Walschwitz

Never one to let bad taste stand in my way, The Guardian sent me here. You vill go look. If you do not, ve haff vays of making you...

Iraq through the prism of Vietnam

General William Odom, USArmy (Retd.), former Director of the NSA, has a few things to say.

The Vietnam War experience can't tell us anything about the war in Iraq - or so it is said. If you believe that, trying looking through this lens, and you may change your mind.

The Vietnam War had three phases. The War in Iraq has already completed an analogous first phase, is approaching the end of the second phase, and shows signs of entering the third.

Gen. Odom has a good historical perspective and knows whereof he speaks. Go read.

Big Business admits it...

Sirotablog

This new article and this new article in the Financial Times finally exposes the real issue fueling Big Money's freakout over Congress moving to stop the Dubai port deal. The first article is most brazen. It quotes the president of the Business Roundtable "warning that renewed political attempts to block the takeover of port facilities could jeopardise both foreign investment and forthcoming trade negotiations." The Roundable, which represents 160 chief executives, dismissed serious security concerns and claimed the controversy is "just another iteration of economic isolationism like the outsourcing debate was." So there you have it in black and white from Corporate America: profits are more important than security.

Big Biz is in on the grim joke: "National Security" is a big scam the way Bush is doing it.

Office Pirates

So there I was (relax, it's not a fairy tale war story), pursuing truth, justice, and the American way on behalf of our readers like I always do. I exist only to serve. Anyway, proving the old adage that even a blind old pig will find an acorn once in a while, somehow I got to this article in the NYTimes, which was interesting enough that I went to the subject site, Office Pirates, to see what I could see. Pretty good, jokes, videos, shit like that. Go see. Don't go if you ain't got a coupla minutes to cruise around. Let me know whatcha think.

Midwest Values

Good interview with Al Franken. From BuzzFlash.

BuzzFlash: Do you feel that redefining and accurately framing progressive values is one of the biggest keys for progressives to win the election? Have you jumped on the Lakoff framing bandwagon?

Al Franken: I have, to some degree. It just drives me nuts that these guys have stolen values, when they're corrupt, dishonest, greedy. They hire people by cronyism. They hijack religion and Jesus, when Jesus talked about helping the poor. As I always say, if you cut out every passage in the New Testament where Jesus talks about helping the poor, or helping the least among us - if you cut out each one of those passages, you'd have the perfect box to smuggle Rush Limbaugh's drugs.

Read and enjoy.

I should have known...

This line at Cursor piqued my prurient interest:

...gay ex-prostitute goes down.

I thought to myself, "Wow! A true enthusiast! Gets after it even when there's no money involved!"

But, of course, there was. It was about Texas politics.

Power and Fantasy

Maureen Dowd compares our two national centers of fantasy and denial. At Donkey O.D.

There is a crash of ideologies between the country's two most self-regarding and fantasy-spinning power centers. The Bush crowd cringes away from gay cowboys spooning, gay authors flouncing, transgender babes exploring and George the Dashing Clooneying in movies about the glories of free speech and the dangers of oilmen influencing policy.

But as I looked around Vanity Fair's slinky Oscar party on Sunday night, it struck me that the bellicose Bushies do share a presentation aesthetic with Tinseltown's trompe l'oeil beauties: you see no furrowed brows, no regretful winces, no unflattering wrinkles, no admissions of imperfection, no qualms about puffing up what you really have, no visible signs of hard lessons learned, and no desire to confront reality in the mirror.

In Hollywood terms, we've reached an Indiana Jones crisis moment in our parlous protectorate. The cave is collapsing, the snakes are encroaching, the vehicles are exploding, the crushing ball is rolling down on us. The public has stopped buying the administration's sugary spin. The Washington Post reported yesterday that 80 percent of Americans - cutting across party lines - say sectarian violence makes civil war in Iraq likely. More than a third call it "very likely." Half also think the U.S. should begin withdrawing troops from Iraq, the poll found, and two-thirds say the president has no clear plan for Iraq.

The widespread resistance to the Dubai ports deal, even among newly fractious Republicans, indicates that Americans have lost faith in the president's competence - a faith shredded by the White House's obtuseness and lies on Katrina.

I love MoDo. The Vanity Fair post-Oscar party is the hottest A-list ticket in Tinsel Town, and she managed to brag a little on herself for getting to go to it, and weave the administration into the phoniness at the same time! Way to go, Red!

Fire Chief Caught On The Lamb

This one's just for fun. From The Smoking Gun.

"You caught me Alan, I tried to fuck your sheep."

Thank God for reality. I couldn't make this shit up!

Veto this, Chimp-o!

From the WaPo

Efforts by the White House to hold off legislation challenging a Dubai-owned company's acquisition of operations at six major U.S. ports collapsed yesterday when House Republican leaders agreed to allow a vote next week that could kill the deal.

Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) will attach legislation to block the deal today to a must-pass emergency spending bill funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A House vote on the measure next week will set up a direct confrontation with President Bush, who sternly vowed to veto any bill delaying or stopping Dubai Ports World's purchase of London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steamship Co.

Yo, Dubya, you ran your mouth and threatened these guys. Put up or shut up. Let's see you veto your war money. It's your choice: Dubaiously controlled U.S. ports or more money to throw down the sand-hole. Congress might over-ride the veto and you'll get your money and no port deal.

Wanta know the ironical part?

DP World officials suggested yesterday that within days, Peninsular & Oriental's operations will belong to them, no matter what Congress does.

They're not going to stop unloading ships in those port terminals. International trade and corporate profit trumps the War on Terror.

And why not? In Bushworld, Green Money beats out a phony, made up, political Red Herring anytime.

Besides, Bush needs the UAE for bases for the jump-off into Iran.

Just one

I'm off to the city to visit the Mrs. I just want you to leave you with some wisdom from Jo Fish:

...

The last time the US sent military forces in to intercede in a civil war, we had to build a monument to 58,000-plus Americans who lost their lives taking sides in a civil war that both the Preznit and Vice-Preznit ran away from, in spades. This time, those two cowards started it and we, the People own it. Unfortunately.

Iraq will affect the political discourse in this country for the next 20 years. It will not be over when the troops come home, on many levels. For the American public, the troops, the economy, this war has damaged us all immeasurably.

And get a dose of reality from Kevin Hayden. I've been saying this for almost 2 years.

...

Yes, I can compare Bush to Hitler. The numbers of corpses do not need to match. The willingness to maintain that death rate, to practice torture, to murder POWs, to develop a gulag that includes foreign ones we've exiled people to via extraordinary rendition... these are the tools of Stalin and Hitler. The only brake that has kept the numbers of dead smaller has been the press digging out the details. And when they are silenced, the numbers will rise.

...

I'm outta here...

It ain't yer daddy's Jesus...

David at 42 turned me on to this one. In his words,

Dear Friend - It is *imperative* that you read the following page from the White House web site: http://www.whitehouse.org/ask/jesus.asp

Don't delay! Your patriotism is at stake!

Liquid Alert!

Yeah!!!!!

I'm happy to report Mrs. F is out of surgery and doing fine. I should be able to bring her home on Friday. While they did do a complete hysterectomy, they found nothing malignant. Once she heals she'll be good as new. I'm a happy camper.

Thanks to all of my colleagues and commenters who offered prayers and good words. We're both deeply touched.

Have I told you how much I hate driving in Manhattan?

How Tom DeLay Stole Congress

Here's a little teaser.

Update:

NYTimes on the film.

Port deal is necessary for war on Iran

Mike Whitney recalls Napoleon's advice in regard to why Bush is pushing so hard for his UAE port deal:

"If you want to understand the policy of a country, look at the map."

United Arab Emirates is located at the center of an oil-dependent world. This tiny state forms the promontory that juts out into the famed Straits of Hormuz through which 40% of the world's oil passes every day. Across the narrow straights sits Iran, the next victim on the list of "axis of evil" nations. Any attack on Iran will require that military forces quickly deploy to Dubai to forestall the closing of the straits and the subsequent devastation that would occur to world oil supplies and financial markets.

This is the critical point that is being intentionally concealed by America's diversionary media. This is the reason that President Bush continues to force the Dubai port plan even though 70% of the American people and Congress resoundingly oppose it.

As far as we know, however, Ahmadinejad has been straightforward in his claims. The IAEA has consistently found that Iran has fully complied with the terms of the NPT and that there "is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program."

That hasn't stop[ped] Washington, though. The die was cast for war with Iran nearly a decade ago in policy papers drawn up by far-right political ideologues that now control all the levers of foreign policy in the Bush White House.

The hypocrisy of this Bush-backed plan is breathtaking. Bush just finished a trip to India and Pakistan where he effectively declared himself the final arbiter of who will get nuclear technology and fuel and who won't. His actions were a clear affront to the IAEA, the UN, the NPT, and the United States Congress, who is supposed to determine such matters as treaties.

Bush has apparently elected himself the god of all things nuclear.

The NPT is dead.

Will this final assault on international agreements clear the path for war with Iran?

The UAE port deal is just more indication that an attack on Iran is forthcoming. Its location is crucial to the success of any American invasion.

For the Pentagon warlords Dubai has become the strategic epicenter of the global resource war. As peace activist and author Uri Avnery said, "Regimes come and go, rulers rise and fall, ideologies flourish and wither, but geography stands forever. It's geography that decides the basic interest of every state."

All eyes should be focused on Dubai and the tenuous future of the Straits of Hormuz.

I didn't want him to go to war with Iraq, and I really don't want him to go to war with Iran.

Anything that presents a barrier to another criminal war on behalf of Big Corpora is a good thing. The port deal must not stand.

The Solution For South Dakota

The Rude Pundit has a sure-fire plan to get the misogynistic South Dakota Forced Birth law overturned so fast it'll make your head spin. Note: his post contains both bad language and a high sexual content. Win-win! You gotta go read it, but here's the upshot:

Over the next few weeks, months even, as periods are missed and crocodile tears are shed (for, indeed, there will be few real regrets), you can pretty much bet that abortion on demand will become the law of the land in South Dakota so fast that it'll seem that yesterday never happened.

That guy's got a pair o' solid brass ones, don't he? I hope it's nice and warm wherever he is.

Spring is almost here: for Mr & Mrs F

Exhausted, I sought
a country inn, but found
the dogwoods in bloom.
Basho

We're thinking of you two. Get the rest you need, have some chicken soup and get ready to enjoy springtime (plant some bulbs for next year)!




(I took a little liberty with Basho, who found wisteria in bloom.)

Family matters

My ass is gonna be scarce around here until the weekend. Unfortunately, during an exam two weeks ago, Mrs. F's doctor found a mass that he didn't like the looks of. Being an Ashkenazi Jew with a family history of cancer (my wife's mom and her grandparents on her mom's side had various flavors), surgery is the only option. She goes in tomorrow morning.

The docs have prepared us for the worst but are hopeful because a C-T scan did not show evidence of metastasis. They'll be doing a biopsy while she's on the table to see if chemotherapy is warranted or not.

While we're naturally concerned, I know she will be in the best place in the world, in the hands of the best doc in the world in the field.

This is a big change for me because it's usually Mrs. F waiting in the hospital for them to put me back together. If all goes well, I'll have her back home for the weekend. Posting will be few and far between because I'll be spending most of my time in Manhattan and frankly, the world can go to Hell for all I care until I know the love of my life is out of danger. I'll let you all know how things went tomorrow night or Wednesday morning.

Gord's got the keys. Behave yourselves until I get back.

See ya's.

Enjoy Monkey Tail

Take about 15 minutes and go see this film. I don't know where he finds this shit, but this is the best one yet from Cleek. Yes, install the media upgrade if you have to. It's worth it.

This day in history

From Geov Parrish

3/6/1836: Mexican troops defend their country's abolitionist constitution, defeat foreign slaveholders. San Antonio, Texas. Remember the Alamo.

Then again, maybe they were just trying to get part of their country back. I wish they'd try again.

1857: Dred Scott decision by U.S. Supreme Court opens federal territory to slavery and denies citizenship to blacks, ruling that blacks are not entitled to protection under the law. The "unhappy Black Race," wrote Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney in his opinion, had never possessed "rights which the white man was bound to respect."

Gee, sumthin' happens nearly every day! Go read.

The case for impeachment is growing

AlterNet

Until recently, talk of ousting President George W. Bush has proved little more than a distant rumbling. For too long, impeachment has been deemed implausible. It's not going to happen with a Republican Congress, so the argument goes. Not with the president finishing his second term, not while we're at war.

But the distant rumbling is growing louder by the day, creating a resonant echo that is rapidly taking root in public discourse. "Impeach Him," reads the cover of this month's Harper's magazine. And in a public forum in New York City last week, journalists, lawyers, and political figures came together to discuss the case against our president.

n fact, the case for the impeachment of President Bush is arguably the strongest in American history. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) makes this amply clear in its recent book, a concise indictment of President Bush that lays out four clear legal arguments that point to impeachment as a necessary remedy for the gross violation of our Constitution. The Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush covers illegal wiretapping, torture, rendition, detention and the Iraq war. An appendix compares the impeachment proceedings of Andrew Johnson, Nixon and Clinton to the comparatively more powerful case against Bush.

The Articles of Impeachment make clear that this is no longer just about President Bush. Rather, it is about preventing the executive branch from obtaining carte blanche to disregard the two other branches of government. This is a paradigm shift that has already gained substantial footing through this administration's steady erosion of legal precedent.

It is the ultimate case of missing the forest for the trees. Behind this massive body of evidence, behind each new report of this president's transgressions of the law, is the threat of the one and only story that Americans will read for the rest of this presidency, and presidencies to come: The abuse of power, and the destruction of our Constitution.

That may be the legal argument, but this for damn sure is about Bush. And all his merry, evil men.

By all means go read the article. Many links and an interview with the book's author.

Right now, the move for impeachment resembles a sputtering moped. Let's turn it into a fire-breathing Top Fueler.