Interview with Bob Graham

I'm putting up a link to Mother Jones' interview with the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee because it's worth a read, and also because my computer won't let me put up posts over a certain word count right now. Here is a quick excerpt:

"We’ve gotten ourselves so bogged down in the quagmire of Iraq that we’ve allowed our principal enemies to regroup, to recruit thousands of new terrorists, to diversify into a much more flexible and nimble organization. Al Qaeda today is a different Al Qaeda than it was three or four years ago, and has become a more serious opponent for the United States. On the other hand, I don’t think we can just pack our bags and walk away from Iraq. The strategy of trying to train enough Iraqis, and train them adequately with necessary equipment, is probably the only strategy that has a chance for us to make any kind of an early -- and I would define “early” as anytime within the next five years -- exit from Iraq."

Problems Updating

My computer is being weird and I'm having a hard time updating. I'm too lazy and tired to figure what the problem is right now, but hopefully I'll have it fixed by Monday.

Happy Thanksgiving

As you can see, I haven't updated in a couple of days now. With work, travelling, and the holiday, I've been pretty busy. But check back tomorrow for my triumphant return!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here's One of the Pictures

The Orwellian Nightmare Sets In

Check out this article about two billboards down in Orlando that have a giant picture of George W. Bush with simply the words "Our Leader" written next to it. It doesn't get scarier than this.

And who, you might ask, is paying for these billboards? Well apparently the billboards are a “political public service message brought to you by Clear Channel Outdoor.”

After doing a little research, I found that Clear Channel Outdoor is essentially a company that rents space for outdoor advertising. Their holdings include over a half million outdoor advertising spaces across the world.

Honestly, you have to check these pictures out, in fact, I think I may throw one up on my banner.

Writing Off Candidates. . .

Pundits never learn from their mistakes. No one gave al-Sadr the time of day going into the war in Iraq, or even immediately following the fall of Baghdad. People wrote him off, saying he would never cull a real following because he was unexciting and disconnected. Well we all know what happened with that. Now these same pundits are saying the same things about many of the potential Palestinian leaders. I know this may seem contrary to my previous statements about Abbas, but watch for a dark horse to take this election.

Fatah Party Picks Abbas

In a not very surprising move, the ruling Fatah party picked Mahmoud Abbas as its candidate to replace Yasser Arafat as head of the Palestinian Authority. While I believe that he will probably win an election, I don't think he has the popular following to push through the proper reforms. He is part of the old regime, and though perhaps better (i.e., less corrupt) than his peers, the increasingly younger Palestinian population does not view him as a true leader. On top of that, he is considerably moderate in a time where relatively conservative and extreme orators rule the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. To make matters worse, no matter who takes power, there will almost definitely be power struggle among the Palestinian security forces and terrorist groups, essentially plunging the state into civil war.

If Israel, on the other hand, were to present Abbas (or whoever else is elected) the same agreement that was offered to Arafat at Camp David (the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the splitting of Jerusalem), things may go differently. I believe the Palestinian people truly want peace, and I think they will respect and follow any leader who gets it for them. Below is a brief rundown of each of the serious and not-so serious candidates. From MSNBC:



Ahmed Qureia
The current Palestinian prime minister, 66, was a longtime ally of Arafat and the key negotiator in secret talks with Israelis in Oslo that led to interim peace deals in 1993.

Also known as Abu Ala, Qureia gained a reputation as one of the more skilled Palestinian politicians in his role as speaker of the Palestinian legislature, but unlike Arafat lacks charisma and has little popularity with the public. As prime minister he threatened to resign several times over Arafat's failure to give him sufficient powers, but was always persuaded to stay.

Mahmoud Abbas
Qureia's predecessor as Palestinian prime minister, Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen), resigned in September, 2003, after only four months at the post due to a power struggle with Arafat.

Named head of the Palestine Liberation Organization after Yasser Arafat's death, Abbas co-authored interim peace deals a decade ago that gave Palestinians limited self-rule. Abbas, 69, has avoided public attention as much as Arafat sought it. He has been an outspoken critic of the use of violence during the Palestinian uprising (intifada) and tried to get Islamic militants to end attacks on Israel. Like Qureia, he lacks a popular following.

Marwan Barghouti
The former head of the Fatah movement's young guard, Barghouti is seen as a possible successor to Arafat in the long term, but any immediate succession plans would be crimped by the fact that he is currently serving five consecutive life sentences in an Israeli prison for orchestrating murders, a charge he denies.

The fiery orator is widely regarded as the grassroots political leader of the uprising begun in 2000 and helped coordinate the first uprising that ended in 1993. There's no guarantee that Barghouti, who supports a two-state solution, would get parole. A poll by Bir Zeit University in the West Bank indicates Barghouti would easily defeat a Hamas candidate in presidential elections.


Jibril Rajoub
The head of the Preventative Security service in the West Bank, Rajoub, 51, is seen as a pragmatist: he supports the intifada, but opposes Palestinian attacks within Israel and has sought to clamp down on Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Rajoub represents the younger generation of Arafat's leadership and any succession by him would likely mean a continuation of the status quo.

Mohammed Dahlan
The former interior minister and security chief in Gaza currently lacks an official post, but remains one of the most powerful of several strongmen in a territory ridden by factional fighting. Dahlan has been courted by international mediators as someone who could instill order in Gaza after a planned Israeli pullout next year.

Rauhi Fattouh
As the Palestinian parliament speaker, he was sworn in following Arafat's death as Palestinian Authority president for at least 60 days. But Fattouh is widely regarded as a bland political backbencher and unlikely to hold on to power during a turbulent transition period. The 55-year-old has been an Arafat loyalist but took the unusual step of suspending parliament sessions for two months to protest at the leader's foot-dragging over ratifying reform measures.

Before I Get Back to More Serious Stuff. . .

Though I suppose this is kind of serious. Somehow I missed this when it first came out, but International Truck and Engine Corp. has rolled out a disgusting, gas-guzzling mammoth of a car that makes the H2 look like a Matchbox car. A slightly dated article on it can be found here.



Now, if that wasn't bad enough, it has come to my attention that this monster of a truck that gets 7 miles per gallon just may become the next must-have item among the elite (read: people with small penises). Apparently our generation's Allen Funt, Ashton Kutcher, has already jumped on board the oil-express. Looks like he's still upset that genetics "punk'd" him down below.


(Yes, that's Kutcher behind the wheel)

Contest!

In reference to my last post about Alberto R. Gonzales' mystery middle name, I'm holding a contest to see who can come up with the best possible middle name for him. Post your guess as a comment or e-mail it to me at verticalrailroad@hotmail.com

My guess? Rico. Or Rasputin.

Middlenamegate

Here's a weird story from the BG. Apparently the WH refuses to release future-AG Alberto R. Gonzales' middle name. Check out the nice quote from Gonzales where he essentially says that freedom of the press is "not absolute." Um, excuse me, Mr. Gonzales? Yeah, you might want to check out something called the Bill of Rights, you know the thing that your job requires you to protect. Yeah, look under "Amendment I."

And now, on to Middlenamegate!

TEN DAYS AGO, in a news story on President George W. Bush's decision to nominate Alberto R. Gonzales as attorney general, New York Times reporters laconically noted of the Bush administration's top lawyer that "the White House declined to release his middle name, saying that Mr. Gonzales prefers the initial."

What, one wonders, is the big secret? True, speaking for the White House in 2002, Gonzales warned a group of Associated Press editors that although journalists may have a right to know what's going on in government, "we also believe such rights are not absolute." But isn't this taking things too far?

The media hasn't pounced on Middlenamegate, and even government-watchdog outfits like Cryptome.org, whose website features satellite close-ups of Gonzales' Vienna, Va., home and Mrs. Gonzales' office phone number, seem disinclined to investigate. So I've done a little idle speculating of my own.

It's possible, of course, that Gonzales' middle name is merely a personally embarrassing one: Rosebud, for example, which in a memorable episode of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" turned out to be the middle name of Rob and Laura Petrie's son Richie. And then there's Ragnar, Reuben, Rico, Romeo, Rudyard. But given the fraught atmosphere in Washington these days, I suspect the name in question is one that might prove politically embarrassing. Perhaps it's French: Ry? R? Robbe-Grillet? Or a left-leaning original coinage: RoeWade? Racialpreferences? Rightsfordetainees? Or maybe it's too right-wing: Reagan? Rove? Rambo?

Just One Last Post Before Bed

The Washington Post, among others, reports that military commanders in Iraq are signaling that they need more troops in Iraq in order to take care of the "resistance" in cities.

The possibility that additional troops would be required to battle the insurgency in this critical period preceding the Iraqi elections, scheduled for Jan. 30, has been signaled for weeks. The Pentagon took an initial step in this direction last month, ordering about 6,500 soldiers in Iraq to extend their tours by up to two months.

With some fresh U.S. forces already arriving in Iraq as part of a long-scheduled rotation, and two newly trained Iraqi brigades due to start operating next month, U.S. military leaders had hoped to avoid further increases.

But over the past week, a closer assessment of the forces needed for the Fallujah recovery effort and future offensive operations revealed a gap in desired troop strength, at least over the next two or three months, according to several officers familiar with the issue.

The officers said the exact number of extra troops needed is still being reviewed but estimated it at the equivalent of several battalions, or about 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers. The number of U.S. troops in Iraq fell to nearly 100,000 last spring before rising to 138,000, where it has stayed since the summer.

Wow, what a shocker. I've been saying for a long time that the only way we can win this war is if there is a draft. Sounds dumb, but it's true. Training Iraqi troops takes too long and is very unreliable (a large percent of trained troops and police are working with the rebels). You might say that training Americans would take a long time too. Yes, it probably will, but at least we know whose side they are really on. And before anyone jumps on me, let me just say that I would rather pull out of Iraq now than have a draft. I'm just saying that if you actually want to win this war. . .

Free Secret U2 Show

Get your tickets for the free U2 show tomorrow (today) at 2:30 in Brooklyn.

For Those Looking for the NBA Brawl. . .

I gots it.

High Res/Low Res

Pink is the New Black, Internet Porn is the New Crack

I can't wait to hear what Bob Saget has to say about this addiction. From Wired News:

Internet pornography is the new crack cocaine, leading to addiction, misogyny, pedophilia, boob jobs and erectile dysfunction, according to clinicians and researchers testifying before a Senate committee Thursday.

Witnesses before the Senate Commerce Committee's Science, Technology and Space Subcommittee spared no superlative in their description of the negative effects of pornography.

Mary Anne Layden, co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Cognitive Therapy , called porn the "most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today."

"The internet is a perfect drug delivery system because you are anonymous, aroused and have role models for these behaviors," Layden said. "To have drug pumped into your house 24/7, free, and children know how to use it better than grown-ups know how to use it -- it's a perfect delivery system if we want to have a whole generation of young addicts who will never have the drug out of their mind."

Pornography addicts have a more difficult time recovering from their addiction than cocaine addicts, since coke users can get the drug out of their system, but pornographic images stay in the brain forever, Layden said.

Jeffrey Satinover, a psychiatrist and advisor to the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality echoed Layden's concern about the internet and the somatic effects of pornography.

"Pornography really does, unlike other addictions, biologically cause direct release of the most perfect addictive substance," Satinover said. "That is, it causes masturbation, which causes release of the naturally occurring opioids. It does what heroin can't do, in effect."

So true. I always used to hear people muttering "I got to get my rocks," but now all I hear is "I got to get my rocks off."

Pssst, I hear internet porn is a government conspiracy to keep people with computers down. Pass it on.


UPDATE:
If you read the article, you saw that one of the people who testified was from the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). This group is, and I quote, "a non-profit, educational organization dedicated to affirming a complementary, male-female model of gender and sexuality." In other words, its members are of the belief that homosexuality is a mental disorder. Check out their website here. Or don't if you don't want to give their page the hits.

THESE ARE THE TYPES OF PEOPLE WHO TESTIFY IN FRONT OF CONGRESS!?

Chilean Update

I swear I'm not making this up, but Bush's first words to the Chilean President were:
"Ricardo, aqui esta el gringo."

For those who can't translate that, he said: "I'm an incompetent idiot."

First, there's this (yes, that's Putin on the right)



Second, there are these:

A Secret Service agent getting manhandled



Bush on the way right getting into the fracas


And third, there is this:

Plans for a state dinner for President Bush at Chile's presidential palace were scratched Sunday after the United States insisted on security measures that Chile called unacceptable.

The change came a day after Chilean security guards temporarily blocked one of Bush's Secret Service agents from entering an official dinner.

For the Sunday event, the Secret Service insisted all guests -- totaling more than 230 -- pass through a metal detector, a top level Chilean Foreign Ministry official told CNN. U.S. officials did not dispute this account.

President Ricardo Lagos believed the measure was humiliating for guests, the Chilean official said.

Was Ohio Stolen?

Apparently not. More and more studies are coming out concluding that in fact, nothing overtly illegal happened in Ohio. Not to say that there wasn't intimidation or understocking of machines going on, it just seems that actual voter fraud did not occur in the Buckeye State. Florida, on the other hand, according to a UC-Berkeley study, just may have once again fallen victim to all kinds of bad things and given Bush more than 130,000 extra votes. Kevin Drum does a decent job reporting on it here.

I should warn you though, that after reading Drum's sources, I feel that he too easily dismisses the notion of fraud in Florida. The source he uses to debunk the UC-Berkeley study even says that:

Something unusual seems to have happened in Broward and Palm Beach counties in 2004. One possibility, as suggested by Hout et al., is cheating, possibly set up ahead of time (e.g., by loading extra votes into the machines before the election or by setting it up to switch or not count some votes). This explanation makes a certain amount of sense, in that, if someone wanted to cheat ahead of time, it would make sense to do it in Florida, and it would make sense to do it in the large-population counties where a 5%-or-so swing in votes could make a difference in the statewide total.

What Drum doesn't understand is that from a statistical standpoint, because there were only two counties that had crazy results as compared to the other thirteen that didn't, these two are considered anomalies and are thus easily written off. Statistics don't take into account that these are by far the two heaviest Democratic counties in the state, as well some of the largest populated.



Drum says that this graph proves that there was "almost certainly not any systematic fraud" because if there was "it would have shown up in more than just two counties." What he doesn't realize is that widespread systematic fraud is entirely unnecessary when all you need are those two counties.

Anyone Want to See a Free U2 Show?

Get tickets here for the free U2 show tomorrow at 2:30 in Brooklyn.

GOP Blocks 9/11 Changes

The story that is sure to dominate the airwaves for the next few days:

The decision to block a vote on the landmark bill, which would have created the job of a cabinet-level national intelligence director to oversee the C.I.A. and the government's other spy agencies, came after what lawmakers from both parties described as a near-rebellion by a core of highly conservative House Republicans aligned with the Pentagon who were emboldened to stand up to their leadership and to the White House.

The bill would have forced the Pentagon, which controls an estimated 80 percent of the government's $40 billion intelligence budget, to cede much of its authority on intelligence issues to a national intelligence director.

"What you are seeing is the forces in favor of the status quo protecting their turf, whether it is Congress or in the bureaucracy," said Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who was the chief Senate author of the failed compromise bill, in what amounted to a slap at her Republican counterparts in the House.

The chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican and the former governor of New Jersey, said that the lawmakers who blocked the vote should be held accountable by the public, and he blamed senior Pentagon officials as well.

Maybe it's because it's five in the morning, but I'm actually pretty happy about this. On the one hand, GOP lawmakers stood up against Bush, revealing that the great Republican Civil War has begun and that politicians are choosing sides. On the other it gives Democrats an opening to criticize Republicans on defense, which is a very big deal. There is not a red- or blue-stater who would feel comfortable with their representative voting against the 9/11 Committee's suggestions. I mean, the alternative is keeping the system the way it is, and well, apparently it's not too good the way it is. This will play out for weeks to come, and just may have an affect on 2006.

Secret Service and Chilean Police Take a Cue From the NBA

There was a little dustup between Bush's boys and Chilean President Richard Lagos' (wasn't he on "Renegade"?) boys about who has bigger boys. Needless to say, Bush's boys won. Kind of. From The Washington Times:

The president's lead agent approached the line of men as quickly as it closed and demanded to be allowed through. Within a few seconds, the confrontation began to escalate with voices being raised and shoving in all directions.
"You're not stopping me! You're not stopping me!" yelled the agent, as captured by several television cameras. "I'm with the president."
During the fracas, another Secret Service agent was roughly pulled from the tumult and pushed against a concrete wall by Chilean security.
. . . Mr. Bush calmly turned right as the other three continued on and inserted himself into the fight. The president reached over two rows of Chilean security guards, grabbed his lead agent by the shoulder of his suit jacket and began to pull.
. . . A few Chilean guards turned their heads and noticed that the arm draped over their shoulders was that of the president, and the line softened. Mr. Bush pulled his agent through, who was heard to say, "Get your hands off me" as he passed roughly through the doorway.