Just the flu

Well, I think I have survived.
On Friday morning, I woke up sick, sick, sick, with a persistent pain in my chest, spasms and impossible to keep anything down, even water. But over the course of the day it got better. Then last night it struck again, such pain I couldn't lie down or sleep, finally dozed a bit between 4 to 6, then violently ill again. So I went to see the doctor, and ended up spending the day in emergency getting checked for gall bladder attack. Luckily, it turned out that I did not have gallstones, just some kind of infection that led to this awful flu. And now finally the pain has faded -- I can breathlessly report that I can drink gingerale now, and I even had a cup of coffee!
The writer Jessamyn West talked about how endlessly fascinated we are with our own pain, how we calibrate it and, as it begins to lift, we anxiously poke at it "this hurt five minutes ago, does it still hurt now?" She was plagued by migraines, and she wrote about how the world disappeared as she dealt with the pain, then it gradually resumed focus and meaning as the pain went away. "The sick soon come to understand that they live in a different world from that of the well and that the two cannot communicate."

Kicking it down the road

One Friedman Unit after another.
Did someone say something about September being some sort of deadline for "progress" in Iraq? Why, perish the thought!
They're now kicking the Iraq "deadline" to 2008! Here's Bill Kristol this morning:

. . . Petraeus and Odierno assume that if they can sustain the surge through the beginning of 2008, at that point, maybe there will be enough Iraqi forces that we can begin to drawdown.

Or maybe they meant September, 2008 all along? Yeah, that's right...

Great line of the day

From Atrios:

A very frustrating thing over the past few years has been our elite leaders' failure to understand what was going on in Iraq. Bush had declared over and over again that leaving was losing, and it was crystal clear that Iraq was a complete disaster, yet they still clung to the belief that either the pony would appear or that Republicans would force George Bush to start getting out. Neither has happened, neither is going to happen, and those are perfectly obvious things to this dirty fucking hippie.

It is increasingly bizarre to see blogosphere debates like this one over how us Librulls will defend ourselves in the future for the disasters which will occur when the Democrats force Bush to leave Iraq precipitously.
The disasters which will occur because Bush stays don't seem to be discussed: war between Iran and Israel; war between the US and Iran; deaths of millions of Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria; destruction of the US fleet and/or US army by Iran's airforce; oil going to $150 a barrel; Kurds declaring independence and the Turks invading; Saudi Arabia invading southern Iraq; all of the above ...
And in the end of course, Republicans will blame all these on the Democrats, because after all, the Dems should have forced Bush to leave before all these disasters occurred ...

First time

..by which I mean, the first time somebody said something that implied you were "old".
Just heard from my daughter, who went to a huge rave in Toronto last weekend. She told some teenager there that she was 26, and this child said "You sure look good for 26!"
I remembered how I felt when, at the age of 35, I was referred to by some young chit as "women your age".
Yeah, yeah, I know, you're not getting older you're getting better, yada yada yada....

Liberating

Stupidest sentence of the day, from ABC News:

Just this week, the Food and Drug Administration approved the birth control pill Lybrel, for the first time giving women the option not to have a period. Period.
It's unclear whether women will embrace this new pill. . .

Emphasis mine. And amid gales of derisive laughter, I ask -- unclear to whom?
ABC seems to think there is something emasculating about women not having periods anymore:

As 21st century women dominate the universities and continue to climb the executive ladder, and metro-sexual men explore their feminine side, it's harder to define what it means to be a woman.

Its not a zero-sum game, guys -- just because women become more "liberated" doesn't mean men are less "manly".
Besides, so what else is new? For years, decades, women have been taking birth control pills continuously to skip their periods, and getting their doctors to prescribe the pill for this purpose "off-label". Amanda and feministing have more.

The Seven-Day-In-May Scenario

No wonder US policy on Iran has seemed sort of schizoid lately. It is.
And is anyone surprised that Cheney is behind the game-playing? Steve Clemons at The Washington Note describes what has been going on. And it sounds uncomfortably close to a Seven-Days-In-May scenario:

There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy.
On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney's team and acolytes ...a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.
This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.
The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).
This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf -- which just became significantly larger -- as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.
. . . the official actually hopes that hawkish conservatives and neoconservatives share this information and then rally to this point of view . . . to help establish the policy and political pathway to bombing Iran.
. . . Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake by aligning himself with the policy course that Condoleezza Rice, Bob Gates, Michael Hayden and McConnell have sculpted.
According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the "right decision" when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President's hands . . . Cheney is saying that Bush is making a mistake and thus needs to have the choices before him narrowed.

You know, in any other American administration, this would be treason.
This type of thing has happened in the past -- Truman fired MacArthur for trying to pull the US into a war against China; Iran-Contra was about the Pentagon running a foreign policy against Congressional funding restrictions.
But this is far beyond Iran-Contra. This is the vice-president running a foreign policy against the President.
Can anyone imagine Lyndon Johnson sneaking around behind Kennedy's back, trying to get Mexico to start a war against Cuba?
Or does anyone think Daddy Bush would have tolerated for one second Dan Quayle muscling Columbia into starting a war against Venezuela?
But it doesn't take any imagination at all to think of Cheney pushing Israel to start a war against Iran, to cut off Bush's options for avoiding another war in the Middle East.
And does anyone think that Bush has the spine to deal with this? Or will we see another "My Pet Goat" moment, where Bush sits frozen in fear and indecision while Cheney takes over running the country?

Murtha's explanation

Finally, an explanation from the Democrats about the war funding bill that makes some sense. From John Murtha:

. . . Some have suggested that since the president refuses to compromise, Democrats should refuse to send him anything. I disagree. There is a point when the money for our troops in Iraq will run out, and when it does, our men and women serving courageously in Iraq will be the ones who will suffer, not this president.
Patience has run out and I feel a change in direction happening within the chambers of Congress. While we don't have the votes right now to change the president's policy, I believe that come September we will have the votes from both Democrats and Republicans to change policy and direction . . .

I don't know whether I agree with him, but he is putting the responsibility for continuing the Iraq War where it belongs, with the Republicans.
At least he's not implying that he's afraid Bush will call him names.

Discrimination

Echidne reports on a recent speech by Newt Gingrich:

"Basic fairness demands that religious beliefs deserve a chance to be heard," he said in the 26-minute speech. "It is wrong to single out those who believe in God for discrimination. Yet today, it is impossible to miss the discrimination against religious believers."

So nice of Gingrich to worry about the Wiccans and the Muslims, probably the two religions whose believers may face anti-religious discrimination in their daily lives in this country.

Photo of the day

From the Faces of Grief blog:

An Iraqi child looks through a shrapnel ridded glass shop window in Shiite district of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 26, 2007 . . . (AP Photo/Adil al-Khazali)

Great line of the day

Bill Scher sums up the latest news that the Bush administration (ie Cheney and Elliot Abrams) are supporting, either directly or though Prince Bandar, Sunni Muslim groups targeting Shia Muslims in Lebannon and Iran:

...the Bush administration is supporting Sunni terrorist outfits with the goal of fostering sectarian violence -- a strategy that undermines any claim to promoting freedom and stability abroad.

I read the news today, oh boy

The zombies are coming! Let's walk a little faster!: Today comes the breathless news that bin Laden had enlisted al-Zarqawi in Iraq to plan potential strikes in the U.S. Two years ago. And al-Zarqawi was killed last year. Oooh, scary stuff, eh?

Don't worry, be happy: If the President of Afghanistan tells Harper in person that it is "probably" not true that any prisoners have been tortured, then that's all that really needs to be said, isn't it.

Shorter: Shorter Sun Media feature debate between an Anglican woman and a Catholic man about gay marriage:

Jane, you ignorant slut!*

*In case you don't remember (and nobody under 45 will) this is how Dan Aykroyd would reply to Jane Curtin during their weekly SNL debates.

Fort Apache, Iraq

The new American frontier is in Iraq.
And we all thought Bush was just pretending to be a cowboy! Instead, it sounds like he is conquering the "new East" just like the bluecoats and the mountain men and the cowboys two centuries ago conquered the Old West. And, just like two centuries ago, the brown occupiers of these lands are just another inconvenience. "Why have you got our oil underneath your sand?" may not actually be a joke, because Bush is making it all into American sand as quickly as he can.
Scarecrow at Firedoglake describes his recent conversation with a National Guard airbase engineer:

My Airman friend has done three tours in Iraq so far, and he wants to go back. He’s proud of what he’s done. He’s an engineer, and engineers build things. They make things work. And they take pride in making them work and building things to last. They would understand the Bridge on the River Kwai.
. . . we are building a huge, permanent infrastructure in Iraq. We are putting in the latest equipment, and it is not there to support some temporary military presence. What’s going up is not something to be taken down and removed when our troops withdraw or respond to some uncertain Congressional appropriation . . . We’re spending billions upon billions on this, and it’s not slowing down. My friend has been there three times, and each time he goes back, he marvels at the tremendous change — in how much more there is now than there was last time. Much more sophisticated; more permanent.
We did not talk much about the violence; where he worked, and what he did, did not require him to face that. He knew Iraqis but these were Iraqis who had essentially “joined us,” in the sense that once they were inside the US infrastructure, they stayed there. They were helping to building this American infrastructure in their country. Their families were there, “inside,” and no one talked about going “outside” because it was too dangerous. There are two different worlds: the Iraq we see on our televisions each night, with scores of people being blown to bits and pools of blood under devastated cars and buildings - and the American one “inside” the US infrastructure. A country within a country. America inside Iraq.
I could tell that my friend did not want to talk about the politics here, or the violence there. He gave no indication that it might all have been a waste of time, lives and money. There was no moral judgment. There was only the pride in what he had built, and the desire to go back and keep building it.

The photo Scarecrow ran with his piece is this one, of the new US embassy in Iraq:

The Huffington Post story accompanying this picture describes it thusly:

The $592 million embassy occupies a chunk of prime real estate two-thirds the size of Washington's National Mall, with desk space for about 1,000 people behind high, blast-resistant walls . . . The embassy is one of the few major projects the administration has undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule and within budget . . . The 21-building complex on the Tigris River was envisioned three years ago partly as a headquarters for the democratic expansion in the Middle East that President Bush identified as the organizing principle for foreign policy in his second term. . . The compound will have secure apartments for about 615 people.

And how about Balad airbase, north of Baghdad:

Back in December, I talked about Bush's permanent military bases in Iraq, and posted this photo of the pool at the Balad air base north of Baghdad.
Doesn't look temporary, does it?
Here is the other photo from that article:

Just a little slice of Americana in the desert. The March, 2006 AP story which ran these photos says:

The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that’s now the home of up to 120 U.S. helicopters, a “heli-park” as good as any back in the States.
At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq’s western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads.
At a third hub down south, Tallil, they’re planning a new mess hall, one that will seat 6,000 hungry airmen and soldiers for chow.
Are the Americans here to stay? Air Force mechanic Josh Remy is sure of it as he looks around Balad.
“I think we’ll be here forever,” the 19-year-old airman from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., told a visitor to his base.
. . . Officers at Al-Asad Air Base, 10 desert miles from the nearest town, say it hasn’t been hit by insurgent mortar or rocket fire since October.
Al-Asad will become even more isolated. The proposed 2006 supplemental budget for Iraq operations would provide $7.4 million to extend the no-man’s-land and build new security fencing around the base, which at 19 square miles is so large that many assigned there take the Yellow or Blue bus routes to get around the base, or buy bicycles at a PX jammed with customers.
The latest budget also allots $39 million for new airfield lighting, air traffic control systems and upgrades allowing al-Asad to plug into the Iraqi electricity grid — a typical sign of a long-term base.
At Tallil, besides the new $14 million dining facility, Ali Air Base is to get, for $22 million, a double perimeter security fence with high-tech gate controls, guard towers and a moat — in military parlance, a “vehicle entrapment ditch with berm.”
Here at Balad, the former Iraqi air force academy 40 miles north of Baghdad, the two 12,000-foot runways have become the logistics hub for all U.S. military operations in Iraq, and major upgrades began last year.
Army engineers say 31,000 truckloads of sand and gravel fed nine concrete-mixing plants on Balad, as contractors laid a $16 million ramp to park the Air Force’s huge C-5 cargo planes; an $18 million ramp for workhorse C-130 transports; and the vast, $28 million main helicopter ramp, the length of 13 football fields, filled with attack, transport and reconnaissance helicopters.
Turkish builders are pouring tons more concrete for a fourth ramp beside the runways, for medical-evacuation and other aircraft on alert. And $25 million was approved for other “pavement projects,” from a special road for munitions trucks to a compound for special forces.
The chief Air Force engineer here, Lt. Col. Scott Hoover, is also overseeing two crucial projects to add to Balad’s longevity: equipping the two runways with new permanent lighting, and replacing a weak 3,500-foot section of one runway.
Once that’s fixed, “we’re good for as long as we need to run it,” Hoover said. Ten years? he was asked. “I’d say so.”
Away from the flight lines, among traffic jams and freshly planted palms, life improves on 14-square-mile Balad for its estimated 25,000 personnel, including several thousand American and other civilians.
They’ve inherited an Olympic-sized pool and a chandeliered cinema from the Iraqis. They can order their favorite Baskin-Robbins flavor at ice cream counters in five dining halls, and cut-rate Fords, Chevys or Harley-Davidsons, for delivery at home, at a PX-run “dealership.” On one recent evening, not far from a big 24-hour gym, airmen hustled up and down two full-length, lighted outdoor basketball courts as F-16 fighters thundered home overhead.

Here are the maps from that article. This one shows the bases in Iraq:

This one shows the bases throughout the region:

And this is just in the Middle East.
A former CIA consultant and Berkley professor named Chambers Johnson has been writing about this stuff for the last several years. One of his readers posted a review on Amazon which summarizes his point:

Forget conspiracy theories and ideological agendas, just contemplate one fact: The USA spends more on military and intelligence funding in 2004 than it has spent at any one time in history. Fourteen carrier groups to defeat the two remaining countries of the axis of evil, N. Korea and Iran? 750 and counting military bases outside the USA? However, the government tells us it is powerless to defend the country against an attack from a terrorist group with WMD??? So, the next time you watch television and the commentator tells you why we need another aircraft carrier, more tanks, more F-16's, etc., ask yourself: Who are we defending ourselves against?

750 military bases worldwide and they STILL don't feel safe? What is the matter with these people? Johnson suggests an enraged public should throw out the neocons and the empire buildiers, with step one to leave Iraq:

When Ronald Reagan coined the phrase "evil empire," he was referring to the Soviet Union, and I basically agreed with him that the USSR needed to be contained and checkmated. But today it is the U.S. that is widely perceived as an evil empire and world forces are gathering to stop us. The Bush administration insists that if we leave Iraq our enemies will "win" or -- even more improbably -- "follow us home." I believe that, if we leave Iraq and our other imperial enclaves, we can regain the moral high ground and disavow the need for a foreign policy based on preventive war. I also believe that unless we follow this path, we will lose our democracy and then it will not matter much what else we lose. In the immortal words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Great line of the day

This has been another edition of what Digby said -- or, actually, eight things Digby said and two things Tristero said.
Here's my favorite(s):

A very large number of right wing legal scholars seem to have the unusual view that a president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors if he lies about a sexual affair, but he has ultimate authority to do anything he chooses in his role as president.

Oh, and don't forget this one:

I think Rudy won it. These people don’t care if he’s wearing a teddy under his suit and sleeping with the family schnauzer as long as he promises to spill as much blood as possible.

And then there's....oh, just go read them all.

Doing it by the book

Typical, isn't it.
The Tories need a cheat sheet even to cheat! The Tory committee chairs can't figure out how to disrupt and paralyze their own committees, they need the Prime Minister's Office to do it for them. All aimed, of course, at provoking an election while the Tories try to pretend it wasn't their idea.
This CP story describes the 200-page manual of Tory dirty tricks:

New Democrat Libby Davies said the manual explodes the Tories' contention that opposition parties are to blame for the parliamentary constipation.
"So much for blaming the opposition for the obstruction of Parliament," she said.
"Now we learn, in fact, that the monkey wrench gang have had a plan all along and not just any plan, a 200-page playbook on how to frustrate, obstruct and shut down the democratic process."

The manual was apparently distributed to Tory committee chairs, and somebody leaked it. Not having heard of that new invention, the xerox machine, the PMO tried to hunt down the leaker:

The government was so embarrassed and annoyed by the leak, that, according to a source, it ordered all committee chairs to return their copies of the handbook, apparently in a bid to determine who broke confidence.

I'll bet someone in the PMOs office is now hard at work on some foolproof way to ID leakers -- like in Tom Clancy novels, where each person's copy secretly has one word changed in some key paragraph.
Anyway, this news story doesn't quote from the manual directly, but CP gives a summary of recent events, apparently all mandated by the Tricks Treatise:

The handbook reportedly advises chairs on how to promote the government's agenda, select witnesses friendly to the Conservative party and coach them to give favourable testimony. It also reportedly instructs them on how to filibuster and otherwise disrupt committee proceedings and, if all else fails, how to shut committees down entirely.
Some of those stalling tactics have been on display this week.
Tory MPs on the information and ethics committee stalled an inquiry into alleged censorship of a report on the treatment of Afghan detainees. They debated the propriety of the witness list for more than five hours while two critics of the government's handling of the matter cooled their heels in the corridor.
The official languages committee has been shut down all week after Tory chair Guy Lauzon cancelled a hearing moments before witnesses were to testify about the impact of the government's cancellation of the court challenges program. All three opposition parties voted to remove Lauzon from the chair but the Tories are refusing to select a replacement, leaving the committee in limbo.
Tories have also launched filibusters to obstruct proceedings in the Commons agriculture and procedural affairs committees and a Senate committee study of a Liberal bill requiring the government to adhere to the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course, CP does the obligatory "rowboat" paragraph to forestall accusations of that ole Librull bias:

The previous Liberal regime also tried to control the conduct of committees. Former prime minister Jean Chretien even faced a mini-rebellion during his final months in office from backbenchers who chafed at being told what to say and do at committee. They demanded the right to choose their own committee chairs.

CP doesn't mention this, but it was Paul Martin who led this reform movement and who, when he was prime minister, continued to allow committees the right to select their own chairs -- even when opposition MPs repaid his democratic largesse by setting out to embarrass him in any way they could through committee hearings. But for Martin, a basic belief in democracy trumped PMO control. Not so, with either Chretien or, now, Harper:

But Davies, a 10-year parliamentary veteran, said the Tories have taken manipulation to extremes she's never seen before.
"They've codified it. They've set it down. They've given instructions."
Both Davies and Goodale agreed that the recent dysfunction may be part of a long term Tory strategy to persuade voters that minority Parliaments don't work, that they need to elect a majority next time.
But Goodale predicted the ploy won't work because Canadians will realize that the Tories are the "authors of this stalemate."
Goodale said the manual also demonstrates that the government is in the grip of an "obsessive, manipulative mania," run by a prime minister who has "a kind of control fetish" in which there can't be "one comma or one sentence or one word uttered without his personal approval."

If they keep up these kind of tactics, they will end up proving to voters is that its a government led by Steven Harper that doesn't work.

Nobody expects....

Hmmm... what does the incompetent thuggery of Bush, Gonzales and Card remind me of?