Kerik flunks Newsweek's background check

In truth, Kerik was a corrupt GOP politician who happened to have a badge. Everything you need to know about why he was your typical Bush government servant is here, thanks to the Center for American Progress.

I was going to write something on Kerik's exit from the Homeland Security Department before he even entered but Steve Soto did such a good job there is no reason for me to. He has some choice words for the Democratic Senators from New York as well.

But let's also throw a brick at both New York Senators, Hillary Clinton and Chuck (See No Evil With Gonzales) Schumer, both of whom praised the selection of this Oliver North-loving, ethically challenged political hack who has misused his office and his staff for personal gain. So from now on, please shut up Chuck and Hillary. Neither one of you have any guts or real judgment.

That should make those of you who are worried about a Hillary run for president sleep a little easier.

Vrbana Bridge

There's a song I've heard quite a few times called "Vrbana Bridge," by Jill Sobule. It was one of those songs which I enjoyed the melody of, and never really bothered to read the lyrics.

Well, today I read the lyrics, and did a bit of Googling, where, to my horror, I learned that it was a true story:

Two lovers lie dead on the banks of Sarajevo’s Miljacka river, locked in a final embrace.

For four days they have sprawled near Vrbana bridge in a wasteland of shell-blasted rubble, downed tree branches and dangling power lines.

So dangerous is the area no one has dared recover their bodies.

Bosko Brckic and Admira Ismic, both 25, were shot dead on Wednesday trying to escape the besieged Bosnian capital for Serbia.

Sweethearts since high school, he was a Serb and she was a Moslem.

"They were shot at the same time, but he fell instantly and she was still alive," recounts Dino, a soldier who saw the couple trying to cross from government territory to rebel Serb positions.

"She crawled over and hugged him and they died like that, in each other’s arms."

Squinting through a hole in the sandbagged wall of a bombed-out building, Dino points to where the couple lie mouldering amid the debris of Bosnia’s 14-month civil war.

What more can you say? I suppose the reason I'm posting this to RS is to share the visceral reaction it gave me in the gut about the human cost of war.

Sarajevo was a long time ago. But the fact is that war breeds tragedy and death. That's not exactly a new observation, but it bears repeating. Saddam Hussein and his regime were monsters. I will admit that. And I think that deposing him was a moral act. But we did so in a hasty and unprepared manner, without enough manpower, and as a result, we f—ked the job up. And because we did the job in a supremely half-assed manner, we created a situation where there is going to be a hell of a lot more tragedy, death, sorrow, and cost in human life. And that, to me, was an immensely immoral act.

"We will serve with the best interest of this country. We will go to war if we need to. We will do whatever it takes to protect this country because we love it so much. But with that comes the obligation to the government of 'don't abuse it.' Don't make what we do a waste. Or don't put our lives in jeopardy if there's not a really good reason. It wasn't a proper use of American troops. It wasn't a proper use of my life, of my friend's lives, or the Marines who I've seen die around me. It's not a proper use." — Lee Buttrill, Seargant, Marine Corps, Veteran of Iraq War

The Late Great United States

Over at the Left Coaster pessimist lives up to his name this morning. In one of his typically very long posts with lots of links he discusses the rise of China as a World Power. The rapid rise of China as the worlds leader is being accelerated by the Bush administration's unilateral foreign policy and a domestic policy that is resulting in a plunging dollar. Europe is jumping on the Chinese band wagon by initiating trade pacts and talk of lifting the arms embargo. I can't do the post justice with a few copy and pastes so head over to the Left Coaster and check out The Dragon Stirring.

Political Blogging and Ethics, Update

Jazz had a post this morning on the CBS article on Blogging and Ethics. David Brock of the Media Matters mentioned in the article has written a letter to CBS asking them to issue a correction. He tells them what he thinks of the kind of journalism they are practicing:

This article is journalism at its shoddiest -- both wrong in its facts and unclear in its meaning. Please post a correction to those inaccuracies.

I think that sums it up pretty well.

Another Gem From The O'Reilly Factor

A Jewish caller into Bill O'Reilly's show complained that the Christmas-centric activities in schools set kids up towards conversion to Christianity. I'm not so sure I'll grant the caller their premise, but then again, I've celebrated Christmas all my life. I might feel very different if I celebrated Hanukkah. (And for those who do, hey, happy first night of Hanukkah.)

But, true to the spirit of peace on Earth and goodwill towards men, Good Old Bill™ invited the caller to emigrate to Israel.

You have a predominantly Christian nation. You have a federal holiday based on the philosopher Jesus. And you don't wanna hear about it? Come on, [caller] — if you are really offended, you gotta go to Israel then. I mean because we live in a country founded on Judeo — and that's your guys' — Christian, that's my guys' philosophy. But overwhelmingly, America is Christian. And the holiday is a federal holiday honoring the philosopher Jesus. So, you don't wanna hear about it? Impossible.

And that is an affront to the majority. You know, the majority can be insulted, too. And that's what this anti-Christmas thing is all about.

Yes, Bill. I'm sure that this was what was on that man's mind. Not that he didn't want his child celebrating another faith's holiday — it was that he wanted to insult Christians.

Oy.

New Right Blog, same nonsense

There is a new right leaning "academic" blog, The Becker Posner Blog, which being the always optimistic guy I am I added to my blogroll before a post had been added. Well the first entry is a justification of pre-emptive war by Judge Posner. I think I would have been better off to add "Judge Judy" to my blogroll. I was going to comment on it but I think I will leave that to Medium Lobster over at Fafblog. Sometimes unabashed satire is the best response.

The Medium Lobster is proud to welcome another enlightened being, Richard Posner, into the world of internet discourse. Today Judge Posner favors readers with a discussion on preventive war, and how to justify such a war in the absence of any imminent threat:

But what if the danger of attack is remote rather than imminent? Should imminence be an absolute condition of going to war, and preventive war thus be deemed always and everywhere wrong? Analytically, the answer is no. A rational decision to go to war should be based on a comparison of the costs and benefits (in the largest sense of these terms) to the nation. The benefits are the costs that the enemy?s attack, the attack that going to war now will thwart, will impose on the nation. ...

Suppose there is a probability of .5 that the adversary will attack at some future time, when he has completed a military build up, that the attack will, if resisted with only the victim?s current strength, inflict a cost on the victim of 100, so that the expected cost of the attack is 50 (100 x .5), but that the expected cost can be reduced to 20 if the victim incurs additional defense costs of 15. Suppose further that at an additional cost of only 5, the victim can by a preventive strike today eliminate all possibility of the future attack. Since 5 is less than 35 (the sum of injury and defensive costs if the future enemy attack is not prevented), the preventive war is cost-justified.

Ah, but why keep things in the abstract, Judge Posner? The Medium Lobster has a more concrete example to illustrate your point: a preventive attack on the moon.

Once again, the probability of an attack from the moon is less than one - indeed, it is miniscule. However, the potential offensive capabilities of a possible moon man invasion could be theoretically staggering. Indeed, there is a distinct, if remarkably slim, chance that a hostile moon man civilization is currently in possession of a Death Star capable of destroying Planet Earth in a single shot. The Medium Lobster has calculated this probability to be 5x10-9. Nevertheless, should this weapon exist and be used against the earth, the resulting costs would include the end of civilization, the extinction of the human race, the eradication of all terrestrial life, the physical obliteration of the planet, and the widespread pollution of the solar system with a mass of potentially radioactive space debris. The Medium Lobster conservatively values these costs at 3x1012, bringing the expected cost of the moon man attack on earth to 1500 (5x10-9 x 3x1012), a truly massive sum. Even after factoring in the cost of exhausting earth's nuclear stockpile and the ensuing rain of moon wreckage upon the earth (200 and 800, respectively), the numbers simply don't lie: our one rational course of action is to preventively annihilate the moon.

When you need a good laugh I suggest a quick trip over to the alternate universe of Fafblog.

I learned something new today

Did you know that the index finger and pinkie extended and other fingers in a fist gesture of which George W. is so fond does not mean W in Italy? So when he had all of his followers doing the gesture to show their support of him... they were all calling him a cuckold. Thank you, Isabella Rossellini, on the Daily Show.

Krugman on Social Security

Although the Bush administration tries to convince us there is not a crisis in Iraq when there is they are trying to convince us there is a crisis in the Social Security system when there isn't. Paul Krugman takes a break from his break this morning to explain that when it comes to Social Security the administration is Inventing a Crisis.

Privatizing Social Security - replacing the current system, in whole or in part, with personal investment accounts - won't do anything to strengthen the system's finances. If anything, it will make things worse. Nonetheless, the politics of privatization depend crucially on convincing the public that the system is in imminent danger of collapse, that we must destroy Social Security in order to save it.

I'll have a lot to say about all this when I return to my regular schedule in January. But right now it seems important to take a break from my break, and debunk the hype about a Social Security crisis.

There's nothing strange or mysterious about how Social Security works: it's just a government program supported by a dedicated tax on payroll earnings, just as highway maintenance is supported by a dedicated tax on gasoline.

Right now the revenues from the payroll tax exceed the amount paid out in benefits. This is deliberate, the result of a payroll tax increase - recommended by none other than Alan Greenspan - two decades ago. His justification at the time for raising a tax that falls mainly on lower- and middle-income families, even though Ronald Reagan had just cut the taxes that fall mainly on the very well-off, was that the extra revenue was needed to build up a trust fund. This could be drawn on to pay benefits once the baby boomers began to retire.

The grain of truth in claims of a Social Security crisis is that this tax increase wasn't quite big enough. Projections in a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (which are probably more realistic than the very cautious projections of the Social Security Administration) say that the trust fund will run out in 2052. The system won't become "bankrupt" at that point; even after the trust fund is gone, Social Security revenues will cover 81 percent of the promised benefits. Still, there is a long-run financing problem.

The problem isn't with Social Security, it's with the budget deficits caused by the Bush tax cuts. So how dies this create a Social Security crisis?

It's true that the federal government as a whole faces a very large financial shortfall. That shortfall, however, has much more to do with tax cuts - cuts that Mr. Bush nonetheless insists on making permanent - than it does with Social Security.

But since the politics of privatization depend on convincing the public that there is a Social Security crisis, the privatizers have done their best to invent one.

My favorite example of their three-card-monte logic goes like this: first, they insist that the Social Security system's current surplus and the trust fund it has been accumulating with that surplus are meaningless. Social Security, they say, isn't really an independent entity - it's just part of the federal government.

If the trust fund is meaningless, by the way, that Greenspan-sponsored tax increase in the 1980's was nothing but an exercise in class warfare: taxes on working-class Americans went up, taxes on the affluent went down, and the workers have nothing to show for their sacrifice.

But never mind: the same people who claim that Social Security isn't an independent entity when it runs surpluses also insist that late next decade, when the benefit payments start to exceed the payroll tax receipts, this will represent a crisis - you see, Social Security has its own dedicated financing, and therefore must stand on its own.

There's no honest way anyone can hold both these positions, but very little about the privatizers' position is honest. They come to bury Social Security, not to save it. They aren't sincerely concerned about the possibility that the system will someday fail; they're disturbed by the system's historic success.

For Social Security is a government program that works, a demonstration that a modest amount of taxing and spending can make people's lives better and more secure. And that's why the right wants to destroy it.

"They come to bury Social Security, not to save it." The neo-feudalists who are now in charge have been trying to kill Social Security since it was started in the 30's and what upsets them the most is it's success. A government program that actually works and actually helps people runs contrary to their philosophy of Social Darwinism.

Of course, our kissmoose tree...

Will not be put up again this year. I have kindly explained to others that as we have cats who view any decorated tree as a fancy cat toy holder regardless of location and/or size, I feel it would be just as efficient to decorate our tree with catnip and freshly cooked bacon, as they would be perhaps only slightly more entertained. Either way, the tree would come down quickly, decorations would be everywhere and we would have happy cats looking smarmy. Of course the nice thing about using bacon is we don't have the little tinsel dangles out of their butts. Please be aware of this danger when you decorate your own tree. Many cats have serious injuries because of ingesting tinsel, particulary when the owner is chasing them down because their butts have gone sparkly. No wait- that's many owners are injured when chasing cats with sparkly butts. Please, be careful out there.

The Revolt of the Clerics

Bull Moose discusses the revolt of the House Republicans. He points out that it was the Democrats that were supposed to fall apart but that it's not too surprising it's the Republicans. The first of many contentious issues is the intelligence Reform Bill. A majority of the House support it and the President supports it but it can't even get a hearing.

The Moose wonders whether the President will be forced to call in the 82nd Airborne to quell a rebellion in a nation's capital.

This time, the site of these disturbances is not Baghdad but rather D.C. Several rebellious congressional clerics are apparently challenging the Grand Ayatollah's authority in Washington over the intelligence bill. The first graph in the lead story in yesterday's New York Times told the entire story,

"President Bush sought to stem a near-rebellion by members of his own party in Congress yesterday by describing a sweeping intelligence-overhaul bill they oppose as an effort "to do everything necessary to confront and defeat the terrorist threat" and calling for its passage during a brief Congressional session this week."

Renegade clerics Hunter and Sensenbrenner are leading the insurgency. Hunter objects to the invasion of sacred congressional ground, otherwise known as turf. Sensenbrenner wants to crack down on infidels receiving driver's licenses. Both perhaps worthy objectives - but they do call into question who is in charge in the G.O.P.

Who is in charge of the Republican Party? Apparently not the "lame duck" President.

This probably is indicative of what the future holds for the G.O.P. as long suppressed tensions in the party come to the surface and their leader is increasingly viewed as a lame duck. Social moderates vs. the religious right, neo-cons vs. the foreign policy traditionalists and fiscal hawks vs. supply siders all may be feuding in the coming months and years.

We can only hope this infighting will neuter much of their agenda. This is one of those times when nothing is probably the best we can hope for.

Questions about Osama bin Laden

Over at the Left Coaster this morning Steve Soto speaks of bin Laden, Bush and Musharraf and the alleged inability to track him down.

A little over a month ago, a less haggard-looking Osama Bin Laden dropped into the eleventh hour of our presidential election and reminded all of us that he was not only still around, but also quite well versed apparently on current American culture, spouting references from Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911". Far from looking like a man on the run and hiding in a cave like he was in the months after 9/11, Bin Laden looked like a man who had the time to be talking from what looked like a TV studio, speaking in a relaxed manner as if he wasn?t threatened by anything. There has been anecdotal evidence since then that the Kerry team felt that Bin Laden's timely appearance crippled them over the final weekend.

Now, less than six weeks later, President Musharraf of Pakistan visits Bush today, and in essence tells us that Bin Laden is nowhere to be found, and is truly on the loose. He tells this to Bush, Cheney, Rummy, and Rice, our new foreign policy team in the second term, who provide no sense of alarm or dissatisfaction at this news. In fact, it seems like a collective sense of "ho hum" is now the new attitude from this administration at the news that after billions of dollars in intelligence spending and a catastrophic waste of a war allegedly against terrorism in Iraq, the man responsible for 9/11 is still running free apparently far from any imminent threat from anyone.

In less than two months, Bin Laden has managed to get out from under Musharraf's alleged hounding long enough to stop at a TV studio, and now vanish. By the way, how many TV studios do they have in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan anyway?

Osama's appearance right before the election did have an impact and although Steve tries to avoid donning the tinfoil hat he does suggest it is suspicious. James Powell in the comments section is not so restrained:

Of the many unexamined episodes from this election campaign the sudden appearance of Osama on the eve of the election is the most striking. It isn't the tape that is striking, it's the widespread lack of interest in it.

How did it get from Osama to American television? What trail did it follow?

How long was the tape available before it was broadcast?

Wasn't the appearance of the tape just before the election a little too convenient? Doesn't that raise suspicions even with people who don't wear tin foil hats?

Why would Osama give a shit about the American elections? What would be his interest in either candidate? President Kerry would be no different from President Bush with respect to the policies that are opposed by Osama, and by people to whom Osama is appealing for support.

Osama is not stupid, he knows this. So what was his goal in making the tape?

So what was with that tape? How can a fugitive make it to a TV studio looking comfortable and at ease? I don't expect these questions to be asked in the US MSM but I don't hear anyone else asking them either.