Nice Job, CNN

From about an hour ago (and to be fair to Dubya, that isn't a direct quote - he omitted the slur for a change)...

Hendrik Hertzberg has more.

Friday Videos

Lowell George of Little Feat would have been 62 today (here's "Fat Man In The Bathtub," recorded live at the BBC in 1975)



...Weezer ("Say It Ain't So")...



...a belated Happy Birthday to Chris Difford of Squeeze ("Black Coffee In Bed")...



...and Happy Birthday also to the Rev. Al Green ("Let's Stay Together").

How We Got Here (4/13/07)

I started this in March, and to follow up, here's more from Bob Woodward’s “State Of Denial,” the third book in his "Bush At War" series.

And to make it easier to go back and read prior posts related to Woodward's book, I set up an index page of sorts here.

Like you, I’ve read and heard the mea culpas from Paul Bremer, the former head of the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority, saying that we could have accomplished what we set out to do had more troops been deployed at the beginning of the war (though Bremer, as noted here, almost immediately backpedaled on that when he uttered those words in 2004).

Well, instead of providing the excerpt where Bremer faced off with Jay Garner, I thought I’d include the following, where Frank Miller, an intelligence official contacted by Condoleezza Rice to oversee security issues and find out what was going on, traveled to Iraq in March before Bremer left to give you an idea of the confusion that seemed to be everywhere.

(pp. 289-292)

Rice was hungry for data and intelligence. She wanted to know what was really happening Over There. She kept telling Frank Miller, “Get me more. Bring me more.”

In March 2004, she sent Miller to Iraq to find out what things were really like. He went as her representative, but he tried to downplay his NSC credentials. Not helpful, he thought. He wanted to avoid polished-up presentations calibrated to impress and perhaps mislead visitors from Washington. He never asked to meet with (Paul) Bremer (head of the Coalition Provisional Authority). He didn’t think it would be useful, but he also didn’t want to risk being turned down. Such was Bremer’s perceived independence from NSC oversight.

Miller was struck by how the CPA had become a hermit city, ensconced in the Green Zone. He explained to one CPA official how he planned to fly around the country to visit with the U.S. military division commanders who were in charge of the tens of thousands of U.S. troops.

“Wow,” the CPA official said. “I wish we could do that. I wish we could see the country.”

It was telling, Miller thought. There was a sense of lethargy, like a bunch of basketball players passing a ball back and forth, back and forth, all reluctant to take a shot. It’s March and the turnover (to Iraqi leadership) is set for June, he thought. Quit passing and launch one at the basket.

Miller and the two people he’d brought with him – retired Army colonel Jeff Jones from the NSC, and an active-duty Army colonel from the Joint Staff – linked up with the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad where the deputy commander, a one-star general named Mark Hertling, was an old friend of Miller’s from his Pentagon days. The group joined a Humvee patrol through an area just south of the notorious Shi’ite Baghdad slum, Sadr City. Screaming poverty, Miller thought – no fresh water, few working sewers. People were living in hovels and throwing trash and human waste in their front yards.

American soldiers in Sadr City and elsewhere now seemed to be acting as much as engineers as infantrymen, setting up water distribution points and improving some roads. But the only money to fund these ad hoc projects came from the military’s emergency funds, called the Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP). Miller made a note that they would need to expand and expedite these CERP funds - walking around money for the battalion and brigade commanders – as they were the only expenditures that seemed to have a visible impact on the population.

Woodward then describes how Miller came across Iraqi kids who gave him the thumbs-up sign and he was glad that they seemed grateful, not realizing that it is the Iraqi equivalent of our middle finger.

Everywhere, Miller found that the Iraqi units suffered from a desperate shortage of vehicles and communications equipment. And the Civil Defense Corps – whose first mission was to guard valuable infrastructure like banks and other buildings, thus freeing up better-trained forces for more difficult duties – was a creature of the individual U.S. military divisions that parented them. One division had a one-week training program, another a two-week program, and a third had extended it to three weeks. It was ridiculous. Earlier that year, Miller learned, a two-star general had sent a report to Defense practically begging for national standards for the new Iraqi corps, but it hadn’t happened.

Miller recorded in his notes the comment of one division commander: “What’s wrong with Baghdad?” the commander said, meaning Bremer’s CPA. “Why won’t they give us the money to do this, and to do the reconstruction projects that need to be done?” Building Iraqi units, both police and military, and rebuilding the country’s infrastructure were prerequisites to an exit strategy for the U.S. But there was too little coordination to do the job right.

Iraq looked and felt like a war zone. Attacks had climbed again, to about 1,000 a month. Every soldier Miller saw carried a weapon. A mess hall Miller was eating in was attacked with mortars. When he flew in helicopters, the door gunners flew with weapons pointed down at potential targets. Miller wore a flak jacket, and he and his two aides traveled under the watchful eye of an earnest young lieutenant of field artillery from Kansas who was assigned as his escort officer. When they moved on the ground, it was in convoys with Humvees and big sport utility vehicles, a machine gunner on top of the Humvees and the escort officer with his M-16 pointed out the window. It was good on the one hand – Miller felt pretty safe – but then he thought, “We ain’t winning any hearts and minds this way.”

The rest of the chapter describes how Miller traveled to multinational units and found situations such as the one in Basra, where the British forces were teaching the Iraqis how to patrol; the problem was that they had English maps, so they told the Iraqis to memorize patrol routes instead (walk 10 blocks to a marketplace and turn right, 5 blocks to a mosque and turn left, then turn left again to return to the station. etc.).

Also, I’m sure we remember how Faux News and other propaganda sources continually fed us the Bushco line about how the U.S. was part of a multinational force once called “the coalition of the willing.” Well, keep that in mind when you read this…

Miller moved on to meet with the Polish commander of the Multinational Force, made up of troops from 23 nations. This was the shakiest part of the coalition, but an important fig leaf to suggest that the war was a broad international effort.

The Polish division commander told Miller, “I’ve got 23 separate national units. They have 23 separate rules of engagement. I pick up the phone. I tell the colonel in charge of the Spanish brigade what to do. He picks up his phone, calls Madrid and says, “I’ve been told to do this. Is it OK?”

Miller understood that this meant the Multinational division had little or no fighting capability.

Woodward also notes the discussion between Miller and Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was the ground commander at the time of Miller’s visit, about the non-communication between Sanchez and Bremer (this book is a case study of avoidance behavior by people in government). Bremer, for his part, warmed himself up to Dubya directly to the point where he barely dealt with Rumsfeld at all towards the end of his time in Iraq.

And as I read this, I can’t help but wonder why Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry didn’t exploit all of this confusion more thoroughly for political reasons during the year of the presidential election (not primarily important versus the safety of our people, I know, though). I can assure you that, has the shoe been on the other foot, Dubya and Karl Rove would have done no less.

Mrs. Parker's Vicious Cycle

(The title of this post pertains to this great movie, by the way, about a vastly superior writer to the one critiqued as follows.)

As I noted earlier, Kathleen Parker of the Orlando Sentinel has been one busy little freeper bee, as it were, buzzing all over the place and stinging with disinformation-laced invective.

Before she sounded off on Imus, though, she decided to have a literary fit of sorts over the capture of the 15 British sailors and marines by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

Now there is no way I will defend Ahmadinejad; he’s a kook who has been granted influence on the world stage because President Brainless decided to marginalize Khatami and other Iranians who could be moderate and work in concert with us first by his stupid declaration of that country as part of the “axis of evil,” and second, by the illegal invasion of Iraq; anyone beyond the age of approximately five years old could see that the war would be a boon to the Shi’ites who dominate the Iranian theocracy in the long run.

However, Parker waxes apoplectic in her column because Ahmadinejad was placed in a position where he could be perceived to show “mercy” to his captives by releasing them, and again, our actions in that region have ended up propping up this guy (and of course, Parker doesn’t even bother to acknowledge the argument that diplomacy played a part in the release of the captives and is thus a more beneficial, adult strategy than declaring unilateral war).

And Parker saves her fiercest rants for “the West” which has, in her view, “diminished motherhood so that women can pretend to be men.” And as Parker extends this line of thinking to all women (and positing somehow that male rape is preferable in combat to female rape…I don’t even want to imagine what is in Parker’s mind here), she offers us this…

At the point when our men can stand by unfazed while American servicewomen are raped and tortured, then we will have no cause to fight any war. We will have already lost.

Positioning women to become pawns of propaganda, meanwhile, is called aiding and abetting the enemy.

I have a couple of points I’d like to make, and before I get to the first one, I’d like to quote Parker again here…

But let's assume for the sake of argument that women, despite all evidence to the contrary, are as capable as men in any battle. If our goal is to prevail, then shouldn't we also consider other ramifications of putting women in combat and/or in positions of risk?

Those ramifications include women's unequal vulnerability to rape and injury, as well as cultural attitudes toward women that may enhance their exposure to punishment or, alternatively, make them useful to our enemies.

So what are you saying then, Parker? That women in the military shouldn’t be allowed to fight in combat? Is it less important to allow them the opportunity to serve as they see fit, fully knowledgeable of the risks and in a manner commensurate with their skill and training, than it is to hold them back lest they be made “useful to our enemies” for propaganda reasons?

I’ll tell you what, then; read about the courageous women who have served this country in the name of George W. Bush’s War For Lies^TM and paid the ultimate price as a result here. Maybe if you do, it will begin to occur to you how insulting your words are to our fine service people who share your gender.

And speaking of Dubya, I’d like to come back to your closing sentence…

Positioning women to become pawns of propaganda, meanwhile, is called aiding and abetting the enemy.

If so, then Bushco is guilty as charged, and most of our corporate media, collectively, are unindicted co-conspirators (and the unraveling of the story of Pfc. Jessica Lynch is Exhibit A in support of that argument, as noted here).

So Mrs. Parker can rail against Ahmadinejad’s propagandistic farce with the British crew (which some have argued is a payback for our treatment of Iranian diplomats in Iraq – yes, some of that umbrage may be equally contrived, but we should have been prepared for Ahmadinejad’s nutty response), but when it comes to “adults (who) are too dim, brainwashed, or ideologically driven to see what’s obvious,” she should try looking long and hard in the mirror before she decides to write her next column.

Jim Gerlach's Fuzzy Campaign Math

If you ever hear 6th U.S. PA Congressional District Repug Rep Jim Gerlach complaining about a budget or misappropriation of funds or any kind of financial matter at all, I’d appreciate it if you kept the following in mind.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported yesterday (as well as Keystone Politics and PA Progressive here) that Gerlach “has agreed to pay what appears to be the largest penalty ever imposed on a Pennsylvania member of Congress for violation of federal campaign-finance laws.”

And this is why…

Gerlach reported to the Federal Election Commission that he had raised almost $2.2 million in a period of less than two months after the election. In reality, he had raised $18,000 to $20,000.

And Gerlach calls the penalty of $120,000 “way out of line,” huh? Well, I would say the same thing about a discrepancy where two zeroes are accidentally inserted to the right of a decimal.

And as the Inquirer story notes, it’s not as if this hadn’t happened before, though not to this degree…

Gerlach admitted to two smaller mistakes that he also described as bookkeeping errors. One was misreporting $8,911 in refunded contributions in 2005. The other was failing to itemize $8,832 in contributions from another fund-raising committee in 2004.

And in true Repug fashion, he threw somebody else under the bus for it, so to speak, namely former campaign treasurer Alan Randzin. And I suppose Randzin should be the one to take the hit for it, but if Gerlach kept him on despite the ’04 and ’05 errors, then that’s his fault as far as I’m concerned, assuming Randzin was directly responsible all three times of course.

Well, I don’t think Gerlach should worry too much about this. After all, as noted in this Bloomberg story, he should have about $82,086 of loose change from the prior campaign kicking around that was handed over to him from Tom DeLay and powerful oil and gas interests, so he can cover at least two-thirds of the fine with that.

Today’s Obligatory Imus Post

I suppose I must weigh in on this subject partly because I mentioned it a minute ago in my comments about Gov. Corzine’s terrible road accident, but I long for this story to fade from public view, actually (along with Imus himself, I hope, but I’m not holding my breath).

Possibly the busiest freeper pundit out there as nearly as I can guess is Kathleen Parker of The Orlando Sentinel, who, after writing this hard-hitting, Murrow-esque account of a YouTube video showing John Edwards fussing with his hair (please), followed it up with another mea culpa on behalf of Imus, most notably this…

Black hip-hop artists have been denigrating the women of their families and neighborhoods for years with terminology that reduces all women to receptacles for men's pleasure. Sharpton and Jackson would do well to direct some of their outrage to that neck of the woods.

Meanwhile, the broader savaging of Imus seems disproportionate to the crime. There is in the air the unmistakable scent of schadenfreude -- pleasure in someone else's misery -- as some in the media have turned on the radio jock like pack wolves on a wounded puppy.

Otherwise, his takedown feels like hecklers gone wild. When the star is down, the heckler gets to be the star. Celebrity comes to the one with the loudest voice, the meanest jibe or, in this case, the pithiest piety.

And of course, not to be outdone, Cal Thomas inflicted readers of the Bucks County Courier Times with similar apologia today (my wife, bless her, made the mistake of actually reading this cretin, and that’s how I know; I gave up on him years ago myself...and it also never ceases to make me laugh when I read a columnist decry people’s preoccupation with stories like this or the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby when those same people dive into the muck over it just like anyone else.).

Yeah, I’m sure that, considering the Edwards column, Parker knows all about mean jibes, and saying that Imus’ words don’t constitute hate speech is hardly the point (and believe it or not, she wrote something else that deserves a response that I’ll try to get to today).

I’m sure most of us understand what I’m about to say, but it deserves emphasis (again, pointed out by my wife this morning).

Some of the quotes from Jesse Jackson (“Hymietown”) and Al Sharpton (“White interloper” – this is an insult? Hey, I grew up in Philadelphia; you’ll have to do better than that!) that have been used to somehow validate Imus’ horrible words fall laughingly short by comparison. While Jackson’s phrase was stupid, it was a broad denunciation of a group of people designated by their religion in a broad geographic area.

Imus, on the other hand, singled out a particular group of women playing a particular sport for a particular college university. In addition to being horribly racist and insensitive, Imus’ conduct is legally actionable – the women could file a lawsuit against him for slander, and I hope they do, actually.

And here is another important difference; people have lumped media personalities such as Howard Stern into this mess by decrying “the coarsening of our culture.” I don’t like that either, but as far as I’m concerned, it is up to us individually to decide what is proper by choosing not to view or listen to something when we find it objectionable. Besides, the people who appear on Stern’s show or most other programs are there to promote something and know that they’re setting themselves up to a degree; almost everything that is said under that pretext is fair comment. On the other hand, the Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team sought absolutely nothing from Don Imus.

Some of the freeper apologia on behalf of Imus reminds me of the time Suzanne Fields blamed “patronizing white liberal guilt” for the outcry over the words of Trent “All These Problems” Lott, which was no less wrong then as it is now.

Finally, here is some thoughtful information on this from Media Matters, and I think Digby also puts everything into perspective very well here (hat tips to Atrios for both).

Buckle Up Next Time, Governor

Let us all wish New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine well as he recovers from critical injuries suffered in a hellacious automobile crash last night (story is here).

According to the Times story, Corzine was returning to Drumthwacket, his mansion in Princeton, where he was to meet with Don Imus and the Rutgers women’s basketball team after attending the New Jersey Conference of Mayors at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. He was being driven to his mansion by state police escort riding in a Chevrolet Tahoe SUV via the Garden State Parkway, which is easily one of the most hellacious thoroughfares in the tri-state area at least primarily because of the insane manner in which people drive on it.

The Times story provides thorough coverage of all of this, of course, but I just want to highlight the item, buried in the story, noting that Corzine probably was not wearing his seat belt at the time of the accident; this is stated because Corzine did not wear his seat belt in the past (and it should be noted, by the way, that air bags will not deploy on many vehicles unless the driver and any passengers are buckled).

Please, Governor, do all you must to recover; we’ll extend our hopes, prayers and best wishes. But don’t risk your life again by ignoring a safety precaution that everyone else should observe also.

Thursday Videos

Kaiser Chiefs ("Ruby")...



...Happy Birthday to John Kay of Steppenwolf ("Born To Be Wild" - an evergreen, I know, but it's the band's signature song; of course, if Peter Fonda and freeper Dennis Hopper were cycling like that in PA, they wouldn't need helmets)

I Don't Own A Bathrobe, Brian

And my name isn’t Vinny and I don’t live in the Bronx either (re: this item).

Still, here, here, and here are reasons why I know more than you do.

(In the first linked item, our hero reports that the Iraq Supplemental sponsored by the Dems "will leave our troops high and dry," he peddles more disinformation on global warming in the second one, and in the third, he allows Dubya to spout his B.S. with impunity.)

And I may not have a nice trophy; oh well. But at least I have a clear conscience.

Part Man, Part Monkey, Part Pope

So Benedict XVI recently stated “there is much suffering in the world,” and it was nice to see him acknowledge the reality of our life and times. And this made me wonder what he would address next on the world stage.

And I have to admit that I didn’t see the theory of evolution anywhere on that list, though I guess I should have; as this Times of London story notes, the Vatican sacked the chief astronomer last year after he said that “intelligent design” (re: some great big nice force created life as we know it, so why don’t we just all shut up and forget about the scientific method of reasoned hypothesis and analysis of data and learn to be just smart enough to get hired at Wal-Mart, OK?) “was not science and did not belong in classrooms” (the former astronomer sounds like a pretty bright guy to me).

As the Times Story further notes…

The Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, who is close to Benedict, has also appeared to back intelligent design, dismissing a 1996 statement by Pope John Paul II that Darwin's theory of evolution was "more than just a hypothesis" as "rather vague and unimportant."

Nice to ‘dis John Paul, you guys (it's not like he can defend himself or anything)…

So, as you can see, the current leader of the Roman Catholic Church is truly emerging as a force of guidance in matters of faith and doctrinal belief (that is, if you live in Kansas, though “ID” doesn’t hold sway as it once did even there).

In this post from a few days ago, I provided background on Pope Benedict XVI from a New Yorker article by Jane Kramer in which he said he believed he would have “a short papacy.”

I’m sorry, Your Holiness, but I hope you’re right.

The Dog Ate Karl's Homework

Gosh, what an unfortunate accident for Bushco that it just happened to lose those pesky Emails pertaining to the investigation into the eight U.S. attorneys fired by Abu Gonzales. What a shame that this inopportune computer glitch just happened to take place at such a difficult time.

Funny, though – this tells us about how something pretty similar happened, oh, I’d say a little more than a year ago. See, Patrick Fitzgerald was trying to obtain Emails that were no doubt circulating within the White House concerning Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, who of course was outed (along with her entire operation tracking loose nukes – way to “protect the homeland,” Dubya) as a payback for Wilson’s Op-Ed in the New York Times calling Bushco on its B.S. about Saddam Hussein supposedly trying to buy yellowcake from Niger (I know all of this stuff is ingrained in us at this point, but it still bears repeating).

And by the way, for a history lesson to see how the Repugs operated when roles were reversed and no investigation was taking place (the whole Monica Whatsername inquisition having ended by then), check out Repug House Rep Dan Burton’s reaction here to the news from the Clinton Administration that it will cost $3 million (in 2000) to upgrade the White House Email system (Calling for a special prosecutor to look into this “big deal”? It is to laugh.).

Desperate Propagandists

A couple of quick hits coming up, and this is one…

This takes you to information on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner coming up on April 21st, and the reason I’m pointing that out is because two stars of the show “Desperate Housewives” have apparently been invited to this mess in an effort to distract from the fact that host Rich Little hasn’t been in the public eye since the Reagan Administration, no doubt slaying the audience with “You dirty rat!” impressions of James Cagney the last time he appeared.

(Actually, the show’s ratings were desperate last week apparently, possibly losing out because of “The Sopranos.”)

Take a look at the people on this list and remember their names the next time you wonder about supporting them in any way, whether or not it means watching their movies or T.V. shows, buying a book, or whatever (I have to admit, though, that I honestly hoped Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would know better).

Update 4/30/07: Kudos to Frank Rich of the New York Times for putting this farce in the proper perspective.

Sex-Ed 101 With J.D. Mullane

I’m not entirely sure why our ol’ buddy J.D. decided to become a moralistic scold today as opposed to the faithful freeper propagandist he usually is, but in a column chastising both teenagers for sneaking around for some activity of a personal nature and parents for turning a blind eye (in his view), he reveals this…

There are 19 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases each year, most among kids between 15 and 24, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This costs the economy about $14 billion a year.

Call me a pointy-headed liberal, but I would consider ruined lives that could result due to disease and/or unplanned pregnancies somewhat worse consequences than anything that could befall our economy, but what do I know?

So remember, kids – keep your hands to yourselves or else you’ll endanger our trade imbalance and government entitlements spending, right?

Once more, words fail me.

God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

Imagine my horror when I discovered today that all of my Kurt Vonnegut books had apparently been donated to our local library (I mean, it’s a good cause of course, but all of them?).

I guess it’s easy to dismiss Vonnegut’s work as farcical absurdity without taking note of the comic (or sometimes tragic) behavior of his characters, reveling in their inexplicable humanity (transvestite car dealer Harry LeSabre in “Breakfast of Champions,” forever ridiculed by his demented boss Dwayne Hoover, in part because he shares his last name with a model of Buick while working for a Pontiac dealership; Malachi Constant in “Sirens of Titan,” which is also the title of a ‘70s prog rock pop song by Al Stewart from “Modern Times,” which features a harpsichord, by the way – nice touch; and of course Billy Pilgrim in “Slaughterhouse-Five,” a man seemingly oblivious to time and space as we perceive it).

However, to categorize Vonnegut as some sort of kooky burnout from the ‘60s is to do him a huge disservice (he was prone to the personal turbulence of many great artists, including a suicide attempt in 1984). I cannot imagine the intricate operations of an intellect that could concoct such fantastic tales, yet make his characters somehow universal and resonant to the reader at the same time.

I can come up with all kinds of interesting recommendations here, a few of which I’ve just mentioned as well as “Cat’s Cradle,” “Player Piano,” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.” However, I want to point out that public television produced a movie of a Vonnegut short story in 1982 called “Who Am I This Time?” with Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon that was wonderful (I think it was featured on “American Playhouse”). There are no gonzo space aliens, planetary collisions, remembrances of the bombing of Dresden in World War II or felt-pen-tipped pictures of human body parts, just two people struggling to express themselves and doing so in a local stage production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” interestingly enough.

And for someone whose work broke all kinds of literary boundaries and took the reader into a sometimes dizzying array of real and imaginary locales, Vonnegut (as is typical for any accomplished artist, I think) was concise when speaking or answering questions in interviews about all manner of topics, including world events (and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what he thought of Dubya, The Boy King).

So let’s raise a glass to the passing of a true literary giant and tortured soul. Here’s hoping he has found the peace and resolution he sought through his writing, a great legacy he has bestowed upon us for all time.

Wednesday Videos

Ben Harper ("Excuse Me Mister" - I think the pictures pretty much say it all)...



...Happy Birthday to Joss Stone ("Right To Be Wrong")...



...The Killers ("Read My Mind")...



...and Carl Perkins would have been 75 on April 9th (here's a rockabilly jam on "Your True Love," with George Harrison and Dave Edmunds).

A Taste Of Their Own Medicine

At this point, I nominate the conservative bloggers taking umbrage at remarks made by Elizabeth Edwards about Monty Johnson of Orange County, North Carolina collectively as Crybabies Of The Year.

As noted here by USA Today, Edwards spoke her mind again (I know, how dare she actually do that and not utterly kow-tow to the Repugs at every turn) and said that Johnson was “a rabid, rabid Republican.”

Here is the rest of what she said…

She hasn't met him, but "I wouldn't be nice to him, anyway," Edwards said. "I don't want my kids anywhere near some guy who, when he doesn't like somebody, the first thing he does is pull a gun out. It scares the business out of me." She also doesn't like the "slummy" condition of the man's property, she said.

It’s really funny for me to read this indignation from the right-wing knuckle draggers when some of these cretins regularly assault those of my particular political ideology in the Bucks County Courier Times as “godless” people for whom the work “sacrifice” doesn’t exist (Jack Kelly), people who don’t “have the stomach to defend America” (J.D. Mullane), and other abusive words too numerous to catalogue in anyone’s lifetime (hell, you could retire on a task like this based on the literary assaults of Cal Thomas alone). And I’m not even mentioning the venom contained in the Letters to the Editor.

But oh, call someone “a rabid, rabid Republican,” and let the “river of tears” begin to flow, right (though if anything in her remarks was borderline, I think it would be the “slummy” characterization).

The people who took offense are those who would be offended by anything actual or perceived anyway. So good for them that the shoe is on the other foot for a change.

Three Wednesday Items (4/11/07)

I didn’t know exactly what to do with this information that some probably missed while preoccupied with Imus, so I’m just throwing it together here.

- USA Today ran a story today about the continual threat posed by sleep deprivation to air traffic controllers, particularly in the cases of four near-fatal accidents and the worst crash that occurred in five years.

And, as noted here by the AFL-CIO

Nearly two years before the fatal crash of Comair Flight 5191, a control tower supervisor at the Lexington airport reported staff shortages that “can cost lives.” According to a safety memo filed in September 2004 and obtained Tuesday by the Associated Press, the supervisor reported the airport’s radar system wasn’t working properly but that the air traffic manager refused to call in a mechanical specialist because it would mean paying two hours of overtime..

Words fail me...

Victor Santore, Southern region vice president for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said the memo proves that staffing complaints aren’t just coming from rank-and-file controllers seeking more overtime pay.

“The FAA just characterizes it as union rhetoric, but here you have a member of management trying to warn someone that the facility is short-staffed, and nobody’s doing anything about it,” Santore said.

The FAA employed 15,606 controllers in 2002, according to (The National Air Traffic Controllers Association), but now that number has shrunk to 14,305 while air traffic continues to grow.

And the AFL-CIO article is less than a year old, by the way.

Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN) is chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He is actually aware of issues pertaining to airline safety, and I’m sure the plight of the air traffic controllers is something “on his radar,” so to speak. Let’s contact him here and tell him Congress needs to hold hearings on the issues pertaining to air traffic controllers in particular and airline operations in general (he’s looking into maintenance issues at the moment).

No one wants uncertainty at 30,000 feet, do they?

- Don’t look now, but our old buddy Vlad and his friends are forming an Opec-like operation for natural gas-exporting companies, as reported in the Times of London (another way for us to “get it in the neck” on energy costs…terrific – the four countries to be included in addition to Russia are Algeria, Iran, Nigeria, and Qatar).

This chart of our natural gas imports shows that we receive substantial quantities from Algeria and Nigeria and a comparatively modest amount from Qatar (and I still say that Halliburton’s move to Dubai was intended to cozy up even more to the countries on this list but not on our import chart, namely Russia and Iran, though I’m just a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger, so what do I know?).

- Oh, and speaking of Imus (and I guess I was a bit – sigh), Smerky says that the Rutgers women’s basketball players were “anxious to be offended” (as Will Bunch notes here, and what could I possibly add to a statement like that; somehow, I'm sure that J.D. Mullane of the Courier Times will weigh in with similar comments shortly).

Here is a great post on this from The General (via Atrios) for some reality-based perspective.

On an unrelated note, I'm not sure how much posting will take place tomorrow - we'll see.

A War Of Words

Is it just me, or do the very terms Bushco uses concerning its conduct of the Iraq war betray their true intentions without their knowledge?

Here’s what I mean; when the Coalition Provisional Authority was established after we originally took over in 2003, Jay Garner was tabbed as either the Viceroy (a term reminiscent of British colonialism) or the Pro Consul (conjuring up images of ancient Rome and Caesar), depending on who you were talking to at the moment in the administration (putting aside the fact that Garner sought as quick a handoff to the Iraqis as possible, while Paul Bremer, Garner’s replacement, was the one who ended up acting in a way implied by those dictatorial titles).

Now, we have “The Decider” deciding that he really doesn’t want to decide any more, I guess (sorry Dubya, but as Colin Powell famous told you, “you break it, you own it”), and he is in the process of looking for a “war Czar” (is it really a surprise that he’s not getting any interest?).

And the whole notion of “Homeland” security isn’t too far removed from Adolf and that goose-stepping gang anyway (the “fatherland” and all that).

Now I ask you, is someone truly interested in a “dialogue” or “triangulation” with an opposing party or point of view going to use these terms in their everyday language?

True To His Word, Sadly

Why is it so difficult for people to understand that discarded embryonic stem cells used for medical research will only be destroyed anyway if we fail to use them?

Does any logically thinking adult out there (automatically excluding you-know-who, of course) seriously believe that using embryonic stem cells for medical research actually encourages abortion?

I automatically ask these questions each time I hear a politician state his or her opposition to embryonic stem cell research on religious grounds. And I know many devout, intelligent people feel that way, but I just wonder what it will take to get through to them on this, assuming that is possible.

And that of course brings us to Sen. Bob Casey, who pledged again recently to oppose embryonic stem cell research when the Senate reintroduces legislation upon their return from the break (which is today, I believe), as noted here. This is completely consistent with what Casey promised in his campaign, by the way.

Still, though, I think he should have a talk with Shelbie and Jeff Oppenheimer about this, and he can learn more about them here.

Why Does Joe Pitts Hate America?

I’m a little late with this, but not Greg Sargent, as noted here – sorry about that – but I must ask the question that I’m sure has been on the lips of every American for far too long now.

As Sargent notes above, Pitts and three other Repugs met with President Bashar Assad of Syria before Nancy Pelosi led her delegation over there (which also included a Republican, by the way). And since Pelosi has been vilified all over the place for her visit, why shouldn’t Pitts get the same treatment for his?

As noted in this Lancaster Online article dated last Tuesday…

Gabe Neville, Pitts' chief of staff, said Monday the conference between Assad and the three Republicans was intended to be "low profile."

"It was done in cooperation with the administration," he said.

However, White House spokesman Alex Conant said Monday the Bush administration — as a blanket policy — "discourages all of (Congress') visits" to Syria, a country believed by the White House to sponsor terrorism.

...

Details about Pitts' trip to Syria, including when the White House learned of it and whether and how the Department of State was involved, were not available from Neville, who said, "I'll let (Pitts) answer that when he gets back."

Neville also declined to divulge Pitts' return date, citing security concerns.

I’m sure that, when it comes to al Qaeda and any other “splinter” insurgent groups that are trying to kill us, Pitts is sitting right at the very top of their “hit” list, right?

Please – I certainly don’t wish ill on the man, but if I ever had to defend life, limb, family and/or property for the sake of my very survival, I can tell you right now that it would not be because something untoward had happened to Joe Pitts.

Also, I searched Pitts’ web site to find out more information on the visit, but I guess he thought it was inappropriate to tell his constituents exactly what it was that he did (“security concerns” and all that, I guess).

But I suppose there is sort of a goofy logic to Pitts’ visit to Syria when you think about it. I’m sure he can vote “no” just as well over there as he can here.