Kevin Drum is shriller than ever!

He writes:

The Washington Monthly: BUSH AND KATRINA.... For what it's worth, I'd like to make absolutely clear why I hold George Bush accountable for the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.... I don't blame him for being on vacation... for a certain amount of chaos in the initial response... for rolling FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security... for focusing more on terrorism than on natural disasters. That was a natural reaction to 9/11. Nor do I think that Bush doesn't care about natural disasters....

Rather, what happened was a series of decisions... that taken together made Katrina more damaging than it had to be.... These decisions were deliberate and disastrous, and that's why I think Bush deserves a large part of the blame for what happened....

January 2001: Bush appoints Joe Allbaugh, a crony from Texas, as head of FEMA. Allbaugh has no previous experience in disaster management.

April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May, Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program...." he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."

2001: FEMA designates a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three "likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country."

December 2002: After less than two years at FEMA, Allbaugh announces he is leaving to start up a consulting firm that advises companies seeking to do business in Iraq. He is succeeded by his deputy and former college roommate, Michael Brown, who has no previous experience in disaster management and was fired from his previous job for mismanagement.

March 2003: FEMA is downgraded from a cabinet level position and folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Its mission is refocused on fighting acts of terrorism.

2003: Under its new organization chart within DHS, FEMA's preparation and planning functions are reassigned to a new Office of Preparedness and Response. FEMA will henceforth focus only on response and recovery.

Summer 2004: FEMA denies Louisiana's pre-disaster mitigation funding requests. Says Jefferson Parish flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue: "You would think we would get maximum consideration....This is what the grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it."

June 2004: The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction in New Orleans is slashed. Jefferson Parish emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri comments: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay."

June 2005: Funding for the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is cut by a record $71.2 million. One of the hardest-hit areas is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.

August 2005: While New Orleans is undergoing a slow motion catastrophe, Bush mugs for the cameras, cuts a cake for John McCain, plays the guitar for Mark Wills, delivers an address about V-J day, and continues with his vacation. When he finally gets around to acknowledging the scope of the unfolding disaster, he delivers only a photo op on Air Force One and a flat, defensive, laundry list speech in the Rose Garden.

So: A crony with no relevant experience was installed as head of FEMA. Mitigation budgets for New Orleans were slashed even though it was known to be one of the top three risks in the country. FEMA was deliberately downsized as part of the Bush administration's conservative agenda to reduce the role of government. After DHS was created, FEMA's preparation and planning functions were taken away.

Actions have consequences. No one could predict that a hurricane the size of Katrina would hit this year, but the slow federal response when it did happen was no accident. It was the result of four years of deliberate Republican policy and budget choices that favor ideology and partisan loyalty at the expense of operational competence. It's the Bush administration in a nutshell.

Daniel Froomkin is really shrill:

Dealing With Political Disaster: President Bush somehow missed the significance of what was happening on the Gulf Coast last week as he and his political guru, Karl Rove, flitted between Texas and California and, finally, Washington. But now, facing what is clearly a full-scale political disaster, Rove and a handful of other masterful political operatives have gone into overdrive. They are back in campaign mode.This campaign is to salvage Bush's reputation. Like previous Rove operations, it calls for multiple appearances by the president in controlled environments in which he can appear leader-like. It calls for extensive use of Air Force One and a massive deployment of spinners.

It doesn't necessarily include any change in policy. It certainly doesn't include any admission of error.

It utilizes the classic Rovian tactic of attacking critics rather than defending against their criticism -- and of throwing up chaff to muddle the issue and throw the press off the scent.

It calls for public expressions of outrage over the politicization of the issue and of those who would play the "blame game." While at the same time, it is utterly political in nature and heavily reliant on shifting the blame elsewhere.

But in some ways, this post-Katrina campaign poses Bush's aides with unprecedented challenges.

The problem -- an achingly slow federal response to what has turned out to be one of the greatest natural disasters this country has ever faced -- can be traced at least in part to one of the Bush White House's most defining characteristics: The protective bubble within which the president operates.

Bush's aides intentionally keep him mentally and physically aloof from any ugliness -- political or otherwise. It lets them keep tight control over the presidential imagery and stay on message.

But inside his bubble, Bush first failed to recognize what was becoming clear to almost anyone watching the news: That Americans needed help. And in his two meticulously staged visits to the Gulf Coast on Friday and Monday, it is precisely because Bush was kept so far away from dissension or mess that he appeared so out of touch.

He cracked jokes on Friday, including one about his drinking days in New Orleans, but has yet to confront the true horror of the situation so widely seen on TV. He has yet to acknowledge the disgrace of a major American city being rendered uninhabitable on his watch. He has yet to come face to face with people left to suffer for days in hellish conditions and explain to them why their government failed them. And he has yet to demonstrate the strength that Americans require from their president in a time of crisis.

This crisis finds the president looking impotent at best, incompetent at worst. And there is an element of whining to Bush's refusal to shoulder his responsibility -- especially should the press continue to make it clear how intensely he and his top aides are trying to pass the buck...

Joe Gandelman is shriller than ever:

The Moderate Voice - ...."sat on a wall....": All of the Presidents during our lifetime -- Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F Kennedy, LBJ, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, the first George Bush and Bill Clinton -- would have immediately rallied the nation, focused the national need to help victims, taken firm hold of federal rescue-aid machinery, and subsequently symbolized the strength, sincerity, and efficiency of the American Presidency and the federal government during a time of crisis.

This wasn't done.

And what did they say about Humpty Dumpty?

I'm afraid he's too far gone into shrill unholy madness to claim to be a "moderate voice" anymore. His weblog needs a new title--badly. For he is one of those who has been driven insane by the mendacity, incompetence, and malevolence of George W. Bush and his administration.

Newt Gingrich recognizes that the Bush administration is incompetent to preserve our security:

Newt Gingrich: I think it puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?

Welcome, Mr. Gingrich, to the Ancient and Honorable Order of the Shrill!

Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Newt Gingrich R'lyeh Wagn'nagl Fhtagn!! Gingrich Fhtagn! Gingrich Fhtagn!! Gingrich Fhtagn!!! GINGRICH FHTAGN!!!!

The Manchester Union Leader is shrill:

The Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday News - 01-Sep-05: AS THE EXTENT of Hurricane Katrina's devastation became clearer on Tuesday -- millions without power, tens of thousands homeless, a death toll unknowable because rescue crews can't reach some regions -- President Bush carried on with his plans to speak in San Diego, as if nothing important had happened the day before.

Katrina already is measured as one of the worst storms in American history. And yet, President Bush decided that his plans to commemorate the 60th anniversary of VJ Day with a speech were more pressing than responding to the carnage.

A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource to rescue the stranded, find and bury the dead, and keep the survivors fed, clothed, sheltered and free of disease...

We would like to welcome former Bush Speechwriter David Frum, who today joins the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill. Welcome, David! Should you ever feel that your meds need to be adjusted, operators are standing by at 1-877-mad-ness...

David Frum's Diary on National Review Online: By now it should be clear that President Bush's words on the subject of Iraq have ceased connecting with the American public.... Maybe most fatefully: a plurality now say that they believe that the president deliberately misled the country into war....

[S]upporters of the war can do our bit to try to change minds. But the biggest megaphone in the country belongs to President Bush - and much depends on whether he uses it well or badly. He is using it very badly indeed.... Again and again... the president will agree to give what is advertised in advance as a major speech. An important venue will be chosen. A crowd of thousands will be gathered. The networks will all be invited. And after these elaborate preparations, the president says... nothing that he has not said a hundred times before.

If a president continues to do that, he is himself teaching the public and the media to ignore him - especially when the words seem (as his speech yesterday to the VFW seemed) utterly to ignore the past three months of real-world events.

The president could have made news yesterday by itemizing the reasons to regard Iraq more positively than most journalists do... the president could have skipped the good news and delivered a blood, sweat, toils, and tears speech: Yes things are hard, harder in fact than expected, but the stakes remain enormous - and here is why we must win, and why I am determined to fight this thing through to victory. That would be powerful too.

As it is, though, he says nothing, and is perceived to say nothing, and soon nobody will be listening at all, if anybody still is...

Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh David Frum R'lyeh Wagn'nagl Fhtagn!!

Shrillness in Private?

MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews is disturbed by the number of guests who are being driven to shrill unholy madness by the incompetence and mendacity of this war, yet only able to gibber about it in private...

What I keep doing here is asking people on and off camera who come on this program, high-ranking officers, enlisted, former officers. I get sometimes, not all the time, two different versions, the version they give me on the air and the version they give me the minute when we‘re off the air.

The version they give me when we‘re on the air is gung-ho, we‘re doing the right thing, everything is moving along. The version they give me off the air is, Rumsfeld is crazy. There aren‘t enough troops over there. We‘re not taking this seriously enough, or, we shouldn‘t be there, sometimes.

Colin Powell's ex-Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson is shrill:

Wonkette - Bush Diplomats Bum Real Hard on Cold Steel Facts: Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, interviewed for the upcoming CNN documentary "Dead Wrong--Inside and Intelligence Meltdown," tersely characterizes his role in the preparations for his boss's historic Feb. 14, 2003 UN speech making the case for invading Iraq and unseating Saddam Hussein. "It was," Wilkerson says, "the lowest point of my life." The unsourced materials the administration gave to Powell to present were, Wilkerson recalls, "were anything but an intelligence document"; rather, they were "sort of a Chinese menu from which you could pick and choose."

It proved to be something less than a walk in the park for Powell, too. After the invasion, US troops continued trolling for, and failing to unearth, any evidence of WMDs in occupied Iraq. Powell would get periodic updates to that effect from future Medal of Freedom honoree George "Slam Dunk" Tenet:

"George actually did call the Secretary, and said, 'I'm really sorry to have to tell you. We don't believe there were any mobile labs for making biological weapons,'" Wilkerson says in the documentary. "This was the third or fourth telephone call. And I think it's fair to say the Secretary and Mr. Tenet, at that point, ceased being close."

Senator Chuck Hagel is shrill:

In U.S. heartland, anxiety over Iraq, oil - Yahoo! News: Hagel, a Vietnam veteran, acknowledged the U.S. military presence was becoming harder and harder to justify. He believes Iraq faces a serious danger of civil war that would threaten Middle East stability, and said there is little Washington can do to avert this. "We are seen as occupiers, we are targets. We have got to get out. I don't think we can sustain our current policy, nor do I think we should," he said at one stop....

"The feeling that I get back here, looking in the eyes of real people, where I knew where they were two years ago or a year ago -- they've changed," he said. "These aren't people who ebb and flow on issues. These are rock solid, conservative Republicans who love their country, support the troops and support the president."

Hagel said Bush faced a growing credibility gap. "The expectations that the president and his administration presented to the American people 2 1/2 years ago is not what the reality is today. That's presented the biggest credibility gap problem he's got," he said. "I hope he has some sense that something's going on out in the country, that there's a lack of confidence that has developed in our position."

Brendan Nyhan reads the WSJ editorial page so the rest of us don't have to. He escapes back to the protection of his guard of shoggoths just in time, pursued by the shambling WSJ zombies led by Michael Moore, who shamble forward and chant: "Bush administration fiscal policy is responsible!" "Cutting tax rates raises tax revenues!" "Extending the Bush tax cuts isn't expensive!" and, of course, "BRAINS!!!!"

Brendan Nyhan: WSJ agitprop on CBO report: The WSJ continues

A second fact you won't see in many other newspapers is that the federal budget deficit has also declined to close to its modern average. CBO says the deficit will fall to 2.7% of national output in the fiscal year that ends at the end of next month. It is expected to continue to fall to 2.4% of GDP next year and 2.0% in 2010, even if the Bush tax rates stay in place.

But... the Journal's 2010 date is cherrypicked -- the effects of extending President Bush's tax cuts... explode over the next five [years]. Once again, the lesson here is simple: never trust the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

A lesson to place alongside "never get involved in a land war in Asia," "never play poker with a man named 'Doc'," and "never accept a battle of wits where iocane powder is a factor."

Gregory Djerejian Is Shrill

He writes:

THE BELGRAVIA DISPATCH: Yesterday: "Last Throes"; Today: "We Cannot Predict the Length...": From the Caspar Star Tribune (Wyoming's News Source!), we have Dick Cheney:

We cannot predict the length or course of the war on terror, but we know for certain with good allies at our side this great nation will persevere and we will prevail.

Translation: I'm not quite man enough to admit I was full of it with the "last throes" comment, so instead I'll talk about 'dictionary meanings' and avoid discussing Iraq in my public utterances (better to conveniently conflate Iraq under the 'war on terror' rubric which, while accurate, nevertheless, shall we say, conveniently elides the main point).

Hardly Churchillian straight-talk, huh? More by way of Roveian 'stay on message' herdism. But these are mediocre times and we, sadly, appear to be led by mediocre men...Look, if our leaders cannot communicate honestly to their public the real state of play with regard to the most pressing issue of the day--well, they will lose the public's trust and the war effort will be increasingly imperiled because of it.

P.S. And no, the oft-heard locution 'as they stand up, we will stand down' just doesn't cut it as a frank assessment of where the war stands. See Fred Kagan below for some of the reasons such utterances are largely chimerical and bogus at this early stage...

We have reserved a bed for him in the Shoggoth Wing.

Baron Samedi! Ogoun Badagris! M'aidez!!

Duncan Black, one of the High Burning Ones of the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill, is alarmed at reports from scouts Mark Thoma and Brad DeLong, returning from in partibus infidelium, that the Bell Curve zombies are active again.

Eschaton: Christ, has that racist claptrap reared its ugly head again? Racists, idiots, or both. You decide... Bell Curve is a groundhog day causing event. Mention it, and the trolls appear saying the book "hasn't been debunked." Point to numerous debunkings and they erect a few mountains of straw. Burn down the straw, and they slink away for a little while, only to return the next time it comes up and they'll start in again, saying the book "hasn't been debunked."...

Led by Michael Barone and David Brooks, they shamble forward, saying things like "Herrnstein and Murray were right!" "There is lots in the Bell Curve that is correct!" "The _Bell Curve_ has not been debunked!" and, of course, "BRAINS!!!!"

The Tigris River Park

Dexter Filkins is shrill:

A Nation in Blood and Ink - New York Times: [I]n this third summer of war, the American project in Iraq has never seemed so wilted and sapped of life. It's not just the guerrillas, who are churning away at their relentless pace, attacking American forces about 65 times a day. It is most everything else, too.

Baghdad seems a city transported from the Middle Ages: a scattering of high-walled fortresses, each protected by a group of armed men. The area between the forts is a lawless no man's land, menaced by bandits and brigands. With the daytime temperatures here hovering at around 115 degrees, the electricity in much of the city flows for only about four hours a day.

With armed guards in tow, I drove across the no man's land the other day to pay a visit to Ahmad Chalabi, the deputy prime minister. Unlike many senior Iraqi officials, who have long since retreated into the Green Zone, Mr. Chalabi still lives in a private home. To get there, you must pass through a series of checkpoints at the outskirts of his neighborhood, manned by guards and crisscrossed by concrete chicanes. At the entrance to Mr. Chalabi's street, there is another checkpoint, made of concrete and barbed wire, and more armed guards. Then, in front of Mr. Chalabi's house, stands yet another blast wall. When Mr. Chalabi walks into his front yard, even inside his own compound, a dozen armed guards surround him....

Americans, here and in the United States, wait for the day when the Iraqi police and army will shoulder the burden and let them go home. One night last month, according to the locals, the Iraqi police and army surrounded the Sunni neighborhood of Sababkar in north Baghdad, and pulled 11 young men from their beds. Their bodies were found the next day with bullet holes in their temples. The cheeks of some of the men had been punctured by electric drills. One man had been burned by acid. The police denied that they had been involved.

"This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened," Adnan al-Dulami, a Sunni leader, said.

For much of last year, the soldiers of the First Cavalry Division oversaw a project to restore the river-front park on the east bank of the Tigris River. Under American eyes, the Iraqis planted sod, installed a sprinkler system and put up swing sets for the Iraqi children. It cost $1.5 million. The Tigris River Park was part of a vision of the unit's commander, Maj. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, to win the war by putting Iraqis to work.

General Chiarelli left Iraq this year, and the American unit that took over had other priorities. The sod is mostly dead now, and the sidewalks are covered in broken glass. The sprinkler heads have been stolen. The northern half of the park is sealed off by barbed wire and blast walls; Iraqis are told stay back, lest they be shot by American snipers on the roof of a nearby hotel...

This Year's Miskatonic Visiting Scholars Include

Ginmar is back from Iraq and is a Senior Heresiarch in the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill:

ginmar: How to lose a war in a few easy steps: Sadr's men have formed Sharia courts in southern Iraq and have passed sentences and performed executions. Amongst the victims which I personally know of were an unmarried pregnant woman and her four-year old child. The mother was executed in the street with three shots while her child watched. Then the little boy's throat was cut. It takes a fairly long time to die that way. One wonders what his moderate father would think of such things. One knows what Sistani thinks of it: reportedly Sadr was summoned to Sistani's presence in the fall of 04 and reamed out for visiting such destruction on the Iraqi people.

What does this have to do with war? This is what happens when there is no plan for what follows a war, even a successful one. The tribal structure of Iraq complicates matters to an amazing degree, and it's apparent that this was not factored in when plans were made. The tribes took control of their regions eagerly as they had not been able to do when Saddam was in power. In the vacuum created by Saddam's ouster, this control felt like management.... Most critically, maintaing a peace after a war becomes something extremely complicated in a tribal society. In a Muslim tribal society, divided between Sunnis and Shi'ites that has been invaded by a largly Christian country the need for delicacy over rides all others. When one can observe US MPs subduing suspects by placing their feet on them, one can only realize that not enough training was done prior to invasion....

To win the peace, we should have promptly increased troop strength by about two hundred thousand to adequately secure the borders and restore order.... Without enough troops, the country was not secure or safe, and this has increased exponentially. We cannot guard the border; we cannot patrol enough streets and highways. We cannot hear every grievance, much less fix them. The insurgents kill at least one US soldier per day, and at least a couple Iraqi civilians for every soldier.

Prior to the war, civilians enjoyed relative safety. Please note the use of the word relative. Hussein could and did seize people and his sons were notorious for their raping and murdering. The mass graves have been over-reported: the one in Hilla last year contained four hundred bodies. Against that one has to contrast the effects of the bomb in Hilla in February of this year: 125 people died. Do good intentions make these people any less dead?... You patrol the streets, you seal the borders, you get the infrastructure up and running again. You keep the population safe and you let them know that things will be better and that, most of all, the war is over. Instead the war continues....

If we could go back in time, we would have a quarter million more troops flood the country after Baghdad's fall, to line the border and secure the museums, the palaces, the bases, and the weapons. No ammo depot in the country would have been unguarded.... Without security you can accomplish nothing. Security cannot be provided without certain numbers of troops. Therefore you must establish security first. Otherwise you tread water, and the water is heavily mined. We could still turn the sitution around in Iraq if we had enough troops, but the thing to be kept in mind is that we created this situation, we must fix it, and we cannot do it with the numbers we currently have---or don't have. Putting those boots on the ground, however, would mean admitting to any number of fallacies. Some people think that is too high a price to pay.

Perhaps those people should have a nice long chat with Cindy Sheehan and re-assess their concept of the price one pays for war.

Dog Days in Arkham!

Here in picturesque Arkham, Massachusetts:

the dog days have set in in earnest.

It was 99F yesterday--but with the humidity it felt like 109F. The fountain pool in front of our tall steel-and-glass building here at Miskatonic University became dangerously hot, and the Watcher in the Water--used to Antarctic temperatures and so unsettled at the best of times--became... well, I don't want to say anything to scare the freshmen. Suffice to say that the opening of a transdimensional portal to the planet Mr. Stross mentioned in his admirable little book soon cooled things off enough to calm it... or, rather, them... down. So forget I mentioned it.

Nevertheless, Paul Krugman is shrill, and so all is right with the world: Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Krugman R'lyeh Wagn'nagl Fhtagn!! Krugman Fhtagn!! Krugman Fhtagn!! KRUGMAN FHTAGN!!!!!!:

Social Security Lessons - New York Times: I'd like to revisit Social Security for a moment, because it's important to remember what Mr. Bush tried to get away with. Many pundits and editorial boards still give Mr. Bush credit for trying to "reform" Social Security. In fact, Mr. Bush came to bury Social Security.... Over time, the Bush plan would have transformed Social Security from a social insurance program into a mutual fund, with nothing except a name in common with the system F.D.R. created.

In addition to misrepresenting his goals, Mr. Bush repeatedly lied about the current system. Oh, I'm sorry - was that a rude thing to say? Still, the fact is that Mr. Bush repeatedly said things that were demonstrably false and that his staff must have known were false.... [T]he administration politicized the Social Security Administration and used taxpayer money to promote a partisan agenda. Social Security officials participated in what were in effect taxpayer-financed political rallies, from which skeptical members of the public were excluded....

[This] is still going on. Last week Jo Anne Barnhart, the commissioner of Social Security, published an op-ed article claiming that Social Security as we know it was designed for a society in which people didn't live long enough to collect a lot of benefits. "The number of older Americans living now," wrote Ms. Barnhart, "is greater than anyone could have imagined in 1935." Now, it turns out that an article on the Social Security Administration's Web site, "Life Expectancy for Social Security," specifically rejects the idea the Social Security was originally "designed in such a way that few people would collect the benefits," and the related idea that the system faces problems from "a supposed dramatic increase in life expectancy in recent years." And the current number of older Americans as a share of the population is just about what the founders of Social Security expected. The 1934 report... projected that 12.7 percent of Americans would be 65 or older by the year 2000. The actual number was 12.4 percent....

[T]he campaign for privatization provided an object lesson in how the administration sells its policies: by misrepresenting its goals, lying about the facts and abusing its control of government agencies. These were the same tactics used to sell both tax cuts and the Iraq war. And there are two reasons to study that lesson. One is to be prepared.... [T]here's still room for another big domestic initiative, probably tax reform. Forewarned is forearmed: the real goals of reform won't be as advertised, the administration will say things about the current system that aren't true, and the Treasury Department will function in a purely partisan capacity...

Remember: for those of you on a tight budget, "used" copies of the Krugmanomicon can be acquired at little more than half price at al-Hazred's felafel cart.

You Open the Transdimensional Portal with the Eldritch Horrors You Have!!

Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Rumsfeld R'lyeh Wagn'nagl Fhtagn!! Rumsfeld Fhtagn!! Rumsfeld Fhtagn!! RUMSFELD FHTAGN!!!!!!

U.S. Struggling to Get Soldiers Improved Armor - New York Times: MICHAEL MOSS: [T]he Pentagon is struggling to replace body armor that is failing to protect American troops from the most lethal attacks by insurgents. The ceramic plates in vests worn by most personnel cannot withstand certain munitions the insurgents use. But more than a year after military officials initiated an effort to replace the armor with thicker, more resistant plates, tens of thousands of soldiers are still without the stronger protection because of a string of delays in the Pentagon's procurement system....

"We are working as fast as we can to complete it as soon as we can," Maj. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sorenson, the Army's deputy for acquisition and systems management, said Wednesday in an interview at the Pentagon.... [B]ody armor remains critical to the military's goals in Iraq. Gunfire has killed at least 325 troops, about half the number killed by bombs, according to the Pentagon.... [T]he Pentagon is relying on a cottage industry of small armor makers with limited production capacity. In addition, each company must independently come up with its own design for the plates, which then undergo military testing. Just four vendors have begun making the enhanced armor, according to military and industry officials.... "Nobody is happy we haven't been able to do it faster," Maj. Gen. William D. Catto, head of the Marine Corps Systems Command, said Wednesday in the interview. "If I had the capability, I'd like to see everybody that needs enhanced SAPI to have it and at the rate we have now, we're going to have months before we get the kind of aggregate numbers we want to have," General Catto said, referring to the thicker plates, known as the Enhanced Small Arms Protective Insert. "That's just a fact of life because of the raw materials paucity and the industrial base."...

Body armor arose as an issue in Iraq shortly after the invasion in March 2003, when insurgents began attacking American troops who had been given only vests and not bullet-resistant plates. The Army had planned to give the plates only to frontline soldiers. Officials now concede that they underestimated the insurgency's strength and commitment to fighting a war in which there are no back lines. The ensuing scramble to produce more plates was marred by a series of missteps in which the Pentagon gave one contract to a former Army researcher who had never mass-produced anything. He was allowed to struggle with production for a year before he gave up. An outdated delivery plan slowed the arrival of plates that were made. In all, the war was 10 months old before every soldier in Iraq had plates in late January 2004...

>

Four months later, the Pentagon quietly issued a solicitation for the enhanced plates that would resist stronger attacks. At the same time, it worked to make improvements to the vests, including adding shoulder and side protection...

A Warning for New Members of the Crew Team

If a giant cephalopod grabs your ore while you are out on the Miskatonic River, let it have the oar. I speak from experience. It's better if you don't try to wrestle it.

In other news, The Blogging of the President reports that its favorite weblog include:

The Blogging of the President: ...the now on hiatus Shrill blog, partially because its time is past...

The time for Shrillblog is never past! The fact that its editors are too far gone in shrill unholy madness to reliably post is a problem. But we will rise again!

Neoconservative Eliot Cohen Is Really Shrill

The word was always that Eliot Cohen was a very smart man, and a wise one--even though he was, for some impossible-to-grasp reason, a neoconservative. Here the Belgravia Dispatch catches him crossing the aisle back to the reality-based community. He is shrill. He is really shrill. This is deer-stuck-in-the-headlights shrillness:

THE BELGRAVIA DISPATCH: A Neo-Con Speaks Out: Eliot Cohen speaks very openly to the WaPo in a short Q&A. It has become increasingly rare to find bright (neo)conservatives willing to buck party orthodoxy and the approved talking points ("last throes"!)--who have the requisite integrity to be honest and forthright about some of the missteps that have rendered so difficult the Iraq effort.

Excerpts:

But a pundit should not recommend a policy without adequate regard for the ability of those in charge to execute it, and here I stumbled. I could not imagine, for example, that the civilian and military high command would treat "Phase IV" -- the post-combat period that has killed far more Americans than the "real" war -- as of secondary importance to the planning of Gen. Tommy Franks's blitzkrieg. I never dreamed that Ambassador Paul Bremer and Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the two top civilian and military leaders early in the occupation of Iraq -- brave, honorable and committed though they were -- would be so unsuited for their tasks, and that they would serve their full length of duty nonetheless. I did not expect that we would begin the occupation with cockamamie schemes of creating an immobile Iraqi army to defend the country's borders rather than maintain internal order, or that the under-planned, under-prepared and in some respects mis-manned Coalition Provisional Authority would seek to rebuild Iraq with big construction contracts awarded under federal acquisition regulations, rather than with small grants aimed at getting angry, bewildered young Iraqi men off the streets and into jobs.

I did not know, but I might have guessed.

Another passage:

Question: Your son is an infantry officer, shipping out soon for Iraq. How do you feel about that?

Cohen: Pride, of course -- great pride. And fear. And an occasional burning in the gut, a flare of anger at empty pieties and lame excuses, at flip answers and a lack of urgency, at a failure to hold those at the top to the standards of accountability that the military system rightly imposes on subalterns.

It is a flicker of rage that two years into an insurgency, we still expose our troops in Humvees to the blasts of roadside bombs -- knowing that even the armored version of that humble successor to the Jeep is simply not designed for warfare along guerrilla-infested highways, while, at the same time, knowing that plenty of countries manufacture armored cars that are. It is disbelief at a manpower system that, following its prewar routines, ships soldiers off to war for a year or 15 months, giving them two weeks of leave at the end, when our British comrades, more experienced in these matters and wiser in pacing themselves, ship troops out for half that time, and give them an extra month on top of their regular leave after an operational deployment.

It is the sick feeling that churned inside me at least 18 months ago, when a glib and upbeat Pentagon bureaucrat assured me that the opposition in Iraq consisted of "5,000 bitter-enders and criminals," even after we had killed at least that many. It flames up when hearing about the veteran who in theory has a year between Iraq rotations, but in fact, because he transferred between units after returning from one tour, will go back to Iraq half a year later, and who, because of "stop-loss orders" involuntarily extending active duty tours, will find himself in combat nine months after his enlistment runs out. And all this because after 9/11, when so many Americans asked for nothing but an opportunity to serve, we did not expand our Army and Marine Corps when we could, even though we knew we would need more troops.

A variety of emotions wash over me as I reflect on our Iraq war: Disbelief at the length of time it took to call an insurgency by its name. Alarm at our continuing failure to promote at wartime speed the colonels and generals who have a talent for fighting it, while also failing to sweep aside those who do not. Incredulity at seeing decorations pinned on the chests and promotions on the shoulders of senior leaders -- both civilians and military -- who had the helm when things went badly wrong. Disdain for the general who thinks Job One is simply whacking the bad guys and who, ever conscious of public relations, cannot admit that American soldiers have tortured prisoners or, in panic, killed innocent civilians. Contempt for the ghoulish glee of some who think they were right in opposing the war, and for the blithe disregard of the bungles by some who think they were right in favoring it. A desire -- barely controlled -- to slap the highly educated fool who, having no soldier friends or family, once explained to me that mistakes happen in all wars, and that the casualties are not really all that high and that I really shouldn't get exercised about them.

There is a lot of talk these days about shaky public support for the war. That is not really the issue. Nor should cheerleading, as opposed to truth-telling, be our leaders' chief concern. If we fail in Iraq -- and I don't think we will -- it won't be because the American people lack heart, but because leaders and institutions have failed. Rather than fretting about support at home, let them show themselves dedicated to waging and winning a strange kind of war and describing it as it is, candidly and in detail. Then the American people will give them all the support they need. The scholar in me is not surprised when our leaders blunder, although the pundit in me is dismayed when they do. What the father in me expects from our leaders is, simply, the truth -- an end to happy talk and denials of error, and a seriousness equal to that of the men and women our country sends into the fight...

Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Eliot Cohen R'lyeh Wagn'nagl Fhtagn!! Cohen Fhtagn!! Eliot Fhtagn!!

Dr. Shrill, Report to the Pentagon, Stat

Who's complaining about government-sanctioned torture? Why yes, it's Burton J. Lee III, President George H.W. Bush's personal physician.

America cannot continue down this road. Torture demonstrates weakness, not strength. It does not show understanding, power or magnanimity. It is not leadership. It is a reaction of government officials overwhelmed by fear who succumb to conduct unworthy of them and of the citizens of the United States.

Zbigniew Brzezinski Is Shriller than Ever!

Zbigniew Brzezinski is shriller than ever!

Bush's hollow fiction of Iraq war: Like a novelist who wishes to inject verisimilitude into his fiction, George W. Bush, US president, began his speech on Iraq with a reference to a historical fact all too tragically well known to his audience. The evocation of the monstrous crime of September 11 2001 served as his introduction to the spin that followed: that Iraq was complicit in 9/11 and thus, in effect, attacked the US; that the US had no choice but to defend itself against Iraq's aggression; and, finally, that if America does not fight terrorists in Iraq, they will swarm across the ocean to attack America.

Since fiction is not ruled by the same standards as history, Mr Bush was under no obligation to refer to his own earlier certitude about Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" (or, rather, to their embarrassing absence), or to the inept sequel of the initially successful US military campaign; or to the fact that the occupation of Iraq is turning it into a huge recruitment centre for terrorists. Similarly, there was no need to deal with the perplexing fact that the Iraqi insurgency does not appear to be in "its last throes", or with the complex choices that the US now confronts.

But a more disturbing aspect of the speech was the absence of any serious discussion of the wider regional security problems and their relationship to the Iraqi conundrum. That connection poses the danger that America risks becoming irrelevant to the Middle East -- largely through Mr Bush's own doing. Much depends on how long the US pursues unrealistic goals in Iraq. And on whether the US becomes seriously engaged in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, on how the US relationship with Iran is managed and on how the advocacy of democracy in the Middle East is pursued. The reality in Iraq is that 135,000 American soldiers cannot create a stable "democracy"in a society rent by intensifying ethnic and religious conflicts. US military commanders, contradicting Mr Bush, have publicly stated that the insurgency is not weakening. It is useful to recall in this regard Henry Kissinger's wise observation (made in regard to the war in Vietnam but pertinent here) that guerrillas are winning if they are not losing. The longer US troops are involved in Iraq, the more victory will remain "on the horizon" -- that is, a goal that recedes as one moves towards it...

Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Joe Gandelman R'lyeh Wagn'nagl Fhtagn!! Ganelman Fhtagn!! Gandelman Fhtagn!!

Joe Gandelman is a professional voice. His schtick on the internet is that of a professional moderate voice, someone who is reasonable, who avoids the excesses of partisanship, who takes a deep breath and realizes that there are two sides to every story and that we need to be... calm, reasonable, and thoughtful always.

He reads Peggy Noonan.

His brain explodes.

Now he is one of us! Embrace your destiny! Feel the power of Shrillness!

Welcome to the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill, Mr. Gandelman--those of us who have been driven into shrill unholy madness by the mendacity, stupidity, incompetence, recklessness, and idiocy of the Bush administration and its allies. Your personal copy of the Krugmanomicon (along with additional promotional material containing many valuable offers) is on its way. Do not read more than ten pages a day, under pain of falling even further into shrill unholy madness. Your rank is Palaeozoic Tentacled Swamp-Dweller, 2nd Class. When in your non-human form, remember not to devour any endangered amphibians. Pray vainly to the dead, uncaring stars at least once a month, preferably when the moon is in the second decant.

Clear the weekend of July 37 for the annual Miskatonic University summer conference, barbecue (don't ask), and wine-tasting. Driving directions to picturesque Arkham, Massachusetts will follow. A side-trip to Tanglewood for the concerts is recommended, but beware Shoggoths on the road near South Campus at moonrise. And remember: Yog-Sothoth is the Gatekeeper!

Joe Gandelman: Peggy Noonan's latest Wall Street Journal column reads as if it's a satire piece— but, no, folks it is 100 percent for real. It's truly hard to believe it is. Before we even discuss it we MUST say a few things:

1. This is the last column of her's we'll read. We already subscribe to Mad Magazine and although her writing is a bit funnier, we get more variety in Mad. And we suspect if the column below was submitted as a satire, Mad would reject it for being too off-the-wall. The Onion? Her column isn't quite cutting edge enough.
2. In all seriousness, her newest column echoes the bitter, angry, attack-mode words of former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein and overall near-hysteria on the part of far right conservatives, Watergate-era officials and talk show hosts who are using the revelation of key source Deep Throat as a chance to rebattle Nixon's impeachment, argue it was all liberal plot, a media plot and suggest that the REAL villains weren't the people in the administration abusing the American people's trust by misusing the government and lying (the word is ACCURATE here because the tapes proved it) but those who dared to bring Nixon down. These GOPers convieniently forget the Republican PATRIOTS such as Barry Goldwater who let Nixon know it was time to go.

...Here are a few excerpts for the latest attack on the 91-year-old former second in command at the FBI who we now know was Deep Throat:

Was Mr. Felt a hero? No one wants to be hard on an ailing 91-year-old man. We're SURE, Ms. Noonan was shedding tears as she began to start her part of the parade of GOPers seeking the equivilent of revenge on Felt for his role in the Watergate stories. MORE:

Mr. Felt no doubt operated in some perceived jeopardy and judged himself brave.

No, Ms. Noonan: MILLIONS of Americans even today consider him brave. That includes many in the Republican party who, to judging by our emails, are aghast at the spectacle of fellow GOPers going after Felt and defending Nixon's Watergate behavior. It's GOP hacks — those who put loyaly to their party and to one man before the country's sacred democracy — who are out there using every argument possible to go after Felt and try to polish up the buried corpse of Nixon...

He had every right to disapprove of and wish to stop what he saw as new moves to politicize the FBI. But a hero would have come forward, resigned his position, declared his reasons, and exposed himself to public scrutiny. He would have taken the blows and the kudos. (Knowing both Nixon and the media, there would have been plenty of both.) Heroes pay the price. Mr. Felt simply leaked information gained from his position in government to damage those who were doing what he didn't want done. Then he retired with a government pension. This does not appear to have been heroism, and he appears to have known it. Thus, perhaps, the great silence.

A hero who was President... wouldn't have put the country through the agony that Nixon put the US through — until patriotic Democrats and REPUBLICANS had to march into his office to his office to tell him there was no hope due to the "smoking gun" tapes that had just come out.... Doesn't she and Stein realize what they're saying? Republican Gerald Ford REPLACED Nixon. So she and Stein are suggesting Ford was incompetent. Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State under Ford. She she's suggesting Kissinger was an incompetent. The fallacy of this argument is so stupifying it defies description.... The GOP has many thoughtful people, who cooly make their party's arguments with logic. Noonan, Stein and Buchanan, in particular, now deserve a room on Mars with Dennis Kucinich and Alan Keyes. They are entertaining but truly not to be taken seriously as thinkers or analyists anymore. They have become self-parodies.

But HERE is where Noonan has made yours truly decide pass on reading anything she writes in the future (of course, she may threaten to stop reading The Moderate Voice, but we will press on with life somehow):

Were there heroes of Watergate? Surely many unknown ones, those who did their best to be constructive and not destructive, those who didn't think it was all about their beautiful careers. I'll give you a candidate for great man of the era: Chuck Colson. Colson functioned in the Nixon White House as a genuinely bad man, went to prison and emerged a genuinely good man. He told the truth about himself in "Born Again," a book not fully appreciated as the great Washington classic it is, and has devoted his life to helping prisoners and their families. He paid the price, told the truth, blamed no one but himself, and turned his shame into something helpful. Children aren't dead because of him. There are children who are alive because of him.

So COLSON is the hero [of Watergate]. Note that Colson went to prison FIRST and was born again, wrote a book, etc. Colson didn't do anything in the White House to come forward with what he knew. Nor did he do anything to halt the unfolding scandal. Nor did he march into Nixon's office and tell him the proper thing was to resign.... [Colson] is a Republican, worked for Nixon and isn't a liberal. He is on Noonan's "team" while Felt was working against her "team."

Do THINKING conservatives realize how badly this makes people in their camp look?.... Hero? Maybe Felt wasn't perfect. But, no, Peggy and Ben, don't blame Felt for genocide, since Ford and Kissinger WERE THE ONES running foreign policy when Nixon resigned.... No matter what charges you throw at this 91-year-old man, he proved more of a patriot in the Watergate era than the people who were abusing government power, lying to Congress and in front of television cameras and who eventually had to go to jail because they were CONVICTED of crimes — or who didn't go to jail because they were pardoned...

Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Gandelman R'lyeh Wagn'nagl Fhtagn!! Ganelman Fhtagn!! Gandelman Fhtagn!!

Shrillness Vacation Report

Yes, the members of the Order are phoning this in live, from middle-America, where we've been taking a long deserved vacation from reality.

Who else is taking a vacation? Why, it's former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who isn't answering his phone because he's on a beach. Wait, no, he isn't on a beach, he just isn't answering the phone because then he might have to explain why he isn't recommending John Balton for the job of U.N. ambassador.

Does he secretly love John but not feel comfortable recommending a guy who admits to getting his "information" from groups that State has classified as terrorist groups?

Or could it be that he thinks the appointment of someone who has been so openly hostile to the U.N. would only confirm the rest of the world's rather tenuous opinion of us? Who's to say? Why not send Nixon to China? Well, other than that Nixon is dead. But Kofi might be up for some ping-pong.

So, for extreme indifference in the line of a job reference check, we hereby induct former Secretary of State Powell, Order of the Shrill, Order of the Shill, into the Order of the I Didn't Bring My Cell Phone I'm On Vacation, and the Order For Another Pina Colada.

Entire English Language To Join The Shrill?

Now that William Safire has stepped down from as the Times' hallucination columnist, we're wondering if it's safe for the entire English language to join the Order. Here's an example of the thinking:

In tomorrow's State of the Union speech, President Bush will no doubt escalate his campaign to replace Social Security with private retirement accounts. We don't know exactly what he'll say, but we're willing to bet that he won't say "private accounts," even though privatization is exactly what he's calling for, and exactly how he and other administration officials have described their scheme hundreds of times before. But the polls and focus groups that Mr. Bush says he ignores show that the public doesn't like to hear the word "private" when the topic is Social Security. So the administration now scrupulously uses the label "personal accounts," and in a 104-page book on selling the plan, it urges Congressional Republicans to do the same.

Whatever happens, we're fairly confident the SotU will use the English language, and the English language won't be happy about being used.

Just When You Thought The Smackdown Couldn't Get Any Harsher...

Our dear leader delivers what might just be the most obvious and eloquent refutation of the Bush cabal's Social Security 'plan'. It's so pretty, so simple, and so damning that it could only have come from the grand master and original gangsta of the Order! It makes your skin tingle.

John Kay Is Shrill!

Writing in the Financial Times, he calls the Bush administration "despicable":

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Columnists - John Kay: Pension 'crisis' helps create one : Like most advanced economies, America faces demographic problems. The numerous baby boomers, the generation born in the 25 years after the second world war, will soon retire. Their fewer children and grandchildren will have to bake their bread and nurse their illnesses. The US is relatively well placed to deal with these problems. Population imbalances are less severe than in Japan and most of Europe. And the budgetary implications are less acute: although America spends a lot on medical care, the retirement income the state provides is relatively low. Moreover, bipartisan reform in the 1980s put America's social security system on a robust footing. Contributions were increased to build up surpluses to meet the growth in retirement benefits. These surpluses will continue to accumulate until around 2018 and then, on current projections, will be run down over the following 25 years. Since longevity continues to increase and America's growing income inequality means that the contribution base is growing less rapidly than national income, it will be necessary to reform the system to ensure its viability in the second half of the 21st century. But the Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the next 50 years the present system will receive contributions averaging 14.02 per cent of relevant income and pay out 14.29 per cent. So why does the second term Bush administration, which does not seem to care about the real and immediate budget deficit in its principal activities, regard the funding of social security as its most urgent economic problem? I have been poring over these figures wondering if, from a distance of several thousand miles, there is something I have missed. But there does not seem to be. The numbers are not controversial: the same ones are used by the people who say there is an urgent need for reform. The interesting question they raise is not: "What should be done about social security?" It is this: "Why is this minor and distant issue subject to such intense political attention?" There is a book on my shelves published in 1982, called The World Crisis in Social Security. I now feel slightly ashamed of my contribution to that volume. Not because of its content: my criticisms foreshadowed sensible reforms for Britain that were implemented soon after. Rather I feel ashamed for my youth and naivety and my failure to understand the game in which I was being asked to play. A retreat from public sector pension provision might create a large flow of money into the stock market. This prospect leaves financial institutions salivating. So it has always been easy to obtain funding for projects such as The World Crisis in Social Security and much of this funding has been channelled through America's rightwing think-tanks. Greed in the investment community is conjoined with the principled opposition of those for whom America's social security system, popular though it may be with voters, is the legacy of that detested socialist Franklin D. Roosevelt. Every pension system has weaknesses and there are always honest but simple scholars who can be encouraged to point them out. Hence my agreeable trip to Washington to debate "the world crisis in social security". I was joined by others who could tell of deficiencies in the pension systems of France, of Germany, and the public system of the US itself. After decades of this propaganda, it is not surprising that most people are convinced that there is indeed a world crisis in social security. It is like having a surveyor continually crawling over your house. Once every defect has been pointed out, repeatedly, even the most robust of occupiers will believe their home is on the point of collapse. The distasteful aspect of this campaign is not its effect on public debate. Politicians and policy analysts ought to be able to distinguish substance from puffery, and reality from misinformation, although there is a marked tendency for them to see only facts and figures to which they are ideologically predisposed. But the endless talk of crisis undermines the confidence of ordinary people in their security in old age and, most of all, in the ability of government to provide it. People who talk of the crisis in social security help create that very crisis. And, despicably, that is what some of these people intend.

Gary Farber Is Shrill!

So shrill that Dr. Mbogo needs to report to the Shoggoth Wing, stat, to deal with this exploding-head-case:

Amygdala: THE HEAD, IT DOTH EXPLODE. Sometimes all you need to do is just listen.

President Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.

This is because, boys and girls, elections are like magic beans. Once you have one, everything is magical and glowy and wonderful! All errors are magically wiped away, and everyone who committed any is either instantly killed and replaced by clone or made a member of the Cabinet. See, Bush secretly fired Rumsfeld and replaced him with an identical clone! Same for the other folks "staying on." Explains a lot, doesn't it? And it's a brilliant solution...

The Star-Tribune Is Shrill!

Fly, shrill horrors trapped in unholy madness, fly!

Editorial: Social Security/Blacks get more, not less, from it: Of all the lies -- let's call them by their right name -- that the Bush administration is spreading about Social Security, none is as vile as the canard Bush repeated last Tuesday, when he said, "African-American males die sooner than other males do, which means the [Social Security] system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people. And that needs to be fixed." That is an entirely phony assertion; it has been debunked by the Social Security Administration, by the Government Accountability Office and by other experts. Bush and those around him know that. For them to repeat what they know to be a blatant lie is despicable fear-mongering.

Bush didn't make up this phony line on his own; it comes from the Heritage Foundation, which a number of years ago did a study purporting to show that because African-Americans have a shorter life expectancy than whites, they get less in return for the taxes they pay into the Social Security system.

But when the Heritage study was examined by actuaries at the Social Security Administration and by the Government Accountability Office, serious methodological flaws and numerous bad assumptions were uncovered. For example:

• Heritage failed to factor in the progressivity of Social Security benefits; on a taxes-paid to benefits-received ratio, those with lower incomes get more back. Blacks tend to earn less than whites, and thus their Social Security benefits are larger in comparison to taxes they pay.

• Social Security is more than retirement benefits. It also includes survivor and disability benefits. Blacks benefit disproportionately from those programs. While blacks are 11 percent of the workforce, for example, they are 18 percent of those receiving disability benefits. Almost half the blacks receiving Social Security -- 47 percent -- are getting disability benefits or survivor benefits.

The Social Security actuaries found that Heritage had exaggerated substantially the amount blacks pay in Social Security taxes and low-balled the benefits they receive. "In fact," the actuaries said, "results from more careful research reflecting actual work histories for workers by race indicate that the non-white population actually enjoys the same or better expected rates of return from Social Security than for the white population."

The GAO reached the same conclusion. It said that, "In the aggregate, blacks and Hispanics have higher disability rates and lower lifetime earnings, and thus receive greater benefits relative to taxes [paid] than whites."

Andrew Sullivan Is Still Shrill

His shrillness has now spread to encompass his friends at National Review:

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish: DENIAL, AGAIN: NRO's Denis Bowles says that the entire substance of the hundreds of cases of abuse and torture can be summarized thus:

Is there any substance to [Human Rights Watch's] complaints? Well, yes — you should not make terrorists stay up late listening to Ratt and you should not make Iraqi convicts get naked and then laugh at them. If you're an American soldier doing these kinds of things, you'll be punished, even as others also try to punish your fellow soldiers and your country.

The only word for this is denial. Please, Denis, read the reports. At least thirty inmates have died after "coercive techniques" in U.S. custody. The government itself has conceded that the U.S. has tortured five inmates to death. Hundreds more have been hospitalized or permanently physically scarred. Even if you radically restrict your analysis to the night shift in Abu Ghraib, the abuses far outstrip forcing people to listen to music or laughing at nakedness. What has happened to American conservatism when it is reduced to ridiculing genuine and important issues of human rights?

Turn it around: why would anyone ever think that torturing 30 people to death would disturb the National Review?

WaPo Goes WaCko

Harold Meyerson stared into the abyss, and discovered the abyss staring back at him. Today he's focusing on the mendacity and malevolence:

But when historians look back at the Bush presidency, they're more likely to note that what sets Bush apart is not the crises he managed but the crises he fabricated. The fabricated crisis is the hallmark of the Bush presidency. To attain goals that he had set for himself before he took office -- the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the privatization of Social Security -- he concocted crises where there were none.

...

In fact, Social Security is on a sounder footing now than it has been for most of its 70-year history. Without altering any of its particulars, its trustees say, it can pay full benefits straight through 2042. Over the next 75 years its shortfall will amount to just 0.7 percent of national income, according to the trustees, or 0.4 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That still amounts to a real chunk of change, but it pales alongside the 75-year cost of Bush's Medicare drug benefit, which is more than twice its size, or Bush's tax cuts if permanently extended, which would be nearly four times its size.

...

In short, Social Security is not facing a financial crisis at all. It is facing a need for some distinctly sub-cataclysmic adjustments over the next few decades that would increase its revenue and diminish its benefits.

Politically, however, Social Security is facing the gravest crisis it has ever known. For the first time in its history, it is confronted by a president, and just possibly by a working congressional majority, who are opposed to the program on ideological grounds, who view the New Deal as a repealable aberration in U.S. history, who would have voted against establishing the program had they been in Congress in 1935.

Frederick Kagan of the Weekly Standard Succumbs to Shrill Unholy Madness!

Writing from some strange Virtual Kishinev, Frederick Kagan succumbs to shrill unholy madness and denounces Donald Rumsfeld--the head of the cossacks--while still declaring his love for George W. Bush, the Little Father, Batiyushka, the friend of us all. Ah! If only the Czar knew what the cossacks were doing in his name! The Little Father would save us!

I don't know if there are enough free beds in the Shoggoth Wing to hold the entire Weekly Standard staff:

Fighting the Wrong War: [We] find fault with Rumsfeld precisely because we do support the president and the war.... Rumsfeld has much to answer for, as well. Claims that there are no serious problems with military policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, or with the equipment our soldiers have, or with the number of troops available, are childish and damaging to efforts to identify and solve real problems....

[T]the most serious criticism... that he has refused to expand the American military.... Rumsfeld's defenders assure us he is not responsible. Only Congress can approve an increase in military end-strength; Rumsfeld has never opposed increasing the armed forces; more troops in Iraq wouldn't help anyway. These are the arguments deployed in behalf of the secretary of defense... they are evasions.... In no sense can Rumsfeld claim to have rushed aid to the Army in any way that is helpful in the current crisis. He has, in fact, consistently and vociferously opposed congressional attempts to offer such aid.... He has argued consistently that it would be better to "rearrange" the active and reserve components of the Army, and he has argued for increasing use of civilian contractors to free up soldiers for combat duties....

Congress has not been the problem here. Nor is it fair to blame Clinton entirely for this problem. Clinton downsized the military excessively, to be sure, and left an Army obviously too small for the missions it faced. But Rumsfeld has been in office for four years....

With more troops in Iraq during and immediately after the war, we would have been able to do the following things that we did not do: * Capture or kill thousands of Iraqi soldiers who were at that time still concentrated in combat units and had not yet melted back into the countryside with their weapons and their skills. * Guard the scores of enormous ammunition dumps from which the insurgents have drawn the vast majority of their weapons, ammunition, and explosives. * Secure critical oil and electrical infrastructure that the insurgents subsequently attacked, setting back the economic and political recovery of Iraq. * Prevent the development of insurgent safe havens in Najaf and Falluja, or at least disrupt them at a much earlier stage of formation. * Work to interdict the infiltration of foreign fighters across Iraq's borders.

If the U.S. Army had begun expanding in 2001, we would have been able to: * Establish reasonable rotation plans for our soldiers that did not require repeatedly extending tours of duty beyond one year. * Avoid the need to activate reservists involuntarily. * Dramatically reduce the frequency with which soldiers return from one year-long tour only to be sent immediately on another. * Let the troops that would still have been overstrained know that help really was on the way.

The U.S. military did not do these things because of Rumsfeld's choices.... [I]n no previous American war has the chief of the military administration refused to focus on the war at hand, preferring programs that could not help soldiers then in the fight to survive and win.... Rumsfeld's attitude has already led to a series of mistakes that have made a difficult situation more difficult. It has put the administration on the defensive about its conduct of a policy that is vital to America's national interest. It has distracted attention from the problem of winning the current war--our most important priority today bar none. These problems don't result from the liberal media or the antiwar crowd making a ruckus about nothing. They result from Rumsfeld's stubborn adherence to a wrongheaded policy. Surely, with the election safely over, there is no longer any need to protect the architect of these mistakes.

We must admit that the prognosis for Frederick Kagan is poor. Should he ever realize that what he is attacking are not *Rumsfeld's* but *Bush's* policies, he will never recover.

Raise Your Hand If You Didn't Expect Another Former Bush Administration Official To Write A Bitter Screed?

Shocked, Shocked! Christine Todd Whitman has the paperwork, we await her application to the order.

It's the Joint Chiefs of Shrill!

The Washington Post reports that the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and 11 other high ranking officers have been driven to sheer unholy madness by the possible appointment of an Attorney General who writes legal justifications for the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces sending our troops abroad to make "ass pyramids".

"Today, it is clear that these operations have fostered greater animosity toward the United States, undermined our intelligence gathering efforts and added to the risks facing our troops serving around the world," the officers wrote, referring to the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies.

Although it stops short of directly opposing Gonzales's nomination, the three-page letter contains sharp criticism of his decisions related to military legal issues and argues that he is "on the wrong side of history."

"Repeatedly in our past, the United States has confronted foes that, at the time they emerged, posed threats of a scope or nature unlike any we had previously faced," the letter reads. "But we have been far more steadfast in the past in keeping faith with our national commitment to the rule of law."

Lew Rockwell is Shrill, and not just about Capitol Hill

Lew Rockwell takes time off from keeping 747's from falling apart in flight to point out that the emperor isn't the only one who is naked:
The Reality of Red-State Fascism

A positive agenda of liberty is the only way we might have been spared the blizzard of government controls that were fastened on this country after Bush used the events of 9-11 to increase central planning, invade Afghanistan and Iraq, and otherwise bring a form of statism to America that makes Clinton look laissez-faire by comparison. The Bush administration has not only faced no resistance from the bourgeoisie. it has received cheers. And they are not only cheering Bush's reelection; they have embraced tyrannical control of society as a means toward accomplishing their anti-leftist ends.

After September 11, even those whose ostensible purpose in life is to advocate less government changed their minds. Even after it was clear that 9-11 would be used as the biggest pretense for the expansion of government since the stock market crash of 1929, the Cato Institute said that libertarianism had to change its entire focus: "Libertarians usually enter public debates to call for restrictions on government activity. In the wake of September 11, we have all been reminded of the real purpose of government: to protect our life, liberty, and property from violence. This would be a good time for the federal government to do its job with vigor and determination."

The vigor and determination of the Bush administration has brought about a profound cultural change, so that the very people who once proclaimed hated of government now advocate its use against dissidents of all sorts, especially against those who would dare call for curbs in the totalitarian bureaucracy of the military, or suggest that Bush is something less than infallible in his foreign-policy decisions.

Yet More People Approach Shrillness...

Ex-CEA Chief Economist Andrew Samwick has accepted a visiting appointment this spring at Miskatonic University in picturesque Arkham, Massachusetts. Here he writes in theWall Street Journal:

WSJ.com - The Economic Crystal Ball: Cloudy, or Clearing?: My biggest question about economic policy in 2005 is whether the federal government will make tangible progress in putting its fiscal house in order. For example, if we are in a cyclical upturn, then why are our tax and spending policies such that we are running budget deficits (even including the Social Security surplus) in excess of $400 billion? Why have we settled for a rather timid goal of merely cutting that budget deficit in half over five years? Leaving aside the longer-term solvency issues of Social Security and especially Medicare for the moment, if the president and Congress cannot balance the budget with six quarters of growth at a 4.4% annual rate and steady growth in the economic forecast, then I will be considerably less optimistic next year that price changes will be mild and that economic growth will continue....

Cutting taxes isn't the rational way to make the government smaller, the one true purpose of a Republican administration's fiscal agenda. The way to do that is to reduce government spending so that tax rates can subsequently be lowered with the budget in balance over the business cycle. We are nowhere close to that scenario, and so discussions in Washington policy circles of yet more tax cuts are particularly unhelpful. Taxes may be "bad," but long-term deficits are surely much worse. The president needs to keep some of his tax cuts, rescind or sunset the others, rationalize the alternative minimum tax, and then move on to entitlement reform of Social Security and Medicare, which remain the long-term fiscal challenges....

Pat Buchanan and William Kristol Lead This Week's Shrill...

Salon reportes:

Salon.com Politics: Pat Buchanan asked President Bush to tell the American public the “Unvarnished Truth” about the current situation in Iraq. For starters, Buchanan would like the President to tell us why we are really there. Referring to “One of the greatest bait-and switches in the history of warfare," Buchanan again reminds us of the now-discredited reasons Bush and his neocon advisers at the Pentagon used as a pretext to war with Iraq: WMDs, ties to 9/11 and al-Qaida. Since the initial invasion, we have suffered over 1,300 servicemen and women killed, over 10,000 wounded, and enormous setbacks to our prestige and national reputation as a result of prisoner abuse scandals. Our risk of suffering another terrorist attack is greater than ever.

Buchanan has been critical of the Iraqi incursion for some time. But he uses some of his strongest language yet in urging Bush to abandon his neocon advisors and lose the spin control. And he's not alone. In the past week, several of our nation’s top military and civilian security officials have come out repeatedly against both the decision to invade Iraq and the Pentagon’s handling of the occupation. Even stalwart Bush supporter William Kristol has admonished Defense Secretary Rumsfeld for both his poor war planning and his handling of post-war Iraq. Rumsfeld’s exchange in Kuwait recently with the National Guard soldier over the continuing lack of armor for military vehicles seemed to even put some the last Republican diehards over the edge.

Has Donald Rumsfeld Joined the Shrill?

A claim that the latest Robert Novak column reveals the hidden secret that the latest shrill unbalanced critic of George W. Bush is... Donald Rumsfeld himself:

From AndrewSullivan.com:

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish: Rummy's own self-defense is... revealing.... If you read Bob Novak's column today, it's hard not to see Rumsfeld's flunkies or Rummy himself doing some energetic spinning. Here's the key paragraph:

Rumsfeld is often bracketed with the neocons, but that is incorrect. In a long political career that dates back to his election to Congress in 1962, he has not even been associated with the traditional conservative movement. In the run-up to the attack on Iraq, he was not aggressively pressing intervention by force of arms, but instead was shaping a military response to fit President Bush's command.

Translation from Rummy: "This is Bush's war, not mine. I never really wanted it. I don't believe in the democratic transformation of the Middle East. I don't want to shift gears from my lean, mean fighting machine concept to one of a military that has to be big enough to impose a new order on societies where liberty has never had deep roots. I'm just taking orders." You can either see this as true (my view) - in which case, Rumsfeld really is the wrong man for the president's Wilsonian agenda. Or you can see this as disloyal spin: in which case, Rummy has lost confidence in the war he was obliged to run...

We Welcome James di Benedetto

We welcome James di Benedetto to the Order of the Shrill:

The Eleven Day Empire: These People Have Jobs Why, Again?: This is, of course, madness. The whole point of having plainclothes air marshalls is that they NOT be immediately recognizable. Sure, SOME of them probably should be wearing suits or sportcoats. And some of them should be in sweatpants, a dirty shirt, and generally look like they got about 5 minutes of sleep the night before. And some of them should be wearing jeans and a polo shirt. And... You'd think this wouldn't be a terribly difficult concept to grasp, but apparently the folks in charge of the program are none too bright. Fire them. Fire them now.

Lech Walesa Is Shrill! Of Europe Are Drawing Closer

Shrill screeds of Bush hatred from the founder of Solidarity:

WSJ.com - At Expense of U.S., NationsOf Europe Are Drawing Closer: "America failed its exam as a superpower," says Lech Walesa, the former Solidarity trade-union leader who became Poland's first post-Communist president. "They are a military and economic superpower but not morally or politically anymore. This is a tragedy for us."

Man, That's a Lott of Shrill Senators

Trent Lott, to be precise:

"I'm not a fan of Secretary Rumsfeld," Lott told the Biloxi Chamber of Commerce (news - web sites) on Wednesday. "I don't think he listens enough to his uniformed officers."

Rumsfeld has under heavy criticism since a soldier asked him last week why the combat vehicles used in the war in Iraq (news - web sites) don't have the proper armor. Both Rumsfeld and President Bush (news - web sites) have said more vehicle armor will be shipped to Iraq.

Lott, speaking to the civic club Wednesday, said the United States needs more troops to help with the war and a plan to leave Iraq once elections take place in late January. The Mississippi Republican doesn't think Rumsfeld is the person to carry out that plan.

"I would like to see a change in that slot in the next year or so," Lott said. "I'm not calling for his resignation, but I think we do need a change at some point."

We asked the Magic Eight Ball to translate that last bit. It said:

Answer hazy. Why hasn't the President fired him?

We're also uncertain regarding the specific mention of uniformed officers. I mean, most officers are in uniform. Are there some other officers out there, commanders who don't wear a uniform and probably spend 40% of their time slacking off or something, yet have the ear of the Secretary of Defense?

New York Times Coverage of the Other Order

New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd checked into the Ward Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken saying nothing but "shills. shills.... aigh!" over and over. Dr. Hastur eventually realized she'd suffered a serious break at the thought of the number of members of the Order of the Shill who are fleeing to the Order Of The Shrill, driven to sheer unholy madness by the mendacity, incompetence, malevolence, incompetence, sheer disconnection from reality, and sheer connection to incompetence of the Donald "Why Do I Still Have A Job?" Rumsfeld defense department.

He has surrounded himself with so many sycophantic generals that it took a grunt from Tennessee to point out that the defense secretary has no clothes - or armor for his troops. He has taken the greatest military in the history of the world and pushed it to the breaking point.

Some people think he's toast, now that conservatives like John McCain, Chuck Hagel and Bill Kristol have turned on him - and now that the grumbles are getting louder in the military, from Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf and the TV generals to the rank-and-file reservists who have other jobs to go back to.

In her lithium inspired fervor, Dowd has a new plan for our troops abroad: branding*.

If the Olympics can attract top corporate sponsors, why can't Rummy's Global War on Terrorism? Bring it on, Bank One!

Picture this: a truck rumbling across the desert on the evening news, completely armored and emblazoned with golden arches. Or a fleet of Visa Humvees. You know Donald Trump would love to slap his name on a few Chinooks. The 82nd Trumpborne.

Now, we were usually the first ones seen running for the door after the marketing V.P. said "global brand strategy", but we're pretty sure that there are a few things that IBM would like to stick their name on more than the corpses of the sons of daughters of America, sent abroad for a fool's errand. But then, what do we know?

Nouriel Roubini Is Shrill!

And boy is he shrill! Worst case of shrillness this month!

Dr. Mbogo to the Shoggoth Wing, stat!

Nouriel Roubini's Global Economics Blog: December 2004 Archives: In another example of the economic brilliance of our MBA President (who taught him economics and when?) and of his economic team, Dubya just found out today the Holy Grail that will eliminate in an instant our trade deficits.

Bush told reporters that the trade deficit was "easy to resolve. People can buy more United States products if they're worried about the trade deficit."

Very deep and profound concept and idea...and altogether wrong on all matters of economic substance. As any freshman in Economics knows, the current account deficit is, by definition,equal the excess of the country's expenditure relative to its income; so if a country spends more than its income, it will have a current account deficit, regardless of its preferences for domestic or foreign goods. If we spend more than we earn, if we have lower savings (because of the huge budget defitics) than our real investment, the current account will be and remain in a large deficit. Also, the demand for imports depends mostly on relative growth rates across countries and relative prices of foreign goods relative to foreign goods (i.e. exchange rates). So, assuming the trade deficit will disappear will not change it by a iota. And too bad that the masses of red state evangelicals on their way to join the social and economic lumpenproletariat crave and can only afford the good and cheap Chinese goods that made the fortune of Wal Mart.

It is not surprising that Dubya displays a crass ignorance of Economics 101 ("let us assume we import less" is his basic solution to our trade problems). It is a little more shocking that no one in his economic team his giving him any parental guidance on basic economics. But maybe not that surprising. With Lame Duck Cheerleader-in-Chief Melting Snow still kept warm for a little while in sinking Treasury, with his Under Secretary for International Affairs (of "there is no problem with the current account deficit" fame) on the way out (as one would assume as the most lame U/S for Int. Affairs ever), with NEC being headless after stealthy & gagged Friedman kept his mouth shut for two years and finally exited, with CEA also headless as the smart Mankiw may wonder why the hell he risked his stellar academic reputation for becoming associated with such economic buffons at the White House, the Chief Ecomomic Strategists at the White House are now Mr. Rasputin Karl Rove and that Most Eminent Economist called Dick Cheney who, today, opened the White House economic summit by pushing again for making the tax cuts permanent and privatizing Social Security, two policies that will certainly lead us to fiscal bankruptcy in the next decade.

With this Motley Crew running our ecomomic non-policies in a time of falling dollar, massive fiscal and current account deficit, even the most conservative Wall Street Journal op-ed page was begging last week for a strong Treasury Secretary in the Rubin tradition and pleading the White House to dump Snow, only to be rebuffed the next day. As the hapless WSJ editors had to admit and beg under a "Stronger Treasury" headline:

"The larger issue is why the Bush Administration has settled for a weak Treasury...on economic policy he has preferred to run things out of the White House, and sometimes even Karl Rove's hip pocket....The financial world is a far more unsettled place, for starters...Inevitably, when interest rates rise, there are going to be financial casualties to be cleaned up. Mr. Rove knows a lot, but we doubt he knows how to work out the next Long Term Capital Management failure, much less handle a dollar crisis...."

Of course, the next day, the White House reconfirmed lame duck and lame non-leader snow-flaky Snow to the Treas job after letting him hang wet and dry for two weeks; take that WSJ Editorial Board for being real influential in your arch-conservative White House! They told you to get lost the same day you pleaded for a stronger Treasury.

The only solace is that, by the time a year from now these reckless policies - with dumb-wit economic nullities such as Rove and Cheney in charge and Snow cheerleading-in-tow - lead to a hard landing of the dollar, a bond market rout, a LTCM-style meltdwon, and a ugly economic slowdown, Greenspan will step down from his Fed job and may be chosen as Treasury Secretary when Dubya gets desperate enough.

Given that Alan is the smartest guy in town and knows better, one will hope that he will reverse his support of the Bush tax cuts (his worst call in 20 years at the Fed), he will emphasize that fiscal restraint must include not only controls on spending but also reversals of some of the reckless tax cuts on high incomes, dividends, capital gains and estate taxes and that he will suggest to reform Social Security along the lines of what he brilliantly did 20 years ago when he headed the Commission that rescued our Social Security system: i.e. raise a litte the payroll tax, lenghten the retirement age and control modestly benefits. I.e., real reform Social Security that maintains its Security and its Social element rather than the mother of all smoke and mirrors shell-games "privatization" that would create another $5 trillion of transition costs and lead us on the same path as Argentina that similarly bothched its social security privatization and ended up defaulting on its entire public debt.

William Kristol Is Shrill!

The latest shrill America-hating critic of George W. Bush and his administration is William Kristol:

The Defense Secretary We Have (washingtonpost.com): Decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort. Rumsfeld acknowledged this last week, after a fashion: "I mean, everyone likes to assign responsibility to the top person and I guess that's fine." Except he fails to take responsibility.

All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments. Some have stubbornly persisted in their misjudgments. But have any so breezily dodged responsibility and so glibly passed the buck?

In Sunday's New York Times, John F. Burns quoted from the weekly letter to the families of his troops by Lt. Col. Mark A. Smith, an Indiana state trooper who now commands the 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, stationed just south of Baghdad:

"Ask yourself, how in a land of extremes, during times of insanity, constantly barraged by violence, and living in conditions comparable to the stone ages, your marines can maintain their positive attitude, their high spirit, and their abundance of compassion?" Col. Smith's answer: "They defend a nation unique in all of history: One of principle, not personality; one of the rule of law, not landed gentry; one where rights matter, not privilege or religion or color or creed. . . . They are United States Marines, representing all that is best in soldierly virtues."

These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have.

Norman Schwartzkopf Is Shrill!

Keening Blasphemy Kevin Drum modems in the details:

The Washington Monthly: RUMSFELD UNDER FIRE....We all know that John McCain isn't a big fan of Donald Rumsfeld, and Chuck Hagel isn't a surprise either. But Stormin' Norman? "I was angry by the words of the secretary of defense when he laid it all on the Army, as if he, as the secretary of defense, didn’t have anything to do with the Army and the Army was over there doing it themselves, screwing up." Good point. Plus there's the fact that Rumsfeld was lying through his teeth about armor production already being at capacity, and how there was nothing more he could do about it. That was bad too.

Senator McCain: Tell Us How You Really Feel!

With President George W. Bush's election in the bag, Senator McCain can go back to pointing out that the emperor is slightly naked. Today's target: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It seems the Senator might be displeased with the Secretary's performance, although he might be a bit murky about his exact feelings:

Asked about his confidence in the secretary's leadership, McCain recalled fielding a similar question a couple weeks ago.

"I said no. My answer is still no. No confidence," McCain said.

Yeah, we're not sure exactly what that's about. Does it involve an aiiigh! or a Ph'nglui. We aren't sure. We'll keep you posted.

Edmund Andrews of the New York Times Is Shrill

Aaaiii! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Andrews R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn! Aaaiii!!!

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Economic View: Social Security Reform, With One Big Catch: OF all the arguments being made to replace part of Social Security with private retirement accounts, few are more seductive and more misleading than the prospect of earning higher returns. Get ready to hear a lot about this next week.... Under the current system, investment returns from Social Security are "abysmal," Mr. Bush said in one recent speech, because the trust fund is allowed to hold only low-yielding Treasury bonds.... According to the Social Security Administration, Treasury bonds can be expected to yield a real annual rate of return of about 3 percent. Equities, by contrast, can be expected to earn 6.5 percent.

That assumption is crucial to arguments that personal accounts can reduce Social Security's long-term shortfall - which the government estimates to be at least $3.5 trillion. Most of the proposals to overhaul Social Security call for steep reductions in future benefits that would be offset by the higher returns people would presumably earn on their investments. Stephen Goss, the Social Security Administration's chief actuary, has endorsed the assumption of higher returns. In evaluating the major proposals for putting some payroll taxes into personal investment accounts, Mr. Goss estimated that even people who hedged their risk by mixing stocks and bonds could expect an average return of 4.45 percent.... "The entire argument is absurd," said William C. Dudley, chief United States economist at Goldman Sachs. "These returns weren't free. You are getting these returns precisely because you are taking on risk."...

Mr. Goss of the Social Security Administration suggested that returns in the future might be even higher than those of the past. "A consensus is forming among economists that equity pricing as indicated by price-earnings ratios may be somewhat higher in the long-term future than in the long-term past," wrote Mr. Goss.... In an interview last week, Mr. Goss acknowledged that many experts believe investment returns should be adjusted for risk and that the common proxy for a risk-free return is the real yield earned on Treasury bonds....

Other government analysts take a much more conservative approach. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which is run by a former chief economist in President Bush's own Council of Economic Advisers, assumes that equities and bonds will earn no more than Treasury bonds... the White House's own Office of Management and Budget recently made the same assumption....

The more basic question is this: Should a rational person believe that Social Security's very real financial shortfall can be reduced just by shifting from bonds into stocks?...

Pandagon Is Shrill

I wonder what Frist says when family members tell him they caught VD from a toilet seat?

Pandagon: Frist in Flight: Think Bill Frist went home and retched on shame after this? Or think he congratulated himself on a dodge well done? And conservatives? If your majority leader can't safely repudiate the "HIV-travels-through-sweat-and-tears" crowd, don't ever, ever complain to me about Democratic fringe groups. Ever.

Introducing The Order Of the Till

Time was, you couldn't leave the Executive Branch and come back two days later asking for handouts. Now we don't know if this was what drove people into the Order of the Shrill, and not, say, the mendancity, malevolence, incompetence, and sheer disconnection from reality of the George W. Bush administration, but an awful lot of former high level government officials have been turning up shrill lately.

Most of them, actually.

In an effort to make sure that wasn't the issue, the government ethics office has abandoned testing of their shiny new wrist slapper.

Lobbying Prohibitions Eased For Former Top Officials

Until now, senior officials at Cabinet departments and agencies had not been allowed to lobby former colleagues for a full year after leaving office -- a rule designed to prevent an obvious conflict of interest. But, in a notice in the Federal Register, the ethics office issued a new rule invoking its power to declare that "a former senior employee who served in a 'parent' department or agency is not barred . . . from making communications to or appearances before any employee of any designated component of that parent."

So don't worry about getting your hand caught in the till! Now they have their own order and everything.