18-35? M or F? Medical or Computer skills? Uncle Sam wants your resume.

You can leave the artfully crafted 'Objective' section blank.

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld indignantly scoffs and scolds about the relentless rumors that the Bush administration is planning to reinstate the military draft.

"This plot is so secret that it doesn't exist," Rumsfeld wrote this week in the Deseret News of Salt Lake City. "To my knowledge, in the time I have served as secretary of defense, the idea of reinstating the draft has never been debated, endorsed, discussed, theorized, pondered or even whispered by anyone in the Bush administration."

In a radio interview earlier this month, Rumsfeld denounced the rumors as "a mischievous political effort that's being made to frighten young men and women."

This may come as a shock to the Pentagon chief, but most of the rumors have arisen from actions within the Bush administration, which has studied how to expand draft registration to include women, target some civilian work specialties for special attention by the draft and extend the required draft registration age from 25 years old to 34 years.

Gestalt management versus box checking & whip cracking.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the "35th Anniversary of the Internet" event in Los Angeles, from Xeni Jardin @ boingboing

We allocate about 70% of our resources to our core business and 30% to "other" because we never know what that other will become. We also ask our employees to spend 20% of their time on exploration, and those tend to be complementary to our core.

Our agenda tends to be driven by a bottoms-up process not so much traditional strategic planning. Google is trying to solve the next problem not the last problem.

[ Question: Was it serendipity that made google what it became? ] I think the word is luck. The principles from which Google was built do exist in other indstries. Ours is a reproducable model, and others may end up reproducing it and solving other problems. We're just seeing the beginning of this.

Good management is not that complicated, it's about leadership. Some managers need to micromanage everything, but that doesn't produce creativity. If you can figure out a way to tell a story, that's how people learn. they have a beginning middle and an end. if you have the right kind of people and the right kind of values, that can work. The great thing about high tech is that labor is very mobile, and if you want to deal with other people, you are forced to deal with them as peers and equals.

There are many uses of the net that are not touched by Google. Peer to peer, and the majority of email traffic. It's very important that people work on internet monitoring, internet scaling, all of the next generation projects -- I don't think any single one is of dominant importance.

We're in a real time world where people who need to collaborate can do so instantly. That has a downside because evil people can collaborate quickly, as well as the good guys, but the overwhelming effect is very positive.

Software businesses, intellectual property businesses have good cashflow if they're run right. A friend who went to business school once told me the only rule you need to know is DNROOC. Do not run out of cash. For us the decision to go public was viewed as a neccesary thing but not something we needed for our operations. People were surprised about the fact that the decision to go public was such a last minute thing, which it was -- we made the decision hours before we filed. We then went through the whole process which was of course widely covered and entertaining in lots of ways. At the end of it, we flew back to our offices and went back to work. Following Monday we had a one hour biefing about what we felt we did right or wrong. We had one of the executives announce the "end of the IPO," and we haven't talked about it since.

The company is about end users changing the world, the good and bad things they're doing out there. It's not about the IPO....

Speaketh, O' Mighty Max, of the Dismal State of Qoin

Max Sawicky

THE WAGELESS RECOVERY

The Prez says the economy is strong and getting stronger. By the evidence of the labor market, however, it is weak and getting weaker.

My colleague and labor market genius Jared Bernstein shows that from the third quarter of last year to this year, the wage and salary component of the Employment Cost Index increased by 2.4 percent, relative to inflation of 2.7. The does not mean that total compensation in these terms is less, since these figures do not reflect fringe benefits, but it does mean that for workers this recovery stinks. Faster employment growth and better jobs would put upward pressure on money wages.

This is the slowest growth rate on record. The most recent comparable period was the first half of 1993 -- Poppy Bush's economy, for all practical purposes.

Sometimes, the Qa Qaa comes down so heavy you need a helmet

Knight Ridder

WASHINGTON - The more than 320 tons of missing Iraqi high explosives at center stage in the U.S. presidential election are only a fraction of the weapons-related material that's disappeared in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion last year.

Huge amounts of arms and ammunition were stolen from military sites, and there's "ample evidence" that Iraqi insurgents are firing looted weapons at U.S. troops and using some of them in car bombs and improvised explosive devices, said a senior U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

[SNIP]

In a new disclosure, the senior U.S. military officer and another U.S. official, who also spoke on condition he not be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that an Iraqi working for U.S. intelligence alerted U.S. troops stationed near the al Qaqaa weapons facility that the installation was being looted shortly after the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003.

But, they said, the troops took no apparent action to halt the pillaging.

"That was one of numerous times when Iraqis warned us that ammo dumps and other places were being looted and we weren't able to respond because we didn't have anyone to send," said a senior U.S. military officer who served in Iraq.

[SNIP]

Al Qaqaa was on a classified list of Iraqi weapons facilities that the CIA provided to Pentagon and military officials before the invasion, said the U.S. intelligence official.

But when the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command produced their own list of sites that a limited number of U.S. "exploitation teams" should search, priority was given to those identified by exiled Iraqi opposition groups, he said. Al Qaqaa wasn't one of them.

"The top of the list was dominated by nuclear facilities and places where we expected to find chemical and biological weapons," he said. "Iraqi exiles had a very heavy hand in determining which places got looked at first."

Al Qaqaa was one of some 900 known weapons sites in Iraq that U.S. experts estimated held more than 650,000 tons of munitions.

"Iraqi exiles." Quaint euphemism for Ahmed Chalabi, early contender for President of a newly free Iraq, sponsored by the Neocon braintrust; and, $380,000 per month advisor and "friend" of Wolfowitz, Rumsfed and Feith @ DoD who had the poor taste to play both ends against the middle and backdoor US intel and codes to the Iranian security services. Yeah, those Iranians, the Axis-of-Evil ones. Small world isn't it? Still, maybe he can get us some of the 'energetic materials' back. For a price, of course.

The Economist pulls the ripcord

And rips Bush a new one. They rightfully don't view Kerry as the Second Coming, but....

With a heavy heart, we think American readers should vote for John Kerry on November 2nd

But on November 2nd, Americans must make their choice, as must The Economist. It is far from an easy call, especially against the backdrop of a turbulent, dangerous world. But, on balance, our instinct is towards change rather than continuity: Mr Kerry, not Mr Bush.

If Mr Bush is re-elected, and uses a new team and a new approach to achieve that goal, and shakes off his fealty to an extreme minority, the religious right, then The Economist will wish him well. But our confidence in him has been shattered. We agree that his broad vision is the right one but we doubt whether Mr Bush is able to change or has sufficient credibility to succeed, especially in the Islamic world. [More]

Next?

Fundamentals of Playing with Fire 101



TRANSLATION: "To defend and help complete the Führer's gigantic labors during the war is the greatest joy and highest duty of every German." [Source]

TRANSLATION not needed: Slate

"I want you to stand, raise your right hands," and recite "the Bush Pledge," said Florida state Sen. Ken Pruitt. The assembled mass of about 2,000 in this Treasure Coast town about an hour north of West Palm Beach dutifully rose, arms aloft, and repeated after Pruitt: "I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my family. I care about my country. Because I care, I promise to work hard to re-elect, re-elect George W. Bush as president of the United States."

I wanna puke.

Homeland security. Patriot acts. Freedom marching. Raised hands. Loyalty oaths. One man. Crazy people.

Pentagon steps in deep QaQaa

From a press gaggle today:

CNN QUESTION: Major, could you please better describe the explosives that were removed? Were they primarily assembled weapons? Were they raw material like the granular HMX or RDX? And could you, sort of, give us a ratio out of that 250 tons how much were assembled weapons and how much were raw material?

PEARSON: As a conventional ammunition ordnance officer, I deal with ammunition logistics management. I am not a technical specialist. I am not explosive ordnance disposal or technical intelligence. My role and what I've been trained on is to manage ammunition facilities and mitigate the risk and exposure to U.S. forces and civilians.

The specifics of what we talked about that we pulled out of there, from my recollection, is some TNT, plastic explosives; I can't further define other than that, plastic explosives. Detonation cords, initiators, and white phosphorous rounds, which were a higher priority for us to go in there.

QUESTION: So you don't know...

QUESTION: But do you believe there was HMX?

QUESTION: Yes. You don't know if there was HMX?

DI RITA: Let me handle that.

QUESTION: Did it look like those barrels -- you know this video that ABC had.

DI RITA: We've described what we know. And as we learn more, we'll describe that. The major has...

QUESTION: Why doesn't the major talk about that?

(CROSSTALK)

DI RITA: Excuse me for one moment.

The major had -- we had units that had responsibility for identifying and understanding what IAEA seals were. The major's unit had the responsibility to go in and clear conventional ordnance.

QUESTION: But, Larry, you've told us that you believe part of the 250 tons represents the material under question. You have said that.

DI RITA: Represents some portion of the material.

QUESTION: The major has not said that. So we would like to hear from him...

QUESTION: Do you believe you had RDX in there? . . .

[all emphasis mine]

What follows is a pathetic Who's On First routine of incompetence and irresponsibility by the political appointee, and security/terrorism amateur, Asst. SecDef. Larry DiRita. Of course, the fact that they are scramblng, can't pull a hefty file of removal protocols, advance plans and inventoried results of steps taken tells us all we need to know. That DiRita doesn't KNOW that RDX is not HMX (mega-mondo dual use nuke detonation explosive and kick ass conventional bang) only shows how completely their knowledge of the situation is hooey and backfill. The major didn't help much in this hash of a press conerence. Whatever he took (primacord, lower graded plastique and munitions) isn't what everyone's so exercised about. DiRita was hoping for an Ole! and ends up wrestling a goat.

HMX is stored in relatively innocuous and stable powder form. It's only when a plasticizer or binding agent is added to them that they become major boom-boom. If there were a serious effort to nail down threatening resources available to be flipped against US forces as an offensive insurgent threat, officers from Captain on up would have been briefed on what to look for and how to handle it. This particular 380 tons was thoughtfully and very conspicuously sealed and labelled by the International Atomic Energy Agency. It is just one cache of many.

The Pentagon is right: Iraq was chock full of nasty conventional weapons and material. But so is Iran. And Pakistan, Syria, Sudan and Indonesia. And, for that matter, so is America. Turn any of those countries into a rudderless chaotic mess by decapitating and disbanding their security and public safety forces and you would get the same result: A terrorist's smorgasbord of free all-you-can-carry doom and destruction, with, as it seems happened in A Qa Qaa and Tuwaitha, obliging Iraqi locals charging budding Bin ladens and Zuwahiris top dollar to rent them the trucks to cart it off. This stuff is what killed 289 marines in Lebonon under Reagan. It blew a hole in the USS Cole in Yemen. It obliterated the UN Mission in Baghdad last year, and did the same to an American compound in Saudi Arabia. Ditto our Embassies in Kenya and Nigeria. The stuff, it's power, and the damage it's already done is not news.

As Bush has noted ad infinitum, the Terrorists only need to be right once, we need to be right 100% of the time. This single, but certainly not solitary, instance of being wrong now mutates into a hundred or a 1000 more opportunities for a terrorist to "get it right." Our long odds just got longer. I feel much safer.

So, this is how the 'grown-ups' do it?

The tragic thing is, this gang of decision-makers who so took pleasure in saying only they had the cojones and the knowledge of how to really fight, how to treat troops, how to make us safer, really don't know what they're doing. Now, as the vortex of misjudgement and inexperience gains speed, they are forced to denigrate troops, deny reality, and define down what "a safer America" really means.

And it will only get worse: Post-election, however it turns out, they will be faced with the now solidfying and factually supported figures of 100,000 Iraqis estimated dead as a result of our "Gift of Freedom" to Mesopotamia. The independent numbers from Lancet, Britain's equivalent to the New England Journal of Medicine, say an alarmingly high percentage of those dead are women and children. Middle East expert Juan Cole has more:

The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, reports that the US and coalition forces (but mainly the US Air Force) has killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians since the fall of Saddam on April 9, 2003. Previous estimates for civilian deaths since the beginning of the war ranged up to 16,000, with the number of Iraqi troops killed during the war itself put at about 6,000.

The troubling thing about these results is that they suggest that the US may soon catch up with Saddam Hussein in the number of civilians killed. How many deaths to blame on Saddam is controversial. He did after all start both the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War. But he also started suing for peace in the Iran-Iraq war after only a couple of years, and it was Khomeini who dragged the war out until 1988. But if we exclude deaths of soldiers, it is often alleged that Saddam killed 300,000 civilians. This allegation seems increasingly suspect. So far only 5000 or so persons have been found in mass graves. But if Roberts and Burnham are right, the US has already killed a third as many Iraqi civilians in 18 months as Saddam killed... [More]

Who knows? But, what we do know: Just as 400,000 Iraqi soldiers disbanded and sent home toting their weapons was a bad idea, so too is flipping open a conventional weapons bazaar like Iraq. In for a dime, in for a dollar. This week, Bush asked for another 75 Billion, making Kerry's claims of a 200 Billion cost for Iraq an underestimate. Keep counting. This will be known as the one-trillion dollar hunch by the end of the decade. To paraphrase Colin Powell, we own it.

If I was George Bush, I wouldn't want a second term. It will destroy the viability of a Republican President, and possibly his party, for 20 years. Too bad. And ironic. In running away from his daddy's shadow, he severed contact with the one man who perhaps could have saved him from himself.

Al Qa Qaa: the shell game version

Via Flit

Bunker bingo update



The image you're looking at is the southern third of the Al QaQaa bunker complex, oriented to north. You can see the fence around the whole area, and individual bunker buildings.

The bunkers in red are those that were inspected in January 2003 when IAEA inspectors returned, found to be still full of tonnes of HMX stored in cylindrical drums, and resealed. All these explosives are now reportedly gone. The two on the left in a somewhat darker red also had HMX, but it was stored in boxes, not drums, according to the IAEA. There was one more IAEA-sealed bunker farther north in the complex, off the top of this image: in total 194 tonnes of HMX are alleged to be missing from the nine sealed bunkers at Al QaQaa.

The bunker in yellow (bunker #47) is the bunker that in January contained 3 tonnes of RDX explosive in 77 "Yugo drums," and 3.5 tonnes of PETN explosive in boxes, now all apparently missing as well. This bunker was NOT sealed by the IAEA, as they were only interested in tracking the amount of RDX Iraq had at Al QaQaa, not completely denying its use. It is thus conceivable that bunker 47 would have had other sorts of munitions in it as well. (The rest of the missing RDX (125 tonnes) was supposed to have been in another bunker complex altogether, 20 miles away, the IAEA confirmed yesterday.)

The bunkers in green are those where reconnaissance photos released by the DOD yesterday indicate there was some activity in the days just before the war. As you can see, they are not the sealed bunkers, or bunker 47.

The news team accompanying the 101st Airborne said they approached from the southeast of the complex (bottom of the picture), so they were almost certainly in one or more of these bunkers in this photo. (They don't mention going over what would presumably be a chain link fence, so they likely came in through that gate southeast of bunker 47.) Their footage appears to show American soldiers cutting the locks off a non-sealed bunker, which had a large number of containers resembling "Yugo drums" inside, mixed in with some other, non-proscribed munitions. It also showed at least one other bunker nearby with its IAEA seal left intact.

This has been a public service to help you make sense of my and others' previous blathering on this subject. The photo has been lifted from the globalsecurity.org site, cropped and turned so up is north, and the bunker numbers and contents cross-checked with the IAEA January report.

BusinessWeek pulls the ripcord

"Chill, George. It's Kerry's Turn"

The Buck Stops in Mesopotamia.

Giuliani must have liked Dubya's "Don't blame me, the Generals could've asked for more troops" line in the second debate so much, Rudy 's now using it on Colonels, Captains and Corporals...

ripple of hope via Atrios

The president was cautious, the president was prudent, the president did what a commander in chief should do. No matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?

Today Show Video [.wmv file] of Rudy, being the selfless patriot and "supporter of the troops" that he really is.

Wait, the administration says the Russians might have taken them, pre-invasion. Aided by Colonel Mustard. In the Drawing Room. With a candlestick.

Oops, the Russians say that's, ummm, oh, what word did they use... Oh yeah, "Absurd." Damn you, Pootie-poot!

Wait, the White House says the Iraqi Coalition Government can't count explosives very accurately.

Whoops, ABC, NBC and some gnomes in the Pentagon say they count just fine. And they read a calendar better.

Hmmmm. Now, the question is, as this wends its way to ultimately land back in the lap of Bush sometime in the next few weeks, will all those people who were intially appalled, then were reeled back toward Bush by the above spin machine just in time to cast their ballot for Bush Tuesday--will they get a refund, or a do over, say middle to late November? Can they get their vote back after being hoodwinked yet once agan?

---

UPDATE: Oh, dear. It seems that a Minnesota TV news crew, KSTP, embedded with the 3rd I.D. got a bit of b-roll video at Al Qa Qaa when they dropped by April 18th, 10 days after the war and and 8 days afer the 101st had a looksee. Seems the junk was still there--IAEA seals, labels, the works

Report: Video Shows Explosives Went Missing After War

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - ABC News on Thursday showed video that appeared to confirm that explosives that went missing in Iraq (news - web sites) did not disappear until after the United States had taken control of the facility where they were stored.

The disappearance of the hundreds of tons of explosives from the Al Qaqaa storage facility has become a hotly contested issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.

Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites) said it was an example of President Bush (news - web sites) bungling the Iraq war. Bush countered that Kerry was making wild accusations without knowing the facts.

Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) said it was possible that the explosives had been removed from the site before the U.S. forces arrived there.

ABC said the video was shot by an affiliate TV station embedded with the 101st Airborne Division when members of the division passed through the facility on April 18, nine days after the fall of Baghdad.

ABC said experts who have studied the images say the barrels seen in the video contain the high explosive HMX, and U.N. markings on the sealed containers were clear.

The barrels were found inside locked bunkers that had been sealed by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency just before the war began, ABC reported.

The things we will learn in the next 6-18 months

• How much Iraqi looted explosives made it to Chechnya and Palestine and small Mediterranean ports.
• How many permanent Bases we have built in the western desert of Iraq and their unfavorable lease condtions.
• What Paul Bremer, Jay Garner and Colin Powell really thought of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
• What was left out of the Taguba Report on Abu Ghraib, and where there 2, 3 or 4 more "Abu Ghraibs"?
• What Donald Rumsfeld thinks of George Bush.
• How "cordial" where Cheney's 3 or 4 visits to Langley and what resulted.
• What did NSC staffers really think about Condoleeza Rice.
• Who leaked Valerie Plame's CIA NOC status to Robert Novak.
• Where all that missing walking-around/greasing-Iraqi-skids money for occupation forces went.
• What the EPA didn't tell us in the WTC environmental impact study.
• What the Mediare Prescription Drug Bill really costs.
• Who was at the Bush Administration's secret energy policy meetings conducted by Cheney and what did they talk about.
• How much the Pentagon was undercounting dead and wounded--ours and theirs.
• What really happened and what did we give away to have our Navy Recon plane and crew released by the Chinese in early 2001.
• How much well-vetted intel passed through NSC, State and DoD about North Korea's fast-tracking of plutonium conversion beginning mid- to late-2001.
• How deeply was Ahmed Chalabi aligned with Iran's Intelligence Services and how obvious, in hindsight, was it?
• How many times Tony Blair had to talk George Bush down off the ledge.
• How much DoD money was given to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Jordan, Syria
• How deeply known, and how high, was the WMD McGuffin known as such and, how surprisingly early.

and last but not least:

• How many of Bush's notable business and political supporters were "truly and deeply" concerned about his volatile imbalances and decision-making, but were "afraid to say anything."

What am I forgetting?

Oh yeah, where was that damn undisclosed location?

Bush endorses.... Kerry?
ABC News

For a political candidate to jump to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief

Sound reasoning, Mr. President. Just a little bit too late.

As noted earlier, al Qa Qaa was an April 10 pee-break for the 101st. Nothing more. Then, on to Baghdad.

Larry Di Rita is a liar. Seems that's part of the membership requirement in this administration. Oh yeah, I lied too. It was 380 tons, not 350. I'll submit my resignation forthwith.

MSNBC (Transcript via kerry blog (Not posted to MSNBC yet, too new.)

MSNBC, 10/26/04 (Transcript):

Amy Robach: And it's still unclear exactly when those explosives disappeared. Here to help shed some light on that question is Lai Ling. She was part of an NBC news crew that traveled to that facility with the 101st Airborne Division back in April of 2003. Lai Ling, can you set the stage for us? What was the situation like when you went into the area?

Lai Ling Jew: When we went into the area, we were actually leaving Karbala and we were initially heading to Baghdad with the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. The situation in Baghdad, the Third Infantry Division had taken over Baghdad and so they were trying to carve up the area that the 101st Airborne Division would be in charge of. As a result, they had trouble figuring out who was going to take up what piece of Baghdad. They sent us over to this area in Iskanderia. We didn't know it as the Qaqaa facility at that point but when they did bring us over there we stayed there for quite a while. We stayed overnight, almost 24 hours. And we walked around, we saw the bunkers that had been bombed, and that exposed all of the ordinances that just lied dormant on the desert.

AR: Was there a search at all underway or did a search ensue for explosives once you got there during that 24-hour period?

LLJ: No. There wasn't a search. The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to

secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away. But there was - at that point the roads were shut off. So it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there.

AR: And there was no talk of securing the area after you left. There was no discussion of that?

LLJ: Not for the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. They were -- once they were in Baghdad, it was all about Baghdad, you know, and then they ended up moving north to Mosul. Once we left the area, that was the last that the brigade had anything to do with the area.

AR: Well, Lai Ling Jew, thank you so much for shedding some light into that situation. We appreciate it.

LLJ: Thank you.

A few pounds here, a few pounds there...

...and pretty soon you get an idea of just how monumentally inept, unfocused and uncaring this administration is with regard to small things like the lives of the troops they "support," and amazingly, the sustainablilty of the political missions they fabricate and sell us.

Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq

NYT: The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year. [More]

In poker they call these slips of focus or intent "tells." Usually, after tells like outing CIA spy Valerie Plame, Tora Bora, the firing of Jay Garner, the disbanding of the Iraqi military, the "unexpected" looting, Abu Ghraib, the advance and retreat from Falujah, Ahmed Chalabi's intel leaks to Iran... well, lets just say the sharks would be circling your table waiting to get their bite out of "the Rube." But, on to the point.

350+ tons? Of what? Military.com:

On a battlefield, nothing has the efficiency and destructive power of explosives. Combining the right compounds and combinations, the military has a few recipies up their sleeve to reap death and destruction on the enemy.

Don't buy any of the bullshit you hear about this being a "field" decision or that they disappeared pre-, mid, or immediately post-war. This was a strategic screw up of tragic proportions.

RDX and HMX High Explosive (HE) is nasty stuff, as any car bomb witness from Belfast to Athens to Baghdad will tell you. The problem with this particular batch of HE was.... well, it wasn't considered WMD-worthy. (Very surprising, since HMX is a dual-use HE; good for cutting steel in construction, or, as the primary explosive for the very nukes Bush told us to worry about.)

Not WMD. Sure, it's a weapon. 350 tons is a massive amount. And it's damn destructive. But it wasn't the "sexy reveal"; it didn't have the marquee value this Public Relations administration wanted. No voila! No Press Bang.

But, like budget figures, it just damn hard for us average folk to get our heads around what we're talking about here. So, let's do the math.

350+ tons of High Explosive (RDX, HMX) = 700,000+ lbs.

Do you remember the Bali bombing that killed 191 Australians, Europeans and Balinese, injured scores more and decimated a city block last year? That was 200 lbs of an HE and homebrew explosive mix in a Toyota. Boom.

The Madrid Train Bombing? A few hundred-weight. Boom.

Pan Am 107 that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland? Supposedly, 1-2 lbs of C4 high explosive. Smaller boom, but 259 dead.

The Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) that are taking out US Humvees and convoys and, oh yeah, Coalition troops at 2 a day, are estimated to range between 5 and 50 lbs; some are just looted artillery shells hooked up to a celluar phone and detonated remotely by a simple phone call. Some IEDs are more sophisticated, consisting of anywhere from 5 to 50 lbs of brick or sheet HE, or explosive scooped out of artillery rounds. Boom. Boom.

The Murrah Building in Oklahoma City? That was about 1000 pounds of ANFO--essentially, fertilizer and fuel oil packed in drums. ANFO is much more cumbersome, less brisant (rapidly burning) and about 40-50% weaker, pound for pound, than the missing Iraqi High Explosives. 1/2 Boom, 168 dead, counting dozens of kids.

So, 350 tons of HE, or 700,000 lbs equals:

3,500 Bali nightclub bombings.

or 1,400 Oklahoma City Bombings

or 35,000 IED attacks on American troops and convoys in Iraq.

Massive amounts of "mid-level" destruction? This stuff is the seed capital of terrorism. And it held no interest for the guys in the basement at the White House, or in the E-ring of the Pentagon?

Scott Mclellan and DoD press flacks for Rummy and Wolfowitz say the ammo dump at Al Qa Qaa, where this stuff disappeared under our noses, was mid-level priority. The things that were top line were the Oil Ministry and Oil fields (their characterization, not mine.) Note: there are estimates of 20-30 ammo dumps across Iraq, many of which recieved little or no attention in the months after the war. In similarly sensitive facilities outside Falujah and Basra (and well-known to the coalition intel and commanders), reports immediately following the invasion had civilians literaly pouring out barrels of toxic effluent stored, still under IAEA seal, from after Gulf War One. Was anybody watching the joint? Besides a few Iraqis slipped a few bucks to keep the gates locked, no. Why were the people dumping barrels of munitions processing waste out into the dirt? They wanted to use them to store drinking water. No doubt, birth defects and cancer will soon be another legacy of Iraq to replace rape rooms. Must be the Price of Freedom we hear so many talking about.

Still, 700,000+ pounds of boom-boom. Still too abstract? Wonder what it feels like? Since my physics sucks, I googled up this Comparative Energies Table and edited it a bit for clarity.

Energy (Joules - NewtonMeters)	Example	Power (Watts)
1 Nm	An apple falling from 1 meter hitting table	40W
230 Nm	Fastball @ 100 mi/hr caught in mitt	2300 W
450 Nm	.357 Mag Handgun (150 gr @ 1000 fps) (impact into steel plate)	12.5 Megawatts
5000 Nm	Hit from 220 lb tackle running 40 yd in 4 sec	20 kW (assuming .25 second hit)
490 KiloJoules	3000 lb Automobile crashing into concrete wall @ 60 mi/hr	2.1 Megawatt
2 MegaJoules	1 Lb High Explosive (detonation velocity 6000 meter/sec)	240 Gigawatt

So, a linebacker tackling you equals 20,000 watts (20 kW) of power spread over a quarter of a second -- a long time in explosive terms.

1 lb of High Explosive equals 240,000,000,000 watts (240 gW) of power. In thousandths of a second.

240 *billion* watts of boom. Very quick. In other words, standing next to 1 lb of detonating RDX HE is like getting hit by 12 million linebackers. Or, if you prefer, being shot by 19,200 .357 magnums. Stand a hundred feet away from 20 lbs and it's only like a few houses falling on you. Either way, you're dead, and in lots of pieces to boot. That's the kind of mass destruction we all take personally.

It's a cliche, sure, but War is serious business. Ironically, this is a war about cliches. About nations, motives, religions, political parties and voters. And about reflexive ignorance, arrogance and vengeance. These people in offfice, many of whom haven't heard a shot fired in anger, never mind served, these people are not serious about this war, nor about weapons of mass destruction, and neither, obviously, are they pure in their aims. The tells are everywhere, and have been since before 9/11. They just like the idea of war. The stagecraft of it, the impression of decisiveness. And yet, they have none of the critical and ideology-free decision-making skills neccessary to execute with forethought. War makes them feel manly, it makes them feel needed.

It makes them feel necessary and wise. In theory.

In practice, they are none of the above. And I wouldn't rehire them to lifeguard my pool.

8 days to go. Many years of remediation, realignment and capable reengagement to come.

[UPDATE 3:36 : Drudge says: An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq. According to NBCNEWS, the HMX and RDX explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived. "The U.S. Army was at the site one day after the liberation and the weapons were already gone," a top Republican blasted from Washington late Monday.

Sorry, that dog won't hunt, as Josh Marshall seems to have noted a few minutes ahead of me here. He rightfully points out that moving that amount of junk, 40 trucks worth, in the lengthy run-up to the invasion would have been nigh impossible given our control of the skies and recon overflights that were ubiquitous 24/7. It's been established by AP, sourced to a Pentagon intelligence official on he ground in Baghdad that the explosives were there, as linked above: "US-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact."

The muddying and administration faux-anger has begun full-force, but this one will work itself out. Too many previously dismissed, and ultimately vindicated, players in this mess--IAEA, The Survey Group, et al--say Larry DiRita and his crew at the Pentagon are spinning furiously because they *don't* know the exact status of Al Qaa Qa, post invasion. And that's the problem. If it were a family home, it would have a porch stacked with unread newspapers and bottles of rancid milk.

One thing Marshall doesn't note is this: For at least 4 months prior to the March 8 invasion-proper, US and British Special Forces teams were covertly wandering the countryside of Iraq ID-ing and sighting targets and pre-positioning materiel. Some were disabling and blowing stuff up where possible. And that's key, following on the point above about this being a mother-lode of terrorist booty: They could, should, and would have torched it prior to it becoming an enemy asset. If ground forces hadn't 86'd it, it should, would or could have been on the A-list of preemptive, or at least, initial aerial bombardment targets once the invasion commenced March 8.

That is, if these guys were truly serious, about real targets of opportunity. But al Qa Qaa was 'boring.' Instead, it seems they had a hard-on for their new rootin-tootin' piece d'resistance: Shock and Awe. Too bad it consisted of bombing the neighborhoods of Baghdad, instead of a lowly cluster of bunkers 30 miles south of town. No cameras there, I guess.]

Dan Drezner drops the fan-dance, gets shrill, joins Reality-based community.

Welcome to the club, Dan.

I posted earlier in the week (Dan as Gypsy-Rose) about Dan Drezner's silly "should I or shouldn't I?" strip-tease over voting for Kerry. Well, I guess the tips weren't as lucrative as he thought. He's run out of excuses. He's given up: He's voting Kerry.

I've made up my mind

So I'm voting for Kerry.

In my two threads on the subject (here and here), I've been amused to read suggestions by fellow Republicans that I'm overanalyzing things and should just trust my gut. If I had done that, I would have known I was voting for Kerry sometime this summer because of Iraq. To put it crudely, my anger at Bush for the number of Mongolian cluster-f**ks this administration was discovered to have made in the planning process in the run-up to Iraq was compounded by the even greater number of cluster-f**ks the administration made in the six months after the invasion, topped off by George W. Bush's decision not to fire the clusterf**ks in the civilian DoD leadershop that insisted over the past two years that not a lot of troops were needed in the Iraqi theater of operations. No, if I was voting based on gut instincts, I would have planned on voting for Kerry and punching a wall afterwards.

Reading the New York Times recap of the postwar planning by Michael Gordon just brought all of this back to the surface. The failure by Rumsfeld and his subordinates to comprehend that occupation and statebuilding requires different resources, strategies and tactics than warfighting boggles my mind: [more]

Kubler-Ross',The Five stages of Grief:

1. Denial and Isolation
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

Only from 5 does possibility spring, like a daisy in the concrete. If you let it. A tough journey from one tribe to the other. Welcome, Dan. Sorry for the snark.

Paranoia will destroi-ya

And the vortex created renders the rest of us collateral damage. Yippee!

Arianna Huffington discovers the R-Complex, and realizes she's been thinking on the wrong plane all this time. I'm too nice a guy to say: "Duh!" Oops, I just said it, didn't I? Wasn't me, it was my R-Cx talking. Not my fault. It's hard, difficult work being rational and championing Good and stuff--Let me finish!

Appealing To Our Lizard Brains: Why Bush Is Still Standing

Since the president's meltdown in the first debate — followed in quick succession by Paul Bremer's confession, the CIA's no-al-Qaida/Saddam link report, the Duelfer no-WMD-since-'91 report, and the woeful September job numbers — I have been racking my brain trying to figure out why George W. Bush is still standing.

The answer arrived via my friend Ed Solomon, the brilliant writer and filmmaker, who explained that the conundrum could be solved by looking at the very organ I'd been racking.

Ed introduced me to the work of Dr. Daniel Siegel, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and author of the forthcoming book "Mindsight," which explores the physiological workings of the brain.

Turns out, when it comes to Campaign 2004, it's the neuroscience, stupid!

Or, as Dr. Siegel told me: "Voters are shrouded in a 'fog of fear' that is impacting the way our brains respond to the two candidates."
Thanks to the Bush campaign's unremitting fear-mongering, millions of voters are reacting not with their linear and logical left brain but with their lizard brain and their more emotional right brain.

What's more, people in a fog of fear are more likely to respond to someone whose primary means of communication is in the nonverbal realm, neither logical nor language-based. (Sound like any presidential candidate you know?)

And that's why Bush is still standing. It's not about left wing vs. right wing; it's about left brain vs. right brain.

Deep in the brain lies the amygdala, an almond-sized region that generates fear. When this fear state is activated, the amygdala springs into action. Before you are even consciously aware that you are afraid, your lizard brain responds by clicking into survival mode. No time to assess the situation, no time to look at the facts, just: fight, flight or freeze.

And, boy, have the Bushies been giving our collective amygdala a workout. Especially Dick Cheney, who has proven himself an unmatched master of the dark art of fear-mongering. For an object lesson in how to get those lizard brains leaping, look no further than the vice-presidential debate.

"The biggest threat we face today," said Cheney in his very first answer "is the possibility of terrorists smuggling a nuclear weapon or a biological agent into one of our own cities and threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans."

Just in case we didn't get the point, he repeated the ominous assertion, practically word for word, two more times — throwing in the fact that he was "absolutely convinced" that the threat "is very real." It was "be afraid, be very afraid" to the third power.

And when we are afraid, we are biologically programmed to pay less attention to left-brain signals — indeed, our logical mind actually shuts itself down. Fear paralyzes our reasoning and literally makes it impossible to think straight. Instead, we search for emotional, nonverbal cues from others that will make us feel safe and secure.

When our right brain is at Threat Level Red, we don't want to hear about a four-point plan to win the peace, or a list of damning statistics, or even a compelling, well-reasoned argument that the policies of Bush and Cheney are actually making us less safe. We want to get the feeling that everything is going to be all right.

In this state, our brains care more about tone of voice than what the voice is saying. This is why Bush can verbally stumble and sputter and make little or no sense and still leave voters feeling that he is the candidate best able to protect them. Our brains are primed to receive the kinds of communication he has to offer and discard the kinds John Kerry has to offer, even if Kerry makes more "logical sense." Which, of course, he does.

The strutting, winking, pointing and near-shouting that marked Bush's town hall debate performance all sent the same subconscious message to our fear-fogged brains: "I'm your daddy . . . I've got your back. So just go to sleep and stop thinking. About anything."

"At the deepest level," Dr. Siegel told me, "we react to fear as adults in much the same way we did as infants. It's primal. Human babies have the most dependent infancy of any species. Our survival depends on the caregiver. We instinctively look to authority figures to comfort us and keep us safe."

As needy infants, this natural drive to be soothed and reassured is what we looked for in our parents; as anxious adults in these exceptionally unsettling times, it's what we are looking for in our leaders.

Over the remaining three weeks of the campaign, as the anxiety level reaches a fevered pitch — and you can be certain the Bush campaign will do everything in its power to make sure that happens — the test facing voters is no longer, "Which candidate would you rather have a beer with?" It's "Which candidate would you rather give you your blankie and a bottle and keep the boogeyman away?"

I know it sounds ludicrous that the most important election of our lifetime is coming down to who can best pacify the electorate's inner baby, but I can think of no better explanation as to why Bush is not currently hovering at around 5 percent in the polls — a voting block made up of those hardcore fanatics who are as utterly blind to reality as he is.

As long as we're operating from our lizard brains — and reason takes a back seat to more primal needs — George Bush will continue to survive the logic-based attacks on his ever-escalating failures.

The only question that remains is: Can Bush, Cheney and Rove keep us shrouded in the fog of fear long enough to brain John Kerry and win in November?

They'll try. But it's hard. Dificult work, that Fog stuff. Evil never sleeps. Just ask the Evil Doers.

Axis of Evil endorses... Bush?

Sez: "Boo, hiss! Kerry won't let us have nukes. Those nasty Democrats are always mean to us, keep us hemmed in, especially under Clinton. Boo, Kerry! Boo-hiss!"

Bush Receives Endorsement From Iran

AP TEHRAN, Iran - The head of Iran's security council said on Tuesday the re-election of President Bush (news - web sites) was in Tehran's best interests, despite the administration's axis of evil label, accusations that Iran harbors al-Qaida terrorists and threats of sanctions over the country's nuclear ambitions. Historically, Democrats have harmed Iran more than Republicans, said Hasan Rowhani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran's top security decision-making body. "We haven't seen anything good from Democrats," Rowhani told state-run television in remarks that, for the first time in recent decades, saw Iran openly supporting one U.S. presidential candidate over another. "We should not forget that most sanctions and economic pressures were imposed on Iran during the time of Clinton," Rowhani said of the former Democratic president. "And we should not forget that during Bush's era — despite his hard-line and baseless rhetoric against Iran — he didn't take, in practical terms, any dangerous action against Iran." Though Iran generally does not publicly wade into U.S. presidential politics, it has a history of preferring Republicans over Democrats, who tend to press human rights.

This just in: Kim Jong il considering Bush for Secret Santa.

Introducing: Dan Drezner as Gypsy Rose Lee

Having spilled my guts all over this blog more than a few times, I'm still not the least bit bashful to say Dan Drezner's slow-motion fan dance of "come-hither and seduce me to vote Kerry" posts makes me wanna find a whiffle bat. Some praise him for thinking out loud. I wanna report him for public indecency, or, at least, very bad vamping....

Some commenters have suggested that Bush secretly recognizes that mistakes have been made, and there will be changes after the election. I'm glad they're confident of that -- this David Sanger story in Sunday's NYT makes it clear that even insiders aren't sure about this:

"Honestly, I can make a more reliable prediction about what Kerry's foreign policy would look like than I can about our own,'' said one senior American diplomat who has spent considerable time with President Bush over the past three years. "I could argue that you'll see Dick Cheney's revenge, or that the President will determine that the hawks got him in deep, deep trouble, and he'd better turn this around.''

So where am I now? I'm unpersuaded by arguments saying that Bush's foreign policy has been a greater success than commonly thought, and I'm not convinced that he would ever be able to recognize the need for policy change.

However, the responses to the previous post have fed my doubts about Kerry's bad foreign policy instincts -- enough to slightly lower my probability of voting for Kerry to 70%. So it's now up to Kerry's supporters to make their case -- how can I trust that John Kerry gets the post-9/11 world? How can I be sure that Kerry's policymaking process will be sufficiently good so as to overwhelm Kerry's instinctual miscues?

That's not serious inquiry, it's familial enabling and wobbliness--the mark of someone unable to face the pure academic truth of their untenable position. The fan Drezner's blowing kisses from behind is made of ostrich feathers.

1. Post-war global power-shift concentrated to the US combined with WMD proliferation and the events of 9/11 were a perfect storm of foreign policy possibility. Bush screwed the pooch--but it's a screwing Kerry can make right. (Details below.)

2. Just to clarify point #1 above: BUSH DOESN'T GET THE POST-9/11 WORLD. At least, he doesn't get it right. (Details below.)

3. Using the above administration official's quote, Drezner asks, answers, then asks again (because he doesn't like the answer), how Kerry's process orientation beats Bush's? Again, using the quote: Kerry demonstrates an actual familiarty with decision-making as a process; one needing something beyond a divining rod. (Varied input, cross-referencing, feedback loops, awareness of stovepipe effects, etc. Details below.)

There's lots more junk Drezner dangles about domestic policy and whatnot: I respect Bob Rubin, and Dick Holbrooke, etc--but what if Kerry doesn't use those guys? Hmmmm. Dan has two choices of life preserver--one in flames, one serviceable--and he's checking the tag on the useful one, worried it might have been made with union labor.

POINT 1: Muscular common sense. What was [and is still] needed is a highly necessary and, conveniently, highly visible rebuild of US forces to meet the demands of assymmetrical threats--guerillas, insurgency, terrorism, middle east foment. Threats that were not news on September 10th. While commencing your highly visible build-up, you leverage post 9-11 (good)will by firmly planting both feet in the Middle East--one in the Mediterranean, one in the Gulf--and saying:

Enough. Your problem is now our Dead. Time to fix or time to fight–fight us. These are our bombs, planes and tanks; and these, these over here are our bonds, bricklayers and business professors. You choose. We're here to help, but we're done with half measures, and you will fix this. Take what you admire, leave what you don't, keep your autonomy. Think about it. Hard. If you say no, you will not like the alternative.

End the press conference, cue the airlift/sealift, alert pre-positioning. And wait for the phones to ring. And ring they would. And not a soul would have blamed us. Now, that is what Bush should have done. Addressed to the whole Middle East--yes, even the bit with names like Haifa and Tel Aviv.

Fantasy? Not at all. You see, all the Realpolitik once had its place, but it is true, 9-11 changed everything. The main thing it changed was the need for bullshit and parlor language in the realm of Middle East diplomacy. (You certainly can't argue that that suggestion is "risky" and "just not done" on the world stage, at least, you can't given the quixotic things done in America's name over the last 3+ years by the "we create our own reality administration.) Ipso facto, rules were meant to be broken, and usually are where things actually get done. I've posted here before [1, 2, 3, 4] that Bush would be being measured for Mt. Rushmore right about now, had he acted appropriate to the magnitude of the situation--with a clearer understanding of the global and tribal metaphorical GASP that he had at his command. A large measure. A simply understood statement of fact: enough is enough. Olive branches in one claw, arrows in the other. Hell, it's our logo and our brand. There is no false advertising in the claim, no surprise at it's clarity regardless of whence you came. Yet Bush is all mexed missage R-Complex. Fight or Fight [sic] on Iraq; Fight then Flee on Chinese intercepts of US recon planes over international waters, on steel tariffs, on NCLB, on Drug Benefits, on Fiscal policy, on everything. Ergo: Bush fucks up, regularly; he didn't and doesn't get the pattern language manifest in the War on Terror. Kerry gets exactly the limbic nature of the current situation and can actually explain it, full well knowing we, and they, must climb higher up the cortical and gonadal chain for practicable resolution, although Bush has probably squandered the above profound Middle East Colossus opportunity. Let us hope not.

Dan, come on. Cleanup's a bitch. And you can't complain about the mess, nor keep whining that you'd really really like to fix it, using your ideas and your words, and that you'd feel so much better about your worldview and your past declarations if you could fix it, but that, hey, you're just not sure how. We'll rub your shoulders later. Meantime, Kerry's got to make some plane reservations to go smooth things over with some very anxious and very useful old friends.

POINT 2: Forget point 2. There's no need. Keep fanning, Dan. And vote your conscience. See ya November 3.

Gallup thinks America is Shawnee Mission, Kansas.

Steve Soto at The Left Coaster valiantly continues to flay the methodology of "the Pioneering Pollster":

...Gallup and other pollsters who refuse to weight their samples for party identification say that weighting samples to reflect demographic and census data is more reliable that using party ID as a factor. Yet after looking closely at the demographic breakdown of the sample that Gallup used to reach their conclusions, it becomes clear that Gallup has become the in-house pollster for Karl Rove and the GOP's view of how the American voting populace should look. Why?

Because according to Gallup's poll [internals] this week, they expect the electorate to be 85% white, 41% conservative while only 19% liberal, and a third to make over $75,000 per year....

Total Weighted Sample: 557 Likely Voters
(2000 exit poll actual results in parentheses)

By Political Ideology:
Conservative: 41% (29%)
Moderate: 41% (50%)
Liberal: 18% (20%)

Party ID:
GOP: 39% (35%)
Dem: 35% (39%)
Ind: 25% (27%)

Income:
Over $75,000: 32% (28%)
$50-75,000: 16% (25%)
$30-50,000: 26% (24%)
$20-30,000: 11%
Under $20K: 9%

And if this wasn’t bad enough,

Race:
White: 85% (81%)
NonWhite: 15% (19%)
Black: (a subset of NonWhite) 8% (10%)

I think those numbers speak for themselves. Gallup is using a sample that assumes 1) depressed minority participation this year from 2000, 2) assumes a drastically higher participation of conservatives as compared to 2000, and 3) predicts that Bush would win by 8% with that electorate. It should also be noted that Gallup's LV sample contains only 11% in the 18-29 year old age grouping, compared to 17% in the 2000 exit polls. Recent polls show that Kerry/Edwards is doing well with younger voters.

He points out that with these consistently hinky polls, the inevitable "oh yeah, we missed that" corrections and adjustments don't mean much post hoc, since the horse has already left the barn--co-sponsors, CNN and USAToday trumpet them far and wide. But I doubt it matters. Odds are great this will be known as the "first-time" or stealth voter election or some such goofy appelation. These numbers suppress turnout urges for disgusted but reluctant Bush voters, and, for many pro-Kerry or even just anybody-but-Bush types, they only feed the frenzy of donations and volunteers to Get Out The Vote efforts in battlegrounds... I'd love to have a piece of the 11-passenger van rental action in OH, WI, FL, MN and a few others.

Remember that post labor-day, pre-election rise in Jobs?

Gonna be, umm, a challenge. More tax cuts p'raps. Maybe a voodoo doll?

CNN/Reuters

 Report: Tech job cuts soar
Challenger says cuts up 60% in 3Q, tech companies have no hiring plans.

The U.S. technology sector suffered another round of widespread layoffs during the third quarter, with computer firms slashing jobs most aggressively, a report said Monday.

"High-tech job cuts are on the way up as the end of the year approaches," said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. "Behind this trend is the fact that technology companies have virtually no pricing power,"

Job cuts in technology jumped 60 percent between July and September to 54,701, compared with 34,213 layoffs in the second quarter. Computer companies alone saw job cuts jump 127 percent, to 30,624.

Manufacturers in the sector are having trouble making money since they have been forced to lower prices in order to attract consumers, Challenger said. So they end up firing workers in order to maintain healthy profit margins.

Worse yet, the growing number of layoffs is not being countered by any move to hire, Challenger added.

Lovely. I'm off to a meeting. To referee the wailing of some business leaders enjoying this "booming recovery." Maybe I'll stumble over some good news there. Yeah, that's the ticket.  

Hey, that's not funny (SNORT)

wonkette:

Bush's Domestic Policy Takes a New Turn



Bush unveils a controversial new approach to lowering Social Security costs in the near future: Just a quick twist to the right, and the neck snaps right in two. . .

Drop the remote! And move away from the television–slowly!

AP via WPVI-Phila

TV Calls Air Force for Help
CORVALLIS, OR-October 18, 2004

An Air Force search and rescue alert was trigged by Chris van Rossman's flatscreen Toshiba TV. It has a built-in VCR, DVD and CD player. And an undocumented feature that has authorities scratching their heads.

Some sort of electric glitch was causing van Rossman's TV to transmit on the international distress frequency. The signal was picked up by a satellite and relayed to the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center in Virginia.

van Rossman had no idea until airmen, deputies and Corvallis, Oregon, police were knocking on the door of his apartment. The errant signal was traced to his TV set.

van Rossman was warned to keep the TV off or face a $10,000 fine for sending a false distress signal.

A spokeswoman for Toshiba says they've never heard of this sort of problem before. But the company is promising to give van Rossman a new TV.

[ed: Noting van Rossman's extensive videotape collection of Ann Coulter interviews, Toshiba technicians have placed the television on a round-the-clock suicide watch. van Rossman plans frivilous lawsuit.]

The reality-based community – You in or out?

Sunday's New York Times:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend - but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

"Senior Adviser"? With a penchant for the Grand Guignol? Who talks like that in this administration? Easy. Karl talks like that in this administration. "The CEO Administration." The "grown-ups are in charge" administration. A so-called "Republican" administration. Sorry, but that's not conservatism, it's psychosis. Wanna know why "Old Europe" is freaked by these guys and their moves? They know this old movie, even down to the dialogue. Vote your conscience, because a lot of "important" people seem to have lost theirs. And then some.

Was it good for you too, Mrs. Lincoln?

Let's see, Kinsey blew the lid off America's sex life in the 50s with in-depth interviews and new-fangled anonymous polling. Next came studies of our feelings about breakfast cerals and collar stains. Then politicians got savvy to Madison Avenue technique. And now, well...

Primetime Live Poll: More Republicans Satisfied With Sex Lives Than Democrats

....The poll analysis includes a breakdown by many subgroups, including region, age and even political party affiliation, which is the topic of results released today:

Of those involved in a committed relationship, who is very satisfied with their relationship?
• Republicans – 87 percent
• Democrats – 76 percent

Who is very satisfied with their sex life?
• Republicans – 56 percent
• Democrats – 47 percent

The poll analysis also reveals who has worn something sexy to enhance their sex life:
• Republicans – 72 percent
• Democrats – 62 percent

When asked whether they had ever faked an orgasm, more Democrats (33 percent ) than Republicans (26 percent) said they had.

Guess we'll have to watch Thursday night to see if Jack Ryan, Roger Stone, Dick Morris and the other "family values" All-Stars may have skewed the results more than Jim McGreevey and a blue dress.

Still trying to figure this one out though: "...and the poll results show that women are more likely to fake orgasms."

[update: Daniel, in comments points out my goof: Kinsey, not McKinsey. Freudian maybe? . Thanks Daniel.]

No fat. No sodium. No Logo?

Naomi Klein must be feeling pretty good about herself right about now. Paul Hawken, too. Now, if we could just get rid of those syndicated Robert Vaughan ads --- "They're represented by the law firm of Sludge, Smarm & Sham? Let's settle this one!" -- well, we'd all be tooting through silk.

Okay, maybe not. Take it away, Guardian:

McDonald's has dropped the famous "golden arches" logo from its British advertising for the first time in what appears to be an extraordinary bid to rebrand as a healthy eating destination.

The chain, criticised by health campaigners but loved by pestering kids for decades, has not yet gone on record about its marketing strategy to shake off its image as the bad guy of modern convenience food.

But a new advertising campaign showing a question mark in its signature canary yellow in place of the ubiquitous arches is the latest in a series of significant changes, including tie-ups with the Vegetarian Society and the introduction of salads to its menus.

The posters show a fresh garden salad with green and red lettuce leaves with a large yellow question mark replacing the golden arches and the slogan "McDonald's. But not as you know it" - a play on Spock's assertion to Captain Kirk in the TV series Star Trek, "It's Life, Jim, but not as we know it".

-SNORT-

The new campaign follows a profit slump at the fast food chain, which has come under increasing pressure in the fight against Britain's child obesity crisis.

Other posters show a pile of empty egg shells stamped "free range", fruit pieces, cups of cappuccino and a bagel smothered in cream cheese, all chosen because they would be less likely to be associated with McDonald's in customers' minds.

The Head-fake School of Branding. Didn't we go through this stateside a few years' back with Fallon's night-clubbing Ronald McDonald to hawk "adult" fare?

To emphasise its healthy menu, the fast food chain is mailing a booklet to 17 million homes containing news about the changes to its menu and special offers to encourage people to eat at McDonald's.

Earlier this month MediaGuardian.co.uk revealed that the Vegetarian Society had agreed to let McDonald's use its seedling logo on certain foods such as garden salads, Quorn Premiere Burger, yoghurt and fruit toast, bagels.

The Vegetarian Society said having its logo in every McDonald's restaurant would help vegetarianism enter the mainstream.

McDonald's pre-tax profits tumbled by nearly three-quarters in the UK last year, falling to £23.6m from £83.8m, the lowest for a decade.

Aha, the ever-popular balance sheet induced mindshift. It's doomed.

The company hopes the new campaign will boost sales and reverse a stream of bad publicity from health campaigners, who claim McDonald's burgers contribute to the growing problem of obesity in Britain, particularly among children.

They think this will rescue a bad business model. That seals it: their ad agency is doomed.

"For the seventh biggest brand in the world to advertise without a hint of their logo shows a determination by McDonald's to encourage consumers to think twice about them and their offering," McDonald's advertising agency, Leo Burnett, said in a statement.

[DOUBLE-SNORT] Bravo, Burnett! No, really.

"Advertising in this way is a first for McDonald's and should serve to inform or remind the public that just as they themselves are changing - the way they eat and look after themselves, McDonald's is also changing."

[TRIPLE-SNORT--NOW COUGHING UP A LUNG]

Merit, Bush-style.

LA Times via existenz

The Pentagon plans to promote Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former head of military operations in Iraq, risking a confrontation with members of Congress because of the prisoner abuses that occurred during his tenure.

Senior Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have privately told colleagues they are determined to pin a fourth star on Sanchez, two senior defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said this week.
 
Rumsfeld and others recognize that Sanchez remains politically "radioactive," in the words of a third senior defense official, and would wait until after the Nov. 2 presidential election and investigations of the Abu Ghraib scandal have faded before putting his name forward....

"It'll just be one more thumb in the eye of the Iraqis and the Arab world," said Charles V. Pena, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, a conservative Washington think tank. "If Sanchez gets another star, it's just more evidence that we're not trying to deal with the hearts and mind issues inside Iraq or the larger Islamic world."

GASP! A fouro post about brands--alert the media!

Mark Tungate excerpts his Media Monoliths: How great media brands thrive and survive over at MediaBistro

In his new book on how to breed a successful brand, this British journalist dissects 20 brands, from MTV to The Economist, and finds they all have seven common keys to survival.

HAVE A VISION

It's incredible how few of the media monoliths grew out of a team effort. When you probe into the history of the world's greatest media brands, you realize that, more often than not, a single individual crea