Monthly Archives: June 2006

Memo to Donkey Cons

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… bloggers who lack the guts to permit comments: They let me in for free, and I got there by mass transit. Still jealous?

Update: Oooo, now the poor babies are whining that they can’t leave up comments threads because lefties are mean to them. And then they launch into a diatribe that somehow blames liberals for every atrocity visited upon mankind since the invention of socks, including the French Terror, 100 million people slaughtered by Communist regimes (they link to a book about it, in case I didn’t know), ax murders, nasty things allegedly done by the Black Panthers, and the demise of Kathleen Willey’s cat.

Righties are such weenies. As I said in the next post, they dish it out a whole lot better than they can take it.

(Anyway, boobies, I already said didn’t pay to get into the Drum Major Institute party. They let me in for free because I was on the blogger host committee.)

Well, since the Donkey Cons blog doesn’t permit comments, you are welcome to leave comments to their post here.

Update update: The children are utterly unglued and raving that they will outkeyboard me. Well, go ahead and keyboard, dears. I find them amusing, but not enough to waste much time on. Especially since they don’t seem to have enough traffic to generate more than a handful of hits. I ‘spect they’re getting some traffic from here, though.

Lacking the moral fiber to admit the exchange began because they called me a “limousine liberal” — which is a knee-slapper to anyone who knows me — now they’re pretending we’re having a disagreement about Kos. The Donkey Cons and other rightie blogs are having a high old time joining the press pile-on of Kos, which they’ve dubbed Kosola, in the assumption that Kos is guilty of influence peddling or something. Once again, they resemble nothing more than a pack of brainless hyenas smelling some dead they can eat.

Now, I have no idea what Kos is peddling to the pols, but the truth is that on the blogosphere he doesn’t have all that much influence to peddle. Some of the charges I’ve heard — that he controls which blogs get advertising from the Advertising Liberally network, for example — are known personally to me to be bogus. And in the larger liberal blogosphere, a Kos endorsement plus a $1 bill will get you whatever you want on the McDonald’s dollar menu. People support candidates when they think the candidates are worthy of support, and if they don’t, they don’t. I’m not seeing a Warner bandwagon, for example.

I don’t know what’s up with Jerome Armstrong and the SEC charges, but the scandal du jour is that Jerome used to be a serious student of astrology. To which I say, so?

Other than general disparagement of blogs and blog readers by people like the Keyboarding Cabbage (which righties are too stupid to realize applies to them, too), the only part of the pile-on that really irritates me is that people like Glenn Greenwald and Steve Gilliard have had to spend time exposing, um, lapses of fact in the stuff the professionals are writing about Kos. A waste, I say; that much brainpower can be put to better use.

Smoke-Filled Backrooms of the Internets, Conclusion

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If you want an instrument to measure how imperfectly the “MSM” reflects actual reality, look no further than the current media pile-on of Markos Moulitsas. Today David Brooks jumps in.

They say that the great leaders are gone and politics has become the realm of the small-minded. But in the land of the Lilliputians, the Keyboard Kingpin must be accorded full respect.

The Keyboard Kingpin, a k a Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, sits at his computer, fires up his Web site, Daily Kos, and commands his followers, who come across like squadrons of rabid lambs, to unleash their venom on those who stand in the way. And in this way the Kingpin has made himself a mighty force in his own mind, and every knee shall bow.

Oh yes, the Mighty Kos, who last Thursday was seen sitting quietly in the corner of the Lotus lounge while a roomful of rabid lambs debated the lamb business. “It’s not about me,” he responded, wistfully, to a question — I didn’t hear the question — and this lamb concurs. While I appreciate Kos’s skill at connecting blogging to the fleshly political world, I don’t actually read Kos all that much. No offense, Kos, but I don’t. On my list of blogs I try to read frequently Daily Kos comes in at about #20, meaning I don’t get to it more than once or twice a week.

Nor are Kos’s ideas accepted unquestioningly among bloggers. For example, among the many bloggers I’ve schmoozed with over the past month, including those at YearlyKos, I can testify there is considerable disinterest in a Mark Warner presidential bid in 2008. This is true even among those of us who went to the infamous Warner party in Las Vegas. And I can’t imagine any leftie blogger endorsing Warner just on Kos’s say so. That’s not how we do things here. As the Green Knight says,

First of all, Kos doesn’t have any followers. He has readers and co-bloggers, sure. But followers? Don’t be ridiculous. We’re talking about progressives, liberals, and Democrats here. You might as well try to herd cats as make people like us get in line.

The cluelessness of MSM pundits is one of the many public outrages that inspired a lot of us to get into blogging; blogging is, at least, more therapeutic than yelling at the TV. Watching and reading some of these bubble-wrapped wonders can be more frustrating than, well, herding cats. But now we have hard proof that their almighty opinions have all the substance of soufflé.

“Keyboard kingpin?” Puh-LEEZE.

It’s clear that elements among the punditocracy have been incited to take down these blogger people before they get too big for their britches. As Greg at The Talent Show says, “I’d love to get a peek at what’s been getting discussed on their private email list.”

However — and I’m speculating here — I wonder if the real target is Mark Warner and not Kos. After YearlyKos I thought it weird when the Warner party became the subject of much finger wagging, even though other politicians hosted parties for conference attendees. Wes Clark invited us all to a “do” at the Hard Rock Cafe, for example (I passed; I was too tired to go), and two or three congressional candidates held more modest cocktail parties. Yet Mark Warner’s party has been called out as if there were something sinister about a candidate inviting voters to some kind of shindig so he can shake their hands and kiss their babies. Not that I saw any babies at the Warner party, but I trust you get the point.

Where did the finger-wagging campaign originate? Why is the MSM suddenly piling on Kos this week? Is attacking Kos a back-door way of derailing candidates associated with Kos? Like Mark Warner? Or Sherrod Brown? Or Ned Lamont? Who is orchestrating this?

Today Newsweek is running a photo of Kos and Warner together on its web site; I assume the photo is in the print edition as well. And Newsweek reports on the 2004 Howard Dean internet campaign and the current challenge of Joe Lieberman as if these efforts were entirely Kos’s doing instead of the work of many blogs pulling together. As I said in an earlier post, Kos has become the physical manifestation of the blogosphere to people who don’t get blogging. Someone should explain to them that he’s only the tip of a very big iceberg.

In the two previous posts I’ve talked about the allegations of quid pro quo, some of which are absurd on their little red faces, and of the mysterious email that was allegedly written by Steve Gilliard, even though Steve says he has no record of writing it, and sent to the Townhall Townhouse listserv, even though no one on the listserv received it. Like the New Republic pundits before him, Brooks holds up the email as evidence of something without questioning its provenance. Way to go.

And these are the pros. These people have editors.

Brooks repeats allegations against Jerome Armstrong that in 2000 he was paid to tout a software stock on the web. The SEC is investigating this. I don’t claim to know what happened. But Brooks passes on the New Republic claim that Kos tried to shush discussion of the SEC story on the web, without noting that TAPPED did write about it. Some “kingpin.”

And Brooks tries to use these allegations to build an implication that Armstrong and Kos are nothing more than old-style influence peddlers. For the other side, which Brooks ignores, see Ezra Klein.

Now, if I were the Democrats, I’d be coming to the support of the blogosphere, because as I say I’m not persuaded Kos and bloggers are the real targets here. And Brooks should be ashamed of himself for passing on smears without bothering to check facts. But then, he’s only a vegetable.

See also Raw Story, James Wolcott, Tbogg, and Shakespeare’s Sister.

Smoke-Filled Backrooms of the Internets, Continued

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The owners of The New Republic must’ve ordered a hit on Markos Moulitsas. Following up the Zengerle v. Kos dispute, another TNR columnist, Lee Siegel, wrote on Thursday defending “Zengerle’s artful and honest exposure of someone who, more and more, seems to represent the purest, most classical strain of hypocrisy.” That’s Kos, I guess. Siegel goes on to fire buckshot at the whole leftie blogosphere —

It’s a bizarre phenomenon, the blogosphere. It radiates democracy’s dream of full participation but practices democracy’s nightmare of populist crudity, character-assassination, and emotional stupefaction. It’s hard fascism with a Microsoft face. It puts some people, like me, in the equally bizarre position of wanting desperately for Joe Lieberman to lose the Democratic primary to Ned Lamont so that true liberal values might, maybe, possibly prevail, yet at the same time wanting Lamont, the hero of the blogosphere, to lose so that the fascistic forces ranged against Lieberman might be defeated. (Every critical event in democracy is symbolic of the problem with democracy.)

So if people use the internets to organize a political challenge to Lieberman, that makes us “fascistic forces”? Why doesn’t that make us “participants in representative democracy”?

And yes, the blogosphere gets a little rough, but I say most of us are genteel compared to rightie talk radio.

Siegel must’ve caught some attitude for the Thursday column, because yesterday he posted on “The Origins of Bloggofascism.”

“Moron”; “Wanker” (a favorite blogofascist insult, maybe because of the similarity between the most strident blogging and masturbating); and “Asshole” have been the three most common polemical gambits. A reactor even had the gall to refer to me as a “conservative.” Another resourceful adversarialist invited me to lick his scrotum. Please send a picture and a short essay describing your favorite hobbies. One madly ambitious blogger, who has been alternately trying to provoke and fawning over TNR writers in an attempt to break down the door–I’m too polite to mention any names–even asked who it was at TNR who gave me “the keys to a blog.”

Poor baby.

For the record, in the past I’ve blogged about digital lynch mobs and why people should learn to express disagreement without suggesting the person disagreed with should go bleep his mother. This is for the disagree-er’s own sake as well as for the sake of the disagree-ee. As I wrote here,

Anger is a tricky thing. It can motivate people, but it can also repel. I wrote last week, for example, that antiwar protests are more effective when protesters are serious but not angry. That’s because people who are not angry at the same things you are will be uncomfortable with your anger. If you want to persuade people to see your point of view, it helps to do it in a not-angry way.

However,

Blogging, on the other hand, is not about persuasion as much as it is about peeling away layers of socially conditioned bullshit to get at bare-bones truth. A good blogger is an honest blogger. I’d say to any blogger that if you’re angry, dig into yourself to find the source of your anger and blog it. Don’t worry about what the neighbors will think.

Saturday I quoted Sam Keen;

    Honor your anger. But before you express it, sort out the righteous from the unrighteous. Immediately after a storm, the water is muddy; rage is indiscriminate. It takes time to discriminate, for the mud to settle. But once the stream runs clear, express your outrage against any who have violated your being. Give the person you intend to love the gift of discriminating anger.

Poor Seigel got blasted with some indiscriminate rage, which is unpleasant, but it’s hardly fascism. Juvenile, probably. Pissed off, definitely. But pissed off doesn’t add up to fascism.

Seigel complains about “abusive attempts to autocratically or dictatorially control criticism” — i.e., somebody called him a “wanker.” And calling him a wanker is fascism, he says, because his dictionary defines fascism as “any tendency toward or actual exercise of severe autocratic or dictatorial control.” I’m not sure how being called a “wanker” reduces a person to severe autocratic or dictatorial control, but I’ll let that pass.

Seigel’s definition of fascism is a poor definition. Per David Neiwert,

In today’s context, Nazism specifically and fascism generally are most often cited by partisans of both sides not with any reference to its actual content but merely as the essence of totalitarian evil itself. This is knee-jerk half-thought. Obviously, I don’t agree that the mere reference to fascism, let alone a serious discussion of it, automatically renders a point moot. But a reflexive, ill-informed or inappropriate reference — which describes the bulk of them — should suffice to invalidate any argument.

Gotcha, Siegel.

Then, after further whining about the “intolerance and rage” in the blogosphere, Siegel continues to express intolerance and rage against Kos and the blogosphere.

“Two other traits of fascism are its hatred of the processes of politics, and the knockabout origins of its adherents,” he says, and then he pulls a quote from Kos out of a San Francisco Chronicle article that begins —

“I believe in government. I was in El Salvador in the late ’70s during the civil war and I saw government as a life-and-death situation,” he said. “There was no one to root for. The government was a corrupt plutocracy and the rebels were Maoists. The concept of government is important.”

Kos said he saw bullets flying and soldiers executing guerrillas, and his father told him all this violence was “politics.” Which, Siegel says, proves that Kos hates politics. But the quote says nothing of the sort; Siegel performed some cognitive acrobatics worthy of Cirque du Soleil to pull “Kos hates politics” out of the Chronicle article. And having observed Kos in a political habitat, I can testify he appeared to be having a good time.

Seigel, increasingly unhinged, drew more illogical inferences from the Chronicle quote:

So he loves government, but hates politics. There’s something chilling about that. I wonder, does Zuniga consider the Solidarity movement disgusting, compromising, venal politics, too? And was there really no one to root for during the Salvadoran civil war? It’s hard to believe the usually inflexibly partisan Zuniga actually said that. The rebels may have been “Maoist”–whatever that meant to them in Central America at the time–but their goal of overthrowing a brutal, rapacious regime might well be something that a passionate political idealist and reformer like Zuniga, looking back at it in 2004, would sympathize with. Or so you would think.

Lordy, Siegel, Kos was a little kid in the 1970s, and he was just explaining why government (as opposed to instability and anarchy) is important to him. Out of this Siegel constructs a straw Kos-ideology and calls it “chilling.” But seems to me that most Americans would agree that a choice between Maoist guerrillas and brutal, rapacious plutocrats leaves one with “no one to root for.” In the real world, often there really is no one to root for other than the innocents who get in the way of other people’s agendas. Think Iraq.

Siegel continues,

But, then, Zuniga–let’s cut the puerile nicknames of “DailyKos, “Atrios,” “Instapundit” et al., which are one part fantasy of nom de guerres, one part babytalk, and a third thuggish anonymity–believes so deafeningly and inflexibly that it’s hard to tell what he believes at all, expecially if you try to make out his conviction over the noisy bleating of his followers.

In other words, Siegel is so enraged that he is reduced to calling us bloggers “morons,” “wankers,” and “assholes,” albeit with a fancier vocabulary. At least he isn’t calling us “conservatives.”

Kos is catching heat now because he has become the physical manifestation of blogging to people who don’t “get” blogging. As I’ve said before, Kos is a great organizer who deserves credit for what he’s achieved in and out of the blogosphere. But I don’t know of any bloggers who think of him as a “our leader.” Those of us with our own blogs (which is most of the leftie blogosphere) are our own bloggers. We don’t look to Kos to tell us what to think, and we don’t always agree with him. DailyKos is a high-traffic site because it’s a huge community with a wealth of good bloggers and diarists and constantly changing content, not because we all click in to receive the wisdom of Kos.

Just wait til Siegel and the rest of the New Republic wankers figure out that they’re not fighting a cult of Kos. They’re fighting a movement of independent thinkers who now have the means to speak out. The wankers can’t control the message any more.

Poor babies.

Smoke-Filled Backrooms of the Internets

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Thursday night I attended the gala awards party sponsored by the Drum Major Institute honoring Wynton Marsalis, Anna Burger, and Markos Moulitsas.

I had a very good time. But I wasn’t aware until today how close I came to being sucked into a vortex of intrigue and controversy and smoke-filled rooming. And possibly money, although money has a way of fleeing the room whenever I show up, so the money thing is a long shot.

Anyway, I got to the party, held at a nightclub called Lotus on Manhattan’s west side, a bit late. The room was too tightly packed with bodies to mingle much, but I managed to wriggle my way to the bar and claimed a spot next to Steve Gilliard and his blogging partner, the lovely Jen, a.k.a. Jenonymous. So I not only could order drinks but was lucky enough to snag a couple of steak cubes as a tray floated by, which in that room was a major coup.

I couldn’t see the honorees as they were introduced and spoke to the room. But I could hear the remarks. But then I got caught up in talking to another gentleman sitting at the bar who turned out to be a frequent commenter on Unclaimed Territory. Small world. So I wasn’t listening to the remarks all that closely and don’t remember what anybody said. I’m sure it was all very stirring, though.

When the awards part of the evening had concluded, Elana Levin of DMI rounded up us bloggers and took us to a downstairs lounge where we could talk about blog stuff. This was truly a star-studded group, as bloggers go. Along with Steve and Jen were two of the Great Babes of Blogging, Liza Sabater and Lindsay Beyerstein (Lindsay did listen to the remarks and blogged about them, here). Bob Fertik of Democrats.com, another survivor of Conference-a-thon, seemed to have recovered from the ordeal, or else he was faking it very well. Soon Lance Mannion and Blue Girl strolled in. Also Tom Watson and several other bloggers — I have not recovered from Conference-a-thon and cannot be responsible for remembering anything clearly — were there was well. And, oh yes, Kos arrived and took a spot in the corner.

Listen, folks, this is as much celebrity gossip as you’ll ever be likely to find on The Mahablog. Enjoy it.

So we had a lively talk about blog stuff, mostly on the grand themes of what we’re all about and whether we’re really reaching anyone other than “the choir.” We let Kos get a word in here and there, but on the whole he seemed perfectly happy to just hang out and listen. Then Kos left and the crowd thinned, and we were left with a small group that included Steve, Liza, Lindsay, Bob, Elana, and some other folks, and we became determined to find something to eat. So we tumbled out of Lotus and into the West Village street. After some fruitless wandering Steve decided to take charge and lead us to a place that would reliably supply us with hamburgers. He cruised straight and purposefully through waves of strolling people like a ship under sail, with the rest of us paddling frantically in his wake, to the place of hamburgers, and they were good hamburgers. And then I realized it was close to midnight and I had to get back to Grand Central before the Metro North Railroad turned into a pumpkin.

This all seemed fairly innocent to me, but what do I know? I’m still just a small-town Ozark Mountain girl. There’s times all these big city doin’s make me feel like I jes’ left Dogpatch.

According to Jason Zengerle of the floundering New Republic, that basement lounge was in fact a smoke-filled room, albeit a no-smoking one, and I had been sitting in the midst of a conspiracy so immense it would have astonished Whittaker Chambers.

As explained by Glenn Greenwald,

Over the last few days, Jason Zengerle of The New Republic has been engaged in a bizarre crusade to depict “liberal bloggers” as a bunch of mindless, obedient zombies who take orders about what to write from Markos Moulitsas, all in order to ensure that they can continue to enjoy the great financial wealth lavished upon them by virtue of their participation in the “Advertise Liberally” network, which Markos founded but does not operate. To prove this “point,” Zengerle published what he purported to be various e-mails regarding recent accusations against Jerome Armstrong, which Zengerle claimed were sent to the “Townhouse” Google group — comprised of 300 or so journalists, political operatives, bloggers, advocacy organizations, and others designed to facilitate communication between these usually isolated groups. To the extent the “substance” of Zengerle’s accusations are worth responding to, Ezra Klein and Max Sawicky (among many) have done so quite thoroughly, respectively here and here.

I’ll let you sort out the allegations and the refutations of the allegations. But as a participant in the Advertising Liberally network, I want to assure you that the amount of revenue received is not enough to buy my loyalty. A fair amount of hamburgers, yes, but not loyalty. I’m holding out for bigger bucks on the loyalty thing. And Kos and Jerome do not run the Advertising Liberally network; Chris Bowers does. I got in because Chris invited me to join, and I didn’t have to do nothin’ for it. Believe me that any club inviting me to join is not all that exclusive, although there are specific criteria. (Also see Chris on “Who Owns the New Republic?“)

Anyway, Zengerle claims that one of the sources of his allegations was an email from Steve Gilliard. But did Steve write the email? Steve says he has no record of it.

I told Zengerle the same thing and that he needs to provide the provenance of the e-mail so I can confirm or deny it. If it turns out I didn’t write those words, I’m going to write Franklin Foer, the editor of the New Republic and demand a retraction and an apology.

I write thousands of words a day between e-mails, IM, posts and comments. It is easy to lose a phrase or e-mail in that, which I why I can’t call it a fabrication. It may be taken from another e-mail, or a post, but I cannot find those words in my mailbox.

See what I mean about controversy and intrigue? And yet not much was said about any of this Thursday night. “Zengerle is an ass and TNR sucks” pretty much sums up the consensus.

While I’m on the subject of Thursday night I want to say something about the Drum Major Institute. DMI is a progressive think tank dedicated to “defending the American dream.” They’re doing some good work, and I hope to hear more from them in the future.

Bushies Prepare to Cut and Run

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From the Times of London:

THE Iraqi Government will announce a sweeping peace plan as early as Sunday in a last-ditch effort to end the Sunni insurgency that has taken the country to the brink of civil war.

The 28-point package for national reconciliation will offer Iraqi resistance groups inclusion in the political process and an amnesty for their prisoners if they renounce violence and lay down their arms, The Times can reveal.

The Government will promise a finite, UN-approved timeline for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq; a halt to US operations against insurgent strongholds; an end to human rights violations, including those by coalition troops; and compensation for victims of attacks by terrorists or Iraqi and coalition forces.

It will pledge to take action against Shia militias and death squads. It will also offer to review the process of “de-Baathification” and financial compensation for the thousands of Sunnis who were purged from senior jobs in the Armed Forces and Civil Service after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The deal, which has been seen by The Times, aims to divide Iraqi insurgents from foreign fighters linked to al-Qaeda. It builds on months of secret talks involving Jalal al-Talabani, the Iraqi President, Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador, and seven Sunni insurgent groups.

As Chris Bowers points out, this says that for the past several months, while Bush and his minions have hurled scorn and vituperation on anyone who even thinks about a timeline for withdrawal — the Bush Administration has in fact been involved in negotiations that will propose a timeline for withdrawal.

The Times doesn’t say that the White House will accept all of the conditions, however. Seems to me this puts the White House in an uncomfortable position — if it rejects the terms, and especially if the U.S. is the sole holdout, this would create a campaign issue so big, fat, and juicy that even the Democrats might see it. We had a way out and we didn’t take it! Iraq asked us to leave, and we didn’t go!

On the other hand, if the Bushies accept the terms and begin a withdrawal, there goes Karl Rove’s midterm campaign strategy. And the hawks and congresspersons who’ve had Bush’s back on “staying the course” are likely to feel betrayed, not to mention the righties who loyally supported the war.

In that event, we lefties can grab the popcorn and sit back to watch the Right dance the cognitive dissonance waltz.

If past behavior is any guide, their tactic will be to paint Bush’s cutting and running as a manly and dignified cutting and running, whereas Democrat calls for cutting and running were a symptom of PMS.

We see the beginnings of this effort at Q and O:

Democrats should welcome this, but let’s not confuse the difference between the two timelines. One was arbitrary and the other is based on the conditions as seen on the ground by the country in question. One reflects politics and the other reflects an assessment of the real situation. Of course it is all predicated on the acceptance of the plan by the soon to be named Sunni insurgent groups.

Having listened to John Kerry’s speech at Take Back America last week, I know that Kerry planned to tie a timeline for withdrawal to conditions on the ground, also. He talked specifically about pressuring Iraq to take responsibility for its own security, allowing U.S. troops to withdraw. As he argued here, the Iraqi government seems to act decisively only when presented with a deadline. “Now we must set another deadline to extricate our troops and get Iraq up on its own two feet.”

John Murtha’s proposal also allows for realities on the ground. Among other provisions for security, he proposed creating a quick reaction force in the region and an “over-the-horizon presence of Marines.”

These details never seem to filter through to righties. I blame Faux Nooz.

Rabbit Redux

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I was out late last night, so bear with me, here — Michael Tackett and Jeff Zeleny write in today’s Chicago Tribune—

FBI agents in an undercover sting operation arrested seven terrorism suspects in Miami on Thursday who allegedly were plotting to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago, the FBI headquarters in Miami and other U.S. buildings, officials said.

The suspects had “aspirations” but “no means” to attack the Sears Tower or other buildings, a senior federal law-enforcement source said.

The men were all Muslims who thought they were plotting “in conjunction with Al Qaeda” but they really were dealing with law-enforcement undercover agents, one law-enforcement official told The Miami Herald.

The men, who told neighbors in the Liberty City area of Miami that they were starting a children’s karate class at a warehouse, had been plotting for an undetermined amount of time, but their scheme was thwarted well before any attack could be carried out.

“They talked about belonging to an Islamic army. They wanted to raise an army in the U.S.,” a second senior law-enforcement official said Thursday. “But they didn’t have the means to do this.”

“There was no threat at all,” the senior federal law-enforcement source said, referring to the Sears Tower. Chicago police said the city is not on increased alert despite the news.

And later in the article …

The men, who had been subjects of an undercover federal investigation, were apprehended without incident in an adjacent Miami neighborhood.

“There was no imminent danger to the community,” said Judy Orihuela, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Miami. “Everybody is in custody who was part of the group. We’ve been conducting the investigation and we know that it’s been dismantled.” …

… Sears Tower officials would not comment directly on the arrests. But a spokesman said that no plan to attack the building ever had been carried out. Tenants said they had not been notified about the plot.

“Law enforcement continues to tell us that they have never found evidence of a credible terrorism threat against Sears Tower that has gone beyond criminal discussions,” Sears Tower managing director Barbara Carley said in a statement.

No big bleeping deal, in other words. Of course, if you’d only seen the headlines (Fox News: “Seven Nabbed in Miami on Terror Charges in Plot to Hit Sears Tower“) you might have gotten a different impression of what went on.

In one of her most brilliants posts yet, Michelle Malkin calls the suspects “black Muslim radicals” and provides us with an overview of recent terrorist threats coming from black Muslim radicals, going back to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and including the Beltway snipers and black Muslim inmates in Folsom Prison. She even takes a swipe at “the old school black Muslim thugs (and Jesse Jackson pals) of the Chicago-based El Rukn.”

And then she says … get ready for this … “Bob Owens catches the Democratic Underground already playing the race card.”

Awesome. You don’t have to parody Malkin. She does it herself.

Still, if indeed we are swimming in terrorist threats here at home … why are we in Iraq, again?

Ellen Goodman writes in today’s Boston Globe (emphasis added):

… over the past two weeks as the House and Senate debated exit and no-exit strategies, there emerged a phrase in the rhetorical war that has not fallen on deaf ears. It’s the assertion that we are fighting the terrorists there so we won’t have to fight them here. As the president said in the State of the Union address, in the West Point graduation speech, in the surprise visit to Baghdad, “we will stay on the offensive against the terrorists, fighting them abroad so we do not have to face them here at home.”

In the midst of the mutual taunting and sound biting, this still resonates with the American people. So it’s time to ask whether we are indeed fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them in the New York subway. If so, what does it mean? What does it portend?

From the get-go, the Bush administration framed the war in Iraq as self-defense, as part of the war on terror. In fact, Iraq was never on the State Department’s dance card of terrorist strongholds. The attempt to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11 was as phony as the assertion of weapons of mass destruction. By no stretch of Dick Cheney’s imagination was Iraq a front line on the war on terror. But it is now.

Over three years, it’s become the recruiting ground, the favorite destination for terrorists who take their place alongside insurgents and civil warriors. No sooner is Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi killed than a claim comes in that the brutal torture and murder of two American soldiers is the work of his successor.

If Iraq is the neighborhood in which terrorists have chosen to fight America, are we now sending soldiers to keep them in that neighborhood? Are we now sending sons, daughters, husbands, wives to be the designated terrorist attractions? If not cannon fodder, are they I.E.D. fodder?

This week at a news conference, The Wall Street Journal’s David Rogers, a Vietnam veteran, challenged the House majority leader. “In Vietnam, they used to put us out in these fire support bases and hope we would get attacked. Is that what you are doing?” he asked. “You are putting people in Iraq and hoping they get attacked so you can bring out the terrorists?” Has it come to this?

Wasn’t that the “flypaper theory” all along? And shouldn’t we put the righties on the spot to explain, if all these black illegal immigrant Muslim radicals are swarming about the country anyway, doesn’t that mean we’re failing to fulfill the mission in Iraq?

Goodman adds, “This administration had no post-Saddam strategy for Iraq. Now it seems they have no post-Iraq strategy for the war on terror.”

Yesterday, Dan Froomkin discussed Karl Rove’s exploitation of Iraq for political purposes. The plan is for Republicans to deride any Democratic plans to withdraw or redeploy troops in Iraq as a “cut and run.” It seems Karl has no post-Iraq strategy for winning elections, either.

The Persistence of Stupid

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So this morning I crank up the laptop and cruise over to Memeorandum to see what blog folks are talking about today, and what do I see but a big headline —

And I’m thinkin’, wow, that’s gonna crank up the righties. And sure enough, a bunch of ’em are pumpin’ their fists and dancin’ a victory boogaloo and hollerin’ YEAH! Eat that, lefties! HOO-yah!

I keep reading, and find that this is not a new discovery, but an account of some stuff found in Iraq since May 2004. And it wasn’t exactly “500 chemical weapons,” as Fox News reported, but 500 chemical weapons shells. These shells contained old, degraded mustard OR sarin “nerve agents” dating from before the Gulf War, but for some reason nobody was interested enough to analyze the stuff to find out for sure what it was. The declassified document detailing the “discovery” — released by our old pal John Negroponte, note — is artfully vague about how much toxin was actually contained in the shells and what condition the toxin was in. Or even exactly what it was.

Apparently Rick Santorum, whose Senate career is in its final throes, got his hands on a classified document from the National Ground Intelligence Center. He pulled key points out of the document and had them declassified, and then made a big whoop-dee-doo announcement that he had in his hand proof that there were WMDs in Iraq, plus a list of 205 Communist agents known to work in the State Department. And here are the key points:

Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.

Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.

Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the black market. Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups would have implications for Coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside Iraq cannot be ruled out.

The most likely munitions remaining are sarin and mustard-filled projectiles.

The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental shortage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal.

It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.

Even at 7:30 in the morning my critical reading skills are acute enough to determine that this document doesn’t say shit.

“Munitions are assessed to still exist.”

We’re guessin’ there’s some stuff we haven’t found yet.

“Chemical weapons could be sold in the black market.”

We’re not sayin’ they have been sold on the black market, but ya never know.

“Possibility of use outside Iraq cannot be ruled out.”

Hey, anything’s possible.

“The most likely munitions remaining are sarin and mustard-filled projectiles.”

That or individually packaged golden spongecakes wrapped around creamy vanilla fillings made with high fructose corn syrup and artificial flavorings.

“The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors.”

But we ain’t tellin’ you how pure the stuff we found was. You just have to guess.

“Insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.”

And they want nukes and fighter jets and great big battleships, too. And a palace on the Tigris River. And Brittney Spears for their third wife.

I mean, who’s stupid enough to fall for this? Oh, wait …

Fox News summarized the findings for its news consumers, thus:

The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

And the righties wonder why we dump on Faux Nooz.

News Hounds (“We watch FOX so you don’t have to”) provides a blow-by-blow of the doin’s at the Un-News Network:

What a coincidence that one week after Karl Rove urged Republicans not to make excuses for going to war against Iraq and to put critical Democrats on the defensive, Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), 18 points behind in his re-election efforts, and representative Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) suddenly came up with some report that 500 chemical weapons have been found in Iraq. Almost the entire hour of Hannity & Colmes last night (6/21/06) was devoted to this “discovery” despite the fact that FOX News’ own Jim Angle had already reported that the Bush administration said the weapons were not in usable condition and were not the WMD’s for which we went to war.

Got that? The Bush administration said the weapons were not in usable condition and were not the WMDs for which we went to war. But what the hell do they know?

The entire show was filled with “FOX News Alerts” about the report. “This is exactly what we suspected he had,” Hannity crowed, before adding, falsely, “This is only a part of why we went into Iraq.” But he never asked either Santorum or Hoekstra, both of whom appeared on the show, about the administration’s response or the likely degraded condition of the chemical weapons.

In fact, it wasn’t until Alan Colmes’ portion of the discussion that Jim Angle’s reporting was even mentioned. “Jim Angle, who reported this for FOX News, quotes a defense official who says these were pre-1991 weapons that could not have been fired as designed because they’d already been degraded and the official went on to say these are not the WMD’s this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had and not the WMD’s for which this country went to war. So the chest-beating that the Republicans are doing tonight, thinking this is a justification is not confirmed by the Defense Department.”

And speaking of coincidences — what a coincidence that John Negroponte had a hand in this! Negroponte was also behind last March’s “junk intelligence” escapade, also known as Dumbo Document Dump; see here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Essentially, from time to time Negroponte pulls a toy rabbit around a track and lets the righties get some exercise by running in circles, chasing it.

I took all this in, and then made some coffee, and then sat down to consider the burning question of our time — how stupid are Bush supporters, really? This goes way beyond your average left the keys in the car stupid, which plagues the best of us from time to time. There’s something more primordial going on here. In some cases, IMO, we’re looking at simple turtle crossing an interstate stupid. You can’t really blame them for it. In other cases we may be dealing with more exotic forms of cognitive handicaps, however, such as I’m getting messages from Mars stupid, or the cookbook said to separate the yolk from the white so I boiled the egg first stupid.

By now most of the rabbit chasers have moved on to the next phase of the exercise, which is wondering why the Bush White House hadn’t said something about this sooner? Some of the results are real knee-slappers, but as I have to be somewhere pretty soon I will have to save that post for another time.

Update: Digby takes another look at stupid.