CapitalistImperialistPig

For those of us who think we elected a Democratic Congress to oppose George Bush and his evil works, there is nothing more infuriating than to have that Congress weakly cave in to one of Bush's scams. It seems that the special FISA court overseeing Bush's spying on Americans secretly ruled that some of Bush's spying was illegal. In trying to get a new law passed to his liking, Bush decided to admit this. Congress and the Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell negotiated a new spying bill that would have permitted more spying but required review by the FISA court within 10 days of wiretaps. Bush waited until just before Congress's August adjournment to reject the deal. He wanted Attorney General Alberto F#$&@*& Gonzales to be the approving authority. The Senate made a few feeble gestures of resistance, Bush shook the chains and mumbled "Terruh, terruh, terruh!" and the Senate caved. The only paltry compromises they extracted were requiri...

Peggy Noonan is about as hard-core as a Republican can be, but she seems to have left the church W. She puts her finger on one point that grits my teeth: I found myself Thursday watching President Bush's news conference and thinking about what it is about him, real or perceived, that makes people who used to smile at the mention of his name now grit their teeth. I mean what it is apart from the huge and obvious issues on which they might disagree with him . . . As I watched the news conference, it occurred to me that one of the things that might leave people feeling somewhat disoriented is the president's seemingly effortless high spirits . . . . . . his good humor seems to me disorienting, and strange . . . Like strange in the sense that you get with crazy people, I think. That and his bizarre detachment and disinterest, the unwillingness to read even a single page memo on Iraq. Americans can't fire the president right now, so they're waiting it out. They can tell a...

Who is IOZ looks at how we manage to be on all sides and against all in West Asia: Can it be true that the United States is engaged in a clandestine effort, using its own special operations troops, to support Turkish incursions into Iraqi territory to combat the PKK and other "Kurdish guerillas"? Sure! Consider. The United States invaded Iraq and deposed its Sunni Arab Ba'athist government. After months of inept proconsular hijinks that guaranteed Insurgency Now! instead of Insurgency One-ah-dese-days!, hasty elections were mounted under a bloc-lists system of proportional representation, which guarnateed that Iraqis would not actually know whom they were voting for, and which also guaranteed a substantial Shia majority in the parliament. At about this point, the Americans discovered--holy shit!--that Iran is, in fact, a Shia nation, and that these Shia politicians had the backing of Iran. And not only that, but they were, like, trying to consolidate their power with pri...

As I mentioned in a previous post, Fox News Thug Bill O'Reilly decided to go after sponsors of The Daily Kos a bit ago. Kos returned the favor, provoking protests from the likes of our friend Lumo . Since then, the battle has escalated a bit, provoking Atrios to proclaim it "felafel day." For those with short memories, this is a reference to a successful sexual harrassment suit by a female former Fox News producer against O'Reilly, who had the habit of calling her up and asking for phone sex while masturbating himself. O'Reilly blustered about extortion for a bit but shut up and payed quick when she filed transcripts which made it clear that she had a detailed record (recording) of the incidents. One incidental bit of comedy occurred when, according to the transcripts, he suggested sexual acts involving a felafel - most think he meant a loofah - I doubt that a felafel would stand up to a shower, much less hard use in a shower. Brad DeLong extracts some excer...

The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus has a column today in which she argues that: In his Senate testimony last week, Gonzales once again dissembled and misled. He was too clever by seven-eighths. He employed his signature brand of inartful dodging -- linguistic evasion, poorly executed. The brutalizing he received from senators of both parties was abundantly deserved. But I don't think he actually lied about his March 2004 hospital encounter with then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. I certainly don't think he could be charged with -- much less convicted of -- perjury. Her argument is essentially that Gonzales was obliged to tell some of the truth, some of the time. She finds some support in that the Supreme's have apparently ruled that the perjury statutes should be very narrowly construed, in that the witness oblidged only to state the literal truth, even if that literal truth is misleading and only a partial answer - which of makes a mockery of the "truth, the who...

Arun has some of the bizarre details of the killing of Pat Tillman and the subsequent cover up. Most suspicious are: The doctors ... said that the bullet holes [three bullet holes in Tillman's forehead] were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away. And: White House, Pentagon cite executive privilege to hold up documents on friendly fire victim Tillman UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan adds another sinister piece to the puzzle: I keep thinking this incident is out of a movie. The heroism, the sacrifice, the tragedy, the lies, the cover-up, and the unthinkable. I should repeat I think it's almost certainly a friendly fire accident. But too much still doesn't add up. And then there's this: his diary was destroyed? Holy coverup, Batman!

...Seems to be alive and well in Jena, Louisiana. Of course racism is hardly a purely Southern phenomenon, but I find it hard to imagine the events in Jena transpiring in any town I've ever lived in. One version of the story is told by Amy Goodman: Last week in Detroit, the NAACP held a mock funeral for the N-word. But a chilling case in Louisiana shows us how far we have to go to bury racism. This story begins in the small central Louisiana town of Jena. Last September, a black high school student requested the school’s permission to sit beneath a broad, leafy tree in the hot schoolyard. Until then, only white students sat there. The next morning, three nooses were hanging from the tree. The black students responded en masse. Justin Purvis, the kid who first sat under the tree, told filmmaker Jacquie Soohen: “They [other black students] said, ‘Y’all want to go stand under the tree?’ We said, ‘Yeah.’ They said, ‘If you go, I’ll go. If you go, I’ll go.’ One person went, the next...