Words of wisdom from Mahatma Wolfowitz

A must-read Molly Ivins, on the Medicare drug plan, 61% of which will go straight into drug company profits, and pork in the energy bill. Turning coal into coal?

A tidbit in the Post says the Bushies are proposing letting drug companies destroy Medicaid records after 3 years, and with them any evidence of Medicaid fraud.

How did I miss this? War-Monger Extraordinaire Paul Wolfowitz said that “If the Palestinians would adopt the ways of Gandhi, they could, in fact, make an enormous change very, very quickly. I believe the power of individuals demonstrating peacefully is enormous.” Wolfowitz then announced that he would retreat to an ashram after he had started 3 more wars.

Speaking of individuals demonstrating peacefully, Bush is visiting the UK soon, and his security people would like it if the entire West End was shut down for a couple of days. Oh, and they want demonstrations banned, and they especially don’t want demonstrations where Bush might actually see them. And they want immunity for Secret Service agents who might shoot somebody; they want to bring 250 armed agents. When Nixon visited in 1969, the Secret Service brought water.

Because he does need completely subservient audiences, doesn’t he? Does anyone else think that his giving a speech today at the Heritage Foundation was an insult to Veterans’ Day, which is supposed to be a national and not a partisan day? Bush also laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, because god forbid he should come face to face with one of the known soldiers stuck at the sharp end of Bushian foreign policy. The fact that he never goes to a funeral of one of the soldiers is well known, and the ban on coverage of the arrival of coffins, but have you noticed that no one from the administration ever visits the wounded either?

A blogger goes looking for the schools in Iraq the Bushies keep claiming they’ve “rebuilt.” Incidentally, this blog, which I haven’t seen before, isn’t bad.

Several German states are working to ban the wearing of Muslim headscarves. The story says that Christian and Jewish symbols won’t be banned. In fact...

Just kidding.

This link looks kind of generic, so it may reach a different story by the time you click on it, but it’s got some really heart-warming pictures of US soldiers interacting with Iraqis, frisking a 4-year old, and I like how one kneels down to tie up the 6-year old girl. (If the link doesn’t link, the story title is “Shocking images shame US forces”.)

Of course, that’s nothing like what we do in our own schools.

Daily Telegraph: Iraqi police officers have been offered the use of a pink Rolls-Royce belonging to the former dictator Saddam Hussein's son Uday, as a wedding car. The deputy interior minister, Gen Ibrahim Ahmad, has authorised the vehicle's use by police officers and ministry officials when they marry. A spokesman said he wanted to honour their work.

After a radical reinterpretation of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde was booed in Brazil, the director mooned the audience.