"You must love those you lead before you can be an effective leader... You can certainly command without that sense of commitment, but you cannot lead without it. And without leadership, command is a hollow experience, a vacuum often filled with mistrust and arrogance."

"The job that every flag rank officer covets was systematically turned down by Army commanders around the world: General B.B. Bell of the US Army European Command, General James Campbell of the US Army Pacific Command, General Larry Ellis of the US Army Forces Command, and General Philip Kensinger, commander of the US Army's Special Operations Command.

"The deputy head of CENTCOM, Lt. Gen. John Abazaid, an Arab-American, also turned down Rumsfeld. Shinseki, Franks, Keane, and Abazaid could not stand the thought of putting up with Rumsfeld and his chickenhawk advisers on a daily basis."

"Both current incumbents leave this summer, and instead of the usual line of hopefuls standing hat in hand, the eligibles have headed for the hills. Rumor has it they may have to recruit the hall porter and the charwoman.

"The interesting question is why. Part of the answer is Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. To put it plainly, Rumsfeld treats people like crap. Working for him is like working for Leona Helmsley, except that Leona is less self-centered. Unless you are one of his sycophants, equipped with a good set of knee-pads and plenty of lip balm, you can expect to be booted down the stairs on a regular basis."

posted by John 11:07 PM |

How far will spite and malice go?

According to my old-fashioned way of thinking—that quaint notion of checks-and-balances revered by the Founders who wrote the Constitution—Congress exists to debate issues and provide the oversight without which the Executive Branch can become a loose cannon—and tyranny replace the Republic. But, just a few days ago, the news was buzzing with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Steinbrenner's arbitrarily cutting off debate. And now, according to The Hill, his staff is denying the use of committee facilities to Democrats who want to raise challenges to the current administration's corruption and "our way or else" approach to governance.

If the Financial Services Committee is the best in the House when it comes to bipartisan comity, then the Judiciary Committee may well be the worst.

In December, ranking Democrat John Conyers (Mich.) began holding “forums” — gatherings with all the trappings of official hearings — after Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) refused to hold hearings on topics Conyers requested. The forums have been held in smaller committee rooms, often with C-SPAN coverage and formal witness lists.

In a sign of how far relationships on the committee have soured, majority staff recently announced a new policy to deny any request from a committee Democrat for the use of a committee hearing room.

What can we Democrats do about this? Short of calling for immediate implementation of every parliamentary step considered in response to the "nuclear option"? To shut this Congress down.

posted by John 10:43 PM |

Kerry to the Rescue

Today's Washington Post reports on John Kerry's pursuit of the truth in the case of the Downing Street Memo:

"When I go back [to Washington] on Monday, I am going to raise the issue," Kerry told the New Bedford (Mass.) Standard Times newspaper two weeks ago. "I think it's a stunning, unbelievably simple and understandable statement of the truth and a profoundly important document that raises stunning issues here at home."

But Kerry has yet to raise the issue in public again.

As Alan Watts might have said: Who knows the sound of one flop flipping?

posted by Jerry Bowles 6:21 PM |

Screw the Poor

All of the problems of Social Security could easily be solved if greedy, lazy-assed old people would just work longer, opines John Tierney in today's New York Times. That big fat benefit check is such an irresistable lure that it causes perfectly healthy old people to stop totin' that barge and liftin' that bail while they still have some life left.

Do you think that our new Safire-lite knows that the average Social Security benefit payment is $922.10 a month. (Hey, Mildred, we can get more than $900 a month from the government for nothing. Gol dang, let's just tell Ernie to take that job and shove it.)

The only people to whom that amount of money would make a big difference are the poor. Better off folks have other assets and sources of retirement income and $900 a month isn't going to be much of a factor in deciding when to hang it up. So, by Tierney's (and Bush's) logic, the solution to the whole Social Security problem is easy--let the well-to-do stockpile their extra cash in private accounts and retire early and make poor people work longer by raising the retirement age.

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:27 AM |

Bad neighbor policy

Imagine the "Isthmus of Gibraltar" linked White Europe and Black Europe(Africa), and that the leader of White Europe told all the lesser nations in Black Europe to drop everything, forget about their economic progress and in the name of "the war on terror" create a Black European police force to ensure that "democratic values" (of White Europe) are being maintained in the region. Now, before you go to Kaplan's for an SAT tuneup, just transpose the concept to North America and "Latin" America. Crapout Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Evan Bayh have the same retrograde approach to relations with our neighbors to the South as Rice-a-phony. Once again, Dems blow another opportunity to make points with Latin voters.

posted by Groom 7:55 AM |

Downing Street Maps All Lead Back To The White House

For the American public to believe that the Bush administration is not guilty of impeachable offenses, they have to swallow the story that the official daily diaries of our closest allies, their recounting of meetings with American officials which they themselves attended (and we speak the same language!) are somehow less accurate than the thirdhand hearsay rantings of an erratic alcoholic emigre named "Curveball" . . .

posted by Michael 12:19 AM |

Monday, June 13, 2005

Bye Bye Freedom Fries

Isn't the Congressman Walter Jones, Republican from North Carolina, who called on the administration today to set a timetable for getting the hell out of Iraq the same Congressman Walter Jones, Republican from North Carolina, who led the battle to rename French fries "freedom fries" a couple of years when our bonne amies declined to join us in the march to folly. Next thing you know, he'll be switching from Kool-Aid to pinot noir.

posted by Jerry Bowles 10:17 PM |

Guess what they're reading in Kansas

Picked this up via Raw Story. No wonder the warp[ed] resident's poll numbers are tanking.

Military action won't end insurgency, growing number of U.S. officers believe

BY TOM LASSETER

Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - (KRT) - A growing number of senior American military officers in Iraq have concluded that there is no long-term military solution to an insurgency that has killed thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,300 U.S. troops during the past two years....

"I think the more accurate way to approach this right now is to concede that ... this insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations," Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said last week, in a comment that echoes what other senior officers say. "It's going to be settled in the political process."...

The message is markedly different from previous statements by U.S. officials who spoke of quashing the insurgency by rounding up or killing "dead enders" loyal to former dictator Saddam Hussein. As recently as two weeks ago, in a Memorial Day interview on CNN's "Larry King Live," Vice President Dick Cheney said he believed the insurgency was in its "last throes."

posted by John 4:28 AM |

Los reglas de juego... Bolivia

Props to Al Giordano and everone at Narconews for staying out in front of the issues that fomented Bolivia's latest Chinese fire drill. As plans for a US supported coup were underway in La Paz, Shrub and Jebby were giving Latin leaders a hose job at a meeting of Organization of American States in Ft. Lauderdale. Roger Noriega, noted mestizophobe and the Junta's man in the Narcosphere, melted down at the OAS confab... after failing to turn Bolivias army against its own people.

posted by Groom 3:03 AM |

The Tea Is Already In The Harbor

In the course of arguing that there are short-term, pragmatic benefits for Democrats in pimping impeachment the way the neocons pimped WMDs (i.e., every time they open their mouths in front of a camera or microphone), That Colored Fella points out that we've already got Article IV of the Impeachment Articles written -- hell, it's probably still on House word processors; we just "cut and paste" from the last presidential impeachment:

Abuse Of Power

- The President made false and misleading statements for the purpose of deceiving the American people

- The President made false and misleading statements to members of the Cabinet and White House aides

- The President frivolously asserted executive privilege

- The President made perjurious, false and misleading statements to Congress

(This is also intended to head off the inevitable wingnut pirouette, tomorrow, when for the first time in history they start to argue, "Hey, that's not an impeachable offense!")

posted by Michael 1:44 AM |

Sunday, June 12, 2005

Guess what? It is getting hotter out there.

It's no longer just a bunch of pointy-headed so-called purveyors of junk science who believe in global warming. Big business is joining the reality-based community. Plus, where did I find the news? USA Today.

The story reads, in part, as follows,

General Electric is the latest big corporate convert; politicians at the state and national level are looking for solutions; and religious groups are taking philosophical and financial stands to slow the progression of climate change.

They agree that the problem is real. A recent study led by James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies confirms that, because of carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases, Earth is trapping more energy from the sun than it is releasing back into space.

The U.N. International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that global temperatures will rise 2 to 10 degrees by 2100. A "middle of the road" projection is for an average 5-degree increase by the end of the century, says Caspar Amman of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Now, if only the wanker in the Whitehouse can get his mind(?) around this....

posted by John 11:55 PM |

More Detail on the July 23rd Memo

The fix was in. Blair knew it. We knew it. Taken together with the much ignored Downing Street Memo, this is (as Jerry put it) Bush's blue dress. Here are some additional excerpts (Full memo here):

"The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.

This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.

“US plans assume, as a minimum, the use of British bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia,” the briefing paper warned. This meant that issues of legality “would arise virtually whatever option ministers choose with regard to UK participation”.

The paper was circulated to those present at the meeting, among whom were Blair, Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of MI6. The full minutes of the meeting were published last month in The Sunday Times."

Facts are stubborn things. This is not going to go away and just might force our somnambulent media to wake up and do their jobs.

posted by Leftcoast 7:39 PM |

Los Alamos, Argentina

It might as well be from reading the “official story” of what happened to nuke lab whistleblower Tommy Hook.

Strange things happen when your top lab is located right in an area that boasts the highest heroin overdose rate in the nation. This story cuts both ways... The right says one thing. The left has their take. One thing’s for sure. The Trustees of the University of California (with help from Feinstein, Boxer and Jane “in harm’s way” Harman and maybe even Willie Brown) are in a Steel Cage Death Match with lil’ red state darlings Lockheed-Martin for control of crown jewel in our nation’s empire of fumble, bumble and boom, The Los Alamos National Labs (a subset of the Lawrence-Livermore National Labs, run by them fuggin commos in Berkeley… that’s in California, for the geographically challenged).

Local Keystone Kops in $anta Fe, under the thumb of New Mexico caudillo Bill “Chief Thunder Thug” Richardson, in true Kremlinist fashion, say that last week’s attack on Hook had nothing to do with the auditor’s whistle blowing activities. Richardson, who earned a reputation as a swarthy, Sinophobe when putting the screws to Los Alamos researcher Wen Ho Lee during his tenure as DOE czar, is on the record supporting his pals at the University of California. Wittingly or unwittingly, Tommy Hook’s upcoming testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee favors Lockhed-Martin, which would move jobs from Los Alamos down the hill to the less dysfunctional Sandia National Labs on the mile-high flatlands south of Albuquerque, an area which does double duty as America’s largest nuclear weapons dump. Sandia is located in the 1st congressional district of Representative Heather Wilson, an up and coming Repiglet star and a graduate of the US Air Force Academy and a Rhodes Scholar who never lets you forget it. She carpetbagged into New Mexico from New York state and a stint as a mid-level NSC staffer, acquired a nuclear consulting company and never missed a chance to get herself photographed with her very good amigo Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM). This has everything to do with jobs and politics nothing to do with science or national defense. Like the national defense laboratories in Great Britain, Los Alamos has been rife with moles since the git-go. “Outsourcing” to Lockheed-Martin will provide no solution, merely export and supersize the organization’s cultural problems to the new contractor. Here we are, on the eve of the whistleblower's sit down with Congress. You gotta wonder if the story would be the same if the victim was a nice Jewish boy named Teddy Herzberger instead of Tommy Hook.

posted by Groom 6:54 PM |

How Long Can The Indiligence Of Hacks Be Blixed Around The Fallacy?

With the Downing Street Memo finally starting to get some traction in the American press, so many shoes are dropping around D.C. that it's looking like a Thom McAn's in the middle of an earthquake. The latest article to begin connecting the dots in a comprehensive, coherent way is The Secret Way To War, published in the most recent New York Review of Books.

And, of course, there's that little bit of street theater Congressman Conyers plans for this coming Thursday, which will follow on the heels of substantive hearings into the BushCo lies leading up to the Iraq war. One can only imagine the false terror alerts this will provoke from the White House, as well as the ostrich-like cowardice of the mainstream media, as it once again goes into full Missing-White-Woman-Du-Jour mode.

posted by Michael 2:43 PM |

Lookey Who's on the Side of the Good Guys

For me there was no stronger image of the Clinton impeachment than that cracker, Bob Barr snarling in righteous indignation over the dress, the lies and the need to purge that pond scum we called Mr. President out of office. The members of the House literally ran the articles over to the Senate--at the time I was thinking they were running so the could get them into the Senate before the public woke up and realized this was serious.

I underestimated Barr's values--truly. He's railing once again, this time against the overreach in the Patriot Act. At least he's a consistent Conservative, unlike the robo-neocons who use conservative concepts to foster a radical and completely non-Conservative, anti-American agenda. We may not agree with his overall politics, but you have to respect his consistency and wish others had his level of commitment.

Which leads me to thinking about Dem strategy and Howard Dean. There is a powerful strategic opportunity that Dean and others seem to be missing. As much as we all want to rant--this site included--ranting, which Dean does masterfully, is not enough and simply will not work. As much as I dislike the DNC, in this case they're right on the issue, wrong on the PR insofar as they choose to denigrate Dean in the media.

The Pugs have abandoned, if not willfully damaged, the Constitution. It seems to me that there is a real position, which is that of the "Constitutional" party--one that truly celebrates the freedoms and rights conferred in that document. We need to embrace the Constitution in every argument. Why? Because it is definitively liberal, not centrist. It is a position that is unassailable by the Right. What are they going say? We don't believe in free speech? Or the right to bear arms? See how long that plays in Peoria, Karl.

We've allowed the Pugs to hijack the language of democracy and pervert the meaning of values that we hold dear. Setting aside George Lakoff and his framing boondoggle, we've lost the language of liberty that powered FDR, Kennedy--even Clinton. To frame all of our issues in the context of the Constitution is so quintessentially mainstream, you might get some support on some issues not only from the Red States, but from the reddest of the red like Bob Barr and Lindsay Graham. You might say we don't want those guys anywhere near our party. I pose this, which would you rather have, Bob Barr in your tent from time to time, or a neocon theocracy?

posted by Leftcoast 12:51 PM |

What part of "revolutionary lesbianism" don't we understand?

Perhaps Hillary R. Clinton can cool us and school us. America isn't quite ready for a First Man in the White House, even if the book is a pack of lies. Shrubby can talk about his dog Barney on the Today Show better than Hillary can talk about herself. And to think that such cavalier observers as Larry Sabato are ragging that the media should have more common sense (self censoship) than to shrink Hilla's zone of privacy. She comes from the same generation as Sir Mick Jagger. She deserves the same zone of privacy. It's only rock n' roll... get ready to tumble.

posted by Groom 10:13 AM |

Shrub's Stained Dress

The Washington Post's Walter Pincus is still stalking the Downing Street memo:

A briefing paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the British memo predicted would be a "protracted and costly" postwar occupation of that country.

The eight-page memo, written in advance of a July 23, 2002, Downing Street meeting on Iraq, provides new insights into how senior British officials saw a Bush administration decision to go to war as inevitable, and realized more clearly than their American counterparts the potential for the post-invasion instability that continues to plague Iraq.

The cousins added these prescient lines:

"A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise...As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."

Where is Kenneth Starr when America really needs him?

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:50 AM |

This week's best invective

Gadflyer's Cliff Shecter, commenting on the latest Washington Post poll,

"The public is increasingly catching on to the fact that President Bush is pretty much a wanker who has no idea how to run an ice cream parlor, much less our country."

posted by John 8:11 AM |

Vanity UnFair... Hillary in the pillory

All the lies, all the time be what Hillary says about ex-New York Times Magazine editor Ed Klein's new book. On the heels of "Deep Throat" Vanity Fair is doin' the dirty, shoveling up the excerpts in their latest offering. Might some powerful "centrist" New Yorkers want to put Mrs. Clinton's senate seat en jeu, as the French like to say? Does Al From want "Clintonism" without a Clinton in the form of Mark Warner or Evan Bayh? Say it ain't so, Hill... Klein's book can't be 100% "blatant fabrication." Image courtesy of Slick Times.

posted by Groom 4:23 AM |