Stupid things

2 leftist radio stations in semi-fascist Italy that planned to broadcast the protests against the Bush visit had their power mysteriously cut for 4 hours.

Amidst the eruption of what Wonkette calls Gipperporn, it’s nice that Christopher Hitchens hasn’t turned into a complete loser after all. He reminds us of something I’d forgotten, the single most terrifying moment of the Reagan lurch towards world annihilation, when it became clear that he didn’t know that once you launched the ICBMs, they couldn’t be called back. And that he claimed the Russian language had no word for freedom, which would presumably mean that no matter how mad they got at France, they’d still have to call French fries French fries.

And Marc Cooper gives another vitriolic obit for Saint Ronny of Bitburg. “The mask of equanimity was ripped off American politics, and the winners in our society were finally given permission to publicly gloat. All of a sudden it was socially acceptable to denounce the poor, to blame the victims, to celebrate and even promote inequality.” I’m beginning to recall the 8-year long ulcer that man gave me. One thing I now realize is that Bush’s lies about the threat of WMDs falls into a pattern of pretending that imperialist wars are about the defense of the Heimat from direct threat. Remember the air strips in Grenada? And just how far was El Salvador (or was it Nicaragua?) from Harlingen, Texas? But then even Hitler pretended that Poland had actually attacked Germany first.

Here’s that Wall St. Journal story on the torture memo.

Clinton’s memoirs are out in 2 weeks. It’ll be interesting to watch his memory and that of Saint Ronny of Voodoo Economics fight it out.

A fake family planning center in Louisiana is being sued for trying to dupe women into delaying abortions until it became illegal for them to have one. Link

Bremer bans members of “illegal militias” like Sadr taking part in Iraqi elections for at least 3 years. People whose militias are now pretending to be members of the Iraqi military, like Alex’s droogs in Clockwork Orange, don’t count, of course.

Germany’s government is moving towards gay marriages, although it will be a fight. And France just had its first one.

Iraq has nearly as many people in its Facilities Protection Service (which guards oil pipelines, not toilets), as it does in the entire police force (75,000 v. 90,000).