I am utterly overwhelmed with work lately, sick with some sort of neverending low-grade flu, and managing the fallout from an unexpected indoor rain shower in the proximity of an exceedingly expensive microscope (nothing was irretrievably lost, thank god). Someday in the near future I hope to get back blogging, but for now free time is mostly a quaint memory.
In the meantime Hilzoy has the post I wish I could write about about the Pentagon’s post-invasion plans. They really did expect a cakewalk, and laid exactly zero plans in case they were wrong. Also note via Drum that the declassified doc unambiguously shows that preparations for Iraq hurt our hunt for al Qaeda.
The narrative by now ought to be perfectly clear. Our brain trust left the crucial post 9/11 job, hunting down those who attacked us, unfinished so they could run off on an second, poorly thought out campaign. Campaign #2, doomed from the start by irresponsible planning and an ostrich-like refusal to adapt to reality, exceeded the expectations of its worst critics. Now the same geniuses want to leave campaigns #1 and #2 unfinished while they provoke a third. It brings to mind a gang of eleven year olds playing Risk. It’s attention-deficit adventurism. Why anybody, even people who broadly agree with their politics, would support these people is beyond me.
Also read Steve Benen on the North Korea agreement. Thanks to our inspired leadership we have essentially returned to the Clintonian Agreed Framework, except that North Korea has several kilograms of processed plutonium and (probably) functioning warheads. If the president’s erstwhile fans don’t like it we can always go back to empty threats. That seemed to work.
Maybe you have something other than Norks and war on your mind. Chat about whatever.
dreggas
I wish the dumb fucks going to the house floor to oppose any criticism of these fucktards would read this stuff. Unfortunately they are just as brain dead as this administration. If anything the debate I have heard so far illustrates just how stupid many of the American people are if they would elect such puppets who do naught but relay administration talking points time and again. I could say the same of those in favor, but those in favor happen to be right.
Bubblegum Tate
Because they simply reject all of the data that’s being presented to them. At least that’s the best theory I can come up with. When you point this stuff out to wingnuts, they basically say, “Nuh-uh!” and tell you how your view on Iraq is incorrect (probably because you listen to that durned “MSM,” which really is operationally entangled with the Democratic party, don’t you know) because really, Iraq is a magnificent success. When you present this information to you, they just ignore it and change the subject.
So the problem is that you expect them to argue in good faith based upon real data. They are not at all interested in that, and they will categorically deny evidence of how awful the Iraq calamity has been from start to finish. If it doesn’t fit their worldview, then it gets discarded. It’s a bit like talking about math with somebody who believes 2+2=5 and absolutely refuses to hear any statements to the contrary.
Third Eye Open
Can someone crystalize the right’s spin of how talking to one’s adversaries is a fruitless endevour…trying to understand these folks is like trying to discuss physics with my dog.
Tsulagi
Looking at the Hilzoy post, you just know what’s been going on lately. Cheney has probably been filling the airspace in the Decider’s head with new PowerPoint slides. Walking him down a path to glory. Iraq and AF are no fun now, so what they need to bring it back is whack Iran which has been causing all the mess. Not their fault, the slides say so.
Plus, they also say Iran would be a cakewalk leading to even more enormous successes in the entire region. PowerPoint is never wrong when in the hands of Last Throes Cheney. It’s legacy time. And more importantly for Decider Man, last chance to show daddy who has the biggest pair.
Andrew
See, it really is all Microsoft’s fault.
Kimmitt
Hey, my wife had a similar cold/flu thing, and it turned out she had an opportunistic bacterial infection or two too. Antibiotics finally let her get things cleared up. FYI.
dreggas
Quote from rawstory about the “powerpoint” slideshow.
Punchy
Cell culture work, Timmy, or are we talking the scanning e- and/or tunneling variety? FWIW, 2 guys in our dept just fully quenched one of their ginormous SS-NMR magnets (too little cold juice…go figger). Replacement cost? $250K. Put THAT in a NIH grant.
John Cole
Col. Bacevich was my Regimental Commander with the 11th Armored Cavalry in Germany, as a brief aside. I met him and worked underneath him on a number of occasions while I was on active duty.
Perry Como
The Deciderator’s North Korea plan.
dreggas
Unfucking believable some some dipshit bitch is on the house floor right now quoting D’Nesh D’Souzas latest piece of Horse Shit and asking it be entered in the record. If it says anything it says these Numbfucks agree with D’Souza that they should make common cause with the terrorists if only because they hate liberals.
Zombie Santa Claus
I say, let ’em. We owe it to posterity to provide them with as many examples possible of how batshit insane the Republican Party really is right now.
Krista
Maybe I’ve read too many British lad magazines, but when you talk about “norks”, I get a very different mental image.
Jake
This is a win-win for Bush. In his Legacy Library (TM), he will be listed as the man who finally tamed Kim Jong Illin’. And if NoKo turns around and dusts SoKo after he’s out of office…who cares?
jg
We’ve always been at war with liberals.
dreggas
I would agree but these bat shit insane people are in Congress currently.
Eural
Is it just me or are those really crappy Power-Points at that? I mean I’ve seen better from my high school students working with Windows 98.
And yes, while we spend hundreds of billions on Iraq our schools are using Windows 98 to teach the next generation of leaders.
dreggas
Bet Iraqis have Vista….
Tim F.
Yes to the above. It’s a spinning-disc confocal with extra gimmickry for live culture work and an objective that costs more than my car (blue book value).
How many teslas did your former maintenance tech guy just flush?
dreggas
OMFG a Republican shithead just got up and claimed the “QUote” from the Washington times yesterday!!!
Andrew
They ran them through the “1950’s Technology” filter.
Also note the slide depicting the invasion routes prominently labels “oil” as primary objectives.
dreggas
And now another one is up there using the un-corrected words of Patreus regarding giving aid and comfort horse shit.
America…I give you the republican party elected by your fellow citizens and urge you today to call your representatives and push for better education, barring that mandatory sterilization of these representatives to prevent them from creating even more morons.
Punchy
Dont know the power of the mag (not my lab), but know it only costs so much cuz one mag provider bought out the ONLY OTHER mag provider, then proceeded to monopolistically double the price of everything.
Jesus…you can do confocal microscopy with LIVE cultures? Holy crap. Even with the phalloidin and Alexa (sp?) added? No paraformaldehyde necessary to fix anything? Wow. That would have saved me boatloads of time and headache…
Punchy
Last comment:
I’m betting this post, and that site in general, is going to be GREAT. Adding to bookmarks in 3…2…1…
Tim F.
It’s amazing what people do with GFP these days. Do you guys even have running water?
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you mean that a normal rasterizing confocal can be a pain in the ass. Indeed. The spinning disc variety scans a hell of a lot faster, except you can’t target a spot for bleaching. Email me and I’ll link you through to some live movies that I published.
Punchy
Sorry, gotta link to this. Just read the headline if you dont have time for the article.
Wow. Just wow
Tim–GFP works great…if your cells express it. The heterogeniety of my cell line forbade me from transfecting it (the same reason I couldn’t overexpress my protein of interest the same way), and I was only photographing monolayer growth, not protein expression per se. Thinking back, I realize that live microscopy is nothing new. FITC and all that, too.
rachel
We can only hope so.
Richard 23
Uh huh. Iran, the world’s largest supporter of terrorism is supplying weapons to the terrorists, but it’s BushHitler McHalliburton who’s ‘provoking’ Iran. How “honest” of you.
What do we have to talk about with Iran? Please stop being the world’s leading supporter of terrorism. Please don’t build nuclear weapons. Please don’t wipe Israel off the map. Please stop destabilizing Iraq. That would go over well.
Maybe we should send Jimmah Carter or Billy Jeff Clinton. Clinton did such a good job with North Korea, after all. Once they go, revoke their passports.
Dreggas
yep he did, so good in fact that after bush waved his cod-piece in Mini Mao’s face to no avail he’s even using Clinton’s plan.
Joathan
I’m not sure how many times I posted General Scheid’s quote about Rummy forbidding planning for the occupation on here but I know it was more than five or six.
And now, when you read it somewhere else you finally see fit to comment on it.
I’m tired of trying to beat everyone over the head with a clue stick.
Richard 23
Thyme for a Goebbels quote, methinks.