Viva Las Vegas

It'll be light posting this week for me, so hopefully the rest of the Boring Diatribe staff will be picking up the slack. I'm in Las Vegas at a professional convention for the week, taking a savage journey to the heart of the American dream. Or, teaching a class on programing, whichever comes first. I'm in the convention center of the MGM Grand Hotel, where the sponsors have thoughtfully provided a wireless lounge. Las Vegas is a strange place.

Nascar Economics

Remember during the election season, when there was all that talk about Nascar dads, and the certainty that the Nascar vote would be for Bush? Well, it was, and I think I've found the reason. I'm not sure we should be bothering with even our simplified explanations of economic issues, when NascarFan82088 is willing to pay $127.51 for a$125 Walmart gift card.

Paying In Blood

Here's your administration, supporting the troops:

DOÑA ANA RANGE, N.M. — Members of a California Army National Guard battalion preparing for deployment to Iraq said this week that they were under strict lockdown and being treated like prisoners rather than soldiers by Army commanders at the remote desert camp where they are training.

More troubling, a number of the soldiers said, is that the training they have received is so poor and equipment shortages so prevalent that they fear their casualty rate will be needlessly high when they arrive in Iraq early next year. "We are going to pay for this in blood," one soldier said.
...
"I feel like an inmate with a weapon," said Cpl. Jajuane Smith, 31, a six-year Guard veteran from Fresno who works for an armored transport company when not on active duty.
...
Military analysts, however, questioned whether the soldiers' concerns could be attributed entirely to the military's attempt to mirror conditions in Iraq. For example, the soldiers say that an ammunition shortage has meant that they have often conducted operations firing blanks.

"The Bush administration had over a year of planning before going to war in Iraq," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who has acted as a defense lawyer in military courts. "An ammunition shortage is not an exercise in tough love."
...
They said they had been told, for example, that the vehicles they would drive in Iraq would not be armored, a common complaint among their counterparts already serving overseas.

They also said the bulk of their training had been basic, such as first aid and rifle work, and not "theater-specific" to Iraq. They are supposed to be able to use night-vision goggles, for instance, because many patrols in Iraq take place in darkness. But one group of 200 soldiers trained for just an hour with 30 pairs of goggles, which they had to pass around quickly, soldiers said.
...
The soldiers also said they were risking courts-martial or other punishment by speaking publicly about their situation. But Staff Sgt. Lorenzo Dominguez, 45, one of the soldiers who allowed his identity to be revealed, said he feared that if nothing changed, men in his platoon would be killed in Iraq.

Dominguez is a father of two — including a 13-month-old son named Reagan, after the former president — and an employee of a mortgage bank in Alta Loma, Calif. A senior squad leader of his platoon, Dominguez said he had been in the National Guard for 20 years.

"Some of us are going to die there, and some of us are going to die unnecessarily because of the lack of training," he said. "So I don't care. Let them court-martial me. I want the American public to know what is going on. My men are guilty of one thing: volunteering to serve their country. And we are at the end of our rope."

Yeah, that's how we want to conduct a war -- making sure the troops are stressed-out, pissed-off, ill-equipped, and badly trained BEFORE they get to the war zone.

We're not going to win like this. So, a modest proposal:

1) Draft the unemployed. Lose your job, go to Iraq.
2) Draft criminals. They can supply their own weapons,(at least clubs, no ammo required) and send them to Iraq.
3) Draft the insane. Nothing scarier to our enemies than a psychotic in a tank.
4) Eat the fallen. Our new troops can save on the cost of their deployment by eating the fallen soldiers from both sides, realizing a further savings benefit since the deliveries of flag-draped coffins to communities nationwide would no longer be necessary.

In future posts, we'll be examining solutiuons to the difficulties of the infirm, the old, the rebellious, the queer and the liberally elitist. Iraq may offer answers to all sorts of domestic problems.

Blame the Tailor

Leader of the free world, looking for a man-date at the APEC summit, apparently dancing a hornpipe with his fly unzipped.

Ignorance is Strength

How much money do schools need to tell children "Don't have sex."? Apparently, they need at least $131 million, to promote the only certain way to avoid sexual transmitted diseases, unwanted pregancies, and a lot of furtive meetings in remote parking areas:

"The only 100 percent way to avoid a car collision is not to drive, but the federal government sure does a lot of advocacy for safety belts," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a group that promotes education about birth control and condom use.

Since children are obedient, I'm sure when they understand that their elders would rather they didn't have sex with one another, underage sex will immediately stop. The problem is just one of proper communication. It's not as if the species is genetically programmed to reproduce or anything. Clearly, the less children hear about sex, the more likely they are to grow up into fine, upstanding Republican voters.

Explains a lot, doesn't it?

Thankful

If you're wealthy, George W. Bush's election gives you a lot to be thankful for. Joe Conason hits the highlights in Salon:

To offset those generous new breaks for Soros, Barbra Streisand and Eminem, the White House wants to eliminate the deductibility of state and local tax payments. For most middle-class taxpayers that will constitute a far larger burden than any benefit from the Bush plan.
...
Although he neglected to discuss any such proposal during the presidential campaign, when he emphasized his commitment to expand health coverage, Bush reportedly plans to eliminate corporate deductions for health insurance coverage. With company health plans already under tremendous pressure from increasing costs, the elimination of deductibility will make insurance unaffordable for most companies (and will certainly give all employers an excuse for eliminating those benefits). That will leave wage and salary earners to fend for themselves against the big private insurers.
...
According to the Washington Post, Bush and his advisers have finally figured out how to pay for the trillion-dollar cost of privatizing the system. They're just going to ignore it by taking the costs "off-budget." Or, as one of the plan's proponents at the Cato Institute explained, the White House economists will use "creative accounting" to hide enormous holes in future budgets.
...
So smile again, a bit sardonically, as you sum up what middle-class Americans, red and blue, can expect as the second Bush regime begins: Higher taxes, exploding deficits and the end of health coverage as we know it.

There's just so much to be thankful for, isn't there?

I'm sure the citizens of the United States are going to have all sorts of fun "bargaining" with enormous insurance companies for "fair" (stop it, you're killing me) health insurance rates, which we'll all be paying for out of our incredible shrinking paychecks as the federal government chews into our earnings to help finance permanent tax cuts for the plutocracy.

When Bush talks about an ownership society, what he's talking about is the happy day when he and his cronies own society. 59 million of you just gave away the store. Remember that as you become part of the underclass, working to support a tiny, viciously uncaring minority that's most interested in bleeding you white before starting in on your children to finance and fight its bloody foreign adventures.

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving. Start making your list of things to be thankful for next year so you can start crossing them off as we begin our descent into darkness.

Another Private Sector Triumph

Or not:

A new study commissioned by the Department of Education, which compares the achievement of students in charter schools with those attending traditional public schools in five states, has concluded that the charter schools were less likely to meet state performance standards.

In Texas, for instance, the study found that 98 percent of public schools met state performance requirements two years ago, but that only 66 percent of the charter schools did. Even when adjusted for race and poverty, the study said, the charter schools fell short more frequently by a statistically significant amount.
...
"In five case-study states, charter schools are less likely to meet state performance standards than traditional public schools," the report said. Those states, Texas, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts and North Carolina, all have made significant public investments in charter schools.

The report's finding appears to present a new complication for the Bush administration as it seeks to carry out the No Child Left Behind law, which says that public schools failing to meet achievement objectives over several years may be converted into charter schools.

Pop Quiz:

The mission of a private sector school management firm is to...
a) Educate Children
b) Maximize Shareholder Value

The mission of a private medical insurer is to...
a) Provide Health Care
b) Maximize Shareholder Value

I could keep going, but you get the point. There are some missions that are essential to society, and need to be accomplished whether or not anyone can make a profit on it. Education is one of them. You only get a second chance on education on a macro scale, and while you're fooling around on that level, thousands of children get cheated of a decent education and you get an electorate that can't make decisions based on reason.

Which, of course, is the real point.

Staying Single

I'm hoping Reductio will also weigh in on this idea, since this is more up his alley of expertise, but it's clear to me that the Republicans continue their determined march away from reality:

Republican budget writers say they may have found a way to cut the federal deficit even if they borrow hundreds of billions more to overhaul the Social Security system: Don't count all that new borrowing.

As they lay the groundwork for what will probably be a controversial fight over Social Security, Republican lawmakers and the Bush administration are examining a number of accounting strategies that would allow the expensive transition to a partially privatized Social Security system without -- at least on paper -- expanding the country's record annual budget deficits. The strategies include, for example, moving the costs of Social Security reform "off-budget" so they are not counted against the government's yearly shortfall.

Well, that was easy. Boring Diatribe will shortly be informing its credit-rating agency that our various debts and obligations shouldn't be counted because -- well, just because we say so, that's why.

This nonsense will go on just long enough to achieve calamity, as a certain chief economist with Morgan Stanley had occasion to remark recently (thanks, Atrios):

Stephen Roach, the chief economist at investment banking giant Morgan Stanley, has a public reputation for being bearish.

But you should hear what he's saying in private.
Roach met select groups of fund managers downtown last week, including a group at Fidelity.
His prediction: America has no better than a 10 percent chance of avoiding economic ``armageddon.''

Press were not allowed into the meetings. But the Herald has obtained a copy of Roach's presentation. A stunned source who was at one meeting said, ``it struck me how extreme he was - much more, it seemed to me, than in public.''

Roach sees a 30 percent chance of a slump soon and a 60 percent chance that ``we'll muddle through for a while and delay the eventual armageddon.''

The chance we'll get through OK: one in 10. Maybe.

Hell, at least while we're all starving to death, the queers won't be married. In fact, put that on America's headstone:
"At Least The Queers Stayed Single."

Betrayal

I'm going to out myself this far to readers unfamiliar with my back story: I live in Vermont. You'll need to know that to understand how nauseated I feel at this news:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 - President Bush's nominee for attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, was all but guaranteed Senate confirmation today when a leading Democrat expressed fondness for the nominee and signaled that he would not stand in his way.

"I like him," Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the leading Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said today after a closed meeting with Mr. Gonzales, whom he has known as White House counsel.

"I said jokingly that the president, with the majority he has in the Senate, could have sent up Attila the Hun and got him confirmed," Mr. Leahy said. "But Judge Gonzales is no Attila the Hun; he's far from that, and he's a more uniting figure."

No, Attila the Hun was a conqueror. Alberto Gonzales is a torturer.

Contact this Senator who used to be a hero of mine and tell him what you think of moral midgets who "like" those who justify torture: Senator Leahy

This is the last straw for me.

The Democrats can go fuck themselves.
It's the only thing they're good at.

Tax Resistance

Rex Saxi wrote in and asked us to comment on employing tax resistance to send a message to the Maximum Leader. We confess it's a subject that we haven't explored thoroughly, but these folks have some ideas, and so does this writer. Being at heart a soak-the-rich and living-wage sort of publication, our stance is that tax resistance should be accomplish within the boundaries of the law, lest the tattered social contract begin to fray further. This is no easy task -- the resister may have to manage his or her income to remain below the poverty line -- not an inviting prospect for those capable of earning more, and living more comfortably.

However, another form of tax resistance could involve heavy charitable contributions to praiseworthy causes helping to fill the gaps compassionate conservatism fails to acknowledge. If you choose this course, research it well, obtain professional advice, and divert your capital where it will do the most good.

Meanwhile, work to encourage Federalism. The most telling tax resistance may come from states demanding an end to unfunded federal mandates and a closer match of federal tax revenue funds collected and redistributed to the contributing states.

A Piece of Our Action

The United States brings the stellar successes of its South American War on Drugs to Afghanistan, with similar results:

KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 18 - Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, the source of most of the opium and heroin on Europe's streets, was up sharply this year, reaching the highest levels in the country's history and in the world, the United Nations announced on Thursday.

"In Afghanistan, drugs are now a clear and present danger," said Antonio Maria Costa, director of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, on the release of the 2004 Afghanistan opium survey. "The fear that Afghanistan might degenerate into a narco-state is becoming a reality."

So glad we're taking seriously the War on Terrorism:

If the drug problem persists, "the political and military successes of the last three years will be lost," Mr. Costa said in a preface to the report. There are indications that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are profiting from the Afghan trade, the report said.

At this rate, soon the Afghanis will figure out that they can purchase a couple dozen Congressman and the executive branch for a few paltry millions and start running the joint.

Doodling

During those long, boring cabinet meetings, do you think the nominee for the Secretary of State writes "Condoleezza Bush" over and over again on her legal pad?

Philadelphia to Darwin: Drop Dead

Yup, another one:

"Because Darwin's theory is a theory, it is still being tested as new evidence is discovered," the statement said. "Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence."

We at Boring Diatribe wish to remind the Dover school district that Newton's Theory of Gravitation is a theory, and encourage the study of alternative theories by the members of the Dover school board, preferably from a great height.

Understanding Iran

The folks over a Needlenose have a handy pictorial reference for grasping the Axis of Evil.

Evildoers Beware!

Congress is going to take away your fast-forward button:

A new bill before Congress may eventually have DVD-viewers thinking twice before fast-forwarding through the ads and previews.

The proposed legislation would make fast-forwarding through those ads illegal -- not only in theaters, but also at home, NBC News reported.

Direct Democracy

John Kerry's asking that we, the people, co-sponsor a health care bill to cover all children in the United States. Go sign the petition.

Austerity

...for everyone:

WASHINGTON - Republicans whisked a $388 billion spending bill through the House on Saturday, a mammoth measure that underscores the dominance of deficit politics by curbing dollars for everything from education to environmental cleanups.

Except, of course, for Our Ruler, whose sycophants in Congress believe the Maximum Leader needs to have a little something included in the same budget that shortchanges the rest of the country:

A potential boon for Bush himself, $2 million for the government to try buying back the presidential yacht Sequoia. The boat was sold three decades ago, though its current owners say the yacht is not for sale.

Citizens go begging while the sanguine Emperor whiles away his time on fabulous cruises. It's hard to imagine a better metaphor for Republican rule.

Jargon

Working in a profession awash in jargon, I find it hilarious when I run into an opaque collection of terms in someone else's story:

If I may relate a piece of extraordinarily good luck that has nothing to do with anything, let me subject you all to the tale of the Best Poker Hand Ever. I was playing some Texas hold 'em last not and get dealt a pair of pocket sevens. Not such a hot hand, but with no pre-flop raising and a large table, I figured why not see the flop. The three cards come down -- 7, 7, Queen. I'm in luck. Even better, two other players each had one Queen in the pocket. On the turn, the going gets really good -- down comes the fourth Queen. The flop was shit, but there I sat holding the nuts with two other players who each thought they had a winning hand of three Queens. Nobody ever worries about the chance that someone has four of a kind, especially because seeing the flop with pocket sevens was a pretty questionable move. I'm all in and, naturally enough, I clean up. If only we didn't play with extremely low stakes, I would now be a wealthy man.

I know, I know. You all watch poker on TV now, and your 13-year-old is bluffing you out of twice his allowance every week, so maybe this story makes sense to you, but commonly having the experience of altering my language to convey complex technical issues in layman's terms makes me susceptible to finding this sort of thing funny. Yes, I'm easily amused. Don't worry Matt, we all still love you.

The Rule of Law

Hey, remember when Nixon ran on a "law and order" platform? Yeah, nobody else in the Republican Party can, either:

WASHINGTON -- "And I want to say to you bluntly: You live today with the most corrupt congressional leadership we have seen in the United States in the 20th century. You have to go back to the Gilded Age of the 1870s and 1880s to have anything comparable (to) that we've lived through."
...
The words were spoken in February 1992 by a House Republican named Newt Gingrich. Gingrich was then building the momentum that led to the historic Republican takeover of Congress two years later. The GOP modestly called what it was up to a "revolution."
...
What's surprising...

Hardly.

...is how shameless House Republicans were on Wednesday in casting aside their 11-year old rule requiring a member of their leadership to step aside temporarily if he or she came under indictment.

The repeal might be called the Tom DeLay Protection Act of 2004. DeLay, the House Majority Leader, is under investigation by Ronnie Earle, the district attorney in Texas' Travis County. Earle, who is a Democrat, is investigating charges that corporate money was used illegally to help Republicans win Texas legislative races in 2002. Republican victories that year paved the way for changes in the state's congressional district lines that helped Republicans win additional seats in Texas this year, solidifying their hold on power.
...
Recall how Republicans dismissed any and all who charged that the investigations of President Bill Clinton by special prosecutor Ken Starr were politically motivated. Ah, but those were investigations of a shady Democrat by a distinguished Republican. When a Democrat is investigating a Republican, it can only be about politics. Is that clear?

Rep. Henry Bonilla, the Texas Republican who sponsored the resolution to protect DeLay, said it was designed to protect against "crackpot" prosecutors whose indictments might get in the way of the ability of House Republicans to choose their own leaders. Can't let a little thing like an indictment get in the way of the sovereignty of House Republicans, can we?

"Attorneys tell me you can be indicted for just about anything in this country," said Bonilla. Remember the old days during the Clinton impeachment when Republicans went on and on about the importance of "the rule of law?" Oh well.

Join the Republicans, because Might is Right.

Turning the Corner

Our victory in Falluja has apparently broken the back of the Iraqi insurgency:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Baghdad exploded in violence Saturday, as insurgents attacked a U.S. patrol and a police station, assassinated four government employees and detonated several bombs. One American soldier was killed and nine were wounded during clashes that also left three Iraqi troops and a police officer dead.

Some of the heaviest violence came in Azamiyah, a largely Sunni Arab district of Baghdad where a day earlier U.S. troops raided the capital's main Sunni mosque. Shops were in flames, and a U.S. Humvee burned, with the body of what appeared to be its driver inside.

U.S. forces and insurgents also battled in the Sunni Triangle city of Ramadi, where clashes have been seen almost daily. Nine Iraqis were killed and five wounded in Saturday's fighting, hospital officials said.

Or, you know, maybe not.

Resistance

Here's one place to start:

United States foreign policy is a major reason Naylor himself advocates secession.
“It just really bothers me paying my taxes to annihilate innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan or anywhere else that Bush or Clinton or whoever decides they want to beat up on,” he says. “I think our foreign policy is just corrupt to the core.”

More detail here.

Cry Havoc

Despite the strains on the United States military,

The Army has encountered resistance from more than 2,000 former soldiers it has ordered back to military work, complicating its efforts to fill gaps in the regular troops.

Many of these former soldiers - some of whom say they have not trained, held a gun, worn a uniform or even gone for a jog in years - object to being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan now, after they thought they were through with life on active duty.

despite unfinished business in Iraq,

The unrelenting wave of assaults in the Sunni-dominated parts of the country indicate that the attack on Falluja could have inflamed Sunni resentment against the American presence. American and Iraqi officials have found it impossible in the 19 months since the invasion to persuade hostile Sunni Arabs to lay down their arms and engage in the emerging political system.

it seems Our Rulers can't wait to adventure in Iran, even trotting out professional Lame Duck Fig Leaf Colin Powell to lay the groundwork:

``We believe we are on very, very solid ground in pointing to a clandestine effort by Iran to develop weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems,'' Adam Ereli, a State Department spokesman, told reporters.

The Washington Post cited unidentified U.S. officials as saying the information, made public by Secretary of State Colin Powell, was unverified and based on a single ``walk-in'' source. Ereli said he would not discuss intelligence.

The refusal to discuss intelligence has become a sort of shibboleth for Our Rulers, hasn't it? I suppose it's difficult to discuss anything you don't know much about, or have much of, for that matter. Refresh my memory: didn't someone just invade some country on the basis of faulty intelligence? Don't tell me, it's right on the tip of my tongue.

Well, whoever it was, I'm sure it turned out all right.

Now that milquetoast Powell is out, it's clear that the real men have taken over:

One senior British official says: “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.” [Newsweek, 8/11/02] Later in the year, Bush's influential advisor Richard Perle states, “No stages. This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq … this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war … our children will sing great songs about us years from now.” [New Statesman, 12/16/02] In February 2003, US Undersecretary of State John Bolton says in meetings with Israeli officials that he has no doubt America will attack Iraq, and that it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea afterward.

At least we'll have more pictures like these to look forward to, along with all those great songs our dismembered children will be singing about us. Thanks to Rex Saxi for locating the photographs.

Once More, Dear Friends, Unto The Breach

Although other obligations have also intervened, the sheer volume of evil news momentarily daunted even the most Boring instincts of this Diatribe. However, bloody but unbowed, we return to the fray. We're going to continue news commentary, but we're also going to begin a couple of new types of post. A discussion around the Diatribe's watercooler has led us to the conclusion that the relentless drumbeat of bad news and sarcasm may eventually wither the souls of even our determined staff, so we'll be sprinkling in some cultural leavening now and again, to remind everyone of the good bits of America-that-was-and-shall-be-again. In addition, and more in line with our central mission, we're going to venture an essay or three on the policies, philosophies, and methods of Opposition.

A recent series of conversations with Reductio has put us in mind of the word "obstruction", often bandied about by Our Rulers when it appears some vestige of Responsible Government still glimmers in the heart of a lawmaker or public official. Like "liberal" before it, a word with a proud history, "obstructionist" is sometimes loaded into the media's chamber and fired with all the discrimination of a drunken Bush supporter showing off his new automatic weapon. As is typical of the breed, the elected federal Don't-Hurt-Me-Crats employ all manner of rhetorical dodges to avoid the taint of the "obstructionist" stink bomb whenever it's lobbed into the political conversation, and, as many such choices their party has made for the last four years, it is dead wrong.

When hundreds of thousands of soldiers stood in opposition to the spread of fascism in World War II, undoubtedly the Axis Powers considered those soldiers "obstructionist". When police officers thwart crime, no doubt criminals conceive of them as "obstructionist". If the opposition to Our Rulers, who seek to dismantle, by inches and leaps, the very structure of modernity is obstructionist, then count this blog and its sympathetic readers as an obstacle to the progress of the 14th century into the 21st.

So, we urge you to resist Our Rulers at every opportunity, and we urge you to find the ears within the government who will help. Do not compromise. Our Rulers are not governing, they are exploiting. They are a race of locusts, determined to consume the fat, then the substance, then the bones of the land and its people, and they will not stop until the corpse has been utterly devoured. You cannot negotiate with a swarm of mindless, hungry insects, and you cannot negotiate with the rapacious appetites of Our Rulers. Oppose, obstruct, resist, because that is the only language they understand. Reason and logic are useless in this struggle. They have already abandoned that field for the enticements of naked power. Very well. Hold your representatives to the highest standard of obstruction: let Our Rulers make no change with complicity of the Opposition. Offer alternatives. Do not accept their watery compromises. They will be undone in any case.

Make them roll over us in tanks. Make them fight for every bloody inch of territory, real and philosophical. Make their victories costly. We have reality, they have ideology. They cannot sustain themselves unless we help them. In the upcoming months, we're going to talk about how to oppose Our Rulers, how to find the chinks in their defenses, and how to turn their own power, paranoia and insularity against them. And we're going to be Boring as hell while we're doing it.

Lab Rats

The best way to test a drug is to make sure a lot of unsuspecting "people" ingest it, and loot them while you do. At least, that's the FDA's theory:

In the past four years, the Food and Drug Administration has taken a noticeably less aggressive approach toward policing drugs that cause harmful side effects, records show, leading some lawmakers, academics and consumer advocates to complain that the agency is focusing more on bolstering the pharmaceutical industry than protecting public health.

We're, of course, shocked that the Bush administration's primary aim at the FDA is to bolster the profits of pharmaceutical companies. It's not as if that were a pattern, or anything:

WASHINGTON — An emerging prescription drug benefit for retirees represents a victory for drug companies and their lobbyists, who have spent heavily to keep Republicans in control of Congress.
...
But pharmaceutical-makers already have averted what they feared most: a single new bloc of 40 million consumers with the market power to dramatically drive down prescription prices — and industry profits. Both the House and Senate versions of the bill bar the government from getting involved in price negotiations.

At least the faith-based government is resolute in the face of contrary facts:

The decrease in FDA enforcement has come despite a steadily rising number of reports of potentially harmful side effects from approved drugs. From 1996 to 2004, the annual number of these "adverse events" almost doubled.

Fox, meet the Republican-controlled henhouse:

Concerns about the FDA's safety monitoring have been growing ever since Congress required in 1992 that the industry assume a significant share of the costs of evaluating new drugs. These "user fees" now pay for more than half of CDER's annual budget of almost $500 million, and the percentage is growing steadily.
...
The perception that the FDA has tilted from its public health mandate toward a focus on industry needs has been reinforced for some in Congress by court cases in which the agency intervened on the side of drug and medical device makers sued by patients claiming they were harmed.

Government aligning with business interests against the people? Where have we heard that idea before?

As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Camo Day, anyone?

If You're Not The Lead Dog...

...at least you can whine, bare your throat and hope the pack leader doesn't tear you a new one, but I wouldn't count on it. True to form, the Don't-Hurt-Me-Crats have elected a collaborator as Senate Minority Leader. Harry Reid's an anti-Roe v. Wade, anti-flag-burning-amendment-supporting Mormon who's about as close to a Republican as you can get without being Zell "Pistols at Dawn" Miller.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada was elected the Senate's minority leader today and vowed to strive for good working relationships with President Bush and Republican lawmakers.

No doubt.

I'm sure Mr. Reid would strive for a close working relationship with Satan, since "You don't have to shout to prove you love America."

No, Harry, you don't. But sometimes you have to shout when your government is slaughtering thousands of people in an immoral war that's costing the United States its honor and security every single day.

Sometimes you have to shout when a war criminal is proposed for the office of Attorney General, or a base incompetent is nominated to the office of Secretary of State.

But you won't do that, Harry. No, I'm sure you'll accommodate, acquiesce, and find common ground with manifest evil whenever you can, thinking that, someday, the Devil will return the favor.

Dance on, Harry. Ignore the smell of brimstone. It's probably only a burning nation.

The Border Burqa

If you regularly follow the news, you know that the Bush administration and Nobel Prize winners don't get along very well, but usually the disagreement involves disputed notions, such as whether the Earth revolves around the Sun or vice versa. However, the latest dispute involves a female Iranian author, Shirin Ebadi, a foot soldier in the real march of freedom, who the Treasury Department is delighted to trip up:

I have wanted to tell the story of how women in Islamic countries, even one run by a theocratic regime as in Iran, can be active politically and professionally. It is my impression, based on the conversations I have had during my travels in the United States and Europe, that such a book would be a welcome addition to the debate about Islam and the West.

Such charming naivete.

So I was surprised and angered when I learned that regulations in the United States make it nearly impossible for me to write a book for Americans. Despite federal laws that say that American trade embargoes may not restrict the free flow of information, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control continues to regulate the import of books from Iran, Cuba and other countries. In order to skirt the laws protecting the flow of information, the government prohibits publishing "materials not fully created and in existence." Therefore, I could publish my memoir in the United States, but it would be illegal for an American literary agent, publisher, editor or translator to help me.

Publish anything you want in America, but you'd better do it without any Americans participating. That's us, free people, yesiree, unable to PUBLISH A BOOK WITHOUT FEAR OF PROSECUTION.

Everybody check their money again. Does it still say "United States of America"?

The Fig Leaf Departs

Here at Boring Diatribe, we're starting to get a handle on the Bush administration's attitude toward cabinet appointees, and, almost certainly, people in general. People, in the administration's view, are not sentient beings with opinions, needs, desires, ambitions and failings. These are traits shared only in private within the tight circle of those they consider "people". The remainder of the upright populace are merely instruments for the exercise of power.

Which brings us to the recent cabinet resignations. John Ashcroft was useful once as a sop to the American Taliban. (This latter group was once known as the Christian Right, until they expressed dissatisfaction with that label. I hope they enjoy the new nomenclature that we're using in our editorial meetings. But we digress.) Now that Bush the Lesser can't run again for president, Ashcroft's liability as a boob-crazed, ineffective US Attorney General with a morbid fear of calico cats became fully manifest, and with a genuine war criminal available for the Torturer General slot, it was time to show Mr. Ashcroft the door. Unfortunately for this addled product of far too many revival tents, he managed to outlive his usefulness to power.

Can Colin Powell be far behind? The answer is no. And, frankly, good riddance to a good soldier in a position that required a leader. Mr. Powell put his skills, knowledge, credibility and integrity in the service of eradicating the precepts that once made this country admirable. He sat before the United Nations, before the entire world, and regurgitated propaganda concerning phantom weapons programs in Iraq that served to hoodwink the credulous, and appall the informed. Under his watch, the State Department became an appendix to the Department of Defense, and he did nothing tangible to slow his administration's rush to an immoral war on false pretenses. He did his part as a useful tool, a gun with one round. The round was fired, and since then, he has held the status within the administration of an oddly-shaped hammer convenient for offering imperfect lessons to the occasional nail.

Powell's loyalty to his superiors (term used loosely) set askew his moral compass, and it will require years for him to regain his once unimpeachable reputation as a nonpartisan. Powell may begin on the lecture circuit by explaining to bored audiences how he sold his soul so cheaply to the Devil.

New Boring Staffers

A quick reminder for all our readers to start checking the "posted by" line at the bottom of our Diatribes. We have two new members of the Diatribe, in addition to our usual posters Antonius and Reductio. We expect our new writers will become especially Boring as the Long Darkness closes over America.

Please welcome Amangler and Eliani into your browser. We hope you enjoy their thoughts on King George II, his subjects, and what's going on beyond the border of this verdant shore, in this best of all possible worlds.

Homeland Insecurity - Part Tres

When I want your opinion, I'll tell you what it is:

WASHINGTON -- The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

Raise your hand if you ever considered the CIA (once headed by George H. W, Bush) a "hotbed of liberals".

I'm finally getting a handle on the definition of "liberal": it's anyone who presents inconvenient facts to public servants and the American people. Tell me what I want to hear, or you're gone. At least, we can be comforted that the same approach worked well for Saddamm Hussein:

From interviews with Iraqi scientists and other sources, he said, his team learned that sometime around 1997 and 1998, Iraq plunged into what he called a ``vortex of corruption,'' when government activities began to spin out of control because an increasingly isolated and fantasy-driven Saddam Hussein had insisted on personally authorizing major projects without input from others.

After the onset of this ``dark ages,'' Dr. Kay said, Iraqi scientists realized they could go directly to Mr. Hussein and present fanciful plans for weapons programs, and receive approval and large amounts of money. Whatever was left of an effective weapons capability, he said, was largely subsumed into corrupt money-raising schemes by scientists skilled in the arts of lying and surviving in a fevered police state.

``The whole thing shifted from directed programs to a corrupted process,'' Dr. Kay said. ``The regime was no longer in control; it was like a death spiral. Saddam was self-directing projects that were not vetted by anyone else. The scientists were able to fake programs.''

. Similarities to a missile defense system are purely coincidental. Whatever it takes to keep the Maximum Leader happy and not purging.

Victory Conditions

If you can't win without committing war crimes, maybe it's time to rethink your strategy:

Human rights experts said Friday that American soldiers might have committed a war crime on Thursday when they sent fleeing Iraqi civilians back into Fallujah.

Citing several articles of the Geneva Conventions, the experts said recognized laws of war require military forces to protect civilians as refugees and forbid returning them to a combat zone.

"This is highly problematical conduct in terms of exposing people to grave danger by returning them to an area where fighting is going on," said Jordan Paust, a law professor at the University of Houston and a former Army prosecutor.

James Ross, senior legal adviser to Human Rights Watch, said, "If that's what happened, it would be a war crime."

A stream of refugees, about 300 men, women and children, were detained by American soldiers as they left southern Fallujah by car and on foot. The women and children were allowed to proceed. The men were tested for any residues left by the handling of explosives. All tested negative, but they were sent back.

If the president, in his role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, can order the suspension of the Geneva Conventions at will, then the Conventions have no meaning. I had wondered, years back, how anyone could be opposed to the United States joining the International Criminal Court. I mean, wouldn't American behavior be above reproach? How wrong I was.

The Phrase You're Groping For...

... is "checks and balances":

Federal judges are jeopardizing national security by issuing rulings contradictory to President Bush's decisions on America's obligations under international treaties and agreements, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Friday.

In his first remarks since his resignation was announced Tuesday, Ashcroft forcefully denounced what he called "a profoundly disturbing trend" among some judges to interfere in the president's constitutional authority to make decisions during war.

"The danger I see here is that intrusive judicial oversight and second-guessing of presidential determinations in these critical areas can put at risk the very security of our nation in a time of war," Ashcroft said in a speech to the Federalist Society, a conservative lawyers' group.

When federal judges block the exercise of naked power by the executive branch of the federal government, there's always the danger that democracy and the rule of law might break out. If these federal judges are endangering national security, then we at Boring Diatribe have to ask what the hell we're trying to keep secure?

I'm sure we'll see the end of moronic comments like this from the Amateur General John Ashcroft, since the professional Torturer General is about to take over:

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based group that represents families of some detainees at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said that Gonzales's legal opinions "opened the door and paved the way" for abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"He's right in the middle of where this administration went off the page of the law and into chaos," Ratner said. "They're promoting someone who was one of the legal architects of the abuse. It's just appalling."

Yes Mike, yes it is. And the Democrats are rolling over for it, because, as Senator Charles Schumer (Craven-NY) says, Alberto Gonzales is "less polarizing" than Ashcroft. Only if your compass already points toward Hell, Chuck. There's a word for you and your kind: collaborator.

Rearguard Action

Yup, here we go:

Massive US military might is useless against a mosque network in full gear. In a major development not reported by US corporate media, for the first time different factions of the resistance have released a joint statement, signed among others by Ansar as-Sunnah, al-Jaysh al-Islami, al-Jaysh as-Siri (known as the Secret Army), ar-Rayat as-Sawda (known as the Black Banners), the Lions of the Two Rivers, the Abu Baqr as-Siddiq Brigades, and crucially al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Unity and Holy War) – the movement allegedly controlled by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The statement is being relayed all over the Sunni triangle through a network of mosques. The message is clear: the resistance is united.

Remember when street-to-street warfare was predicted for the initial invasion of Baghdad? Seems like either the resistance needed time to find its bearings, or was actually giving the United States a chance for a few months to make things better after Hussein's fall. Not anymore:

Badrani also disputes the Pentagon spin: “It is misleading to say the US controls 70% of the city because the fighters are constantly on the move. They go from street to street, attacking the army in some places, letting them through elsewhere so that they can attack them later. They say they are fighting not just for Fallujah, but for all Iraq.” The mujahideen tactics are a rotating web – Ho Chi Minh’s and Che Guevara’s tactics applied to urban warfare by the desert: snipers on rooftops, snipers escaping on bicycles, mortar fire from behind abandoned houses, rocket-propelled-grenade attacks on tanks, Bradleys being ambushed, barrages of as many as 200 rockets, instant dispersal, “invisible” regrouping.

And this will make us wildly popular:

Dr Muhammad Ismail, a member of the governing board of Fallujah’s general hospital “captured” by the Americans at the outset of Operation Phantom Fury, has called all Iraqi doctors for urgent help. Ismail told Iraqi and Arab press that the number of wounded civilians is growing exponentially – and medical supplies are almost non-existent. He confirmed that US troops had arrested many members of the hospital’s medical staff and had sealed the storage of medical supplies.

The wounded in Fallujah are in essence left to die. There is not a single surgeon in town. And practically no doctors as well, as the Pentagon decided to bomb both the al-Hadar Hospital and the Zayid Mobile Hospital. So far, the International Committee of the Red Cross has reacted with thunderous apathy.

How is this going to get better? More force? Can this administration be this stupid? Yes, I know the answer. Who's going to be the last soldier to die for this mistake?

God's Kingdom

The Christian Right is fond of citing Bible passages to justify everything from homophobia to support for a Greater Israel. As Richard Q. Ford tells us, a parable from Jesus may offer insight into the current situation in Iraq.

There was a good man who owned a vineyard. He leased it to tenant farmers so that they might work it and he might collect the produce from them. He sent his servant so that the tenants might give him the produce of the vineyard. They seized his servant and beat him, all but killing him. The servant went and told his master. The master said, “Perhaps (they) did not recognize (him).” He sent another servant. The tenants beat this one as well. Then the owner sent his son and said, Perhaps they will show respect to my son.” Because the tenants knew that it was he who was the heir, they seized him and killed him.

For an historical perspective reaching back more than two millenia, Mr. Ford's short essay is worth the read.

Thanks to Eliani for the link.

Harvey Is Not Invisible

Harvey Fierstein's 500 words for George W. Bush.

Whack-A-Mole

Hit 'em in Fallujah, they hit back in Mosul. Does anyone in the Pentagon have a clue about how to fight a guerilla war? The trick is, guys-with-a-hammer, that not everything's a nail. Sometimes, just making life better for people might win you a little more of that intangible "capital" (that the president's become so fond of mentioning) to spend, rather than simply slaughtering them, which, as you're coming to learn, results in a net loss.

I'll keep saying it until the United States leaves Iraq: this war cannot be won. The US is fighting an entire country now, and unless the Republicans are willing to kill every single Iraqi in order to free them, we're doing more harm than good in Iraq. I had a conversation last night with our least bloodthirsty Boring Diatribe staffer, who opined that maybe a civil war is overdue in Iraq to get the political structure sorted out. I think the best that can be hoped for at this point is a democratic Kurdistan that doesn't drive Turkey insane. Iraq isn't going to turn into a democracy. Get over it. Any democratic structure is going to last just long enough to elect clerics, and we'll have Iran next door to Iran, which is, of course, what Iran had in mind all along.

Hey, Mr. Nation-Builder...

... how many freaking countries are you going to create?

``I intend to use the next four years to spend the capital of the United States on such a state,'' Bush said. ``I believe it is in the interests of the world that such a truly free state develop. I know it is in the interest of the Palestinian people.''

Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Palestine. Hey,maybe if you'd STARTED with a serious effort in Palestine, we might not have all these countries to repair, or, you know, create now.

If I thought this statement was anything but the same blather Bush spouted four years ago when he first called for a Palestinian state, I might be worried about how our crack State Department leadership might be able to spare attention from the other rolling catastrophes in the Middle East, but since it's mere rhetoric from a president mesmerized by Ariel Sharon, I'm sure we'll see a blue ribbon panel shortly to look into the whole matter.

The Fallen

Veteran's Day.

The Jury's Still Out

Hell, Jethro, since I got all faith-based, I plain can't figure out if global warming is happening or not!

Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Head

Momma Government's gonna protect you from all those nasty men winning World War II. I'm looking forward to the "Leave it to Beaver" channel and the revival of infantalizing pap as entertainment now that the Christian Right is laying hold to the reins of government. Are there any rational Republicans who believe that conservatives think government should be getting out of directing other people's lives? The cognitive dissonance within people who "want the government off their backs" and yet can't muster the will to change a television channel is breathtaking.

Tiananmen Square Rehearsal

They're getting ready. A trial run in Los Angeles. Here's what 59 million of you voted for.

Whistling Past Africa

More people slaughtering each other in Uganda. Maybe we could do something about it if we weren't a little preoccupied fighting the Infinite Insurgency in Fallujah. Memo to power: 20 years ago, I said, "Forget about the Soviet Union. They can't even feed their own people. They're not a threat. Pay attention to Islam. Islam's coming." Blank stares greeted me in return for this early Diatribe. Listen to me now: start thinking about Africa. Africa is coming. They will be noticed, one way or another.

The New Majority

Israel has long been concerned about ethnic Jews becoming a minority in the nation because of the higher Palestinian birth rate. From the looks of things, the rest of the United States had better start worrying about Texas:

"Get plenty of rest."

That's one of the eight STD-prevention steps listed in one of the four high-school and middle-school health textbooks approved for state adoption last week by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE). "When you're tired, it's hard to think clearly," the text continues. "Don't put yourself in a situation in which you have to make a tough choice when you're tired." The other steps include: "Respect yourself" and "Go out as a group" ("You can also take the pressure off by double-dating"). No mention is made of the barrier methods of contraception, such as condoms, that help prevent STDs. One almost expects to see, in its stead, something about "an apple a day."
...
Leo's efforts, which evidently surprised many of her colleagues, actually came at the tail end of six months of tumultuous hearings, closed-door committee meetings, and agitation on all sides over the issue of what to tell the kids about contraception. And last week it was decided: Don't tell them anything.

On the other hand, since the Texas and California textbook markets are so large, I'm sure we'll be seeing these books outside their home state, so maybe the rest of the country will be able to keep up.

Department of Torture

Let's just rename the Justice Department, shall we? Alberto Gonzales, White House counsel, has been named by President Bush to replace John Ashcroft as Torturer... ahem. United States ATTORNEY General:

The attacks by Al Qaeda on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, these lawyers said, had plunged the country into a new kind of war. It was a conflict against a vast, outlaw, international enemy in which the rules of war, international treaties and even the Geneva Conventions did not apply. These positions were laid out in secret legal opinions drafted by lawyers from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and then endorsed by the Department of Defense and ultimately by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, according to copies of the opinions and other internal legal memos obtained by NEWSWEEK.

So, we go from a man who finds the sight of Justice so abhorent he must erect a curtain to conceal her, to a man who finds international law and human rights so repugnant that he must seize on the earliest opportunity to grind it into the bloody muck of the torturer's killing ground. Gonzales' actions led inevitably to the Abu Ghraib war crimes, and the wholesale violation of human rights still underway at Guantanamo Bay. Follow the link to the Abu Ghraib phtographs, look at the blood on the floor, remember the detainees in Camp X-ray, and understand that the author of these crimes is now proposed as your Attorney General. Then have a look at your coins and make sure they don't say Argentina.

Dear Mr. Lincoln

Telegram from the future. Not for the kids.

Sorry

Hundreds of folks around the nation and around the world have something to say.

Declaring Victory

We won. Can we leave Iraq now?

Attorney general declares victory over crime, terror
NBC, MSNBC and news services
Updated: 9:32 p.m. ET Nov. 9, 2004

WASHINGTON - Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans resigned Tuesday, the first members of President Bush’s Cabinet to leave following his re-election.

The resignations were announced by White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who said Bush had accepted the decisions of both secretaries.

“The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved,” Ashcroft wrote in a five-page handwritten letter to Bush

It's a relief to have peace with honor.

Arson

The staff at Boring Diatribe are giving you a pass. Remember when they invaded Iraq, and you thought of the money you paid to the federal government in taxes, and you wondered how many of your dollars went into blowing to bits some sweet Iraqi kid? We remember. After watching 3000 people get murdered on television, the last thing on our minds was more bloodshed, but that's us, and while we wrote, and marched, and told the whole world, 20,000,000 of us, that this war was wrong, the ignorant bastards in this country followed their demagogue and dragged us into this filthy quagmire of torture and the slaughter of innocents.

Okay, you did your best. You spoke to your friends, you contributed to the DNC, you contributed to the campaigns, you wrote, you marched, you made your voice heard. You are no longer responsible for what follows.

The red states don't give a damn about you, your views, or the fact that if you live in a blue state, you most likely subsidize their liberal-hating, gay-bashing lives with some of those same tax dollars you worried about in Iraq. By re-electing George Bush, they have put a gun to your forehead, and are no longer taxing you. They're looting you. So, let's join them.

Especially if you live in a blue state, we want you to contact your federal representatives, and tell them they'd damned well better not fillibuster the next tax cut. Let the idiots take the field, and design the economy around their faith. I'm sure Jesus will bail them out once the blue state gravy train stops pumping money into their lagging economies.

The more we read of the commentary on the right, the more we understand that this is what they think of you, and of us:

If anyone needs to work to “bring the country together” it’s those on the left who have divided it so badly. Those who sought to destroy this great man should get down upon their knees and beg the victors for mercy. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll let a few of them linger on for the simple reason that they amuse us. My life’s goal is to see the Democratic Party virtually obliterated and left as a rump of people like Stephanie Herseth who both mostly agree with us anyways and are easy on the eyes.

That’s the future of the Democratic Party: providing Republicans with a number of cute (but not that bright) comfort women.

Let’s face a hard truth: this was the bitterest Presidential campaign in living memory. The Democrats and their allies staked everything on the defeat of this President. All of the resources they had accumulated over a generation of struggle were thrown into this battle: and they have failed. Despite all of their tricks, despite all of their lies, the people have rejected them. They mean nothing. They are worth nothing. There’s no point in trying to reach out to them because they won’t be reached out to. We’ve got their teeth clutching the sidewalk and out boot above their head. Now’s the time to curb-stomp the bastards.

Okay? Do you get it now? We did. We read this tract of filth and lies and we understood: these people do not want peace, or unification, or even to govern. They want to rule, with a boot on your neck, laughing at you while they empty your pockets. So, let's give them what they want.

They want a small, drownable federal government? Help them. Let's shrink the federal pie and expand our state programs. When the red states complain that grandma can't afford her drugs or that Johnny got his arm blown off in Iraq and there's no money 'cause he can't work no more, well, tell them to talk to their impoverished state governments, or their church, or Jesus, because the liberal train just left the station, with its cargo of the 40-hour workweek, clean air and water, and a government responsive to the citizenry. It's gone, folks, and you sent it on its way. Maybe you can hitch a ride in the trunk of a passing plutocrat, if he doesn't throw you under his wheels for traction.

Here at Boring Diatribe, we're inexpressibly weary of subsidizing people who call us liars, traitors, and evil. Enough. Stop resisting. Help them. Let them understand with their bodies and their lives the full monstrous shape of what they desire. We're dividing the country? Let's. Let's divide the country. Let's pit Jesusland against Reasonland, and see who comes out on top. Stop enabling the red states. They don't care about you. They say it every day. They laugh at you while you're trying to help them. To recall an earlier post, imagine the victims of 9/11 pissing on the firefighters dispatched to save them. That's what these people are doing to you.

Put out your local fires. Stop enabling the arsonists.

Hell's Own Blog

Call us proud citizens of Hell:

That is why the unthinkable must become thinkable. If the so-called "Red States" (those that voted for George W. Bush) cannot be respected or at least tolerated by the "Blue States" (those that voted for Al Gore and John Kerry), then the most disparate of them must live apart--not by secession of the former (a majority), but by expulsion of the latter. Here is how to do it.

Having been amended only 17 times since 10 vital amendments (the Bill of Rights) were added at the republic's inception, the U.S. Constitution is not easily changed, primarily because so many states (75%, now 38 of 50) must agree. Yet, there are 38 states today that may be inclined to adopt, let us call it, a "Declaration of Expulsion," that is, a specific constitutional amendment to kick out the systemically troublesome states and those trending rapidly toward anti-American, if not outright subversive, behavior. The 12 states that must go: California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware. Only the remaining 38 states would retain the name, "United States of America." The 12 expelled mobs could call themselves the "Dirty Dozen," or individually keep their identity and go their separate ways, probably straight to Hell.

Who's this Mike Thompson joker think he is, horning in on the Liberal Hate Speech Monopoly?

Oh, just forget it. Please, Mr. Thompson, I beg you to find a way to make your modest proposal a reality. As long as we in the Dirty Dozen can leave you to wallow in your United States of red ink, poorly performing economies, rampant divorce and teenage pregnancy, foreign wars, and militant ignorance of basic scientific theories. Just don't come crying to us when you need someone to tell you how to make fire.

The Last Stand

I expect to soon see the remainder of the independent United States judiciary crushed under the heel of the "activist judges" canard, but until the third branch of the federal government is entirely lobotomized, I'm going to take pleasure in its last few spasms of conscience before they turn out the lights:

A judge in Washington said the military short-circuited the rights of Osama bin Laden's driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 34, of Yemen. Last month, another judge rebuked the government for limiting foreign detainees' access to lawyers.

The administration has defended to the Supreme Court its detention of hundreds of men in Cuba without constitutional protections, and lost in a landmark ruling this summer.

This won't last. The Republicans have shown a fondness for rewriting whatever rules don't suit them, so I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Congress starts muscling the judiciary with actions of questionable legality like this:

The House Judiciary Committee yesterday voted along party lines to eradicate the power of federal courts — including the Supreme Court — to alter the Pledge of Allegiance. The Republican leadership has promised to bring the highly-charged legislation up for a vote on the House floor and is expected to do so next week.
...
Yesterday’s action in the House is part of a piecemeal solution that Republican congressional leaders have adopted to solve what social conservatives have long viewed as the problem of activist judges, particularly on the federal bench.

This last is merely a trial balloon, in my view. If the Republicans manage to invalidate judicial review at will, soon we'll be proudly displaying a banana right next to the republic's golden door.

Bad Apples

Good thing all that Abu Ghraib stuff was just a few bad -- uh oh, wait a minute:

As soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment approached the burning vehicle, they did not find insurgents. The victims were mainly teenagers, hired to work the late shift picking up trash for about $5 a night, witnesses said.

Medics scrambled to treat the half a dozen people strewn around the scene. A dispute broke out among a handful of soldiers standing over one severely wounded young man who was moaning in pain. An unwounded Iraqi claiming to be a relative of the victim pleaded in broken English for soldiers to help him.

But to the horror of bystanders, Alban, 29, a boyish-faced sergeant who joined the Army in 1997, retrieved an M-231 assault rifle and fired into the wounded man's body. Seconds later, another soldier, Staff Sgt. Johnny Horne Jr. , 30, of Winston-Salem, N.C., grabbed an M-16 rifle and also shot the victim.

The killing might have been forgotten except for a U.S. soldier who days later slipped an anonymous note under the door of the unit's commander, Capt. Robert Humphries, warning that "soldiers had committed serious crimes that needed to be looked at."

U.S. officials have since characterized the shooting as a "mercy killing, " citing statements by Alban and Horne that they had shot the wounded Iraqi "to put him out of his misery."

If we're going to complete the glorious conquest of Iraq, we'd better get to silencing all these busy-body Winter Soldiers out there.

I'll be the first to say it: this war cannot be won. With incidents like these and those at Abu Ghraib churning repeatedly through the Arab media, with the photographs of Arab victims of American torture being painted as murals in Arab cities, we will never, ever, convince Iraqis we are there for any purpose other than to install an oppressive power the United States government considers friendly to US interests.

There is a tipover point in these conflicts when suppressing an insurgency is no longer a matter of fighting a small, flexible guerilla force, but metastasizes into what every occupying power should fear: fighting an entire country.

As a small thought experiment, imagine your child, your brother, your father, at the other end of Lydie England's leash. Would you ever understand? Would you ever surrender to such filth?

The next four years in Iraq will be an object lesson in the limits of power that more fortunate nations will study as a cautionary tale. We have not learned from history, and so we must repeat the lesson.

Jesus Cries Again

We're getting tired of writing about the Bush administration's incompetent handling of Iraq, but we just can't let this one go by:

Missing Antiaircraft Missiles Alarm Aides

By Dana Priest and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 7, 2004; Page A24

Several thousand shoulder-fired missiles -- the kind that could be used to shoot down aircraft -- are missing in Iraq, and their disappearance has prompted U.S. military and intelligence analysts to increase sharply their estimate of the number of such weapons that may be at large, administration officials said yesterday.

Some U.S. analysts figure that as many as 4,000 surface-to-air missiles once under the control of Saddam Hussein's government remain unaccounted for. That would raise the number of such missiles outside government hands worldwide to about 6,000.

Read those figures again. At a stroke, the administration has managed to TRIPLE the number of surface-to-air missiles in circulation among -- whoever! No one knows who has these weapons, but we're going to go out on a limb and guess that they're not about to show up as a deus ex machina to pull some struggling American military unit out of the frying pan.

Wisconsin to Darwin: Drop Dead

This should come as no surprise to anyone. Let the government-sponsored efforts to extinguish the light of reason begin, and, rather than beat up Texas this time around, since taking potshots at huge targets is hardly sporting, let's go after a town in a blue state, home to the thoroughly enlightened Senator Russ Feingold (alert: no sarcasm in this estimation of Mr. Feingold).

The local school board of Grantsburg, WI, believes that their science curriculum should not be restricted to a single theory of how the world has come to be. Look forward to Boring Diatribe's new textbook, soon to be offered in Texas and California, where we forward the theory that a giant, tireless hamster keeps the hollow earth spinning by running along the inner surface, and that rain is caused by the weeping of Jesus at humankind's collective stupidity.

That's right folks. After a brief, restorative interlude, we're back, and we're Boring.

Holier and Out

Looks like John Ashcroft is headed for the dustbin of history. In case you don't remember, Ashcroft became Attorney General because Bush wanted to toss him a bone after Ashcroft lost his Senate seat to a dead opponent. The Bush family tends to practice an acquaintance-based nepotism that seems to work well for them but badly for the country, since Ashcroft, for example, hasn't managed to get a single conviction for terrorism in three years. Just one more example of this administration's incompetence and hypocrisy. "Tough" on terror, but totally inept in actually reducing it.

6 Stages

The folks over at Needlenose have a little something for you.

Getting a Life

All right, light posting for a few days -- normal life beckons. Hopefully Reductio will get back in the saddle and our new author will take up some of the slack.

Into the Fire

There's a lot of talk out there about pulling up roots and heading for a country that's more in tune with your beliefs, and I can't blame you. I've had those thoughts myself. Here at Boring Diatribe, we're not inclined to lightly invoke the events of September 11, 2001 to sway hearts and minds. Too much of that rhetoric has been used to justify everything from slaughtering innocent foreigners to eroding the rights we hold dear. But as you contemplate acquiring an Irish passport, or pointing the U-Haul toward Canada, remember this:

When the planes hit the towers, the New York City firefighters didn't find another building to climb.

There's a fire burning in the country right now, fueled on the lives of people that need our help. If they're not voting with us, it's because they don't understand everything we're about. We need to show them. It's time we took a page from every other political movement that found itself shut out of power. We need to take our will and our beliefs to the people who don't know us, and we need to show them that their values are our values, and they need to know that their kids go to better schools, that they can go to the doctor, that their son or daughter came home safe and whole from war, because their neighbors were watching out for them.

We need to ask them to remember that the next time they go to the polls. The staff at Boring Diatribe has no clue how to build a movement, but we know it starts with you, all 55 million of you, to fight the fire consuming our nation. We have to tell people to stop trusting the arsonist burning down their home, and letting the guy outside with the hose have a crack at the problem.

We need to grab hold of the Democratic Party and redirect its energies toward doing what it can do best: helping the citizens of this country build a better life. And if its not the Democrats, it the Progressives, or its a whole new political movement that we'll patch and sew together from pieces strewn across this nation. Politics is the last swatch of cloth to add to the quilt. The first, the very first, is leading by example.

Southern Financial Management

Maybe the blue states need to cut off the subsidies to the red states and let them start pulling on their own bootstraps. Or eating them, if need be:

And so, while the moral-values crowd may have won, the fiscal orgy in Washington is sure to continue. Given Bush's mandate and his stated desire to fix the Alternative Minimum Tax (a huge tax reduction), make the temporary tax cuts permanent (ditto), and transform Social Seucrity (massive borrowing), his pledge to halve the deficit by 2009 is absurd.

In decades past, increasing Republican dominance of the House and Senate would have meant more fiscal discipline. But Republicans increasingly dominate the states that are net drains on Federal taxes—the Southern and Great Plains states—while fading in the coastal states that produce a disproportionate share of federal revenue. (It's Republicans, not Democrats, who are sucking on the federal teat.) What Amity Shlaes quaintly identified in today's Financial Times as the "southern culture of tax cutting" has been married to the southern culture of failing to generate wealth and the southern culture of depending on federal largesse. The offspring is an unsightly deficit monster.

But that would be wrong.

Tom! Tom! Wake Up!

You're dreaming again!

If Mr. Bush can salvage the war in Iraq, forge a solution for dealing with our entitlements crisis - which can be done only with a bipartisan approach and a more sane fiscal policy - upgrade America's competitiveness, prevent Iran from going nuclear and produce a solution for our energy crunch, history will say that he used his mandate to lead to great effect.

Purple America

County by county.

The Small Tent

The editorial staff at Boring Diatribe is absorbing a few zingers for reprinting Michael Moore's assertion that John Kerry is the #1 liberal in the Senate. Naturally, this was an attempt to energize the base, and not a scientific inquiry into the Senator's voting record. So, for those who wrote in on the subject, we'll ask for nominees. Who's going to spearhead the liberal resistance in the Senate?

Regarding Congress, it's not a secret that the neoconservative members think they'll be able to bulldoze any opposition to their agenda. There's another way to tip the balance in the Senate before the next election, and that's to entice a few moderate Republicans to abandon their party.

Let's start in New England. I think it's high time that Olympia Snowe and Sue Collins of Maine came over. Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island has already hinted he might change parties. In fact, in this account of an event catering to moderate Republicans, we might have the beginning of a list of Republicans to bring over to the other side of the aisle:

Tuesday night's Big Tent Celebration was the largest-ever gathering of Republicans who support a women's right to choose. Senator Arlen Specter (PA), Congresswomen Judy Biggert (IL-13), Congressman Mike Castle (DE-AL), Congressman Jim Leach (IA-02), Congressman Rob Simmons (CT-02), Congressman Chris Shays (CT-04) and Senator Lincoln Chaffee (RI) were among scores of other elected officials who accepted honors from RMC and spoke to guests. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson also made an appearance.

Write to the Senator or Representative of your choice. Tell then that their values are not represented by their party, but that there is a party that would be happy to work with them.

The Hard Way

Some reality-based soldiers in Iraq have spoken to the LA Times about the explosives at Al Qaqaa:

WASHINGTON — In the weeks after the fall of Baghdad, Iraqi looters loaded powerful explosives into pickup trucks and drove the material away from the Al Qaqaa ammunition site, according to a group of U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsmen who said they witnessed the looting.

The soldiers said about a dozen U.S. troops guarding the sprawling facility could not prevent the theft because they were outnumbered by looters. Soldiers with one unit — the 317th Support Center based in Wiesbaden, Germany — said they sent a message to commanders in Baghdad requesting help to secure the site but received no reply.

If someone's supporting the troops, it's not the military. Contrast this tale with Bush's remark about the military in Iraq:

"If they need more, I will make sure they get it."

Sorry, America. We tried to make it easy on you. Now you'll have to learn the hard way.

Bush Voter

Kos has this.

More Thanks

To Red, for showing up at the sign-holding November 2nd, ferrying coffee, and risking a losing encounter with traffic to take a few snapshots.

Hopeful Rhetoric Aside...

... you can also expect four years of really Boring songs like this one.
Thanks to Red for the link.

Judicial Nominees

I'm not a big fan of Arlen Specter, but right now, as the next chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he's a man to watch.

Spelunking

Like other writers on subjects liberally political, I had hoped that today would mark the second day of soul searching on the part of the party formerly in power, to discover how it had squandered the mandate of the people. Such is not to be, and so, with torch in one hand and sturdy rope in another, I'm going looking for the heart of the Opposition.

By some strange, prophetic turn of events, one year ago, this report came concerning a remark by Howard Dean during an interview:

"I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," the former Vermont governor said in an interview published Saturday in the Des Moines Register. "We can't beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats."

The remark is further illuminated by this excerpt of the same candidate's speech to the Democratic National Committee:

"White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals on the back ought to be voting with us, and not [Republicans], because their kids don't have health insurance either, and their kids need better schools too."

The other Democratic primary candidates villified Dean for these remarks. This comment by John Edwards took one tack:

"The last thing we need in the South is somebody like you coming down and telling us what we need to do." He told Dean the remarks were condescending. "The people I grew up with, the vast majority of them, they don't drive around with Confederate flags on pickup trucks," Edwards said.

This, of course, is hyperbole. The last thing Southerners actually need is to hover one car breakdown away from losing their jobs, their homes, and their health.

Al Sharpton took another, predictable tack:

The Rev. Al Sharpton told Dean: "You are not a bigot, but you appear to be too arrogant to say, 'I'm wrong,' and go on."

A couple of days later Dean said:

"I apologize for it. I think it's time to move on. The people who are most concerned about this are the people who are with us. I think we'll be fine."

As those who suffered this columnist's private Boring Diatribes before this blog was born may remember, I thought this apology was a terrible mistake.

I was an early supporter of Howard Dean. Coming from a small, rural state, he had exactly the right take on the Democratic Party. Had I been advising the Dean campaign at the time, as some of my readers may remember, I would have told him to respond to the criticism of his remark in this manner:

"The rest of you can continue to stay safely in the echo chamber of preaching to the choir, but I believe the message of the Democratic Party, that upholds the efforts of honest working people to make a decent living, to care for their families, and to help their neighbors, is a message they're longing to hear. They want to know that people like us, who devote their careers to public service, are serving them, not Washington lobbyists in $2000 suits. We are the Democratic Party, the party of the living wage and the 40-hour workweek, the party of Social Security, and of Medicaid, the authors of the programs that help so many neighbors in this great nation support so many of their fellows that they may never meet. We are in this together. That is the message of our party. So, if I am guilty of reaching beyond what you gentleman think of as an insular consituency that does not need to look outside its circle of true believers for support, so be it. You are wrong. Everyone in this country should know that we believe in clothing the naked, in feeding the hungry, that we believe in making certain that anyone who puts in a hard day's work receives a hard day's pay, and isn't one small misfortune away from finding his family homeless and hungry. We are the Democratic Party, and I invite all of America to join us in building a better future for all our children, rich and poor, black, white, Asian, Latino, immigrants and natives. We are here to fight for your pursuit of happiness."

That is MY Democratic Party. And the repudiation offered to its current incarnation by the American people in this past election shows how far it has gone astray.

Build America

Here at Boring Diatribe, we are great believers in the power of government to transform people's lives for the better. Government at all levels is merely an instrument for collecting and focusing the energies of many onto tasks most readily accomplished collectively, which will otherwise go undone, and which redound to the benefit of the commonweal. There are other constructs for reaching common goals. Corporations represent one such construct, as do as clubs, villages, towns, cities and states.

We will not attempt to spin the election results as anything but what they were: an unambiguous rejection by a little more than half the country of values communicated by the Democratic party from national government . We will not deny the truth. The voters have spoken, and, despite grievious efforts by the victorious party to disenfranchise voters across the nation, we will accept that a large portion of the country does not wish to see what they perceive as the values of Democrats take action through government.

We're also not going to wait two years to try to change their minds. There are causes beyond politics, other spheres in which to exercise influence and to expend energy for noble aims. Find them. A group gathers funds to remove land mines from poor areas of the globe. Contribute. Feed the hungry, defend the accused, write to others and persuade them to do the same. The door of action through government is only one path, and, we suspect, is one that will close for the next four years as the record of the current administration bears its terrible fruit of divisiveness and ruin both here and abroad.

Don't wait. You know the blueprint of America by heart. Pick up whatever tools you can find, and set to work after one last glance backward. Look back over the expanse of human history, and note its wars, its conflagrations, its destruction, its animal savagery, and then look about and take with you this solace:

The builders are winning.

Tomorrow, we'll be back, more Boring than ever.

The United States vs. America

It had been brought to the attention of Boring Diatribe that a perception of overt nationalism may be afflicting the reputation of this blog. To be clear, here at Boring Diatribe, we make a bright distinction between the United States, which is a country, an instrument for acting as one, and America, which is an ideal.

America is a land where no one lives in fear of reprisal for expressing an opinion. America is a land where a free people allow no one to fall so far that he has no opportunity to rise again, where merit, character and behavior, not breeding or wealth, are the standards by which all citizens are judged, and the law under which they are protected. America is a place where freedom is not thin rhetoric sent marching to destroy the lives of distant peoples, but a hope, a promise, and a hand up to the less fortunate to stand side by side with us to accomplish nothing less than the wholesale improvement of the human experience throughout the world.

Ask not what America does for you. Ask what you can do for America, for it is the one true hope of this troubled sphere, careering its way through darkness. America, the America all of you carry in your hearts, is the place of justice, mercy, benevolence, innovation, independence, and tolerance that Jesus, Muhammed, Confusius, Gandhi, King and the Buddha envisioned when they walked this Earth, carrying their learning and their grace before them to illuminate the hearts of huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

America is within you. Find it, there, under your prejudices and fears, your hatred and your despair -- there. It is mighty like a river in flood, tall like a beacon lighting the path home, wide like the ocean that embraces the world, full of grace, full of goodness, and burning with the resolve that all peoples everywhere will taste the sweet wine of its restorative draught.

America has another name. It is Hope.

Design Flaw, or Not

So, when e-voting machines in Florida malfunction, why do they always malfunction in one particular way?

Roberta Harvey, 57, of Clearwater, Fla., said she had tried at least a half dozen times to select Kerry-Edwards when she voted Tuesday at Northwood Presbyterian Church.

After 10 minutes trying to change her selection, the Pinellas County resident said she called a poll worker and got a wet-wipe napkin to clean the touch screen as well as a pencil so she could use its eraser-end instead of her finger. Harvey said it took about 10 attempts to select Kerry before and a summary screen confirmed her intended selection.

How many voters, conditioned by endless "Are you sure?" dialog boxes, failed to check their ballot summary?

Oh My! What Will He Do?

Whatever Todd S. Purdam of the New York Times is smoking, will someone please send 377 tons of it to the offices of Boring Diatribe?

So what next? If even a one-vote margin is a mandate, as John F. Kennedy once said, what might a real mandate look like for Mr. Bush? Will he pursue his course undaunted, whatever the opposition may do? Or once again seek, as he promised four years ago, to "change the tone" in Washington, and reach out to the one-quarter of voters in the electorate who described themselves as angry at his administration?

If Ohio breaks for the president, is there the smallest doubt what Bush will do?

Given a "mandate" for this administration's behavior, which has included encouraging torture, parochialism destructive to international relations, pre-emptive war, unparalleled secrecy, crony capitalism, abridgement of constitutionally protected rights, the creation of the largest debt and deficit in the history of humanity, rollback or undermining of environmental protections, unabashed gay-baiting, erosion of the separation of church and state, corrosive policies gradually dismantling the public school system, and naked suppression of voter participation, is there really any doubt at all?

Fasten your seatbelts. The USA is about to endure the economy of Argentina, the political policies of Italy in the 1930s, and the theocratic influence on public policy of the Islamic mullahs on the Iranian government.

We at Boring Diatribe will not concede that the light of empiricism and reason is to be extinguished in the United States. America's still in our hearts, waiting to be born. And if it's not going to be born in this political arena, it will be born in the streets, and power will listen to reason, or, eventually, be crushed by it.

To our friends around the world, who placed so much hope, as we did, on this election to unambiguously repudiate the perversion of this great nation into a small-minded bully determined to impose its will without thought of consequences at home and abroad, we say, take heart. The idea of a just, free, and benevolent nation will not die, while even one American will tediously diatribe against the hubris of leaders determined to eradicate it.

No Retreat, No Surrender

We rolled over in 2000, and we're not rolling over again. No one gets a ten-point swing from tracking polls to final vote tally in 24 hours. I want a microscope on Florida tomorrow morning, and we're going to start gathering up all the stories of voter suppression and outright fraud that happened nationwide, but especially in Jeb Bush's pet state.

And if, after all the legal challenges are complete, we can't prove that the GOP stole this election like they stole the last one, well then...

...you can expect the staff here at Boring Diatribe to be very, very boring for the next four years as the nation we love gets dragged down into darkness.

You want to play? We're ready.

Today

So, what the local Democratic party had me do today was to stand for three hours at the very center of my small town where two major roads intersect, with a 4-foot by 8-foot Kerry/Edwards sign. I waved at passing cars, and was later joined by another Democrat with a sign in favor of a local legislative candidate.

Republican Reaction:

Two Republicans in their fifties rolled down their windows to tell me they voted for Bush, and one further cautioned me that the weather was about to become unfavorable to standing out in it. I thanked both for voting.
Several other Republicans gave me the thumbs-down, but politely.
Several others gave me emphatic thumbs-down signs, as if summoning the lions to tear me to bits.
One gave me the finger.
At least four others felt compelled to shout abuse of various levels of profanity and inanity.

Democratic Reaction:

Lots of favorable horn-tooting, waves, thumbs-up, and victory (or peace) signs.

Judging the proportion of the former to the latter, and using my own intensely complex polling methodology, I'd say my state in a landslide for Kerry. Nope, we're thoroughly Blue where I live, so no big effect on the nation.

Thanks to Izabella's Cafe for sending out periodic life-sustaining cups of hot chocolate and joe.

Exit Polls

They're often inaccurate and unreliable. Here's the latest from Slate:

Florida -- Kerry 52, Bush 48
Ohio -- Kerry 52, Bush 47
Michigan -- Kerry 51, Bush 48
Pennsylvania -- Kerry 58, Bush 42
Iowa -- Kerry 50, Bush 48
Wisconsin -- Kerry 53, Bush 47
Minnesota -- Kerry 57, Bush 42
New Hampshire -- Kerry 58, Bush 41
Maine -- Kerry 55, Bush 44
New Mexico -- Kerry 49, Bush 49
Nevada -- Bush 49, Bush 48
Colorado -- Bush 50, Kerry 49
Arkansas -- Bush 54, Kerry 45
North Carolina -- Bush 53, Kerry 47