As some of you will recall, I have a friend named John McCrea, who is the front man for the band CAKE. They’re putting out their latest release independently, without the help of a record label. To try to help get the word out, I recorded a conversation with John — and I do stress the word conversation, this isn’t really an interview per se — at the end of June. The original plan was that it would be transcribed and posted to coincide with the CAKE contest I held in mid July. But, gosh, you know, one thing and another, and, well, um.
A while back I spoke to Matt Taibbi by phone. Technical difficulties prevented me from getting to it immediately, but I’ve finally posted it here. I can’t claim it’s timely now, but Taibbi was just as entertaining as you’d expect.
Taibbi’s latest piece for Rolling Stone, “The Great Iraq Swindle,” is here. His new book Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire, is coming out in October.
Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested in June at a Minnesota airport by a plainclothes police officer investigating lewd conduct complaints in a men’s public restroom, according to an arrest report obtained by Roll Call Monday afternoon.
Craig’s arrest occurred just after noon on June 11 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. On Aug. 8, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct in the Hennepin County District Court. He paid more than $500 in fines and fees, and a 10-day jail sentence was stayed. He also was given one year of probation with the court that began on Aug. 8.
A spokesman for Craig described the incident as a “he said/he said misunderstanding,” and said the office would release a fuller statement later Monday afternoon.
MR. RUSSERT: Larry Craig, would you want the last word from the Senate be an acquittal of the president and no censure?
SEN. CRAIG: Well, I don’t know where the Senate’s going to be on that issue of an up or down vote on impeachment, but I will tell you that the Senate certainly can bring about a censure reslution and it’s a slap on the wrist. It’s a, “Bad boy, Bill Clinton. You’re a naughty boy.”
The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy, a naughtyboy.
I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.
So China loans the US government money, which it gives to Iraqi contractors, which they give partially to insurgent groups, which they use to attack Americans:
Iraq’s deadly insurgent groups have financed their war against U.S. troops in part with hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. rebuilding funds that they’ve extorted from Iraqi contractors in Anbar province.
The payments, in return for the insurgents’ allowing supplies to move and construction work to begin, have taken place since the earliest projects in 2003, Iraqi contractors, politicians and interpreters involved with reconstruction efforts said.
So in the end, American taxpayers end up with everything: the death, the crippling injuries, and the foreign debt!
All we need is for the Bush administration to borrow still more money to put down internal US rebellions, and Americans will truly come to understand the exciting third world experience of odious debt.
(Update: be sure to scroll down; judging from the YouTube numbers, a lot of you are overlooking the second video…)
Some of you may remember my old online animated series, back at the beginning of the decade, in those long-ago days before the blogosphere and the Patriot Act and far too many other things. The project never really went anywhere — online animation hadn’t really quite caught on yet, and the Flash format and the pre-dotcom-meltdown business model pretty much excluded any possibility of it going viral, and, well, even if the work had been embeddable, there were no blogs to embed it. But I’ve been going through the old files lately in preparation for a talk I’m giving at the Schulz museum in Santa Rosa at the end of September, and I’ve gotta say, the animators and the voice talent did some pretty good work. And, you know, the writing’s not terrible either. It all holds up a lot better than I expected. So I thought I’d put one up, but you’ve gotta keep in mind that it is six years old, and unavoidably dated in parts (it’s been an action-packed six years, as you may have noticed.). Also, this one’s an extended riff on Plan 9 From Outer Space, so if you’re not an Ed Wood aficionado, it will probably make no sense whatsoever. But for whatever small percentage of you are familiar with the source material — enjoy. Without further ado, available online for the first time in six years (to my knowledge): Plan 9 from Inside the Beltway, starring our good friend Bob Harris a the voice of Sparky …
[I]nstead of demonizing those we disagree with, we should debate them on the merits…Why [Atrios] feels the need to wrap his criticism in childish and tasteless attacks is beyond me. If you don’t agree with me or any other blogger, explain why. Calling me stupid might make you feel good, but it does nothing to advance the debate.
This led to a lengthy back and forth between Cohen and me, in particular regarding the Clinton administration’s policies toward Iraq during the late nineties. Sadly, it consisted of exactly what you’d expect: childish, tasteless name-calling on my part, while Cohen patiently attempted to debate me on the merits.
If you want to read it all, it’s here, here, and here. But all you really need to know about it can be found in this exchange:
1. Cohen wrote: “Saddam never acknowledged that he didn’t publicly have WMD.”
2. Childishly and tastelessly, I pointed out that (a) the Iraqi government passed a law banning WMD in February, 2003; (b) Saddam Hussein stated Iraq no longer had WMD in a February 26, 2003 interview with Dan Rather; and (c) Saddam then said the same thing in Arabic on Iraqi national television.
3. In comments, Cohen understandably responded: “Why you put so much faith in the words and deeds of Saddam Hussein is beyond me.”
Thus in the end, we find ourselves where we began, with the same unanswered questions. Why do bloggers like myself persist in our childish name-calling toward serious, sober foreign policy professionals? And why do we refuse to advance the debate on our faith in Saddam Hussein’s words and deeds?
AND: Remember this problem predates blogs—serious foreign policy professionals have long had to deal with this unseemly behavior by the public. For instance, here’s Madeleine Albright at a “national town hall meeting” on Iraq at Ohio State on February 18, 1998. As you see, she attempted to advance the debate, only to be met with childish, tasteless name-calling:
QUESTIONER: What do you have to say about dictators of countries like Indonesia, who we sell weapons to, yet they are slaughtering people in East Timor? What do you have to say about Israel, who are slaughtering Palestinians, who imposed martial law? What do you have to say about that? Those are our allies. Why do we sell weapons to these countries? Why do we support them? Why do we bomb Iraq when it commits similar problems?
ALBRIGHT: I really am surprised that people feel that it is necessary to defend the rights of Saddam Hussein.
ALSO: Thanks to SteveB for pointing out how Cohen, when confronted elsewhere with childish name-calling, wrote this in another patient attempt to advance the debate:
[Y]ou have as much right to hate America as I do to love it
