Would you agree that the opposite of being alive is being dead?

Just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in. Sure John Roberts is deadly dull, but Biden emotes enough for the both of them. And then there’s Tom Coburn. You might think that to become both a doctor and a senator, you’d have to be something other than a complete idiot. You’d be wrong. (Hazzah and kudos, by the way, to the Daily Show for skewering this homophobic ass yesterday). Somehow he weaseled his way onto the Judiciary Committee, where he addressed these remarks to John Roberts:

As you have been before our committee, I’ve tried to use my medical skills of observation of body language to ascertain your uncomfortableness and ill at ease with questions and responses. ... And I will tell you that I am very pleased, both in my observational capabilities as a physician to know that your answers have been honest and forthright as I watch the rest of your body respond to the stress that you’re under.

But not in, like, a gay way, cuz we know Coburn isn’t down with the gayness, though he does have an odd fixation on lesbians in high school bathrooms. Coburn also had some point or other to make about the concept of brain-death, possibly having something to do with Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, and asked Roberts, “Would you agree that the opposite of being alive is being dead?” Roberts took a moment, and then agreed.

For a state somewhere between life and death, we must look to Guantanamo, where the hunger strike now involves more than 1/4 of the prisoners. According to Sgt. Justin Behrens, a military spokesmodel, talking about forcible feeding, and presumably intending to sound reassuring rather than threatening, “We’re going to take care of everyone.”


Other NATO countries are resisting American pressure to expand NATO’s role in Afghanistan beyond “peacekeeping” to offensive operations against the Taliban (Rumsfeld wants to reduce the American contingent without reducing the number of occupation troops). Rummy says “it would be nice if Nato developed counter-terrorist capabilities.” Nice. Violence in Afghanistan is increasing, but unless they target Americans no attention is paid in the US, where most people have forgotten that we’re still occupying Afghanistan. With elections coming up Sunday, there has been none of the usual rhetoric from Bush about purple fingers, 90-year olds braving the terrorists to cast their ballots, etc., presumably because he doesn’t want scrutiny of an election process that will not look especially democratic and which will return some quite unsavory warlords. Karzai said that it was ok that warlords hadn’t been expunged from the ballot, since voters could simply refuse to vote for them. Several former Taliban officials are also running, including the foreign minister, who had been held by the Americans for three years, and the head of the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, who claims to have been misunderstood, why he wasn’t against girls being educated, they just didn’t have the money for it.


In a speech last week, which I keep forgetting to blog, Bush praised the efforts in relieving Katrina victims of the faith-based community and the “community-based community.”

Speaking of faith-based, Bush – that’s him in his bar mitzvah suit – celebrated the history of Jews in American life today.


Whoever’s in charge of the White House website is also down with the Jewish people, quoting Bush thus: “This may sound a little odd for a Methodist from Texas saying this, but I just came from shool [sic!].” Bush took the opportunity to blast “the desecration of synagogues in Gaza that followed Israel’s withdrawal.”