Nightmare for Bush?

The San Francisco Chronicle ran this editorial today on Richard Clarke's allegations of Bush Administration myopia on terrorism.

I have to admit, the timing of the 60 Minutes interview, coming right before Clarke is set to speak to the 9/11 commission, is clearly a marketing decision: Viacom owns both CBS and the publisher of Clarke's book.

Realizing that fact does nothing to discredit Clarke, however. Anyone who listened to Rumsfeld & Co. lay the groundwork for the war in Iraq knows how single-minded they were in asserting that Saddam Hussein was a grave danger to world peace. Nothing Clarke has said seems inconsistent with the ideological slant of the White House. And the fact that Dick Cheney seems to think that the best means of refuting Clarke's charges is to mock him for being "out of the loop" indicates that the Administration's fervor has not abated.

What interests me most, however, is the fact that a major transnational corporation found it worthwhile to make the President look really, really bad.

Last night Kim said to me, "Bush will steal the election anyway."

I responded that it's certainly a possibility, but noted that there could be major civil unrest if people perceived a coup d'etat.

Then I added that the best hope for ousting Bush may lie with the very transnational corporations that the anti-globalization movement rightly rails against. You see, we're rapidly approaching the point where the Bush doctrine becomes a liability for the masters of capitalism. War is only profitable up to a point. And the profits from Iraq have been narrowly channeled into the hands of Bush's backers.

There's also the prospect, as Viacom's moves suggest, that transnational corporations will aggressively pursue the profits to be had by exploiting a groundswell of international hatred towards the Bush Administration.

If you make enough enemies, you create a market for culture targeted against you. Ask anyone who remembers the Watergate era.

Rich

Here's another example of a wire story that openly questions assertions being made by the Bush campaign.

The "lying liars" strategy exemplified by Al Franken -- you should read the New York Times Magazine feature on him from this Sunday -- seems to be paying indirect dividends.

Can Bush survive steady battering in the mainstream media? We'll see.

Attrition!

The Israeli assassination of Ahmed Yassin seems as likely to make the world more peaceful as the American-led invasion of Iraq. Yassin and Saddam Hussein were bad guys, to be sure. Anyone who uses murder as a political tool is reprehensible. And those who use war -- which, in spite of Jean Baudrillard, tends to involve killing -- as a political tool are only a notch above murderers on the morality scale. Not all wars are unjustified. But the aggressors usually are.

lizyjn posted a moving entry on Monday about how she felt upon learning of Yassin's liquidation-by-missile. I've been processing myself. Maybe it's banal to assert that two wrongs don't make a right, but that's what I'm left with. That's also the message of this opinion piece in Ha'aretz, but it's fleshed out with enough hypothetical carnage to make me stop worrying about the utility of clichés.

April 11-12, 1839

Another missive from the beyond:

I told SMF that I was a cross of Plato & Aristotle.

Was this written in a spirit of pride or self-doubt?

Scary, Scary

I pulled this image from the gallery on the Bush campaign website.

I hazard that we're supposed to feel good about our fearless leader's decisiveness. He's speaking; the Russian looks on.

Problem is, the Russian has such a fearsome visage that the "backdrop" bulges forward into our consciousness, ruining the desired effect.

We may fear what George's minions are doing, but it's hard fear him as a person. He's too plodding, unfocused.

Vladimir, on the other hand, knows how lock onto a target.

A friend of mine once referred to the "thousand yard stare" of a former secret serviceman being interviewed on TV. I'd heard the metaphor before that, but it only became palpable for me at that moment.

Ever since, I've looked for people with that "thousand yard stare." Dick Cheney has it. Putin, however, has a ten thousand yard stare.

Incidentally, I just love photographs in which people are gazing outside the frame, creating conflicting focal points in the negative space beyond the image itself.

For me, this is an outstanding photograph. It's also one of the scariest pictures I've seen in a long while.