The Straighter Dope

     A host of news services, from Bloomberg to the CBC, the AP, to the Ireland and a Chinese news service are reporting that, basically, Bush has accepted responsibility for bringing the nation to war on faulty intelligence.

     Here is what the President also said that pathetic journalists like Nedra Pickler seem to have missed...

At any point along the way Saddam Hussein could have avoided war by complying with the just demands on the international community.  The United States did not choose war, the choice was Saddam Hussein's.

     In other words, he blamed the war on Saddam Hussein, which is the opposite of taking responsibility for bringing the nation to war.  Only one story is convenient. 

     As an aside, did "taking responsibility" strike anyone else as a completely meaningless gesture, like when he "took responsibility" for Katrina?  Does it mean he'll pay to fix things?  Does it mean he'll do time for tens of thousands of cases of negligent homicide?  What does it mean?  Bush is devaluing the very concept of responsibility.

Bradford Berenson

     Would someone please ask the White House if this ex-White House official speaks for them.

     He asserts that the current court martials, used at Guantanamo Bay, for instance, are the fairest and most generous to the defendant of any in the history of humankind.  He is so terrible. 

     What I need is much longer debates.  I imagine that stupid talking points (he called his 8 points "principles") whither under careful attack.  Berenson was so offensive.

Thousands of Rioters

     Christians of western European descent were on the rampage in and near the beaches of Sydney, New South Wales, in recent days.  For a sane Australian's perspective, try Disaster Plan.

     If instead you want to see the myopic worldview of the Muslim haters, try LittleGreenFucktards or Tim Blair.  Blair has a lot of links, but the scumbag actually suggests that there were equal numbers of bat-weilders.  Indeed (pun: Instaidiot says "indeed" a lot, and links to Tim Blair for this story).

Microcosmographia Academica

A fine read.  Short, sweet, and to the point.  It says it is about academic politics (based on the author's long experience at Cambridge University) and was written in 1908.  It seems to be about any politics.  Since the first edition is all I see online, I will include the preface to the Second Edition here:

There was a time toward the end of 1914 when many people imagined that after the war human nature, in our part of the world, would be different. They even thought it would be better in some ways. I have an idea that I shared in this illusion. But my friends who are still active in this microcosm tell me that academic human nature, at any rate, remains true to the ancient type. Moreover, a short an inglorious career in the home forces and in a government department has convinced me that the academic species is only one member of a genus wider than I had supposed. Frequenters of the Church Congress, too, have admitted that they sometimes turn to the pages of this guide for help. Considering all this, I have persuaded the publishers to reprint it as it stands.

and the preface to first edition, also not at the website

I fancy (though I am not sure) that there is just one feature of academic life that has become a little more prominent since the war. If I could have recaptured the mood of the fortnight in which this book was written, I might have added a chapter on Propaganda, defined as that branch of the art of lying which consists in very nearly deceiving your friends without quite deceiving your enemies. But the subject is not yet ripe for treatment; the art is still imperfect. We must leave it to be worked out by the party whose mission it is to keep the university safe for aristo-democracy.

Lieberman and the Democrats

     I think it is fair to start by giving credit to Lieberman for doing a lot better in the 2004 Democrat primary than I remember him getting credit for.  He certainly did far better in the polls than Senator Edwards, for example, or even Senator Kerry.  His appeal, it should be noted, was limited to the Northeast, while only Dean and Clark won polls all around the country.

     And although Lieberman might be fairly be considered a centrist Democrat, Poole and Rosenthal have him just three spots to the right of "liberal" hero Barack Obama. 

     That said, Lieberman has recently been getting some press for his pro-war, pro-Bush comments concerning Iraq.  I listened to these comments.  He could not handle a debate on the subject.  His factual grasp of the situation, and/or historical parallels, seemed non-existent.  The press corps doesn't seem to be making an issue of the facts, not with Bush, with Lieberman, or with any of the war supporters.  The following image was what I saw when I followed a link to this story from the San Jose Mercury News.

Fixed

     My web site for maps had a bug, I fixed it.  Thanks for your patronage

If Your Will Has Been Shaken, the Weather Will Win

     Reuters begins an article "Short-term targets and tight timetables are no solution to fighting climate change, Australia's environment minister said on Thursday" and did not follow it up by suggesting the climate would be encouraged by any effort to stop messing with it.

     What few Americans realize is that Australia is Fox News.  Rupert Murdoch is an Australian who exerts far more power there than he does in America (granting that America exerts more power, overall).  I believe that Bob "the Silver Bodgie" Hawke (as exquisitely (and painfully) described John Pilger in his book "A Secret Country") was actually the first example of "third way" politics practiced by Clinton and Blair (Murdoch runs "Sky News" in the UK).  Hawke had been the head of the Australian Trades Union Council and was later Prime Minister.  Murdoch was driven insane by Edward Gough Whitlam, a man who can easily be described as one who brought progress to the entire world; he was ahead of the curve of the world.  Whitlam was also the only Prime Minister sacked by the Monarch of England's representative (the Governor-General) in Australia.  Monarchy is so passé.

Kenya

     I am no expert on such matters.  What is a good blog on the current situation in Kenya?

Krepinevich, Again

     This guy has a PhD, but you can bet your bum it isn't in military history.  He taught at one of the "War Colleges" but you can bet your bum he wasn't popular.

     What does he say, in front of a bunch of people?  That the process of rotating Generals out of the field was bad policy.  He said FDR wouldn't have pulled Patton from Europe.  He said Lincoln wouldn't have pulled Grant from the field.  What this unobservant "nerd" neglects to note is that those generals were succesful at accomplishing war aims.  There is no monumental success in Iraq that would protect any General.

     In fact during WWI and WWII, during the Civil War and the War of American Independence, failing Generals were simply fired.

     Krepinevich doesn't even know what democracy is, and he appears with Senator Lieberman at this event, war-hawking.

Security Coversheets

     Tip to ArmsControlWonk.  Alternative coversheets for classified information (pdf), courtesy of the Federation of American Scientists.

My Map Site

     Please check it out.

The Roberts Court

     For the second time (at least) the Roberts court has released its audio recordings of the courts proceedings the same day.

     This particular time the released recording included material that one doesn't normally hear in such tapes (admission of lawyers to the Supreme Court Bar).

     This is the C-SPAN Court. 

     Now we need to get some cabinet and NSC meetings released.  Until then, believe it or not, C-SPAN leads to tyranny.  If ONLY the President is free from public scrutiny and rampant criticism of his actual job performance, then the President will enjoy the greatest "maybe he's OK" margin.

Waron Jesus

     I already have this post which discusses how mail service occured on Sundays in early America.  This is from a thought provoking 1961(?) speech by Kurt Gödel, which will appeal to anyone who is interested in math and philosophy and reads my blog and who has spare time.  It does, however, have a great quote:

I believe that the most fruitful principle for gaining an overall view of the possible world-views will be to divide them up according to the degree and the manner of their affinity to or, respectively, turning away from metaphysics (or religion). In this way we immediately obtain a division into two groups: scepticism, materialism and positivism stand on one side, spiritualism, idealism and theology on the other.

     The war on Christmas meme is a tactic.  It is, luckily, an appeal to the base.  It will not move moderates, and _will_ alienate people.  I might be letting the cat out of the bag here.

An Iraq Deception

     How many times have you heard that "most" of the attacks are happening in "just four" provinces of Iraq.  When they say "most" they mean "some number slightly greater than 50%".  The deception comes when you realize that the populations of those four provinces is greater than 40% of the total. 

     From the census done recently by the Ministries of Trade and Planning.  Baghdad: 6.38M, alAnbar 1.28M, Salahaddin 1.08M, Ninawa 1.37M, total 27.474M.

John Ralston Saul interview

     I've heard Milton Friedman say that _any_ spending by government is socialism (that would include, of course, the production of pyramids or golden thrones).  I've always thought that Thomas Friedman was a fricking joke, if not an outright racist peice of shit.  Here are a couple quotes from/on John Ralston Saul, the first from an interview done at Mother Jones magazine with its editor, Julian Brookes.

First of all, Friedman is barely worth considering. It's basically one of those 'How to succeed' books; it's very embarrassing, frankly.

and, from some random source, a snippet about his book The Collapse of Globalism

Saul also quotes the regret of Milton Friedman, who had advised emerging countries in Eastern Europe to "privatize, privatize, privatize," when he should have been telling them to start by building robust legal and political systems. Markets are, according to the mythology behind them, supposed to be self-regulating. They aren't.