Wherein John McCain is compared, unfavorably, to a 60-year old Thai hooker with leprosy

The hunger strike by Palestinian political/security prisoners may end today, after a bit over two weeks. I was never clear on whether this supposed to be a fast to the death (if the strikers ever issued a formal statement, I didn’t see it), but the Israelis certainly attempted to speed along the process of physical deterioration, denying them milk, juice and salt, which they were willing to take.

My off-the-top-of-my-head, middle-of-the-night theory that Larry Franklin was passing operational intel to the Israelis is supported by no one else. Fine. If it was about influencing policy towards Iran, as seems to be the case, and influencing it in the direction of war, maybe the opposition party, if the US had one, or the press, if it weren’t so tame, could use this to lever the Pentagon the hell out of the business of formulating foreign policy.

This incident will also serve to make a war against Iran harder to undertake in a 2nd Bush term, by making it appear to the Muslim world like--well, more like--the product of a US-Israeli cabal.

The US was given advance notice of the coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea, and chose to do nothing, according to the Sunday Times (London), for the usual reason: oil. The government of EG is a rather nasty one, and the US was afraid it would have to impose sanctions, depriving itself of EG’s precious, precious oil.

I don’t know how much of the R convention I’ll be able to stand to watch, especially since they failed to invite the entertaining lunatic right-wingers to speak. Instead, while the RNC disinvited Britney Spears because she’s too big of a whore, McCain and other R moderates-on-some-issues will be peddling their asses onstage for smaller change than that charged by a 60-year old Thai hooker with leprosy. This convention is Shrub’s version of “kinder and gentler,” the phrase his father used to distance himself from Reagan, which as often as not became “kindler” and gentler. Actually, the 2000 convention did the same thing, with Newt Gingrich, as I wrote at the time, “locked in the basement until it’s over.”