And the stupid burned....

...for eight years.

George ’n Jews

Bush met some Jews today at the White House. Betcha he didn’t know they came in black.


It’s International Human Rights Day, so Bush talked about the only human right he really cares about, religious freedom, while unwittingly practicing the right to mangled speech: “We discussed how America must remain engaged in helping people realize the great blessings of religious freedom; and where we find societies in which religious freedom is not allowed to practice, that we must do something about it.”

This AP picture was taken through the magic of Hasid-o-cam.


Then he celebrated Hanukkah, and what’s Hanukkah without a honking big Christmas tree? (And a shout-out to Reuters photographer Jim Young for framing the shot so as to take in the entire tree.)

The people’s house

Nothing says awkward quite so much as Hanukkah at the White House (except maybe Kwanzaa at the White House). Bush says that this menorah is “a symbol that the White House is the people’s house, and it belongs to Americans of all faiths,” although he added that he hoped they wouldn’t “Jew it up too much.”







Earlier in the day he stuck the Indian ambassador next to a big ol’ Christmas tree, to show him whose God was boss.



Although, to be fair, you can’t actually go more than five feet in the White House before running into a Christmas tree or a Christmas wreath or some other form of Christmas decoration.

Hanukkah at the White House, or as George calls it, Jewy Christmas

California right-wingers are so upset with Der Arnold that they’re looking around for an alternative.

In Germany, Condi Rice said that she wouldn’t comment on the American kidnapping, and five-month detention and torture of German national Khaled al-Masri, all because he had a “suspicious name,” because he’s suing, and she certainly can’t talk about an issue that might be before the courts. I am getting so sick of that line. Angela Merkel came out of their meeting saying Rice had admitted a mistake in that case, but the State Dept says that Rice did no such thing and they don’t understand how Merkel could ever have gotten such an idea. Rice said something about “if” little errors occur, the US will rectify them, although she didn’t say how dumping al-Masri on a mountain road and then pressuring Germany not to talk publicly about the case fit with that.

George Bush loves him the Hanukkah. Possibly because it’s all about the oil. So he got a 19-day jump start on it.


Is the White House’s fire insurance premium paid up?

That’s the West Point Jewish Cadet Choir. Let me repeat that: the West Point Jewish Cadet Choir.

There were questions that were highly complimentary and very friendly and very interested and very supportive

Maureen Dowd writes that Shrub prefers people who feed him “swaggering fictions” rather than uncomfortable facts.

I haven’t (hitherto) piled on to Bernie Kerik, Chimpy’s nominee to head the Dept of Heimat Security, mostly because everyone else was doing it. And every article and blog post seems to have some other detail: the Village Voice has articles about the crappy job he did in NY; Talking Points Memo has been trying to figure out what happened while he was supposed to be training Iraqi police that made him leave prematurely; there have been stories about questionable business connections, using NYPD personnel for personal business, thuggery in Saudi Arabia, an illegitimate child he abandoned in Korea, etc. It’s too much for any one story, but this one is a good brief overview. Kerik’s appointment suggests to me that Bush has no intention of making the DHS, whose establishment he opposed, work. Which is good and bad news because, like the intelligence reform bill just passed, you’d like to see coordination improved to prevent a future 9/11, without all the police-state add-on’s.

For me, though, one single sentence of Kerik’s disqualifies him from the post: “If you put Senator Kerry in the White House, I think you are going to see that [terrorist attacks] happen.” He has proven his willingness to politicize the issue of terrorism for partisan purposes.

Speaking of people in jobs they are unfit for, Secretary of Defensiveness Rumsfeld says he is surprised that the media focused on the questions posed to him by troops yesterday about vehicle armor, and National Guard units getting stuck with antiquated equipment, and the stop-loss program, and why soldiers weren’t being paid and why National Guards now doing the exact same job as the regular military are being paid less, and whether they couldn’t just all go to Disneyland instead (really), when otherwise “[i]t It was a very fine, warm, enjoyable meeting. There were lots of questions; they covered the full spectrum. There were questions that were highly complimentary and very friendly and very interested and very supportive.” Incidentally, the armor question was fed to Spc. Wilson by Edward Lee Pitts of the Chattanooga Times, frustrated by Rummy’s refusal to answer questions from actual journalists.

Australian PM and racist swine John Howard says it is “common sense” to condition aid to aboriginal communities on things like making their children wash their faces twice a day.

Bush attended a Hanukkah ceremony today, although he was heard to comment that the lamps wouldn’t have needed to burn for eight days if there had been enough oil wells in Alaska. Note that in the picture in this story of the menorah-lighting (performed by the children of an army rabbi (“one of our Jewish chaplains”) deployed in Iraq, because even Hanukkah is actually about his stupid war now, Shrub’s chimplike head is uncovered.

Sinister

I thought you all needed to know this right away: crows are left-handed. (See latest issue of Nature)

Bush at White House yesterday: "I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Chanakah."