[2004.05.28 - 07:55 A.M.] Krugman Goes Deep
After a long slump of somewhat boring articles about crude oil prices and such, Krugman finally swings for the fences with this scathing analysis of the media's treatment of Bush, past and present:
People who get their news by skimming the front page, or by watching TV, must be feeling confused by the sudden change in Mr. Bush's character. For more than two years after 9/11, he was a straight shooter, all moral clarity and righteousness.
But now those people hear about a president who won't tell a straight story about why he took us to war in Iraq or how that war is going, who can't admit to and learn from mistakes, and who won't hold himself or anyone else accountable. What happened?
The answer, of course, is that the straight shooter never existed. He was a fictitious character that the press, for various reasons, presented as reality.
Ah, it's so refreshing to see P-Krug return to All Star form.
Also check out Bob Herbert's excellent piece on Al Gore's speech.
Friday morning on the Times op-ed page. A rare oasis of mainstream media sanity...
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[2004.05.23 - 12:30 P.M.] Chalabi
Wanted to share a few thoughts on the developing Chalabi news. Quick recap for those of you who have been living in a political cave: Ahmed Chalabi was/is the head of the Iraqi National Congress, a group of exiles who agitated for Hussein's overthrow. During the run up to the war in Iraq, he was the darling of the neoconservative set. He was the primary source of most of the "intelligence" (and it's not possible to use a term more loosely than I'm using it here) that the neocons used to bolster their case for war. Chalabi basically told them that Saddam was the devil, the true source of all evil in the world. Told them that he was the puppet master pulling Osama's strings, and that in his spare time he ran a mail-order operation where other evil people could buy nuclear weapons. That sort of stuff. The neoconartists then turned around and vomited up Chalabi's "intelligence" to press whores like Judith Miller of the New York Times. And the press whores spewed it out to Moron America who, because they are intellectually challenged, bought the story hook, line, and sinker. And so it came to pass that a majority of Murkans supported the unprovoked invasion of a country that had done nothing to harm us.
But I digress.
The fact that Chalabi is an utter fraud has been known for some time. It was known while our boys at the Pentagon - Rummy, Wolfie, and Feithy - were making nice with him. Chalabi was a known criminal. Also a loser and a liar. A self-serving dickwad. A major league cocksucker. But he served their purposes, so they pretended he was a human being.
Here's the thing, though: Any murmurings of "We was misled by this bad dude" need to be deeply discounted. Chalabi may have fucked these guys, but it was consensual sex. Remember what O'Neill and Clarke told you, people: The Bushies walked into the White House on Day One with plans to go to war in Iraq. If Chalabi hadn't come along and helped them out with their bogus pretext, they would have found someone else to do it. (Or not. Frankly, given the willful, malignant idiocy of this crowd, I'm surprised they bothered to build a pretext. If their publicly stated reason for war had been "Because we feel like it", a majority of this moron-infested nation would have supported it anyhow.)
Which brings me to my conspiracy-mongering point: I think this whole falling out with Chalabi is a ruse. I think it may very well have been planned from the get go. Think about it. We've been pimping this guy hard. He desperately wants to be a player in the New Iraq. But, to accomplish that, he can't be seen as being our guy, because, in case you haven't noticed, the average Iraqi on the street doesn't think very fucking highly of the Untied Satan of Murka right now. So I believe this whole business with the INC funding stoppage and the police raid has been scripted in an attempt to give Chalabi the street cred he needs to take his place at the head of the table. And no, I don't think that the "revelation" that Chalabi has been two-timing us with Iranian intelligence in any way undermines this theory. I think the Potomac Posse knew about that as well, and they tacitly condoned it because their Master Plan to reshape the Middle East was more important to them than any concerns about, you know, letting highly classified secrets leak out to the CV joint in the Axis of Evil. That's my belief. You're welcome to share it.
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[2004.05.22 - 01:15 P.M.] Sarin Wrap
Let me be up front about this. My reaction when I heard about the sarin-filled IED (improvised explosive device) that was detonated in Iraq this week was visceral and immediate: "Oh shit, here we go. The wingnuts are going to hop on this single, twenty-year-old artillery shell and try to claim it validates the administration's WMD lies." Much to my relief, with one prominent exception (which I'll come to in a bit) that doesn't appear to be the case. Even Rumsfeld -- who for some reason still has his fucking job -- was described as "appropriately cautious" in evaluating the significance of the find. Maybe, having been burned so repeatedly over the last year, war supporters have learned to restrain themselves from making the hyperbolic assertions that were so common during the pre-war debate. Given this unusually calm reaction, we may actually be able to have a reasonable discussion about what this shell is and what it means, if anything.
Here are a few thoughts:
Does this device qualify as a Weapon of Mass Destruction? This was a chemical weapon, sure, but are all chemical weapons WMD's by definition? News accounts that I read on this mid-week said that after the detonation, two soldiers were treated as a precautionary measure and released. Not exactly a big, scary mushroom cloud. Even if a weapon has a chemical or biological payload, isn't there some minimum amount it needs to contain to be considered a WMD? More to the point, is this the class of weapon we ostensibly went in there to neutralize? Sarin is highly lethal, but the damage that an artillery shell could do - as opposed to a larger bomb or missile warhead - seems dubious.
Where did this shell come from? Was it smuggled out of some larger stockpile, or is it really just a random dud found lying around. The shell has been described as "old and unmarked", so there's a question of whether those who rigged it even knew it contained sarin. It's quite possible this thing has been lying around out there for over a decade. It might even date all the way back to that forgotten era when Saddam was our ally and we were helping him with his chemical weapons program.
This seems to illustrate the danger that, by toppling Saddam and destabilizing Iraq, we've actually increased the chance of any illegal weapons he did have finding their way into the hands of "terrorists".
Some of these questions, it appears, could be answered readily. Kevin Drum points to an article by Scott Ritter which suggests that a quick assay of the data we should, by now, have available on the shell would put a lot of this uncertainty to rest:
Given what's known about sarin shells, the US could be expected to offer a careful recital of the data with news of the shell. But facts that should have accompanied the story — the type of shell, its condition, whether it had been fired previously, and the age and viability of the sarin and precursor chemicals — were absent. And that's opened the door to irresponsible speculation that the shell was part of a live WMD stockpile. The data — available to the ISG — would put this development in proper perspective — allowing responsible discussion of the event and its possible ramifications.
Ritter, of course, has been repeatedly vilified by the war-monger set, many of whom will see the above as just more axe-grinding on his part. But, as Kevin points out:
All [Ritter's] saying is that there's some simple objective data that could determine the nature of the sarin shell, but the Army hasn't provided any of it. Until they do, there's no way to guess whether this discovery is meaningful or not.
My guess is that this definitive data will only be revealed to the public if it points to the shell being part of a larger find. If the data indicates the opposite, we'll never hear about it. This is perfectly in keeping with the administration's habit of using vagueness and uncertainty to their advantage. Even if they know full well that this is just a random find indicative of no larger cache, they'll keep mum while their proxies in the media make the emotionally charged (if factually untenable) case that this single shell validates the WMD argument.
One such willing proxy is that vile charlatan who haunts the Grey Lady's op-ed pages, William Safliar. On Wednesday, he pinched out a turd of an editorial so horrid that I was rendered speechless. Safliar has always had a gift for taking one or two choice pieces of evidence and extrapolating from them to generate richly detailed alternate universes, which he then excoriates the rest of us for not choosing to live in. This column, however, was the whopper to end all whoppers. Hold your nose for a minute and journey with me to the planet Saf-tard. Did you know that:
Not only does the existence of this single sarin-filled shell prove that all the pre-war WMD claims were correct, but future historians will write about how stupid we "defeatists" were for believing otherwise?
The fact that this single sarin-filled shell was modified into an improvised explosive device in May of 2004 by an insurgent in Iraq proves that Saddam, who has been in U.S. custody for six months and was in hiding prior to that, cooperated extensively with terrorists prior to our invasion? And that future historians will write about how dishonest we "defeatists" were for claiming otherwise?
Next to the grave threat that this single sarin-filled shell posed to the peace-loving nations of the world, all this carping about a little torture at Abu Graib is just silly? And that future historians will mock the "defeatists" who tried to claim that flouting the Geneva conventions wasn't a grand idea?
Anyone who was either opposed to the war, pointed out that the administration lied about our reasons for going to war, or observes that things aren't going so well in the aftermath of the war, is a "defeatist"? And they should all immediately admit that they were wrong because of this single sarin-filled shell? Otherwise, they will suffer the wrath of future historians...
OK, you can let yourself breathe now. Truthfully, can anyone explain to me how this dishonest, deluded cretin gets a twice-weekly shot at some of the best real estate in all of the media kingdom? Baffling.
Busy Busy Busy nicely summed up Safliar's ramblings thusly:
"In the future, I will be right about all the things that I am wrong about now."
Indeed.
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[2004.05.17 - 08:30 P.M.] Zinni Speaks
Retired General Anthony Zinni (USMC) is alive and kicking on the guest speaker circuit. Speaking at the CDI (Center for Defense Information) Board of Directors Dinner on May 12, 2004, Zinni outlined the Top Ten Mistakes made with respect to Iraq. Mistake number one? Blowing off the successful strategy of containment we'd used since Gulf War I:
I think the first mistake that was made was misjudging the success of containment. I heard the president say, not too long ago, I believe it was with the interview with Tim Russert that ... I'm not sure ... but at some point I heard him say that "containment did not work." That's not true.
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We bombed him almost at will. No one in the region felt threatened by Saddam. No one in the region denied us our ability to conduct sanctions. Many countries joined us in sanctions enforcement, in the no-fly zones, and in the maritime intercept operations where we attempted to intercept his oil and gas smuggling.
So to say containment didn't work, I think is not only wrong from the experiences we had then, but the proof is in the pudding, in what kind of military our troops faced when we went in there. It disintegrated in front of us. It didn't have the capabilities, that were pumped up, that were supposedly possessed by this military. And I think that will be the first mistake that will be recorded in history, the belief that containment as a policy doesn't work. It certainly worked against the Soviet Union, has worked with North Korea and others. It's not a pleasant thing to have to administer, it requires troops full-time, there are moments when there ... there are periods of violence, but containment is a lot cheaper than the alternative, as we're finding out now. So I think that will be mistake number one: discounting the effectiveness of the containment.
Now, it was with no small satisfaction that I read this statement from a retired general. You see, last year, during more than one of the interminable debates I found myself in about the wisdom of going to war with Iraq, this particular canard was raised repeatedly. "Containment hasn't worked!" or "Containment can't work forever!" were regular guests at the table of ideas. I found these claims to be utterly baffling. We'd been slapping Hussein around for over a decade, regularly lobbing bombs at him whenever he got cute with us. He hadn't attacked anyone outside his borders since the end of the war. In what possible sense could containment be said to have not worked? Well, other than in the desperately-pulling-a-bogus-rationale-for-war-out-of-one's-ass sense? So, anyhow, good to hear someone considerably more in-the-know than myself point this out so bluntly.
Zinni is just full of piss and vinegar in this speech. He rambles a bit, but the juicy pieces are worth it. Here he is on cooking the Iraq WMD intelligence and the "imminent threat" posed by Hussein's regime (emphasis mine):
The third mistake, I think was one we repeated from Vietnam, we had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support. The books were cooked, in my mind. The intelligence was not there. I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee one month before the war, and Senator Lugar asked me: "General Zinni, do you feel the threat from Saddam Hussein is imminent?" I said: "No, not at all. It was not an imminent threat. Not even close. Not grave, gathering, imminent, serious, severe, mildly upsetting, none of those."
Ooooh. Not even a "mildly upsetting" threat? Methinks the Zinnster is having a little fun at the Bushies' expense. Mocking the Dumsfeld and Wolfulloshitz brain trust. Choice stuff.
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[2004.05.15 - 06:30 P.M.] Rumsfeld Is Done
Seymour Hersh fires the final silver bullet that -- if there is any justice in the world, and if Bush has any decency or even just common sense -- will fell this monster who has afflicted us for so long:
The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focused on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of elite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.
According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.
Yes, that's right, as part of the "superb job" that the "best secretary of defense ever" was doing, he authorized torture and sexual humiliation techniques to be used on Iraqi prisoners, most of whom did nothing wrong in the first place. Just one of the many fine decisions we, as a nation, owe Rumsfeld a "debt of gratitude" for, I suppose.
Know what I think? I think Rumsfeld shouldn't be allowed to resign. He should be fired, and then we should hand him over to an international war crimes tribunal. Yep, that sounds about right. Never happen, but, hey, I can dream...
Seriously, though, this has to be the end of the road for him, right? He can't last the week now. No way. After playing dumb about this in the hearings this week ("Gee, gosh, yeah, this is horrible, unspeakable even, a real body blow to this great nation, and I suppose I bear ultimate responsibility for it, you know, since I FUCKING AUTHORIZED it.") and now having this story come out? He's got to be gone. With this, the potential damage he'd do to the Bushies if they keep him should finally outweigh their insane code of Honor Among Psychos.
Please tell me this son of a bitch is gone. We're so overdue to see one of these pricks take a fall. Please.
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[2004.05.12 - 02:50 P.M.] Let's Play WICWIC!!!
Check out this incredible piece on MSNBC, "Avoiding Attacking Suspected Terrorist Mastermind":
In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.
The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.
“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn't do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.
Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.
The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.
And the Money Graf (emphasis mine):
Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.
By way of clarification, this is the same Zarqawi that is responsible for chopping Nick Berg's head off, in addition to an estimated 700 other killings.
This, readers, strikes me as a perfect opportunity to play everyone's favorite parlor game, "What If Clinton Were In Charge?"
Just try to imagine what Republicans and all the 'winger hacks in the media would be doing and saying right now if it were revealed that such a colossal blunder had happened on Clinton's watch. Go ahead. Give it a shot. I mean, are you fucking kidding me? The GOP would have sent a lynch mob down to the front steps of the White House. They would have started Double Secret Impeachment proceedings before the newsprint was even dry. Chickenhawk pundits would be lecturing us on how Democrats were afraid to use American military power.
(The even sadder and more maddening truth, of course, is that if Clinton had this opportunity, he probably would have taken it, and then all these same idiots would have accused him of trying to "wag the dog" to distract attention from his political problems. Some guys just can't win.)
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[2004.05.07 - 07:55 P.M.] Is That What We Are?
Philip Kennicott has an amazingly powerful article in the Washington Post on the horrors of Abu Graib:
Among the corrosive lies a nation at war tells itself is that the glory -- the lofty goals announced beforehand, the victories, the liberation of the oppressed -- belongs to the country as a whole; but the failure -- the accidents, the uncounted civilian dead, the crimes and atrocities -- is always exceptional. Noble goals flow naturally from a noble people; the occasional act of barbarity is always the work of individuals, unaccountable, confusing and indigestible to the national conscience.
This kind of thinking was widely in evidence among military and political leaders after the emergence of pictures documenting American abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. These photographs do not capture the soul of America, they argued. They are aberrant.
This belief, that the photographs are distortions, despite their authenticity, is indistinguishable from propaganda. Tyrants censor; democracies self-censor. Tyrants concoct propaganda in ministries of information; democracies produce it through habits of thought so ingrained that a basic lie of war -- only the good is our doing -- becomes self-propagating.
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[T]hese photos are us. Yes, they are the acts of individuals (though the scandal widens, as scandals almost inevitably do, and the military's own internal report calls the abuse "systemic"). But armies are made of individuals. Nations are made up of individuals. Great national crimes begin with the acts of misguided individuals; and no matter how many people are held directly accountable for these crimes, we are, collectively, responsible for what these individuals have done. We live in a democracy. Every errant smart bomb, every dead civilian, every sodomized prisoner, is ours.
At some level I take issue with the notion that "we live in a democracy" and hence these crimes belong to all of us. Bush, after all, was never elected. And he has exposed himself, over the last three and a half years, as a deeply anti-democratic individual. The whole world was against this war, but Bush thought he knew better, and he had the power to enforce his will. What were we to do?
But at another level, that's nitpicking. Rush Limbaugh dismissed the Abu Graib atrocities as no worse than a fraternity prank, and I have no doubt that scores of millions of Americans agree with him. Worse, the wound of 9-11, it seems to me, has metastacized into a cancer on the national psyche which leads us to believe anything we do, anywhere in the world, to anyone we perceive as a danger, is justified.
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[2004.05.03 - 09:30 P.M.] Unexceptional
Last spring and summer, as hopes that our forces might uncover Saddam's super-secret WMD stash faded and the piles of evidence linking the Iraqi regime to al Quaeda continued to not exist, war supporters of all stripes began retroactively linking their position to the need for humanitarian intervention to stop the atrocities Saddam had committed against his people. If we accomplished nothing else, came the refrain from this untapped vein of potential Amnesty International members, we shut down the torture chambers and ended the barbarism that was the hallmark of this evil regime. Given that particular line of reasoning, the slowly unfolding story of the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of coalition forces and "private contractors" might seem rather ironic, were it not for the fact that disgust and revulsion tend to overwhelm one's appreciation for irony.
I am withholding judgement on who is to blame for this and what we should do about it until the facts are all on the table. Already there is some evidence that this was not merely a case of a few bad apples getting out of hand. The suggestion that these "techniques" were countenanced by the Defense Department as a way to "soften up" our captives for questioning is alarming to say the least. This is simply not the way that the self-appointed leader of the free world ought to behave. But then perhaps we still have a thing or two to learn about liberty and justice and all the other big ideas that choke the self-congratulatory rhetoric our leaders cloak their actions in.
One such lesson should already be clear: Regardless of where the inspiration for these atrocities came from, they are an emphatic refutation of George Bush's "Good Versus Evil" worldview. The lesson of Abu Graib is that, as individuals and as nations, we are all more than capable of evil under the right circumstances. Seeing our own forces so quickly transition from toppling a torturer to doling out torture of their own demonstrates that Saddam, Osama, and whatever other bogeymen Bush has lately appointed to the Legion of Doom do not have a monopoly on humanity's baser instincts. The ridiculous notion - grounded in the stupid concept of "American Exceptionalism" - that we are somehow qualitatively different from the rest of the world, that we can rely on our moral certitude to guide us to correct action at all times, needs to be discarded before it can do any more damage.
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[2004.04.24 - 12:20 P.M.] Hug This, Kristof
Ever notice how each of the New York Times' op-ed writers seem to have their own little hobby? Something they keep coming back to, like a toy they just can't put down? Tom Friedman's hobby is offshoring to India - specifically, how great it is and how it's actually a good thing to see Indians doing work that used to be done by highly-paid, highly-skilled American workers. William Safliar's hobby is the secret connection, made known to him during a principals meeting of the Bavarian Illuminati which he attended at Paul Wolfowitz's summer cottage, between Saddam and 9-11. Paul Krugman's hobby is keeping a detailed scorecard showing how everything the Bush administration does is stupid and wrongheaded (I happen to share this hobby).
And then there's Nick Kristof. Ah, yes. Kristof's hobby is scolding liberals for not being sufficiently tolerant of the religious, particularly evangelical Christians.
I find this to be an odd hobby indeed. The whole premise, which Kristof articulates again today in a piece titled "Hug an Evangelical", seems to be that if liberals want to make real progress in this country, we have to make nice with the Jesus People. (Oh - damn! - see, there I go again, typical liberal, demeaning good, honest believers. I sure hope Nick isn't reading this.) After all, Nick assures us, not all of them are gay-bashing, evolution-denying, fetus-obsessed fanatics who want to impose their twisted reading of a two-thousand-year-old book on the entire country by writing it into law. Really. Only some of them are. The rest are just peachy, and if we reach out to them they might be our friends and, just maybe, vote Democratic.
First off, let's get something straight: Anyone, and I mean ANYONE, who thinks Christians are a persecuted group desperately deserving better treatment from their secular countrymen just plain needs to get bent. You're a Christian? Well I'm an atheist, OK? I've got your imaginary buddy's name on my money. He's in my pledge of allegiance. References to his glory spew from the mouths of politicians at all levels of my government damn near daily. Basically, your Boy is in my face 24/7 and I pretty much just have to take it. So if my copping an attitude about religion in general and Chris-tee-ay-nitty in particular is giving you angina, tough fucking luck.
Second, the notion that being intolerant or dismissive of evangelicals (again, this is Kristof's favored group) is somehow analogous to being intolerant of gays or minorities is just retarded on its face. As ridiculous as some of us believe their religion to be, there's no movement afoot to deny them their right to worship as they see fit. OK? You don't see us nonbelievers calling our representatives in Congress and asking them to support a Constitutional amendment banning church services. All that we'd like is to agree to keep religion out of government, and, frankly, by doing so, we're doing you religious types a favor. I agree with Atrios' suggestion in this post, where he says:
It's time for liberalish Christians to tell their slightly more right-leaning brethren that those of us who fight to maintain the separation between Church and State do it to protect freedom of religion - not destroy it. It's time for moderate and liberal Catholics to take a stand against their Church's assault on Democratic (and only Democratic) politicians who deviate from doctrine.
One last thing: I'm not walking around out there telling anyone what they can and cannot believe. Everyone's got to make up their own minds about why we're here and what it's all about. But please, stop asking me to "respect" religious beliefs, because it's not going to happen. To put a Toastian twist on an old bible-thumper saying, "Respect the believer, not the belief." I have friends and family who profess to believe in God. They're good people, and, by and large, I respect them as individuals. I do not and will not, however, respect their belief in fairy tales and the supernatural. They can choose to arbitrarily suspend their critical faculties in this one area of their lives, but I'm not going to lie and tell them I'm cool with it.
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[2004.04.23 - 07:55 P.M.] Marshall's Paradox
Josh Marshall takes the big stage today with an op-ed in the New York Times. The subject? Bush's paradoxical rise in the polls during this horrific stretch of events in Iraq:
If Americans decide that Iraq is a disaster, why do they not see him as the cause of the problem? Why has support for the president bounced back (up four points in one poll) even as approval of his handling of Iraq has fallen (down three points in the same poll)?
The pattern may not hold, and voters tend to react differently to the outbreak of a crisis than to sustained bad news. Still, there is a theory that might explain these apparently contradictory poll results. In wars abroad, Americans don't want their presidents to fail.
In part that's because a failure for the president is a failure for the nation. Indeed, the logic may apply with more force in cases like Iraq, in which the president has cast the nation on what is essentially a war of choice. To admit that the president blew it is to say the same of the public that followed him into the conflict. And like its leaders, the public not only doesn't like admitting it was wrong, but it will go to great lengths to avoid doing so.
To the extent that this phenomenon exists, I am quite certain that I'm immune to it. Simply put, I do not, in any way, shape, or form, identify the Bush Administration with America. Their reign is illegitimate. Their actions are consistently deceptive and often illegal. Personally, I bear no responsibility for this war, and I do not believe the majority of the American people should either. The true partisans -- the My Bush, Right or Wrong crowd -- yes: Iraqi and American blood is on their hands. But not those of us opposed to the war (we truly did do everything we could to stop it) and not those who were too stupid or too trusting to see through the admin's lies. Dammit, in a sane country, Citizen Dipshit should be able to trust his government in matters of war and peace. No. This fiasco is all theirs, and while I lament the loss of life, I would sooner eat broken glass than "rally behind" the bastards who are responsible for it.
[2004.04.21 - 08:00 P.M.] Post Of The Week (04.18-24)
Aaron Kinney at Hornswaggler takes POTW honors with this brutal dissection of Condi's Bush-Worship:
No one is saying those two are having an affair. But I've thought for a long time, and if my links were working I could go back and find a post, that Rice has crush on Bush (that is doomed to be unrequited).
It all started when I read that Rice views Bush with something akin to awe, that she looks up to and admires him in a way that actual heroes -- such as Martin Luther King, Bob Dylan, Chuck Yeager and President David Palmer, for example -- often inspire.
See, if you regard George W. Bush with reverence -- I'm not saying if you support him or voted for him or think the war in Iraq was a good idea -- I'm saying if you regard him with awe, you are fucking loony toons, and I will go through on a case by case basis and prove this to be correct. Line 'em up! And I'll go through one by one and determine the pathology that has led you to this faulty conclusion.
I am always highly skeptical of black Republicans. And it's worse if, like Condi, you're a female black Republican. This is the party that fought the advancement of your rights tooth and nail, a party that espouses policies that negatively affect your fellow blacks at every turn* and you're going to say, "Sign me up"?
I don't fucking think so.
Trust me. Just read the whole thing. Dude has got a flamethrower for a keyboard...
[2004.04.21 - 07:15 P.M.] Fuck You Very Much, Mr. Walton
Interested in learning just how much ass Wal-Mart sucks? Rafe Colburn helpfully points us to this post over at respectful of otters:
The HIV clinic where I work doesn't accept patients who have health insurance. We're 100% funded by the state and federal government, and we're in service for people who are absolutely indigent. People who have no other options - not Medicaid, not Medicare, not anything.
So imagine my surprise when someone came into my office today who has a full-time job. She works 40 hours a week at Wal-Mart. Like many of their employees, she can't afford their health insurance plan. Even if she could, they wouldn't cover her HIV care because it's a pre-existing condition. It isn't even about paying for the drugs, which are expensive - she qualifies for the state AIDS Drug Assistance Program, which picks up all of her prescriptions for her. Wal-Mart won't pay for office visits to an HIV specialist, and they won't pay for the blood tests she needs to monitor her condition.
So you, the federal taxpayer, will be paying for her medical care. Today you also gave her $40 worth of food vouchers, because after she pays her rent (which eats more than half her wages, and she lives in a slum) there's not a lot left over to buy food. I'm sure you're glad to do it, right? You don't want her to die.
And you don't want Walmart's $8 billion profits and 21.6% return on shareholder's equity to drop, the way it probably would if the public weren't picking up the cost of keeping Wal-Mart associates and their children alive. You wouldn't want any members of the Walton family to drop off the list of the richest people in the world. (Imagine if only four of them were in the top ten.)
This is what happens when that mighty engine called Capitalism comes unhitched from that irritating burden called the Public Interest. A total fucking train wreck. But, by all means, avert your eyes, America. Rest easy. Surely the Great God Market will see to a just end for all of us. Right?
[2004.04.19 - 07:45 P.M.] Unimaginable. Not.
Courtesy of Atrios, check out this bombshell revelation in USA Today (emphasis mine):
In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.
So, the administration line about no one being able to envision a 9-11 scenario -- a line we've been hearing non-stop since the moment the towers fell -- turns out to have been pure, unadulterated, certified Grade A bullshit.
What. A. Surprise.
Note to the press: Could we just stop pretending that these pathetic hacks have any credibility left whatsoever? Please? Believe me, it would make your jobs a lot easier from here on out if you started from the assumption that the opposite of whatever the White House says is the truth. It would also lower the blood pressure of millions of your fellow Americans.
[2004.04.15 - 05:45 P.M.] Poll Position
Compare and contrast. Here's President Dumb-as-a-Rock in his "press conference" Tuesday night:
"[A]s to whether or not I make decisions based upon polls, I don't. I just don't make decisions that way."
And here's a paragraph from a piece in today's New York Times on Bush's never-back-down stance at said conference (emphasis mine):
Mr. Bush's advisers said that the president had anticipated the line of inquiry [as to whether he had made any mistakes] at the news conference. One adviser said the White House had examined polling and focus group studies in determining that it would be a mistake for Mr. Bush to appear to yield.
There you go. Just add a pinch of irony, two teaspoons of cynicism, and simmer until done.
Here's a funny thought: Do you think Rove and company actually poll-tested and focus-grouped the whole "I don't make decisions based on polls" routine? I mean, picture it. Bunch of schmoes come in, sit down, and the marketing guy is like "What would be your reaction to a president who said that he didn't make decisions based on polling data? Positive? Negative? Please be honest. Your feedback is valuable. Helps us shape the big guy's public persona."
Idiots.
[2004.04.09 - 04:45 P.M.] Condi-fused? So Am I.
Reading all the post-game analysis of Rice's testimony yesterday, one thing completely knocked my socks off. While discussing the now infamous Presidential Daily Briefing from August 6th, 2001 (you know, the one titled "Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States") Rice stated:
"The PDB does not say the United States is going to be attacked. It says Bin Laden would like to attack the United States."
So here we have Rice drawing a pretty big distinction between an enemy merely having the desire to harm us versus an enemy actually planning to harm us. Let's put aside whether that really is what the PDB said. With any luck, we'll know soon enough. My question is, isn't this the exact opposite of the case they recently tried to make about Saddam? Didn't the Bush administration, in the wake of the Kay Report, try to portray Saddam's mere desire to acquire WMD as a clear threat that required immediate action?
This crew never ceases to amaze me. There is simply no consistency - ever, in any single area of policy - to the underlying rationales they trot out to justify their actions. The policies themselves remain constant. The stated basis for them changes so often it might as well be spit out by a random blurb generator.
[2004.04.05 - 07:50 A.M.] Is Greed Still Good? America's CEO's Think So.
Bob Herbert has a great op-ed today on the question of who's benefiting from increased worker productivity in American corporations. (Spoiler: It's not workers.)
The recent productivity gains have been widely acknowledged. But workers are not being compensated for this. During the past two years, increases in wages and benefits have been very weak, or nonexistent. And despite the growth of jobs in March that had the Bush crowd dancing in the White House halls last Friday, there has been no net increase in formal payroll employment since the end of the recession. We have lost jobs. There are fewer payroll jobs now than there were when the recession ended in November 2001.
So if employers were not hiring workers, and if they were miserly when it came to increases in wages and benefits for existing employees, what happened to all the money from the strong economic growth?
The study is very clear on this point. The bulk of the gains did not go to workers, "but instead were used to boost profits, lower prices, or increase C.E.O. compensation."
This is a radical transformation of the way the bounty of this country has been distributed since World War II. Workers are being treated more and more like patrons in a rigged casino. They can't win.
Corporate profits go up. The stock market goes up. Executive compensation skyrockets. But workers, for the most part, remain on the treadmill.
Now, I've made this very point before: The cost savings corporations accrue by downsizing, outsourcing, offshoring, and squeezing workers isn't "necessary" to keep companies competitive -- the old Perils of the Free Market / Law of The Jungle excuse. What it is necessary for is to keep CEO's and the rest of Corporate America's Top Brass living in the lifestyle to which they've become accustomed. My question is: Are we going to just sit back and take the screwing? Are we going to be sheep, mindlessly repeating to ourselves and the flock "It's the maahhhket. It's the maahhhket." Or are we going to raise our voices to point out the injustice of this peculiar arrangement?
[2004.03.31 - 03:35 P.M.] Dead Americans
Just about on my way out the door, and I dropped by Political Animal to see if Kevin Drum had any interesting updates. He did.
The violence in Fallujah today was truly horrifying. An enraged mob killed four American civilians in the most barbaric way imaginable:
The attack began when insurgents fired assault rifles at two SUVs in a busy commercial area. Then, hundreds of people, young and old, gathered around the burning vehicles and shouted anti-American slogans.
Video footage showed the charred bodies on the streets, having been dragged from the vehicles and beaten with shovels. At least three bodies were seen hanging from a bridge in Fallujah afterwards.
They were then cut down, attached to donkey carts, and dragged a mile and a half through the city, witnesses told The Washington Post.
Weren't these people supposed to greet us with rose petals?
I hope all the 'wingers, war bloggers, chicken hawks, and other idiots who backed this adventure take a nice long look at that picture. This is what your war has brought us. Nice going, you fucking nimrods.
[2004.03.28 - 02:35 P.M.] Richard Clarke: Bad Muthafucka
"Oh, so you wanna declassify my testimonizel, yo? Is that it? Well let's go muthafuckas," Richard Clarke did not quite say on Meet The Press Sunday. He then went on to not add, "Bring it, pussies."
In response to the GOP's (possibly empty) threats to declassify Clarke's testimony before Congress two years ago, a move clearly intended to intimidate our intrepid whistle blower into backing down on his criticism of the Bush administration, Clarke has upped the ante:
"I would welcome it being declassified, but not just a little line here or there," Mr. Clarke said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press." "Let's declassify all six hours of my testimony."
Mr. Clarke added this morning, "And I want more declassified."
Mr. Clarke said the private testimony of the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, before the commission should be declassified. He added that e-mail messages, memos and all other correspondence between Ms. Rice and Mr. Clarke should be included in that.
"The families, the victims families, have no idea what Dr. Rice has said," Mr. Clarke said. "They weren't in those closed hearings where she testified before the 9/11 Commission. They want to know. So let's take her testimony before the 9/11 Commission and make it part of the package of what gets declassified."
Oh my. Yeah. Hmmmmmm. Maybe declassifying stuff isn't a road the Bushies wanted to go down, no? Seeing as they've fought to keep everything from the White House's Summer 2001 daily intel briefings to what brand of toilet paper Bush wipes his ass with a state fucking secret. Yeah, maybe this sudden lurch towards Government in the Sunshine was a slight tactical error. Should make for some very engrossing television though.
This is an incredible development. This administration has used intimidation and character assassination to silence every last one of its critics. DiIulio famously recanted his entire story about the "Mayberry Machiavellis". O'Neill didn't recant, but did confusingly suggest that, despite the shocking revelations he made to Ron Suskind, he didn't understand why anyone would interpret his comments as putting the White House in a negative light. The list of lesser victims cowed into submission by these scumbags is a long one.
But not Richard Clarke. Mister Clarke has come to play. You have to love that. It's like watching one of those action movies where the bullies and bad guys are shitting all over everyone and everything until the hero comes to town...
Falsified evidence. An illegal war. Sweetheart oil services contracts. A nation left vulnerable to attack.
George Bush and Dick Cheney were having the time of their life. Until they fucked with the Wrong Guy.
Now in theaters: Richard Clarke starring in
TOUGH WITNESS
THE TRUTH COMES TO WASHINGTON
[2004.03.28 - 11:45 A.M.] "A Drug War We Can Win"
Just caught the AARP's new ad taking on the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill, and as John Sterling would say, "It is high. It is far. It is gone!"
The ad is the newest update of their "Drug War" series -- a series which, I'm surprised to say, I haven't seen the original installments of. I can't find a link to the actual video right now, but if I run across one I'll post it.
The narrator in the ad begins by acknowleding the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill passed by Republicans as "a start" but then quickly switches to discussing the need to "go further". Specifically, the narrator intones, we need to explore "safe importation of drugs from Canada" as well as securing the "ability to negotiate prices" with drug manufacturers.
From a PR standpoint, there is some brilliant jujitsu going on here. The ad doesn't directly attack the Bush administration or Republicans for selling seniors out to the pharmaceuticals, although this is exactly what they did. Instead, the AARP takes the position of assuming good faith on the part of the bill's backers, thanks them for their efforts, and then advocates taking certain steps to make the bill better. Those steps, of course, include removing the two provisions that Republicans deliberately put into the bill to benefit Big Pharma, but -- nudge, nudge, wink, wink -- we're just going to pretend it was an oversight on their part instead.
Very saavy. I don't know who's doing this ad campaing for these guys, but the Kerry campaign needs to get in touch with them ASAP.
[2004.03.28 - 10:00 A.M.] Facts and Issues, White House Style
If the last week hasn't convinced you that the GOP is driven solely by their quest to maintain political advantage, even at the cost of sacrificing our nation's security, well, nothing will, I guess.
Richard Clarke's appearance on 60 Minutes last Sunday blasted open the wall that seemed to be holding back public debate on 9-11 and the fight against terrorism. Clarke's searing indictment of the Bushies handling of pre-9-11 intelligence -- and their bizarre fixation on Iraq -- sharply focused the attention of the national news media on an area where they have, for almost three years, vacillated between extreme negligence and good-puppy reporting of the White House's talking points. At mid-week, that focus slid effortlessly over to the ongoing testimony before the 9-11 commission, said testimony including appearances by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Clarke himself. Amazingly, the ears of the general public, whose knowledge of the real issues behind the "war on terror" has bordered on the deliberately obtuse, finally pricked up at this slew of media coverage. An incredible 89% of Amercians surveyed had heard about Clarke's charges. That's more Americans than can probably find Iraq or Afghanistan on a map.
This dramatically changed news environment presented all of us with a real opportunity to have an honest discussion regarding terrorism and national security. There is ample evidence that the Bush administration came into office believing that states, and not transnational terrorist groups, posed the gravest threat to U.S. security. Their obsession with Iraq in particular is supported by Clarke's narrative and by the recollections of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, among others. As Josh Marshall points out, Condoleeza Rice herself, in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine that she wrote during Bush's presidential campaign, was focused almost exclusively on dealing with so-called rogue states rather than directly with terrorist organizations:
Not only does [Rice] not mention al Qaida or Osama bin Laden, she scarcely even mentions terrorism in the sense we now generally understand it. Her discussion is about North Korea, Iraq and Iran -- rogue states that might threaten the US with weapons of mass destruction (primarily with the use of missiles) -- and, to a much lesser extent, state-sponsored terrorism from Iran.
..
The central policy recommendation is national missile defense -- a defensive capacity aimed at states. And though there is mention of chemical and biological agents and the need to "expand intelligence capabilities against terrorism of all kinds" even a quick read of the entire section shows clearly that ideologically-based transnational terrorism simply wasn't on her radar as a significant threat to the United States.
The administration's stubborn prosecution of the Iraq war -- a war for which they fabricated a series of tendentious rationales -- demonstrates that, even after 9-11, this basic policy frame was maintained. Now, agree with them or not, this old-school security stance is a legitimate policy position that could have been debated on its merits. Instead of engaging in that debate, however, the Bushies and the GOP Machine opted for the tried-and-true path that has never failed to lead them out of the woods of controversy:
Lie. Lie. Lie. Fabricate. Lie. Smear. Lie some more. Personally attack your adversaries. Lie. Smear. Smear more. Smear in ways that would make Richard Nixon blanche. Lie again. Spin. Lie. Spin while fabricating. Attack with smears and lies. Spin, lie, smear and fabricate simultaneously, all the while chewing gum.
Indeed, GOP Watchers everywhere this week were treated to a performance for the ages. Personally, I thought I was prepared for the worst, but by the time the usually-mild-mannered Bill Frist proffered his scathing and deeply dishonest denunciation of Clarke on the Senate floor Friday, I had been stunned into mute disbelief. (These guys do have a remarkable way of pulling that off.)
What has been particularly incredible to me - more than the attacks themselves, in fact - is the bare-faced frankness with which the administration and their attack dogs have carried them out. They're not even making a token effort to clothe their naked political maneuvering (emphasis mine):
The net effect of the week's debate has, Mr. Bush's advisers argued, been to at best discredit Mr. Clarke and at worst cloud the issue. "I think in the end, he's not going to have any credibility," Charles Black, a Republican consultant with ties to the White House, said of Mr. Clarke. "I think any objective person watching this is going to come away saying this is confusing at best."
..
The White House strategy also involves what officials said would be a continued effort to discredit Mr. Clarke and to confuse the dispute with a battery of accusations and counteraccusations intended to increasingly make this dispute appear to be a partisan fight between Republicans and Democrats.
A continued effort to confuse the dispute. Right. My oh my how our national discourse has been debased.
At my fraternity back in college, we had a saying: "Don't confuse the issues with the facts." It was a useful device for getting your way in an argument when the guy you were debating was beating you over the head with damning evidence of some kind. Unfortunately, what was funny when it came to escaping responsibility for who yakked on the couch or broke a window isn't so funny when it's applied to a discussion of mass-casualty terrorism and how we might avoid it in the future.
[2004.03.27 - 12:22 P.M.] Spring Cleaning
It is absolutely beautiful here in Connecticut today. Sixty six degrees and sunny. Got the windows open to let some much needed fresh air circulate. After the freakishly cold Winter we just endured, this kind of weather almost makes me want to go for a swim. Instead, I've aired up the tires on the bike and I'm heading out for my inaugural ride of the season. Gotta shake the rust off those pedaling muscles.
Speaking of airing things out, E.J. Dionne has a good piece on the 9/11 Commission's work, and how they're letting some fresh air and sunshine expose the Bushies' real record in the War on Terrah:
It is now obvious why the Bush administration fought so hard in 2002 to prevent this commission from being created. Ever since 9/11, the administration has run a dazzlingly successful campaign to keep the nation's conversation about terrorism focused on how tough Bush is on the bad guys -- and, by implication, how weak his political adversaries would be.
The commission is encouraging the country to consider questions the administration has never wanted asked. Why did these attacks happen on its watch? Could the government have done more to prevent them? Were intelligence warnings given short shrift? What was the administration thinking about on Sept. 10, 2001, and in the months before? And, yes, might the president not usefully express some remorse over any of these failures?
..
One great thing about democracies is that they make it very hard for secrets to be kept forever, for claims to go unchallenged indefinitely and for those in power to escape responsibility. The 9/11 commission is democracy's revenge on those who thought that a horrific event in our nation's history could be used for partisan ends, that serious questions about what happened would get pushed aside -- and that no one would ever have to say, I'm sorry.
[2004.03.21 - 08:20 P.M.] Richard Clarke
Here we go again. Sixty Minutes tonight ran an extensive interview with former Bush (and Clinton) terrorism adviser Richard Clarke. In it, Clarke reveals that the Bushies came into the White House with a hard-on for Iraq. He says they repeatedly ignored his attempts to put Al-Quaeda on the front burner as the number one threat to America and our allies. And he says that, after 9-11, Bush and key administration officials pulled out all the stops to construct a rationale which would allow them to attack Saddam Hussein in response, even though they had solid intelligence that he was in no way involved.
...yawn...
Whoops. Sorry. Nodded off at the keyboard there...
"But, Toast," you say, "How can you be bored by this? This is shocking stuff! A Bush insider revealing that everything Bush has done in the "War on Terror" is a misdirected farce? This is huge! Heads are going to roll."
Well, yes, in any other universe, that is surely what would happen. In a just universe, where the population of the United States behaved like rational beings, here's how things would look in the Spring of 2004:
Don Rumsfeld would have been fired.
Paul Wolfowitz would have been fired.
Condoleeza Rice would have been fired.
Dick Cheney would be on trial for high crimes and misdemeanors.
Impeachment proceedings against George Bush would be well underway.
Alas, we don't live in that world, so revelations like those of Richard Clarke -- or Paul O'Neill before him -- don't count for much. It's very nice of CBS to continue to air interviews with the conga line of ex-admin officials bursting with tales of sordid goings-on in the White House. At least it's good entertainment. But if you think anything will be different as a result of this come Monday morning, don't hold your breath. Here's a preview of what will happen tomorrow:
Various officials will deny that anything Clarke said ever happened.
White House press flaks will feign disgust and disappointment at the allegations leveled.
At least one high-ranking member of the administration will say that arguing about the events of two years ago is counter-productive and that we have to look forward and work together to meet the tough challenges facing us in the War on Terror.
Right-wing bloggers will produce thousands of pages of "facts" contradicting Clarke's on-air claims and questioning the man's character.
Right-wing pundits and opinion writers will scoff at Clarke, dismissing him as having an axe to grind and/or as an opportunist trying to push his book.
Bush backers will go right on believing that Dubya's a good guy, doing a good job, and that they're safer with him in charge than some weak-kneed Democrat.
Most Americans, hearing all the sound and fury, will conclude there's nothing to all this "partisan nonsense".
Feel free to use the above as a checklist. I've got a six pack that says all of the above comes to pass before I hit the cafeteria for lunch.
[2004.03.17 - 07:10 P.M.] Post Of The Week (03.14-20)
Josh Marshall easily wins Blog Post of the Week honors with this entry, reprinted here in full:
Again and again I read -- or hear directly from administration supporters -- this excuse that any questioning of the administration's record in foreign affairs, or Iraq, or even on other matters is just a deplorable focusing on the past, a distraction, when the nation faces grave challenges which we need to focus on solving.
This is more than just simple buck-passing. It is a sort of through-the-looking-glass version of how problem-solving and accountability are supposed to work. It also has the perverse benefit of allowing the scope of the administration's failures to become reasons for not discussing those failures -- a sort of self-reinforcing anti-accountability causality loop, with all manner of moral hazards built in.
We've created such a mess that we don't have the time or the luxury to start second-guessing how badly we screwed things up!
I've always been strict about keeping four-letter words off this site. So I apologize for the graphic nature of this analogy. But this is like I come back to my office to find my new employee has taken a crap right on my desk.
Puzzledly and not happy, I say, "What, umm ... what happened here?"
To which he replies, "There you go again, always focusing on the past, how this or that could have been done differently, when what's really important is the future, how we deal with this and other challenges we're going to face."
To which I would reply, "No. The future is exactly what I'm thinking about. And that's why you're fired. Because in the future I can't afford to have anyone working here who craps on my desk, and then when I confront them about it all they can do is dodge responsibility with moronic excuses and try to put the blame on me for asking what the hell is going on."
These guys should be fired too.
And, no, I wouldn't advise the Kerry campaign to base a 30 second ad on this analogy.
[2004.03.10 - 06:30 P.M.] Tom Friedman Makes Shit Up
It's bad enough that Tom Friedman is on the wrong side of the offshoring debate.
It's bad enough that he loads his "arguments" in favor of offshoring with trite platitudes, bizarre non-sequiturs, clumsy examples, and spurious conclusions.
Now, as Tom Tomorrow points out, it appears that he's stooped to making shit up in order to flesh out his rambling odes to India:
On Sunday, Thomas Friedman wrote:
Yamini Narayanan is an Indian-born 35-year-old with a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Oklahoma. After graduation, she worked for a U.S. computer company in Virginia and recently moved back to Bangalore with her husband to be closer to family. When I asked her how she felt about the outsourcing of jobs from her adopted country, America, to her native country, India, she responded with a revealing story:
"I just read about a guy in America who lost his job to India and he made a T-shirt that said, `I lost my job to India and all I got was this [lousy] T-shirt.' And he made all kinds of money." Only in America, she said, shaking her head, would someone figure out how to profit from his own unemployment. And that, she insisted, was the reason America need not fear outsourcing to India: America is so much more innovative a place than any other country.
He goes on to make his usual case: Americans needn't fear globalization, because our innate pluckiness will always overcome any obstacle. I was a little curious about that guy who made all the money off those shirts, though, and after doing a little Googling I found what I thought was a rather glaring flaw in the anecdote: the shirtmaker was neither unemployed nor American.
TT goes on to divulge that the guy who designed the T-Shirt has reaped a whopping $10 in profits. But rest assured folks, this is an example of the irrepressible American Ingenuity that is going to save us all.
Hey, wait a second... My company recently announced they'd be ramping up efforts to offshore coding jobs like my own... I've had my "Offshoring is Un-American" bumper stickers on sale for months now... I've already made net profits in excess of $3.00 on them... Maybe I can get a starring role in Tom Friedman's next column!
Gotta go. Have an important e-mail to write.
At right is a picture that George Bush didn't want you to see. His administration has, in fact, been preventing you from seeing this picture and others like it since the start of the war. Finally, 
Rand McNally was kind enough to send me this updated mideast map for my world atlas. It's a great service they offer when you buy one of their products. Particularly useful these days, since you never know when the Bush administrtation is going to have a flight of neoconservative fancy and redraw the map somewhere.
From day one of John Kerry's campaign, I've found something vaguely unsettling about the man's appearance. Something in his face that made me uneasy, raised the hairs on my neck a bit, filled me with a wary uncertainty. I'd seen his visage somewhere before, but I couldn't place it. The other day, it finally clicked. Take a look at the side-by-side comparison, and just try to tell me that the Senator from Massachusetts wasn't a logo model for that football team from Massachusetts.
