The Real Enemy

The Opinion "Cats are native to earth" has died.

They aren't. Because humans lack the proper visual aids (i.e. astral feline spectrometers) that would clearly reveal cats to be the galactic invaders that they actually are, humans have historically assumed that cats are from our planet. We could not be more wrong. Our weakly constructed assumption regarding the meowing Warhol rats has taken us down the garden path to clumpy litter boxes, the culinary wonder known as Hair Ball Upchuck Surprise and Late Night Cat Ass Theater (as played out on my chest around 3:45 a.m.--it's not as sexy as it sounds). It all gets much, much worse, which amuses these felons no end.

[...]

[Has any] self-satisfied nativist ever plummeted to [his death], having begun the descent of a stairway just as a feline times its open-field running to coincide with one's setting one's foot down on a perilous step--a mad adjustment ensues, an ankle is twisted, and a hopeless human cascades unto death, all at the paws of space invaders? These stairway murders, which occur daily all over America, are the work of aliens: malevolent, whiskered interlopers sent here to purr in our laps like mechanical harlots, only to lull us into a false sense of bestial familiarity.

[...]

The Opinion is survived by a field mouse, a terrified, worldly little field mouse. You can see the absolute horror in his eyes: he knows a hawk from a handsaw, by gum. And you should too.

  MJS at Jesus' General

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Are We Almost There Yet?

In Iraq, where we had, it seemed, decided that enough was enough and we should simply depart, the calls from a familiar crew for us to stay are growing louder by the week.

The Iraqis, so the argument goes, need us.

[...]

As 2009 ended, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was suggesting that new negotiations might extend the U.S. position into the post-2011 years. (“I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see agreements between ourselves and the Iraqis that continue a train, equip, and advise role beyond the end of 2011.”) Centcom commander General David Petraeus agrees. More recently, Gates added that a “pretty considerable deterioration” in the country’s security situation might lead to a delay in withdrawal plans (and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has agreed that this is a possibility). Vice President Joe Biden is already talking about re-labeling “combat troops” not sent home in August because, as he put it in an interview with Helene Cooper and Mark Landler of the New York Times, “we’re not leaving behind cooks and quartermasters.” The bulk of the troops remaining, he insisted, “will still be guys who can shoot straight and go get bad guys.”

[...]

In Iraq, only one thing is really known: after our invasion and with U.S. and allied troops occupying the country in significant numbers, the Iraqis did descend into the charnel house of history, into a monumental bloodbath. It happened in our presence, on our watch, and in significant part thanks to us.

  Tom Englehardt

The Bush Administration never had an exit plan, because there was never any plan to exit. That was only in Obama's campaign speeches.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

The Decline and Fall of the US Empire

This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.

Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg's municipal offices.

[...]

Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn't be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.

  Social Security

Bad planning on the government's part. If you can't afford a war, don't get into one.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Speaking of Afghanistan...

The Old Taliban of Mullah Omar hit Qandahar late Saturday with the largest coordinated bombing campaign since 2001, killing at least 35 persons and wounding 56. A spokesman said that the movement had targeted Qandahar on hearing the plans of Gen. Stanley McChrystal pledge that the US will mount a major campaign to clear Qandahar of the Taliban.

  Juan Cole

Bring 'em on.

It's Sunday

Surprise! Joe "the Pope" Ratzinger covered up priest pedophilia.

Germany's sex abuse scandal has now reached Pope Benedict XVI: His former archdiocese acknowledged it transferred a suspected pedophile priest while Benedict was in charge and criticism is mounting over a 2001 Vatican directive he penned instructing bishops to keep abuse cases secret.

  Yahoo

Boy, that's unprecedented in the annals of the church.

The archdiocese said there were no accusations against the chaplain, identified only as H., during his 1980-1982 spell in Munich, where he underwent therapy for suspected "sexual relations with boys." But he then moved to nearby Grafing, where he was suspended in early 1985 following new accusations of sexual abuse. The following year, he was convicted of sexually abusing minors.

Because, guess what? When you cover for an abuser, he goes on abusing.

The pope, meanwhile, continues to be under fire for a 2001 Vatican letter he sent to all bishops advising them that all cases of sexual abuse of minors must be forwarded to his then-office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and that the cases were to be subject to pontifical secret.

[...]

An Irish government-authorized investigation into the scandal and cover up harshly criticized the Vatican for its mixed messages and insistence on secrecy in the 2001 directive and previous Vatican documents on the topic.

[...]

In the United States, Dan Shea, an attorney for several victims, has introduced the Ratzinger letter in court as evidence that the church was trying to obstruct justice. He has argued that the church impeded civil reporting by keeping the cases secret and "reserving" them for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

"This is an international criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice," Shea told The Associated Press.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Go Get 'Em, Bernie

[T]he White House decided that it had to use reconciliation to pass a final health care reform bill. That meant that any changes to the Senate bill (which had passed with 60 votes) -- including the addition of the public option -- would only require 50 votes, which Democrats assured progressives all year long that they had. Great news for the public option, right? Wrong. As soon as it actually became possible to pass it, the 50 votes magically vanished. Senate Democrats (and the White House) were willing to pretend they supported a public option only as long as it was impossible to pass it. Once reconciliation gave them the opportunity they claimed all year long they needed -- a "majority rule" system -- they began concocting ways to ensure that it lacked 50 votes.

[...]

Faced with the dilemma of how they could possibly justify their year-long claimed support for the public option only now to fail to enact it, more and more Democratic Senators were pressured into signing a letter supporting the enactment of the public option through reconciliation; that number is now above 40, and is rapidly approaching 50. In other words, there is a serious possibility that the Senate might enact a public option if there is a vote on it, because it's very difficult for these Senators to vote "No" after pretending all year long -- on the record -- that they supported it. In fact, The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim yesterday wrote: "the votes appear to exist to include a public option. It's only a matter of will."

[...]

[A]ny one Senator can introduce a public option amendment during the reconciliation and force a vote -- and it now seems that Bernie Sanders, to his great credit, is refusing to go along with the Democrats' sham and will do exactly that: ignore the wishes of the Senate leadership and force a roll call vote on the public option.

  

What He Said

Dennis Kucinich opposes the corporate-coddling health care boondoggle pushed by the White House -- and he is called an accomplice in mass death by progressive paladin Markos Moulitsas. Kos even levelled the most dread epithet in the entire progressive canon at Kucinich's opposition: "It's definitely a very Ralph Nader-esque approach .. a very unrealistic and self-defeating approach."

So this is where we've come to. Ralph Nader, who has spent decades fighting corporate power, often successfully (which is more than Kos can say), is now a figure of scorn and derision -- his very name a perjorative term -- among our leading "progressives."

And why? Because Nader dared to offer an alternative to the bipartisan consensus of Militarism and Money in the 2000 election. And this, according to the unrealistic and self-defeating mythology of serious progressives, is what threw the Florida vote -- and thus the election -- to George W. Bush. This fairy tale persists despite the fact that the recounts carried out by the media consortium after the election clearly showed that Al Gore received more votes than Bush in Florida, regardless of Nader's total. It was Al Gore and his fellow establishment Democrats who "threw" the election to George W. Bush by refusing to challenge the result in Congress, by refusing to confront the transparent fraud and corruption at the very heart of the political process, and to use the tools provided them by the Constitution to uphold the will of the electorate.

  Chris Floyd

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

There'll Be No Leaving Afghanistan

Aside from Patrick Kennedy's angry lament that the media was not present during the heated debate on Dennis Kucinich's move to end the war in Afghanistgan by the end of the year, it turns out that there are 65 representatives who voted with Kucinich. I'm actually quite surprised that there were that many.

The vote was 65-356, with vast majorities from both parties opposing the resolution to end the war. Rep. Kucinich and his 19 co-sponsors delivered impassioned pleas to end the conflict, but they appear to have ultimately fallen on deaf ears.

In fact, much of the debate from the “no” side came in the form of questioning whether the debate should have happened at all, including speculation that Rep. Kucinich and others had “forgotten about 9/11″ and that they were deliberately trying to undermine America in seeking to end the eight and a half year war.

  Antiwar

Sickening, but not surprising.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Pwned

Obama's Mideast policy lies in tatters this morning and US credibility as a broker of any future settlement was deeply wounded.

  Juan Cole

I don't know how you can wound a dead animal.

Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, announced Wednesday that he had been informed by Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas that the latter has pulled out of indirect talks with Israel. Late Wednesday, the Arab League itself reversed its earlier cautious endorsement of the proximity talks, recommending that that support be dropped.

[...]

The talks were likely deliberately sabotaged by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who had his Interior Minister announce the construction of 1600 new households in Occupied East Jerusalem the day before they were scheduled to begin. In fact, Israel is actively planning 50,000 further housing units on occupied Palestinian territory.

[...]

Since 1949, the US has given Israel over $100 billion in direct aid, and the indirect forms of aid are orders of magnitude greater. That the vice president of the United States (and therefore the president himself) were ambushed by the prime minister in this arrogant and nearly sadistic manner raises the severest questions about why US taxpayer money should flow in such enormous amounts to a country that is actively and on a massive scale violating the Hague Agreement of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 on the treatment of populations by occupiers.

Sort of like dealing with the Republican party.

The security implications for the US are enormous. Many European allies feel strongly that Israel is an aggressor state in the region, and when Obama asks them for help in the fight against al-Qaeda, they may feel that Washington's coddling of Israeli colonialism produced much of the radicalism that they are now asked to spend blood and treasure combating.

And they would be right.

Maybe we are seeing the beginning of the outing of the damaging relationship the US has with Israel.

What He Said

RIP Granny D

But I bet she won't be resting.

No Wonder It Didn't Turn into a Falluja

There was nobody there.

For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a "city of 80,000 people" as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand.

[...]

It turns out, however, that the picture of Marja presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict.

[...]

"It's a collection of village farms, with typical family compounds," said the official, adding that the homes are reasonably prosperous by Afghan standards.

[...]

Richard B. Scott, who worked in Marja as an adviser on irrigation for the U.S. Agency for International Development as recently as 2005, agrees that Marja has nothing that could be mistaken as being urban. It is an "agricultural district" with a "scattered series of farmers' markets," Scott told IPS in a telephone interview.

The ISAF official said the only population numbering tens of thousands associated with Marja is spread across many villages and almost 200 square kilometres, or about 125 square miles.

[...]

Marja has never even been incorporated, according to the official, but there are now plans to formalise its status as an actual "district" of Helmand Province.

[...]

So how did the fiction that Marja is a city of 80,000 people get started?

The idea was passed on to the news media by the U.S. Marines in southern Helmand.

[...]

The rest of the news media fell into line with that image of the bustling, urbanised Marja in subsequent stories, often using "town" and "city" interchangeably.

[...]

As "Operation Moshtarak" began, U.S. military spokesmen were portraying Marja as an urbanised population centre. On Feb. 14, on the second day of the offensive, Marine spokesman Lt. Josh Diddams said the Marines were "in the majority of the city at this point."

He also used language that conjured images of urban fighting, referring to the insurgents holding some "neighbourhoods".

[...]

The COIN manual asserts that news media "directly influence the attitude of key audiences toward counterinsurgents, their operations and the opposing insurgency." The manual refers to "a war of perceptions…conducted continuously using the news media."

  IPS

I swear you can't believe a thing these sunzabiches tell us.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.