One wonders.

"Syria's human rights record is poor, the report said. Syrians do not have a right to change their government and 'continuing serious abuses included the use of torture in detention, which at times resulted in death,' unfair trials and arbitrary arrests." Is how the Boston Globe quotes the recent State Department report on human rights abuses.

Now, we have a Secretary of State that refuses to repudiate torture, an Attorney General who sanctions torture, a CIA plane that flies prisoners to countries, including Syria, so they can be tortured for us, and we engage in a bit of torture ourselves. If the Prez declairs you an "enemy combatant" you're history -- forget lawyers, habeas corpus, the right to a fair trial, or any of that esoteric rights stuff.

Why would anyone in the world take the United States seriously? We don't have policies, we have parodies of policies.

Condi plays dress up

"Rice's coat and boots speak of sex and power -- such a volatile combination, and one that in political circles rarely leads to anything but scandal" gushed the WaPo reporter.

Of course the neither the airhead who was writing for style section of the Post, nor her editor, could have been thinking of Abu Ghraib, or the now famous Gonzales torture memo, or the ongoing feeble investigations of a varitety of abuses.

This is, after all, the incompetent National Security Advisor, who not only failed to act on the warnings about Al Quaida but did tell us that Iraq had WMD's, walking out in fashionable jackboots at a military base in Germany.

A real Nigerian scam

We've all gotten one of those emails from someone claiming to be a Nigerian national with a ton of money to dispose of, well now there's a real Nigerian scam.

Olatunji Oluwatosin, a Nigerian national, is at least one of the guys behind the identity theft scam that was run on ChoicePoint. Initial reports were that ChoicePoint's computers had been hacked but in reality they were scammed. It was a hack alright but a social hack. ChoicePoint intitially came off as a victim, now they come off as a bunch of chumps.

Some of us may have had our personal information compromised but ChoicePoint ain't saying, except to California and D.C. folks. Doesn't inspire confidence.

Perhaps what we need is legislation requiring ChoicePoint and others to make an annual disclosure of the information they hold on us and who's accessed that information over the past year. That could be interesting. Will it happen with a RePub congress, so interested in privacy rights? Sorry, dumb question.

If you buy a flute...

There's an old saying among photographers -- if you buy a flute, you own a flute, but if you buy a camera you're a photographer.

The same rule seems to apply to journalists. Witness Jeff/Jim -- no apparent training or past practice but he gets equal footing with those genuinely ink-stained types that work for marginal publications like the Washington Post. By Jeff/Jim journalism standards, I am a journalist, since I write for a (very) small circulation quarterly magazine. But we do actually have subscribers, print stuff on real paper, follow a more or less regular publication schedule, and have articles that contain original writing.

Then again, there's the mail order photography school that used to (maybe still does) publish a newsletter which any of its students could submit contributions to. That got you "press credentials" -- an official looking card that you could use to demonstrate that you were a working press photographer.

Journalism isn't alone in the cheapening of what constitutes credentials. This morning Matt Lauer was going to interview a six year old "historian." The kid is an historian, you see, because he's memorized a lot of facts about presidents. Setting aside the obvious question if interviewing a six year old while being paid millions of dollars makes you a journalist, one needs to remind Matt that there's a difference between history and chronicle, so that memorizing facts about presidents doesn't make you an historian. Nor does simply writing about the past. Doing history requires careful study, an ability to manage and interpret information, and a solid grasp of logic.

Later this week 60 Minutes will present us with a four year old "artist" who's splashes and drips have apparently been selling quite well, thank you. Why this constitutes news is beyond me but it does illustrate another old saw about a sucker being born every minute.

Pretenders have always been with us and I doubt we will get rid of them but we can at least not promote them. One would also hope that legitimate, practiced, journalists, historians and artists would stand up and contribute to the public discourse in ways that demonstrate a depth of knowledge and professionalism. This isn't new -- Emerson complained about "scribbling women" writing potboilers and asked why the "scholars" weren't playing a larger role in everyday life. (This wasn't altruism on Ralph Waldo's part -- the scribblers were competing with him for space in publications -- but his larger point holds true.)

We have a few -- Paul Krugman leads the list -- folks with real credentials and knowledge who are willing to put themselves out there with reasoned discourse. Unfortunately they're outnumbered by the Jim/Jeffs, Anne Coulters, and the scores of "senior fellows" with BA degrees that infest right wing think tanks who get helped along by the "MSM" in their pursuit of what passes for news when they're not interviewing six year olds.

Gone

Sic transit gloria, Hunter.

Rummy comes clean.

In a truely "W" moment, Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee: "I am not going to give you a number for it because it's not my business to do intelligent work."

Finally, an accurate statement out of the guy. Or maybe he, like Condi, is starting to imitate the boss.

Ah, the private sector....

Having worked on the public sector/non-profit side of the world for so long, I've gotten used to folks pontificating about the power, glory, logic, efficency, and overall superiority of the private side of things. Here's a prime example, one Carly Fiorina.

Ms. F, for those living in caves, managed to get fired from HP this past week ostensibly because the Board of Directors disagreed with the way she was managing the company. They sent her packing, alright:
-- $14 million in severance pay
-- $7.38 million performance bonus (even tho' they canned her for non-performance)
-- $21.1 million in other compensation (stock options and the like)
-- $200,000 year pension (the cads) and
-- $50,000 for legal, financial and career counseling (really) so she can figure out what to do with the $42 million that's about to fall into her lap for getting fired.

They let her keep her computer, health insurance, "personal security," a secretary and technical assistance, at least for a time. The board did take back her parking space and pulled her profile from the company website. Them private sector types play rough.

What's next? Maybe the "The Apprentice" will inject a little reality into the show by adopting the harsh methods of the HP board: "you're fired, so take your $42 mill and get your sorry ass out of here."

Condidolences.

Cribbed this from Kos: "National Security Advisor and now Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice indeed lied, repeatedly, when she claimed to the media and to Congress that the Administration didn't have advance warning of al-Qaeda threats -- that's roundly been proven by multiple reports and sources, at this point. Either Rice knew full well about the al-Qaeda threats or she didn't -- as National Security Advisor it's unclear which of those two options makes her look more stunningly incompetent -- but Al-Qaeda was such a well-known threat that the FAA referred to the terrorist group in fifty-two separate daily intel reports from April, 2001 to the time the attacks finally took place."

Whaddaya mean look "stunningly incompetent?" There was never any doubt that she's incomptent, so I guess we're debating how much so.

Media seeks to end secrecy....

The Associated Press has filed suit to lift the veil of secrecy off...the Michael Jackson case.

This illustrates perfectly well what's wrong with the Monica Machine that purports to be the free press.

Lies, damn lies and beyond.

After the last few days, can there be any doubt in anyone's mind that Commandate El Busho and his minions are the masters of misinformation (aka "lies")? After some dissembling by John Snow, the true cost of the Medicaid drug benefit was revealed: $720 billion vs the $400 billion figure they used to sell the program. No doubt about it, from drilling in ANWR to achieve energy independence to those WMD's in Iraq, these folks bullshit with the best of them.

Not content to simply lie to the mainstream press, most of whom are dumb enought to act as if the Repubs are truthful, the Bushies have manufactured fake news reports, paid right wing talkmeisters, and dutifully call on the reporter from the Talon news agency, whatever that is, to disrupt any difficult questions that might arise at press conferences.

The mainstream press is grumbling about Talon and the paid political ads disguised as talk radio but will they do an expose on the Bush propaganda machine? I doubt it.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Yet another...but not a General.

From the NY Daily News story about "Camp Crazy":

"Deanna Allen, a 19-year-old prison guard with the 105th MP Battalion, smiled and lifted her T-shirt. Photos show a man standing close to her and leering at her breasts while another G.I. snaps pictures.

"From what I understand they dared her to do it," said Allen's grandmother, Luci Tomlin, in Black Mountain, N.C. "It was a loose moment. She is a strong-headed young lady. Sometimes she can be a little irrational."

Sorry Ms. Tomlin, but your grandaughter is an asshole. There is no other explanation for her behavior, given that she's supposed to be a highly trained member of the United States Armed Forces in Iraq to defend us against unspeakable tyranny and to promote democracy among the Iraquis. Showing your tits to other people while mud wrestling is not something one is trained to do as a prison guard.

Even on a dare. In the cultural sensitivity department, those people she's supposed to be liberating would find that behavior pretty offensive. But hey, she's a real 'merican from down south, right?

Who knows, on a dare she might be photographed with naked prisoners stacked in a pile simulating sex with each other or holding one by a leash. It's been known to happen.

Lt. Gen. James Mattis

Folks have their knickers in a twist over Lt. Gen. James Mattis' remarks that its fun to shoot some people and that he loves to brawl. What do they think the Marine Corps trains troops to do, hand out parking tickets?

People go into the military for lots of reasons. Some of them go into the military because it's a trip to be trained, permitted, encouraged, to go out and wreak havoc. Blow stuff up, kill a few of whoever is currently defined as the bad guys. Some of that group stay, get promoted, maybe even become generals. They're very competent when it comes to destruction. Assholes, but competent.

Genuine (but false) thought

Writes Brad DeLong: "some in the Bush administration appear to have genuinely (but falsely) thought to be on the verge of developing nuclear weapons."

This statement may be true of the White House kitchen staff but I find it hard to believe that anyone in a position of authority (including St. Colin) reasonably believed that Saddam had WMD's and the ability to deploy them against this country or anyone else for that matter. There's ample evidence of that coupled with the long standing neo-con desire to take out Iraq as a threat to Israel and give us a compliant central location in the Middle East.

DeLong's blog is excellent and his skill as an economist is impressive but like a lot of folks he underestimates the ability of the Bushies to manufacture a crisis. The Mayberry Machiavellis are in reality a bunch of very clever people who know how to use emotions and the media to advance their causes.

It's difficult and expensive to collect information and Joe Average Citizen is at a disadvantage, given the demands of everyday life and crappy reporting that passes for news in most of the media, when it comes to evaluating the spin that emerges from every administration. This administration has exploited the gap between need to know and available information to the max. Lying has become an art form.