I’ve been searching for this creepy quote from Colin Powell made last month where he defends the CIA by saying something along the lines of “I know some things that they’ve been doing, and they’ve been doing an impressive job.” (suggesting a wink toward some aim the public is not privy to.)

Either connected to or not connected to America’s latest adventure in Haiti… I don’t know. I do know that one blogger connected it to the currently struggling Iranian Reform Movement, for what that’s worth.

But, did you notice? The US just aided a coup in Haiti!

Which prompted Venezuelean president Hugo Chavez to call Bush an, and I’m quoting here, “asshole.”

The Bush II administration is now one for two in its Latin American coup attempts, with a secong crack at Venezuela coming right on up. (I’m hearing the murmurs bubbling up in the press.) I remember watching the botched coup in Venezuelas, and scratching my head in confusion as the strings got tangled up in plain sight on the National News. Contradictory and illogical news item after contradictory and illogical news item. Bush praised the “new bosses” just as the old boss reasserted control — the rank and file of the military deciding not to follow the orders of the coup-leaders.

The film is The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, which does as good a job as any explaining what I bewilderingly witnessed that weekend. The film makers were caught on the inside, in the “right place at the right time” filming their documentary of Chavez right when the coup-attempt took place. Watch for it on public access stations, it’d pop up eventually on the “Free Speech TV” feed.

Not that Hugo Chavez is anything but an authoritarian asshole hisownself.

In the case of Haiti… the American public were treated to the spectacle of the US government denying the claims made by Aristide (calling everyone he could — in the case of America that means members of the Congressional Black Caucass) that he had been kidnapped. And, of course, we got the spectacle of government officials, as well as media pundits, saying that such a claim was ludicrous… why, look at the New York Times story where “sources” told us that he “meekly asked the American ambassador in Haiti through an aide whether his resignation would help the country.
“It was as if he was the last guy in the world to figure out that the country would be better off were he to relinquish power,” the official said.

Yes. Haiti is now better off that this Aristide clown has been replaced by a classic Latin American Death Squad led by Guy Phillipe. Temporary leadership, perhaps. Perhaps Baby Doc can fill in the shoes sometime soon.

I hear that Aristide had his phone privileges cut by whoever his new caretakers are.

I had wondered since the State of the Union Speech: Why would George W Bush spend 99 words on the rather irrelevant topic of steroid abuse in professional sports?

Granted, the heads of Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds keep getting squarer and squarer with each passing year(*), but… Who gives a frick?

Just in case the viewer had thought that Bush’s stand against Big Steroid was a whole lot of Hot Air (akin to last year’s SOTU speech promises to fight AIDs in Africa, his push for hydrogen- fueled cars, his proposal to expand Americorp, etc etc etc): the White House is pushing right ahead to organize a Summit of the various Professional Sports League to do battle with the forces of Big Steroid.

Sure to be a majour story on Sports Radio, ESPN and sporting websites.

Wait a minute!

He just by-passed the “news filters” of the psuedo-Legitimate press that Bush was aggrieved by. (Thus, he launched that pr offensive of scheduled softball interviews with local news stations last summer.)…

And he just found his way into “fuzzy news story” land with a parallel news media, prone to discussion of the trivial, with a large male audience (generically patriotic, the so-called “NASCAR Dad”).

Or am I off into la-la land here?

…………………………
(*)Apologies to Sosa and Bonds. I have no idea why their heads are squarer than they used to be, and do not wish to imply use of performance-enhancing drugs, or for that matter corked bats, for which I have no evidence or reason to have evidence — except for the “corked bats” bit. Besides which, I vaguely recall that Sosa was cleared of the charge last summer in a highly publicized testing.

Update: Bonds = Mr. Square Head.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/29/politics/campaign/text-nydebate.html?pagewanted=print&position=

(“freethepresses” is the default unregesitered login names and codes)

Elizabeth Bumiller of the NEW YORK TIMES: President Bush has said that freedom and fear have always been at war, and God is not neutral between them. He’s made quite clear in his speeches that he feels God is on America’s side.

Is God on America’s side?

WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THAT QUESTION???

A quick google search and I find spewing on the part of Drudge, Free Republic, Maroon Blog.

And a differing opinion on the whole basis of that question from James Poling, and this blog.

I’m reading through a recent issue of The Nation, and there it is… an advertisement for the Fox News Channel.

It’s not the first time Fox News has placed an ad in the magazine, to the laughter of the magazines liberal-left clientele. I can’t figure out what the game Fox News is playing here.

The ad? The ratings for Fox News’s coverage of the Democratic Primary has beaten the ratings for CNN’s coverage. Handy bar graphs. The debates that Fox News showed beat the debates that CNN showed. The ratings for the night of Iowa’s caucusses defeated the ratings for CNN’s coverage. Like that.

Perplexing, though, was the significance of a quote from a Boston Herald story found here, “He said he learned from Fox News that he was the likely winner, and celebrated with supporters and advisers like Senator Edward M. Kennedy, manager Mary Beth Cahill (another Dorchester native), strategist Robert Shrum, and Kerry’s brother Cam.”

What is the reader of the Nation supposed to do with this quote? “John Kerry finds Fox News credible (or something, and there’s a mention of Edward Kennedy’s name, so we should too!”

I flicked past Fox News the other day, and spotted Oliver North talking with Alan Colmes. On the bottom of the screen, there was the “Fox Factoid”: Oliver North was awarded 2 purple hearts. Uh huh. Might not have been the “factoid” that I would’ve selected, (mine would probably have been culled from herebut to each their own.

All I caught was Oliver North saying “It’s typical John Kerry. He’s sliming the National Guard.” (uh… huh. So the National Guard of the Vietnam era was, to paraphrase Colin Powell, a place where the sons of the powerful could wrangle themslves to avoid actual fighting, and has become since then, probably since “Operation Just Cause”, a deployable military arm much to the surprise of some of its recruits who were expecting just to throw out a couple weeks a month for college money… slime that if you must.)

Fox News. Fair and Balanced.

#1: The movie, Passion of the Christ. One critic refers to it as “The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre”.

#2: That g-d-mned nail necklace

#3: Two editorials I’ve read about Bush’s re-election bid, one from Dick Morris the other from David Broder. Morris says Bush is behind Kerry by an even larger margin than it appears right now, and he needs to re-assert his successes on terror. Broder says that Bush politically needs to remind the nation of where it was on 9/12.

#4: Richard Perle and David Frum’s suggestions on how we need to proceed after 9/11 as articulated in their book An End to Evil.

#5: A Portland Mercury editorial from the 1-year anniversary of 9/11 saying that Cermonies of the anniversary and the coverage on television is over-indulgence… chocolate covering.

#6: During the era of the Bubonic Plague, religious art re-shifted toward a focus on Christ’s suffering.

#7: That church sign saying “The Jews Killed Jesus” that was spotlighted on the news recently.

#8: My suffering is bigger than your suffering, see it right here, and I’m out for blood. Got that?

Maybe I’ll flesh these thoughts out later. I don’t know.

Am I going crazy here?

I’m thinking of the presidential election in terms of a boxing match. Round One began roughly when the Democratic probable emerged in the wake of the New Hampshire primary. Ladies and Gentlemen: John Kerry. I’ll arbitrarily end Round One right now.

So, where are we? Bush’s strategy had, by insider’s accounts echoed through the chattering classes and actually manifesting itself in comments made in his Meet the Press appearance, been to “stay above the fray” as LONG AS POSSIBLE (note the early September Republican Convention date, which also correspond to winding himself up with the military) — with his minions doing the dirty work — and generally work on a soft-focus campaign that worked well for Reagan (“It’s Morning in America, dontcha know?”) and Bill Clinton (Triangulate = Be an Amorphous Blob), and to wind himself as tightly to the military as possible (as well, for that matter, to NASCAR.)

Where are we now? Yesterday, Bush ran right into the muck of campaigning and slammed John Kerry as a flip-flopper before the Republican Governors Committee. And he endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, which even Tom DeLay voiced hesitation on.

Granted, he still has his NASCAR appearance, but with regards to the other parts of his strategy… well, the plan has evidentally rather dramatically changed.

Round One goes to Kerry.

From the Pre-eminent Gay Republican Organization.

“As conservative Republicans, we are outraged that any Republican—particularly the leader of our party and this nation—would support any effort to use our sacred United States Constitution as a way of scoring political points in an election year,” Guerriero said.

No matter what happens in the coming months, Log Cabin will stay in the GOP and fight—fight for fairness, liberty and equality. Hundreds of Log Cabin leaders will gather in California this April for our largest national convention ever. And in August, Log Cabin will have a strong presence in New York for the GOP’s 2004 national convention. We will mobilize all our resources and grassroots strength to fight this anti-family Constitutional amendment.

…………………..

Yes. The Bush Administration is going to heed the rumbling sound of the powerful gay Republican lobby. Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

The current political battle over in Iran is a battle over the meaning of the last election. Everything boils down to voter turn-out. Because the powers that be barred various reformist candidates from running, the (stumbling) reform movement called for a boycott of the election.

So, the Conservatives get to declare victory if turnout was high. The Reformers get to declare victory if turnout is low.

I’m thinking that we can translate that over the United States. If fewer than 50% of eligible voters vote in the 2004 general presidential election, I get to declare victory, okay?

In looking around the blogosphere, I have to ponder the significance of the act of blogging about other blogs.

Googling around, I find that, yes indeed, The (ahem) Media Whores Online Watch Watch Watch Watch did indeed have bloggers discussing the content of the blog.:

UPDATE: Barney Gumble over at Media Whores Online Watch Watch Watch Watch questions Hannity’s Bestseller status. It is true the NYT lists come out quite far in advance of their actual publication dates, but we shall see…

In bemoaning the lack of British political blogs, one blogger mentioned the aforementioned blog with:
However, I think I may have the beginnings of an explanation for it, partly inspired by seeing this post from Harry Steele, where he observes that we in Britain are yet to experience the ‘metablogs’ – blogs that exist solely to comment (usually critically) on other blogs, a concept taken to the point of extremity by Media Whores Online Watch Watch Watch Watch.

(The story of the entire lifespan of “MWOWWWW” is found here. Not a sympathetic portrait.)

John Kerry

Page 51 , A Call to Service: My Vision for A Better America:

I hope by the time you read this book that the UN has been usefully employed as a partner in the reconstruction of Iraq and that Jacque Chirac has ceased his foolish rebellion against the very idea of the Atlantic Alliance. America, which has always shown magnanimity in victory, should in turn meet repentant Europeans halfway, not ratchet up the badgering unilateralism that fed European fears in the first place.

Page 43

As a veteran of both the Vietnam War and the Vietnam protest movement, I say to both conservative and liberal misinterpretations of that war that it’s time to get over it and recognize it as an exception, not as a ruling example, of the U.S. military engagements of the twentieth century. If those of us who carried the physical and emotional burdens of that conflict can regain perspective and move on, so can those whose involvement was vicarious or who knew nothing of the war other than ideology and legend.

Actually, what I want to know is: Did Mark Hand stop reading after 50 pages?