Probably coerced / I'm a survivor / snot from the nose of the Great Buddha

“OH YES, HERE IS JOHNNY, GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME.”: Just what India needs: an Italian widow as prime minister. Still, better a corrupt dynasty than the Hindu-supremist BJP party, which ran on the slogan “India’s Shining,” presumably intended to refer to India’s recent economic success rather than to invoke the image of a Bollywood remake of the Stanley Kubrick film of the Stephen King novel, only this time with a lot more signing and dancing. One of the congresscritters who saw the prison photos, Rep Trent Franks (R-Ark), who doesn’t know much about art but knows what he likes, disapproved of a photo of a prisoner sodomizing himself with a banana. “My conclusion,” Rep Franks concluded, “is that that was probably coerced somehow.” Ya think? The London Times has a headline that encapsulates an irony I might have missed: “Rumsfeld Visits Prison at Centre of Storm to Tell Troops 'I'm a Survivor.'” Of course he never had to survive--for instance--being coerced, somehow, to sodomize himself with a banana. I think. The Indy article on this just drips sarcasm. One detail I hadn’t heard: when the US reopened Abu Ghraib, they hung a sign “America is a friend of all the Iraqi people.” I guess it’s better than Arbeit macht frei. I imagine we’ll find out that those troops survived an ideological screening process. Certainly their questions to him were at the trivial or Larry King level. Link, but don’t bother. Rummy also says that if it were up to him, he’d certainly release all the pictures, but those darned lawyers won’t let him. Lynndie England is claiming that she was ordered to pose for those photos. She’s not a callous sadistic bitch, she just plays one on television. The European Commission’s envoy to Slovakia, a Dutchman, suggested that Roma children be removed from their parents and placed in boarding schools so that they learn “normal social values.” Like racism. The Dutch tv interviewer asked about the morality of this; and Eric Van der Linden said that the parents could be given a few bucks to overcome their resistance. He has been reprimanded, but not fired. From the Telegraph: “Priests at one of Japan's most famous temples have taken steps to block the sale of a sweet marketed as the "Snot from the nose of the Great Buddha". Tuesday Texas is due to execute a paranoid schizophrenic, whose yelling during his trial caused him to be excluded from most of it, and who will not speak to his lawyer because he does not understand “hell law” (is there any other kind?) and thinks he has received a pardon from Satan, not understanding that Satan is no longer governor.