EW, of course Iran’s a bigger threat than Pakistan. They must be–they have more oil. I’m sure a woman of your intelligence has already noticed the correlation between the amount of oil in the offing and the severity of the ’threat.’ Why try to steal from poor countries? That isn’t the Cheney way.

phred

Yes, but I read that somewhere, don’t know where, so I was just borrowing from some other smart person.

I see I’ve been beaten to the punch on NPR. Well, part of greatness is knowing whom to steal from. Obviously Warner and Bai didn’t.

Also, I hesitate to mention it, but William Lind has been pretty scathing in his indictment of Pakistan policy. You can read some of what he’s written here, esp. #153. I hesitate to bring it up because, although he’s cogent and knowledgeable on some topics, he’s um, hyperbolic on others. (Which is a polite way of saying: he’s a wingnut afraid of a Radical Frankfurt Left joining forces with Islamic Radicals to bring the Caliphate to American soil.)

With accuracy like that, Bai must wear a glove when he wipes his ass.

Strangely, Matt Bai reminds me of pencil-pudded hair-plug candidate. I wonder if he gets a lot of that.

I’m a little confused here. Your reference to â€Warner†is the old VA Senator, the former VA governor or someone else? I’m not familiar with the slam to you but I do know that he needs to be careful about slamming you cause you’ll out fox him!

Actually Marcy, you might remind me of the girl – what’s her name? – in Scooby Doo. I think it’s the glasses and the smarts. But not really. You are real and that character in Scooby Doo is a cartoon.

Now Mat Bai, he reminds me of Smeagol in The Lord of the Rings. But then Smeagol was a computer generated character in the movies and a figment of my and TRR Tolkein’s imaginations in the books. But frankly, I think Mat Bai is actually less real than Smeagol. More like the guy Mortimer Snerd on the radio.

I was reading Neil’s description-prediction of how Bai lives and I started to get worried

but I guess I can relax

my bills are paid, my dishes are in the cupboard, and I ain’t wearing Pajamas (I don’t even own Pajamas)

I must be doing something right

PS: if the NSA guys are lucky, I’m wearing my BVDs, but mostly I’m a commando blogger

wink)

Mark Warner ex governor of VA, plans to run for state office 2008. Favors cobbling together a constituency as compartmentalized as his scattered mosaic of policies such as his attempts to convince doctors that nuclear powered electric plants are safe, v. Harvard Crimson 2006 interview. Warner attempts to understand the breadth of vision his questioners clearly had at Ykos1 in 2006 image. Bai makes specious claims by misquoting, but that is the basic characteristic of the current leadership of the Republican party and their favored pundits. Something seems difficult in looking at news images such as this one of a Pakistan gendarme kneecapping a Pakistan attorney, though WaPo published it in the hardcopy version of some papers, it is an AP copyrighted photograph, available there. Warner is chary of UN; Warner takes stands that are regressive for minorities; Warner supports vitiating constitutional checks and balances by even strengthening the executive versus congress; Warner favors tabloid versions of justice, and discounts gentle, restorative remediation of unruly behaviors; big backer of Copa but the profile this comes from was written in 2001 before the Google million search strings and privacy cases reached the courts. Maybe he has improved the interconnectedness of his rough tumble social fabric policies. Pakistan seems to me to be part of the class strife pawn in the armarium of US foreign policy, though evidently now beyond the nice talking stage, after ten years of abetting surrogate conflicts in a country to its north, a risky theater simply for its proximity to the hyped ’WMD’ harboring former regime in Iraq.

yo, PJ:

Bai’s been in that underground bunker, in an undisclosed location, drinking the koolaide with dead eye dick, and doing â€the math†with kkkarl. their brilliant policy decisions have led the GOP to this promised land:

If I were a Republican strategist for 2008, I’d be depressed. The political climate reading tonight has shown that things nationally, and in Ohio, have not improved noticeably since 2006. Republican extremism is box office poison.

I stole that one from DailyKOS’ front page

I’m beginning to think that george’s only hope is to cancel the 2008 elections

cuz if we DO hold the 2008 elections, the Democrats might just end up with more than 67 Senate seats and over 300 seats in the House (if anybody who doesn’t understand congressional rules, (that means YOU shit stain) the GOP would be totally irrelevant under those circumstances)

and does anybody out there realize how strong that koolaide has to be to produce such strong delusions ???

Good on you Marcy. Keep up the good fight.

And it is not, I think, an unfair aside to ask if Bai’s descriptions of Marcy suggest a revealing piece of who he is as a writer: In an appearance lasting about half a page, Marcy is rendered more negatively than probably anyone else in the book, which will come as something of a surprise to anyone who has ever met her – unless, of course, they remember that she posed some particularly difficult questions to Bai when he spoke on a panel at YearlyKos 2006, leading him to give a frankly embarrassing answer. It is difficult to read his string of unflattering descriptions of her as anything other than bitterness at having been publicly shown to be a bit of a fool.

Ooh this sounds interesting. What did Marcy ask Bai and what was the embarrassing answer?

For the record, I liked Marcie in the Peanuts strip. She was very observant, a good friend to Peppermint Patty, and the â€sir†may have been a feminist line about patriarchal society, but maybe not.

I dunno, Pete. I pretty much have a â€knee jerk reaction to everything Bushâ€. I also have a knee jerk reaction to placing my hand on a hot stove eye as well. Neither seem that unreasonable from where I sit. They are both appropriate learned human responses. Most non-Democratic Congressional Leadersheep humans are able to learn such appropriate and intelligent response mechanisms from the human experience.

So, if our Marcy is like â€Marcy†from Peanuts, which proverbial football did she yank out from Matt Bai’s kicking foot? Inquiring minds want to know.

And it’s good to have you back, Marcy.

game. set. match. bmaz. How about no child left behind? he he,

Re Peanuts characters:

You’re confusing Marcie with Lucy van Pelt, Linus’s sister. Lucy didn’t wear glasses.

I’m Canadian, and during the tenure of Brian Mulroney as PM, I occasionally had to follow my knee-jerk responses with more thoughtful pondering of policies of the day. Mulroney was no Dubya, but he was enamoured of entwining our two countries foreign and economic policies. His administration worked hand in glove with Reagan’s to bring us NAFTA.

There have been many threads here on TNH about the danger of Pakistan spinning out of control and that it poses the most serious threat to the world.

Iran IMO is not so much as a threat but a potential partner to bring stability to the ME. The simplicity of reporting in our corporate media makes it easy to caricature Ahmedinejad who in reality has very little power in Iran compared to the Ayatollah Khamanei. Iran has indicated I believe on numerous occasions a willingness to negotiate a grand bargain. The other problem that we have is that both Repub and Dem politicians buy into the conventional wisdom that Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas are automatically bad and evil. Hezbollah is a very sophisticated and disciplined political and militia operation. Hamas has a huge following among Palestinians and was the duly elected party in free elections. It makes so much sense for us to sit down with these folks and work a deal. They have the ability to deliver their people. That would however mean we will have to play a much more even handed role in the ME something for which Howard Dean was pilloried. This would imply not being the lapdog for AIPAC and the Likudniks and cutting loose the â€dicatorships†in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

What we are seeing in Pakistan is again in many ways not surprising and quite predictable. Pakistan has been a very unstable place since our use of islamists to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan with rising jihadist influence in the military and intelligence services. Growing unrest in the northern tribal provinces with jihadist influenced islamists gaining substantial strength. Add to this volatile mix an absolutely corrupt system and political parties and with secular people and institutions under assault by both the military and islamists for their own reasons. There is a very real possibility that Pakistan could unravel and in the ensuing chaos nuclear weapons and fissile material could easily pass into jihadist hands. There’s also a very real possibility that to rally people into a common focus and enemy the Pakistani military could launch a war with India. There should therefore be significant concern that tthe real threat is not Iran but an unstable Pakistan that collapses into anarchy and unleashes a conflagration that includes nuclear weapons.

I am glad that at least EW is asking key politicians like Mark Warner these very important questions so that they can go and educate themselves. Unfortunately our dumbed down she said/he said corporate media can’t make it sensational enough for a Nancy Grace show.

(…)â€I effectively agreed with Warner’s assessment of why Iran was a threat–Ahmadinejad’s threats, Iran’s hegemonic pretensions,(…)

Personally, I wouldn’t concede either of those points. Re: the former (eg: threatsâ€), Armiandinejad is a figurehead w/no real power. The winger media/talking heads (etc.) has focused on him to hi-lite GWB’s exploits does not change that. Cheney, Wolfowitz and rest of W’s neo-con cabal floated similar

On the later point (hegemony), Iran has attacked nobody. They have been occupied by US (Mossadeq coup/Shah), and attacked by us as SH’s proxy. They neighbor Iraq, which has elected an Iran friendly govenment, so AFAIC they certainly have an interest… profoundly, in not having large US military presence w/in pissing range.

Personally, I’m willing to concede nothing to any chorus currently feeding Iran’s â€axis of evil†marketing scheme, whether folks do so consciously or not.

Perilous times.