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Another great forward from Sabine...

I've got a bad feeling about this...

I'm generally a pretty optimistic guy, and there's a general logic to that attitude:  Things have pretty much always looked bad to some degree, yet things have, generally,  gotten better over time.  So you shut your eyes and you keep on walking and you whistle past the graveyard and then, you know -- the sun comes out.

But now a-days you look around, you do the math, and you realize: Holy shit, dude -- are we fucked?

I get the sense that this is one of those moments when things are much worse than "they" are letting on. Which makes me think: We need an "F-Scale."  Like, if stuff is just sorta screwed up, but things generally work and you can pretty much expect that you're going to be able to keep your job and your house and suicide bombers aren't going to move in next door and really downgrade your property values, that would be F-1.

And then an F-10 would be economic depression, the destruction of the Bill of Rights, civil war and environmental collapse. And so on.

So where does that put us? Because when the Feds are bailing out the banks and the President is giving the economy a "You're doin' a heckuva job, Brownie" pep-talk, and currency converters in Amsterdam stop exchanging dollars because their value is dropping so fast, that's got to be like an F-7.

And when we're five years into a botched, brutal war and still hoping that the latest strategy is someday going to give the Iraqis a chance to build a society that's stable enough to do simple shit like, say, provide electrical power to most of the grid for most of the day, that's at LEAST an F-8.

And then we've got a political campaign where the entire focus of the past few days has been a concerted, deliberate attempt to destroy an inspiring presidential candidate by endlessly looping out-of-context statements by his preacher?  At essentially the same time that the President of the United States of America is openly advocating TORTURE? And the media doesn't even think the torture veto is really all that NEWSWORTHY?

Where's the F-scale on THAT?

Answers, please, on a post card...

Iran, I-exaggerate?

I have to admit: My reactions when I saw the headline-alert Tweet announcing the "Iranian naval showdown" story were not pleasant. My first thought was that our government was hyping whatever happened for political reasons.  My second thought was that the News Lords were going to uncritically pound that hype right into the national consciousness.

I don't like either thought, but that's where I find myself today. The federal government says something, and I have to discipline my reaction to make sure that I at least give it the benefit of the doubt. I wasn't this way before 2004, but that where I am now, and it's based on experience, not ideology. The Bush  administration certainly didn't invent politicized bullshit (Gulf of Tonkin, anyone?), it's just that ... great Gawd, there's just so much of it, and the skeptical reporting is just so slow to catch up that it's practically irrelevant.

Benazir Bhutto

Let's be clear: Bhutto was no saint, even though she played one on TV recently. And yes, her return to Pakistan under threat of almost certain death was an act of great courage.

But the tragedy here isn't just personal. This is a global disaster. Iraq is a mess and Iran is a potential threat, but Pakistan is an enormous country with a polarized population that could either grow into a stable democracy or shake itself to death. And if Pakistan -- a nuclear power -- falls apart and turns hostile to the U.S., well...

Let's just hope that doesn't happen.

Bad credit

If you've been rabidly keeping up with the pending mortgage crisis in the U.S. and its global economic consequences, good for you.  I've been out on the town with princesses.

However, if you would like a lovely explanation of just what the hell the "credit crunch" is and why people everywhere are aflutter about looming defaults of thousands of borrowers, visit one of the top sites for U.S. news coverage: the BBC.

This little Q&A lays out nicely what the problem is and why it matters.  It's bizness news in English (no pun intended) for those who would like to be economically literate, but aren't masochistic enough to have an MBA. It's from September, but there are lots of links to news stories on the site if you'd like to know more.

Lunch hour report: Hersh on Iran NIE

(Editor's note) Say what you want about reporter Sy Hersh, but remember this: History gets the last word. His coverage of the Bush Administration's wars just keeps on getting confirmed -- months, even years later, yes, but that's the way things go in the world.

So what does Hersh have to say about the NIE on Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities? Here's a transcript of what he had to say to Wolf Blitzer on CNN last night (-dc)...

Hersh: J'accuse

Have you heard about Seymour Hersh's interview with Major General Antonio Taguba yet? I heard about it today... but not from reading a newspaper.

"There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff (the explicit images) was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this."

That's the two-star general who was tasked with investigating the program of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib, the same man who was forced into retirement this year. Hersh hit the talking-head circuit last night to promote it. On what planet is this not front-page news? Everywhere?

Avigdor Lieberman

If there's a benefit to the shit-storm over Ben Heine's dairies and cartoons at Daily KOS, it's got to be this: I finally heard the name Avigdor Lieberman. 

Holy crap.

I should read more.

Iraq: Victory for nobody?

As much as I'd like to read Stratfor's 2007 Annual Forecast, I just can't come up with the $399 to buy a copy right now. However, I thought some of you might be interested in the company's sales pitch summary of some of its key preditions:

• Russia and China will rank at least as high in importance as the U.S. conflicts in the Muslim world.
• The United States and Iran are blocking each other's ambitions in Iraq. This will open new possibilities for political arrangements. The war in Iraq will not end in victory for anyone. That will become the basis of all negotiations.
• The United States is the world's leading power. When it moves toward political paralysis, others grow bolder. Aggressiveness will continue from Venezuela to Asia. But the most important moves will come from Russia and China.

Rocks in the river

A long essay on terrorism, American policy, and whitewater canoeing...

As If It Isn't a Choice

This morning, after standing in the rain for 15 minutes, I boarded the Metro Nashville Bus which I take to work each morning (my employer, Vanderbilt University, generously provides free boarding for all employees on the entire Metro system).  I noticed, as I always do when it rains, that the bus was at about 75% of its normal capacity.  I've always wondered about this.  As naive as I am sometimes, I asked the driver why the bus was so relatively empty on rainy days.  "For the most part," he says, "the people riding today have no choice.  They'd drive if they had cars rather than stand in the rain.  You've got a choice, today, you drive."

This concerns me.  Not greatly perhaps but it does concern me.  While I'm certainly not "Mr. Green" by any means, and while one could easily point fingers at me as well, I started riding the bus because I'm not sure we do have a choice.  Whether you're concerned about the damage done by auto exhaust (and this isn't even something I'll debate), or you're concerned about the ongoing global impact of our "reliance on" oil, I'm not sure you should be acting as if you do have a choice.  No one likes standing in the rain, no one likes waiting to move, no one likes the inconvenient route buses often take, but some people take mass transit because they don't have other transport.  If the rest of us would begin to really believe that perhaps we shouldn't have a choice . . . . that in the long run we don't have a choice, maybe our behavior would change.  Maybe but doubtful.

The Importance of Being Irwin

I'm only planning on writing about this topic once, as it's already beginning to wear thin, and this is only day two.

I was introduced to The Crocodile Hunter several years ago by my Bad Movie Night group of friends.  Generally it was what we watched when we failed to find a movie bad enough to live up to our freakishly bad expectations. 

I realized this week that I just presume anything that those particular people are fans of is relatively unknown to the rest of creation, from the science-fiction series Lexx to the live-action superhero British movie musical The Return of Captain Invincible (which, contrary to its name, is not a sequel).  That Steve Irwin's death was the top story on cnn.com astounded me.  That television has been fascinated by this story like a royal car wreck for the last day is just shy of incomprehensible.  He's in danger of becoming another media Princess Di, only with spiders instead of landmine victims, and with far less fashion sense.

Ok, the guy has 200,000,000 viewers.  (Or, to put it another way, ten times the population of Australia.)  So did Baywatch, but no one's going to throw a state funeral if David Hasselhoff dies.  For that matter, we wouldn't make this big a deal about things if it was Tom Cruise who had died.

So what is it about Steve Irwin that has so fascinated us?  Is it the Jackass-like quality of some of his stunts?  That may make him entertaining to some, but it doesn't make him worthy of this commemoration.  Is it his fervent conservationism?  This country has never seemed particularly interested in the topic, other than in saving the occasional owl.  (To paraphrase one associate of Irwin's: anyone can convince people to save koala bears.  Steve took up saving spiders and crocodiles and other nasties that people generally think aren't worth saving.)

Is it his everyman language?  Maybe getting closer, but I think that ultimately stemmed from his refreshing lack of phoniness.  As crazy as he was on camera, he was just as crazy off camera.  The persona we all saw was really him.  He wasn't putting on a show: he really was that passionate, and that crazy, about wildlife.  And while he made pleas impassioned to the point of corniness, he didn't lecture and he didn't often point fingers.  Certain species are dying because their habitats are being destroyed, he would say, not that mean, capitalist developers were callously destroying their homes.  He talked a lot about respect for animals, while avoiding specifically addressing  "animal rights."  I think in that way he made conservation palatable for a lot of people nervous about being associated with radical, tree-hugging members of PETA.

Did I approve of his methods?  Not always.  He took risks that were not necessary.  You have, by now, no doubt seen a couple dozen clips on CNN of him getting bit in the face by snakes.  That doesn't have to happen.  My high school had a program where elementary kids came as field trips to learn about a variety of animals which high schoolers handled.  As a child I attended those field trips.  As a teen I was one of those animal handlers, and the main attraction was a couple boas and pythons that we would bring out draped around our necks that the children could pet.  Never got bit.  No one I knew got bit.  Why?  Because we didn't wave them around like yo-yos.

On the other hand, Steve never EVER blamed the animals.  When he got bit, it was his fault.  (Damn right.)  Nor did he ever tell his audience that these animals were just harmless, misunderstood creatures wanting a cuddle.  These are dangerous animals, neither pets nor toys.  While many of these animals are not aggressive or wishing to cause harm (like, ironically, stingrays), they still require respect or people and animals both can get hurt.  And, of course, there's the crocs, who clearly always want a piece of that crazy zookeeper dancing around their pens.

Reading Thomas E. Ricks

Here's some light beach reading for August:

That summer (2002) many generals had three major concerns about invading Iraq: the possibility of Saddam's using weapons of mass destruction, the dangers of becoming enmeshed in urban warfare, and the worry that a postwar occupation could be costly especially if the United States had to put in thousands of troops to hold the country together. "I can't tell you how many senior officers said to me, "What in the hell are we doing?" recalled Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, who had been the J-3, or director of operations on the Joint Staff, since October 2000. In that key job he oversaw the daily employment of U.S. forces around the globe, and so was the link between the Pentagon and senior American commanders in the field. Those top officers and their staffs were coming back to Newbold. "They just didn't  understand," he recalled. "'Why Iraq? Why now?'" They were especially worried about undercutting the counteroffensive against al Qaeda: "All of us understood the fight was against the terrorists, and we were willing to do anything in that regards -- so, 'Why are we diverting assets and attention?'"

Yet for all those doubts, only one top officer really deeply objected to the entire war plan. That was Newbold, who as the Joint Staff's director of operations was aware of almost everything of significance going on in the U.S. military, and to the classified information it was receiving.

--Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Chapter 3, "This Changes Everything: The Aftermath of 9/11," page 40. Published on July 25, Fiasco is the No. 1 bestseller at Amazon.com.

Chinese blogger petition

Found over at Old Controller:

There's a Chinese filmmaker/blogger/government critic named Hao Wu who has been imprisoned, without charges, since Feb. 22.

There's also a petition you can sign to help focus attention on his case. And if you've got a blog, and if you've got readers, and if they've got blogs, well ... that's another way you can help focus attention on his case (hint, hint).

Dan's Wednesday links, etc. (2.22)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOMMY! Yes, it's my mother's birthday. Know why I know? Because my computer tells me so. Actually, it reminded me on Monday, and I quickly e-mailed a Happy Birthday song to my mommy and started writing the wrong dates on all my stuff. Why? Because I'm a dork.

Anyway, happy birthday mom. You raised a dork, but the dork loves you.

SPEAKING OF DORKS: Two incongruent things crossed my fleeting attention-span yesterday -- a Zogby poll that shows President Bush's approval rating still stuck at 40 percent and a PressThink thread that suggests a healthy chunk of that 40 percent is convinced that this is the media's fault.

Yet judging by what media credibility polls I can find, the President's approval rating generally appears to be running ahead of the public's trust in the news media.  At what point do you just figure that people don't like the Bush crew because, after five years of watching these guys in action, they've just kinda gotten to know them?

Or do you just blame Jon Stewart?

STEP AWAY FROM THE DORK: How bad is it for Bush? Well, don't look now, but some of our local conservatives are actually distancing themselves from White House policies. This is a trend we first noticed late last year when some out-of-town friends (FOX viewers, Bush voters) came to visit and summed up their feelings thusly: "They're all bad."   

Bill Frist tried the maneuver yesterday, promising a bill to overturn the White House-backed U.A.E. ports deal that would put an Arab company in charge of several big U.S. ports. I offer no opinion on the deal itself, but I want to make this point: When a politics-first administration backs a deal this stunningly tin-earred, I suspect that there's more in play than mere crony capitalism. I won't be surprised if turns out there's crony capitalism involved, but this just smacks of secret deals, blackmail and Spookworld.

BIZARRO WORLD: A University of South Carolina study published on Tuesday found that roughly 70 percent of Charlestonians would support a ban on indoor smoking in most public places -- a finding that's sure to fuel another push for a ban on smoking in downtown dining establishments.

For the record: I am an ex-smoker (or, if I use the language of addiction, a recovering smoker). I dislike the smell, and don't particularly care to be around it. I am woefully apologetic to all the people I ever subjected to the second-hand effects of my 20-plus-year former habit.

So I'm not defending my narrow interest when I make this statement: THIS IS NO PLACE FOR GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION. If a private restaurant thinks that the majority of its patrons would appreciate a smoke-free environment, a private restaurant can simply ban smoking. As so many have.

By modern American standards, I am a defiant liberal living in a conservative, Red-State, safe GOP Congressional district. So how does it happen that 70 percent of my supposedly conservative neighbors want a "nanny state" smoking ban, while I'm wandering around preaching "get the government out of our private liberties?

I don't get it. I really don't.

ABORTION: Well, that didn't take long. The Roberts Court will take a look at the constitutionality of a ban on "late-term" or "partial birth" abortions (take your pick of names, partisans).

Anyway, here's the deal, Democrats: The Supreme Court is no longer your ally, so if you want to protect women's reproductive rights, you're going to have to pick your battles now. And this ain't it.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans are willing or eager to place some restrictions on these rare (and, quite frankly, disturbing) abortions. Eighty-six percent oppose the abortion of pregnancies that are more than six months along. No matter how you look at this, it's a political loser.

Meanwhile, a working majority of Americans favor of abortion rights in general. If you're among that group, then protect that that fragile coalition. Tend it.  Grow it.

The working hypothesis for women's rights advocates has long been the slippery-slope model. Restricting abortion rights in any way was a slippery slope toward the undoing of Roe v. Wade. Where has that gotten us? People who should be on our side now view the pro-life movement as extremists and warm to the arguments of those who want to put the church in charge of your bodies.

Yes, it's a polarized age. Yes, Roe v. Wade is probably toast anyway. Yes yes yes.

But politics is compromise. The way to safeguard a woman's right to choose is to willingly deal with the areas in which that right enters into the gray areas of ethics. Every single right you can imagine eventually runs into the gray -- why is it that we must pretend that abortion is somehow different?

Dan's Friday links, etc. (2.10)

NEWSFLASH! ONE WEEK OF ROCKETBOOM ADS SELLS FOR $40K ON eBAY: And the winning advertiser is someone named Starfinder5, whose bid bested a $31,200 offer by an unknown eBay nube called 6520brad. There were 105 bids.

We'll expect detail in today's episode, but for those of us wondering how these new media forms are going to shake out, this bears watching.

RANDOM FIND: I have found the Greatest Book Critic Writing in The English Language Today, and his name is Noel Hurley.

WHICH VIBRATOR IS RIGHT FOR YOU? Via Alternet: "Kat's on-the-job training had taught her a trick to determine which vibrator might be right for you: Touch it to the tip of your nose. It's also right there on Sue Johanson's website, episode #036: Try the nose test -- if it makes you jerk your head back, these vibration are too strong for your genitals." (Freelance writer Liz Langley)

AFRICA TOO WEAK TO FIGHT H5N1 (BBC): A reminder that bird flu doesn't have to turn into a human pandemic to have profound effects:

Officials at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) say Africa's monitoring systems simply are not adequate to cope effectively with outbreaks... "The reason we've been so concerned is that veterinary systems throughout Africa are weak," said Samuel Jutzi, director of the FAO's Animal Production and Health Division.

WE'RE NOT THE ONLY ONES TALKING ABOUT CARTOONS: Via Steve Outing's E-Media Tidbits (Poynter Online), the CEO of Topix.net blogs about what happens when they put a geo-locator on the IP addresses of commenters on the Danish cartoons controversy. Answer: They're coming from around the world.

And here's George Friedman writing in Tuesday's Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report:

The explosion in the Muslim world over the publication of 12 cartoons by a minor Danish newspaper -- cartoons that first appeared back in September -- has, remarkably, redefined the geopolitical matrix of the U.S.-jihadist war. Or, to be more precise, it has set in motion something that appears to be redefining that matrix. We do not mean here simply a clash of civilizations, although that is undoubtedly part of it. Rather, we mean that alignments within the Islamic world and within the West appear to be in flux in some very important ways.

SPEAKING OF CARTOONS: These days its not uncommon for more than half of our daily traffic to be people who come to Xark via image search engines. The most popular image? World's Ugliest Dog. Second most popular? "Growing Up Hippie No. 4." Probably a dozen people a day download this image.

For the record, there are actually only three published cartoons in the "Growing Up Hippie in the 1970s" series (No. 5 here). And the first one was No. 3. I never drew a No. 1 or a No. 2. Why? Because I'm just not hung up on that whole consecutive order thing. I grew up hippie, remember? Anyway, traffic counts seem to suggest I should write less and draw more, particularly if I'm drawing cartoons that have popular image search terms in the filename.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: WaPo reports that what Gonzales told the Senate about the secret eavesdropping program ain't what the White House told the FISA judges. Can't say I'm surprised at this point. By the way, was anyone else unimpressed by Bush's non-informative claim (well, actually, it's not even that -- more of a nudge-wink inference) that his illegal spying program somehow thwarted shoe-bombers from stealing a plane and flying it into some building out in Los Angeles? Excuse me, but how do you hijack a plane, post-9/11, with a shoe bomb? "OK, let me into the cockpit, so I can crash the plane and kill all of you, or I will make my shoe explode, and maybe put somebody's eye out. Allah akbah!" It's just not very convincing.

WELL, DUH: Newsflash (National Journal): "Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been 'authorized' by Cheney and other White House 'superiors' in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records."

CHUCK NORRIS: The whole Chuck Norris meme is now officially dead, according to our oldest son, a junior in high school. Apparently it's just soooo December 2005. So throw out your Bustedtees "Hero" shirts and try to keep up. (Actually, I don't care -- I'm far too old to be hip, and I still think the "Young Chuck Norris" music video is pretty funny).

Dan's Wednesday links, etc. (2.1)

STATE OF THE ONION: Did you watch Bush last night? We didn't -- went out and supported the US economy by purchasing a sofa instead. For coverage of the event, I turned, as always, to America's No. 1 weekly news source: My ass.

Just kidding. I pulled up The Onion and read its lead story:  "President Creates Cabinet Level Position to Coordinate Scandals."

"Tonight, by executive order, I am creating a permanent department with a vital mission: to ensure that the political scandals, underhanded dealings, and outright criminal activities of this administration are handled in a professional and orderly fashion," Bush said.

The centerpiece of Bush's plan is the Department Of Corruption, Bribery, And Incompetence, which will centralize duties now dispersed throughout the entire D.C.-area political establishment.

THE STATE OF THE UNION IS AWFUL: