Hesiod on chickenhawk defenders.

Digby on Coulter, and Chomsky, and Bloggers, Oh My!


Chomsky is a pointy headed intellectual who can best be described as inciting leftists to have a second cup of coffee. Coulter is actually entertaining the Republican establishment by promoting the killing American liberals and getting paid handsomely to do it.

And she isn't alone There are also Horowitz, Derbyshire, that nut-case Paul Craig Roberts (and a whole slough of puerile polemicists at Town Hall) not to mention Rush and his little clones all around the country. These people demonize liberals on a daily basis, portraying their fellow Americans as if they are sub-humans, worthy of total disdain and subject to violence solely for their political views.

There is nothing like this on the left, and certainly there's nobody with national exposure who is turning a profit at it. (Oh sorry, I forgot that anonymous guy who posted a remark on a message board over a year ago that mentioned violence. He's quite a threat, to be sure.)

I really could not care less whether certain bloggers repudiate this immature babbling, but I don't want to hear another word from right wing moralists about how our culture is being polluted by sex and violence. If they think that routine, everyday demonization of liberals is just good clean fun then they can shut the fuck up about the breakdown in moral values in this country. Their glass house is lying in shards at their feet.

Homeobox weighs in on the terrorist podiatrist.

Talk Left points me to this WaPo Op-Ed.

This is an extraordinary moment. If, in response to the challenge of terrorism, we transform ourselves into a society that eliminates the rule of law and concentrates in the president unchecked power to detain people without charges or judicial review, we will have become our antithesis. The irony would be profound."

HELLO?!?! IS ANYBODY OUT THERE??? HAS ANYONE READ THIS FUCKING STORY??

Authorities stumbled upon an astonishing array of weapons inside the town home of podiatrist Robert Goldstein, 37, Thursday evening after receiving a complaint that he was arguing with his wife, Kristi, 28.

After coaxing Goldstein out of the home, Pinellas County deputies discovered about 20 homemade bombs, a pair of rocket launchers, dozens of high- power rifles and an antipersonnel mine.

They also retrieved a three- page battle plan that laid out in intricate detail a mission to blow up what appears to be a local Islamic educational center. The writing includes at least the first names of two other people.

At Saturday's news conference, prayer leader Bilal Muhammad of Fort Myers said local Muslims had been in close contact with federal authorities and had been told that one accomplice had been detained.

Some Egyptian guy shoots up an El-Al counter and there's a 3 week Blogistan debate over whether it is or isn't terrorism. This plot is uncovered and chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp.

There are days when I feel lonelier than poor Jonah Goldberg over at the Corner the day the NY Post had the "BUSH KNEW" headline.

Quis custodiet istos custodes?

The FBI has intensified its probe of a classified intelligence leak, asking 17 senators to turn over phone records, appointment calendars and schedules that would reveal their possible contact with reporters.

In an Aug. 7 memo passed to the senators through the Senate general counsel's office, the FBI asked all members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to collect and turn over records from June 18 and 19, 2002. Those dates are the day of and the day after a classified hearing in which the director of the National Security Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, spoke to lawmakers about two highly sensitive messages that hinted at an impending action that the agency intercepted on the eve of Sept. 11 but did not translate until Sept. 12.

Barry Crimmins sez:

Dr. Robert J. Goldstein of St. Petersburg, Fla. has been charged with possession of a= nonregistered destructive device and attempting to use an explosive to damage and destroy Islamic centers. He allegedly had 40 weapons, 30 explosive devices, a list of about 50 Islamic worship centers in Florida, and detailed plans to bomb an Islamic education center. What do you bet Goldstein has bond set long before several Islamic prisoners who have not been charged with anything yet still rot in prison?

Fundraising follies.

Bush has taken 28 out-of-town political trips in his first 16 months in office, compared with the 20 that federal records show for Clinton in the corresponding period.

Bush's road trips this year have raised more than $27 million for Republican parties and candidates. He also has headlined several Washington fundraisers, including last week's record-setting $33 million dinner benefiting the RNC.
[...]
One senior administration official said each trip's official component, known around the White House as the "policy event," is scheduled first, and then the fundraisers are added. That does not comport with statements from local party officials, who say they know about the fundraisers long before a hall is booked for the official event. Other White House officials said fundraising plans drove the schedules for several recent trips.
[..]



The administration has requested an increase in the White House travel budget from $1.6 million to $3.8 million.

I actually agree with Reynolds that Turley's use of the word "camps" was likely a bit of hype. But I also think it's rather Kausian* to get more concerned about the hyperbole surrounding the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens without charges or legal representation than the thing itself.

Emphasis is everything.


*trying out a new word here.

Jeb's pal Reiger seems pretty obsessed with Biblical discipline. Is this what he means?


Deuteronomy 21

18 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. 20 They shall say to the elders, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard." 21 Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.

Don't forget to read W.'s blog.

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."


All quiet on the Blogistan front.

Joe Conason on Perkins:

Perkins gets the blahs
"Do you want our government run by corporations? Vote Democratic in November. That's the text of the latest attack ad rolled out by the party of Terry McAuliffe. The Democratic National Committee chairman plans to air them in selected battleground states and congressional districts throughout the country." So claimed conservative columnist Joseph Perkins in an Aug. 16 column that insisted Democrats are as culpable as Republicans for the corporate crime wave. He really doesn't know what he's talking about, beginning with the fact that there is no such DNC ad, except in his fevered mind. What Perkins quotes is actually the text of the clever online "ad" blurbed here a couple of weeks ago. (Meanwhile, the creative types at Blah3.com have added two new ads to their "Money" series on the deficit and offshore tax havens that prove McAuliffe should hire them.) So far no word on whether Perkins, obviously well-trained as an editorialist for the Wall Street Journal, will retract his bizarre error.

Instapundit has this to say:


UPDATE: Okay, one more thought. Isn't it odd that national sovereignty, and a whole raft of individual protections under international (and American constitutional) law can go by the wayside in the effort to prosecute war crimes, but that anything that might make a reporter's life more difficult is obviously beyond the pale?

Okay, it's not really odd that a reporter would think that. What's odd is that anyone else would take it seriously. Then again, it's not at all clear that anyone else does.



He's talking about Robert Fisk, and I didn't bother reading the article he's referring to, but it brought to mind the media attention about the recent police abuses in Portland. One thing that disturbed be was that the media's coverage emphasized the police's behavior toward reporters (video showed they deliberately sprayed a cameraperson). And, while it is true that the press constitutionally have a special role, and do and should enjoy some special protections, they are all too quick to decide that THEY are the story. The coverage that I read/saw had a definite tone of "well, the protesters deserved it but why are they picking on US!!"

Beyond Corporate notes the unrecognized benefits of the religious hijacking of public schools.

Right Wing Terrorism Watch


I think the score is now 4-1, though that 1 was pretty sketchy.

SEMINOLE -- The plan for the military-style "mission" showed adrawing of an "Islamic Education Center."

Timers on plastic explosives would go off in 15 minutes, taking down buildings and killing Muslims. Bombs and land mines would detonate in
parking lots and playgrounds, killing police and fleeing students.

This was the blueprint of a 37-year-old podiatrist from Seminole, Robert Jay Goldstein, who had compiled a list of 50 Islamic centers and mosques in the Tampa Bay area and Florida, federal authorities said Friday.

"He had enough weapons to take on an army," said Cal Dennie, Pinellas County sheriff's spokesman. Indeed, authorities removed an arsenal of weapons and enough explosives to destroy not only his townhome, but up to 10 others.

[..]
"OBJECTIVE: Kill all 'rags' at this Islamic Education Center -- ZERO residual presence -- maximum effect," the plan read.

[..]

Jack Grayson says about a year ago Kristi Goldstein told him her husband was no longer a practicing Jew. Grayson says he remembers Goldstein wearing a cross when he dropped off his rent check.

That Christianity sure is a stinking turd of a religion.

At least he didn't have any Giant Puppets of Death!

Freepers respond:


To: Friedrich Hayek; JohnHuang2

Damn---does this guy think we are at war? And at war with someone who has vowed to annihilate us and has no qualms about who they kill, how many, etc.? What's
wrong with him?

I don't mean to say I told you so, but I predicted some time ago that we'll see an increasing number of Americans who, if they do not wiew government as taking action to
protect us, will take things into their own hands.

9 posted on 8/24/02 8:09 AM Pacific by gg188

Judy Woodruff, liberal media extraordinaire:

WOODRUFF: Well, you may have heard protesters in John's piece, protesters in the background. Our White House team says it was the usual relatively small group of protesters who often follow Mr. Bush on the road. In Oregon last night a demonstration against the president got a bit out of hand. Police in full riot gear shot pepper spray and rubber bullets at protesters who pounded on police cars and refused to back off from a barricade.


I guess Bush is the new Grateful Dead.

Jeb Bush plays the bigot card. You see, apparently anyone who thinks that someone who has views such as these:

In the article, Regier says that husbands must have authority over their wives, who should not work outside the home unless it is financially necessary. 'Scripture is clear in stating that women are to be `helpmates' to their husbands, that they are to bear and nurture children, that they are to be 'workers at home.' ''

and who, in good Christian form, tried to lie about it, shouldn't be in charge of child welfare just has a problem with people of faith. According to Jeb:

Gov. Jeb Bush charged Friday that critics of his new state child welfare chief -- a fundamentalist Christian who advocates corporal punishment -- are displaying ''bigotry'' and a ''double standard'' against people of faith.

[,,,]

Bush, in Miami with Regier to announce a multiagency effort to find children who are missing from DCF custody, called The Herald's stories that revealed Regier's writings ''outrageous'' and ``just wrong.''

''I don't believe that someone who described himself as a person lacking faith altogether would be receiving the same kind of scrutiny,'' Bush said. ``I think there's a double standard, and I'm bothered by it.''

Bush added: ``Somehow the implication is that people of faith somehow are strange, and I just reject that.''

Get used to it. This is the new standard response to all criticism of people's stone age viewpoints - "You're a bigot! It's unfair! White Christian nutcases have no political power in this country! Wahh!"

Reader D.M. sent in this analysis of the Bush administration.

The following are some thoughts concerning Bush's use of "tactical hubris" in various situation including with regard to Iraq.

As the 2000 campaign neared election day, the Bush campaign decided to employ the “bandwagon tactic.” That tactic is based on the presumption that late-deciding voters will break towards the campaign that is perceived to be the winner. Thus, the Bush campaign theorized, if we simply act and talk as if we will win, the late-deciding voters will break for us and our act will become self-fulfilling. To implement the tactic, Karl Rove predicted an electoral landslide as well as a popular vote victory of 7+ percentage points. In the last stages of the campaign, the candidate ignored battleground states in which the election would be close such as Florida, New Mexico, West Virginia , Iowa and Wisconsin to concentrate on states in which Mr. Gore had a substantial lead such as California and New Jersey. The apparent theory behind that choice was that the public and the press would decide that if Bush was sufficiently confident to campaign in “lost states,” he must have the election sewed up. From that conclusion the “bandwagon effect” would result in the undecided voters breaking for Bush.

The essence of that strategy was that an act of exaggerated or unjustified self-confidence could influence the behavior of others in a favorable way. A display of exaggerated self-confidence is the definition of hubris. In the case of the “bandwagon tactic,” hubris may have come within one Supreme Court Justice’s vote of costing G. W. Bush the Presidency. That close call, however, has not diminished the Bush administration’s use of tactical hubris.
On election night, the results of the election were unknown. No one knew who had won New Mexico, Florida or part of the west coast. The result of Florida would determine the election. Before absentee ballots had been tallied, before a decision on recounts had been made, before a lawsuit that ultimately decided the election was brought, George W. Bush announced that he was the winner. He was, his campaign declared, President Elect. While James Baker, the Brooks Brothers riot squad and more lawyers than worked the O.J. trial scrambled to ensure the accuracy of his statement, Mr. Bush was serenely confident in his victory. Given that no one, including Mr. Bush, Mr. Rove and Mr. Baker could possibly know how the Florida electoral votes would eventually be cast, the announcement may be best understood as an act of unjustified confidence, i.e. hubris.

Perhaps the Bush campaign felt that by prematurely declaring victory, he would buck up his supporters, cow Al Gore and his legions, and turn the media and public opinion in his favor and against a recount. Public opinion might then simply demand that the initial Florida results be certified and Bush be installed into office.

If Bush’s declaration of victory was a tactical use of hubris (as opposed to being simple hubris), it is difficult to assess whether or not it worked as planned. Clearly, Mr. Bush’s supporters were invigorated by the declaration. Mr. Gore however was not cowed. The media and, in particular, the pundits seemed to accept the statement and opine that Mr. Bush was the rightful winner even before a recount. The public did not seem to rise up and declare Mr. Bush the winner as a result of his announcement. Once the recount issue went to the United States Supreme Court, however, the tactic of hubris, if that is what it was, may have been a clear winner. A divided court, in an opinion written by Justice Scalia, issued an injunction halting the Florida Supreme Court ordered recount. The basis for such an injunction was that the actual counting of all votes cast in Florida would cause irreparable harm to one of the parties, namely Mr. Bush. The finding of irreparable harm has, as an unstated premise, that Mr. Bush was the rightful winner of the Florida electoral votes and, therefore, of the Presidency. Perhaps the display of hubris in declaring himself the winner reached the audience of five members of the Supreme Court and influenced their behavior. If so, score one huge victory for the tactics of hubris.

After his inauguration as President, Mr. Bush decided that the closeness of the election and his relative lack of a mandate should not temper his policy proposals. Some counseled that he should alter his domestic agenda given that he lost the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes. After all, a clear majority of Americans had voted against Bush in the election. Bush rejected that argument and decided that to proceed as if he had a mandate would, in fact, create that mandate. In essence, Bush decided that if he acted as if he had a mandate, others would get on board and he would, in fact, have a mandate.

The centerpiece of the Bush domestic policy during the campaign was a large tax cut that critics claimed would skew its benefits to the very wealthy while squandering the budget surplus. The tax cut proposal had been developed in 1999 when the Bush campaign worried that his primary challenge would come from Steve (flat tax) Forbes instead of John McCain. Despite the changes in the economy and the potential for deterioration in the budget picture should the economy head into a downturn, Bush decided to proceed with his tax cut proposal with minimal modifications. Thus, Bush decided that the way to deal with the lack of an electoral mandate was to act as if he had one with regard to his largest domestic policy prescription. The decision to proceed with the tax cut was not an act of hubris as Mr. Bush’s self-confidence was fully justified. Shortly after he proposed the legislation, one Democrat, Zell Miller of Georgia, announced that he would support the bill. The tax cut passed by respectable margins in both houses of Congress and became law.

A pattern may be perceived in the above. When faced with a decision, Bush decides on the outcome he desires, announces it as fact and hopes that his show of confidence will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. With regard to campaigning in “lost states,” the strategy did not work but no price was paid. With regard to the “President Elect” strategy, it may not have worked with the public but it may have worked with the only constituency that mattered, the Justices of the Supreme Court. On the tax cut, the strategy seems to have worked to Bush’s short-term political benefit. Whether or not it works in the long term depends on the future of the economy, the budget and the assignment of political blame should either crater.

The President’s Iraq policy follows the pattern. In his State of the Union speech, the President identified Iraq as one of the four countries operating as an “Axis of Evil.” He predicted that “the price of indifference would be catastrophic” with regard to those countries. He vowed that “America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation's security.” Mr. Bush noted that “time is not on our side.” He would not “wait on events, while dangers gather…. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.”

In his Commencement speech at West Point, Mr. Bush made clear that efforts to remove Saddam from power in Iraq were needed and would be taken preemptively:

For much of the last century, America's defense relied on the Cold War doctrines of deterrence and containment. In some cases, those strategies still apply. But new threats also require new thinking. Deterrence . . . means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies.

We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best . . .. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.

[T]he war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act.

And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.

Those statements can only be read as announcing that the security of the nation depends, in part, on regime change in Iraq. Indeed, Richard Perle has stated as much when remarking that:

The failure to take on Saddam after what the president has said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism.

A funny thing happened on the way to the implementation of Bush’s announced policy. The Republican Party, the Republican foreign policy establishment, the uniformed military, our traditional allies, countries in the Gulf region, and increasingly, the American people failed to react to the show of confidence by rallying to support the policy.

Within the Republican Party, Senator Richard Lugar, Senator Chuck Hagel and Majority leader Armey have all expressed reservations concerning preemptive military regime change in Iraq. The foreign policy establishment of the Republican Party including former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Secretary of State and former National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, General Norman Schwarzkopf and General Wesley Clark have expressed varying degrees of reservation concerning the policy.

The press reports a singular lack of support for the policy within the uniformed officers at the Pentagon. The New York Times repeatedly publishes negative critiques of “war plans” leaked from sources within the Pentagon.

Despite a high profile trip to the region by Vice President Cheney, none of the Gulf states support the policy. German leadership is actively running against the policy in the upcoming elections. Even such a staunch ally as Great Britain has expressed reservations and has failed to commit to support preemptive military action in Iraq. Mr. Bush looked into Mr. Putin’s soul and found a $40 billion development deal between Russia and Iraq.

Recent polling suggests that the American people’s support for war with Iraq is tepid at best and falls precipitously in the event that American casualties are incurred, the war lasts for any extended period or the U.S. has to go it alone without the support of our allies.

Stratfor.com reports that the Bush administration is backing down from preemptive action in Iraq and is looking for a way to limit the political damage of such a reversal. The President meets with his “war cabinet” in Crawford and announces that no discussion of Iraq occurred. The President who once announced that “time is not on our side,” that the results of indifference could be “catastrophic” and declared that “this nation will act” now strikes a different chord. The White House announces that no decision has been made. Bush states that he “is a patient man” and decries the media “frenzy” concerning Iraq.

Perhaps hubris is no substitute for patient planning, consultation with Congressional leaders as well as allies, substantive debate and careful building of support among the American people.

Thanks to MWO, Cursor, Metafilter, Camworld, and a few others who linked me the last couple of days were my biggest days yet. Hopefully a few who came for Dick Cheney's email scam stick around. And, thanks to Baconslab for writing it and allowing me to steal it.