September 2003 Archives

Josh Marshall broke this story a few days ago (presumably with an assist from a recent article by Hill colleague Michael Gerber) but I didn't take special note of it until he pointed out this Times article today.

A group of businessmen linked by their close ties to President Bush, his family and his administration have set up a consulting firm to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq, including those seeking pieces of taxpayer-financed reconstruction projects.

The firm, New Bridge Strategies, is headed by Joe M. Allbaugh, Mr. Bush's campaign manager in 2000 and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency until March. Other directors include Edward M. Rogers Jr., vice chairman, and Lanny Griffith, lobbyists who were assistants to the first President George Bush and now have close ties to the White House.

At a time when the administration seeks Congressional approval for $20.3 billion to rebuild Iraq, part of an $87 billion package for military and other spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, the company's Web site, www.newbridgestrategies.com, says, "The opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that no other existing firm has the necessary skills and experience to be effective both in Washington, D.C., and on the ground in Iraq."

I don't normally have a problem with ex-Administration types starting up a consulting company like this, which is why I didn't make much of Josh's original piece. I assumed they had some expertise in the area, and I wouldn't normally see any harm in their making a living off that expertise, as long as they aren't in a position to actively influence the decision making process. But these guys don't seem to have any expertise in anything but working for the Bush family.

I'm not sure there's anything truly nefarious about this and I don't imagine this will turn into anything huge, but it's another little chip in the facade. Those chips are adding up.

Looks like Plamegate is proceeding full steam ahead despite Bob Novak's flip flopping.

PLEASE READ: Important Message From Counsel's Office

We were informed last evening by the Department of Justice that it has opened an investigation into possible unauthorized disclosures concerning the identity of an undercover CIA employee.

-----------------------------------

The Department advised us that it will be sending a letter today instructing us to preserve all materials that might be relevant to its investigation. Its letter will provide more specific instructions on the materials in which it is interested, and we will communicate those instructions directly to you. In the meantime, you must preserve all materials that might in any way be related to the Department's investigation. Any questions concerning this request should be directed to Associate Counsels Ted Ullyot or Raul Yanes in the Counsel to the President's office. The President has directed full cooperation with this investigation.

Alberto R. Gonzales

Counsel to the President

Emphasis added.

I don't know where this will end up, but it should be fun to watch ... unless Bush makes the smart political move and quickly comes clean on the whole affair. While Karl Rove seems to be losing his magic touch, he's still a weasel with a big bag of tricks and a game plan.

[Plamegate summary via Andrew Sullivan]

[Update]
Sometime between writing this and posting it, Bush sort of took my advice.

President Bush called on Tuesday for anyone with information about those who disclosed the identity of a CIA official to come forward, saying: "I want to know the truth."

"If anybody's got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward," Bush told reporters after meeting with business leaders in Chicago. It was Bush's first public comment on the controversy.

They're spying on me.

Garage A Trois consists of Charlie Hunter (Charlie Hunter Trio, TJ Kirk, etc), Skerik (Critters Buggin, Ponga, Les Claypool and more), Mike Dillon (HairyapesBMX, Critters Buggin, Les Claypool) and Stanton Moore (Galactic, New Orleans Klezmer Allstars). This is going to be a killer show. I'll let the band describe themselves:

"Garage A Trois first formed in 1999, right after Mardi Gras, as a trio featuring Hunter, Moore and Skerik, and added Dillon in 2002. This union of musical forces has only increased the creative output of these musicians-and apparently really helped their grundle.

Charlie Hunter: "Garage a Trois relies on the principle that the only way to put a brilliant shine on a grundle is to make the rag pop! It is our belief that if you don't hear that snap you won't get return customers."

Skerik: "Garage a Trois has done wonders for my Grundle, in fact, I didn't even know I had one."

Mike Dillon: "Challenges of the grundle sub inspire me to hover in the freezing woodshed, in search of antenna realization."

Stanton Moore: "Mike makes it rumble, Skerik plays a bundle, Charlie keeps me humble, have you seen my grundle?""

And to top it off, Sex Mob will be opening for them. Sex Mob is: Steven Bernstein (Spanish Fly), Briggan Krauss (Pigpen, Babkas), Tony Scherr (Either/Orchestra, Lounge Lizards) and Kenny Wollesen (Tom Waits, Bill Frisell, all of the Downtown scene).

"Sex Mob is a band out of time: a smartly old-fashioned quartet of world-class musicians with a satchel full of charts. Sex Mob is a band of the now: post-modern waltzes mutating into dub-echoed free jazz. Sex Mob is social music: a rollicking midnight set with clatter and drinks and a band. Sex Mob is a happy contradiction: an experimental jazz outfit whose music has slid readily into the mainstream via Saturday Night Live, MTV, and National Public Radio."

Roswell Rudd, a trombone hero of mine, joined Sex Mob on their latest album, but I have no idea if he'll be touring with them.

For some unknown reason, there is no link to purchase tickets from the Fox Theater site. Not to worry though, tickets can be purchased online here.

If you're planning on attending, leave a comment.

From ABC News' Kerry campaign reporter Ed O'Keefe:

"ABC News has learned former Senator Gary Hart (D-Colo.) plans to endorse Senator John F. Kerry's presidential bid in a Tuesday conference call with reporters. The Kerry camp will promptly Webcast the Hart endorsement on LINK following the call."

"Hart, a leading contender for the Democratic party's 1984 nomination, withdrew his name from consideration after flirting with a second run this year. Having gained further prominence as a part of the Hart-Rudman Commission investigating terrorists threats prior to 9/11, Hart will likely lend further strength to Kerry's national security credentials."

"Tuesday's endorsement marks a strong September of endorsements for the Massachusetts Senator, ranging from Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), environmental activist lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and just last week, the International Association of Fire Fighters."

[via The Note]

Today is the FEC filing deadline for 3rd quarter campaign contributions. If you're interested in contributing to a candidate, now's the best time to do it. I have a suggestion for a candidate that could use some cash, but no matter who you support (unless it's Bush in which case you should wait until tomorrow) you should get your contributions in today!

This campaign was spawned from a grassroots movement -- and now it's time to put some "green" in the grassroots. Go right now, and make a contribution. Every dollar counts. In fact, every dollar counts double -- since the Feds will match contributions, dollar-for-dollar, up to $250. And every *early* dollar counts triple. Success breeds success -- the more dollars we can bring in now, the more inclined the big donors will be to give money later.

[via Generally Speaking - The Official Clark '04 Blog]

I never followed his solo career too closely, but the Hellborg/Lane/Sipe album Temporal Analogues of Paradise is a favorite of mine. Shawn Lane - dead at 40.

Shawn Lane traveled the world collaborating with artists as diverse as European rockers, jazz fusionists and Indian musicians.

The Memphis guitarist was just as likely to turn up sitting in with a local bar band as he was to wind up selling out a show at The Hague in The Netherlands.

Mr. Lane, a guitar virtuoso, died Friday at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis. He was 40.

The cause of death was not immediately known.

This is even worse than I forsaw. I'm still a motha fuckin P I M P though and I should have bet Jake.

Arnold Schwarzenegger may be the latest celebrity to transform himself into a candidate for high California office. But if some Republican political operatives have their way, he will not be the last.

The comedian Dennis Miller is being talked about, apparently seriously, as a Republican candidate for a statewide post. Three Republican strategists interviewed in the past week have said they want to draft Miller into politics. One, a prominent Republican operative and Schwarzenegger aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that once the recall election is over, he plans to recruit Miller to challenge Barbara Boxer for her U.S. Senate seat next year.

[via Drudge Report]

If you're a fan of the blues, don't miss Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues on PBS every night this week. The first episode tonight covered the Delta blues with all sorts of great archival footage and interviews. My favorite moment was an interview/performance with recently deceased african/blues fife player Otha Turner, whose music provided the 'missing link' connecting traditional african music and the blues.

Under the guiding vision of Executive Producer Martin Scorsese, seven directors will explore the blues through their own personal styles and perspectives. The films in the series are motivated by a central theme: how the blues evolved from parochial folk tunes to a universal language.

Dick Cheney on Meet the Press 2 weeks ago:

And since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interests. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now for over three years.

Oops

A Congressional Research Service report released yesterday concluded that federal ethics laws treat Vice President Cheney's annual deferred compensation checks and unexercised stock options as continuing financial interests in the Halliburton Co.

[via Political Wire]

This is just plain stupid. I'm sure more gossip will come out about this in the next few days, but, to quote Richard Forno's comments on the ISN mailing list today: "and we wonder why IT security will never really improve". For those unfamiliar with Geer, he's a LONG time computer security heavyweight who's largly responsible for the merger of Boston hacker staple L0pht Heavy Industries and @stake a few years back which, as far as I'm concerned "made" @stake and was a major milepost on the slow and steady decline of the computer underground.

A computer security expert who contributed to a paper deeply critical of Microsoft has been dismissed by his employer, a consulting company that works closely with the software giant.

Dan Geer, a longtime computer security researcher, and several colleagues released a controversial study on Wednesday that called the ubiquity of Microsoft software a hazard to the economy and to national security. Although independently financed and researched, the study was distributed by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), a Washington-based trade association largely made up of Microsoft's rivals.

Clark unveiled a "Plan For Job Creation" yesterday in advance of today's economic debate.

The key components:

• The Homeland and Economic Security Fund - $40 billion over 2 years to beef up homeland security, providing jobs in the process.
• State and Local Tax Rebate Fund - $40 billion over 2 years to the States to encourage lower state taxes and avoid balanced budget required job cuts.
• Tax Incentives for Job Creation - $20 billion over 2 years to encourage new hiring through a job creation tax credit, tax credits for small and medium sized business investment, tax incentives to keep jobs in the US and removing tax incentives that encourage them to leave.

While reading through a mailing list today, I came across a collection of papers that touched on something that interests me. How can you make something trusted out of something you can't trust? As an example, how can you trust that precompiled compiler to not insert a backdoor into your code? I'm linking to the papers here for reference sake, but some of you might find them interesting.

The first document is a lecture given by Ken Thompson on the occasion of winning the ACM's Turing Award.

The moral is obvious. You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ people like me.) No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using untrusted code. In demonstrating the possibility of this kind of attack, I picked on the C compiler. I could have picked on any program-handling program such as an assembler, a loader, or even hardware microcode. As the level of program gets lower, these bugs will be harder and harder to detect. A well installed microcode bug will be almost impossible to detect.

I've seen this lecture before, but Thompson acknowledges an "Unknown Air Force Document" as the source for his inspiration of a self-replicating trojan. Apparently at some point someone figured out which document it was.

Multics Security Evaluation: Vulnerability Analysis

Last year the original authors issued an update to the paper and compared the computer security posture back in 1974 with the situation today and finds that things have gotten worse.

Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation

Don't miss it!

Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who jumped into the presidential race just a week ago, joins the nine other Democratic candidates in New York on Thursday for a debate on economic issues.

The two-hour debate begins at 4 p.m. ET and can be seen live on CNBC. It will be repeated on MSNBC at 9 p.m. ET.

This is certainly interesting. Has Clark been the "establishments" answer to Dean all along?

Substantial parts of the draft movement, in fact, were led not by regular citizens inspired by Clark but by public-relations professionals and political operatives with deep ties to the Democratic Party and the Clinton administration. During the past week, it has slowly dawned on some of the less politically experienced members of the Draft Clark movement that this might not be purely coincidental.

"My operative theory is that a bunch of political insiders decided to recruit a candidate and created a fake draft movement to pressure him," says Newberry.

[via Daily Kos (who it should be noted, founded DraftClark.com before leaving to work for Dean)]

[update]

The Wesley Clark Weblog counters:

I expected the draft sites would disappear and I'll miss digitalclark.com. Other than that, I wish I knew what they were talking about. I have not experienced any of this, nor have I spoken with anyone that has.

[via Political Wire]

Looks like Hart won't be running for Senate.

Former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart says he is "deferring" to Congressman Mark Udall on a 2004 U.S. Senate race to unseat U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell.

"I've deferred to Congressman Udall, and I certainly hope he will be the Democratic candidate," Hart told CNN on Tuesday.

This is a test. Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy
Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy

Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy Gobbledy

That dog has got some big ears.

What's wrong with the picture of the Diebold Global Election Management System? I know at least one reader will see it.

I came across this link in an interview with blackboxvoting.com's Bev Harris on Salon today that some of you might find interesting.

For those wondering and who've called to enquire, I am still gainfully employed, despite recent events.

Retirement plan manager TIAA-CREF laid off more than 500 workers Monday, 70 in Denver, in a streamlining move.

A great article in Foreign Affairs on how Bush managed to bungle the diplomacy leading up to war. It's long, but worth the read for those that are having a problem understanding why Bush's approach to Iraq was a bad idea.

What went wrong? Why, when the leader of the free world went to war with a brutal and hated dictator, did so many countries refuse to take America's side? How much collateral damage was caused in the process? And what lessons can be learned from this debacle? After extensive debriefings of key participants in Europe and at the United Nations, as well as of a number of informed American diplomats, some important lessons from the recent crisis are starting to emerge.

First, the fact that Washington's justification for war seemed to shift as occasion demanded led many outside observers to question the Bush administration's motives and to doubt it would ever accept Iraq's peaceful disarmament. Second, the United States failed to synchronize its military and diplomatic tracks. The deployment of American forces in the Middle East seemed to determine American policy, not the other way around, and diplomatic imperatives were given short shrift. Third, the failure to anticipate Saddam's decision to comply partially with UN demands proved disastrous to Washington's strategy. Fourth, the belated effort to achieve a second Security Council resolution could still have succeeded, had the United States been willing to compromise by extending the deadline by just a few weeks. But such a compromise was not forthcoming, which leads to the last lesson: the Bush administration's rhetoric and style alienated rather than persuaded key officials and foreign constituencies, especially in light of Washington's two-year history of scorn for international institutions and agreements.

Wooooeeeooooeoeoeoeoooo!

Greetings from Amazon.com!

You've previously signed up to be notified when "Firefly - The Complete Series" (DVD) became available, and we're happy to inform you that it is now available to pre-order!

It's not quite the "Straight Talk Express", but it's early yet, so I'll hope to see something a bit more definitive challenging the rush to war as his positions are revealed.

Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark said today that he "probably" would have voted for the congressional resolution last fall authorizing war, as he charged out into the presidential campaign field with vague plans to fix the economy and the situation in Iraq.

[update]

Political Wire points out another interview with the NY Times where Clark seems to either be confused or trying to have it both ways.

"At the time, I probably would have voted for it, but I think that's too simple a question," General Clark said.

A moment later, he said: "I don't know if I would have or not. I've said it both ways because when you get into this, what happens is you have to put yourself in a position — on balance, I probably would have voted for it."

And then later in the interview...

Still, asked about Dr. Dean's criticism of the war, General Clark responded: "I think he's right. That in retrospect we should never have gone in there. I didn't want to go in there either. But on the other hand, he wasn't inside the bubble of those who were exposed to the information."

Huh?

I'm linking to this more for my own memories sake than anything else due to a conversation I had about a German museum conservator with fond memories of Cowboys and Indians and Thieves and Policemen and the subsequent search for this article which I read last year. In any case, it's somewhat interesting. So is this.

Alex Biber's day job is designing semiconductor technology. Away from work, he becomes Beaver, a Cheyenne warrior.

Biber the engineer drives on the autobahn and wears blue jeans. Beaver the brave wears hand-tanned buckskin and rides a horse, commanding the steed in an ancient language once used by Plains Indians. Biber, his wife and two daughters live in a 91-year-old farmhouse, but the family vacations in tepee villages in humid Central European forests.

"WELL IF WHAT I've heard about it is fair dinkum [Aussie lingo for "true"] that he spent $25 million making a movie that's shot in Aramaic and Latin and he's intending to release it without subtitles, I think he's got to get off the glue," Crowe said.

It's Official. His announcement speech takes place later today, but there is a video he released this morning for the Draft Clark movement confirming his candidacy. He needs money and volunteers! Or, if you're still not sure, consider attending the next Meetup.

Sounds like the General will be running.

"HE'S MADE HIS decision and will announce it tomorrow in Little Rock," said Mark Fabiani, a spokesman for Clark. The announcement will be made at 1 p.m. ET Wednesday in Arkansas, sources said.

Fabiani did not reveal Clark's decision, but officials close to the former Army general said he told his fledgling campaign team that he's in the race.

While watching HBO's intriguing new series Carnivale and K Street I was checking out some of the actors on IMDB. While there I spotted this tidbit. Zatoichi, one of my favorites - thanks to IFC's Samauri Saturday's - is getting an updated film treatment which is apparently winning raves.

Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi, based upon the popular series of film and televisions shows about a blind masseuse/samurai warrior, won the coveted AGF People's Choice award at the 28th Annual Toronto Film Festival yesterday.

I'll probably follow up at some point with some more info on Carnivale and K Street. Until then if you have HBO, suffice to say you shouldn't miss either.

This kind of puts things in perspective.

[via Coyote Gulch]

The Denver Post has a short interview with Bill Joy, the retiring co-founder of Sun.

Q What do you plan to do next?

A After 28 years, talk to people, look around, and write some software myself (group of one). I'm still very interested in reliable software and computing; I'd love to write some (Java) software, which helped somehow with the vulnerability of the Net. I haven't worked out how this could happen, but I am going to think about it.

Kevin Drum points out some Iraqi arithmatic by the LA Times and wonders what formula the Administration is using for Afghanistan.

The Los Angeles Times reports this morning that President Bush's $87 billion funding request isn't going to do the job. $55 billion more will still be needed for postwar reconstruction.

We already allocated $79 billion a few months ago, and 79 87 55 = 221. I'm not sure exactly what period these funding requests cover, but at a guess that's $221 billion over the course of perhaps 15 months, or about 2% of GDP. That's a lot of dough.

I'll need some time to wrap my head around this number, but in the meantime here's something that continues to genuinely perplex me. Let's take the hawks at their word that Iraq is a front on the war against terror, and that stabilizing Iraq is a key part of winning the war. You might not believe it, but that's their case.

But if it's true, then surely stabilizing Afghanistan is at least as important? In fact, given the large amount of known al-Qaeda activity in Afghanistan and the continuing Taliban presence there, you could make a pretty good argument that keeping a lid on Afghanistan is more important than Iraq.

But in any case, surely it's not a mere one-tenth as important, as the administration seems to think based on its troop commitments and reconstruction funding there? Especially given the continuing reports that this is the place where the terrorists are regrouping, not Iraq.

We've had some interesting discussion of late here in the 0xdeadbeef compound on the price of victory, and in the spirit of keeping those comments from scrolling anymore, I'm pinging the thread instead. Feel free to ping some more if you have other thoughts ;)

Fred Kaplan has a good piece in Slate on the historic opportunity 9/11 presented to America, and how Bush bungled it.

But the Bush administration brushed aside these supportive gestures — and that may loom as the greatest tragedy of Sept. 11, apart from the tolls taken by the attack itself.

Ever since the crumbling of the Soviet Union, foreign-policy specialists had been wondering how to create a new world order for an era that lacked a common enemy. Now, suddenly, here was that enemy. And here was a moment when the world viewed America with more empathy than it had in the past half-century. An American leader could have taken advantage of that moment and reached out to the world, forged new alliances, strengthened old ones, and laid the foundations of a new, broad-based system of international security for the post-Cold War era — much as Harry Truman and George Marshall had done in the months and years following World War II.

But George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice did not take that path.

I just saw the General on Bill Maher last night (a rerun from last week). He's got charisma, he's a great speaker and from what I've gleaned of his positions, he'd probably be the candidate for me. And the Burnt Orange Report (which has been a very useful resource while following the Texas redistricting mess) thinks The General will run.

Wesley Clark will run for President, and he'll get the Clintons money. And by the end of the month, he'll be the story of the race.

The NY Times catalogs what's been going wrong lately for the Administration, what the causes might be, and points out a "fundamental flaw in the character of this White House."

Despite his tough talk, Mr. Bush seems incapable of choosing a genuinely tough path, of risking his political popularity with the same aggression that he risks the country's economic stability and international credibility. For all the trauma the United States has gone through during his administration, Mr. Bush has never asked the American people to respond to new challenges by making genuine sacrifices.

He committed the military to war, but he told civilians they deserved big tax cuts. He seems determined to remake the Middle East without doing anything serious about reducing our dependence on Middle East oil. His energy policy is a grab bag of giveaways to domestic oil and gas lobbyists. He refuses to ask for even the smallest compromise when it comes to fuel-efficient cars.

The pattern goes further. Mr. Bush rolled out a domestic agenda that included some ambitious programs aimed at lifting up America's least fortunate, particularly his No Child Left Behind education package. But in this — as in the African AIDS initiative and even his controversial faith-based initiative for social services — Mr. Bush has been content to take the credit for proposing, without paying the political dues necessary to get things done. Certainly most American parents, whose public schools are racked by state and local budget crises, are not feeling that their children are enjoying better educational opportunity. The AIDS program that got such a positive response when the president unveiled it has been underfinanced by Congress, with the White House's encouragement.

Even the administration's foreign policy reflects its tendency to go for quick gratification without much thought of the gritty long haul. The invasion of Iraq appears to have been planned by people who assumed that after a swift military assault, Saddam Hussein would be gone and Iraq would quickly snap into a prosperous, semidemocratic state that would be a model for the rest of the Middle East.

When it turned out that things were far more complicated, the president hedged on the price tag — apparently out of fear that if Congress knew how high the bill was going to be, there would not be enough votes for another round of tax cuts. Congress, however, was happy enough to be deluded until it was too late. Now we know the cost is going to be massive, with much of the tab to be paid by the future generations who will be saddled with the Bush debt.

The usual suspects have been all over this lack of Presidential courage and accountability the past few days.

Kevin Drum:

I can't think of a single major policy initiative he's taken that compares, say, to Bill Clinton's healthcare plan: something that he believes in so deeply that it's worth pushing for even though it runs the risk of being unpopular. This is one of the key differences between Bush and Tony Blair, for example.

Josh Marshall

So here the whole sordid business comes full circle. The administration games the public into an endeavor by exaggerating the gains and minimizing the price. Then the gains are revealed as not quite so great. And the price is revealed as very much greater. And if all that weren't bad enough, the operation is bungled on several fronts. So the gamers and the scammers say it's the fault of the critics who tried to carve through the mumbo-jumbo in the first place. And when the public has a touch of buyers' remorse over a product that was peddled on false advertising, the answer lies in the public's own degeneracy and division.

It's everyone's fault but theirs. 'The terrorists', domestic enemies, cultural declension, the French, perhaps tomorrow the decline of reading, the end of corporal punishment in the schools, permissive parenting, bad posture, rock 'n roll, space aliens. The administration is choking on its own lies and evasions. And we have to bail them out because the ship of state is our ship.

Paul Krugman:

But the most important concession Mr. Bush should make isn't about money or control — it's about truth-telling. He squandered American credibility by selling a war of choice as a war of necessity; if he wants to get that credibility back, he has to start being candid.

Yet in the speech on Sunday he was still up to his usual tricks. Once again, he made a rhetorical link between the Iraq war and 9/11. This argument by innuendo reminds us why 69 percent of the public believes that Saddam was involved in 9/11, despite a complete absence of evidence. (There is, on the other hand, strong evidence of a Saudi link — but the administration's handling of that evidence borders on a cover-up.) And rather than acknowledge that the search for W.M.D. has come up empty, he declared that Saddam "possessed and used weapons of mass destruction" — 1991, 2003, what's the difference?

So will Congress give Mr. Bush the money he wants, no questions asked? It probably will, but it shouldn't. Mr. Bush created this crisis, and if he were a true patriot he would pay a political price to resolve it. Maybe it's time for him to do a couple of things he's never done before, like admitting mistakes and standing up to the hard right.

E.J. Dionne:

Consider these two sentences. "Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there, and there they must be defeated," Bush declared. "This will take time and require sacrifice."

Well, yes. But at no point in the speech did the president explain who would do the sacrificing except, of course, our troops on the ground.

With his postwar plans in tatters, Bush might at least have offered a wink or a nod to the fact that he did nothing to prepare Americans for the full cost of this enterprise -- perhaps because being too explicit too early about the burdens might have made it harder to pass his dividends tax cut. He couldn't have that.

He might have sacrificed a bit by acknowledging that all the optimistic predictions that emanated from his administration -- that American troops would be treated as liberators and all that -- made this enterprise look a lot easier than it turned out to be. Was this just a big bait-and-switch operation? First persuade Americans to fight the war by minimizing the costs. Then, once we're there, argue that we can't cut and run and demand $87 billion in new spending, and who knows how much more later.

It's time for someone to take responsibility. Regardless of whether the war in Iraq in the end was a "good thing" (and we're having a fairly interesting discussion of that topic over here) there is no question that the American public was by and large duped into supporting a unilateral war by unsubstantiated rhetorical links between Iraq and al-Queda and threats of WMD armageddon. The President's choice to take the "preemptive" route left us alone and stuck with the bill - a bill significantly higher than we were lead to believe. Someone must pay.

[via Tapped]

[edited: the nattering nabobs in the comments section (and even in email) requested I remove the highly informal and casual word Irregardless.]

Ack! Thbbbt!!

After eight years away from newspapers, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Berkeley Breathed is creating a new comic strip called "Opus," starring his beloved penguin of the same name.

The Washington Post Writers Group, which will syndicate the strip, is expected to officially announce Breathed's return this Sunday. The reclusive Breathed, who rarely gives interviews, could not be reached yesterday for comment.

Organ music is God?

"It has been suggested that because some organ pipes in churches and cathedrals produce infrasound this could lead to people having weird experiences which they attribute to God," said Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist from University of Hertfordshire.

"Some of the experiences in our audience included 'shivering on my wrist', 'an odd feeling in my stomach', 'increased heart rate', 'feeling very anxious', and 'a sudden memory of emotional loss'.

"This was an experiment done under controlled conditions and it shows infrasound does have an impact, and that has implications... in a religious context and some of the unusual experiences people may be having in certain churches."

In related news, Denver University just dedicated the 2800+ pipe William K. Coors Organ - the centerpiece of their new performing arts center.

At the end of intermission, Coors, an amateur keyboardist, took his place at the organ, acquitting himself well enough as he performed several light favorites, including "Take Me Out the Ball Game," which the organ handled just fine.

Salon rightly crowns Bjork the "most important pop musician of her generation."

It seems impossible to start with anything other than that voice. "Childlike," "feral," "alien": All three words have been used repeatedly in describing her pipes, and their apparent incompatibility alone gives some sense of just how unusual the sound is. Billie Holiday's voice famously combined childishness with world-weary wisdom. Bj�rk has pushed the paradox a little further, combining childishness with ferocity and unbridled sexuality.

She is a true virtuoso vocalist, the likes of whom popular music has rarely seen. Her operatic range and seemingly effortless pitch control have been demonstrated not only in her own music, but in her performances of Arnold Schoenberg's notoriously difficult "Pierrot Lunaire." Her voice can be perfectly clear, and she often phrases in an intentionally tentative way, bringing the childlike quality of her singing to the fore. But that can be undercut immediately by an extraordinary guttural sound, as if the note were too fragile to support the energy coming out of her body. It is a sound no child could ever make.

Wesley Clark will be appearing tonight on Real Time with Bill Maher. Check your HBO listings for times.

[via Political Wire]

After the mosque bombing in Najaf last week, Fareed Zakaria says we could be in for a "hellish ride" if the Administration doesn't abandon its attempts to keep the peace "unilaterally and on the cheap". He sees hints of a possible turnaround (or more infighting) in Gen. John Abizaid's comments to the New York Times last week.

Abizaid's interview is a powerful admission that on the two most important postwar issues — the number of forces and the nature of the occupation — the Bush administration got it badly wrong. The only question now is, will the administration finally recognize its errors? It might already be too late to achieve a great success in Iraq. But it is not too late to avoid a humiliating failure.

The mysteriously positive Ken Joseph Jr — the young Assyrian Christian pastor I've conspiracted on before — returns with an upbeat update from the ground in Baghdad.

Despite the recent bombings, Baghdad looks dramatically different. The stores are full of supplies. The streets are crowded with people and cars. The buses are working and police are on the streets, directing traffic.

At night the streets are full of pedestrians, many families with children. I am at a loss to reconcile what we see on the ground with what is being reported.

The "regular people" are much better off than they were. Security has improved with Iraqi police everywhere, telephones are starting to work, electricity, while off and on, is relatively stable, the stores are full of food, and, little by little, people are getting jobs back.

Pensions have been paid on time. The schools are working and people for the first time have hope and a future.

It's not all water and wine in the Pastor's eyes though:

The problem for Christians is very different. The Americans do not appear to be requiring a secular constitution as they did in Japan or a limited regional autonomy.

This is a serious problem for us. They are already giving their blessing to the dual system so common in Muslim countries: the recent citizenship changes allow for a 2-year wait for Arabs (read Muslims) and a 9-year wait for non-Arabs.

We are beginning to feel that if the United States will not demand that the constitution be secular with a strong prohibition against religious involvement by the government and limited autonomy, then we will have to pull Assyrian Christians out of the country.

But even his bad news sounds like a veiled message from the Administration, or at least its friends on the Christian Right.

While he seems fairly authentic and most everything he says seems reasonable, I'm still not convinced this guy isn't spinning for the Administration. He keeps popping up with very convenient opinions at very convenient times, in very convenient publications.

The first DNC sponsored debate is taking place tonight in Albuquerque at 6pm MDT. It will be airing locally in Denver on KBDI Channel 12 at 6 and 7:30pm and on KRMA Channel 6 at 10pm.

The Democratic National Committee is sponsoring six debates among the Democratic presidential candidates between September and December. Watch the candidates explain their visions for America and decide who you think is the best person to replace George W. Bush in 2004.

The NY Times on Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus — commander of the 101st Airborne Division, and someone who understands what Iraq needs. We need more like him.

The ethnic makeup of the north — a diverse blend of Arabs, Kurds, Turkoman and tribes — is less hostile to the American presence than the troublesome Sunni triangle around Baghdad, although it has the potential for ethnic strife. But that only partly explains the military's relative success here.

Other elements are the early deployment of a potent American force large enough to establish control, the quick establishment of new civil institutions, run by Iraqis, and a selective use of raids to capture hostile groups or individuals while minimizing the disruption to local civilians.

Another factor has been an American commander who approached so-called nation-building as a central military mission and who was prepared to act while the civilian authority in Baghdad was still getting organized.

An Army general who holds an advanced degree in international relations from Princeton, General Petraeus was steeped in nation-building before he arrived in Iraq. He served as the assistant chief of staff for operations for SFOR, the international peacekeeping force in Bosnia. His division is also well suited for its mission. Unlike an armored unit, it has lot of infantry soldiers — nearly 7,000 — to conduct foot patrols and stay in touch with the local population. It also has 250 helicopters to travel across northern Iraq.

"We walk, and walking has a quality of its own," the general says. "We're like cops on the beat."

Andrew Sullivan's back from vacation and is losing faith in the Administration.

So far, I've been manfully trying to give the administration the benefit of the doubt, especially given the media's relentlessly negative coverage of Iraq. But they're beginning to lose me, for the same reasons they're losing Dan Drezner. They don't seem to grasp the absolutely vital necessity of success in Iraq. And I can't believe I'm writing that sentence.

Hmmm, sounds familiar:

Those that are deceiving themselves into thinking Bush actually plans to follow through with the Grand Plans to democratize the Middle East are living in a fantasy world as should be readily apparent by now. Just because you hope something will happen doesn't mean Bush has any intention of letting it happen. And even if he does, the chances of it resulting in a government that's friendly to America are just about nil.