Animalia
Cat Show Plans Memorial Service for Dog
"what digby sez..."
Open Letter To Pat Robertson’s Mescaline Supplier
To Whom It May Concern,
It’s time to stop supplying Reverend Pat Robertson with hallucinogens. He clearly has tripped out once too often and it’s kind of giving the phrase “zonked totally out of your mind” a bad rap:
On today’s 700 Club, Rev. Pat Robertson took the opportunity to strongly rebuke voters in Dover, PA who removed from office school board members who supported teaching faith-based “intelligent design” and instead elected Democrats who opposed bringing up the possibility of a Creator in the school system’s science curriculum.
Rev. Robertson warned the people of Dover that God might forsake the town because of the vote.
“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.”
via Pharyngula
The Final Throes
Suicide Bomber Kills at Least 29 in Crowded Baghdad Restaurant
A man wearing a suicide bomb belt walked into a bustling breakfast restaurant in the heart of the capital this morning and blew himself up, killing at least 29 people and wounding 30, many of them police officers, officials said.
Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a group that tracks Islamic militant postings. The attack was the most lethal in the capital in two months, and came a day after three suicide bombings killed 57 people in Amman, Jordan, in a coordinated attack also claimed by Al Qaeda.
It was the worst strike in a day of violence in Iraq that left at least 35 dead and more than 50 people wounded. Police officials also found 27 corpses in the southern city of Kut.
All American Suckers
Unbelievable. Thirty-eight percent of this country still approves of Bush. Man, that’s a lot of rubes.
Y’know, a halfway intelligent and utterly unscrupulous con artist could do very well for himself here.
“Al Qaeda Is Having A Field Day”
There has been a lot of hand wringing amongst the liberal hawks these days regarding Iraq. And this has overlapped with an extremely abstract, prolonged -and frankly idiotic- argument over “the future of liberal interventionism” in the wake of the Iraq disaster.
And while all these great minds have been discussing ever so “reasonably” how best to adjust the “calculus” of America’s Manifest Destiny so “we” will continue to be a force of good in the world, they have, almost to a person, demonstrated their profound inability merely to look outside their own goddamn windows and respond with simple human decency and commonsense to the real world. And once again, they’ve demonstrated how alarmingly limited American foreign policy discourse has become. Why? Because, regarding the recent catastrophe in Kashmir, most of the pseudo-intellectual liberal interventionists have joined the Bush administration once again in failing to pay attention to the patently obvious:
The poor response of the international community to the victims of Kashmir was underscored by the United Nations saying that it had received only 27% of the $312 million of its flash appeal for quake relief – compared with 80% pledged within 10 days of a similar appeal to international donors after the tsunami of December 26.
The government of Pakistan’s own response to this massive human tragedy has also been described as slow and inadequate. One leader of Pakistan-administered Kashmir stated, “It’s a shame as the government on the other side [Indian-administered Kashmir] acted promptly and provided relief and rescue in all the affected areas … People are angry here as they think Islamabad has double standards, even in handling natural disasters.”
What about the Islamist organizations of Pakistan; how did they respond? The same Kashmir leader told Reuters, “The jihadi groups are more sincerely taking part in relief operations. Those groups, which were branded bad by the government, are no doubt doing well and will influence people’s sympathy in the future.”
A number of earthquake victims attested to this reality by stating that the only prompt help they have gotten has been from Islamist groups. (See Asia Times Online Waging jihad against disaster, October 20.) Even Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf agreed with the performance of the Islamist groups related to post-earthquake assistance.
Examine the above realities from the perspective of al-Qaeda’s version of public diplomacy. Considering the publicity given by the Western media to all statements that al-Qaeda issues, Zawahiri’s appeal for aid for Pakistani victims was heard all over the world.
The immediate danger that this appeal poses is to Musharraf’s own regime.
And given that Pakistan has nukes, well? But let’s read on:
Al-Qaeda is having a field day watching the community of nations perform so deplorably in regard to the human tragedy in Pakistan. It can, quite effectively, underscore three perspectives. First, that the illegitimacy of current Muslim governments in the wake of their failure to come to the rescue of a Muslim tragedy of epic proportions does not require any further debate, from the perspectives of al-Qaeda.
Second, the seeming lack of Western concern only underscores al-Qaeda’s claim that the West does not really care about what happens to Muslims, as long as the compliant and sycophant Muslim regimes continue to preside over the political status that ensures the dominance of the West. Third, given the preceding two reasons, al-Qaeda’s own unrelenting insistence on the violent overthrow of all extant Muslim regimes is further established, at least in the minds of everyone who is mildly sympathetic to that organization’s criticisms.
What emerges from the preceding is a transnational pan-jihadi entity carefully studying the twists and turns of the US and Western responses to countering terrorism and coming up with its own countermeasures.
Despite the dismantlement of the Taliban regime, al-Qaeda knows that the battle for control of Afghanistan has barely begun. It will continue its guerrilla-type skirmishes with US-led and Afghan forces. But the most important concomitant battle is to influence the hearts and minds of the Muslims of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
A weak Afghanistan remains under constant threat of major political turbulence. At the same time, an unstable Pakistan serves as an even more significant target than Afghanistan. The centers of gravity to win its war against the “enemies of Islam” – a phrase that al-Qaeda uses to depict all forces that oppose it and its objectives – are located in those two countries.
All it must do is keep the focus of rhetorical barrages on all Muslim tragedies and grievances and persistently highlight the sustained ineptness of the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan. A highly charged environment thus created would be vastly conducive to even greater instability in the region. That is the essence of al-Qaeda’s battle to win the hearts and minds of Muslims, not only in South Asia, but also in the rest of the world of Islam.
I hate to say it again, but I told you so.
Again, boys and girls: The American mainstream media must make room for those of us in the reality-based community. I’m talking about those people who realized on 9/11/01 the Bush administration had to have been asleep at the switch; those people who understood after bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora that the Afghanistan war was a catastrophic military failure; those of us who heard of Bush/Iraq in spring, 2002 and were utterly appalled anyone would take seriously an idea so plainly bonkers; and those of us who immediately grasped that a catastrophic earthquake in a land that just happened to be at the center of several overlapping nuclear confrontations was an emergency – both human and political- that those nations committed to defeating al Qaeda simply had no choice but to pay serious attention to.
I mean, why can’t we hear from experts who are right on a regular basis? Where the hell are they? Does Richard Clarke have an op-ed column? Is he provided the same access to tubed eyeballs -and the same courtesy- that the Swift Boaters and the crazy generals Digby described yesterday? Anyone recently see Rand Beers in the news two days in a row?
I Almost Feel Sorry For Him
I’M A GENIUS [Jonah Goldberg]
I scored 100% my first time out on this timewaster.
Posted at 09:22 AM
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Very Good News
Expanding on tristero’s good news below, may I just say how pleased I am that California voted down every single initiative yesterday, thereby shoving Schwarzenegger’s useless 70 million dollar special election down his throat. Even the parental notification for minors seeking abortion went down.
Schwarzenegger is toast. After watching Bush and him in action maybe people are finally beginning to move beyond the “dumbshit guy I’d like to hang out with” and “movie stars are, like, awesome” methods of choosing our leaders.
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Win Some, Lose Some
All eight members up for re-election to the Pennsylvania school board that had been sued for introducing the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in biology class were swept out of office yesterday by a slate of challengers who campaigned against the intelligent design policy.
[SNIP]
The election will not alter the facts on which the judge must decide the case. But if the intelligent design policy is defeated in court, the new school board could refuse to pursue an appeal. It could also withdraw the policy, a step that many challengers said they intended to take.
“We are all for it being discussed, but we do not want to see it in biology class,” said Judy McIlvaine, a member of the winning slate. “It is not a science.”
The fiercely split Kansas Board of Education voted 6 to 4 on Tuesday to adopt new science standards that are the most far-reaching in the nation in challenging Darwin’s theory of evolution in the classroom.
[SNIP]
Among the most controversial changes was a redefinition of science itself, so that it would not be explicitly limited to natural explanations.
[SNIP]
“This is a sad day, not just for Kansas kids, but for Kansas,” Janet Waugh of Kansas City, Kan., one of four dissenting board members, said before the vote. “We’re becoming a laughingstock not only of the nation but of the world.”
[SNIP]
In the standing-room-only crowd in the small board room for Tuesday’s session were two dozen high school students fulfilling an assignment for government class by attending the public meeting. They shook their heads at the decision.
“We’re glad we’re seniors,” said Hannah Teeter, 17, from Shawnee Mission West, a high school in Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City. “I feel bad for all the kids that are younger than us that they have to be taught things that aren’t science in science class.”
The Republican loss in Virginia, which President Bush carried with 54 percent just a year ago, came after an 11th-hour campaign stop by Mr. Bush and the kind of all-out Republican effort to mobilize the vote that reaped rich rewards last year.
Republicans argued on Tuesday that Virginia was a local election driven by local events, with little long-term national significance. But the loss clearly stung, as did the double-digit defeat in New Jersey, a blue state that had seemed within reach for the Republicans.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was dealt a stinging rebuke on Tuesday by voters who rejected the centerpiece of his efforts to change the balance of power in Sacramento, an initiative to cap state spending and grant sweeping new budget powers to the governor.
Jerry Sanders, a former police chief, outpolled a surf-shop owner and City Council member on Tuesday to be elected mayor of San Diego, a city that has been tainted by corruption and fiscal mismanagement.
With 90 percent of the precincts reporting, Mr. Sanders, a Republican, had 54 percent of the vote, to 46 percent for Donna Frye, his Democratic opponent.
Bad news, good news, bad news:
Doctors would have to tell women seeking abortions in their 20th week of pregnancy or later that their fetuses might feel pain — an assertion debated in the medical community — under a bill passed by Wisconsin lawmakers.
Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, promised to veto the legislation, which the Assembly passed 61-34 Tuesday and the Senate passed earlier.
[snip]
Three states have similar requirements and federal legislation is pending in Congress, the National Conference of State Legislatures said.
Texans voted overwhelmingly to add a prohibition of same-sex marriage to their constitution on Tuesday, becoming the 19th U.S. state to do so.
[I]n St. Paul, Randy Kelly became the city’s first incumbent mayor in more than 30 years to lose a re-election campaign.
Polls suggested that Mr. Kelly’s endorsement of President Bush last fall was a factor in his loss to a fellow Democrat, Chris Coleman, by 70 percent to 30 percent.
“I have never seen anything quite like this,” Lawrence Jacobs, director of the University of Minnesota Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, said about what he called a firestorm over the endorsement.
A poll conducted by Mr. Jacobs found that more than half of likely voters in the city said Mr. Kelly’s endorsement would influence their votes. Most of those respondents said it would lead them to vote for Mr. Coleman, a former City Council member.
Confiding in Vic
It looks like DC is just crawling with wingnuts claiming to have spotted Elvis er… claiming that Joseph Wilson told them that his wife was CIA while they were waiting to go on one News show or another. Oddly, none of them ever came forward to support poor little Scooter and Karl during their ordeal. How selfish of them.
From last July, here’s a friend of Victor Davis Hanson, regaling the Freepers with lurid stories of Wilson’s crass materialism and bragging about his hot blonde wife in the make-up room:
Based upon a personal conversation (we were in a small group eating; it was NOT an “off the record”) I had with eminent historian Victor Davis Hanson (we were at a luncheon table together during a trip to Europe), it appeared entirely possible that Joe Wilson himself was the (or one source, if not the original one) possible source in revealing his own wife’s status as a CIA agent or employee.
Victor Davis Hanson (Wilson presumably knew Victor Davis Hanson wrote regularly for NRO (National Review Online), had done OpEds for the Wall street Journal, and other publications, and had his own Website with a widespread following) said he (VDH) & Joe Wilson were both in the same “Green Room” before a televised debate-discussion on Iraq, etc. and Joe first warned the TV make-up person not to get powder on his $14,000 Rolex watch, then he bragged to Victor about several things (possessions and trips to Aspen, etc.), like his expensive car (I think it was a Mercedes), and then bragged about his beautiful wife who, Joe Wilson said (braggingly) was a CIA operative.
I asked Victor Davis Hanson Why he didn’t write up this account.(?) He replied that Joe Wilson would probably simply deny it, since only he (VDH) & Joe Wilson were in the Green Room together before the broadcast.
Fitzgerald is going to have to round up every wingnut in Washington. Seems they’ve all been holding out on him, allowing him to spend years investigating and hundreds of thousands of dollars and now he’s going to have to start from scratch. After all, he is under the impression that Wilson’s CIA status was classified and not known outside intelligence circles. Apparently, Wilson spilled his guts with uncommon frequency in the Green Rooms of television studios.
For those of you who need a primer on the hard, masculine, manliness of the brave Victor Dave, (who was evidently much too busy tucking into his terrine of duck confit whilst entertaining his little friends with insider tales of crass nouveau riches clods to step up and help out his pals Scoot and Turdblossom) here’s James Wolcott on the subject.
By the way, did I ever tell you that I once heard Dick Cheney recite the codes to the nuclear football over tacos at Michael Ledeen’s house? He did. And while he was doing it he was picking off the neighborhood cats with a bb gun and bragging about his three-way with Lynn and John Bolton. I never said anything before because he would just deny it. We were alone together in the bathroom at the time.
Crooks and Liars has a whole list of interesting links on the Valelly/McIntyre Swift boat smear.
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Whole Lotta Love
Wow. CNN is reporting that Trent Lott just said that the Washington Post leak was probably perpetrated by a Republican Senator! Apparently, the gulag was discussed at the Republican-Senator-only meeting last week in which Cheney begged them to back-off the anti-torture policy.
Lott said, “we have met the enemy and he is us.” Man a majority leader scorned is fearsome creature, ain’t he?
I do find it fascinating that Cheney was discussing this Gulag opernly in front of the GOP caucus after they had just recently voted 90-0 for the anti-torture amendment. Seems old Dick is a little slow on the uptake. He didn’t learn a thing from his earlier leaking campaign, did he?
Update: Think Progress has the video.
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