Two more weeks. Hang in there, babies.

• I don’t know what to make of this. The LA Times’ Robert Scheer reports that a CIA report on 9/11 that was requested by Congress is being suppressed until after the election. (LA Times; use BugMeNot.com for username and password.) The report is apparently damaging to the Bush administration because it names names and places the blame where it belongs, presumably on the shoulders of very high level officials. I’m not going to get too agitated yet because the details are still kind of skimpy at this point, but if this report does exist and if it is being suppressed by the administration, decent people ought to be outraged. The report is the result of an internal CIA investigation by an 11-member team who labored for 17 months on the project. The only reason not to release such a report would be the damage it might cause to the current government. Don’t we deserve to know the whole truth about the job this government has done before we decide whether they get to stay or go?
• You know, this is the thing with The Medium Lobster: he’s not funny. See, funny is when you flirt with the truth. When you strip the truth naked as a jaybird and make it stand on a tabletop, it’s just uncomfortable. Here, he lays bare George Bush’s certainty, and it ain’t pretty.
• Josh Marshall bangs his head against the wall at the administration’s daffy claims about our military readiness.
• Digby bangs his head against a different wall; or should we say, same wall, different place. The administration’s complete inability to look reality in the eye is New Age fundamentalism at its worst.
• For those of you with high-speed connections and thick skins, there are a couple of videos you might want to see. First, Mark at Boing Boing points us to a mashup of the President’s “funny” slideshow bit from earlier this year with scenes from the real consequences of Bush’s War. (BBC/Buzz Flash) Second, a bit of juvenile catharsis at Bush’s expense. (Thanks, Danielle, for the link.)
• Michael Bérubé updates his “What do you like about Bush?” quiz. It’s a very revealing look inside the partisan mind.
• If you’re the type that’s swayed by endorsements, you might be interested to know that Kerry’s newspaper endorsements outstrip Bush’s by 3-2. However, Bush has been endorsed by Pat Buchanan, Vladimir Putin, and now by Iran! (Obsidian Wings) Now, what about Poland?
• Are you a patriot? Take the Patriot Pledge! (via Sid’s Fishbowl)
• The Al Franken Show blog has more cuttings from Monday’s Gore speech. Full text available here. The closing’s pretty on the mark:

  There are now fifteen days left before our country makes this fateful choice – for us and the whole world. And it is particularly crucial for one more reason: The final feature of Bush’s ideology involves ducking accountability for his mistakes.

  He has neutralized the Congress by intimidating the Republican leadership and transforming them into a true rubber stamp, unlike any that has ever existed in American history.

  He has appointed right-wing judges who have helped to insulate him from accountability in the courts. And if he wins again, he will likely get to appoint up to four Supreme Court justices.

  He has ducked accountability by the press with his obsessive secrecy and refusal to conduct the public’s business openly. There is now only one center of power left in our constitution capable of at long last holding George W. Bush accountable, and it is the voters.

  There are fifteen days left before our country makes this fateful choice – for us and the whole world. Join me on November 2nd in taking our country back.

It’s late, so let me just throw a few links out there.

• The Army is sending their elite training unit into combat. Phil Carter of Intel Dump notes that this is akin to “eating your seed corn.” (Brad DeLong)
• Read John Cleese’s new joke. Read John Cleese’s new joke NOW! (William Gibson) (Apologies to Giblets)
• The Left has found its rallying cry. (Matthew Yglesias)
• I’m not sure how Catholics have managed to keep their faith with the pedophilia scandals over the past couple of years, but the ones who have are facing a bizarre choice this year. (First Draft)
• Kevin Drum makes the case for Kerry as the man to handle our foreign policy for the next four years.
• The Talent Show looks at the Enron-style accounting tricks that have been used to mischaracterize Kerry’s Senate voting record.
• Michael Bérubé has a couple of words for any progressives thinking of breaking ranks this year.
• John Kerry says that President Bush has broken at least three promises. (The Talent Show)
• The Memory Hole discovers that after the Vice Presidential debate, the White House removed a page from their website that might have been embarrassing to the Vice President.
• Speaking of Vice Presidents, Gore can still bring it. In fact, I wish he’d brought it a long time ago, but there you go. Gore today: “This was not an unfortunate misreading of the available evidence, causing a mistaken linkage between Iraq and al-Qaida,” Gore said. “This was something else—a willful choice to make a specific linkage whether evidence existed or not.” (via Talking Points Memo)

More stuff you should be reading instead of this l…. this lou…. this lovely blog…

(Whew. Change is hard.)

• I would have been prepared to believe that maybe our post-war planning was slipshod or rushed, but nonexistent!? From Warren Strobel and John Walcott, two top-notch reporters for Knight-Ridder Newspapers, we learn the following:

WASHINGTON – In March 2003, days before the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, American war planners and intelligence officials met at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to review the Bush administration’s plans to oust Saddam Hussein and implant democracy in Iraq.

Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon’s plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners’ parlance as Phase 4-C. He was uncomfortable with his material – and for good reason.

The slide said: “To Be Provided.”

A Knight Ridder review of the administration’s Iraq policy and decisions has found that it invaded Iraq without a comprehensive plan in place to secure and rebuild the country. The administration also failed to provide some 100,000 additional U.S. troops that American military commanders originally wanted to help restore order and reconstruct a country shattered by war, a brutal dictatorship and economic sanctions.

[—-snip—-]

The U.S. intelligence community had been divided about the state of Saddam’s weapons programs, but there was little disagreement among experts throughout the government that winning the peace in Iraq could be much harder than winning a war.

“The possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace in Iraq is real and serious,” warned an Army War College report that was completed in February 2003, a month before the invasion. Without an “overwhelming” effort to prepare for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the report warned: “The United States may find itself in a radically different world over the next few years, a world in which the threat of Saddam Hussein seems like a pale shadow of new problems of America’s own making.”

A half-dozen intelligence reports also warned that American troops could face significant postwar resistance. This foot-high stack of material was distributed at White House meetings of Bush’s top foreign policy advisers, but there’s no evidence that anyone ever acted on it.

“It was disseminated. And ignored,” said a former senior intelligence official.

[—-snip—-]

Gen. John Keane, the vice chief of the Army staff during the war, said some defense officials believed the exiles’ promises. “We did not see it (the insurgency) coming. And we were not properly prepared and organized to deal with it . . . . Many of us got seduced by the Iraqi exiles in terms of what the outcome would be,” Keane told a House committee in July.

Rumsfeld’s office “was utterly, arrogantly, ignorantly and negligently unprepared” for the aftermath of the war, said Larry Diamond, who was a political adviser in Baghdad from January to March of this year.

Read the whole piece here. My friend Johnny Walker Red over at Right On Red reassures me that we can still win in Iraq, and I don’t doubt it. I have faith in our military, but the civilian leadership’s appalling lack of preparation for an attack of this magnitude is shocking and utterly demoralizing. (via Atrios)

• Matthew Yglesias notes the creeping Putinization of America.
• From the unspeakably brilliant Michael Bérubé, we discover two new literary works of note: a science fiction account of “a Messianic madman [who] takes over the United States in a disputed election” (NYTimes) and an alternative history in which George W. Bush wins the presidency (It’s All One Thing). Most frightening (and oft-quoted) quote from the science fiction piece:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend—but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

• I don’t think the assault on our constitutional liberties is over—not by a long shot—but I continue to see signs that all hope is not lost. A panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals restricted officials in Columbus, Georgia—in absence of a specific threat—from setting up metal detectors at a planned protest. (via Boing Boing) The court decision read in part:

“We cannot simply suspend or restrict civil liberties until the War of Terror is over, because the War on Terror is unlikely ever to be truly over,” Judge Gerald Tjoflat wrote for the three-member court. “September 11, 2001, already a day of immeasurable tragedy, cannot be the day liberty perished in this country.”

• In reflecting on the New York Times’ endorsement of Kerry for President, Athenae captures the sentiment perfectly. We might have sailed great oceans with the emotion and sentiment of 9/11 at our backs. Instead, we stayed in port and manned the guns. (First Draft)
• Also at First Draft, Holden notes that, no, our president did not supply the troops with everything they needed.
• Is this my country? Is this who we are… unrepentant torturers? (NYT, reg req’d)
• Fred at A VC gets his back up when Frank Baranko says “Almost nobody reads blogs.” And with good reason. After all, 8 million nobodies can’t be nobody.
• Adam Felber goes all Jon Stewart on the media’s collective ass.

Jon Stewart rocks! Jon Stewart is my new personal god. I will build a shrine to Jon Stewart and worship at his altar and sacrifice goats and rubber chickens and drink their blood.

God, I wish I had seen Crossfire today. Jon Stewart was the guest, and he basically told Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala what a lot of us have been feeling for a long time: that these shows are theatre, they’re put-ons, and they are doing an immense disservice to political discourse in America. I’ve stopped watching most news shows because they are uninformative and unenlightening and, in my opinion, bent on making their viewers less clued in than if they never watched any news at all. I’ve given up hope that it’s going to get better, but I wonder if Stewart’s willingness to speak up will encourage others to do the same. Maybe it’ll just draw some attention to the preposterous beast that modern television journalism has become. We can hope.

The Poor Man has a transcript, and one of his commenters posted an edited video of the segment.

There was also coverage at Wonkette and at Hullabaloo.

Jon, dude… I’ll be buying your book, this weekend. Least I can do.

UPDATE: Yes! There’s a Bittorrent, courtesy of Boing Boing.

Lots of juicy stuff today that you should be reading instead of this lousy blog…

• First of all, can I get some love from my man Jon Stewart? M’boy’s all over the Novak thang. (via First Draft) Of course, that’s not a surprise, as it was Stewart who coined my favorite Novak nickname: Douchebag of Liberty!

• First Draft also has this about a platoon in Iraq that’s been arrested for refusing to go on what they considered to be a suicide mission. (Insignifica: The justice professor quoted in the article is from the tiny college my dad used to work for in my hometown.)

• Lots from Josh Marshall about Republican dirty campaign tricks. Just go to Talking Points Memo and start reading.

• Sid’s Fishbowl has more on the Republican dirty campaign tricks (soon to be a feature on David Letterman!). At the end of his post he quotes from an unnerving PressThink piece about Sinclair Broadcasting, the gaggle of wingnuts who are preparing to broadcast an anti-Kerry propaganda piece the week before the election. In it, Jay Rosen asks the questionm “Is Sinclair a broadcasting empire getting what it needs from politics, or an ideological empire getting what it needs from broadcasting, possibly on the way to some larger and more potent combination?” In other words, what if Sinclair isn’t in it for the money? What if they’re willing to take heavy losses in order to promote their ideological agenda? Free market forces have worked in the past to keep broadcasters fair and honest, but what if those forces all of a sudden weren’t in play?

• Speaking of Sinclair and Republican dirty campaign tricks (soon to be a Penn & Teller HBO special), Kevin Drum has the scoop on the Nightline reporters that went to the village in Vietnam where John Kerry engaged in the action that earned him his Silver Star. I don’t want to spoil his post, but you should read it to find out what this has to do with Sinclair and the Swift Boat Vets and why Drum concludes: “What a revolting bunch of men. What a disgusting, repellent, sleazy operation.”

• Via Boing Boing, we find this kick-ass send up of the School House Rock animations revealing the greatest dirty political trick of all: establishing a government.

• William Gibson is blogging again, and his first post illuminates something about what seems to paralyze many Americans: we can’t come to grips with the fact that some of our leaders don’t share our values and don’t have our best interests at heart.

• Local Boy Ian Spiers just pointed to an article that claims that Bob Barr is now a card-carrying member of the ACLU. Apparently he joined because he felt the Patriot Act went too far. Brain… melting…

Thanks to Sid the Fish for the shout out. Now, here’s more stuff you should be reading instead of this lousy blog…

• Best debate wrap-up: Michael Bérubé swings a mean axe.

• First Draft notes a David Hackworth piece on how the military flexes its muscles to punish dissent. I think I understand why the military takes this hard line, but doesn’t truth outrank discipline?

• Damn. Seems like some Republicans have been… I was going to say naughty, but somehow election fraud goes way beyond naughty and into high crimes territory. Sid the Fish has the short story and a couple of links. Josh Marshall is on the case, too (you may have to scroll down a bit).

• The Fish also points us to this great explanation of Kerry’s health care plan. Any plan, big or small, will be subject to the Law of Unintended Consequences, but this plan does seem to have a lot going for it.

• I’m not operating with a lot of capital these days, but the Iraq War Vets at Operation Truth are going to get a few shekels. (Via Hullabaloo)

• Digby’s also got the question that I keep asking myself: How do the Republicans keep getting away with it?

• Wasn’t the debate in Arizona? How come Bush didn’t mention the hydrogen powered car that these Arizona high school students built? (BoingBoing) After all, hydrogen fuel was his initiative. (WhiteHouse.gov) Was it maybe because the initiative was a brilliant judo throw meant to benefit the oil industry? (The Angry Liberal)

• Blogcritics has the seven rules for How to Identify Bad Science. Here’s a game: Alter the following to apply to Bad Politics:

1. The discoverer pitches directly to the media
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.
7. he discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.

More stuff you should be reading instead of this lousy blog…

• Yeah. James Wolcott says what I would’ve said if I was a smarter, better writer: George W. Bush is an “empty volcano,” yet no one in the mainstream media will call him on his lack of gravitas. You know, if you look at the way people talk when they criticize Bush, they don’t really criticize Bush. They criticize Karl Rove. It is virtually universally understood that Rove is the puppet master. Yet, like a good puppeteer, the audience is still transfixed by the illusion. We end up looking at the talking head, and paying no attention to the man behind the curtain.

• Every time I read about the Valerie Plame situation, I have difficulty making it through a paragraph without drifting off into violent fantasies involving Robert Novak and a red-hot poker. Michael Kinsley’s op-ed in today’s LA Times makes a good argument that the absolute right to protect anonymous sources should be attenuated by socially-responsible exceptions. However, why don’t I ever hear anyone questioning Robert Novak’s initial decision to report the leak in the first place? Novak knew that he was exposing a CIA agent, he knew that he was endangering her life and the lives of her sources, and he knew that he was abetting an act of revenge by the administration. In my book, that makes him a traitor to his country. Why isn’t he arrested for writing that column?

• Sisyphus Shrugged has a related comment. (via Eschaton)

• There’s a devastating article in the Washington Post today (use BugMeNot.com to get a username and password), quoting some mighty disgruntled and pessimistic members of a Marine platoon based in Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad. Quite a contrast from the current administration’s attempts to portray the situation as “getting better.” Of course, the article doesn’t claim to represent the feelings of the entire military, but it does seem to jibe with other reports coming out of the country via alternative channels.

• I didn’t quite understand Bush’s remark in the last debate about the Dred Scott case, but Brad DeLong catches the explanation. Michael Bérubé is on the case, as well. Read a few of the Supreme Court case synopses he links to (they’re short) and tell me if they don’t blow the “strict constructionist” argument right out of the water.

• Finally, I’ve only gotten about a third to a half the way through this article at the LA Times, but I understand why Kevin Drum thinks it’s an important read. Take a look at If America is Richer, Why are Its Families So Much Less Secure.

Oh, my poor kittycat needed to have an operation this week. I’m writing this from my bathroom, where I’m baby-sitting him while he’s convalescing. The upside is that it’s given me a chance to catch up a bit on the news.

Like others have said, I thought last night was pretty much a draw as far as the actual debate performance—ie, the “externals.” Bush and Kerry both came out swinging, and I was really pleased to see Kerry remain firm and strong and not try to be “likeable.” But, to my mind, Kerry’s still got the edge by dint of his grasp of issues and the fact that he seems more dialed in to reality as we know it. But then, I’m a Kerry man.

Now, here’s more stuff you should be reading instead of this lousy blog…

• Apparently, Bush really does have an alternate information stream available.


• Bush fails the Global Test. (Eschaton)


• My favorite debate coverage, as always, comes via Fafblog.


• Yowtch. Retired Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy is embarrassed by her commander in chief. (First Draft)


• Does Bush have a plan for this economy? Look at these graphs and you tell me. (The Poor Man)

Light blogging continues. Enjoy the weekend, y’all.

Been too busy to read the news much the past few days. I’m trying to catch up, but it might be a day or two before I get back to blogging regularly. Here’s a post for you to read, if you must: Athenae bitch-slaps the ostriches. (First Draft)

On a somber note, I would like to mark the passing of Janet Leigh. For several years I worked at Universal Studios Florida, and I had the pleasure of performing in the Alfred Hitchcock tribute show (now closed, alas). The show recreated the shower scene from Psycho, with a Janet Leigh stand-in in a body suit. Mrs. Leigh showed up to do publicity when the venue opened in 1990 (-ish) and, by all accounts from my fellow cast members who were there at the time, was warm, gracious, and charming. If you get a chance, check out some of her films from Netflix. Besides Psycho, you can see Janet in The [original] Manchurian Candidate, Touch of Evil, and Bye, Bye Birdie.

Watched the debates. Got some thoughts:

• Josh Marshall and I had the same thought:

For the first ten minutes or so, my pained reaction was, “Where did we get these two guys?”

I agree with the rest of his post on this, too, though. Kerry settled down and looked very forceful and convincing, while Bush looked weak and fumbling. In the back of my mind, though, I kept thinking that neither candidate was reaching voters on the other side. Kerry might have picked up some undecideds, but I don’t think he turned any Bush supporters.

• I’m with Digby on this one:

Bush keeps saying that changing position on Iraq is a sign of weakness. But, anyone can understand that when things are hurtling out of control you should change direction. Bush is incapable of doing this because he has staked his presidency on a war he wanted to fight instead of the war we needed to fight.

What’s with this idea that being unwavering in your commitment means you don’t ever change your mind? Isn’t changing your mind in response to a changing situation what our military, sports, and business strategies are all inherently based on? I mean, if running backs followed this principle, Barry Sanders would’ve been a lousy running back. A ball carrier shifts, shuffles, and jukes in order to stay one step ahead of his opponents. A fighter pilot changes speed and direction in order to elude an enemy. A business might change marketing or product delivery in response to new information about what their customers want. If any of them were as bullheadedly stubborn in pursuing their initial strategy as this administration has been, they’d be dead – either literally or figuratively. Can’t Bush’s supporters see that?

• A member of the Bush campaign—yes, that’s the Bush campaign, not the Bush administration—apparently helped Iyad Allawi write the speech he delivered before Congress a couple of days ago. (Washington Post, via Talking Points Memo.)

• Perhaps this is the reason why Kerry forgot to list Poland as part of our Iraq coalition. (DeLong)