Category: Edgewise

  • wonderful

    what a lovely night to be a Democrat. I’m just sitting here, watching the proposition results come in over on the CA secretary of state’s site. And those two Ys have switched over to Ns. And we’ve got the floor all set up for a clean sweep. And there’s Virginia! What a great state, Virginia.…

  • Bush Team on a Busman’s Holiday*

    2002 was a busy year for the Bush Team…. January 9: Douglas Feith (OOSP) calls Lt. Gen. Jay Garner on the phone…. Feith: Garner, I got a job for you. Garner: Hello? Who is this? Feith: Directive from da Man himself Garner: The president?! Feith: Rumsfeld, you idiot. Da Man. We need you to put…

  • Yellowcake Shake and Bake

    As the NY Times finally gets its ass in gear and finds some reporters who aren’t owned by their sources to get on the Yellowcake Papers story…we continue with our little tale of aging spies, Italians in love, and the Bush administration’s Alternative Reality Operations (AROs). The Story, Part II: Recipe for a W-r (classified)…

  • Yellowcake Goes to America

    To continue the story of how an aging Italian spy called Rocco, for purposes all his own and not related to Dick Cheney’s need to find the goods on Saddam Hussein in order to justify a war on Iraq, concocted a phony “dossier,” also known as The Niger Papers (or Yellowcake as I like to…

  • Rocco and the Rome connection

    The U.S. Senate Select Intelligence Committee inquiry may be going nowhere but thankfully we have the Italian Parliament to help us in our journey to enlightenment in the Yellowcake! story. And I have Nur-al-Cubicle to thank for providing a lucid summary of La Repubblica‘s reportage on the government investigation of “The Niger Documents”. The Story,…

  • Reports of Pentagon Official’s Bloodying Greatly Exaggerated

    I should hope it was an exaggeration! And I hope that “ate him for lunch” was also greatly exaggerated Detainee Policy Sharply Divides Bush Officials NYT A central player in the fight over the directive is David S. Addington, who was the vice president’s counsel until he was named on Monday to succeed I. Lewis…

  • Yellowcake!: a journey back from ignorance

    Hey, the Democrats are finally getting mad about something! (Harry Reid shut down Senate business today saying, “… this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions…”) I feel for them. I’m just working up a head of steam…

  • In which I predict the future again!

    I predict that in just a few hours it will be proven once and for that I cannot in fact predict the future!

  • How the War Has to Compete with the War-Profiteers

    Especially when it’s only mere Iraqis who die. From the NYT Lack of Armor Proves Deadly for Iraqi Army “The Iraqis put quite a few more people in their trucks, and those trucks aren’t armored,” Major Warren said. “No armor plus more people in the truck equals a substantially higher casualty rate.” The Army unit…

  • These US soldiers in Iraq present such an excruciating paradox.

    These US soldiers in Iraq present such an excruciating paradox. On the one hand, we have seen how, with the right (i..e., wrong) people and setting, the slippery slope of prisoner abuse plummets deep into the abyss. But then there is the astonishing generosity, altruism, self-sacrifice that can show up, something that they almost take…

  • A Sweet Old Baseball Rivalry

    The Chicago White Sox’ unexpected sweep of the Boston Red Sox in this year’s World Series calls to mind the mostly forgotten early years of the game, when Baseball franchises were owned mainly by the major cookie companies, and the classic rivalry was between the Baltimore Oreos and the Chicago Hydrox.

  • What planet is Hugh Hewitt phoning it in from?

    From Why the Right Was Wrong: … tactics previously exclusive to the left – exaggeration, invective, anonymous sources, an unbroken stream of new charges, television advertisements paid for by secret sources … Wha? Excuse me. Project much?

  • Who leaked to Novak beside ‘Official A’?

    OK, so the indictment says that Official A leaked to Novak. But didn’t Novak say that he was leaked to by (at least) two people, one of whom was “no partisan gunslinger.” Assuming that Official A is Rove and that Rove cut a deal and rolled on Libby, thus keeping his shit clean (for now),…

  • Sulu’s gay

    Although I was almost inappropriately delighted to learn today that Sulu is gay, I have to confess that I’m kind of irritated at the timing. I mean, yesterday Miers withdraws, then this morning, so-called “Scooter” Libby resigns. And now here comes George Takei, pushing those stories right off the front page.

  • In which I predict the future!

    Many years ago, before Seinfeld became a national Thing, I looked up one day and I said “I’m going to start watching Seinfeld.” And I didn’t just say this myself. I said it to other people too. For example, So-Called Bill. It didn’t make much sense at the time. And then that episode with the…

  • Watergate-esque

    You could make the case that Plamegate isn’t and won’t be Watergate, in that all the focus has been on the possibility that some of the President’s key people may go down, but you don’t really hear much speculation that the President himself could be dragged in. But then there’s this: when Nixon left office,…

  • But doesn’t she deserve an ‘up or down vote’?

    Conservatives Launch ‘Withdraw Miers’ Website Sauce for the goose?

  • Desperate times

    OK, so horrific earthquake in Kashmir. Delay, Miers, Libby, Rove, all that. Wilma’s kinda fierce. Deficit’s growing. Continued Katrina fallout. Inflation mebbe. Gas prices. You know what I’m talking about here, right? I’m talking about news. There’s lotsa news. Like, big stories. Everywhere. And what are the good folks over at Fox focused on? Well…

  • Absentee voting party (in Berkeley)

    from the East Bay for Democracy newsletter: ABSENTEE VOTING – MADE FUN What better reason for a get-together than voting our progressive values as a block? Join other East Bay for Democracy folks as we pot-luck, and de-luck Arnold Schwarzenegger’s radical agenda for California. When: Monday October 17, 2005 starting at 7:00PM Where: Redwood Gardens…

  • If getting pregnant were like catching a cold

    If getting pregnant were like catching a cold, just something that people randomly came down with, I doubt the government would even think of coercing those who caught it to take the pregnancies to term–even though the Pro Life-Baby Killer considerations would be just the same. There is definitely a sexual anxiety at play here…

  • Be Prepared

    HANOI (Reuters) – The spread of Asia’s deadly bird flu to Europe is a “troubling sign” and the world must work faster to prepare for a potential flu pandemic, U.S. Health Secretary Mike Leavitt said on Friday. —————– I hear that Bush White House officials are assembling a team of top Public Relations experts from…