Speech after Long Silence II

Well, I read a lot of blogs each day and I use furl to save stuff that I think I want to remember and or send to friends. My last post on this blog was 5/28. Since then I have furled about 154 stories. You can see them at http://www.furl.net/members/msobel

What's interesting is that I can download the whole archive, (6000 entries) put it on my harddrive and have desktop google search it. It runs less than a half a gig, which means I could keep it on a $10 flash drive. Talk about memory aids.

If You Wanna End the War and Stuff

Finally got back to reading blogs via google blog reader for a couple of hours.

Left Coaster has the most optimistic view I have seen in a long time on how to end the war. No Oil Law, No Occupation

TNR actually has stuff worth reading in The Closing of the Presidential Mind (oxymorons abound) Basically that Bush decisions are careful to exclude reality, knowledge, or expertise. It takes the whole reality based discussion and works out the details. Another word is lie.

Reuters tells us why we have the majority of our aircraft carrier groups sitting off Iran's shores in Iran wants to develop shared oil fields with Iraq for they have beaten their swords into oil rigs. And it never would have happened without Bush's leadership. He is a uniter.

For those of us who have worked hard for a candidate with a terrible campaign staff, Matthew Yglesias reviews the annecdotal memories of the Democratic Campaign Consultant who’s lost more presidential campaigns than anyone else alive, helping give us Reagan, Bush, and Bush.

Think Progress has a great story on Bush's warnings about terrorists after our dogs.

In case you were feeling too optimistic, a well sourced story about Cheney running amok trying to get Israel to attack Iran so Iran will attack our sitting duck fleet.

What a Day XIII

Haven't posted for a while but have saved some readings up. Putting dates on them since some have aged.

And you thought Flat Earth was just an expression. Turns out Galileo was actually a Darwinist. Someone helping Brownback. (5/18)

Someone wrote a bubble bursting analysis of what the Iraq War really has turned into. The good news: It's not a Civil War, the bad news: It's something worse. (5/18)

Kermit was right, it's not easy being green, Turn's out it's not easy being in the Zone. (5/17)

Get ready for the Stab in The Back winger narrative. You know, the one Hitler used. (5/15)

Bloggers get no R E S P E C T (5-15)

Prairie Dogs are Evil Libruls (5/17)

In case you forgot, a memoriam of Falwell's life works. (5/15)

Florida voting, it's not just snakes, alligators, and Rove.

Democrats reinstated pay as you go. Bush instated Pay at the Pump (5/16)

Abstinence Birth Control Czar lied on his resume. I'm shocked. (5/15)

Turns out the White House wasn't the only one using email illegally. (5/16)

The American health care system is not only more expensive than any other developed nation but has worse quality. (5/16)

What a Day XII

Some of my readings for the last day or so that I wanted to save:

1) Thompson (the Fred), 2) TNR, Netroots, trust and the dark side, 3) DOJ HR, 4) Poor People, 5) Demoblogics 6) Old Jokes, New Jokers and 7) Blood for Oil, More than you want to know.

So adding more detail to the Thompson (Fred) is a dick story Kevin Drum at Political Animal adds some detail in the prop Red Truck story.

Henry at Crooked Timber has one of the best (of many) commentaries on Chiat's TNR cover story on the netroots. It goes well with John Quiggin also at Crooked Timber's analysis of buy partisanship and the reinvention of the two party system. (I forget who linked me to this, I can't find the link among the usual suspects)

The whole thing reminded me of the prisoner dilemma and the best strategy tit for tat. Another way to say it is that trust once lost is difficult to regain, and that trusting someone who is untrustworthy is a losing stratergy, a point well worth keeping in mind when dealing with Cheney/Bush/Rove types. Incidently, to look at the dark side (never underestimate the power of the dark side) Henry has a great review of Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy; With a new Afterword

The General comes through with a DOJ Personnel handbook.

A Plan to Reduce Poverty (hint, not trickle down)

Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake says "Wakeup Asshole,you're not a kid!"

Driftglass makes a classic tale relevant for our times. (Not work safe if your boss can read)

Finally, too depressing for words but necessary to have for reference Michael Schwartz at Tom Dispatch lays out the whole circulatory system of Blood for Oil.

Reality, the Unreported Story.

Today's post derives from spending 20 minutes with the Sunday New York Times. I used to love and respect that paper. It's just a shame but then I live in a country that elected George Bush after seeing him in action for almost 4 years.

Marc Santora at the NY Times has an article on Fred Thomson headlined "Thompson Tries Out Campaign Lines" which allows him to transcribe the stump sound bites that Thompson is using with out having to even hint at a reality near Kevin Drum at Political Animal's judgement:

Thompson is a guy whose political record in the Senate was a big zero; whose only real claim to fame is being a character actor on TV and in films; who has done nothing to distinguish himself this year except deliver a few vaguely Reaganesque pastiches in a nice baritone; who is apparently not Christian enough for James Dobson's taste; who has no known issues that he really cares deeply about; and whose most famous quality is his laziness.

Along the same lines Walter Shapiro at Salon talks about how three of the Republican candidates (including Thompson) have cancer. My immediate reaction was to concoct a line by a media pundit: "We would never make an issue of the Republican candidates cancers because the metaphor of cancer would tend to remind people of their incurable essential moral decay."

And going for the Bifecta, The NY Times Week in Review lead article is about the conflict in Saudi Arabia between the benefits of modern life and religious traditional practices. I was interested in seeing how the article would deal with the systemic corruption that is the nature of Saudi "government". Turns out it isn't a factor so the article didn't mention it.

And the Trifecta is an op ed on the Sunday NY Times Op Ed page, Plan B? Let’s Give Plan A Some Time First by the father of the Surge (who gave up this beloved son for adoption by Republican President Bush.) I think his article is saying, "the surge is working because he can point to a half a dozen places where things are not as bad as they were." I could be wrong, I am not fluent in Neoconish. The examples all neglect that violence is down in the cherrypicked cases because the anti-occupation forces have moved elsewhere. You know during the 16th and 17th centuries, the victor in a battle was considered to be whoever was in possession of the field of battle at the end. That's not the case anymore. Anyhow, I had trouble understanding the article so I cut and pasted it into google translate, clicked on summarize and got: "One more FU."

Saturday is Bad News Day II

The NY Times today had a front page story (bottom left below the fold and it's Saturday) about the "split" among conservatives between the Creationists (and their well funded chimera Intelligent Design) and those needing evolution to justify conservative themes. D at Lawyers Guns and Money comments refuting the claim that Facism and Communism are both based on Darwin (yep, that's what the Rethugs are saying). I commented :

As M.J. O'Brien note above, what is troubling conservatives is that if they give up evolution, then they give up all the arguments about "nature" supporting the current power structures. Men over women, whites over blanks, the poor are just lazy etc.

They of course haven't done their homework. The Calvinists had the same problem and came up with the theory of "visible gifts" which translates as the rich are rich as a visible sign of God's decision to predestine them as saved.

I would suggest the appropriate modern term would be Social Intelligent Design. Women are inferior because the Intelligent Designer, (blessed be his name) made them that way, George Bush is rich because the only sign of Intelligence about him is the Design that makes him rich.

They need an ideology to support their artificial aristocracy.

This reasoning owes much to What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It? by Philip E. Agre who seems to have disappeared from the Internet.

One of the EvoCons (to coin an obvious phrase), "Larry Arnhart, a professor of political science at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb" seems to have plagiarized from Burke:

Mr. Arnhart says, conservatives assume that evolved social traditions have more wisdom than rationally planned reforms.

Ah well, to paraphrase, we'll stop no lie before it's time.

Looking for the rest of Saturday's bad news, we got:

• Shucks, Bush is Just Plain Folks which Robert Farley also of Lawyers Guns and Money demolishes as more NY Times feeding the crapper's tale.
  
• one illness is enough to sink a small business' heath insurance
  
• Job growth sucks
  
• Condi meets with Syria but apparently isn't a traitor like Speaker Pelosi
  
• an attempt to blame Democratic Presidential Candidates for lack of agreement on whatever the President wants.
  

What a Day XI

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." Mahatma Gandhi or in the case of Jonathan Chait at the New Republic's How the netroots became the most important mass movement in U.S. politics. The Left's New Machine. First they ignore you, then they defame you etc. I read the last four paragraphs to find out how it ends and found baseless opinions and false comparisons:

... At the narrow level, the netroots take part in a great deal of demagoguery, name-calling, and dishonesty. Seen through a wider lens, however, they bring into closer balance the ideological vectors of propaganda in our public life.

Take the case of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a slain soldier who camped out at Crawford, Texas, in August 2005, demanding to meet with President Bush. The press corps did not treat her as a serious story, and understandably so--there were many parents of fallen soldiers with strong views on Iraq, so why should hers hold such weight? But the netroots took hold of the Sheehan story, harping on it for days, and forced it onto the national agenda. This is the sort of thing conservatives have been doing for years. The Swift Boat Veterans For Truth deserved no special credibility, either, but, in 2004, the right-wing media apparatus elevated them onto the national stage. Was the veneration of Sheehan intellectually shabby? Without a doubt. Was it, considered as a whole, a bad thing? That is not so clear.

The Democratic Party, as Moulitsas has written, is indeed undergoing a comprehensive reformation, as is liberalism in general. At the end of this reformation, what will the left look like? It will look a lot more like the Republican machine that prevailed in Florida. It will be nastier and more ruthless, and less concerned with intellectual or procedural niceties. It will be more of a disciplined movement and less of a collection of idiosyncratic personalities.

Conservatives have crowed for years that they have "won the war of ideas." More often than not, such boasts include a citation of Richard Weaver's famous dictum, "Ideas have consequences." A war of ideas, though, is not an intellectual process; it is a political process. As my colleague Leon Wieseltier has written, "[I]f you are chiefly interested in the consequences, then you are not chiefly interested in the ideas." The netroots, like most of the conservative movement, is interested in the consequences, not the ideas. The battle is being joined at last.

So,

1. Cindy Sheehan equals Swift Boats Veterans for Truth
   
2. Results not ideas ? WTF ?
   

There are many posts taking about some of the points Chait blows.

• Eli at Firedoglake comments in terms of how things look for the Rthugs.
  
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers Guns and Money takes apart the Rthug rule of law posture about Florida 2000 that Chait parrots.
  
• Big Tent Democrat at Talk Left has a nuanced analysis worth reading.
  
• Kevin Drum at Political Animal says that Chait gets the Republican Noise Machine wrong. The netroots are not equivalent in size and Kevin argues that liberals don't want to listen to hours of seething hatred and white guy resentment.
  

The NY Times finally picks up politically motivated phony prosecutions but Monica's loyal Bushies.

In the course of a comment on the Walls being built in Baghdad Naomi Klein's Baghdad year zero resurfaced in how the Bushies' screwed up the economy.