Tuesday, May 22, 2007

2 + 2 still equals 4


Check out some very serious propaganda in today's Guardian Iran's secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iran. Of course, the money quotes all come from an unnamed "senor administrion official in Baghdad."I am still pretty sure that Cheney and George will strike against Iran b/f they leave office. It may be that Gordon Brown's reversal on British troop levels in Iraq is related to this plan. I'm not following things as much as I was before, but I still think that Cheney's self-interest and Bush's "logic" almost require them to do this. Cheney knows it is now-or-never and George has god on his side.

We'll see.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Energy Mercantalism Revisited

I noted a few months back Russia's energy nationalism as a harbinger of the end of "free market" fundamentalism (The End of Neo-liberalism and the New Energy Mercantalism). More recently Hugo Chavez has raised the flage on what was Venezuela's last privately run oil field.

Yesterday, finally, George responded to these dramatic developments. Yes, George has got a word for these kind of people: terrorists. According to today's White House Watch (see Dan Froomkin), Cox News Service reports on George's appearance before the Associated General Contractors meeting in DC. George said:


"...'You can attack a nation several ways. One, you can get 19 kids to fly airplanes into buildings, or you can gain control of something a country needs and deny that country access to that, in this case, oil, and run the price of oil up, all attempting to inflict serious economic damage.'"

Frightening stuff. We now know where the twins will not be going for spring breakk 2008.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Monday, April 02, 2007

The Times They are a Changin, Sort Of

Come gather round voters
With your mouths full of foam
And admit that your wallets
Are dry to the bone
And just accept it now
That you’ll soon loose your home
Pray your I-R-A
Is worth savin’
Then you better start laughin
Else you’ll die with a moan
For the times they are a changing, sort of


Come talking heads and pundits
Who think like a herd
Be as dumb as you want
Cause your paid by the word
Remember the louder you scream
The better you’ll be heard
There’s no end to your childish
Name-callin
And the dumbest one now
Will just be called back again
For the times they are a changing, kind of


Come senators and congressman
In search of a buck
Don’t pass legislation
That’ll compromise your luck
And the sign on your desk
Says fuck and get fucked
By the lobbyists outside
A ragin’
But your pimping ways
Lacks the dignity of a whore!
Yes the times they are a changing, sort of


Come Iraqi veterans
Who can’t pay the rent
And forget that already
Next month’s paycheck is spent
For what matters most is that
We invade Iran
The Iraqi War is
Rapidly aging
Please join us in the new one
If you’ve still got two hands
For the times they are a changing, kind of

A line it is snorted
The beer can makes a blast
Old Dubya is off
On the war path
One more roll of the dice
Try and salvage his past
Common sense is
Rapidly fading
And the dead one’s now
Will never come back
For the times they are a changing, sort of

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Who says political science is not an experimental science?


Here is an excellent real-world test of the Democrats' commitment to being the anti-war party. It is from Congressman Walter B. Jones (R) of North Carolina’s 3rd district and is reproduced below. If the Democrats genuinely wanted to prevent Cheney from attacking Iran they would be 100% supportive of this joint resolution. not surprisingly, Nancy Pelosi has been described as non-committal about it. I give it about a 1% chance of getting to the House floor for an actual vote and a 0.1% chance of being passed.


JOINT RESOLUTION

Concerning the use of military force by the United States against Iran.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. REQUIREMENTS CONCERNING THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAN.

(a) Rule of Construction- No provision of law enacted before the date of the enactment of this joint resolution shall be construed to authorize the use of military force by the United States against Iran.

(b) Requirements- Absent a national emergency created by attack by Iran, or a demonstrably imminent attack by Iran, upon the United States, its territories or possessions or its armed forces, the President shall consult with Congress, and receive specific authorization pursuant to law from Congress, prior to initiating any use of military force against Iran.



Monday, February 12, 2007

The audacity of cynicism, part I


I am slowly beginning to accept the reality that sooner or later—and probably sooner—the Cheney administration will strike at Iran. The details of this action need not be hashed out here—a US-lead/Israeli lead? Nuclear/conventional? etc,—what matters is that this is now almost inevitable. Here’s why…

In a nutshell, Dick Cheney is pursing the grand strategy that he has set out for himself. He and George and their neo-con friends have proclaimed that they want to re-make the Middle East in their own image. This is their stated goal and despite a lot of missteps, head fakes, and outright lying about a lot of other things, they are sticking to this claim. They started in Afghanistan, to the east of Iran, next they went into Iraq, to the west of Iran, and now comes Cheney’s hat trick, Iran itself. In the book The March of Folly which describes four historical episodes where ruling powers pursued failed strategies despite all kinds of facts that should have lead them to do otherwise, Barbara Tuchman finds that those in power are much more willing to fail than they are to admit that they are wrong. So it matters not a wit to Cheney how bad things get in Iraq (or Afghanistan) he’s going forward with Plan A.

So if Cheney won’t stop Cheney, who can? Well, the Democrats, of course!

But let’s listen to what the Dems are saying and take stock of exactly what they are not doing.

In November 2006, in results that surprised even themselves, the Democrats won control of both houses of Congress. They did so on a wave of anti-Bush and anti-war sentiment, which frankly, as a party, they did relatively little to push or swell. So what have they done to lift up these anti-war voices, to press the demands of the people who put them into power? First off they have resuscitated the policeman that was suffocating under the ass of the former Speaker of the House, Danny Hastert. With the investigatory powers accorded to the legislative branch once again in play, there is now an opposition party asking questions. Second, they have come out publicly (being quoted in mainstream newspapers even!) and asserted that the Bush (sic) administration does not have the legal authority to invade Iran without expressed written permission from the Congress. Third, they have tried (and so-far failed) to pass a non-binding resolution stating their opposition to the president’s “surge strategy” in Iraq. Bold moves from a Party emboldened by victory. Onward soldiers of justice!

Now let’s look at the real effect of these three gambits. First, the ever-vigilante Henry Waxman (D, California), as new chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, will do his best to embarrass the hell out of the Republicans. He will publicize their lies, corruption, nepotism, veniality, and incompetence. He will subtly reveal (to the those already in the know) that the Republican Party is willing to risk the lives of Americans so that they and their rich friends might continue to pay the kids private school tuition bills without changing their sacred current-consumption patterns. Don’t get me wrong, I like Henry Waxman and I believe that he’s a first class and honest muckraker. But he is a Party man and though we can’t know for sure his own appetite for truth, we do know his party’s. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: Republicans like to serve truth as the appetizer, while Democrat’s prefer it for dessert, but neither would ever dare serve it as the main meal.

And as for the policy implication of the other two maneuvers? Well, the Democratic Party has finally come straight out and said it, “The President’s powers are limited.” That’s right! There it is! They’ve said it and they’ve even said it in public! You didn’t think they had it in them but they said it. Many of us had come to think that the Party had no balls. But they proved us wrong. And if George tries to break the Constitution again well this time they’re really going to do something about it like…like…pass a non-binding resolution saying that what he did was wrong (as opposed to the current one wherein they say what he’s going to do is wrong.)

In other words, all of the Democratic Party’s current strategies are designed to not change a thing. It is pure political jockeying, intentionally designed for political advantage without risking any policy changes. The Democrats know that both ideas—the surge in Iraq and the bombing of Iran—are awful and immoral, but they also know that they cannot intervene without putting at risk the entire house of cards, a.k.a. the current American political establishment. So they do the only thing they can do: they tuck a political card into their sleeve so that next year after the surge plan has failed and the bombing campaign in Iran has happened (and thanks to their own sins of omission tens- maybe hundreds-of-thousands of more lives have been lost), they can say they told us so.

So in my continuing effort to turn the social sciences into a predictive science, here’s what I see in the crystal ball:
(1)
The US attacks Iran on flimsy evidence;
(2)
The Democrats hem-and-haw, spin around three-and-half-times, and hem-and-haw some more;
(3)
The MSM, while continuing to quote the Cheney administration that the evidence implicating Iran is air-tight, reports that some administration opponents say that the administration’s evidence against Iran is, in fact, not perfect;
(4)
The truly innocent civilians of Iran die in the tens- and maybe hundreds-of-thousands; and,
(5)
Paraphrasing Sourush Shehabi, the current (very unpopular) Iranian regime remains in power for another 20 or 30 years and 70 million Iranians become radicalized.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Don't say you were never warned...


A few weeks back I gave my Doublespeak Quote of the Year Award for 2007. Now it's time to announce Man of the Year and without hesitation I'm giving the title to Soroush Shehabi, a reporter (?) from Washington Life Magazine. The following vignette was described on United Press International on-line.
At a farewell reception at Blair House for the retiring chief of protocol, Don Ensenat, who was President Bush's Yale roommate, the president shook hands with Washington Life Magazine's Soroush Shehabi. "I'm the grandson of one of the late Shah's ministers," said Soroush, "and I simply want to say one U.S. bomb on Iran and the regime we all despise will remain in power for another 20 or 30 years and 70 million Iranians will become radicalized."

"I know," President Bush answered.

"But does Vice President Cheney know?" asked Soroush.

President Bush chuckled and walked away.

Links we never followed


In the tradition of the New Yorker’s Block that Metaphor, I’m starting up a “Links we never followed”. The list below is the first step. I think they speak for themselves.



“Man denies masturbating on ski lift…” (Drudge Report, 8 February 2007)

“Britney vs. the Terrorists” (Washington Post, 9 February 2007)

“Beauticians cut, curl, offer stroke-prevention info” (CNN, 11 February 2007)

And this one from the US embassy in Bagdad…

“Job Opportunities” (http://iraq.usembassy.gov/, 11 February 2007)