Sunday, December 03, 2006

Instahoglets 3rd Dec. 06

The latest installment in an occasional series of snark-filled punchpost link-fests. Eat yer hearts out Glenn and Duncan! I can do in one post what you do in a whole blogpage! It only takes an hour or so to find and collect the links. Still, you get all the traffic and all that advertising revenue...ummm...errr...

  • Scary cyber-stories. Despite a great deal of Homeland Security hype, the supposedly threatened cyber-attack against U.S. financial institutions by Islamic jihadists has so far failed to materialize. Because just seeing Chertoff's gremlin-like visage on TV scared the cyber-jihadis blind. Or maybe because, even though Homeland InSecurity had "no information to corroborate the threat," they decided to hype the threat "out of an abundance of caution." You decide.

  • Think Progress - Condi Rice admits in a TV interview that the Bush administration has made mistakes in Iraq, but she won't say what they are until she leaves office. You cannot ask someone to incriminate her work-husband, it seems.

  • The Rude Pundit on the Maliki-Bush press conference: "For al-Maliki, the whole event was the rhetorical equivalent of being forced to stand naked with women's panties on his head while the conquerors took souvenir snapshots," ...and that's one of the more generously nice bits.

  • James Joyner takes on higher education and blames falling standards on the "educrats" - bureaucrats and administrators - who won't let the academics do their job properly. He argues, rightly, that any wingnut insistence on "liberal elitist professors" being to blame for the dumbing down of education is simply nonsense and that academics need to reclaim their institutions from the grey legions of educrats. Then again, he isn't to strong on students having a voice either: "Students and faculty are in entirely different positions. Faculty ARE the university; students are its purpose." Imagine applying that to labor relations: "the workers ARE the company, shareholders are its purpose..."

  • Have you heard about the radio hoax where the host suggested all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band? The Agonist has the story and also has an MP3 of the show, wherein you can hear all the wingnuts calling in to rabidly agree with the host's suggestion. Now tell me it can't happen here.

  • Tom Tomorrow: Lohse, a social work master’s student at Southern Connecticut State University, says he has proven what many progressives have probably suspected for years: a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush.

  • At last, a Wiccan war hero has the pentagram memorial he wanted, thanks to the State of Nevada. The federal Department of Veterans Affairs still won't allow Wiccans their own symbol on grave markers, saying it "requires a public comment period". Seven years? Because that's how long some families of Wiccan servicemen have been waiting. That "public comment" b.s. is code for "we're too scared of the Christian fundies, including our boss Dubya."

  • A couple of days before the resignation even he didn't know he would be making. Donald Rumsfield penned a memo outlining a bunch of possible options for the war in Iraq. Bloggy analysts are rife, from both sides of any fence you care to mention. Here are three takes - Kevin Drum, James Joyner and Captain Ed.

  • As you mull over those opinions on the Rummie Mistake Memo you might want to consider the words of William Lind - the man who literally wrote the book on assymetric warfare - on Iraq: How many troops would it take to undo all those errors? The answer is either zero or an infinite number, because no quantity of troops can erase history. The argument that more troops in the beginning, combined with an ink blot strategy, might have made the Iraq venture a success does not mean that more troops could do the same thing now. Indeed.

  • Now we know what Dick Cheney was up to in Saudi the days before the Bush-Maliki summit. According to the London Sunday Times: According to senior Israeli sources, Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, will soon meet high-ranking Saudi officials to explore the formation of a group of moderate (Sunni) Arab countries to negotiate with Tel Aviv over the future of the Middle East. Only in Cheney-land could the Saudis be described as "moderate". The article also notes that the peacetalks weren't Olmert's idea - he's been given his marching orders on this from the White House too. It's an interesting development and not at all a bad one, although it is liable to leave the region's Shia feeling vulnerable with who-knows-what consequences. I may just be cynical, but I've a feeling that Cheney et al still have plenty room to FUBAR this bit of diplomacy too.

  • Memo to media: Republicans have lost America. We can't stand them anymore. Turn around! Stop protecting their rear-ends. Start talking about real solutions. Give the Republicans the blame they so richly deserve so that no one will make the mistake of listening to them anymore.

  • Are you a terrorist-loving, Bush-bashing, “blame America first”-crowd traitor? Do you want the terrorists to win? Take the quiz and find out. Jim Henley did.

  • And finally, some hope that this fine nation will not go quietly into the neocon night. Imagine 100 "V"-masked protestors outside the White House. You don't have to, here are the pics and story.

    We received an email from the Director of the movie, "V for Vendetta." He was aware of our events and said he wanted to send a few words of encouragement and was happy that "V" had made it into the popular vernacular. He closed with the words, "Fight The Power."

    Now imagine 1,000 V's outside the White House - you'll have to wait until next year to see if your imagination is up to the task.
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