McClellan on Bush's mistaken Iraq assumptions: "You've got to be flexible."

Carla at Preemptive Karma greets the dawn with previously unreleased bits of the January 31, 2003 memo outlining the private arrangement by Bush and Blair to attack Iraq--UN support or not, WMD or not--as they did, some two months later. She gives the whole deal six well-chosen words: "No morals. No scruples. No decency."

Aaah--but who needs morals, scruples, or decency when you've got Scottie "Flopsweat" McClellan on point? From this morning's press briefing, here's ol' Flopsweat facing Helen Thomas (the transcript occasionally, and inexplicably, attributes McClellan's remarks to "THE PRESIDENT," but don't panic--as far as we know, Cheney's still the real president):

MR. McCLELLAN [. . . ] Helen, go ahead.

Q In a follow up for -- from this morning's briefing, I said that the President was aware in the run-up to the war that there were no weapons -- no weapons -- unconventional weapons had been found, and you sort of denied that it was in the memo.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, this morning you said that the President was aware there were no weapons of mass destruction. And that is not what that article spelled out.

Q This is what it -- the memo says: The President and Prime Minister acknowledge that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq in the run-up to the war.

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, let me remind you and take you back to that time period, because there was a U.N. weapons inspection team that was looking at these issues. And that team put out I think some sort of interim report back in December of '02, and that report showed that the regime was not coming clean. And we said at that time that the regime was continuing its pattern of non-cooperation and that if they continued --

Q They also said they didn't find any weapons.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- if they continued down that path, then we were prepared to use force. The President pursued a diplomatic solution. That's why we went to the United Nations. That's why we passed a 17th resolution that called on the regime to disclose or face serious consequences.

Q The memo says he wanted a war, basically that he was determined, and there were no weapons found.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, Helen, that's not an accurate assessment, and you know it. Because you covered --

Q Is this memo wrong?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, you covered us at that time period. And let me remind you, go back to that time period, look at the public comments that were made, look at the numerous statements that were made by the President of the United States. We were continuing to pursue a diplomatic solution, but we recognized that it was necessary to prepare and plan accordingly in the event we would need to use force, and that's what we were doing at that time, as well.

But Saddam Hussein was given every opportunity to comply, and he continued to defy the international community -- even when he was given one final opportunity, or face serious consequences. So let's not rewrite history. It was very clear what was going on at the time.

Q Is this memo correct?

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't -- I haven't seen that memo, Helen.

Q You haven't seen The New York Times' memo?

MR. McCLELLAN: I've seen The New York Times.

Q Well, let me just follow on that. There's nothing in there that suggests that this is not an accurate reflection of a conversation that the President had with Prime Minister Blair, right?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think that our public and private comments are fully consistent.

Q And therefore the guts of this appears to be accurate?

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know what you're talking about "guts" of. Let's be specific in what we're talking about.

Q Well, comments made about the inevitability of war, the President's feeling about that at one --

THE PRESIDENT: Well, the President was making numerous public comments at the time, David. You covered those comments. The use of force was a last option, but we recognized that it was necessary --

Q It was his mind frame, though.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- to prepare and plan, and that's what we were doing at the time. And if you go and look at the public comments at the time, going back to late in the fall and winter period of 2002, on into 2003, we were making it very clear what the regime needed to do. And if it didn't do it, we were prepared to enforce the Security Council Resolution 1441, which called for serious consequences.

Q It didn't call for going to war.

Q Let me ask you a more fundamental question. The President -- according to this report of this memo -- said to Prime Minister Blair that he didn't expect that there would be any sectarian violence. That's obviously proven -- he was disproven. That is, in fact, the case that there is sectarian violence. Some worry about the prospects of civil war.

My question, though, is the President's judgments, this administration's judgments about the war that did not come to pass, that created a credibility problem with the American people with regard to how they view this war, does that not hurt the President when he now says, we need patience and we have to persevere?

MR. McCLELLAN: First of all, you made a very long statement there, and I'm not accepting the premise of the beginning of your question that that's an accurate reflection of things. We've talked about what we anticipated and what we didn't anticipate and what we prepared for.

And I think credibility is about doing what you say you're going to do. We did what we said we were going to do. Tyrants around the world know that we mean what we say, because we followed through on the resolution that was passed at the Security Council and held Saddam Hussein's regime to account. And he has been removed from power. The world is better off because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.

We are working to transform a troubled region of the world, and that goes directly to our own security. The Middle East has been a breeding ground for terrorism. We had a false sense of stability because of previous foreign policies of previous administrations. This President made the decision after September 11th that we were going to take a comprehensive approach to the war on terrorism, and that we were going to work to spread freedom.

Q You're getting off point.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, it's very much on point.

Q Well, if I was too long-winded, let me just -- let me just be more precise.

MR. McCLELLAN: Sure.

Q The President assumed incorrectly, hindsight tells us, that there would not be sectarian violence after the invasion. Is that correct?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, there were certain things that we anticipated, and certain things that we didn't anticipate. The President has talked publicly about what some of those were. And we've also worked to adapt and adjust to circumstances on the ground. Any time you're engaged in a war -- and the President talked about this issue last week -- things aren't going to go necessarily according to the plans. You've got to be flexible, you've got to be able to adapt and adjust to the circumstances on the ground. And that's exactly what we have done.

We know that the terrorists have made this the central front in the war on terrorism. They want to spread sectarian violence and create civil war. But the Iraqi political leaders and Iraqi religious leaders have come together, and they said, we need to move forward, we need to continue to move forward on forming a government that represents all Iraqis. The Iraqi army has held together. They have shown that they can perform well and help restore calm and restraint. And that's important, too. Now, there are certain areas where they didn't. But I think you have to look at the full picture. And just to make comments like that doesn't take a look at the full picture.

Jim, go ahead.

Let's start with the merely statistical: Of the five specific "yes-or-no" questions that Thomas directed to McClellan, not one received a direct answer--let alone a "yes" or a "no." (You could count his bold statement "I've read the New York Times" as a fairly straightforward affirmative answer, but that hardly helps his reputation for forthrightness.) Also, as a general rule, the shorter and more direct Thomas's questions, the longer and more evasive McClellan's responses.

Most of McClellan's replies ("answers," as you can see, would be overstating it) were threadbare bits from earlier Downing Street Memo press conferences: "uncertainties of war," "look at the full picture," "September 11th," failures of "previous foreign policies of previous administrations" --and, of course, the ever-popular "Jim, go ahead."

That last one's Scottie's favorite.

Hu's on first

News item from China Daily:

On bus-stop billboards, newspaper front pages and television news broadcasts, in school classrooms, factory study groups and student counseling sessions, at forums and meetings all across China, the Communist Party propaganda apparatus has been spreading the word from President Hu Jintao: Do good and avoid evil.

Hu's fatherly advice, in the form of eight do's and don'ts, was issued two weeks ago as an antidote to the corruption and cynicism spreading across China, a result of the often raw capitalism that has emerged during 25 years of dramatic economic change. Although his aphorisms may sound simplistic to Western ears -- "Work hard, don't be lazy" and "Be honest, not profit-mongering" -- Chinese analysts said they are a response to a deep-seated desire among people here for a moral compass to guide them through the unsettling transformation.

Hm. Problems with corruption, cynicism, and the adverse effects of unchecked capitalism . . . ? Perhaps China doesn't need a list of do's and don'ts; maybe all it needs is for our own Great Leader to trot out one of his Speeches of the Eternal Campaign for them.

Here's the list, as promulgated by Hu:

1. Love, do not harm the motherland.


2. Serve, don't disserve the people.


3. Uphold science; don't be ignorant and unenlightened.


4. Work hard; don't be lazy and hate work.


5. Be united and help each other; don't gain benefits at the expense of others.


6. Be honest and trustworthy, not profit-mongering at the expense of your values.


7. Be disciplined and law-abiding instead of chaotic and lawless.


8. Know plain living and hard struggle, do not wallow in luxuries and pleasures.

Actually--rather than sending Bush over there--it could probably only work to everyone's benefit if Bush and the GOP leadership pasted some of these items in their hats back here at home.

Specter: Special p3 cave-in countdown

(Update: Congressional Republicans hate and fear Feingold's censure motion; Congressional Democrats merely fear it; but Democratic voters--remember them?--think it's a pretty good idea.)

The official countdown clock is started:

The Senate Judiciary Committee has set a hearing for next Friday on the call by Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, to censure President Bush for his approval of a program to allow electronic eavesdropping without warrants.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the panel, said he had decided to schedule the session after Mr. Feingold, in a television interview, pressed for hearings on the censure proposal.

This is Part 1 of Specter's trademark two-part M.O.: First he makes some handwringing public statement indicating his concern that this time the Bush administration has gone too far. That the American people won't stand for it. That he's going to get to the bottom of it. That, if they think they can just run roughshod over our constitution and the people, they've got another think coming.

Here's Specter's lock-and-load moment from the censure debate:

"They want to do just as they please, for as long as they can get away with it,'' Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said in an interview with The Associated Press. ''I think what is going on now without congressional intervention or judicial intervention is just plain wrong.''

Specter was one of the first Republicans to publicly question the National Security Agency's authority to monitor international calls -- when one party is inside the United States -- without first getting court approval.

(Remember that it was Bush's flouting of the Fourth Amendment and FISA law--and the resolute refusal of the GOP-controlled Congress to exercise its proper oversight function in the matter--that prompted Feingold to introduce the censure motion in the first place.)

Then, in Part 2, Specter collapses like a wet taco and not only allows Bush to get whatever he wants, he uses his position as Judiciary chair to abet it.

Part 2 will come next Friday, when Feingold's censure moment is killed in the Judiciary Committee, in some procedurally nasty fashion.

And that's the thing--here's what will make it a uniquely Specter-rific moment: Specter won't just sit back passively and let it die in the predictable party-line vote. He'll find some way to use his power as committee chair to hand the motion an anvil as it goes over the cliff. Perhaps he will rule all discussion by the Democratic committee members out of order. Perhaps he will simply require that all questions or statements by Democrats must be in pig-Latin, or maybe Esperanto. Perhaps he'll invoke some little-known Senate rule requiring that votes for censure must be written in blood from the still-beating hearts of supporters on the committee.

No one has established precisely why he does this. After all, he certainly doesn't have to go to the bother of all that Capraesque foot-stamping; he could simply fall in line enthusiastically with the worst of the Bush administration's tendencies from the start like, say, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, Specter's GOP counterpart on the House Judiciary Committee. Not for Sensenbrenner the wasted motion of feigning bipartisan sympathy.

Perhaps Specter is simply that cynical. It could be.

Or it could be that he genuinely means to do the right thing, but then Karl Rove messengers over to Specter a package--perhaps containing the severed finger of a loved one, or maybe photos of Specter playing bocce with Satan. And a beaten, cowed Specter slinks back inside the fence, secretly hoping that next time--next time!--will be his chance to see justice done.

Either way, it doesn't make much difference. Friday will come and Specter will not only oversee the defeat of the censure motion in committee like the loyal Republican button man that he is; he'll add some gratuitous shiv-in-the-back that will be all his own.

Think I'm wrong? This is Specter, looking ahead to Friday's hearing:

Mr. Specter said his intent was not to use the session as a political forum but to explore issues surrounding the proposed censure. He said he believed the proposal was baseless.

"I am prepared to deal with it," Mr. Specter said. "I am sure not going to sit back and have Feingold spout off."

(Handy decoding hint: When a Republican vows "not to use the session as a political forum," it means "the session will be exclusively for the purpose of saving our partisan political hides.")

The clock is running.

(Update: And while Specter postures and plots, Bush continues his extra-constitutional power grab--you know, the one Specter says is "plain wrong.")

Scrubbed, shaved, plucked, and waxed

There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.

- Jean Cocteau

It's not often that the Fashion section of the NYTimes notices anything remotely connected to my personal appearance. Rarer still--rarer by far--that it it identifies something about me as the "next big thing" in fashion. In fact, about the only thing more unlikely than that is when the Times' Fashion section declares that I have, in fact, been ahead of the style curve for over 25 years.

But that is indeed the situation we face--I choose the verb with some care--at the moment.

Trend spotters, style mavens, fashion forecasters, and focus-groupies have identified the full beard--the Times goes so far as to use descriptors like "bushy" and even "scraggly"--as the next hot look for men.

"This is some sort of reaction to men who look scrubbed, shaved, plucked and waxed," said the designer Bryan Bradley, who stepped onto the runway after his Tuleh presentation looking like a renegade from the John Bartlett show, at which more than half the models wore beards: untidy ones that scaled a spectrum from wiry to ratty to shabby to fully bushy.

"It's less 'little boy,' " Mr. Bradley said. "For a while men have looked too much like Boy Scouts going off to day camp."

Scrubbed, shaved, plucked and waxed--four adjectives that emcees have never had to dip into their thesauri for as they called me up to the podium. I have the same beard I started a couple of decades before "metrosexual" was named the 2003 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society. It was pretty cheesy then, and the only reason I'm willing to call it "scraggly" now is because the Times apparently would, too.

I've had several opportunities--and many more invitations--to shave it off, but at this point I'm one of the few people left who know what I look like without it. Believe me, America--we're all better off this way.

The Times article mentions Ulysses S. Grant's beard as the sort of thing with-it men are shooting for now. It also offers up a photo of George Clooney with a full beard--grey-streaked and well trimmed, in "Syriana"--as the exemplar of the new look. Exactly the comparison I was going for.

(Postscript: The story has apparently become quite the hot topic at Free Republic, which makes me wonder if maybe I need to rethink this whole thing after all.)

Bush, prophecy, and the apocalypse

(Now if that isn't an arresting title, I give up.)

I've got a post up over at Preemptive Karma (I still just love that name--wish I'd thought of it) about the incident in Cleveland earlier in the week, when an audience member asked Bush if he thought that Christian apocalyptic prophecy was showing itself with terrorism and the Middle East.

The answer was garbled--even by Bush's rather low standards for public discourse--and yet it managed to be revealing. Check it out.

Cave troll

Sen. Arlen Specter wants you to know he is shocked--shocked!--to discover that Bush administration continues to engage in warrentless domestic spying:

"They want to do just as they please, for as long as they can get away with it," Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I think what is going on now without congressional intervention or judicial intervention is just plain wrong."

This might be newsworthy on its merits--a top Senate Republican calling the President out on extraconstitutional actions--except for two things:

First, Bush has long made clear that he does not consider himself or his administration bound by any law that Congress might happen to pass anyway, including Constitutional protections against warrentless invasions of privacy.

Second, Specter, as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee (although a chair without a backbone is really more of a stool) refuses--out of political cowardice or misplaced loyalty, you decide--to provide exactly the congressional intervention whose absence he bemoans, since he's prevented the Judiciary Committee from properly investigating Bush's domestic spying program. Most recently, he blocked attempts by Committee Democrats last month to require Attorney General Gonzales to be placed under oath before giving his testimony on the subject.

This pattern by Specter--public handwringing for the health of the republic followed by craven obeisance to the Bush ideological agenda once the gavel bangs down--has become so familiar it's surprising the AP covers it as news anymore.

No shortage of opportunities

You won't read about it in the Oregonian, but a local company made the news in connection with the NCAA tournament. From Think Progress:

Eleven of the men’s college basketball teams that have advanced to the Sweet Sixteen fail to meet the NCAA’s minimum academic standards. Eight of those teams are sponsored by Nike, who will profit as players sport their logo on national television.

Through our Graduation Madness campaign, ThinkProgress readers have sent thousands of emails to Nike demanding they take action to help ensure more college basketball players graduate. Thanks to your efforts, Nike has responded. [. . . ]

[W]e are also aware of the diligent efforts made by all the NCAA-governed institutions to raise the graduation rate among student-athletes at their schools. We believe that school administrators and team coaches have made this issue a priority within their ranks, and are actively implementing programs that address this concern. [. . . ]

Translation: everything is going fine and we don’t plan on doing anything.

But while the Big O didn't devote any ink to Nike's indifference to graduation rates for the athletes wearing the Swoosh, this item found its way to a prominent position in the business section:

Nike's third-quarter profits surged 19.2 percent over the same period last year, the company said Tuesday, easily topping analysts' expectations as sales for sneakers in the United States and Asia helped fuel growth for the world's largest athletic footwear manufacturer. [. . . ]

"Nike has no shortage of opportunities," said Nike chief executive Mark Parker in his first earnings conference call since succeeding CEO Bill Perez in January. "Prioritizing those opportunities with the strongest potential for growth is a primary focus."

Blogroll update

Actually, I've got several items to move in or out--mostly in--but let's deal with these three now.

First of all, Marshall Wittman is out. Not just out of the p3 Time Out Box--I'm talking out completely. Out with extreme prejudice. The Bull Moose has left the building. Long overdue, frankly.

Second, Wonkette! hasn't had the actual Wonkette writing there in a couple of months. The left-behinders can't cut it. Gone.

And on the plus side: Newly relocated PDX DL member Misty of expostulation (and Shakespeare's Sister) is hereby added to the list:

Blog: expostulation

Turf: Tricky question. Here are her index categories, in order: politics, life, religion, news of the weird, misc., BBA PSA, blog gourmet, Inherit the Dumbassery. Draw your own conclusions.

Recent post: Hey, Senator--Here's Your Ass

Bush: Easier to take in the age of DVRs

The Daily Show seems to be on a major roll this week. (Update: Jane at FDL has the early review on tonight's episode. It's still 45 minutes in the future where I am.)

Last night was one of the funniest, most dead-on opening reports that Stewart's done in weeks--since before the Oscars, I'd say. Beginning with coverage of the pseudo-event* of Bush giving another one of his still-in-campaign-mode speeches about Iraq, Stewart asks the obvious question: Given that Bush is given the same speech over and over, regardless of what's going on in Reality Land, do we really need to bother listening to the new ones as if they're anything more than the old ones recycled?

And he provides the obvious answer: No, in the age of TiVo, we really don't. What follows is the Ultimate Generic Bush Iraq Speech, stitched together word-by-word from all the previous indistinguishable speeches. Priceless. Next time you hear that Bush has an Iraq speech scheduled, just replay this clip and then get on with things that really matter in your life. Laundry, perhaps.

The indispensable Crooks & Liars has it in Windows and QuickTime formats. (Update: Broken C&L link fixed. Sorry.)

(*Hats off to Randi Rhodes, by the way, for pointing out that Bush gives these creampuff speeches in the afternoon, when no one will be watching, simply so that the fact of their occurrence will be reported on--and a few sound bites thrashed about second-hand--by the cable pundits in the evening.)

But last night's show may pale to insignificance in comparison to tonight's show: The guest is the bane of the Democratic professional election losers inside the Beltway, and the darling of the rank and file, Senator Russ "Safe, Shmafe--Let's Censure Him" Feingold.

Must see tee-vee.

Walls and fences

My earlier note about "free trade" and education was a little bit of a rarity around here at p3, since macroeconomics isn't really my thing. I've always been more of a First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment kind of guy.

But as long as we're on the subject, and looking ahead to one of the likely GOP diversionary issues for 2006 and 2008, here's something Shawn passed along:

When Bush and Fox sit down with new Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Cancún on March 30, all three leaders will pretend that relations are better than they are. They will note "progress" toward the goals of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, signed last year in Texas, even though it is a timid, paper-shuffling exercise that measures success by the number of bureaucratic meetings.

What they should do is think far more boldly. The only way to solve the most pressing problems in the region—including immigration, security, and declining competitiveness—is to create a true North American Community. No two nations are more important to the United States than Canada and Mexico, and no investment will bolster security and yield greater economic benefits for America than one that narrows the income gap between Mexico and its North American partners.

Bridging that gap was supposed to be one of the many benefits that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would deliver. And indeed, since NAFTA took effect in 1994, trade and investment among the United States, Mexico and Canada have nearly tripled, making North America the world's largest free-trade area in terms of territory and gross domestic product (GDP). Yet the income gap has widened: the annual per capita GDP of the United States ($43,883) today is more than six times that of Mexico ($6,937).

Shawn added this:

I've been talking about this with lots of people lately. Most of the Mexican folk I know say that if they could make more money in Mexico--not a lot more just enough to live a little more comfortably and provide for their families a little better--that they would much rather stay home. It's a positive way to start changing the situation for a long term solution rather than walls and fences that won't change a thing...really.

The Great Education Myth

A couple of weeks ago, Paul Krugman laid out the numbers showing that the widening earnings gap in the last three decades was produced by the increased concentration of wealth and power in America--not by education, whose power to raise earnings has, contrary to popular myth, flatlined during that period.

David Sirota takes it to the next level, pointing out that those two hotbeds of class war and worker unrest--Fortune Magazine and the Federal Reserve--have demonstrated why college educated workers in the "knowledge business" are at greatest economic risk from so-called "free trade" policies: because their work, unlike, say, construction, is most easily outsourced to low-wage countries in Asia.

Sirota brings it home:

America's sell-out "free" trade policy is now not just a problem for manufacturing workers - its a problem for information-sector workers. This trade policy, in the name of larger and larger corporate profits going to smaller and smaller numbers of people, is now undermining the value of education. And now matter how many pundits, politicians or elites say the word "education" over and over again, the data shows they are pushing a myth.

In the American mythos, education has been the egalitarian ladder that will allow anyone to get ahead. "Free trade" fetishists are pulling that ladder up behind them, and don't really care about the consequences.

Wait for it . . . wait for it . . . aaah!

Spring officially arrived a few minutes ago, at 10:26am PST. This gratifying event was first reported by Mrs. Dorothy Stetson of Freeport, Long Island, who promptly telephoned the Mayor.

The Society for Affirming the End of the World at once went into a special session and postponed the arrival of that event for TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.

All honor to Mrs. Stetson for her public spirit.

The PDX peace rally: One message

I've been snarking the Oregonian lately, but I like the look of their initial take on the peace rally downtown this afternoon:

Anti-war demonstrators gathered in Tom McCall Waterfront Park Sunday afternoon with a single message: Vote pro-war politicians out of office.

Kudos to the rally organizers for getting the right message out there, untrampled and undiluted, and to the Oregonian for getting the message. This is one of the most comforting things I've seen in a good long while.

By comparison, KOIN-TV's 6 o'clock report chose to hang the story on the standard GOP "rallying for peace versus supporting the troops" frame--as if concern for the troops wasn't motivating the people marching at Waterfront Park today. And after listening to KOIN go on admit that there were no counter-demonstrators--but in the interest of saphead objectivity they assured their viewers that the hypothetical counter-demonstrators (who didn't show) nevertheless held their beliefs "just as passionately" as the 10,000+ actual people who showed up to oppose the war--it was nice to see the O treatment on the rally acknowledging that, for one afternoon at least, this really was a story with pretty much only one side.

And as long as I'm making nice, the Oregonian had a powerful front-page story today about the grim effect that the war is having on some military families, even after the ones who serve return home. (In case you find this link after the Oregonian has archived the story, a big chunk of it is excerpted at The News Blog.)

Memories can be beautiful--and yet

FAIR takes the occasion of the third anniversary of our very first corner in Iraq to catalog some of the many pundits who got it wrong--smugly, willfully, gleefully, myopically, pedantically, or cluelessly, but always wrong--from Day One.

You can pick your favorites; here are a few of mine:

"We're all neo-cons now."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated so far.... The final word on this is, hooray."
(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)

"Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?"
(Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)

(This item has been sitting in my To Do file for a couple of days; thanks to The Skirt for the nudge.)

Match wits with the Oregonian's headline writer

For each of these three stories from Section 1 of today's paper, I'll give you the lead paragraphs, and you guess which headline appeared over the story.

1. Here's the lead:

Three years ago, as they ordered more than 150,000 U.S. troops to race toward Baghdad, Bush administration officials predicted that Iraq quickly would evolve into a prosperous, oil-fueled democracy.

Now, as the conflict enters its fourth year, the Bush administration faces a new challenge: the prospect of civil war in Iraq. And, in response, officials appear to be re-defining success downward again.

What was the headline?

A. Bush administration's war policy discredited
B. Whatever defines 'success' in Iraq, it's still elusive

2. Here's the lead:

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, U.S. soldiers made one of the Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.

In the windowless room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball, according to documents and people interviewed by The New York Times. The Soldiers' intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.

What was the headline?

A. U.S. troops reuse Saddam's torture facilities for same purpose
B. Zeal of elite forces led to abuse of detainees

3. Here's the lead:

A top Senate Democrat said Sunday that President Bush should be held responsible if he violated the law in authorizing the domestic spy program.

But Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said it is too early to tell if either censure or impeachment of Bush would be appropriate.

What was the headline?

A. Durbin: Bush should be held responsible if he violated law
B. Durbin: Bush censuring may be premature

(Answers in the Comments section.)

War: Good news and bad news on the home front

Good news: Portland's US Rep, Earl Blumenauer, introduced legislation on Thursday to force the "immediate withdrawal of 46,000 National Guard and Reserve forces as part of a plan to reduce U.S. responsibility in Iraq," according to the Oregonian.

Bad news: Blumenauer may have been far more accurate--depressingly more accurate--than he intended to be, in this quote which the Big O helpfully pulled from the end of their article and placed above the headline on page 1 of the print edition this morning:

I think the informal peace movement is as powerful as anything that is organized.

Saturday morning toons

Oliphant nicely captures the innocent wonder of being president.

Tribute to St. Patrick

Two years ago this May, the unstoppable Gary and I toured western Ireland by bicycle. On the last day of the Ireland leg of the trip, we climbed Croaghpatrick, the holy mountain where St. Patrick spent forty days in retreat.

Here's the view from about three-quarters of the way up.

On peace rallies, including the one coming up this weekend in PDX

The Portland Peaceful Response Coalition is sponsoring a peace rally this Sunday, on the third anniversary of the US attack on Iraq, at Waterfront Park.

The topic has come up several times in conversation this week, including at our semimonthly Drinking Liberally get-together, and in another phone call this evening with a genuinely-pissed-with-the-
Democrats-even-more-than-with-the-Republicans-these-days
friend.

The recurring question seems to be: What's the point of a rally--even a big one?

I sympathize to some extent--they're certainly not much use if what you specifically want is to capture the attention of Big Media or the Democratic Party's national brain trust. But I'm still not giving up on the concept, or the practice, of the Big Honking Rally.

I wrote about this last fall after a spate of peace vigils around the country during the Cindy Sheehan vigil in near Bush's Crawford TX vacation retreat (both her vigil and, eventually, his vacation were interrupted by Hurricane Katrina, as you may recall). In exchange for not dragging you through the full argument here, I invite you to go read it there.

But I just . . . can't . . . resist--so here's a little excerpt to get you started:

Observers of middle eastern politics talk about the gap between the political elites and popular opinion by referring to "the Arab street." Juan Cole asks about the "American street:"

Critics of the [DC anti-war] event derided it as a carnival, but what popular movement in history has not been Rabelaisian? Crowds and their performers clown and mug, ridicule the sacred and celebrate the deity all at once. Carnivals of protest create their own bubble of consciousness, in which the unspeakable can finally be shouted, the powerful parodied, and the status quo turned upside down.

Here's a point that many Professional Pundits and Beltway Insiders should paste in their hats: Most Americans aren't Professional Pundits and Beltway Insiders.

For most Americans, political participation comes somewhere after making the mortgage payment and looking after the family. They relate to the media not as "content providers," but as consumers--which means that the media aren't a vehicle for them to network and shape opinions, but rather an experience that often leaves them feeling more helpless and alienated than they were before.

So when a rally comes along that lets them shake a little Rabelaisian booty, they may well take it for what it's worth. And the carnal/carnival aspect of rallies, marches, vigils, boycots, sit-ins, etc. allows people to put their individual bodies out there among other bodies--an ancient strength of public demonstrations that never needed television or blogs to exert itself.

So my advice to you is this: If you're undecided, go for it--get your body down to Waterfront Park (or wherever you are) on Sunday and get Jeffersonian/Rabelaisian on their ass.

"Even his commas and semi-colons had a way of dancing up and down"

Here's another of my favorite scenes from John Fante's Ask the Dust:

There was a letter from Hackmuth in my box. I knew it was from him. I could tell a Hackmuth letter a mile away. I could feel a Hackmuth letter, and it felt like an icicle sliding down my spine. Mrs. Hargraves handed the letter to me. I grabbed it out of her hand.

"Good news?" she said, because I owed her so much rent. "You never can tell," I said. "But it's from a great man. He could send blank pages, and it would be good news to me."

But I knew it wasn’t good news in the sense that Mrs. Hargraves meant it, for I hadn't sent mighty Hackmuth a story. This was merely the answer to my long letter of a few days ago. He was very prompt, that Hackmuth. He dazzled you with his speed. You no sooner dropped a letter in the mail box down on the corner, and when you got back to the hotel, there was his answer. Ah, me, but his letters were so brief. A forty page letter, and he replied in one small paragraph. But that was fine its its way, because his replies were easier to memorize and know by heart. He had a way, that Hackmuth: he had a style; he had so much to give, even his commas and semi-colons had a way of dancing up and down. I used to tear the stamps off his envelopes, peel them off gently, to see what was under them.

I sat on the bed and opened the letter. It was another brief message, no more than fifty words. It said:

Dear Mr. Bandini,

With your permission I shall remove the salutation and ending of your long letter and print it as a short story for my magazine. It seems to me you have done a fine job here. I think "The Long Lost Hills" would serve as an excellent title. My check is inclosed.

Sincerely yours,
J. C. Hackmuth

The letter slipped from my fingers and zigzagged to the floor. I stood up and looked in the mirror. My mouth was wide open. I walked to Hackmuth's picture on the opposite wall and put my fingers on the firm face that looked out at me. I picked the letter up and read it again. I opened the window, climbed out, and lay on the bright hillside grass. My fingers clawed the grass. I rolled upon my stomach, sank my mouth into the earth, and pulled the grass roots with my teeth. Then I started to cry. Oh God, Hackmuth! How can you be such a wonderful man? How is it possible? I climbed back to my room and found the check inside the envelope. It was $175. I was a rich man once more. $175! Arturo Bandini, author of The Little Dog Laughed and The Long Lost Hills.

I stood before the mirror once more, shaking my fist defiantly. Here I am, folks. Take a look at the great writer! Notice my eyes, folks. The eyes of a great writer. Notice my jaw, folks. The jaw of a great writer. Look at those hands, folks. The hands that created The Little Dog Laughed and The Long Lost Hills. I pointed my index finger savagely. And as for you, Camilla Lopez, I want to see you tonight. I want to talk to you, Camilla Lopez, and I warn you, Camilla Lopez, remember that you stand before none other than Arturo Bandini, the writer. Remember that, if you please.

Thanks to Jon who first got me reading Fante's novels some 20 years ago.

Serious numbers

I'll just come out and admit it; today was my birthday (past tense is probably correct, since on the east coast it already isn't my birthday again).

I won't go into details; we'll just say that it's a prime number this year. A prime number, I would have you notice, is divisible only by itself or one--that is to say, by itself or oneself, or by itself or me; I think you can draw your own conclusions about what that might mean.

In any case, as I look ahead at the next year, a vast expanse that is already spreading out in front of me like the great Bonneville Salt Flats, I am reminded of this adage by Marcus Aurelius (or perhaps it was Tarantino the Elder, or maybe Hepatitis of Sciatica--I can't remember which):

Minutus cantorum,
Minutus balorum,
Minutus carborata descendum pantorum.

("A little song, a little dance, a little selzer down the pants.")

Words to live by, if you ask me.

Self-actualization

Ever worry that you aren't living up to your full potential?

From an MSNBC "where are they now" feature, via Shakespeare's Sister, comes this tidbit:

Linda Tripp

Tripp became Lewinsky's confidante and secretly recorded her talking about the affair. After becoming a figure of derision, she quit her Pentagon job and now sells bratwurst at her German deli in Middleburg, Va.

Just a reminder that sometimes people do reach the level they merit. (Thanks, SS.)

Bandini!

It totally slipped under my radar until opening day last Friday that one of my favorite novels--Ask the Dust--has been put on film. I'm not a huge Clive or Hayek fan, but I'm still looking forward to it.

The NYTimes review suggests that, not surprisingly, it never escapes the problem of making a film from a bildungsroman about a becoming writer (think Garp)--what often makes such a book most interesting to me is seeing what's going on inside the writer's head, and reading his struggling output, and both of those resist translation to film.

But it's a wonderful novel. What's going on inside Arturo Bandini's head--the head of the main character in John Fante's novel--is a whirlwind of arrogance, shame, mania, rage, ambition, and the embarrassed desires of a twenty-year-old man in late-1930s Los Angeles. The prose snaps along, pulling all your senses in, making you feel the gritty sand blowing in from the desert, taste the oranges that he lives on while he struggles to sell his work. When the characters triumph, you can feel yourself smile. When they exhibit their too-common failings--and oh, they do--you want to turn your gaze away.

So, while I'm waiting to see the film, here's the first of two scenes from Ask the Dust that I love to re-read:

She pointed to my hand with a pencil. "You bite your fingernails, she said. "You shouldn't do that."

I shoved my hands in my pockets.

"Who are you to tell me what to do?"

"Do you want some beer?" she said. "I'll get you some. You don't have to pay for it."

"You don't have to get me anything. I'll drink this alleged coffee and get out of here."

She walked to the bar and ordered a beer. I watched her pay for it from a handful of coins she dug out of her smock. She carried the beer to me and placed it under my nose. It hurt me.

"Take it away," I said. "Get it out of here. I want coffee, not beer."

Someone in the rear called her name and she hurried away. The back of her knees appeared as she bent over the table and gathered empty beer mugs. I moved in my chair, my feet kicking something under the table. It was a spittoon. She was at the bar again, nodding at me, smiling, making a motion indicating I should drink the beer. I felt devilish, vicious. I got her attention and poured the beer into the spittoon. Her white teeth took hold of her lower lip and her face lost blood. Her eyes blazed. A pleasantness pervaded me, a satisfaction. I sat back and smiled to the ceiling.

She disappeared behind a thin partition which served as a kitchen. She reappeared, smiling. Her hands were behind her back, concealing something. Now the old man I had seen that morning stepped from behind the partition. He grinned expectantly. Camilla waved to me. The worst was about to happen: I could feel it coming. From behind her back she revealed the little magazine containing The Little Dog Laughed. She waved it in the air, but she was out of view, and her performance was only for the old man and myself. He watched with big eyes. My mouth went dry as I saw her wet fingers and flip the pages to the place where the story was printed. Her lips twisted as she clamped the magazine between her knees and ripped away the pages. She held them over her head, waving them and smiling. The old man shook his head approvingly. The smile on her face changed to determination as she tore the pages into little pieces, and those into smaller pieces. With a gesture of finality, she let the pieces fall through her fingers and trickle to the spittoon at her feet. I tried to smile. She slapped her hands together with an air of boredom, like one slapping the dust from her palms. Then she put one hand on her hip, tilted her shoulder, and swaggered away. The old man stood there for some time. Only he had seen her. Now that the show was over, he disappeared behind the partition.

I sat smiling wretchedly, my heart weeping for The Little Dog Laughed, for every well-turned phrase, for the little flecks of poetry through it, my first story, the best thing I could show for my whole life. It was the record of all that was good in me, approved and printed by the great J. C. Hackmuth, and she had torn it up and thrown it into a spittoon.

After a while I pushed back my chair and got up to leave. Standing at the bar, she watched me go. There was pity for me upon her face, a tiny smile of regret for what she had done, but I kept my eyes away from her and walked into the street, glad for the hideous din of street cars and the queer noises of the city pounding my ears and burying me in an avalanche of banging and screeching. I put my hands in my pockets and slumped away.

Capraesque

That's the sort of week I seem to be having.

Monday was Call the Senators Day, in support of the Feingold censure motion. (Nice to see the Dems lining up so courageously behind him on that one, by the way.)

Today was Jury Duty Day. I used to dread it as an inconvenience, although I've changed my mind about that. I think it's a good thing that everybody should do. But still have some personal ambivalence about the whole experience, for another reason. I've finally come to realize that no prosecutor, no defense attorney, is ever--ever--going to seat me on a jury. Even when my number gets called from the jury pool to go upstairs to the courtroom for voir dire, it takes them about four or five questions to decide I'm their worst nightmare: An overeducated guy (worse, author of three books on persuasion and influence) back there in the jury room saying, "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Let's think this over . . . !" Rightly or wrongly, before you can say "habeas corpus" I'm back downstairs reading my book.

This morning it didn't come to that humiliating point; of the four trials scheduled, two pled out, one waived jury, and my name wasn't called for the remaining trial. So I was on my way home by 10.30am. Until I get the next letter, go back into the pool, and get passed over for service again.

He sent me on to Dr. Quimby, the specialist who had examined my eyes some twelve or fifteen times before. He gave me some simple reading tests. "You could never get into the army with eyes like that," he said. "I know," I told him.

James Thurber, "Draft Board Nights"

Reading: Krugman smacks down McCain

Paul Krugman finds daylight and appears once again for those of us who aren't Times Select subscribers.

There are a couple of big memes that are dominating talk about the 2008 election. One is the supposed inevitability of a Clinton nomination. The other is the "straight-talker," "maverick," "moderate" reputation of John McCain.

Krugman says it's time to put that one to rest:

So here's what you need to know about John McCain.

He isn't a straight talker. His flip-flopping on tax cuts, his call to send troops we don't have to Iraq and his endorsement of the South Dakota anti-abortion legislation even while claiming that he would find a way around that legislation's central provision show that he's a politician as slippery and evasive as, well, George W. Bush.

He isn't a moderate. Mr. McCain's policy positions and Senate votes don't just place him at the right end of America's political spectrum; they place him in the right wing of the Republican Party.

And he isn't a maverick, at least not when it counts. When the cameras are rolling, Mr. McCain can sometimes be seen striking a brave pose of opposition to the White House. But when it matters, when the Bush administration's ability to do whatever it wants is at stake, Mr. McCain always toes the party line.

It's worth recalling that during the 2000 election campaign George W. Bush was widely portrayed by the news media both as a moderate and as a straight-shooter.

I used to respect McCain, but it's been too clear for too long that there's not much he won't do--including compromise his professed principles at the drop of a hat--to become President.

This is going on the Readings list in the sidebar.

Why I did it

In a remark on his way to a post about something else altogether, the Torrid one at LO describes Feingold's censure motion as "important legislation that will go nowhere."

Now, I suspected all along--and TJ has since confirmed--that when he said "go nowhere" he didn't actually mean specifically, well . . . nowhere. He just meant it in the unremarkable sense that, like virtually all Democratic initiatives in Congress these days, it almost certainly won't get passed and might not even get a debate or vote.

Nevertheless:

Having just gotten off the phone with the offices of my two Senators (and Feingold's office), I'm of the opinion that wherever the censure motion is going--and always assuming it has virtually no chance of actual passage--it still ain't going <air quotes>nowhere</air quotes>.

Here's a partial rundown of the good that Feingold's censure motion will likely do:

1. It will embarrass the GOP to have to waste a little more of their dwindling supply of political and PR capital swatting it down.


2. It will achieve a certain amount of consciousness-raising among Feingold's timid Democratic colleagues to the extent that it excites any active response among voters.


3. It will interrupt the already scant coverage of Bush's latest round of speeches on Iraq (offered in lieu of an actual plan for Iraq).


4. It will plant the seed in some confused or scandal-numbed voters that a consequential response to Bush's illegal adventures is both possible and thinkable.


5. It will contribute to the public perception that Feingold may well be presidential timber, and is certainly worth at least a look come primary time.

Now, back to those phone calls. Both Wyden (DC: 202-224-5244 PDX: 503-326-7525) and Smith (DC: 202-224-3753 PDX: 503-326-3386) are still in the "The Senator hasn't made a statement yet but I'd be happy to forward your comment to him" mode, which isn't surprising. If Wyden goes along, it'll only be after he's determined there's a strong following wind already. And Smith . . . well, he's only a moderate at re-election time.

I left a message at Feingold's office (DC: 202-224-5323) thanking him for introducing the censure motion.

And it all only took about 3 minutes. If you need to find your senator's local or DC number, or you're the type who likes to have talking points in front of you before you dial, go here.

(Update: The GOP counter-maneuvering has begun; see FDL's update.)

Mark May 21st on your calendar

It's the day a northwest landmark--of sorts--bites the dust: The main cooling tower of the Trojan Nuclear Plant--a money-hole for rate-payers shut down by Portland General Electric in 1992 shortly after the industry successfully defeated a 1992 ballot measure designed to accomplish the same thing, breaking all previous spending records for an initiative campaign in the process--will finally be demolished.

Then, after you mark you calendar, read this great reminiscence by The Skirt. And call your mother.

"Thumbing his nose"

Feingold is going to introduce a motion of censure against Bush for his unconstitutional--anticonstitutional--wiretapping and surveillance adventures.

Serves me right for avoiding the Sunday morning talking head shows.

Meanwhile, the NYTimes has this report, which seems to move the bar from censure-worthy to downright-creepy:

But senior staff members insist that Mr. Bush is in good spirits, that calls from his party to inject new blood into the White House make him ever more stubborn to keep the old, and that he has become so inured to outside criticism that he increasingly tunes it out. There is no sense of crisis, they say, even over rebellious Republicans in Congress, because the White House has been in almost constant crisis since Sept. 11, 2001, and Mr. Bush has never had much regard for Congress anyway.

Net neutrality: The Big O weighs in on the side of irrelevance

A friend of mine wryly observed, "I like to read the Oregonian to find out what was in the New York Times last week." Don't know if he was looking for a case in point this morning, but all he had to do was turn to the editorial page, where they've gotten around to Senator Wyden's proposal to protect net neutrality.

Their editorial is a study in the practical use of the non sequitur. Yes, they concede, Wyden's proposal is founded on "admirable principles." But, they hedge,

In other ways, however, Wyden's proposal ignores the ways in which the Internet fails to function as a democracy. For starters, less than 20 percent of the world's population can tap into the network, according to Vinton Cerf, a developer of the Internet's key data-handling protocol. While the percentage is much higher in this country, broadband access remains unavailable or unaffordable in many areas.

Further, such libertarian technologists as Doc Searls, the senior editor of Linux Journal, are concerned with the prevalence of "asymmetric" Internet access. That means that information flows much more quickly to you than it can from you, keeping the average user from equality with major online content providers.

Meanwhile, the Internet is fragmenting in significant ways as such countries as China come online. Thanks to the cooperative attitudes of some U.S. companies, users in China have access and privacy rights that are much lower than those of their counterparts in the West. In that sense, the Internet stopped being a democracy some time ago.

And these thoughts by the editors are, in their turn, admirable questions, but not ones that have anything much to do with Wyden's proposal, which centers around these provisions:

• Preventing interfering with, blocking, degrading, altering, modifying or changing traffic on the Internet;


• Prohibiting creation of a priority lane where content providers can buy quicker access to customers, while those who don’t pay the fee are left in the slow lane;


• Allowing consumers to choose which devices they use to connect to the Internet while they are on the Internet;


• Ensuring that consumers have non-discriminatory access and service;


• Having a transparent system whereby consumers, Internet content, and applications companies have access to the rates, terms, and conditions for Internet service.

And as for this blithe add-on by the editors--

At any rate, choice already exists in cyberspace. If a service provider charges more than customers want to pay, or provides inferior service, most U.S. customers can choose a different provider and a different way to connect.

--one can only say that the Oregonian's indifference to the increasing concentration of ownership in these areas is a thing to behold.

Elephant in the room

Toles has a nice comment on the argument that all Democrats should be making as regular as breathing, but mostly aren't.

Driving 55 in a 90 mph world

[Greetings, Mannionistas! If you like this post, the management encourages you to sample another bit of our fine product.]

Nick from DL sent me these poll results with the comment, "The numbers say it all: 60% of Americans support the right to choose. That's just the latest FOX poll. The question is posed every which way in previous polls, and most of them are encouraging, e.g. 66% would not want Roe overturned."

I find that comforting--along with all the other poll results we're seeing lately, like these:

• 70% of Republicans think civil war will break out in Iraq.
• 70% of Americans think US is on wrong track
• 37% approve of his job performance
• 74% of Republicans approve his performance, down from 82% in February
• 36% approval rating on domestic affairs, down from 39% last month
• 43% approval on foreign policy and terrorism
• 40% approval on Iraq and economy
• 2/3 disapprove of Congress job performance

And yet, in spite of all these numbers, Bush's nation-destroying agenda keeps getting pushed through, piece by piece. And with each scandal, each bare-faced lie exposed, each unpopular program, each dreadful economic report, each foreign policy failure--each time we think, well this is the one that will do it. And yet it never seems to be "the one."

Here's the smartest thing I ever heard Newt Gingrich say (stop me if you've heard this):

He was driving on the Autobahn in Germany--going about 90, probably--and thinking about the 55 mph speed limits in the US, which everyone hated. If the German government lowered the speed limit on the Autobahn to 55, Gingrich recalled thinking, everyone in Germany would drive 55 . . . and then vote the whole government out at the next opportunity. In the US, they'd complain about the speed limit, drive 90 anyway, and keep re-electing the same people.

Sandra Day O'Connor: Worried about partisanship

Sandra Day O'Connor has been making her post-retirement victory lap--and a lump-throated, misty-eyed tour it has been. And in the time-honored tradition of "no tag-backs!"--a tradition even older than the Supreme Court itself--she is rediscovering her concern about the unwholesome effect of partisanship on the American judiciary.

At a recent scholarship luncheon in her honor, O'Connor took off on the theme. (Note: No transcript or recording of O'Connor's speech is available at the moment; this is a transcript of Nina Totenberg's NPR report, so it's unclear where O'Connor is being paraphrased and where she's being quoted--although listening to the three-minute story here gives a better sense of when Totenberg is probably quoting O'Connor--you can hear the "air quotes.")

The nation’s founders wrote repeatedly, [O'Connor] said, that without an independent judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government those rights and privileges would amount to nothing. But, said O’Connor, as the founding fathers knew statutes and constitutions don’t protect judicial independence, people do.

And then she took aim at former House GOP leader Tom DeLay. She didn’t name him, but she quoted his attacks on the courts at a meeting of the conservative Christian group Justice Sunday last year when DeLay took out after the courts for rulings on abortions, prayer and the Terri Schiavo case. This, said O’Connor, was after the federal courts had applied Congress’ onetime only statute about Schiavo as it was written. Not, said O’Connor, as the congressman might have wished it were written. This response to this flagrant display of judicial restraint, said O’Connor, her voice dripping with sarcasm, was that the congressman blasted the courts.

It gets worse, she said, noting that death threats against judges are increasing. It doesn’t help, she said, when a high-profile senator suggests there may be a connection between violence against judges and decisions that the senator disagrees with. She didn’t name him, but it was Texas senator John Cornyn who made that statement, after a Georgia judge was murdered in the courtroom and the family of a federal judge in Illinois murdered in the judge’s home. O’Connor observed that there have been a lot of suggestions lately for so-called judicial reforms, recommendations for the massive impeachment of judges, stripping the courts of jurisdiction and cutting judicial budgets to punish offending judges. Any of these might be debatable, she said, as long as they are not retaliation for decisions that political leaders disagree with.

I, said O’Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O’Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

As philinmaine points out, this is pretty strong stuff--the "D-word" trumps even the "I-word" in the mainstream's oppositional lexicon. And I couldn't agree with her more--an independent and robust judiciary is the main line of defense against authoritarian rule of the kind to which our nation was founded in opposition.

Still, one can't help wishing she'd found her scruples about separating partisan politics from the judiciary a little bit sooner--say, about five years earlier:

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, 76 years old, and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, 70, both lifelong Republicans, have at times privately talked about retiring and would prefer that a Republican appoint their successors. . . . Justice O'Connor, a cancer survivor, has privately let it be known that, after 20 years on the high court, she wants to retire to her home state of Arizona . . . . At an Election Night [2000] party at the Washington, D.C., home of Mary Ann Stoessel, widow of former Ambassador Walter Stoessel, the justice's husband, John O'Connor, mentioned to others her desire to step down, according to three witnesses. But Mr. O'Connor said his wife would be reluctant to retire if a Democrat were in the White House and would choose her replacement. Justice O'Connor declined to comment.

In a story published the following day, Christopher Hitchens, the United States correspondent for the Evening Standard of London, wrote that "O'Connor . . . has allegedly told her friends and family that she wishes to retire from the Court but won't do so if there is to be a Democratic president to nominate her replacement." Helen Thomas, a nationally syndicated columnist, wrote that "[t]he story going around [Washington] is that a very upset Justice Sandra Day O'Connor walked out of a dinner party on election night when she heard the first mistaken broadcast that Vice President A Gore had won. The ailing O'Connor apparently wants to retire, but not while a Democrat is in the White House and could pick her successor." Various parts of this story were repeated in a number of publications.

O'Connor voted with the conservative majority in Bush v, Gore, the 2000 decision ending the vote recount in Florida and effectively awarding the presidential election to George W. Bush, who nominated conservative justice Samuel Alito as her replacement.

Okay, is it me, or--

--did the headline-writer just fail to think things through in this morning's Oregonian?

Doctor-assisted suicide cases flat in 2005

Thought so.

I'd link to the story itself, but it seems kind of irrelevant now.

Misunderstood guy

From the Guardian (by way of a leak from archangel Gabriel to writer Terry Jones) comes news that the First Principle, Prime Mover, and Supreme Being is genuinely pissed at having his name dragged into Tony Blair and George Bush's military adventures. Spaketh the Guardian:

As is customary with Mr Blair's statements, it's rather hard to tease out what he is actually saying; but the gist is clearly that if God didn't actually tell him to bomb Iraq, then the Almighty would certainly agree it was the right thing to do.

"If Tony Blair thinks his friendship with George W Bush is worth rubbing out a couple of hundred thousand Iraqi men, women and children, then that's something he can talk over with me later," said God. "But when he starts publicly claiming that's the way I do the arithmetic too, it's time I put my foot down!" It is well known that God has a very big foot.

A source says Gabriel has spent days trying to dissuade the Almighty from loosing a plague of toads upon the Blair family. [ . . . ]

The archangel reported that the Almighty has become increasingly irritated with the vogue for politicians to claim that He is behind their policies - especially if these involve killing large numbers of humans. According to Gabriel, God spake these words: "That George W Bush once had the nerve to say: 'God told me to go end the tyranny in Iraq, and I did.' Well, let me tell you I did no such thing! If I'd wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, I could have given him pneumonia. I didn't need the president of the United States to send in hundreds of heavy bombers and thousands of missiles to destroy Iraq - even though I appreciate that Halliburton needed to fill its order books."

The Divine Author is known to avoid directly contacting those on our plane of existence; in fact, his last public appearance was over four years ago--and again, the reason for his appearance was to distance himself from those doing violence purportedly in his divine name.

"Look, I don't know, maybe I haven't made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again," said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. "Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. And to be honest, I'm really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand."

Neither Downing Street nor the White House has issued a reply to the Almighty's statement, although FOX News commentator Sean Hannity concluded his syndicated radio program yesterday with the words "Let the 'Swift Boating' begin!"

Reading: The competition to re-enter the Middle Ages first

America has produced a generation of adults--both women and men, pro-choice and anti-abortion--who are spoiled by the intellectual comfort of not having to think through what Roe v. Wade really means for their lives.

That party is about to end.

The blogworld has been alive with this for the last week, but I'm going to go with Saint Molly:

The state legislature of South Dakota, in all its wisdom and majesty, a legislature comprised of sons and daughters of the soil from Aberdeen to Zell, have usurped the right of the women of that state to decide whether or not to bear the child of an unwanted pregnancy. They will decide. Women will do what they decide. [ . . . ]

In South Dakota, pharmacists can refuse to fill a prescription for contraceptives should it trouble their conscience, and some groups who worked on the anti-abortion bill believe contraception also needs to be outlawed. Good plan. After that, we'll reconsider women's property rights, civil right and voting rights.

For years, the women's movement has been going around asking, "Who decides?" as though that were the issue. Well, here's the answer. [SD state senator] Bill Napoli decides, and if you're not happy with that arrangement, well, you'd better be prepared to do something about it.

(If you've made it this far and haven't been introduced to Napoli, one of the finest minds of the 14th century, go here. If you don't want to read all the way through the transcript, go here for the punchline, straight up, no chaser. Who the hell sits around imagining scenarios like this?)

The whole article is going to the Readings list in the side bar.

And while we're at it, here are three items--beyond the obvious (i.e., that women are chattel)--which seem to follow logically from South Dakota-style thinking, although the coat hanger enthusiasts seem to have overlooked it:

1. The burning building problem. If fertilized eggs really are the moral equivalent of fully developed--and actually born--persons, exactly how far are we willing to go to protect them?


2. The laddie-boy problem. Courtesy of Jane Hamsher at firedoglake, who shared this email from Digby:

   I just realized that those nuts in South Dakota might be having an unanticipated effect. I am working today and this guy said to me over lunch, "I can't believe that these people are really serious." He's a bit of a putz and he admitted that he'd believed women were exaggerating the threat. I said "I hope you're ready to be daddies, boys. Last time abortion was illegal they didn't have DNA testing" and they all looked stunned.

3. The don’t-call-it-murder-then-try-to-weasel-out problem. Digby points out that a lot of those "abortion is murder" sign-wavers haven't really thought through what that means.

And South Dakota is just first in line.

(Image from EKO, commenter at DailyKOS.)

Factoids

Make of this what you will.

Out of a string of 12 visitors to the blog early Saturday, 8 were from the US, and 1 each came from: Kenya, France, Netherland Antilles, and Finland. All four of the non-US hits found me via Google. And here's the search phrase each began with:

Kenya: "Perseverance"

France: "The Birds and the Foxes Thurber"

Netherland Antilles: "perseverance"

Finland: "nothstine.blogspot.com"

Background: By far, the search topic that has brought the most Google searchers to me has been the word "perseverance," with the Thurber fable, and the National Lampoon/Ted Kennedy/floating Volkswagen story a somewhat distant second and third, respectively. Lots of people out there Googling about those three things. I can't exactly explain why it got me readers from those particular countries on that Saturday, though. Probably better I don't know--left to my imagination, the explanation becomes a lot more fun than it most likely is in reality.

(I'm just stumped by the odd fact that Finland found me by Googling my URL--which means they didn't need to Google me at all, unless we assume they knew how to Google but didn't know what to do with a URL, which strikes me as an almost Pythonesque incapacity.)

"Perserverance" has an interesting story: From the beginning, it's outdistanced all the other keyword hits. I picked the blog title because I liked that Jefferson quote, and it was alliterative, and it was about persuasion, which gave it a tie-in to some of the ideas I planned to write about. What I didn't realize--didn't even consider--was that "Persuasion, Perseverance, and Patience" was going to be a total conversation-killer when someone would ask me "so, what's your blog called?" and I'd tell them. There'd be this long, awkward pause, and then we'd both start patting our pockets for a pencil and paper, because it was obviously way too long and clunky to remember. (Plus the blog URL isn't the same as the blog name--and worse, it's my name, which is also not easily picked up, let alone correctly spelled, in conversation.)

So anyway, the title has worked against me as a word-of-mouth device. It was too much of a word-of-mouthful. (That's why, with the anniversary makeover, I started the "p3" rebranding process.) But, in an odd way, it's worked for me as far as Google hits from the rest of the country and the world--although, of course, anyone visiting my site because they Googled "perseverance" isn't likely to stay very long or return.

Now, of course, with a year or so to think about it, I realize that blog- (and URL-) naming would be wise to follow these rules:

• No more than two words (three in a pinch, not counting "the," although I'd probably avoid "the" if possible).


• Three or four syllables total. Two syllables or five would be all right if the name was strong in other respects.


• Use a pun, a twist on a familiar phrase, or an esoteric/invented word.


• All spellings should be phonetically obvious.
  

(Compare "the rules" with the blog names on my blogroll in the sidebar.)

So, here's a p3 Reader Survey: If we were going to rename this blog following "the rules" (and, just to be clear, we're not), what would be a better name for it?

A firedoglake two-fer

This one's been loitering in the to-do bin for a few days.

ReddHedd at firedoglake picks up one of my favorite talking points about the rot at the heart of the Bush administration:

George Bush wants to be elected so badly, to do whatever it takes to cover his ass, that he is willing to lie about cheese. A completely unimportant detail to everyone (except perhaps a few die-hard Philly cheesesteak purists in Essington).

Why lie? Because he could.

The whole post is good, and not just because it's on one of my preferred topics, the well-tempered Philadelphia cheesesteak.

Pitch perfect

If you're like me, you've grown tired of the intellectual cleft stick that Bush has placed you in during the last 6-plus years: Is he lying, or is he really that thick-headed?

It took the comments section at firedoglake to make me realize that's a false dilemma, stemming from a poor phrasing of the proper question--the proper question being: What is the president's job, and is he doing it?

His job is to make the right decisions.

If he runs his ship in such a way that subordinates feel free to hide things from him, and he's not asking questions to get the right information, then he's a failure in making the right decisions.

If he's getting the information and then lying about it, he's a failure at making the right decisions.

The King has failed to do his job. How exactly this came to be is of interest as an educational moment for others who come after him. But it is of no interest as a political matter.

He failed to treat Tillman with honor. He failed to make the right call on Iraq. He failed to help New Orleans. He failed to uphold the fourth amendment. He failed to keep the name of a CIA counter-proliferation agent secret.

As far as accountability is concerned, these were his calls to make, and he failed.

No OR's about it.

We get letters

Earlier this week, Pandagon had a post about a good day/bad day in Alabama. At about the same moment I was reading that, long-time p3 reader and kibitzer Gary dropped me a note from the Yellowhammer State about a trove of archive photos from the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham between 1956 and 1965, discovered by the Birmingham News. He writes:

History is always popular in the South, particularly the white South. It's usually a noble history of pre-Civil War days and the glorious fight for Southern Independence. That history isn't as powerful for me as the history of the black South of 50 years ago. This is a history that makes me proud that we (black and white) who live in the Deep South remember. Check out these.

Look at the photos.

Some people will tell you that we in the South haven't made any progress about race--usually these are self-contented people from other places who Randy Newman best characterized in "Rednecks". The most cynical (and you know I'm usually among that group) will point out that racism is still with us. It is. It probably always will be. But look at the photos and tell me that there has been no change.

How we got here, continued

Another excerpt from Richard Hofstadter's classic collection of essays The Paranoid Style in American Politics.

Now we start getting into the confluence of fundamentalism and the rise of late 20th century (pseudo-)conservatism. (Earlier excerpts here and here.)

Under the aegis of right-wing politics, rigid Protestants of a type once intensely anti-Catholic can now unite with Catholics of similar militancy in a grand ecumenical zeal against communism and in what they take to be a joint defense of Christian civilization. The malevolent energy formerly used in the harassment of Catholics can now be even more profitably spent in the search for Communists, or even in attacks on the alleged subversiveness of liberal Protestant denominations. The Manachean conception of life as a struggle between absolute good and absolute evil and the idea of an irresistible Armageddon have been thinly secularized and transferred to the cold war. The conflict between Christianity and communism is conceived as a war to the death, and Christianity is set forth as the only adequate counterpoise to the communist credo.

Fundamentalist leaders play a part in right-wing organizations far out of proportion to the strength of fundamentalism in the population at large. Among them are Robert H. Welch, Jr., the founder of the John Birch Society; Dr. Fred C. Shwarz, the head of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, and Reverend Billy Hargis, of the Christian Crusade, which flourishes in the Southwest.

A large part of the rise in fundamentalist ultra-conservativism may be linked with the astonishing growth of the Southern Baptist Church, which increased from 2,300,000 members in 1936 to 10,000,000 in 1952. A comparable growth has also been enjoyed by the right-wing Churches of Christ. The increase in these groups has far outstripped that of more moderate Protestant denominations in the same period. Such church groups have created a vast religious public, once poor and depression-ridden but now to a large degree moderately prosperous, whose members sometimes combine the economic prejudices of the newly well-to-do with the moral prejudices of the revolt against modernity.

We know more, of course, about the role of fundamentalist leaders in rightwing groups than we do about fundamentalism among the mass following. The presence of two kinds of subcultures in the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade is suggested in a study [. . . whose] findings point to a bifurcation between a relatively affluent, educated, and "sophisticated" wing, concerned most intensely with the economic content of ultra-conservatism, and a more deeply religious wing, leaning toward fundamentalism, primarily concerned with religious and moral issues.

Richard Hofstadter, "Pseudo-Conservatism
Revisited--1965" in The Paranoid Style in
American Politics and Other Essays (1964)

"Meddle? Of course I'm going to meddle! Do what you're best at!"

The SciFi Channel is picking up the first season of the "reimagined" BBC classic "Doctor Who," beginning on the 17th of this month.

The series, about a renegade Time Lord who steals a time machine and gallivants around the space-time continuum, with an inexplicable string of usually-plucky and invariably-sexy companions (my favorite was Leela, but there were others)-- first began airing the weekend JFK was shot, and ran for about 25 years after that.

Its core gimmick--developed on the fly when its original star left the series--was that the Doctor was from a race that "regenerates" after their bodies are too badly damaged. When you regenerate, basically, you go through a transformation that makes you look and act completely differently--almost as if you were played by a different actor, often with a new writing staff. Regenerations were a chance to revamp the style of the series--although, apparently, never an opportunity to increase the production budget meaningfully.

Loyal--or accidental--viewers saw the Doctor make it to his sixth regeneration before the series disappeared from the air. He reappeared in his seventh regeneration for a FOX network movie in the mid 1990s (for a time, it was rumored that Spielberg would make the movie, an idea which managed to upset purists even more than the concept of a Scotsman being cast to play the Seventh Doctor). The story line continued off the radar screen for many years in novels.

I haven't followed it all in about 15 years, so I don't have much information to offer: The new series is geared to an older audience, one gathers, and shows more political awareness in its themes. (The analogy might well be "Battlestar Galactica.") We'll see. Anyway, it's on the p3 Worth-A-Look List.

Rare Bit of Self-Disclosure: For four years I had the high honor and serious responsibility of serving as the faculty sponsor of the Ball State "Doctor Who" Appreciation Society. Kinda makes you stop and think, doesn't it?

Publicly financed elections repeal: Reports of its death weren't exaggerated after all

First it flatlined; then--out of nowhere--it started getting a blip on the monitor again. This time, though, it looks like it's really dead.

For now.

Latest installment of undead-murderous-creature-stalks- impractical-teens movie? Nope, although you could be forgiven for thinking so. And, as with Michael Myers and the rest, fans are not completely disappointed to think he'll be back in another installment, and he will be--as long as the investors will cough up the cash.

Now, having beaten that metaphor within an inch of its life, let's review the whole story:

Voter-owned elections, approved by the Portland City Council in a 4-1 vote last May, roused the ire of institutional purists, who believed that the measure should have been referred to the voters (I have some sympathy with this group), and downtown businesses, who didn't want their access interrupted (not so much sympathy here).

(Full disclosure: I don't live in Portland; I live in the first 'burb west of Portland.)

When said business interests formed the First Things First Committee--the name intended to indicate that the issue was really about potholes and school funding, not the preservation of donor-owned elections--with the purpose of gathering signatures to put the question on the May 2006 ballot, most observers figured that clean elections' days were numbered. (Some felt this because they believed that public financed elections were unpopular on the merits; others thought so because it was the sort of issue that could get creamed by a well-funded media campaign of fudged truths and "save our children" misdirection.)

Unsurprisingly, FTFC handed in more than enough signatures by the deadline. Surprisingly, the first routine check by the auditors indicated that there were far too many invalid signatures to qualify.

Even more surpsingly, an audit of the audit suggested that the sampling mechanism that declared all those signatures to be invalid might itself be on the blink. A re-audit was immediately begun.

And still more surpisingly, the second audit determined that, no, the FTFC still didn't have enough signatures to put clean elections on the ballot for this May.

But--whether you're a institutional purist or a downtown businessman, or just a Michael Myers fan--the movement to put publicly financed elections on the ballot, and thereby kill it once and for all, is not over. It'll be back on the fall ballot, or next spring . . . or Christmas 2007, at a theater near you.

And since the bad arguments against public financing--"we need to spend that money on potholes!" (yeah, as if that's where the money would go)--are easier to fit on a bumper sticker than the good arguments for it--"downtown developers and their cohort want to finance the elections because they want to protect their pet projects"--voter education now becomes an important defense against the inevitable media disinformation campaign when the time comes.

(Postscript: Two city council candidates have qualified for public money.)

Republican ethics: A possible clue?

It's an old line, but it's an evergreen: Being called "unethical" by the House Republicans is like being called "ugly" by a frog.

Joe at AmericaBlog puts it pretty well:

We've finally learned what the GOP thinks is unethical: reporting on the GOP ethics violations.

You can read the full story here. The reference is to "America For Sale: The Cost of Republican Corruption," a lengthy report released last week by the Democratic staff of the House Rules Committee.

I've been indexing the most egregious examples of GOP corruption from the report here:

• Part 1: Health Care


• Part 2: Energy Policy


• Part 3: National Security


• Part 4: Employment and the Economy


• Part 5: Education

Typical Republican up-is-downism: The crime isn't the crime; blowing the whistle is the crime.