THIS MODERN WORLD

I haven’t been following this terribly closely, but there’s a point I haven’t seen anyone make: Pajamas Open Not The MSM Whatever They Call Themselves Media are basically the Bush administration writ small. Many of them are neocons in the original sense of the coinage, Yoostabees who’ve gone over utterly to the dark side. And they’ve spent a lot of time discussing their fantasies about the world with one another, until they’ve lost track of the difference between fantasy and reality–and now they’re trying to impose their fantasy life on the real world. And yet, they don’t seem to have any real plan for what happens next.

The upside is, nobody dies for this fuckup. Some not very bright investors lose some money, and a couple of liberals who’ve been bought off to play Alan Colmes end up looking like sellouts–but nobody dies.

A better writer than I could carry this metaphor out more succesfully, but those of you who follow these things probably get the idea.

(Atrios has some good links related to this, but I’m on the road tonight and too lazy to cut and paste, so you’ll have to do the heavy lifting yourself.)

(Also, a note to the Token Libs in this misbegotten enterprise–I don’t really care what kind of money they’re offering you to provide them with Colmes-ish “bipartisan” cover, this is a bad idea. I understand we’ve all got bills, and believe me, I’m no purist–but some lucre is just too filthy to be worth accepting. You’re not there because these people want a range of opinion–just look at their frigging blogroll. You’re there to provide cover for truly deplorable ideas. However you may justify this, you’ve crossed a line that you really should not have crossed. And I say this as someone who’s turned down more opportunities than a lot of people are ever offered, because in the long run, I’d prefer to retain at least a controlling interest in my own soul.)

Over at Crooks & Liars, where I’m guest posting for a couple of days, I posted this link to the Democratic party’s media contact page :

All you have to do is enter a zip code and it will bring up a form for you to contact multiple local and national media outlets at the same time. This is an especially useful resource if you wanted to, let’s say, contact the Arizona Daily Star and tell them that John McCain is a fraud whose “toughness” only comes out when it’s politically safe to do so or The Greenville News to tell the people of South Carolina that their Senator wants to destroy some of our most basic rights as Americans. With the public finally starting to wake up to the moral cowardice of the Republican majority, I can think of quite a few places that could use a friendly reminder that their representatives are part of the problem. So take advantage of the Democratic media contact page, folks. It’s a damn good resource that people don’t use nearly as often as they should.

The blogosphere is great at feeding and directing outrage, but not necessarily as good at actually channeling that outrage into something constructive. Writing a letter to the editor is the easiest thing in the world to do, and this just makes it easier. While I always encourage people to contact their representatives, going over their heads and taking your message to their constituents can help change of the minds of the only people Congressmen fear : voters who can put them out of a job.

Also, at the risk of turning this into a Corner-ite blogger conversation, let me just say that Conservative Jones, boy detective was one of the “smartest”, “edgiest”, and funniest TMW strips I’ve ever read. I’ve been meaning to email Tom privately to tell him how much I like it, but a strip that still makes me laugh out loud a month later deserves some public props.

Hunter, over at Kos, writes about something that bothered me as well:

Today, Jonah Goldberg made his editorial page debut in the Los Angeles Times:

STOP ME IF YOU’VE heard this already. But there are people out there — honest, decent, sincere people and deranged moonbats, too — who think that George W. Bush lied about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. No, seriously, it’s true.

OK, let’s stop right there. You might think this would be a good time to fisk the column in entirety; quite frankly, though, it is a rather pedestrian Jonah Goldberg submission. Goldberg is truly the George W. Bush of punditry — installed in his chosen field through the graces of his mother, noted right-wing voice Lucianne Goldberg, from whom Jonah inherited much of his rather inexplicable world viewpoints, but none of her omnipresent, easy vitriol or difficult-to-parody panache.

I want to talk about something else. Specifically, I want to talk about the words deranged moonbats, and the editorial goals and standards of the Los Angeles Times.

We got precisely into the second sentence of the first piece of Jonah Goldberg’s first column before devolution into talk of “deranged” non-honest, non-decent, non-sincere opponents. From there, we slide into nothing better. We are told, in so many words, that the speeches about mushroom clouds and African uranium never happened; that the State of the Union address was a figment of our imaginations so powerful that it imprinted itself onto the videotapes of the world through our collective, “deranged” wills; and yet at the same time, that Saddam Hussein was a Hitlerian figure who posed such a serious threat to our nation that historians should be “forgiving of deceit”.

In short, Goldberg cannot even keep a consistency of his most basic premise — whether the war was about WMDs and preemption, or whether such talk of WMDs and preemption is “deranged” — even between his own shabbily constructed paragraphs. Talk of the derangement of his opponents is perhaps, then, premature.

We are entering a time when conservatives, after having repeatedly shoved the discourse of the country into a series of ever-deeper ravines via the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Michelle Malkin and an unending stream of similar though lesser clones, are now professing outrage that they are being attacked according to the same crude, boorish standards that they have made part and parcel of their movement. While I, as a blogger, could not possibly care less about their belated protestations of civility, I will admit to the Los Angeles Times right here and now, as a reader, that I expect a level of discourse greater than that low mark in the objective, non-partisan press — even in the editorial section.

There is a difference between the level of debate worthy of Internet blogs, and the level of debate worthy of one of the nation’s largest and most respected newspapers. Chief among those differences would be the relevance of declaring opponents “deranged moonbats”. During the last Democratic National Convention, Ann Coulter managed to get one of her columns axed from USA Today because the majority of her insights consisted of, among other things, paragraphs describing herself and fellow Republicans as “prettier” than the Democratic participants, observations that many of the featured speakers should have been put in cages, and declarations calling the Democrats the “French Party”.

The Los Angeles Times would have done well to follow the example.

The entire post is well worth reading.

In the alternate universe most right wingers inhabit, Bill Clinton “gutted our military.” Here in reality, it’s a somewhat different story:

The military is falling far behind in its effort to recruit and re-enlist soldiers for some of the most vital combat positions in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new government report.

The report, completed by the Government Accountability Office, shows that the Army, National Guard and Marines signed up as few as a third of the Special Forces soldiers, intelligence specialists and translators that they had aimed for over the last year.

Both the Army and the Marines, for instance, fell short of their goals for hiring roadside bomb defusers by about 20 percent in each of the last two years. The Army Reserve, meanwhile, failed to fill about a third of its more than 1,500 intelligence analysts jobs. And in the National Guard, there have been consistent shortages filling positions involving tanks, field artillery and intelligence.

The report found that, in all, the military, which is engaged in the most demanding wartime recruitment effort since the 1970’s, had failed to fully staff 41 percent of its array of combat and noncombat specialties.

Officials with the accountability office, the independent investigative arm of Congress, found that some of the critical shortfalls had been masked by the overfilling of other positions in an effort to reach overall recruiting goals. As a result, the G.A.O. report questioned whether Congress had been given an accurate picture by the Pentagon of the military’s ability to maintain the force it needs for Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The aggregate recruiting numbers are rather meaningless,” said Derek B. Stewart, the G.A.O.’s director of military personnel. “For Congress and this nation to truly understand what’s happening with the all-volunteer force and its ability to recruit and retain highly qualified people, you have to drill down into occupational specialties. And when you do, it’s very revealing.”

* * *
Some military experts also said the gaps would be dangerous only if they continued. Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, said the problems posed by the shortfalls would be eased if the military began to reduce its deployment in Iraq.

“We are taking a gamble here that the Iraq mission can be wound down before the cumulative problems become really serious,” Mr. O’Hanlon said.

* * *

The war, several military experts said, has scared many young people away from dangerous work.

“Prospective recruits, when they think about rewards and sacrifices of military service, realize that some positions are simply a lot more dangerous than others,” said Mr. Hosek, the personnel expert at RAND.

There are nonetheless some bright spots for the military in the G.A.O. analysis. Dr. Chu said there had been growth in the Special Forces ranks, thanks in part to a new bonus of $150,000 for those who qualify. He said bonuses were also part of the reason some jobs were overfilled.

But some military experts doubt that these small triumphs will be enough to keep the ranks – and the right jobs – filled at a time of war.

“I’m not convinced that we can cap the problem,” Mr. O’Hanlon said. “I think there’s a strong possibility the situation could worsen.”

Music edition, via Gilliard:

“Bush Was Right” by The Right Brothers
Lyrics by Frank Highland

Real media/MP3

Freedom in Afghanistan, say goodbye Taliban
Free elections in Iraq, Saddam Hussein locked up
Osama’s staying underground, Al Qaida now is finding out
America won’t turn and run once the fighting has begun
Libya turns over nukes, Lebanese want freedom, too
Syria is forced to leave, don’t you know that all this means

Bush was right!
Bush was right!
Bush was right!

Democracy is on the way, hitting like a tidal wave
All over the middle east, dictators walk with shaky knees
Don’t know what they’re gonna do, their worst nightmare is coming true
They fear the domino effect, they’re all wondering who’s next

Bush was right!
Bush was right!
Bush was right!

Ted Kennedy – wrong!
Cindy Sheehan – wrong!
France – WRONG!
Zell Miller – right!

Economy is on the rise kicking into overdrive
Angry liberals can’t believe it’s cause of W’s policies
Unemployment’s staying down, Democrats are wondering how
Revenue is going up, can you say “Tax Cuts”

Bush was right!
Bush was right!
Bush was right!

Cheney was right, Condi was right,
Rummy was right, Blair was right
You were right, We were right, “The Right” was right
and Bush was right…
Bush was right!
Bush was right!
What We’re About
What We’re Fighting For