CIA does backfill; so do I!

a brainiac with a cranium packed...
...actually there's no maniac and no uranium here, it turns out. The Inqy woke me up this morning with a for-real terror dream. Syria was making the bomb! No mention of skepticism from David Albright or Mohammed el-Baradei. A senior admin official saying the reactor was just a click away! A grainy ISIS photo from space! Strangely, no mention of yesterday's videotape.

Convincing! So here comes WaPo to rain on the parade: another senior admin official says nobody thought this was legitimate information:

At the same time, a senior U.S. official acknowledged that the U.S. intelligence experts had formally assigned only "low confidence" to the possibility that the site was at the heart of a Syrian nuclear weapons program, because it lacked basic components such as a reprocessing plant.

Since we can't both be right here, and since Israel seems to want a land-for-peace deal with Assad, the September bombing and the current flurry of flaky data are clearly functions of inter-agency squabbling, no? Senior intelligence officials in favor of preemptive strikes against fantasy targets are undercutting their colleagues, indeed undercutting Israeli foreign policy. Clearly, the original story is backwards: what the CIA's presentation to Congress suggests is that in September, we got the satellite pics to Israel and leaned on them to make a surgical strike. What does "they asked for no green light" mean? It means preemption was our idea.

So, predictions are easy to come by at this point. Within the month, let's say, Olmert and Assad will sign an historic peace agreement, and Tzipi Livni will make plain that Israel didn't want to bomb that patch of desert, but Bushites bullied Israel into it.

***

Mad Yoo

In the interest of finally catching up on things I've meant to talk about, I'm just going to print an email I sent to the Inquirer in January. John Yoo had just been sued by Jose Padilla's lawyers for his work at the Office of Legal Counsel. On 15 January 2008, the Inquirer ran his apologia. Reading it was like smoking crack. There's not really anything in this email that isn't obvious to everyone, but it's a start.

Sir:

1) Yoo's arguments for the plenary power of the executive during time of war fail to account for the interminable nature of the so-called war on terror. Permanent presidential rule by fiat represents the end of democracy, and the inception of a police state. Thus the animus against Yoo. If this is a democracy, we can only ask Yoo's defenders, in what sense is the global war on terror finite? And the corollary, in what ways are the president's war powers circumscribed?

2) Yoo's relationship to Padilla has less to do with his arrest than with his detention. Yoo is no Jack Bauer. As the primary author of the now-infamous "Torture Memo" written in 2002 in the Office of Legal Counsel and exposed in May 2004, he argues that interrogation methods tantamount to torture are legal (at best, not illegal), that enemy combatants are not subject to Geneva protections, that only the executive shall determine what does and does not constitute torture, and that the executive is justified in keeping the entire process shrouded in secrecy.

Apologists need to make a case. Does torture work? Does torture work quickly? Are other means of interrogating terror suspects invalid? If so, why? Is torture's efficacy and necessity profound enough to trump Eighth Amendment protections against it? How can Congress or the people legitimize a secret war? How can the executive branch write the rules for its own behavior?

No one defending Yoo will touch these concerns with a ten-foot pole, content instead to cry "lawfare."

3) Since Yoo's resignation, every one of his positions has been picked apart in Congress and the courts. The Supreme Court has ruled that indefinite detention without trial is unconstitutional, even when the detainee is a foreign-born "enemy combatant." The practice of torture has been swatted back everywhere from the Detainee Treatment Act to the Army field manual.

All of which begs the question, what extralegal or quasi-legal acts is Yoo currently defending? If we take the president at his word when he says, "We do not torture," then Yoo's spirited assertion of single-handedly crafting a victory strategy in the GWOT falls flat. If we don't need torture anymore to beat Al-Qaeda, why did we need it in the first place?

4) The operative word may not be lawfare, but avoision in Yoo's case. His work at OLC was the foremost instance of sneaking illegality in under a cloak of legalisms. His defenders need to square his charges against Padilla with the Bush adminstration's ongoing use of the law for political ends.

Alternately, if this isn't a crusade to deny terrorist fellow-travelers the use of a legal arsenal, but is merely typical conservative angst over the pressing need for tort reform, then we're just going to have to agree to disagree. (For my part, I see a right to sue anybody anywhere enshrined in the Fifth, Seventh and Fourteenth Amendments.)

But the question of magnitude makes this no ordinary suit. Yoo's actions affect all U.S. citizens, and everyone the United States suspects of being a terrorist sympathizer; depending on your definition, that could amount to one-fifth of the entire world. We're not talking about a cup of coffee to the pants; if actions such as Yoo's are not repudiated, our fundamental rights are forfeit, and human rights takes another body blow.

5) Finally, I am actually on Yoo's side. Padilla's lawyers have turned a matter of obviously unconstitutional behavior into an open political question. They've given the right something to sink its teeth into. By suing a man who could only be loved by far-right law wonks, and who most of us barely recall, Padilla's lawyers have enabled their position to be caricatured as just one opinion among many -- some red some blue all valid -- when it is a matter of redressing transgressions. Sue the president, the DoJ and the OLC instead. Picking on subordinates is craven. The president is the officer with a constitutional duty to discharge; he was either derelict in his management of the executive branch, or was brazenly flouting the law. Sue him.

In fact, this is the only avenue of defense likely to yield a positive result for Professor Yoo. Should he express interest in retaining my services, please forward my email to him.

Yours,
--
ds

...a dangerous man trained to run 20 miles in soft sand...

Ellis Weiner, over at What HE Said, hits upon a nice counter to the Hillaryspin so prevalent in the media post-PA:

Saying that Obama can’t win Pennsylvania in November because he lost to Hillary is like watching an intra-squad practice game among, say, the San Antonio Spurs, and concluding–after one team “loses”–that the Spurs can’t possibly hope to compete in the playoffs. “A team consisting of Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, and Brett Barry lost. How can they hope to prevail against Phoenix or Boston?”

Now, leaving aside the fact that, due to the defensive liabilities of Steve Nash, a team consisting of TParker, Manu, and Barry would, in fact stand a small chance against Phoenix at least, I'm pretty much in full agreement with this analysis. Assuming that, because he doesn't win among Democrats in a state where the very well known de facto incumbent/heir has the backing of the state political apparatus, he can't win in the general is just silly.

But what about the Hillary supporters who won't vote for Obama? I've heard it said that "the primaries are when you fall in love, the general is when you fall in line." And, yes, that's some lesser-of-two-evils shit right there. but it's true. And, again, Ellis is in agreement:

Naturally, at this juncture, someone will point out that X percent of Obama voters and Y percent of Clinton voters have told pollsters that they will refuse to vote for the other side’s candidate if she/he gets the nod, and will instead vote for McCain. Fine. Whatever. Let’s say they really mean it–today.

Does anyone really think they’ll all feel the same way after three months of hand-to-hand, hand-to-mouth, and foot-in-mouth combat in “the general”? When McCain, with all his history and tax cut switcheroos and lobbyist-infested staff and iffy wife and photo-of-him-hugging-Bush-with- his-eyes-lightly-closed and Iraq-for-a-hundred-years mischegoss and Sunni-Shia confusion, has finally been challenged and shamed by the Democrats, who have thus far been busy eviscerating each other? And when a single gaffe, scandal, “misspeaking,” or revelation can torpedo a campaign overnight?

Granted: only the Democrats could find a way to lose this election, and we should never underestimate their fuckupability. But, that said, I'm kind of in agreement with BillyClint, to an extent. We need to chill out.

When this thing is over, we will have had a national campaign with full airing of Obama's dirty laundry. Well, most of it, anyway. And McCain will still be old and doddering and unable to tell Shiite from shinola. He'll still be clinging to tax cuts as a solution to everything after a summer of 4-dollar-a-gallon gas, and he'll still be proposing upping military expenditures to 4% of GDP while our bridges and levys collapse and our schools rot. The Democrats will still be the party of the future.

...funny little guys

Joe Lieberman, Brechtian instigator
Okay, not to belabor a point. But Connecticut Bob is the source for Joe Lieberman news. Here's the AG of CT claiming he knew nothing about the FBI's "Case Closed; it's not Ned" memo:

"Neither I nor any member of my staff has ever seen the October 25, 2006 FBI email. Nor were we ever informed of its contents. I first learned of it when I read a report in The Stamford Advocate on April 9, 2008."

A recap: in August 2006, Lieberman's campaign claimed its website was the victim of a cyber-attack and shadow-blamed Ned Lamont. The FBI investigated, and before the November election, determined no foul play occurred. The FBI released that information this year, and Leebs demurred to comment.
Connecticut's AG Blumenthal is cautious to a fault, and has pined after a US Senate seat from CT for a decade; did he allow the smear against Lamont in order to prop up the wounded Leebs? Was he in on the mock-terror cyber-drill? Joe ain't speculatin':

"The scenarios we discuss today are very hard for us to contemplate, and so emotionally traumatic and unsettling that it is tempting to push them aside[...]"

True! And Brecht-ish! Blurring the difference between news/stunts, terror/theatre, vandalism/cock-ups? "Traumatic" and "unsettling"! Intentionally traumatic and unsettling! Remember, the Senator wants us to acheive a heightened state of awareness...

***

Debating McCain...
...should be pretty easy. But since we anticipate candidate Clinton will do just fine bringing the nasty, whereas candidate Obama will have a hard time lacerating poor Walnuts, we at Dark Steer offer some rhetorical tools:

"Do we want Charles Keating at Treasury?"

"Every place the Senator calls a success is bombed later that afternoon. So I'm not surprised to hear of the [catastrophe] in [state]. The Senator was just there today, explaining how many jobs had yet to leave."

"Maybe John's comprehensive immigration reform should work like his campaign finance reform. Then Univision and AT&T could pay Senators for the right to drive down wages while they were paying for the right to kill off the competition. It's about streamlining the process."

"Who is it we're fighting in Iraq, John, quickly? No help from Senator Lieberman this time."

"If the Senator is so concerned about the power of money in politics, he should ask his wife's family to stop paying his mortgage."

"John McCain running on 'Action' is like Idi Amin running on
'Vegetarianism.'"

***

Did they sing the anthem?
Man, if Sy Hersh is wrong, that would shift my whole paradigm. Turns out Israel had footage of North Koreans inside that concrete box in the Syrian desert; thus the September 2007 bombing. Question: how do you identify a North Korean on tape? And like everyone else is asking, why now? Or why justify the Israeli bombing at all? And is this going to be on YouTube anytime soon? Because I'm really sick of watching Kim Jong-Il's unicorns and scottish fold kittens...



Huge snowstorms are happening!
--
ds

Bush league

K:

Barry may indeed weather whatever storms emerge. It seems clear that Gibson and Stephanopoulos are getting the worst of the debate coverage, for instance. John Dickerson says Obama was doomed to look petulant; and I think the stick-to-your-guns strategy is what doomed him. Because we've seen it before.

It's Bush 101 : Double Down. It may or may not enable the campaign freedom of maneuver. I tend to think not, based on Barry's flaccid attempts to thread the needle on Rev. Wright in the debate, but prove me wrong. (He was pushy and above-the-fray while delivering byzantine rationalizations of his relationship with Wright. It was cringe-inducing. There are so many ways to deal with the Rev., and he has to pick the morally upstanding one? Barry can't say, "Look, I was living in Chicago's South Side. I need this man and every other vintage militant every day of the week, because I'm from Kansas."? He can't plead expediency? Ahh, because that would be the old politics rearing its ugly head...)

There is maneuverability on the Bitter score, so fine, maybe the tactic works. Elevate. Got it. But it's a shit way to make policy. Elevation is fine for discourse; but in policy, it's called escalation. It's a perpetual raising of the stakes.

To take your abortion prediction, what does an elevation speech sound like?

***
Leebs will speak at convention if McCain can't find his keys.
Related! McCain anger okay! Not pissed enough to "blur his judgment," says Leebs!

Also, not senile enough to fumble the nuclear football! Not drunk enough to confuse Sunnis with Shiites! Still funny! Don't you quit on me...

Also related! One-third of Iraq veterans have post-traumatic stress disorder or a major brain injury. That's 19 percent with depression, 19 percent with probable brain damage, minus 7 percent with both. What's the record for Vietnam POWs?

And, forty years after: the sacrifice-shall-not-be-in-vain meme is back to shame us all...Will President McCain blockade Vietnam until the return of all captive US servicemen is accomplished? I'm for it! US out of Vietnam!

--
ds

'Eey, aowye doughin'!

****update****

Okay, for real, I'm not that tired of futures. I take it back. There are fears of failure here that the delegate math has done nothing to alleviate. Plus, I tend to take my Dad's advice on these matters, and he's calling a brokered convention. He had Allen beating Webb in 2006, though, so...

Still...fears! What happens when the core left decides phased withdrawal is too goddamned slow and boycotts the election? I mean, what happens when I and my class hop off the wagon? [I like to pretend there's a whole crop of us out there...] I don't like war on ghosts -- and an Obama presidency guarantees continued predator strikes on blind targets in Central Asia? Alternately, what happens when suburban whites abandon the era-of-good-feeling and vote their prejudices? Or, what happens when Republicans stop registering as Democrats in order to vote against Hillary Clinton? Sure we have Obama-McCain polls and Clinton-McCain polls, but no one is really, literally out of the race yet. Where is the long arm of the Bradley Effect? Fears!

Or: Hey, how we doing! Thass Chaka and Bob! Thass Philadelphia, bee! How exciting. But typically, the paper covered the scrum surrounding the speech, said "Obama spoke for more than half an hour," and left. Like he was talking about his new living-room set or some shit...

Also, here's Kaus. It is, as the man says, a Category II Kinsley Gaffe, i.e., a true statement.

The only trouble is no one likes being psychoanalyzed, viz.:

I think that when people ascend socioeconomically, they tend to spend less time with their families, and so issues of family become very important to them, and pretty soon everything Ivy-educated people do starts to become a search for a missing family life. People like Senator Obama are clinging to their own ambition in order to compensate for the loss of his father, for instance. It's the same impulse behind all of Paul Simon's work, Juno, so forth. Wes Anderson is the first satirist of what i call "yuppie remorse." [snip]

Now, that's not a quote from anyone, but it should have been. I think BHO's survival has less to do with his ability to thread the rhetorical needle than with the impotence of his opponents. The point of bittergate is that it's not over. It's the first sentence in the doomed-by-his-class narrative. I walked by Geno's the other night, which was blasting right-wing talk radio, and the guy used the word "elitist" seven times in a minute. This is the tip of the oiceberg.

And the point of the video, sadly, is visual: Barack and Chaka and their thug bodyguard, Bob. Not at all reassuring to Overland Park KS or Montgomery County PA or Fairfax VA. O for a radio age...

hasta
--
ds

"I consider this case closed."

K:

Meant to get at you about Liebs: clearly an object of scorn round here. I was giggling bout this the other day. Turns out Ned Lamont was not responsible for Joe's website crashing back in the summer of '06. Investigators determined Joe was. "I consider this case closed," says the Senator, and well, he knows better than anyone that there's nothing there to discover! And dismissing the federal investigation as "old news"! A classic!

Suppose we should believe him about future attacks, weapons in the sand, cybercriminals and islamofascists then.

Pictures later.

Aye, I saw the McCain tax-relief bit in the paper. I figured he was just making nice with his right flank. "See, I get it. Any problem, no matter how nutcrushingly vast, can be solved with a tax cut. Right fellas? Fellas?" Ergo all problems will be solved when we have no taxes.

Okay but for real, could he extend the tax holiday to state gas taxes? Because that, smoking and gambling are the only sources of revenue left for PA to plunder. Man, and let's not even talk about how the 400-year-old system of townships up here leads to giant property tax bills, de facto segregation, shit schools and permanent provincialism. Or how about the Philadelphia city income tax. That's right fukkas, the city takes 7 percent of my pay, and feeds it to black mafia. Let's not talk about Imam Shamsud-din Ali, a.k.a. Clarence Fowler either. Or Kenny Gamble. One day.

Nevertheless, my first response was to come up with a tax that solves problems, Northern liberal that I be, and I got one.

Pass a windfall oil tax and prorate it to our commitment in Iraq. 2% cut of industry revenue -- not profit -- for every 140,000 soldiers serving. When we drop to 70,000 troops, the tax drops to 1% of revenue.

Here's the neat part. An escalator built-in to the tax for our continued presence, viz.: one-half percent for every six months. So the tax can't be whittled down to a manageable burden; it sticks around until we're done. And it gradually de-escalates as we pay down the cost of the war.

Charts 'n' graphs: Table 1: Gradual de-escalation, 2008-2013.

Basically, everyone who says that a windfall oil tax can't pay for anything is part right. Taxing profit won't pay for shit; thass feeding off the ass-end. And who wants to do that? Take the food from out they mouths, on the other hand, and you can do things. You can't pay for universal health care. But you can cut into the deficits we've been running. By 2013, the Dark Steer Windfall Tax will be chugging along at 5% of industry revenue, estimated at 2 trillion dollars. So 100 billion. Not a lot, but a start.

I strongly dislike this campaign; I think if Obama runs to his right he's going to look phony. This is the lesson of the "bitterness." And he's doomed to run to his right. I grow weary of crystalballin'.

So, a message to the candidiates: my endorsement is up for grabs, in case any one of you has a brazole big enough to implement the Dark Steer Windfall Tax...

C'mon...who's got the ten-and-a-half?

--
ds

Or he could turn it around...

...this has actually been one part of the Obama campaign that I've loved to watch. They do a good job of turning the conventional political knowledge on its head. The candidacy in itself is politically counterintuitive: black guy with Kenyan-Muslim background, name sounds like Osama, middle name Hussein, first term senator, no real political machine underneath/behind him going up against wife of successful-if-flawed previous president. Y'know, the unlikelihood of it all. But they do a good job of turning the political status quo around. Now the black guy with the funny terr'st name is the frontrunner.

So these "gaffes"... the gaffe over talking to enemies, the gaffe over striking targets in Pakistan, usw... they turn them around by sticking to the original point and not backing down. BarryHussein says something, well, politically incorrect. The mainstream media and the political establishment hoot and cry YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON TELEVISION and everybody says it's a gaffe. BHO and the Hopefuls stand their ground, refine what they've said so it comes across better, and wait. And, eventually, people start to come around... or events prove him to be on the right track. Thus, people start to see the silliness of not talking to people and expecting things to change. Thus, it comes out that we already engage in targeted strikes against Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

"Bittergate" is the same. Hillary's overplayed her hand by jumping on it so fiercely. She looks desperate and flat out ugly. But, here's the lovely thing, BHOs finding a way to turn it to his advantage.



He's turned it around. Like he very well should. Don't run from something just because you said it wrong initially. Refine it, find what's true, and come back twice as hard with it. The hard core of truth in the original "gaffe" is "people are angry at their government and don't feel like anybody's looking out for them, so they vote smaller issues because they don't believe the bigger issues will change." Here, we see this more refined, almost to the point where it's packageable as a campaign ad.

Here's the thing: I really like the learning curve on this campaign. I'd like it more if they worked a little bit faster, but they seem to learn from mistakes and address them as best possible. I think "Bittergate" is the culmination of Obama really being rather unused to the frontrunner status. When he first took a real lead and it looked like HillyClint was on her way out, he turned toward McCain without having fully vanquished his rival. The backlash stunned him and he's stumbled since. It's taken him quite a while, but I think we could be seeing the beginning of a fuller realization of their status on the part of the Obama campaign and the candidate himself. It's about damned time. They'll need to put Clinton away and work on accelerating their learning curve for the general election.

Stay the fuck off the road, money...

Walnuts McCain dropped another banger today. Speech on... well, I dunno, really. Purportedly on some means to jumpstart the economy. Democrats characterized as tax and spenders, blow money on monuments to Woodstock guarded by black separatist revolutionary communists or somesuch. "Oh, they'll build a wall around our economy and stop the free flow of... und so weiter."

So mostly it was the usual claptrap. But, as Salon's Andrew Leonard points out, the central point of the speech seems to be the alleviation of the gasoline tax for the summer. Now, of course, this is a short term measure meant to provide a short term boost for the economy. But, really, where's the presidential candidate who will tell the American people what they really don' wanna hear?

That cheap oil ain't comin' back. Me and you, we're old enough fogies to remember fillin' up the parents' cars after a night downtown with whatever change was left on us coming back from the coffee shop. Them days is done and done. China's on pace to consume ten million barrels a day by 2025, and... doesn't India have sub-2000 dollar cars?

All that's to say, we're not getting back to a "comfortable" price per gallon in the foreseeable future. Sure, there's some dissenters, but even they won't go so far as to say we're going back to anything anywhere close to what Americans think they're entitled to pay. And even if his little gas tax cut work, it wouldn't help. Taxes account for only--what?--fifteen percent of the cost of a gallon? Sheeeeeit. It costs my ass forty bucks to fill up my Focus here in Cville. That's gonna save me six bucks. Woo. That's not gas price relief. That's a pack of cigarettes and a twenty-two of Pilsner Urqell.

So one of the candidates needs to tell Americans to sit back and observe where they at. Or, more pointedly: "Stay the fuck off the road, money." Walk your fat ass to the bus stop. Solves our fuel problem and our obesity epidemic at the same time. Or bike. Or at least buy a more fuel efficient car. And we need the car companies making better cars. Why does this seem so easy to me? Reinvestment in national infrastructure, focused effort to wean ourselves from oil. These things will create jobs and drive our economy into the future. If the Dems run on the future, being the party of the future, there's no way Walnuts stands a chance. Hell, there's even room for Clinton on the ticket in that case (in the veep slot). She's the extension of the Bridge to the 21st Century. And BarryHussein is the other side of that bridge.

The recent hullabaloo over "Bittergate" seems to me indicative of exactly why we won't see good ol' Al Gore stepping into the ring. Gore's had a lot to say about the smallness of our politics. He actually sounds a lot like BarryHussein when he talks about it. But this just seems to be a perfect example of it. Seize on one inconsequential comment and blow it up to gigantic proportions.

How dare he look down on us?!

Is he an elitist?

Is he a Marxist?!

(Joe Lieberman is scum, by the way. Not that any of us needed reminding. But I'd be remiss if I didn't say it.)

And soon this will blow over. The media and various camps will try to hold onto it, just like they've done with the Wright "controversy." But it will fade in importance unless he very quickly follows it up with some equally maladroit phrasing. If Hillary wins in PA, "Bittergate" will enjoy a brief resurgence before being put to rest by an Obama victory in North Carolina. The Republicans will try to make some hay out of it in the fall, but hopefully the Obama team will have come up with a way to put the kibosh on it. He weathered the Wright storm, he'll make it through this one.

So, political future... Crystal Ballin'... what to look for? I'm gonna step out past the nomination battle. The abortion question gets raised. Repubs will say BarryHussein voted against making doctors save born-alive babies from botched abortions. We get the shots of protestors with their ugly signs. Maybe a special here or there on some one-armed kid that was the result of a botched abortion. Shots of a little blonde girl plunking away on a piano with her one arm. Et cetera. BarryHussein gives a speech on abortion in America. Balanced, reasoned. Tamps down controversy. I think this is actually the way he should approach these things. Organize rallies in response to "gaffes." Speak plainly and openly about the issues that trouble us so much as a culture. Make it simple and plain. And press the shit out of the media to cover them.

Eh. So, hubbub over abortion sometime in the fall. Of course. I'm still not afraid. I've my apprehensions and anxieties, yes, of course. But I'm not afraid. I don't think the other side realizes precisely what's going on this time around. There's the possibility of a grand realignment. Stark differences between the two candidates this time around. One for continuing the war as long as it takes. The other for ending it in a responsible manner. ("Responsible manner": look for that to be a key phrase in the Obama pitch. Talk of meetings and UN and regional responsibility.) One for expanding military spending to four percent of GDP, the other for rebuilding the American infrastructure. (I hope to GOD this is a central part of the Obama pitch. Reinvestment in infrastructure will create jobs and deliver a remarkable return on investment. If we put it right, this will sell hugely.) We'll have a clear contrast, and I think the American people will pick the side that's telling them they'll bring the troops home and give folks jobs.

More later.

Bad futures

Well. Clearly I was wrong to hate on the Inqy for running an inflated-threat headline. What are editors to do when the only copy out there is inflated-threat copy? F'rinstance: NSC's Stephen Hadley on Fox Sunday:

"Iran is very active in the southern part of Iraq. They are training Iraqis in Iran who come into Iraq and attack our forces, Iraqi forces, Iraqi civilians. There are movements of equipment. There's movements of funds,"

Note the specificity! Why, it's as if the Weekly Standard predicted this very thing! Prediction, agitation, rearguard defense when it all goes south, recrimination: the cycle of future-baiting! (Or "-bating," -- Eds.)

We here at Dark Steer solemnly promise never to predict futures that would have undesirable side-effects if enacted. We further promise never to be wrong about anything consequential. Nor will we pursue a foreign policy detrimental to Dark Steer's image/standing in the world.

But back to Steve's kool-aid! It gets really weird! Viz.:

"So we have illegal militia in the southern part of the country that really are acting as criminal elements that are pressing the people down there."

Did he say "pressin'"? Or "o-pressin'"? Is the problem that Basra is overrun with criminal gangs? Like the 28 mere hooligans summarily executed yesterday? Because that's good for SCIRI and Maliki; it means their political legitimacy is not questioned. But wait, he also called dem bways "illegal militia," trained by Iran -- though by whom in Iran, where in Iran, with what materiel in Iran, like the SecDef sez, "we just don't know." Militia, tho' constitute a political problem, not one of law and order, thus:

Iraq's cabinet ratcheted up the pressure on anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr by approving draft legislation barring political parties with militias from participating in coming provincial elections.

...and after all the fuss we made about this not being about upcoming elections, it turns out that Badr vs. Sadr II follows the same pattern as the first time around: shut down the press office, assassinate the leadership, move in on the neighborhoods. Then, sit back and scratch your heads when the radicals you tried to isolate sweep parliamentary elections. Did the routine work in Palestine in 2006? It ain't work in Paris in 1788 either...
--
ds

Inqy bashing

K:

Headline in this morning's Inquirer: U.S.: Iran hikes militia support. Shit we're used to hearing, albeit with modifications. Used to be "Iran supports Muqtada al-Sadr," and now al-Sayyid himself is beyond reproach, but Iran is still -- doing what exactly, funding? training? arming? feeding? -- supporting special groups. Conventional wisdom: Iran is the problem. I mean, despite the fact that SIIC -- formerly the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iran -- is Maliki's party, their militia the Badr is without any dispute trained in Iran; Iran brokered the Basra ceasefire; the last thing they want is for the Maliki government to fall, etc.

Nevermind. The new conventional wisdom is heightened support. Right under the AP's scaremongering set-up, "Iran's role has been one of the complicating factors," the secdef says:

"I think that there is some sense of an increased level of supply of weapons and
support to [special groups]. But whether it's a dramatic increase over recent
weeks, I just don't know."

Some sense, but I just don't know...like the drunk everybody believes, because listening to him is harmless; just let the man prattle on. Here's another. Take it easy. Anyway, it's a lot easier than listening to Rick Santorum. Gates is the guy who wakes up on your porch the next day talking to himself in a puddle of piss.

New Inquirer headline: SecDef: "Wait, Whose House Is This?"

Some historical matter. Clearly war with Iran will solve all our problems. Clean up human rights abuses, fix the border, protect unborn Christian babies, etc.:

• "Bob Casey is aiding and abetting terrorism and genocide."
• Holy shit he lost the election and he's still at it.
• "Terrorists, trying to enter our country, yet Casey comes out for amnesty for illegal aliens."

And I remember the "Democrats Will Not Protect You From Osama Bin Laden" flyers from 2004 getting trotted out for 2006...but I don't have an image yet...

Anyway, I thought this shit was old hat. I mean, Sy Hersh hasn't written a piece on impending war with Iran since, what last April?

Off to play in the sun...

--

ds

Intrade update

K:
Intrade has the VP as follows:

Evan Bayh = 2.0
Wes Clark = 5.3
Jim Webb = 10.1
Billy Rich = 11.3

Inneresting list. No liberals. No blue-staters. The fallout from Obama pulling such a huge futures price (~79!!) is a lift for the otherwise improbable Billy Rich VP candidacy. Neckless wonder. For my money, the Irish soccer fans that make up the intrade audience surf too close to shore. Futures markets are not facts on the ground; the Webb number up there should be enough proof of this. Webb is a dead fish; just nothing at the end of the line...

But Evan Bayh, poor Evan Bayh at 2 points. My advice to traders is buy, in proportion to the HRC-is-nominee number. A steal, but only in an HRC world. Clinton-Bayh is like a May-September romance and an inter-dynastic marriage rolled into one. Plus Democrats taking Indiana and Arkansas? Colossal...

The Wes Wing

K:

The Inquirer this morning had a front-page above-the-fold David Petraeus, offering the sage counsel that we stay in Iraq until it is no longer unstable. We have Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden running the CIA. Vice Admiral McConnell (USN Ret.) is DNI. So while one commander in the field runs a rearguard defense of a failing surge -- a policy, it bears repeating, whose so-called gains came at the cost of paying and arming Sunni militants, turning a blind eye to SCIRI/Ministry of the Interior death squads, and calling Moqtada Al-Sadr "Al-Sayyid," in other words, the cost of setting up its own demise -- the other two set picks for the president's drive to the basket on wiretapping and torture.

Deferring to the wisdom of commanders is the last desperate act of an administration with no support in the populace. Saying we will "listen to our commanders in the field" is tantamount to breaking out the batons.

So I ain't part of the Wes Wing. I was pissed that his bumper stickers in 2003 had Clark and four stars. Like fucking Noriega was running for president.

I think it's awesome that you and Larry are on the same page. How he does that cut-to-the-chase dialogue thing is, obviously, beyond me. Plus the piece had some bitchin' cartoons.

But f'reel f'reel, the shit will hit the fan if we as a nation keep assuming that civilians are crass guttersnipes bent on building an impressive retirement portfolio. Civilians aren't, by and large, doing a good job contradicting the only-military-has-gravitas meme. Why is Larry Craig still in the Senate: pensions!

(Can't we stop using the hyphenated-phrase-followed-by-"meme" meme? -- Eds.)

Brian Williams, 08/05/2013: Today in Los Angeles El Jefe Clark declared a condition of unrest, ordering the mobilization of 22 thousand of his controversial new paramilitary clones. Bred from birth to quell violence, able to subsist on a thin gruel of oats and cocaine...

...okay I'm mostly thinking of the Dominion here. My much-maligned secret sci-fi past exercises its long arm, and all the unsettled debts of history come back into play...

But isn't Obama supposed to be the definition of civilian competence? He's so competent, so motivated to solve problems, bind wounds, etc. that his Republican buddies in the Illinois Senate are stumping for him. The advice of a general, the silent presence of Clark's hand on the rudder, contradicts that posture.

I also didn't like the caricature of Gore. Only fat sodomite lieutenant governors want this guy to be president? Was this a Tim Kaine-Haley Barbour composite? That was cold. I think the possibility of his presidency is real, it's just up to him to grab the ring.

Anyway, I could have summed all this up by saying the Obama-Clark power play is an excellent way to run against Hillary Clinton. But it's a shitty way to run against John McCain. By which I mean it's a losing strategy. Picking someone to shore up your credentials is a tacit admission that you lack whatever he has. It's also a Reagan classic: a regrettable echo of this president's hands-off, CEO, don't-mind-me-i'm-just-the-Decider mimcry of the Great Sleepwalker. "The president is going to listen to the counsel of his advisers" is always code for "The president is way way out of his depth. Shit, the president couldn't run the Texas Rangers..."

And what problem does Obama have with rural whites? I mean, the boys here in South Philly are for Rudy Giuly; it's urban whites he's going to lose, like McGovern in 1972. Man won Iowa, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Kansas, the Texas caucus...somebody factcheck me quick....I honestly don't know what Obama needs. I feel like constituencies can't be grabbed by identity alone. Urban and ex-urban whites are going to vote BHO when he disses welfare, disses illegals, disses identity politics. He needs to tack right, and hard, not just as a matter of expediency, but as putting into practice his cross-the-aisle rhetoric. He needs to shape up on Israel -- not for my benefit; shit, he needs to shape up on Palestine for my benefit.

Therefore I give you the next vice-president of the United States: Pat Buchanan! A man who believes the war was botched from the start; who is the greatest attack dog since Spiro Agnew; shit, who wrote "nattering nabobs of negativism" and "effete snobs" and "pusillanimous pussyfooting"; who will probably cause China to call in its T-notes by saying some shit about poisoned toothpaste; who favors a ruthless crackdown on the undocumented; who had the best diss of McCain ever: "The McCain campaign is this: The jobs are never coming back; the illegals are never going away; plus, we're going to have all these wars."

Shit, if you wanna roll right, roll hard...

Be Ready to Sacrifice...

Quickpost. Since we're gonna occasionally pull out snippets from old emails and hope our reader(s) trust us enough to believe we're not making shit up, seems only right to bring up this li'l vulgar snippet...

...biggest concern, of course, is national security credibility. barryhussein's got no service experience. shouldn't be huge, but it is. sucks, but, what can you do?

...other concern is the clintons. yeah, they say they'll fall in line. and they likely will. but i wanna placate those scheming fucks. i want them totally on board with as little bitterness as possible.

...so who's that give us? well, i'm thinking clark. national security cred in the bag. more importantly, he's a clinton man. endorsed hillyclint. was rumored to be the clinton stalking horse in the 04 contests. mentioned time and again as a veep for hillyclint. you tell the hick and hte [sic] harridan we'll give them a gracious concession for the good of the party and they'd better fucking fall in line with full out support. no sour grapes. full on support and doing their best lying to excuse the attacks they made on barryhussein in the primaries. i want billyclint and barryhussein with joined, raised hands in front of a crowd of 30 thousand in arkansas. i want hillyclint and wes and barryhussein arm in arm in madison square garden with twenty thousand alternating chants of yes we can and u.s.a...

And then we've got Lawrence O'Donnell, writer for The West Wing, dropping this gem:

Barack: When you walk out of here I’m going straight to a press conference and announce that when I get the nomination, my choice for VP will be Wesley Clark, and—
Hillary (laughs): Not gonna happen. Wes has been with my campaign from the start.
Barack (continuing): —and on the next ballot, the possible Obama-Clark ticket’s gonna get me the Arkansas delegation and another—what do you think—200 superdelegates at least?
Hillary: I’m not gonna let you have Wes for a phony unity ticket.
Barack: Too late. Michelle is meeting with him right now.
Barack’s iPhone buzzes. He checks it.
Hillary: He won’t accept anything without my—
Barack holds up the iPhone. close on text message: CLARK DEAL DONE. LUV U, M. Hillary looks pained—as much by the Clark deal as by the love in the Obama marriage. Barack gives her a moment to process the shock, then …
Barack (softly): I want you to come with me to the press conference.
Hillary: No way.
Barack: I need—
Hillary (bitterly): You don’t need me. You’ve got my biggest supporter as your VP. He’s got you covered now on foreign-policy credentials, military experience.
Barack: It’s not a unity ticket unless you say it’s a unity ticket. I want to tell the press that I asked you to be VP, you turned it down and suggested General Clark. I want to give you credit for saving the day, saving the party. I want you leaving Denver with your head held high.

Now, imaginary scripts for future scenarios ain't exactly sound political analysis, but I've got the general view that there's been little "sound political analysis" this election season. Maybe the American public can't take it. Maybe the American public ain't smart enough to take it. Maybe the American public thinks it's getting sound political analysis but is really deceiving itself about the pertinence of what really amounts to little more than "oooooooh! he say whaaaaa? oh no he didnnnnnnnn'". Don' matter to Jesus. What do matter to Jesus is making sure this ticket is solid. So Clark gets the Clintons a surrogate in the Oval Office. And he works best. HillyClint as veep doesn't bring much to the ticket IM(ns)HO. Most of the Dem partisans, no matter what they say right now, will fall back in line once the nominee is chosen. The rest will trickle back as it becomes apparent to the nation what a McCain administration will look like. Party unity ain't a question. We want white males, though, don't we? We want to try to pull the South, now, don't we? Clark's the way to go.

Now what to do about HillyClint? She ain't gonna totally be happy with ClarkVeep. No, no, no. She's sacrificed too much, endured too much. And she deserves a reward. She put up with Bill and Chris Matthews and whoever the hell else. So I've been saying for a while now: Senate Majority Leader. [No email to cite here, gotta trust me.] We knock the eunuch Reid out of the spot, dust it off nice, and give it to her. She gets a nice, visible perch from which to watch BarryHussein like a hawk. And rightly so. His ass better not mess up. But, if he does, Hillary is...
Untarnished. Gets to be a walking "I Told You So" in 2012. Still runs on the competence issue. Gets some notches on her belt for accomplishing things. Perfect positioning to beat Mitt in '12.

And now, I must needs find some way to get access to the NBAs live streaming of the Laker game. Lakers-Celtics final. This will be beautiful. You should watch the playoffs this year.

-k

"Oh, but be ready to sacrifice.
If you love 'em you should tell 'em twice..."
-Gnarles Barkley, "Surprise"

Morrr Gorrrr

Intrade has Barack at 87, HRC at 14. Gore contracts are a steal at under 5! Honestly the last time I looked at a futures market BHO was in the low 30s...why am I not putting my money where my mouth is?

From across the universe, U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Palm Beach Gardens, FL) :

If either Clinton or Obama suggested to a deadlocked convention a ticket of Gore-Clinton or Gore-Obama, the Democratic Party would accept it, Mahoney said.

Also:

Rasmussen ran a poll after Klein's article intended to debunk the Gore-as-healer plotline. Like a typical statistician, he/it/they invented a tool completely useless to the task at hand. Rasmussen's poll found Gore trailing Clinton and Obama in a three-way-race. Which is something that cannot happen. Rather than look for the favorable-unfavorables on tickets, Gore-Obama, Gore-Clinton and so on, dude just got his numbers and split.

Among those numbers: Gore 76% favorable among likely Democrats. I haven't got a national poll yet, but PA (Quinnipiac, 03/18/2008) is HRC 71%, BHO 61%.

Somewhere my grandfather is still saying, "A statistician is a man who can draw a straight line from a baseless assumption to a foregone conclusion."

Horrorshow

K:

I don't know what the conventioneers fear, but I fear history. One of these two candidates will have to condescend to be vp. Neither has any reason to assume the position. The other day, Brian Williams was on Letterman. Dave asked something like: "These people hate each other, I mean revile. So how do you work with a person after that?" And Williams brought up Kennedy-Johnson. And we know how that ticket turned out.

Next prediction: in the event of an Obama-Clinton ticket, wait for Obama to be assassinated. Maybe in a plane crash.

I'm still pissed about Paul Wellstone.

The 1960 scenario is pret-a-porter...where are my diacritics...Young, inspirational minority liberal, with religion problems, reliant on Chicago power brokers meets middle-aged cloakroom operator. Needs the so-called hand of wisdom in the general, needs to tack to the right, needs delegates.

Clinton, as Johnson was, will be pissed at having nothing to do. And she's not as good at entertaining herself as Lyndon was: no ranch, no booze, no baseball, no pissing in the House parking lot. Who's wearing a pantsuit at 3 AM? HRC's wearing a pantsuit at 3 AM. Like Batman. Johnson's motivating force was the knowledge that men in his family tended to die young. He had a heart attack during his first Senate campaign. Father, grandfather and uncle died of heart disease in their 50s. If Clinton feels like the clock is ticking, if she can't wait out the next eight years...

In effect, the death-threat scenario is a pretty good argument for Clinton-Obama. Make sure she's not stifled by the two-hole. And since I don't trust her to reverse the arrogation of power to the executive wrought in the Bush years, I'm begging for Gore-Obama. We'll see...

Next? PA polling, futures, Pylon, Delta 5, the Yoo torture memo (latest disavowal: "it's boilerplate"!), and does anybody else want a Gore candidacy? Also, what does Al weigh now?

Gore's my harbinger...

DS,

Agreed and agreed in advance. You called that shit like it had a phone number. I'm still somewhat skeptical of the degree to which AlGore's a solution. Not that he wouldn't win, because i think he would. But the desire to have Gore step in seems indicative--to me, at least-- of a certain trepidation on the part of the Democratic core.

That is: so much rides on this election. The future of our republic, arguably, runs on what we do in November. There are, of course, the evident crises with Iraq and healthcare, Iran and energy, Russia and the economy, global warming and the vestiges of the culture wars. Further, the world is really watching us. Seems apparent a good portion of the world is willing to chalk up the Bush years as a colossal screw-up and give us a fresh look, depending on whom we elect. The old Churchill aphorism: "Americans will always do the right thing... after all other options have been exhausted."

So everyone's painfully aware of the import of the coming election. Fine. The trouble comes in the unknown aspect. We're down to a woman and a black guy. Ye gods! How remarkable! But now? Really? So much rides on this! Can't we go a little bit safer? A nice white guy? Experienced? Capable? Yeah! Gore!

And I understand the trepidation. I feel it sometimes, myself. But my argument against it is basically my argument against Hillary: You can't go back.

Hillary promises a return to the halcyon days of the Clinton era. Unprecedented peace and prosperity. Settle the score against the repubs. Blah blah, yadda yadda lobster bisque. The yearning for Gore is a bit like that. Both sides of America want a mulligan. Shoulda been Gore-McCain in 2000. We got one half of that after the embarassment of the Bush regime; some Dems wanna get the second half going. I understand. And I wouldn't be totally averse, were it to happen.

But I don't believe in its necessity.

I think Barry Hussein will win. He thinks he'll win, too. And he's doing his best to make the yearning for Gore work to his advantage. I'm not afraid. Indicators point in our favor.

Whew! How's that for an introductory post. Introduce self to reader(s) next time, and a bit on human paraquat Karl Rove. Aside from that, mang, the new Gnarles is still on constant repeat. Fuck what the critics say. The album's some honest, painful, comtemplative, and frequently gorgeous 21st century Soul.

-k

"Storm's on the harbor like a harbinger for gore.
Gore's my harbinger, pardon the art of war."
-Aesop Rock, "Getaway Car"

Gore-Obama Reprise

Kevin,

First of all, I think we should run this as a work of correspondence. Partly to structure the rambling; partly also to let my 20th century mind handle the medium. That said:

Joe Klein wrote this on 27 March 2008.

On Tuesday, 10 July 2007, I wrote to you:

all hell breaks loose at the convention when HRC can't win on the third ballot. Al Gore moves through the crowd, suddenly less Taftian. signs pop up. banners unfurl. dissatisfied electors realize they are about to install a female candidate. chairmen cut new deals with the Gore insurgents. Gore calls Obama: "Hello Senator, good to get a holt of you." Obama knows the score: "My pleasure, Mister President." Gore is appreciative but cool: "I have an idea, I wonder if you'll hear me out." BHO releases his chairmen to Gore, who wins the nomination by a nose, taking the South on principle -- nobody trusts the Hairdo anyway, they jump ship -- taking in others by nostalgia, or a sense of order. Gore Obama. stickers that just say GO GO GO. Al defeats his despised HRC, giving a final fuck you to the Clinton empire that so brutally fisted him in 1998 -- i'm thinking of the Lewinsky, the bombing of Iraq, and swallowing a Republican increase in ballistic missile spending that became the cornerstone of the Bush defense plan. Gore gets to play the tough, since BHO is so sweet and gentle, and tough Gore is fascinating. Skilled fundraiser, brutal in the debates, cold, smirking, lunging in for the kill, making fun of Romney's hair (or McCain's Iraq, or Thompson's colostomy bag, or Rudy's ignorance), refusing to repeat the smug performance of 2000, the wonkery, he goes all out full-bore arrogant, knowing his power. He's the only Democrat to pull 50-plus percent in this generation. The one man who could bend other men to his will, the kind of man who would kill his own family, the kind of man who could kill Edie Finneran -- that's right Verbal...

Let it be known: I was on that shit.

Problems with what I wrote back then? For starters, I was sure Clinton would be the presumptive and Obama the insurgent nominee. I thought for sure Romney would win the nomination. And chairmen; who was I thinking of? I also thought that Al Gore was Keyser Soze...

But the full-bore arrogance is in effect: Gore called Cheney a flat-earther and a conspiracy theorist in his 60 Minutes interview...steps in the right direction...