Give my chance a plan to work

I received an ad in the mail that asked “Do You Value Your Teeth?” Fortunately, it turned out to be from some dentist, not from my bookie.

Speaking of no child left behind, the US will put on trial a 20-year old, Omar Khadr, who has been held without charge in Guantanamo for 5 years. Charges include murder in violation of the law of war, spying, and conspiracy. This will be the first war crimes trial of a child soldier. Details are sketchy, but his lawyer says that the conspiracy was committed when he was less than 10. (Update: oh, according to the charge sheet [pdf] the conspiracy involves everything that Al Qaida has ever done.)

In his interview of John McCain on last night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart, who I’ve often felt has been too obsequious in his interviews with people in power, quietly refused to let McCain describe the Iraq War as “unpopular,” a word chosen to frame opponents of the war as followers of fashion. Well done.

In an email from the McCain campaign today, McCain says, “If you don’t believe that the problems facing the country need to be addressed, then I am probably not your candidate.” Does that sort of rhetoric ever convince anyone?

There seems to be no transcript of Bush’s interview by Charlie Rose, so I had to (shudder) watch it, although I had to pause it for laughter after he claimed that Gen. Petraeus said, “Give my chance a plan to work.” I only listened in snatches while doing other things, so here are some snatches:

We’re working with “an interesting group of nations” on Iran, which is “spreading radical Shia in a region that doesn’t need any more radicalism.”

Can he imagine saying about Iraq, well, we’ve tried, & then leave. No he can’t.

The Iraq bill is “a political document.”

Asked how much violence is acceptable in Iraq, he said he’d have to ask “experts,” such as Petraeus and Ryan Crocker. He thinks that it’s a cultural thing, how much violence is considered normal (I think Bush was copying something Petraeus said a couple of days ago that Iraq would always have a certain number of bombings and would adjust, just like Belfast in the 1970s).

Today is Malaria Awareness Day. George Bush held an event at the White House. “Every year, more than a million people die of malaria -- and the vast majority of them are children under five years old,” he said. “It’s a sad statistic,” he said. “Malaria imposes a crippling economic burden in sub-Saharan Africa, where so many are struggling to lift their families out of poverty,” he said. “All of that may seem like a cause for despair. But it’s not,” he said, and proved that he was not despairing by following his speech with a Malaria Awareness Party. Woooo!







(Update: Think Progress has the video.)