Today's wallpaper is from the 1966 Christopher Lee flick Dracula, Prince of Darkness, the sequel to the awesome Hammer flick The Horror of Dracula. This one did not star Peter Cushing as Dracula's nemesis, but did feature Hammer honey Barbara Shelley.
CalPundit offers further reflection on his lenghty diatribe about the Texas Republican platform.
Unfortunately, due to some technical problems, the permalinks on CalPundit's site had to be reconstructed, and so previous links here will lilely be off. I'll correct what I can as I discover them.
Joshua Marshall scores big with a definitive takedown of Bob Novak's recent claims that
Clearly, Novak knows the meaning of the phrase 'CIA operative' and he uses it advisedly. In the last decade he’s never used the phrase to mean anything but clandestine agents.
Let’s cut the mumbo-jumbo: past evidence suggests that Novak only uses this phrase to refer to clandestine agents. In this case, when he has every reason to run away from that meaning of the phrase, he suddenly runs away from that meaning. Especially with all the other evidence at hand, that just defies credibility. Everything points to the conclusion that Novak did know. That would mean, necessarily, that his sources knew too.
The ‘we didn’t know’ cover story just doesn’t wash.
Let's recap: There's no question that Valerie Plame was an undercover operative. There's no question that someone in the Administration revealed that information, at the very least, to Novak. There's every reason to beleive that Novak wants to spin this embarrassment criminal behavior as best he can, to the point of calling his earlier work into question. But as Marshall points out, there's little reason to take his revisionism seriously.
Marshall also responds to a reader who finds it hard to believe that Plame was actively working as a covert agent as the mother of two-year-old twins. But it doesn't matter if Plame had come in from the field. It isn't just about protecting her, but also the integrity of sources and methods -- funny, I seem to recall lots of concern about those expressed by this Administration in the past -- of possibly ongoing operations Plame had been involved with. Even if Plame was no longer an active agent, her relationship with the CIA was a vital secret to protect those individuals she gathered inteeligence from, whether they cooperated with her knowingly or not. That's why the statute contains a five-year limit.
MoveOn provides an opportunity to be helpful to the President: Sign an affidavit attesting that you weren't the one to blow Plamne's cover. Eventually Bush should be able to narrow it down...
CalPundit links to an amusing cartoon noting that Bush has trouble finding things he should, and offers his thoughts on the "it was stupid, not criminal" excuse that's really becoming shopworn with this Adminstation.
Mark Kleiman has more on why a coerced waiver of journalistic privilege won't work.
Blah3 links to a letter to Karl Rove from Rep. John Conyers, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, calling for Rove's resignation on the grounds that pushing Plame's identity may have been a felony even after someone in the White House blew her cover through Novak.
Update: Joshua Marshall adds more weight to the theory that the White House's sepcific denials about three of its members not being involved in "leaking classified information" might not be all that it seems.
Paul Krugman delivers an impressive rebuke to those who think pointing out the Administration's deceptiveness amounts to wild-eyed incivility.
Some say that the right, having engaged in name-calling and smear tactics when Bill Clinton was president, now wants to change the rules so such behavior is no longer allowed. In fact, the right is still calling names and smearing; it wants to prohibit rude behavior only by liberals.
But there's more going on than a simple attempt to impose a double standard. All this fuss about the rudeness of the Bush administration's critics is an attempt to preclude serious discussion of that administration's policies. For there is no way to be both honest and polite about what has happened in these past three years.
On the fiscal front, this administration has used deceptive accounting to ram through repeated long-run tax cuts in the face of mounting deficits. And it continues to push for more tax cuts, when even the most sober observers now talk starkly about the risk to our solvency. It's impolite to say that George W. Bush is the most fiscally irresponsible president in American history, but it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.
On the foreign policy front, this administration hyped the threat from Iraq, ignoring warnings from military professionals that a prolonged postwar occupation would tie down much of our Army and undermine our military readiness. (Joseph Galloway, co-author of "We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young," says that "we have perhaps the finest Army in history," but that "Donald H. Rumsfeld and his civilian aides have done just about everything they could to destroy that Army.") It's impolite to say that Mr. Bush has damaged our national security with his military adventurism, but it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.
Still, some would say that criticism should focus only on Mr. Bush's policies, not on his person. But no administration in memory has made paeans to the president's character — his "honor and integrity" — so central to its political strategy. Nor has any previous administration been so determined to portray the president as a hero, going so far as to pose him in line with the heads on Mount Rushmore, or arrange that landing on the aircraft carrier. Surely, then, Mr. Bush's critics have the right to point out that the life story of the man inside the flight suit isn't particularly heroic — that he has never taken a risk or made a sacrifice for the sake of his country, and that his business career is a story of murky deals and insider privilege.
In the months after 9/11, a shocked nation wanted to believe the best of its leader, and Mr. Bush was treated with reverence. But he abused the trust placed in him, pushing a partisan agenda that has left the nation weakened and divided. Yes, I know that's a rude thing to say. But it's also the truth.
Brad DeLong has more, using a concrete example [what, just one? --ed.] of Administration mendacity:
So what is the right response? Is it to stick to making only "C" arguments, and to pretend to take Larry seriously as he momentarily throws off all his analytical commitments and beliefs and channels the mercantilist arguments of early Ira Magaziner? Or is the right response to make the "C" arguments, but also make the "M" argument that Larry is being a sock puppet for Karl Rove because he wants to keep his White House mess privileges?
It's a hard question. But there are clearly times--and I think this steel tariff example is one of them--when sticking to the "C" arguments alone is a way of misleading your readers [emphasis added]. All the substantive economic policy guys in the Bush administration were horrified by the steel tariff. And to pretend that they weren't horrified--that they believed what they said in their sock puppet role, and that there was a serious debate between two serious schools of analysis--is so close to lying to your readers that I cannot see the difference.
"Civility" becomes the last bastion of those who cannot appeal to justice or the truth to make their case. If King David had behaved this way, he would never have repented of the murder of Uriah -- he would just have told the prophet Nathan that it isn't polite to point.
These observations are spot-on. For starters, many in the GOP stopped being civil some time ago (If they want to get back to the old ways, I'd suggest some tried-and-true methods of demonstrating their sincerity, like a public apology and acts of contrition...and listen to those crickets chirp.)
It keeps coming down to certain themes. Bush -- and many of his supporters -- are cowards and bullies who are afraid of a fair fight. I'm sure it's dismaying to the Crawford crowd, who defines "bipartisanship" as "shut up and do it my way," to have Democrats willing to demand accountability from this Administration (it's abundantly clear that many Republicans are unwilling to do their duty). Sure, many Democrats -- and not a few principled conservatives -- are angry at the mess Bush has made of this great county, and the sleazy tactics they use.
But the Democrats are far from unhinged. To the contrary, more and more, it looks like they have Bush's number. Bush is simply not trustworthy, and there's absolutely no percentage in taking him at his word.
And it occurs to me that if the Republicans had anything to back their claims up, they wouldn't have all that big a problem with it. Con men, it has been observed far and wide, rely on the courtesy and trust of their marks, and usually bloviate impressively when the suckers raise any doubts. Parallels with the current bunch in Washington are left for the readrs to draw.
Last night I watched the pleasing 1981 Joe Dante werewolf movie The Howling (information and capsule review at Carfax Abbey; review at And You Call Yourself A Scientist!). The plot concerns a stressed-out TV reporter sent by her shrink to one of those groovy California retreat/resort colonies, only to discover that it's a haven for werewolves. It's rife with in-jokes and homages -- right after a character gets bittin, dooming him with the werewolf curse, the film cuts to a couple watching The Wolf Man on TV, and Claude Rains says the famous rhyme, and the cast includes horror icons John Carradine and Kevin McCarthy, and the film includes cameos by Dick Miller and Roger Corman. The movie also stars a very young -- and very hairy -- Robert Picardo, who would go on to play the irascible holographic doctor on Star Trek Voyager
I also made significant progress in Resident Evil: Code Veronica. I succeeded in getting Claire and Steve to escape the Antarctic base. Doing so begins the third part of the game, in which the player controls Claire's brother Chris. I plan to replay Claire's final boss fight, though -- I used a little too much ammo to bring it down, and something tells me I'll regret it if I point her pistol at an approaching zombie and hear the "click" of an emptry chamber.
Unfortunately, PixelDecor has been hit by automated linking spiders that have been sucking bandwidth, so this year there's an easy password system. To download the wallpaper:
Cemetery Gate Productions is a cool production shop offering a great set of masks -- from retro Halloween favorites to creepy living dead -- props, and other creations.
Unfortunately, the deadline for ordering costumes or props by Halloween has already passed.
Earlier today, the hit counter reached 45,000. I'm enjoying a fairly high-traffic month, due at least in part to increased search engine hits for horror-related topics. Thanks for visiting, and don't forget that there's lots of left-of-center commentary, Halloween celebration and general swankiness around, so enjoy!
Holy cow...I just got the following spam email (from this address), in HTML format complete with form:
Important notice
We have just charged your credit card for money laundry service in amount of $234.65 (because you are either child [p__graphy] webmaster or deal with dirty money, which require us to layndry them and then send to your checking account). If you feel this transaction was made by our mistake, please press "No". If you confirm this transaction, please press "Yes" and fill in the form below.
Enter your credit card number here:
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If anyone falls for this one, they deserve to have their credit number in the hands of a silly script kiddie.
Speaking of horror films, I forgot to make note of this week's set of horror flicks I rented Tuesday night. Unfortunately, being out of town last weekend prevented me from finishing last weeks' batch, so I re-rented two (which I must watch this week). Here they are:
The Howling (redux)
The Night Flier (redux)
Creepers (the American cut of Dario Argento's Phenomena, starring the lovely Jennifer Connelly; review at Teleport City)
It creeped the hell out of me. If you don't like horror movies, this is the movie for you. Why? Because it's effective and there's actually not a whole lot of gore, just creep-outs to no end.
Tim's assessment is spot-on. There's surprisingly little blood. Tobe Hooper, like many great horror directors, is a genius at making the audience think it sees more than it does. And the film is a non-stop creep-fest.
In the documentary accompanying the great low-budget zombie flick/homage The Dead Hate the Living, it's noted that director Dave Parker hosted zombie movie marathons for his cast to give them an idea what he was going for. (Since several of his characters are supposed to be zombie movie buffs, the tactic paid off.) So I'm sure Tim is on to something.
I'd definitely recommend he read, if he hasn't already, Dr. Freex' account of writing and making his own bad horror film: Forever Evil, which I bought on videotape for a lark -- and a mere buck -- some weeks ago.
Tim also links to this Flash-based site for a low-budget zombie film I'd never heard of, Sexy Zombies. Looks interesting...
The indispensible Mark Kleiman looks at one of the latest theories put forward to explain the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame: It was all a colossal, stupid blunder, but not a deliberate -- read criminal -- act.
Well, anything's possible. Two insanely monstrous blunders -- one by Libby and a player to be named later in identifying Plame as CIA without knowing she was covert, and a second by Allen's "senior Administration official" in somehow moving a group of six phone calls back a crucial week in time, and inventing "revenge" as the motive for an act never actually committed -- seem hard to believe.
...So on balance I find the "pure accident" theory hard to swallow. But it might turn out to be true. That wouldn't leave the Administration with clean hands: if it's true, heads should have rolled eleven weeks ago, and the President should have apologized to Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson.
Still, unlike Talleyrand, I don't regard blunders as worse than crimes. I'd rather be ruled by the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight than by Don Vito Corleone and family. And that seems, right now, to exhaust the set of interpretations consistent with the facts.
A couple of things should be noted about this. First, this is a classic strategy: confuse the issues, change the direction, switch the focus -- in short, try to make things complicated enough so that people get so confused that they simply give up trying to understand any of it.
But one issue is not complicated at all, and it should not be lost sight of, despite all the apparent attempts to bury it: since Novak's original column appeared -- now, what, 12 weeks ago? -- the White House has known that someone told Novak of Plame's undercover status. Perhaps, on the basis of some technicality, it wasn't criminal. But someone blew her cover.
And the White House did nothing about it, until the recent Washington Post story and the ensuing controversy forced them to. That's all you need to know. The rest is window-dressing, a distraction, an attempt to confuse the issues. Don't let them get away with it.
Even Daniel Drezner points out that the Administration once again using incompetence to excuse malfeasance is hardly reassuring:
Does this excuse Bush's lackluster statements about pursuing the leak? Yes and no. If the Maguire theory holds and Bush knows this as true, then it may explain why he's not exercised about the issue -- he knows that there was no criminal intent. However, as Maguire and I have pointed out repeatedly, Plame's NOC status means that even if there was no criminal action, this was a serious breach of ethical boundaries, not to mention a threat to intelligence operations. For someone who's supposed to bring honor and integrity back into the White House, Bush's approach remains cavalier.
...[T]he Newsweek theory of events rests crucially on the notion that the official who leaked the story to the Post made an important mistake. If you still accept the Post story as 100% correct, outrage is still justified. Second, Bush's lackadaisical response to the damage that has emanated from the leak has opened him up to justifiable criticisms -- proving once again that the response to the scandal is always more damaging than the scandal itself.
I'm not buying either, and here's why: if blowing a covert agent was basically an accident, then the responsible parties should have stepped forward and basically thrown themselves on the mercy of the court. The fact that no one so far has done so -- and in the process seem willing to let the Administration endure the scandal of an apparent criminal act and actions that are easily perceived as foot-dragging if not an outright cover-up -- makes this theory unlikely at best, and certainly inconsistent with the known facts.
I think there are at least a few clues pointing to the conclusion that Novak and his sources knew precisely what her status was. Again, not proof, but clues.
Let me walk you through them.
First, in his original column Novak referred to Plame as an “operative.” In recent interviews Novak has tried to pass this off as an oversight, explaining that he meant it in the colloquial sense in which one might refer to a political hack, an operative, etc.
...Frankly, no one buys this. As we’ve seen in the last couple weeks there are various phrasings which get used to describe CIA employees whom we would, in colloquial language, call ‘undercover agents.’ But ‘operative’ is pretty much always used to distinguish people from ‘analysts.’ It’s hard to believe that someone like Novak, who’s been doing this for almost half a century, would make such a silly mistake. Really hard to b
