December 28, 2005

Stop Making Sense

WARNING: Irresponsible, tin-hat conspiracy theorizing below.

The Confidence Man has long been utterly addlepated by the Cheney Cabal's foreign-policy and homeland-security strategies.

Since their installment by the Scalia Court, the Cheney Cabal has again and again made bafflingly dangerous, destabilizing, and demented decisions on the international stage. Not a single move they have made has made sense from any sort of strategic or security-oriented standpoint.

Not even the "no-blood for-oil" arguments have ever made entirely convincing sense of the Chen ey Cabal's decisions.

But the Confidence Man has a theory -- one that keeps making more and more sense by the day, especially given recent revelations about the Cheney Cabal's domestic spy apparatus.

The Confidence Man has always lain some credence to the supposition that Dick Cheney and/or his lieutenants had some prior knowledge of at least some general aspects of the attacks of 9/11.

We're not claiming that Unka Dick remote-piloted the planes into the WTC and Pentagon. We're not claiming that he bankrolled the hijackers.

But given the copious documentation of the various intel agencies' knowledge of the soldiers on the ground and the chatter, it is apparent that Cheney knew SOMETHING was going down (figuratively speaking, at least) in the summer or fall of 2001.

Here's our theory: Cheney did, in fact, have someone "on the inside" within a cell including or proximate to the 9/11 hijackers. Cheney's agent was NOT one of the hijackers -- but he did go to ground after 9/11. Cheney knew something was coming down the pike, but didn't suspect it would be quite as catastrophic as it turned out. And when it was as bad as we all witnessed -- and Cheney's man on the inside had disappeared -- Cheney panicked.

Cheney did not panic for his fear at the safety of the US -- he panicked at fear for his own neck. Because the man on the inside had the goods on Dick's foreknowledge of 9/11.

The ENTIRE US security apparatus as mobilized post-9/11, then, has been Dick Cheney's desparate attempt to track down this one man. The kidnappings, the extreme rendition, the torture, the wiretapping, all of it.

The Moron War on the War on Christmas

Upon some further reflection regarding the Feebs-with-Geiger-counters-in-mosques issue we discussed immediately below, we have come to a tentative conclusion.

It is certain, of course, that Karl Rove has a greasy paw in FOX News' ludicrous "War on Christmas" campaign.

But what strikes the Confidence Man is the timing of the hullabaloo this year.

Yes, as some have noted, the Moron War on the War on Christmas, as with other commercial holiday endeavors, creeeps ever earlier year by year.

However, consider that the NYT's revelations of Bush's end-run around FISA for illegal wiretaps AND the FBI-mosque-radiation-monitoring program both came out at the height of the holiday shopping season -- and that, as the NYT and WaPo reported, the Bushists had been trying to suppress the NYT's reporting of said stories for over a year.

Now, numerous commentators in recent weeks have pointed to the essentially anti-Semitic nature of the Moron War on the War on Christmas.

While the Confidence Man agrees in principle with this argument, we are starting to suspect that perhaps there is a more subtle anti-Islamic dynamic at work in the timing of TMWOTWOX and the media.

TMWOTWOX, we suspect, in its more aggressive deployment this year was intended to prepare the ground for the revelations of the wiretapping and monitoring of mosques.

The Jesus Bomb

The Confidence Man reads with mounting horror and disdain the news that the FBI has been infiltrating mosques and Muslim community centers to monitor for radiation.

Leaving aside the issue that the Bushists have NEVER been serious about controlling nuclear proliferation, cracking down on Pakistan and various rogue international nuclear actors, or securing chemical and nuclear facilities in the US, we wish to conduct a little historical thought experiment.

Recall that, in the 1990s, the US was subject to a rash of terrorist acts perpetrated by, on the main, straight, Christian, Caucasian men: Oklahoma City, the Atlanta Olympic Village bombing, abortion clinic bombings, abortion doctor shootings and harassment, the Unabomber (granted, Ted K. was neither a Christian nor straight per se), the James Byrd and Matthew Shepard lynchings (among others), and Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Montana Freemen (these three being Federal assaults on terrorist threats as or more genuine than, say Vincent Padilla or the melt-the-Brooklyn-Bridge-with-soldering-irons ding-dongs), as well as various and sundry un- or under-reported incidents.

The country, at the time, was under assault by a loosely aggregated white/Christian-identity network no less organized or well-funded than al Qaeda -- and no less hostile to classic Western Liberal Enlightenment values of liberte, egalite, fraternite, et al.

Imagine, then, the reaction if Clinton and Reno had justifiably decided to infiltrate CHURCHES in the '90s to monitor radiation levels.

When Bush Didn't Lie

During the 2004 campaign, Bush and his proxies frequently derided Kerry's insistence that countering terrorism was on the main a law-enforcement job.

The Bushists insisted on their mechaphor of the GWOT, casting the fight as a struggle between competing armies, not of civilization vs anarchy.

And, as we're now seeing, the Bushists were being entirely honest (albeit misguided and INSANE) during the campaign.

They never had any intention of pursuing legitimate legal means to estop, prosecute, or otherwise disrupt terrorists -- in America or abroad.

December 22, 2005

The Wrong Man

Left Blogistan has been a-buzz today with discussion of Ben Wallace-Wells' WaMo profile of Kos.

While the Confidence Man holds no brief for Kos (truth be told, we generally do find him and his Kossacks too shrill to be productive), we do consider ourselves among the blog triumphalists helping to sweep aside the deadwood of print journalism (if we may be so grandiloquent).

We are also, of course, baseball fans.

And being baseball fan and blog triumphalist alike, we know that when Wallace-Wells deploys Bill James as a conceptual metaphor for Kos's activities, we know that he's utterly wrong.

The operative model is, of course, Oakland's Billy Beane.

And the East Coast Establishment, Ivy League hopeful yearning of Wallace-Wells' invocation of the Red Sox' hiring of James and consequent WS Championship is all washed up. James didn't win the Series -- owner John Henry's money (intelligently spent by Beaneiac more than Jamesian GM Theo Epstein, building on a team framework largely inherited from Epstein's predecessor) won the Series.

And, of course, Beane's most famous comment from Moneyball -- "My shit doesn't work in the playoffs" -- would have been a much more apt anecdote to sum up Kos's political efforts in '02 and '04. To wit, Kos, like Beane, was able to utilize new principles of technology, organization, and data analysis to build a cheap, efficient machine to succeed at the margins where the mainstream market was most inefficient -- but ultimately both keep failing at the final test (playoffs, elections).

Brazile Nuts

Donna Brazile, she of the flawless Gore '00 campaign, repeatedly has achieved Shrumian levels of competence.

But the Confidence Man had not previously suspected that she might, in fact, be mentally ill.

This NYT article on black leaders' meeting with Bush provides profound evidence that Ms. Brazile may have suffered massive brain trauma.

Regarding her meeting with Bush to discuss Katrina reconstruction efforts, Brazile was quoted as saying:

"'He gave me information. Like I didn't know that prior to Katrina we may have had too many hospital beds instead of enough,' she said. 'He put that information into my head.'"

Um ... so, one of the problems with Katrina rescue-and-cleanup efforts was that there were TOO MANY HOSPITAL BEDS AVAILABLE?

Now, the Confidence Man can JUST imagine the convoluted, tortuous, utterly-divorced-from-reality-and-genuine-economic-scholarship HBS MBA-speak "market dynamics" argument that one of Chimpy's handlers might have given him to parrot regarding this, um ... theory. The fundamental misunderstanding and misapplication of economic principles is at the heart of the Rove-Abramoff-Norquist GOP.

But for Brazile to swallow it AND regurgitate it for the benefit of the press? That presumes a truly Reaganesque level of mental faculties on Brazile's part.

And ... "He put that information into my head."?!? What is she -- a fucking Scientologist? And undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic? (TomAYto, tomAHto, I know ...) Who talks like that?

December 16, 2005

That's it. I'm outta here.

The Confidence Man reads with rising gorge the NYT report on Bush's authorization of the NSA to conduct heretofore-illegal wiretaps on American citizens.

But what really renders us bilious is the revelation, buried deep in the story, that the Times SAT ON THE STORY FOR A YEAR.

1. The NYT is DONE. Finis. Kaput.

2. Hmmm ... what major American political event transpired approximately 1 year ago ... hmmm, our memory seems faulty ... hmmm ... let's see, it's now December 2005, so a year ago would have been ... uh, carry the 10s column, uh ... 200- ... 4? Yes, that's it: 2004. Now, what month immediately precedes December? Nnnn- ... Nnnnov- ... Nnnnnnnovem- ... November? Let's see -- 1 + 1 = ... t- ... tw- ... two!

Alright, we'll say it: the Bush Administration convinced the NYT to not publish this story prior to the 2004 election.

Impeach these pigfuckers. Impeach 'em NOW.

And cancel your NYT sub.

December 15, 2005

I dunno 'bout you ...

... but when I hear "Saudia Arabia" and "visa fraud" in close conjunction, I usually think of this ...

December 01, 2005

Hillbilly Orange Alert

Well, this certainly can't be comforting news to Jibbenainosay and his fellow denizens of the cane-break. Killer Soviet Squirrels!