sfarber

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, we’ll honor this most un-blarney-like exegesis of recent ersatz intelligence releases by the Bush Administration offered by Barbara O’Brian (it’s all thematic) of the O’Maha Blog. You see, with his approval ratings sinking deeper than the Lower Ninth Ward led by an ever more unpopular Iraq War taking him down faster than Dick Cheney with a shotgun, the President and the team must go back in time, and now show us just why the current intractable situation was fully justified from the beginning. They do this by providing misleading “intelligence”, essentially juxtaposing various sources...

The largest military assault in Iraq since… well, the last time a large military assauult was announced… this time, called Operation Swarmer, involving over 1,500 U.S. troops and over 50 aircraft of various sizes were deployed in an anti-insurgent operation near the Samarra area of Iraq, toward purported insurgent strongholds and weapons caches. Coming just a few days shy of the third anniversary of the commencement of the Iraq war, I guess we can call this “shock and awe light”. Perhaps very light. It comes as the extremely fragile “democracy” we installed met in the form of a brief meeting...

The Arctic ice cap has receded for the second year in a row, making for the largest reduction in size in the world’s Northern ice cover since satellites began measuring this in the 1970’s. Some predict that at this pace, it may disappear entirely later in this century. Though not discussed in the article, that would likely raise global sea levels, as an awful lot of water is contained in that ice. It could also effect climate in other profound ways. While there is dispute over whether these particular changes can be explained by natural year to year localized weather...

You might well be photographed by the FBI, or some other government agency, particularly if you’re some pinko who opposes what the President is up to…according to documents released by the ACLU… The events described took place in Pittsburgh, in 2002, and supposedly, the FBI agent involved destroyed the photographs when the target of surveillance didn’t show up (on that last point, there’s a bridge near my house that Mr. Roebling designed… perhaps you’d like to buy it?) Tip of the iceberg, folks. In a “L’Etat C’est moi” ethos, this sort of thing will happen… a lot…

Before I get to the stunning Moussaoui developments, let’s take a moment to point out the fecklessness of the Democratic Party, as done brilliantly here by the perennially succinct Elton Beard… Yes, yes, Russ Feingold is himself running for President… but the man has some cojones. A censure for the President’s brazen commission of crimes and affronts to our constitution, including but not limited to, to wit, the deliberate and wanton violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which the senate Republican majority has made it clear they couldn’t care less about (while Arab-bashing over the ports issue remains in...

Yes, this year’s Gridiron Dinner, the ultimate Inside the Beltway Self-Fellatiation event where the press corps throws itself a white-tie dinner where the biggest of the big muckity-muck politicians must show up and be “self-deprecating” took place again, with the President using the occasion to mock the real leader of the free world the Vice-President, Dick Cheney. For good measure, Dick’s wife Lynne Cheney used the occasion to mock him too. Dick, of course, has his permanent game-face on, and, well, didn’t shoot anyone at the dinner in retaliation. Senator Barack Obama was also there, to sing about just how...

At a cell in the Hague, the Netherlands (the only “double the” place-name I can think of) former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic was found dead, apparently of natural causes. While many will feel cheated at the lack of a verdict, given how the trained-as-a-lawyer Milosevic was conducting himself, and giving the complexity of the case that the Euro-justice-ers had concocted against him… as it wound into its third year… a conviction was by no means a foregone conclusion. Without question, Milosevic ordered, or at least failed to order the cessation of, the worst atrocities committed in Europe since the Second...

< Mr. Peabody, pictured with his adopted boy Sherman, takes the whole talking dog concept to another level... the level... of... dare I say it... this blog. You see, Hector Peabody (yes, that’s his first name; and though the museum at Yale is apparently named for him, he is a graduate of Harvard– wagna cum laude) doesn’t just talk. He talks brilliantly. He is erudite… a polymath, seemingly well informed on everything. And for fun, he likes to take his pet, a boy he adopted named Sherman, on the Wayback Machine (it is spelled various ways) to travel throughout time...

Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton (the greatest friend to the environment in that post since James Watt) tendered her resignation to the President, effective March 31st. Why did she resign? And on her 52nd birthday, no less? The CNN report I linked to… is conspicuously quiet on that point… The Washington Post clears it up for us a bit, here. You don’t recall the names Steve Griles (deputy secretary of the interior… until recently) or Italia Federici (a “public interest” lobbyist and good friend of the now departing Secretary Norton)? Who are they, you ask? Oh yes… they are...

As I’ve suggested before, everyone and their Dubaian Uncle was coming out of the woodwork to try to save George W. Bush from himself over the ports deal debacle. The culmination of these efforts is the announcement by Dubai Ports World that it will be divesting itself of its United States operations, thereby (hopefully) obviating the need for legislation that would have the same result– legislation that the President has vowed to veto, which would be a really, really stupid idea if he did. Now, this whole ports thing seems to have caught the usually well-oiled Bush Administration spin-machine off...