The last edition of “What Sidney Said”

Goodbye, Mr. Bush. A sad day indeed. I will miss you, Sidney. Good luck.

No more Friedman units?

YouTube killed the clip of Tommy Friedman explaining that “we hit Iraq because we could” and that we needed to have our soldiers go house to house and tell Arabs to “suck on this” because we would look weak otherwise. Truly a loss. But what’s really interesting is that YouTube may have pulled it because Tommy was embarrassed about it.

Sy Hersh does journalism

Curious about the Cheney Bush Administration’s planned Iraq strike? Seymour Hersh has plenty to keep you awake at night.

“Cheney’s option is now for a fast in and out—for surgical strikes,” the former senior American intelligence official told me. The Joint Chiefs have turned to the Navy, he said, which had been chafing over its role in the Air Force-dominated air war in Iraq. “The Navy’s planes, ships, and cruise missiles are in place in the Gulf and operating daily. They’ve got everything they need—even AWACS are in place and the targets in Iran have been programmed. The Navy is flying FA-18 missions every day in the Gulf.” There are also plans to hit Iran’s anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile sites. “We’ve got to get a path in and a path out,” the former official said.

A Pentagon consultant on counterterrorism told me that, if the bombing campaign took place, it would be accompanied by a series of what he called “short, sharp incursions” by American Special Forces units into suspected Iranian training sites. He said, “Cheney is devoted to this, no question.”

Great.

Chait’s ‘The Conscience of a Liberal’

Paul Krugman makes many interesting points in his review. I particularly liked this one:

Second, Jon talks at some length about the media, and in particular about the Republican ability to get journalists to harp endlessly on supposed character flaws of Democrats, while their own candidates get a free pass. He emphasizes the right-wing echo chamber, but there’s more to it than that. It’s also – as I can report from my own experience – a result of asymmetrical intimidation. Quite simply, if you point out character flaws in a conservative, there will be an all-out effort, involving major media as well as blogs and talk radio, to discredit and ruin you, personally. This just doesn’t happen on the other side.

So journalists feel that it’s safe to ridicule Democrats, even if the supposed character-defining episode never happened; they choke up and shy away when it comes to Republicans. That’s why even the most grotesque stuff, like Giuliani’s claim that he’s a rescue worker too, or Romney’s remark that his sons are serving the country by helping him become president, doesn’t get picked up.

Interesting. Nauseating, but interesting.

Suck. On. This.

The wisdom of Tommy Friedman.