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to the Web sites a protection that shields journalists from revealing the names of unidentified sources or turning over unpublished material.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.

Maybe An Aircraft Carrier In Lake Michigan Would Help...

An interesting, but inconclusive, article on illegal immigration in Truthout.

Some eleven thousand guards patrol the length of the country's border with Mexico, a true sieve. George W. Bush's plan, studied this year in Congress, seriously divides the Republicans. Talk about immigration in Washington does not follow the usual fracture lines of the political parties: Democrats are torn between humanitarian arguments and those of Labor Unions; Republicans are divided between pro-business lobbies that want the cheap labor and the Republican base that fears a "Hispanization" of the country. From Tucson.

She would like to see "50,000 soldiers on the Mexican border and 50,000 on the Canadian border." The traitors in her eyes: the American government, which "rolls out the red carpet for illegals."

How do you say "coyote" in French? What a ninny!

"If there's anything I've understood as far as immigration is concerned, it's that you can tell me where someone lives and what their party affiliation is, but I can't deduce his position on immigration from that," summarizes Pastor Robin Hoover.

There are many sides to this problem. Leave it to the Frog who wrote that to put it in such a succinct fashion.

Solvency

[. . .]

In other words, the markets have caught on to the fact that Bush is nothing more than economic smoke and mirrors. He continually hides the ball or figures out ways for other people to pay for his mistakes.

Because the US has not effectively dealt with its trade or federal budget deficit, other nations appear to be making the initial moves to get away from the dollar.

[. . .]

Enlightening post in the Kos Diaries via Corrente. Eventually, our creditors are gonna cut us loose to founder on our own. When that happens, we'll see another Depression.

NWHM

Hah . . . what, you say? It's National Women's History Month. Refresh what you learned in history class. (Especially with all the fiesty wimmins runnin around in Left Blogstonia.) Thanks to Pandagon for the link.

Huh?

[. . .]

"So long as health-care costs continue to grow faster than the economy as a whole, the additional resources needed for such programs will exert pressure on the federal budget that seems increasingly likely to make current fiscal policy unsustainable," Greenspan said.

He again threw his weight behind the notion of restructuring the Social Security retirement system to include private investment accounts -- an idea President Bush is pushing in speeches around the country.

[. . .]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the Chairman of the Federal Reserve isn't supposed to be a PARTISAN-FUCKING-HACK like his PARTISAN-FUCKING-WIFE.

Skank

From Campus Progress comes the announcement of the winner of the "Name Ann Coulter's Next Book" contest.

The rules for the contest were simple: The book title had to be the same format as Coulter’s books—a single word, followed by an explanatory subtitle.

The winner:

“Roosevelt: Wheelchair-riding, America-hating terrorist”

Many more. My submission:

"Sailorpussies: How I Fucked the Seventh Fleet 'Til It Ran Out Of Seamen"