Fur-lined toilet seats are a luxury. Dangerous rhetoric is a necessity

Nancy Pelosi says that the Boy-Emperor has no clothes, and Tom DeLay practically calls her a communist in response, saying that “if the Democrats truly want to be considered for national leadership again”, they need never to say anything bad about Bush ever again, which is an interesting definition of leadership. “She should apologize to the president and to the troops because this nation cannot afford the luxury of her dangerous rhetoric.” Luxury.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Michael Howard has decided that it’s ok to criticize Blair’s war policy as incompetent, and Labour is responding just like DeLay--irresponsible, threatening the morale of troops, etc.

And Bush will take out ads accusing Kerry of “playing politics with national security”. Did I mention those accusations of playing politics will be made in advertisements directed at the person running against Bush?

I can no longer keep up with torture allegations. They just pile up on top of each others like a pyramid of hooded naked Iraqi prisoners, if I may wax metaphoric. We’ve got Delta Force’s “battlefield interrogation facility” (does every single unit get its own dungeon?) , we’ve got Afghanistan. We’ve got Reuters employees tortured, NBC or is it CBS. We’ve got new pictures every day, and new details: maxi-pads, crawling over glass, food in the toilet, yet more deaths in custody, more prisoners raped, smeared with shit, ridden like animals, force-fed pork and made to curse Islam and thank Jesus (Ann Coulter would be proud).

A story in the NYT today notes that the Pentagon’s list of approved interrogation techniques is classified. Why? The prisoners know what’s being done to them, so the only reason is public relations, which is not only not a legitimate reason to classify something, it’s against stated policy, as set forth by Bush in Executive Order (you could look up the number yourself).

Kerry campaign slogan: “Let America be America Again.” That’ll stop people saying he wants to make America be like France. Wonkette notes it captures the essence of Kerry, stilted yet empty. (Wonkette makes the same obvious France joke I did, but I came up with mine independently; not a good sign for that slogan). Still, the similarity to “let Reagan be Reagan” makes me think he wants America to be a drooling, imbecilic, incontinent has-been, in which case we might as well vote for Bush.

Iraqi universities are complaining that the US has done nothing to rebuild them after the post-invasion looting. The same AP article says that in vocational schools, pupils are taught “theoretical carpentry” because of lack of tools. Some problems contain their own solutions.

The US is still denying having bombed a wedding party.