“The 9/11 Story that got away.”
AlterNet: “In 2001, an anonymous White House source leaked top-secret NSA intelligence to reporter Judith Miller that Al Qaida was planning a major attack on the United States. But the story never made it into the paper.”
Just go read.
Blog Notes
Well, I think I’ve managed to stitch together the ability to do a “below the fold” kind of thing…
The annoying thing is that all the old posts will have that “Read More” thingy on them now, but at least now there ought to be less scrolling! Anyway, we’ll give it a try and see what everything thinks. If no one likes it, I’ll change it back.
Also updated: Each contributors’ Greatest Hits list—and Shamanic sent me a picture at long last, so she has been added to the contributors’ list. And I changed the blogroll so it will be easier for me to update, which meant moving the entire list over to Blogrolling. If I missed anyone in the move, and you suddenly find your blog missing, just let me know.
Oh, I also added a "Main Page" link on the post pages next to the comments link for easy return to the main page.
Never bathe again!
Okay, this is just seventeen different flavors of awesome:
[Guillermo] Del Toro has announced that he’s teaming with Alfonso Cuaron to adapt Roald Dahl’s The Witches. Guillermo will direct and write the adaptation with Cuaron producing. He tells Variety that the film will be smaller than other Dahl adaptations like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach, but will be “most likely very much designed.”If you’re unfamiliar with the name, Guillermo Del Toro is best known stateside for his work on Blade 2 and Hellboy. Neither of which were terrible (Blade 2 was better than it had any right to be, and Hellboy was more disappointing than outright bad), but more importantly, he also directed Chronos and The Devil’s Backbone, which are unequivocally terrific movies. Both show how well Del Toro can handle human drama alongside the fantastical, never letting one overwhelm the other; also important, both show Del Toro getting impressive performances out of child actors, which isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do.
Of course, this won’t be the first time Dahl’s macabre classic has been adapted for the screen- Nicholas Roeg’s version come out in 1990, less than two decades ago, which is quick turnaround for a remake. Normally, I’d think this was a horrible idea, but as I say in my review (which is totally brilliant, and I just linked to it, so don’t deny yourself the thrill any longer!), Roeg’s film doesn’t really do the source material justice. While it’s no sure thing, I believe Del Toro has at the least the potential of doing a better job, even if I’m not entirely sure what the hell he means by “very much designed.”
More Dahl all the time, that’s what I say; and here’s hoping that this time, they keep the original ending.
Disgusting
Via The Hotline, below is an attack ad issued by one Republican candidate against another GOP-er. They’re both running for the State Assembly in the central valley region of CA, and “Bill Conrad (R) is apparently running on the platform that his opponent won't survive his term because he had a heart transplant.”
I wonder, by the way, if Mr. Conrad has ever heard of a bloke called Dick Cheney?
A tale of two senators
There are those who defend the Constitution...and those who don't:
Feingold, Specter clash over gay marriageA Senate committee approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage Thursday, after a shouting match that ended when one Democrat strode out and the Republican chairman bid him "good riddance."
"I don't need to be lectured by you. You are no more a protector of the Constitution than am I," Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., shouted after Sen. Russ Feingold declared his opposition to the amendment, his affinity for the Constitution and his intention to leave the meeting.
"If you want to leave, good riddance," Specter finished.
"I've enjoyed your lecture, too, Mr. Chairman," replied Feingold, D-Wis., who is considering a run for president in 2008. "See ya."
You have to wonder if Specter has any convictions at all. Then again, maybe it's crystal clear:
Among Feingold's objections was Specter's decision to hold the vote in the President's Room, where access by the general public is restricted, instead of in the panel's usual home in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.Specter later said he would have been willing to hold the session in the usual room had he thought doing so would change votes.
Not all those who voted "yes" support the amendment, however. Specter said he is "totally opposed" to it, but felt it deserved a debate in the Senate.
(Hat tip to SusanG at DKos. Cross-posted way over yonder...)
Who says women aren’t funny?
Peggy Noonan is hilarious. First of all, she manages to tie together Bush’s immigration speech and The Da Vinci Code’s critical failure into one column by noting that they share in common being “out of touch.” Reversing the order of her column, we’ll look at her take on the film first, which—I kid you not—starts out, “Speaking of the detachment of the elites…” Ho ho ho. I told you she's a side-splitter.
There is a God. Or, as a sophisticated Christian pointed out yesterday, there is an Evil One, and this may be proof he was an uncredited co-producer. The devil loves the common, the stale. He can't use beauty; it undermines him. "Banality is his calling card."Yeah, yeah—we know. And he wears a green parka to Auschwitz.
I do not understand the thinking of a studio that would make, for the amusement of a nation 85% to 90% of whose people identify themselves as Christian, a major movie aimed at attacking the central tenets of that faith, and insulting as poor fools its gulled adherents. Why would Tom Hanks lend his prestige to such a film? Why would Ron Howard? They're both already rich and relevant. A desire to seem fresh and in the middle of a big national conversation? But they don't seem young, they seem immature and destructive. And ungracious. They've been given so much by their country and era, such rich rewards and adulation throughout their long careers. This was no way to say thanks.Yeah, Tom Hanks! Yeah, Opie! What’s wrong with you? Everyone knows it’s a total insult to make a fictional film which could be read to suggest that some of Christianity’s gulled adherents are poor fools, because then when they overreact and accuse you attacking the central tenets of their faith as if you were making a documentary, they’re proven to be poor fools—and compelling them to reveal themselves thusly is just rude rude rude! Although, if you ask me, Noonan is two decades too late. I wrote off Tom Hanks after Bosom Buddies got cancelled and I found out he wasn’t really a woman. Dirty trickster!
I’m too flustered to think about the travesty of this film any longer. Moving on (or back) to Noonan’s discussion of Bush’s out-of-touchness:
The disinterest in the White House and among congressional Republicans in establishing authority on America's borders is so amazing--the people want it, the age of terror demands it--that great histories will be written about it. Thinking about this has left me contemplating a question that admittedly seems farfetched: Is it possible our flinty president is so committed to protecting the Republican Party from losing, forever, the Hispanic vote, that he's decided to take a blurred and unsatisfying stand on immigration, and sacrifice all personal popularity, in order to keep the party of the future electorally competitive with a growing ethnic group?You know, if Bush has suddenly developed a keen interest in sacrificing himself for the good of the GOP, he should really go whole-hog with the falling on his sword shtick and just resign.
This would, I admit, be rather unlike an American political professional. And it speaks of a long-term thinking that has not been the hallmark of this administration. But at least it would render explicable the president's moves.
The other possibility is that the administration's slow and ambivalent action is the result of being lost in some geopolitical-globalist abstract-athon that has left them puffed with the rightness of their superior knowledge, sure in their membership in a higher brotherhood, and looking down on the low concerns of normal Americans living in America.Mmm, maybe that’s it. I might posit that it has something to do with the fact that Bush is paralyzed by the blood-thirsty caterwauling of his racist base on one side and the hushed whispers to leave immigration bloody well alone if his party wants to keep favor with the corporatists on the other. But in true Wall Street Journal columnist form, Noonan likes to pretend that the only Bush base has is the rubes in the red states. Err, normal Americans living in America.
I continue to believe the administration's problem is not that the base lately doesn't like it, but that the White House has decided it actually doesn't like the base. That's a worse problem. It's hard to fire a base. Hard to get a new one.See, here’s why I flip-flopped (how liberal of me) Noonan’s column. She is delightfully funny, but she still doesn’t realize you save your best joke for last. (Apparently this is what Peggy Noonan and Bush have in common—an inability to go out on a high note.) Is there anything more amusing than a professional political writer pretending to not know that the Bush administration has never “liked” its average-Joe base? That’s a splendid riff, Pegster—almost post-modern in its appearance as a critique of the Bush administration while simultaneously employing the same premise that they have always used…the presumption that the average-Joe base means something (or did, at one time) to the administration, other than a useful swath of diligent and easily-manipulated voters who helped usher BushCo into power so they could cater to corporatists and Neocon warmongers. Superbly ironic, Peggy. Brava.
Iron John in the Tuff Shed out back
I once read a collection of humorous essays by a woman whose name escapes me now; one of the pieces focused on decorating the home in her particular style. She said that she placed a portrait of her husband in one of the rooms so that he would remember that he lived there too. Such is the supposed lot of the man whose wife is in charge of home design and decor, a response to which prompted a home and garden piece by Finn-Olaf Jones in today's New York Times (registration required). Apparently, men are carving out hidey-holes of their own, private retreats from the world at large and their homes' feminine leitmotif in particular. My wife, M, forwarded me the article this morning with this note: "I know you want one too." Actually, no, not really.
According to the Jones piece, men are buying Tuff Sheds from home stores in growing numbers and making of them workshops, pool rooms, poker dens, personal bars, workout spaces...real manly-men clubhouses, sanctums sanctorum, no girls allowed. The article is just a tad overwritten in spots; it moves onto shaky ground when it tries to spin the trend off into larger cultural implications such as the decline of social organizations (ala Robert Bly's drumming circles and Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone) and it engages in definite overreach when it conjures up such extremes of seclusion as Ted Kaczynski. Sorry, but you just can't leap from a workshop out back to the Unibomber in a single bound, and it's foolish to try.
Once you set aside those remote conclusions, however, you're left with a more interesting aspect of the phenomenon left unexplored by the author: the willingness of men to invest much time and treasure to create these private spaces. Tuff Sheds don't come cheap - try pricing an outbuilding or garage structure sometime - and that doesn't include the additional effort and expense of customizing the space with heating, air conditioning, drywall, electricity, and the portrait of Elvis emblazoned on a field of black velvet. What does it say that households have thousands of surplus dollars for such purchases, or that men seem to feel it important to spend it in this way? You won't really find out from reading the Jones article, which is too bad, because that's where the real interest lies in this story.
As for me...a little more room for working out would be nice, but the situation isn't so urgent that I'm about to drive to the Home Depot for an outbuilding. If we were to create a new room for the house, I'd rather it be a mudroom between the great outdoors and the kitchen. My wife does worry a bit about making me, the hapless husband, feel esthetically abandoned. Nice of her, but she needn't fret. I find it's best to leave decor to the team member with both the eye and the interest for it, and I'm certainly capable of thinking sufficiently masculine thoughts in just about any room in the house. But then, I'm a man.
(Cross-posted like a man, baby!)
Blogging the Bible
So this plonker is blogging the Bible for Slate. Readers are asking awesome questions like “Who was Cain’s wife?” Magical. No one’s ever considered that before.
Yeesh. Tune in tomorrow for wide-eyed contemplation of whether Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church.
Drum’s got a great take on this spectacular blogging feat.
But This Has Nothing to Do With Race...
Shorter O'Reilly: "White Christian Power! White Christian Power!"
Summary: Bill O'Reilly claimed that The New York Times and "many far-left thinkers believe the white power structure that controls America is bad, so a drastic change is needed." O'Reilly continued: "According to the lefty zealots, the white Christians who hold power must be swept out by a new multicultural tide, a rainbow coalition, if you will."Holy Flurking Schnitt!
As Media Matters for America has noted, O'Reilly has previously claimed to have exposed the "hidden agenda" behind the immigration movement, which he said was "the browning of America." O'Reilly also asserted, during the same April 12 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, that "there is a movement in this country to wipe out 'white privilege.' " Additionally, on the May 1 edition of The Radio Factor, O'Reilly alleged that the "organizers" of the May 1 nationwide pro-immigrant protests have a "hardcore militant agenda of 'You stole our land, you bad gringos,' " and that the organizers seek to "take it back by massive, massive migration into the Southwest.' "
But again, this has nothing to do with race. It's about illegal immigration!
Go watch the video, and when you pick your jaw up from the floor, feel free to write FOX and let them know what you think about this.
(The Browning of the cross-post...)
Well, there’s a first time for everything…
I actually agree with George Will.
I’ll give you a moment to recover.
Okay, ready?
Will asks Who Isn’t a ‘Values Voter’? and then responds to his own question in uncharacteristically reasonable style:
This phrase diminishes our understanding of politics. It also is arrogant on the part of social conservatives and insulting to everyone else because it implies that only social conservatives vote to advance their values and everyone else votes to . . . well, it is unclear what they supposedly think they are doing with their ballots.Wuh? Why, that almost sounds like something I’d write.
It is odd that some conservatives are eager to promote the semantic vanity of the phrase "values voters." And it is odder still that the media are cooperating with those conservatives…Dearie me. I really do have a case of the vapors.
Attempts to assign values-seriousness can get complicated: Freedom and happiness are valuable. Arguably, governmental actions that did much to increase freedom and happiness in the past half-century were state laws liberalizing divorce. These made important contributions to the emancipation of men and especially women from mistaken marriages. Perhaps the most important of these laws -- it was among the most liberal and was in the most populous state -- was signed by a divorced governor, Ronald Reagan. What do socially conservative values voters make of that?
Of course Will manages to get in a typical dig at liberals by saying we “value equality indiscriminately” (I’ll leave you to parse out the humorous illogic in that one), but remains level-headed enough to acknowledge “they vote their values.” (This is certainly a step in the right direction from claiming that the one great conviction of the Democratic party is that “there aren't enough abortions.”)
I’m rather impressed to see a conservative columnist take on the infuriating—and erroneous—conception that conservatives have the market cornered on values. At the same time, it’s sadly indicative of how lopsided everything has become that a conservative’s willingness to honestly address something so patently obvious has the capacity to impress me.
Haditha Massacre
The killing of 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians by US Marines in the Iraqi city of Haditha, including seven women and three children, was done “in cold blood,” according to Rep. John Murtha, D-PA.
Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to show Murtha is right…Okay, first of all, to say that Murtha is “a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq” is somewhat misleading. He is himself a former marine who is very hawkish—and was on this war, too, until it all went so horribly wrong.
Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that "there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."
Military officials say Marine Corp photos taken immediately after the incident show many of the victims were shot at close range, in the head and chest, execution-style. One photo shows a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot dead, said the officials, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity because the investigation hasn't been completed.
One military official says it appears the civilians were deliberately killed by the Marines, who were outraged at the death of their fellow Marine.
“This one is ugly," one official told NBC News.
Secondly, “ugly” doesn’t really begin to cover it.
I don’t have much else to say about this; I feel at a loss at the moment. TBogg and Billmon, however, have excellent posts about it.
Question of the Day
What non-political (or mostly non-political) blogs do you just love?
The only two I read regularly are Dlisted, because Michael K’s bitchy snark just totally cracks my shit up, and FourFour, because I can get posts like this and like this, so I am, thusly, in bloglove with its proprietor Rich.
How about you?
Parents don’t get no respect…how about a tax cut?
Glenn Reynolds (otherwise known as Instapundit), writing for TCS Daily, suggests that people (and, of course by “people,” we mean “white people,” since, as John Gibson so helpfully noted to justify his “procreation not recreation” recommendation, “half the kids under 5 years old in this country are minorities”) aren’t having kids anymore because:
~ Kids aren’t typically used as slave labor anymore. “Children used to provide cheap labor, and retirement security, all in one. Now they're pretty much all cost and no return, from a financial perspective.”
~ Parenting isn’t fun anymore. “We've taken a lot of the fun out of parenting… [I]n recent decades, a collection of parenting ‘experts’ and safety-fascist types have extinguished some of the benefits while raising the costs, to the point where what's amazing isn't that people are having fewer kids, but that people are having kids at all.”
~ People don’t automatically have prestige conferred upon them simply by reproducing anymore. “There's also the decline in parental prestige over generations. My mother reports that when she was a newlywed (she was married in 1959) you weren't seen as fully a member of the adult world until you had kids.”
And you know what all of this financially unrewarding, unfun, unprestigiousness adds up to for a reliable conservative-who-claims-to-be-a-libertarian like Instapundit, don’t you?
A tax on parenting!
In these sorts of ways, parenting has become more expensive in non-financial as well as financial terms. It takes up more time and emotional energy than it used to, and there's less reward in terms of social approbation. This is like a big social tax on parenting and, as we all know, when things are taxed we get less of them. Yes, people still have children, and some people even have big families. But at the margin, which is where change occurs, people are less likely to do things as they grow more expensive and less rewarded.A splendid idea. A cultural tax cut is exactly what we need! We should definitely encourage parents to be less responsible and less involved, eschew safety mechanisms like car seats and bike helmets, tell Child Protective Services to get out of our grills, and then get back to the good old days when becoming a parent was the best possible thing you could do with your life. (If you’re a woman, please read: the only possible thing you could do with your life.) You know, back in the good old days when it didn’t matter what kind of parent you were—good, bad, eager, reluctant, indifferent—as long as you were one.
…If people want to see Americans have more children, they should … look at ways of making parenting more rewarding, and less burdensome, in social as well as economic terms.
Reynolds’ argument for making parenting more desirable by making it “fun” and “rewarding” (financially and socially) misses the point. There are some people who just don’t bloody want to be parents. There were probably just as many of them in “the good old days,” but they had no means of controlling it. If they wanted to be married and have sex with their spouses, they were, inevitably, going to have kids. Maybe there are fewer people having kids these days simply because it’s an option.
One of the best things about control over one’s reproduction is that it allows people who really don’t want to be parents to avoid parenting. The anti-choice crowd tells us that every life is precious, but is that really true? The lives of a lot of unwanted kids have been pretty fucking horrible. If your own parents don’t regard your life as precious, it’s a pretty tough road to hoe. And it’s not just about people who never have kids; on the flipside, people who really do want to become parents can control how many children they have, and there’s something to be said for that, too. Being able to have only two kids instead of ten is a pretty good deal for parents—not to mention the kids they have.
“Making parenting more rewarding and less burdensome” to try to encourage people to have kids sounds like a patently dreadful idea to me, particularly on behalf of the kids born to parents who think the whole gig should be a breeze. Of course, what’s best for kids didn’t figure much into Reynolds’ argument. Do kids really benefit if their parents get more “social approbation” and “prestige” just for breeding? Look, if there are people who are disinclined to become parents because it’s not “cool” enough, they’re probably making the right decision to stay childless.
As for people who don’t have kids because it’s a financial struggle, maybe we could use those billions in actual tax cuts instead to guarantee free healthcare for every American child. That would be a good start to make parenting more affordable—and it has the additional benefit of being useful to kids. It’s certainly not as glamorous as suggesting that anyone who figures out how to successfully fuck ought to be rewarded with lavish admiration, but I just can’t help thinking what would be best for children. Even in spite of my selfish reluctance to birth them.
I wonder who’ll get the contract…?
The Senate has voted to build 370 miles of triple-layered fencing along the Mexican border.
DNR—I mean it!
If I were 80, I would totally do this:
Mary Wohlford has informed family members of her wishes should she become incapacitated. She has also signed a living will that hangs on her refrigerator.
But the retired nurse and great-grandmother believes she has removed all potential for confusion: She had the words "DO NOT RESUSCITATE" tattooed on her chest.
"People might think I'm crazy, but that's OK," said Wohlford, 80. "Sometimes the nuttiest ideas are the most advanced."
Wohlford said she is healthy; in fact, she cares part time for two other women. She said her decision to enter a Galena, Ill., tattoo parlor in February was the culmination of what she witnessed during her almost 30 years in nursing and during the Terri Schiavo controversy last year. …Wohlford said she does not want something like that to happen to her.
The tattoo isn’t legally binding, but there’s something I find really cool about making a statement like that, especially since Wohlford’s family was divided over the Schiavo mess, making her worry the same thing will happen. It’ll be a lot harder for family members inclined to dismiss her wishes to make such a decision with that tattoo staring them in the faces. My body. My choice. DNR, bitchez! I love it.
Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush... All a Bunch of Goddamned Liberals
Remember Glenn Greenwald's brilliant post regarding Bush followers labeling anyone that disagrees with Dear Leader a "liberal?"
What it takes to make someone a "conservative" in Bozell's eyes is the same as what is required in the eyes of all Bush followers -- a willingness to support Bush's actions because they are the actions of George Bush.
[...]
People who self-identify as "conservatives" and have always been considered to be conservatives become liberal heathens the moment they dissent, even on the most non-ideological grounds, from a Bush decree. ThatÂ’s because "conservatism" is now a term used to describe personal loyalty to the leader (just as "liberal" is used to describe disloyalty to that leader), and no longer refers to a set of beliefs about government.
Well folks, get ready to go one step beyond.
Damn tree huggers, every last one of them.
Tip 'o the energy dome to Digby, who had his own Criswell moment not too long ago.
(Let's all go to the cross-post and get ourselves a treat!)
