Bob Herbert "How Scary is This?"

[Hamlette]

The investigation of Karl Rove, Scooter Libby et al. is the most sensational story coming out of Washington at the moment. But the story with the gravest implications for the U.S. and the world is the overall dysfunction of the Bush regime. This is a bomb going "Tick, tick, tick . . ." What is the next disaster that this crowd will be unprepared to cope with? Or the next lunatic idea that will spring from its ideological bag of tricks?

snip

Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, addressed the administration's arrogance and ineptitude in a talk last week that was astonishingly candid by Washington standards.

"The case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process. What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made." When the time came to implement the decisions, said Mr. Wilkerson, they were "presented in such a disjointed, incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn't know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out." Where was the president? According to Mr. Wilkerson, "You've got this collegiality there between the secretary of defense and the vice president, and you've got a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either."

Nevertheless, he is appalled at the way the war was launched and conducted, and outraged by "the detainee abuse issue." In 10 years, he said, when this matter is "put to the acid test, ironed out, and people have looked at it from every angle, we are going to be ashamed of what we allowed to happen." Mr. Wilkerson said he has taken some heat for speaking out, but feels that "as a citizen of this great republic," he has an obligation to do so. If nothing is done about the current state of affairs, he said, "it's going to get even more dangerous than it already is."

end quote

It makes me even madder that the NYTimes cut us off from these columns. Herbert is hitting hard every day, even harder than Rich.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

1. "... cut (you) off..."?

What an odd sense of entitlement you just expressed.

Pay the rate, and read the columns. What you got for free for so long was never yours to keep.

You want it, you buy it.

[aquart]

3. Ah, the smugness of financial comfort.

It's true. Only people with good, solid incomes should read the NYT. The rest are not entitled.

Odd that they feel the news pages should go for free. And the regular editorials.

Selective, kinda.

[Southsideirish]

7. I wonder if he is against the public libraries ,too, for allowing FREE

access to newspaper and journal articles?

[OldLeftieLawyer]

13. Well, for starters,

all lawyers are NOT male. This change took place in the twentieth century. Welcome aboard, and be sure to bring your ill-informed stereotypes with you.

Now, guess where the money for public libraries comes from?

Go ahead. I can wait.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

12. HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What are you, my accountant?

Nice to see that the tolerance for different perspectives hasn't clouded your ability to see as far as the end of your nose and no farther.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the laugh.

[rzemanfl]

6. Leftie, while you are correct, will we next be saying this about

weather reports? I never saw a line on my tax return that said "for daily free weather reporting service." The New York Times is a business and at least on the surface is not an overt branch of the government, it is under no obligation to publish anything for free. I just hate to see this happening.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

11. I agree with you

It's a business, that's what people forget, and a strange sense of entitlement takes over. While I wish the dissemination of the writing were available to everyone, with all sides being happy with the arrangement, it's just not possible.

I hate to see it happening, too, but reality has a strange way of rearing its ugly little head.

I write books. People buy them. Some people get them out of libraries and read them. Does it matter to me that I don't get paid when they're taken out of libraries? Hell, no. I'm delighted that folks are reading my work. (In the UK, though, writers get a royalty every time one of their books is checked out.)

But, when I see people reading new books in bookstores, not just browsing, but curled up and licking their fingers before they turn the pages, does it piss me off? Yeah, it does, because it's a book store, not a library.

Some things cost. Some don't. As I said, the sense of entitlement has been encouraged, and when something like the Times going subscription happens, people take it personally instead of seeing how lucky they were for so long.

Go buy a newspaper and make sure they stay in business - that's my advice to people who want to read Herbert or anyone else at the Times.

[rzemanfl]

17. You are a woman of many facets. Please PM me with your pen

name, anyone who can come up with "now imagine George W. Bush blowing himself" must write a hell of a book.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

18. Now, now...................

Imagine how hard it must be for George W. Bush these days, with Karl Rove so distracted that he isn't available to keep yelling "Suck, George, suck!"

I think he must keep falling over.

[rzemanfl]

20. Are you holding out on me re: your pen name? Or was "I write

books" rhetorical?

You heard the one about * the haircut and the earpiece I'm sure.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

21. Naw,

I'm just now responding to the PMs asking me for my name. I do like my anonymity, as I know you understand.

Look, the books cost $$$. This stuff here - my real genius work - you get for free. Think about it.

Haircut? Earpiece? Fuckface?

Tell.................

[rzemanfl]

22. I trust you meant "not" rather than "now" but if you did mean "now"

I am waiting for your message.

Dubyah needs a haircut and he goes to a barber he's never been to before. The barber sees an earpiece in his ear and asks if he can take it out to trim around the ear. Bush says "no, work around it" then he dozes off from all the hard work he's been doing. So the barber takes the earpiece out and finishes the haircut. When he's done he tries to rouse the chimperor but he is unresponsive and blue around the lips. He yells for the nearest Secret Service man-who asks him if he took the earpiece out, as the barber hands the earpiece to the Secret Service man he hears Karl Rove's voice saying "breathe in, breathe out."

[OldLeftieLawyer]

23. Hey!

That's my blowjob joke, only clean. Very good.

Let us consider what the bulge on his back was.

No, I meant "now." A number of lovely folks PMd me to ask for info, and, as I mentioned, my anonymity is precious to me.

Sort of like you, my splendid man-of-a-thousand-dances..................

[rzemanfl]

24. That's why I assumed you had heard the haircut joke. Which I

can reliably date by radiocarbon hard drive dating to a week or two ago.

It is your good fortune you have never seen me dance, for much the same reason that I don't sing in public or private. Pity the poor women on whose toes I've trod for appearance's sake at social functions.

Do I need to PM you or is my "in the clear request" for a PM sufficient? I too value my anonimity, which is why I use the name and state of residence of a guy who I dislike-who married my wife- as my screen name. So bust that rzemanfl guy FBI/Secret Service dudes, no skin off of my nose here in British Columbia or at my Winter digs in Costa Rica.

[Clark2008]

8. Considering that they make most of their money from ads...

then I agree with the OP.

Why should only wealthy people have access to news and editorials?

Of course, the NY Times is a rag, now, for allowing the likes of Jayson Blair and Judith Miller, but, still... it's the principle of the thing.

[ultraist]

15. It's not only the wealthy who can afford to buy a newspaper

And for those who cannot afford a couple bucks, it IS available in the library.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the NYT charging for their paper. They are a for profit business, not public or charity org.

[Hamlette]

9. I paid the rate, but I'm lucky. . .

an old lefty lawyer like you, lucky enough to have money.

What makes me mad is the whole system. Rush and Fox and the likes blast right wing propaganda 24/7 and some of the most intelligent left wing arguments must be paid for. It's not that I have to pay, its that those who can't pay won't have access to "the truth."

[tularetom]

10. Don't pay don't pay don't pay

Don't encourage their little experiment in information capitalism. The laws of supply and demand apply here. If nobody pays, the price will come down. Or, once they realize that all the columns wind up in a blog somewhere the next day, they'll stop the practice entirely. Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if, in the wake of the Miller affair, the more able NYT columnists like Herbert Krugman and sometimes Dowd, jump ship and wind up somewhere else soon. I know the argument that keeping track of who pays is how they determine which columns are the most popular but c'mon. Freepers may be fooled into paying to read Brooks or Tom Friedman but do we want to participate in that game? Meanwhile NYT just sits back and laughs at the scam they have perpetrated.

[A-Possum]

14. Or people like me just quit writing

Yeah, tell me about how much NYT columnists get paid, which is a long way from the point.

I'm losing my 20-year career as a novelist because I can't afford to write anymore. Because people don't buy books new. Because publishers are only paying for "numbers" now.

I have fans, I have readers writing me begging for more books. But I can't justify the time it takes for the money I'll get paid now. It's poverty wages. And I'm by no means an unknown author in my genre. But Amazon sells my new books alongside my used books, and the used books cost a tenth of what the new ones cost. Who's gonna pay for new? Yeah, lots of lucky readers get to read them used, and I don't get paid enough to make a living anymore.

So too bad for these readers when they write me saying they hate that they can't find any books except the same old "bestseller" authors and asking when my next book is coming out.

I'm not writing for a living anymore. Sorry.

Thanks for the support. Be careful what you wish for.

[Greyhound]

16. Pretty convenient how that works, huh?

Charge more pay less = fewer books written = fewer readers = greater ignorance = more repug voters

[NightOwwl]

2. Here's a link for you....

http://cyphering.blogspot.com/

The columns are usually up within a day of publication. If you haven't read it already, Frank Rich's column is up, and it is fantastic.

[Southsideirish]

5. Thanks for your helpful comments.

[YDogg]

4. Ten years? I'm already ashamed.

Ashamed and angry.

[pushycat]

19. He's right, you know. WE NEED TO STOP THE TORTURE and

humiliation now. Congress would be the logical place to look, but they are not open to the public anymore.

What does he mean it will get even more dangerous? What does he know that we should? eek