Happy Hour Discurso

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

Stick a thumb in a Republicon’s eye. Give both middle fingers to the oil companies that prefer perpetual war in the Middle East and destructive drilling in our pristine wilderness areas to changing their business model. Sign MoveOn’s petition supporting Al Gore’s challenge to change over to 100% clean, renewable energy within 10 years.

I’m actually pretty excited by this. Energy policy usually leaves me with a gargantuan headache, but I’m using Al Gore’s speech for Sunday Sensational Science, and instead of bludgeoned I feel energized.

Um.

Pun really not intended on that last bit. Blame the 2 hours of sleep I got last night. Anyway, upshot: Gore’s challenge is an exciting one, it deserves support, so I encourage you to sign the petition.

And now, on with the day’s stupidity.

Here’s why I think Gore’s right when he says “We can do it!” and the Cons are wrong when they say, “We can’t and we don’t wanna.” It’s because they’re being forced to sing a Democrat’s tune on their centerpiece: foreign policy. And why are they forced to sing like dear little birdies?

Because their entire foreign policy is going down like a bad erection:

Matt Yglesias had a very good item this morning, noting the “debacle” for the Republican approach to foreign policy.

[McCain had] spent, several weeks with the main theme of his campaign being, quite literally, to criticize Barack Obama for not having been physically present in Iraq recently. This (of course) got Obama to go to Iraq, thus setting up a dilemma. Either Obama would survey the “progress” in Iraq and change his position, thus making him a flip-flopper, or else he would refuse to change his position, thus making him obstinate and out of touch with reality.

But instead of either of those things happening, Obama went to Iraq and Iraqi leaders said he’d been right all along! That’s about as close to “game, set, match” as you get in terms of real world events influencing your political campaign. What’s more, given the domestic situation and John McCain’s inability to talk about domestic issues persuasively, he can’t afford to play for a draw on Iraq.


Quite right. David Kurtz added how surprised he is to see “just how
complete the Republican collapse on foreign policy has been in the short span of just a few weeks.” Kurtz noted that it’s “hard to think of any recent historical parallels.”

I’d just add that it goes beyond just Iraq. Over the last couple of months, the entire GOP foreign policy — the strategy, the worldview, the assumptions, the tactics — has crumbled to the point of destruction. The Bush administration bucked the McCain approach and adopted the Clinton policy to reach an accord with North Korea. McCain endorsed Obama’s policy on Afghanistan. Bush established the most direct diplomatic efforts with Iran since 1979. Just today, the administration sounded very Obama-esque in reaching out to Syria, which would have been unthinkable a year ago. Hell, the Bush administration is even distributing memoranda, telling officials to stop
using language such as “jihadists,” “mujahedeen,” and “Islamo-fascism.”


Savor this a moment. While Obama’s whirlwind foreign tour goes spectacularly well – so well, in fact, that he’s been mobbed by adoring GIs and State Department officials, earned the praise of Iraqi leaders who seem to have found someone who will finally listen to them, and driven around in style by the King of Jordan his own self, the Bush regime’s foreign policy has returned epic fail after epic fail. Their policy didn’t work. They had to take pages from the despised Dems. And I am going to have enormous fun rubbing that in over and over as the election draws nigh and the Bush erection goes bye.

This would be enough. It would, in fact, be more than enough. But their string of losses this week don’t end there. Oh, hell, no.

Remember Hamdan? Osama bin Laden’s former driver, the guy the administration was busy torturing and getting ready to parade in front of a kangaroo tribunal until the Supreme Court started making little noises like “Hrm, hrm, your little military tribunals are a sham, you’ve contravened the Geneva Conventions, and until you shape up you ain’t trying nobody“? Yeah. Well. They’ve finally gotten round to creating a kangaroo court that’ll pass as the real thing, and whaddya know, the military judge is actually issuing the Bush regime a sound spanking:

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba. July 21 — Prosecutors in the trial of Osama bin Laden‘s former driver cannot use as evidence some statements the defendant gave interrogators because they were obtained under “highly coercive” conditions while he was a captive in Afghanistan, a military judge ruled Monday evening.

[snip]

Allred’s willingness to throw out evidence in a proceeding against an accused al-Qaeda member could bode badly for cases the government expects to bring against planners of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, some of whom were subjected to far more coercive conditions.

Oh, snap! You can’t use evidence tainted by dirty methods, Bushie, nuh-uh! That’s what they don’t show you on all those 24 episodes. Poisoned fruit, baby, yeah!

And for all you law-and-order types in the audience, keep your outrage on simmer: this isn’t a case of a cop forgetting to dot an i. This was our government using internationally condemned and extremely illegal methods to coerce piss-poor “intelligence” from a suspect. There’s no way crap like that belongs in a court of law. Judge Allred got it exactly right.

So there goe
s Bush’
s grand “I’ll torture ’em to keep America safe” schlock, sailing out the window right after his entire foreign policy. What else? Oooo, looks like his BFF Great Britain’s decided they just can’t be friends with a lying fuckwit:

In Britain, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons has just issued its Human Rights Annual Report (.pdf). It concluded that America’s word can no longer be trusted when it comes to claims about torture, rendition and human rights abuses. From The Guardian yesterday:

Britain can no longer believe what Americans tell us about torture, an MPs’ report to be published today claims. . . .

In a damning criticism of US integrity, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said ministers should no longer take at face value statements from senior politicians, including George Bush, that America does not resort to torture in the light of the CIA admitting it used “waterboarding”. The interrogation technique was unreservedly condemned by
Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who said it amounted to torture.

[snip]

Today’s committee report said there were “serious implications” of the striking inconsistencies between British ministers continuing to believe the Bush administration when
it denies using torture. “The UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future,” said the committee. “We also recommend that the government should immediately carry out an exhaustive analysis of current US interrogation techniques on the
basis of such information as is publicly available or which can be supplied by the US.”


[snip]

If Britain — one of America’s closest allies during the Bush era — is openly proclaiming that it cannot trust the word of our government, then who can? Moreover, Britain has hardly been a standard-bearer of human rights itself over the last seven years. Indeed, while our political class in the U.S. is busy covering-up and immunizing our Government’s lawbreaking and human rights abuses, members of both the British Left and Right are joining together to demand investigations into what appears to be compelling evidence that their own intelligence officials abducted British citizens and turned them over to Pakistani security services in order to be interrogated and tortured…


I wonder how it feels to be despised and slapped down by so many courts, countries, and circumstances? Somewhere in that foggy little crust of goo we must, despite compelling evidence to the contrary, call Bush’s brain, he’s got to be feeling just a little let down by the fact that everything he’s ever done has been a complete, epic fail.

Happy Hour Discurso
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Bob Barr Endorses the Constitution

It’s no secret I’m thrilled that Bob Barr is running for President. I’m hoping he’ll draw off a good number of reluctant McCain supporters: he’s just conservative enough to manage it. And now I have a whole new reason to recommend him: he’s a privacy advocate who’s decided that FISA is poison to privacy. He’s endorsed the Strange Bedfellows coalition by way of saying, “That’s just about enough unbridled government power, thanks so much:”

A lot of media attention has been focused on our privacy or, more appropriately, the invasion of our privacy by the government. The recent law that allows the government to intercept our phone calls and emails without any legitimate probable cause is the most glaring example. Ultimately we lose some freedom with virtually every new law or government regulation, but this particular law, FISA, is the granddaddy of all invasions of our privacy.

For the last several years Bob Barr has been fighting the government’s intrusion into our privacy at every step. There have been other organizations standing shoulder to shoulder with Bob. But, the recent focus on the invasion of our privacy has motivated a whole new group of concerned activists to join together in an effort to stop the government’s encroachment into our lives.

Some of the names of the organizers of this new group, AccountabilityNowPac, may be familiar to you. They come from a large variety of backgrounds and political beliefs joined in the common interest of protecting our privacy.

If you get a chance please take a look at their web site to learn more about them.

Feels pretty good to be recognized by a presidential candidate. I hope his stand shames the other two into remembering this little thing called the Fourth Amendment. Maybe then we’ll see that nice, embarrassed shuffle sideways. That delightful, “What FISA fiasco? Oh, that. Yeah, I, uh, now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I’ve realized I was temporarily insane in supporting that idiotic bill. My first act as President will be to kick that bit of legislation to the curb. Yay, Fourth Amendment!”

Look, one can dream.

Bob Barr Endorses the Constitution

Why Christian Businesses Should Read the Articles They Link To

Occasionally, I check Sitemeter to see Who’s Honoring Me Now (copyright Stephen Colbert). Occasionally, that turns out to be extraordinarily amusing.

Take, for instance, this referral:

Weird, says I. What the fuck would a site called Profit God’s Way be referring people to me for? Unless they’re bitching about me… There was that article on shady Christian businesses that wasn’t too flattering. Bet they’re pissed! Yippee!

So off I click to discover what awful things are being said about me. All I get is this:

Well, that’s disappointing. Just a lame fucking advertisement. But I’ve got to be on this page somewhere: otherwise, no one would’ve clicked through it to my blog.

*scroll scroll scroll* HA HA HA HA HA! Aren’t they cute?


(click to embiggen)

Still no me. What the fuck?

*scroll scroll Your product is so great!!1!!1!! blah blah scroll scroll scroll*

*pause*

*really long pause*

Seriously?

THEY FUCKING LINKED TO MY ARTICLE! AH HA HA HA HA HA! HEE HEE HEE! WAH-HA HA HA HA SNORT WHEEZE BWAH HA HAow. I think I strained something.

So no shit. I had to go surfing through the site to verify it wasn’t a spoof. Had to be a spoof, right? I mean, who’s gonna be that stupid?

Forget I asked.

Self-explanatory, really.

I don’t know how long I’ll be up there before someone figures out that – how do I put this delicately? – linking to my article isn’t quite in keeping with the overall message of their website. In fact, it’s pretty fucking counter-productive. I’m sure my enshrinement there will be temporary.

But the amusement value will last me the rest of my life.

Why Christian Businesses Should Read the Articles They Link To

The Captain's Calling for Ye!

Captain PZ Myers demands more submissions:

I’m hosting the next Carnival of the Elitist Bastards on 26 July, and the submissions are barging in to my mailbox and demanding my attention…but I need more. I want a legion of arrogant SOBs making noise. So send me more links…don’t be shy (hah!).

A legion he wants and a legion he shall have. There’s still time! Dig out a past post if you haven’t time to write a new one. You’re Elitist Bastards: something you’ve written in the past will pass muster! Pull an all-nighter, whatever you must do: just answer your captain’s call by this Friday!

(Tip o’ the tricorn to Slybird for the photo suggestion)

The Captain's Calling for Ye!

Happy Hour Discurso

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

If the transitions herein make no sense, please keep in mind that this nocturnal person has been hijacked into a day schedule and is operating on about 3 hours of sleep. I go back to nights next week.

Next week seems a really loooong way away.

But not quite as long as the Bush regime, which at this point feels like it’s going to last for another million years. Let’s see what kind of fuckery they’ve been up to today.

Oh, I see they’re trying to walk Prime Minister Maliki like a dog:

First, a rather odd statement released by U.S. Central Command on the Maliki government’s behalf suggesting Maliki was “misunderstood and mistranslated” — but the statement only came after the Bush administration leaned on Maliki’s office to help put a lid on this public-relations disaster for Bush and McCain.

But Maliki and his staff keep slipping the leash:

Ali al-Dabbagh, the spokesperson for the Maliki government in Iraq, has had an interesting couple of days. After Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki endorsed Barack Obama’s withdrawal policy, it was Dabbagh who was forced to argue that the quotes attributed to Maliki were “not accurate,” even though they were entirely accurate.

The back-and-forth nature of the discussion led some to an awkward dynamic: the Iraqi government supports a U.S. withdrawal, but the Bush administration has explained to Iraqi officials that they’re not supposed
to support a U.S. withdrawal.

This morning, to help resolve any ambiguities, Dabbagh endorsed Obama’s timetable, too.

And so John McCain, to help out his buddy Bush, decided to explain to Maliki via the American media what Iraq really wants:

Given reality, the fact that the Maliki government wants a U.S. withdrawal timetable and has endorsed Barack Obama’s Iraq policy by name would seem to be bad news for John McCain and his presidential campaign. But the presumptive Republican nominee has a trump card to get himself out of inconvenient jams like these: “I’m John McCain.”

Take this morning’s appearance on NBC’s “Today” show, for example.

[snip]

Meredith Vieira asked McCain, “[I]f the Iraqi government were to say — if you were President — we want a timetable for troops being to removed, would you agree with that?” McCain responded, “I have been there too many times. I’ve met too many times with him, and I know what they want.”

Got that? The prime minister of Iraq and the Iraqi people may seem to want U.S. troops out of their country, but John McCain has been to Iraq and he “knows what they want.”

I knew McCain was going to have a rough time wriggling out of this one – I mean, it’s quite a lot of egg he took in the face, what with the Iraqis endorsing Obama’s Iraq strategy over his – but I thought he’d come up with something a little more clever. This strategy’s bold, yes. Bold and incredibly stupid.

It’s almost as stupid as what the wingnuts are saying to try to get around the fact that the Iraqis would really like their country back soon:

As I’ve mentioned before, Maliki, of the Shiite Dawa Party which opposed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq in the first place, has long-standing ties to Iran and Syria — and has expressed support for Hezbollah. The only thing that surprises me about this story is that anyone is surprised.

[snip]

Notice: No credit to or thanks for the efforts and sacrifices of the United States and our armed forces, much less the surge. In fact, Maliki’s major observation about American troops, other than that he wants them out of Iraq “as soon as possible,” is that he wants the power to prosecute them for “offences or crimes committed by US soldiers against our population” — a major sticking point in negotiations over a status of forces agreement.


Well, that’s an interesting argument. They’re trying to say Maliki’s got no right to say what he says cuz his party opposed a foreign invasion of their country, they have a relationship with their neighbors, and they’re not grateful enough for the rampant destruction and exploitation of their country and citizens freedom we gave them. And imagine the nerve of demanding the right to prosecute invaders for crimes against the citizens!11!!!1!

If this is all they’ve got to counter with, they’re in pretty bad shape. The sad thing is, at least 28% of the country listens to this drivel.

I’d ask Bill O’Reilly what he thinks about this, because it’s sure to be entertaining in a teeth-grinding, makes-you-want-to-slap-him-upside-the-head kind of way. But he’s a little too distracted by Gore’s unexpected visit to the Netroots Nation convention:

On his radio show today, O’Reilly claimed that Gore was now associating himself with the most “hateful group in the country.” “And I’m including the Nazis and the Klan in here,” said O’Reilly.” He then claimed that attending Netroots Nation was “the same as if he stepped into the Klan gathering”:

O’REILLY: Al Gore now is done. He’s done. Ok. He is not a man of respect, he doesn’t have any judgment. The fact that he went to this thing is the same as if he stepped into the Klan gathering. It’s the same. No difference. None. K, he loses all credibility with me. All credibility.


[snip]

But O’Reilly exposes the hyperbolic shallowness of his name calling when he claims that “these Daily Kos people” are worse than “the Nazis and the Klan,” but then assures his audience that they won’t “come to your house a
nd hurt you.”

Note to O’Reilly: The Nazis and the Klan actually hurt people.

America’s neocons, ladies and gentlemen. An endless font of raging stupidity, bloodlust, and whining. I’m sure Al Gore is just devastated he’s lost all credibility with them.

Happy Hour Discurso

Richard Dawkins et al Aren't Really Atheists, Sez Religious Scholar

I’ve stumbled across an interview in Salon that should keep us all thoroughly entertained for weeks. Super-duper religious scholar James Carse is, according to the article, “out to rescue religion from both religious fundamentalists and atheists.” Since he redefines atheism to be something completely nonsensical, I don’t know who he thinks he’s saving religion from.

You see, according to his rarified definition of atheism, Richard Dawkins doesn’t qualify. None of us do. Observe:

Given what’s happening in the world right now, do you think there’s a lot at stake in how we talk about religion and belief?

Absolutely. In the current, very popular attack on religion, the one thing that’s left out is the sense of religion that I’ve been talking about. Instead, it’s an attack on what’s essentially a belief system.

Are you talking about atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris?

Yes. There are several problems with their approach. It has an inadequate understanding of the nature of religion. These chaps are very distinguished thinkers and scientists, very smart people, but they are not historians or scholars of religion. Therefore, it’s too easy for them to pass off a quick notion of what religion is. That kind of critique also tends to set up a counter-belief system of its own. Daniel Dennett proposes his own, fairly comprehensive belief system based on evolution and psychology. From his point of view, it seems that everything can be explained. Harris and Dawkins are not quite that extreme. But that’s a danger with all of them. To be an atheist, you have to be very clear about what god you’re not believing in. Therefore, if you don’t have a deep and well-developed understanding of God and divine reality, you can misfire on atheism very easily. [emphasis added]

“Misfire on atheism?” What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Maybe my rough-and-ready street philosophy is inadequate to the task of understanding Mr. Carse’s elevated definitions, but what he seems to be saying here is that you can’t be an atheist if you have a counter-belief system (i.e., if you can explain most of the mysteries of life by turning to science and reality). You also seem to have to be some sort of religious scholar to qualify. You have to understand “god” to not believe in “god.” And you have to define which god it is, exactly, you don’t believe in. Otherwise, you’re apparently not an atheist.

And here I thought it was so simple. I thought that, to be an atheist, you just don’t believe in gods. None of ’em. I thought that blanket unbelief was good enough. Nobody told me going in to this that I’d have to debunk every fucking god individually, and that I can only do that if I have a deep understanding of all of the fuckers.

Are you fucking kidding me?

All right. Let’s play ball. Let’s have Mr. Carse define religion. Oh, wait, he can’t:

What, then, do you mean by religion?

Religion is notoriously difficult to define. Modern scholars have almost unanimously decided that there is no generalization that applies to all the great living religions. Jews don’t have a priesthood. Catholics do. The prayer in one tradition is different from another. The literature and the texts are radically different from each other. So it leaves us with the question: Is there any generalization one could make about religion?


What he eventually comes up with, after much spewing of the philosophical bunkum, is that religion is simply a belief system that’s survived a few thousand years. Got that? If it ain’t ancient, it ain’t religion.

Now that we’ve discovered the bugger can’t define religion, let us return to his discussion of what an atheist is:

And yet, you’ve just told me that you yourself don’t believe in a divine reality. In some ways, your critique of belief systems seems to go along with what the new atheists are saying.

The difference, though, is that I wouldn’t call myself an atheist. To be an atheist is not to be stunned by the mystery of things or to walk around in wonder about the universe. That’s a mode of being that has nothing to do with belief. So I have very little in common with them. [emphasis added]

So, in order to be an atheist, it’s not enough to not believe in gods. It’s not enough to explain the universe not by resorting to the supernatural, but by reaching for the natural. It’s not enough to not believe in one single, solitary fucking supernatural thing. We can’t even have a sense of wonder about the universe.

You know what? I’m done. This guy had a little kernel of a good idea at the very beginning, when he was discussing belief systems vs. religion. But once you get through those first couple of paragraphs, where it looks like he’s going to present sound ideas that have real philosophical merit, he just skews off into this mumbling bullshit. Wait ’till you hit his celebration of “higher ignorance” bit. For all of us who thirst for knowledge, this clown is like a nice, cold mirage: pretty to look at in some respects, utterly fucking useless when it comes right down to it, and definitely not what you need.

He just wants humanity to celebrate a different kind of stupid. I think we’ve had quite enough ignorance of all stripes.

At least we have an explanation as to why this twit can’t recognize an atheist. There is that small consolation.

Richard Dawkins et al Aren't Really Atheists, Sez Religious Scholar

Happy Hour Discurso

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

If you haven’t seen Dark Knight yet, better hop to it – you’re losing your chance to make history:

Fevered fans pushed “The Dark Knight,” the sixth in Warner Brothers’ series of “Batman” movies, to record three-day ticket sales of $155.3 million over the weekend, shoring up what so far had been a wobbly year at the movie box office.

By Warner’s estimate, the film narrowly eclipsed opening-weekend ticket sales last year of $151.1 million for Sony Pictures’ “Spider-Man 3,” the previous record holder.

[snip]

“It just took on a life of its own,” said Dan Fellman, Warner’s president for theatrical distribution. “You never expect anything like this.”

You know why it took on a life of its own? Because they got it godsdamned right. The story, the acting, the production, every damned thing was spot-on. And it’s got something for everyone: a little hint of romance for the sighers, huge sweeping issues with no easy answers for the thinkers, utterly fantastic visuals for the artists, virtualy non-stop action for the adrenaline junkies. If I can find a weakness in this movie, it’s that it’s too damned short. I could’ve stayed in that theatre for five hours (although my friend George couldn’t – someone really needs to design more ergonomic theatres).

As a die-hard Batman fan who always pissed and moaned about how the movies were way too fucking campy, I’m now a very happy geek indeed. Finally, we have a set of movies that live up to the mythology, that let the Dark Knight be dark, and deliver a set of performances that deserve Academy Awards. Heath Ledger fucking well deserves one. Do you hear me, judges?

(Why, yes, yes I am obsessed over Dark Knight. However did you guess?)

Moving on, then. There’s always political fuckery to be found, even when I’d rather be reliving the best moments of the greatest film so far this year.

McCain has an amazing habit of surrounding himself with slimeballs. The latest bit of corruption dripping its ichor all over his campaign comes by way of Stephen Payne, Mr. “I’ll exchange face time with powerful people for a lot of money.” He made one of his infamous offers to a Kazakh politician known as Eric Dos. And here’s where it gets interesting:

The Times reported that Dos had previously worked with Payne to arrange a 2006 visit by Vice President Dick Cheney to Kazakhstan. Dos claims that in exchange for arranging Cheney’s trip, “a payment of $2m was passed, via a Kazakh oil and gas company, to Payne’s firm.” Payne denies that any such arrangement existed.

But the Times reports today that Payne may be lying about his business dealings and that the money may have been funneled through a sister company to Payne’s lobbying firm:

The Sunday Times, however, has discovered the existence of a channel through which funds from the Kazakh government could have been readily transferred.

A sister company to WSP, Worldwide Strategic Energy (WSE), of which Payne is also president, has a subsidiary, Caspian Alliance, which is the sole US representative for KMG.


The Times reports that a top adviser to Sen. John McCain, lobbyist Randy Scheunemann, has direct ties to the company that is alleged to have funneled the funds…


As we say in my circles, the plot sickens. For a man who claims to be against lobbyists, McCain certainly surrounds himself with plenty of ’em, don’t he?

McCain’s problems only get worse. You remember what Prime Minister Maliki said yesterday. Here’s just how badly this is going to go for McCain’s campaign:

This could be one of those unexpected events that forever changes the way the world perceives an issue. Iraq’s Prime Minister agrees with Obama, and there’s no wiggle room or fudge factor. This puts John McCain in an extremely precarious spot: what’s left to argue? to argue against Maliki would be to predicate that Iraqi sovereignty at this point means nothing. Obviously, our national interests aren’t equivalent to Iraq’s, but… Malik isn’t listening to the generals on the ground…but the “hasn’t been to Iraq” line doesn’t work here.

So how will the McCain campaign respond?

(Via e-mail, a prominent Republican strategist who occasionally provides advice to the McCain campaign said, simply, “We’re fucked.”…)


That line is destined to go down as the most succinct and accurate bit of political commentary this campaign season. Fucked, indeed.

The cons are trying desperately to discredit the PM’s unequivocal statement by throwing up a smokescreen. It’s really not working:

The new, political response is that M
ali
ki didn’t actually say what he was quoted saying. A statement released by U.S. Central Command on the Maliki government’s behalf suggests Maliki was “misunderstood and mistranslated.”

Der Spiegel, the magazine Maliki spoke with, not only released a detailed transcript to bolster its report, but issued another statement today standing by its story.

Obama is pleased, but McCain certainly is not. In an interview with SPIEGEL, Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki expressed support for Obama’s troop withdrawal plans. Despite a half-hearted retraction, the comments have stirred up the US presidential campaign. SPIEGEL stands by its version of the conversation. […]

A number of media outlets likewise professed to being confused by the statement from Maliki’s office. The New York Times pointed out that al-Dabbagh’s statement “did not address a specific error.” CBS likewise expressed disbelief pointing out that Maliki mentions a timeframe for withdrawal three times in the interview and then asks, “how likely is it that SPIEGEL mistranslated three separate comments? Matthew Yglesias, a blogger for the Atlantic Monthly, was astonished by “how little effort was made” to make the Baghdad denial convincing. And the influential blog IraqSlogger also pointed out the lack of specifics in the government statement.


I think the fact that the “clarification” was issued by the US Central Command says it all, really. The rest is just icing on a very tasty cake. Note to propagandists: at least make some effort to obscure where the propaganda’s issuing from, or you really make it too easy to identify as a pathetic yet brazen attempt to head off a political catastrophe.

It doesn’t help McCain’s chances one whit that Maliki is not the only one playing “follow the leader” when it comes to Barack Obama:

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown thinks Barack Obama has the right approach on counter-terrorism. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki thinks Obama has the right approach on Iraq. The Bush administration seems to think Obama has the right approach on Iran. And none other than John McCain thinks Obama has the right approach on Afghanistan.

The conventional wisdom has told us for a year and a half that Obama’s biggest weakness is background on foreign policy and national security. But if that’s the case, why is everyone following this guy’s lead?


Heh, heh. Why indeed?

Somebody Photoshop me a picture of Obama as the Pied Piper, with all of the poor little neocons helplessly dancing to his tune.

And finally, for your Sunday entertainment, allow me to present this delightful Moveon.org video of McCain’s “it’s all in our heads” approach to economic woes:

Too fucking right. It’s no Dark Knight, but still: Encore!

Happy Hour Discurso

Sunday Sensational Science

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Saturn through a backyard telescope. It was so tiny, and yet so perfect – the rings standing out with incredible clarity. It didn’t even look real, and yet, I’d seen my neighbor, a professional astronomer at Lowell Observatory, point his ten inch telescope at the night sky and focus carefully before stepping back and letting the kids look at another world.

Saturn is a world unlike any other.

The Cassini Mission is proving that, and returning some spectacular photos of Saturn and its moons:

After an epic journey of seven years and 3.5 billion kilometres, the Cassini spacecraft entered Saturn orbit on 1 July 2004. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a $3 billion, 4-year tour of Saturn, its rings and many of its 40-odd known moons. No other spacecraft had been near the solar system’s second largest planet since the Voyager flybys of the 1980s.

Three billion dollars buys you a lot of science. Serious science. No, really:

The most spectacular highlight of the mission so far is its visit to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. ESA’s Huygens probe was released by Cassini and descended through the dense atmosphere of Titan in January 2005. It became the first probe to land on such a distant world.

Huygens discovered a strikingly Earth-like landscape of hills and branching valleys, though the peaks are ice and the intermittent rivers carry liquid methane. Cassini has also seen clouds and old shorelines, as well as evidence for deserts, an ice volcano and a possible lake of methane near the south pole. But there has been no sign of the methane seas or oceans once expected.

Scientists are loving Titan, but my fascination lies with the water vapor jets streaming from Enceladus:

On a previous, much closer pass by Enceladus, Cassini detected that the south pole of Enceladus is spewing out a vast plume of water vapour that stretches hundreds of kilometres from the moon’s surface and keeps Saturn’s E-ring topped up – but it has now captured the first images of this activity. On Sunday, 27 November, Cassini was positioned so that the Sun was behind the moon, causing one side of Enceladus to be illuminated as a fine crescent, with its volcanic plumes backlit.


Enceladus is only the third body in the solar system to show signs of active volcanism, besides Earth and Io, Jupiter’s moon. Even though this volcanism is relatively gentle, planetary scientists cannot yet work out what is driving it. The new pictures could help by revealing the muzzle velocity of the moon’s plumes.


Part of the fun of exploring the solar system is turning back for a look at home. Here we are, the tiniest of pale blue dots, shining between the rings of Saturn. We’re another of the wandering stars. Someday, we may be able to get this perspective from a resort on Titan, sipping drinks and thinking of how far we’ve come.

Rather puts things in context, that.

I think the single most spectacular image, though, is Saturn eclipsing the Sun. This isn’t an artist’s interpretation, not a product of the imagination, but a photograph, enhanced just a bit to bring out the dramatic beauty of it. And if you look really closely, you’ll see an infintesimal pale blue dot, shining inside the rings.

This is our bit of the Universe. Outstanding, isn’t it?

Sunday Sensational Science

Oceans of Inspiration

Every writer has something that opens every floodgate and releases images and words in torrents. A song, a drink, an exercise, a person.

For me, it’s movies.

Certain movies become anthems. They scour me down to essentials: I become an instrument, nothing more than the story that’s unfolding inside me, spilling from my fingers faster than I can type. They strip everything else away. Food, sleep, other people all lose their importance. The movie drives the story, and the story becomes the entirety of my world.

I’m almost afraid to tell you which movies have done this. Just remember that no matter how the critics panned it, no matter how many folks thought it was the most ridiculous bit of Hollywood schlock ever to hit the big screen, it somehow tickled the Muse. And when the Muse gets tickled, all choice I have gets definistrated.

(That’s thrown right out the bloody window, for you non-sesquipadaleans in the audience.)

One of those movies was MI:2. Seriously. Yes, even with Tom fucking Cruise. Remember, it was right before he went completely batshit insane. I lost count of how many times I saw it in the theater. It came out right as I was halfway through Trinity, the only novel I’ve ever actually finished, and something about it just screamed Adrian Sykes, the anti-hero star. For weeks, I had a specific routine: I’d see MI:2 every couple of days, and I wrote. That movie, coupled with the Highlander episodes starring Methos, drove the story to completion. Highlander, I can at least explain: Adrian comes from the same part of England as Peter Wingfield, the actor who plays Methos, so there was the accent to consider. There was also the fact that I first heard Adrian speaking to me because of Highlander. But I still to this day don’t know exactly what it was about MI:2 that released the flood. Adrian’s nothing like Ethan Hunt, and the book is really nothing like a Mission: Impossible story. But there we were, and what else could I do but what the Muse demanded?

(And yes, in case you’re wondering by now: inspiration is an awful lot like insanity. Thanks for asking.)

Lord of the Rings should be a no-brainer. And yes, I saw it more than MI:2. But not as many times as the group of high school kids in their elf costumes. That trilogy is something I try to watch at least once a year, because it gets me into epic storytelling mode. It knocked the breath from my body when I first saw it. It was precisely what I wanted to accomplish: the myth, the meaning, the sweep and scope, the rich detail…. So I don’t have elves, Hobbits, wizards, or any of that sort o’ thing. What I’ve got is worlds as beautiful, stories that dive as deep into the huge questions of good, evil and fellowship. Those movies taught me something important: slow down. The story can move along just fine even if you’re travelling down a few scenic routes rather than flying along the freeway. And fantasy worlds need to be so complete.

Batman Begins is my theme movie for the book I’m preparing to write now. I think you’ll understand when you meet the main character, which you should soon, because I plan to have it complete by the end of next year. Christian Bale’s Batman is absolutely him. Although no, he doesn’t dress up in costumes and fight supervillains. It’s the darkness they share.

Dark Knight is going to take me in a whole new direction.

You see, movies spark ideas. And what this movie has shown me is exactly how much work I’ve got cut out for me, making my Big Bad truly terrifying. It’s gotten me to thinking about adversaries you can’t fathom, desperation on unimaginable scales, evil you just can’t overcome. I’ve been struggling with that for years. I’ve read books on evil, and all of it falls so short of what I know that evil would be. Satan? A buffoon, a rank amateur, compared to my main evil guy. Think of every terror you’ve ever had, every bad guy who left you shitting yourself in terror, and magnify that by a trillion. Somehow, that’s how Sha’daal has to come across – and yet, seductively elegant, understated, nothing at all what you’d expect. The dichotomy between world-destroying acts and a soft-spoken being drives me absolutely nuts. But I think Dark Knight will allow me to achieve the proper mood with him and the destruction he leaves in his wake.

(And no, he’ll be absolutely nothing like the Joker. I’m not that obvious. Look, people who read Trinity didn’t even realize the inspiration had been provided by MI:2. And I’m getting rid of the stupid Highlander in-jokes that crept in when I do the re-write.)

What Dark Knight does for me is helps me to feel what my characters are going through as their entire world comes toppling down around them. And I needed to feel that. I caught a glimmer of it in the Battlestar Galactica miniseries, when the Cylons destroy the colonies: but this is so much darker. It makes the destruction of the colonies look like a bad day at Disneyland.

If I can make Dark Knight look like a really bad day at Disneyland, I’ll have accomplished what I set out to do. And then it’s off to intensive therapy for me: a few months of Pirates of the Caribbean, coupled with massive amounts of rum, should bring me back from the utter darkness again.

Until the next time we have to slide beneath the waves…

Oceans of Inspiration