Incivil war

Keyboard Kommando Komix

Down time isn't dead time...

CrackBerry addicts: Why the workers who can't switch off are suing their employers

Rational heads

May they prevail.

Court Challenge to New Detainee Law May Come In 'Days'

With President Bush poised to sign the White House-backed detainee treatment bill into law, groups are promising to challenge it in court "in days."

“I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in ‘H’ that this will be found constitutional,” Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told Congressional Quarterly (sub. req.). CCR represents a number of Guantanamo prisoners.

Strangely, some senators who voted for the bill weren't convinced of its constitutionality. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who voted for the bill even after his amendment to preserve certain rights for detainees was defeated, called the proposal "patently unconstitutional on its face," The Washington Post reported. When CQ asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who negotiated with the White House to win minor concessions on the legislation, if the bill was constitutional, he responded "I think so."

If there is ever an argument with a republican and the republican says anything about values, cut them off and ask them, "you mean the value to torture?" Torture torture torture. Don't let them ever live it down.

Why Iraq will never get better under republican watch

Lott: "They all look the same to me."

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush barely mentioned the war in Iraq when he met with Republican senators behind closed doors in the Capitol Thursday morning and was not asked about the course of the war, Sen. Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, said.

"No, none of that," Lott told reporters after the session when asked if the Iraq war was discussed. "You're the only ones who obsess on that. We don't and the real people out in the real world don't for the most part."

Lott went on to say he has difficulty understanding the motivations behind the violence in Iraq.

"It's hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what's wrong with these people," he said. "Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israeli's and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me."

Torture them all! Yahee!

Did Bush Pass on bin Laden Before 9/11?

What are we becomming?

Antiterrorism Bill on Detainees, Geneva Conventions

NYTs editorial board: Rushing Off a Cliff

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.
...
There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

International baby of mystery

Jacob

A not so sunni future

Most Iraqis Favor Immediate U.S. Pullout

Wapo article here.

Screwed

Dems: We Won't Let GOP 'Paint Us Into a Corner' On Torture, Wiretapping

Apparently the Dem's are not going to attempt to filibuster the lovely new torture bill. Perhaps I am a political neophyte and don't see the larger picture, but frankly not standing up against this type of unbelievably bad crap is why people think Dems are weak. Frankly they aren't worth my vote if they don't protest. It isn't hard to draw the line at torture. At least stand for your principles. Are you for or against torture, yes or no? Just stand up and say it!

Frankly, this is indicative of the dems not being able to come together to put forth a consistent platform - in particular an approach to Iraq that they can all stick to. They have jumped on issues as they have been politically expedient and Bush's tragic failures have made it easy going. But they won't win as much with an I'm not them in most things, but I still am tough on terror like them, only better I swear, approach. People are generally averse to risk and if they don't have a relatively clear idea what will happen they will be reluctant to change.

Home prices: 1st drop in 11 years

Sales slow, prices hit by second biggest year-over-year drop on record; surge of homes for sale seen keeping prices weak

Bye-bye Bolton

Bolton to not get confirmed as Ambassador to UN

Ambassador Bolton will fill his term as the only unconfirmed Ambassador at the United Nations in American history.

What an honor.

comment on fox interview

Donald Rumsfeld is not a competent wartime leader

Republican General: Rummy responsible for deaths, failure, Abu Ghraib, the leaning tower of Pisa...

Donald Rumsfeld is not a competent wartime leader. He knows everything, except "how to win." He surrounds himself with like-minded and compliant subordinates who do not grasp the importance of the principles of war, the complexities of Iraq, or the human dimension of warfare. Secretary Rumsfeld ignored 12 years of U.S. Central Command deliberate planning and strategy, dismissed honest dissent, and browbeat subordinates to build "his plan," which did not address the hard work to crush the insurgency, secure a post-Saddam Iraq, build the peace, and set Iraq up for self-reliance. He refused to acknowledge and even ignored the potential for the insurgency, which was an absolute certainty. Bottom line, his plan allowed the insurgency to take root and metastasize to where it is today. Our great military lost a critical window of opportunity to secure Iraq because of inadequate troop levels and capability required to impose security, crush a budding insurgency, and set the conditions for the rule of law in Iraq. We were undermanned from the beginning, lost an early opportunity to secure the country, and have yet to regain the initiative. To compensate for the shortage of troops, commanders are routinely forced to manage shortages and shift coalition and Iraqi security forces from one contentious area to another in places like Baghdad, An Najaf, Tal Afar, Samarra, Ramadi, Fallujah, and many others. This shifting of forces is generally successful in the short term, but the minute a mission is complete and troops are redeployed back to the region where they came from, insurgents reoccupy the vacuum and the cycle repeats itself. Troops returning to familiar territory find themselves fighting to reoccupy ground which was once secure. We are all witnessing this in Baghdad and the Al Anbar Province today. I am reminded of the myth of Sisyphus. This is no way to fight a counter-insurgency. Secretary Rumsfeld's plan did not set our military up for success.

There is much more... Watch the video

Our beautiful minds

Apparently can't handle the truth

Check out newsweeks covers across the world...

Al Franken

God Spoke - his new movie, out now.

Big surprise

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

Gee, didn't see that coming. But you can't have a never-ending war if you don't rile some people up.

bin Laden dead?

From typhoid? Not a confirmed report yet.

Lewis Black

unacceptable to think

Clinton-Wallace fireworks on Fox

Read the transcript

A bad bargain

Republican "Compromise" on torture bill

yes, lovely compromise, between republicans and republicans. All it does is
put the satus quo into law. Anyway, I think this is a great opportunity for Democrats. The republicans probably figured this was a great wedge issue - get the democrats to vote on it before the election and if they vote no say they are weak on terror. They need to not give into that. Stand firm - show that they are strong and have a position - namely no on torture. That shouldn't be so hard. Republicans want a torture bill, we say no to torture. They need to start yelling "rubberstamp" congress - this plays exactly into the do-nothing, weak-kneed republican congress that they have been harping on for a while.

This can be perfect for the dems. here's hoping.

Iraw: Two options

From the Iraq Study Group, "a bipartisan team headed by longtime Bush family friend James A. Baker III and former 9/11 Commission chair Lee Hamilton"

One plan would have America begin its exit from Iraq through a phased withdrawal similar to that proposed this spring by Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat of Pennsylvania and former Marine. Another would have America make a last push to internationalize the military occupation of Iraq and open a high-level dialogue with Syria and Iran to persuade them to end their state-sanctioned policy of aiding terrorists who are sabotaging the elected government in Baghdad.

Like this guy, I don't think that this will happen while Bush is president, not unless something extraordinary happens at the upcoming elections. I don't think a family intervention will set this guy straight.

IRAQ FOR SALE

The War Profiteers - the movie

Bloodless Coup in Thailand

The coup in Thailand looks like it could bring some closure to ongoing conflict in the south of that country and to the discontent felt over the ousted Prime Minister's behaviour. The coup's leader, General Sondhi, is a muslim and is known to promote a policy of negotiation, unlike the 'former'? Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, who has excacerbated tensions (see next blog entry) among muslims, bhuddists and christians in southern thailand. General Sondhi's stated:

"We agreed that the caretaker prime minister has caused an unprecedented rift in society, widespread corruption, nepotism and interfered in independent agencies, crippling them so they cannot function.

"They have also repeatedly insulted the king."

The King, although not party to the coup has supported General Sondhi's plans to place an interim government in power until the next general election in 2007. The King, highly revered and also a negotiator, is expected to bring all political parties to the table. We'll see now how Thaksin Shinawatra responds...

Although there may be positive consequences to the coup, Kofi Annan rightly stated that these methods cannot be endorsed and are simply a 'power grab'.

Neurotheology

Divining the brain

Its the parietal lobe!

We found that the Franciscan nuns activated several important parts of the brain during prayer. One part was the frontal lobe. I've been particularly interested in the frontal lobe because it tends to be activated whenever we focus our mind on something. This can be very mundane, like focusing on a problem we're trying to solve at work. Or it can be focusing on a phrase from the Bible, which was happening with the Franciscan nuns. They would focus their attention on a particular prayer of great meaning, and they'd begin to feel a lot of unusual experiences. They would lose their sense of self. They would feel absorbed into the prayer itself. They'd no longer see a distinction between who they are and the actual prayer process itself. Some people call it a feeling of connectedness or oneness.

Another part of the brain that changes in the prayer state is the parietal lobe. This is located toward the back top part of the head. The parietal lobe normally uses our sensory information to create a sense of our self and relates that self spatially to the rest of the world. So it's that part of our brain that enables us to get up out of our chair and walk out the door. We've hypothesized that when people meditate or pray -- if they block the sensory information that gets into that area -- they no longer get a sense of who they are in relation to the world. They may lose their sense of self, and they feel they become one with something greater -- ultimate reality or God.

The Rise & Fall of Imperial Democracies

Using fear and manifesting a threat

Just five years ago, southern Thailand was relatively peaceful. The army had only a limited presence in the region, and no one feared walking on the streets at night. Tourism flourished, and Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian religious leaders maintained close contacts. In fact, many political scientists cited southern Thailand as a model of how a government could successfully promote interfaith harmony and integrate a Muslim minority.

It's no surprise that the change is partially due to al Qaeda, whose networks have pressed to politicize and make more violent a growing Thai Islamism. But the ratcheting-up of the conflict also owes much to decisions made by the government itself. The leadership of the aggressive, autocratic, self-aggrandizing Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has exacerbated the insurgency problem. But though Thaksin's heavy-handed tactics—repressing independent voices in the media and bureaucracy in times of crisis, locking up members of Islamic opposition parties, and cracking down on institutions that gave the country's Muslim minorities a role in their own governance—seem like the work of a tyrant, they're not. When the most sweeping of the prime minister's actions came to light, the electorate endorsed them, returning Thaksin to office with huge majorities in Parliament.

In times of conflict, this is how even democracies tend to behave: Leaders consolidate executive power and punish dissension, while the electorate rewards them—at least initially—for such shows of strength. The war on terror has given cover to governments around the globe—from Italy and Russia to the Philippines and Thailand to even the United States—that have followed this pattern, becoming imperial democracies. But as the example of Thailand vividly shows, heavy-handed efforts in the name of taking on terror have succeeded only in making violent Islamism a more profound and urgent threat.

How bad is it to have leaders with latent authoritarian tendencies in power when there is a terrorism attack.

Military Coup in thailand

Emergency declared over 'military coup' in Thailand

Canadian Was Falsely Accused, Panel Says

After Tip From Ally, U.S. Sent Muslim to Syria for Questioning

They should really put scare quotes around the word questioning, unless questioning means beaten, forced to confess, and then shoved in a coffin sized dungeon for 10 months.

oops, I guess it was a mistake. Silly us!

Well what do I care, I am a white guy - won't happen to me...

Wow

Gore Calls For Immediate Freeze on C02 Emissions, Elimination of Payroll Taxes

What an idea. Speech here.

From the Washington

to the Beijing Consensus

While Bush administration officials like to blame the so-called Latin turn to the left on populist "thugs" and demagogues, an alternative explanation holds that the failure of Washington Consensus economic policies paved the way for the rise of leaders such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales. Latin America gave the Washington Consensus the good old college try: privatization, deregulation, trade liberalization, fiscal austerity... And what did it get? Higher poverty, higher unemployment and slower rates of growth than in the supposedly bad old import-substitution days. And in the case of Argentina, almost complete economic collapse.

It's the big story in developmental economics, the discrediting of the Washington Consensus and the subsequent search for a new path. And China is playing no small role in the aftermath: There's even a school of thought that China has a model of its own to offer the developing world: the "Beijing Consensus."

...

Ramo defines the Beijing Consensus as having three main parts:
1. A commitment to innovation and constant experimentation. There are no set rules carved in stone and handed down by the IMF to a Moses-like prophet that everyone must follow if they want to get to the promised gross domestic product. There is, instead, constant tinkering and constant change, and a recognition that different strategies are appropriate for different situations.
2. A rejection of per capita GDP as the be-all and end-all: sustainability and equality must also be part of the mix.
3. Self-determination.

Here's dreaming

Bush prepares emissions U-turn

Jesus camp

Documentary Shows Youths Training to Fight for Jesus

Frank Rich says

The Longer the War, the Larger the Lies

RARELY has a television network presented a more perfectly matched double feature. President Bush’s 9/11 address on Monday night interrupted ABC’s “Path to 9/11” so seamlessly that a single network disclaimer served them both: “For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression.”

No kidding: “The Path to 9/11” was false from the opening scene, when it put Mohamed Atta both in the wrong airport (Boston instead of Portland, Me.) and on the wrong airline (American instead of USAirways). It took Mr. Bush but a few paragraphs to warm up to his first fictionalization for dramatic purposes: his renewed pledge that “we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor or support them.” Only days earlier the White House sat idly by while our ally Pakistan surrendered to Islamic militants in its northwest frontier, signing a “truce” and releasing Al Qaeda prisoners. Not only will Pakistan continue to harbor terrorists, Osama bin Laden probably among them, but it will do so without a peep from Mr. Bush.

You’d think that after having been caught concocting the scenario that took the nation to war in Iraq, the White House would mind the facts now. But this administration understands our culture all too well. This is a country where a cable news network (MSNBC) offers in-depth journalism about one of its anchors (Tucker Carlson) losing a prime-time dance contest and where conspiracy nuts have created a cottage industry of books and DVD’s by arguing that hijacked jets did not cause 9/11 and that the 9/11 commission was a cover-up. (The fictionalized “Path to 9/11,” supposedly based on the commission’s report, only advanced the nuts’ case.) If you’re a White House stuck in a quagmire in an election year, what’s the percentage in starting to tell the truth now? It’s better to game the system.

The untruths are flying so fast that untangling them can be a full-time job. Maybe that’s why I am beginning to find Dick Cheney almost refreshing. As we saw on “Meet the Press” last Sunday, these days he helpfully signals when he’s about to lie. One dead giveaway is the word context, as in “the context in which I made that statement last year.” The vice president invoked “context” to try to explain away both his bogus predictions: that Americans would be greeted as liberators in Iraq and that the insurgency (some 15 months ago) was in its “last throes.”

The other instant tip-off to a Cheney lie is any variation on the phrase “I haven’t read the story.” He told Tim Russert he hadn’t read The Washington Post’s front-page report that the bin Laden trail had gone “stone cold” or the new Senate Intelligence Committee report(PDF) contradicting the White House’s prewar hype about nonexistent links between Al Qaeda and Saddam. Nor had he read a Times front-page article about his declining clout. Or the finding by Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency just before the war that there was “no evidence of resumed nuclear activities” in Iraq. “I haven’t looked at it; I’d have to go back and look at it again,” he said, however nonsensically.

These verbal tics are so consistent that they amount to truth in packaging — albeit the packaging of evasions and falsehoods. By contrast, Condi Rice’s fictions, also offered in bulk to television viewers to memorialize 9/11, are as knotty as a David Lynch screenplay. Asked by Chris Wallace of Fox News last Sunday if she and the president had ignored prewar “intelligence that contradicted your case,” she refused to give up the ghost: “We know that Zarqawi was running a poisons network in Iraq,” she insisted, as she continued to state again that “there were ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda” before the war.

Ms. Rice may be a terrific amateur concert pianist, but she’s an even better amateur actress. The Senate Intelligence Committee report released only two days before she spoke dismissed all such ties. Saddam, who “issued a general order that Iraq should not deal with Al Qaeda,” saw both bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as threats and tried to hunt down Zarqawi when he passed through Baghdad in 2002. As for that Zarqawi “poisons network,” the Pentagon knew where it was and wanted to attack it in June 2002. But as Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News reported more than two years ago, the White House said no, fearing a successful strike against Zarqawi might “undercut its case for going to war against Saddam.” Zarqawi, meanwhile, escaped.

It was in an interview with Ted Koppel for the Discovery Channel, though, that Ms. Rice rose to a whole new level of fictionalizing by wrapping a fresh layer of untruth around her most notorious previous fiction. Asked about her dire prewar warning that a smoking gun might come in the form of a mushroom cloud, she said that “it wasn’t meant as hyperbole.” She also rewrote history to imply that she had been talking broadly about the nexus between “terrorism and a nuclear device” back then, not specifically Saddam — a rather deft verbal sleight-of-hand.

Ms. Rice sets a high bar, but Mr. Bush, competitive as always, was not to be outdone in his Oval Office address. Even the billing of his appearance was fiction. “It’s not going to be a political speech,” Tony Snow announced, knowing full well that the 17-minute text was largely Cuisinarted scraps from other recent political speeches, including those at campaign fund-raisers. Moldy canards of yore (Saddam “was a clear threat”) were interspersed with promising newcomers: Iraq will be “a strong ally in the war on terror.” As is often the case, the president was technically truthful. Iraq will be a strong ally in the war on terror — just not necessarily our ally. As Mr. Bush spoke, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, was leaving for Iran to jolly up Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Perhaps the only way to strike back against this fresh deluge of fiction is to call the White House’s bluff. On Monday night, for instance, Mr. Bush flatly declared that “the safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.” He once again invoked Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, asking, “Do we have the confidence to do in the Middle East what our fathers and grandfathers accomplished in Europe and Asia?”

Rather than tune this bluster out, as the country now does, let’s try a thought experiment. Let’s pretend everything Mr. Bush said is actually true and then hold him to his word. If the safety of America really depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad, then our safety is in grave peril because we are losing that battle. The security crackdown announced with great fanfare by Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki in June is failing. Rosy American claims of dramatically falling murder rates are being challenged by the Baghdad morgue. Perhaps most tellingly, the Pentagon has nowstopped including in its own tally the large numbers of victims killed by car bombings and mortar attacks in sectarian warfare.

And that’s the good news. Another large slice of Iraq, Anbar Province (almost a third of the country), is slipping away so fast that a senior military official told NBC News last week that 50,000 to 60,000 additional ground forces were needed to secure it, despite our huge sacrifice in two savage battles for Falluja. The Iraqi troops “standing up” in Anbar are deserting at a rate as high as 40 percent.

“Even the most sanguine optimist cannot yet conclude we are winning,” John Lehman, the former Reagan Navy secretary, wrote of the Iraq war last month. So what do we do next? Given that the current course is a fiasco, and that the White House demonizes any plan or timetable for eventual withdrawal as “cut and run,” there’s only one immediate alternative: add more manpower, and fast. Last week two conservative war supporters, William Kristol and Rich Lowry, called for exactly that — “substantially more troops.” These pundits at least have the courage of Mr. Bush’s convictions. Shouldn’t Republicans in Congress as well?

After all, if what the president says is true about the stakes in Baghdad, it’s tantamount to treason if Bill Frist, Rick Santorum and John Boehner fail to rally their party’s Congressional majority to stave off defeat there. We can’t emulate our fathers and grandfathers and whip today’s Nazis and Communists with 145,000 troops. Roosevelt and Truman would have regarded those troop levels as defeatism.

The trouble, of course, is that we don’t have any more troops, and supporters of the war, starting with Mr. Bush, don’t want to ask American voters to make any sacrifices to provide them. They don’t want to ask because they know the voters will tell them no. In the end, that is the hard truth the White House is determined to obscure, at least until Election Day, by carpet-bombing America with still more fictions about Iraq.

Let's celebrate constitution day

with the right to torture

An Energy-Thrifty State

California, Taking Big Gamble, Tries to Curb Greenhouse Gases

[update] fixed the link above to the article

Of the 50 states, California is the lowest in eletricity use per capita (ok, it is moderat weather, so that helps a lot) and among the lowest in gas consumption per capita (even with LA).

The worst 10? All red states except for the District of Columbia, and they have to use a lot of energy to power Bush's brain.

Google.org

Philanthropy Google’s Way

Google starts up a for profit charity, google.org. There focuses include global poverty, energy, and the environment.

One of its maiden projects reflects the philanthropy’s nontraditional approach. According to people briefed on the program, the organization, called Google.org, plans to develop an ultra-fuel-efficient plug-in hybrid car engine that runs on ethanol, electricity and gasoline.

The philanthropy is consulting with hybrid-engine scientists and automakers, and has arranged for the purchase of a small fleet of cars with plans to convert the engines so that their gas mileage exceeds 100 miles per gallon. The goal of the project is to reduce dependence on oil while alleviating the effects of global warming.

Don't do evil, and do some good. Maybe the market will save us.

[update] Well, you take the good with the bad, looks like Google is ramping up its presence in D.C. by courting republicans.

Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers

The movie

check out a screening near you.

Bearded Men

Teacher won't shave until bin Laden caught

One more step to the security state

Air Force chief: Test weapons on testy U.S. mobs

Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

Olbermann’s Special Comment on Bush

Who has left this hole in the ground? We have not forgotten, Mr. President. You have. May this country forgive you.



Snap.

Best War Ever

Proof of Global Warming

From here

- Carolina

Meditation: Why Bother?

Mindfulness in Plain English, by Henepola Gunaratana

Meditation is not easy. It takes time and it takes energy. It also takes grit, determination and discipline. It requires a host of personal qualities which we normally regard as unpleasant and which we like to avoid whenever possible. We can sum it all up in the American word 'gumption'. Meditation takes 'gumption'. It is certainly a great deal easier just to kick back and watch television. So why bother? Why waste all that time and energy when you could be out enjoying yourself? Why bother? Simple. Because you are human. And just because of the simple fact that you are human, you find yourself heir to an inherent unsatisfactoriness in life which simply will not go away. You can suppress it from your awareness for a time. You can distract yourself for hours on end, but it always comes back--usually when you least expect it. All of a sudden, seemingly out of the blue, you sit up, take stock, and realize your actual situation in life.
...
You can't ever get everything you want. It is impossible. Luckily, there is another option. You can learn to control your mind, to step outside of this endless cycle of desire and aversion. You can learn to not want what you want, to recognize desires but not be controlled by them. This does not mean that you lie down on the road and invite everybody to walk all over you. It means that you continue to live a very normal-looking life, but live from a whole new viewpoint. You do the things that a person must do, but you are free from that obsessive, compulsive drivenness of your own desires. You want something, but you don't need to chase after it. You fear something, but you don't need to stand there quaking in your boots. This sort of mental culture is very difficult. It takes years. But trying to control everything is impossible, and the difficult is preferable to the impossible.

Its a good book, and it is online for free.

This is getting interesting

American Airlines to blame for 9/11, Disney/ABC movie falsely claims

Here's hoping they notice.

In and out, nobody gets hurt

was Rumsfeld's Iraq plan

'The secretary of defense continued to push on us ... that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave,' Scheid said. 'We won't stay.'

Scheid said the planners continued to try 'to write what was called Phase 4,' or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like occupation.

Even if the troops didn't stay, 'at least we have to plan for it,' Scheid said.

'I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that,' Scheid said. 'We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

'He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war.'

....'In his own mind he thought we could go in and fight and take out the regime and come out. But a lot of us planners were having a real hard time with it because we were also thinking we can't do this. Once you tear up a country you have to stay and rebuild it. It was very challenging.'

Good news

Bolton confirmation is dead

Pork Database Bill set to move to house

Coburn credited "the army of bloggers and concerned citizens" who pressured Congress for moving the bill forward.

The bill's made speedy progress since last week, when blogs and their readers smoked out the two anonymous Senators who were holding up the bill.

Transparency

Senate Passes Pork Database Bill

Lets talk about the anger

76% of voters angry

41% approval, 55% disaproval of Bush. Watch the video.

Looks like pressure on ABC might have worked

ABC Said to Re-Edit Key Parts of 9/11 Show

Under growing pressure from Democrats and aides to former President Bill Clinton, ABC is re-evaluating and in some cases re-editing crucial scenes in its new mini-series “The Path to 9/11” to soften its portrait of the Clinton administration’s pursuit of Osama bin Laden, according to people involved in the project.

Among the changes, ABC is altering one scene in which an actor playing Samuel R. Berger, the former national security adviser, abruptly hangs up on a C.I.A. officer during a critical moment in a military operation, according to Thomas H. Kean, a consultant on the ABC project and co-chairman of the federal Sept. 11 commission.

Mr. Berger has said that the scene is a fiction, and Mr. Kean, in an interview, said that he believed Mr. Berger was correct and that ABC was making appropriate changes.

The reassessment came as two Clinton aides mounted an unusual attack last night on the motives of Mr. Kean, a Republican and a former governor of New Jersey. In a letter to Mr. Kean, the two aides, Bruce R. Lindsey and Douglas Band, wrote that his defense of the mini-series “is destroying the bipartisan aura of the 9/11 Commission,” on whose findings the project is partly based. They asserted that Mr. Kean was driven by payments from ABC or his own partisan politics.

...

Mr. Kean said that two other parts of the film are also under review. One is a scene where an actress playing former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright is apparently obstructing efforts to capture Mr. bin Laden. The other part suggests that Mr. Clinton was too distracted by impeachment and his marital problems to fully focus on Mr. bin Laden.

Making shit up

FBI Agent Who Consulted On ABC's Path to 9/11 Quit Halfway Through Because ‘They Were Making Things Up’

ABC's load of crap

Officials of the Clinton administration have denounced an ABC-TV ``docudrama," slated to air Sunday and Monday, that they say includes made-up scenes depicting them as undermining attempts to kill Osama bin Laden.

Send a message to ABC

Get your fear on

Boo! Bush speech quoting bin Laden

I think I preferred it when he went on about the impending doom of social security.

Answer: looking for WMDs in Iraq

Question: What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA

Something makes me think Cheney didn't really want her to look too closely.

the sound of Cheney scheming

Just friggin great

Iranian President Wants to Purge Profs

I prefered the old realism where we tried to promote the moderates.

Where's the love?

Bin Laden gets a pass from Pakistan

Osama bin Laden, America's most wanted man, will not face capture in Pakistan if he agrees to lead a "peaceful life," Pakistani officials tell ABC News.

The surprising announcement comes as Pakistani army officials announced they were pulling their troops out of the North Waziristan region as part of a "peace deal" with the Taliban.

If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden "would not be taken into custody," Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, "as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen."

I guess this is what you get when the people you need to help, "simply don't like us".

Sun Tzu - The Art of War -

Audiobook

Download it and listen. I thought I'd shoot you an internet about how some nice guy put it on a truck and into the pipes.

Now why would that be?

Bush straight shootin with the facts

'The problem is we get oil from some parts of the world and they simply don't like us,' Bush said. 'And so the more dependent we are on that type of energy, the less likely it will be that we are able to compete, and so people have good, high-paying jobs.'

There really is no accounting for taste.

Just Another Political Compass

Take the quiz

I'm libertarian left:
Economic Left/Right: -5.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.95

A bit more libertarian and collectivist than Gandhi and the Dalai Lama. Almost, surprise surprise, the exact opposite of G.W.. Funny, I always think that I am more middle, but, not according to this quiz.

Culture wars and booty popping

Why 'booty popping' will do to Islamic fundamentalism what rock 'n' roll did to Stalinism

Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?

The myth of the omnipresent enemy

Summary: Despite all the ominous warnings of wily terrorists and imminent attacks, there has been neither a successful strike nor a close call in the United States since 9/11. The reasonable -- but rarely heard -- explanation is that there are no terrorists within the United States, and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad.

Seem farfetched? Follow the logic:

... Americans are told -- often by the same people who had once predicted imminent attacks -- that the absence of international terrorist strikes in the United States is owed to the protective measures so hastily and expensively put in place after 9/11. But there is a problem with this argument. True, there have been no terrorist incidents in the United States in the last five years. But nor were there any in the five years before the 9/11 attacks, at a time when the United States was doing much less to protect itself. It would take only one or two guys with a gun or an explosive to terrorize vast numbers of people, as the sniper attacks around Washington, D.C., demonstrated in 2002. Accordingly, the government's protective measures would have to be nearly perfect to thwart all such plans. Given the monumental imperfection of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, and the debacle of FBI and National Security Agency programs to upgrade their computers to better coordinate intelligence information, that explanation seems far-fetched. Moreover, Israel still experiences terrorism even with a far more extensive security apparatus.
...
Another popular explanation for the fact that there have been no more attacks asserts that the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, although it never managed to snag bin Laden, severely disrupted al Qaeda and its operations. But this claim is similarly unconvincing. The 2004 train bombings in Madrid were carried out by a tiny group of men who had never been to Afghanistan, much less to any of al Qaeda's training camps. They pulled off a coordinated nonsuicidal attack with 13 remote-controlled bombs, ten of which went off on schedule, killing 191 and injuring more than 1,800. The experience with that attack, as well as with the London bombings of 2005, suggests that, as the former U.S. counterterrorism officials Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon have noted, for a terrorist attack to succeed, "all that is necessary are the most portable, least detectable tools of the terrorist trade: ideas."

The money says

Dems to win House and GOP to hold the Senate

'Deluded': Extraordinary attack on Blair by Cabinet

Senior ministers to confront Blair to hasten his departure

Tony Blair will be served notice to quit Downing Street at a meeting of the Cabinet next week when senior ministers plan to confront him over his refusal to commit to a departure timetable.

One described Mr Blair this weekend as 'deluded', while another said he was being 'self-indulgent'. They are among a growing number of cabinet ministers, some formerly loyal to Mr Blair, who have concluded he must leave office sooner rather than later if Labour is to have a chance of winning a fourth term.

'This pantomime has to end or we are going to lose the next election,' said one last night.

The new CBC

Corrupt Bastards Club