For a couple of weeks I’ve been trying to understand why "The Surge"?  What possible motivation could the Bush administration have behind defying all logic and reason, not to mention all the good advice from his former Secretary of State, many of his generals, over a thousand serving troops, James Baker and Friends, and numerous opinion polls?  I now think I have an answer.

However, to understand it, you have to shift your mindset to the dark, cold, twisted and contorted world of the Bushites. Follow me below if you dare...

I will vote Republican in 2006 because:

1. I want a prosperous America, where the poorest can achieve wealth, if allowed to save instead of pay high taxes, while benefiting from low unemployment and limited regulation.

2. I want a freer America, where my rights-- to own a gun, to determine my own healthcare arrangements-- are not infringed in the pursuit of an abstract common good.

3. I want a strong America-- one that does not cower when threatened by its enemies, which defends its interests, and exists as a beacon of hope to all who wish to be free.

Oh where to start, where to start...  A prize to whoever comes up with the best smackdown of this unbridled bullshit.

 ~ Trendar.

We work daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.

Follow me down below for more...

San Francisco is a cosmopolitan place; I saw people of all types, all colors, and from all walks of life. Many of them would not have looked out of place in New York, or Kansas, or Ohio, or anywhere in the world, for that matter.

In the club I went to later on (at the top of a major San Francisco high-rise hotel) there were a whole group of military personnel in uniform, who the club bouncers were letting in without paying the cover charge. They were drinking, dancing, and having a good time, rubbing shoulders good-naturedly with the rest of us civilians.

(follow me down below...)

As I listen to the cable news coverage from New Orleans, I've finally today been hearing some discussion of how the dividing lines of race and poverty have been so starkly highlighted in the aftermath of this tragedy. In particular black leaders such as the members of the Black Congressional Caucus and the Rev. Jesse Jackson are now standing up and saying that the government's response to this disaster has been at best incompetent and shameful in its treatment of the poor, the old, the infirm, and the sick - which in New Orleans means predominantly the black population of the city.

(more on America's Dirty Little Secret after the jump...)

A step further than the personal wisdom of Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas?", more insightful than George "Don't Think of an Elephant" Lakoff's skillful manipulation of language, certainly far beyond the pundits simplistic "Values Voters" explanations for the November election, Driftglass (with assistance from Steve Gilliard) presents us with a simple and concise description of the mindset of the Average Republican. Not the elite, policymaking, money-grubbing, well-connected, Bushies and their clones, but the average Joe or Jane who puts their X in the "R" box.

(more below...)

I blogged back in January about the CIA's morally despicable practice of "Extraordinary Rendition" (otherwise known as illegally kidnapping people and carting them secretly off to third party countries for imprisonment and torture) of suspected terrorists, in many cases without clear evidence or even a whiff of due process.

One of the innocent victims of this heinous scheme was a German citizen named Khaled el-Masri. He was kidnapped while traveling on vacation and flown to Afghanistan, where he was interrogated and tortured for months by what appeared to be American CIA agents, then finally released. His only crime? Having a similar name to one of the suspected 9/11 terrorists, Khalid al-Masri.

It now appears that once the U.S. government determined that el-Masri was entirely innocent and not related to terrorism in any way, he was released on the direct orders of Condoleeza Rice -- a fact which pretty much confirms every detail of his story:

Let's just play fantasy politics for a moment. Imagine if I were given the sole and unequivocal right to pick the next President of the United States, who would I choose, and why?

Let me, for a moment, separate from the likely individual candidates for the job, and just consider the question in abstract:

Amidst all the shocking revelations that the White House credentialed a man who is a pornographer, a homosexual rent boy and a blatant conservative shill, there are those who are outraged, yes outraged that the left wing blogosphere would dare to intrude on someone's personal life simply to make political hay.

Yes, I remember the blue dress. Yes, I remember the Starr report with all it's sordid details of cigars and blowjobs.  Yes, I remember a man being impeached in public and humiliated in private by all his weaknesses as a human being. Not that anyone else in this world on the right wing side of the fence has ever had such weaknesses; no, Rush, no, Paul, no, Jack...

The debate for Social Security privatization is over.

Even aside from Dick Cheney's shocking admission (on Fox News, no less) that privatization will not solve the long term fiscal problems of Social Security, it's becoming increasingly clear that the basic premise of the proposed private accounts (that they will allow people to create better return on investment than in the current system) is built on faulty (and deliberately misleading) logic. Michael Kinsley has a compelling argument which nets it out:

(More below the fold...)

So for me, the highlight of the speech was the Iraqi woman, Safia Taleb al-Suhail, who had just voted in her country's election, giving a peace sign and displaying her ink-stained forefinger. The low point was the sight of Republican Congressmen (none of whom have never had to vote with bullets and bomb fragments whizzing past their heads) holding up their carefully-overstained fingers as a cheap publicity stunt for the cameras.

Tomorrow the papers, pundits and parrot-journalists will be uncritically repeating phrases from Bush's State Of The Union speech verbatim, perhaps quoting lines such as "We must join together to strengthen and save Social Security" (conveniently ignoring the fact that what little detail was contained in the President's speech about his plan for private accounts clearly indicate he will do little or nothing to save anything, let alone Social Security). So reading between the lines and the lies, what did Bush really say?

(more after the break...)

Now that the partygoers in DC are shaking off their hangovers and the sponsors are putting away their checkbooks and they are all returning home, we can ask the important question: What was the real message in Bush's inaugural speech?

It's become common practice for the Bush administration in general, and Bush in particular, to use rhetoric and half-truths as a way of framing issues to benefit their political agenda. The most obvious example of this was the drumbeat in advance of the Iraq war, in which a constant stream of Republican politicians asserted, directly or indirectly, that Iraq was a serious threat to the US (which they weren't), that Saddam Hussein had WMDs (which he didn't), and that Iraq was intimately linked to Al Qaeda (which it wasn't). This game of insinuation and allusion was so effective that even today a significant minority of Americans still believe those statements to be true.

(More after the jump...)

Brad DeLong has a certain way with words. In just a sentence or two he can express a complex idea that's been bumping around in my brain for a while but which I simply couldn't articulate, and that's so blindingly obvious in its insight that it takes a  moment for me to realize just how perceptive it is. Take, for example, this opening salvo:

It comes as no particular surprise to me that the Pentagon is considering creating El-Salvador style hit squads to carry out assassinations and kidnappings in Iraq. As I have discussed previously, the CIA is already kidnapping suspected "terrorists" (on sometimes tissue-thin evidence), and transporting them to other countries for interrogation and torture. Stories about this practice, called "rendition" are starting to find the light of day, at least in other countries. As the following article describes, a series of explicit allegations to this effect have been made by a German citizen who was detained while on vacation in Macedonia.

(More after the break):

So for example:

• Progressives want to balance the budget, but regressives rack up huge deficits.

• Progressives want to restore confidence in America's moral leadership, but regressives appoint a torture apologist to enforce our laws.

• Progressives want free and fair democratic elections everywhere in the world, but regressives want to obstruct transparent elections here in America.

Frameshop?

Why is the US government slow poisoning its own troops?

The use of depleted uranium (DU) in Iraq, much like depleted uranium itself, is gradually starting to seep into the media's consciousness, and so the general public. The issue, for those not yet familiar with it, is that some US ordnance (specifically shells) and tank armor used in Iraq contains depleted uranium, which is a low level radioactive by-product of uranium processing for nuclear reactors. When fired, these shells naturally disintegrate, and the uranium contained within them "vaporizes" -- becoming an airborne mist which mingles with the dusty desert soil or even seeps into the groundwater, and so into plants and animals.

It appears the CIA are using several Gulfstream jets to secretly transport terror suspects to unknown locations, out of the reach of (and away from the prying eyes of) reporters, the courts, and even the Red Cross. According to the Washington Post, such detainees, often hooded and shackled, are being smuggled to friendly countries with poor records of human rights so that their interrogations can be carried out without niggly little interruptions, such as trials, humane treatment or (heaven forbid) the Geneva Convention. The CIA has set up a shell company with fake directors which "owns" the jets in order to facilitate this process, which is called "rendition":

Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War by Dana Priest, Washington Post (subscription)

Since Sept. 11, 2001, secret renditions have become a principal weapon in the CIA's arsenal against suspected al Qaeda terrorists, according to congressional testimony by CIA officials. But as the practice has grown, the agency has had significantly more difficulty keeping it secret.

(more below...)

Paul Krugman is well known for taking complex financial and economic issues and distilling them down into language that almost anyone can understand. In today's New York Times, he makes a number of of very simple and clear points about the forthcoming White House plan to privatize social security, and the dangers inherent in such a plan. For example, he discusses the grim reality behind the oft-quoted (by Republicans) example of privatized retirement accounts in Chile:

(continued below the fold...)