Resilience is what he’d like to define people

Bush did another Katrina event, in Mississippi. He pointed out Tommy Longo. “He’s from Waveland.” Actually, he’s the mayor of Waveland, Mississippi. I think I’ve got you all pretty well trained by now; see if you can spot the inappropriate metaphor in the first sentence of the following quotation, and a familiar phrase in the second:

I’ve always viewed Waveland as a benchmark to determine whether or not this recovery is more than just shallow. In other words, I’ll never forget seeing Waveland as we choppered over Waveland. It was like nothing, it was gone, completely destroyed. And so when I talk to Tommy, I really view Tommy as a barometer and if Tommy is optimistic, I’m going to be optimistic; if Tommy says there is progress, I’m going to say, thanks. And Tommy is okay.

He went on,

The interesting thing about the folks who live in this part of the world, they may have lost their building, but they never lost their soul or their spirit. I think the Senator [Trent Lott] called them -- resilience is what he’d like to define people. I call them optimistic about life.

We’ll succeed unless we quit

The word being used to describe Trent Lott’s return to Republican leadership is “redemption.” John McCain, for example, said, “We all believe in redemption.” Just what is it that Lott is supposed to have done to redeem himself?

George Bush decided that Hanoi was the perfect place to talk about applying the lessons of the Vietnam War to Iraq. “We’ll succeed unless we quit,” he said, suggesting that the US hadn’t done enough to destroy the country whose guest he was. Around this time, the Vietnamese must have been sorry they didn’t have an even bigger bust of Ho Chi Minh to stick behind him as a reminder of just who kicked whose butt.

They all look the same to me

It’s the pretense of pragmatism that irritates me. The pro-war spin on the semi-declassified NIE focuses on the sentence, “Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.” I’ll concede that premise, which seems common sensical enough, but, even putting aside the countervailing number of jihadists created every day the war continues, how does this add up to a case for continuing the war to make us safer from terrorism? Have they never heard of cost-benefit analysis? Let’s say that pulling out of Iraq would mean 1,000 fighters “inspired to carry on the fight.” Hell, let’s say 10,000. If we dealt with them through traditional means – intelligence, security, phone-tapping, satellites, etc – we could spend $100 million to combat each fighter, and still come out ahead.

At a fundraiser today, Bush said that the war is not increasing the risk of terrorism. “History tells us that logic is false.” How come he gets to invoke History on the same day Congress is doing his bidding in undoing centuries of legal protections on the grounds that history is irrelevant because we are fighting a totally new type of war against a totally new type of enemy?

This morning, Bush met with Republican senators. He said of the meeting, “I’m impressed by the caliber of people that serve our country.” One such person is Sen. Trent Lott, who again demonstrated his caliber by shooting himself in the foot. Several times. Asked by reporters afterwards if any of the senators had brought up the subject of Iraq with the chimperor, Lott said, “You’re the only ones who obsess on that. We don’t and the real people out in the real world don’t for the most part.” He said of the Iraqis, “It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people... Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me.”

So if they didn’t talk about Iraq or have a seminar on Sunni-Shiite differences, what did they discuss? According to Bush, “Our most solemn job is the security of this country. People shouldn’t forget there’s still an enemy out there that wants to do harm to the United States. And therefore a lot of my discussion with the members of the Senate was to remind them of this solemn responsibility.” So another productive and informative meeting, then.

To the extent one were to occur

The Senate agrees not to take unreported free meals from lobbyists. Trent Lott is furious: “It’s totally ludicrous that we are doing this. I’ll be eating with my wife and so will a lot more senators after we pass this one.” Somehow I don’t think Mrs. Lott is too thrilled about it either.
(Update: wait, did Lott mean that a lot more senators will be eating with his wife or with their own wives?)

Rumsfeld unveiled his secret plan for Iraq: “The plan is to prevent a civil war and, to the extent one were to occur, to have the Iraqi security forces deal with it, to the extent they are able to.” For a start, it’s just good business sense. Rummy says American soldiers cost $90,000 a year to maintain abroad, while Afghan soldiers cost $11,000, Iraqis $40,000. The real problem, though, is that the enemy refuses to play fair: “These enemies cannot win a single conventional battle, so they challenge us through nontraditional asymmetric means with terror as their weapon of choice.” Right, they’re not fighting conventional warfare, and they’re also not using cavalry, they’re not marching in formation, they’re not carrying muskets. I know he had the Pentagon buy all those little plastic soldiers and was really looking forward to pushing them around a table while making “kapow” noises...

From the Indy, another in our series, Newspaper Headlines So Good That The Story is Bound to be Disappointing: “Mexico Enlists Sex Dolls in Battle Against Harassment.”

They have to understand fruit because the butcherer is gone

On Damadola, we are now being told by Pakistani officials that there really were terrorist leaders at the house, but that their bodies were dragged off before authorities arrived. This is The War Against Terror’s equivalent of “I do have a girlfriend, but she goes to another school, you wouldn’t know her.”

According to the Pentagon website, “The American people must remind themselves every day that the United States is at war, a top Army general said today.” It’s not exactly the serenity prayer, is it? Some people, and I’m thinking Gen. Ray Odierno might be one of them, are just not cut out to write self-help books.

George Bush, meanwhile, invited some “victims of Saddam Hussein” to the White House, on the very day a Human Rights Watch report says that the US uses torture as a deliberate policy, and said some ironic things about a tyrant who considered himself above the law and denied people basic human rights. But mostly, he was there to listen: “The stories here are compelling stories. They’re stories of sadness and stories of bravery.” He added, “I like stories. ‘Specially animal stories. Uncle Dick reads me a story every night before beddie byes.” The event, Bush’s portion anyway, will be broadcast on C-SPAN later, so I can see whether it’s just a transcription error that has him referring to Saddam as “the butcherer,” but it’s kind of too good to check. If the message is how the US invasion and occupation have transformed Iraq, why did they put right next to Bush a guy who (very sensibly) ran away from Saddam’s Iraq, but who doesn’t seem to have any plans to move back to what Bush calls “a society that is beginning to understand the fruits of democracy and freedom.” Understanding fruit. Whatever.

Speaking of people who are often outwitted by produce, Scottie McClellan at today’s Gaggle:

Q There are allegations that we send people to Syria to be tortured.

MR. McCLELLAN: To Syria?

Q Yes. You’ve never heard of any allegation like that?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I’ve never heard that one. That’s a new one.

Q To Syria? You haven’t heard that?

MR. McCLELLAN: That’s a new one.

Q Well, I can assure you it’s been well-publicized.

MR. McCLELLAN: By bloggers?

I take it then that I do not have the honor to number Mr. McClellan among my readers. Nor has he read the Human Rights Watch report, but he condemns it as “based more on a political agenda than on facts.”

McClellan was asked again today about Abramoff meetings with White House staffers, and said “we’re not going to engage in a fishing expedition.” Then he accused people of making insinuations without evidence – the very evidence he is refusing to provide.

He also denied that he had said – in the statement he’d made a few minutes earlier – that the chief of Syrian military intelligence was personally involved in the Iraqi insurgency.

Princess Sparkle Pony points out that Trent Lott is confused by the “outrageous” provision in the Republicans’ compromise(d) ethics rule lowering the spending limit on meals congresscritters could accept to $20. “Where are you going to – to McDonald’s?” The concepts of either a) eating a meal that costs less than $20, or b) paying for his own food, are so alien to him that they literally didn’t enter into that head-like object he keeps under his toupee.

I want my security first. I’ll deal with all the details after that.

Trent Lott, supporting illegal surveillance of Americans: “I don’t agree with the libertarians. I want my security first. I’ll deal with all the details after that.” As Benjamin Franklin said in his blog in 1759: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

The House voted to condition future aid to Palestine on Hamas being banned from parliamentary elections. So I suppose we won’t be hearing any more about spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. Oops, my bad, of course we will: Tom Lantos, one of the sponsors, says that Hamas “has nothing but contempt for democracy, though it is more than happy to exploit democracy for its own nefarious ends”. And Rep. Ileanna Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House International Relations subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia, accuses Hamas of trying to “hijack” the elections by, you know, being more popular than other parties and winning more votes.

On a very special episode of The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly interviews Secretary of War Rumsfeld, and tv’s all across America blow themselves up in suicidal despair. I missed seeing it myself, as I was talking my tv off a ledge at the time, but it reads like the Wimbledon of Stupid; when they get a volley of asininity going, it is a thing to behold, if you have the stomach for it.

O’REILLY: Is [Iraq] the best battlefield?

RUMSFELD: It is central front of the global war on terror.

O’REILLY: Even more than Iran?

RUMSFELD: Iran is not a battleground today. Iran is very busy financing Hezbollah and Hamas and the various terrorist groups that they fund with Syria to go in and try to — you heard what the new president...

O’REILLY: He’s a nut. All right. But I don’t know. You could make a case in Iran.

RUMSFELD: They said Hitler was a nut.

O’REILLY: I would have. And they should have stopped him in the Rhine.

Rummy on American Iranian influence in Iraq: “And what we’ve got to count on is that the Iraqi people are, even the Shia, are more Iraqi than they are Shia and that they’re not going to want Iran influencing their elections.” Rummy on the torture bill: “from the Defense Department’s standpoint, the arrangement that’s been made does not have implications, because we have had requirements for humane treatment from the beginning.” And that’s worked out just swell.

And here’s a photo from the Iraqi elections I haven’t been able to think of an excuse for using:

The president obviously was just stunned

Trent Lott told CNN that it’s only people in the media who are asking whether rescue efforts were hampered by all the National Guard units being in Iraq. Anderson Cooper, doing a quieter version of his Howard Beale moment yesterday with Mary Landrieu, said no, there’s a guy down the street here who just said that to me.

Lott said of Bush’s tour of the wreckage: “The president obviously was just stunned”. Uh no, that’s his normal expression.

The BBC showed a large group of stranded refugees (and I honestly don’t understand the problem black leaders seem to have with that term) in New Orleans, getting no help at all from the authorities, then pulled the camera back to show 20 cops a block away, all focusing their attention on a single looter.

If somebody would like terms about which to get pissy when applied to American cities, how about “shoot to kill policy” and “urban warfare” (the latter being the conditions under which FEMA is operating, according to its head, Michael Brown). Or the commander of the National Guard promising to “put down” violence “in a quick and efficient manner,” using guard troops back from Iraq and “highly proficient in the use of lethal force.”

A sparkle in their eye

There’s a film floating around on the web of Bush during the commercial when he appeared on Letterman, wiping his glasses on some CBS employees’ sweater. Which can’t be good for the glasses, as well as being rude. But this is the guy who goes around patting the heads of bald people. You live in a bubble that long, everyone turns into Michael Jackson.

The NYT says that the US military will no longer perform offensive operations in Iraq--y’know, going after the “bad guys,” destroying the Mahdi Army, capturing Sadr, capturing the guys who killed the mercenaries in Fallujah, and all the other stuff they promised to do--and just guard buildings and oil pipelines. So they should be able to catch up on their reading. We’ve officially surrendered. Billmon.org has a good analysis of this. He says we have the power to go in and hold any area we want, but lose it again the minute we leave. He compares this to the French efforts to hold Vietnam 1946-54, although most of us have been in classrooms like that. As I’ve said, we lost the battle for hearts and/or minds some time back. On any given day we alienate some number of Iraqis and win over exactly none, and this has gone on for months. There is no Iraqi who disliked us in January who likes us now.

Bush today on how he never had relations with that man, Achmad Chalabi: “My meetings with him were very brief. I mean, I think I met with him at the State of the Union and just kind of working through the rope line, and he might have come with a group of leaders. But I haven't had any extensive conversations with him.”

Both Bush and Rice insisted that the new Iraqi government are not puppets. No reporter asked the obvious follow-up: marionettes?

He also says that intelligence sources report to him that people in Afghanistan “have got a sparkle in their eye.” Presumably he doesn’t mean women, who aren’t allowed to show their eyes in public.

Does anyone remember the Republican candidate for Congress in Santa Cruz in 1982, Gary Richard Arnold? Slogan: “Looks like Lenin, Talks Like Lincoln.” It was a very safe D seat (Leon Panetta’s), of course, but this guy came to our attention because at a meeting of R Congressional candidates at the White House, Reagan told him to--and I’m quoting--shut up. This got him a lot of votes in Santa Cruz from people who didn’t realize he was attacking Reagan from the right, a piece of real estate undreamt of by Cruzians, and was in fact a conspiracy nut (Trilateral Commission). This is an exaggerated version of the love some people on the left have found for John McCain, disregarding 90% of his actual personal beliefs and policies. Anyway, the Voice brings up a possibility: if Bush wanted to stop his nosedive... Bush/McCain 2004.

If you read the WaPo story I linked to a couple of days ago about Bush lies, you must read the humorous reply by the Bushies. My favorite is where they “prove” that Kerry accused Bush of personal responsibility for Abu Ghraib, quoting Kerry thus: “It is an attitude that comes out of how we view the prisoners. It is an attitude that comes out of an overall arrogance and policy.” You’re so arrogant, I’ll bet you think this song is about you.

Trent Lott on Abu Ghraib: “Interrogation is not a Sunday-school meeting.”

Too early for the Alabama election results, but here’s a depressing AP headline: “Ten Commandments Influence Ala. Primary.” Seems unlikely; can Alabamans actually count to ten? It’s hard to count on your fingers or toes when they’re webbed.

Failed liberations: Iraqis, garden gnomes

In the Tuesday NYT, Paul Krugman (who gave a great talk broadcast on CSPAN, I believe viewable online at booknotes.org) writes about the wilful ignorance of Bush and America in general about the views of others, the column brought on by 1) Bush’s failure to understand moderate Muslims’ distrust of the US (I made the same point yesterday by mocking Bush’s hyper-simplified analysis of Iraqi militants as hating freedom and loving terror), 2) the hate mail he got when he tried to explain, not excuse, the Malaysian PM’s anti-semitic remarks. Trying to understand, rather than issuing anathemas, is taken to be moral weakness. There was a mini-series about Hitler a few months ago, which originally was supposed to have been about his early years and based on the very good Ian Kershaw biography. By the time it reached tv, his childhood was reduced to about 2 minutes (presumably because showing his father beating him up would have been taken as sympathy for Hitler), the title was changed to something like Hitler: Rise of Evil, in case you mistook CBS’s moral stance, Kershaw had demanded his name be removed, and Hitler was played as a ranting lunatic, with no attempt in 4 hours to get into his head at all, much less explain how a nation could respond to him. 58 years later and CBS was scared it would be perceived as soft on Hitler. It was a film that filled Americans’ deep need NOT to understand.

For another example of wilful misunderstanding, there’s been a lot of condemnation in the last 2 days of the bombing in Iraq of the International Committee of the Red Cross, but I have yet to hear a suggestion that there’s a reason beyond sheer assholery: a big red symbol of Christ’s death and alleged resurrection didn’t carry that much weight in fucking Iraq.

I mean, in the same newspapers there are stories about the shitstorm in Italy where a judge ordered crucifixes removed from public schoolrooms (following one of Mussolini’s laws), after objections from a Muslim student. In case anyone needed a reminder that not everyone is a Christian. (Yes, I know that the ICRC claims the cross isn’t Christian but Swiss, but c’mon.)

Iain Duncan Smith is facing what we Kallyfohrnians call a recall as Tory party leader, under rules that also made recall way too easy (15% of Tory MPs could secretly demand it). Simon Hoggart of the Guardian: “This looks likely to be the fourth leadership election in eight years. The Tories seem to work their way through leaders like other people get new cars, except that a new car will get you somewhere. ... Heaven knows what the Tories would do if they ever found a leader they liked. They'd have nothing to do to fill the empty hours.” He might retain his job, simply because no one else really wants it--no one thinks the Tories will win the next election, so the next Tory leader will lose the election and be knifed in the back in his turn--but IDS is mortally wounded and can’t survive until the next election (probably in 2005).

And nearly 6 months after the flight carrier thing, Bush claims that the “Mission accomplished” banner did not refer to the war, but to that carrier’s mission, and that it was the work of the crew, not his PR people at all. Actually, it turns out to have been made by a private vendor, and no one is saying who paid for it. Also, Bush used the words “mission accomplished” in speeches, so blaming the carrier crew is especially weaselly.

Trent Lott on how to deal with Iraq: “If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens. You’re dealing with insane suicide bombers who are killing our people, and we need to be very aggressive in taking them out.”

From the Daily Telegraph:

More than 40 gnomes stolen and liberated by a shadowy French underground movement were yesterday condemned to life in a "dusty cupboard" by a police chief hunting the thieves.

Earlier this year priests arriving at the cathedral in Saint-Die in the Vosges found 84 stolen garden gnomes lined up on the steps as if waiting for Mass.

Flapping above them was a banner, which read "Free at last!" But after months of investigation, the police have given up trying to find the culprits.

An open day was held on Monday for those wanting to claim the gnomes. Fewer than half were collected.

"The liberators have failed," said Michel Klein, the local police chief. "The gnomes are now going to spend the rest of their lives locked up in dusty cupboard."

Despite M Klein's remarks, the closing of the Saint-Die gnome theft case marks another victory for France's gnome liberators. Since 1997, they have freed some 6,500 gnomes around France, stealing them from private gardens and leaving them in forests, beside lakes, or in one case encircling a roundabout.

In the strangest case, 11 gnomes were found hanging from a bridge in Briey accompanied by a suicide note saying: "When you read these few words, we will no longer be part of your selfish world, where we serve merely as pretty decoration."

Suspicion in the Saint-Die case naturally fell on the Front de Liberation des Nains de Jardin (Garden Gnome Liberation Front), whose leaders were arrested in 1997 and given suspended prison sentences.

Whereas in Britain thieves steal garden gnomes to resell them there is no suspicion that the FLNJ is out for money. Instead, they repaint the gnomes in green, representing trees, and blue for the sky, and cover up their clownish red noses. The gnomes are then liberated in a ceremony involving techno music, fireworks and, police suspect, drugs.

A very important continent

Gray Davis is spending a million bucks or so to get signatures on petitions against the recall. Such petitions have no legal value, or any other value really, and are presumably just intended to fog the issue. The LA Times has a story about migrant signature-collectors, who go from state to state in search of these paying gigs (it is illegal for other than registered voters to collect signatures, but the Republicans actively recruited in Washington state). Some simultaneously collect signatures for each side. Ah, citizen democracy at its finest.

The Israeli Cabinet agrees to release some prisoners. Islamic Jihad is threatening to end its week-old truce because none of its (or Hamas’s) people will be released. Or any the Israelis “think have blood on their hands.” That formulation refers to the fact that Israel doesn’t bother trying most of the people it detains. The 400 (some papers say 300) that will be released--very very slowly--would only amount to a fraction of the number detained without trial (every paper has its own figure for this one). I don’t know if releasees will be confined to them or will include people actually convicted of something, although I gather most will be women, children and sick people.

You’ll remember that Rumsfeld threatened Belgium that if it didn’t change its crimes against humanity law, he would pull NATO hq out of Brussels and otherwise punish them. They pointed out that they had already changed the law, stopping the proceedings against Bush and Tommy Franks, so why is Rumsfeld still not happy? Well, Rummy is actually acting on behalf of Ariel Sharon. The change in the law, allowing defendants to be tried only in their own countries, did in fact protect all Americans, but the people who filed charges against Sharon for the Sabra-Shatila massacres are Palestinian refugees, who wouldn’t be allowed into Israel to present their cases, so Belgium still has jurisdiction.

Only 9 current and former Senators made it to Strom Thurmond’s funeral. Trent Lott did not go. Suggested eulogy: If we had buried Strom in 1948 the country would not be in this mess.

I can’t figure out what the vote in Corsica turning down greater autonomy meant, but it sounds like the Corsicans weren’t too clear themselves.

African leaders are expected to complain to Bush about their cotton farmers being bankrupted by the heavy US subsidies of our cotton farmers. Oh sure, but when we brought them over to work in our cotton fields, they bitched and moaned about that too.

By the way, Bush will be visiting Nigeria, which he once described as “a very important continent.”

Italy’s highest court, which you know from this space deals exclusively with cases involving sex in automobiles, mothers-in-law, whether women wearing jeans can be raped, etc etc, rules that a pat on the ass constitutes sexual violence.

We’re getting closer to figuring out the precise limits of acceptable homophobia in this country. It’s somewhere between Rick Santorum and Michael Savage (who I never got around to watching during his brief run on MSNBC, not knowing the wit and subtlety of his rhetoric rose to this level: “Oh, you're one of the sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig. How's that? Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig. You got nothing better than to put me down, you piece of garbage. You have got nothing to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it. Get trichinosis.”).

In Britain, those limits have been clarified this week by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who pressured the newly appointed Bishop of Reading to resign. Seems the guy is in a homosexual relationship, celibate just as the Church of England and until recently the state of Texas demands, but the evangelicals, who have all the money, and the Anglican church in Nigeria, complained that he used to have sex and has not “repented.” The thing is, Rohan Williams, the bearded, happy-clappy Archbishop, knows better and not only gave in but defended the right of the bigots to be bigots.

God himself will not permit it

A few days ago I wondered how Bush could go to Iraq without getting an embarrassing reception. Silly me. He flew over Iraq for 66 minutes, never actually setting foot on it. According to a White House official, this demonstrates that Iraq is free. In a speech, Bush said, in a statement so fatuous that further comment would be pointless: “But one thing is certain: no terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime because the Iraqi regime is no more.”

A heart-warming interview with Saudi Arabia’s chief executioner.

For the first time since the end of the Korean War, US troops have been moved away from the border between the Koreas. Evidently they think that either North Korea is likely to start a war--or we are. Either way, the North Koreans are likely to see this as preparation for a strike on their nuclear facilities, which is not good.

It’s a little unclear to me exactly how it happened that 8 million poor families got left out of the tax-cut bill. Was it an accident or a bargaining chip? DeLay explained that there were many bigger priorities than poor people (the many hours spent in the House debating another attempt to outlaw flag-burning, perhaps?), and then tried to hold the poor kids hostage to yet another tax increase for the rich. The Senate at any rate has voted to restore the money to the poor families, and, yes, to those in the $100,000-150,000 range (given that the original tax cut was sold precisely and repeatedly as a tax cut for every family, they never really had the right to cut some families out, but then this is the government that sold a war on Iraq based on non-existent WMDs; Big Shrug)(some R’s said that they could neglect the poor, as in the last bill, because they weren’t taxpayers; when the R’s talk about taxes, they always neglect to count Social Security and sales tax, the regressive taxes, and concentrate on the progressive taxes) (and as long as I’m randomly putting thoughts in parentheses because I’m too lazy to construct a proper argument, the tax cut increased the deduction businesses can take for vehicles to $100,000 if they weigh over 6,000 pounds--no SUV left behind). According to the Times, Trent Lott voted for the bill “but as he did so he stuck his tongue out, put his finger in his mouth and made a gagging sound, indicating his apparent distaste for the bill.” Or possibly just behaving like one of the children having their tax credit restored

A UN court made a half-assed attempt to arrest Liberian dictator Charles Taylor for war crimes Wednesday. They had kept the indictment secret, waiting to spring it on him when he was out of the country, but unfortunately the country he was in was Ghana, which let him go, claiming they received the indictment too late. Nonsense. If there’s one thing I know about west African countries, that we all know, it’s that they have email. Taylor: “To call the president of Liberia a war criminal? God himself will not permit it.”

On the heals of the Justice Dept inspector general’s report of abuses of immigrant detainees, Ashcroft demands yet more powers of indefinite detention, the creation of new crimes including simply training with a designated terrorist organization (recent months have shown that the Bush admin rewards governments that do favors with us by adding organizations opposed to those governments to the list, so there’s not just the “one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter” problem--the list is a purely political construct) without actually doing anything, and providing “material support” to such organizations, as some of us on this list have done for Salvadoran or anti-apartheid groups. And death penalties, he wants more of those.

Here’s a story from the world of museums. The prized exhibit at the York Archaeological Resource Centre is a thousand-year-old piece of Viking shit, said to be the largest complete example of preserved human shit by those who are experts in such things. They are trying to put it back together after its display stand crashed, breaking it into three pieces. The article will tell you everything you want to know about what this gentleman ate, the health of his bowels, and, as an added bonus, there’s a picture.

Analyzing their poo

Chester Trent Lott in an AP interview: “A lot of people in Washington have been trying to nail me for a long time. When you're from Mississippi, when you're conservative and when you're a Christian, there are a lot of people that don't like that. But I fell into their trap and so I have only myself to blame.” Ah, so the whole 100th-birthday-party-for-Strom-Thurmond thing was actually a cunning Liberal trap, going back to 1902, to nail Trent Lott.

Lott spread the blame a bit: he also attributed his fall from grace to a plot against the great state of Mississippi and of course to God. “God has put this burden on me and I believe that he'll show me a way to turn this into a good.”

The Lott thing has finally made one news source, the New Republic, write about the racism of Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, as I have in the past on several occasions, but somehow the man rejected by the Senate for a district court judgeship under Reagan for his racist actions and words slipped past the media into the Senate in 1996 by the clever expedient of shortening his name to Jeff Sessions. And now he’s on the judiciary committee.

Lott has of course been replaced by Bill Frist. Am I the only person who imagines the R Senators singing “If I only had a heart doctor”? I’m telling you, the irony of this thing is ridiculous. Here’s an extremely disturbing comment on Frist’s qualifications by Lamar Alexander on today’s McNeil-Lehrer: Well, let me tell you a very short story to answer your question. Imagine ten years ago, a 40-year-old young physician having dinner with his family here in Nashville, gets an emergency telephone call, goes out to the airport, gets in his own plane, flies to Duke, to the medical center, cuts the heart and lungs out of a dying person, puts it in a plastic bag full of ice, puts it back in his plane, flies back to the Vanderbilt University heart transplant center, which he founded, and goes into an eight-hour surgery procedure to place that heart and lungs back into another dying person who then lives. Now, if you understand that, and a man who then gets back to his young family the next morning about 12 hours after he left, you understand about 75 or 80 percent of who Bill Frist is.”

And Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-Way Down South in the Land of Cotton), the guy who made the comments about Cynthia McKinney giving him segregationist feelings, has repainted his lawn jockey white.

Iraq invites the CIA to send agents--openly--into the country to check on arms. Where’s the fun in that?

The US has dismissed the offer as a “stunt.” No, juggling chainsaws is a stunt. GeeDubya trying to speak a coherent sentence is a stunt.

Iraq has also welcomed the first international group of voluntary human shields. Sadly, they do not include Sean Penn.

Speaking of omissions in the Iraqi arms dossier, the US cut 8,000 pages out before handing it on to the non-permanent members of the Security Council. The US did that, not anyone working for the UN.

The AP yesterday became the first media source I’ve seen actually to question the laughable claim by the US that Saddam intends a “scorched earth” policy, noting that no evidence for this assertion has been given. The article also says that US radio broadcasts into Iraq, currently trying to get soldiers to desert, says that when Iraqi POWs were returned after previous wars, Saddam ordered their ears be cut off. This is a lie.

Remember when the US accidentally bombed some Canadians in Afghanistan in April? It turns out that the pilots were on amphetamines. Why? Because the Air Force told them to. Evidently this is standard.

There is no room at the Bethlehem Inn. It has been commandeered by the Israeli Army. Another paper reports that every Palestinian living under constant curfew in Bethlehem has but one dream: a visa to the US. Talk about no room at the inn!

The Catholic Church in Boston demands that all sex abuse cases be dropped on First Amendment grounds. I really must go over the New Testament again.

Best headline of the week, about Kenya’s elections, in the Guardian: Après Moi, the Delusion.

More than Winona Ryder ever did

There’s a piece in the NY Times on how subtly Bush managed the removal of Trent Lott, without leaving any fingerprints. Unless you count that front-page story. Oh, or last week when Bush publicly called Lott’s remarks un-American, which was the moment any political commentator with half a brain knew that it was all up. Is there a way for me to suggest that Bush being able to reshape the leadership of another branch of government is a bad thing without actually getting Lott back? If so, sign me up.

To quote a disgraced British celebrity you’ve never heard of, At least I’ve paid for my slips, which is more than Winona Ryder ever did.

What I enjoy is that so many of the Republican Senators who wanted Lott gone disliked his sudden death-bed conversion to affirmative action and the King holiday. Lott was now too liberal on race for his colleagues.

The Daily Telegraph says that incidents in which US troops have been attacked in Kuwait have been covered up. Also, the Kuwaiti government has been cracking down on people who denounce the American presence there.

Bad news: the show Friends has been renewed. This is bad because it lessens the pressure on NBC to renew the West Wing.

The Post has a story on a Dallas suburb that has banned toy guns (if toy bans are banned, only toy criminals will have toy guns). And in Israel, the Orthodox owner of a toy-importing company removed all the pigs from a farmyard model.

A while ago I asked who was supposed to give asylum to those Iraqi scientists & their families the Bushies want abducted, since the UN can’t given anyone asylum. The Post says that the inspectors have been talking about this with the last country that should be seen to be involved in this, the US. And amazingly, the US is refusing to promise that it will offer asylum. Or rather, it won’t give it to anyone who says things the US doesn’t want to hear, like that Iraq has no weapons of MD, only those who follow the US line. Subtle, huh? The article also says that the US will give Blix a list of scientists they want interviewed: in other words, a shopping list of people Bush wants gift-wrapped and put under his tree.

Trent: don’t let the burning cross hit you in the ass on the way out

www.re-date.com will tell you how many seconds, minutes, etc you’ve been alive, how many people have born and died in that period, how far light would travel or your fingernails grow if you didn’t cut them.

At the UN, the US vetoes a condemnation of Israel for killing 3 UN workers. The US said the resolution was one-sided. No, it condemned everyone in the Middle East who has killed UN workers, which is a perfectly legitimate thing for the UN to do. The US is also against demanding that Israel comply with the Fourth Geneva Convention (i.e., stop targeting civilians).

Colin Powell has announced he won’t issue a Middle East peace plan because he doesn’t have one. No, actually he said he wouldn’t release it before Israeli elections, which suggests either 1) the US will tailor its plan, not to basic fairness, but to what flavor of fascists dominate the next government of one of the two sides, or 2) they want an election to occur without having basic facts before it.

American Samoa reverses its ban on Arabs. Samoa is semi-autonomous, but the ban was bound to be reversed when the US press finally noticed it, a mere 4 months after it was implemented (I didn’t know about it either).

A Guardian report on Ole Miss, where Trent cheer-led and certainly didn’t foster hatred, says it’s now 13% black, although his old frat sure isn’t. The Confederate battle flag has been removed from the University flag, but the marching band still plays Dixie--the black musicians routinely refuse to play along.

I’ve been meaning to mention something Lott said in one of those apologies. He said that he personally practiced affirmative action, that he had hired blacks on his staff. The thing is, his office has refused to release actual numbers, so what Lott evidently meant by affirmative action wasn’t that he hired blacks at or above their percentage of the population, but that he hired blacks AT ALL.

I still say the most frightening thing of the whole Lott affair was how the “liberal media” and politicians waited for permission from conservatives before reporting Lott’s remarks. A story in the Guardian notes that the story was brought to attention and kept alive by the bloggers.

Against the wishes of all 140 other nations in the WTO, the US blocked a deal for cheaper drugs to poor countries. Dick Cheney stepped in to overrule the US trade negotiator.

My actions don't reflect my voting record

I had the best sort of jury duty today, the type where you don’t have to show up (and, indeed, drive 18 miles through the rain to do so). And I’d washed my Cat in the Hat t-shirt and everything.

The Russian claim that a Chechen leader in his 30s died in prison of “natural causes” might be more credible in a week other than one in which a Russian colonel charged with murdering (and probably raping) an 18-year old (or 17, depending on which paper you read) Chechen woman will be released because he was “temporarily insane.”

In Canada an Indian chief says that Hitler was justified in “frying” the Jews. What’s a PC person to do?

The SF Weekly published the address & phone number of John Poindexter, head of the Total Information Awareness program. (301) 424-6613. 10 Barrington Fare in Rockville, Md, satellite photos of which are available online at http://cryptome.org/tia-eyeball.htm. Woops, that site is 404.

Women discovered in the Afghan city of Herat are often arrested and subjected to gynecological tests, and they are banned from driving. In Kabul, the Taliban’s old Vice and Virtue thugs are now called Islamic Teaching, and still harass women wearing makeup. But they can still fly kites, right?

Yesterday saw Trent Lott’s fifth gig of Apologypallooza 2002, on Black Entertainment Television, which may be the first time I’ve ever watched that channel. Let’s just say he’s not getting better at this over time. Now Clinton, that man could apologize. Trent may well have been on drugs. “My actions don’t reflect my voting record,” he said, which I think means that because he’s hired a couple of black staffers (incidentally, his people refuse to release the actual number), we should ignore his attacks on affirmative action and voting rights. Although he does now claim to support affirmative action and the Martin Luther King holiday. But the most moving part came at the end:

A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a slave, and, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little negro, in a crate that he had sent all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted, and our little girl Tricia, the six year old, named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, loved the negro, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.

(By the way, if you’ve never read the Checkers speech, do so now).

That information in the Iraqi report that was censored? Germany had the most companies which helped Iraq, followed by the US. A German newspaper got hold of the original--the speculation is that this was an American leak designed to embarrass the German government.

I never got around to mentioning the Likud primary a week ago. Sorry ‘bout that. The hard-line Netanyahu supporters all won, of course. The primary is a non-electoral thing, but it is determinative: voters in Israel vote for a party, not a candidate, so who becomes a Knesset member is determined by their position on the party list. Evidently, the people who got to vote on the 8th did so by paying for the privilege. This time, many turn out to be criminals trying to exert pressure on the party to secure pardons.

www.raptureletters.com. See, after the Rapture, when all the good little boys and girls have been taken up to Heaven, there’ll be all these people wondering what happened. This site will send them an e-mail the Friday after the Rapture, explaining it to them.

From the Daily Telegraph: Iran's moral police arrested a barber in Isfahan who gave young women short haircuts so that they could pass as boys and go out without covering themselves, the Kayhan newspaper said.

Once more, without feeling

I watched Trent Lott make his 4th “apology” on C-SPAN today. And why not a 4th? If Arnie can make another Terminator movie, Mel another Mad Max movie and Sylvester another Rocky movie, why can’t Trent return to the scene of his former triumphs?

Naturally, it looked about as sincere and believable as his “hair.” He mouthed the words he had to mouth, but, like Rock Hudson in a Doris Day movie, didn’t exhibit any of the sentiments that should have been behind them. Nor did he seem to understand the importance of the issue, rather like Cardinal Bernard Law talking about paedophelia--and hey, Bernie, don’t let the choir boy hit you in the ass on the way out--he doesn’t understand why people are getting worked up about it. Paul Krugman’s column in the Friday NY Times suggests that The Republicans present two faces: their national leader pretends tolerance, like Shrub yesterday, but display their real attitude by keeping around people like Lott and by appointing those judges. Krugman notes that Bush didn’t follow up his rebuke of Lott by calling for him to step down. Like Bernie Law, he’d like to forgive Lott his sins and go right on with business as usual.

R’s use a lot of coded words that the media never bother decoding for the rest of us. I don’t know if I commented during the 2002 elections how often Bush mentioned to R audiences the need to get a R Senate in order to confirm his judges. They knew he meant abortion, I assume the reporters knew it too, but no one ever translated it.

Still, the Cardinal and Kissinger stepping down in the same day ain’t bad. Trent would be gone too if Mississippi didn’t have a D governor.

Russia bans the use of any alphabet but Cyrillic for languages within its borders. Evidently Chechens, Tatars and other separatists have been moving towards Latin script.

The CIA (motto: assassinating Fidel Castro since 1958) has been given a list of terrorists to kill.

Speaking of not learning from past mistakes, the US has called for early elections in Venezuela. Hey, once you support a coup, you really don’t have a right to say anything about elections.

Party like it's 1948

The official, official mind you, Mississippi Democratic Party sample ballot for 1948. It says that a vote for Truman is a vote to ban lynching and the poll tax, so true Democrats should vote for Strom Thurmond.

In one of his interviews, Trent claimed not to remember who the Republican was that year, and couldn’t be drawn on whether Truman or Thurmond would have been the better president.

I’ve been trying to track a hint I heard today that when Trent Lott was president of his fraternity at Ole Miss, at the time James Meredith was trying to integrate it, he led an effort to keep his fraternity segregated nationally. My websearch turned up something more interesting: during the riots, his frat was raided by the FBI and military, because it was stockpiling weapons (that ain’t in the Time magazine story).

Today Bush finally called Lott’s comments offensive, while using an executive order to allow federal contracts to go to organizations that discriminate on the basis of religion.

Seattle has now made it illegal to film up women’s skirts, so plan your vacations accordingly.

Interesting case of cannibalism in Germany. What makes it interesting is that the perp, a software specialist, found his victim, a chip engineer, online. And I don’t mean he lured him, I mean the victim volunteered to be eaten, responding to an ad saying, “Wanted: young, well-built 18-30-year-old for slaughter.” He has since placed the ad again, getting 5 new volunteers, but the police intervened first. Those crazy Germans, huh?

Man bites crocodile: a businessman went swimming in Malawi, was attacked by a croc and escaped by biting it.

Click here.

If we'd elected Dewey, we wouldn't have had all these problems

Coincidentally, the US has released its new military strategy, which involves nuking Iraq if it uses chemical or biological weapons.

Joining Kissinger on the 9/11 Coverup Commission, retired Sen. Slade Gorton. Wasn’t he the guy that really hated Native Americans? And Mitchell is out, and Trent Lott is trying to keep Warren Rudman off, because he might be a wee bit independent and we can’t have that.

Contrary to what I said last time, the Iraq disclosure will be censored, so that we won’t be told what Western corporations sold military-use equipment to Iraq. I was really looking forward to seeing the name Haliburton, and maybe the Carlyle Group, etc.

Trent Lott clearly made a big mistake by speaking the way he did. I mean by apologizing, because the media and god knows the Democratic “leadership” ignored his racist comments completely until then--which is actually pretty frightening; this could quite easily have continued to be ignored. I mean, he was interviewed by CNN right after that speech, and wasn’t even asked about the “slip of the tongue” (like a 61-year old white Southern politician could accidentally make such a remark without understanding its implications). Anyway, this may even prevent him retaining his leadership position, although it would have been better if it hadn’t occurred right before Christmas and the, ya know, war and everything. FAIR gives a bit of his history with the race issue (as does Joe Conason at Salon, although highlighting different things): Of course we now know he made exactly the same comments about Thurmond in 1980 (the Daily Show says in Lott’s defense that he only does this sort of thing every 22 years--he’s like the Halley’s Comet of racism), but he also sponsored restoring Jefferson Davis’s citizenship, pushed Reagan to give tax-exempt status to Bob Jones University (and filed a friend-of-the-racist brief with the Supreme Court in which he argued “racial discrimination does not always violate public policy”), voted twice against extending the Voting Rights Act, once against continuation of the Civil Rights Act, fought the ML King holiday, lauded the Council of Conservative Citizens (who have a website now, check it out), etc etc.

Speaking of Trent Lott, the Supreme Court heard a case on cross-burning today [I am the king of segues, bow down before me!]. Several of the Supes seem literally incapable of telling the difference between a symbol of violence, and actual violence. Souter said, “The cross has acquired a potency that is at least equal to that of a gun.” Tell that to someone who’s been shot. Scalia said blacks would prefer to see a rifle-toting man in their front yard rather than a burning cross. I’m guessing not so much. Clarence Thomas, who actually spoke out loud in the Court, said that the burning cross was a symbol of oppression during “100 years of lynching”. That would presumably be the low-tech kind. And obviously not very efficient, if it...takes...one hundred...years...to... OK, maybe that joke is trying too hard. Or not hard enough. Personally I’d only accept a very, very carefully written ban, and Virginia’s isn’t good enough. Wonder what Trent would think? He’s the guy who argued to the Court in 1981, “To hold that this religious institution is subject to tax because of its interracial dating policies would clearly raise grave First Amendment questions.”

Bush is implementing logging rules that were rejected by Congress. I must have missed hearing about the suspension of the US Constitution. According to the Post, “The new rules will decrease, from 200 pages to perhaps only one page, the amount of environmental impact information needed to approve clear-cutting projects in some areas.” Ironically, this means that there is now only 1/200th of the need for clear-cutting.

Discarded toupees of the past

A couple of quotes about a moron Republican president: he devotes his public life to translating a complicated world of public affairs he barely comprehends into those values he never questions. Like much of America, he contained contradictions, but never experienced them.

About Reagan, but there is a certain familiarity, no?

Lott’s embrace of Strom the racist as well as Strom the man has finally made the NY Times, as he issues a non-apology apology, which says he doesn’t embrace the discarded policies of the past. Not the “wrong” policies or the “racist” policies of the past, just the discarded ones. Jesse Jackson has demanded he resign. I’d go further and demand that Tom Daschle resign as well, for this comment on Lott: "There are a lot of times when he and I go to the microphone and would like to say things we meant to say differently, and I'm sure this was one of those cases for him, as well." Salon has tried to get comments from Joe Lieberman, Nancy Pelosi etc, without success.

Bush is evidently working on a plan for prescription drug benefits for Medicare recipients--but only if they move from fee-for-service to HMOs and pay higher fees for doctor visits. Shame.

Today’s NY Times has headlines at opposite ends of the front page, one about the US being the first to get the Iraqi report, the other that a judge lets Cheney keep his energy policy contacts secret. Transparency is for other people. The judge, a Bush appointee, fancy that, used to be deputy for Kenneth Starr, when he had a very different set of ideas about the level of privacy due to the White House.

Incidentally, the Iraqi report will contain the names of the Western companies that helped it build up its weapons inventory. Expect some familiar names.

So the new secretary of the Treasury is to be a railroad executive. Yes, railroads, the model for the American business of the future. Well, CFX is the largest railroad company in the East, and I guess its fierce competitiveness did manage to drive into bankruptcy United, the largest company selling travel on those new-fangled flying machines (it’ll never catch on). Snow is one of those executives who benefitted by his company lending him money to buy stock in the company, and then forgiving the loan when the stock plummeted (a practice since made illegal). It must be nice when your actions or incompetence have no personal consequences whatsoever. It must also be nice not to have to pay taxes, like CFX (see the report from the Citizens for Tax Justice).

Speaking of United, is it really the function of the federal government to be engaged in screwing employees, refusing to give the company a loan as long as its mechanics and pilots are making above minimum wage?

Salon reminds me of the most famous Iran-Contra-hearings quote from John Poindexter, now head of the Total Information Awareness program: “to the best of my knowledge, I can’t recall.” I guess knowledge isn’t power, after all.

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?: The Bush admin is thinking of defining membership in Al Qaida as a war crime for the purposes of its military tribunals. Guess that takes care of that whole “finding evidence of a crime” problem.

The US will spend $92 million for 6 Iraqi opposition groups which share our values, including the Movement for Constitutional Monarchy and the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (which is based in Iran). Because the world needs more monarchs and more Islamic revolutions. Can’t have enough of them.

We are also going to sell arms to the vicious government of Algeria.

Georgia Republicans are planning a law to make women intending abortions (called “executions” in the bill) to go to court to get a death warrant. Then a guardian would be appointed for the fetus, who could demand a jury trial....


From the Telegraph: A vicar has apologised for giving a sermon at a children's carol concert in which he told them that Father Christmas could not "scientifically exist". Parents said they were horrified after the Rev Lee Rayfield told the children, some aged three, that Father Christmas and his reindeer would "literally blow up" if they had to deliver all those presents.

What Would Mohamad Do?

The river of insane “reality” shows continues. Starting next week, a show in which ex-minor celebrities go on blind dates. First up: the guy who played Eddie Munster. Next, on Fox, will be one of those shows in which 20 gold-diggers compete to marry a millionaire. The twist this time: he’s not really a millionaire, he’s a ditch digger, but the women are told he just inherited $50 million. Hilarity ensues.

Speaking of signs of the impending apocalypse, Elliott Abrams is now in charge of Middle East policy. I had really hoped that Iran-Contra would have finished his career in public service forever. But in those days I underestimated the willful amnesia of the American people, and now the government is full of Bush the Elder’s co-conspirators. That willful amnesia means not only that nobody remembers who that smug little prick was and what he did (and you can look it up if you don’t either), but that it didn’t even bother the Bushies that putting people like him, Negroponte, Reich, Poindexter etc into these positions would bring up all those never-answered questions about Bush Senior’s role in Iran-Contra and the sleazy pardons after he had been defeated for reelection. It’s also an insult to Congress that all those people convicted of lying to it in the past should be given any sort of job. Still, Congressional undersight is such these days that none of these people have actually been called on to testify about anything, even Poindexter over his plan to spy on every American.

The Americans who don’t have amnesia are Southerners, who remember a rosy past which never actually existed. Like Trent Lott, who astonishingly has not been hounded out of public life for his rhapsodizing last week over the joys of segregation and how we’d all have been better off if we’d let Strom Thurmond sort out the nigras, or words to that effect. Slate’s Today’s Papers says the major papers have devoted only one story to it, in the Post. Joe Conason at Salon says the NY Times hasn’t even reported the words, which I did last Friday.

What if they held a presidential election and no one came? Well, in Serbia they just held their third attempt at one, and once again failed to make the 50% turnout required for an election to be valid. It was raining. Some democracies fail due to economic collapse, some during wars, and then there are those which can’t handle a bit of water, like suede. Well, to be fair I understand it was raining really quite hard. Maybe next time they should trick the Serbs into voting, you know, tell them there’ll be a good old-fashioned ethnic cleansing at the town hall, then when they come, tell them it’s been cancelled but as long as they’re here...

Do you think if I submitted that idea to the Carter Center they’d offer me a job?

Saw a book of I guess you could call it British social history in the new books section at Doe Library yesterday — “Mud, Sweat and Beers: A Cultural History of Sport and Alcohol.”

Iraq’s report was not supposed to go to UN Security Council states without being vetted first by the inspectors (what that means is that Syria is currently on the Sec Council, and they didn’t want it knowing how to make weapons of mass destruction), but somehow the US is already receiving a copy--it promised to do all the xeroxing--under some sort of deal under which only the 5 permanent members get it.

Well, I don’t know if Mohamad really would have married one of the Miss World contestants, as that journalist suggested, but the King of Swaziland, already in some trouble for having kidnapped a 17-year old girl to be one of his wives, has plans to do the same for his country’s entrant when she returns home.