How About Google Replaces the CIA

In Legacy of Ashes the History of the CIA Tim Weiner has written a book that should give us all pause. The CIA has not worked. Harry Truman thought of it as a sort of big newspaper that would inform the President of news that both made and did not make the papers. But that is not what the OSS boys who formed the CIA culture desired. They wanted to play at overthrowing governments that leaned the slightest bit leftward; they might go communist. Weiner writes that they were bad at it because the first generation of operatives, many of whom were active alcoholics, did not have a clue as to what they were doing. They did not know the history, language nor culture of the nations they were assigned to radically change but brimming with arrogance and misplaced American can do optimism they forged ahead. Their ventures were supposed to be secret and not traceable to the United States. But the CIA never learned to be subtle. Funds would suddenly pour into the coffers of parties and politicians they supported. The people realized immediately that the money was coming from outside their country and they wer all somewhat acquainted with the country that had more money than it knew what to do with. They simplely added two and two to get CIA and the Americans. When Generals would get some training in the US and return to establish a dictatorship to protect their people from communism. Those people were not fooled; they knew the US had purchased that General.
What about the intelligence? What about the President's newspaper of the printed and unprinted stories of the governments of the world? Well as Weiner has documented, the CIA knew next to nothing of what happened in other countries and was surprised by major developments time and again while misdiagnosing situation after situation. The CIA's focus on covert (i.e. goverment overthrows and other foreign medling) action ate the budget keeping people from being trained in the languages and cultures of subject countries so that they could be productive as operators or analysts. Secrecy covered up the wrong doing and the incompetence and allowed for the creation of an international reputation for omnipotence that the CIA decidedly did not have. When nations blundered or were beset with bad luck they wrongly saw the hand of the CIA in their misfortune. All of which brings me to my point.
Lets disband the CIA and replace it with Google...

Hey Dick Leave the Constitution Alone

Dick Cheney what a guy! His Vice President's office is not to be monitored in its handling of classified materials because...well....he is NOT really part of the Executive branch...because the Vice President is named in the Constitution as President of the Senate. My God how the main stream media howled when Al Gore came out with his "no controling legal authority" statement on making fund raising calls from a federal office. Yet here is Cheney a clear member of the execuative branch saying he is unaccountable to executive orders because...well...his office of the Vice President is not part of the executive and that is just fine. Move along, move along, no story here.....
I rather like Rahm Emanuel's solution. Fine, he says, Cheney and the Vice President's office are not part of the Executive Branch...we can do that. We will remove them from funding for Executive branch. I say "Go for it Rahm!!"

I was reading a diary over at dKOS entitled Is George W Bush Planning to Trigger Apocalyptic War? and it chilled me. The diarist's quote of Jeff Sharlet caught me cold. Sharlet starts by saying "We keep trying to explain away American fundamentalism." Then goes on to describe where I find myself.

Those of us not engaged personally or emotionally in the biggest political and cultural movement of our times—those on the sidelines of history—keep trying to come up with theories with which to discredit the evident allure of this punishing yet oddly comforting idea of a deity, this strange god. His invisible hand is everywhere, say His citizen-theologians, caressing and fixing every outcome: Little League games, job searches, test scores, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, the success or failure of terrorist attacks (also known as "signs"), victory or defeat in battle, at the ballot box, in bed.... A divine love that speaks through hurricanes. Who would worship such a god? His followers must be dupes, or saps, or fools, their faith illiterate, insane, or misinformed, their strength fleeting, hollow, an aberration. A burp in American history. An unpleasant odor that will pass. ( Jeff Sharlet, from Through a Glass Darkly, Harpers Magazine, December 2006 )

They are, from my perspective, so surreal that I find myself simply reaching for denial or thinking that they are "dumb rednecks" who will have no long term impact. But armageddon fundamentalists are not as I would have them be. Many ETs (End Timers) have impressive secular educational credentials in the academic, legal, medical, and engineering fields (e.g. Olasky at UT). Still their religious born desire for the purification obtained from a great "die back" of humanity is crazy and must be resisted and fought. If the dKos diarist is right W is looking for a way to attack Iran before him term ends we are really in trouble.

Don't Cave Dems...Please Don't

Democrats in the Congress please continue to do what the people sent you there to do i.e. bring the troops out of harms way in Iraq. You cannot accomplish this if you roll over and give Bush want he wants after a veto. The safety of the troops is primarily the responsibility of the commander and in this case the commander-in-chief. Bush has ways of keeping those troops provisioned just keep reminding people of that. And also remind them that a good commander does what is necessary to insure that his troops are never left without the resources they need to defend themselves. In this case what a reasonable commander would do is compromise with Congress and accept the pull out time line knowing that if things turned around in Iraq that timetable might melt away.In any event Bush must be held accountable.

Is it time for Gun Control yet?

I wonder how many people Cho Seung-Hui would have killed with a rock, knife or baseball bat? Would even one person have died before he was overwhelmed and hauled away? But Mr Seung-Hui had a gun, no by all accounts he had two guns. He could instantly dish out mortal wounds before anyone could get near enough to stop him. And so he did.

Already the fake disgust of the NRA-istas is heard, they tell us not to use this tragedy for political purposes i.e. lessening the opportunity for gun violence by strengthening gun control laws. They need not be afraid, over 87% of the country favors the minimum wage and it still hasn't gotten out of the Congress. When it comes to guns is there even 50% of the population who wants more regulation?

It's the Southern Accents That Get Me

Even at this late date there are people who call in to C-SPAN just falling over themselves to heap praise upon George W. Bush. He has not lied to us, he has protected us. He is a good man, they say, and even more call him a good Christian man. Invariably these people are out of touch with facts and current events and could care less. What they do know they get from FOX News and Limbaugh or one of his many clones and then they mix that all up.

Often those with the strongest feelings and the fewest facts tend to be the people who speak with a Southern accent. After a while it just gets to me; there will be no convincing such people. They are not open to facts, debate or persuasion. Bush is their beleaguered hero and thats that.

I would say to the Democratic political strategists...yeah go ahead and write off the South.

Slush pile me and W

You are reading--if indeed you are human and are really reading this blog entry- a slush pile blog. Slush pile is the term publishing houses use to describe unpublished and mostly unpublishable manuscripts. The slush pile is the land fill of literature.

OK! I can deal with that, I'm a big boy.

The fact is that I am not disciplined enough in my writing. Which is to say I do not write every day. Real authors do exactly that. They also do an additional thing...they revise. They may feel, when writing, that the spirit is upon them and every word is worth its weight in gold but invariably it is not so. The gold, in fact, comes from considered and careful editing.

Personally, I think that Karl Rove is itching to go to before a Congressional committee and show everyone just how brilliant he is. I do not think he will make any indictable mistakes if he should appear before either Chairman Conyers or Senator Leahy. Moreover, I think Karl needs this sort of appearance and has hungered for it secretly since coming to Washington. After all, what would you want were you 50 times smarter than the man who is President and who out of the public eye dismissively calls you "turdblossom"? One thing really smart people hate it is to be mocked by a dumbass- read W. As much as Karl Rove wants a Republican majority for the future, what he wants more is recognition. Karl has had to take a lot of shit for W and that gets old, especially since W by now is already history. If Karl is going to have a time it is now.

Slush pile me and W

You are reading--if indeed you are human and are really reading this blog entry- a slush pile blog. Slush pile is the term publishing houses use to describe unpublished and mostly unpublishable manuscripts. The slush pile is the land fill of literature.

OK! I can deal with that, I'm a big boy.

The fact is that I am not disciplined enough in my writing. Which is to say I do not write every day. Real authors do exactly that. They also do an additional thing...they revise. They may feel, when writing, that the spirit is upon them and every word is worth its weight in gold but invariably it is not so. The gold, in fact, comes from considered and careful editing.

Personally, I think that Karl Rove is itching to go to before a Congressional committee and show everyone just how brilliant he is. I do not think he will make any indictable mistakes if he should appear before either Chairman Conyers or Senator Leahy. Moreover, I think Karl needs this sort of appearance and has hungered for it secretly since coming to Washington. After all, what would you want were you 50 times smarter than the man who is President and who out of the public eye dismissively calls you "turdblossom"? One thing really smart people hate it is to be mocked by a dumbass- read W. As much as Karl Rove wants a Republican majority for the future, what he wants more is recognition. Karl has had to take a lot of shit for W and that gets old, especially since W by now is already history. If Karl is going to have a time it is now.