another one bites the dust

(art by aarrgghh)

gonzales bids hasta la vista.

what's striking to me is how little sadness there is on the right that he is leaving. a quick look over at "the corner" shows that most conservatives there view his departure with relief. michelle malkin wasn't upset to seem him go either. a quick blogosphere check shows that most on the right are okay with this decision. but i wonder why republicans and wingnuts aren't angry about gonzo's departure. gonzalez has been radioactive for months now. he became the walking symbol of the bush administration's failures — incompetence, corruption and cronyism (loyalty uber alles). for him to resign now — after the disastrous appearances on the hill, after his deceptions, after stubbornly refusing to do so months ago when it could have stemmed the tide — well, it seems like defusing a bomb after it had already gone off. it's like rumsfeld all over again. this departure brings back memories of the phrase, the mayberry machiavellis. bush and friends seem intent on going down hard and taking the gop with them.

i died in iraq

from texas: a report from beyond the grave ... ?

rockport man among 14 soldiers killed in iraq chopper crash corpus christi, texas (ap) — a 23-year-old coastal bend man says he's been identified as one of 14 soldiers killed in a helicopter crash in iraq this week. rockport police chief tim jayroe is a friend of garrett mclead's family. he says the army has told the family that the 2002 rockport-fulton high school grad was among those killed in yesterday's crash of a blackhawk helicopter. most of the 14 soldiers killed in the crash in northern iraq were based in hawaii, while several others were from washington state. the military says mechanical trouble likely took down the chopper, not hostile fire. the army hasn't released the names of those killed in the crash, which was part of the pentagon's worst single-day death toll in iraq since january. the military said it appeared the aircraft was lost by mechanical problems and not from hostile fire.

... or just sloppy editing?

dubya foreign policy 101

josh marshall:

even more interesting is another argument president bush is poised to make: namely, that vietnam is more than just an analogy. he will argue that the terrorist threat we face today is in some measure the result of our withdrawal from vietnam, as it emboldened the terrorists to attack us. the president will also make the argument that withdrawing from vietnam emboldened today's terrorists by compromising u.s. credibility, citing a quote from al qaeda leader osama bin laden that the american people would rise against the iraq war the same way they rose against the war in vietnam, according to the excerpts. i'm not sure i've ever seen a better example of president bush's comically inept strategic thinking. actually, lack of strategic thinking. i'm sure you've noticed how, as the president's policies go further and further down the drain, he more and more often cites the authority of osama bin laden as the rationale for his policies. in this case, we must stay in iraq forever wasting money and lives and destroying our position in the world because if we don't we'll have proved osama bin laden right. it's like a very sad version of a sixty year old falling for that dingbat head fake ten year olds used to play when i was a kid in elementary school in which: kid a says he wants the football kid b says, 'fine, but if you take the football, you're gay.' and then kid a stalks off hopelessly bamboozled and unable to parry this paralyzing riddle. apparently we have permanently ceded our foreign policy to the whim of osama bin laden's taunts.

josh's schoolyard analogy is amusing, but it's actually not quite accurate, especially if the football is intended to represent u.s. withdrawal from iraq.

bush clearly intends to stay in iraq until the end of his term, if no one forces him out, an event which, at this late stage, seems less and less likely. so bush clearly doesn't want the football. it's the other kids in the yard, the good, sensible, tired, restless public, who really want the football and have been badgering poor dubya to get it for them.

bush's vietnam analagy is just one more in an endless (at least until january 2009) series of lame excuses for not getting the football that everyone else wants but dubya has no intention of delivering.

outgrowing the "grown-ups"

i used to believe that a lot of these people were just talking over my head, their discourse too lofty for a regular guy like myself. but that isn't true. they're just stupid. — oliver willis, "margaret carlson had a column to fill"

funny thing — while i cannot point to a specific time or day or season, by the time i left high school i had reached this same epiphany about all the figures that had been held before me as authorities: parents and teachers and all those they pointed to as "leaders".

while i would hestitate to call them to a person all stupid, at the heart of my transformation was the realization that, despite what i had been brought up to believe and had dutifully absorbed as a force of nature, like the pull of the earth, these purportedly omniscient beings were actually no more intelligent than i was. that the politicos and the pundits who propagandized the iraq war — and who even at this late date continue to debase our public discourse — are now openly mocked as "grown-ups", "very serious people" and "the wise old men of washington" is no product of simple bush-deranged whimsy.

ironically, i considered my development to have been one true sign that i had reached a degree of maturity. except that i didn't become one of the "grown-ups".

alberto piñata

and lo, a new talking point is born ...

(video courtesy of talkingpointsmemo.com)

warrentless wiretaps 101

the cliff notes edition, courtesy of duncan black (aka atrios @ eschaton):

look, all the parsing of statements is a waste of time. they were eavesdropping on whoever they wanted to without any warrants or oversight. whether or not "whoever they wanted to" included, say, the john kerry campaign or markos moulitsas is still an open question. they obviously claimed the power to do so, it just isn't clear if they did it.

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.

aye, there's the rub

stephen colbert picks apart ben nelson, the last man standing of the democratic senators who still support the war in iraq:

colbert:	how, uh — how would you change the game plan in iraq?
nelson:	what we would do is transition the mission. ah, and that would include taking the combat troops out of fighting the civil war — or the sectarian violence, as you choose — ah, and redeploy them into certain areas. fighting al qaeda is one of them, in al anbar and all over. i think we have al qaeda on the run ...
colbert:	so you wouldn't withdraw them? ... so you wouldn't, wouldn't withdraw them?
nelson:	... wouldn't be withdrawing —
colbert:	why wouldn't you withdraw them?
nelson:	— them. we wouldn't, wouldn't withdraw ... we wouldn't try to micromange the war. you would just change the mission. you'd also, ah, redeploy the troops to the, ah, to the borders, to protect the borders in case ...
colbert:	but what if the president doesn't want to do that?
nelson:	well ... that's the problem. the president doesn't want to do that.

hmm ... yes, that would be a bit of problem, now wouldn't it, ben?

without overlooking the illogic in ...

(a) nelson's cutely-alliterative "transition the mission" game plan, which sounds less like a strategy for victory than another attempt to find busywork for keeping the overstretched troops in iraq and

(b) his argument against withdrawal, which he frames as "micromanaging the war" (while eloquently borrowing one of the republicans' favorite talking points). but wouldn't withdrawal unequivocably end our involvement in the quagmire, thereby leaving us nothing to "micromanage" ... ? doh!

... i want to applaud this comedian for confronting nelson with the grand conceit afflicting all the armchair generals who think they have the grand strategy for iraq (even if they do).

and that grand conceit is this: that their plans mean squat if the commander-guy isn't going to implement them. so what's the point of supporting this war one day longer if it's never going to be waged in the way that you think will win it?

i've been carping on this point for a while:

unfortunately (and i do say this with the utmost respect to all those who have been applying the necessary brain-power and wisdom that's been heretofore lacking in this debate) all these plans represent nothing more than idle academic masturbation. they're all quite pointless. and that's why you'll find no trademarked and patented "aarrgghh plan" on this site. because unless the first step in your grand strategy reads:

my grand strategy for iraq by carping know-it-all 1) remove george bush and dick cheney from office.

... then your plan is nothing but toilet paper. because unless you're willing to let events continue to spiral for at least another two years, george bush will give your precious plan all the due consideration he gave to the over-anticipated iraq study group report — that is, as steve gilliard remarked, he'll "wipe his ass" with it. which leaves us with only one plan — the only one that matters — the kagan plan, more fondly known as "the surge" ...

it's a point that i've been taking to other blogs:

probably the biggest conceit of those cheerleading the "surge", whatever their particular reasons, is the illusion that getting one more bite of the apple means that the occupation will be finally getting it right this time, whatever that ultimately means. the surge, they insist, will work as long as [fill in your personal cure-all here ], and as long as we give it time. the reality of course is that the surge cheerleaders are not in charge. they're not going to get the chance to run the type of surge they think will finally produce that pony. the folks in charge are the same criminals, starting with the commander-guy, responsible for the mess-o'-potamia, and they really don't care what anyone else thinks. and they certainly won't be applying [ your personal cure-all ] to the problem. it's been oft said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, but the real insanity of supporting this escalation is expecting the same idiots, with such a record of failure, to do anything different. nothing will change as long as they are in charge. which means either another year and a half before even preparing for withdrawal — or impeachment now.

unfortunately, as long as fantasists like nelson remain in congress, this will be a point i'll have to keep jabbing in people's eyes for the foreseeable future. at least somebody with a megaphone is finally helping out.

comment of the day

crooks and liars: state rep. bob allen, a co-chair of republican presidential candidate john mccain’s florida campaign, is expected to address thursday charges that he offered to perform oral sex on an undercover male police officer for $20.

quoth joementum:

the sad thing is, at $20 a hummer, he was probably mccain’s best fund-raiser 1.

---

¹ to be fair, it was allen that allegedly offered to pay for the privilege (which could explain why mccain's campaign coffers are just about empty ...)

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.

no soup for you!

now this is creative ...

ap: a senate appropriations panel chaired by sen. richard durbin, d-ill., refused to fund $4.8 million in the vice president’s budget until cheney’s office complies with parts of an executive order governing its handling of classified information. at issue is a requirement that executive branch offices provide data on how much material they classify and declassify. that information is to be provided to the information security oversight office at the national archives. cheney’s office, with backing from the white house, argues that the offices of the president and vice president are exempt from the order because they are not executive branch "agencies." the funding cut came as the appropriations panel approved 5-4 along party lines a measure funding white house operations, the treasury department and many smaller agencies. durbin, the no. 2 democrat in the senate, said cheney’s office was flouting requirements that it comply with the reporting requirements on classified information. "neither mr. cheney or his staff is above the law or the constitution," durbin said. "for the vice president to believe that he has no responsibility to meet this requirement of the law is a dereliction of duty."

comment of the day

from the washington post, whose editors still don't believe we've heard all the relevant facts about john edwards' $400 haircut, the man behind the scissors and sassoon is feeling a bit let down:

beverly hill stylist joseph torrenueva: i'm disappointed and I do feel bad. if i know someone, i'm not going to say i don't know them ... when he called me "that guy," that hit my ears. it hurt.

quoth legalize @ tpm cafe's election central:

dude, get over yourself. you cut the man's hair; it's not like you massaged each other and did meth together in denver hotel rooms. sheesh.

scooter skates

josh marshall: there is a conceivable argument — a very poor one but a conceivable one — for pardoning scooter libby, presumably on the argument that the entire prosecution was political and thus illegitimate. but what conceivable argument does the president have for micromanaging the sentence? to decide that the conviction is appropriate, that probation is appropriate, that a substantial fine is appropriate — just no prison sentence. this is being treated in the press as splitting the difference, an elegant compromise. but it is the least justifiable approach. the president has decided that the sentencing guidelines and the opinion of judge don't cut it. the only basis for this decision is that libby is the vice president's friend, the vice president rules the president and this was the minimum necessary to keep the man silent.

no bail? no-brainer!

(art © mike luckovich)

tpmmuckraker: it sounds like it wasn't even close. the decision by the court was unanimous, the ap reports, while reuters says "the appeals court rejected libby's request in a one-paragraph order, ruling he has not shown that his appeal 'raises a substantial question.'"

doubled down

(photo-edit by dave hill)

and meanwhile, brick by brick, the house that jack built continues to fall ... painfully.

new york times: a federal judge chastised the interior department's former no. 2 official and doubled his proposed prison term to 10 months tuesday for lying to senators in the jack abramoff lobbying scandal and making excuses about it in court. j. steven griles, who was the department's deputy secretary, had pleaded guilty to obstructing a congressional investigation, and a federal judge said he continued to make excuses about his lies. "even now you continue to minimize and try to excuse your conduct," u.s. district judge ellen segal huvelle told griles before doubling the five-month person prison term he and prosecutors had agreed on. griles admitted to lying to senate investigators about his relationship with abramoff, the central figure in a corruption investigation that has led to convictions of a former congressman, legislative aides, lobbyists and officials in the bush administration. griles had asked to be spared prison time. under his plea deal with prosecutors, the justice department recommended he serve five months in prison and five months in a halfway house or under house arrest.

asks atrios @ eschaton:

remind me how many clinton administration officials were convicted for acts they committed while in office?

why jack bauer always gets his man

now i know justice antonin scalia has a great love for theatrics, but his recent use of a fictional tv character, tough guy government agent jack bauer of the popular series 24 (which i will disclose that i've never watched), to enthusicastically bolster his justification for torture as a crime-fighting tool, has left me wondering if the good judge has any sense at all of the profound irony he's just fallen victim to. (though in the classic use of irony the victim is always oblivious to his predicament — irony is the writer's gift to the reader.)

in fact, if i may allow myself to appropriate a tv personality of my own, it was the daily show's host jon stewart who remarked, in his report on the graceless exit of former deputy secretary of state randall tobias, a casualty of this spring's dc madam scandal, that "there is nothing the administration can do that is not ironic."

the globe and mail: senior judges from north america and europe were in the midst of a panel discussion about torture and terrorism law, when a canadian judge's passing remark — "thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra 'what would jack bauer do?'" — got the legal bulldog in judge scalia barking. the conservative jurist stuck up for agent bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. "jack bauer saved los angeles. ... he saved hundreds of thousands of lives," judge scalia said. then, recalling season 2, where the agent's rough interrogation tactics saved california from a terrorist nuke, the supreme court judge etched a line in the sand. "are you going to convict jack bauer?" judge scalia challenged his fellow judges. "say that criminal law is against him? 'you have the right to a jury trial?' is any jury going to convict jack bauer? i don't think so. "so the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. and ought we believe in these absolutes."

what should disturb everyone is that scalia takes import from the fact that jack bauer wins. jack bauer always gets his man. he saved california, fer chrissakes!!! and jack wins because he's willing to torture. it is of course the classic "ends justifies the means" argument, and disappointingly, not a particularly sophisticated example, considering that its source is supposed to be one of the smartest jurists in the country.

but how can scalia credit jack's willingness to torture for jack's success when the reality is that — and here is where the irony i so subtly foreshadowed kicks in — as a fictional character, jack's success or failure has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of anything he does but instead depends entirely on the desires of his scriptwriters!

the reality is that jack bauer has never saved anything or anybody. he's not real. bauer wins because the scriptwriters want him to. likewise, torture works only because the scriptwriters want it to.

in america's fight against terrorists, we don't need jack bauer. what this country needs are his scriptwriters.

torture has perhaps saved some at the expense of honour, by uncovering 30 bombs. but at the same time it has created 50 new terrorists. — albert camus

decidership

according to the urban dictionary (with a minor revision of my own):

a form of government with [an idiot] exercising absolute power and unrestricted control and regularly disregarding opinions, petitions or mandates of the people or elected representatives.

q:

well, what do you say to critics who believe that you're ignoring the advice of retired generals, military commanders, who say that there needs to be a change?

bush:

i say i listen to all voices, but mine's the final decision. and don rumsfeld is doing a fine job. he's not only transforming the military, he's fighting a- a- a war on terror. he's helping us fight a war on terror. i have strong confidence in don rumsfeld. i hear the voices, and i read the front page, and i know the speculation. but i'm the decider, and i decide what is best. and what's best is for don rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.

do not pass "go"

(art © mike luckovich)

AP: a federal judge said thursday he will not delay a 2½-year prison sentence for i. lewis "scooter" libby in the cia leak case, a ruling that could send the former white house aide to prison within weeks. ... no date was set for libby to report to prison but it's expected to be within six to eight weeks. that will be left up to the u.s. bureau of prisons, which will also select a facility. "unless the court of appeals overturns my ruling, he will have to report," walton said.

a moment of clarity

well yeah. i was just sitting here, eating my muffin, drinking my coffee, when i had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity. — hitman jules winnfield, pulp fiction (1994)

finally.

after spending the last six years crazy drunk on all fear all the time!^®, has the mainstream media sobered up?

matthews: well, i'll tell ya one thing — i agree with what fareed zakaria wrote in newsweek this week, which is: terrorism isn't explosions and death. terrorism is when you change your society because of those explosions. and you become fearful to the point where you shut out immigration. you shut out student exchanges. you shut people out of buildings. you begin to act in almost a fascist manner because you're afraid of what might happen to you. that's when terrorism becomes real and frighteningly successful. that's what i believe, and that why i question the way giuliani has raised this issue. he raises it as a spectre. in a weird way he helps the bad guys.

damn

r.i.p. steve gilliard (1966-2007).

i did not know steve, but those who did say that his online papa-don't-take-no-mess analysis was matched only by his in-person charm. i agreed with a lot of what he wrote — and to that extent felt a certain kinship — and made reference to a number of his posts:

"we" are not amused

send in the clowns

a good old-fashioned space opera

my condolences to his friends and family.