Either Halliburton misplaced a decimal point or getting around in Iraq is a bit more difficult than the administration would have one believe. . . . → Read More: Halliburton takes a 16,750% markup for LPG deliveries in Iraq
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Modern conservatives can’t seem to decide whether they most admire Mao or Osama. On the one hand, Billmon (via Atrios) has demonstrated an eerily similarity between the Cultural Revolution and today’s right in their attack on intellectuals in the Academy. On the other hand, Volokh (via Digby) apparently wants to justify the use . . . → Read More: American Taliban James Wolcott tears off a multi-contextual rant that begins with the increasingly bizarre hysteria surrounding the Schiavo case—Congress has announced an agreement on a supposedly one-time exception allowing Schiavo’s parents to appeal directly to the federal courts to have Schiavo’s feeding tube reinserted—and ends with the assassination of the American Dream, stopping along the way to trash the dance of the press with religious hypocrites. . . . → Read More: The case against optimism The right has a network of think tanks providing expert commentary for the press (in which I include television ‘”news”) and a farm system producing an endless stream of progressively more reactionary political candidates and operatives. They worked hard to get where they are. But most people still don’t embrace the far right conceptually: polls inevitably show respondents more supportive of progressive and socially supportive goals rather than the reactionary, punitive ones of the right. We, liberals, can take advantage of that sense of progressive propriety if we put ourselves in the presence of the press and legitimate it by becoming their colleagues, in some fashion, rather than their removed opponents. . . . → Read More: Left behind the press If you’ve ever watched a White House briefing or presidential news conference and thought, “Damn, I wish they’d ask him about …,” now’s your chance. . . . → Read More: Ask the White House I have to confess that I didn’t think there could really be more than one interpretation of the ascension to World Bank president by Paul Wolfowitz, but there are. Several, in fact, if you look at the comments upon the post linked above. Daniel Drenzer, whom I believe to be the token moderate among the advertised at-home bloggers taking part in in the Brookings Institution’s panel discussion on “The Imp@ct of the New Medi@,” an inter@ctive di$cu$$ion, says he thinks that the exit of the embarassing Doug Feith from the Pentagon, along with the appointment of John Bolton to the UN and Wolfowitz to the World Bank, reflects the waning influence of the Trotskyite Right in the administration. No neocon worth their salt would want Bolton at the UN of Wolfowitz at the Bank — because neocons don’t believe these institutions are particularly relevant. What matters is who is ruling the roost inside the beltway. And in DC, the balance of power has shifted to State — and the people that are there have signaled a willingness to listen to the Europeans. Compared to what they faced during the Powell/Rumsfeld wars, this is a much more hospitable environment for European diplomats. This is a country in which we can’t figure out a way to get everyone covered by some form of health care but we can figure out a way to make sure that the people who get crushed by medical bills incurred because they didn’t have health insurance, can’t wiggle out from under the rock. The ratio of suicide to bankruptcy is about to take a jump. Next step, debtors prisons. Hey, free health care! For now, anyway. . . . → Read More: Buy Tivo. Boycott everyone. Screw the networks. Are you objectively pro-Auschwitz? I’m writing this in the basement of the White House, at an empty desk in the warren of cubbyholes used by members of the press in between events upstairs in the briefing room. I arrived shortly after 9 am, expecting to attend the scheduled 9:30 “gaggle” and then the televised 12:30 briefing with Scott . . . → Read More: BTC News gets within spitting distance of the President BTC News will have a representative at one or two of the White House press gaggles and briefings this week. We’re looking for succinct, documentable questions to ask the press secretary, assuming we get the opportunity. If you have anything you’d like us to ask, leave it in the comments. Sample: On February 27 . . . → Read More: Ask the White House |
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Sisatani for Saint; Rummy blames the Turks
Rumsfeld also came up with the funniest sick line of the day when he observed that had the US put sufficient troops in the country to secure it and avoid the chaos following the invasion, Iraqis would have viewed the troops as occupiers rather than liberators. . . . → Read More: Sisatani for Saint; Rummy blames the Turks