Ah-nold: Girly-man Gubernator

James Wolcott does it again.

"[T]he Governor is so used to browbeating the press that he thought he could do the same to the California Nurses' Association (CNA), one of the most militant unions in the country, with 60,000 members and representing registered nurses at 171 health facilities throughout the state. Schwarzenegger has been trying to roll back the union's gains on nurse/ patient ratios, safety standards and kindred issues.

"On February 15, when Schwarzenegger and his platoons of body guards and flunkies trooped into a screening of Be Cool, 300 nurses demonstrated. Kelly DiGiacomo, 46 years old and 5'2", a nurse at a Kaiser hospital near Sacramento, had a ticket. She ensconced herself in the fourth row, wearing her nurse's scrubs.

"A bodyguard rushed up, and under the pretext of a possible meeting with the governor, led her to a room with a California Highway Patrol cop at the door and began to grill DiGiacomo. A few days later a CHP investigator called. DiGiacomo asked why she should be considered a threat. The investigator replied, 'Well, you were wearing a nurse's uniform.' 'Oh, sure, the international terrorist uniform,' DiGiacomo scoffed. Californians scoffed with her when they saw the news stories. At least Bush and Cheney can claim they're being targeted by hairy men from the dark side of Mecca. Here's Arnold hiding behind his goons from the woman who cares for you when you're in the hospital."

Some "tough guy", huh?

Martha's Lesson

There's been a lot of verbiage this week about Martha Stewart. As everybody knows, she just got out of the can after five months, a billion dollars richer and probably infinitely wiser. Good for her, I say. Before all this happened, I couldn't have gave a shit less about her one way or the other. I still don't, other than I think she got royally screwed by the government. Think on this:

Ms. Stewart got five months in a federal joint and five months house arrest for lying to the government about a crime that she was never charged with, a crime that arguably never occurred, over an insignificant amount of money from the sale of her own stock, that ain't a drop in the bucket compared to what Enron and others blatantly stole from everybody with administration help. What I take from that is this:

It's OK for the president and the government, cops, politicians, preachers and corporations to lie to, or steal from, you and nothing happens to them. Nothing, except maybe praise for doing their job well and being on the bandwagon of power.

However, if you lie to them without being on their IOKIYAR list, or for being an uppity broad, or for not paying enough protection money in the form of campaign contributions, you're in big trouble. It's the Amerikan way: pay up or pipe down. Or we'll knock you down.

I'm not going to even say that this is unfair, because that would just be whining. Of course it's unfair. It was engineered that way and it works well. Someday the tables will turn and I hope I'm there to grind my heel in their face. Now that's fair.

Questions

A good one from the Ghost:

[. . .]

Why is a book, possibly anywhere from twenty-five hundred to two thousand years old, of dubious and questionable authorship, with notable historical inaccuracies, inconsistent logic, unprovable positions and overt factual errors, the so-called basis of an open, democratic, scientific and technologically advanced society?

[. . .]

WTF?

I seem to be on a foreign policy thing today, so lets talk about Syria's announced pullback from Lebanon. It offers hope for a people under occupation for 30 years.

BEIRUT, March 5 -President Bashar al-Assad of Syria refused on Saturday to comply with President Bush's demand that he withdraw all of his country's troops and intelligence agents from Lebanon, telling the Syrian Parliament that he planned instead to order a gradual pullback to Lebanese territory near Syria's borders.

[. . .]

Bashir Assad, Syria's president, isn't the model for integrity. You know Syrian intelligence won't leave that quickly, even if the troops do. But this is a hopeful sign. So why is the White House taking such a hard line?

More below the fold . . .

The stench of hypocrisy 4

Via the King:

Suppose that Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Canada and announced that the United States was retreating from its principles of freedom since the World Trade Center attack. The United States, he might have said, has denied due process of law to some American citizens. It has established a concentration camp in Cuba. It has tortured prisoners, indeed often and in many places. It denies aliens the right to trial by jury -- indeed, it acts like the only ones who have Mr. Jefferson's inalienable rights are American citizens, and not always.

Then he says, while I'm at it, there are a lot of flaws in your democracy. You certainly don't think your Electoral College is democratic, do you? Neither is your Senate, with its disproportionate representation of smaller states. Rhode Island is as big as California? Gimme a break!

[. . .]

Did he expect Putin to accept his insult and promise to do better? Did he think that the Russian people would say that it was time for the Russian leadership to shape up in response to the criticism of an American president? What good would come of his criticism? Why did he bother to make such a big deal out of it?

[. . .]

Why not be rude and crude and patronizing? Why not act like an evangelical minister preaching to South American heathens? Why not act like the campus evangelist who tells Catholics that they are not Christian? Why not act like a Catholic bishop refusing the sacraments to a political candidate?

Story.

These clowns who are running the show in Washington don't have a clue about diplomacy, also witnessed last week with regard to Canada opting out of the Missile Defense Shield. We have a foreign policy run by five year olds.

Up is down

Well, mostly. Pauly and his Little Sister have some fun with numbers.

We're #49!

Unlike the Retard Right (© Gordon) who look at our position in the world through Bush-colored glasses, this is where we really stand in comparison to the rest of the world:

More below the fold . . .

Wolcott on Greenspan

We have to cross the mighty mountains to go shopping this A.M., so I'll be brief. Read the article, but here's the punch line:

Alan Greenspan, pompous hack. Harry Reid, blunt hero.

Sometimes even wordy ol' Wolcott cuts through the shit.

Hmmm . . .

This via RDF at Corrente:

In a case with implications for the freedom to blog, a San Jose judge tentatively ruled Thursday that Apple Computer can force three online publishers to surrender the names of confidential sources who disclosed information about the company's upcoming products.

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg refused to extend to the Web sites a protection that shields journalists from revealing the names of unidentified sources or turning over unpublished material.

[. . .]

Makes you wonder, especially after hearing this earlier in the week [link via Sis]:

In just a few months, [Bradley Smith, one of the six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission,] warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.

[…]

The Repubs know we're standing between them and their complete takeover of the media and the information services. While they have us watching Social Security, they're working on destroying free speech. Watch.

As for trying to collect fines from my ass. Good luck. As the sign says: 'Hell with the dog, beware of Owner.'

Saturday Cattle Dog Blogging

Dad, I have to go OUT!!!!!

Ha!

Rook.

Cannon fodder

WASHINGTON, March 3 - The Army is so short of new recruits that for first time in nearly five years it failed in February to fill its monthly quota of volunteers sent to boot camp. Army officials called it the latest ominous sign of the Iraq war's impact on the military's ability to enlist fresh troops.

"We're very concerned about it," Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday when asked about recruiting shortfalls in the active-duty Army and Army Reserve. "When people ask you what you worry about the most, I say there's just two words: people and money."

[. . .]

Link via Melanie.

Guard and Reserve recruiting has been down for months. Now the active duty folks can't fill their quotas. So, are they gonna extend tours again? What if the influx of new recruits continues to drop off? Ya think they're gonna pack it up and leave Iraq? Me neither. Hey Gord, get yer wrenches ready to travel. If Harry and I get there first, we'll save a rack in the tent for ya. And one last question. Ya think Jonah Goldberg will finally sign up for duty?

Hey, Seventh Cross, Listen Up!

Go read A Fascist America by Justin Raimondo at AntiWar.com. You folks can do more justice to this one than I can, and besides, I'm tired.

Perceptions

I don't care who was wrong or right. This:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was injured and another person killed on Friday when "multinational forces" fired on a speeding automobile at a military checkpoint in Baghdad, the Pentagon said.

makes us look like a buncha fucking idiots.

Reid Blasts The 'Span

In today's WaPo:

"I'm not a big Greenspan fan -- Alan Greenspan fan," Reid said when asked about the Fed chairman's testimony this week urging Congress to deal quickly with the financial problems facing Social Security and Medicare. "I voted against him the last two times. I think he's one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington."

"Why doesn't he respond to the Republicans and tell them the big problem here is the debt that this administration [has] created?" he said. "We had a $7 trillion-dollar surplus when Bush took office. Now we have a $3 or $4 trillion-dollar deficit. That's, in fact, what Greenspan should be telling people."

In his first months as successor to former senator Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), Reid has proven to be a pugnacious and sometimes unpredictable leader. He has given the administration no quarter, and his comments sometimes have caused an uproar among fellow Democrats.

An uproar of approval, at least to this pajamahadeen. For a kid from from East Slagheap, Nevada, Reid seems to be going in the right direction. Keep punchin', Harry.

Neocon Amorality

Here's a good article in our ongoing discussion of "moral values" as a distraction for the unwashed masses and how this administration actually uses them. From the Consortium News.

For a government that wraps its actions in moral absolutes about good versus evil, while deriding liberal relativism, the Bush administration may rank as the most committed in modern American history to an ends-justify-the-means ethos.

Indeed, to understand the administration’s neoconservative foreign policy, one must recognize how this moral framework works: First, it sets out worthy-sounding goals – freedom, democracy, security – and then it applies whatever tactics are deemed necessary – torture, murder, unprovoked invasions – along with an aggressive propaganda strategy at home.

Next, when events take a positive turn, the neoconservatives claim credit, even if they had only a minor role or the events were largely coincidental. Criticism of the bloody means is washed away by celebration of the virtuous ends. Mainstream commentators join in, cheering the neocons’ farsightedness. Those who opposed the original actions are pushed to the political margins.

Go read. I'm only finding un-fucking-believably long in-depth stuff today, it seems. It's giving me a lot of practice in reading without moving my lips.

De Col' Wind Be Comin' Closah.....

Feel that cold breeze on the back of your neck? That's a draft. Philip Carter and Paul Glastris make a case for it in a Washington Monthly article. Agree or disagree, they make some good points. Go read. Pack a lunch, it's a long one.

The only effective solution to the manpower crunch is the one America has turned to again and again in its history: the draft. Not the mass combat mobilizations of World War II, nor the inequitable conscription of Vietnam—for just as threats change and war-fighting advances, so too must the draft. A modernized draft would demand that the privileged participate. It would give all who serve a choice over how they serve. And it would provide the military, on a “just in time” basis, large numbers of deployable ground troops, particularly the peacekeepers we'll need to meet the security challenges of the 21st century.

America has a choice. It can be the world's superpower, or it can maintain the current all-volunteer military, but it probably can't do both.

It's gonna dazzle ya how much good shit is Below The Fold.

Deficits and Deceit

Paul Krugman on Greenspan and Bush's lies about Social Security and the deficit.

To put Mr. Greenspan's game of fiscal three-card monte in perspective, remember that the push for Social Security privatization is only part of the right's strategy for dismantling the New Deal and the Great Society. The other big piece of that strategy is the use of tax cuts to "starve the beast."

According to starve-the-beast doctrine, right-wing politicians can use the big deficits generated by tax cuts as an excuse to slash social insurance programs. Mr. Bush's advisers thought that it would prove especially easy to sell benefit cuts in the context of Social Security privatization because the president could pretend that a plan that sharply cut benefits would actually be good for workers.

The best bet now is that Mr. Bush will manage to make the poor suffer, but fail to make a dent in the great middle-class entitlement programs.

And the consequence of the failure of the starve-the-beast theory is a looming fiscal crisis - Mr. Greenspan isn't wrong about that. The middle class won't give up programs that are essential to its financial security; the right won't give up tax cuts that it sold on false pretenses. The only question now is when foreign investors, who have financed our deficits so far, will decide to pull the plug.

Krugman is a smart guy who knows this shit inside and out, and has the balls to call 'em like he sees 'em. You should read him religiously. Print his op-eds, put them in a binder, and refer to them often. He does "talking head" duty on TV occasionally and is well worth watching. I liked it the time he went toe-to-toe with Bill O'Reilly and didn't give an inch to that big pussy bully.

More draft

One more before I fade into incoherency. A level-headed article on the case for a draft:

[. . .]

All this for a war that most planners consider to be a medium-sized conflict—nothing like what the United States faced in World War I, World War II, or the Cold War. And while threats of that magnitude aren't anywhere on the horizon, there are plenty of quite possible scenarios that could quickly overwhelm us—an implosion of the North Korean regime, a Chinese attack on Taiwan, worsening of the ethnic cleansing in the Sudan, or some unforeseen humanitarian nightmare. Already we have signaled to bad actors everywhere the limits of our power. Military threats might never have convinced the Iranians to give up their nuclear program. But it's more than a little troubling that ruling Iranian mullahs can publicly and credibly dismiss recent administration saber-rattling by pointing to the fact that our forces are pinned down in Iraq.

[. . .]

Not that I'm clamoring for a draft. I'm for a foreseeable endgame to Iraq. I talked about this the other day too.

[. . .]

The dollar is getting weaker and our military is stretched thin. Were I an opposing general, I'd say America is almost ripe for the picking. What say the Chinese attacked Taiwan? What say the North Koreans attacked South Korea and Japan? What if both scenarios occurred at once? In what position would that leave our military and our economy? Could we afford it? Could we field the army required? Looks like with 45% of our troops in Iraq being Guards and Reserves, we can't. Not if we're faced with an army that doesn't respond to 'shock and awe' the way the Iraqi army did. My dad fought the Chinese and they were formidable 50 years ago. Now they have nukes. So do the Indians and Pakistanis, so do the North Koreans.

[. . .]

Good

Here, via Sis.

Light blogging for me today. I got an abcessed tooth and I'm turning to chemistry to get me through until I see that thieving dentist of mine tomorrow. In a few minutes, I'll make even less sense than usual. I can't even be a whiny little bitch about it because Mrs. F. is in Hartford and the dog don't give a shit.