President Bush: genius and mighty warrior

Truly a genius



Hindrocket got in trouble for speaking his mind:

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

Liberals are mocking Hindrocket for this. But not I. I applaud him for telling the truth, while admonishing him for his undue restraint. President Bush is more than an uncommon leader. His brilliance and military prowess can be compared to those of Biblical heroes.

President Bush's uncanny wisdom calls to mind the young Jesus visiting the Temple: "And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers" (Luke 2:57). When Dear Leader speaks, his obvious depth of understanding and his felicity of expression also fill one with astonishment.

But President Bush is more than a man of wisdom. He is also a great warrior. As Commander-in-Chief, he compares favorably with Samson, generally reckoned the mightiest warrior in the Bible. In fact, Dear Leader beats Samson at his own game. Samson boasted,

With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps,
with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men. (Judges 15:16)

Using the exact same weapon, President Bush has killed almost twice as many Americans (and many times that number of Iraqis). History will remember President Bush's military leadership as fondly as it does his intellectual brilliance. Both are of a magnitude that cannot be forgotten.

DeLay of game

Tom DeLay has really surpassed himself. The energy bill already was a feast for the usual special interests, with oozing gobbets of pork for everyone — well, not you or me, but everyone who matters. But that wasn't enough for the Bugman. Josh Marshall explains:

Seems DeLay slipped over a billion dollars of privately-administered pork for oil companies in his district into the energy bill after the bill was out of conference committee.

Judd at Think Progress has the details:

Tom DeLay thinks the federal treasury is his personal piggy bank. DeLay slipped “a $1.5 billion giveaway to the oil industry, Halliburton, and Sugar Land, Texas” into the energy bill.

But this isn’t a normal case of government pork. DeLay has completely dispensed with the democratic process. From a letter Rep. Henry Waxman just sent Speaker Dennis Hastert:

The provision was inserted into the energy legislation after the conference was closed, so members of the conference committee had no opportunity to consider or reject this measure.

The $1.5 billion won’t be administered by the government by a private consortium in DeLay’s district:

The subtitle appears to steer the administration of 75% of the $1.5 billion fund to a private consortium located in the district of Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Ordinarily, a large fund like this would be administered directly by the government.

This is really brazen. It's not just DeLay's French name that would make him feel at home in the court of Louis XIV. His corporatism updates the beloved aristocratic notion that the purpose of government is to distribute largess to one's friends. By that measure, Tom DeLay is a a true aristocrat.

Turns of phrase

Each of these well-turned phrases is piquant by itself, but even tastier in context. Go and read the complete posts.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden:
Why is the tone of so much magazine and newspaper writing as unnatural as silicone breast implants on a snake?

Wonkette:
We would like to apologize for our characterization yesterday of Scott McClellan as a puppy dog. ... now we feel that a more accurate analogy would be that Scott McClellan is like a hapless baby rodent of some kind. Perhaps a gerbil or a weasel. Small, hairless, blind, and dependent on a larger rodent for all his information.

Bobby Lightfoot:
You have to wake up and realize that every time we let something like this happen we suck just a little chrome off the Trailer Hitch Of Life, if you follow me. Oh, the Trailer Hitch Of Life is unlustrous as of late.

TNH:
I haven't been so surprised by the efficacy of a blade since the day I played pop-up baseball with a bowl of withered half-dry apples and a katana.

Howard Waldrop on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:
See it with someone you love, especially if they're shorter than you.

We'll go no more aRoving

The White House is worried about the Karl Rove story. The one-sentence version is: Karl Rove hurt national security for partisan political reasons when he blew a CIA agent's cover. The ensuing criminal investigation has the administration worried — they're especially worried about the flood of news coverage.

The Bushites tried to change the subject by rushing the President's nomination of John Roberts for the Supreme Court. It worked. For two days. The lead story in today's Washington Post is about Rove, again.

(This post is mostly summary, plus snark. Major sources include recent news, Defective Yeti's Roving Reporter: A primer for the Karl Rove / Valerie Plame scandal and Wikipedia's Valerie Plame entry.)

What Wilson did

Joe Wilson did two things. He told the truth to the Bush administration, and he told the truth to the American people.

The government's chief justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction. The clincher was that Iraq was seeking uranium ore from Niger for nuclear weapons. A natural person to investigate was Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former career diplomat with experience in both countries. Wilson's 2002 investigation found that the Nigerien government was not exporting yellowcake uranium ore to Iraq and could not plausibly sneak it past the foreign consortium that operated the mines.

Wilson told the State Department, which enthusiastically ignored his report. In fact, Bush repeated the bogus claim in his January 2003 State of the Union speech. The US invaded Iraq March 20, 2003. On July 6, 2003, Wilson published an op-ed in the New York Times demolishing the administration's main reason for war.

What Rove did

After Wilson had the temerity to speak out, Rove quickly retaliated. Rove told several reporters that Wilson's trip was a junket arranged by his wife, Valerie, a CIA operative (She uses her married name, Valerie Wilson, in both professional and private life, but most coverage refers to her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, because the first story did.) This was somehow supposed to discredit Joseph Wilson, because any sane person would leap at the opportunity to navigate bureaucracy in the world's fifth-poorest country.

This leak had two real purposes:

• punish Joe Wilson by attacking his family
• intimidate other potential dissenters.

Only the blindest partisan hacks attempt to justify it (see "Republican spin", below).

Why it's wrong

Going after a whistleblower by attacking his family is just cowardly and low, which is standard for Rove. But this is far worse. Karl Rove burned a covert CIA operative for short-term, partisan advantage. Besides uncovering Valerie Wilson, Rove exposed and potentially harmed her front company, every American she worked with, and every foreigner she ever came in contact with. This could harm her field, the unimportant area of nuclear proliferation. Burning Valerie Wilson will do immense harm to future American intelligence gathering, as well. Fewer foreign informants will dare talk to American agents when the Americans (and their networks) are at risk of being outed by a bilious apparatchik.

You know it's wrong to blow a spy's cover. And so does everybody who can count to 007.

Republican spin

Republicans have tried to justify Rove's actions. Everything they say is either false or irrelevant, and, as Josh Marshall pointed out, it all sounds like the excuses of a child caught stealing. Here are some of their talking points:

• Valerie Wilson wasn't covert.
• She was covert, but Rove didn't know it.
• Rove knew, but found out her covert status from an unclassified source, either

* a reporter, or
* Johnny the shoeshine boy.

• Rove didn't tell any reporters, but merely confirmed what they asked him.
• Rove didn't refer to Valerie Wilson by name, but only in a very sneaky and indirect manner, as

* Valerie Plame, or
* Joe Wilson's wife, or
* alerie-Vay ilson-Way.

• Rove's leak was justified because Joe Wilson is a big meany.
• Rove didn't do it. Somebody else is the source of the leak. Maybe the One-Armed Man?

It's a regular cascade of bullshit, isn't it?

Back to reality

When Republican spin-meisters are faced with the facts of the Rove case, their spinning slows way down. Time's Matt Cooper testified that

• Rive first mentioned and identified Valerie Wilson (as Joe Wilson's wife, but not by name);
• Rove said she was CIA, working on WMD;
• Rove said he was revealing classified information.

Maybe Rove was exaggerating, or maybe the secret was something else? An article in today's Washington Post points out that the CIA considered her identity secret, and it was marked as such in a classified State Department memo.

The facts don't look good for Rove, but the law looks even worse. The "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement" Rove signed, and relevant laws on identities and espionage, mean that

• Rove can't reveal classified information;
• no matter what the source;
• Rove can't confirm classified info;
• it's Rove's duty to know whether something is classified or not;
• his motives don't matter.

Also, it looks like Rove lied to the FBI. Prosecutors hate being lied to, and convictions for perjury and obstruction of justice are easier to get than ones for technical-sounding intelligence crimes.

More questions

What will President Bush do? He previously promised to fire anyone who leaked classified information. But when Rove's name surfaced, Bush flip-flopped. The new standard is that he will fire anyone who "committed a crime". I suspect that means he'll fire Rove only if Rove

• committed a crime;
• is convicted;
• loses all his appeals;
• fails to get a presidential pardon.

Who else broke Valerie Wilson's cover? Robert Novak attributed his information to "two senior administration officials" (my bold). So Rove has at least one co-conspirator.

The big question in Plamegate goes way past "Did Karl Rove burn a CIA agent?" The big question is a classic: "What did the President know and when did he know it?"

And finally, what will the American people do? In the Washington Post, Dan Froomkin wrote,

More than four in 10 Americans, according to a recent Zogby poll, say that if President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment.

Zogby notes

The latest poll shows more support for impeaching Bush now, than there was for impeaching Clinton when Congress did so in 1998.

Rudie can't fail

The incomparable Rude Pundit will be doing a one-man show, The Rude Pundit in The Year of Living Rudely, at the New York International Fringe Festival. See rudepunditshow.blogspot.com for details.

Somewhere, Ogden Nash is smiling

The July/August Poetry magazine is a "special humor issue." Michael Miner notes that the lead-off poem 'rhymes "quote 'em" and "scrotum."'

House Elvis

Sock it to me, baby.

What's up with the house elves in the Harry Potter books? They seem like another whimsical group of magical beings — like Gringotts' goblins, or the centaurs of the Forbidden Forest — but I think there's more to them than that.

To my American sensibilities, their enthusiastic servility sounds a lot like slaves as depicted by slavery's apologists. Since JK Rowling is a Brit, they're more likely modeled on Victorian servants, who could be more snobbish than their upstairs employers. Either way, Hermione comes off as a lame do-gooder who is utterly ignorant of those she's trying to help. And her organization, Society for the Preservation of Elvish Welfare (SPEW), has the worst acronym since Nixon's Committee to RE-Elect the President (CREEP).

I suspect both Hermione's cluelessness and her group's name are hangovers from the early books, when Hermione was much more a standard type from boys' books, the silly, know-it-all gurl. So, as Hermione has become more an individual, and less a type, maybe we'll see her become more engaged with house elves as individuals, rather than as an faceless cause. If we're lucky, Hermione's elf-rights group will get a better name.

Better Elfy Acronyms Now

ELF	Elf Liberation Front (from a chapter title in book 4)
THE	Together with House Elves
SHE	Support House Elves
HEHE	Help Enfranchise House Elves
HEAL	House Elves Are Lovely
HELP	House Elf Liberty Plan

Draco could start a counter-organization. Besides, it's more fun to think up snarky, snotty names (and for me, it's more natural).

Malfoy Is Largely Fascist

ELF	Elves Love Families
HELLO	House Elves Love Living Oppressed
HEALTH	House Elves Are Less Than Human
ELVIS	Elves Love Voldemort's Innocent Supporters
HERMIONE	House Elves Resent Mudbloods Interfering in Our Normal Endeavors

Even without Hermione's organization, house elves' contradictions have a lot of dramatic potential. They love Harry Potter, but many are devoted to Voldemort's supporters among the aristos. They're everywhere, they're pretty powerful, and yet they're almost invisible. They are ideally situated for either side to use in gathering intelligence, or even as a fifth column. Or they could develop an independent perspective, with independent actions. In our muggle world, elves have begun to assert their rights — although that seems to be centered in Iceland, so far.

I'm going to go get the book, and find out for myself. So I'll put a sock in it.

Pottering about

The Dr. Dementor Show


It seems there are dementors roaming my neighborhood. I'm still looking forward to getting the new Harry Potter book on opening night. I have a lot of questions, just like everybody else.

Some of the questions have become standard for each book in the series:

* What l'il beastie will Hagrid adopt this year?

* Who is the new Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher?

We have more information on, and more opportunity to debate, other notions:

* What word games is JK Rowling playing? I suspect a connection between Dumbledore and Voldemort. Their names are nearly anagrams, especially when you consider how pronunciation shifts: d ≈ t; v ≈ b (like in Spanish); u ≈ o (imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger's accent).

* What about Harry's romantic life? Will he end up with Hermione? Ginny? Draco?

* What big secret is being concealed from Harry this year?

* Who dies in this book? In Britain, there's been heavy betting, suspiciously centered on the town where the books were printed. In honor of this, the Grauniad ran a contest to tell the death of this character in the style of a writer other than Rowling. I especially liked the one after PG Wodehouse. Harry Flashman's account, as told to John M. Ford, is also excellent.
I would like to point out that Bloomsbury could have generated this hype and misdirection for very little money. I would also like to point out that there are an awful lot of Weaselys running around.

* And of course, what happens to Harry?

The really big question, though, is : what's up with the house elves? I'll save that for a future post.

Ho ho ho

Saucy little thing

Cookie Jill at skippytopia points out the worst car name EVAR: Laputa from Mazda. I'm sure some exec thought naming a vehicle after a floating island in a Miyazaki film was really swift, but didn't realize that it was a vulgarity in Spanish:

The "Laputa" is derived from the name of the floating island in the book Gulliver's Travels. This name was chosen to evoke images of fun, sportiness, and casualness.

Given what "La puta" means in Spanish (it's something you never call somebody's mama), some of Mazda's publicity can be read in a new light.

* Of course Laputa has an affordable price.

* Laputa is targeted at young customers, especially recent university graduates.

* Laputa provides a smooth and comfortable ride.

* And in-out easiness.

* Now Laputa comes with additional equipment.

Somehow, I don't think many consumers will buy Laputa. But it will be very popular as a rental.

Ebbers so humbled

Bernie Ebbers is going to jail for his crimes as head of Worldcom. He was behind an eleven-billion dollar fraud that resulted in the company going bankrupt. Yesterday, a federal judge sentenced him to 25 years in a low-security federal prison.

Jeralyn Merritt argues at TalkLeft that the sentence is too harsh, that a nonviolent criminal shouldn't be given what is, in effect, a life sentence (Ebbers is 63). I think he got off easy, and the sentence may not be enough to deter other corporate criminals.

Let's look at what he did. Ebbers helped destroy $120 billion in value — Worldcom's market cap peaked at $120 billion in 1999, and was down to $280 million when it filed for bankruptcy.

Maybe that's too harsh. The whole telecom sector has had problems, so it wasn't all Bernie's fault. So maybe we should just consider his accounting fraud, which was a mere $11 billion.

But even that may be too high. Criminals usually don't act for the joy of destruction (except for the pigfelcher who slashed my tires a few years ago) — they're in it for the money. So we shouldn't look at the damage Ebbers did, but what he hoped to get away with.

What did Ebbers gain? His highest net worth was about $1.4 billion. But the company had some value before he destroyed it, and its stock did, too. Let's look at his most direct illegal gains: a relatively puny $400 million in sweetheart "loans" from Worldcom's board.

So Ebbers got a year for every $16 million. That doesn't sound like a huge deterrent to me, especially since the chance of prosecution is small: Forbes calls the case "a freak".

I've said before that the Mafia is in the wrong business(es). The crooks can make more money, with less risk, by going legit.

Scott McClellan told the truth

People have been giving Scott McClellan a hard time for his apparent lies regarding Karl Rove and Valerie Plame. But McClellan told the truth, one time.

The Washington Post says

In September 2003, McClellan said that anybody found to be involved in the Plame unmasking "would no longer be in this administration."

I'll assume that Rove was one of the leakers — because everybody thinks so, and because it seems pretty darn obvious. How can we reconcile McClellan's statement with Rove's continued presence in the White House?

It's simple. McClellan's said those words in September 2003, during Bush's first term in office. "This administration" referred to Dear Leader's first administration, which ended in January, 2005. Now we're in Bush's second administration. So McClellan spoke the truth, because nobody is in Bush's first administration anymore, because that administration is over.

What McClellan said was true only in a narrow, technical sense. I suspect he meant to utter a straightforward lie, and a tiny bit of truth crept out by mistake.

This small, lonely scrap of accidental truth doesn't excuse, or even mitigate, any of the lies, misdeeds, and crimes perpetrated by McClellan and his superiors.

Shocked and appalled

Like everybody else, I was shocked and appalled by last week's London bombings. I didn't say anything because I didn't have anything new to say (Not that that's ever stopped me before.). Anyway, Billmon said it best:

The cold blooded murder of Londoners is no more horrifying than the murder or New Yorkers or Madrilenos -- or Baghdadis. But today's target still has a special hold over my emotions. If your mother tongue is English, and you loved stories as much as I did as a child, then London is the city of your imagination, of Mary Poppins and David Copperfield, of London-bridge-is-falling-down and the prince and the pauper. And if you've been there, and visited the places you dreamed about as a boy, and ridden the tube to Picadilly Circus, and climbed the stairs of the Tower of London, and strolled through Hyde Park in the morning fog, then what happened today hurts more than maybe it should, logically.

We are all New Yorkers, we are all Madrilenos, we are all Baghdadis. But I was a Londoner from the time I learned how to read. I know it shouldn't make any difference, but it does.

Supreme beings

So, Audio Goddess is going to the racetrack with some pals from work. "Do you know anything about handicapping horses?" she asks. "In Chicago, I think they use a hammer," I sez. I don't play the ponies, and it turns out my information is out of date. Your traditional blunt instrument leaves obvious marks and is too severe, besides. Nowadays, they convince recalcitrant equines with stress positions and waterboarding.

I follow politics a little more closely and feel slightly more qualified to opine on Supreme Court nominations.

Most of the field has been extensively analyzed. I strongly favor the consensus top ten picks: a combined 2/5.

Normally, I'd bet on Alberto "Abu Ghraib" Gonzales at pretty short odds. But I'm so sure a filly will win this race that I'm tempted to scratch Torture Boy. I'll leave him in, but bet him to show; to win, he's at 15/1. He's 2/1 for the Rehnquist Stakes, though.

If they hadn't just run hard races, Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown would be higher than 10/1 each.

Driftglass has a brilliant suggestion for a nominee. She's a dark horse, though: 20/1.

Russell D'Arby at The Swift Report points out that "Most Americans Back Judge Judy, Joe Brown for Supreme Court": 7/1 for Judge Judy, a combined 5/1 for all the others.

I still like my old prediction, even though it's less likely than any of the above: 1000/1.

NOTE: All odds are for entertainment purposes only and do not constitute an offer to wager. However, you are encouraged to pay Semiquark Holdings, LLC anything you like.

IKEA bookcase coffin

Done with the bookcase?

A Cøffïn from IKEA is the ideal product for the tasteful after-lifestyle. Artist Joe Scanlan tells how to build one in his book DIY, or How To Kill Yourself Anywhere in the World for Under $399. (via Boing Boing)

The book is available from Scanlan's site at $22. If you order it from the page with Scanlan's coffins, it's more artistical, though, 'cause it's $27.50.

Chronovore: Google Maps Transparencies

North Loop

Google Maps Transparencies is going to be one of the biggest time-eaters ever. Kokogiak has overlaid translucent Google maps onto satellite imagery. (via robot wisdom)

You get all the zoomy goodness of Google's satellite images. And you can adjust the transparency of the map layer. The image above is about 55% transparent. Zero transparency gives you a map square with no photo visible underneath. Plus, you can toggle between layers, so the main image can be a map with the photo transparently over it.

This is a great hack on the new Google Maps API. Besides being a fascinating way to lose hours, it will be a great tool for learning geography and cartography. The NGA will love this (if they don't already have something better).

Check it out.

Featurismo

After a holiday weekend, there's a shortage of real news, so papers get analytical and feature-y. Today's NY Times follows that pattern.

There's a little bit of breaking news. There's new religious strife in India. The Deep Impact space probe hit a comet (as planned!).

There's lots of analyis. Surprise: after Supreme Court Justices get lifetime appointments they become all independent and stuff. Developments in Iraq are causing the Pentagon to re-evaluate its strategery.

There are some good features with news pegs. Valerie Plame is, like, a real person, with something resembling a life. Tight security around the new Harry Potter includes everything short of the Cruciatus Curse.

There are a lot of pure features with little, if any, breaking news. One of them has what may be the best Times headline since their obit of the actor who played Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, which was titled "Charles Gray, 71, Cats' Friend, Bond's Enemy". My favorite headline today corrals a whole herd of contrasts and paradoxes: "Iranian Women's Dress Code Is Modest but Golf Friendly".

I can't even spell "M I T" but they still let me take the weblog survey.

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WTF Is It Now??

Declaration

For Independence Day, my reflex is to post the Declaration of Independence and weave in descriptions the many ways our current ruler is following the lead of the previous George III. But that's been done before, and done better.

Instead, here's the Declaration of Independence, translated into American by H.L. Mencken:

When things get so balled up that the people of a country have to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are on the level, and not trying to put nothing over on nobody.

All we got to say on this proposition is this: first, you and me is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better; second, nobody ain’t got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time however he likes, so long as he don’t interfere with nobody else. That any government that don’t give a man these rights ain’t worth a damn; also, people ought to choose the kind of goverment they want themselves, and nobody else ought to have no say in the matter.

Read the rest.