Cowboy hat = trustworthiness

I've never trusted this President. Perhaps I'm cynical, but it takes more than a cowboy hat and a down-home south Texas accent to convince me that George W. Bush is trustworthy. Especially when he's trying to convince the media not to publish certain stories about the shit he's doing. Which is fishy no matter who's doing it.
I wouldn't trust Bill Clinton farther than I could throw him, but did he ever go to the media and try to convince them not to publish the Monica Lewinski story?

While you were sitting here like a dumbass, this cowboy hat wearing motherfucker has stolen your Lexus.

Update: speaking of being a motherfucker, I'd completely forgotten to give props to
the Republic of T for the story.

Me, cynical?

The CS Monitor wants to know, how useful is US propaganda in Iraq?
Okay, paying Iraqi newspapers to put in stories that make us look good is wrong. I think we can all agree that if it's not illegal, it's at least sleazy as hell. It goes against what makes a democracy a democracy.

Now, some argue that the need for propaganda outweighs the ethics--but does propaganda really work when people know about it? Perhaps it is just my cynical nature, but if I were in Iraq, I'd now be extremely suspicious of any news of US military victories and the like.

Oh, and Merry Christmas and all that.

If you weren't pissed off already, perhaps this will get you: according to the New York Times, the NSA hasn't limited its spying to the international telephone calls of people with links to Al Qaida. Apparently they have, with the help of telecommunications companies, been scanning assloads of random phone calls and email correspondence in search for terrorist activity.
They're not releasing the names of the telecommunications companies--lucky them, because yeah, the conservative web logs are full of people who don't give a rat's ass about their civil liberties, but Americans as a whole don't put up with that kind of shit. Most Americans (72%) are against the Pentagon's PR campaign in Iraq.

The FBI has also been getting in on the action, covertly monitoring the homes and businesses of American Muslims for changes in radiation levels. Now, it's really sweet of the FBI to be making sure that our nation's Muslims don't get radiation poisoning, but that really isn't their job.

Buyer Beware

I can not believe the cojones on this guy. George W. Bush has the cojones to defend the illegal spying program even after it turned out that they spied on the wrong people. They were supposed to spy on international calls, but some local calls got in too.
This is a really good illustration of why this stuff needs to be done within the bounds of the law. Even if the President had nothing but the best of intentions, by letting the NSA spy on people all willy-nilly, he created the possibility for abuse of our civil rights.

Speaking of contempt for the law, Smilin' Tom Delay is running for re-election. In addition to money laundering, he has been using political donations to fund his lavish lifestyle. To all those donors whose money went toward Delay's Caribbean vacations, all I say is, what did you expect? You gave money to Tom Delay.

More questions

1. If spying on Americans without a warrant is legal, as Bush claims, then why did he ask the Times not to report it? (link by angry arab) If it was the right thing to do, why did he want to hide it?

2. There were other, legal ways to get a wiretap on somebody. They could have gone through the FISA court and gotten a warrant in minutes. They could have even spied anyway and gotten a warrant after the fact--also legal, surprisingly enough. It was not necessary to break the law.

Score one for science

Teachers in Dover, Pennsylvania, now do not have to preface their lesson on evolutionary biology with a disclaimer stating that evolution is "just a theory". In fact, ID can not be mentioned at all in the science classroom.

This was never a scientific issue. Evolution is a theory in the same way that gravity is a theory. The only reason the ID people wanted a disclaimer before evolutionary theory is because evolution upset the fundies too much.

All of the above

Okay, so you get caught abusing your executive power by authorizing illegal wiretaps on American citizens. This is serious shit. This is what brought your hero, Richard Nixon down. So what do you do?
a) resign before you can be impeached
b) apologize and hope that everybody forgives you
c) keep doing it. Tell everybody you'll keep doing it. Be *proud* of it. Vow to punish whoever told on you. Repeat until they throw you out of office.

Only in Iraq

would "voting irregularities" include dead people casting ballots and murder in the streets (props to angry arab).
I'm not naive. Anybody from Cuba Libre knows that it isn't an election unless people rise from the grave to cast their ballots. It's practically tradition. But since when is violence a voting irregularity?

Good news / Bad news

Remember when I said that the Pentagon has been monitoring citizens who really don't need to be monitored? Quakers, anti-war protesters, guys with beards, etc.
Well, guess who eased spying restrictions for the NSA? Yeah that's right, President Bush. And he's been keeping it on the down-low, too. John McCain first heard of the measure via the NYT. Now I know that a lot of people don't like McCain, but he's no slacker. This is something that the president hoped that we wouldn't notice.

Fortunately, while the House ratified the Patriot Act extension, the Senate rejected it. If they don't reach a consensus by the 31st, the thing will die.

Schadenfreude?

A New Orleans company is offering bus tours of Hurricane Katrina wreckage. Is this sick, or just a way to help people cope?
My guess is that nobody'd spend $35 to look at the devastation if they weren't serious about it. I'm not like this, but I know people who really need a visual in order for something to really sink in.

It depends on what your definition of "great" is.

I don't understand how the Administration can brag about our great economy when for a growing segment of the population, housing is becoming unaffordable and energy costs are going to go up 25%--forcing many families to choose between "heat or eat".

Christ, you know that 11.9% of American families were "food insecure" last year? The rising heating costs, the rising housing costs--this number is only going to go up for this year. Who is this good economy good for? Who is benefiting from all of this "growth"?

Learning from our mistakes

Bush is taking responsibility for invading Iraq under false pretenses. Okay, great. And in the same breath, defending the pre-emptive war doctrine that got us into this mess in the first place.

Isn't this whole mess proof of why pre-emptive war is a bad idea? Bush talks about reforming our intelligence--great, but what good does that do when we ignore stacks and stacks of good intelligence and listen to a guy named "Curveball" just because he's saying what we want to hear?

Once we decided that Saddam needed to be taken out, we looked for any excuse to take him out. Now, it's possible that a coalition of countries could have done the same thing, but not as likely. I'm willing to accept that we're going to be in Iraq for a while, but we can at least learn something from this.

The latest from Debbie Downer

Feeling too happy? Unable to wipe that big dumb smile off your face? Can't stop thinking about puppies and flowers and Christmas?

I think that our friends at the Pentagon can help. According to NBC, the Pentagon has been using your tax dollars for monitoring peace demonstrations.
Which gives you more street cred--being on Bill O'Reilly's list, or being on the Pentagon's list?
By the way, for those who keep track of that kind of thing, this is yet another way that the Iraq War parallels the Viet Nam war. The Pentagon also kept track of Viet Nam War protesters. I wasn't around, but from everything I've picked up, they must've had their hands full.

The Pentagon is also coming out with a $300 mil stealth PR campaign, putting pro-American messages into foreign media without disclosing who it's by. Okay, #1, it's not stealth if everybody knows about it. And #2, this is so wrong on so many levels. I put it this way: if Saudi Arabia were to do the same to us, we'd certainly be pissed.

Americans certainly are an optimistic bunch

According to a recent poll, more Americans believe in sending troops to Iraq. 50% believe that sending troops to Iraq is not a mistake, compared with 45% last month.

Yet, only 38% of Americans believe that Bush has "a clear plan for victory" in Iraq.

What good will it do to be in Iraq if we haven't got a plan? Going into Iraq would've been quite an undertaking even if we had done it right. I'm hoping that the elections go okay, I know that if things do work out in Iraq, it will be in spite of, and not because of President Bush.

Getting aboard the clue train

Okay, so Bush's poll numbers have inexplicably gone up a few points. Now I was thinking that it might be because he's finally admitting that the government seriously messed up with regard to Katrina, but if you look, the poll was actually taken a few days before he said that. So, I'm stumped.

But seriously, he's actually admitting it. Apparently when he told Mike Brown, winner of the "Fuck-Up of the Year" award, that he was doing a "good job," he was only being sarcastic. Oh Bush! You are such a kidder.

It's like he's two months behind the rest of us. Everybody else was that the government royally screwed up with regard to Katrina..in October. It's the middle of December and Bush is just now saying that the government screwed up in response to Katrina. Let's see, if it is now just coming out that the CIA is running illegal prisons in December, Bush will probably start to admit it sometime in February.

Holy crap

So much for supporting the troops. I'm not in a military family, but I do know that it is disrespectful to send fallen troops home as freight on commercial airliners. (Story is courtesy..um, everybody. Everybody is talking about this).
This just cinches it. If you're going to send young men and women to war, at least make sure that you're fighting that war for a good reason. And if they die, at least show them some respect.

Better Than Stalin

I hate the Bush Administration just as much as the next web logger, but comparing them to the Soviet Union? It's a bit much, wouldn't you say? It's like comparing Tom Delay to Hitler. Sure, they're both bad, but do you spit when you say Tom Delay's name?

Early voting has started in Iraq. Gawd I hope everything goes smoothly, so we can get the hell out of there already. Everybody made fun of Clinton for relying on opinion polls, but if Americans don't want us to be in Iraq, and if the Iraqis don't want us there, then maybe there's a good reason.

Why the ends do not justify the means

I don't know how this happened, but somehow, the rightness/wrongness of torture has actually become an issue for debate in this country.
I don't think anybody's trying to claim that torture is moral. It's more of an "ends justify the means" argument. Presumably, it's okay to torture somebody if it will prevent another 9/11.
This argument would only make sense if torture were the best way to gain information. Which it isn't. For example, remember that information about the al qa'ida link to Iraq? Turns out that the operative just said that so that they would stop torturing him.

Edit: Sorry! Mad props to the Angry Arab for the story.

Just because you're paranoid / don't mean they're not after you

"Hey asshole, I thought you weren't coming back until Monday." Yeah, I said Monday, but I didn't know that some kid was going to get suspended from his high school for speaking Spanish in the halls.
I'll save you the outrage. Getting suspended just for speaking Spanish is a clear miscarriage of justice. Even the people who think that English should be our national language are outraged, 'cause no matter what the national language is, you should be allowed to speak whatever you want to on your own time.
And everybody knows that, cognitively, but *man* do people get paranoid when there's a Spanish conversation in the background. Not paranoid enough to motivate them to actually learn Spanish, but pretty damn paranoid. I don't know what to say, except to get the hell over it. Mexicans are just as boring as Americans. Seriously. Mexicans talk about the same boring shit that you talk about.

I'll give you a topic: a peanut is neither a pea nor a nut. Discuss.

It's that time of year again: the dreaded finals. I can pretty much guarantee you that I won't be posting until next Monday. I'll still be able to respond to email/comments and all, but posting is out.

Why the Iraq War is like the Viet Nam War #644

I was actually starting to feel kind of guilty about not posting much last week, but really, what would I have posted on? There's been nothing but reruns on. Let's see, Tom Delay was caught gerrymandering. Bor-ring. When isn't Tom Delay breaking the law? Yesterday he was caught money-laundering, today he was caught disenfranchising minorities, tomorrow the feds will find a dead prostitute in the trunk of his car.

Anyway, today we find that just like the Iraq War, the Viet Nam War escalated largely to skewed intelligence. All of the political 'loggers who are keeping a list of comparisons between Iraq and Viet Nam, here's another one for you. Your welcome.

Even in stupid news, there's nothing but reruns. John Kerry gets called for jury duty, then a week later Bush does.

Free Advice

I'm back. I haven't been slacking, I've been learning. Here's something I've learned that you might benefit from. Free advice: if a cop wants to arrest you for reckless endangerment, just, you know, let him. Don't punch him in the face. That only makes things worse.

And some more free advice: if you're going to try to build up PR in Iraq by planting fake articles in Iraqi newspapers, don't get caught.

Even as the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development pay contractors millions of dollars to help train journalists and promote a professional and independent Iraqi media, the Pentagon is paying millions more to the Lincoln Group for work that appears to violate fundamental principles of Western journalism.

In addition to paying newspapers to print government propaganda, Lincoln has paid about a dozen Iraqi journalists each several hundred dollars a month, a person who had been told of the transactions said. Those journalists were chosen because their past coverage had not been antagonistic to the United States, said the person, who is being granted anonymity because of fears for the safety of those involved. In addition, the military storyboards have in some cases copied verbatim text from copyrighted publications and passed it on to be printed in the Iraqi press without attribution, documents and interviews indicated.

Sound familiar? It should. The Bush Administration was issuing fake news spots to American tv stations what, six months ago? The stuff above is still in the allegation phase, but not only did Bush admit that his administration issued the fake news spots, he condoned it because it's not illegal.

Neither is tampering with newspapers abroad. You know why? Because it's an entirely new level of sleaze. Nobody's made it illegal because nobody's even thought about doing it before.

The Bush administration really has its priorities in order. They're aces at this propoganda shit, yet they haven't come up with a decent strategy for getting us out of Iraq. The only problem is, they might be able to fool 35% of America, but they can't fool the people who actually have to live in the mess that they've created.