Democratic Debate: Asbestos Pantsuits for everyone!

A debate in Las Vegas (transcript). Sadly, Wolf Blitzer did not come dressed as Elvis.

Hillary: “this pantsuit is asbestos tonight.” I just had an extremely disturbing mental flash explaining why she would need an asbestos pantsuit.

Extremely disturbing.


Hillary: “the Republicans are not going to vacate the White House voluntarily.” Cool, I recommend nerve gas. Although it may not work on Cheney.

Biden: this is not about experience, it’s not about change, it’s about action! Although he does have 35 years of experience (which is exactly the same figure Hillary throws around).

Oddly enough, Chris Dodd is also wearing an asbestos pantsuit.



Another question on which no voter will make their decision: will you support the Democratic candidate, no matter who they are? Kucinich says it depends on their war position, everyone else says yes, silently mouthing, “Unless it’s Kucinich.”

I can’t believe the big issue of the 2008 election is going to be driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. Obama says illegal immigrants aren’t coming here to drive or go to the In-N-Out Burger. Suddenly I want a chocolate milk shake. Kucinich insists on the word undocumented instead of illegal, and tries to talk about creating a path to legalization, but Wolf refuses to let him (or anyone else) avoid the real issue, which is, of course, should they be allowed driver’s licenses, yes or no, yes or no dammit. And if so, should they be required to be organ donors? Okay, he didn’t ask that, but none of the candidates supported driver’s licenses – wait, I think Richardson did, but I don’t really feel obligated to listen when Richardson is talking, I just go to my happy place.


5:33 I just noticed Gravel isn’t here.

Starting with Pakistan, Wolf again interrupts whenever anyone tries to give a more nuanced answer, insisting they respond to his simplistic, dualistic framing of the question: which is more important, human rights or national security? Dodd, by the way, disappointed me by opting firmly for the latter. As did Clinton, but you expect it from her. Biden makes much of the fact that he spoke with both Musharraf and Bhutto, and did so before Bush. Biden’s new motto: “Vote for me, I have a telephone – with speed dial!”

I keep hearing about Biden calling Musharraf, but somehow never hear what Musharraf said to him, although I’m guessing, “Joe Who?”


Free trade agreements, and here comes Wolf with another either/or: NAFTA, good or bad? Hillary wants a “time out” on trade treaties, while they think about what they did. Obama is okay with a free trade deal with Peru because it’s a small country, but not South Korea.

Hillary is happy to be attacked by the other candidates, which she says isn’t because she is a woman, but because she is ahead. Also, she is very comfortable in the kitchen. Must be the asbestos pantsuit.

Wolf again asks the important question: is Hillary playing the gender card? For some reason, though, he only asks this of Edwards, presumably because he is the most “girly” of any of the candidates, as opposed to Wolf, who is manly and is named Wolf and has a beard.

Wolf interrupts Kucinich while he is calling for impeachment, because heaven forfend anyone be allowed to say anything interesting.

Hillary accuses Obama of wanting to raise Social Security taxes on fire fighters and school supervisors.


Biden wants to appoint to the Supreme Court someone who ran as dogcatcher. Not a joke, he says. And his first nominee will be a woman. A woman dogcatcher.

Are elections actually held for an office of dogcatcher anywhere in the country?

Kucinich will appoint aliens from that UFO he saw that time to the Supreme Court.

Someone in the audience asks Hillary if she prefers diamonds or pearls. She said it depends on who what Bill did this time.

Democratic Debate: Rocky XXVIII

Obama says that his fight with Hillary is the most hyped fight since Rocky fought Apollo Creed (hint: he’s Rocky in this scenario). That is some damned disturbing imagery there.

(Later: oh, I get it, he thinks a Rocky reference will go over big because he’s in Philadelphia, where, I believe, that movie was set.)


John Edwards was then invited to pile on Hillary (I believe that makes him Mr. T), which he did, accusing her of “double talk,” although I would say that her evasiveness and over-caution makes it more half talk or quarter talk.

Hillary asks, if she’s so like the Republicans, why are they all attacking her, huh, huh? Um, is that a trick question? She says it’s because she’s stood up against George Bush and his failed policies. Doesn’t mention any of his failed policies she’s actually hindered in the tiniest way. Edwards later says that the R’s keep attacking her because she’s the one they want to run against. Ouch.


Hillary says she will solve Social Security without raising any taxes through “fiscal responsibility,” whatever the hell that means.

After Russert invited the candidates to beat up on Hillary, he invited them to beat up on Iran, because he thinks it will make the debate more exciting. He is wrong.

Biden says the Kyl-Lieberman vote played into the “urban legend” that the US is in a crusade against Islam. I think he means that’s a legend in urban areas like Baghdad, Fallujah, you know, the urban areas with bomb craters.


Hillary, like all of them, says she will try diplomacy on Iran. Says sanctions are a part of diplomacy. I don’t think she knows what the word “diplomacy” means.

Oh, pardon me, she said “vigorous diplomacy.” Well, that’s entirely different.


Edwards says, correctly, that Kyl-Lieberman gave Bush and Cheney everything they wanted and that it looks like it was written by the neo-cons. Dude, what do you think Joe Lieberman is if not a neo-con?


(Long gap here where I lapsed into a hypnotic state, but I’m pretty sure no one said anything interesting.)

Biden on Giuliani: “There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and 9/11.” Nice. Of course Biden mentions about 173 things in each of his sentences.

Asked about Twitt Romney twice “confusing” his name with Osama bin Laden’s, Obama says he never pays attention to Romney, who’ll probably say something different next week. Man, he needs to hire Biden’s gag-writer.

When did Kucinich start talking about impeaching Bush & Cheney?

And then they said stuff about the alternative minimum tax. And hedge funds.

Lightning round. Can any candidate answer any question in 30 seconds? Surprisingly, no. Honestly, if they can’t solve education in America in 30 seconds, how can they possibly expect to be president? Gravel wasn’t allowed on the stage today, but moron blowhards Tim Russert and Brian Williams were allowed to run this debate.

Only Chris Dodd says illegal immigrants shouldn’t get driver’s licenses, as NY is now debating. He said solemnly that it’s a privilege, not a right. Then played a short film strip about road accidents and pedestrian right-of-way. Hillary... seemed to have 3 or 4 positions on the subject – sometimes 30 seconds is actually too long.


Kucinich confirms that he did indeed see a UFO. Obama dodges question on whether there is life on other worlds. Did I mention that answers on education were confined to 30 seconds?

Only Dodd wants to decriminalize marijuana.

Biden is asked if he would advise people not to buy toys from China for Christmas. Did I mention that answers on education were confined to 30 seconds?

Only Obama is asked what he’ll go dressed as for Halloween, dammit. He’ll wear a Mitt Romney mask, which will have two faces. Anyone have any costume suggestions for the other candidates?

Democrats discuss gay issues: semantics may be important to some

Some of the Democratic presidential candidates went to a Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/whatever-the-term-is-for-“I’m not really gay, I just offered that guy twenty bucks to blow him ‘cause I’m afraid of black people” forum, which turned out not to be an actual debate. (For anyone reading this in another country or twenty years from now, here’s a link to explain that reference.)

Biden and Dodd skipped the event, then decided that skipping was itself kind of gay and decided to hold their own belching contest to prove who is the more manly. Jeez, between the hair plugs and the fathering a child in your sixties, I think you two have the over-compensation thing pretty well covered.

Since Dodd claimed a scheduling conflict, I hope someone tracks down what he was actually doing last night.

Obama is playing the race card for all it’s worth, and quite a bit more. Evidently he understands everything the LGBTW community goes through because he’s black and his name is “Barack Obama” and his parents couldn’t have gotten married in some states. (Later he says that isn’t what he was saying and that he’s not into “comparisons of victimology.”) But he is not in favor of letting gay people marry, says civil unions, “As I’ve proposed it, it wouldn’t be a lesser thing, from my perspective,” and the difference is just “semantics.” “Semantics may be important to some,” he said dismissively. He says he would have advised civil rights leaders in the 1960s not to bother trying to end miscegenation laws, but to focus on issues that have “real consequences.” And he reassured churches that no one would force them to perform gay marriages. In retrospect, I think he was saying that as long as everyone gets full legal rights, the state shouldn’t really have an opinion about what constitutes a marriage because the bond of marriage is a purely religious one. Maybe someone should ask him if atheists should be allowed to marry.

He even repeated the famous sentence from his 2004 convention speech, about which I wrote, “You’ll notice his ‘We coach Little League in the blue states and have gay friends in the red states’ line carefully avoided creeping out the homophobes of Middle America by keeping the Little Leaguers and the gays in separate states.”


As John Edwards walked in, the camera focused on an audience member with weird hair. He also understands what it’s like to be different, because he’s so pretty. Lord, right after I wrote that, he did actually say that he understands it because he grew up in the segregated South.

He repudiated his previous statement that he opposes same-sex marriage because of his religious views. But he still opposes same-sex marriage. “All I can tell you is where I am today.”

Asked what he’d do if one of his staff said they were trans-gendered and thinking about making the “transition,” Edwards says he’d help them “in every possible way.” Fine, you hold the penis while the doctor cuts it off.

He said he’s perfectly comfortable around gay people, no matter what you’ve heard.


Dennis Kucinich, who understands what it’s like to be different because he’s an elf and is the favorite of this crowd and of Melissa Etheridge, keeps talking about the power of love. He loves love (although he’s not in love with it).

This is not proving as entertaining as I anticipated.

Mike Gravel also loves love. Melissa Etheridge asks him how he can be so gay-friendly when he’s like really really old, and if there are many gay people in Alaska. Three, as it turns out, and they’re all in the front row.


He says all gays should come out of the closet. I don’t know why, but that’s the only thing I’ve heard so far that surprised me.

Do igloos have closets?



The non-debate format allowed me to fast forward through Bill Richardson (but not in a gay way). I put it back on play while I fed the cat, and he was so laughably out of his depth that I had to go back and listen to the whole thing. He said (sigh) he understands what it’s like to be different because he’s Hispanic. Asked whether homosexuality is a choice or inborn (sadly, no one else was asked this), he seemed never even to have heard of the issue before, first mumbling that it was a choice, then that it was a scientific matter and he doesn’t understand science. Gay people befuddle him (but not in a gay way). He refuses to say if he’d sign a gay marriage bill if one were passed by the New Mexico Legislature, just as Obama refused to say if he’d have voted for one when he was in the Illinois lege.

Hillary talked about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act as “transitional” policies to fend off far worse Republican moves, trying to make essentially anti-gay measures sound progressive. No one is buying. Although they’ll probably vote for her anyway, and then act surprised when she does little if anything for them. She opposes gay marriage, and calls that opposition a “personal position.” Like Edwards, she seems to think that’s relevant, but a presidential candidate’s positions on public policy issues are not “personal.” She said prefers to think of her position not as anti-gay marriage but as pro-civil union. Margaret Carlson prompted her to say, “I’m your girl,” just as she did to the AFL-CIO two days before. She said it (I could swear I heard Kucinich say it too), but she isn’t. Her and Obama’s sort of “pragmatism,” their willingness to compromise with other people’s rights... hey, I was expecting to blog this forum with nothing but double entendres!


I don’t think there was more than that one question about transgendered people, and I’m quite sure there were none about bisexuals.

Democratic debate: You shouldn’t always say everything you think when you are running for president

Tonight the Democratic presidential candidates not named Gravel debated in an AFL-CIO debate. I’ll go out on a limb and predict that the gay-themed debate two days from now will be less snooze-inducing. The candidates were all in favor of infrastructure and against mine cave-ins. All of which would have sounded a lot kinkier at the gay debate.

Obama would call the president of Mexico and the (non-existent) president of Canada to fix NAFTA. Biden, despite not representing a state actually bordering Canada, knows they have a prime minister.


Hillary said if you want someone to stand up and fight the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, “I’m your girl.” Does that mean she’ll fight like a girl?


Kucinich says he’s the Seabiscuit of this race. Or possibly Hillary said she’s Seabiscuit and Kucinich said he’s your girl – I wasn’t paying very close attention. All of which would have sounded a lot kinkier at the gay debate. Which will be on the Logo Channel, by the way, for the 3 of you who get that one. Last month I saw a very good 1972 tv movie on that channel with Hal Holbrooke as a divorced man coming out to his 14-year old son. His live-in boyfriend was Martin Sheen.


Asked about China, Hillary said she doesn’t want her children [sic] eating bad food from China, or playing with toys from China that will make them sick. Isn’t Chelsea a little old for Thomas the Tank Engine?


Everyone but Obama is so solicitous of General Musharaf. Jeez guys, does the opposite of “naive” (if threatening to invade a country can be so described) really have to be cynical and Kissingerian? Hillary lectured him, “You shouldn’t always say everything you think when you are running for president.” So, COMPETITION 1: What is she thinking that she isn’t saying?


COMPETITION 2: Edwards said that, unlike Hillary, “You’ll never see me on the cover of Fortune magazine”. What magazine cover will we see him on?

Democratic debate: You can now, John, go to Hanoi and get a Baskin-Robbins ice cream cone

Transcript.

Personally, I think if they were going to have a YouTube debate, the candidates should have had to respond to whatever the top 10 YouTube videos were today. We need to know what Kucinich thinks of the cat who plays the piano, what Christopher Dodd thinks of the trailer for the Simpsons movie, and everybody’s opinion of Jessica Biel’s butt.

Hillary is asked if she’s a liberal. She prefers the word progressive, which has “a real American meaning,” or did right up until the moment when she appropriated it and emptied it of any meaning.


Asked to demonstrate their bi-partisanship by naming a Republican they could choose as their running mate, if they were running for president in a wacky sitcom shown only on YouTube, Biden says Chuck Hagel. Sadly, no one else is asked. At the risk of sounding like those knuckleheads at unity08.com, where I’ve seen people seriously propose that Obama and McCain run together, what Republican would be a good – and by good of course I mean amusing – veep for Hillary, Edwards, or whomever? Include an explanation if necessary. And no fair everybody suggesting David Vitter for Hillary.


Reparations for black people (actually, “is African-Americans ever going to get reparations for slavery?” I guess no one posted a video on the subject using grammatical English, huh CNN?): Barack does not take the opportunity to mention that he probably wouldn’t qualify because his ancestors weren’t slaves. Kucinich is the only candidate who supports them (though he doesn’t say how much), making him the instant frontrunner among former slaves, assuming he wasn’t already.

Obama, in a haircut that makes his ears look huuuuuge from certain angles, says he is authentically black because he can’t get a cab in Manhattan.


Hillary says she is authentically female. We’ll take her word for it.

Edwards says he is authentically pretty.

Two underlit lesbians ask if the candidates would let them marry... each other. Kucinich says yes, making him the instant frontrunner among underlit lesbians, assuming he wasn’t already. Dodd says civil unions yes, marriage no. Ditto Richardson, with full marriage rights. Edwards says it is a very difficult issue for him. Poor baby.


Asked about Darfur, Biden said, “Those kids will be dead by the time the diplomacy [Richardson talked about diplomacy] is over. I’m not joking.” Thank you for clearing that up.

Gravel says the Vietnam War was in vain because you can buy a Baskin-Robbins ice cream cone in Hanoi. Ho Ho Ho Chi mint. Let’s see, 55,000 American lives divided by 31 flavors...

Wait, doesn’t that mean we won? Otherwise, Baskin-Robbins here would have only one flavor, rice.

Obama says that troops never die in vain.


Everyone says women should register for the draft. Asks Gravel, who you’d really think would have found out at his age, “What’s the difference?”

Hillary is asked if Arab leaders would take her, a woman, seriously. Yes, she says, pretty much everyone finds me scary.


The candidates are asked if they sent their children to public or private schools, and whether they told their children about sex with medically-correct and age-appropriate terms. Hillary said she just handed Chelsea a copy of the Starr Report.

A video from someone in their bathroom in wacky Berkeley (which CNN spells Berkely) asked something about compact flourescent bulbs. Edwards said their harsh light takes away from his prettiness. Yes, I’m totally making up the answers now. I lost interest about the time they were asked who their favorite teachers were.


I couldn’t quite see, but it looked like they all raised their hands when asked if they flew to the debate on a private jet, except Gravel, who took the train. Obama says he would have taken a cab from Manhattan, but, well, you know.

Asked about health care, Edwards talked about his three-day Poverty Tour (evidently you can see all of it in three days, if you’re using a private jet), in which he met a guy who couldn’t talk until he got his cleft palate repaired when he was 50. Everyone looked at Biden and sighed, for some reason.


A scary man asked if they would take away his semi-automatic (which he called his baby). Biden said yes. He will be missed.

I set the recorder for 5 minutes overtime but they went longer still. Just as it cut out, Edwards was criticizing Hillary’s coat. He will be missed.

Democratic debate: Trying to get black men to understand it is not unmanly to wear a condom

There was a Democratic presidential debate tonight. I fell asleep. To show how different bloggers are from normal people, I woke up while Kucinich was speaking.


The debate was at Howard University, the questioners were black, and the camera kept focusing on Al Sharpton in the audience, nodding his head or looking very stern indeed.


I amused myself trying to decide who the whitest candidate is. I would have a poll, but I strongly suspect you people would all vote that it’s Obama. Mike Gravel may have lost some points by not being entirely au fait on the terminology, referring to “black African-Americans,” and for saying that the war on drugs “does nothing but savage our inner cities,” possibly not the best choice of verb. He’s from Alaska, you know.


On the other hand, in the HIV/AIDS segment, Bill Richardson talked about the need to “penetrate” minority communities. Biden said he spent last summer in the black sections of town trying to get black men to wear condoms. It’s nice he has a hobby. Also, he said that he and Barack have both been tested for AIDS and there’s no shame in that (Obama’s over-speedy insistence that he got tested with his wife, not with Biden, undercut that message, though he put on a big smile to prove that he was going along with a joke rather than exhibiting homosexual panic).


Kucinich said that Michael Moore is right about the need to get insurance companies out of medicine, which might get him some attention on Fox on any other week than the one when Paris Hilton got out of jail. He also called for a constitutional amendment for equality in educational opportunity. I have no idea how that would work, and I doubt he does either.


Others brought their shop-worn slogans along. Edwards tried to work race into his “two nations” thing, and Hillary reassured us that “I really believe that it takes a village to raise a child”.


About the time I was nodding off, I could swear I heard Joe Biden say that we could repeal Bush’s tax cuts for the rich because... “they didn’t ask for it,” and they’re patriots who wouldn’t mind. But that would be a supremely silly thing to say, so I probably just dreamed it. At least I didn’t dream about him trying to convince Barack Obama to wear a condom.


There will be many, many, many more debates, which is good because so many questions remain unanswered. What’s up with Edwards’ yellow wrist band? And Gravel’s pants? And will I ever mention Chris Dodd in one of these posts?

Democratic debate: There’s a teachable moment here

Transcript.


Edwards: The war on terror is a bumper sticker. We are not safer.


Clinton: The war on terror is not a bumper sticker (but it is one of those Garfield dolls stuck to a car window). We are safer.


Kucinich: There’s a teachable moment here.

Biden, yelling (he seemed to be yelling a lot of the time, as was Gravel): We’re not funding the war, we’re funding the safety of the troops until we can get 67 votes to end the war. So that’s okay, then.


Hillary tried to avoid have to admit that she didn’t read the National Intelligence Estimate before voting for the war. But when pressed (good for Wolf Blitzer, by the way) she tried to claim it was irrelevant and that she was “totally briefed” (also: “thoroughly briefed”) (insert your own “boxers or briefs” joke here). By whom she did not say (and it’s important, since the question is whether she knew of the dissent in the full report that she failed to read, and since the dissent turned out to be correct). She also blamed “the Iraqis” for failing to take advantage of the “opportunity” we gave them.


Hillary: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a transition policy. She really can’t admit that anything she or the Clinton administration did was a mistake.

Biden: “No one asked anyone else whether they’re gay in those holes – foxholes!”

Asked how they would use Bill Clinton, every single one wants to send him out of the country. Especially Hillary. Indeed, Hillary says, “I believe in using former presidents.” No one asked what job she would give Chimpy.


Edwards was a little worrisome on foreign policy issues. He talked about driving a wedge between the Iranian people and its leaders, but seemed to support Pervez Musharaf as being better for us than the results of democratic elections.

Hillary said that Musharaf has “become” anti-democratic. I was going to ask what her first clue was – his seizing power in a military coup? – but then realized this was another example of her refusal to admit past mistakes, since Musharaf came to power when Bill was in office.

Bill Richardson suggested pressuring China to pressure Sudan by threatening to boycott the Olympics. People tend to forget how damaging to his reputation Carter’s decision to boycott the 1980 Olympics was. I’d go so far as to say he would have been re-elected but for that.


Asked what they would do in their first 100 days, several of course said pull troops out of Iraq. Richardson would establish pre-school for every American. Well, I’m looking forward to that. I haven’t finger-painted in a really long time. Edwards would travel the world re-establishing America’s moral authority. He didn’t say how. Gravel would yell at people. Dodd would restore constitutional rights. Yay, Dodd!

We’re not into the blame game

New Orleans asks, “Is Dennis Hastert worth reclaiming?”

LA. Governor Blanco, asked by Diane Sawyer how many people died because of the incompetent governmental response: “We’re not into the blame game.”

Bush: “A lot of people are working hard to help those who have been affected, and I want to thank the people for their efforts. The results are not acceptable.”

Bush is going on a tour, but promises not to enjoy it: “I’m not looking forward to this trip. ... It’s as if the entire Gulf Coast were obliterated by the worst kind of weapon you can imagine”. Stupidity?

(Update: Dennis Kucinich: “Indifference is a weapon of mass destruction.”)

Rural electrification for everyone!

Daily Telegraph: "A gang of big women is terrorising stores in Durban, South Africa, police said yesterday."

Best description of the convention, by thepoorman.net: "It’s No Exit choreographed by Busby Berkeley."

Médecins sans Frontieres is pulling out of Afghanistan. After decades of operating there, it took an American occupation to make it too unsafe. There are frontiers after all, and they were largely created by the US, which is treating aid as an instrument of war, giving aid only to villages that inform on the Taliban, having soldiers operate out of uniform, putting the real aid workers at risk. 30 have been killed this year.

After Tony Blair’s relentless smooch-fest with GeeDubya’s ass, the Republican party has banned Labour MPs from its convention.

Today a suicide car-bomber killed dozens of people waiting on line to apply to join the Iraqi police. The idiots keep making applicants for the police or military line up in the streets, completely vulnerable to this sort of attack, which happens every 2 or 3 weeks.

Al Sharpton tells the convention that if Bush had appointed the Supreme Court in 1954, Clarence Thomas wouldn’t have gotten to law school. The crowd erupted in applause, possibly for Clarence Thomas having gone to law school, or for Bush not having been Ike, or something. Too deep for me.

I could swear I heard Dennis Kucinich refer to the D’s as the party of rural electrification. Who said the convention was content-free? It didn’t turn out to be as big an applause line as the Clarence Thomas thing.

John "Dizzy" Edwards keeps repeating "Hope is on the way." Maybe Hope got stuck in traffic, or is being cavity-searched by security. Oddly, a lot of people were waving pre-printed signs that said "Hope is on the way," which means they expected Hope to be late. Maybe it’s a Waiting for Godot thing. I guess if hope isn’t here yet, we’re hoping for hope, but wouldn’t that mean hope was already here? Too deep for me.

Outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture

Mark Kimmitt, M.M., uses the U-word, describing what the Shiites are doing as a “minor uprising.” I think this is a first. A search for “uprising” at the defenselink.mil site, my usual one-stop shopping center for the collective horseshittery of Messrs. Rumsfeld, Myers, Kimmitt, Wolfowitz, etc., brings up a lot of denials that certain things going on constitiute uprisings--by Shiites, in Fallujah, in Iraq generally. They admit to the U-word in Iraq as readily as they admit to the T-word (torture). See for yourself.

It’s been 8 days since the Sunday Times of London reported that one of the intended 9/11 hijackers had spilled the beans to the FBI. Nothing anywhere else (well, The Sun, the Press Trust of India, a Taiwanese site, Bloomberg), no follow-up, even in the Sunday Times today. I don’t get it.

But Holy Joe Lieberman, on CNN today, evidently endorsed torture, using as an example if one of the 9/11 hijackers had been captured before the attack. No word about what you do with one of them if they turn themselves in after losing all their Al Qaida mad money at craps (score one for the Great Satan, by the way!).

Speaking of torture, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales wrote Bush a memo some time after 9/11: “As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war. In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions”. Quaint. QUAINT.

Early this month, the House voted 376-3 to authorize war with Iran over its nuclear program. Although this may not be the month for this country to accuse any other of “continuing deceptions and falsehoods,” the resolution did just that, and said the US or other countries should “use all appropriate means to deter, dissuade and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.” Almost the exact words that permitted Bush to invade Iraq. Kucinich, one of the three (Libertarian loon Ron Paul and John Conyers were the others; 14 D’s voted wimp, I mean “present”), notes that the resolution endorses Bush’s doctrine of preventive wars. You’d think the Congress would have learned better of giving Bush blank checks. (Note: this happened 12 days ago. Did you notice it? I didn’t)

Powell calls, I guess, for a coup against Arafat, telling Palestinians to “wrest control of the security forces from Chairman Arafat”. I think that’s in the same interview where his press aide grabbed the camera and moved it off Powell when Tim Russert, back in Washington, started to ask about his lies to the UN about Iraqi WMDs.

Powell also hectored the Arabs for not having expressed more insincere outrage over the Nick Berg murder. In fact, he has a mathematical formula: “When you are outraged at what happened at the prison, you should be equally, doubly outraged at what happened to Mr. Berg.” Well, which is it, equally or doubly? His own reaction to Israel’s plan to destroy hundreds of Palestinian homes in Gaza, and displace up to 40,000 residents of the Rafah refugee camp, was to call it “unhelpful,” which I believe is represented numerically as a milli-outrage.

Kuwait may let women vote. Don’t hold your breath though.

The WaPo on the response to Seymour Hersh’s latest article: “In a statement released yesterday, Pentagon officials harshly criticized the report, calling it 'outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture.' The Pentagon would not, however, say flatly whether or not the program exists.”
Billmon.org takes the non-denial denial apart line by line.

A recent Kurt Vonnegut piece, not his best but he is 81, as he repeatedly tells us. Quote: “There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.” Another quote: “Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power.”

Why are you here?

Does anyone have an opinion on Prop 56? I don’t know if the provision reducing the anti-democratic 2/3 majority to pass a budget to a somewhat less anti-democratic 55% is worth voting for a prop. with that ridiculous provision of not paying legislators’ and the governor’s salaries if the budget is late, ensuring that only rich legislators had the luxury of voting their consciences.

Interesting story (well, I thought it was interesting) in the NYT about walk buttons. It seems that in NYC, 3/4 of those buttons do absolutely nothing, while most of the remaining buttons have to be pushed or you don’t get a walk signal. Reminds me (but not the NYT reporter) of a story a couple of years ago that many of the fire hydrants in NYC are also non-operative, but they keep them for the parking ticket revenue.

Didn’t watch last night’s debate (I think I’ve suffered enough already), but understand that Larry King’s first question to Kucinich was “Why are you here?” Larry King, mind you. Larry Fucking King.

Reporters should try that out on Scott McClellan, Bush’s hilariously inept spokesmodel, who said today the reason Bush won’t spend more than an hour with the 9/11 Commission, or with more than two members of it, well, it has something to do with separation of powers. Cuz Georgie is all about the checks and balances.

In Britain, says the Indy, “A couple who were forced to sell their house at a loss after learning it might contain body parts of a girl murdered by her father have lost their fight for compensation.”

An even more uplifting British story yesterday was of a 64-year old man who was mugged in a hospital, where he was visiting his sick wife. So he wasn’t there when she died, because he was being treated for his injuries.

Evidently in 1982 Reagan got the CIA to sabotage the Soviet Union’s natural gas pipeline through rigged software, creating a huge explosion.

The House passes (but the Senate won’t, so it’s academic) that bill making harming a fetus a separate crime. The anti-abortion side which passed this piece of excrement said it has nothing to do with abortion, but voted down an alternative that would have accomplished the same thing but without the symbolism by increasing penalties for injury to a pregnant woman resulting in the loss of the fetus. If this sort of symbolism wasn’t important to the social conservatives, they wouldn’t be bitching so much about the sodomites usurping the sacred institution of marriage when they could settle for civil unions.

Blair’s buds are still attacking Clare Short. While Blair refused to confirm or deny that GCHQ spied on Kofi Annan, Home Secretary David Blunkett said that his security clearance was higher than hers and he hadn’t seen... [excuse me while I go look that up] hadn’t “been shown” any transcripts. Ok, that pause was me realizing as I typed that Blunkett, who is blind, might have been playing rather unclever word games. Now I’m not sure. I might not have been thinking along those lines but for the Phillip Knightley piece in the Indy today on how Britain and the US can each say that GCHQ/NSA don’t spy on their own citizens because each side spies on each other’s citizens for them.

The Pentagon is creating a “news” “service” in “Iraq” and “Afghanistan”--sorry I mean Iraq and Afghanistan, providing text and photos of the uplifting side of military occupation, because they don’t like the negativity of the civilian press, which focus too much on car bombs and the deaths of soldiers. First, c’mon, soldiers’ deaths barely make the papers these days. Second, THE MILITARY is complaining that attention is being paid when members of THE MILITARY die.

It'll take more than extreme anger

An Israeli official admits that the “fence” will effectively annex 6% of the West Bank.

“Jordan's parliament yesterday rejected a proposal to allow the state to ban parents from giving their children names such as Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein.”

The US will start fingerprinting visitors to the US from all but 28 countries. This isn’t just security, of course, this is building up secret dossiers on everyone in the entire world.

Brazil has decided to fingerprint Americans. Not for security, just out of pique, in retaliation.

Did you know that Mussolini had a cyst the size of a potato on the back of his neck? Neither did I. Evidently he personally censored every photo taken of him, weeding out those that showed the cyst, or him smiling, or with a nun or priest (bad luck).

Is the D race nastier than previous ones, or have I just forgotten? I know it was Al Gore who first brought up Willie Horton, but this year we’ve got this gem from Wesley Clark: “I didn't have as much practice skiing as the governor did. He was out there skiing when I was recovering from my wounds in Vietnam.” He now says this was a joke. Ha fucking ha. And Kerry attacked Dean for suggesting that the rule of law applied even to Osama bin Laden (who he nevertheless says deserves the death penalty). Dean himself says that all the other candidates have been “coopted by the agenda of George Bush.” And yet he said, “If I was the president and the troops had Osama in their sights, we would shoot to kill,” suggesting he’d been coopted by the cowboy hat of George Bush.

Kucinich was asked this brilliant question (from the editor of the Des Moines Register): “Given your personal decision not to consume animal products, how can you assure livestock producers you will be an advocate for them as president?” I don’t know what the answer was, I couldn’t google me a transcript.

John Cleese is considering running (or silly-walking) for mayor of Santa Barbara.

The Afghan loya jirga has agreed a new constitution, and it has been hailed as probably good enough. Or at least the closest thing to a democracy you’re gonna get out of a body of warlords. Being a body of warlords, there were more death threats than occurred in Philadelphia in 1787 (although who knows, those proceedings were secret), but they may collectively own fewer slaves. George Bush, showing that enthusiasm for Jeffersonian democracy he is so well-known for, said the constitution would “help ensure that terror finds no further refuge” in Afghanistan. I believe that’s from the preamble. And the American ambassador, reaching for the most condescending thing he could say, called it “one of the most enlightened constitutions in the Islamic world.” In other words, it’s close to being an elective dictatorship, and will fall apart the second Karzai is assassinated--the NY Times notes that he took a helicopter to the assembly, not daring to drive the one mile from his office. The precise degree of American input into the document is unclear, although I assume reserving a quarter of the seats in the lower house for them was not an idea that the warlords came up with on their own (what does it even mean--can only women vote for those seats, in which case what about the other ones?). The lower house is the house of people, which hopefully is not a statement about building materials, and the upper house is the house of elders. I haven’t read how the latter is chosen, but I don’t suppose that many people get to be elders in Afghanistan, and I don’t suppose we want to know what they had to do to get that way.

Here’s a piece you must read about the condition of women in Afghanistan. How did I miss the law banning women singing in public?

Lieberman has a new ad saying, “How do we defeat George Bush's extreme agenda? It'll take more than extreme anger.”

The US is going to privatize its military aid to Georgia, including security for the all-important oil pipeline.

If anyone’s interested in Osama’s latest missive, the Guardian runs it in the op-ed section.

From the AP: “The Labor Department is giving employers tips on how to avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible under new rules expected to be finalized early this year.” Tips include cutting salaries to make up the difference. “"We're not saying anybody should do any of this," said Labor Department spokesman Ed Frank.”

The British Parliament today discussed church insurance, leading one MP to ask whether churches insure against acts of God. The Guardian’s parliamentary sketch writer writes

“But the Speaker used the poser to make another attack on MPs who ask overlong questions. His new guidelines are, I gather, that no one may ask a question that lasts longer than Britney Spears' marriage.

“Finally, the year began with a splendid new extended metaphor. Michael Ancram was giving a guarded welcome to the recent deal with Colonel Gadafy: "This pudding served up today shows promise, but the proof does not lie in the recipe, nor in the cooking, but in the eating, and it should be eaten with a very long spoon, accompanied by your choice of cream, ice cream or custard."

“I made the bit up after "spoon" but you get the idea.)”

Finally, some excerpts from George Monbiot’s latest column:

But foreign policy is also driven by commerce, and in particular by the needs of domestic exporters. Aid goes to countries that can buy our manufacturers' products. Sometimes it doesn't go to countries at all, but straight to the manufacturers. A US government website boasts that "the principal beneficiary of America's foreign assistance programs has always been the United States. Close to 80% of the US Agency for International Development's contracts and grants go directly to American firms."

A doctor working in Gondar hospital in Ethiopia wrote to me recently to spell out what this means. The hospital has none of the basic textbooks on tropical diseases it needs. But it does have 21 copies of an 800-page volume called Aesthetic Facial Surgery and 24 volumes of a book called Opthalmic Pathology. There is no opthalmic pathologist in training in Ethiopia. The poorest nation on Earth, unsurprisingly, has no aesthetic plastic surgeons. The US had spent $2m on medical textbooks that American publishers hadn't been able to sell at home, called them aid and dumped them in Ethiopia.