asked and answered

dispirited die-hard republicans commiserate over mccain's non-game-changing performance at the second presidential debate and wonder:

why on earth would the mccampaign finally be hitting these issues on the trail, and then he didn’t say one word about it (again!) in the debate when he had the eyes of the nation??? it’s like the man wants to lose. ayres is an absolutely legitimate concern. the (imo very real) possibility that obama isn’t even a natural-born citizen is an absolutely legitimate concern. the fact that in four years he took more money from fannie mae than any senator in history except dodd, is an absolutely legitimate concern. and nobody — i’m not counting rush — is talking about the real reason behind the financial meltdown, which is the government holding a gun to the head of banks, forcing them to make affirmative action mortgage loans that had no chance of being repaid. [link mine]

juan cole volunteers one theory:

in the real world of political ads, mccain and his surrogates are shouting ugly insults at barack obama. he is accused is saying that us airstrikes have killed innocents. this is true and mccain said it, too. they say he was on a committee with a professor who used to be a weatherman 40 years ago. and ... ? how nonsensical these attacks are is demonstrated by the inability of mccain to repeat them to obama's face. what sort of allegation won't hold up in a debate? a flimsy one. one with the form of propaganda. mccain's nasty personal attacks on obama were apparently felt by his campaign to be inappropriate to a live appearance. they feared such smears would look mean in the mouth of a presidential aspirant.

update: even obama himself all but calls mccain a chickenshit on national tv:

i am surprised that, you know, we've been seeing some pretty over-the-top attacks coming out of the mccain campaign over the last several days, that he wasn't willing to say it to my face. but i guess we've got one last debate. so presumably, if he ends up feeling that he needs to, he will raise it during the debate.

update #2: now biden's piling it on out on the trail:

all of the things they said about barack obama in the tv, on the tv, at their rallies, and now on youtube ... john mccain could not bring himself to look barack obama in the eye and say the same things to him. in my neighborhood, when you've got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him.

update #3: oh snap! you know it's getting ridiculous when even members of the gray panther cheerleading squad start breaking ranks:

king:

michelle, are you not supporting the ticket?

laxalt:

look, i think — i can't believe the tone of this conversation. here we are, three conservative, loyal republican women. and we are talking about a female who could be the vice president of the united states of america. in my estimation, she is being used unfairly as a tool by a team who, by the way, do not even support, nor does their candidate, equal pay for women for equal work. so if she is going to be the traditional vice presidential attack dog — which i concur with bay, that's very much a traditional role — why didn't her male running mate, i.e. the candidate himself, man up and speak to those issues, calling his opponent essentially unpatriotic, calling him a terrorist? i'm sorry. this is not the republican party that bill buckley, that paul laxalt, that ronald reagan raised me on. and i don't believe the american people like this kind of dirty politics. if they can't win fair and square, they shouldn't trash the other guy.

i must admit, it tickles me to hear a paleoconservative biddy like laxalt throw down a neologism like "man up" to challenge the head of her ticket.

how far the mighty have fallen! it was only three months ago that wesley clark was mercilessly excoriated by the mccain camp, the right wing noise machine and the mainstream talking heads for daring to question the mere idea that prisoner of war status isn't necessarily a qualification for the presidency, which cost clark his place in the obama campaign. back then mccain could count on the eager defense of the media to protect him from almost any legitimate inquiry.

but in that time mccain has foolishly sacrificed the centerpiece of the narrative of his entire campaign: his not-to-be-questioned integrity, a facade which he'd been carefully crafting for decades. he figured that he had built up so much house credit, especially with the media, that he could gamble away some negligible portion of his integrity on a bet that he could quickly and permanently tarnish obama. unfortunately for mccain, clinton gambled first and lost, leaving mccain with no cards to play. like the inveterate gambler he's reputed to be, mccain stubbornly doubled-down and bet his integrity on an empty hand, and predictably lost. and when his camp began to attack the media for acknowledging the nasty turn of his campaign, he drove away his best allies.

without his integrity, he no longer has a compelling story for the voters, and without the support of the media, he no longer has anyone to sell it for him, and he's been flailing and flopping and lurching about ever since for some other reason to justify the continued existence of his campaign.

which just reveals how hollow the enterprise is. this is a vanity campaign. it's all about him. its all about how ex-p.o.w. john mccain deserved to win. now that the sterling biography's gone, and worse, now that the collapsing economy is reminding voters that the election is all about the voters, he can't even articulate a coherent narrative or plan that focuses on their lives and how he intends to improve it. he's nothing left to sell them.

the only question left seems to be whether he'll lose like a gentleman. the answer isn't looking good.

i didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms i believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. in truth, i wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. ... in truth, i'd had the ambition for a long time. — john mccain, worth the fighting for (2002)

save our diplomats!

... from dubya! please!

oaths, the constitution, and the u.s. embassy in iraq the bush administration is taking a hard line on dragooning civilian foreign service officers into serving in the war zone of iraq. the article contains a quote by ambassador ryan crocker which says that the fso's swear an oath to serve anywhere in the world. this is not true. they swear an oath to uphold the constitution. they sign a contract that allows them to be posted anywhere. there is a difference, and the two documents may actually be in contradiction. for instance, what if the government did something unconstitutional and wanted to send you to support that action ... ? another retired u.s. diplomat sent me this: i am also a retired foreign service officer, and strongly second the view of the anonymous fso (retired) whom you cited in your column today. the issue really is not the commitment to world-wide service undertaken by fsos. the decision by the bush administration to not only keep an embassy open in a war zone, but increase its size to make it one of the largest in the world, is simply testimony to the madness of the entire iraq "adventure," and the fraudulent nature of the expressed rationale for our being there. most of the staff in this "embassy" do not speak the language and cannot act effectively as diplomats, even if that were the purpose in sending them there. but that is not the purpose. ... the willingness of secretary rice, or dr. ferragamo as she is known on one satirical website, to continue supporting this war of occupation through this "embassy" and more broadly through her declaration of a new order known as "transformational diplomacy" simply confirms that she is not a "moderate" voice for diplomacy against the likes of dick cheney. diplomats do not "transform" other countries. they represent the interests of the u.s. to the governments and citizens of other, independent, countries. again, please write your congressional representatives and senators, and contact your local democratic and republican party organizations, and urge them in the strongest terms to close down the us embassy in iraq. it has no business being there. it is under constant mortar and rocket attack, cannot actually conduct diplomacy, and is a thinly veiled viceregal palace intended to perpetuate bush's neo-colonialism. to end the war, begin with what is possible. close the embassy. save our diplomats. by the way, [this] is the sort of news still coming out of iraq every day, with 3 more us troops killed. that's a "lull"? and, see phillip carter on the dark side of the 'good news' about iraq. the fact is that it is still one of the most violent places on earth and the decline in fighting comes in part in baghdad because the city has gone from being 50/50 sunni and shiite to being 75% shiite, with much of this change having come in 2007 under the nose of the surge troops from the us. diplomacy with iraq's neighbors can be done outside iraq better. diplomacy with iraqi politicians can still be pursued (most of them live outside the country anyway). save the diplomats. save the world.

ioiytus 1

juan cole:

meanwhile, the voice of america reports that the bush administration will freeze the assets of persons or organizations that attempt to destabilize iraq. voa says: president bush has signed an order that allows the u.s. government to block the assets of any person or group that threatens the stability of iraq. the order exempts the united states. either the voa copy writer is a little clueless or this person has a wicked, dry sense of humor.

recalling that the daily show host jon stewart recently remarked that "there is nothing the administration can do that is not ironic," i'm going to have to go with door number one, juan.

---

¹ it's okay if you're the united states.

it's not easy being green

... in fact, it "sucks big time."

(image © will sherman)

juan cole: on tuesday, guerrillas launched some 20 katyusha rockets and mortar shells into the green zone in downtown baghdad, killing 3 persons, including a us soldier, and wounding 25 persons. the green zone was originally supposed to be the safe place in iraq, with the area outside it (everything else) called the "red zone." the us embassy in baghdad appears to have forgotten what the phrase "green zone" means, since a spokesman there told [the la times], "there's fire into the green zone virtually every day, so i can't draw any conclusions about the security situation based on that ..." let me draw the conclusion. if you've got fire into the friggin' green zone every day, then we can draw the conclusion that the security situation in baghdad sucks big time. when you've got people killed and a large number of people wounded in the one place in iraq that was supposed to have a "permissive" security environment, then security in general is the pits. now you might say that we can't draw many conclusions from the events of a single day. and, being able to lob mortar shells over a wall doesn't speak to that much organization. but then what about these two nuggets in [the la times] story? 1) there were about 39 attacks [on the green zone] in may, compared with 17 in march, according to a u.n. report. 2) tuesday's attack came the same day gunmen kidnapped iraqi police col. mahmoud muhyi hussein, who directs security inside the green zone ... in other words, the security situation in the green zone is spiralling down at an alarming pace, and the guerrillas have such good inside knowledge that they can kidnap the very person responsible for security in it, as he drives in jadiriya. that, my friends, is an inside job. and such an inside job doesn't bode well for future security in the green zone. for one thing, presumably they are "debriefing" col. hussein as we speak, looking for weak points. people i know and respect are in the green zone, so i'm pretty distressed by this situation, and not amused by the embassy spokesman's attempt to blow smoke up our posteriors. this looks bad.

some perspective

from juan cole:

i keep hearing from us politicians and the us mass media that the "situation is improving" in iraq. the profound sorrow and alarm produced in the american public by the horrific shootings at virginia tech should give us a baseline for what the iraqis are actually living through. they have two virginia tech-style attacks every single day. virginia tech will be gone from the headlines and the air waves by next week this time in the us, though the families of the victims will grieve for a lifetime. but next tuesday i will come out here and report to you that 64 iraqis have been killed in political violence. and those will mainly be the ones killed by bombs and mortars. they are only 13% of the total; most iraqis killed violently, perhaps 500 a day throughout the country if you count criminal and tribal violence, are just shot down. shot down, like the college students and professors at blacksburg. we americans can so easily, with a shudder, imagine the college student trying to barricade himself behind a door against the armed madman without. but can we put ourselves in the place of iraqi students?

post mortem

let us examine the corpse, shall we?

admiralnaismith @ mydd:

lieberman was the goliath candidate. when you're goliath, you win by being as gracious as possible, trying to keep the condescension out of your voice as you welcome the chance for an amicable primary contest and talk about how democracy is so wonderful and your little-known opponent has every right to run, and then you swamp him financially with positive, upbeat ads about your record, mentioning the "david" by name barely if ever. "goliath" wins popularity contests by being a gentle giant, not by being a brutal bully. lieberman didn't do that. he was fred sanford, clutching his chest and yelling "lamont! lamont!" every chance he got. he didn't even bother to hide his contempt for the democratic process as he screeched and raged at how this bloody peasant was daring to besmirch the divine right of incumbents. he publicly insulted not only the "david" but anyone who held "david"s views — which happened to be popular, majority views. and to cap it off, he unveiled his spoiler independent bid, stabbing his own party in the back before he had even had the primary. it was lieberman, and not lamont, who turned this race from nothing into a real contest, and then an upset.

thereisnospoon @ daily kos:

let's face some cold, hard facts, people. we didn't do this, because what we supposedly did was impossible to do — in any politcal climate. in one corner, you had a bunch of unpaid volunteers, internet rabble-rousers, and an inexperienced politician whose highest post had been county selectman. in the other, you had the three-time senator, former vice-presidential candidate, visible party statesman, bill clinton, hillary clinton, harry reid, barbara boxer, the other popular ct senator dodd, most of organized labor, the women's groups and the environmental groups, most of traditional democratic party support, paid lobbyist support, paid armies of gotv staff, the slick ad money, the top dlc consultants, and a 3 to 1 budget gap. i'm sorry. that's not david vs. goliath. this isn't even the nba champions versus a rec league team. that's more like an ant vs. my shoe. and the shoe lost. but then, the dlc is an old shoe — and the most politically incompetent shoe i've ever seen. the truth is that the dlc couldn't beat my dead great-grandmother. or yours. they couldn't beat their own shadow. so why did anyone think they could beat karl rove?

josh marshall @ time:

he's seemed almost militantly indifferent to the disaster iraq has become. and his passion about the war seemed reserved exclusively for those who questioned it rather than those who had so clearly botched the enterprise. his continual embrace of president bush — both literal and figurative — was an insult to democrats, the great majority of whom believe bush has governed as one of the most destructive presidents in modern american history. it's almost as though lieberman has gone out of his way to provoke and offend democrats on every point possible, often, seemingly, purely for the reason of provoking. is it any wonder the guy got whacked in a party primary? lieberman got in trouble because he let himself live in the bubble of d.c. conventional wisdom and a-list punditry. he flattered them; and they loved him back. and as part of that club he was part of the delusion and denial that has sustained our enterprise in iraq for the last three years. in the weeks leading up to tuesday's primary, a-list d.c. pundits were writing columns portraying lieberman's possible defeat as some sort of cataclysmic event that might foreshadow a dark new phase in american politics — as though voters choosing new representation were on a par with abolishing the constitution or condoning political violence. but those breathless plaints only showed how disconnected they are from what's happening in the country at large. they mirrored his disconnection from the politics of the moment.

juan cole:

first of all, the man was brain dead on the iraq issue. ... lieberman had bought into the rove master narrative. bush went to war electively, thus very conveniently making himself a war president and therefore above criticism. he got a second term that way despite having been among the worst presidents in history. lieberman ceded to bush a kind of invulnerability on the most important republican party snafu since its policies contributed to the onset of the great depression. why would a democrat do that? the answer is that on foreign policy issues, lieberman is a neoconservative, and supports the iraq project for the same reasons that douglas feith and paul wolfowitz (then number 3 and 2 respectively at the pentagon) did. ... lieberman may run as an independent, and we cannot know what will happen in that case. but for the reasons given above, it is important that he has been repudiated by democratic voters. the rest of the party now has a shot at taking the house, without risking having their colleague's pro-bush sanctimonies on iraq constantly thrown in their faces.

christy hardin smith @ firedoglake:

at some point, the folks who report on politics and the folks who run for office will wake up and understand that bloggers are merely americans who try to amplify the sentiment of thousands more just like them. and the overwhelming sentiment that i have been hearing for months and months is that people have had enough of the lies, the manipulation, the self-dealing, the egos, the idiocy, the selfishness, and the outright dereliction of duty and lack of accountability from so many in washington, d.c. in this rubber stamp republican congress … we’ve had enough.

less than human

those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. (voltaire)

even in an age of laser-guided precision instuments of mayhem, warfare still remains an untidy business. civilians still get slaughtered, exposing the slaughterers to bad press and, more inconvenient, the risk of legal sanction. just how can an honest warmonger do what he does best — mass murder — without all the headaches?

never fear, celebrity lawyer-pundit alan dershowitz is here! and he has just the solution you need when you can't — or won't — let pesky civilians hamstring your efforts to bomb your opponent into the stone age:

just redefine the term "civilian" — no purchase necessary!

... we need a new vocabulary to reflect the realities of modern warfare. a new phrase should be introduced into the reporting and analysis of current events in the middle east: "the continuum of civilianality." though cumbersome, this concept aptly captures the reality and nuance of warfare today and provides a more fair way to describe those who are killed, wounded and punished. ... the israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern lebanon that have been turned into war zones. those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit. some — those who cannot leave on their own — should be counted among the innocent victims. ... every civilian death is a tragedy, but some are more tragic than others.

it is epiphanies like these that honestly make me wonder if it is actually embarassing to be as brilliant as alan. i mean, this is so simple! no need to retool weapons or rethink strategies. (or — god forbid — question the legitimacy of the attacks!) just relabel the dead!

of course, a nonetheless elegant solution, even one as brilliant in its simplicity as this, can sometimes be a little too simple. as juan cole explains, does relabeling really go far enough?

alan "torture is ok" dershowitz is annoyed that the israelis have been accused of killing innocent civilians. he is now arguing that there are degrees of "civilianity." he wonders how many innocent civilians killed by israel in lebanon would still be innocent if we could make finer distinctions. (he should read the lebanese newspapers and he would get the answer. one third of those killed by the israelis are children. i'd guess they are all civilian all the time. and then there are the families, like the canadian women, children and men blown up at aitaroun. i suppose they are really civilians. etc.) but i don't know why dershowitz stops there. let me reformulate his argument for him. shouldn't we recognize degrees of humanness? after all, isn't that the real problem? that the enemy is considered a full human being in the law of war? that horrible supreme court judgment that hamdan had to be given a trial of some sort was based on the misunderstanding that he is a human being. israeli officials have already showed us how arabs can be reclassified away from a full "human" category that they clearly, in the view of the kadima government, do not deserve. for instance, israeli ambassador to the united nations dan gillerman angrily denounced kofi annan for neglecting this key fact. the guardian reports,' mr gillerman said "something very important was missing" from mr annan's speech: any mention of terrorism. hizbullah were "ruthless indiscriminate animals", he told reporters.' so you see, one reason that you can just bomb the hell out of the lebanese in general is that they aren't human beings at all. they are "animals." you might quibble that gillerman is only referring to members of the hizbullah party as animals, not all lebanese. but most shiite lebanese, some 45 percent of the population, support hizbullah. and the lebanese government, made up of christians, sunnis and druze, let hizbullah into the lebanese government and gave it cabinet posts. so probably those who tolerate hizbullah are at most half-human. this has yet to be worked out. it might be possible to declare them .66 animal. or maybe they are just all animals. they speak arabic, after all, right mr. gillerman? there is a problem with stopping here, however. it is not enough to reclassify some human beings as animals. after all, you have to treat animals humanely. you can even be fined for mistreating an animal, though probably you would not go to jail. the staff of us secretary of state condi rice has made a suggestion for another, more convenient level, that of snake. thus, a senior white house official referred to the massive israeli bombing campaign and destruction of lebanon's civilization and killing of hundreds and wounding of over a thousand as "defanging" hezbollah. i am pretty sure that language is meant to suggest that the shiites of lebanon, although apparently human beings, are actually snakes. i suppose it is possible that another sort of reptile is is intended, but i suspect that "snake" is the intended classification. but some snakes are protected species. we need a lower category. it is clear that some human beings are neither human nor animal. hamas and hizbullah members, for instance, are actually not even full organisms, just diseases. israeli deputy consul general for san francisco, omer caspi, said of the lebanese and palestinian publics concerning hamas and hizbullah members, "we say to them please remove this cancer off your body and soul before it is too late." caspi did not specify whether members of hamas are leukemia and those of hizbullah melanoma, or the reverse. the good thing about finding out that some apparent human beings don't have to be treated as well as whales (which have almost been wiped out) is that it allows us to put behind all wimpy hesitancy just to do what needs to be done. i mean, a cancer. everyone knows what you have to do with a cancer. it requires chemotherapy. it needs to be just exterminated, before it kills the snakes, animals and humans. so we have the human beings, like israeli prime minister ehud "bomb'em back to the stone age" olmert and torture defender, attorney alan dershowitz. then we have the animals, like the "persons" who vote for hizbullah and hamas. then we have the level of human-appearing snakes, who need to be "defanged," which apparently involves killing their wives and children with air strikes. then we have the cancers, who need to be "wiped out" immediately. i understand that president bush is appointing alan dershowitz to be head of the "human-non-human metrics" commission that will decide which people are full human beings, and which fall into other categories, such as "animal," "snake," and "cancer." it is rumored that that dershowitz intends to create a special category, of "cockroach," for the human-appearing creatures who dare to criticize him.

the complaint against king george

to celebrate the 230th birthday of the united states, juan cole is having a little holiday contest. can you identify how many of the complaints which thomas jefferson and his fellow signatories leveled against king george and britain in the declaration of independence could be leveled against george bush and his administration by current american and/or iraqi citizens?

the first one on jefferson's list is easy:

he has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good

this complaint against the department of homeland security is oddly comical in its archaic construction:

he has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance

while these offenses of the military occupation should be familiar to the iraqis:

he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us for protecting them, by a mock trial from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states

and these offenses familiar to the anonymous captives at guantanamo bay and hidden elsewhere in once-abandoned gulags scattered around the globe.

for depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences

jefferson's list is quite long. for now, the rest of king george's crimes i leave to you.

why are we still there?

(cross-posted at daily kos)

iraq: dateline, february 2006.

insurgents. jihadists. militias. suicide bombers. death squads.

at least 30,000 and up to 100,000 or even more dead; many tortured, executed. over 40,000 injured. perhaps 1,000 more each month.

in the midst of this abbatoir: a 20-something, over-extended guardsman from anytown u.s.a. who doesn't speak the language, doesn't look like the locals. her assigned task: "security". what can she secure? according to respected middle-east scholar juan cole, not much, not even her own safety:

"sunni arabs in iraq blamed us troops for not protecting sunni mosques and worshippers from violence. the us military ordered the us soldiers in baghdad to stay in their barracks and not to circulate if it could be helped. (later reports said some us patrols has been stepped up.) this situation underlines how useless the american ground forces are in iraq. they can't stop the guerrilla war and may be making it worst [sic]. last i knew, there were 10,000 us troops in anbar province with a population of 1.1 million. what could you do with that small force, when the vast majority of the people support the guerrillas? us troops would be useless if they hcad [sic] to fight in alleyways against sectarian rioters. if they tried to guard the sunni mosques, they'd have to shoot into shiite mobs, which would just raise the level of violence they face from shiites in the south."

it seems crystal clear that u.s. forces have been reduced to serving only one function in iraq: target practice. the majority of iraqis feel that attacks on u.s. troops are justified. with reconstruction effectively halted, and no further funds forthcoming, guess who bears the brunt of civilian frustration? as long as u.s. troops stay in iraq, they remain too convenient as scapegoats for everything there that continues to go wrong:

"on saturday, al-sadr's movement joined sunni clerics in agreeing to prohibit killing members of the two sects and banning attacks on each other's mosques. the clerics issued a statement blaming "the occupiers," meaning the americans and their coalition partners, for stirring up sectarian unrest." (AP)

having successfully alienated all the rival factions, the u.s. no longer can find any meaningful candidate to partner with. cooperation with the u.s. has become the literal kiss of death in iraq, delegitimizing and rendering impotent any iraqi that might still wish to help implement any american plan for recovery.

there have been many calls, out of feelings of both guilt and pride, to, in so many words, clean up the mess that iraq has become. such calls, even if somewhat narcissistic, might be lauded for their acceptance of our ultimate responsibility. others call for us not to allow iraq's oil infrastructure to become incapacitated or be altogether destroyed. such calls are compelling for their sobering practicality. still other calls demand that we keep the conflict from engulfing the entire region, for the sake of stability and security. but our guilt, pride, practicality, stability and security cannot be helped by staying in iraq if in fact our presence has no positive influence whatsoever.

withdrawal from iraq removes both a focus for much iraqi anger and an easy excuse for iraqi dysfunction. most importantly, withdrawal will save lives that can be saved. the time for withdrawal is long overdue.

karl rove: super-genius

(cross-posted at daily kos)

i've noticed commenters throughout the blogosphere claim that portgate is actually another brilliant behind-the-scenes rovian masterstroke designed to help the republicans distance themselves from the white house in time for the midterm elections and move cheney's embarrasing shooting cover-up off the front page.

curiously, during the media storm following the shooting i also noticed commenters claim that the cover-up was another brilliant behind-the-scenes rovian masterstroke designed to help the republicans distance themselves from the white house and move the wiretapping hearings off the front page ... and who also had previously claimed that those hearings were arranged to move the abramoff mess off the front page, which in turn was arranged to move the libby/delay indictments off the front page ... ad nauseum.

buried within this "karl rove: super-genius" meme lies a not-very-subtle scandal fatigue, a defeatism and resignation to the idea that rove in his god-like omniscience will always be just one step ahead of us dullards, that the latest counterfeit-scandal is really just a trap, artfully designed to make his gullible attackers look foolish, having taken their eyes off the ball, while ever-boosting the mojo of the republicans. what rot.

juan cole: "i think they get up in the morning and they face a set of situations in iraq and they try to develop policies to deal with those situations, and they get up the next day and there's a new set of situations and they develop policies to deal with those. i think it's reactive. i think it's ad hoc. i don't think there's a big picture. i think they're hoping that they can ultimately muddle through, that things will settle down enough so that they can get out of it with some dignity. i think it's probably a forlorn hope."

portgate and its handling was no more or better planned than was the shooting cover-up or its handling. once again they got caught with their pants down and their bloody red hands in the cookie jar full of cash for their cronies. since a number of our port affairs are already handled by foreigners, they obviously did not expect the public to suddenly notice or care, and are again not prepared to deal with the blowback from such attention — blowback they set themselves up for after five years of stoking their supporters' jingoism and xenophobia.

after having twice delivered the white house to the unlikely george bush, i can see why some would call him a genius. there's no doubt that he's a very sleazy smart operator when it comes to running election campaigns. so sleazy smart in fact that he got himself booted off george sr.'s campaign team.

but genius in one area does not translate to genius in another, and it is of course possible for otherwise apparently smart people to make horrifically bad decisions. nor are they immune to bad luck. while bushCo™ seems to have a talent for electioneering, they display none whatsoever for governing. it could even be argued that they have no real interest in governing, as opposed to ruling — with a big stick, a short leash and piles of treasure to shower on the court cronies and toadies.

just look at bushCo™'s poll numbers: <snark>you'd think a super-genius could keep the sheeple happy while ruthlessly fleecing them.</snark> clinton's numbers remained in the 60s throughout the worst of his pummeling. (presiding over a boom and a surplus obviously helps.) bushCo™ has been reeling from a different new crisis every week and has been badly hemorrhaging supporters since fallujah.

i find it impossible to believe that rove (or any other supposed intelligent being, for that matter) would think that any strategery that would worsen the administration's deathly poll numbers and inflame not just his congressional opponents, but also his apologists and the last of his die-hard public supporters could possibly be a good one. what kind of genuis tries to put out a fire in one room of his house by repeatedly setting new fires in another? a super-genius, no doubt.