And the sad thing is that you're not a bit surprised.
(Nicely complements Shakes' earlier post. Loosely adapted from a post at my place.)
CNN has the real take on Bush and ISG
Caption This Photo
My favorite headline on this topic so far today?
Bush Serious About Iraq Report.
Well, la dee da.
Russ on KO
"Russ Feingold" just emailed me to let me know he'll be on Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight to discuss Iraq and his reaction to the Baker-Hamilton Commission Report.
I thought I'd pass it along since many of us are fans of both gentlemen.
Iraq Study Group
Everyone in the blogosphere is writing about the report they released today, and, frankly, I don’t have anything to add. Suffice it to say I find it:
~ Interesting that they suggest “all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq” by spring of—surprise!—2008.
~ Shitty that they recommend threatening Iraq with a reduction in “political, military, or economic support” if their government can’t get it together on “national reconciliation, security, and governance.” Maybe I’m just a daft rube, but it seems to me that it’s difficult to orchestrate a national reconciliation without effective governance, but it’s tough to effectively govern without decent security, and decent security is hard to come by during a civil war. So it also seems to me that we’ve basically broken the shit out of their country and now we’re telling them we won’t give them any glue, tape, or bubble gum to fix it unless they…fix it.
Instead of using the Iraqis’ failure to ‘fix it’ as a last-ditch effort of eschewing (and redirecting) responsibility for this debacle, it would be awesome if we could just be honest, at long last, and say, “We’re sorry we fucked all your shit up. It’s our fault. And worse yet, your only hope now might be our leaving. So we’re gonna try that, and see what happens. Whatever support you need, we’ll give you, if it will help. In the meantime, our deepest apologies.” That’s the kind of thing grown-ups say when they make an irreversible mistake with no easy solution.
"You don’t know the half of it."
Have I mentioned lately that I love Michael Bérubé? Cuz I do.
At least read the final few paragraphs that begin "Last but not least…" They gave me a jaw-cracker of a grin.
Damn Dems
Pelosi’s pick to chair the House Intelligence Committee is calling for more troops to be sent to Iraq:
In a surprise twist in the debate over Iraq, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, the soon-to-be chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he wants to see an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops as part of a stepped up effort to “dismantle the militias.”So let me see if I’ve got this right. Harman was passed over because she had been wrong about the war in the first place in favor of someone who was right in the first place, but now wants to send in more troops? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m not the only one who seems flummoxed for precisely the same reason…
The soft-spoken Texas Democrat was an early opponent of the Iraq war and voted against the October 2002 resolution authorizing President Bush to invade that country. That dovish record got prominently cited last week when Speaker designate Nancy Pelosi chose Reyes as the new head of the intelligence panel.
…Reyes added that he was “very clear” about his position to Pelosi when she chose him over two rivals—Rep. Jane Harman of California and Rep. Alcee Hastings—to head the critical intelligence post.
Drum: “Which is better: someone who got it right in the beginning but has since lost his way, or someone who originally made a mistake but seems to have learned something since then? I think I'd pick door #2.”
Steve Benen: “So, at this point, the only people in Washington who are anxious to send thousands of additional troops into Iraq are John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and the incoming Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee? This isn’t good. …I think the phrase I’m looking for here is ‘buyer’s remorse’.”
Meanwhile, the Iraq Study Group’s report has been released, and panel co-chair James Baker introduced it at a press conference by saying, “We no longer can afford to stay the course.” Great idea to let the incoming Democratic House Intelligence Committee Chair cede ground to the Bush family fixer and his panel of plonkers. The whole point of the Iraq Study Group was to take the policies the Democrats have been suggesting—and the American people have been wanting—and make it look like they were coming from Bush’s side. Reyes has now made the despicable whitewash ever so much easier.
Sick
One of Republicans' most trusty canards is that liberals are nothing more than modern-day Robin Hoods, keen to steal from the rich and give to the poor. The less honest among them make it sound like we've got a nefarious plan to don ski masks and rob working people (rich or poor) at gunpoint, then shove the cash into Ronald Reagan piñatas and take them to the projects to let welfare queens and thugs who turned down scholarships to Yale for a life of gangbanging bash them open with copies of The Communist Manifesto.
The reason this particular bit of scaremongering is so effective is because there's some truth to it. Most progressives are interested in providing a strong and comprehensive social safety net, which requires higher taxes than not providing one would. Conservatives complain that it's an attempt to legislate a social conscience, which no individual is required by law to have, and I'm actually sympathetic to that complaint in theory, but, in reality, a healthy society is predicated on a robust collective interest in providing for all its members—and because we can't count on decency to ensure it, the law must.
And the truth is, I just don't feel all that bad about saying, "You're goddamned right I want to legislate a social conscience" when I read stuff like this:
The richest 2 per cent of adults own more than half the world’s wealth, according to the most comprehensive study of personal assets.That's sick. And not only do we not provide nearly enough aid to the rest of the world, we can't even be bothered to make sure that we feed people within our own fucking borders.
...The richest 10 per cent of adults accounted for 85 per cent of assets. The bottom 50 per cent of the world’s adults owned barely 1 per cent of global wealth.
I need to go scream.
Gore: It's Not About You, G-Dub
Goddamn, I love Al Gore:
Calling the Iraq war "the worst strategic mistake in the entire history of the United States" and "worse than a civil war," former Vice President Gore urged President Bush to find a way to get U.S. troops out of Iraq "as quickly as possible without making the situation worse" while appearing this morning on NBC’s "Today."He then added, "Pull your head out of your legacy, Dumbass."
"I would urge the President to try to separate out the personal issues of being blamed in history for his mistake and instead recognizing that it is not about him. It’s about our country," Gore said in an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer.
Carnival of the Liberals
The first anniversary Carnival of the Liberals is up! At your suggestion, I submitted "Tradition is the Ultimate Dog Whistle," and you'll have to click through to see if it made the cut...
Great stuff there, including one of my favorite Coturnix posts of all time.
I Blame the Gay Penguins
Mary Cheney is pregnant:
Mary Cheney, the vice president's openly gay daughter, is pregnant. She and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, are "ecstatic" about the baby, due in late spring, said a source close to the couple.I wish Mary Cheney and her growing family well as they try to navigate the hostile world in which they find themselves, thanks in no small part to the Grand Old Party, which she has so diligently served.
It's a baby boom for grandparents Dick and Lynne Cheney: Their older daughter, Elizabeth, went on leave as deputy assistant secretary of state before having her fifth child in July. "The vice president and Mrs. Cheney are looking forward with eager anticipation to the arrival of their sixth grandchild," spokesman Lea Anne McBride said last night.
This is, of course, precisely the kind of situation the Bush administration and the GOP has been claiming we need to prevent, because it threatens to destroy American families and thusly shred the very fabric of our nation. But the only people who are going to suffer here are Moms and their baby, because Cheney and Poe live in Virginia, where Virginia voters just passed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions in November. It’s also unlikely Poe will be considered a legal parent of their child. The only family being undermined is theirs.
It would be nice to think that perhaps the most vociferous homobigots of the Right would take this opportunity to reevaluate their positions, but that’s not going to happen. Cheney and Poe will instead be lucky if they’re not willfully exploited to pass more legislation limiting the marriage and parenting rights of same-sex couples.
The 2006 Weblog Awards
Shakes Sis is a finalist in the Best Liberal Blog category for the 2006 Weblog Awards!
A big CONGRATS also go out to the following Shakers:
Konagod for Best New Blog
Lindsay Beyerstein for Best Individual Blog
Jon Swift for Best Humor Blog
Sadly, No! for Best Humor Blog
skippy for Best Liberal Blog
Pam for Best LGBT Blog
Michael Bérubé for Best Education Blog
Tom for Best Culture Blog
Crooks & Liars for Best Video Blog
Feministe for Best of the Top 250
Orcinus for Best of the Top 250
Laura for Best of the Top 3501 - 5000 Blogs
Blue Gal for Best of the Top 3501 - 5000 Blogs
Deborah for Best of the Rest of the Blogs (8751+)
Other blogs in the Best Liberal Blog category:
Pandagon
Think Progress
Eschaton
The Rude Pundit
Jesus' General
Bring It On!
Hullabaloo
Bitch Ph.D.
Legal Fiction
And congrats to everyone else nominated! If I missed you, I'm very sorry and please let me know in comments. Voting is scheduled to begin on Thursday.
Question of the Day
The obvious follow-up to yesterday is, of course, what is your least favorite word? I'm not much of a fan of moist. Moist is kind of a yucky word for what can be a rather nice thing. Moist chocolate cake. Moist skin in a misty rain. Etc. It should sound nicer, somehow.
Somebody Call the Waaaaaaaaambulance for Poppy
Former President George H.W. Bush broke down in tears as he cited his son, Gov. Jeb Bush, as an example of leadership.Kee-rist. I hope Babs whipped his ass with a string of pearls when the idiot crybaby got home from soiling the family’s good name by veering dangerously close to a public demonstration of humanity. It might even have been touching if he weren’t, ya know, talking about Jeb Bush. And if he weren’t, ya know, the patriarch of a clan full of criminals, thieves, perverts, and assholes.
…He said he was proud of how his son handled losing the 1994 governor's race to popular incumbent Democrat Lawton Chiles, and vaguely referred to dirty tricks in the campaign.
"He didn't whine about it. He didn't complain," the former president said before choking up. As he tried to continue, he let out a sob and put a handkerchief to his face. When he spoke again, his words were broken up by pauses as he tried to regain composure.
"A true measure of a man is how you handle victory and how you handle defeat, so in '94 Floridians chose to rehire the governor. They took note of his worthy opponent, who showed with not only words but with actions what decency he had," Bush said before again sobbing.
Inland Empire
If there’s anything that might save me from being the last one out of the Matrix, it could be my love of David Lynch films. I’ve known people—people with excellent taste and open minds—who couldn’t sit through five minutes of Eraserhead, but I’ve probably watched it a dozen times. And you seriously, truly, do not want to get me started on Twin Peaks or Wild at Heart, because I am incapable of discussing either without being embarrassingly effusive.
Normally, when a director I really like has a new film coming out, I tend to avoid all press about it, including trailers, because I prefer to know as little as possible about films before I see them. But with David Lynch, I know the trailers won’t spoil anything, because they are always so creepily vague. So I was pleased to discover the trailer for his new film Inland Empire at Slog.
Ooh, very Lynchy. I can’t wait!
Don't Forget...
...to watch Shaker Evelyn tonight on Jeopardy, if you can catch it. Mr. Shakes and I will be tuning in tonight at 6:30!
Help! Someone! My mom keeps trying to brainwash me!
From Katharine DeBrecht, the author of Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under my Bed! and Help! Mom! Hollywood's in my Hamper! comes the newest in the “Help! Mom!” series: Help! Mom! The 9th Circuit Nabbed the Nativity! (Or, How the Liberals Stole Christmas). It hits bookstores today, so grab them while they last!
World Ahead Publishing’s press release describes the book as “Funnier than Nancy Pelosi's ethics campaign!”
[T]his time she has not just Hillary but activist judges and other hapless liberals in her comic sights…Gawd, ha ha! It’s so true! Ha ha ha! Those goddamned liberals can’t keep their fucking noses out of everyone else’s business! Ha ha! Like the Terri Schiavo debacle—boy howdy, did they make a mess out of that, ha ha ha! And it was totally hilarious when those liberals tried to criminalize abortion in South Dakota, hee hee. Seriously—don’t even get me started on how the liberals are always trying to dictate who people should love and fuck and marry and who should be parents and shit! I swear to god I’ll snort milk right out my fucking nose just thinking about it! Ha ha ha ha ha!
Johnny and Luke loved being in Miss Bardin’s third-grade class—especially at Christmas, when the class put on its annual pageant, complete with a nativity scene and a donkey! But when Congresswoman Clunkton, Senator Weary, Al Snore and the whole 9th Circuit court show up demanding an end to the fun in the name of diversity, global warming and stinky French cheese, all is almost lost until Johnny, Luke and an unexpected hero armed with a mysterious piece of paper unite to save Christmas.
Like every HELP! MOM! book, 9th CIRCUIT has something for both kids and their parents. Young readers will love following along with the lively story while singing the ridiculous (but very politically correct) new lyrics for The First Noel…
The First Toenail, the Liberals did say
Was that the harder people work
The more taxes they pay…
…while parents will enjoy the cartoon antics of liberals doing what they do best — minding everyone else’s business.
Also side-splitting? A woman so obsessed with Hillary “Clunkton” that she’s written three books so far to demonize her but apparently isn’t aware that she’s a senator.
Ground Control to Major Tom…
My first decidedly unromantic response to this story, which describes NASA's plans to permanently staff an "international base camp on one of the moon's poles" was: We've got a ten gazillion dollar deficit; perhaps this can wait. But that felt like too much of a grumpy pooh-pooh even for me, particularly since I'm usually such a sci-nerd, so I headed on over to visit My Favorite Physicist, Sean Carroll, at Cosmic Variance, to see what he had to say. Turns out, he's not much more excited than I am.
It's frustrating to be so lukewarm about the Great Human Adventure in Space, about which I'd much prefer to be enthusiastic. But nothing about the operation inspires confidence, much less wonder. NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale described the program in this tired bit of management-speak:Maybe we're both just cantankerous curmudgeons, but I think he's got a point. (Especially when he also notes that "Nobody knows how much it will actually cost.") It seems like an inevitably vast expenditure for something that NASA's own Deputy Administrator can't make sound more exciting than a new mini-mall in Scranton—probably because it won't provide a dissimilar opportunity to, oh I don't know, say, Halliburton or Bechtel that a mini-mall would to Subway and The Gap."This strategy will enable interested nations to leverage their capabilities and financial and technical contributions, making optimum use of globally available knowledge and resources to help energize a coordinated effort that will propel us into this new age of discovery and exploration."Do people really talk like that? It sounds straight out of Dilbert. Complete with numbingly bullet-pointed Powerpoint presentation!
Maybe the concerns are misplaced, and NASA will be able to aggressively pursue human exploration of space without sacrificing their unique contributions to cutting-edge astrophysics. But I'd be just as happy to let NASA concentrate on the science at which they excel, and leave the space-cowboy stuff to the X-prize folks.
Oh, so cynical, I know, I know. But the ability of "interested nations" to participate puts me in mind of the order signed by Bush in October to assert America's right to limit other nations' access to space. Bush, of course, won't be president during most of the project, but the possibility that it could be someone with equally entrenched interests in funneling profits to favored corporations and labeling nations part of an axis of evil makes the whole endeavor seem a wee bit iffy. I've got to second leaving the the space-cowboy stuff to the X-prize folks.
Not that NASA's listening...
(PEEK-ed.)
Today in Dumbassery
This time it's for lighting matches on a plane. Why would someone do something so stupid? To cover up the fart smell, of course:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- What do you do if you pass embarrassing gas on an airplane? One woman found out what not to do.
A Nashville International Airport spokeswoman said an American Airlines plane bound for Texas had to make an emergency landing Monday morning in Nashville after matches were lit in flight.
[...]
The 99 passengers and five crew members were taken inside the terminal after landing so the plane could be checked out.
"They did find evidence of where matches had been struck in an individual's seating area. That individual is being questioned by the FBI at this time," Lowrance said.
A woman passenger told investigators that she lit matches to mask gas that she emitted.
She wasn't charged and wasn't allowed back on the flight. How stupid does one have to be to light matches on a plane, much less to cover up the fart smell?! BTW, check out the quiz on the story site, which asks if you would admit to lighting matches to cover it up.
Speaking of fire in inappropriate places, this story reminds me of an experience my father-in-law had while working security one summer at an amusement park--they got a report of strange activity in one of the ladies' restrooms. No, no one was trying to cover up the smell. A woman was grilling chicken in the public bathroom.
