Irony Test

If I were to tell you a member of the Village People was arrested, could you tell me which member it was? Consider it a test of your sense of irony.

Ready?

That's right, its The Cop.

Long Time Coming

So the first move in the often-predicted White House staff shake-up came today. The Wh Chief of Staff is out. (For those who only know the WH staff throught The West Wing think Leo McGarry's old job and C.J. Cregg's current one)

It's early and I haven't had my coffee so I'll just borrow this take from The Washington Note:

Andrew "Andy" Card, one of the least publicly visible White House Chiefs of Staff in history but someone with a steady, careful management hand who must be given credit for much of Bush's political success, has announced his resignation.

I don't think that this is the guy that you need to replace in order to turn things around.

Suicide by Jury

The sad strange evil case of Zacarias Moussaoui took still yet another turn today. Moussaui is the only man being tried in the United States in connection with the 9/11 attacks. The man has already confessed to being member of Al-Quida and being part of a plot to attack the United States. The only real drama left in the case was whether he would get the death penalty or not. In order to kill him, the Federal prosecutor has to tie him directly to the deaths on 9/11, being part of some future attack isn't good enough. Its a real tricky case to make because Moussaoui was already in jail at the time of the 9/11 attacks.

Dahlia Lithwick layed out the real stretch that the Government was trying to make to have Moussaoui be responsible for 9/11:

Last week Robert Weisberg and I tried to highlight the central flaw of the government's conspiracy theory in the Zacarias Moussaoui penalty phase: You can't easily stretch lying into a capital federal criminal conspiracy to murder. The government's contention that Moussaoui actually caused the 9/11 deaths because he lied to federal investigators about details of the plot might satisfy some definition of criminal conspiracy. But it's a hard argument to sustain under the federal conspiracy and death-penalty rules. The causal link between Moussaoui's acts and the actual murders is just too stretched out to work under the federal laws involved in this case.

Then something funny happened at the sentencing trial: The prosecutors switched theories. Somewhere along the way, they stopped arguing that Moussaoui's lies had caused 9/11 and began to argue that his failure to tell the truth was the cause. In other words, the deaths happened not as a result of the false information Moussaoui gave FBI investigators (that he was taking lessons in flying 747s for fun, had worked in marketing research in London for a company called NOP, and had earned the money in his terrorist bank account) but as a result of the true information he withheld.

Up until today, it was widely held, by both the defense and the prosecutor is that Moussaui was not part of the 9/11 plot, was not the "20th hijacker" but was part of some future terror plot. Thus the reach by prosecutors.

But today Moussaoui just jumped into the noose that has been prepared for him. Despite the desperate pleadings of his defense team, he took the stand. He now claims that he was going to fly a plane on 9/11 and that Richard Reid, the"shoe bomber" was to be part of his team. I'm pretty sure Moussaoui just killed himself.

No need for strange legal theories - Moussaoui seems to be perfectly willing to say whatever it takes to die.

Quote of the Day

Al Sharpton on Chris Matthew's Hardball:

MATTHEWS: Who is funnier, you or Dick Cheney?

SHARPTON: I'm really funny. There's a difference in being funny and being the fun, and Mr. Cheney is the fun at this point.

Eschaton and West Wing

You West Wing viewers out there will note that Matt Santos was being interviewed by the Blogger Atrios from the Blog Eschaton in last night's episode. Turns out that was just an actor playing Atrios, but you can find the actual Eschaton blog if you want.

Real Horror

There's a horror movie out this week called Stay Alive, the premise of which is that there's a video game, and if you die in the game, you die in real life. Unfortunately the movie is only 20 minutes long, because after the first person dies, everybody else stops playing the game.

If you want real horror, look at the headlines from Iraq. today's horror:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Police found 30 more victims of the sectarian slaughter ravaging Iraq — most of them beheaded — dumped on a village road north of Baghdad on Sunday. At least 16 other Iraqis were killed in a U.S.-backed raid in a Shiite neighborhood of the capital.

Now how in the world is the media going to find the "good" in Iraq when this is whats happening. Find me some good that can overcome thirty headless bodies.

Man on the Street

So today I found myself walking across downtown Sac. I’m going to leave out why, on account of it would make me look foolish.
But as I was walking, I came across a rather large protest march working its way through downtown to the state Capitol. I’m always up for fighting for a good cause and besides, it was heading my way, so I joined up.
I soon found myself surrounded by a huge crowd of high-school-aged Latino kids. I joined in a chant of what I assumed was, “No justice, no peace,” in Spanish.
So it turns out that the march was to protest new immigration legislation now working its way through Congress. The most controversial of the measures being considered would make it a crime to “aid illegal immigrants,” which could make charitable aid to illegals, well ... illegal.
The Sac protest is just one of many. Immigration is going to get really hot real soon. As one of my Drinking Liberally companions said, immigration is great because it scrambles all the normal lines of politics. Both parties have strong pro- and anti-immigration elements. There’s nothing predictable about this debate.

Think About the Future

I've tried to resist the urge to start with the 2008 presidential speculation. I honestly was trying to hold out till at least the end of the year. But stuff happens and I can't help myself. So here goes my first speculation for 2008. A couple of things first. One, 2008 will be a wide open contest on both sides. No incumbent President or Vice-President will be running. This means that right now it's a lot like Spring Training - everyone thinks that their guy (or girl) will win it all. But the press, the donors, the activists, and the voters all hate a wide open contest with lots of candidates. It’s complicated, hard to cover, hard to decide who to vote for and who to give money to.

So the Presidential primaries are a brutal Darwinian process where something like 8 serious contenders on each side will be narrowed down to one candidate each, who get to do the big battle in November 2008. Without trotting out too much of my old Poli Sci degree, the mechanics of these races usually result in a dramatic primary race showdown between two likely candidates. These showdowns are where the true action is, and it’s these showdowns that I will try and predict.

For the GOP, the race will become a showdown between a moderate and a conservative. The moderate will be one of the a-typical GOP types who have broad popular appeal because they break with conservatives on issues. The smart money on this category is John McCain, but don't rule out Rudy Giuliani. Moon-shot speculation could include Condi Rice in this category. The moderate will go head-to-head with a conservative, an ideological true believer who will scare the crap out of most Craigorian Chant readers. Someone like Sam Brownback, who you can read about in Rolling Stone. Scary. Of course we here at the Chant will be pulling for the conservative on account that he will scare the crap out of voters and lead to an easy election of the Democrat.

On the Democratic side, it will come down to Hillary and Not-Hillary. If Hillary Clinton runs, she will be the instant front-runner for a host of reason layed out in this Salon piece. Hillary may be tough, but there are a lot of Dems out there with some real doubts about her, including me. This post is too long already to get into why I think Hillary is a bad idea, but lots of people will be looking for an alternative. Lots of people will be trying to be the Not-Hillary. John Warner, Joe Biden, John Edwards, Feingold and so on. The most interesting Non-Hillary is a reborn Al Gore. Check out this Ezra Klein piece on what Al Gore has been up to. If Gore gets in, he could really shake things up, but who knows? So it comes down to Hillary vs. Not Hillary and I will be rooting for the Not Hillary.

So that is the shape of things to come. Stay tuned.

Vote For Something

Nice little Tapped post on the need for young voter moblization efforts to be about more than "civic virtue, particularly when paired, incomprehensibly, with rappers"

You need to appeal to young people's self-interest. The NRA moblizes gun owners basted on the need to own guns, Senior Citizens vote to protect Social Security, so why is it that young people are told that they should vote because "its the right thing to do" by P.Diddy of all people.

No other group gets lecured on why voting is good for the Country. The rest of American gets told why voting is good for them.

Open Thread

Craig's going to be learning the dark art of FEMA flood maps all day today, so talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic:

Grape-nuts are neither grapes, nor nuts. Discuss.

Do you think that troops will remain in Iraq for the full Bush Presidency?

Did she get off beat the rap just because she's hot.

Is the BMW Z4 really the best car for Craig's mid-life crisis? I'm nowhere near a mid-life crisis, but I like to plan ahead. After all, Katrina showed us all the importance of planning for a crisis.

Answers, people I want answers. Use the comments.

Remember, Remember

You should go see this movie. Then tell me what you think. It's very much an action movie but it has a whole lot to say.

First and foremost, this is the movie that will show you what fascist government would look like in the UK. We can find German and Italian fascism in old history books, Serbian fascism in new history books and Belarussian fascism in today's headlines. But it's important to know what the UK or US version would look like. I'm not one of those who run around calling Bush a fascist, and I certainly don't go tossing that around when talking about Tony Blair, but you can see hints of totalitarianism in warrentless wiretapping and the eliminationist rhetoric of Ann Coulter.

The second theme of V for Vendetta is political violence. Blowing up buildings and killing lots of cops and police up close and personal with lots of knives. The anti-hero of the movie, known only as V is your classic terrorist/freedom fighter ink blot. Just depends on who's looking at him. V has no political program except destruction and chaos. He is firm is his conviction that the current government is profoundly wrong and must be destroyed. What he believes is correct, so what we must look at is his tactics. They are extreme and cruel and at one point, indistinguishable from the regime he is fighting.

The true test of non-violence is always fascism. At the end of every work about the Holocaust there is some message of "never again." The question is, do you really mean that? Because a protest march does not stop this kind of evil. True fascism destroys all democratic, peaceful means of change. At what point does violence become necessary?

Breaking News

Crawford, Texas -- A tragic flood this morning destroyed the personal library of President George W. Bush. The flood occurred in the presidential bathroom where the books were kept. Both of his books have been lost. A spokesman said the president was devastated, as he had almost finished coloring the second one. The White House tried to call FEMA but there was no answer.

Inside Scoop

Ok, having just concluded a trip to Trader Joe's not more than 10 minutes ago, I can testify to the accuracy of this very helpfull insider's guide to the store:

Adopt a Soviet Mentality. This is the first thing nearly every regular TJ's shopper mentions: Products appear suddenly, work their way into your daily routine, and then disappear with no warning.

Some very tasty Pad Tai noodles, which came with childishly simply instructions, have been a regular part of my diet for the last couple of months. Alas, today they were gone. The shelf space is now devoted to bags of charcoal briquetts, which I could never get into, taste-wise.

The Shopping-List Guarantee. If you go to TJ's with a shopping list for a dinner party or even a moderately complex recipe, you are guaranteed to leave the store without finding at least one item on the list. Just accept the fact that you will have to hit one or two other stores on the way home. This raises a bigger issue: TJ's has great prices on many staples, and it's easy to forget that its selection is tiny compared to a real supermarket. It is not a one-stop shopping solution.

Case in point: was stuck today with the craving for bagels and lox. Joe gave me an excellent deal on the smoked salmon and some tasting looking bagels. However, no cream cheese was to be found in the entire store. A key ingredient. Holds the whole thing together. I've got to go out again to the regular supermarket. Trader Joe's requires strategy and planning to realize its full potential.

Year Three in the Books

Anniversaries. Time to take stock, look back, and look to where we are going.

We have now been in Iraq for three years.

Even as I type this, Bush is giving a speech about the progress we are making in Iraq. Again. The short version of his speech - all kinds of good things are happening in Iraq, but if we leave the situation will get even worse.

If you want to know how we got here, Think Progress has a comprehensive timeline of the Iraq war.

The Goods

TPM keeps a careful eye out for these things so I don't have to. Josh links to a San Diego UNION-TRIBUNE article that has the goods on one John T. Doolittle, official white whale of Craigorian Chant. To sum up:

A number of members of Congress have spouses on the payroll. But the Doolittles, well ... they did a lot. Julie Doolittle had a political consultancy and she worked on commission raising money for Doolittle's campaign and political action committee.

Now, let's take out the ethico-criminal magnifying glass and look closely at what that means. As the article, makes clear, Julie had no fundraising experience prior to starting her consultancy. She also didn't seem to do any actual fundraising. What this meant was that every time someone gave Doolittle money, Julie and John personally got a 15% taste of the cash.

So, for instance, the Wilkes crew gave Doolittle's campaigns $118,000. And according to the Union-Tribune's investigation, the Doolittle's got at least $14,400 of that personally.

Now, you might say, if Julie Doolittle was a professional fundraiser, and why should she be barred from working for her husband's campaigns. But then Julie Doolittle wasn't a fundraiser.

Julie Doolittle's Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions, launched in March 2001, right after Doolittle got his seat on the Appropriations Committee. In other words, right after he got in a position to hand out federal contracts in a big way. SDFS has no phone number, no website and no employees except for Julie Doolittle. Prior to opening the firm she seems to have had no experience doing fundraising.

Now one of the things that offen gets lost in the campaign fiance debate is that politicians do not personally benefit from the money they raise from donors. That money goes into a campaign account and is just spent on campaign activities. But the Doolittles seem to have created an arrangement so that a portion of what they raise goes into their personal account. All married couples I know have joint bank accounts. This arrangement with Doolittle's wife seems to exist only to give the family a personal cut of their campaign cash. This arrangement turns money given as political support into personal bribes. It stinks.

Collateral Damage

Interesting idea about the upcoming Scooter Libby trial and how it might expose the WMD backstory:

Lawyers for Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide are signaling they may delve deeply at his criminal trial into infighting among the White House, the CIA and the State Department over pre-Iraq war intelligence failures.
...
Court papers filed late Friday raise the possibility a trial could become politically embarrassing for the Bush administration by focusing on the debate about whether the White House manipulated intelligence to justify the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

The defense team stated that in June and July 2003, Plame's CIA status was at most a peripheral issue to "the finger-pointing that went on within the executive branch about who was to blame" for the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

We can only hope. I would just love for the whole WMD issue to be fought out in a court of law. The reason - perjury. Unlike, say Meet the Press where you can lie without consequence, in a court of law you lie, you go to jail. In fact, I can make a pretty good case that the whole reason that Scooter is in trouble is that he used the same tactics with FBI agents that he used with reporters, i.e. he lied.

An bhfuil tú ar meisce fós?

Anybody know Gaelic? That's "Are you drunk yet?" Happy St. Patrick Day everyone. More Gaelic here. Hope your all celebrating in the traditional manner. This being Craigorian Chant we have to work high matters of State into everything, so here's a surprisingly upbeat take from Slate on the prospects for Irish unification. The main driver behind unification may be economics. Ireland, which pretty much always meant "poor" has emerged as an economic powerhouse, while Northern Ireland is completely dependent on London to keep it propped up. Of course there's a thousand years of bloody history to overcome, but maybe the power of green money will overcome the difference between green and orange.

Historical Document

The news cycle moves so fast and the GOP is able to switch talkings points without any sense of irony or guilt its sometimes very helpfull to look back what was being said just three years ago. FAIR, a liberal media watchdog, put together an amazing list of quotes from the "Mission Acomplished" era"

"Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?"
(Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)

"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington."
(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)

"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."
(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)

"Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?"
(Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)

"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?"
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03)

Anybody want to try and collect from Mr O'Reilly? I've been in the gaslamp, there are some great places to eat.

Far Away, So Close!

I think that we can safely say that Bush is in trouble when even Jessica Simpson is trying to get some distance between the President and herself:

Concerned about politicizing her favorite charity, singer-actress Jessica Simpson Wednesday turned down a invitation to meet with President Bush, a snub that left Republicans dismayed.

The apparent final word that Simpson would be a no-show at a major Republican fund-raiser with Bush and congressional leaders Thursday night came after a day of conflicting reports from her camp and organizers of the event.

and by "politicize" she means "associate it in any way with a wildly unpopular President." When a President is popular, his presence brings legitimacy and needed attention to your charity. When he's polling in the mid-thirties, he brings the dread "politics" with him.

The GOP reply is pretty feeble:

NRCC spokesman Carl Forti said he was surprised at Simpson's position.

"It's never been a problem for Bono,"

Bono, of course, is bigger than the President. There is no way that Bush's bad mojo causes so much as a ripple in Bono's aura. Jessica Simpson, being a mere mortal starlet, has to keep an eye out for her reputation. Bono is beyond such petty concerns.

More like Guidelines than Rules

So during Lent (that's the forty days before Easter, you heathens) good Catholics such as myself the rest of my family are to abstain from eating meat on Fridays. This year, however, St. Patrick's Day falls on a Friday. What is a good Catholic, in need of the traditional corn beef, to do? Well you get a dispensation from your Bishop. A dispensation is the magic wand that Bishops are issued with their pointy hats that make sins go away. You just have to make up the day of no meat at a later date. A good solution. St. Patrick gets honored and no one goes to hell.