Category: Politics

Jimmy Breslin is pissed off. Who can blame him? He says he’s thinking about getting out of the news business. Hope he doesn’t.

This government’s kidnapping of Faris/Rauf violated the laws handed down by Madison, Jefferson, Marshall. A small religious zealot, John Ashcroft, takes their great laws and bravery and using our new Patriot Act, turns it into Fascism.

He could do this openly because news reporters go about the government like gardeners, bent over, smiling and nodding when one of the owners shows up. You only have to look at a White House news conference to see how they aggressively pursue your right to know.

The newspeople stand when the president comes into the room. They really do. They don’t sit until he tells them to. You tell them a lie and they say, “Sir.”

The thing that really strikes me about this is how conservative it is, in the non-political sense. Here’s a guy who’s seen a lot. I mean, a lot. He’s recorded half of the twentieth century for us. He’s not writing so scathingly about a return to conservative values; he’s not protesting the act of living in the past. He’s talking about how dangerous the changes are.

Now, that’s a truck.

The Freepers are getting all excited about stuffing the MoveOn ballot box. They’re so cute! Such a fervent belief in the democratic process! Not.

But the priceless bit — I gotta quote the whole thing. Here.

FOR THE THIRD TIME:

This is not a FReeping opportunity – this is lunacy! These people are COMMUNISTS!

THINK ABOUT IT …!!

DO YOU REALLY WANT YOUR NAME ON A LIST ASSOCIATED WITH A COMMUNIST ORGANIZATION …??

HOW WILL YOU EXPLAIN THIS WHEN THE DOJ OR THE FBI COME CALLING AND ASKING YOU QUESTIONS AND POKING INTO YOUR PRIVATE AFFAIRS …??

Capitalization is that of the original author.

Phil Carter mused on the Iyman Faris plea bargain over the weekend, to good effect. He’s dug up a claim that the government threatened to declare Faris an enemy combatant in order to get him to plea bargain. Phil explains why this is bad at length. It goes beyond the immediate fact that someone’s either an enemy combatant or not.

WMD explanation of the week: they were looted. Sure, several hundred tons of neurotoxins were looted. So effectively and so secretively that we haven’t found even a single looter. Sounds likely.

But OK, let’s grant ‘em that one. Let’s also admit that US forces have had no luck finding the “looted” WMD. Isn’t the solution obvious? Bring back Blix’s team; they’re professionals. Let them get back to work. After all, the IAEA found looted uranium a whole lot quicker than we could.

Excellent news out of Iraq: the IAEA found the missing uranium. This is not a WMD find; this is uranium that was looted during the war, and which has now been recovered. Congrats and thank you to the UN agency which found the stuff.

Political junkies might be interested in this news. Howard Dean’s 17 year old son was arrested for stealing booze from a local country club today. No big deal; the Senate Majority Leader’s son was just arrested for DUI. Rove’ll try and spin it, though.

I mentioned Paul Krugman’s piece on liquidity traps last month — I’d link to it again, but the NYT doesn’t have free archives. Pity. However, thanks to MetaFilter, I can show you this paper (PDF) from the Dallas Federal Reserve. It’s a nice clean explanation of liquidity traps along with some speculation about ways to fend off the one we’re about to hit.

David Neiwert just published the final installment of the “Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism” series. Sorry about the self-link; he doesn’t have a table of contents anywhere. But he says there’s a PDF coming soon.

Anyhow, this installment is fascinating material on the connection between religion and fascism, made all the more important and relevant by the recent Rudolph arrest. And, yes, it’s interesting when considering Islamic terrorism as well. Key coinage: “fascimentalism.”

It’s not time to vote yet. Maybe soon. Who knows?

It’s a pretty tricky issue. The problem is that if elections are held now, you’re going to get either Islamic extremists or Baathist remnants in power. In many ways, Jay Bremer is right. The long-term goal of a democratic country would be poorly served by holding elections right this minute.

This is not, however, news. Most anti-war people noted this problem many months ago. The problem is not that Bremer is putting off elections, it’s that he doesn’t have any clear plan on how to get to them — as predicted. Unfortunately, saying “So what will we do when we win?” was apparently a sign of anti-Americanism.

I think it’s pretty reasonable to ask for a plan at this stage of the game. It’s not as if we’re asking for military secrets. Rather, we’re interested in the question of reconstruction. Surely a wider understanding of how to reconstruct a severely damaged country (damage mostly done by Saddam, just to be clear) would be good for the world?

P.S.: We can’t look at the Afghanistan model, cause it isn’t working. So says the notably left-wing commie pinko symp loonie liberal group known as the Council on Foreign Relations.