Great lines of the day

James Wolcott: Irrationalizations:

Twenty, thirty years from now a new generation of right wingers and armchair warriors will be contending that we could have won in Iraq had it not been for Michael Moore and prissiness over torture. . . . Robb writes, '[T]he simplest explanation for the outcome in Iraq is that we were just beaten by a better opponent (the Israeli's seem to be getting this, why can't we?).' Because such knowledge cuts too deeply into the pride of the American psyche. It's also too painful to consider that the U.S. is beatable. We'd rather believe that we beat ourselves, and then scapegoat liberals as the losers who made us lose.

Could it be possible that the whole Iraq mess might make the United States a more mature nation? Could a national discussion of lessons learned in Iraq result in a realistic assessment of America's weaknesses as well as strengths? Could their political leadership start thinking strategically about global problems instead of going off half-cocked? Could they actually become a nation that acts like most of the other nations on the planet already do, except for North Korea and Zimbabwe?
Naaaaaahhh!

Osama Bin Hollywood

Its just such a dull story, really, all about how a bunch of losers kill 3,000 people one sunny morning. Ya just GOTTA do SOMETHING to sex it up.
It needs yer 'narrative arc', see -- heroes and villians and drama and conflict and turning points and setbacks and tension and good guys betrayed and all that.
But I'm not sure whether turning Sandy Berger and Madeline Albright and the Washington Post into villians, and then making Bill Clinton into a coward, will be enough, really.

We've gone beyond "docu-drama" and "mocku-mentary" to reach the level of "info-tainment" -- by next week we'll be reading about how ABC has written Jason Bourne into the script to stalk Bin Laden.
Over at Hullabaloo they're promoting the 9/11 action figures give-away cross-promotion. Corrente's farmer writes about how excited all the Kewl Kids are:

I like pretty happy endings as much as the next history action movie fan. After the docu-thriller-movie-mini-series-event is over - whenever that is - me and Michael Ledeen and David Horowitz and Peggy Noonan are gonna hop in Peg's Nassau County Seclusion-3D Urban Camo-Pattern Hummer with UTV Floor Mount Kalashnikov Assault Weapon Rack and heated Sheepskin Rumble Seat and thunder on down the parkway to the local All-American drive through fast food slop-shoot for some Happy History Meals and our free ABC-Disney United Front Supreme Council for the Defense of the Motherland moveable mujahidin freedom fighter action hero figure sets which come free with each patriotic ABC/Disney Happy History Meal purchase.
You can bet your liberal ass on it . . .
if you want to get the whole Northern Alliance (United Front) moveable mujahidin action hero set you can just visit your local participating fast food All-american franchise each night following the ABC TV mini-series and get more action figures and then just keep coming back until you have all the action figures you want for your very own. Collect them all! The complete set! . . .

Can this really be true, you ask? How could ABC and Disney be so crude and cruel and crass as to turn 9/11 into a marketing opportunity? Well, who cares whether its actually true or not? Its fun! And its sexy!
The farmer continues:

... my historical pre-emptive recollections of the people and events and "overarching moments" I describe above, which follow the ABC-Disney documentary "the Path to 911," are completely true and accurate as I see them in a composite pre-emptive retrospective documatary dramatic info-tainment context.

So, that's OK then.

Oops

Non-sequitur:

Brave little boy

There are so many Katrina stories where we never find out what happened -- like, did that man and his grandchildren make it, the one who was interviewed by the CNN reporter and who told her about his wife drowning and calling to him to take care of the grandchildren as she was swept away? What about that little boy who cried so hard because they didn't allow him to take his dog on the bus? What happened to the teenager who commandeered the school bus and drove a bunch of people to Houston and they were talking about charging him with theft? What about that little group of survivors hiding in an apartment with their dogs who talked to the CTV reporter? Did that boy from the Convention Centre make it, the one who became a one-man publicist for the people stuck there?
But here's one where we find out some good news, thanks to Digby:

Sept. 5, 2005: In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.
They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.
...Deamonte volunteered his vital statistics. He said his father was tall and his mother was short. He gave his address, his phone number and the name of his elementary school.
He said that the 5-month-old was his brother, Darynael, and that two others were his cousins, Tyreek and Zoria. The other three lived in his apartment building. . . . Deamonte began to give more details to Derrick Robertson, a 27-year-old Big Buddy mentor: How he saw his mother cry when he was loaded onto the helicopter. How he promised her he'd take care of his little brother.
Thankfully, the mothers have now been found and they've all been reunited. Late Saturday night, they found Deamonte's mother, who was in a shelter in San Antonio along with the four mothers of the other five children. Catrina Williams, 26, saw her children's pictures on a website set up over the weekend by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. By Sunday, a private plane from Angel Flight was waiting to take the children to Texas.
But, how they got separated is every parent's nightmare: The helicopter came and there wasn't room for all. The helicopter personnel told the mothers to put the kids on board and they would return for the mothers.
The helicopter never returned. The kids went flown to Baton Rouge, and the parents ended up in Texas.

Digby writes the update:

Sept. 5, 2006: Here's the kid last February, doing well in the first grade in San Antonio.

February 2006: Alan Rochkus, principal of Harmony Hills Elementary School, watches Demonte Love, first-grader, complete a math puzzle while a KSAT-12 photojournalist films him. Love rescued six children, ranging in age from 5 months to three years, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, La. He received a Trumpet Award for his heroism.

Digby writes:

It does your heart good, doesn't it?

Yes. Yes, it does.

Great lines of the day

It will be interesting to see whether any other media figures stand up to be counted the way Keith Olbermann is doing.
The Bush administration is attacking the media to get them to shut up about the Iraq war, spying on Americans without warrants, Guantanamo, the Delay/Cunningham scandals, the Katrina chaos, the housing bubble bursting, sky-high oil prices, etc. etc.
Olbermann is dishing it right back at them:

. . . the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, “a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government.”
Make no mistake here—the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the “media.”
The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.
Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle: The attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word—“media”—the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of Al-Qaeda propaganda.
That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American . . .
Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.
More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek—a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.
It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration’s recent Nazi “kick” is an awful and cynical thing.
And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

And the funniest dog video

Again, so far...

Funniest cat video ever made

So far, at least.

Which way will it go?

By happenstance, Juan Cole and James Wolcott are one after the other on my blogroll. So I click on Woldott and read this:

. . . despite all of the Cheneyesque bluster, the Bush administration is pursuing the diplomatic route with Iran. To the dismay of the hard nosers, Bush is also reeling back his use of "Islamic fascists", which will be interpreted as a capitulation to political correctness. You even have Rumself whining that his recent appeasement slur was taken "out of context," and calling for "constructive" dialogue regarding the situation in Iraq. And then there's the happy novelty of Rudy Giuliani blowing the whistle and calling a foul on "partisan bickering", which will not endear him to the more strident dickheads in his party.
There has been a major shift in the mood climate, one which the War Party and its bloggers are resisting at the top of their lungs. But resistance is futile. As John Robb writes in an important post at Global Guerrillas, "Playing at War", we're not going to the get the grand, conclusive World War III (or IV) that same neocon ideologues crave. Conflict is being ratcheted down, dispersed . . . What we're hearing from pundits, bloggers, and likeminded belligerents this August is a baying to a false God, a nostalgic need for motivational clarity and a macho yearning for deliverance that the facts on the ground will deny them. Their commando belts tied up in knots, their umbrellas unfolded, they can turn on Bush, or on Condi Rice (as Richard Perle has done), but who can they turn to? Nobody. That's why they're egging each other on, flexing their biceps, and clinging to Mark Steyn for warmth. It's the only way to hold on to their fading relevance.

Whew! Well, that's a relief. But then I click to Juan Cole and read this:

The Times of London details Israeli planning for a war with Syria and Iran. Richard Perle, who sold the American people the fantasy that the US could march into Iraq, install corrupt businessman Ahmad Chalabi in power, and would be greeted with garlands of flowers, is disappointed that Israel did not attack Syria during its recent war on Lebanon. Hey, Perle, in case you didn't notice, the Israeli military did not do so great against 5,000 Hizbullah militiamen. So you wanted them to compound the failure by widening the war? The man never met a war he didn't love and never let reality interfere with his power fantasies. If there were no arms industry, people like that would never get to be on television.Note especially the ending grafs of the article:

Advocates of political engagement believe a war with Syria could unleash Islamic fundamentalist terror in what has hitherto been a stable dictatorship. Some voices in the Pentagon are not impressed by that argument.“If Syria spirals into chaos, at least they’ll be taking on each other rather than heading for Jerusalem,” said one insider.

Why assume that the Syrians would stay busy with each other? If the Muslim Brotherhood managed to come to power, backed by the vast Sunni majority in the country, it could fairly quickly establish order and begin concentrating on getting back the Golan Heights and "liberating" "Palestine". The Syrian MB would be even closer to Hamas than the Syrian Baath. It would also be closer to the Salafi Jihadis fighting in Iraq. And it might well angle to overthrow the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Israel might end up facing a massive, militant, fundamentalist Sunni state, aiming to unify all the Sunni Arabs in the neighborhood for a final drive against Israel, using Hizbullah guerrilla tactics and rockets and missiles. Sunni fundamentalists increasingly see themselves as caught in a pincers between Israel/the US on the one side, and Iran/the Shiites on the other, and would have lots of incentive to create a united front.You wonder if that phrase, “If Syria spirals into chaos, at least they’ll be taking on each other rather than heading for Jerusalem,” is how the Neoconservatives in the Pentagon feel about what has happened in Iraq. It is an astonishingly shortsighted perspective. And when did the US Pentagon begin caring who rules Jerusalem?

I wonder which will turn out to be right? As much as I hope it is Wolcott, I'm more afraid it will be Cole.

Great line of the day

Patrick at Firedoglake writesLessons from a kitchen garden. One paragraph struck me as true of Canada, too:

Pat Buchanan has said very little in his life with which I agree, but one thing he said that has resonated with me: America was a great country before it was a rich country. My grandparents scratched a living out of the earth and lived humbly. They were able to save their pennies and buy building materials over the years, and they never had a mortgage payment, a car payment or a credit card payment. To paraphrase Loretta Lynn, they were poor but they were proud. There was a time when it was not illegal to be poor, nor was it considered a moral failing. Men who took advantage of honest people to enrich themselves were not thought of as honorable men.

Emphasis mine. When we were in the Maritimes this summer, it struck us both how proud the Maritimes people are, in a way that has nothing to do with money -- perhaps it was just this kind of old-fashioned pride that we saw there.

The story of the paper clip that turned into a house

The paper clip


The house


The blogger


The party


The t-shirt


Kipling, Sask., throws party to celebrate paper clip that turned into house

A small piece of office stationery, an old house in need of an owner and a web-savvy Montrealer on a mission have come together to thrust a small Saskatchewan farming town into the international spotlight this Labour Day weekend.
Residents in Kipling where getting ready Friday for a weekend-long house-warming party for Kyle MacDonald, the now-famous blogger who managed to trade a red paper clip for a house over the course of the last year.
"The buzz right now is crazy," MacDonald said in an interview from outside his new home at the east end of Main Street.
"I think it's because no one knows what to expect. We just know that a lot of people are potentially going to arrive and there is a bit of a thrill to it. There is sort of that wild-card effect, you know."
Not knowing what to expect is nothing new for MacDonald, who was born and raised in British Columbia.
His adventures began last July when he put a red paper clip up for trade on the Internet - a cyber version of a swap game he played as a child.
Someone in Vancouver offered him a fish pen which promptly went on the trading block.
The pen was swapped for a doorknob, then a Coleman stove, a power generator, a keg of beer, a snowmobile, a trip to Yahk, B.C., a cube van, a recording contract, a year's free lodging in a Phoenix bungalow, an afternoon with rock icon Alice Cooper and a KISS snow globe.
That's when actor Corbin Bernsen from the one-time television series "L.A. Law" got involved. He offered a role in his new movie "Donna On Demand" for the KISS keepsake.
By this time, all the trading had caught the attention of the town of Kipling. Figuring it would be good for economic development, town council purchased a vacant house on Main Street.
Mayor Patricia Jackson said the 1920s home, built from an Eaton's catalogue kit, needed a little paint and some new drywall, but was generally in good shape.
Council offered it up and MacDonald accepted. He and his girlfriend moved from Montreal earlier this summer.
"I sort of see it as a place where I would like to base my life out of," MacDonald said. "Everyone is good here."
He plans to write a book about his experience and said there is a movie deal in the works.
He has also been welcomed with open arms by people in Kipling.
Since making the deal, Bernsen has been to town to hold auditions for the movie role and the town has been in headlines around the world.
There have been inquiries from people looking to move to Kipling and from businesses looking to set up shop, Jackson said.
"There's no way that all the businesses in the community, with all of their advertising budgets for probably 10 years, could have got together and bought this kind of publicity."
Bands were scheduled to play throughout the weekend and Bernsen was to return for a second set of auditions.
MacDonald invited the world through his blog and, as of Friday afternoon, there were already people from California, Ontario, Quebec and B.C. stopping by the house. Each of the people who made a trade were also expected to be there.
Garrett Johnson came all the way from Kansas City for the festivities. He offered up some lake-front property for the movie role, but MacDonald ended up taking the Kipling house.
"It's a beautiful town," Johnson said. "The people are all very welcoming and kind and everyone waves. They just make you feel right at home."

Kipling is about 150 km east of Regina.

Looking on the bright side

Its a good thing the extra border fees happened when the Conservatives were in power. See, if the Liberals were in power, the Conservatives would have blamed the fees on Liberal anti-Americanism and Martin's poor relationship with the Bush administration. But now, the blame for the fees can be placed where it belongs, on the greedy, short-sighted, incompetent Bush administration itself . . .

Is anyone else having trouble with Gilliard's site?

Yesterday and again today, I click on Gilliard's site and my browser crashes. Is this happening to everyone?

Great line of the day

Over at Firedoglake, Jane Hamsher has a great comment on the shameful Washington Post editorial which basically said Joe Wilson shouldn't have blown the whistle on the "mushroom cloud" fantasy and has only himself to blame for his wife's trouble:

... to argue that somehow [the Armitage] leak — which played no part in the concerted Administration effort to bully, intimidate and punish Joe Wilson — should somehow excuse Scooter Libby and Karl’s Rove’s subsequent actions is a true marvel of wingnut logic. Incredibly it is somehow okay to rob the liquor store, shoot the owner, rape the cashier and spatter the walls with blood because someone else was caught shoplifting there the week before.

And how far has the Washington Post fallen, to condemn a whistleblower when whistleblowing itself is the lifeblood of journalism? That whirring sound you hear is Katharine Graham spinning in her grave.

Great lines of the day

Dave at Galloping Beaver writes a powerful post about war and Afghanistan -- You want support? Earn it

. . . I've got a chestful of useless gongs and some permanent shrapnel wounds to remind me of days which I would rather have missed in my life.
I've experienced the exhilaration of close-quarters battle and the years of remorse that follow because I had no choice but to kill the teenage soldiers in the fire-pit to my front.
I've been beside a good man, a highly competent marine, who suddenly dropped like a bag of shit while I got splattered with flesh and blood. The movies make it look so much more dramatic and heroic than it really is. The truth is just a bloody, fucking mess.
I've been on the right flank of a patrol when the man on point stepped on a landmine. And all we could do was watch as he lay there screaming, his viscera splayed over the ground, the lower half of his body gone. He lived for over five minutes while the medic did a drill on him - with morphine auto-injectors. It ended with a colour sergeant screaming, "FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!" because he had been unable to protect a good man.
I've watched kids die. It ends everything. Their personalities cease to be a part of the team; their humour stops; their dreams end; and, their death affects a hundred other people - permanently.
I've had to call fire down on my own position while I watched my men nod. They knew, as I did, that there was little chance we would get out of it alive, much less unscathed. It was necessary at the time and the cost of that act is paid for in year after year of nightmares.
I have a direct and long-service association with both British and Canadian militaries. I have an affinity for the people who serve in those militaries and I have an interest in how they are committed. My interest is in their welfare, how they're led and how safe they are. Whether anyone likes to admit it or not, they are kids on an adventure. They won't come home that way.
I'm not "anti-war". I am, however, highly skeptical whenever troops are committed to combat. I expect that the real reasons for going to war will be clearly enunciated by the politicians who continue to live in comfort and convenience while others suffer and die.
To provide unreserved support for the Afghanistan mission is not only stupid, it is irresponsible. And, it is not contingent upon me to provide alternatives to the decisions of the self-styled warrior class, those who are prepared to waste lives while not risking theirs, be they prime ministers, presidents or keyboard commandos.
I will question everything about the Afghanistan mission. My support comes only when I receive rational, truthful answers . . .
most Canadians, after reading of another soldier killed in Afghanistan, ponder whether to return their empty beer bottles or shine up the motorcycle. Almost no one considers that there are 27 Canadians who can never entertain such mundane thoughts because they were blown away in a mission that appears to lack long-term definition and has gone on longer than the US involvement in World War II.

Emphasis mine. And my agreement, too.

Where were you?

A new ad campaign to raise money for a memorial asks "where were you?" on 9/11.

A national ad campaign being launched on Thursday features the stories of people who remember where they were when they heard of the 2001 terrorist attacks . . . A historian says the event will be remembered for life by the people who experienced it, in the same way that people recall the assassinations of President Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr . . . The foundation has compiled about 250 "where were you" oral histories . . .

Here's their ad:


John at Americablog says:

What the hell is our obsession with remembering September 11? We remember it, ok. I don't need a TV commercial to remind me of that day or how I felt. I was there. It took me a long time to get over it. And I most certainly don't need my politicians, or anyone else, trying to drag me back to that day kicking and screaming several times a year . . . Unfortunately we live in a country and a society where the dead aren't just eulogized, they're propagandized. You want an ad campaign? Here's an ad campaign:

And here is the picture I think Bush really should use:


If I could add a photoshop slogan, it would read: "Where was the President? Frozen at the switch...".
I wonder if the project has recorded Bush's own history of that day:

The President was seated in a classroom when,at 9:05,Andrew Card whispered to him: “A second plane hit the second tower.America is under attack.”The President told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis.The press was standing behind the children; he saw their phones and pagers start to ring. The President felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening. The President remained in the classroom for another five to seven minutes, while the children continued reading.