Friday, May 28, 2004
Inauspicious news for a Memorial Day weekend
So let me get this straight: we give Najaf and Kufa back to al-Sadr, rescind the arrest warrant, let his Mahdi Army continue to organize, and we still try to spin it as a victory? That story from the shouted front-page of the NYTimes is already trumped by another story of attacks on the military in Kufa. Wow. This war is getting out of control.
The Often Essential Krug is Entirely Essential today. He throws a ton of bricks at Bush, the Press, and his own paper today. Only the most important liberal columnist in the country can get away with that.
Everyone's looking for nice things to say about the WWII Memorial. Personally, I think it's pathetic. Huge, wasteful space torn from the National Mall. Unimportant, illogical pillars for States (what vet every defined his service by the State he came from - that seems to have ended after the Civil War). As usual, architecture by committee ends up being a muted disaster.
So let me get this straight: we give Najaf and Kufa back to al-Sadr, rescind the arrest warrant, let his Mahdi Army continue to organize, and we still try to spin it as a victory? That story from the shouted front-page of the NYTimes is already trumped by another story of attacks on the military in Kufa. Wow. This war is getting out of control.
The Often Essential Krug is Entirely Essential today. He throws a ton of bricks at Bush, the Press, and his own paper today. Only the most important liberal columnist in the country can get away with that.
Everyone's looking for nice things to say about the WWII Memorial. Personally, I think it's pathetic. Huge, wasteful space torn from the National Mall. Unimportant, illogical pillars for States (what vet every defined his service by the State he came from - that seems to have ended after the Civil War). As usual, architecture by committee ends up being a muted disaster.
Thursday, May 27, 2004
A news overload lament...
So much ink used everyday, so few stories that capture the public's imagination. Every day brings ugliness from Iraq, accompanied by analysis that should cause even more ill-stirrings. But what do people get from the major TV networks? Kobe and American Idol. The real story is that over 800 Americans have died in Iraq. Instead, we get the AG and FBI, looking to scare us on some subliminal level, planting the thought that the next attack is a moment of weakness away. As Rummy might say, "oh my goodness." No explanation, just a folksy redirection and nothing else offered.
We don't get off so easy here, though. Unread and in the ether - that is the role so many have filled for the moment. Tapped into what shames all of us about this whole Messopotamia. And looking for some sense to come of all of it.
So much ink used everyday, so few stories that capture the public's imagination. Every day brings ugliness from Iraq, accompanied by analysis that should cause even more ill-stirrings. But what do people get from the major TV networks? Kobe and American Idol. The real story is that over 800 Americans have died in Iraq. Instead, we get the AG and FBI, looking to scare us on some subliminal level, planting the thought that the next attack is a moment of weakness away. As Rummy might say, "oh my goodness." No explanation, just a folksy redirection and nothing else offered.
We don't get off so easy here, though. Unread and in the ether - that is the role so many have filled for the moment. Tapped into what shames all of us about this whole Messopotamia. And looking for some sense to come of all of it.
Friday, May 21, 2004
Chalabi Chooses a New Country to Dupe
The WashPost continues to have the best pipeline to leaks from the Iraqi prison abuse scandal. Today's offering is major, detailing abuse that includes sodomy, forcefeeding pork and liquor to admitted Muslims and a stomach-turning litany of brutal acts that makes what we've seen thus far look like a John Hughes film. Featured are six new photos and video stills that show some military folks that haven't been pictured before. Obviously, it was wishful thinking by the Bushies that charging seven low-level "bad apples" would eleviate this travesty. And by timing the release to coincide with the beginning of the Memorial Day week-plus break for Congress, the Post has undoubtably pushed this story to a full-stride gallop with minimal interference.
The Post also details the campaign coffers of Kerry and Bush as of the end of 2004's 1st Quarter. Kerry's now doubling the fundraising of Bush while the money continues to fly out of both camps with record speed. Bush has already dumped $130M, and has just over $71M on hand. Clearly the Bushies are showing the same approach to campaign spending that they encourage with regard to the Federal budget.
You have to wonder whether Richard Perle and his ilk are willing to take Ahmad Chalabi's calls these days. Yesterday's humiliating raid of his Chalabi's fiefdom grounds has begun to unleash a bunch more incriminating allegations about his questionable ties with other evildoers aside from the NeoCons. Is he really stupid enough to pass along classified info to Iran about the Occupation of Iraq? If so, he's burned his last bridge (lots of cells are opening for him at Abu Gharib, by the way). No matter how much I'd like to see it happen, I won't expect that Chalabi will get his just desserts and end up in the pokey. But that slope he's standing on is awfully slippery. Even though CBSNews broke the story into the open last night, as usual the Wall Street Journal advanced the story considerably this morning.
I've not yet commented on Randy Johnson's perfect game from earlier this week. Impressive feat, even for one of the ugliest men on the Planet. But my impression of Randy will forever be jaded by seeing him driving a Porsche 911 outside a grocery store in Seattle in the summer of 1995 when I had a pathetic job delivering practically-inedible organic sandwiches. His craggy noggin was sticking out of the sunroof and with his appalling mullet blowing in the breeze. A 6'10" man should never, EVER, drive a car that size. He could throw a perfect game on his 50th birthday and I'll still never get that vignette out of my memory.
The WashPost continues to have the best pipeline to leaks from the Iraqi prison abuse scandal. Today's offering is major, detailing abuse that includes sodomy, forcefeeding pork and liquor to admitted Muslims and a stomach-turning litany of brutal acts that makes what we've seen thus far look like a John Hughes film. Featured are six new photos and video stills that show some military folks that haven't been pictured before. Obviously, it was wishful thinking by the Bushies that charging seven low-level "bad apples" would eleviate this travesty. And by timing the release to coincide with the beginning of the Memorial Day week-plus break for Congress, the Post has undoubtably pushed this story to a full-stride gallop with minimal interference.
The Post also details the campaign coffers of Kerry and Bush as of the end of 2004's 1st Quarter. Kerry's now doubling the fundraising of Bush while the money continues to fly out of both camps with record speed. Bush has already dumped $130M, and has just over $71M on hand. Clearly the Bushies are showing the same approach to campaign spending that they encourage with regard to the Federal budget.
You have to wonder whether Richard Perle and his ilk are willing to take Ahmad Chalabi's calls these days. Yesterday's humiliating raid of his Chalabi's fiefdom grounds has begun to unleash a bunch more incriminating allegations about his questionable ties with other evildoers aside from the NeoCons. Is he really stupid enough to pass along classified info to Iran about the Occupation of Iraq? If so, he's burned his last bridge (lots of cells are opening for him at Abu Gharib, by the way). No matter how much I'd like to see it happen, I won't expect that Chalabi will get his just desserts and end up in the pokey. But that slope he's standing on is awfully slippery. Even though CBSNews broke the story into the open last night, as usual the Wall Street Journal advanced the story considerably this morning.
I've not yet commented on Randy Johnson's perfect game from earlier this week. Impressive feat, even for one of the ugliest men on the Planet. But my impression of Randy will forever be jaded by seeing him driving a Porsche 911 outside a grocery store in Seattle in the summer of 1995 when I had a pathetic job delivering practically-inedible organic sandwiches. His craggy noggin was sticking out of the sunroof and with his appalling mullet blowing in the breeze. A 6'10" man should never, EVER, drive a car that size. He could throw a perfect game on his 50th birthday and I'll still never get that vignette out of my memory.
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
The Oregon Trail Ends...Today
Kerry brought Dean with him to Oregon yesterday. Pretty standard coverage resulted, with the veiled hints that these two fellers don't think too much of each other. But buried in the coverage was news that Nader didn't even gather the 1000 signatures he needed to make the Presidential ballot. For someone who got 5% there in 2000, that's a telling stat. Which leads me to offer my opinion that all the polls that show Nader drawing around 5% nationally are so far off-base as to be detrimental to the actual horserace by giving Ralph even more false confidence for digging in his heels in the states where he does make the ballot. I'd prefer that the pollsters look to places like Oregon and New Mexico that actually have a history of voting for the 3rd Party spoilers as a way of better gauging his support this year. Just a thought.
At long last, Chalabi's gettin' kicked off the gravy train! I'd hate to see what sort of a mess he and his henchmen make of their squatters palace given this overdue development. He doesn't officially lose his $350K/month until June 30th, but it finally looks like it indeed will happen. In retrospect, it's amazing just how much false justification for war a measly $27M can buy.
DailyKos, one of the best politico-blogs, hit one out of the park yesterday by analyzing the cynicism of Bush's fake grandiloquence during the 50th Anniversary celebration of Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka. To paraphrase, for the Bushies to praise the actions of Judges that rule against the misguided majority of 'Mericans barely passes the laugh test. But the fact that Massachusetts began offering gay marriages yesterday I believe this moment will stand as an important contrast between the future of our collective march toward equal rights for all Americans and the hard-to-stomach present Administration's claims of higher aims.
To follow up on yesterday's ironic disparity in coverage of the news from Iraq - the Wall Street Journal seems to have dusted off an editorial from a year ago and added a new lead to trump up the importance of the single sarin shell found over the weekend. Apparently, the WSJ thinks that comments such as the following still hold water:
Though it gets little attention, the Iraq Survey Group that is searching for WMD has also found warehouses full of commercial and agricultural chemicals. Mixed and packaged properly, those could quickly become chemical weapons, and Saddam had no legitimate need for so much pesticide.
Yea right, any pharmacist/pharmer can whip up a big batch of anthrax given a casual motivation. Unbelievable. Look, I read the WSJ every weekday given a still active subscription from when I did news briefings with the Dean Campaign. I respect them as a national paper and some of their reporting is beyond comparison for quality. But their editorial page simply cannot be taken seriously by anyone other than a diehard NeoCon. Listen for Wolfie to quote from it in today's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It's just about the only defense of his time at Defense in play at the moment for the Bushie/WSJ/FoxNews side of the argument. And to play this during the same news cycle when the rest of the world is shocked by the suicide bombing that killed Ezzedine Salim is just downright jingoistic crapola masquerading as progress.
The LATimes keeps the legs churning on the Iraqi prisoner abuse story with some gruesome details from statements by the guards currently being run up the flagpole. More is sure to come (yet another great "get" for the LATimes in this particular case). After all, the first court martial starts tomorrow in Iraq.
Kerry brought Dean with him to Oregon yesterday. Pretty standard coverage resulted, with the veiled hints that these two fellers don't think too much of each other. But buried in the coverage was news that Nader didn't even gather the 1000 signatures he needed to make the Presidential ballot. For someone who got 5% there in 2000, that's a telling stat. Which leads me to offer my opinion that all the polls that show Nader drawing around 5% nationally are so far off-base as to be detrimental to the actual horserace by giving Ralph even more false confidence for digging in his heels in the states where he does make the ballot. I'd prefer that the pollsters look to places like Oregon and New Mexico that actually have a history of voting for the 3rd Party spoilers as a way of better gauging his support this year. Just a thought.
At long last, Chalabi's gettin' kicked off the gravy train! I'd hate to see what sort of a mess he and his henchmen make of their squatters palace given this overdue development. He doesn't officially lose his $350K/month until June 30th, but it finally looks like it indeed will happen. In retrospect, it's amazing just how much false justification for war a measly $27M can buy.
DailyKos, one of the best politico-blogs, hit one out of the park yesterday by analyzing the cynicism of Bush's fake grandiloquence during the 50th Anniversary celebration of Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka. To paraphrase, for the Bushies to praise the actions of Judges that rule against the misguided majority of 'Mericans barely passes the laugh test. But the fact that Massachusetts began offering gay marriages yesterday I believe this moment will stand as an important contrast between the future of our collective march toward equal rights for all Americans and the hard-to-stomach present Administration's claims of higher aims.
To follow up on yesterday's ironic disparity in coverage of the news from Iraq - the Wall Street Journal seems to have dusted off an editorial from a year ago and added a new lead to trump up the importance of the single sarin shell found over the weekend. Apparently, the WSJ thinks that comments such as the following still hold water:
Though it gets little attention, the Iraq Survey Group that is searching for WMD has also found warehouses full of commercial and agricultural chemicals. Mixed and packaged properly, those could quickly become chemical weapons, and Saddam had no legitimate need for so much pesticide.
Yea right, any pharmacist/pharmer can whip up a big batch of anthrax given a casual motivation. Unbelievable. Look, I read the WSJ every weekday given a still active subscription from when I did news briefings with the Dean Campaign. I respect them as a national paper and some of their reporting is beyond comparison for quality. But their editorial page simply cannot be taken seriously by anyone other than a diehard NeoCon. Listen for Wolfie to quote from it in today's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It's just about the only defense of his time at Defense in play at the moment for the Bushie/WSJ/FoxNews side of the argument. And to play this during the same news cycle when the rest of the world is shocked by the suicide bombing that killed Ezzedine Salim is just downright jingoistic crapola masquerading as progress.
The LATimes keeps the legs churning on the Iraqi prisoner abuse story with some gruesome details from statements by the guards currently being run up the flagpole. More is sure to come (yet another great "get" for the LATimes in this particular case). After all, the first court martial starts tomorrow in Iraq.
Monday, May 17, 2004
Back on the Trail
After reading in this morning's NYTimes about how Dennis Kucinich is still battling for delegates in tomorrow's Oregon Primary, I was inspired to come back to this blog in hopes of restarting some entries on this year's Election Battle. Two months of lost election comments amount to 60 lifetimes of shifts and twists worthy of shtick. But no one's reading me in this forum (with the possible exception of family). So here we go again - once again into the fray of verbose futility.
A must-read from the WashPost this weekend dealt with Bush's funding raising prowess. As if "Pioneers" and "Rangers" weren't enough, now there will be "Super Rangers" which are tasked to throw $300K-each the way of the RNC. Look for "PowerRangers" and "Pie and Coffee-Neers" coming soon. You heard it here first.
More terrible news coming from Iraq this morning in the form of the (recently-current) head of the Governing Council being assassinated by a massive car bomb. Yet FoxNews/Drudge/ImitatorFrauds everywhere will surely instead trumpet the discovery of an old 155-millimeter shell with sarin gas over the weekend that was used in a roadside bomb. The only interesting thing I've seen thus far about that munition is that the Iraqis typically didn't mark their chemical shells (according to David Kay being interviewed on MSNBC). Personally, I find that astonishing footnote to be even more important to consider than the weak-kneed, so-called good news of finding the first instance of decades-old WMDs. Regardless, any new news is surely considered to be good news by the Bushies in hopes of pushing Sy Hersh's latest example of an amazing "get" for "The New Yorker" off the nation's front pages. If there's a more important investigative journalist working in the US today, he or she doesn't come to mind.
On an entirely different note, the Milwaukee Brewers are generating news on the playing field for the first time in years, much too my satisfaction. Granted, they're only one game over .500 and it isn't even the end of May. But their Ace, Ben Sheets, threw a complete game at home yesterday - striking out 18 (a team record eclipsing one of my childhood faves, Moose Haas's, previous best of 14) on the way to a 4-1 victory. Cheering for the Brew Crew has become akin to cheering for a Minor League team over the last decade. I'm still there, though. And this team has some early potential. Lyle Overbay (the new first baseman we got along with 5 other contributing players for trading the ridiculously large Ricky Sexton) has a 17-game hitting streak still active. They defend well, they hit well, and they've got the best-rated Farm League system in the major leagues. All that with the lowest payroll in the Majors this year. A long way from Bambi's Bombers and Harvey's Wallbangers, but a team worthy of attention nonetheless.
And with that, I'll sign off for the moment. It feels good to be back.
After reading in this morning's NYTimes about how Dennis Kucinich is still battling for delegates in tomorrow's Oregon Primary, I was inspired to come back to this blog in hopes of restarting some entries on this year's Election Battle. Two months of lost election comments amount to 60 lifetimes of shifts and twists worthy of shtick. But no one's reading me in this forum (with the possible exception of family). So here we go again - once again into the fray of verbose futility.
A must-read from the WashPost this weekend dealt with Bush's funding raising prowess. As if "Pioneers" and "Rangers" weren't enough, now there will be "Super Rangers" which are tasked to throw $300K-each the way of the RNC. Look for "PowerRangers" and "Pie and Coffee-Neers" coming soon. You heard it here first.
More terrible news coming from Iraq this morning in the form of the (recently-current) head of the Governing Council being assassinated by a massive car bomb. Yet FoxNews/Drudge/ImitatorFrauds everywhere will surely instead trumpet the discovery of an old 155-millimeter shell with sarin gas over the weekend that was used in a roadside bomb. The only interesting thing I've seen thus far about that munition is that the Iraqis typically didn't mark their chemical shells (according to David Kay being interviewed on MSNBC). Personally, I find that astonishing footnote to be even more important to consider than the weak-kneed, so-called good news of finding the first instance of decades-old WMDs. Regardless, any new news is surely considered to be good news by the Bushies in hopes of pushing Sy Hersh's latest example of an amazing "get" for "The New Yorker" off the nation's front pages. If there's a more important investigative journalist working in the US today, he or she doesn't come to mind.
On an entirely different note, the Milwaukee Brewers are generating news on the playing field for the first time in years, much too my satisfaction. Granted, they're only one game over .500 and it isn't even the end of May. But their Ace, Ben Sheets, threw a complete game at home yesterday - striking out 18 (a team record eclipsing one of my childhood faves, Moose Haas's, previous best of 14) on the way to a 4-1 victory. Cheering for the Brew Crew has become akin to cheering for a Minor League team over the last decade. I'm still there, though. And this team has some early potential. Lyle Overbay (the new first baseman we got along with 5 other contributing players for trading the ridiculously large Ricky Sexton) has a 17-game hitting streak still active. They defend well, they hit well, and they've got the best-rated Farm League system in the major leagues. All that with the lowest payroll in the Majors this year. A long way from Bambi's Bombers and Harvey's Wallbangers, but a team worthy of attention nonetheless.
And with that, I'll sign off for the moment. It feels good to be back.
