: Apprently, the folks over at Crooked Timber have discovered that this is a fake. So it is funny again.

2003-07-16T15:58:00.000-04:00

ACCORDING TO INSTA-NUTCASE, the furor over the Niger Yellowcake is just a ploy by Democrats to "generate a smokescreen to undercut the impact on black voters of Bush's trip to Africa."

Say it with me: Glenn Reynolds is a joke.

Indeed.

2003-07-16T15:49:00.000-04:00

JONAH GOLDBERG AND BILL BENNET explain why honesty in government is important.

2003-07-16T13:32:00.000-04:00

HOW COULD THEY HAVE BEEN SO FAR APART IN THEIR ASSESMENTS?

On March 7, ElBaradei gave his final report to the Security Council before his inspectors were removed from Iraq on March 18. His conclusion was that "the IAEA had found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq." He also said the documents that gave rise to the allegation that Iraq had tried to buy African uranium were forged.

On March 16, Cheney appeared again on "Meet the Press" and reiterated his views of the previous August about Hussein's nuclear program. "We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." The war began three days later.

(From this WAPO story)

2003-07-16T12:59:00.000-04:00

I'M NOT SURE WHAT TO MAKE OF THIS. The article explains that the CIA "objected vigorously to a Bush administration assessment of the threat of Syria's [WMD]". Then at the end we get these two examples:

In his June testimony, Bolton asserted that U.S. officials "know that Syria is pursuing the development of biological weapons." The CIA report said only that it's "highly probable that Syria is also continuing to develop an offensive BW (biological weapons) capability."

Finally, Bolton told the congressional committee that "North Korean entities have been involved in aiding Syria's ballistic missile development." The CIA reported that Syria was trying to build Scud-C ballistic missiles "probably with North Korean assistance."

Now, there is certainly a difference between knowing something and believing something to be highly probable, but is it enough of a difference to object to vigorously? The wording of the second example is almost the same, again Bolton is assuming something as fact that the CIA deems probable. Perhaps he is not employing the most prudent of interpretations, but it certainly seems somewhat reasonable that these things are true.

Not that I know very much about CIA reports, but it seems to me that they would tend to hedge most of the itelligence with words like probably or unlikely, so as to leave themselves an open defense if the intelligence is wrong. Intelligence is not an exact science, right? So what options does that leave a policy maker who has to use this inexact and purposefully vauge material?

Well, you can choose to assume that probables and likelies are definitelies, start treating them as such, and create policy accordingly. Or you can look at all of the maybies and highly probables and take them to imply that there is no clear picture of the situation and therefore no clear policy to be drawn from them. In the first case, decisive action based on intelligence that turned out to be wrong could prove to be disasterous. In the second case, inaction based on intelligence that turned out to be right could have the same effect.

Obviously, this is a policymaker's job. To decide when and how intelligence should be used and what kind of action it should dictate. It is not the policymaker's job to create her own intelligence, or to use only evidence which supports a course of action on which she has already decided. Unfortunately, that is the way it happens in Washington and Biloxi and pretty much anywhere else a small group of people in charge want to promote an agenda.

Our system of representative government is based on a precept of trust. We trust the Senators and Representatives that we elect to act in our best interests, to make decisions that we cannot, and to base those choices after an honest assesment of all available options. If the trust is broken, the whole system breaks down with it.

2003-07-15T14:10:00.001-04:00

The basic difference in political, social, economic, or religious worldviews is that some people believe in absolutes, and some people do not. Some people believe in the varying shades of gray that lie between each unattainable limit. Some people believe that everything can be described as either being this or that. One makes it easy to be open; the other makes it easy to make choices. Neither view is right or wrong; they are just different.
I belong to the former group and accordingly my worldview is one that tries to figure out where along a spectrum of possible meanings an issue lies. People like me tend to look for evidence that reassures them that their worldview is the right one. They look for ways to make sure that nothing can be viewed as an absolute. The other type of person does exactly the same thing; only they look for evidence to prove that an absolute does exist.
I also believe that as a general rule, people in the first group tend to call themselves liberals and people in the second group tend to call themselves conservatives. Liberals have difficulty accepting the rigidity of the conservative principle of duality, and conservatives refute the liberal adherence to unity.
This relationship has lasted from the beginning of civilization and is the basis for every argument that has ever or will ever exist. The best part is that there will never be an answer. We will go on having this argument until the end with no side ever being declared the winner.

See, no winners, no losers, just a lot of in between.

2003-07-15T14:10:00.000-04:00

BOY THEY HAVE YOU IN LINE DON'T THEY.

1) Stupid me. I forgot it was 1970, or...err, 1980 not 2003. Can you believe the size of this guy's arsenal? Staggering. Just look at all the weapons they are finding that could harm American citizens in our own country. They are all over the place.

Dude, where are they? Buried under the sand? There is nothing there that could have done anything, and you know it.

1a) You got me here. We bviously didn't know anything about his WMD programs before the war, so how would we ever know if he tried to get back to the heady days of the 70's and 80's.

Rabid Democrats being accused by reasonable people. That's awesome!

2) Exactly. But only when a conservative says it.

3) Yeah. Blowjobs and Bombs. Same thing.

None of them lied to me.

As I liberal, I do not feel qualified enough to talk about anything. If I was an enlightened conservative, I would know that the doctrine of pre-emptive war has been a staple of American foreign...there I go again talking about something I shouldn't be.

Are you sure it is perfectly alright to be part of the anti-war movement? That's OK with you? Really? The reason the anti-war movement exists is to oppose the war. Believe it or not, they are actually some legitimate reasons to do so. They also want to promote genocide and support terrorism whenever possible.

I know reading comprehension isn't everyone's thing, so I'll try to make it simple this time:

There were legitimate reasons for removing Saddam Hussein from power that I believe will provide the ultimate justification for the war. The reasons I THINK THE WAR WILL TURN OUT TO HAVE BEEN A GOOD IDEA:

A) A friendly democracy in the Mid-East. B) Our troops out of Saudi Arabia C) A show of American force in the region. D) The liberation of the Iraqi people. E) The securing of the Iraqi oil deposits. F) Leaving Iraq alone might have lead some time in the future to WMDs in the hands of terrorists (even though there has been no evidence of any connection between Al Qaida and Saddam).

Now this is where it gets tricky, so stay with me. There are ALSO some outcomes of the war, many of which stem directly from the way this Administration has handled itself, which are potentially extremely bad for the United States of America.

A) Existing Anti-American sentiment in the region is inflamed by a prolonged US occupation, 100 Bin Ladens are created. B) The credibility of the US government is shot due to the fact that the case that they showed the world for the invasion was almost entirely false (unless 25,000 gallons of VX and Mustard gas and all that shit suddenly shows up in ICBM's in a valley that no one can see). C) The loss of crucial allies in the war on Terror due to the contempt shown them by the Bush Administration, including its conduct in everything from the war and the U.N. to Kyoto and the ICC. D) Hundreds, if not thousands of US troops die in a prolonged guerilla war which turns into an urban Vietnam and leads to the removal of US forces and the creation of a Shiite fundamentalist regime bent on American destruction.

(As you may or may not have noticed, all of these reasons except for B) have been part of the anti-war movement’s argument from the start. They just have some ammo now, because of the whole Niger thing.)

What it all boils down to, as far as I am concerned, is that we had to do something post 9/11. Invading Afghanistan and killing all those Taliban and Al Qaida was a good start. Using the sympathy born of the WTC and Pentagon tragedies to build a strong, worldwide coalition of countries to help us fight these terrorist organizations was also the right thing to do. I am not totally convinced yet, that the next step should have been fulfilling an 8-year-old plan drawn up by a tiny group of fundamentalist conservatives with distorted political aspirations, by invading a foreign country that had no ties to terrorism.

I now do not think that Saddam posed an imminent threat to the US the way the Administration described it. I did not know that before the war, and I still believed there were good reasons to hold back for a while. I also do no think this is an unreasonable thing to say. Now that the war is on, I hope with all my heart that the mission of bringing democracy and stability to the people of Iraq will be accomplished.

P.S. I only delete things when you are right about something I disagree with.

2003-07-15T03:08:00.000-04:00

WHAT CAN I SAY?

"There is absolutely no evidence of Saddam "striving to acquire dangerous weapons with the intent of actually doing something with them."

If the glove does not fit, you must acquit.

1) There is absolutely NO evidence that Saddam Hussein started up a nuclear program in the 1970s and did so with the intent of doing something with them. We know this is true because he managed to acquire chemical weapons in the 1980s, and he was quite well behaved with them. Saddam does, and always gas -sorry- HAS deserved the benefit of the doubt.

And say what you will about American intelligence and who knew what, but if there was really NOTHING there, then why not let the inspectors in in the first place?

1a) Yes. The sanctions regime crumbles and all of a sudden we just KNOW Saddam has reconstituted his WMD program. and so we just re-institute sanctions and inspectors. Because Saddam has historically welcomed inspectors into his country with mountains of greasy chicken schwarma and tins of Turkish tobacco, right?
Rabid Democrats wonder why we reasonable people accuse them of intellectual dishonesty, and then they totally ignore FACTS such as Clinton's own ultimatum to Saddam
Hussein. THE US GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN ADVOCATING THE REMOVAL OF SADDAM HUSSEIN SINCE THE DAY THAT THE US GOVERNMENT LEFT HIM IN POWER. I happen to think that's for a good reason, but there are a lot of Democrats who forget that, at one point, they were on the other side of the debate. And now they've switched. AFTER Sept 11. Because of politics.
Fucking Howard Dean in 2004 says me!

2) The Middle East is important for one reason: Oil. It's the oil tha keeps US interested, and it's the oil that keeps those folks who hate us funded. Otherwise, neither of us would give a shit about each other. Can we move on?

3) "Nor is it acceptable or routine to destroy the integrity and credibility of the Office of the President because you do not think the public deserves the truth."
Here's where I agree. I think that Bill Clinton should have ... Oh wait. You're talking about Bush? Uhhh ... Forget it.

If you don't think it's routine for the president to lie to the public about national security, you just don't know much about Franklin "Pearl Harbor" Roosevelt, Harry "A-bomb" Truman, Dwight "McCarthy" Eisenhower, John "Bay of Pigs" Kennedy, Lyndon "Gulf of Tonkin" Johnson, Richard "Cambodia" Nixon, Jimmy "Iran Hostage Crisis" Carter, Ronald "Iran-Contra" Reagan, George "Line in the sand" Bush, or Bill "Sudan, or 'I did not bomb that country because I had sex with that woman!'" Clinton.
And if you really think the US has had a single guiding foriegn policy -such as could possibly be "reversed"- for 200 years, you're just not qualified to talk about U.S. foreign policy.
And for God's sake, it's perfectly allright to be a part of the anti-war movement, but don't act as if information just coming to light -and not particularly damning info at that- is the reason that the anti-war movement existed. Unless the adminstration had produced evidence that Saddam Hussein was a pro-life christian who enjoyed hunting and Nascar there would always have been an anti-war left.
And while, yes, I am stereotyping, just think about that for a second.
Or, you can just erase this like you always do when I say things you really disagree with.

2003-07-14T13:45:00.000-04:00

STEPHEN GETS SOME OF IT right, but I have to respond to a few things.

1) There is absolutely no evidence of Saddam "striving to acquire dangerous weapons with the intent of actually doing something with them." After three months of unfettered access, not one shred of evidence of existing or planned WMD has surfaced in Iraq. Nothing. Zilch. Bupkes. Unequivocally, Saddam's WMD (or more precisely, lack thereof), presented no immediate threat to the United States. Any statement to the contrary is simply false based on the facts. A potential but unlikely future threat is not enough for the American public and is not the way the war was sold.
If the sanctions regime crumbles, and Saddam tries to reconstitute a WMD program, you reinstate the sanctions and send back in the inspectors. It obviously worked for the last 12 years, no reason it would not continue to do so. The argument that finding WMD after a war is better than not finding (meaning they did not exist) WMD without a war is bogus unless the WMD are not the issue.

2) The war had nothing to do with oil, remember.

3) Massaging statistics on hand-gun deaths or making up evidence showing the detriments of government regulation on business or lying about reports that prove taxes actually kill babies in order to justify public policy is one thing. Purposefully misleading the entire country, let alone the beloved and ephemeral 'international community', in order to undertake an unprecedented American invasion is an entirely different matter. Whether or not you care, it happened.
It is not okay, nor I would argue, is it common political practice, to deceive millions of people in order to reverse 200 years of foreign policy. Nor is it acceptable or routine to destroy the integrity and credibility of the Office of the President because you do not think the public deserves the truth. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for having invaded Iraq. The failure of the Administration to illustrate them is as much to blame for the anti-war movement as a liberal upbringing and an excess of free time. I think the war could have been sold without the fabrication and exaggeration. If it could not have, it should not have happened.

4) I want to re-iterate that I think this war will end up having been a worthwhile endeavor. The caveat is that only the establishment and continuation of a truly democratic, stable, Western-loving government will have made it so. I am happy for the people of Iraq. I hope that they make the most of their newfound freedom and become a true friend to America in the region.
I also think the flexing of American military muscle is a good message to send to Iran, Syria, and any other uppity Middle-Eastern cesspool of a country. That message being; We can still kick the shit out of you any time we want to, so chill the fuck out before we lay the smackdown.

2003-07-12T13:44:00.000-04:00

JUST SO YOU KNOW: I'm sorry for the sloppy wording and verb-tense agreement issues in the post below. I just don't feel like editing right now.

2003-07-12T13:39:00.000-04:00

LET'S CONSIDER THIS HYPOTHETICAL: I read the BBC article about the British government's "very senior source" leaking his/her doubts about finding WMD to an editorialist for a paper that has been a vociferous opponent of the war since the debate began, doubts which were then seized upon by members of the opposition government. It was very convincing.

But that's not my point. Re-read this statement: "We would now know what we're being told, that Saddam did not have those weapons... and we'd have found out without a war in which thousands were killed."

Now imagine what would happen if it were true. Weapons inspectors find no real evidence of WMD or WMD development in Iraq. Support for the sanctions regime -already tenuous- crumbles. Saddam, still in power, capitalizes on his newfound freedom to re-start the nuclear program that everyone agrees he had at one point and was waiting for the right opportunity to continue.

Is that a preferable outcome?

Look. It's not that I don't care that I was lied to -if that is indeed the case. It's that I'm not surprised. And so far I haven't heard anything that is truly shocking. For all the hulaballoo (that's right. hulaballoo) over the Niger forgery, it's not as if the administration had been waving it around all through the build-up to the war. Colin Powell didn't even use it in his speech before the General Assembly NINE DAYS LATER. And wasn't it THAT speech that supposedly rallied the country to support the war?

This is what happened. Senior members of the Bush foreign policy team are convinced that getting Saddam Hussein out of Iraq can help solve a lot of long-term problems for America in the Middle East: 1) You no longer have an avowedly anti-American tyrant striving to acquire dangerous weapons with the intent of actually doing something with them. 2) You have a leaderless, secular Middle-Eastern country with a relatively well-educated populace that just might tolerate a government that is openly friendly with the West, as opposed to a collection of faith-based societies run by autocrats who have their people convinced that their poverty and oppression is a direct result of America's support for Israel. 3) You help secure the flow of oil from a country with the second largest proven petroleum reserves.

Then a group of terrorists hijack four American airplanes on the morning of Sept. 11, illustrating the threat that anti-American feeling in the Arab world poses to America. The Bush officials see that there now exists the political will to topple Saddam Hussein that was lacking when Bill Clinton and numerous high-ranking Democrats proposed the same thing years earlier (and were opposed by –surprise- the Republicans.)

But it turns out that the evidence isn’t as convincing as they might have –for lack of a better word- hoped. And pre-emptive war based on long-term hypotheticals is still a fairly unprecedented move for America, and for the rest of the world. So they massage the evidence, presenting dubious or ambiguous information that supports their conclusions as facts, and ignoring or hiding information that doesn’t support their conclusions. (Wow, I never thought about it before, but isn’t this beginning to sound like the way government policy is usually formulated?)

I’ve deliberately phrased things up to this point so that it doesn’t sound like I’m rationalizing. Basically, the way you feel about this depends on the way you feel about the war. I agree, essentially, with the neo-cons, and I recognize that it was a political necessity to cloak the invasion of Iraq in terms that showed it to be slightly more than the fierce expression of Realpolitik that it was.

I won’t level the criticism the administration deserves for its conduct here, and I don’t want to imply that the ends always justify the means. But I do believe that the end is justified, and I think that, in the long run, that will be the most important point.

2003-07-11T13:59:00.000-04:00

FROM THE 'NO SHIT' DEPT. The BBC reports that 'US needs help in Iraq'.

The US Senate has voted unanimously to urge President George W Bush to consider asking Nato and the United Nations for help in rebuilding Iraq.

Is there a reason that we have not already asked for their help?

(I love that they voted, unanimously, to 'urge' him to 'consider' asking for help. What is that?)

2003-07-11T13:07:00.000-04:00

THE FINGER POINTING HAS BEGUN.

"The CIA cleared the speech. The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety," Rice said, en route to Uganda.

"No seriously, the CIA really cleared the speech. Seriously. Really, it did." she added later.

Eventually someone is going to be held responsible for this. Somehow I do not think it is going to be anyone in the White House.

UPDATE: CBS has the inside scoop. (Check out that headline. Ouch.)

The statement was technically correct, since it accurately reflected the British paper. But the bottom line is the White House knowingly included in a presidential address information its own CIA had explicitly warned might not be true.

2003-07-10T12:48:00.000-04:00

REUTERS REPORTS, on yet another high ranking official exposing the weakness of the Administration's case for war.

"I believe the Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq," said Greg Thielmann, who retired in September from his post of director of the strategic, proliferation and military affairs office in the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research.

I STILL FOOLISHLY BELIEVE that the BBC is a credible news source, so when I read that the British government does not believe any WMD will be found, I find it a little disconcerting.

"We would now know what we're being told, that Saddam did not have those weapons... and we'd have found out without a war in which thousands were killed."

Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the admissions were a "dramatic development" and ex-Prime Minister John Major has called for a full independent inquiry into the basis for war.

FROM THE NO SLANT DEPT. The NYT manges to get it all into one concise article. (Don't ya just love 'em?) To be fair, experts said that it would take 5 years or so to get things up and running, so anyone complainig about four more years is going to be at it a while.

Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the private Arms Control Association, was one of several experts challenging the administration.

'We, along with an increasing number of others, believe that the administration made its case for going to war by misrepresenting intelligence findings as well as citing discredited intelligence information,'' Kimball said Wednesday.

IS IT POSSIBLE? I am linking to an article from Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute (posted on FreeRupublic.com no-less!) and I think he gets it totally right. I thought only we misguided, treasonous, liberals talked like this?

Possible intelligence failures need to be corrected. Washington's loss of credibility should be addressed; saying "trust me" will be much harder for this president in the future or a future president.
Stonewalling poses an even greater threat to our principles of government. It matters whether the president lied to the American people.

A LETTER TO THE WAPO, pretty much sums it up.

As an American, I feel either betrayed that I'm being lied to or horrified that my government is that stupid.

Whether or not you agreed with the war in the first place, in light of the overwhelming evidence that Bush deliberatley misled the country, even if you don't care if you were lied to, you should at least be concerned about the precedent he is setting. What is going to happen next time there is a perceived threat, real or not?

I believe in the end, assuming we can foster the creation some sort of western-friendly democracy in Iraq, it will turn out to have been a 'good' idea. I do not, however, believe that lying to the American people in order to start a hugely unpopular (and continuing) war is a reasonable thing to do.

Don't worry about it though, it is just my impenetrable world view talking.

2003-07-09T15:40:00.000-04:00

ZEN JUDAISM. Courtesy of Eugene Volokh.

2003-07-09T13:42:00.000-04:00

GUTLER? IS THAT YOU?

2003-07-03T00:22:00.000-04:00

MAYBE CUNTE WON'T ERASE THIS ONE

I may joke from time to time about the mental capacity and guts of my ideological foes, but only a wacko, right-wing shrew like Ann Coulter could write the following:

"Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn't slowed them down. (p. 16)"

Whoah. Reading shit like that makes me think it can't bee TOO hard to get published.
Follow the link to read the shocking conclusion.

2003-07-01T12:23:00.000-04:00

THOSE ENT DUDES FROM THE TWO TOWERS can be a little prickly first thing in the morning.

(Thank you Fark.com)

2003-06-30T14:47:00.000-04:00

STEP 1: READ THIS ARTICLE.

STEP 2: QUICKLY THINK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE BEFORE YOU REALIZE WHAT IT MEANS.

STEP 3: VOTE DEMOCRAT IN 2004, 2006, 2008 AND EVERY OTHER ELECTION YEAR UNTIL ALL OF THESE PEOPLE ARE DEAD AND BURIED.

2003-06-27T18:23:00.000-04:00

SOMETHING REALLY BOTHERED ME about Maureen Dowd's column about the SCOTUS's Michigan affirmative action decision. Eugene Volokh articulated it.

"Lots of people have criticized Justice Clarence Thomas’ anti-race-preferences opinion (from Monday’s Grutter v. Bollinger decision concerning the University of Michigan Law School’s admissions policy), on the grounds that there’s reason to think that he has benefited from some such preferences. Maureen Dowd in The New York Times has a particularly intemperate expression of this view: “It’s impossible not to be disgusted at someone who could benefit so much from affirmative action and then pull up the ladder after himself. So maybe he is disgusted with his own great historic ingratitude.”

The most basic objection to this view, I think, is that if a judge thinks that a policy is unconstitutional, he has an obligation to so vote, whatever his personal history might be. “Gratitude” isn’t a proper basis for constitutional decisionmaking.

But beyond this, I wonder how far these critics would take their criticism. In the 1970s, the Supreme Court held that sex discrimination was unconstitutional. The justices who voted for this position had spent their lives in a nation in which women were largely excluded from the legal profession. Those men may well have benefited from this exclusion — when half the population is out of the competition, the competition is easier. Maybe if men hadn’t gotten preferences, some of those justices wouldn’t have made it onto the high court.

Should Justices Brennan, Marshall, and the others have said “Oh, we benefited from sex discrimination, so it would be ungrateful for us to now hold that sex discrimination is unconstitutional”? Or should they have resigned en masse, in shame at having gotten this benefit that they realized was improper? Should people have berated them for having gotten the advantage of preferences for males, and then denying future generations of men the same advantage (“pull[ing] up the ladder after [themselves]”)? . . ."

2003-06-27T12:29:00.000-04:00

I GUESS IT'S POSSIBLE THAT SOMEBODY could be this stupid. But not a freakin' nuclear scientist, right?
"Los Alamos National Laboratory equipment buyer Lillian Anaya thought she was ordering $30,000 worth of transducers. But she dialed a number that had been changed from an industrial equipment dealer to an auto parts shop, and wound up buying a Mustang with government money instead.

That's the assertion of Los Alamos and University of California investigators, who today cleared Anaya of any wrongdoing in a case that helped engulf the world's most important nuclear research center in a fog of scandal."

2003-06-27T11:05:00.000-04:00

DAMN IF THAT'S NOT SOME MESSED UP SHIT. Via Calpundit a story about a really bad dude.

2003-06-25T00:25:00.000-04:00

WHILE THERE WAS NEVER A CHANCE IN HELL I would ever vote for Dick Gephardt, his recent speech regarding the Supreme Court's latest affirmative action decision cemented the feeling.
"When I'm president, we'll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day," Gephardt said. "Fortunately, that will never happen, because I look like George Will and bore even myself."
Okay, I made the second part up. But really, which is a more ridiculous thing to say?

2003-06-23T13:26:00.000-04:00

WHY DOES STEVE REFER TO ME AS CUNTE ON MY WEBSITE? It's not like I call him CHODA BOY here.

2003-06-23T13:16:00.000-04:00

ALRIGHT, THIS IS JUST GETTING RIDICULOUS. No, it’s not the 32nd weekend in a row of constant rain. That is over for me now. I haven’t strength to continue.

No, I am talking about the looting of the Iraqi National Museum. Let's recap:

First reports say 170,000 plus items looted or destroyed. Basically, this is the entire collection of the museum. This report is followed by a major Bush/Rummy bashing campaign of anti-war pundits based on the fact that American troops did nothing to secure the museums' treasures.

Then we find out that most of the items were actually hidden by the museum staff in underground vaults and that many Iraqi people are returning stolen items that they have been safekeeping. The actual number of pieces lost is now unclear, pro-war bloggers begin to write about the idiot lefties who have no idea what they are talking about ever.

Next we get reports that 'only' 33 items were stolen. Intstahack, Glenn Reynolds blows his wad. (If even 1 in 10 of his posts were somewhere close to rational I might suggest you go there to laugh at him. As it currently stands however, his paranoia and hyperactive sense of importance just make it all extremely sad.)

Now it seems that it actually was thousands of items that were stolen or damaged, although not all of them were of 'great value'.

So, look, I don't really care whether it was 33 or 170,000 or somewhere around 6600 or if it turns out to be 3218.98163. Obviously, a few dozen is better that tens of thousands, but it is bad either way. Others and myself have made the comparison to the reaction that the loss of even one item from the Museum of Natural History or the Met or the Smithsonian would be.

Calling the looting of the Iraqi National Museum a hoax is wrong. Calling the reporting of the looting a hoax might be a little more apt. The updating would tend to suggest people are trying to figure it out rather than blatantly exaggerating the situation for political means.

2003-06-20T14:01:00.000-04:00

I FEEL THE CUNTE'S PAIN in the rain. I'm headed home to catch the Red Sox at the Phillies Saturday, and guess what the forecast is. If it's cancelled, they'll probably play a doubleheader Sunday, but that reduces my chances of seeing scheduled starter Pedro "75 pitches" Martinez by half.
BTW: If you want to read a "sophisticated exegisis" of why the rain sucks, check out this NYT story.

2003-06-20T13:50:00.000-04:00

MICKEY KAUS, the glibbest, most self-consciously cynical, and most entertaining writer in the blogosphere, has even more to say about income inequality and tax cuts.
"If income inequality is so bad that it should be the talismanic standard against which all tax bills are judged--if it's unfair, if it leads to "social tensions and economic inefficiences"--then why not legislate and redistribute against it? Maybe because the legislation and redistribution won't work. Last time I checked, it would take above-Sweden levels of taxation to come even close to countering the inequality boom of the last few decades. Without redistributive taxation, there's no hope at all. ... So Rattner [i.e. the Democrats (SR)] is left with this platform: "We have a horrible inequality problem. We're very unhappy about it. There's nothing we can really do about it but we can pretend to try, and at least we shouldn't make it worse." ... And Democrats wonder why they don't have an appealing core ideological pitch."

2003-06-19T12:07:00.000-04:00

TOMORROW IS TODAY and, you guessed it, it's still raining. Bastard.

Did anyone see Ann Coulter on with Hannity & Colmes last night? I only caught the end of the segment. They had one of Al Gore's former advisors on to talk about Al's planned foray into the currently non-existent world of liberal talk radio. Now, if past experience is any indication, it is pretty much a foregone conclusion that the show is going to fail. I mean, 'liberal' and 'talk radio' just do not belong in the same sentence.

But, that is not the point.

The point is that Ann Coulter is severely retarded and needs to be treated. (I apologize to any of my mentally challenged readers. I understand comparing Ann to any of you is extremely insulting, but I think the woman needs our help.)

Why do I make this conclusion you ask?

Hannity asks her what she thinks the audience will be for a liberal radio talk show.
Her response (in all seriousness she qualifies): Well, uh, you know, I think that everyone who listens to NPR is a conservative. Like, uh, everyone that listens to or watches political talk shows is conservative. Everyone else is off watching Lifetime for women.

Right. We are to believe that the only audience for political talk shows is conservatives? Where’s the proof? Where’s the EMT standing by in case she tries to swallow her tongue?

Baby Ann explains: Just look at Fox News. We're number one. It is pretty obvious who the audience is and they have chosen us. We're number one! We're number one! We're number one!

I know I am not the only person who realizes that the reasons Fox has so many viewers are the same reasons that Howard Stern has so many listeners, are the same reasons traffic backs up for miles on the highway after a horrific crash on the other side of the street.

Morbid curiosity and our need for entertainment. Both of which pander to our baser instincts.

People want to catch a glimpse of mangled bodies. They want to hear what shocking thing Stern is going to say next. They want to see what kind of arrogant, sensationalist, childish crap the Fox News network and its monkey commentators are going to come up with tonight.
People respond to outrageous behavior and insulting commentary. It attracts people with the lowest, most absurd aspects of humanity. And, of course, it is funny. Just look at the daytime T.V. talk shows.

It is why you watch wrestling. It's fun to watch the divas with their massive boobs bouncing around and the muscle-bound freaks yelling at each other and throwing each other around the ring. And what makes it most enjoyable, is no matter how ridiculous it gets, they always take themselves entirely seriously. Monday Night Raw, Smackdown, The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes. Its fun to watch but nobody believes any of it.

Fox is number one because it is the Jerry Springer of the cable news world.

Get over it, Ann.

2003-06-18T12:33:00.000-04:00

I'VE BEEN GONE SO LONG EVEN I MISSED ME. I still haven't figured our whether work sucks more when you are too busy to do anything (read: surf the net) or when you are so bored you run out of things to do (read: can't masturbate at the office).

Either way it is nice to be back on the Vine.

I was going to return with a fancy little post about how interesting the blog phenomenon and the Internet in general are, but soon realized that everyone has read it a hundred times and decided not to. So, what to write about? What to write...?

IF IT DOESN'T STOP FUCKING RAINING I AM GOING TO CHOKE MYSELF WITH AN UMBRELLA AND LET THE RATS EAT MY ROTTING CORPSE!

Nah, the weather is boring. That's small talk not blog material...

SERIOUSLY, I WORE A GODDAMNED SWEATER TO WORK THIS MORNING AND WAS COLD. IT'S JUNE FUCKING 18TH AND I'M COLD IN A SWEATER. THIS ISN'T CANADA, SO WHAT THE FUCK?!

There has to be something more interesting to write about than crappy weather. Maybe O'Reilly said something stupid last night...

DEAR GOD, HEAR MY PRAYER. LET THERE BE SUNSHINE AND WARMTH THIS YEAR. IF YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY, YOU ARE EVEN SICKER THAN I THOUGHT. IF YOU MAKE IT 100 DEGREES AND HUMID FOR THE ENTIRE MONTH OF AUGUST, SO HELP ME SATAN, I'LL HUNT YOU DOWN AND FEED YOU TO THE ATHIESTS. AMEN.

Whatever, I guess there just isn't anything in particular on my mind these days.

I should write about leftists who don't do anything but bitch and complain about the Republican majority instead of coming up with better solutions to our problems and doing something about it. Something about the pitiful field of Democratic presidential candidates might work. I should write about the fact that not one person has been fired or reprimanded or indicted for the intelligence failures that led to the 9-11 attacks. I should write something about “Bush lied, people died” or that Fox News panel last night agreeing that 'we' should invade Iran with the troops currently occupying Iraq. I should write about Hamas and France and ‘homicide’ bombers’ families getting money from Saudis for killing innocent people. I should write about the Congo and 3.3 million dead and counting.

I should write about all those things.

Maybe tomorrow…

2003-06-13T12:26:00.000-04:00

THOSE CRAZY MUSLIMS: Censors in Egypt have banned The Matrix:Reloaded. Interestingly, the reasons for the prohibition do not include "incoherent screenplay," "overwhelming pretentiousness to action ratio," or "criminal revival of Keanu Reeves' career."

2003-06-13T12:09:00.000-04:00

MATTHEY YGLESIAS SHOWS WHY blogs are more fun than newspapers. Look at all the comments you get if you write about profanity.

2003-06-13T12:01:00.000-04:00

OH CRAP. Apparently it's all my fault.

2003-06-06T10:03:00.000-04:00

WITH A NEW RADIOHEAD ALBUM in the offing, a couple of critics go head to head on them in Slate this week. Here's a sample:
"Perfectly good bands like Radiohead, Wilco, and the Flaming Lips go into the studio, hit the Pretentious Button, and people roll over like puppies. (I mean, before the Beatles, would anybody have even sat still for Sigur Rós?) These bands are not untalented and studio trickery can be hot, but I do think there is an overdeveloped and unfortunate correlation between a band's stock rising and that band increasing its store of avant foolishness. There's some class fear and bad faith at operation here—nobody wants to feel square, or worse, uncultured, and so they nod along to the echo chamber and the Stockhausen quotes. Then, live, the band plays the catchy songs and everyone is happy."
I'm not looking forward to Hail To The Thief as much as I thought I might. I guess that it's hard to get excited about an album you know you're going to secretly dislike the first 40 times you hear it. I still haven't come around to Amnesiac. Though I did listen to Kid A for the first time in months yesterday, and it pumped me up a little bit.
UPDATE: I just downloaded the video for the first single, "There, There." And it sounds pretty cool. More guitars and vocals, less noises and textures. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

2003-06-06T09:44:00.000-04:00

SPEAKING OF THE NEW YORKER: Is it me, or have the last three issues gone from mediocre to complete shit? I thought they'd hit bottom last week with "Gertrude Stein: 15,000 words on a lesbian in France." But have you tried to get through this week's clunker on the Catholic Church and psychiatry? I was reading it on the toilet yesterday and I had to switch to the shampoo bottle.
NOTE: If you've ever wondered how I get my hair so silky smooth, it's the iodopropynyl butylcarbamate.

2003-06-06T09:20:00.000-04:00

MAYBE YOU'VE BEEN FOLLOWING THIS STORY; maybe you haven't. But after at least a year and a half of ever-intensifying criticism, the blogosphere has succeeded in fomenting the downfall of NYT editor Howell Raines. Raines was, by most accounts, responsible for the bias and slipping standards that a lot of people have noticed in the times over the past couple years. I think I might go back to reading it now.

2003-06-04T08:45:00.000-04:00

HOW MUCH WOULD YOU LIKE TO BET that Hendrik Hertzberg wrote his piece about Baghdad in this week's New Yorker from west Midtown? While Hertzberg can always be counted on for some hearty Bush-bashing, it's rare that he whips out the old "conservatives are evil" argument. This week is an exception.
"It’s tempting to suggest that the Bush Administration is failing to provide Iraq with functioning, efficient, reliable public services because it doesn’t believe in functioning, efficient, reliable public services—doesn’t believe that they should exist, and doesn’t really believe that they can exist."

Yes, it is, isn't it. Or at least it is if you're always looking for an excuse to mischaracterize political veiws with which you don't agree. Which is exaclty what Hertzberg does in his next few sentences:

"The reigning ideologues in Washington—not only in the White House but also in the Republican congressional leadership, in the faction that dominates the Supreme Court, and in the conservative press and think tanks—believe in free markets, individual initiative, and private schools and private charity as substitutes for public provision. They believe that the armed individual citizen is the ultimate guarantor of public safety. They do not, at bottom, believe that society, through the mechanisms of democratic government, has a moral obligation to provide care for the sick, food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, and education for all; and to the extent that they tolerate such activities they do so grudgingly, out of political necessity. They believe that the private sector is sovereign, and that taxes are a species of theft. To paraphrase Proudhon, les impôts, c’est le vol."

The whole article isn't all bad. And the situation in Iraq could be, and by most accounts, should be better. But to use the breakdown of civil institutions and municipal services in Iraq as an opportunity to pillory conservativism strikes me as a little vulgar for somebody who would quote Proudhon. (Whoever the fuck he is.) After all, it seems like the main reason that Baghdad is a mess are that police and health care workers are staying home in droves. How ideologically driven do you have to be for the thought even to occur to you that this has something to do w/ the liberal/conservative argument?
And not for nothing, but here's a Telegraph piece that contradicts the conventional wisdom that Iraq is hell on Earth (except for America under the Hitler- er, uh, Bush Administration.)

2003-06-04T00:44:00.000-04:00

CONTRARY TO PUBLIC OPINION, I am unlikely to vote for President Bush in 2004. With all the (justified) attention on national security, it's easy to forget just how much the administration has flouted good Republican ideals (as opposed to the bad ones).
PS: It's a link to a New Republic article about farm subsidies. If you're still reading, the link requires registration. But it's worth the couple minutes, honest. And what the hell do you have that's better to do, anyway? Work?

2003-06-04T00:23:00.000-04:00

MAYBE THIS ISN'T THE PLACE for such a lowbrow topic, but say goodbye to the Diamondbacks this season, if you haven't already.
Benito and Juan for Schilling is beginning to look like a good deal.

2003-05-29T15:19:00.000-04:00

DEAR LORD GOD, SAY IT AIN'T SO.

2003-05-29T15:12:00.000-04:00

HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE THIS MAN?

2003-05-29T15:09:00.000-04:00

I AM SO PSYCHED ABOUT the $200 I am going to save on my tax return. Why? Read this and you will understand.

2003-05-29T13:26:00.000-04:00

HEY, IF THIS IS THE DIRECTION they are going in, I have about 15 billion kick-ass swimmers in my underwear. I am sure at least one of them has some potential.

2003-05-29T13:10:00.000-04:00

THIS DOESN'T SOUND TOO GOOD.

2003-05-29T12:46:00.000-04:00

THIS IS WHY...

"We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."
Donald Rumsfeld
March 30, 2003

"They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer."
Donald Rumsfeld
May 27, 2003

2003-05-29T11:30:00.000-04:00

MIKEY, MIKEY, MIKEY.

I'm speechless.

2003-05-29T00:04:00.000-04:00

BACK TO BUSINESS: My favorite blogger Dan Drezner has a roundup of the recent discussion about wealth inequality. I'm sure some of you out there have read CalPundit's take. Kevin's correlation between GDP growth and income growth seems a little fallacious to me, but I can't explain why. I also can't argue that income inequality hasn't increased at a drastic rate over the last decade. (Of course, those who think it's George Bush's fault ought to think about who was president for most of the last decade.) I've read that it has to do with newfangled census calculations (income per household means me and my roommate or you and your seven kids) or with increased immigration (more people in the country who are likely to be poor.) But while you'd be wrong if you said the poor are getting poorer, you'd be more wrong if you said the rich weren't getting richer. ON balance I'd say the former is more important than the latter, but it's still a disturbing trend.

2003-05-28T07:38:00.000-04:00

SPORTS GUY SCHADENFREUDE: Bill Simmons' essay on Roger Clemens shows why I can never be a true Red Sox fan. It's like being a "real New Yorker." If you weren't one as a kid, you ain't never gonna be one.
"There are many gray areas in sports where you can see both sides of a debate, but this isn't one of them. Clemens sold out an entire city. He didn't care about us. We supported him for 13 seasons, and when the time came for him to cash in, he headed to Canada and never looked back. There are many ways to figure out true Sox fans -- like when someone calls Bill Mueller "Mule-er" (it's pronounced like "Miller") -- but the Clemens Debate remains the ultimate test. Either root against him or root for another team. There's no middle ground."
I never held much against Clemens. I always figured it was Dan Duquette and his "in the twilight of his career" comment that drove the Rocket out of Beantown. Clearly, the Sports Guy disagrees.
"[U]ntil Clemens apologizes to the city of Boston and admits that he committed the most heinous crime that an athlete can commit -- complete and utter apathy -- I will always root against Roger Clemens. And I will never be entirely rational about it."
But if you really want to read Simmons in a froth, check out the "Is Roger Clemens really the Antichrist?" column.

2003-05-28T07:14:00.000-04:00

JAMES LILEKS SHOWS WHY he's always worth reading again today. The second bit about feature-writing might be of more interest to me than most, but the first section describing the triumph of Corona in the imported beer market will stir the soul of anyone with a pair of testicles and a paunch.
SAMPLE: "Corona is awful beer. Corona is diluted Chihuahua piss. It’s darker on the way out than on the way in, which ought to tell you something. It’s astonishing that they make Corona light - that would be, by definition, the anti-beer. Want to sober up fast? Slam six Corona lights."

2003-05-28T07:03:00.000-04:00

SINCE I'M TOO CONSTIPATED TO SLEEP, I figure I might as well get in a little blogging. At the moment it's 6:30 a.m. and I've already read about the Red Sox' blowout by the Yanks, pondered a few fantasy baseball moves, and heard my aged roommate's chainsaw-like snoring drowned out by actual chainsaws wielded by the chattering Latino construction workers who are responsible for my charming new cinderblock view. I'm not looking forward to today.

2003-05-27T15:30:00.000-04:00

IN OTHER NEWS: Two is getting bigger.

2003-05-27T15:25:00.000-04:00

NEAL POLLACK ON IRAN.

2003-05-27T12:50:00.000-04:00

APPARENTLTY THE LOOTING of the Iraqi National Museum never really happened.

A couple of things:

1) I read the NY Times and if this moron did too he would have known that they dedicated a significant amount of column space explaining that the original reports had been highly exaggerated and that the actual number of stolen items was probably in the dozens rather than thousands.

2) Deutsch-bag. Who the hell is this guy?

"I don't see any big or significant damage from this looting," says Deutsch. "It was very small-scale."

Whu? Uh-buh I, ah huh? So, if you destroyed the Guggenheim that would be, like uh, medium-scale?

3) What is the point of writing this story? Lowry is basically trying to say that it was no big deal that the museum was raided. It is actually a good thing when you think about it because, "Antiquities sometimes are better off in private hands than in museums." While this may be true in some cases, do you really think it applies to 5000 year old relics in the hands of people with no water, electricity or food? Wait, wait, wait, what was I thinking? Those poeple are not holding on to the stuff, they are probably selling it to, oh I don't know, antiquities dealers like Deutschbag.

There is obviously no journalistic integrity to this story. It is just some lame attempt to downplay a significant and widely recognized failure of Rummy's war plan.

Kudos to Instapundit for linking to this peice of crap. Does Glenn just not care about his credibility anymore?

2003-05-23T15:26:00.000-04:00

RICHARD COHEN ON THE PVT. LYNCH MEDIA DEBACLE.

2003-05-23T11:56:00.000-04:00

I JUST GOT MY PICTURES BACK from CVS. I think Steve and I are going to use this one of us, leaving The Zombie Hut, to promote this site.

(Weird how similar we look.)

2003-05-23T11:45:00.000-04:00

HAPPINESS IS AN ILLUMINATED LEFT PREFRONTAL LOBE.

There are two paths which seekers of Truth should not follow. One is the path of habitual devotion to passion and sensual pleasures, the other is the path of self-mortification and extreme asceticism which is also painful, ignoble and unprofitable. The Tathagatha has discovered a Middle Path, which opens the eyes and bestows understanding and which leads to peace, insight, wisdom and enlightenment.

Where self is, truth is not. Where truth is, self is not. Self is the fleeting error of samsara; it is individual separateness and that egotism which begets envy and hatred.

2003-05-22T13:31:00.000-04:00

$90 MILLION OVER SEVEN YEARS.

A) Jury award in class action lead paint poisoning case.
B) Twice the GDP of the Pacific Island of Kiribati.
C) $12,857,142.29 a year or 338.35 times my salary.
D) 18 year old LeBron James' new contract with Nike.

2003-05-21T15:42:00.000-04:00

UGGH. DID SOMEONE STEP ON A GNOME?

2003-05-20T13:06:00.000-04:00

THE PENTAGON RESPONDS to the BBC report of Private Lynch's rescue.

2003-05-20T12:53:00.000-04:00

EARTH PENETRATING NEUTRINO BEAMS capable of destroying nuclear weapons?

HOLOGRAPHIC STORAGE capable of copying 100GB of memory in less than a minute?

MEAT-FRUIT?

What's next? An easily removable CD wrapper?

2003-05-20T10:41:00.000-04:00

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Not that the NY Post should be considered a legitimate source of news or commentary in any way, but this is just ridiculous.

2003-05-20T00:49:00.000-04:00

Props to the Cunte for failing to look up the word "facetiously" in the dictionary before lambasting me for my gullible jingoism in a post below.
Coming soon: Holocaust? What Holocaust?

2003-05-19T16:56:00.000-04:00

SO LONG, DOUCHEBAG.

The original caption for this photo read: 'When asked comment on the real size of Saddam's chemical weapon stockpile, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer laughed and said "Oh, he only had about this much. We figured that was about 16,000 liters too little to start a war over, so we exaggerated a little."' (It was later changed to its current form after a phone call from the Evil Conservative, Stephen Rauscher)

2003-05-19T16:05:00.000-04:00

WHAT A SHAME IT DIDN'T WORK OUT. Imagine the gastronomical possibilities. Maztoh Ball Masala. Gefilte Vindaloo. Naan and Lox. The list is endless.