Upon further reflection (and, one imagines, an uncomfortable conversation or two), Tony Snow has decided that the President doesn't really think using blastocyst-Americans for stem-cell research is murder after all:



Salon asks the obvious question:



Meanwhile, Condi goes to Beirut and offers soothing noises:



Yet, we aren't so concerned about the plight of the Lebanese people as to interfere with pressing business:



After all, we can't let a little human suffering (of fully-gestated brown people, rather than lily-white "snowflake" embryos) get in the way of the President's "leadership moment" (hat tip to Billmon for this gem):



The utter incoherence of the administration's Middle East policy is laid bare in the above quote. So, Bush's post-9/11 plan is to "build Sunni Arab opposition to Shia terrorism"? First off, it's rather odd that an attack by al Qaeda, a Sunni terror group, would inspire Bush to recruit Sunnis to go after "Shia terrorism." Further, toppling Saddam's secular Sunni regime and replacing it with an Iran-friendly Shia government is a curious approach to furthering this plan.

But beyond all the quibbling about how we've put Iran in the catbird seat by winning the Iran-Iraq war for them, one has to wonder how encouraging and arming Israel in their quest to punish Lebanon as much as humanly possible for the sins of Hezbollah is supposed to convince Sunni Arabs (such as, say, the democratically elected Hamas government) that they need to help us fight Shia terrorism.

Do they have mulligans in darts?

UPDATE: Here's the inevitable result of Bush's folly.

In our extremely irregular series of pictorial warnings on the dangers of feline mind-altering substances, we bring you these disturbing images. Remember, kitties, if you do catnip you could end up like this:

In today's Washington Post, we learn about the President's view of Israel reducing Beirut to rubble:



Earlier in the week, Tony Snow expounded on Bush's first-ever veto, rejecting federal funding for stem-cell research:



So:

Slaughtering innocent civilians as a "let's see what happens" foreign policy exercise = "consequences that will have to be managed".

Using a glob of cells -- that was already slated to be tossed in the dumpster after fertility treatments -- for potentially revolutionary research that could rid millions of debilitating and deadly illness = "murder".

Which only leaves us wondering where to file this:



I've been told that Bush was re-elected because of his "moral values." If that's the case, the American people are a bunch of sickos.

Jeez, look at this. I leave for a week, try to have a nice vacation, and you guys go and start World War III (or IV or V, if you believe the wingnut talking heads). How am I supposed to enjoy decadent scenes like the one below when Israel and Hezbollah are trading atrocities? How inconsiderate.

Narcissism aside... well, not so fast. Let's stay with the narcissism for a second. Surveying the carnage from his bunker at the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol intones:



Somewhere in a cave in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden is chuckling as his plan comes to fruition. It's an insane plan, to be sure -- the sort of combination of hubris and recklessness that lesser minds admire as heroism. Osama understood during the heady post-Oslo days that a moderate US Middle East policy (one that did something other than mindlessly enable Israel) would defang his rhetoric and influence. 9/11 had a single, simple purpose -- to poke the biggest stick possible into the eye of the United States, then sit back and watch as moderation was thrown out the window of the Humvee.

What actually happened, of course, was beyond Osama's expectations. The Bush White House quickly discovered that their self-interest intersected with Osama's in maintaining a radical position toward the Middle East. Bush mirrored Osama by pursuing an absolutist policy that eschewed statesmanship in favor of scorched earth in Iraq. By invading Iraq, we went well beyond simply enabling Israel -- we became Israel, with Iraq playing the role of Palestine. For a few years, the US and Israel pursued mirror-image versions of reality, in which both attempted to pawn security issues off on a "sovereign" government while nervously eyeing "democratic" elections that promised to produce more problems than solutions.

Of course, we were told before the invasion that overthrowing Saddam would actually stabilize the Middle East. When asked about this, Condi announced that only positive effects could be attributed to the Iraq invasion:



If good stuff happens, we can credit invading Iraq. If bad stuff happens, blaming the invasion of Iraq is "grotesque." Such is the kindergarten thinking offered with a straight face by the astonishingly out-of-her-depth Secretary of State.

The end result of this funhouse is the unrestrained saber-rattling of Kristol and his ilk. Osama wanted to ensure the continued conflation of Israel and the US, and Kristol eagerly puts us exactly where Osama wanted us to go.

I heartily recommend visiting the Whiskey Bar for some excellent analysis of the rapidly (d)evolving situation.

I'm on a fact-finding mission for the Fiddle this week, so posting will be light. Here's my current view:



I have golf with Tom DeLay tomorrow. It's hard work, but I love my readers.

The only time you'll see all four of them this close together is at the thrice-weekly Dispersal Of The Treats. It is much-anticipated.

There was a lot of discussion after the 2004 election about the "moral values" voter, which the exit polls indicated made up a large portion of the vote for Bush. Though at the time I assumed that this was just code for "homophobes drawn out to vote by the presence of gay marriage bans on the ballot," it seems that I was yet again thinking on far too small a scale.

We already knew that radical-right Christians hated gays (though the more disingenuous among them professed to "love the sinner and hate the sin," which I'm sure was great comfort to gays as they watched their rights being stripped away), but I wasn't aware of the deep reserves of enmity they held for the Jews (considering most of them seem to be staunchly pro-Israel). Unless Sussex County, Delaware is an enormous statistical anomaly, these people are even scarier than I thought.

A Jewish family there recently had an unpleasant experience at their daughter's high school graduation:



After the sort of bureaucratic runaround that would cause most people to give up, the persistent Dobrich finally got her complaints in front of the school board.



If just being Jewish causes these good citizens to bring out the pitchforks, one shudders to think what they'd do faced with a Muslim, Buddhist or (gasp) an atheist.

Much of the harassment of the Dobriches was enabled by the publishing of their home address and phone number by a right-wing anti-ACLU group that advertises widely on right-wing blogs:



I realize it's difficult to fathom how the right threatens reporters and photographers for the New York Times with execution for treason for talking about the publicly-known vacation homes of the most well-protected men on the planet (with the permission of those men and their protectors), but eagerly points unhinged religious crusaders (who advocate dismemberment for non-believers) at defenseless ordinary citizens. (I suspect they would just like to see those who don't agree with them die in one way or another.)

These people have nothing to do with the ideals of Christ and even less to do with the ideals of America. They are repugnant and their hate is not worthy of a national platform, let alone worthy of being eagerly courted by Karl Rove and the GOP.

Here's Senator Ted "Bridge to Nowhere" Stevens (not pictured above) explaining how the internet works on the floor of the Senate:



Rest assured that legislation designed to funnel huge amounts of money (perhaps using "tubes") into the accounts of telcos is being considered by those well-acquainted with the technical issues involved.

Seriously, anyone reading this blog probably knows more about how the internet works than Ted Stevens does. He's like any number of executives I've known who can only (mis)understand the internet in terms of their personal e-mail (or, more accurately, the e-mail their secretaries receive and print out for them). Of course, they never let their lack of knowledge get in the way of making decisions.

So, everyone, let's all get together and let the telcos and cable companies decide what parts of the internet we should be able to access, so that semi-sentient senators can get their "internets" in a timely manner. Lobbyists everywhere thank you.

One of the observations people made while gazing numbly at their televisions on 9/11 that has entered the collective consciousness was that "it looks like a movie."

And while there's truth there -- the specter of fireballs bursting from the instantly recognizable twin towers almost looked more like CGI than real flames burning real people to death -- what that statement also indicated was that for most Americans, thankfully, such scenes of violence were only to be found at the multiplex, not real life. The only context they had for understanding such things were those offered by familiar Hollywood narratives and archetypes.

Which perhaps explains why so many people persist in trying to apply the Hollywood template to the events following 9/11 continuing until today. For example, we have various "mainstream media"-hating right-wing types (who clearly are on their way to becoming the new mainstream media) taking the lead offered by the White House in attacking the New York Times' reporting on the SWIFT program to broadly monitor financial transactions in an attempt to root out terror activity:



We'll set aside for a moment the question of whether exposing violations of civil liberties committed in the name of safety is a valid function of a free press. Unsurprsingly, I think it is, and complaining about reporting on SWIFT is akin to complaining about CSI helping murderers better avoid forensic detection:



What we're really dealing with here, I believe, is indignation over the image of the big secret government safety net being drug into the light by the hated "liberal" Times. For where were the threats to prosecute the conservative Wall Street Journal, which also reported on SWIFT? Nowhere. That didn't fit the narrative of the freedom-hating liberal media frustrating the dangerous work of noble spies and operatives like the ones on 24. (Why, they're probably the ones who got the bad guy in Dirty Harry off on a technicality!)

And once that narrative takes hold, it becomes more compelling than reality. (Why watch the news when you can learn about terrorism from Jack Bauer and James Bond?) Having barely finished chewing on the SWIFT story like a rawhide bone, the right's attack poodles sunk their teeth into fresh treason... in the NYT travel section.

This frothy piece on the playground of the Washington power elite drove 24-addled observers like David Horowitz to red-faced raving:



In Horowitz's TV-land reality, the New York Times travel section is part of a conspiracy with Al Gore and Jimmy Carter to keep the United States from successfully invading Iraq while endangering the most well-protected men on the planet by revealing the publicly-known location of their vacation homes. One can picture a bearded, robe-wearing terror cell eagerly cracking open the Sunday Times, having been unable to locate the infidel Rumsfeld's location through the mere use of Google.

(As is usually the case in such right-wing rage-fests, the actual question of whether Cheney and Rumsfeld themselves had any issue with the article was ignored. They didn't, and Rumsfeld approved of the photo of his house.)

But in the dramatic battle between the enemies of freedom and photogenic counter-terror agents, you never know where the next attack might come from. Doing his best interpretation of the grizzled head of MI-5 grinding his teeth with rage at the latest interference from the ignorant bureaucratic nitwits, leading pro-torture theorist John Yoo reacts to the Supreme Court:



Of course, fighting criminals is a lot less fun than fighting terrorists because of all those pesky Miranda laws and due process and other buzzkill regulations (not like the "creative thinking" Yoo likes, perhaps a little too much). Faced with not being able to continue living out the fantasy of torturing the location of the deadly virus bomb hidden in downtown L.A. out of a swarthy terrorist mere seconds before detonation (then running in and snipping the correct wire as the clock blinks 00:01), Yoo can only stamp his feet and complain... to the New York Times.

What to do? Why, we need a conference! A conference sponsored by the Heritage Foundation! We could get the creators and writers (and, why not, the stars!) of 24 to tell us how to fight terror and the liberal media! We'll get Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff to attend and learn along with us! And (oh boy!) we'll get Rush Limbaugh to be the moderator! Damn, won't that be great?

And, dear readers, you probably already know that I'm not making any of that up.

EDIT/UPDATE: Turns out that after the conference, Limbaugh and the producers of 24 (and two other men) headed to the Dominican Republic on Limbaugh's network's private jet. As everyone in the world now knows, Limbuagh returned with 29 100mg Viagra tablets. How many he left with is an interesting question...