The Growth of the Soil
Sunday, January 30, 2005
 
Ink-stained fingers have become a symbol of pride
Tomorrow and thereafter there will be plenty of time to worry about the post-election period and all that it entails (even friends of the administration like Tony Blankley of the Mooney Times predict increased ethnic strife in Iraq and Republicans and Democrats alike are increasingly insisting on a solid timetable for withdrawal). Today, though, you would have to have a pretty hard heart to not take a certain delight and even a little pride in an image like this:



The Times describes a "party like atmosphere" in baghdad itself as voters "packed" polling places. In Basra, Najaf, and Mosul, turn out was nearly as high as the most optomistic pundits predicted. Iraq's election commissioner is estimating that 8 million people BRAVED THE THREAT OF DEATH to make their voices heard. Was it perfect? No. Is there still a signifcant possiblity of civil war? Yes. But for today, let's pray for the very best for the brave men and women, Iraqis and Americans, who did their part in Iraq today.

Friday, January 28, 2005
 
The Reign of Fear continues
In today's NYT, Krugman continues his assault on the Bush administration's Social Security scare tactics. I am an avid Krugman advocate. Clearly, he is a liberal tower of Pisa but I think he consistently articulates the absurdity of the current regime and backs his smack with data. As for today's article, it saddens me that Bush continues down the path of "scare them into submission." His current pitch: Social Security is bad for African Americans because blacks have a shorter life expectancy. WHAT???? Krugman effectively dismantles this naive assertion in his editorial and goes on to reiterate that the Bush team continues to lead with initiatives and then follow with a flood of rationale to support (perhaps JUSTIFY is the better term) their vision. The administration keeps pushing bad policy, based on flawed logic and skewed data. I am left clinging to the hope that Congress will slow the flow and stall the fall of this great nation.

 
When Everyone is Special, No One is Special
This is too funny.

Thursday, January 27, 2005
 
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Freaky.

Wednesday, January 26, 2005
 
A Legend Has Died
Philip Johnson, may he rest in peace in God's perfect architecture.



 
What's News: January 26 Edition

Michael Novak at National Review thinks that the mainstream press is going to be surprised by the success of the Iraqi election. Novak predicts voter turn out, driven by Shiites and kurds, to reach as high as 70%. But where he is really going out on a limb is in his prediction that Sunni turnout may be much higher than expected. I am betting (and hoping) he is right.

I share little with the “bomb and a prayer” wing of the conservative movement these days, but one thing we do share is a child like joy at the prospect of a once-captive people getting a chance to vote. This election won’t change the situation on the ground overnight, but if the Iraqi people come out in force they will send a powerful message to the insurgents and perhaps go a long way towards achieving the goals which the administration’s half-competent strategists have utterly failed at.

China’s economy grew at a whopping 9.5% in 2004. The repercussions for the American economy is mixed. On the one hand, a lot of that money should be in the hands of corporations and consumers who ought to purchase more American products and services. On the other hand, as long as the Chinese continue to peg the value of the Yuan to the dollar, we will not reap the full benefit of comparative advantage, the economic theory that explains how all parties should benefit from international trade.

Shockingly, The non-partisan CBO says that there is no way in hell that the Bush administration will meet its target of reducing the deficit by half in four years.

MSN Money Market editor Jim Jubak takes an informative look at how the government is managing our money.



Tuesday, January 25, 2005
 
What’s News: January 25 Edition

Warning: Economics Ahead

David Sanger, writing in the Times today, is one of the few today to pick up on what I believe will be a major story of 2005, the slide – and potential collapse - of the dollar.

The Bush administration has been publicly proclaiming the Rubin doctrine of preferring a strong dollar, but every one of their policies suggests that they either don’t care or actually prefer a weak dollar. In the short run, a weak dollar makes foreign imports more expensive here and American exports cheaper abroad. Sounds pretty good. In the long run, however, the weak dollar can have a lot of negative consequences. Chief among these is the possibility that foreign central banks, the major purchasers of American debt, will decide that the dollar is less stable then the Euro. In a not altogether unlikely scenario, the central banks run out on the dollar, forcing interest rates through the roof (because we will have to offer a premium for anyone to be willing to buy debt in dollars). Higher interest rates mean that both businesses and consumers have less purchasing power, meaning that the economy will slow or even shrink.

But that isn’t actually even the worst of it. The Bush policy is making us incredibly vulnerable to just two central banks: Japan and China, which are, between the two of them, funding the Bush Spending Spree. That’s right, one of the major sources of funding for America’s military might is our only serious potential state antagonist.

Economists understand that this situation seriously ties our hands with regard to China policy. As Sanger points out, one of the clearest examples of this is the Administration’s utter failure to force the Chinese to let their currency “float.” By pegging their own currency to ours, China protects itself from our imports and keeps the prices of its exports low. Add this to China’s competitive advantages in wages and its regulatory environment (meaning that American businesses has to comply with a lot of rules that Chinese businesses don’t have to) and you see the problem. It’s the economic version of Mathew McConaughey’s great line in Dazed and Confused about teenage girls. In fact, since China constitutes a humongous potential market for American goods, the failure to get them to let their currency float cancels out a good deal of the advantages of a weak dollar.

I will continue to post on this issue as it unfolds.

Other News

The LA Times says that the Iraqi people are coalscing around Allawi:
Election Is Looking Up for Allawi

John Powers at LA Weekly agrees with me that the left better stop beating up on Bush and figure out what the hell it stands for. It’s the issues, stupid. Here are his proposals:
A Vision of Our Own

ArmsControlWonk argues that what the real reason for concern about the Pentagon’s new covert ops activities is that covert ops don’t work and never have:
Covert Operations




Friday, January 21, 2005
 
Introducing America Held Hostage

After a week of watching this thing unfold it became clear to me (mostly through the advice others) that it might have been overreaching to hope that this one blog would accomplish two very different things. On the one hand, I wanted a repository for quick links, brief observations and bare knuckles battling. On the other hand, I wanted to develop something of an online magazine with more long-form, thoughtful, original content. It is becoming apparent that this one limited format blog might not be capable of supporting both efforts.

So, things are going to change around here. First off, I would like to introduce you to America Held Hostage.

AHH is the new sister blog to Growth of the Soil. Feel like fighting? Want to post a link to an interesting new article? Head over to AHH. AHH will also feature a daily survey of interesting political content on the web.

Feel like writing or reading something with a little more meat? Growth of the Soil will now be exclusively dedicated to original content. In the coming weeks, I hope to work with some the current contributors, and the large number of people who have told me that they are interesting in posting but haven’t posted yet, to ensure that there are one or two new pieces on Growth of the Soil every day.

So, that’s that.

Right now on America Held Hostage: a completely random review of some of the more interesting takes on the inaugural address.


 
Is the left reactionary?
John Powers says so, in the alt press LA Weekly. I concur, but it's worth reading the article even if you don't.
Whether it’s rewriting the tax code or privatizing Social Security to solve an imaginary "crisis," the right has become the agent of change.

In contrast, the left has become — there’s no other word for it — reactionary.

Still unable to accept that the right has dominated our national life for the last quarter-century, the left hasn’t done the hard, slow work of thinking through what it means to be progressive during an era of ultraglobalized capitalism in which the only successful Democratic president in the last 35 years, Bill Clinton, followed policies that even he compared to Dwight Eisenhower’s. Far from proposing bold new ideas that might seize the popular imagination, the left now plays the kind of small-ball that Dubya disdains. Even worse, it’s become the side that’s forever saying "No."

What the left lacks is not a galvanizing messenger but a positive message, a set of energizing ideas and values. It’s not enough to oppose the invasion of Iraq or Bush’s plans for Social Security. That’s merely to react against someone else’s agenda. We must reverse the great (and startling) historical flip-flop in our political iconography. Forty years ago, the left represented the future — it crackled with pleasurable possibility — while the right symbolized the repressive past, clinging to dead traditions like shards of a wrecked ship.

These days, all that has been stood on its head: In the wake of September 11, the right claims it wants to free oppressed people — why, democracy is on the march! — while the left is too often caught saying "I told you so" about the mess in Iraq, even as that country speeds toward an election that any decent human being should hope goes well. In 1968, who would have believed it possible that the left would be home to the dreary old "realists" while the right would be full of utopians?

These are not new ideas. Peter Beinart wrote probably the best piece on this subject . One of the more interesting ideas that I'd like to see taken on by the left is federalism, which could be recast as a progressive way for all us to just get along. Obviously federalism has more relevance to domestic issues than to foreign policy, but I think federalism has been unfortunately miscast as a right-wing philosophy. Given Bush's apparent contempt for states' rights and circumscribed power in the federal government, federalism is now a philosophy of government without a true home. So lefties everywhere, maked a nice nest for it, it will reward you.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
 
Fareed Zakaria on India, disaster and hope
To understand how much and how fast India is changing, look at its response to the tsunami. I don't mean the government's reaction but that of individual Indians. In the two weeks after the tidal wave hit, the Prime Minister's Relief Fund, the main agency to which people make donations, has collected about $80 million. After the Gujarat earthquake of April 2001, it took almost one year to collect the same amount of money.

But the real story might be that 20 years of modest but persistent reforms in India have had huge effects. Over the past 15 years, India has been the second fastest-growing large economy in the world (after China), with an average growth rate of 6 percent. Per capita income in the country has almost doubled (from an admittedly tiny base), and more than 100 million Indians have moved out of poverty...

China is following the East Asian model, with a strong government promoting and regulating capitalist growth. But India might well be forging a new path, of necessity, with society making up for the deficiencies of the state. Actually, this is not entirely new. In some ways India's messy development resembles that of another large, energetic, chaotic country where society has tended to loom larger than the state—


While Zakaria's very optimistic take on things may be a bit idiosyncratic, for reasons mentioned in the article I root for India rather than China as the first 1 billion person wealthy superpower.
 
The Bush Satanic CULT!!
Total complete and utter wingnut post. JOKE AHEAD WARNING.








ROCK ON Satan lovers!!!

nod to boingboing
 
One Thing the Republicans are Doing Right

This article by the always interesting Stanley Crouch centers around an issue that is of great interest to me right now. The bottom line, in my opinion, is that the Democratic party has maybe one or two election cycles left before they start to really loose black voters in large numbers.

There are a lot of reasons why blacks are going to start migrating to the Republican party. First and foremost, as Crouch points out and I agree, black voters perceive themselves less and less as "black voter" and more and more as "voters," period.

At one point it may have been necessary for blacks to perceive themselves as a block to achieve the basic goals of the civil rights movement. To treat black people as a block today, however, is to deny the amazing achievements of that movement. The Republicans have caught onto to this, the Democrats have not.

Unlike so much of what the Republicans do, I don’t think this is a political strategy but an honest-to-goodness ideological difference. Shed a conservative of his racism and what will be left, as far as his thinking about minorities goes, will be an honest belief in the individual as a power in his own life.

As Crouch points out:

“The Republicans have succeeded in making high political appointments that seem to be free of any racial glue and actually recognize the individual rather than color or sex.”

I think this is dead on, and it puzzles (and saddens) me that I don’t think that either Al Gore or John Kerry would have elevated nearly as many minorities to true positions of power as George Bush has. I could very well be wrong, but I imagine that Bush and his people set about looking for the people they want in a particular position, and it just so happens that many of them have been minorities. Now, of course, I think Condi Rice was a horrible NSA and I expect her to be just as bad at State, but I measure her performance by very different metrics than the Bush team does.

To get at the heart of the matter, why are the Democrats still playing footsies with borderline felons, the likes of Al Sharpton, while the Republicans are appointing minorities to head up Education, State, NSA, and Justice?

I would love to hear someone else’s thoughts on this.


 
Funny Papers




















 
And ANOTHER Ponzi Scheme Comment
"'It's a badly, badly flawed plan,' Robert Rubin, the former secretary of the treasury and current Citigroup director, told me. 'From a fiscal point of view it's horrendous. It adds to deficits and federal debt in very large numbers until 2060.' He calculates that the transition costs of Bush's plan for the first 10 years will be at least $2 trillion, and $4.5 trillion for the second 10 years. The exploding deficit would have an 'adverse effect on interest rates, an adverse effect on consumption and housing prices, reduce productivity and growth, and crowd out debt capital to the private sector. Markets could begin to lose confidence in fiscal policy. The soundness of social security will be worse'.

Rubin adds that the stock market is hardly a sure bet. 'You are not making social security more secure by subjecting people's retirement to equity risk. If you look at the Nikkei in Japan you get a sense of what can happen.'"

 
More Ponzi Scheme Comments
"`The combination of higher birth rates and more immigration makes the United States the healthiest of developed nations. This is not a crisis.''"


Newt Gingrich
the Republican former
Speaker of the House of Representatives


 
What American's Should Expect

Outgoing Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, in an interview with Greg Sheridan of The Australian had the following to say about his disappointments:

"I'm disappointed that Iraq hasn't turned out better. And that we weren't able to move forward more meaningfully in the Middle East peace process."

Then, after a minute's pause, he adds a third regret: "The biggest regret is that we didn't stop 9/11. And then in the wake of 9/11, instead of redoubling what is our traditional export of hope and optimism we exported our fear and our anger. And presented a very intense and angry face to the world. I regret that a lot." (Hat tip: Kos)

This is what America should expect from its leaders. Honesty. No great feat. Just a little good old fashioned truth-telling. How much would it do to defuse the anger of those of us who oppose the president if we had any reason to believe that more members of his administration were capable of this kind of reflection?

It is not that we want apologies for apologies sake, it is that we want to believe that our leaders are capable of processing events without the filters of “faith,” “loyalty” and ideology skewing their perceptions of reality.

Does Armitage think the war in Iraq was a mistake? As far as I know he does not. And though I don’t agree with him on that, I can respect him a great deal for acknowledging that things didn’t turn out the way he and others in the administration had hoped. In doing so, he doesn’t insist on moving the goal posts the way that most of the administration and its supporters keep doing. Dani wants us to consider the possibility that things aren’t going so badly in Iraq. Judged against the traditional model of war, the model of long, drawn out engagements, perhaps we are not doing so badly. But that isn’t what the president or the vice-president or any of their strategists believed would happen, and it isn’t what they told the American people would happen.

If I believed that the administration’s strategists were learning from their miscalculations then I would be far more willing to accept their mistakes and trust their future judgments. War is hell, from what I hear, and there are always mistakes.

Condi Rice told the senate committee presiding over her appointment to State that no one could have foreseen the insurgency, by way of excusing the horrendously bad planning for the post-war period. This is beyond untrue: its insulting to the American people. The 41st president cited the near certainty of overwhelming strife in a post-Sadaam Iraq as the major reason why he failed to press on towards Baghdad a decade before the second Gulf War. The question of why Rice feels compelled to lie to the senate and to the American people troubles me to no end.

I have worked in the business world for about a decade. One lesson I have learned is that staff almost always take on the operating style of their boss. Another lesson I have learned is that teams that reflect on mistakes outperform those who invest themselves in denials and cover-ups every time. Taken as a whole, the Bush administration and its mouthpieces have developed a truly pathological hostility to the truth.

It is as if they lie for the sake of lying alone. Take for example the conservative war on Social Security. It is not enough for them to make a stand on the merits of the fairly strong case to be made against social security on grounds ranging from inefficiency to (gasp) unconstitutionality. For reasons that are simply beyond me, the President feels compelled as if by some internal force to make major speeches in which he outright lies - and there can be no other possible way of construing the statements he has made - about the solvency of the program.

There is no doubt in my mind that the men and women of the administration, many of them no doubt solid citizens, are reflecting the nature of their boss.

I am not a partisan who wishes to see the Republicans fail just to prove me right. Though I lack the imagination to convince myself of any set of circumstances by which the situation in Iraq will eventually work out to our advantage, I sure as hell hope it does, and would be more than happy to suffer through four years of Jeb Bush in order to see it happen. What I can’t stand, from Republicans or the opposition, are any more lies. Let us hope that Armitage isn’t the last honest man in this administration.


Wednesday, January 19, 2005
 
I wonder what's up their sleeve?
Jan. 19, 2005 — For a possible Inauguration Day story on ABC News, we are trying to find out if there any military funerals for Iraq war casualties scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 20.
If you know of a funeral and whether the family might be willing to talk to ABC News, please fill out the form below


Hmm...Cyetain, are you by any chance in programming at ABC? It seems like they're into your "cost of war" theme.

UPDATE: This is either a hoax, or they took the posting down. That was the link, and it was ABC's website.
 
You Don't Know Jack-Eye
This may sound redundant during this time of war, but I’m going to say it anyway: the 5-Star world is an unnecessary world. I’m in Saint Moritz, Switzerland, and I’ve just eaten a $40 cookie with my $25 coffee. Walking back from a restaurant in the nearby village, I saw a Bentley with a Luxembourg license plate. I have little to say about the Swiss except they are exceedingly obsequious to everyone they meet, especially Germans. It’s an unnecessary world, and it deserves none of what it has and none of our valuable time. However, I had an experience yesterday with my 5-star toilet in my room at this 5-star hotel that caused me more than a moment’s pause. I’d just eaten another rude breakfast of excreting eggs with bacon and an indifferent piece of fruit. Coupled with yet another bumpy flight the previous day, I thought it might cause digestive disruption (known in its extreme state as Simonia Marcusia Explosia). But it didn’t. I sauntered into the bathroom, passed with a hush through a sliding glass door into the toilet salon. I sat down on the toilet and it began to whir. A-ha! A whirring toilet! I opened the International Herald Tribune and read an article about how this week’s men’s show at Milan is presenting a “Neo-Conservative” look. It was a toxic enough read. I went about my business for a bit as I read another story about Dick Cheney's sinister meddlings with domestic staff selections. Boy, the Herald Tribune is just an awful newspaper now. The article reads like it was written, quite literally, by the rotted corpse of Walter Lippman.

Then I pressed the Flush button with my elbow, and I sighed as the bowl drained. However, my story – much like Bush’s presidency – doesn’t end here. For just then a geyser of warm-to-hot water erupted at my arse. I let out a yelp and reflexed the newspaper across the salon. I was scared and repulsed, but my nerves had trouble doing the physiognomic mathematics. What was I really feeling? Before I had a chance to answer, a bullet of cold water caught me right on the jack-eye. I was suddenly very angry, but then a warm breeze began blowing from deep within that toilet bowl, and I was suddenly very happy. Maybe the Swiss (and I bet the Japs) know something that we don’t.

Happy inauguration day, Simon.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
 
Getting into it some more
Earlier today, we saw this post:

"'I think the resistance is bigger than the U.S. military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people,' said Gen. Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, director of Iraq's new intelligence services.

Shahwani said there were at least 40,000 hardcore fighters attacking U.S. and Iraqi troops, with the bulk made up of part-time guerrillas and volunteers providing logistical support, information, shelter and money."


Cyetain in a comment to this post:
Anyway the author continues to flog stories about Saddam hold outs and foreigners. Even the head of Intelligence IN IRAQ doesn't believe those myths.


Well, here's an article by LTC Tim Ryan, an American official. His view:
The operation in Fallujah is only one of the recent examples of incomplete coverage of the events in Iraq. The battle in Najaf last August provides another...
What the media didn't show or write about were the two hundred-plus headless bodies found in the main mosque there, or the body that was put into a bread oven and baked. Nor did they show the world the hundreds of thousands of mortar, artillery and small arms rounds found within the "sacred" walls of the mosque...

Telling us what it looks like from where he's sitting:
From where I sit in Iraq, things are not all bad right now. In fact, they are going quite well. We are not under attack by the enemy; on the contrary, we are taking the fight to him daily and have him on the ropes...

The number of attacks in the greater Al Anbar Province is down by at least 70-80 percent from late October — before Operation Al Fajar began. The enemy in this area is completely defeated, but not completely gone. Final eradication of the pockets of insurgents will take some time, as it always does, but the fact remains that the central geographic stronghold of the insurgents is now under friendly control.

Telling us what it looks like to him:
That sounds a lot like success to me. Given all of this, why don't the papers lead with "Coalition Crushes Remaining Pockets of Insurgents" or "Enemy Forces Resort to Suicide Bombings of Civilians"? This would paint a far more accurate picture of the enemy's predicament over here. Instead, headlines focus almost exclusively on our hardships.

Cyetain, what do you think of this story? This comes from a well placed American security official, though not as high ranking as the Iraqi inetlligence chief you linked, and whose statements you apparently accept at face value. LTC Tim Ryan shares with General Shahwani the virtue of being in Iraq, involved in the daily struggle there. As men of action, they both have agendas. Granted, General Shahwani's position may offer him a broader view of events in Iraq, and a deeper understanding, but I think that LTC Tim Ryan adequately qualifies his general statements. Perhaps they're both honest actors. I hope so. But they're not objective observers.

It's strange to me, and I'm speculating here, that you would regard these two accounts so differently. Are Americans such bigger liars than Iraqis? Are we incapable of assessing the situation there, because we're not Iraqi? Are the interests of an Iraqi official making a public statement any less conflicted than an American military commander's? Are you thinking without thinking? Using your hunch power?

Your taste in news raises questions.

 
Getting into it a little
A comment that got long enough, and hopefully good enough, to make it onto the front page...


Cyetain, I didn't mean to emphasize that you were comparing Vietnam to Iraq, rather that seems to be the gist of the articles you're linking to, with minimal commentary. The theme I'd give the links is not "the cost of war," but the "Iraq quagmire."
And just because the stuff you post doesn't come from the Op/Ed pages doesn't mean it isn't opinion or slanted. Check a couple of the Reuters pieces you've linked to lately on Yahoo. Where is the reporting in them? Just as you characterize Michael Gove as another neocon towing the line, I could call the authors, sometimes nameless, of the pieces you've linked just some more transnational progressive activist journalists promulgating their narrative of choice, with which you appear sympathetic. From your comment to my post:
Where the Afghanistan elections REALLY a smashing success? At what cost? Is the government in control of the entire country? even a majority of the country? Have the schools for women and the new rights given to them continued?

I would say yes, in that they occurred, the elections were a success. Smashing success? Too early to tell. That's not a cop-out, that's the nature of measuring progress in these matters, which after the violent revolution part can tend to be slow. I think the new government is still in a period of consolidation, and that the issue of federal control over the country is a tricky one. There's a multiethnic population with numerous flavors of Islam, many of which don't play well together, so there's a question as to how much centralized control is even desirable. Clearly, though, the country needs a strong enough central government and military/police force to encourage warlords and aspiring warlords to work within system. Whether this will succeed is for me at least a mystery at this point. But I like Afghanistan's chances better than I did under the Taliban.

As for the rights of women, I think that women were clearly worse off under the previous regime, and regardless of how retrograde the current government gets that will be true. I think it's fair to say that the trend in that country has recently been towards more rights, rather than fewer, for women. Broadly speaking, that is the trend worldwide, even if it's a slow trend, though of course Shari'a areas are a notable if not statistically speaking widespread exception to this trend. This is not to say that regressive forces arising from the cultures in Afghanistan won't reassert themselves and slacken the pace of improvement or worse. Just that this will hopefully be harder to do as the civic infrastructure improves.
Anyway the author continues to flog stories about Saddam hold outs and foreigners. Even the head of Intelligence IN IRAQ doesn't believe those myths. And the fact that they are not united is supposed to give us hope? No I think that means they want us out so they can kill each other in a massive civil war.

The disunity is supposed to give us hope that the insurgents can be defeated, I think was the author's point, as was contrasting this situation with the one in Vietnam. I also think it's fair to note that the insurgents, at least the Iraqi ones, are primarily Sunnis, who are a minority population. Their prospects in an all-out civil war are not good. I don't doubt that many Shi'a and Kurds would like to kill the Sunnis, and are thinking about doing that at the first available opportunity. For the time being, the Kurds especially but the Shi'a also, perhaps because of nothing other than self-interest arising from their majority status, seem to be behind the elections. So the people most agitated at this point are the ones who have the most to lose from a civil war, and the most to gain from the restoration of the Ba'athist regime. I think this explanation, rather than insurgents trying to chase the US out so they can be slaughtered by people they and their kin have been subjugating for decades (and now terrorizing), is the big motivator in the insurgency. Why are you so convinced that this is a myth? Your argument--that the insurgents are fighting to get us out so they can take the gloves off for the civil war--is muddled, if it hasn't yet achieved mythical status.
My favorite part of the article is when he blames Saudi Arabia for the size of the troop presence and the execution of the initial invasion... AWESOME.

I liked that one, too, the more for never having heard it before. It's a pleasing melange of boldness, vagueness, lack of attribution but with a frisson of plausibility. It's worth looking into, but I'm not accepting it at face value either. Interestingly, the author doesn't mention Turkey's last minute closing of her gates to our troops as having played any factor in our ability to secure Iraq or get a lot of troops there in a hurry. No one of note is really mentioning it, but based on things I recall reading in the aftermath of Turkey's snub and amidst the chaos following the fall of Baghdad, it seems like this might have had a real impact on subsequent events.
My post have one "meta" concern... the cost of war, this war, any war. There are reasons to bare those costs, what are yours?

Oh, the standard neocon claptrap about fighting fascism, ending tyranny, encouraging democracy and representative government, and last but certainly not least, national security in the global age. Getting a quarter of a million friendly troops on two of Iran's borders also pleases me, for the same reasons I've just mentioned.

Simon says:
Daniel fails to acknowledge the potential importance of simply recognizing the fact that these things are happening. Now, he seems to believe that Cyetain is either skewing the facts or getting his information from bad sources, and that may or not be the case, I don’t know.

I readily acknowledge the importance of gathering information, of trying to figure out what is happenning. I don't think that Cyetain's posts are telling the whole story, though that's not a criticism, since that isn't necessarily his goal nor need it be. It's fair to say that he's focusing on the bad news, which is abundant even in a war that is going well (which is not to say that this one is, though I think it's going better than someone whose introduction to the micro-facts came from this blog might think). I've taken issue with some of Cyetain's links, in which the reporting, if there is any, is minimal, and the underhanded (because it's portrayed as news) analysis is on full display. I will point out what I think is low quality information in an age when there are fewer excuses for it. Anyway, here's a link to good news about the war in Iraq, in the WSJ Op/Ed. I don't vouch for all the details, and yes, Cyetain, it does appear in an Op/Ed, but the reporting looks to be superior to some of your Yahoo News/Reuters blurbs.
 
Falling Trees

First off, forgive me if you feel that this post belongs in comments.

I think that there is certainly value to keeping abreast of the details of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To be honest, until I started reading Cyetain’s posts I generally went out of my way to ignore the micro-facts on the ground aspect of the war. I think that Daniel fails to acknowledge the potential importance of simply recognizing the fact that these things are happening. Now, he seems to believe that Cyetain is either skewing the facts or getting his information from bad sources, and that may or not be the case, I don’t know.

However, I think that Daniel points the way to a fair criticism of Cyetain’s posts in that, beyond the most basic “if a tree falls” value, its unclear where Cyetain is trying to take us, “us” being readers and “us” being a nation that is, for better or worse, at war.

I am interested in the first question because I want to see this blog develop into a place where ideas are born and cultivated, and so I think it is fair to challenge each other to reach for more depth in posts. Now, my thinking about this has changed over the blog’s short lifespan. Originally I had thought of the site as a place to dump interesting ideas. Now I am thinking of it more as a sort of online magazine, where I hope we might move more towards slightly longer form “think pieces,” for lack of a better term.

I am interested in the second question, what is Cyetain saying to us as a nation about the situation in Iraq, because I think it points to a crucial problem for those of us who oppose the administration in its approach to terror and beyond. It is hardly enough, at this late date, to continue to point up their failures. I think that there was a time for that during the election cycle. What I find much more interesting and timely now is a focus on where those of us who oppose the administration would take the country. This is an issue that I hope to post on in depth sometime soon.


 
Cyetain, trying to drag us into the black hole?
From the London Times:

SCIENTISTS HAVE a phrase for the point at which the known universe ends, and a black hole begins. They call it the event horizon. In recent months it has become clear that a similar phenomenon is at work in media coverage of foreign affairs.
There is a particular point at which knowledge appears to end and a huge black hole begins. It seems to occur somewhere in the 1960s. The specific event beyond which most commentators now find it difficult to see is the Vietnam War.
It has become the dominant reference point for discussion of any current military campaign. The war to liberate Afghanistan had barely begun before sceptics were suggesting that a “Vietnam-style quagmire” loomed. And from the moment plans were laid to topple Saddam’s regime, cynics were certain that the Iraq war would lead, if not to Apocalypse Now, then to the quagmire to end all quagmires.
In the past few weeks the number, and weight, of those concluding that the Iraq war has been a foolish adventure has grown. And many of the weightiest, including John Maples, the former Shadow Foreign Secretary, writing on these pages last week, have invoked the long shadow cast by the Vietnam War Memorial. Can we not learn from history, they ask, and recognise we have made another error to rank with that error-strewn conflict in the jungles of South-East Asia?

Cyetain, just about every article you link to on Iraq, as well as your to this point slight editorial commentary, suffer from this problem. You present the bits and pieces of coverage that conform to your apparently dim view of the endeavor and its prospects for success.

Gathering together often questionable press clippings does not an argument (or a discussion) make. Or are you being meta, posting these brief snippets of articles to make a subtle and nuanced point about journalism and war, reporting/observation and truth? In either case, you're starting to resemble a bad news wire service, and there are already enough of those.

If you're interested in hearing some important reasons why Iraq is not Vietnam, and why those reasons might lead one to expect a different outcome, I recommend that you read the rest of this interesting article.
Monday, January 17, 2005
 
Iraqi insurgents outnumber U.S. forces
"'I think the resistance is bigger than the U.S. military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people,' said Gen. Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, director of Iraq's new intelligence services.

Shahwani said there were at least 40,000 hardcore fighters attacking U.S. and Iraqi troops, with the bulk made up of part-time guerrillas and volunteers providing logistical support, information, shelter and money."

 
U.S.-Led Forces Damaged Ancient Babylon
In the list of all things FUBAR this probably isn't up near the top... still....

The report said U.S. and Polish military vehicles had crushed 2,600-year-old pavements in the city, a cradle of civilization and home to one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Archaeological fragments were used to fill sand bags, it added.

"This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain," John Curtis, keeper of the museum's Ancient and Near East department

U.S.-Led Forces Damaged Ancient Babylon-Report
 
From the Department of the Utterly Obvious
The Post: Why do you think [Osama] bin Laden has not been caught?
THE PRESIDENT: Because he's hiding.


Wow... Insightful. Anyone else concerned that the Commander in Chief has such a sophisticated understanding of the situation?
 
What's so funny?
''I suspect if you were asking me questions 18 months ago and I said there's going to be elections in Iraq,'' Bush told the White House press corps on Jan. 7, ''you would've had trouble containing yourself from laughing out loud at the president. But here we are at this moment, and it's exciting times for the Iraqi people.''


No actually Mr. President most of us actually don't think there is anything funny about it at all.
 
Key Social Security Disability Numbers
Some facts about Social Security's disability program:

--Disabled beneficiaries: 6.2 million.

--Average monthly benefit: $866.

--Dependents of disabled beneficiaries: 1.7 million.

--Almost three in 10 of today's 20-year-olds will become disabled before age 67.

--About 72 percent of the private sector work force has no long-term disability insurance.
 
The New York Times > AP > International > Exiled Iraqis Start Registering to Vote
``The Iraqi election constitutes the beginning of a political process that will hopefully lead to democracy being firmly established in Iraq,'' says Minister for International Development Cooperation Carin Jaemtin."





For everyone involved we can only hope that this is infact the turning point. God bless them and keep them safe.
 
In Defense of Anti-Semitism
Allow me a moment to amend my previous post regarding Spanish anti-cuisine: I just ate the most divine piece of pork at a friend's house. It was encebollado, slow-cooked with garlic and just the right amount of olive oil and a hint of Tunisian bitter thyme. My friend served it with grilled calçots, a sweet and mild Catalan green onion with the soul of a savory candy cane. For dessert, I ate large, irregular blocks of honied pineapple and prickly pear from Israel. Right now, I feel as though I could hop on that infernal motorcycle and die in nasty France with few regrets. That's all. Viva Dennis Kozlowski!
 
It’s a global free-fire zone.
Must read: SEYMOUR M. HERSH's New Yorker Article.

If we could avoid accusing Mr. Hersh of anti-american, communist, athiest, God-hating... that would be cool.
 
Smiley's People

According to this crazy Times article, the success of the Ukranian Orange Revolution is due, at least in part, to the machinations of the S.B.U., Ukraine’s successor agency to the K.G.B.

If the article is to believed, the S.B.U. chief, General Ihor P. Smeshko, worked feverishly in secret to protect the protestors from other military and intelligence entities that were chomping at the bit to squash the uprising, paving the way for the second round of elections that handed victory to opposition candidate Yushchenko. One of the strangest twists in this very strange story: Smeshko was present at the dinner in the summer of 2004 at which Yushenko is believed to have been served a helping of the poison dioxin.


 
Martin Luther King, Jr. A Time to Break the Silence (Declaration Against Vietnam War)
"What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call 'VC' or 'communists'? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of 'aggression from the North' as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.




How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition."


Martin Luther King, Jr.


 
U.S. Lowers Expectations for Once-Heralded Iraq Vote
With fears for a low voter turnout among Sunni Arabs due to a boycott and insurgents' intimidation, the administration no longer touts the elections as a catalyst to spread democracy across the Arab world.

Instead, U.S. officials now emphasize the political process that will follow the vote.

Unable to deliver on its lofty goal of bringing democracy to Iraq (news - web sites) through the Jan. 30 elections, the Bush administration is pressing a damage-control campaign to lower expectations for the vote.

"Clearly, we don't see the election itself as a pivotal point," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told NPR on Friday. "It's the beginning of a process, the process where Iraqis will write a constitution and at the end of the year will actually vote for a permanent government."


"Once their original rationale (to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction) fell apart, they created very high expectations for democracy to be able to justify their takeover," he (Juan Cole, a professor of modern Middle East history at the University of Michiga) said. "Now that they have ended up with a not particularly good demonstration of democracy, they are forced to lower the public's expectations for these elections."


Yahoo! News - U.S. Lowers Expectations for Once-Heralded Iraq Vote
Sunday, January 16, 2005
 
Putting Lipstick On A Pig
Or Why People Really Love America (Usually To Death)

I've been driving around Barcelona on a motorcycle since I arrived. It's an idiotic thing to do. I have no health insurance and I hate pain. On Saturday I rode through drunken traffic at three in the morning while suffering from extreme exhaustion, jetlag, and a couple hours breathing the smoke from my friends' ever-burning tobacco-and-hash rollies. I weaved into other motocycles and scooters, careered past the flat grilles of blind and segmented city buses, and repeatedly confused Barcelona's 'Yield,' 'Stop,' and 'Do not enter' signs to comical effect. At one point I wobbled to a stoplight and stalled violently in front a policeman who shook his head balefully as if to say, "I could stop you now, but I have a feeling God has plans for you..."

But what was really ailing me that night was that I had just finished my first real Spanish meal. And like a nasty deja vu of childhood embarrassment, the regretful memories washed over me: An entire cuisine awash in oil, deadened by pork grease, adorned by funny-tasting canned tuna, laid on beds of undercooked rice, dappled by mysteriously mushy and oversalted olives. And pork, pork, everywhere pork. Where rice forms the foundation of most asian cuisines, and pasta (for example) the exported basis of Italian, a journey to the center of spanish food leads to the discovery of a Giant, Slightly Off-Tasting Pig. Indeed, should a Spaniard happen to dip his finger into a dish as he's preparing it and hazard to ask, "What is missing?" the answer, he finds, is almost always Pork. If it's a vegetable broth he's cooking for an emphatic convention of vegetarians, the answer is Pork, and if it's a piece of pork that said Spaniard is cooking, well then, he concludes, the solution must lie in another part of the Giant Pig of Spain, perhaps a part he hasn't yet explored.

And I'm a man who loves pork. In the United States, where it seems we eat just the right amount of pork (and the rest of the world senses this, and they hate us for it), I love me a pork chop or a pork tenderloin or bits of pork whatever in a stir-fry. Amazingly, when I moved to Barcelona just four days before September 11, 2001, I think that part of what compelled me to come here was the food. I mean, the city is beautiful. The architecture is utterly inspired and fearless, and it hits you in psychedelic bursts each time you turn onto another street. But that's only part of it. In those first days after the 9/11 attacks, amid the clutter and rattle of the Spanish reaction to 9/11 (I won't go into that now, but its sequential contours roughly mirrored the rest of Europe's: 1. Horror at the act, followed by 2. rage at the aggressors, and then 3. fear of the scope of America's reaction and finally a 4. visceral hatred of George W. Bush), amid all that I can recall clearly having the impression that Spanish Food Is Great.

But that's the biggest joke on a continent rife with them. Spanish food is horrendous, from top to bottom. In fact, when I visited this past summer, I arrived on the day the New York Time Magazine ran a dunderheaded cover story declaring Barcelona the new capitol of global cuisine. The irony here is breathtaking. (No less so since I'm here now on an assignment from the New York Times Magazine.) The vast, vast, vast majority of this cuisine is nearly inedible. Beyond their tired reliance on pork, Spaniards also love rubbery squid, called "pulpos", and "bravas", bits of hard fried potatoes meant to be dipped in tiny dishes of thick, warm mayonnaise. There are also "croquetas", "sepias," "cosas a la plancha", and hideous canned white asparagus stalks that resemble nothing so much as pickled penises and are a pessimistic staple of Spanish salads. And Paella? Forget it. Paella is like the punchline to an elaborate inside joke told to the world by the Ministry of Tourism.

It's a sad state of affairs, especially that now the weak dollar has made every meal so goddamn expensive. When I went to change my dollars into euros (the exchange rate is $1 : .62 euros), I felt like I was a refugee trading a buckboard full of coconuts for a pint of goat's milk. Thanks, George. The next time I bite into one of those cock-like asparaguses, I'm going to think of you.
Saturday, January 15, 2005
 
More Ponzi Scheme Lovers
"For too long, too many people dependent on Social Security have been cruelly frightened by individuals seeking political gain through demagoguery and outright falsehood, and this must stop. The future of Social Security is much too important to be used as a political football."


Roland Reagan
Star of "Bedtime for Bonzo"
Oh... and he happened to
be president when the USSR
went bankrupt...


 
I Pity the Poor Immigrant
I thought I would introduce my blogger-ego by way of a travelogue, since I happen to be traveling. Apologies if it's light on domestic politics and humor. I'm so tired that I cried over my chicken-and-chips while lunching at my favorite old haunt, the Rincon de la Ciudadella.

Landed at the Barcelona airport at 7:45 this morning, January 15, and rode a train to the center of town as the Mediterranean winter dawn broke late over the eastern foothills. Debarked at the Plaça de Cataluña, a sprawling square-in-the-round in the geographic belly of the city. This is where the tourists cluster and hustlers meet each morning to plot their dull strategies. The trashmen, diligent men of BC/Neta, the world's most sophisticated and efficient public works department, are finishing their meticulous sidewalk scrubbing. Standing in the midst of a sea of pigeons, I can see the El Cortes Ingles and FNAC buildings facing off across the Plaça, each representing Europe's Wal-Mart (until they're snuffed by encroaching Wal-Mart). To the South I can also see the leafy entrance to La Rambla, a shabby pedestrian Broadway of dubious reknown where confidence men and bird peddlers battle for the attentions of confused, camera-draped Germans and greasy, be-denimed families of Frenchmen. To the west, behind the El Corte Ingles, is Antoni Gaudi's dribbly postcard church, Sagrada Familia.

But Plaça de Cataluña is best known as the site where the Catalan militias made their last stand against the Francisco Franco's advancing "Nacionale" coup in February 1939. Across Spain, thousands of populist "Republican" militiamen - socialists, Communists intellectuals, internationalists - died in the futile fight against Franco's army. It was a noble and doomed battle in which the Catalans were wretchedly outnumbered, and when Franco wrested control of Plaça de Catalunya, the lights turned out in Spain for the next 37 years. Cataluña suffered the most vicious federal reprisals for its unwillingness to surrender, and Catalans have since earned a reputation across Spain as a stubborn, snooty, sometimes cold people.

Later this morning, I thought about Franco and the tragic Catalans when I strolled to the tiny square I moved to way back in the week before 9/11/01. The square, with a tiny community fountain and coffee shop, borders a lively Arab slum. After the terror attacks in New York City, news reports place Mohammed Atta at a meeting of the Al Qaeda minds in the nearby town of Tarragona. The Spanish government, led by a conservative with a soup-strainer mustache named Jose Maria Aznar, conducted massive, arbitrary sweeps of the Arab quarters and rumors spread of countless Arab men gone missing or shipped back to Morocco and Algeria and Egypt. Unburdened by any significant civil liberty protections, the round-ups went on without judicial oversite or even much popular protest. In my square this morning though, the Arab presence appeared stronger than it had ever been. Where before fewer than ten or fifteen Arabs would loiter (in a boisterous, menacing way in which Arabs seem to specialize. Ahem. Excuse me.), there were hundreds, gathered in tight circles, kicking soccer balls. A waft of hash smoke passes. Stubborn motherfuckers. The nail-stiff Catalans beat at them like vermin and they relax and multiply. Imagine that...
Friday, January 14, 2005
 
An administrator’s thoughts on the 3rd day

So, I think there have been many great posts here already, and I am working very hard to get some new contributors to post up and expand the conversation a little bit.

I do want to say something about the tone of the posting thus far.

I did request in the invitations that we try to avoid cursing, as I think that gutter language rarely offers anything to a debate, but I certainly don’t have any intention of “enforcing” that request. Everyone who I asked to contribute to this blog is old enough to determine what words to use when, and I will leave that to their discretion.

There are other things that all of the contributors (and potential contributors) to this site share as well. This is an invite-only community, something that separates it from many of the larger group blogs. In deciding who I wanted to invite, my only real criteria was that I wanted all of the contributors to be people who had taught me something. It was, and remains, my hope that this blog would be for people of disparate backgrounds, living in different places and living different lives to have some positive influence on each other, no matter how small.

Now no one who has checked into this blog (and I know there are far more people looking at it than contributing to it right now) could fail to have noticed the heated discussions between Cyetain and Sarge. When I decided to invite two such strong partisans to participate I knew there would be fireworks. But those invitations were also extended with the knowledge that both of these fellas rank among the very best people – in a sort of warm fuzzy way -- that I know. I have known both of them for a very long time now, long enough to know that they both have exceptionally good hearts, and long enough to know that each, in his own way, loves this country in the same visceral-to-the-point-of-unhealthy way that I do.

Few things are more fascinating to me than the fact that the three of us can share such a strong love for this country while holding such wildly different beliefs on almost every issue. This "problem" is a micro manifistation of the apparent divisions in our country as a whole.

Sarge is far to the right of me, and he is almost always horribly wrong. Cyetain is far to the left of me, and he is almost always horribly wrong. Somehow, though, I almost never fail to learn something when I get into a political conversation with either of them.

My point, if I have one, is that this little experiment here is well worth our time, but I doubt it will survive for very long if we don’t treat each other with respect. Even if the warriors keep coming out to play, it won’t be long before no one else is bothering to check the site out.

*****

On a separate note: Daniel has raised an interesting question: should entries that are essentially responses to previous posts be treated as new posts or comments? At this point, I think we should leave this up to individual discretion.

When I brought this issue up with one of the contributors he said “Yeah, my last one was just a response, but it was so good it deserved to be on the front page.” I liked that answer, at least for now. If we get more contributors, which I hope we do, we might have to tighten things up a little bit, but in the meantime the above contributor’s approach is a good one: a response should go in the comments unless we think it is so good it needs to be a post.


 
Got Yer Bigotry Right Here
Michelle Malkin is a right-wing columnist who most recently got a little famous, but mostly infamous, for writing a book called "In Defense of Internment." Even though I disagree with Ms. Malkin on many subjects, I like her writing and I admire her for her boldness. She's got this immigrant/populist vibe that I appreciate, plus she's pretty hot.

Instapundit excerpted some of her hate mail this morning, and it's just incredibly vicious. The column she wrote (it's the first link you'll see in her blog post I linked to) raises some interesting points about being a minority conservative. Some of the hate mail:

Proverbs 69:69 counsels: "Like a whore who infects those she sleeps with, so doth the ultra-republican faux columnist infect her readers with lies." While you are looking in the mirror, cursing the Left because you weren't born blond, think about the above. Amen.

Is is such a shame that you look like a Filipino- because your thinking, writing (if you can call that) is a disgrace to any member of the Asian community. Someday, when you are no longer motivated by greed, and when you are closer to your next life stage, you will realized what a horrible sellout you are."



From her column:

Rabid liberal elitists expect and demand that "women of color" in public and political life adopt their left-wing political orthodoxy. When we don't accept such tripe, their racist and sexist diatribes against us are unmatched.


I'm neither a racial minority nor do I consider myself a conservative (others have disagreed), but Malkin's observations ring true. I could tell some stories, but my favorite is the time the (socialist) German drug dealer I was arguing with, when he discovered I was Jewish, told me that "fascist Israel" was the "new Germany" because of "Jews like me." Frigging hilarious, even moreso because of the German's utter inappreciation of irony.

People pursuing a radical political agenda are frequently at least as bad (Ted Rall, anyone?), if not worse, than those pursuing "bigoted religious dogma." There should be no moral high ground autmatically ceded to self-professed progressives and radicals, even if you think their hearts are in the right place.

 
Lost Gay Translations
"Between 1998 and 2004, the military discharged 20 Arabic and six Farsi speakers, according to Department of Defense data obtained by the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military under a Freedom of Information Act request."

Just to be clear these guys (and gals?) speak the LANGUAGE OF THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO KILL US. Let's see... being able to translate the messages of our enemies or... pursuing bigoted religous dogma... Oh yeah, you KNOW they made the right choice.
 
Re: Mr. President can you define Legacy?
I'm not clear on whether to use comments to reply, or just to add another post. Let me know if anyone has strong feelings on this matter.

Bush wasn't saying he'd accomplished his goals yet, or that anyone thought so yet. That's why it's called a legacy, that's why he said in 50 years he hopes people see things that way.

Anyway, his quote just sounds like fluff. The president--the federal government altogether--don't have much control over education policy, nor do they control whether rural rubes love urban elites. With all the legitimate opportunities to bash Bush, is it necessary to invent others?

 
Picture Pages
The First of a regular selection of the funnies.









 
How Can George be Certain he has a Relationship with the Lord?
I think it would do George some good to take a look at this year's Edge Annual Question
"WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?"
Go to edge.org to see all of the responses.

 
Mr. President can you define Legacy?
Another Bush quote to chew on...
On his legacy:
President Bush: "Well, one piece, I hope that 50 years from now people will look back and say, 'Thank goodness old George W. stuck to his beliefs that freedom is … is an agent for change, to make the world more peaceful, and that all people deserve to be free. At home I . . . two legacies. One would be a country in which our education system is the best in the world, and secondly that this concept of civic participation, the great compassion of the country has been re-energized, so that neighbor loves neighbor just like they liked to be loved themselves."

Does ANYONE believe that he has achieved any of these? I mean a legacy is, you know, what people remember you DID... not what you would have liked to do... The best education system in the world? Red State neighbor lovin' Blue State neighbor? WORLD FRICKIN PEACE?
 
President outlines role of his faith
President outlines role of his faith

President Bush said yesterday that he doesn't "see how you can be president without a relationship with the Lord..."


"I think people attack me because they are fearful that I will then say that you're not equally as patriotic if you're not a religious person"

Can someone tell me how these two statements fit together? No GOD no president... but that doesn't mean you aren't patriotic? The president feels comfortable alienating large parts of the country that don't believe in God, or don't believe in HIS god, and yet he doesn't even attend church.

Why do I bring up the no church thing? Well the President claims to strongly believe in "Faith Based Organizations" (churches). So much so that he has "funneled "about $1.2 billion" (OF YOUR MONEY) to religious groups so far." Additionally:
"What we are going to do in the second term is to make sure that the grant money is available for faith communities to bid on, to make sure these faith-based offices are staffed and open," Mr. Bush said. "But the key thing is, is that we do have the capacity to allow faith programs to access enormous sums of social service money, which I think is important."

And yet on a personal level he can't even take the time to attend. Interesting.

 
Oh Brother Where Art Thou

What swing-state-no-more Governor with a great pedigree has been Roving around in the public eye of late? First we found him making the scene at a recent international disaster of catastrophic proportions. Today, he'll accompany a close relative as he delivers a major speech on education.

Hmmm, I wonder what they are up to....


 
US deserters flee to Canada to avoid service in Iraq
US deserters flee to Canada to avoid service in Iraq:

"American Army soldiers are deserting and fleeing to Canada rather than fight in Iraq, rekindling memories of the thousands of draft-dodgers who flooded north to avoid service in Vietnam.

An estimated 5,500 men and women have deserted since the invasion of Iraq, reflecting Washington's growing problems with troop morale."

 
Cheney Promotes the Ponzi Scheme
"[Social Security] has fulfilled the promise announced by President Franklin Roosevelt -– providing vital income to millions of seniors, and assuring generations of working people that their retirement years would have some decent measure of security ... a just society ensures that elderly people can grow old with dignity. For that reason our nation established the Social Security system. And that is why, after 70 years, Social Security remains a fundamental commitment of both our political parties."


Vice President Dick Cheney
Catholic University of America
January 13th, 2005


 
Inaugural?
If this description is accurate, does anyone believe he's going to be able to swear in President Bush?

Thursday, January 13, 2005
 
Make love drugs, for war
At some point, someone broached the subject of an aphrodisiac weapon of mass destruction. Use this sketch of an article to imagine that moment.

Bon jour all. I'm not going to wade into the Susan Sontag riptide yet. I'm new here, it looks rough and I'm conflicted. I like lesbians, especially smart hot ones. I don't like commies, except occasionally for smart hot ones. So I'm still thinking about it.

This is a different kind of story. One that makes you go, hmm....what would it be like if we flooded the enemy's water supply with E? Would it lead to massive outbreaks of anal soldier sex? Would people be that distracted that we could really win a war this way? Probably not even worth a try. Though it might be helpful for interrogations, moreso than torture.



 
What is Left?

Sarge’s assessment of Sontag, while it may be accurate in its particulars (I wouldn’t know, I don’t know a thing about her), saddens me in that it points up the degree to which the political spectrum has shrunk in this country. Sarge is no doubt joined by millions of others in this country who do not, in any practical sense, draw any distinction between those who have explored collectivist approaches and those who sought to use collectivist ideology to mask their fascistic intentions.

Though Sarge is, as he says, aware of the distinction, I think he makes a conscious choice to ignore it in the service of his disdain for Sontag, a disdain that is reflective of the general trend in the popular perception of what is and is not appropriate in American political thought.

Everything even a notch to the left of “center” (whatever that is) is lumped in together and presumed to be worthy of scorn, if for no other reason than the fact that some on the left once allowed themselves to be naive enough to sympathize with what turned out to be horrible regimes (Sarge will, of course, be more than happy to provide a long list of other reasons to heap scorn on the left, but he didn’t need them to establish his impressions of Sontag so we can leave them alone for the moment).

Of course, some on the left, maybe even most, recognized the communist regimes for what they were from the very outset. What-is-more, the American right has provided a far greater bounty of aid and comfort to the enemies of freedom around the world then the left was ever capable of mustering. What did the American left ever do for Castro, when compared with what the right did for Seko, Noriega, Pinochet, Suharto, Marcos, Duvallier, Doe, Papadopoulos, and so on and so on.

But somehow here we are, at a time in history when an entire spectrum of political thought, one closely tied to to Judeo-Christian teachings regarding community, faith, and freedom, can be so easily dismissed from the national discourse. If social security dies in the coming months it will be in part because just the whiff of “socialism” is enough to kill almost anything.

Of course, social security has nothing to do with socialism. Its not a ponzi scheme, its insurance. Insurance happens to be one of the most crucial components of the free market system, perhaps equaled only by the combination of capital in corporations in terms of its importance in establishing the world of plenty that we all enjoy today. Without insurance, capitalism would be impossible. Once we have acknowledged that insurance is good and necessary then all that is left is to condemn social security because it is an insurance system administrated by the government.

When, I wonder, did we come to convince ourselves that our government, a government for the people, by the people, is inherently evil? Is not this hatred of our democratically elected government the worst kind of anti-Americanism possible? Is there any more elitist position than a reflexive condemnation of anything that is undertaken by a government of duly elected representatives of the people?

More later.


 
Marxism
Exactly how does this prove that Sontag is was a "marxist-socialist" who was "fighting against the tide of history."

She seems to be celebrating the fact that the PEOPLE of Cuba have managed to create a sense of communty, if you know any thing about the Jazz community in Cuba for instance. Note she doesn't say Castro "knows a lot about spontaneity, gaiety, sensuality, and freaking out." There is a difference between the people and the goverment... especially in a dictatorship. Maybe she is a communist because she mentioned Cuba? Or maybe because "community" sounds like communism, kinda? On second thought... nah...

And as far as the first quote... if you believe that our system of government is perfect and doesn't have any need of reform... oh boy.

By the way you wanna eat tripe go ahead...

I suggest we take this "discussion" into comments...
 
The 75
From the same speech: "the rightness of many of our views and aspirations...for reforms of the many injustices of our own system".

And: "The Cubans know a lot about spontaneity, gaiety, sensuality, and freaking out. …The increase of energy comes because they have found a new focus for it: community."

Yeah, nothing like Castro's "community" to put a lilt in your step. Just ask The 75.

I trust you can understand what she is getting at. Or maybe not. Regardless, Sontag was anything but subtle in her love affair with utopian ideals and the fringe left.

Tripe. I'll have to remember that. I prefer the word "bile" myself. One can eat tripe. Bile, on the other hand, is just poison by a different name.

 
Happy Times
My wife and I recently traveled to Hong Kong and Tokyo to celebrate the engagement of our good friends Alex and Claire. I thought I would share some of my favorite images with everyone.



Waiting for our flight to Hong Hong in a Tokyo airport bar.



First view of Hong Kong from the Peak. This was about as clear as it got before the smog from southern China buried the city. Hong Kong is unimaginably tall...



New Years Eve at the Hong Kong Country Club



The m0j0 team over looks Hong Kong on the first day.



Puppy love. The newly engaged couple



Telling the parents seems to have gone sparklingly well.



The Chairman on everything...



We did alot of hiking in the mountains. One of the amazing things about Hong Kong was being able to take a taxi from downtown to a trail and hike up to views like this and then down to the sea.




I'll post some more tommorow.

 
A Shorter Reply to a Short Reply
Looking forward to a single quote or piece of source material supporting any of the tripe you just spouted.

To be clear... statements like these are not a discussion as you put it. You aren't debating her ideas you are smearing her, thusly "kicking" her (btw it isn't how I put it... it is the way the author of the article "I wish I had kicked Susan Sontag" put it... (of course you would know that if you read my post)). If you would like to debate I suggest you bring some real information to the discussion not just hateful bile.
 
A Short Reply
I think Susan Sontag would be pleased that people are debating her ideas and speeches after her death. Indeed, "kicking her", as you so wonderfully chose to put it, would look more like casting aside her life's work as not having the necessary gravity for debate, rather than preserving those ideas by discussing their worth. It's unfortunate, and kind of weird, that you feel otherwise.

It's not like I called her ugly.

Sontag placed her self squarely in the original center of the "anti- anti-communist crowd" (note the use of the word "we"). She was trying to convert her friends (and some might say herself), not give aid to the converted. Additionally, she seems unable to grasp where things went wrong with The Movement, and is reduced to tacitly calling the anti-communist / conservatives that which they also (in addition to communism) existentially opposed (fascists and fascism). It is a canard that conservatives supported fascism to defeat communism. It's a logical mind-trick that she employs to convince herself that she's been anti-communist all along. And it's rubbish.

Additionally, there is a difference between marxism in theory and communism as exited (and exists) in nature. Sontag was fond of the former, but against (as you cite) of the latter. I never said she was a "commie". The irony is that for being a Woman of Ideas, she failed to conprehend that ideas have consequences unless the realities of history demonstrated those consequences to her in cold blood. It took her 20 odd years to finally see the "human face" of tyranny, and even then, went down hurling names at those who could see clearly in the first place.

 
Kicking at Dead Women
Well I suppose we should start at the top and head on from there. Beating up on a dead woman takes real guts... and you didn't do a very good job. If you would like to see someone take the piss out of her I would suggest the essay "I wish I had kicked Susan Sontag" in the UK Daily Telegraph, but I want you to notice something buried in the article:

Admittedly, the vainglorious silliness that was her most salient characteristic did not lead her to embrace the Marxism of so many similarly silly Cambridge intellectuals.

Why would the author write such a thing? Well... because Susan Sontag wasn't a Marxist/Communist. In fact Susan Sontag believed that Communism was a form of fascism. You see you have taken your quote completely out of context. The quote you use is from a meeting called to express condemnation of the crushing of the democratic movement in Poland. The "enemy" Susan mentions in this quote isn't Communist, it is the Anti-Communist.... the "we" she refers to is the "people at whom the folks living in that collective know as "the Upper West Side" look down over the their Beluga from Zabars)" as you so eloquently and insultingly put it. So she is saying "Can it be that our (us the liberal's) enemies (the Anti-Communist) were right?"

To make this very clear here is a bit from the same speech that you quote:

We were unwilling to identify ourselves as anti-Communists because that was the slogan of the right, the ideology of the cold war and, in particular, the justification of America's support of fascist dictatorships in Latin America and of the American war on Vietnam. (The story, of course, starts much earlier, in Europe in the late 1920s, with the rise of fascism, whose principal war cry was anti-Communism.) The anti-Communist position seems already taken care of by those we oppose at home.

I want to challenge this view.

Further more.

There are many lessons to be learned from the Polish events. But, I would maintain, the principal lesson to be learned is the lesson of the failure of Communism, the utter villainy of the Communist system. It has been a hard lesson to learn. And I am struck by how long it has taken us to learn it.

Further more.

I would contend that what they illustrate is a truth that we should have understood a very long time ago: that Communism is fascism--successful fascism, If you will. What we have called fascism is, rather, the form of tyranny that can be overthrown=-that has, largely, failed. I repeat: not only is fascism (and overt military rule) the probable destiny of all Communist societies--especially when their populations are moved to revolt--but Communism is in itself a variant, the most successful variant, of fascism. Fascism with a human face.


WOW she sounds like a raving commie to me!!

In the future before thrashing about insulting people please at least read the source material you are quoting.

 
Don't Mind If I Do...
My first post. Wow. Great to meet you all.

Deep breath...hold it...and now the fire:

Susan Sontag was a marxist-socialist who was wrong on just about everything, save the beauty of photography. She said it best when she explained:

"Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Reader's Digest between 1950 and 1970, and someone in the same period who read only the Nation or the New Statesman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of communism? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?"

In a word, yes.

Poor Smart Susan, fighting against the tide of history, whereas Dumb Ronald Reagan was able to see clearly that which was so obvious to so many people in Middle America (the same people at whom the folks living in that collective known as "the Upper West Side" look down over their Beluga from Zabars).

But then again, liberals have always had a soft spot for communists and dictators. Just read Nicholas Kristof's recent and pathetic paean to Castro.

Sontag used the descriptor "enemies". Which brings me to Teddy Kennedy. If you wonder why the Democratic party is an intellectually dead entity, you need only read the speech he made to the Washington Press Club yesterday. Democrats are infactuated with Bush. Bush, who turns everything into a crisis. Bush, who will never admit his mistakes. Bush, who plays Texas but was born Yankee. Bush, who used his daddy's influence to get a job in the TexANG. Bush, ad infinitum and ad naseum.

Pretty precious stuff from a man who drowned a co-ed in 1969.

But, to use a cliche, I digress. The real point here is that Social Security is a horrible deal. The myth of the Social Security Trust Fund is finally being exposed, its 1% management fee is more than what I pay Vanguard to manage my index funds, and let's not forget that in most major cities ponzi schemes are illegal. Bush wants to modernize the system to meet the economic realities of today's economy. Not such a bad idea IMO (for the record, I will not ever use an "H" when employing this acronymn) . Instead of engaging on ideas, the Democrats have nothing. Trotting Kennedy out as the future of the party is laughable, but welcomed by conservatives.

If you don't help shape the debate, you will be run over by it.

Most people believe that "once bitten twice shy" is a generally useful heuristic. Not Democrats. 1994, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2004... "Bitten 5 times by the electorate and still indulgent of the left" might be kind and sensitive, but this is politics, not pillowing.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005
 
To View or Not to View

Looking at the images on the site posted by Cyetain below is incredibly sobering. Does the fact that there is great human suffering occurring in Iraq negate the potential necessity for military action? It does not. It does, of course, raise a certain cost/benefit problem. It also makes one wonder how there is any possibility that America will come out of this thing with anything less than 1000% more enemies than we had before we engaged in Iraq.

A more pressing question now, however, has to do with the images themselves. What do we owe the young American men and women who are captured in these images? What do we owe the Iraqis? As citizens on the home front do we have a duty to at least witness what is going on in Iraq?

Is it appropriate that the major American news outlets have completely avoided showing America what is happening in Iraq? If you are a supporter of the Bush administration, do you believe that providing wider distribution of images like these would undermine or build support for the administration's policies?

Upon reviewing these images, I, for one, was overcome with hatred for the insurgents. Set aside the arrogance of this statement for a moment and consider it simply as true or false: If there wasn't an insurgency than Iraq would very likely be the scene of some rather different images.

There would have been no prison torture, no Fallujah. Micro and macro free markets would be springing up in every corner. In a nutshell: an open society.

Of course, there is an insurgency, and, of course, everyone but Bush and his supporters knew there would be.



 
Armed Robots Off To Iraq
How is this for a really bad idea? Let's send ROBOTS armed with ROCKETS, GRENADES, SHOTGUNS, and AUTOMATIC WEAPONS to Iraq, cuz you know nothing says hearts and minds like shooting people with a remote control.

Soldiers may have armed robots as battle buddies by early next year, according to industry and military officials attending the biennial Army Science Conference.




Different weapons can be interchanged on the system – the M16, the 240, 249 or 50-caliber machine guns, or the M202 –A1 with a 6mm rocket launcher. Soldiers operate the SWORDS by remote control, from up to 1,000 meters away. In testing, it’s hit bulls eyes from as far as 2,000 meters away

The Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System, or SWORDS, will be joining Stryker Brigade Soldiers in Iraq when it finishes final testing, said Staff Sgt. Santiago Tordillos...





“We’re hoping to have them there by early 2005,” Tordillos said. “The Soldiers I’ve talked to want them yesterday.”


Oh yeah... in case you like your killer machines to come with a glossy brochure... here you go...

 
Measuring Charter Schools
In this interesting article, Marshall and Johnson at National Review consider two recent studies that appear to contradict each other regarding how charter schools are doing vs. public schools. One of the studies, the one that shows charter schools doing better, used a method called "matching," in which charter schools are compared to public schools with comparable populations. This approach is intended to be more accurate than the types of studies that are usually cited by opponents of charter schools which tend to rely on "blind comparisons," i.e. comparing the performance of all charter school students vs. all public school students.

The problems with the blind comparison approach are fairly obvious. Charter school students tend to come from worse neighborhoods. They may also have had significant academic and behavioral problems in public school, helping to drive their parents to seek alternatives.

The question of charter schools runs wide and deep. I think it is difficult for many in my generation to understand the weight that earlier generations gave to public education because of the race issue. Is it time to rethink the model now?

I know this. My wife has taught at a number of public schools and a single charter school. In many ways I would say that the charter school better served its students. It attracted highly motivated, bright, excited young teachers, most of whom got to work early and stayed very late. It allowed administrators and student the opportunity to experiment a great deal more than is possible in any public school setting. Because parents had to work to get their kids into the charter school, the overall parent population was far more engaged than it would be in a comparable public school, and, in fact, there was a great sense of community.

On the downside, the union-less teachers at the charter school had essentially no recourse to deal with an arbitrary and largely unqualified principal. There were indications of some pretty serious financial hanky panky, but the board was ill equipped to perform any sort of investigation and, existing outside of the board of ed structure, had no resources to support them. Perhaps worst of all, some teachers, even ones with good intentions, exercised absurdly bad judgment in the classroom, with no one in place to guide, correct or replace them.

Anyway, take a look at the article:
Grading Schools - National Review

 
Michael Chertoff: Another Stupid Cabinet Choice

In news only slightly lighter than Cyetain’s initial offerings, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at Michael Chertoff, the Bush administration’s new nominee for chief of Homeland Security.

Civil liberties types are wary of Chertoff because of his work in the Attorney General’s office in the months following 9/11. Chertoff established the use of the status of “material witness” to hold 762 foreign nationals indefinitely without charge. Chertoff ported the material witness concept over from his successful work targeting organized crime in New York in the U.S. Attorney’s office in the ‘90s (a position he was hired into my none other than Rudy Giuliani). The Justice Department’s inspector general later issued a report that was critical of the policy. Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, told WaPo today that "We're very concerned that Judge Chertoff views immigration solely through the lens of national security and counterterrorism, and that his record on counterterrorism needs to be closely examined."

Chertoff has also come under heat for spearheading the blazingly inept prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui. Chertoff was among the strongest proponents of the vapor-theory that Moussaoui was the fabled “20th hijacker,” despite the fact that there was never a single shred of evidence behind this theory.

Finally, liberals can’t forgive Chertoff for his work on Alfonse D’Amato’s Senate Whitewater investigation committee, were he established himself forever as an enemy of Bill and Hillary. Here again, it looks like Chertoff proved to be an ineffectual investigator and litigator: no charges were ever filed.

As near as I can tell, the problem with this guy is not that he doesn’t take civil liberties seriously enough, nor do I care that he tried to take the Big Dog down. What I do care about is that he comes to the position with 1) no experience running a massive conglomerate of any kind, 2) no qualifications for anything to do with the war on terror or homeland security except his record at Justice, 3) his record at Justice in the capacity of lead legal mind in the war on terror is poor, at best.

My concerns about Chertoff are not unlike my concerns about most of Bush’s cabinet. It is an understatement to say that he is wholly unqualified for the position, just like Gonzalez at Justice and Rice at State.

Slate.com's Fred Kaplan was very pleased with himself last week when he came up with the suggestion that Homeland should be run by someone with some serous corporate M&A experience. He hosted a reader poll which, not surprisingly, landed on Jack Welsh as the best bet. I can’t say that I think that is such a bad idea. Kaplan is dead on that the major challenge at Homeland is operating a massive organization comprised of 23 agencies whose day to day activities have almost no connection to each other. What the hell does Chertoff bring to this position? Nothing.

Another stupid choice. A little less homeland security.

Hillary’s Nemesis, Mean Mike Chertoff, Is Up for Homeland – NY Observer

Some Questions, Mr. Chertoff – Slate

Michael Chertoff: Worse Than Kerik - Newshounds

Chertoff praised as good choice to run Homeland Security, work with both parties - Detroit Free Press




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