You know the drill : This guy was a member of the Bush administration, found out what a dickhead he was, and left. Now he’s gonna go on TV and talk about it :

A former White House anti-terrorism advisor says the Bush administration considered bombing Iraq in retaliation after Sept. 11, 2001 even though it was clear al Qaeda had carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Richard Clarke, who headed a cybersecurity board that gleaned intelligence from the Internet, told CBS “60 Minutes” in an interview to be aired on Sunday he was surprised administration officials turned immediately toward Iraq instead of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

“They were talking about Iraq on 9/11. They were talking about it on 9/12,” Clarke says.

Clarke said he was briefing President Bush (news – web sites) and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld among other top officials in the aftermath of the devastating attacks.

“Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq. … We all said, ‘but no, no. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan,” recounts Clarke, “and Rumsfeld said, ‘There aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.”‘
. . .
“I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection” between Iraq and al Qaeda, Clarke tells “60 Minutes.”

“But the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there, saying, ‘We’ve looked at this issue for years. For years we’ve looked and there’s just no connection,”‘ says Clarke.

I think I’ve completely lost any capacity to be shocked by Bush anymore. Seriously. If Bush announced tomorrow that the elections were canceled indefinitely due to “security concerns” and that the Justice Department was looking into ways to classify homosexuals as terrorists, it would seem like business as usual.

I keep telling myself “It’s an election year, it’s an election year…”, but this is still completely fucked up :

Federal regulators opened a new front in their crackdown on offensive broadcasts Thursday, saying that almost any use of the F-word on over-the-air radio and television would be considered indecent.

The Federal Communications Commission overruled its staff and said an expletive uttered by rock singer Bono on NBC was both indecent and profane. It marked the first time that the FCC cited a four-letter word as profane; the commission previously equated profanity with language challenging God’s divinity.
. . .
The FCC also proposed fining a subsidiary of Clear Channel, the nation’s largest radio station chain, the maximum $55,000 for a broadcast on two Florida radio stations, WAVW in Stuart and WCZR in Vero Beach, where the host conducted an interview with a couple allegedly having sex.

Commissioners noted that they acted against Clear Channel on the complaint of a listener who did not have a transcript or tape, a departure from past practice. “Complaints should no longer be denied because of a lack of tape, transcript or significant excerpt,” Commissioner Kevin Martin said.
. . .
Federal law bars radio stations and over-the-air television channels from airing references to sexual and excretory functions between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when children may be tuning in. The rules do not apply to cable and satellite channels or satellite radio.

The House earlier this month voted to increase the maximum fine for indecency to $500,000. Similar legislation is pending in the senate.

That’s right, half a million dollars. Pretty soon the fine will be bigger for saying to word “fuck” in public than actually fucking in public. (And don’t even get me started on the “challenging God’s divinity” shit or the fact that they’re fining people without any evidence).

Here’s a fascinating interview with a security expert from Newsweek.

Do you think the money we?ve spent?and the way we?ve spent it?on homeland security measures is worth it?
I think it?s an enormous waste of money. Politicians tend to prefer security countermeasures that are very visible, to make it look like they?re doing something. So they will tend to pick things that are visible even if they are less effective. Training FBI agents in Arabic is a really good idea, but no one is going to see it. Fingerprinting foreigners at the border is a very visible thing that, even if it is less effective, is going to look like we?re doing something.

Do you think the Madrid bombings, assuming they were carried out by Al Qaeda, were effective as a political tool given the surprise upset victory three days later of the Socialist Party, which wants to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq?
I thought the exact opposite. Al Qaeda wants escalation. When they attacked the United States, they wanted us to attack back with force because that would enrage more Arabs, which enrages more of us, and makes the conflagration worse. I?m amazed that people are saying that the victory for the antiwar people in Spain was a victory for Al Qaeda. I?m proud of Spain. They could have reacted like the U.S. and said they would use even more force. They reacted with restraint.

Well, it depends on what you think their goal was with these attacks. If they wanted to isolate the United States, and persuade Spain to leave Iraq, then you could argue that they succeeded.
The U.S. in Iraq plays into the terrorists? hands. It gives them more people to kill. It proves we?re an occupying nation. What Al Qaeda wants is to cause a holy war. They wanted us to invade Iraq. By denying liberties for thousands of Americans, by moving our nation toward a police state and rattling sabers throughout the world, we proved them right. We legitimized them by claiming we were at war with them. They don?t deserve the designation of enemy combatants. They are criminals and should be treated as such.

What changes would you like to see in the way the U.S. approaches security?
What I push for is more balanced approaches toward security. It is just one of the goals of our country. If we took every single person in this country and locked each of them in a box, we would be more secure, but it wouldn?t be a better society. I would much rather live in a country that people run to than run from.

Of course, the big problem here is that if all this guy’s recommendations were followed, it would be even more apparent that fighting terrorism is primarily a law enforcement issue, and we can’t have that…

I’m having one of those weeks where I just hate everything. It’s not triggered by anything in particular, but it’s stopped me from posting anything even slightly interesting. So forgive me if my posting here is pointless, meandering, and/or silly. Lately, it’s been hard to get enthused about blogging or this site in general. I’m thinking about redesigning the whole damn thing. I wanna add some stuff and make the whole thing more “clean” (sorta like my current site structured like this one). Is there anything I should change or keep the same? Are there any other sites whose design I should try to incorporate? Am I being crazy?

Since the A.B.B. position of most lefties is easily misconstrued and often met with feigned shock by conservatives (“You mean you’d vote for Saddam over Bush?”), here’s a list of living Americans who I would vote against in a two-man race with Bush :

Judge Roy Moore

Pat Buchanan

Dick Cheney

John Ashcroft

Rev. Fred Phelps

Pat Robertson

Rep. Tom DeLay

Trent Lott

John Walker Lindh

Ann Coulter

Terry Nichols

Granted, most of these are a “Stick with the devil you know…” situation, but let’s not pretend that just because somebody says they’ll vote for anybody but Bush means that they’d be willing to give their vote to a child rapist or brutal dictator. And it’s not like conservatives didn’t feel the exact same way back in 1996.

It doesn’t matter how right we are or how wrong Bush is, with an organization like this, Bush can all but buy the presidency :

White House political chief Karl Rove said Wednesday that President Bush had just begun to demonstrate the kind of targeted, multi-front campaign he plans against senate rival John Kerry.

Addressing a small group of conservative activists, Rove assured them that Bush planned a nimble campaign able to counterpunch even before Kerry opens his mouth. The White House adviser pointed with pride to the Bush camp’s response Tuesday, when it got word that Kerry planned a national security speech to veterans in West Virginia.

Less than 24 hours after learning of the speech, the Bush campaign produced an ad criticizing Kerry for his senate votes on military spending. It also dispatched volunteers to hand out pro-Bush material to West Virginians, and started radio ads in the state.

The Bush campaign has material ready to go on Kerry based on his votes and speeches, said a Republican who attended the session. Whenever Kerry raises an issue, the Bush-Cheney campaign will be prepared to hand out leaflets, and run ads on TV and radio.

Bush has more than $100 million in the bank. If we can’t get our message out, then we’re gonna get steamrolled. If you have a website, please put a banner ad on it. If there’s a Bush fundraiser happening near you, print out some flyers. It may not raise much money, but it’s a start.

Earlier today I got to briefly check out the news channels’ responses to today’s bombing in Iraq. While CNN and MSNBC had the standard coverage that consisted of a shot of something vague while the anchors repeated shit we already knew, FOX had two pundits talking about how these attacks are a “sign of desperation” and that the terrorists were just lashing out “like a wounded animal”. Since this seems to be a fairly common opinion in wingnut-land, I gotta know : What the hell are they basing this opinion on?

Terrorist groups have planned and carried out two major attacks in less than a week. How is this anything other than a slap in the face at the Bush Administration’s efforts to defeat terror? Is it just because the attacks didn’t happen here? I guess that argument would have held similar weight on 9/10/01.

All signs point to the fact that the Bush administration is screwing up the war on terror. Prior to 9/11, they ignored the Hart-Rudman report on terrorism and stopped some counter-terrorism programs so they could concentrate on a missile defense program. After 9/11, they let the Taliban and al Qaeda get away in Afghanistan. They pulled resources away from that fight to go into Iraq, which wasn’t an immediate threat. They’ve bungled (to put it nicely) intelligence and threatened people who disagree with their goals. They’ve botched the occupation. They’ve spent more money on the same missile defense program (which doesn’t work) than it would cost to completely meet our needs for homeland security. And now they’ve trying to find Bin Laden again.

To think we’re doing well is to accept anything the president says at face value. In 2001, Bush gave himself a clever way around ever having to explain how the war on terror is going. Addressing the nation two weeks after the attacks he said “Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success.” That last part is they key : “secret in success”. In other words, he’s all but saying “Yeah we’re winning the war, I just can’t tell you how or why.”

Well, I’m calling bullshit on that one, Mr. Bush. This is an election year, so if you wanna get your job back, you’re gonna have to tell us why you deserve it. (For those of us who have had to work for a living, we call it an “employee review”.) If you’ve been doing such a great job, you’re gonna have to provide a little more detail than “we’ve got them on the run” or “we’ll smoke them out”.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everybody!

Why a shamrock?

Patrick used the shamrock to explain the Trinity, and has been associated with him and the Irish since that time.

So does that mean the reason four-leaf clovers are so lucky is that you get an extra god?

There are many, many reasons why the internet is the greatest communications medium in human history, but one of my favorites is that it’s a home for people to indulge their obsessions. A good example is FallonFey.com (Why not FeyFallon.com?) which contains every weekend update segment from the last four seasons. Here’s some of my favorite jokes :

FEY: As of yesterday, the Bush administration said they still hadn’t found the source of the White House leak that outed a woman as a CIA operative. So, just to recap, here are the things President Bush can’t find: The White House leak, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, the guy who sent the anthrax through the mail, and his own butt with two hands and a flashlight.

FALLON: In a Veteran’s Day speech this Tuesday, President Bush vowed, “we will finish the mission we have begun, period.” Afterwards he was advised in the future he doesn’t have to read the punctuation marks.

FEY: CBS announced that it will not air moveon.org’s winning anti-Bush ad during the Superbowl, saying they don’t air so-called Issue Ads. Unless the issue is that girls are sluts for beer.

FALLON: On Friday, President Bush announced details of his plan to send a man to the moon. Bush told reporters that to guarantee success of the mission, we will only send the astronauts up there when it’s a full moon.

FEY: Here we see the Defense department’s new double-wide podium, designed so that Donald Rumsfeld can talk about the war without anyone seeing the huge boner it gives him.

FALLON: This week, Georgia’s board of education approved the plan that allows teachers to keep using the word ‘Evolution’ when teaching biology. Though, as a compromise, dinosaurs are now called ‘Jesus Horses.’

In other news, I’m seriously considering changing the name of this blog to “Jesus Horses”.

Looks like Bush has a new ad out that calls Kerry on his vote to block Bush’s request for $87 billion. Since this coincides with a charge that was made in the comments here, I’m going to post these remarks from pages S12321 and S12322 of the Congressional record.

Since Thomas.loc.gov doesn’t allow permalinks, to see it for yourself, check out the remarks on “EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS FOR IRAQ…” from the Oct. 2, 2003 senate page. Also, to make things a little more readable, I’m splitting up his remarks into three sections.

Failure to share costs with the international community

It was bad enough to go it alone in the war, but it is inexcusable and incomprehensible that we choose to go it alone in the peace. One of the reasons we are facing $87 billion is that the administration has stiff-armed the United Nations and has not been willing to bring other nations to this cause through the deftness of their diplomacy, the skill of their diplomacy.

Last year, President Bush had three decisive opportunities to reduce this $87 billion bill. That first opportunity came when we authorized force. That authorization sent a strong signal about the intentions of the Congress to be united in holding Saddam Hussein accountable. I thought, and still believe, that was the right thing to do. It was appropriate for the United States to help stand up at the United Nations and hold those resolutions accountable. It set the stage for the U.N. resolution that finally led Saddam Hussein to let the weapons inspectors back into Iraq. That was correct.
. . .
The Bush administration, impatient to go into battle, stopped the clock on the inspections, against the wishes of key members of the Security Council, and despite the call of many in Congress who had voted to authorize the use of force as the last resort the President said it would be.
. . .
Then there was a second opportunity. After the Iraqi people pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in the square in Baghdad, there was a moment when British and American forces had proven our military might and the world was prepared to come in and try to assume the responsibility for helping to rebuild Iraq.

Once again, Kofi Annan and the United Nations offered their help. Once again, this administration gave them the stiff arm. They said: No, thank you; we do not need your help. And we proceeded forward without building the kind of coalition that would reduce the risk to our troops and without reducing the cost to the American people.

Then the third occasion was just the other day, when the President went to the U.N. General Assembly. Other nations again stood ready to help to provide troops and, hopefully, funds. All President Bush had to do was show a little humility and ask appropriately. Instead of asking, he lectured. Instead of focusing on reconstruction, his speech was a coldly received exercise in the rhetoric of redemption.

Kofi Annan offered to help. Again, we did not take them up on that offer in a way that was realistic. The President exhibited an attitude that was both self-satisfied and tone deaf simultaneously, once again raising the risk for American soldiers by leaving them alone, and once again raising the cost to the American people by leaving America alone.

I believe the President could have owned up to some of the difficulties. The President could have signaled or stated a willingness to abandon unilateral control over reconstruction and governance. Instead, he made America less safe–less safe–in a speech and in conduct that pushed other nations away rather than brought them to our cause and what should be rightfully the world’s cause.
. . .
In January of this year, Secretary Rumsfeld said the same, and he added that “How much of that would be the U.S. burden, and how much would be other countries’, is an open question.” Well, today it is not an open question; it is a closed question. We know the answer: The majority is being paid by the American taxpayers. In March of this year, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz testified in the senate that Iraq is a “country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” Did the Secretary mislead us or was the Secretary ignorant?

Uncertainty about the war’s long-term costs

Eager to rush to war, the administration played down or, worse, ignored the likelihood of resistance. It lowballed the number of forces that would be needed to seize the alleged WMD sites, for which the war was fought, to protect the infrastructure, and underestimated the magnitude of the reconstruction task and the ease with which oil would flow for rebuilding. It refused to tell the American people upfront the long-term costs of winning the peace.

I remember the distinguished former President pro tempore and leader of the Democrats, the Senator from West Virginia, asking that question penetratingly, repeatedly. Yet those figures given have proven to be false or completely underballed. It refused to tell the American people those long-term costs, and it refused to do the work, to ask the international community to join us in this effort.
. . .
So what of this cost of the Iraqi operation?

In the fall of 2002, OMB Chief Mitch Daniels told us the costs of Iraq would be between $50 and $60 billion. It is now already more than $100 billion more than that.
. . .
In March, Secretary Powell testified in the senate that “Iraq will not require the sorts of foreign assistance Afghanistan will continue to require.” When Larry Lindsey predicted the war may cost $100 billion to $200 billion, he was deemed so far off base by the White House that he was fired. Now, a year later, Congress is set to appropriate over $160 billion, and the costs are estimated to rise to $350 billion to $400 billion over 5 years. Even Larry Lindsey’s estimates are now low. With so much so wrong, Americans are looking to the White House for direction and leadership. They want, and they deserve, straight answers to straight questions.

How long will we be there? How much will it really cost? How many American troops will it take? And how long will it be before we do what common sense dictates and get the world invested in this effort by not treating Iraq as though it is an American prize, a loot of war but, rather, treating it as a nation that belongs in the community of nations, dealt with properly by the United Nations, as we did in Bosnia and Kosovo and Namibia and East Timor and in other parts of the world?

So far, the White House, with all of its evasion and explanation, has been a house of mirrors where nothing is what it seems and almost everything is other than what the President promised. But Americans are also looking to us in the Congress for leadership.

The Biden-Kerry Amendment

The President has talked a lot about sacrifice in recent weeks. In an address from the White House, he said of Iraq, “This will take time and require sacrifice.” In his weekly radio talk, he warned that “This campaign requires sacrifice.” Even in his State of the Union Address, the President issued a call for sacrifice saying: “We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, other presidents, and other generations.” But that is exactly what we are doing if we leave this $87 billion in its current form.
. . .
Despite all we are asking of the men and women in uniform, the bill we now debate appropriates $87 billion simply by increasing the Federal deficit. It asks no sacrifice of anybody in the United States today who can afford it. This is an off-budget, deficit-spending free ride.

The amendment Senator Biden and I and others are offering changes that. It will pay the cost of this bill. It will pay the cost of the entire $87 billion by simply repealing–not all, which I think we ought to do–a portion of the tax cut for the wealthiest Americans.

The Biden-Kerry amendment will ask those who can afford to pay this burden to do so, and make their contribution, make their sacrifice to the effort to win the peace. It protects the middle class. It meets our obligations in Iraq. And it will help ensure that we have the resources necessary to accomplish our goals here at home, goals such as making health care more affordable, paying for homeland security, and keeping the President’s promise to leave no child behind.
. . .
Senator Biden and I are making a commonsense proposal. Rather than borrowing an additional $87 billion, we want to scale back a small portion of the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, for those making over $300,000 a year. The average income of those in that top tax bracket is $1 million a year. These Americans are not exactly hurting. Their real average after-tax income rose a remarkable 200 percent in the 1980s and 1990s, and their overall share of pretax income has nearly doubled over 20 years. That cannot be said of any other income group in the United States.

In the year 2000, the 2.8 million people who made up the top 1 percent of the population received more total after-tax income than did 110 million Americans who make up the bottom 40 percent. Think about that: The top 1 percent of Americans earned more income than the bottom 40 percent, and that is after taxes.
. . .
It is simply not unfair to ask those earning the most, those who are the most fortunate, those who are the most talented, the hard-working Americans who are earning more than $300,000, not as a matter of any kind of targeting except for the fact they are the best off and have the greatest ability, to make this sacrifice without a negative impact on their lifestyle, on their choices, on their quality of life. This is a time for sacrifice. I believe it is appropriate for us to ask that in order to promote a free Iraq, in order to reduce the burden being placed on future generations of Americans, in order to reduce the burden placed on the middle class today, in order to have the least negative impact on our economy, the least negative impact on long-term interest rates, the least crowding out of borrowing by adding to the debt and crowding out private borrowing in the marketplace by public borrowing, the least negative impact on perceptions, the best way for America to deal with this problem of misinformation, this problem of promises broken is to turn to those the President seeks most to give the biggest breaks to most frequently and ask them to share the burden.

So while some may want to believe that sticking up for firefighters and voting against the $87 billion amounts to “hypocrisy”, I find Kerry’s desire to stand up for working Americans and fiscal responsibility to be pretty consistent.

This morning when I woke up, I this chunk of John Kerry’s speech before the IAFF. Needless to say, I was mighty impressed :

And tens of thousands of other troops arrived in Iraq to find that – with danger around every corner – there wasn’t enough body armor to protect them. Many of their families on the homefront – mothers and fathers, husbands and wives and children – were forced to raise the money to buy it for them. Families should be sending pictures and care packages to Iraq – and the Department of Defense should be sending the body armor. Today, I call on President Bush to support a law now in Congress to reimburse each and every family who had to buy the body armor this Administration failed to provide.

Many of us here today have been on the frontlines of conflicts far away. But all of us know that today firefighters and other first defenders here at home are on the frontlines of this new war – and you also deserve the tools you need to do the job.

After September 11th, President Bush went to New York, stood at Ground Zero, and stood with our firefighters. I wish the President would go back now and ask whether he’s stood with you since that day.

You should never have to worry about getting the health benefits and collective bargaining rights you’ve earned. And President Bush should never forget that the three hundred forty-three heroes we lost on 9-11 were not only parents and children, brothers and husbands, fianc?s and best friends. They were also proud members of Locals 94 and 854. They never forgot it and neither will we.

Two and a half years after 9-11, fire departments only have enough radios for half their firefighters and almost two-thirds of firehouses are short-staffed – with more firefighters and police officers being laid off.

Cargo in our airports and seaports still isn’t getting screened. Our terrorist watch lists haven’t been simplified and the right information still isn’t available to the right people on the frontlines of preventing the next attack. First defenders still can’t radio each other in emergency situations. Air marshals are being laid off.

And yet this Administration has put a tax giveaway for the very wealthiest over making sure we do all we can to win the War on Terror here at home. They have no problem giving Halliburton a fat no-bid contract while only soldiers and firefighters and police officers are asked to give their sacrifice.

Half an hour later when CNN was covering the speech, they described it with the predictably bland “John Kerry had harsh words for Preisdent Bush today…” without playing any actual clips. I guess that’s technically true, but without any quotes you’re kinda stuck with an impression as bland as “Citizen Kane is a good movie about a man and his sled”.

As far as Kerry’s attacks go, I wish he’s go into more detail. This whole “tax cuts for the rich” line has become such a mantra for the left, that I wonder how much power it really has on undecided voters. A better plan would be to mention a few specific figures and contrast them with Bush’s other priorities. Something like this (figures from here and here) :

“Just a year after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush cut $150 million in grants to firefighers, yet he’s willing to spend ten times that amount in an effort to ‘support marriage’. He wants to spend $270 million on abstinence-only sex education programs that have been proven to be ineffective, while he slashes $82 million from the budget to improve the FBI’s counter-terrorism technology. $10.2 billion on a missle defense program that’s never worked, when we’re more likely to be attacked by a nuclear weapon in a shipping container than a missle. This president’s priorities are wrong for America and if you don’t believe me, I invite you to stop reading his lips and start reading his checkbook.”

The fact is, the way Bush chooses to spend the money is the problem here. While Kerry is painfully aware of this, he should point out the specific dollar figures to show how the cuts Bush has been making have been relatively minor in comparison to many of his biggest priorities.

Billmon has a good point about the results of the Spanish elections :

If the Madrid attack had never happened, and the Spanish people still had voted to give the PP the boot, I would have been pleased, and would have seen it as a defeat for Bush, not a victory for Al Qaeda. But that isn’t what just went down. Instead, a sizable number of Spanish voters wound up blaming their own government for a major terrorist attack, at least in part because of its alliance with the United States. And that’s a political earthquake. It seems extremely naive to think it won’t have an impact elsewhere.

The Spanish Socialists may be totally sincere in their commitment to continue the fight against Al Qaeda (and I certainly hope they are.) But there does appear to be a trend running here, in which popular opinion in many countries, particularly in Europe, is beginning to feel caught in the middle — not just in the war in Iraq, but in the struggle against terrorism as well. It isn’t neutralism — yet. But it seems to be leaning in that direction. And a neutral Europe, not to mention a neutral world, would be a grievous wound (albeit a largely self-inflicted one) for the United States.

But JR (whose blog makes me wish I spoke Spanish) has an even better point in the comments :

I just can tell you as a Spaniard that my people and democracy have won.

Period.

On the other hand, the Socialist victory has also something to do with the misinformation coming from the incumbent government, and its suspisious interest that ETA was behind the bombings. The people rallied spontaneously on saturday asking for “the truth” and they only obtained an illegalization remark from the election commision. These are the kind of things that made us kick Aznar’s ass far away from here.

Being an outsider who didn’t know a damn thing about Spain a week ago, let me act like an authority for a moment and give you my unsolicited opinion.

While it’s easy to come to the conclusion that the Spanish people blamed their government for not adequately protecting them (which is a fair criticism in its own right), it does seem that Aznar spent late last week doing everything he could to blame ETA for this attack. While the jury’s still out on (somewhat) on who’s responsible, it seemed from over here as if he was making the case while ignoring any evidence that implicated al Qaeda. And in Europe, unlike here, people don’t like being lied to.

But Billmon bring up a good larger point. Is the impending Spanish withdrawal from Iraq a sign of European indifference toward the war on terror? Once again, I’d say yes and no.

“Yes”, in the sense that as Bush and co. continue to define the war on terror to include Iraq, any reduced effort on this front will be contrary to the goals defined by the Bush administration. If Spain and our other allies (and by allies I include, contrary to popular opinion, Germany, Russia, France, etc.) move further away from American efforts to beat terrorists, I can only conclude that it’s as much Bush’s fault as anyones.

But “no”, in the sense that I believe this will, if anything, make Europeans more vigilant in their desire to defeat al Qaeda, just not necessarily on American terms. With a disagreement like this, it sure would be nice to have leadership that wasn’t openly hostile to international organizations, huh?

Hell hath no fury like a 1.5-hit wonder scorned :

Chubby Checker, whose song “The Twist” was one of the most popular dance records of all time, isn’t in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And that’s OK with him.

But the singer is peeved over what he considers a lack of radio airplay for the classic song and his new material. So he staged a protest ? albeit good-natured ? outside Monday’s induction festivities in midtown Manhattan.

“I’m not doing it to get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at all,” he told The Associated Press in an interview. “I don’t get the airplay that one in my position deserves. ‘Twist and Shout’ gets more airplay than ‘The Twist,’ and that’s not right.”

Checker, 62, has been recording for decades, and some of other hits include “The Hucklebuck” and “Pony Time.” But his biggest hit was the 1960 song “The Twist,” which went to No. 1 in that year and again in 1961, sparking a dance craze across the nation. The song was so popular he even had a hit with its sequel, “Let’s Twist Again,” in 1961. (He also had a hit with “Slow Twistin’” and in 1994 released a song called “Texas Twist”).
. . .
“I’m not getting the airplay ? no airplay, no payday,” said Checker, who waxes on and on about the popularity of “The Twist. He says even foods with the words “twist” and “checker” in them point to the song’s enduring popularity. (He also markets “Chubby Checker’s Beef Jerky” with flavors like “Sugar Twist Teriyaki.”)

Okay, just glancing at the list of past inductees, I can think of five performers that deserve to be inducted before Chubby Checker :

Perusing the blogs and news today, I see that the socialist party has won the Spanish elections. The main talking point on both sites of the aisle here is that the terrorist attacks last week were in the hopes that it would stop the Spanish right-wing party (who have been big supporters of Bush and Blair) from winning re-election. Well, the right-wingers lost, so it seems that the terrorists have won (I’ll get back to that statement in a moment).

What’s worse is that this (apparent) al Qaeda attack on Western interests, using Iraqi occupation as an m.o., will probably be used to falsely draw a parallel between pre-war Iraq and those who attacked us on 9-11. The real reason that I can see for all the attacks that we and our allies have suffered at the hands of these terrorists is that Islamic fundamentalists don’t want us in the Middle East at all. With the implementation of the Iraqi constitution pending, I’m sure the prospects of a permanent US-friendly government scares the hell out of them. So anything they can do to punish those who are behind this thing would seem to be in their best interests.

But does that mean that the terrorists won the Spanish election? Well, yes and no.

Yes, in the sense that the attacks signaled a 180-degree opinion change in the opinion of the electorate. Whoever was behind the bombing was clearly intending to punish the people who supported Bush and Blair. So insofar that the terrorists accomplished their goal, it looks as if they succeeded.

But, c’mon. That’s not what people really mean when they say “the terrorists have won”. What they really mean is “those who disagree with me are going to help terrorists kill you.” In that sense, I definitely don’t think the terrorists have won. President Bush and his allies (both domestic and foreign) have continually dropped the ball on the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq (which, despite last week’s attack, are still separate issues). We can argue endlessly about how well Kerry (or Spain’s socialist party) would do in these wars, but we already know that Bush and co. aren’t doing as well as they could.

To paraphrase Atrios, just because the people of Spain voted to get rid of the leaders who were incapable of protecting them from a terrorist attack doesn’t mean that they are indifferent to the dangers that terrorist attacks pose.

One year ago today, The Talent Show began with this post :

Where is the money coming from?

In the ongoing quest to get a UN Resolution to use force against Iraq, the Bush administration has been offering billions of dollars in bribes (they prefer the term “aid”) to the undecided members of the Security Council. Aren’t there more important things to be spending that money on?

If the last year has taught me anything it’s the most reasonable people will stop loving George W. Bush once you point out what a fuck-up he is. Well, it’s an election year now. So let’s change the “bribes” part to something like $1.5 billion to “support marriage” and get the message out. As far as I’m concerned, November’s election is ours to lose (or Bush’s to buy).