There will be no jokes about Thomas Dolby in this post

The winners in this year's Visions of Science Photographic Awards, a competition sponsored by Novartis and The Daily Telegraph, have been announced. You can see them all via the BBC News site, what follows are a few of my favorites with commentary.




"I've heard of men who are all hands, but this is ridiculous! Thank you! Goodnight!"

Migraine attacks can cause a variety of visual symptoms (aura) as well as the notorious stabbing head pain. This is a representation of a barn seen during an attack, painted by an artist and migraine sufferer.

You'd almost think it was worth it...

The fine cellular structure of the stem of a sunflower is revealed here, including red vascular areas and blue supportive tissue. This systematic regularity contrasts with the sweeping outline of the butterfly.

"Every minute of every hour..."

(Hey, I said no Thomas Dolby, not no Tears For Fears)

Papa's got a brand new bag

One or two blogs have been cautioning those of us on the left that indictments in the Plame scandal may not, in fact, be forthcoming. Some have raised the possibility, which seems to me quite likely, that the president will just pardon anyone who is prosecuted. It's a question of whether he can afford the political hit right now.

Of course, it's always possible Cheney & Co will spend a few years in prison & Bush will pardon them at the end of his term. I could live with that.

Others have reached back in their memories to when President Richard Nixon ordered Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox fired when he insisted on obtaining the secret White House tapes. In the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre," the Attorney General and his deputy both resigned rather than carry out the order, but future Supreme Court reject Robert Bork was only too happy to comply. As I imagine Alberto "Geneva convention? What Geneva convention?" Gonzales would be.

Could President Bush fire Fitzgerald? Of course he could, but would he? Again, the question is, can Bush expend the political capital he would lose making such a self-serving move? Remember, according to some, it was the fallout from firing Cox that made calls for Nixon's impeachment overwhelm his Presidency.

Can Bush afford such a risk, with only seven out of 50 states currently giving him a positive approval rating? I tend to think that he can't, but acknowledge that this may be wishful thinking on my part.

So: Here's The News Blog with a post that responds and links to, and quotes from, posts from billmon and John Dean. Dean thinks Fitzgerald won't prosecute, TNB (and billmon) disagree:

What also needs to be understood is that if there are indictments, serious political damage would have been done. It's not Watergate, this is national security and the idea that aides to the President and VP violated national security for a political grudge is intensely damaging.

Given Bush's record, people keep looking for the deus ex machina. The problem is that there probably isn't one. Bush is in a tight position and he can't bail out Rove and friends without taking a hit, and Bush doesn't take hits for himself, much less staff.

I think TNB is right; but, as they also both say, Dean has been right about a lot of this, and deserves a hearing. Reads and makes up your own minds.

Ah ha...ah ha ha ha..ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

A rapist was captured after he forced his victim to write him a check and then tried to cash it, police said.

Anthony R. Roberts, 25, was arrested Wednesday night outside a check cashing store, minutes after he left the woman's apartment, police said. Police said Roberts forced his way into her apartment at gunpoint, bound her with tape and raped her. But first he forced her to make out a $1,400 check in his name, and told her to write on it that it was for electrical work, authorities said.

That's hysterical.

Some sweet hypnosis and the world just slips away

Terry Gross from the NPR program Fresh Air is featuring a couple of interviews with George Carlin and Steve Martin. I think you'll find them interesting; I did. It's the first time I've heard Martin speak at length about writing.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day

Like Maureen Dowd, Arianna Huffington is a writer I don't like as much as some of my liberal brethren. I consider her to be at best, untrustworthy. At worst, a contemptible opportunist who cynically changed sides when it looked like there wasn't enough room in the spotlight as a conservative. And the liberals promptly forgot about everything she'd said about Clinton and/or done to try to get her empty suit of a husband elected.

All that said, this blog post is dead-on.

In the Times' Sunday Judy-Culpa, Judy Miller said of her woeful pre-war reporting: "WMD -- I got it totally wrong... The analysts, the experts and the journalists who covered them -- we were all wrong."

To which a growing number of journalists are responding: No, we weren't.

This is no time for rewriting history, or for allowing those who helped the Bush White House market the war to fall back on the comfort and safety of a collective "we all screwed up."

Judy Miller needs to find a new rationalization. The "everyone was wrong, so no one was wrong" line is as thoroughly discredited as the administration's prewar claims... and Judy Miller's obliging reporting of them.

Among the many dreams I have for the next weeks, months, and years, is that representatives of the Main-Stream Media, and both political parties, will have no other choice but to start standing up & saying just who was wrong and who was right in the lead-up to war.

Call it a fantasy.

"Sunrise, Sunset"

Early and often in his autobiography, This Terrible Business Has Been Good To Me, which I have just finished, movie director Norman Jewison speaks about his identification with Jews and black Americans. This has driven his desire to help tell their stories.

Although he is white and Canadian, some of Jewison's best-known and most-awarded films are about the black American experience (In The Heat of The Night, The Hurricane, others.). Although he is Goyim, another is about Jews (Fiddler on the Roof). Many of these films are considered classics.

It got me thinking once again about why I feel a similar identification with my two lesbian characters, Keitha & Annabel. I mean, there's part of me that thinks I'm crazy (or rather, fears that I will be thought crazy): By what right do I presume that I can identify with, and relate to "the lesbian experience?"

One answer is I don't know about "the lesbian experience," I only know about my girls. Another answer is I don't know by what right...but I do so identify. So I guess I just want to say that Jewison's book, while a quick read--took me less than a full day--was kind of inspirational to me.

As is a quote with which he ends the book:

...after the premiere of Waiting For Godot, Samuel Beckett was asked why he had written such a depressing play. He replied, "Great art can never be an act of pessimism. Art comes from hope. The very act of writing something anticipating an audience is an act of hope."

That's the kind of thinking that keeps me getting out of bed in the morning...

Good Night, And Good Luck

The RT consensus for this film reads,

This is a passionate and concise civics lesson from the past, arriving with much political and cultural relevance to today.

That's true, and it's what I expected, but it's not the kind of review that's gonna get the Fog audience ("Civics lesson? Cultural relevance? Ew!"). So, what I want to talk about a little bit here is what I didn't expect.

The film is surprisingly tense and moving, even if you're familiar with the events it dramatizes, which I am. Clooney's script (co-written with Grant Heslov) resists the urge to have its characters embark on long soliloquies, and uses mostly their own, publically recorded words.

Everything else is suggested in performance.That's a tribute to the casting and the subtle performances Clooney got from his actors. David Strathairn in particular performs one of the most remarkable re-creations of a real person I've ever seen as Ed Murrow, but it's not a Rich Little-style impression.

Rather, it's a carefully assembled lesson in the art and craft of acting. Not a showy, "Oscar-bait" performance (think Jodie Foster in Nell), though IMO he deserves a nomination, but a disciplined, nuanced one that makes the audience come to him.

Similarly, Clooney is also to be commended for his low-key performance; this is no vanity project designed to show a movie star in the best light. He acts, as Fred Friendly reportedly acted, as Murrow's steady, supportive collaborator.

Another of the film's real achievements is that it reminds us of what a great writer Edward R. Murrow was; he almost deserves a co-screenwriting credit. And this invites us via inference to mourn the fact that we have no such men or women writing for the television news today.

I'm not speaking of political speechmaking, merely of writing, and it's a craft that Murrow practiced with the skill of Norman Corwin and maybe even of Sorkin. The film is a respectful tribute to him and if there is one thing I would like to see most as fallout? It is a new generation of journalists who know that we have had, and can and must have again, a better news media than we have today.

We interupt this blog for an unpaid political announcement

(again, a tip o'the hat to Egalia, who has a good eye for a funny graphic)

And this is the greatest conspiracy theory I have ever seen in my whole entire life

I swear I am absolutely not making this up. Someone on the conservative site Free Republic actually posted:

I don't know .. the whole thing is such a mess - I still say this "mess" has Hillary's fingerprints all over it.

Bill Clinton knew this was going down when he and Hillary were perusing Europe trying to sell her book. At a London function, Clinton was overheard to say to Blair, "If you don't stop supporting Bush and his war, you will not be able to win your next election". Within a few days of that exchange of words, the Wilson story broke.

And it just goes on like that. Well, it's official: The conservatives have crossed that line between everyday villainy and cartoonish super-villainy.

Oh...what the hell. For old times sake.

Let's kick Michael Brown in the head a little more...because he deserves it more than we ever dreamed.

Marty Bahamonde, a FEMA regional director, told a Senate panel investigating the government's response to the disaster that he gave regular updates to people in contact with then-FEMA Director Michael Brown as early as Aug. 28, one day before Katrina made landfall.

...on Aug. 31, Bahamonde frantically e-mailed Brown to tell him that thousands are evacuees were gathering in the streets with no food or water and that "estimates are many will die within hours."

"Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical," Bahamonde wrote.

Less than three hours later, however, Brown's press secretary wrote colleagues to complain that the FEMA director needed more time to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge restaurant that evening. "He needs much more that (sic) 20 or 30 minutes," wrote Brown aide Sharon Worthy.

"We now have traffic to encounter to go to and from a location of his choise (sic), followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc. Thank you."

Two things:

One: Gotta love an aide with such a unique connection to literacy.

Two...who else remembers the scene from The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King where Pippin...who knows the situation is past critical...watches Denethor eat dinner? And sings:

Home is behind
The world ahead
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadow
Through the edge of night
Until the stars are all alight

Mist and shadow
Cloud and shape
Hope shall fade
Hope shall fail

"He was." Wow.

So...you hear about this former aide to Colin Powell who is just going off on Cheney, Rumsfeld, et all? It really makes for some, well, I don't know if you'd call it amusing reading, but I think you'll enjoy it.

Excerpts follow.

Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired colonel, also charged that, as national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice was "part of the problem" by not ensuring that the policy-making process was open to all relevant participants.

"Wilkerson embodies Powell and [Powell's deputy secretary of state, Richard] Armitage," who is also a retired military officer, said Steve Clemons, who organized Wilkerson's NAF appearance. "That's how his remarks should be seen."

If so, it appears that Powell and Armitage have little but disdain for Rice's performance as national security adviser, although Wilkerson was more complimentary about her subsequent work at the State Department and the relative success she has enjoyed in steering US policy in a less-confrontational direction compared to the frustrations that dogged Powell.

Wilkerson attributed her success to several factors, including her "intimacy with the president" and the fact that the administration "finds itself in some fairly desperate straits politically and otherwise".

Wilkerson was particularly scathing about the former under secretary of defense for policy, Douglas Feith, citing (retired general) Tommy Frank's famous description of the neo-conservative ideologue as the "f...ing stupidest guy on the planet".
"Let me testify to that," he said. "He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man. And yet, and yet, after the [Pentagon is given] control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves in a closet somewhere ... That's telling you how decisions were made and ... how things got accomplished."

He also denounced the abuse of detainees and said that Powell was particularly upset by it. "Ten years from now, when we have the whole story, we are going to be ashamed," he said. "This is not us. This is not the way we do business. I don't think in our history we've ever had a presidential involvement, a secretarial involvement, a vice presidential involvement, an attorney general's involvement in telling our troops essentially, 'Carte blanche is the way you should feel. You should not have any qualms because this is a different kind of conflict'

Wilkerson also contrasted Bush's diplomacy very unfavorably with his father's. Referring to Bush's first meeting with former South Korean president, Kim Dae-jung, Wilkerson noted, "When you put your feet up on a hassock and look at the man who's won the Nobel Prize and is currently president of South Korea and tell him in a very insulting way that you don't agree with his assessment of what is necessary to be reconciled with the North, that's not diplomacy; that's cowboyism."

Right. Now that we've all enjoyed that, here's John from AmericaBlog with a note of caution:

Overall, this is a great article...Colin Powell's former chief of staff just SAVAGES Cheney and Rummy. But then he says something that is simply untrue. Powell is upset at him for speaking up because Powell is the world's most loyal soldier.

Powell wasn't the world's most loyal soldier when he publicly took on his commander in chief in that commander's first days in office in early 1993. And he wasn't the world's most loyal soldier when he savaged that commander in his subsequent memoirs.

Colin Powell is many things, including an opportunist who got burned selling his soul to the devil, but a loyal soldier he is not. And frankly, I wonder how upset Powell really is that his close friend is spilling the beans on how all of this mess is NOT Powell's fault. Uh huh.

So...I'd say, take a little from column A, and a little from column B. Sure, it's fun to watch more and more people dogpile on the CIC...but you always gotta consider the source.

And keep a dream alive

Atrios has a good post linking to and commenting on an article by Sam Rosenfeld and Matthew Yglesias about "liberal hawks." They write:

The incompetence critique is, in short, a dodge -- a way for liberal hawks to acknowledge the obviously grim reality of the war without rethinking any of the premises that led them to support it in the first place. In part, the dodge helps protect its exponents from personal embarrassment. But it also serves a more important, and dangerous, function: Liberal hawks see themselves as defenders of the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention -- such as the Clinton-era military campaigns in Haiti and the Balkans -- and as advocates for the role of idealism and values in foreign policy. The dodgers believe that to reject the idea of the Iraq War is, necessarily, to embrace either isolationism or, even worse in their worldview, realism -- the notion, introduced to America by Hans Morgenthau and epitomized (not for the better) by the statecraft of Henry Kissinger, that U.S. foreign policy should concern itself exclusively with the national interest and exclude consideration of human rights and liberal values. Liberal hawk John Lloyd of the Financial Times has gone so far as to equate attacks on his support for the war with doing damage to “the idea, and ideal, of freedom itself.”

It sounds alluring. But it’s backward: An honest reckoning with this war’s failure does not threaten the future of liberal interventionism. Instead, it is liberal interventionism’s only hope. By erecting a false dichotomy between support for the current bad war and a Kissingerian amoralism, the dodgers run the risk of merely driving ever-larger numbers of liberals into the realist camp. Left-of-center opinion neither will nor should follow a group of people who continue to insist that the march to Baghdad was, in principle, the height of moral policy thinking. If interventionism is to be saved, it must first be saved from the interventionists.

To which Atrios adds:

When the Bush administration kicked the soccer ball away from Afghanistan and towards Iraq the media and the "liberal hawks" and the country dutifully followed, aborting what could have been the greatest humanitarian triumph in history. One which, given the speed at which books about the place were selling after 9/11, would've had the full support of the country. I was somewhat surprised but deeply proud of the fact that post-9/11 much of the country seemed to buy into the idea that bad people had taken over a country of good people. There was a heartwarming generosity after 9/11, a sense that we must help those people - not the bad people, but the ones under their thumb.



Yes, we're still in Afghanistan, but we haven't exactly thrown all possible resources into bringing that country into modernity. We had our chance, but Iraq was a much shinier toy.

chumps.

as if he hoped the answer would change

Via War and Piece, an LA Times article about Cheney and his staff's war with the CIA:

When Cheney visited the CIA, Iraq was his main focus, particularly in the months before the war. Unlike Libby and others working with the vice president, Cheney was reportedly always polite. But in his quiet way, he was insistent, sometimes asking the same question again and again as if he hoped the answer would change, according to people familiar with his contacts with the CIA.

Lately I keep thinking about the famous line from the Sherlock Holmes stories,

"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts..."

That's what I think about when I'm having conversations with Republicans who believe Delay's troubles stem from nothing more than a vindictive and partisan prosecutor. That's what I think about the WHIG.

True, we all make Holmes' capital mistake from time to time. Trouble is...very few of us are in a position to have any deaths result from it.

It's fundraising day. Please consider a small donation...

If you look over to the right there and click the View my complete profile link you'll find, among other things, a link to my Amazon.com Wish List. If you're amazed at the quality of posts on this site (I know I am), please consider making a small donation to the Buy Ben Those Books And CDs He Can't Score Through The Ink 19 Gig Fund. I thank you.

Why The Internet Was Invented, Part Two

So we could have sites like this one, an entire site devoted to one of the most classic, most fan-favorite and most well-known cartoons ever made...Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese's One Froggy Evening. You've seen it, you love it, you've always wondered about it...

That's the most disturbing picture I've ever seen in my whole entire life

Firedoglake has an entry about the relationship between Judith Miller and the WHIG (White House Iraq Group). But if you're anything like me, you'll have trouble getting past the picture they use to start it off.

Let's just say it illustrates that relationship as it pertains to Miller and Dick Cheney in a dirty...in a dirty, visual...oh just have a look. You know you want to now, you pervs.

ETA, on the other hand, this one, courtesy of TGW, made me smile:

Leonard Cohen~I Came so Far for Beauty

I came so far for beauty
I left so much behind
My patience and my family
My masterpiece unsigned

I thought I'd be rewarded
For such a lonely choice
And maybe she would answer
To such a hopeless voice

But no, I could not touch her
With such a heavy hand
Her star beyond my order
Her nakedness unmanned

I came so far for beauty
I left so much behind
My patience and my family
My masterpiece unsigned

You eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeediots! (as Ren would say)

Kos:

The latest idiot unmasked is Slate's Jacob Weisberg.

No one disputes that Bush officials negligently and stupidly revealed Valerie Plame's undercover status. But after two years of digging, no evidence has emerged that anyone who worked for Bush and talked to reporters about Plame--namely Rove or Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff--knew she was undercover.

I didn't realize Weisberg had access to Fitzgerald's files.

The problem for these idiots is that they long for a Ken Starr-type investigation, with investigators leaking like sieves. They can't stand a prosecutor who conducts his campaign with the type of professionalism and -- yes -- secrecy, that doing his job right requires.

Say, remember that Bill Bennett thing?

Sure you do. Bill "Book of Virtues" Bennett said that aborting all African-American babies, while "an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do," would make the crime rate go down.

A probably at least latently racist, but certainly stupid, unfortunate and hurtful comment. But it happened at least three weeks ago, which is like two years in blog time. However, a timely fellow named Todd Manzi has just joined the conversation. He begins:

Everyone is weighing in on what Bill Bennett said on his radio program. Everyone is eager to offer their opinion on his words and whether or not he should have said them. Everyone is missing the point.

Um, no, Todd. Everyone was weighing in and eager to offer their opinion over two weeks ago. Now we're a little more interested in things like:

Bush knowing Rove was the CIA leak
Tom Delay's lawyer making claims he can't justify
Bush's patently unqualified nominee to the supreme court

But none of that lets you work up a head of steam about liberal Democrats, does it? As others have in the past, Manzi contrives to disingenuously miss what many found offensive about Bennett's remarks: The way his brain is apparently wired, black=criminal.

He continues at some length (to the tune of 2,906 words), but his basic point is contained in his affecting to be shocked-shocked! that:

Democrat Congressman John Conyers in a press release disguised as a letter to Salem Radio Network said:

. . . we simply cannot countenance statements and shows that are replete with racism, stereotyping, and profiling. Mr. Bennett’s statement is insulting to all of us and has no place on the nation’s public air waves.

Keep in mind that Conyers released his letter to a wire service with the hope that the story, now with him in it, would get play on the air waves. Conyers was attempting to gain more exposure of Bennett’s statement.

Dear god. You mean...a politican attempted to take advantage of a clumsy remark made by someone on the other side, and get himself a little media spotlight in the bargain? Say it ain't so. Manfred, bring me my smelling salts...

ETA: Oliver Willis adds to the chorus of horror:

It’s not like the right-wing has several hundred non-profit groups and politicians and media outlets that jump on an issue and bray like dogs in heat until it gets covered by the mainstream press no matter how sketchy the actual substance of the issue is - right?

The poor babies.

Yaz~Winter Kills

Green
in your love
on bright days
You grew sun blind
you thought me unkind
To remind you
how winter kills

Lost
in daydreams
you drove too fast
and got nowhere
You rode on half fare
when you got too scared
How winter kills

Tear at me searching for weak scenes

Pain
in your eyes
makes me cruel
Makes me spiteful
tears are delightful
welcome your nightfall
How winter kills

I'll tear at you searching for weak scenes...

How winter kills