not even Afghanistan

Eric Kleefeld passes on some of Hillary Clinton's not-for-your-ears accusations that the "activist base" of the Democratic Party is a bunch of troublemakers.

We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me.

Ok, if true, that sounds pretty good to me. We know it is only a matter of time before we get our nalgas kicked out of Afghanistan just like every other imperial power that has ever stormed into the country and waddled out. We know this because Michael Scheuer (never one to shy away from bloodshed, if called for to defend la madre patria) told us so in 2004. He could have told us in 2001 if we had bothered to listen.

But there's one problem. MoveOn is unhappy with Clinton's claim:

Senator Clinton has her facts wrong again. MoveOn never opposed the war in Afghanistan, and we set the record straight years ago when Karl Rove made the same claim. Senator Clinton's attack on our members is divisive at a time when Democrats will soon need to unify to beat Senator McCain. MoveOn is 3.2 million reliable voters and volunteers who are an important part of any winning Democratic coalition in November. They deserve better than to be dismissed using Republican talking points.

Oh dear. Cue IOZ:

You know, most Americans are imperialists. One of the reasons--the reason--that it so amuses me to find the occasional commenter here ask me why I offer no practical solutions to "our" problems, why the closest I ever come to advocating for direct action is to propose minor acts of cultural vandalism. Being an anti-imperialist in America is like being a Zionist in the Third Reich. I am a fringe radical. If you agree with even a tenth of what you read on this site, you too are a fringe radical. Your beliefs and opinions are not reflective of those of your countrymen. The question, "How do we stop being imperialists?" bears as much practical import as, "How do we live without breathing?" We don't. The United States of America is an empire. Maybe you think it's on the downhill slide? I certainly hope so. But it is what it is, nevertheless. The notions that within the body of empire lurks the heart of an egalitarian, constitutional republic, or a libertarian minarchy, or a parliamentary social democracy are the purest forms of political self-flattery. The subjects here may be largely political, but the program is purely perceptual. I am not a reformist.

I am a reformist, but IOZ's view of the situation is much closer to the truth than Moveon's and certainly Clinton's.

and i shot a rabbit once in the desert ...

Listen to somepowers, otherwise known as Mrs. Begnet (but only to our landlords, who insist on leaving the rent receipts addressed as such even though this is not actually her name):

[W]hat is even more irritating, I think, is the way candidates have to parade around Pennsylvania waving their blue collar credentials, telling their own Horatio Alger stories as testaments to the American dream and evidence that despite their "elite" status, they're just regular folks. Op ed writers are jumping on this bandwagon, too, with my least-favorite ever, Maureen Dowd, writing this morning on Obama's supposed classism while conveniently mentioning that she grew up in a house with a gun. (Really, why did I even click on that link? Girlfriend just makes me angry.) Give it up, folks: none of you are actually "regular people," at least not in the sense that you can avoid the amazing privileges you enjoy due to your education, you access to powerbrokers (or status as one), or your ability to have a megaphone to broadcast your ideas. It strikes me as ridiculous and extremely paternalistic that we need photographs or video of candidates bowling or downing shots to vet their abilities to be Commander-in-Chief. This kind of working-class pornography is really no different than hipsters donning trucker hats and raising $2 cans of PBR in the air in time with the chorus of "Sweet Home Alabama" in a New York bar. Can we talk about class issues without everybody having to mention that they know what it's like to be poor?

Hear, hear! More please ...

PSA for cable news hosts

Watching Larry King react to Stephen Colbert on King's own show was surreal ... deer in the headlights doesn't quite capture the experience, maybe brontosaurus in the blast radius would be more apt.

A good rule of thumb when appearing with Stephen Colbert in the vicinity of a camera: Stephen Colbert is smarter than you and the camera loves him more than you. In fact, the only person qualified to appear with Colbert on TV is ... Esteban Colberto!

And here is some more ...



Can someone please convince Chris Matthews to go on Colbert's show? Please? Show him the US News study and maybe he'll consider it ...

Remembering belatedly that Colbert discusses Matthews' recent appearance on the Colbert Report in the clip above and makes this same reference to the US News report ... so yeah, looks like there was a little subconscious appropriation going on there on my part ... PSA to sleep-deprived bloggers: be careful even blogging about Stephen Colbert or you risk looking like an idiot. His mojo is that strong.

Henley's foresight pays off

Jim Henley takes a moment from his busy cable news/talk show circuit schedule to review some of the reasoning behind his decision to oppose the Iraq War before it started.

. . . you didn’t have to be a libertarian to figure out that going to war with Iraq made even less sense than driving home to East Egg drunk off your ass and angry at your spouse. Any number of leftists and garden-variety liberals, and even a handful of conservatives, figured it out, each for different reasons.

. . .

What all of us had in common is probably a simple recognition: War is a big deal. It isn’t normal. It’s not something to take up casually. Any war you can describe as “a war of choice” is a crime. War feeds on and feeds the negative passions. It is to be shunned where possible and regretted when not. Various hawks occasionally protested that “of course” they didn’t enjoy war, but they were almost always lying. Anyone who saw invading foreign lands and ruling other countries by force as extraordinary was forearmed against the lies and delusions of the time.

Before the war, Henley was laboring in obscurity on his blog, raising doubts about the veracity of the government's reports and questioning the intelligence and sincerity of the government's most faithful supporters. And just look at him now!

steno yave: Atrios edition

I can't improve much on this:

For various reasons I've been rather uninterested in getting into the weeds of the Wright issue, though obviously it's the case that we've had decades of prominent and popular white conservative preachers blasting the evils of America and no one has much cared.

Aside from disparate treatment of left and right and black and white in our mainstream discourse, there's also a difference in the basic narrative provided. The narrative from the Right - and its representatives in the conservative religious community - is of an America which was once the garden of Eden, until its tragic fall at the hands of (feminists, liberals, civil rights movement, whatever), and they wish to bring the country back to its former state. Thus they can hate the America that is while dreaming of the perfect America that was. Thus there's no conflict between their unquestioned patriotism and their hatred of the country, as their patriotism is for the True America that was, not its current corrupted incarnation

While the mirror image rhetoric from the Left is about a country which was flawed, often tragically so, but which has the capacity for improvement. Be disgusted with the country as it was and is, while hoping for an evolution to a better country.

everyone knows nothing at all

IOZ, when not warbling about the transcendence of abstention, tells the story of Big Shitpile in a way we, the newly (or oldly) cynical, can understand:

Consider Bear Stearns, who was once as handsome and tall as . . . Well, consider anyway this throwaway line and quite common sentiment these days:

“The problem is bigger than the Fed,” said Meredith A. Whitney, an Oppenheimer financial services analyst. "Trillions of dollars of securities were underwritten on the false assumption house prices could never go down on a national basis. That falsehood has put the entire financial system in a tailspin."

Right. And we all believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and he kicked out the inspectors, and oil would pay for the war, and there will be no permanent military bases. Ladies and gents, boobs and rubes, the falsehood Ms. Whitney--and plenty of others--identifies is a fine tall tale for house-flippers and the jerks who think they're going to hit it Buffet style on eTrade, but the people who run all those "financial services" know that there's no such thing as economic escape velocity. That which goes up must come down. Anyone who knew anything, admittedly a vanishing category these days, knew not only that housing prices could go down on a national basis, but banked on the fact that they would. The run-up was all smoke, mirrors and profit-taking, and the downturn, even in these early stages, will be all about the massive transference of wealth from the public coffers into the so-called private sector.

John McCain tips 9%

Yes, it’s true. Also:

• John McCain cheats at computer Scrabble.
• John McCain wants you to open a Roth IRA.
• John McCain reuses plastic utensils.

So does my dear grandma, but she doesn’t want to bomb Iran!

Via Yglesias.

an important point

From Yglesias:

Reacting to the news that the U.S. government has been supplying arms to the Palestinian Authority (so they can fight Hamas), the Armchair Generalist wonders "why is it that the Bush administration's first answer to every regional conflict is to throw more weapons into the mix? You'd think that, by now, they'd have figured out that hard power doesn't solve these long-term conflicts."

I think they actually do understand this pretty well. After all, if the conflicts were "solved" that would reduce the need for American weapons, and htus reduce the opportunities for American influence. The essence of the approach is to create a series of standoffs where our proxies have the bulk of the guns, but their enemies of the bulk of the legitimacy (in part because they're not serving as our proxy), and thus the guns-without-legitimacy side is able to maintain a permanently tenuous grasp on power that leaves them ever-more-dependent on external American support. The identity or background of the proxy doesn't really matter, and can include ex-insurgents in Iraq, the same Fatah groups we were trying to freeze out of Palestinian politics a few years ago, Iranian-backed Shiite parties in Basra, sundry Somali factions, whatever.

It’s a racket, and with the U.S. government as head racketeer. There's a lucrative side-effect of this process: our national arms exporting business helps keep client states loyal, which keeps the proceeds from weapons sales flowing back to the U.S., creating incentives for the U.S. to perpetuate the conflict—a self-reinforcing process.

It’s quite a scam when you consider that aggressive p.r. efforts to paint the U.S. as the godfather of global democracy lend the whole project just enough legitimacy to stave off complete collapse. People are starting to see this for what it is—modern imperialism—so we’ll see how long the U.S. can maintain the status quo.

type test

77 words

Speedtest

Via Nicolle--thanks for the tip!

nobody tells me anything

The breakdancers on the D Train tonight were wearing tight pants. I mean, Sex Pistols, Wassup Rockers tight. I couldn't tell if it helped or hindered movement. The moves appeared to be the same as usual (these kids were 13, for God's sake--they weren't doing anything too innovative or sophisticated), just the look was different.

The B-boys are fun to watch sometimes, just as long as I don't get kicked in the face.

paranoia or pragmatism?

I was talking politics yesterday with a friend in town for the weekend, and he said all his coworkers support Obama except four middle-aged black women who support Clinton because they are convinced if Obama is elected, he will be assassinated.

Hhm, I thought, that’s weird. A little paranoid, maybe?

But then I saw this tonight in the NY Times:

There is a hushed worry on the minds of many supporters of Senator Barack Obama, echoing in conversations from state to state, rally to rally: Will he be safe?

In Colorado, two sisters say they pray daily for his safety. In New Mexico, a daughter says she persuaded her mother to still vote for Mr. Obama, even though the mother feared that winning would put him in danger. And at a rally here, a woman expressed worries that a message of hope and change, in addition to his race, made him more vulnerable to violence.

. . .

Not long ago, his advisers worried that some black voters might not support his candidacy out of a fierce desire to protect him. It was a particular concern in South Carolina, but Mr. Obama said he believed the worry was also rooted in “a fear of failure.”

A paranoia shared by many, it seems. Let’s hope those fears are not born out.

Radio Shack sucks

This will be one of those somewhat vindictive, purely personal blog posts that every blogger seems to come to periodically.

Don’t buy anything at Radio Shack, unless you don’t care if it breaks and you don’t see a dime of your money back.

Me, back at the store after buying a Radio Shack personal cassette tape player to listen to FOIA tape recordings of old immigration proceedings for work:

This tape player is broken after I used it for three days. Can I get my money back? I have the receipt and it hasn’t been 30 days yet.

Sales clerk: Do you have the original packaging?

Me: No, I threw it away because I didn’t think the tape player would break after three days.

Sales clerk: No packaging means no refunds, no exceptions.

Me: Can I get store credit? (Thinking to myself, “Not that I want to buy anything here anymore, but it’s better than nothing.”) Is there anything you can do for me here?

Sales clerk: You can't get store credit, but you can trade it in for another one at another store. You can’t do it here because we are all out of that item.

Me, before walking out in an aggravated state: Thanks.

Now, why did I feel it was necessary to say thank you after what had just transpired? It must be a thankless job enforcing such a customer-unfriendly return policy, but still …

So, having vented now, I’m feeling a little better already. I’ve re-learned what every junior high school student knows but I must have forgotten over the years: low price is not a reason to buy stuff at Radio Shack, it’s a reason not to buy stuff there.

thanks again, NRA

Solid rock statue up for a riot.
Originally uploaded by andreaslouws

I think this may be a recurring feature here.

Desiree Smith, one of the public university’s more than 25,000 students, said she saw students fall down around her as the gunman opened fire. She tried to crawl away, she told a local television station, CLTV, thinking she was going to die, then wondered if she should play dead before getting up to run out of the classroom. Other students told of a chaotic scene in which panicked students dropped to the floor, the blood of victims spattering on those who escaped injury.

This should not be a monthly story in our newspapers. At some point, you have to stand back and say, "This is what Americans want, this is what they voted for." To have the freedom to have their children shot down in the classroom. Who are we to deny the voters what they voted for?

o frabjous day

Up late when I should be in bed, I stumbled across this gem. I don’t know how, but I never came across it as a kid (thank goodness). As a former white-shirt-wearing, clip-on bowtie sporting, damnation-to-your-soul-eating, bona fide polyg-progeny deacon, it hits a little too close to home …

But I was scratching my head over this:

Keep your bladder empty. Refrain from drinking large amounts of fluids before retiring.

??

Reduce the amount of spices and condiments in your food. Eat as lightly as possible at night.

????

Really, can someone help explain this?

Then there was this, which I enjoyed:

It is sometimes helpful to have a physical object to use in overcoming this problem. A Book of Mormon, firmly held in hand, even in bed at night has proven helpful in extreme cases.

Oh, snap! He didn’t just go there … Yes he did!

And finally:

Avoid people, situations, pictures or reading materials that might create sexual excitement.

In other words, avoid life. If at all possible. It’s dirty, you know.

[Image: Wikipedia]

um, like ... dude!

In light of recent news, I'll revisit what I wrote a year ago, which any half-witted blogger could have predicted:

we see that Giuliani is outpolling the next three Republican candidates combined.

Once more, just so I’m clear about this, Giuliani will never never never win the Republican nomination for president in 2008. Never never never never. It’s simply not going to happen.

. . .

If he does manage to win the nomination, I will do a little celebratory dance in honor of Rudy, because it will mean that the Republican base has seen the error of its ways and agreed to relinquish the cultural direction of the country to Godless liberals like myself.

Of course, I apparently had my money on Brownback and Hagel. Looks like the Magic 8 Ball beats human powers of prediction once again.

Also, Clinton. Ick.

Sonata in Atrios, op. IOZ

Dear Jane,

They wouldn’t do it if they didn’t want to. They don’t share your priorities. They are not on your side. Cut them loose or lower your expectations.

Saludos,

yave

there will be blood

There will be interminable tedium. Consider yourself warned.

why lawyers are stoopid, or, why there's nothing ethical about legal ethics

Exhibit A:

For 10 years, Leslie P. Smith, a Virginia lawyer, reluctantly kept a secret because the authorities on legal ethics told him he had no choice, even though his information could save the life of a man on death row, one whose case had led to a landmark Supreme Court decision.

Mr. Smith believed that prosecutors had committed brazen misconduct by coaching a witness and hiding it from the defense, but the Virginia State Bar said he was bound by legal ethics rules not to bring up the matter. He shared his qualms and pangs of conscience with only one man, Timothy G. Clancy, who had worked on the case with him.

“Clancy and I, when we were alone together, would reminisce about this and more or less renew our vows of silence,” Mr. Smith told a judge last month. “We felt that there was nothing that could be done.”

But the situation changed last year, when Mr. Smith took one more run at the state bar’s ethics counsel. “I was upset by the conduct of the prosecutor,” Mr. Smith wrote in an anguished letter, “and the situation has bothered me ever since.”

Reversing course, the bar told Mr. Smith he could now talk, and he did. His testimony caused a state court judge in Yorktown, Va., to commute the death sentence of Daryl R. Atkins to life on Thursday, citing prosecutorial misconduct.

And I have to paste this next bit in the hope that the most improbably named law professor in the country gets quoted again sometime:

Ronald D. Rotunda, who teaches legal ethics at George Mason University, said the rules in Virginia were murky about what lawyers in Mr. Smith’s position could do. But if the bar’s initial advice was correct, Professor Rotunda added, “there is something wrong about the law, particularly if you are talking about execution or years in prison.”

I would have to agree.

a face in the crowd

Aw, shucks. If faithful Americans want to give their money to Creflo Dollar, I have no problem with that. It’s a free country, after all. What could be more American than enjoying the liberating experience of freely giving your money to a con man? Named with suspicious aptitude, this one has been particularly good at casting himself as a spiritual self-help guru. And yes, the reason I’m posting about this now is because I watched him for a bit on my teevee the other day. He is fascinating to listen to, and I say that in all seriousness. It makes me wish that Joseph Smith’s sermons could have been taped for posterity, so we could marvel today in the power and cleverness of his sheer, enveloping charisma. (Again being serious. Ok, now back to your normally scheduled sarcasm.) One wonders if Dollar will also manage to convince his congregants, as only the best of the pretenders have before him, that his favored position as God’s messenger endows him with a special exception to the blessed rule of monogamy imposed on the many.

If so, rest assured that you will read about it here shortly afterwards.

deep thoughts

First question: Is "rare show of bipartisanship" the dumbest phrase ever wrought by man or woman?

Discuss.

Second question: What prompts me from time to time to encourage my imaginary commenters to discuss these momentary but irrepressible convulsions of irritation known as blog posts, which they probably couldn't care less about and may not even understand? (assuming arguendo that these commenters existed at all):

(a) Unadulterated egomania, tempered by the distancing from normal life only achieved by the truly self-absorbed, and an endearing but pathetic tendency to adopt turns of phrase more meaningfully employed by bloggers with traffic on the scale of Texas/Canada rather than Uzbekistan/Wyoming.

(b) The maddening propensity of political reporters to seek compromise in every instance without respect to substance or principle, their habitual preference for coded cliché over concise transmission of useful information, their infuriating refusal to invert the pyramid (it’s supposed to be upside-down for a reason, goddammit), and their refusal to pick a fucking side once in a while.

(c) The New York Times is retarded.

(d) I am retarded.

(e) “Rare show of bipartisanship” is refreshing as the morning dew compared to the novel observation that “Mr. Bush’s approval ratings may be low, but the ratings of Congress are even lower.”

Turn your answers in when you're done and then you can leave early.

(Hint: It’s not D.)