Kibbles and B****ing
Published by Warrior Tang February 21st, 2005 in Miscellaneous PoliticsFirst, rest in peace, Hunter S. Thompson. I haven’t read much of his work, but what I have read, I’ve enjoyed. Here
are some samples of Thompson’s writing. Perhaps one of my fellow writers who is a bigger fan than I may have more eloquent eulogy.
From the “I Want To Believe” department: According to our vast
Berkelian spy network, the Conservative Political Action Conference turned into
the Conservative Kool-Aid Quaffing Conference when House Homeland
Security Committee Chairman Chris Cox told the attendees that
The Nukes Are Out There and we nabbed ‘em:
“America’s Operation Iraqi Freedom is still producing
shock and awe, this time among the blame-America-first crowd,” he
crowed. Then he said, “We continue to discover biological and chemical
weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq.” Apparently, most
of the hundreds of people in attendance already knew about these
remarkable, hitherto-unreported discoveries, because no one gasped
at this startling revelation.
That’s news to me. As far as I am aware, the number of active production
facilities that the US has discovered — excepting the Ansar poison labs
outside Saddam’s control that Condoleezza Rice’s National Security Council
refused three times to bomb — still ranges in the mid to low zeroes,
and I hadn’t heard of any chemical or biological weapons discoveries
in about a year. Those that were found were were a decade old and
dilipidated to the point that a soldier hit by one that was duct-taped
into one of those Irritatingly Ubiquitous Detonations (or whatever
the army is calling them these days) succumbed to a mild case of dilated
pupils and was put out of action for a whole few minutes.
Imagine if the insurgents used incendiary devices with marijuana
warheads. It would be so much worse, but at least our soldiers
wouldn’t be as stressed out after a patrol.
And from what I know of the blame-America-first crowd, they’re
quite unshocked and unawed at the predicted quagmire that America
is wallowing in in Iraq. The only shock might be at the blindness
and intentional stupidity of an America that seems to enjoy causing
problems for itself in some masochistic, self-hating manner. Hell,
they have web pages, let’s take a look at what they’re thinking: the Workers’
World Party, the guys behind International Answer: “All evidence
points to this struggle continuing as it has for the past 20 months,
despite the election.” Wow, what a panicked and emotional statement
of shock and awe! How ’bout the Revolutionary Communist
Party, the guys behind Not In Our Name? “This U.S.-dominated election
was staged and orchestrated to legitimize the U.S. invasion and conquest
of Iraq and to cobble together a comprador regime, which would enable
the U.S. imperialists to exert long-term control of the country
and undercut Iraqi resistance.” A little more emotional, but it doesn’t
look like they’ve given up thinking the US is the bad guy.
I’ll leave you with the repetition that Chris Cox is the
House of Representatives’ top guy on national security and the
obvious fact that if there were any truth to his statement,
we’d have been hearing about it everywhere.
It’s worth repeating a link to this classic, which should be mandatory reading for everyone
interested in modern US politics
Mr. No WMD drops two bombshells:
Scott Ritter says
the Iraqi election was rigged to shave 8 percentage points off the Shiites’
total, and Bush has signed off on plans to attack Iran this summer
Honored titles like Master Sergeant, Quartermaster, and Master-at-Arms will soon be joined by Rave Master as the
Army is thinking of distributing eckies to GIs for combat stress.
Hey, it’s not a bad plan: if the drugs don’t relieve combat stress,
the back-rubs will. However, the increased bottled water use
in already-parched Iraq might stretch US logistical capabilities,
and glow bracelets wouldn’t exactly be conducive to night operations.
Okay, snark mode off: they’re trying it on psych patients who are
already stateside, not active duty soldiers.
Riverbend has a post fearing that Iraq
might turn into another Iran. In case you’d forgotten or weren’t aware,
she lives there.
About 200 contractors
have been killed in Iraq, including about 75 “security consultants”
and “security contractors” (ie, mercs). The list is linked to web
citations, and it’s less than I would have expected.
I found it while trying to dig up information on some of the more
esoteric/conspiratorial rumours about US casualties in Iraq — that immigrants hoping to serve in exchange for a green card or citizenship are not
counted in official US casualty counts, and that Mazen Dana reported
finding a mass grave of US non-citizen soldiers near Abu Ghraib and
that he was being followed by the US shortly before his death –
and it does strike me as odd that no one on the list is Mexican.
Via Eschaton, witness a short flamewar
between Minnesota Politics Guru and Time Magazine’s Weblog of the Year,
Powerline.
Miracle of miracles: a fairly intelligent opinion piece
in the Washington Times
Pharyngula comments on a German anthropologist discovered
to be a fraud. In a more disturbing aspect, the fraudster’s university’s documents on Nazi medical experiments have been mysteriously destroyed, and his father was a Nazi MP…
Bill Maher continues being his Politically Incorrect self with
a new column titled “Kids Say the Darndest, Most Stalinist Things”.
Amusingly offensive quote:
Lest we forget, last month the people of Iraq risked death
and danger to send a simple, inspiring message: America, get out of
our country. But also, we want the freedoms you take for granted.
The latest example of “Might Makes Right” morality from the Bush
Administration: Justice Department lawyer and torture advocate John Yoo
declares that Congress “can’t prevent the President from ordering torture”
because “the core of the Commander-in-Chief function” is that any order
Bush gives to his soldiers is tautologically legal, overriding contrary law.
For more on the the government’s support for this doctrine, read my earlier
article Kingmakers
in the Pentagon.
The Financial Times has an article about the 1921 race riot of Tulsa,
Oklahoma. I consider myself at least moderately well-read about
US history, but this is an event I’d never heard of.
While playing with numbers, Washington
College notes this Presidents’ Day that President Washington’s popularity
is waning. The frightening part: given the option, Republicans would
overwhelmingly elect George Walker Bush over George Washington,
62-28%. Not surprisingly, 35% of them think GWB is the best or 2nd-best
President ever, with 46% saying same of Reagan and 39% of Dems saying
same of Clinton. Lincoln has the most cross-party support, but both
parties like their late-20th-century Presidents better. Onetime giants
Thomas Jefferson (yay) and Andrew Jackson (boo) had almost no support.
Another scary part is that 20% of Dems couldn’t answer what century the
Declaration of Independence was signed…
US Agency for International Development head Andrew Natsios
is going to Afghanistan with a “press contingent” of right-wing opinionists
Rush Limbaugh and Mary Matalin along with CNN news anchor Daryn Kagan,
who is Limbaugh’s girlfriend. Matalin is a former advisor to Dick Cheney.
This raises the intriguing questions of whether there are political
or otherwise non-journalistic reasons for bringing along Matalin
and Limbaugh, whether the trip to Afghanistan constitutes payment
to Limbaugh, whether the two were invited, whether this was at the
expense of real journalists, and so on. One wag on another blog suggested
that Limbaugh wanted to go to Afghanistan because that’s where most of
the world’s opium is produced.
Soon-to-be-formerly straight-A Texas high school student boycotts standardized testing,
declaring “These tests don’t measure what kids really need to know,
they measure what’s easy to measure. We should be learning concepts
and skills, not just memorizing. It’s sad for kids and it’s sad for
teachers, too.” I agree with the principle, but hope it doesn’t hurt
her college prospects. A gem in the DKos comments is a
comparison of No Child Left Behind to football.
Happy Fun
Presidents’ Day Quiz from the Detroit Free Press. I got 13.