Right Wing Nut House

UTILITY MAN GEOFF BLUM GOLFS A HOME RUN IN HIS FIRST WORLD SERIES AT BAT DURING THE 14TH INNING OF LAST NIGHT’S 7-5 WHITE SOX VICTORY

Chicago awoke this morning bleary-eyed and feeling a touch hung over. It was as if most of the city had spent a restless night tossing and turning with no amount of sheep counting or log sawing any help in bringing about the peaceful, blissful sleep that so many desired but were, for some reason, denied.

If one had taken a ride on the city’s “L” train system this morning, an observant stranger might have noticed something a little odd; many more people than normal with tall, steaming cups of hot coffee, their eyes bloodshot and big, black circles under the sockets which gave the impression that most of the city was wearing a mask.

And every once in a while, people would look at each other, recognize the symptoms , and despite being tired to the very marrow the their bones would exchange knowing smiles:

“Go Sox.”

“Yeah…one more will do it.”

“Didja see that game?”

To the detriment of the city’s productivity for the day, many did indeed see the game. And when Mark Buerhle induced Houston’s Adam Everett to pop out to short and give the Sox an exhausting, 14 inning marathon 7-5 victory the time was nearly 1:25 AM. For the briefest of moments, it was almost as if White Sox fans who were watching the game weren’t quite sure whether they were truly awake or if they were in that delicious pre-wakeful state where the marvelous dream you were having tickles the conscious mind with the possibility that perhaps, it is not a dream after all; perhaps…just perhaps you really can fly or you are a Hollywood star or that gorgeous woman really is laying in bed next to you.

So you pinch yourself awake and the dream disappears, dissipating into the ether like the smoke that used to blow from the foundries and furnaces that nurtured this city in fire and sweat for a hundred years. Tough work for tough people, that. The people who gave the town its moniker “The City that Works” knew full well that the irony inherent in that slogan was that it was the many who did the working while the few did the crowing. Whether spending all day in the slaughterhouses amidst the unspeakable carnage of animal sinew and flesh to feed the nation or toiling on the night shift at the mill, death and injury wearing a thousand different faces and the cinders from the white-hot molten steel scarring the faces and hands and melding flesh to metal until the workers became one with their work.

These were the typical White Sox fans the last time the team was one victory away from a World Series Championship. In the autumn of 1917 as American doughboys rolled up the Kaiser’s best troops in France and Germany’s General Von Luddendorf slipped into defeatism and despair as the fresh faced Americans from farms and factories attacked his troops with a terrifying resolve and optimism, another White Sox team stood where today’s team now proudly stands; a single stride from destiny.

Back then, the hard working men who followed the fortunes of their Southside baseball club didn’t see baseball as an innocent diversion, a nice way to pass one’s leisure time. For when you work 10-12 hours a day, six days a week, “leisure time” takes on a whole new meaning. Going to the ball game was an occasion. Carefully dressing in your best clothes and taking the wife and kids to the ballpark was a large part of the working class world. Immigrants who barely understood English knew how many RBI’s Eddie Collins had and Shoeless Joe Jackson’s batting average. They knew that Ed Cicotte could wiz a fastball by any hitter in the league. And they could appreciate the smooth fielding and timely hitting of shortstop Buck Weaver.

It was a colorful crowd, swearing at umpires in a dozen different languages while eating picnic lunches featuring food from every ethnic group imaginable. And there was drinking and gambling too. People would bring their own buckets of beer to the park and quaff away as the gamblers and the shysters circled around them like vultures. Baseball had seen the odd gambling scandal every now and again and there were always rumors floating around about this or that player being “on the take.” For most, however, gambling was as much a part of baseball as the infield fly rule.

That year of 1917 saw the White Sox cruise through American League competition and win the World Series in six games over the New York Giants. Two years later, Cicotte, Weaver, and Shoeless Joe along with 5 other players took money to throw the 1919 series against Cincinnati. For the working class fans of the ballclub it was a betrayal of monstrous proportions, akin to finding out that not only is there no Santa Claus, but that Christmas was a fraud. In many ways not understood by most outsiders, the city never, ever forgave the team for that treachery. In fact, to this day, rooting for the Cubs is a form of payback for the thrown series, a way to stick it to the Soutsiders who so treasonously played with the loyalty and love of the fans.

All of that may be about to change. With the White Sox poised to take the title, the city seems ready to finally and forever forgive the team their sordid deed. Given how much ink has been spilled over the Black Sox Scandal of 1919, it may also once and for all put to rest the issue of the thrown series with the national sports media.

Any way White Sox fans look at it, something wonderful is about to happen. It’s going to be one of those rare times in one’s life when pinching yourself awake doesn’t help. The reason being, the dream is reality.

Calling all bloggers!

You have until tonight at 11:00 PM to get your entries in for this week’s Carnival of the Clueless.

Last week’s Carnival was the best yet with 29 entries from both the right and left side of the political spectrum hammering those individuals and groups among us who are truly clueless.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

Each week, I’ll be calling for posts that highlight the total stupidity of a public figure or organization – either left or right – that demonstrates that special kind of cluelessness that only someone’s mother could defend…and maybe not even their mothers!

Everyone knows what I’m talking about. Whether it’s the latest from Bill Maher or the Reverend Dobson, it doesn’t matter. I will post ALL ENTRIES REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I AGREE WITH THE SENTIMENTS EXPRESSED OR NOT..

You can enter by emailing me, leaving a link in the comments section, or by using the handy, easy to use form at Conservative Cat.

As Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald methodically goes about the business of deciding whether to indict one or more White House officials in L’Affaire d’Plame, it is becoming increasingly clear that no one is going to jail for telling reporters that Ambassador Joe Wilson’s wife convinced the CIA to send him on a mission to Niger to give his consulting business a boost. Rather, it appears that in what can only be described as the cruelest of ironies, Scooter Libby and perhaps (although not very likely) Karl Rove will be charged with crimes related to the investigation of the leak.

Libby especially is in jeopardy thanks to his too cozy relationship with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. It appears that Libby is a typical Washingtonienne, a gossip extraordiaire who cultivates his relationship with reporters by passing along juicy personal tidbits about players in both politics and the bureaucracy. The cozy breakfasts, the intimate lunches, perhaps even the late night cocktails at the Mayflower Hotel bar or some other quiet corner of Washington are the standard venues for the purveyors of this gossip. For people like Libby, it gives them a special thrill when they see the tidbits published in important papers like the Washington Post or New York Times - almost as if their names were in the paper. At the very least, they know that the gossip mongers will then be speculating about who let that particular cat out of the bag and the cycle repeats itself.

Only this time, Libby has apparently not been able to keep the timeline regarding his gossip mongering straight. Or, just as likely, he fudged that timeline a bit to protect his boss, the Vice President, from being dragged into the leak investigation in the first place. Either way, it appears that Mr. Libby is toast. This article in today’s New York Times reports that Vice President Cheney knew about Joe Wilson’s wife almost a month before Wilson went public with his tantrum against the administration for not recognizing his brilliance in cracking the Niger-Iraq uranium caper:

. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war.

Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status.

A couple of things to note from this article. The fact that Cheney probably asked Tenet about Plame makes perfect sense when one considers the circumstances surrounding Joe Wilson’s curious campaign for recognition and self-aggrandizement in the months following his trip to Niger.

By Wilson’s own admission, he had been shopping the story of his Niger trip to reporters for months before his OpEd in the Times:

I was determined that the story was going to have to get out. I did not particularly want the story to have my name on it. I wanted the U.S. government to say what they said on July 7, that the 16 words should never have been in the State of the Union address. So I began responding to reporters’ inquiries, but always on background. I didn’t want the publicity, but more to the point, there is a nasty habit in Washington of attempting to destroy or discredit the message by discrediting the messenger, and it was important to me that the message have legs before those who would want to discredit the messenger found out who the messenger was. So I spoke to a number of reporters over the ensuing months. Each time they asked the White House or the State Department about it, they would feign ignorance. I became even more convinced that I was going to have to tell the story myself.

Now, put yourself in the White House’s shoes. Here you have this loose cannon running around town 1) blabbing about a classified matter, and 2) spreading falsehoods about what actually happened. As early as May, Wilson had succeeded in getting Administration critic Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times to write a column about his “secret” trip to Niger in search evidence that Iraq tried to buy yellow cake uranium to restart their nuclear program. Kristoff, with his ties to several current and former CIA employees - many of whom have turned out to be partisan Democrats - had been getting selective, cherry picked leaks for months regarding the CIA’s innocence in telling the Administration of Iraq’s WMD capability. This fit in perfectly with Kristoff’s invented narrative that the Administration had “twisted” intelligence to make the case for war with Iraq.

As if to confirm what I have been writing about for months regarding this bureaucratic war between the White House and the CIA, the Washington Post, on the eve of the probable indictments of Administration officials in the Plame case, have finally come out and given context to the entire matter by showing that the Administration push-back against the CIA and not any personal motive of revenge against Wilson was the reason officials tried to discredit him:

The alleged leaking of a CIA operative’s name had its roots in a clash over Iraq policy between White House insiders and their rivals in the permanent bureaucracy of Washington, especially in the State Department and the CIA.

As the investigation into the leak reaches its expected climax this week with the expiration of the grand jury’s term, the internal disputes have been further amplified by a recent string of speeches and interviews criticizing the administration’s handling of Iraq, including by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and State Department diplomats, and other officials involved in the early efforts to stabilize Iraq.

The article glosses over the election power play made by a group of CIA partisans - probably centered in Valerie Plame’s WINPAC division at the CIA - who sought to interfere in the election of an American President by selectively leaking information about the Iraq WMD to friendly reporters. All along, we’ve gotten hints that have led to speculation that the real reason for Wilson’s trip (besides his wife’s attempt to help get his fledgling consulting business get off the ground) could have been an attempt to embarrass the President. My friend AJ at Strato-Sphere, who has been on top of this case from the outset, has a link to a UPI report that show Fitzgerald was investigating the source of the so-called Niger forgeries; documents that purported to show Iraqi attempts to buy Niger yellow cake.

What makes this effort by Fitzgerald significant is Joe Wilson’s public claim that he knew they were forgeries because “the dates and names” were wrong. Only one problem there: Wilson never saw the Niger forgeries:

Wilson has also armed his critics by misstating some aspects of the Niger affair. For example, Wilson told The Washington Post anonymously in June 2003 that he had concluded that the intelligence about the Niger uranium was based on forged documents because “the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.” The Senate intelligence committee, which examined pre-Iraq war intelligence, reported that Wilson “had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports.” Wilson had to admit he had misspoken.

“Misspoken” may be the understatement of the week. Wilson out and out lied. What is curious is where he would have gotten that information because indeed, the documents list as Prime Minister of Niger someone who had been out of office for years. In other words, Wilson did not “misspeak” anything; he was simply repeating what he had been told by someone with access to the secret documents. The fact that he falls asleep every night next to someone with access to that classified information should tell you all you need to know about Wilson’s role in this entire affair.

In short, Wilson has been acting like the classic CIA errand boy - a conduit to the outside world who can leak to reporters all sorts of classified information while shielding his masters at the CIA from charges that they violated their oaths not to reveal the nation’s secrets. He has perhaps proved himself a little more flamboyant than his friends at the agency would have preferred with a photo spread in Vanity Fair not to mention a book deal and appearances on every political talk show in Christendom. But he has served his purpose well.

How far Fitzgerald will go in his indictments remain to be seen. He could only charge Libby with making false statements and obstruction. Or, if the Special Prosecutor is going to cast a wider net, he may simply drag 5 or 6 Administration officials before a judge on conspiracy charges. Even though no crime was committed in outing Plame, Fitzgerald may try to make a case that there was a conspiracy to keep him from finding out who said what to whom. If that is the case, expect the worst if you’re a Republican and euphoria if you’re a Democrat.

WHITE SOX RIGHT FIELDER JERMAINE DYE TURNS AWAY FROM A PITCH BY ASTROS RELIEVER DAN WHEELER. THE BALL GLANCED OFF DYE’S BAT BUT THE UMPIRE RULED IT HIT THE SOX BATTER AND AWARDED HIM FIRST LOADING THE BASES FOR PAUL KONERKO WHOSE GRAND SLAM HOMER GAVE THE SOX A TEMPORARY TWO RUN LEAD IN THE 7TH INNING

Once every year when the dogwoods bloom and the snows on the Holy Mound of Mounds have melted to reveal the Sacred Slab, the Gods of Baseball wake from their winter slumber and gather to decide which team will win the World Series.

These past couple of years, the Gods have been busy. Or drunk. If so, they’ve been doin’ some thinkin’drinkin’ because the turn of the New Millennium has seen some of the most unlikely World Series Champs imaginable.

Starting in 2000 with the first “subway series” in more than a generation, the hated Yankees defeated the nearly-as-hated Mets in a battle of teams who believe that New York is the center of the universe. The Gods witnessed this hubris and were mightily displeased, cursing the Mets by making them acquire high-priced free agents that turned into busts like Carlos Beltran and hexing the Yankees and their fans by allowing them to make it to the World Series twice in the next four years only to be buried by inferior National League teams.

One of those teams, the Arizona Diamondbacks defeated the 2001 Yanks in seven games on a broken bat line drive single by Luis Gonzalez the wasn’t hit hard enough to make a dent in the outfield grass. The D’Backs had two of the best pitchers of this or any other generation in Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling and not much else which only goes to prove that when the Gods are on your side, nothing else much matters.

The same could be said for the 2002 Champs, the Anaheim-LA Angles who still can’t make up their minds about what to call the team after 30 years but who have something the White Sox don’t have - a recent World Series title. The Gods, being the mischief makers they are, have since sentenced the Angels to the illusion that they can win another World Series without David Eckstein.

More heavenly tomfoolery in 2003 occurred when the Florida Marlins won their second World Series title in less than 10 years by defeating those Yanks. This gives the Marlins exactly the same number of World Series Championships as the Cubs, the difference being the Marlins have been in the league only since 1993 while the Cubs have been playing baseball in Chicago almost since Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over the lamp in the barn that started the Chicago Fire. The Gods love Florida because they like to vacation in Palm Springs during the winter where they sit by the pool and drink Cuba Libres and then play shuffleboard with the old folks in the afternoon. (They disguise themselves as tourists from Rio).

No such favoritism was shown the Boston Red Sox by the Baseball Deities for the longest time. It seems that when the God’s only begotten son, the great Babe Ruth, was sent down to show the locals what the game was really all about, he was badly mistreated by the then owner of the Bosox Henry Frazee. The Babe, one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball, was sold to the Yankees in 1919 for the sum of $100,000 and a loan for $350,000. To understand what an unbelievable amount of money that was at the time, President Wilson was pulling down $25,000 a year while trying to embroil the United States in the grubby power politics of Europe following World War I. For that, Mr. Wilson was soundly chastised by the Senate who refused to ratify US entry into an even more hopelessly idealistic and corrupt organization than the United Nations - the so-called League of Nations. Not quite as wholesome as the American and National Leagues plus they had players who couldn’t hit straight fast balls to save their lives but were very adept at throwing curves.

Frazee wanted the money to finance Broadway shows. The people of New York showed their gratitude for giving them the greatest baseball player in history in their usual effusive manner; they refused to attend any of the shows he so lavishly produced thus causing his bankruptcy, early retirement and death at the age of 48 in 1929.

Those whom the Gods destroy, they first make into laughingstocks.

But something happened when the Gods met on The Holy Mound of Mounds last year before the 2004 season. They apparently decided that enough was enough as far as the Red Sox were concerned and lifted the curse that had plagued the club since 1919. Besides, they saw ratings for their fair game falling like a stone and, having just added the God of Marketing to their little club, felt that it was good for the game to have a heart-tugging storyline that featured 90-something seniors weeping like infants when the Red Sox finally triumphed. And the nice touch of absolutely destroying Yankee fans by allowing the Pinstripers to go up 3 games to none in the LCS only to see the Carmines come back and take the series by winning 4 straight must have been enormously satisfying to the God of Records. He not only hates the Yankees for having so many of his precious “bests” and “firsts” and “mosts” but also because of the attention paid to New York sports franchises by the national media, especially the god-like network ESPN (Eastcoast Sports Please Network).

But the Gods had a problem going into 2005. How do you top 2004? They not only decided to tap the God of Destiny on the shoulder and send him to sit in the Chicago White Sox dugout all year long, it appears that they also decided to finally reveal themselves to unbelievers by causing a rash of events in the playoffs where divine intervention would be the only way to explain the simple, dumb, luck experienced by the formerly hapless Pale Hose.

The most recent revelatory episode occurred in last night’s 7-6 White Sox victory. With the Chisox trailing 4-2 in the bottom of the seventh inning, men on first and second, two out, and Jermaine Dye at the plate, a sudden gust of wind blew dirt in the home umpire’s ears and allowed a foul ball tipping off the bat of the White Sox right fielder to make the exact same sound as a ball hitting human flesh. The fact that the two sounds share absolutely no similarities means that the only possible explanation for the umpire’s error was divine intervention.

What happened next was to be expected, given how the baseball deities have taken such an active interest in helping the Chisox this fall. Paul Konerko sent the first pitch from brand new pitcher Chad Qualls on a line into the seats in left for a Grand Slam homer.

The fact is, you can talk all you want to about the bad calls and lucky breaks of the Sox this playoff year. But those events would be simple footnotes in history without the Sox taking advantage of them and making the best of them. Also, beware if you utter such nonsense and you live in a town with a professional baseball franchise. The Gods are listening and will brook no opposition to their decisions.

That said, the rest of the game was far from predictable. Phenom Bobby Jenks appeared to be human after all when he gave up two runs in the ninth and allowed the Astros to tie the score. Jenks suffered from a low strike zone being called by home plate umpire Jeff Nelson. To be effective, Jenks needs to throw high strikes. Otherwise, Major League hitters have little problem getting to his fastball especially when it’s below the belt. When batters can use gravity as an assist in speeding up their bats, power pitchers are in trouble.

The Gods had one more shock in store for fans when they gave Sox left fielder Scott Podsednik temporary rights to Babe Ruth’s ability. Pods slammed a ball into the right field seats to win the game and send the Sox to Houston with a 2-0 series lead.

All the signs point to a White Sox series win in Houston. But perhaps the Gods will take pity on the Astros and give them a couple of wins in front of their long suffering fans. With two of the classiest players in the game - Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell - the Astros deserve to shine a little before their own folks.

But judging by how the playoffs have been going for the White Sox, it appears that the Gods of Baseball are already starting to think about how they can top 2005 next year. Perhaps they’ll turn to the North Side of town…

Not a chance.

Not content with redacting portions of the Mehlis report that named Syrian President Assad’s brother in law and other high ranking Syrian nationals as assassins of Lebanese nationalist Rafiq Hariri, the United Nations has also suppressed a report from the Lebanese Medical Examiner in the case that shows a “70% probability” that the driver of the Mitsubishi truck that exploded last February 14 killing Hariri and 21 others was a Palestinian:

BEIRUT: The UN team investigating the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri has disregarded a report by the Lebanese medical examiner Fouad Ayoub following a thorough investigation of its content.

Ayoub said a tooth was found belonging to a Palestinian whose remnants were subject to DNA analysis and is now believed to be the suicide bomber who drove the explosives laden Mitsubishi truck to the site of the explosion.

According to his report, these remnants belong to a 23rd corpse at the bomb site.

The bones of the corpse were found by a British diving team off the coast of the St. George Yacht Club, where the explosion occurred.

The remnants were matched with others found 100 meters away from the scene, on the premises of the Riviera Hotel.

Other forensic evidence that would point to a possible Palestinian connection to the assassination was also ignored:

The security sources also indicated the Swiss experts who took samples of explosives from the scene were able to determine the explosive used was C4.

C4 is commonly used in Eastern Europe, a region where the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command is known to have procured explosives in the past.

One of the names in the report not suppressed by the UN was the notorious head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command Ahmad Jibreel. The PFLP Commander has been a thorn in the side of Israel for many years and is the author of dozens of terrorist attacks directed against the Jewish state.

Although suicide attacks in Lebanon were prevelant at one time, today they are all but unknown, the preferred method of assassination and terror being the remotely detonated bomb. The occurences of suicide bombings are rare enough that responsibility has usually been traced to factions in sympathy with the Palestinian cause; most notably Hizballah and the Amal Militia:

Modern suicide bombings was introduced by the Shi’ite terrorist organization Hizballah in 1983 in Lebanon, and it was in Lebanon that this modus operandi was refined throughout the 1980’s. During the 1990’s the attacks continued, but declined in frequency, until today, suicide attacks in Lebanon are a rare occurrence. All together, 50 suicide bombings were carried out in Lebanon, half of which were perpetrated by the Hizballah and Amal, and the remainder by secular communist and nationalist organizations, including the Lebanese Communist Party, the Socialist-Nasserist Organization, the Syrian Ba’ath Party, and the P.P.S.

The rise in the political power of Hizballah in Lebanon can be directly correlated with the drop in suicide attacks against other factions in Lebanese society. This presents an enormous problem for the US State Department in that they have named the so-called “Party of God” as a terrorist organization. The fact is that Hizballah political leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is one of the most popular and charismatic politicians in Lebanon. And despite his call for continued attacks agains the Jewish homeland, his influence in the government currently taking shape in Lebanon cannot be ignored. Even though UN Resolution 1559 calls for the disbanding of all militias, Nasrallah has so far refused to cooperate in disarming Hizballah’s military wing which has in the past worked side by side with Syrian intelligence to control the population.

How to disarm Hizballah and mitigate Nasrallah’s influence so that Lebanon doesn’t become a base for terrorist attacks against Israel is perhaps one of the biggest under reported stories in American foreign policy. It will test our resolve in the war against terror as well as prove to the rest of the world whether or not our deeds will match our rhetoric in this war.

And complicating this picture is the UN’s Mehlis report that now brings the issue of direct Syrian interference in the affiairs of the Lebanese state into stark relief. Could the Syrians have been in cahoots with Hizballah in the assassination? Such a revelation would roil the streets of Lebanon and tax the abilities of the new government to deal with such a crisis.

One curious note also via the Daily Star: They originally reported that it was not the UN that suppressed the names of Syrian nationals in the assassination plot but rather the US State Department who asked the names be redacted. I have seen no other media reports that implicate the State Department in the cover-up and the PDF version of the dead tree Daily Star story has been taken off their website.

For the UN to ignore the report from the on-scene pathologist so that they would not have to deal with the implications of Palestinian fingerprints on the assassination of a popular, non-sectarian politician shows to what length that international body will go to in kowtowing to the murderous thugs currently in control of the Palestinian cause.

Here’s the Daily Star’s story on the missing paragraphs from the Mehlis Report.

Deyan Sudjic is the architectural critic for The Guardian’s Observer Magazine and is considered one of the doyens of the architectural world.

He is also a member in good standing of that amorphous group of international elitists who have discovered that their purpose in life is to tell the rest of us how truly insignificant and banal is our existence - probably because we don’t recognize their brilliant intellects and breathtaking cleverness.

In fact, Sudjic is so clever that when writing this OpEd in Sunday’s New York Times, he tied himself into rhetorical knots in his attempt to connect opponents of the so-called “Freedom Center” at Ground Zero to Nazis, Mussolini, and Imelda Marcos:

Messrs. Pataki and Bloomberg may or may not know it, but they are following a trail that takes them right back to the pyramids, not to mention mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, who bankrupted his country building ever more elaborate palaces, and Imelda Marcos, whose passion for monumental architecture was vastly more expensive than her better-known enthusiasm for footwear.

The use of an obscure historical figure like King Ludwig to chastise critics of the Freedom Center is a perfect example of how elitists like Sudjic try and show how vastly superior they are to the rest of us. And it underscores the problem with Mr. Sudjic’s editorial; by trying to connect opponents of the Freedom Center to dictators and tyrants, Mr. Sujdic obscures the fact that Governor Pataki made his decision to abandon the Center based on good old fashioned democratic politics. The fact is, the organized effort to toss that monstrous affront to the memory of the victims who lost their lives on 9/11 was solidly grounded in something elitsts always have a hard time understanding: The Will of the People.

Sudjic doesn’t have a clue. He tries to compare Pataki’s decision to ax the Freedom Center with former Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s meglomaniacal attempt to rebuild the state capitol of Albany:

During his 18-year campaign to turn Albany into a Brasília-on-the-Hudson as some sort of bereavement therapy for his dashed White House ambitions, Rockefeller spent hour after hour looking in awed wonder at renderings of a city of dazzling white marble towers rising from the ruins of some 2,000 perfectly good homes he had ordered torn down.

In late 1962, hours before Rockefeller was to finally unveil to the press the big model of his project (and it was as much his creation as that of his court architect, Wallace Harrison) he was observed frantically trying to remove the tiny pieces of affordable housing at the margins of the mock-up, for fear it would spoil the look of his utopia.

Mr. Pataki made his most recent mark on ground zero because he objected to what the Freedom Center might or might not contain, not because he was displeased with the design of the Norwegian architecture firm Snohetta. Nonetheless, he swept the project off the board with just as regal a gesture as Rockefeller’s.

This last paragraph is curious. After telling us that Pataki nixed the Freedom Center for reasons entirely different than Rockefeller’s ambitious decisions regarding the remaking of Albany, Sudjic then asks us to ignore that fact in favor of his theme that Pataki is a acting in a “regal” manner…just like Rockefeller!

This would be true if Pataki believed in the Divine Right of Kings and acted like an annointed sovereign in asking that the Freedom Center be moved to more appropriate climes. What’s that you say? Pataki was elected by the people of New York? The organized campaign, led by Debra Burlingame whose brother was the pilot of Flight #77 that flew into the Pentagon on 9/11, was supported by an extraordinarily broad-based coalition. Not just conservatives but more significantly, several groups that represent families of the 9/11 fallen took up the cause to keep the Ground Zero Memorial from being hijacked by the anti-American left. To try and posit the notion that Pataki was acting like a king or a dictator is ridiculous:

Saddam Hussein, following in the footsteps of Hitler and Mussolini, was a determined builder. It was only his decision to invade Iran that stopped him from building a state mosque in Baghdad designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. And his Mother of all Battles Mosque, designed so that the dimensions of the minarets and fountains are a semiotic reference to the dictator’s day of birth, has an unfortunate echo in the symbolism of the Freedom Tower, which is to stand at 1,776 feet, marking a different sort of birthday altogether.

Leave it to an elitist to compare July 4th with Saddam’s birthday. There is no other way to put it; only an idiot makes such a comparison. Only someone without a shred of common sense not to mention historical perspective can make such a statement with a straight face. It underscores what the Freedom Center, in fact, will be. It will glory in comparisons such as this one to the detriment of both America’s image and historical fact.

Finally, Mr. Sudjic bemoans the loss of architectural coherence to the project:

The electricity, alas, has long since faded away. What makes the rebuilding of ground zero so difficult a project is the ambiguity about who is guiding the architectural symbolism. The rhetoric is that the client here is that wonderful amorphous mass, the public. The reality, however, is that ground zero is being shaped in private by Mr. Pataki’s often arbitrary and incoherent decisions, by the wishes of the developer, Larry Silverstein, and sometimes by the brute force of the security consultants whose interventions have a tendency to sweep away the obfuscation about the nature of the project.

Is it any wonder things have reached a state of inertia? Somebody needs to impose his will, and the only one with a mandate and money to do so is Governor Pataki. He should stand up and acknowledge that ground zero will be rebuilt in his image, just as Nelson Rockefeller did with Albany. I have no illusions that he will make all, or even any, of the right decisions. But his attaching his name indelibly to the project would at least concentrate his mind on setting things back in motion at New York’s most sacred ground.

The rebuilding of Ground Zero is an enormous project. It is something akin to building a small town, so widespread and total was the devastation caused by the collapse of the towers. Everything from sewers and electrictiy to subways and other infrastructure projects are necessary so that life can return to that part of Manhattan. The Ground Zero Memorial is a tiny part of the enterprise. Even if one were to include the Freedom Center with the memorial, the cost would be a beggar’s portion of the total.

The centerpiece of the project is the aforementioned Freedom Tower. While the skyscraper has had design problems from the beginning - most notably as Mr. Sudjic mentions, security issues - Governor Pataki has exercised his authority as holder of the purse strings in a restrained manner. This has led to competing visions of the massive building and what it represents. But it is important to remember that the entire project (overseen by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation) is costing tens of billions of dollars. The Memorial, the Freedom Center, and even the Freedom Tower taken together still amounts to only a fraction of the monies to be spent in “rebuilding” Ground Zero. The rest of the massive project continues apace and is being obscured by arguments over the meaning and architectural asthetics of these designs.

What elitists like Mr. Sudjic object to is the intervention of amateurs like you, me, and even Governor Pataki in this debate. Only the learned, the cultured, should debate the merits of one design over another. In short, only our betters have the wisdom, the insight, and the special knowledge to tell us what we should think about how buildings should relate to our everyday lives. The 9/11 Memorial was nearly stolen by people like Mr. Sudjic because we almost believed them. It took the widows and loved ones of the victims of that horrible day to remind us what freedom is and how it should be exercised.

24 YEAR OLD BOBBY JENKS FINISHES A GAME FOR THE WHITE SOX THAT FEATURED HOUSTON STARTER 43 YEAR OLD ROGER CLEMENS

It’s pretty hard to refer to White Sox closer Bobby Jenks as a “kid.” After all, the man is 24 years old and been making a living throwing his 100 MPH fastball for more than 5 years. On the other hand, one look at the roundly cherubic face and the 270 pound body with what appears to be some adolescent “baby fat” on it and one could be excused the exaggeration.

But perhaps because the game of baseball contains more than its fair share of fabulists and myth makers, the appellation “The Kid” evokes a powerful subtext to any story. “Youth will be served” in both sport and life. And nowhere was this theme explored any better than in the short story by Jack London entitled A Piece of Steak.

Published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1909, the story is about an aging boxer who wakes up on the day of what he knows will be his last fight hankering for a piece of steak. But there is no money for meat. The promoter has advanced him the loser’s purse just so he could pay the rent and what was left over was barely enough to purchase some bread and flour to make a weak, unsatisfying gravy.

As he readies himself for the fight, the boxer reminisces about his youth and how he used to eat steak three times a day when he was a winning fighter. Back then, people gladly bought him steaks just so they could sit with him and bask in his celebrity. But no more. Now aging and tired, he realizes that in order to win and receive the balance of the money from the winners purse that will see him through until he can get a job, he must use all of his wiles, all of his wisdom and knowledge to defeat his opponent.

For his opponent is a young, up and coming fighter, a mirror image of who and what he was many years ago. In fact, his foe is youth itself for, as London brilliantly shows time and time again, “youth will be served.” And the aging fighter wonders if he can defeat not only his opponent, but life itself which has played such a horrible trick on him by making him grow old.

The youth has power and grace and an endurance that the old boxer realizes he doesn’t possess. Therefore, his strategy will be to conserve his strength, hoping that the young fighter will make a mistake and give him an opening. He will then unleash his remaining strength in a hail of blows that will knock out the youngster and give him the winner’s purse he so desperately needs.

The fight unfolds as a one sided affair with the youth predictably beating up on the older boxer. But the aging fighter knows how to deflect the young man’s blows just enough so that their power is reduced. He also has the guile and experience to slip away from blows that would have hammered him into the canvas. And then, with the young boxer way ahead on points, his overconfidence gets the better of him and he momentarily drops his guard.

This is what the aging fighter had been waiting for and he immediately tries to take advantage. He hurts the youth with several well aimed shots to the head and then begins to pound away at the body. He can feel victory in his grasp as the youth starts to sag. He can see that the young man is ready to drop. All he needs to do to knock the youngster out is deliver the final, coup de grace to the jaw.

As he rears back and readies himself to deliver the final blow, the aging boxer realizes to his horror that the strength just isn’t there. The blow lands but doesn’t have the power behind it to bring the young man down. Sadly, the old fighter believes that if only he had a piece of steak, the blow he delivered would have been powerful enough to bring him victory. As the young man holds on to the ancient boxer in the clinch, he can feel the strength returning to the younger man while his own diminishes.

And thus, is youth served in the end as the youngster knocks out the now tired and defeated older man.

London’s fable, one of the best short stories ever written, reveals the universal truth that the young lion will eventually defeat the old lion as the torch of life is passed to another generation. And while it is impossible to diminish the career of last night’s starter for Houston Roger Clemens, watching the 43 year old fireballer limp off the mound in the second inning last night immediately brought to mind London’s tale of bitterness and life’s betrayal of all of us as our physical abilities diminish just at the time that our experience and knowledge would allow us to dominate our world in a way that was impossible in our youth.

And stepping into the spotlight last night was that raw power of youth represented by Bobby Jenks. Now it is his fastball not Clemens’ that blows away hitters like the autumn leaves swirling around outside of US Cellular Field. It is the youngster that, with seeming ease, plowed through the last 4 batters for Houston by striking out three of them, hurling his Thor-like thunderbolts with terrifying speed and accuracy.

Jenks has what Clemens had twenty years ago; a fastball so overpowering and intimidating that hitters never were able to get comfortable in the batters box. The batter’s self-preservation instincts were on full when facing Clemens back then. Now, although still an outstanding pitcher who led the Major League starting pitchers in Earned Run Average (1.87 runs per nine innings), Clemens is much more apt to use his knowledge of hitters and his resourcefulness to get batters out.

No, there is no parallel between Roger Clemens and the aging boxer except in the fact that both are now old by athletic standards and that the skills and abilities they possessed as youths have been replaced by experience and guile. Clemens, like his fellow Texan Nolan Ryan, will always be remembered for both a stratospheric ability to throw a baseball and a longevity that defied the gods that allowed both to pitch well into their 40’s. Nothing Clemens does in this World Series will dim the luster off of a career full of record shattering accomplishment and marvelous athletic feats. But his fastball - once the scourge of the baseball world - is no longer the powerful weapon that allowed him to dominate batters in a way seen perhaps once in a generation.

And Bobby Jenks? Here’s how I described the “kid” from Spirit Lake, Idaho a couple of weeks ago:

He can throw a baseball more than 100 miles per hour. At that speed, the ball screams toward the hitter appearing to be a tiny, jet propelled pellet of white-hot molten plasma, a blur to the eye of even the best of Major League hitters and forcing them to begin their swing almost before the pitch leaves his hand. And his 12 to 6 curve ball thrown almost 20 miles per hour slower has made more than one Major League hitter look like a busher with cataracts.

But what Bobby Jenks has that makes him a potential star closer for the White Sox during the upcoming post season is the heart of a lion and the soul of a serial killer – two attributes that a successful baseball fireman must have in order to succeed when the game is on the line and the pressure so intense that equally gifted pitchers have buckled and broken.

Jenks showed last night that he indeed has “the heart of a lion.” And it is just possible to imagine that by the end of Game 1 of the World Series, the young lion established himself as leader of the pride while the old, tired male limped off into history realizing that yes, youth will always be served when it comes to athletic endeavors.

UPDATE

Although Crank picks the Chisox is 7 games, he has some rather interesting comments about the luck of the Sox in not having to face healthy #1 starters in both the Angels series (Colon) and now against the Astros (Clemens).

Nice try but doesn’t that statement ignore the White Sox starters? Is Crank saying that any of the games would have turned out differently? Is he saying that either a healthy Colon or Clemens would have shut out the White Sox?

This is the problem with playing “what if” games in baseball. It wouldn’t have mattered who pitched last night for the Astros unless they had scored more runs than the White Sox. In other words, unless you’re willing to say that the Sox would have scored 3 or fewer runs, the notion that a healthy Clemens would have beaten them is a fallacy. This is true especially because of the Astros bullpen which was horrid last night.

Ain’t baseball great?

As regular readers of the Carnival know, I generally use this space at the start of the Carnival to highlight who I believe to be “Cluebat of the Week.” I was all set this week to name Syrian President Bashar al Assad for the honor thanks to his part in what has to be considered the most botched “conspiracy” in world history.

Think about this for a minute: More people probably knew about and participated in the assassination of Lebanese nationalist Rafiq Hariri than are going to vote for Harriet Miers for Supreme Court Justice. There was Assad, of course and his brother in law, Assef Shawkat. Then there was apparently most of the Syrian President’s cabinet. And there was Syrian intelligence that, according to the Mehlis report, used the sovereign state of Lebanon as its personal, brutish playground for more than a quarter century.

But that was only Syrian involvement. Syrian-siding Lebanese turncoats were also in on the plot. There were 4 high ranking Generals who have been implicated as well as radical islamists. Even the clueless puppet President of Lebanon Emile Lahoud was kept abreast of developments.

This was the dumbest conspiracy ever. Dumber than trying to sell arms for hostages. Dumber than using wadded up duct tape to prop open an access door at the Watergate in order to bug the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. It was even dumber than sending thugs to the homes of women you’ve bedded down in the past to threaten them with physical harm if they opened their mouths about it.

But Assad has to take a backseat this week to the clueless antics of my pet cat Snowball.

Now Snowy is a beautiful girl, still just a baby at 14 weeks but nevertheless, a demon. She is the kitty from hell. She is Snowball the Destroyer, Snowball the Terrible, Snowball the Merciless. Since moving in, she has chewed through $70 set of headphones, shredded the cord to a floor fan, and gnawed into a pair of Ferragamo sandals.

But her latest caper is what she is being honored for; she clawed her way through the wire on my broadband connection box. And she was doing it while I was busy trying to keep the cord to my brand new $90 set of headphones away from her.

I thought I was clever. I thought I was outsmarting her. But while I believed she was sitting at my feet waiting for the headphone cord to come within her kitty grasp, she was actually sort of absent mindedly batting the cord to my broadband connection back and forth like a metronome, idly passing the time until my attention was elsewhere and she could go after her main target. Of course, her razor sharp claws were ripping the insulation off the broadband box wire as easily as they shred my skin whenever I pick her up to move her off our bed. The amazing thing is it only took her a couple of hours on Friday to accomplish what the Democratic Underground, the Kos Kids, and Oliver Willis could only dream; she kicked me off the internet.

The young ladies at Comcast service center who gave me another connector box thought it was cute. I wanted to slug them. Let them live with this devil’s familiar for a few weeks and those laughs will turn to heretical thoughts of selling the clueless animal to Mr. Lee’s Chinese take out down the street to be turned into soup a la Snowball.

So for deviltry above and beyond the call of any kitty I know, Snowball gets the nod as Cluebat of The Week. And as you peruse the Carnival entires below, I’m sure you’ll find your own candidate whose cluelessness will shock you, entertain you, and perhaps even bring a smile to your face.

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothin’ can beat teamwork.
(Edward Abbey)

Spot on, Eddie! I see you’re a Cubs fan.
(Me)
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Ferdy the Cat gives a spirited defense of his species and their utility as blog fodder as he angrily responds to a Toronto Mail article dissing blogs that use cat pictures and stories as filler. Now what kind of a blogger would shamelessly use their cat for “humor and whimsy?”

Adding a little international flavor this week is Angry in the Great White North with this bit of idiocy from north of the border. It seems that Canadian correction officials want to house a transgender inmate at a woman’s prison - this after moving him/her from a male prison and (here’s the clueless part) paying for his sex change operation!

Superhero (Boy! Does she look good in tights or what?) Pamela at Atlas Shrugs fisks Wesley Clark, grinding him into talcum powder for his clueless comments on Iraq.

Update on Don Surber’s campaign for “King of the Cotillion:” Um…know any good concession speeches? But Don concedes nothing in this great post on political correctness in Great Britain.

After a too long hiatus from the Carnival, the Palmetto Pundit is back and piling on cluebat Madonna. Says PP: “I’m having trouble imagining a scenario in which my parental skills could be improved by turning to Madonna for advice and guidance…” Um…yeah.

AJ at The Strata-Sphere has that clueless gadfly Larry Johnson, former CIA agent and Plame defender, dead to rights. Johnson once left me a comment on a Plame post reminding me that he “knows the people who killed drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.” Yeah? Impress me some more, Larry.

Miriam made the mistake of listening to NPR while they interviewed the clueless member of an Iranian rock band who wrote a song about Guantanamo. The mental image conjured up when thinking of what the group’s female back-up singers might look like makes me wonder how anyone can take them seriously.

Raven take aim at Cluebat Hall of Fame nominee Joe Wilson and fires off a few choice barbs at his contention that he’s actually a hero for lying through his teeth about his trip to Niger.

Here’s your weekly dose of satire from our dynamic duo of The Nose on Your Face and Mr. Right. It is suggested that you not be drinking any carbonated beverages when reading these two masters of the genre. TNOYF has “Top 10 PETA Comics” while Mr. Right brings us “Ronnie Earle Indicts Much of Texas on Conspiracy Charges .”

And while you’re in the mood for funny, check on Kender’s post comparing Vampires and Werewolves with the left and the ACLU. Classic Kender.

Tinkerty Tonk goes after the anti-war meme “Who would Jesus Bomb?” and wonders if the clueless lefties have ever met a Christian.

Josh Cohen is rightly up in arms over a little Republican hypocrisy regarding pornography and how it is defined. Whenever a politician starts talking about “protecting the children” grab your wallet and an extra copy of the constitution to protect them from the ravages of clueless legislators.

Those pain dealing pachyderms at Academic Elephants review Barbara Boxer’s new novel about Washington and dole out punishment requisite to the crime. Wonder which character Boxer sees herself as? I doubt whether she included a clueless, stumbling, bumbling Senator in the book.

Fred Fry correctly diagnoses the idiocy behind striking down the Georgia voter ID law. To compare the law to a poll tax is pure politics, as Fred points out. What gets me is that you can’t buy booze in Georgia unless you have an ID. But you can vote? Something is wrong there.

Blogbud Maryhunter has the skinny on the rapidly-fading-from-view Cindy Sheehan’s fallout with the possible Democratic nominee for President in 2008 Hillary Clinton. Very soon we’re going to get to the point that Democrats are going to welcome a non-endorsement from Mother Sheehan.

Cao of Cao’s blog (pronounced “key”) has the perfect cartoon for your weekend pleasure; a cluebat and a terrorist.

Regular House reader Bill Martin from the town with the great name of Thunder Bay, Ontario links us with this piece of more cluelessness from Canadian correction authorities. This time it involves publishing floor plans for prisons on the internet - in full view of the inmates who may be interested in the best way to escape their incarceration.

More fisking of the Canadian justice system, this time from the North American Patriot. Wonder Woman has some head scratching examples which show that we’re not the only ones who have idiots dispensing punishment to criminals.

Dan Melson is positively speechless about the cluelessness of California bureaucrats as he wrestles with provisions of that state’s Megan Law.

The Headmistress at Common Room has a hilarious take on one of the most curious stories ever published; AP’s take on Karl Rove’s garage.

Pat Curely links to a comparison between Gore and Hillary and make some salient points about Gore’s viability and qualifications.

Matt Johnston has a thoughtful article on the DC schools and the cluelessness of officials who cave in to special interest groups at the first sign of trouble.

Iris Blog successfully debunks the idea - pushed most notably by Timothy Noah of Slate - that Dame Margaret Thatcher is now opposing the United States in the Iraq war.

Is there any group more clueless than Neo-Nazis? Orac has the lowdown on the group’s demonstration in Toledo recently and the riot that ensued.

Different River blogs about the House passing liability protection for gun manufacturers. Perhaps the tide against gun regulation is turning as this bill will keep the trial lawyers from destroying the gun industry in America.

Finally, here’s my take on the cluebats in Syria who planned the Hariri assassination

My internet connection has been down since early this afternoon. It came on briefly at around 4:00 pm and again about 5 minutes ago.

Comcast says they don’t have a clue what’s wrong. I’ve already lost about 1/3 of the Carnival as it went off before I could save it.

What a mess. And depressing.

At any rate, it may be my little black box in which case I won’t have internet until Monday (didn’t get a dial up capability when I bought the computer, damnit). I’ll try again in the morning.

Rather than my usual habit of simply updating a post to detail other reactions by blogs to the same story, I’ve decided to go ahead and devote an entire post on reaction to the Mehlis Report regarding the Hariri assassination.

The MSM has given the story front page treatment. The New York Times leads with the supposedly embargoed information that President Bashar Assad’s brother in law Syria’s military intelligence chief, Asef Shawkat has been implicated in the plot to kill Hariri.

I find it interesting that the State Department would ask that the information be censored while knowing that it would probably leak anyway. According to the “diplomat” quoted in the story, Assad himself may be on the ropes as a result of this obviously botched conspiracy. If so, State may be trying to head off a coup d’etat:

“There is evidence in abundance,” the diplomat said. “But to get every piece of the puzzle they need more time.” He spoke on condition of anonymity because of what he described as the extreme sensitivity of the matter.

Mr. Shawkat is considered the second most powerful man in Syria and has been seen as a likely candidate to take over the country if the embattled Mr. Assad were removed from office.

The diplomat, describing Syria as a “country run by a little family clique,” said the involvement of any one in Mr. Assad’s inner circle would be a severe blow to the government.

“There is absolutely no doubt, it goes right to the top,” he said. “This is Murder Inc.”

By implicating Shawkat, State has cut the legs from underneath any cabal that would wish to overthrow Assad. You’ve got to believe that no one in Syria wants an international criminal as President. Also, relations with Syria are at an extremely delicate point now and publicizing the fact that Assad’s relation is directly responsible for murder would complicate any diplomacy that’s going on. Besides, it’s a nice club to hold over Assad’s head not to publically humiliate him by having his brother in law named as a murderer.

The Washington Post talks about the impact the report might have on the international community:

The findings have been eagerly awaited by U.S. and European officials. Along with a second U.N. report on Lebanon due in days, key members of the Security Council hope to use the findings to increase pressure on the Assad government to end years of meddling in Lebanon and to generally change its behavior both at home and throughout the region, including ending support for extremist groups.

That last may be wishful thinking as Assad needs those “extremist groups” to project his power in Lebanon as well as bother the state of Israel.

The Washington Times takes a different approach, highlighting the potential unrest in Lebanon that the report could engender:

Lebanese police and soldiers have been deployed throughout the capital to maintain order in an increasingly tense environment.

Many Lebanese fear a revenge campaign by Syrian soldiers or loyalists.

“Given the infiltration of Lebanese institutions and society by the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services working in tandem, it would be difficult to envisage a scenario whereby such a complex assassination plot could have been carried out without their knowledge,” wrote Detlev Mehlis, a German criminal investigator and head of the U.N. panel.

The theme of Lebanese reaction is taken up by Michael Totten:

Lebanon this morning was quiet and subdued in the wake of the news. Automobile traffic is down. Foot traffic is down even more. Downtown Beirut is eerily silent. Military checkpoints have been beefed up substantially. Armored vehicles and heavy artillery are set up in front of potential targets. I noticed some hotels won’t allow cars to enter their parking lots without first having bomb squads check under the chassis with mirrors for bombs. But I saw that last time I was in Lebanon, in April, and I’m unsure if this is a resumed policy or if it has been in place the whole time. I will say that I haven’t noticed it on this trip until now.

I did see a number of large old white people with hats and cameras wandering around downtown. Perhaps a cruise ship just deposited them blissfully unaware into a frying pan.

Global Voices has reaction from from bloggers inside Lebanon:

The Lebanese Blogger Forum came to this Conclusion:

There is probable cause to believe that the decision to assassinate former Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, could not have been taken without the approval of topranked Syrian security official and could not have been further organized without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security services.

While the Lebanese Political Journal says:

The streets of Beirut are incredibly quiet. The last time I experienced this was the day after Hariri was assassinated when no cars roamed the streets. Today, is not like that day, but the city is in an unusual state.

The Captain points out that the report will finally get some action against Syria in the Security Council:

This UN report does make it almost impossible for the UN Security Council to dither any longer on this issue. The US-French effort to push devastating sanctions onto Assad’s narrow shoulders should continue apace, and perhaps the report might even convince Russia and China to step aside and withhold their vetoes and protection from Assad. Dictatorships can’t act this stupidly and still expect their allies to unquestionably endorse them forever.

Now if we could only get them to move on Iran’s nukes…

Joe Gandelman has a good analysis highlighting more MSM reaction.

And Mark Noonan puts the report in perspective:

Last week we noted that Syria’s Interior Minister, - and former head of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon - Kanaan was reported to have committed suicide in his office. Given that the UN investigation - for what it was worth - was coming to a head and was bound to show clear Syrian, and especially Kanaan, involvement in the murder of a Lebanese politician, I thought the suicide rather convenient

Kanaan’s “suicide” must be seen in this light. Perhaps the Interior Minister was contemplating turning on his collegues. Or perhaps someone thought he told Mehlis’ people too much. Either way, he was a danger to someone, probably Shawkat.

In this way are minor annoyances dealt with in Assad’s Syria.