Got Treason?

Senate intelligence committee's Phase II report on pre-war Iraq is finally out. No news for the cognoscenti, but at least the little Dutch boys are running like hell from the dike. The cowardly little twerps. TPM has the specifics:

Phase II
You can find the reports here:
http://intelligence.senate.gov/080605/phase2a.pdf
http://intelligence.senate.gov/080605/phase2b.pdf

"Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information"

"Report on Intelligence Activities Relating to Iraq Conducted by the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans Within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy"

Here are the key points from the reports, according to a press release from Sen. Jay Rockefeller's office:

--Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.

--Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

--Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.

--Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities [b]did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties[/b] as to whether such production was ongoing.

--The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.

--The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

Quickee VP Non-Speculation

Lots of speculation today about Hillary Clinton's non-concession last night. Many support her for VP as a way to heal the party and bring in the "hard-working white people" vote. Some smart folk opine that she kept the race open and sent supporters back to her web site, ostensibly to tell her what she should do next, as a way to pay down some of her campaign's $30 million debt. Other long-time Clinton supporters aren't waiting, many having defected today, and the DNC's home page has a picture of Obama (the one above) announcing his status as nominee.

Various problems exist with a Hillary VP scenario, and the biggest is procedural: candidates for VP are required to present exhaustive documentation designed to vet them and protect the presidential nominee from taint before and after an election. For some reason, the Clintons have a big problem with transparency, and all the donors to their presidential foundation, all the business deals that gave them $120+ million of income over the past 8 years would have to be examined under clinically harsh light. That's a big hurdle, probably a show-stopper.

Even if that were cleared, an Obama presidency with Hillary Clinton as VP would set Operation Enduring Scandal in motion. While it's possible that Bill would stop blowing up at reporters for writing about his indiscretions, stop whoring across the globe on Ron Burkle's 757 (christened 'Air F*** One' by aides), neither is it bloody likely. You can't just imprison the man in a dungeon for four years, he's an ex-President...although that must have crossed a few minds, Hillary's not the least. He is simply an unacceptable liability.

Caroline Kennedy has been named to Obama's search committee, and she and Michelle Obama have a lot in common: they both despise the Clintons. Finally, although she would take it, Hillary Clinton doesn't really even want the spot--a mere Vice Presidency is obviously not big enough to contain her goals, and putting her there would be like having a cobra in your backpack. (Note per Jon: That is to say, she would eagerly take VP, but only as a stepping stone.) She needs more room to run, tasks to perform, someplace where she can deploy her full array of talents. Somewhere like Secretary of State.

Barack Obama's Nomination, In Personal Terms

As of this writing, the Obama campaign needs only 10 or 11 delegates to reach the 2,118 required to secure the Democratic party's nomination for President of the United States. That should happen when polls are counted in Montana and South Dakota, and 50 or so superdelegates make their announcements. The people lined up on the sidewalk outside the Excel Center in St. Paul, Minnesota at 2:30 in the afternoon are making sure they'll get in to hear his speech at 9PM.

The Excel Center is where the Republican Convention will be held this fall, and the fact that Obama is going there to accept his party's nomination is telling. He is not a nice man. He's a principled man for a politician, true, but that's a very different thing. The first time I heard him speak on the radio, I didn't know who it was, and resolved to find out the name that went along with that voice. Having learned a lot about him since, I can tell you he's an aggressive, smart, disciplined hard-ass, and he's going to sock it to the Pugs tonight.

As a boy, I was patriotic, idealistic, and became an Eagle Scout. I was decided on a military academy by age 9, but eventually learned my timing was off for that as a good way to serve my country. I studied languages, served a mission, took a degree in International Relations, and considered a career in foreign or intelligence services. But the more I met the people who ran our government or had influence over it, the more disabused I became. Getting to meet the revered, respected and powerful was a thrill, but it quickly became apparent that they believed in the power of Sea Monkeys. That is to say, they believed in a world of silver bullets, werewolves, secret spells and magical realism, apparently never realizing their nostrums were utterly self-serving nonsense.

Serving under the Reaganites was out for me. I told myself I needed to make more money than government internships paid; joining a union and working as a carpet layer offered a better way to deal with college expenses. Looking back on the good old days of the "Reagan Revolution," at least there were upsides to killing peasants and Iraqis--it ensured profits, kept a stranglehold on our main areas of interest, and made us feel better about losing the Far East and Iran. At least they were consistent, the outcome was sensible in a G. Gordon Liddy kind of way, and it was pretty obvious what I'd be getting into.

With the Clintons, you never knew what they were going to do next, you just knew it was going to be all about them. One minute running desperately needed sterile Q-tips here, pausing to sprain wrists to pat themselves on the back, the next minute ripping children to shreds with cluster bombs and denying responsibility. That, of course, was before the Bush family, not content with its premature exit from the seat of power, sent its unholy son back to torture the world. (Thanks for downing all those shots of Wild Turkey when you were pregnant, Babs.) Which meant that I had to get involved in politics, horrifying as that prospect was in 2003.

It was horrifying because of the dreary entitlements and an effete, ill-prepared ineffectiveness of opposition to a well-organized, charlatan, ruthless cabal that was gutting the economy and Constitution. Horrifying because the opposition party decided to back a second Skull and Bones member for President, somehow as a result of Al Franken and Janeane Garafolo meeting John Kerry in an apartment for dinner on Manhattan's upper east side and agreeing to betray Howard Dean, the anti-war candidate. Horrifying because my best involvement option was to go door-to-door in a Moveon.org Polish fire drill to get out the vote. It was easy to see that Kerry was a stiff, and he was the first candidate I ever voted in an election. My vote was symobolic, only intended to go on the record against BushCo, knowing Kerry was working for almost the same people.

Barack Obama does not have any of these problems. He does not consult acerbic garden gnomes for magic theories and geopolitical wisdom. He does not have a personal astrologer, does not screw strumpets in limos, shoot thousands of crippled birds to blow off steam, he is too realistic to make gays in the military his first priority on entering office, and he is sensible enough to know that Iraq is a millstone on the economy. In his words, he doesn't want to just get us out of Iraq, he wants to change the mindset that got us into it, and the only area where he thinks America should be exceptional is in more equal opportunity. This is a leader I can get behind, and always could.

Assuming that Dick Cheney doesn't finally nuke Iran tomorrow and bring an end to this charade we've been calling a country for the last eight years, we're finally starting to head in the right direction. I have known since heading away from government that America has desperately needed to shit-can its exceptionalism. At this point, talk of "American leadership" is ridiculous. It's not time for America to lead anymore. For one thing, we're broke. For another, the logical conclusions of our petroleum-brained, intellectually bankrupt philosophies have rained havoc, violence, and misery on the world and brought it to the brink of economic ruin.It's time to sit down at international conventions, pour ourselves a hot cup of Shut The Hell Up, and follow.

There are three countries in the world that aren't on the metric system: the United States, Myanmar, and Liberia. The longer we maintain the Bully Cop fiction that we don't need to join international accords, the more we'll start looking like the two latter failed states. To enjoy the benefits of high standards, you have to adhere to them. (Note per metric system: we don't have to stop weighing bananas by the pound. We have to start manufacturing goods by meter and kilo in order to succeed in overseas markets.) It won't be easy, but it's time to close the book on the manifestly failed policies of the past. Barack Obama will have our butts sitting in class at those standards bodies forthwith, and excelling there is our path to success.

The Berlin Candy Bomber

A different sort of war hero lived just down the street from a family I was staying with, and he was old friends with them. He was not just a hero, really, more of a mythical creature or icon, a man perfectly tailored to fit America's post-Big War self-image, one of a beneficent powerhouse showering the globe with the blessings of its innovation, mass production, and cornucopic agriculture. The myth was real, as low-key as an old hardware store, and lived nine houses away; his name was Gail Halvorsen, and he was the Berlin Candy Bomber.

For those who remember, that phrase evokes a dim interval when the Cold War had not yet cooled into its unstable jello mold. Anything could happen, some did, including Soviet fighters crashing into passenger planes from buzzing them too close, and war was widely expected. In 1948, in response to the announcement of a separate West German currency, Stalin's planners figured an island of troublesome capitalism could be blockaded and starved out. With roads blocked off, air supply seemed logistically impossible, and capitulation would come by winter at latest. The Soviets kicked off their blockade in July.

My friends arranged the meeting. In his living room, I asked Gail Halvorsen about the unprecedented logistics required to supply the 2 million denuded residents of West Berlin with 7,500 tons of necessaries per day in the winter, about 5,000 per day in summer. An airborne conveyor belt was hastily suspended to send in the basics of coal and flour, then sped up, enlarged, and was finally perfected to send in over 2 million tons of everything by the time it was over. Every bit of it by air. The allies wiped the nose of communism in 2,200 glorious calories per day, and although the blockade ended in May, 1949, the airlift kept going until September for good measure.

West Berlin was 110 miles inside the Soviet Zone. Halvorsen and his C-54 crew would fly 3 or 4 supply missions into Tempelhof airport every day, leaving only 4 or 5 hours for sleep; touched down in Berlin, airmen were not allowed to exit their planes. An avid photographer, Halvorsen decided to forgo a night's sleep and hitched a ride on a buddy's flight so he could tour Berlin by jeep, see the Reichstag, Hitler's Bunker, the Brandenburger Tor. While waiting for his driver, he walked down to the end of the Tempelhof runway to take a picture of an infamous apartment block which had to be dropped over or dodged by overloaded C-54s on their landing runs, the cause of fatalities and lots of stress. Just beyond the field's barbed-wire perimeter were 30 or so German children standing in the rubble watching the planes come in. They came up to the barrier, stuck their hands through and begged him to come visit them.

Halvorsen talked with the children for some time, enough to deeply impress him and make him late for his rendezvous. The thoughtful questions, gratitude, and maturity from the pint-sized people flummoxed him. They thanked him for bringing food to their families. As he hustled away it occurred to the Lieutenant that none of the children had asked him for candy or chewing gum, as children everywhere else had so assuredly done, it being considered within their rights. He reached into his pocket, felt the two sticks of the Wrigley's gum he sometimes chewed against drowsiness, and reluctantly made a decision which would change the course of his life.

He turned around and broke the two sticks into halves, walked back and gave them to the children at the wire. At that time, three sticks of gum in Berlin would buy two week's worth of laundering, or greater favors; anywhere in West Germany, adults would immediately dive for a casually flicked cigarett butt, with ensuing wrestling and fisticuffs. But the gum was not fought over, and the children split the Wrigley's Spearmint wrappers amongst themselves to savor like frankincense.

Halvorsen felt bad for not being able to give more, so he decided to break Air Force regulations. He told the kids to look for the plane that wiggled its wings as it flew over the apartment the next day, and he would drop some chocolate bars. His apprehensive crewmates went along, using their weekly gum and Hershey bar rations, tying them to handkerchief parachutes and finally tossing them down the flare tube just as they cleared the apartment block.

The ecstatic kids mobbed the wire at the end of Tempelhof and cheered. After a few more runs, the press picked up on a mystery Candy Bomber, the whole thing snowballed and Berlin went wild. Rather than face disciplinary action, Halvorsen became a celebrity, and eventually many pilots were helping drop US-donated candy all over West (and sometimes East) Berlin. A firehouse in Chicopee, Massachusetts was converted into a packaging center to deal with all the private donations even before the Stateside candy companies got involved. The Soviets lodged a formal diplomatic protest over stray candy, but the food and supplies, the chewing gum and chocolate kept on coming, vital flourishes to go along with the flour.

It is difficult to put your finger on anything particularly special about Gail Halvorsen. Nice guy, constitutionally good-natured. Salt of the earth, like you'd expect of a former Utah beet farmer. Wholesome and unassuming, yet very much his own man. Twenty years after he first dropped Hershey bars to some rubble-rats, the people of Berlin demanded that he be made the commandant of Tempelhof Airport, which he became upon his promotion to Colonel. After his military service ended he was named Dean of Student Affairs at a large university. Amongst many other honors, he was chosen to carry the German national team's sign in the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympics. Retired when I met him, sitting easy in his worn recliner, he was surrounded by pictures. Some were of his children and grandchildren, but these swam in a sea of pictures hung and piled everywhere, all of them bearing messages and smiles from grateful Germans.

Democracy, Its Psychotherapy And Cure

Although it is called such, the United States of America is not and has never been a democracy. In legal writ and practical fact, numerous safeguards have been maintained to ensure against its ever becoming one. Women and blacks still aren't equal, and punishment for being poor now extends into the upper middle class. Still, you never know. Democracy could happen.

Through circumstances which defy convenient explanation, I watched the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee proceedings on C-SPAN Saturday, holed up Howard Hughes-style all high-lonesome in a be-marbled Las Vegas hotel room. Except for dozing off a couple times, I saw the whole thing from about 2/3rds through Florida, and thought the horror show remarkable (almost regrettable) for restraint. Net-net, the HRC campaign was ruled and bylawed into a 50% Michigan-Florida compromise weighting after much twisting and kvetching. I wouldn't normally have watched this, but there was my general immobility to consider, and nothing better was on TV.

At times it looked and felt like an organization falling apart. Imagine, for contrast, if Florida and Michigan had bolted to the front of the Republican Party primary line. Zippo, nada, natch of their votes would be counted. If a couple of wayward states had given the RNC any guff, drunken thugs in pickup trucks would've dragged the offending apparachiks out of their homes in the middle of the night for manure-boarding sessions. The next morning, everybody would show up at the committee meeting shaved, showered, and smiling submissively, and their sole query would be, "Whose ass do I kiss first?" That's unity.

Whereas Democrats know all about diversity. And if any more diversity had gone on at the DNC, Harold Ickes would've dropped trou, shit on the Marriott's rug, started flinging turds at the co-chairs and said, "Look at me, I'm a gorilla!" This from the man who ran the party for 15 years, the incumbency-enhancing architect of the Super Tuesday soiree: "we need to make sure every vote counts." Oh, the passion, lo, the rampant egalitarianism. Listening to Harold, you could just feel liberty's heaving breast swelling to yell out, "Freedom! Freedom!" It was all I could do to not break out into the Pledge of Allegiance.

Simply put, Michigan and Florida Democrats were not well served by their state party leaders; they were insubordinate, intransigent, and insolent, and boy did they get off light. There isn't a leg to stand on: both states had the chance to do the primaries over according to the rules and have all their votes counted; they refused on the grounds of extra expense. A re-vote would have been the right thing to do, yet there wasn't a single word said about it by anyone who spoke into a microphone--curious, no? You could almost see the looming presence of Howard Dean in the ballroom, toying with a five-pound hammer and twirling a thumbscrew. The RBC committee meeting was more about putting down a snitty rebellion than about seating delegates, and the real question was whether the states and a significant, well-entrenched, and deeply unhappy faction would recognize the DNC's future authority.

In that context, the meeting's transparency was truly courageous--I can't imagine the RNC would allow live coverage in a similar situation. The committee's discipline was awesome, betraying guidelines that had been very well-rehearsed; it would have been easy, even natural, to rub the state reps' noses in messes of their own making, messes they had no excuse for. Although ironies and hypocrisies were flying fast and thick, that didn't happen. The most Shylockian propositions were accorded respect, and most anyone with a passing familiarity with Democratic party track record would've found it impossible to deaden impulses to derision without powerful incentives. For example, to the unremitting mantra of "disenfranchising voters?" Give me a break. Forty years ago the Dims settled on a nominee a full year before a ballot was cast.

Paradoxically, votes and involvement mattered more this time than in any other Democratic primary; campaigning mattered more; organization mattered more. As a brand, Clinton was as well-known as you can get, so she was not prepared for America's first real 50-state nomination fight. Everywhere Obama went, he closed the gap. He was down in Wisconsin by 20+ points in January. He traveled there and won it by 17 points. He was down by 24 in Virginia, began visiting, and eventually won it by 28. He was down by 20 in Pennsylvania three weeks before its primary, made a hasty tour and closed it to 9. The more exposure he got, the more votes he won. That's what happens in real democracies, that's the quality you want to see in your party's leader, and that's why the faithful have told Hillary Clinton to act like Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. Yes, your dead-enders want to fight on as an insurgency. Tell them to go home and plant crops.

The RBC's final vote bore the feel of a previous internal compromise and a carefully foregone conclusion. What was needed was done. Furthermore, it was the only actual open debate about an election or its processes which has occurred in my lifetime, and to my knowledge ever in these United States. I'm not sure of the full impact or follow-through, but that alone is no small thing. The DNC conspiracy, if such it was, expressed an even-handed but resounding "enough!" It gave the signal for the Clintons to pass the torch to a new kind of party, and it's going to be one far more representative and open than it has ever been before.

Bad Blogger, Bad!

I played hooky for over an entire blog-week. Better to ask forgiveness, or become a lot better at lying. I'll go with forgiveness: sorry for the unannounced absence. Really, it had nothing to do with topless beaches or rehab.

Time Warner Rushes To Deliver Web TV To Newly Discovered Tribe

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time Warner Cable Inc (TWC.N) plans to offer subscribers an easier way to bring Internet video to their television screens as part of an overall home networking system, Chief Executive Glenn Britt said on Friday.

"Right now it's pretty hard to get Internet stuff on your TV," Britt said at the Sanford C. Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York. "Within a relatively short time it's going to be very easy to get Internet TV on your big screen TV," he said, estimating it would take between one to two years to popularize such technology.

"To prove just how easy it will be for the average consumer, we have targeted the best demographic in the world, a purely indigenous tribal group on the Brazil-Peru border. The tribe has had no previous contact with the outside world, does not have a name or a known language, and as you saw on PowerPoint slide 19, they were trying to shoot down our plane with spears and arrows. We have teams on the ground bringing in two 48-inch flat screens, satellite uplinks, and the required generators. We're scheduled to go live in 8 days."

Britt gave few specific details about how the service would work or when it would become available in the US, focusing on the design benefits of bringing YouTube to peoples untouched by television, internet, or any known communication methods. "Tivo and Apple TV were for the classic tech-savvy early adopters, and the uptake in those segments is already falling off; whereas in cable, we have traditionally dominated in much broader market segments, the ones only capable of switching channels. An undiscovered, completely illiterate tribe is the perfect focus group for us...when they can use it, we'll know it's ready for North America."

Shares in Time Warner Cable, which recently announced plans to separate fully from Time Warner Inc (TWX.N) by the end of the year, rose 2 percent to $30.57.

(Note: portions of the above were taken from business news about Time Warner.)

Yeast Shall Overcome: Wingnut Reactions To A Dunkin Donuts Ad

I happened to see an ad on TV while trying to watch the History Channel this morning. (Mental note: Lord Running Boy loves World War II air battle analysis, and was particularly enthused about F6F gun camera footage. Where, oh where do the children get this aggression from?) I realized about halfway through the ad that the pitch-person was Rachel Ray, a populist-leaning chef with her very own show on cable which I've surfed past a few times; I say populist because her food theme seems to be "easy-to-cook dishes that won't trigger diabetes until you're 60."

Not being a current Dunkin customer, the imagery took a few moments longer to leech into the recesses of my brain: "Hey!...is that a kaffiyeh Rachel is wearing?? Oh, yes. Oh yes, it was, and woe be it unto the PR people at Dunkin Donuts come Tuesday morning. Now, direct oppo research doesn't hold much appeal for me, and I normally prefer to rely on my hand-picked, undetectable HUMINT team moles, since they're better at it and are usually family. But this one was tempting. So I Googled 'Rachel Ray, terrorist' and got 116,000 hits. Scrolling past the usual froth-mouthed dancing bears of the mainstream media, I went to a destination we'll call 'Little Green Footworshippers,' a paranoid DSMR-IV virulent-patriotism blog. I was not disappointed:

I didn’t believe this story when people first started emailing about it; but sure enough, its true. Dunkin Donuts, the venerable old fried dough seller, is the latest American firm to casually promote the symbol of Palestinian terrorism and the intifada, the kaffiyeh, via Rachael Ray: Dunkin’ Breakfast Choices.

Here’s an LGF search with many previous examples of the mainstreaming of the kaffiyeh. I’m actually getting hate mail from Rachael Ray supporters (!) but this isn’t happening in a vacuum, and Ray is not the first celebrity to show up wearing one of these.

UPDATE at 5/23/08 12:35:54 pm:

This isn’t just my lonely opinion; for more on the kaffiyeh as the symbol of Palestinian terrorism (they don’t call it that, of course), see the “Magazine of the Party for Socialism and Liberation:” The Palestinian kaffiyeh: a symbol of solidarity [S&L Magazine].

A survey of some of the thread comments:

• I'm going to Krispy Kreme!

• Not that I've been to a DD in years, but I think that maybe I should never go back.

• Crap. I literally just took a sip of a Dunks coffee.

• Who owns Dunkin Donuts? It's going to be hard to get my wife and daughter to stop going there.

• Is that hack Rachel Ray gonna whip us up some dunkin donut falafels to go along with PLO cafe latte?

• It's not just DD in this case. Rachel Ray has an empire. Her Food Network shows, her talk show, her magazine, her line of cookware.... All should be boycotted.

• That is Rachel Ray. I'm not sure that she actually understands the significance of what she is wearing; at least I have never heard anything of her politics. She doesn't strike me as a moonbat, but she may be.

• What is the building in the background? Can anyone tell? Rachel Ray . . . I wonder if she might be of Muslim heritage . . .

• She should be ashamed, but I'd bet dollars to donuts (sorry!) she has no idea the significance of what she's wearing... That does not excuse DD for running an ad w/ her wearing it, tho... What's next, swastikas? Ron Paul T-shirts?

• Their shareholders must be made aware this is offensive and undermines our war effort.

I'll watch the ad closer if I see it again, and will update you if Rachel is observed performing any goose-stepping islamofascist choreography, advocates fried-dough suicide bombs, or starts singing "Yeast Shall Overcome."

P.S.--I think the building in the background might be a Mormon Temple, possibly the one in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Will They Kill Obama?

Hillary Clinton has wistfully stated at least five times in the past three months that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June after winning the 1968 California primary, citing it as another reason for not dropping out. We could parse nuances of the word "assassinate" or compare Florida to the plight of Zimbabwe, but let's cut the crap. Let's head straight for the cerebellum, and to the oldest of superstitions, which is this: naming calls. Speak of the devil, and he appears.

Despite not withstanding the temptations of power well and wielding it to precious little good, the Bushes and the Clintons still have it. Yes, the gate-crasher has a movement, sure, he's tapped into a longing, has foot soldiers and 2 million donors. Still, he doesn't have the power yet, and all that stands between whom the Clintons serve and their maintenance of the White House is one man's life. If you think these people haven't killed before, maybe playing "See No Evil" is more fun than it looks.

Bobby Kennedy was killed because he threatened a long-established system of political, corporate, and racial fealty. He wanted to get America out of a stupid war, a change of direction many thought to be both traitorous and bad business. Same with Barack Obama now, but with crucial differences.

Obama is much better organized, much less frictional, far better at assembling stakeholders. It's what he does. He has ameliorated his radical roots well enough to get the endorsements of Paul Volcker and Warren Buffett, the most significant he's ever won, as they bring Wall Street with them. Even rich investors have come to long for something different, something which doesn't throw empires down imprudent hellholes. This isn't about morals for them, it's about results. They think we need an entirely new practical and philosophical basis on which to float a country, and they see the Clintons as just another part of the problem.

They're not going to kill Barack Obama. Even if a desperate woman's dark wish-craft wants triggers to be pulled, a transformation in our national psyche has already occurred. At this point, the people who should be most worried about the powers that be are Bill and Hillary Clinton. They're burying themselves.

Thumbs Up From The Other Side

A son is coming down like a cosmonaut from Nirvana. His sonogram is titled 'OPEN HAND.' I am inexpressably happy, scared again, and I'm filled with all the hopes and greeds and fears containable by animal revetments.

If you see him there above, he's thumbing his nose with his left hand and giving a thumbs-up with his right. He looks for all the world like Evelyn Waugh waving to me and my girl from the far corner of the dark-wood-panelled Connaught in London. Behind coke-bottle glasses, his eyes send out babyphores: "Hallo, there. There's a big line outside, but I've got the table! Come on and join me."

Mon p'tit panier blanc, mon joli coeur et encore, quand y'a l'ascenseur. Yes we will join you. Where we live, my son, we open worlds and give the waters back to skies. We all begin and end in dreams, and await you.

Saudis Spite The Bush Administration

Meant to mention earlier; the Bush family may once have had a special relationship with the Saudis. If they did, it is over. A significance occurred on Bush's current debouch through the Mid-East, and I'm searching for the right English word to describe the Saudi response to his viagric exhortations to raise oil production; let's see, here...objurgate is too open; fustigate is getting better, but still too blunt; and I'm thinking animadvert is about right. It's a rare word, the verb form of animadversion, that most well-placed censorious or unfavorable comment. It approaches the oblique, aristocratic, Parthian-shottish elegance of their efficient insults.

The Saudi elites are the most polite of men, and they can afford to be. No one dares to mention, much less decry, their polygamy, their servants, nor their slaves except in praise. These men are proud men, they are rich and blood-connected, they run a feudal society; they are princes and know the locations of their thrones. So when the King and his family ministers pointedly and publicly say to their long-accustomed arms and security supplier who has begged twice, "We see no need to raise oil production," it should be noted.

The fact that they invoked rank and privilege on a loyal servant was completely lost on the Western Media. The New York Times byline said, Saudis Rebuff Bush, Politely, on Pumping More Oil. Politely? These people now control Citibank. Politely was running a poacher over the fence undead. Here, they showed Bush the unwashed soles of their feet at the feast, a no-no on par with pooping into someone's indoor potted fern, as I was once tempted to do so in a certain Senator's dining room and refrained out of pity for his intelligent, hip-to-his-tricks wife. She was human, and so kind to extend me his distant hospitality.

George W. Bush opened his trip to the Mid-East in a kneeling homage to the Israeli Knesset; Democrats and the media focused on his anti-appeasement remarks, choosing to flock like geese to Obama's needless defense. Diversion alert: Yo! Am I the only person trapped in these topographies, self-banished from my gods, who realizes what occurred? Teeth should have gnashed, clothing should have rent. George Bush's grandfathers financed the Nazis and armed their glabrous fingers from Brownshirt beginnings right on into the unspelunkable hellholes of WWII, and they got filthy rich.

The trusted executor of the resulting Bush estate, once grandpap died, was the former CEO of Standard Oil who confessed a no-contest-peccavi to the Trading With the Enemies Act in 1942. It was that man, their financial advisor, who had built the cracking station in 1940 at Auschwitz. (You in the Knesset, were some of you not there?? Did your fathers and mothers not have tattoos of blue? Did someone, anywhere, anyone who dwells amongst the drooling gollum-wallahs of our media do any homework, have any memory? No. So here it is proven, and I am so profoundly sorry: the value of history is negative.) I wish I had a river I could skate away on. I wish I had a river so long that I could teach my feet to glide.

The greater substance of what our Fetal Alchohol First Son read in his halting rote was mercifully more general than specific, unconditionally expressing infinite support for Israel against its enemies, now Myrmidon. I could never have enumerated every missile, tank, drone and jet, pick me up with sterile hands. In all probability every one of you, the brave readers who've made it this far, you're not terribly interested in the details, the ins and outs of the troublesome keystones of the Jewish-Arabic curtains and contentions. Or by extension, our jittering American-Muslim affairs.

I'm not neither. To summarize Palestine, the odds are long, the proposed scenarios are all shams, the negotiations are charades as satirical as 'Blazing Saddle' in the original Mel Brookish. (Stage, scene, intro: "If you don't get back right now, I'll kill the nigger! Now sing songs of joy and peace!") Imagine how the Arabs, the Iranians, the Iraqis, the Lebanse, the Pakistanis, the Malaysians and the Detroitians took in the actions, the speaking, and the words of our developmentally disabled envoy. While prostituting his office at the seat of imperial project Judah, it even offended the Israelis.

It didn't end there, and it's not going to. He travels to offend elsewhere. Probably my biggest regret is that I never had a classical education to better deal with the winds whistling down from these intellectual heights. George Bush absorbed more classics while he doodled, stamped his feet and closed his ears at Andover by twelve years old than I've breathed in my whole life. Those classics would've told me to be open, and learn to love what I don't know. The test is now, the test is mine and the sap is rising. And I still don't know why that son of a bitch chose to not stay home.

Obama Breaks Over 50, Clinton Dives Under 40 In Gallup Poll

Edwards announced his support for Obama on the 15th, he was already going up the day before, leading up to a 55-39 result yesterday. The photo above of Portland's waterfront park speaks 75,000 words. Washington's Democratic Campaign Chair, Dwight Pelz, announced his Obama endorsement today, as did former KKK member Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) and investor Warren Buffett.

Buffett is not a super-delegate, he's someone far more influential. Following endorsements by two former SEC chairmen and Federal Reserve legend Paul Volcker, this signifies a crack right to the core in Wall Street's traditional knee-jerk support for Republicans. Buffett's announcement come after a day when the Illinois candidate for democratic nominee openly spoke about tougher anti-trust regulations, particularly in regards to media cross-ownership in local markets.

Arianna Huffington has an eloquent summary of Hillary Clinton's accomplishment for women called Hillary Clinton's Defeat: A Historic Triumph. It manages to be both accurate in its praise and conciliatory in its aim, giving an impression of how she can bow out on the best terms and re-build her political capital, not to mention become part of American legend:

"Once the disappointment fades and the cuts and bruises heal, the lasting impression will be one of glory, accomplishment, and profound impact."

Crude Awakening: Barrels Of Oil Per Ounce Of Gold

As we teeter off the tipping point of a non-negotiable way of life, we collectively suffer from multiple illusions, these still shored up by past observations logged by our inductive social brains. We're like Bertrand Russell's examplary thought-chickens, so convinced of our keepers' benevolence by continued feedings that we say, "See, these humans ain't so bad, look how good they been to us lot! Worth trading a few eggs for, I'd say. Hey what's that sharp metal thing Farmer John's carryin'?" The past lulls us into thinking it's always prologue. It's not, and having been outside this box, my thinking is unorthodox.

I say Farmer John is bent on murder. To wit, the diverging lines in the graph above. The blue and red lines ascending skywards on Jacob's ladder represent the Dollars and Euros required to buy a barrel of oil. The purple line snailing its flat path across the chart is the number of barrels of oil an ounce of gold will buy. Oil and gold are commodities, so they have intrinsic value; dollars and euros are pieces of paper, so they do not. The price relationship between oil and gold has been remarkably stable for the past 70 years. Therefore it's not so much the price of oil which is going up; it's the value of currencies which is going down. That's the key to understanding what is happening to the US place in the world economy, and its likely implications, and whether or not the Eagle is become as paper, as the Bear once was.

Most analysts would probably point to Peak Oil as the cause of oil's price increases, but US demand for oil fell year-on-year by 4% this January, world oil production went up by 2.5%, and world consumption increased by only 2% over the same period. Refiners such as Valero have cut production, called off expansion, and laid off workers because of low margins, yet gasoline reserves are at the highest level in the past 16 years. In this case, Peak Oil or the gas and oil "shortage" touted by the US President and his Secretary of Energy are illusions, and ungloving their hidden hands is easy.

Investment in speculation probably accounts for more than 50% of oil's price increase. Not surprising, since price volatility attracts speculation, and sustained price movements build their own momentum to create price bubbles. The total market in oil futures was worth $9 billion in 2001. It's now worth $250 billion. As the speculation extends, the more it attracts new entrants, and there's little reason to think oil speculation is in a late stage.

But there's something deeper going on than extraordinary oomph in one commodity. Across the board, commodities are up by more than double their year-prior price. Copper, rice, bauxite, silver, chicken feed, flour, you name it. Wheat futures went up by 70% on one Friday a couple of months back. Such broad-based sustained buying is consistent with a flight from currency into alternative values, and it's never happened to this extent in my lifetime. Granted, oil is a special case due to heightened global political risk and to clear domestic policy intentions to work up price--with both POTUS and VPOTUS being influential oil men, they've rewarded their own.

But two causal roots are anchored still further in the earth, and both are tolling knells to continued American leadership in the world. Each is a clear signal of lost fiscal confidence, at least in US tender. Primo, foreign banks want to unload gigantic dollar holdings, and they've been doing so. China alone has a $1.5 trillion reserve and has been hoarding commodities for years now. Secondo, the dollar monopoly on oil exchange is now broken, and it's why current US leadership is still considering an attack on Iran.

Suffocating Iran's anti-dollar initiative is critical to maintaining dollar hegemony. If that cannot be done, a day will come when the US government can't print up paper and buy all-you-can-eat energy with it. That means no operational military might, no further capacity to borrow. Government actions would have to be earned by building foreign exchange reserves. I'll turn to Brother Tim (who runs the always-principled, oft-provocative Blog of Revelation) and surface his comment on a previous post (What's That Got To Do With The Price Of Rice?):

The Iranians have now opened up their oil bourse, accepting mainly petro-euros and yen, and a few lesser hard currencies. Absolutely no petro-dollars accepted.

Last September Iran started accepting only yen from the Japanese. The Japanese and the Chinese account for a large part of Iranian oil exports, around 20% each.

Iranian production is capable of 6 million barrels/day, as witnessed in the 70s and 80s. Iranian consumption is just over 1 million barrels/day. They're now producing around 4 million barrels/day, exporting 3. So, roughly 3 million barrels/day has been pulled off the open market (NYMEX & IPE).

Add to that 'Private Oil'. This is backroom dealing between producers and consumers, effectively eliminating the middle-man (NYMEX & IPE). An example of this is the Chinese deal with Sudan to get 200,000 barrels/day @ $60.00/barrel for 10 years, in exchange for investment capital for infrastructure and exploration. Russia and Venezuela have made similar deals with China. Every barrel that is sold or traded in this way is one more barrel taken off the open market. THIS is a big part of the rising oil prices, and will surely get worse as time goes by.

Many think the New York Mercantile Exchange and London's International Petroleum Exchange are invincible. They believe that since the two largest Exchanges are basing oil on the dollar, that the dollar cannot fail. However, when those two Exchanges collapse (and they will) the dollar will go belly-up with them. Every barrel bought with yen, euro, or renminbi, is a barrel lost to the dollar.

Every barrel bought with yen, euro, or renminbi is a barrel lost to the dollar. Because it weaken's the dollar's liquidity. The economic conflict is broken down the old capitalist/communist fault line, except now the capitalists owe the communists huge sums of money. That chart above explains much about how the war is going, and nearly everything about the United States' choice of enemies. Tim, you seem to have an excellent grasp here, and I'd appreciate it if you could expand as you see fit.

Echoes

"The rich have become so unsocial that those who own property had rather throw their possessions into the sea than lend aid to the needy, while those who are in poorer circumstances would less gladly find a treasure than seize the possessions of the rich."

Isocrates, Greece following the Pelopennesian War, 366 B.C.

"The rich organized themselves into oligarchies for protection against the poor, who schemed to despoil them by legislation, taxation, or revolution. Their members took a solemn oath: 'I will be an adversary of the people, and in the Council I will do them all the evil that I can.'"

Aristotle, Greece, Politics, Section 1310, ca. 335 B.C.

Republicans On The Run II

Reader, sane person, and fellow Seattleite Isabelita expresses doubts that McCain will stumble in the Fall, feeling that maybe he'll somehow eke out another Pug-stolen election. I share your doubts, Iz--is it really possible that this politically sewn-up society of vicious, limitless, corpse-gnawing swine will simply file back into their sties? Constantly bitten, forever shy.

But then I think, how weird is this already? Imagine that it's September 12th again, and you're sitting at home watching the news, on the verge of a seizure from the shock therapy of seeing Islam-powered jets slam into the World Trade Centers over and ka-blinka and over. Then this bright little hole appears in your living room wall, it gets bigger, and out pops a magical time-traveling dwarf who intones the following:

"Hear me, oh mortal, and be not afraid! I come from the future and bear a message for your people. Seven years from now, your next President's middle name will be Hussein, and his last name will rhyme with Osama. Oh, yeah--he'll be black and from Kenya. Thou must go now, and tell thy people."

Personally, I would have said to the dwarf, "Look, you're obviously a time traveler, probably from a different planet, maybe even an angel. But I'm not going anywhere and you're completely crazy. So let's just keep this between you and me for now, ok?"

But that dwarf was probably right. Republicans are more frightened than they were after Watergate. The RNC chair, Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) called President Bush "absolutely radioactive" on TV last night, predicting that "if Senator John McCain is seen by voters as "Bush III" he will lose by 20 percentage points." It's Davis's job to be the party's optimist.

Then, Peggy Noonan, the Catholic conservative speech writer and seer of the Republicans talks to the old-time hands, and she had this to say in yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

There's a long way to go, and those quotes are there to make me feel better, too. But here's a happy thought: at least the right people are scared for once.

Transmigration Of Trolls

Senile psychopath "Maverick" John McCain was all set to negotiate with Hamas in 2006, but it's taboo for Barack Obama to dish that crazy talk now, because, because, ahh--oh, dammit--Neville Chamberlain! [ABC News]

Torkham Choke Point: Pakistan To Stop Supporting US Operations In Afghanistan

Torkham is just 5 klicks east of the summit of the Khyber Pass, right on what masquerades as a border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some clever chappie drew the Durand Line, more commonly known as the 'Zero Line,' on a map in 1893 as an attempt to keep the Khan's influence out of what was then British India. It never really worked. Jalalabad is to the west, Peshawar is to the east, and in between is al-Qaeda.

The 50,000 US & NATO troops in Afghanistan need about 700,000 gallons of fuel per day to maintain operations. 500,000 of that goes through Torkham, where 36 tankers were blown up in a customs parking lot one night in March. The Afghan National Army has difficulty securing supply columns from attack once past the gate, and the efforts of Pakistan's forces have become increasingly token since recent elections which effectively deposed the US-bankrolled Musharraf. The Taliban was able to close the supply route for at least 8 days in April, prompting an increasing number of Predator drone missile strikes inside Pakistan. "Truckers wanted, must have a love for adventure."

Soon, Pakistan will conclude a new treaty with its tribes to heal enmities over past US support; losses through the Torkham line will likely steepen dramatically. Russia has been watching this devolving situation closely, and Vladimir Putin offered a supply line through Russia at the last NATO meeting, but certainly not for free. They didn't take him up on it (yet). US supplies going through Russia to fight al-Qaeda packs enough irony to prostrate intelligence services with howls of helpless laughter. The only people keeping straight faces are the grunts and the Bush Administration. Here's what the Pakis have to say about it:

Adm. Eric T. Olson, the commander of United States Special Operations Command, held a round-table discussion with a group of civilian Pakistani leaders to sound them out on the possibility of cross-border raids by American forces. He was told in no uncertain terms that from the Pakistani point of view it was a bad idea, said one of the participants.

Instead, Pakistani officials are trying to restore calm to their country, which was rattled by a record number of suicide attacks last year. Within days, they are expected to strike a peace accord with Pakistan’s own militants that makes no mention of stopping the infiltrations. In fact, Pakistani counterinsurgency operations have stopped during the new government’s negotiations with the militants.

“Pakistan will take care of its own problems, you take care of Afghanistan on your side,” said Owari Ghani, the governor of North-West Frontier Province, who is also President Pervez Musharraf’s representative in charge of the neighboring tribal areas.

Mr. Ghani, a key architect of the pending peace accord, believes along with many other Pakistani leaders that the United States is floundering in the war in Afghanistan. Pakistan, he said, should not be saddled with America’s mistakes, especially if a solution involved breaching Pakistan’s sovereignty, a delicate matter in a nation where sentiment against the Bush administration runs high.

“Pakistan is a sovereign state,” he said. “NATO is in Afghanistan; it’s time they did some soldiering.”

Edwards Endorses Obama; Now For Some VP Speculation

The timing of the endorsement was either fortuitous or great planning, a maul used to blunt momentum from the Clinton victory, their largest margin yet, in West Virginia last night. (Where Edwards got 7% of the vote.) Edwards supplies 18 regular delegates to the Obama numbers, which would put him over 1,900 total and within ten of a simple regular-delegate majority of 1,627. The important psychological delegate number is 2,000, not 2,026, and Obama now only has to get 30% of the remaining uncommitted pool. You always have to wonder what price was paid, and the VP slot would seem a little steep. A Cabinet position would be reasonable, and Edwards would be the most progressive Attorney General imaginable.

Now the winnowing process begins for the running mate. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia (retired Navy Commander, son served two tours in Iraq, took seat away from a Republican incumbent) offers a great suite of gap-fillers. But he's a first-termer from Congress. Ohio's governor Ted Strickland has been bandied about because he closes all the obvious gaps--he now runs a key state that has trended Republican, is moderate, well-respected, over 60, white and got an 'A' rating from the National Rifle Association. But he's a Clinton supporter, which may discount him, and also a first-termer, which doesn't help the inexperience angle.

So, looking down the list of Democratic state governors, there aren't many that fit the bill as nicely as Tennessee's Phil Bredeson. He brings everything Strickland does and a boatload more: he started Health America, which became a 6,000-employee publicly traded health care management company; he is noted for spending wisely on education programs; he's a Presbyterian from smack dab in the demographic and region Obama has struggled in; he won his last gubernatorial election 69-30; and he does not draw his gubernatorial salary. He's a small-town boy from Appalachia made good with the credibility, physics degree, contacts, and drive to take on the health care mess.

Republicans On The Run

Here's the follow-up to last night's post on the Mississippi miracle, a memo sent out this morning by National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.). His message is a simple "To the lifeboats!" advisory. This clearly gives the lie to the congressional field trip to the White House last week to hug each other and display "solidarity."

“We are disappointed in tonight’s election results. Though the NRCC, RNC and Mississippi Republicans made a major effort to retain this seat, we came up short.

“Tonight’s election highlights two significant challenges Republicans must overcome this November. First, Republicans must be prepared to campaign against Democrat challengers who are running as conservatives, even as they try to join a liberal Democrat majority. Though the Democrats’ task will be more difficult in a November election, the fact is they have pulled off two special election victories with this strategy, and it should be a concern to all Republicans.

“Second, the political environment is such that voters remain pessimistic about the direction of the country and the Republican Party in general. Therefore, Republicans must undertake bold efforts to define a forward looking agenda that offers the kind of positive change voters are looking for. This is something we can do in cooperation with our Presidential nominee, but time is short.

“I encourage all Republican candidates, whether incumbents or challengers, to take stock of their campaigns and position themselves for challenging campaigns this fall by building the financial resources and grassroots networks that offer them the opportunity and ability to communicate, energize and turn out voters this election."

Travis Childers Delivers Big Democratic Win In Mississippi

In a district which went 62-38 for Bush in 2004, the AP calls a tight race for Democrat Travis Childers in Mississippi. It's a win for the DCCC and a symbolic win for Obama in the staunchly conservative Mississippi 1st district. This is big; by comparison, Hillary Clinton's thumping victory in West Virginia is a sideshow. Tonight's Mississippi miracle will shake the Republican Party to its core, because it recently lost two other "lock" races and the RNC pulled out all the stops to firewall this one. Haley "Where's My Dinnah?" Barbour is also the Republican governor. His famed appetite must be suffering, and he's probably wearing a plus-size adult diaper right about now.

In race-baiting beamed forward in time from the Reconstruction era, Obama was used as a boogeyman by the Pugs; Childers had aligned himself with the new sheriff in town, counting on new voter turnout to win. It worked. This is what the RNC leadership had to say about this race, coming on the heels of special-elections defeats in stronghold seats in Louisiana and Illinois, including the one held by former Speaker of the House Denny Hastert:

"When you connect three dots in anything, that's a bad thing. This connects the dots. At that point, everybody's got to come together and have a come-to-Jesus meeting," said Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), a retiring centrist who will help form a new advisory panel at the National Republican Congressional Committee.

"It's a time of sober reflection and, to some extent, resolve. I hope these special elections are a wake-up call," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), the leader of the conservative Republican Study Committee.

"The Republicans would be ignoring reality if they try to explain away this race," said Nathan Gonzales, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report.

Note to the NRCC: Jesus will kick your butt through the goalposts of life. Increasingly it looks to this political late bloomer that the Republicans may be facing a historic landslide with Barack Obama at the head of a ticket which mobilizes and enfranchises a new, post-baby boom generation of voters. It's also a clear indication of how far the Global War on Terra has eroded the pylons of the so-called conservative Base. In a way I almost wish this "connect the dots" win hadn't happened just yet. Because if they lost here, Republican strategists know they can lose anywhere. Everywhere. They're a smart, professional group adeptly fond of rigging elections, they're out of excuses, and the unequivocal outcome forms an urgent new question to keep them up at night: "How are we going to suppress that much more vote?"