Maybe we should arm them with tiger blood

…. NATO is now policing a civil war in which it is almost impossible to tell who is a civilian and who isn't, who is a rebel and who isn't, and which pick-up trucks are Qaddafi's and which ones are the rebels'. For these reasons, arming the rebels is a total crap shoot. On what grounds do the people of the United States have a reason to arm one side in a civil war, when we have no idea who they are? Doesn't the fact that NATO has already warned them not to attack "civilians" tell you something?

I remember Iraq when we spent months not believing there was an insurgency. How could the Iraqi people defend the dictator who oppressed them? It didn't compute. And then we realized things were not quite as simple as Bill Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz had told us - and we are still there ten years and a trillion dollars later.

This is a dumb war, Mr President. And you are supposed to be against those. Remember?

via Sullivan.

C.I.A. on the ground. It's Reagan-esque. It's really, really disappointing.

"Obama Administration Weights Indefinite Detention"

In part, because Ahmed Ghailani was "almost aquitted" (he wasn't). 

"The jury came within one count of acquitting him entirely," says Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "And had that happened that would have put the government in an enormously difficult position because if you hold a trial and somebody is acquitted, it kind of violates our sense of what a trial is to say, well, we're going to hold him anyway."

Hmm, seems like there's something else that violates our sense of what a trial is. 

"Obama snoozed, oil oozed"

This morning on MSNBC's daily train wreck called Morning Joe, everyone was in agreement that the BP spill was turning into "Obama's Katrina," and that the administration needed to have somebody down there taking decisive action, acting "mad as hell," and solving the problem. 

But it's really not clear that the government or BP has any idea what to do. It's not like Katrina, where the government is failing to pull the trigger on the obvious next steps. There is no obvious solution. And I could be wrong, but I suspect that being "mad as hell" isn't going to accomplish a lot by itself. 

That said, it looks like Obama is going to move in on the operation, pushing out BP. And although it will cause him to "own" the spill more than he already does, I guess I'd rather have Steven Chu running things than the liability lawyers over at BP.     

img via 

I didn't think the President was going to sign the healthcare bill until the reconciliation package had passed

In retrospect it makes sense: It totally takes the wind out of Republican sails. But I bet you there were at least a couple of House members caught off guard as well.

What Jason doesn't know about health care reform could fill a blog post

Pop Quiz:

1. True or False? The Senate bill mandates that Americans buy health insurance, but since it does nothing to reign in costs, it amounts to a huge giveaway to the insurance industry.

2. Multiple choice: If the House passes the Senate's bill and they all fix it during Reconcilliation, will they address affordability by...

a) including a Public Option to drive down costs.

b) allowing the government to set levels on costs

c) using taxpayer dollars to provide subsidies to Americans who can't afford the overpriced insurance

d) doing nothing... they will hope it works itself out after the midterms.

3. Short answer: If you picked c or d, how does this not amount to a huge giveaway to the insurance industry?

4. Essay question (optional): How are we not completely fucked on this one?

My favorite part of Obama's speech

... was these grumpy lumpuses:



They just can't stand the fact that Obama will never reveal the Wu-Tang secret.

31 flavors

superpoop

The Chicago way

superpoop.com

Monday funnies

Like I was saying, it might have been the plan.

superpoop.com

Radio gone wrong

Talk radio this morning is all about Obama - Gates - racism blah blah blah, instead of health care. It's almost as if Obama planned it that way.

I'm not sure who is filling in for Laura Ingraham this morning, but he just suggested that now would be a good time to burgle Gates's house. Ahem.

"Judging by the pollution content of the atmosphere, I believe we have arrived at the late twentieth century."

Leonard Nimoy: I’ve met [Obama] twice. The first time was a couple years ago, very early on when he had just announced his candidacy. He was in Los Angeles, speaking at a luncheon we were invited to. There was a very small crowd — minuscule compared to the crowd that he gathered later — at a private home in Los Angeles. And we were standing on the back patio, waiting for him. And he came through the house, saw me and immediately put his hand up in the Vulcan gesture. He said, “They told me you were here.” We had a wonderful brief conversation, and I said, “It would be logical if you would become president.”

| quote via the Times via Ben Smith. title quote via Spock in "The Voyage home." picture via Bad Drawings of Spock. |

Barack'n'rolla

So in his first few weeks as President, Obama has moved boldly to keep many of his campaign promises that he can do via executive order, he's signed S-CHIP, and he's achieved a breathtaking legislative achievement in the stimulus bill that features a bunch of liberal spending (or, as we like to call it on this Blog of Record, "good ideas"), rewards traditional Democratic constituencies, and may even help prevent the worst case economic scenario.

And the public still thinks he's bipartisan as heck.

I'd say he's doing quite well. And I'd reiterate what I've said previously: Barack is playing a long game with Republicans, and they are getting rolled. Those of us who have been trained by the last 16 years to analyze events in frames like "who won today's news cycle" are likely to mistake what he's doing.

UPDATE: Matt Cooper agrees: "I don't underestimate what lies ahead but I'm pretty amazed by how despairing the tone on the left has been in the wake of what was a very significant passage of legislation. "

img via

Tom Daschle is not going to eat your children

For the sake of argument, let's imagine that Hyper-Evolved Giant Octopi (HEGOs) emerge from the ocean to live amongst us. And one opens an auto-repair shop down the street.

Now, you might not feel comfortable taking your car to that shop, because you just don't know that much about HEGOs. You can't really prove that an octopus wouldn't do a great job, but you wonder...

Will they understand how important this car is to you? Will they share your priorities about what needs fixing? Will their different perception of the world lead them to focus on emissions while perhaps causing them to miss the fact that your brakes are about to go?

That's pretty much how I feel about Tom Daschle. I can't really prove that he wouldn't do a great job fixing our health-care system, but he's divorced enough from what I consider ordinary life that I wonder... is he going to really be focusing on what matters?

This is completely unfair, I know. But I'm also with Lex Dexter: We've got bigger fish to fry, and I'm glad Obama didn't spend a bunch of political capital trying to keep that nomination alive.

Just run-of-the-mill rendition

Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator missile strikes -- for taking suspected terrorists off the street. | LAT |

Frankly, I'm not thrilled about this. But Obama's other executive orders seem to indicate that even these renditioned folks will:

a) Not be tortured

b) Not disappear... their whereabouts will be reported to the Red Cross.

c) Given due process.

So, while other countries might rightly consider rendition of their citizens an act of war, at least they will know when that act of war has occurred, and to whom.

Discuss.

UPDATE: Is it funny or disturbing that so many liberals are rushing to defend "ordinary rendition," in which we merely send our agents into a another country to illegally detain, interrogate, and ultimately imprison individuals because--drumroll please--we are at war.. at war against TERROR?

Discuss.

UPDATE 2: Hillzoy's Q&A doesn't really clear things up. I don't believe Obama needs to sign anything to authorize our continued extradition of criminals. This is something else.

It's cheap to just post a link to the Onion

... but this 'graph in particular made me fall over laughing:

A holdover from the Bush administration, Gates told reporters he may have gotten off on the wrong foot with the new president, citing an occasion when Obama asked him what he knew about 1984's Secret Wars, a 12-issue limited Marvel release. Gates then handed a visibly confused Obama 1,400 classified pages on covert CIA operations in El Salvador.

Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To 'Savage Sword Of Conan' #24

thanks to Maray for the link.

To split or not to split, faithfully

Language pedants hew to an oral tradition of shibboleths that have no basis in logic or style, that have been defied by great writers for centuries, and that have been disavowed by every thoughtful usage manual. Nonetheless, they refuse to go away, perpetuated by the Gotcha! Gang and meekly obeyed by insecure writers.

Among these fetishes is the prohibition against “split verbs,” in which an adverb comes between an infinitive marker like “to,” or an auxiliary like “will,” and the main verb of the sentence. According to this superstition, Captain Kirk made a grammatical error when he declared that the five-year mission of the starship Enterprise was “to boldly go where no man has gone before”; it should have been “to go boldly.” Likewise, Dolly Parton should not have declared that “I will always love you” but “I always will love you” or “I will love you always.”

Any speaker who has not been brainwashed by the split-verb myth can sense that these corrections go against the rhythm and logic of English phrasing. The myth originated centuries ago in a thick-witted analogy to Latin, in which it is impossible to split an infinitive because it consists of a single word, like dicere, “to say.” But in English, infinitives like “to go” and future-tense forms like “will go” are two words, not one, and there is not the slightest reason to interdict adverbs from the position between them.

Oaf of Office

Ahem

Entered into the Blog of Record without further comment... for now.

Another sign of the pro-Obama times: An MTV exec says they're changing their reality shows: "Our shows are going to focus less on loud and silly hooks and more on young people proving themselves. These are themes that are consistent with the Obama generation." | via ben smith |

What it all means, in an incredibly narrow sense

Conservative pundits and bloggers may be gnashing their teeth and rending their clothes this morning, but somewhere the big boys--Murdoch, Hannity, and El Rushbo--are smiling and lighting their Cuban cigars. For they know from experience that their business model makes a lot more sense when it's not their guys in the White House.

For a similar reason, I wonder how our beloved progressive blogs will fare. Just as conservative talk radio came into its own during the Clinton years, the netroots was born in the fire of Cheneyism.

If Obama is at all successful as president, I imagine the demographic for Kos, TPM, etc, is bound to condense to a harder-core liberal audience. Many of the blogs may hang up their keyboards, either because their readership is down or just because they no longer have the passion. And, of course, Andrew Sullivan will pivot again, and begin decrying liberal politics almost immediately.

What I'd hate to see, but what I predict, is the zombification of a large portion of the medium. They will shamble onward under their own weight, no longer serving anything but their own survival.

But do not worry about this humble Blog of Record, dear reader. We've been planning for this transition for some time, and I am happy to announce that, during the first Obama administration, The Bellman will be your first, best source for pictures of, and discussion about, alternate hairstyles.

How will Liz Lemon vote?

Way back in Spring of 2007, she confessed that:

"I'll probably tell all my friends I'm voting for Obama and then vote for McCain."

This was pretty funny, even though at the time the world was predicting that the race would be between Hillary and Giuliani.

Now, this has come back to haunt me.

Yes we can

Where Are The Dogs Humping.com