Nobody sang Kumbaya

The Bush admin is fighting the court decision that it must make different denominations of paper money detectable by feel, saying that blind people can just use credit cards, or portable reading devices (which cost $350, or at least this one does). Or possibly they can have their butlers tell them what each bill is – doesn’t everyone have butlers?

Outgoing ambassador to the UN and wielder of the Mustache of Death, John Bolton, when asked if he had made peace with equally outgoing UN SecGen Kofi Annan, replied, “Nobody sang ‘Kumbaya.’” Told of this, Annan wondered, “But does he know how to sing it?”

In an interview with Laura Ingraham, couldn’t-be-outgoing-fast-enough-for-my-taste Secretary of War Rumsfeld said that the exact right number of troops was sent to Iraq. He also displayed his historical grasp of counter-insurgency campaigns: “And you think of the insurgency in -- in -- oh, Algeria, for example, I’m trying to remember, I think it was 10 or 12 years long. And that’s the nature of it. And it was the Algerian people, ultimately, that put it down and that will be the case here.” Actually, I just realized that he may not have been referring to the Algerian War (which France lost), but to the 1990s when the military cancelled elections after the Islamic Salvation Front won the first round, and put down their subsequent rebellion with a Pinochet-esque brutality. Either way, not really a role model.

The US and Russia, which were supposed to have destroyed their chemical weapons stockpiles next year, have been granted another 5 years (and India and Libya until 2009 and 2010 respectively) from the oversight organization. I feel safer already.