Reasons I Don't Watch TV Number Gazillion

And a good reason to watch Colbert on You Tube.

I'd Really Love To Get Mark Frost's Reaction

Fuck it, I'm just going to link to Charles Pierce.

The United States assists Israel in bombing the living isotopes out of two uranium-enrichment plants and a reactor. Leaving aside the pre-emptive nature of the attack, it unleashes a public health catastrophe with untold ongoing consequences on a country where the public-health system is rudimentary at best. Which results in a population that is so excited about being bombed and sickened that it rises up and overthrows the government and installs one more likely to be friendly to the powers that have bombed and sickened them.

That quote is from Pierce, though you would be excused for any confusion.They must be competing with the WashPo for Mark's love. Liberal media? It must suck to be on the same side of an issue as the pathologically insane.  

Salon sees the Times as doing a reverse end around of some sort. I'll go with that, the devious bastards. 

The New York Times editorial page pulled a fast one on Iran hawks today by publishing an op-ed from the most indiscreet member of their rank, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton. While some Times readers may have been aghast to see the venerable paper publish Bolton’s ravings — under the headline “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran” — the editorial decision should be cheered. Here we have a leading conservative hawk plainly admitting that the alternative to the deal currently under negotiation is not a “better deal,” but is a bombing campaign followed by some hazily defined efforts at “regime change.” Meaning, ultimately, war with Iran.

Well, it is the paper of record. And Bolton as a member in good standing of the neocon crowd is now on record calling for mass murder. 

A Sad Day For Israel

For the nutters outnumber the rational.

  If Netanyahu prevails, the nature of Israel's diplomatic alliance with the United States will have to change — the U.S. cannot continue to extend its U.N. veto to a country whose government has formally disavowed negotiations.

...

In the long run, a deep American alliance with the kind of garrison state Netanyahu envisions will become untenable. The only remaining diplomatic strategy will be to deepen Israel’s ties with right-wing America, whose support for Israel is not contingent upon it fulfilling its liberal, democratic ideals. The Republicans who hailed Netanyahu as a Churchillian prophet are cheering a figure who no longer disguises his intention to bury forever the original Zionist dream.

Speaking of nutters, the WashPo continues to shine as a member of the no-longer-liberal media. Here's torture enthusiast Marc Thiessen:

So let’s get this straight: Iranian-backed rebels have overthrown the pro-American government in Yemen that was helping us fight al-Qaeda’s most dangerous branch. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has deployed its terrorist Quds Force into Iraq, and its infamous commander, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, is on the ground leading the offensive against the Islamic State. Iran is on the verge of getting the world to lift economic sanctions in exchange for a nuclear agreement so bad that it has actually united Arabs and Israelis in opposition. 

I'm not going to go through and Fisk his article. Suffice to say, once again, that American foreign policy should be conducted to benefit the US and not the Israelis and Saudis.

Leading to Charles Pierce:

(A)s much as Bill Kristol and Tom Cotton may want to believe it, and stipulating that the United States will stay the current course in negotiations, Tuesday's elections in Israel were not a referendum on whether or not this country should strike a deal with Iran on the subject of the latter's nuclear weapons program. The effort to sabotage those negotiations is likely to continue, and grow ever louder, but it should be ignored as thoroughly as it has been to this point. It is possible that a few more American legislators may show the white feather on the subject, but there should not be enough of them to wreck the possibility of a breakthrough. And Tuesday's results are damned sure not an endorsement of another catastrophic war in the Middle East.

And apparently the members of Old Europe share the enthusiasm of us DFH's over Bibi's win.

The EU congratulated Netanyahu on his victory, but said it was committed to relaunching the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians that he rejected in the last days of the campaign.

British Prime Minister David Cameron took a similar stand, tweeting his congratulations but letting his spokesman emphasise that "he wants to see peace, wants to see a two-state solution".

This From The Liberal Washington Post

So, I know that Mark Frost is reading the WashPo now because it's not as lieberal as the lieberal NYTimes. He did say that the WashPo was coming around to those good Conservative values (such as genocide). I'm sure this psychopathic opinion piece, by someone whom I'm sure moonlights as a serial killer, made his day.

What if force is the only way to block Iran from gaining nuclear weapons? That, in fact, is probably the reality. Ideology is the raison d’etre of Iran’s regime, legitimating its rule and inspiring its leaders and their supporters. In this sense, it is akin to communist, fascist and Nazi regimes that set out to transform the world. Iran aims to carry its Islamic revolution across the Middle East and beyond. A nuclear arsenal, even if it is only brandished, would vastly enhance Iran’s power to achieve that goal.

And sadly yes, it gets more insane from there.

Otherwise, only military actions — by Israel against Iraq and Syria, and through the specter of U.S. force against Libya — have halted nuclear programs. Sanctions have never stopped a nuclear drive anywhere.

Does this mean that our only option is war? Yes, although an air campaign targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would entail less need for boots on the ground than the war Obama is waging against the Islamic State, which poses far smaller a threat than Iran does.

Some might make the case that sanctions stopped a nuclear drive in Iraq. Of course, it didn't do any good because psychopaths like Joshua Muravchik helped to impel us into war there, too. And since we obviously don't have an army capable of taking on a country 3 or 4 times the size of Iraq and aren't going to have any allies, we'll just drop bombs on them. That won't cause any unintended consequences. 

Fuckin' asshole!

And since I'm here, do Democrats equal Republicans in this instance, Matt?

Since Frost recently said he was a fan of The Atlantic as well as the WashPo, I hope he caught this post by James Fallows (bless his heart).

Right, repeated bombing raids "as necessary." What could possibly go wrong with that approach? Yes, "surely the United States could best Iran." Surely we could polish off those backward Viet Cong. Surely invading Iraq would work out great. (I haven't taken the time to see if the author was a fan of invading Iraq, but I have a guess.) Surely the operational details of these engagements are a concern only for the small-minded among us.

How would we think about a "scholar" in some other major-power capital who cavalierly recommended war? How would we think about some other capital-city newspaper that decided to publish it? The Post's owners (like those of the NYTand other majors papers) have traditionally had a free hand in choosing the paper's editorial-page policy and leaders, while maintaining some distance from too-direct involvement in news coverage. Jeff Bezos, behold your newspaper.

Hat tip to Scott Lemieux at LGM for the Fallows link and for "The Answer is always War."