Democracy will have spoken

Karl Rove weighs in on the “bulge” under Bush’s jacket: “there was nothing there.” See, I’ve been calling Shrub an empty suit for years.

London Times headline: “Funeral Exposes Arafat’s Failings.” You’d think if there was one thing he couldn’t be blamed for...

Colin Powell: “We know that, in the eyes of the Palestinian people, Arafat embodied their hopes and dreams for the achievement of an independent Palestinian state.” I like how he doesn’t quite say that the Palestinian people are idiots for believing that, but nudges right up to the line.

Indeed, many are asking how a people could stick with a leader who constantly failed. But enough about George W. Bush....

A couple of days ago I castigated Bush for saying, “There will be an opening for peace when leadership of the Palestinian people steps forward and says, ‘Help us build a democratic society.’” I thought he meant they should ask the US for help. It’s actually stupider than that, because today he said a Palestinian state would depend on “the Palestinian people’s desire to build a democracy and Israel’s willingness to help them build a democracy.” So they’re supposed to ask Ariel Sharon for help, even though he has done so much for them already.

There’s an amusing exchange in the same press conference in which Bush is asked what would happen, in Iraq as well as Palestine, if a non-democrat is elected, and Bush rejects the whole premise of the question:

Well, first of all, if there’s an election, the Iraqis will have come up with somebody who is duly-elected. In other words, democracy will have spoken. And that person is going to have to listen to the people, not to the whims of a dictator, not to their own desires -- personal desires. The great thing about democracy is you actually go out and ask the people for a vote, as you might have noticed recently. And the people get to decide, and they get to decide the course of their future. And so it’s a contradiction in terms to say a dictator gets elected. The person who gets elected is chosen by the people. ... And if they don’t -- the people of the Palestinian Territory don’t like the way this person is responding to their needs, they will vote him or her out.

It’s a contradiction in terms to say a dictator gets elected. HITLER, you moron, short fella, funny mustache, you must have heard tell of him at some point.

The coup government of Haiti plans to issue an arrest warrant for ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. For corruption.

Picture from Fallujah, prisoners captured by Marines. Say, when Tom Ridge told us to stockpile duct tape, do you think this was what he had in mind?