The Kerry web site has posted docs of his Vietnam service record. Somebody less lazy/busy/tired than me go check them out. There is plenty to keep you busy.

Brave New World

I'm not sure what to say about this other than, "Stop. Now."

The political consultants discreetly observed from the next room as their subject watched the campaign commercials. But in this political experiment, unlike the usual ones, the subject did not respond by turning a dial or discussing his reactions with a focus group.

He lay inside an M.R.I. machine, watching commercials playing on the inside of his goggles as neuroscientists from the University of California, Los Angeles, measured the blood flow in his brain. Instead of asking the subject, John Graham, a Democratic voter, what he thought of the use of Sept. 11 images in a Bush campaign commercial, the researchers noted which parts of Mr. Graham's brain were active as he watched. The active parts, they also noted, were different from the parts that had lighted up in earlier tests with Republican brains.

-snip

Mr. Freedman and William Knapp, a strategist with both Clinton presidential campaigns and the Gore campaign in 2000, turned to this technology after consulting with Mr. Freedman's brother, Dr. Joshua Freedman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at U.C.L.A., who was less than impressed by the methodology of political consultants.

Yes, unfortunately you read that last part right. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go and build a bunker.

Random Sighting

A harried-looking Barak Obama at the Hyde Park Co-op grocery store with his daughters.

"People who are still defending George don't need patient argument; they need shock therapy."

He just can't stop.

Once again, President Bush misspoke on a weapons issue, telling the nation that 50 tons of mustard gas were found in Libya -- twice the amount actually uncovered.

Okay this isn't quite as egregious as his other lies. But does it bug anyone else that Bush has no regard for accuracy? I'm not sure that ballpark figures cover it during wartime.

...And yes, that tie was doing weird things.

In short, no, it wasn't in your head. And, no, it wasn't your TV. And, no, it wouldn't have helped to change the channel. It looked like that--pulsating, strobing--on every channel that reshuffled its schedule to make room for Bush as he addressed 9-11 and Iraq.

Epilogue on President Flopsweat

Wow.

What a piss-poor job, even by Bush's dismal standards. I'm sorry I fell off on blogging duties. It's hard to blog while sipping Hot and Sour Soup. But man what an embarrassing display. Yes usually he dodges and stutters, but he always seems rather blithe about the whole business. That facade is finally cracking. I kept expecting him to say "Fuck this," and walk out.

Didn't like the questions on mistakes and failure and responsiblities. Too close reality. And David Brooks is already revising it in his head to pretend it wasn't really that bad.

He can't answer how the Vietnam analogy is false because well he doesn't really know what went on in Vietnam.

What about the Sunni-Shiite alliance? Nobody asks good questions.

Yes what about all those promises? How did you get that so wrong?

Suiciders????

Food's here. More later.

Insti-cated???

Bad choice in tie. "You are getting sleepy. You don't care about badly I've fucked up. You believe every word I'm saying. Sleep America, sleep."

"An atmosphere of security." What does that mean exactly? This is probably so that they can say, "We never said we'd supply actual security, merely an atmosphere of security."

Uni-ed Nation. Slur, slur, slur.

The licking of the lips does not inspire confidence. And it's slightly icky.

Horr-ah?


Ah yes, Weapons of Mass Destruction. That particular argument never gets tired.

"I'll be glad to take your questions." That face says otherwise.

It's That Time Again

Yes, I once again will give myself an eye-rolling induced headache by watching this alleged press conference. Watching Bush wing it has all of the pain of a watching a high school play and none of the fugitive nostalgia. When I watch a high school play I wince out of empathy. When I watch Bush I wince, and cringe and finally retch.

"I’m not into conspiracy theories except those that are true"

I don't know about you but I'm willing to think unthinkable thoughts:

There were several benefits that could have been anticipated from 9/11. One was the so-called Patriot Act. It did appear that the Patriot Act, given how fast it was rushed into Congress, voting had already been prepared. The Patriot Act is so large that it’s inconceivable it could have been written after 9/11. Rushing it through Congress when most members had not even read a small portion of it was clearly one benefit, giving the government increased powers.
Also, there was the desire to wage war in Afghanistan to force out the Taliban and put an American-friendly government in place because of the desire of Unical and other gas companies to build an oil pipeline, which they felt was too dangerous with the Taliban in power. There was a meeting in Berlin in July 2001, a final effort to get an agreement between the Taliban and the United States that would allow a sort of joint government, where the Taliban would share power with more American-friendly leaders. The Taliban refused, at which point they were told, “If you don’t take our carpet of gold, we’ll bury you under a carpet of bombs.” The Pakistani representative at this meeting said the Americans told him that the war would start before the snows came that October. And after 9/11 happened, there was exactly the right amount of time for the U.S. forces to get organized to begin the war, and the war began on October 7.
Another benefit is that many senior members of the Bush administration had for a long time wanted to attack Iraq. Getting control of the oil there was one motive; the more general motive was to secure a military presence in that part of the world.

Hmmmm...

How do these people sleep at night?
or
Chicken and Rice

Wayne Madsen ties all the loose ends together (thanks to Smirking Chimp for the link)

She told the 911 Commission, "I brought in Zalmay Khalilzad, an expert on Afghanistan, who, as a senior diplomat in the 1980s, had worked closely with the Afghan mujahedeen, helping them to turn back the Soviet invasion."
However, Khalilzad had been a consultant for Cambridge Energy Research Associates and had been negotiating with the Taliban on the proposed trans-Afghanistan Central Asia Gas Pipeline (CentGas) deal involving UNOCAL, Halliburton, and other oil companies, including Rice's former company, Chevron. Enron conducted the feasibility study for the pipeline and current Afghan President Hamid Karzai was a consultant to the U.S. oil consortium and its liaison to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Taliban whose base was Kandahar. The Bush administration, including Rice, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca, held meetings with Taliban officials in the weeks prior to 911, and they met with Pakistani intelligence chief Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, a supporter of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, on the days just prior to 911. Before joining the administration, Rice and Armitage had jobs with oil companies that had a vested interest in the CentGas pipeline.

—snip—

It is clear that Bush and his national security team, with the exception of principled individuals like FBI special agents Coleen Rowley in Minneapolis and John O'Neill in New York, and some, as yet unnamed, intelligence professionals within the U.S. intelligence community, were asleep at the wheel prior to America's second "day of infamy."

Just read it.

Joy

Jon Stewart is going to be on the The O'Franken Factor in a few minutes.

Having caught Christopher Hitchens on the Dennis Miller show (don’t ask why) I saw that Hitchens’s reasoning for his support of Bush’s work in Iraq has fallen apart even within the narrow confines within which it made at least some sense. Hitchens’s post-9/11 line has been that we have long been in a state of war against jihad (to find out what this has to do with Iraq read on), but that only the Bushites have had the clarity and the courage to acknowledge this and to pursue the attack. Of course, Richard Clarke’s book and the news we keep hearing from the 9/11 commission prove otherwise, but Hitchens will not be deterred (he selectively uses Clarke’s book against Clarke’s own conclusions) It doesn’t matter that the Clinton administration was more aware of and engaged with the Al Qaeda threat than the Bush administration before 9/11--the litmus test of seriousness is whether or not we should have attacked Iraq last year. Say “Yes,” and you are a foe of terrorism; say “No” and you might as well strap a dynamite belt to your chest. In fact, I misstate: if you check out Hitichen’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal the litmus test turns out to be whether or not you supported marching into Baghad during Gulf War I. Confrontation with Iraq was inevitable according to this reasoning. And since going to war was something we would have had to do anyway, it doesn’t much matter what was said to us to garner support for that war. Of course, neither Hitchens nor the Bushites have the courage to admit that “prolonged occupation” is the only way to achieve their professed goal (Hitchens’s preferred, New Agey term is “intervention”), and that the only way to make such an occupation a success is to enlist the support of the world community and a majority of the US public. And so far Hitchens and W. have not shown the slightest inclination to do either.

the professor

Somewhere over the rainbow...

Eleanor Clift gets it exactly right in The Wizard of Oz Letter, (thanks to Smirking Chimp for the link)

What Cheney and the tight circle around Bush are protecting is the myth they have created since 9/11 of a war president astride the world stage. Anybody who punctures that imagery is destroyed. Richard Clarke is only the latest in a series of insiders who have pulled back the curtain. At the center is an incurious president who is so inarticulate that he can't be left on his own to make a sustained argument on behalf of his policies without falling back on rehearsed talking points and sound bites.

She even compares George "if I only had a brain" Bush to Reagan, who testified while suffering from Alzheimer's disease and allowed his testimony to be videotaped.

Who knew we'd hit the Wizard of Oz trifecta? No brain, no heart, and no courage.

Worse and worse

Jubilant residents dragged the charred corpses of four foreigners -- one a woman, at least one an American -- through the streets Wednesday and hanged them from the bridge spanning the Euphrates River. Five American troops died in a roadside bombing nearby.

The four foreigners were killed in a rebel ambush of their SUVs in Fallujah, a Sunni Triangle city about 35 miles west of Baghdad and scene of some of the worst violence on both sides of the conflict since the beginning of the American occupation a year ago.

It was reminiscent of the 1993 scene in Somalia, when a mob dragged the corpse of a U.S. soldier through the streets of Mogadishu, eventually leading to the American withdrawal from the African nation.

In one of the bloodiest days for the U.S. military this year, five American troops died when their military vehicle ran over a bomb in a separate incident 12 miles to the northwest, among the reed-lined roads running through some of Iraq's richest farmland.

Residents said the bomb attack occurred in Malahma, 12 miles northwest of Fallujah, where anti-U.S. insurgents are active. U.S. Marines operate in the area, but it was unclear whether the slain troops were Marines.

Chanting "Fallujah is the graveyard of Americans," residents cheered after the grisly assault on two four-wheel-drive civilian vehicles, which left both in flames. Others chanted, "We sacrifice our blood and souls for Islam."

Associated Press Television News pictures showed one man beating a charred corpse with a metal pole. Others tied a yellow rope to a body, hooked it to a car and dragged it down the main street of town. Two blackened and mangled corpses were hung from a green iron bridge across the Euphrates.

"The people of Fallujah hanged some of the bodies on the old bridge like slaughtered sheep," resident Abdul Aziz Mohammed said. Some of the corpses were dismembered, he said.

Beneath the bodies, a man held a printed sign with a skull and crossbones and the phrase "Fallujah is the cemetery for Americans."

If you're here in Chicago, Air America Radio is WNTD 950 AM.

Go ahead and ditch Terry Gross. She's interviewing Karen Hughes.

Random Sunday Musing

Listening to "Santaland Diaries" cures all ills. I don't care if it's March dammit!

30 minutes of smart comedy beats 24 hours of "news"

CNN and MSNBC have gotten used to losing to Fox News. But during the Democratic primaries, an unexpected foe stole the ratings crown from all three. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, a mock news program airing on Viacom's (VIA) Comedy Central, attracted more viewers at 11 p.m. than any of the cable news channels in the last two weeks of January, outdoing Fox by 20 percent even as the news network was running live campaign coverage. Stewart's fake news show has won ever-growing audiences with help from real politico guests like John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards.

David Brooks Is A Hack

Only this time it’s not just me saying it. Somebody got paid to research and write a whole story detailing the history of David Brooks’ hackdom.

Brooks is operating in a long tradition of public intellectualism. Like William Whyte, another child of Philadelphia's western suburbs fascinated with the interplay of money and manners among his contemporaries, Brooks is a journalist who works on sociological turf. But Whyte, who was an editor for Fortune in the 1950s, observed how people lived, inferred trends, considered what they meant, and then came up with grand conclusions about the direction of the country. When, in 1954, he wanted to find out which consumers were trendsetters, he went into Overbrook Park and surveyed 4,948 homes -- all inhabited by real people. Brooks, by way of contrast, draws caricatures. Whether out of sloppiness or laziness, the examples he conjures to illustrate well-founded premises are often unfounded, undermining the very points he's trying to make.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Not that anything will come of this other than an oh so brief snarky satisfaction, but lately pleasures are so few and far between. So my is off to Mr. Issenberg who has done an almost too-thorough job of invalidating Mr. Brooks, even going so far as to confront the man himself.

I called brooks to see if i was misreading his work. I told him about my trip to Franklin County, and the ease with which I was able to spend $20 on a meal. He laughed. "I didn't see it when I was there, but it's true, you can get a nice meal at the Mercersburg Inn," he said. I said it was just as easy at Red Lobster. "That was partially to make a point that if Red Lobster is your upper end? " he replied, his voice trailing away. "That was partially tongue-in-cheek, but I did have several mini-dinners there, and I never topped $20."

I went through some of the other instances where he made declarations that appeared insupportable. He accused me of being "too pedantic," of "taking all of this too literally," of "taking a joke and distorting it." "That's totally unethical," he said.

Satire has its purpose, but assuming it's on the mark, Brooks should be able to adduce real-world examples that are true. I asked him how I was supposed to tell what was comedy and what was sociology. "Generally, I rely on intelligent readers to know -- and I think that at the Atlantic Monthly, every intelligent reader can tell what the difference is," he replied. "I tried to describe the mainstream of Montgomery County and the mainstream of Franklin County. They're both diverse places, and any generalization is going to have exceptions. But I was trying to capture the difference between the two places," he said. "You've obviously come at this from a perspective. I don't think if you went to the two places you wouldn't detect a cultural difference."

As soon as read this it hit me. This is where that “whaa??” feeling comes from after reading one of Brooks’ pieces. The man is trying to write satire and failing miserably. And since the satire part doesn’t register, the whole piece ends up looking like badly researched writing. Or at least selectively researched. Brooks is so hopelessly trapped in his red state-blue state dichotomy that any research he does has to be massaged to fit into that thesis. So if he finds something that doesn’t fit he either discards it or glosses over it. Satire right?

Wrong.

Good satire doesn’t generalize. Good satire is very specific and focused. Good satire doesn’t fall back on gross oversimplifications. Somehow I think that Brooks knows this and only calls it “satire” to weasel out of uncomfortable explanations.

Satirist or not Brooks sure put the “suffer” in “insufferable.”

I asked him about Blue America as a bastion of illegal immigrants. "This is dishonest research. You're not approaching the piece in the spirit of an honest reporter," he said. "Is this how you're going to start your career? I mean, really, doing this sort of piece? I used to do 'em, I know 'em, how one starts, but it's just something you'll mature beyond."

Mature beyond what exactly? Beyond the grind of carefully researching a piece for clarity and nuance?

I must admit that despite my glee I have almost a sour taste in my mouth as I reread the piece. Punching holes in Brooks’ work while fun, is too easy. And this is because that Brooks isn’t concerned about being honest or accurate. His job is to perpetuate stereotypes about red states and blue states, Old Europe and the U.S., and Kerry and Bush. His work is propaganda in satire drag. Bad satire drag. Brooks’ satire doesn’t even shave its legs.

Anyway, just for fun I dug up my old posts documenting the crimes of David Brooks. Enjoy.

Bobo ventures out fearfully to the ballgame

I almost agree with Bobo

Bobo makes me throw up

Bobo condemns free exercise of Democracy

Bobo channels Nooners

UPDATE: I see via Wonkette that Sasha Issenberg is a Mr. and not a Miss. so the post has been adjusted accordingly. Oops!

Rove Is Wetting Himself

Clarke's book is flying off the shelves.