A plague of Jerry’s

You know, I want proof that Paul Bremer’s nickname was ever actually “Jerry.” I think Bush just got the name wrong, couldn’t admit that they ever gets anything wrong, and his handlers told Bremer that his name was now Jerry.

There’s been some complaint from librarians about a doll modeled on one, that puts its finger to its mouth and goes shush. Librarians deplore that stereotype. Yesterday I was driven out of the periodicals and microfilm section of the public library because of loud conversation. By two librarians. Mostly, skilled librarians have been replaced by unskilled machines. I went to the library in the first place because one machine phoned me to tell me I had something overdue; I went in to find the item on the shelf and show it to a human after another machine had failed to register it when I returned it two weeks before. I only had to rant at them for a couple of minutes before they wiped out that charge, plus another one from July when the same thing happened, and another one where I was charged because the person who had checked out a magazine before me had dropped it in a bathtub (I presume). Still, there’s a certain sense of shame when one is charged with a library crime, isn’t there, even when one didn’t actually commit it, I presume because it’s the first responsibility we’re given outside of the home. I’ve been reading a discard--every so often my library tosses several hundred books in the parking lot and you can just take them, including hard-covers from as recently as last year--with one of those see-through wrapper things only libraries use, and I feel guilty every time I underline something. I hope you’re not waiting for this paragraph to have a point.

Mark Hertsgaard has a good piece in Salon which says that Bush needs to admit that he might have been wrong, or his presidency is in trouble. He’s right that Bush’s method of governing has become visibly brittle and inflexible. He is so committed to the idea that the world will react to his initiatives in exactly the way he expects it to, that there is no Plan B, and he starts floundering. The arrogance with which he exercises power makes him very vulnerable to looking bad when the least little thing goes wrong, and the things that have been going wrong are not the least nor are they little.

Another problem that will become more visible when Bush shifts completely into campaign mode is that he has no popular surrogates to campaign for him. There are creepy, cranky old men (Cheney, Rumsfeld), tone-deaf zealots (Rice, Ashcroft), discredited fig-leafs (Powell), and no one else the average voter has even heard of, because Bush likes to take all the credit. Bush pretty much only speaks to military audiences or Republican fundraisers, and the lesser lights don’t dare appear in events open to the public. Cheney had to go to the Heritage Foundation to find a congenial audience that wouldn’t care that everything he told it about Iraq has been controverted. Laura Bush has begun to campaign for him, really for the first time, because there is simply no one else, and I haven’t seen any indications that she’s America’s sweetheart either. So it’s just Shrub, circumventing the “filter” of people who might contradict him by giving interviews to very local tv stations, the last resort of a politician afraid of too-tough questioning by Larry King.

And he’s raising money, $84 million so far, to put his face on tv right between Will & Grace, Regis & Kelly, etc. Christ, $84 million, that’s $50m beyond shitloads, $30m beyond obscene and $10m past unholy.

Actually, it’s also an insult to democracy for a sitting president to think (possibly correctly) that he needs that much money. It does not cost $84m, plus what they can raise in the next year, to run on one’s record. Is there something to tell us we don’t already know?

Speaking of expensive mis-communication, the Bush budget includes $100m for Iraqi media, to be dispersed by Rumsfeld and DOD. Rummy with a $100 million megaphone. Shudder. The call for private bids actually uses the phrase “fair and balanced.”

Independent headline: “Three Americans Killed in Diplomatic Convoy Blast.” I just don’t see what’s so diplomatic about a convoy blast.

The German who taught his dog to do the Hitler salute has had the charge against him dropped. (Daily Telegraph headline: In Paw Taste)

Several R. Senators just returned from Iraq, reporting on how swimmingly everything is going. D. Senators like Chris Dodd, who wanted to go, were told there were no facilities.

California R’s have decided to try to change the reapportionment process here. In the reverse of R policy in Texas, they want to remove it from the legislature and give it to judges. Subtle, aren’t they? Actually, despite strong D control of the legislature, the R’s have nothing to complain about from the last redistricting, either at the state lege or congressional levels. The voters do, since every seat was drawn as a safe seat for whichever party held it. They have removed the risk from the electoral process; also the politics, issues, interest, democracy. Of course when Californians do get interested in elections, look what happens.

Governor Terminator seems to plan to rule by threatening the legislature with the wrath of the people, by taking every point of disagreement to the ballot in the form of ballot initiatives. A limit to the size of the budget, for example, and massive bond indebtedness to pay for his refusal to consider raising taxes to pay for the existing spending. Well, we could hardly expect him to be bound by legislators operating in a representative democratic system, now could we? I’d make a witty comparison between The Arnold and Napoleon III, but maybe this ain’t the audience.

Here’s a major shocker, in an AP headline: “Halliburton Allegedly Overcharges in Iraq.” Say it ain’t so. Next you’ll be telling me that the Azerbaijani dictator’s son was only elected to replace him by a fraudulent election. This is for gas, for which the army pays Halliburton California prices, which are $1 a gallon more than the average Middle Eastern price. It was a no-bid contract.

Bill Hemmer, whoever that is, was hosting a CNN program and suggested that Bush might be right that the situation in Iraq was improving, but it didn’t get coverage because reporters were scared away by all the shooting and bombs going off. Evidently, this was not said in irony.

Someone else I hadn’t heard of, deputy undersecretary of defense General William “Jerry” Boykin (I swear I read this article after writing my above comments about “Jerry” Bremer), who is in charge of tracking down Osama and Saddam and such, is an evangelical who speaks a lot at churches about how the US is at war with Satan, how Muslims hate us because we’re a Christian nation, how God chose Bush to be president, etc etc. A quick google search shows that except for a brief mention in a Nation article, this wingnut just snuck in under the radar.

The enemy is a guy named Satan

Sometimes, great minds think alike. And then, at other times, Thomas Friedman thinks like me. His column today (Thur.) also talks about Bushies being afraid of speaking before non-picked audiences. I didn’t know that even the Heritage Foundation wasn’t allowed to ask Cheney any questions.

On the same page, Maureen Dowd says of Rep George Nethercutt’s comment that reconstruction in Iraq “is a better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day” puts the casual back in casualty.

Also giving with the happy talk, the Commerce Secretary visits Iraq and calls for investors to ignore the violence. See if you can detect any sarcasm in this NYT story (excerpted): “At a heavily guarded warehouse at the Baghdad airport, which ordinary Iraqis cannot enter without American permission, Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans said on Wednesday that violence in Iraq is isolated and that foreign investors should seize opportunities here. .... Mr. Evans said, "You have to look beyond these isolated incidents that are occurring." Asked what advice he would give potential investors, he said, "Tell 'em to come here like I did."” They would, but they can’t afford to have a whole army protecting them.

The Texas Court of Appeals says that a motorist giving another motorist the finger is not illegal. There was an actual jury trial in this case.

Cute Michael Kinsley piece on Bush’s news habits.

The British report on GM test crops says that they lead to the disappearance of wildlife. Especially butterflies. And flowers. In part from the extra-strength pesticides, in part from the lack of seeds for animals to eat. And Monsanto is pulling out of Europe, which pleases the Europeans no end.

The right-wing Daily Telegraph denounces the fear-mongers, under the contradictory but no doubt irresistible headline “Frankenstein Knows Best.”

At an Islamic conference, Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad said: “1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million. But today they rule this world by proxy.” “(Jews) invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy, so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong; so that they can enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power.”

The Chinese have put a man into space, and I can’t think of a good tasteless joke about it. It was supposed to be good for Chinese stature and pride, and was up until the minute a tv interviewer asked him to confirm the old chestnut about the Great Wall being the only man-made thing that can be seen from space. No, actually it can’t.

I mentioned William Boykin yesterday, the guy at the Pentagon you don’t want showing up on your doorstep to talk about Jesus. Rumsfeld says he has a right to speak his mind. Whether he has a right to speak it to a religious group while wearing a military uniform--a detail I didn’t have yesterday--is another matter. We do know that 500 soldiers stationed in Iraq were given the right to speak their commanding officer’s mind. Boykin said that Muslims worship an idol, and not “a real god.” Even without this, why would you put him in charge with the operations to capture Saddam, Osama, etc, when what Rummy calls his “outstanding record” is one of being in charge of failed operations: rescuing the hostages in Iran in 1980, the raid on Somalia in 1993, the search for Pablo Escobar... Incidentally, 2 days ago I joked that Scalia was recusing himself from the pledge of allegiance case because he thinks he is god. So evidently does Boykin, who said that god chose Bush to be president.

Tanzania has banned imports of used underwear.

“Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he "didn't want to see any stories" quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences, said a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used.” I give the URL because when I read that I thought it was a joke.

There are riots in Azerbaijan over the fraudulent election letting Aliyev’s son succeed him. That could never happen here. The riots, I mean, not the fraudulent election letting one leader’s son succeed him.

The Texas R’s passed their little redistricting, and it’s so blatantly partisan and yes, racist, that they may have over-reached themselves. Midland has a congressional district and the capital Austin doesn’t, and the districts are all funny shapes. So it might be thrown out in court. Especially since the panel that the D’s are appealing to is the one that drew up the current districts.

The Supreme Court is to decide whether “under God” can be in the pledge of allegiance. Scalia is recusing himself, presumably because he thinks he is God, or possibly that he is above rather than under God (actually because Fat Tony has publicly expressed himself on this issue).

The Onion says “Schwarzenegger Elected First Horseman Of The Apocalypse.” Actually, Der Arnold becoming the highest-paid “actor” in the world was the first sign of the apocalypse, so I think it’s just greedy for him to have become a second sign. Incidentally, asked after the election about his promise to reveal all about his sexual escapades after the election, he said “Old news.” A Voice reporter calls him the Human Hummer. I have also heard Teflon Terminator.

Evidently Bush is on a partial fast, not eating sweets as long as troops are in Iraq. Sounds silly, but given his extremist religiosity, I’d go with creepy as a more apt description.

As was his attempt to reassure us about his Iraq policy: “The person who is in charge is me.” Do you feel reassured now, I know I do.

The real James Bond died today at 90.

From the Guardian: “A German who trained his dog to raise his right paw in a Hitler salute is to appear in court tomorrow, German prosecutors said last night.” A black (ahem) mongrel (ahem) sheepdog, no prizes for guessing its name.

An orgy of legislation

Guests at a wedding in Serbia celebrated in the time-honored manner, shooting guns in the air. They shot down a plane.

As we know, when Bush promised cheap AIDS drugs for Africa, he didn’t actually mean it. At the WTO the US insisted on making any country that wished to import or export cheap generics jump through many many hoops. But Canada plans to try. The Guardian (oh, originally a Nation story) asks whether the US will use NAFTA provisions to stop them. Last week the Senate approved Bush’s choice for head of his AIDS initiative, a former CEO of Eli Lilly, one of the Canada plan’s enemies.

Among the many laws signed by incredibly lame duck Gray Davis includes one prohibiting companies retaliating against employees who refuse to break state or federal laws. Did you know that was legal up until now? One requires people who own or possess kiddie porn to register as sex offenders, which is stretching the term. Soda is banned from school vending machines. School restrooms should be clean. Schools previously called “low-performing” in state laws will now be called “high priority,” in order to build morale (Ralph Wiggum: “I’m special!”). It is now a crime punishable by 1 year in prison to record a movie in a movie theater; talking, cell phone use, teenagers, over-loud crunching of popcorn, etc etc, are still not subject to the death penalty. Domestic partnerships as of 2005. Transgendered people are protected from housing and work discrimination, which is all very well, but doesn’t that put the state in the business of deciding what clothes are gender-appropriate, in order to decide who is “transgendered”? AB 663 bans doctors and med students performing pelvic exams without consent on unconscious women. The execution of retarded people is banned. Unsolicited email is banned, although I’m not sure how the mailer is supposed to know who’s a Californian.

George Monbiot is suggesting that the US military is being dragged into politics by the politicians. Bush uses them as back-drop. Since June 2002, 14 of his major speeches were delivered to captive military (or veteran) audiences. “The marines were the first to be told about his interstate electricity grid; he instructed the American Legion about the reform of the Medicare programme; last week he explained his plans for the taxation of small businesses to the national guard. The troops may not have the faintest idea what he's talking about, but they cheer him to the rafters anyway. After that, implementing these policies looks like a patriotic duty.” He started this well before 9/11, so it’s not that. The military is now getting spending it’s not even asking for, and if you include the $87 billion and the $19 billion hidden in the Dept of Energy for new nukes, the federal gov is spending more on it than on education, public health, housing, employment, pensions, food aid and welfare put together. “You would expect this sort of allocation from a third world military dictatorship.” “Bush's reverse coup has meant that the Democrats must suck up to the armed forces as well, in order to be seen as a patriotic party. Wesley Clark's campaigning slogan is "a new American patriotism".”

The claim that Israel has submarine-based nuclear weapons may in fact have been a lie.

Dog’s Breath corn dog

Israel has nukes on submarines, thanks to the US. The news seems to have been leaked by the US as a warning to Syria that it had better take any bitch-slapping Israel feels like handing out. (Later: Ha'aretz says in almost as many words that the LA Times story on this was planted by the Mossad, in an article on how the Syria-is-acquiring-WMDs stories in the American press have been managed by the spy agency.

Also, last week bombastic loudmouth John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control, said the US doesn’t care about Israel’s nukes because Israel isn’t a “threat” to the US. I’d like to see the job description for under secretary of state for arms control.

The Indy reports that the US is copying Israeli collective-punishment tactics in Iraq, bulldozing the crops of farmers who don’t inform on the Resistance.

Australian PM John Howard, recently censured by the Senate, as I reported, is also under criticism for recalling Parliament just to hear a speech to be given by Dubya, at a cost of well over $1m. He won’t be pleased to hear that White House briefing papers given the press refer to him as John Major. They also say that Canberra is major-league boring (really)(I mean they really say that, although I’m sure it’s also true that Canberra is boring). The only restaurant it recommends is fast food. Evidently in Oz that means the Hog’s Breath Cafe, evidently a chain serving the Dog’s Breath corn dog (hogsbreath.com.au).

If you don’t believe that Iraq is going swimmingly, there’s probably a letter from a US soldier stationed in Iraq in your local paper informing you of the fact. The military seems to be writing such letters, and asking soldiers to sign them, and sending them to their hometown newspapers. The Olympian noted two such identical letters. For extra fun, in a few days time run the quotes from those letters through news.google to see how many papers fell for it.

An analysis of the Texas redistricting written for US Rep. Joe Barton (R-Deep in the Heart of Texas) says, “This has a real national impact that should assure that Republicans keep the House no matter the national mood.”

Bumps on the road

Here in Kallyfohrnia, Ahnuld is getting a few lessons in how state government actually functions. For example, the Gropenführer does not have the power to reduce the car tax unilaterally (even if he did, he’d find that the Kallyfohrnia voters would still be pissed, because they probably think he promised to eliminate the tax altogether). He also asked Gray Davis politely not to keep filling vacancies and signing bills (like Pete Wilson and every other outgoing governor did). What Ahnuld didn’t know: even if Davis didn’t sign the bills, they’d still pass into law. So steroids-for-brains doesn’t even how the veto power works.

With all the talk in Israeli circles about those pilots who refuse to bomb people, it seems that as a general, Sharon himself refused to obey an order in 1973 to evacuate a settlement (or advised someone else to disobey such an order, I’m not clear).

From the Daily Telegraph: “A man accused of stealing a penis by sorcery was beaten to death in the Gambia yesterday. Police said tricksters appear to make genitals vanish then extort cash for a cure.” (In 1997 I had several stories about this happening in Ghana.)

Bush’s drug czar wants to drug test all school children.

The Australian Senate censures Prime Minister John Howard for lying about the reasons for Oz joining the war on Iraq.

But don’t they know that the Iraq situation is “a lot better than you probably think,” as Bush put it on a day in which 3 American soldiers, 8 Iraqi police and a Spanish spy were killed. “There will be bumps on the road,” said Paul Bremer, which some editorial cartoonist will, or should, rapidly turn into an image of a jeep driving over a lot of dead bodies.

Slate on the slush fund buried in the $87b. Not that buried, since it’s more than 1/10th of the total. Includes a blank check for Rummy to spend in bribing foreign countries for military aid in Iraq, and to transfer large sums of money from one bit to another, without Congressional oversight. Which they don’t really want to exercise, because with specific amounts, they’d have to explain voting for X million for Iraqi schools but not American schools, etc.

The Vatican really thought the pope was going to get the Nobel Peace Prize. Heh heh.

So to prove America’s even-handedness in killin’ people, a court in Arizona sentences to death a guy who took revenge for 9/11 by killing a Sikh (Sikh, Ayrab, what’s the diff?). Voices in his head told him to kill the devils. The jury chose to disregard his insanity defense, pointing out that George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld hear the same voices (to be fair, the voices may just be Fox News).

That guy was a Boeing airplane mechanic, which should give you some pause. But even he could have answered the questions on which airport screeners are tested, at least if he, like they were pretty much given the answers in advance, because otherwise how could they answer these:

How do threats get on board an aircraft?

a. In carry-on bags.
b. In checked-in bags.
c. In another person's bag.
d. All of the above.

Another question asked why it was important to screen bags for "improvised explosive devices."

a. The I.E.D. batteries could leak and damage other passenger bags.
b. The wires in the I.E.D. could cause a short to the aircraft wires.
c. I.E.D.'s can cause loss of lives, property and aircraft.
d. The ticking timer could worry other passengers.


At no point were they tested on their ability to find actual dangerous stuff in baggage.

I like to play the leader

Some religious authorities don’t like gay marriage, and some REALLY don’t like it. For example, the Russian Orthodox Church defrocked a priest that performed one. And demolished the church in which it was performed.

Bush’s idea of the way to get the bottom of the Plame Game is to get Justice right on it. Well, after a 12-hour period before people are ordered not to destroy documents. Oh, and the White House Counsel’s office will just hold on to all the evidence for a couple of weeks before it goes to justice. National security, you know.

Today’s Top Five list is changes under Governor Arnie. Maybe it’s too early to find our displacement of Florida as national laughing stock especially funny, but it didn’t seem a very good list. I did like:
6> California Department of Food and Agriculture now classifies steroids as a vegetable.

Ariel Sharon is getting increasingly paranoic about opposition. He accused the pilots who refuse to go on bombing-assassination missions of trying a coup, now he’s accused the Labor party of working with Palestinians to topple the government.

The Guardian: “The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which the HIV virus can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk.”

The Guardian also explains the Schwarzenegger victory to Brits, sort of: “Putting Arnie in charge of the world's fifth largest economy is like making Benny Hill chancellor of the exchequer: quirky but unreal - and not very funny.” More: “myth and reality may continue to collide. For some, Mr Schwarzenegger was a classic out sider, an immigrant-made-good, an heir to the American dream. But in truth he needed the Republican party, big business backing and $21m to beat Mr Davis. These debts will be called in in the normal way.”

For goober results. None of the 135, including the alleged murderer, got fewer than 172 votes. Bad luck, Todd Richard “The Bumhunter” Lewis (position on the budget crisis: “We need to spend less.”), but someone had to come in last. (If I never know what “the Bumhunter” means, it will be too soon.)

Führerprinzip: Last night the Game Show Network ran an episode of the Dating Game from the early to mid-1970s, in which Arnie had to choose between 3 bachelorettes (a word they did not make him try to pronounce). “Ya, girl number three, I am new to this country, can you explain to me what means ‘hanky panky’?” Asked where they would go on a date, one said wherever he wanted. He said that was goot, because “I like to play the leader.” She was the one he chose. They got to go to Hawaii with a Dating Game chaperon. Yeah, that’ll work. A chaperon. To paraphrase Richard Dreyfus in Jaws, I think we’re gonna need a bigger chaperon.

Lo and behold

Today I got another recorded call against the recall, this time from Joe Lieberman. Who would this convince?

The State Dept calls on Israel to “avoid actions that heighten tensions.” And that was AFTER they bombed Syria. I guess the US considers bombing to be a way of releasing tensions. Hell, these days it’s the only way Ariel Sharon can... no, I won’t go there. Anyway, Israel is blaming Syria, and Arafat, natch, for a suicide bombing by a woman who had several family members recently killed by Israel. Not to justify her response, but really we don’t need to look any further for who “sent” her. (Later:) here’s Robert Fisk saying the same thing: “No one asks what these "training bases" are. Do Palestinian suicide bombers really need to practice suicide bombing? Does turning a switch need that much training? Surely the death of a brother or a cousin by the Israeli army is all the practice that is needed.” What seems to have happened is that after the threat a couple of weeks ago to expel/assassinate Arafat, this time Sharon had to do something big, or his buds would call him a weenie, so he bombed a country that had nothing to do with anything. Anyway, Shrub spoke to Sharon, and didn’t criticize the bombing of Syria. (Later:) and said something nonsensical about Israel protecting “the homeland.”

www.awfulplasticsurgery.com. (Views right only in Internet Explorer). Go snicker at celebrities.

I suppose we could always just try to derive what amusement we can from Governor Terminator’s accent. Today he was campaigning in Huntington “Beetch”, saying how much he liked “beetches.” Yup, that’s what I keep reading.

Exsscellent: An Italian tv poll shows PM Berlusconi to be the person Italians are most sick of. I wouldn’t ordinarily mention this, but there’s a great picture of him looking like Montgomery Burns’s younger but just as evil brother, here.

France has launched a campaign against noise pollution, with police given the power to confiscate noisy scooters and motorbikes, and so on. Yappy little dogs will remain sacrosanct, of course.

Colin Powell has an op-ed piece in the WashPost trying to spin the Kay report. He even uses the phrase “Lo and behold”. The Bushies are making an awfully big deal about some botulism left in a scientist’s refrigerator for a decade and evidently forgotten by the government. First, (insert pathetically obvious joke about the state of my own refrigerator here), second, knowing what we do about the reliability of the Iraqi power grid even before we bombed the crap out of it, how good could it be, 3rd, whether this is serious would depend on exactly what strain it was. Oh, I could debunk the rest of Powell’s article point by point, but why bother?

Congress finally decides not to build quite so many prisons. In Iraq. It also deleted Bush’s $153m. budget request for garbage trucks at $50,000 each. When you’re through wondering why Iraq would need $50,000 garbage trucks, do the math on how many of them. Also, no money to establish ZIP codes ($13m).

A Schwarzenegger rally drew 10,000 people, a Davis one 35. Said one D. Party spin doctor, yeah but he doesn’t draw as big a crowd as Hitler did.

Whatever means is necessary

R’s have responded to Der Arnold’s little “he said, she she she she she she she she she she she she she she she said” problem by telling the media that Gray Davis has a temper problem and once threw an ashtray at an aide. Like anybody would believe there are still ashtrays in California.

The Turkish Parliament gave permission for its army to march into Iraq, as per the request of the US, which is putting Bush’s political need to start pulling troops out over the need of his puppet government, which is objecting fiercely, to maintain even a hint of credibility. The US claims that the Turks, subsidized as I mentioned before at a cost of $950,000 each, won’t be targeting Kurds, but this is not what the Turkish foreign minister is saying.

An article in the Tues. NY Times says that executions by lethal injection often use drugs that do nothing to lessen suffering, but do disguise it from observers (and seem to be used for that purpose, or at least serve no other obvious function). And they use chemicals that are banned in some places for the euthanization of animals because they are considered cruel.

Bush said “In order for there to be a Palestinian state, the Palestinian Authority must fight terror and must use whatever means is necessary to fight terror.” That’s what I like about Bush, his idealism. Maybe they can put that in their constitution: “We the people, in order to use whatever means is necessary to fight terror...” James Madison would be proud. It should make the constitution a lot shorter, too, since there need be none of that fair trial, search warrant, 5th amendment crap, just “whatever means is necessary.” Or should that be “am necessary”? Jesus, George, six-year olds are better at subject-verb agreement than you are.

In horrendous Supreme Court decisions, we have two today: 1) it let stand the conviction of a pregnant woman for murder for “delivering drugs” to the fetus through the umbilical cord. 2) it let stand Arkansas forcing an insane guy to take drugs to make him sane enough to be executed.

Another good analysis of the Kay Report, again showing that it doesn’t say what the Bushies say it says.

At an economic summit in Thailand later this month, Bush’s food will be tested for poison on mice.

Ariel Sharon says Israel will strike at its enemies “in any place and in any way.” Well, probably not in any way. I doubt they’ll be throwing cream pies at their enemies, for example, a method of protest I’ve always favored. Bush said that Sharon’s moves are “valid decisions. We would be doing the same thing.” Which would make anybody else rethink their position, but probably not Sharon. Israel releases a bombing map of Damascus, what it claims are homes and offices of Palestinian militants. Plan your vacations accordingly.

Haaretz says that in 1973, the US (Kissinger) gave Israel a secret green light to keep fighting Egypt and Syria after the official cease-fire went into effect, even if those countries stopped fighting. And it did.

Any time, any place

My last email/post mentioned pussy cats in the subject line, as you will recall. SOMEbody’s over-zealous work computer bounced it: (reason: 553 5.0.0 Offensive E-mails not allowed at this site.)

The California, if not the federal, Do Not Call list went into effect this week. But just when I thought I didn’t need to screen my calls any more, who calls today but Al Gore, who wants me to vote against the recall.

The US has accepted Serbia’s offer to send troops and police to deal with the Muslims of Afghanistan. The US sees nothing wrong with this.

Yesterday I mentioned an Israeli tank commander being charged with negligence. The NY Times said he was charged with manslaughter. Wrong: just negligence.

Robin Cook, who resigned the Labour government over the Iraq war, says that Blair admitted Iraq had no WMDs 2 weeks before the war started. Might have been nice if Cook had mentioned that before. Resigning over principle is one thing, screwing up your book deal over principle is another matter entirely, evidently.

“U.S. Rep. Cass Ballenger [R-NC] blames the breakup of his 50-year marriage partly on the stress of living near a leading American Muslim advocacy group that he and his wife worried was so close to the U.S. Capitol that ‘they could blow the place up.’”

If you’re apt to believe Bush when he claims that David Kay’s report says the exact opposite of what it says, read here:

There hasn’t been much talk about David Kay himself. He’s actually been so much an advocate of attacking Iraq for so many years, has made repeated predictions about the nature of Iraq’s arsenal identical to those made by Bushies, sanctified those 2 mobile labs as signs of a biowar program well in advance of the facts, etc, that he actually seems the perfect man to front a Bush cover-up, which is not what he’s actually done.

Headline in the Sunday Times (London): “Arnie Gropes for Those Last Key Votes.” (And the NY Times says “Governor Davis Struggles to Hold His Base”--Arnold, of course, always tries to hold someone else’s base). And the Observer (London) has an editorial titled: “Arnie Did What? And We're Like... That's Amazing!”

The Arnold has continued attacking the integrity of the 11 women, who never even asked him to apologize, and blamed their statements on Davis dirty tricks and “sleaze politics.” There’s a lot of talk about the leftie LA Times too. And there’s this: “Meanwhile a group of young Republican women calling themselves Babes for Arnold are preparing to counter feminist demonstrators picketing his rallies across the state. They will hold banners reading: ‘I am yours, governor Arnold, any time, any place.’”

Then let a father explain to his daughter why her beloved pussy cat has gone

A study that correlates people being wrong about Iraq (connections with Al Qaida, WMDs actually being found, the world supported us) and their primary source of news. Guess where Fox viewers fit? Of people with 1 of the 3 misconceptions, 53% supported the war. Among those with 2, 78% percent supported it, and among those with all 3, 86%. Of those with none of the misconceptions, 23% supported the war.

From the table of contents of today’s Daily Telegraph:

Pets pampered

An authoritative magazine published by the Jesuits lashed out at the culture of pampered pets yesterday, saying animals had no souls or rights. [As the Jesuits like to say, give me the puppy for a year (that’s 7 dog years), and I will give you the dog. I don’t know how exactly that joke relates to that particular story, but it popped into my head.]

Pets face kidnap for debt

The power company that supplies Russia's far eastern port of Vladivostok is threatening to kidnap the pets of customers who fail to pay their bills.

The head of the company says, “Then let a father explain to his daughter why her beloved pussy cat has gone.” There’s no picture, but I assume he was twirling long mustaches while he said this.

Canadian PM Chretien will retire in February. What will he try next? Marijuana. “I will have my money for my fine, and a joint in the other hand.”

An Israeli tank commander is actually going to be charged for “negligence” in the deaths of 4 Palestinians, 3 of them children aged 5, 6 and 13, during the Jenin Massacre. He negligently opened fire on civilians with tank shells and machine guns. Oops. He’s being charged only because someone videotaped as a tank fired a shell at a group of children on bicycles who had just bought chocolate bars. I’d like to use the word negligence sarcastically again, but I’m too pissed off. Let’s take it as read, shall we?

Bush on the slide in his poll numbers: “Sometimes the American people like the decisions I make, sometimes they don’t. But they need to know I'll make tough decisions based upon what I think is right.” Yeah, that’s what’s worrying us. Hell, he doesn’t even get his news from Fox, he gets what Karl Rove tells him was on Fox.

When Valerie Plame’s name was leaked, a snowball was started down a hill. There are public documents which listed her employer as a company called Brewster-Jennings & Associates. So when Rove or whoever also exposed that firm as a CIA front. Although more specifically, that idiot Novak exposed it today, saying he didn’t believe it was real. It is, and no doubt was the cover for other agents.

The Arnold says he can’t remember making pro-Hitler comments. Anyone else in the world would say that they hadn’t, he says he can’t remember. Which means he did, and just hopes that he has the only copies of the out-takes from Pumping Iron. And returning to the sexual assault issue, he does the “a little bit nutty, a little bit slutty” thing: “One wonders what the motivation is. Why am I getting all this stuff thrown at me now? No one complained.” About another incident in which the victim has gone public (there are now 11 women), he doesn’t remember that either. Several of the actresses he’s worked with have come forward to say that he was a perfect gentleman to them. Of course he was, it’s the powerless women he likes to humiliate.

At an event today he dropped a wrecking ball on a car. This had something to do with the car tax. Gubernatorial candidate Gallagher could not be reached for comment.

Where there's smoke there's Arnold rubbing a waitresses' breasts together

Israel decides to extend its wall, but will leave gaps to be filled in at some point when the US is distracted. The US, which had vaguely threatened to withhold a fraction of one percent of the aid it gives Israel, does nothing. Then Israel announces the building of hundreds more units in Ariel and elsewhere, and Colin Powell says the US has “concerns.”

The LA Times published accounts of several of the no doubt innumerable times in which Arnold has committed sexual battery on women. Arnold both denied the reports (“trash politics”) and apologized for them, sort of. “Playful,” indeed. Actually, as I re-read it, it looks more and more like a non-apology apology, sorry if you took my grabbing your ass in the wrong way, sorry if you took offense at my little request--described by the Daily Show as a cross between a gynaecological exam and a wine tasting. The Post has him saying, after the “apology,” “Now, let's go from the dirty politics back to the future of California.” Dirty politics? Oh good, now we know who the real victim is here. Poor Arnold, misunderstood even when he isn’t mangling the language, just some waitresses’ breasts. “Women voters should know that I always have strong women around me.” Sure, if they weren’t strong you’d break them.

If you’re not taking this seriously, as relevant to his qualifications to be governor, consider this phrasing of the story, from the Guardian: “Schwarzenegger has admitted that he used his celebrity to humiliate women sexually.” It’s not just boorishness towards women, it’s that he abuses any power he has (and many of these stories were from a time when he was just a C-list celebrity).

Also, some old quotes surfaced today about how much he admired Hitler. Who also abused his power a little, if I may engage in some dirty historiography.

Ok, and maybe it doesn’t seem like much after the Hitler thing, but the man, who started running saying he’d use his own money and be beholden to nobody, has decided to loan his campaign a few million. This is the classic rich candidate’s method of hiding his backers, who can contribute after the election is safely over. This violates Prop 34, which was passed in 2000. 2000 is of course ancient history--we know because the most recent of the gropings we know about occurred then, so it must be ancient history, huh?

Bustamante is now running ads saying that even if you vote against the recall, you have a responsibility to vote for a candidate. Several newspapers, I think including the Times, have recommended skipping the second part of the ballot.

And Davis again reminds us why no one likes him:

"I don’t know if any of you are parents," says Mr Davis to the small gathering of firefighters, teachers and police officers. "But I am, and I have difficult conversations with my children all the time: like when they want to stay out all night. Those conversations aren't much fun, are they? And if your child at that moment could recall YOU, what do you think he would do?" For a second, the Governor of California, the world's fifth largest economy, population 35 million, looks close to tears.

That was from the London Times, which also says something I’d missed before: the only previous governor to be recalled, Lynn Frazier of ND in 1921, was elected to the US Senate the following year, where he stayed for 3 terms.

Some tests of genetically-modified crops in Britain, which were supposed to be pro forma before Blair gives in to US demands that GM be allowed in, have shown that the crops are the major threat sane people always knew they were, killing off weeds, insects and endangering biodiversity.

It’s been 10 years since Boris Yeltsin bombarded the parliament building. Evidently since then it’s become clear that his dirty tricks squad created much of the violence he used as an excuse for his coup.

British foreign minister Jack Straw somehow claims that the war is justified by the finally released Kay report, which says no WMDs have been found in Iraq but Saddam “had not given up his aspirations and intentions.” Orwell imagined a Thought Police; even he never imagined that a Thought Army would invade because of aspirations and intentions.

8%

Robert Fisk says that the Proconsulate in Iraq is suppressing news of the number of times the oil pipelines are attacked, which is several times a day. In fact, from the start the US had it all wrong, protecting the oil fields, when the sabotage, which Fisk thinks is operating according to a pre-set plan, was always aimed at the export pipes. He also says that half the $20 billion for Iraqi “development” is actually allocated for security. So we’ve got control of the oil, and no way to get it to American SUVs.

And another $600 million to search for Iraqi WMDs. That’s a lot of dowsing rods.

With some members of the Iraqi “governing council” demanding that the US turn over power very quickly, it is interesting that the same council is saying that 6 months is way too soon for them to draw up a constitution. I think what they’re actually saying is they don’t want a constitution to be drawn up by an elected conference, which would then be the only body in Iraq with any sort of democratic legitimacy. The US won’t want elections either, because the Islamists would win and impose sharia. So good luck with that, guys.

In today’s White House press conference, with the reporters still piling on Leakgate--well, they should be rested and ready after that 2½ months of not following up--a reporter pointed out that since Bush says he doesn’t bother reading newspapers or watching tv news, the question of what the president was told and when he was told it is of unusual relevance.

Re “Leakgate,” DailyKos asked for suggestions. I like “the Plame Game.”

Even Philip Agee, whose naming of CIA names led to the 1982 law, thinks that this was kind of scummy. He was principled, this is just revenge. Something I didn’t know, or forgot: Agee sued Barbara Bush in 1995 for defamation when her autobiography said he was responsible for the assassination of the Athens head of station in 1975; he got her to admit he wasn’t to blame.

It seems that the reason the Justice Dept didn’t issue the order for the White House to save documents/email/etc for a day, is that the White House asked for the delay. No, nothing to hide--not any more.

Wesley Clark tells Joshua Marshall that he voted for Clinton. Now someone needs to ask about the elections in between 1980 and 1996.

The LA Times poll that shows Arnold with an 8-point lead over Bustamante, 40-32, also has a grand total of 8% who think he’s actually the most qualified for the job or was more knowledgeable than his opponents in the debate (that’s 2 separate questions, the same result in both). I looked at the poll, and can’t figure why those 40% are voting for him; really, they didn’t ask. They also didn’t ask the 8%: “You’re kidding, right?”

A shortage of cement

The NYT has a story about how states are cutting back on the cost of prisons by feeding the prisoners less food. That way you can fit more in a cell, too.

David Corn has a column on McClelland’s evasions on Plame-gate, which unless someone comes up with a name that isn’t crap is how I’ll be referring to the leaking to Robert Novak of the name of the wife of Amb. Joseph Wilson. (Later: the Post has Leakgate. We can do better.) Corn says “Pity McClellan. He has a tough task--to depict the president as caring about the leak even though he is doing nothing about it.” The lefties trying to use Plame-gate to damage Bush, like Corn, have their own difficulties. I haven’t checked his other columns on this subject (Corn was on this one early and often--I cited him on this subject July 22--my, it took the mainstream media a long time to catch up), but this column seems to make a point of not using Valerie Plame’s name, I guess to prove that he’s more patriotic than Novak (Later: Jim Lehrer did the same thing today). Corn and the bloggers who are all over this also have to pretend that they care about the damage to the career of a CIA officer--oh dear, she won’t be able to secretly meet with moles inside the governments of nations we’re trying to overthrow--and consider violation of the 1982 law to be akin to treason. Funny, I was opposed to that law in 1982 and I’ll bet Corn was too. Here’s some really overblown rhetoric from TomPaine.com: “The facts of this story are singularly grotesque. Taken at the top layer, you have a White House that appears perfectly willing to go after the family members of its critics. Valerie Plame's career is destroyed, period. The act itself displays a level of viciousness that is dangerous to the functioning of this, or any, democracy.” Me oh my. Look, by all means go after the Bushies for their vindictiveness and sneakiness and hypocrisy, make McClellan squirm, bring up the Shrub quote about people who release agents’ names being lower than the lowest of the really pretty darn low, attack Ashcroft’s ability to conduct a fair investigation (he already gave the White House a day’s head start to destroy evidence before issuing an order not to), and let’s find out if Rove really was fired by Bush the Elder for sliming Mosbacher to Robert Novak in 1992, but let’s not be quite so hypocritical.

Krugman’s column today (Tues.) does something in discussing the cronyism behind the contracts to rebuild Iraq that no one else has done: since the Bushies are comparing this to the Marshall Plan, Krugman talks about the special efforts Truman took to make sure there was no post-war profiteering.

Something I missed: when Paul Bremer was asked in Congress why he was asking for $400m. to build a 4,000-bed prison, he said that there was a shortage of cement in Iraq and it needed to be imported. A shortage of cement. They could mine his head and get all the cement they need.

With my memories of the Reagan administration thankfully fading somewhat, it’s hard to compare whether Ed Meese was more godawful an attorney general than Ashcroft is, but his reaction today to a question about the Patriot Act may give a clue: “Librarians are more interested in pushing pornography on kids than fighting terrorism!”

Sydney Schanberg (ya know, Sam Waterston in The Killing Fields) has read Wesley Clark’s forthcoming book, which says some interesting things about how badly the Bushies screwed up in their wars on terrorism, Afghanistan, etc. Sam, I mean Sydney, asks the question: so why didn’t you mention any of this before, Wes?

Just saw an ad for McClintock. It cites a poll to show that he is gaining momentum and has a chance of winning. When you spend your hard-earned (well ok, Indian casino) money trying to prove your viability rather than your competence, not to convince people but to convince people that other people are convinced, you don’t deserve to win. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a campaign ad citing favorable polls before. And, as usual, there’s an Onion piece that relates to this point.

Of course Arianna’s withdrawal in favor of Gray Davis is worse, and sillier, and I could say more but at this point it feels like a waste of words to use them on her. And we know how she hates waste.

Is Bush clairvoyant?

The recall is now a foregone conclusion. There are tv commercials against the recall of “the governor” by “the Republicans,” because Davis doesn’t dare mention his own name and so that he can fight an archetypal Republican who would abolish abortion and repeal gun laws, rather than the only actual Republican who could win. If you can’t mention your own name in your own ads, if even you realize that you are despised by your own state, it’s time to resign. I still intend to vote against the recall, and it would still be wrong, I think, to vote for the recall, but if anyone wants to abstain, they have my permission. Voting no on the recall was always going to be a decision based on theory rather than practice--which I’m normally more than ok with--but voting to retain Davis no longer seems like a defense of the democratic process. “Vote for the really really unpopular guy in the name of democracy” doesn’t seem like such a viable slogan. Which is not to say that we shouldn’t change the rules to make recalls much harder to initiate, but I don’t know that an arbitrary calendrical cycle is really that much less capricious a grounds on which to schedule elections than getting 5% of the population to sign a petition.

As for candidates, you’re on your own. If I never tell you who I voted for, it probably means I voted for Thong Girl and am embarrassed to admit it, which will also mean I couldn’t bring myself to vote for the wishy-washy Camejo or the increasingly hollow Arianna, both of whom are suggesting that they might back out or ask their supporters vote for Bustamoney. Busty was always out of the running for me because he supports the death penalty, and the crap he’s pulled with illicit campaign spending (I saw one of those ads last night he was ordered a week ago not to spend laundered money on) hasn’t made him more attractive.

Of course I may change my mind after the Game Show Channel’s Who Wants to Be California Governor Wednesday.

Others have been having fun with the Census Dept’s list of names. In 2000, there were 11 children named Bentley, 5 Jaguars, and ironically, just 1 Xerox (although there were 24 Unique’s), and 49 Canons. Also, a Gouda and a Bologna, and they are not named after the places.

Indonesia is updating its criminal code, which is largely the same as when the Dutch left. For example, those Gouda-eaters (that only works as a segue if I’m right that Gouda is Dutch) (so I’m not going to look it up) somehow neglected to outlaw black magic, homosexuality and premarital sex.


A new $20 bill comes out next week. It’ll have peach and blue coloring. $33 million will be spent on PR for the bill, because we know how unpopular $20 bills are in this country. They will pay for product placement in movies and Jeopardy and such.

White House spokesdickhead McClellan says, three times no less, that he has “no specific information” about the source of the leak about Ambassador Wilson’s wife. And we all know about the high standards this administration puts on the information it uses to make decisions. Of course what he’s saying is that nothing will be done to find the felonious leakers, but hey if you guys want to violate your professional ethics, coming down to our level, and name them.... He also says that Bush knows that Rove didn’t do the leak, but refuses to say how Bush knows this, and if you read the transcript, refused in the face of a very long barrage of questions. If he didn’t ask Rove, then he is either clairvoyant (a reporter asked McClellan this), or he already knew who leaked. They’re stonewalling, of course, which actually worked nicely for them for the past 2 months, when this should have been on front pages but wasn’t. (Incidentally, if anyone knows what reporter asked the clairvoyant question, I’m curious).

Connecting the dots

The NY Times runs a fairly devastating article about the quality of intelligence supplied by Iraqi defectors, but fails to say exactly how that intelligence related to decision-making by the Bush administration, and arguments made by it. It says that the Defence Intelligence Agency concluded early this year that no more than 1/3 of the information was potentially useful, but we need a more specific date, obviously. Half way through the article even sorta kinda almost apologizes for the Times’s many many articles by the laughable Judith Miller that passed on this crap. Nor did the paper announce when it would change it’s slogan to All the News That’s No More Than One Third Potentially Useful.

The Monday WashPost has a bunch of stories about bad and misused intelligence.

The new Bushie phrase about intelligence, intended to immunize them when their sources and claims are discredited one by one, is that it is a matter of “connecting the dots.” Mary Matalin, now Cheney’s spokesmodel, used the phrase, so did Condi: "There were many, many dots about what was going on in the Iraqi programs after 1998." George Seurat or Jackson Pollack, you be the judge.

Methods so you don't have to be dependent on people's memories

I just read the transcript of Condi Rice’s interview on “Meet the Obsequious Press” this morning. She says “I would warn off jumping in to any conclusions about what David Kay’s report says” about Iraqi WMDs. Of course that was the report that was supposed to be released last week and wasn’t and will probably never be released, so don’t jump to any conclusions before then. She said that we should continue believing in WMDs because everyone’s always believed in WMDs, and that was the premise behind the UN policies and Clinton’s air strikes in 1998. No, Clinton’s air strikes in 1998 were about a certain blow job, just ask any of your right-wing friends. Russert asked how the claims about Nigerien yellow cake got back into the State of the Union address three months after the DCI had them removed from an earlier speech. “It’s not a matter of getting back in. It’s a matter, Tim, that three-plus months later, people didn’t remember that George Tenet had asked that it be taken out of the Cincinnati speech and then it was cleared by the agency. I didn’t remember. Steve Hadley didn’t remember. We are trying to put now in place methods so you don’t have to be dependent on people’s memories for something like that.” Gee, I thought the human race had already developed methods so we wouldn’t have to be dependent on memory. Ya know: writing, Lexis-Nexis, shit like that. It would explain a lot about the Bush admin operates: they haven’t developed written language yet.

Some day we’ll find out what the hell is going on behind the scenes. The CIA just asked the FBI to investigate the leaking to the press of the fact that Ambassador Wilson’s wife was in the CIA, a serious crime under the 1982 Anti-Phillip Agee Law, which had been pushed for very hard indeed by George Bush the Elder. What took them so long? Didn’t get a big enough bribe in the last budget? Or if it’s that DCI Tenet himself leaked the fact, then why is his agency doing this at all? Personally I’d love to see Karl Rove go to prison, or Condi Rice.

This is where the incestuous relationship between the press and government becomes so obnoxious. Rove, or whoever, shopped that story all over town, meaning that reporters and editors at at least 6 newspapers know who the leaker is, which probably means everyone in the Washington press corps knows, and they write stories containing speculation about things they know the truth about. Sometime when Bush the Elder was VP, the Post did a profile of Jennifer Fitzgerald, who worked for him and was rumored to be his mistress. This was the point of the story, since they wouldn’t have written a story about her otherwise, but they didn’t mention the rumor; they did say that she had “worked under Mr. Bush in a variety of positions.”

Yesterday I mentioned Putin’s strategy to push Chechnya out of sight and mind. Today, the acting quisling president of Chechnya is poisoned, though still alive as of this writing.

Newsweek story about Rummy’s regime change in Iraq. He ordered Jay Garner not to take with him 16 of the 20 State Dept officials he planned to, because they were too pro-Arab (no doubt they could speak Arabic, which almost no one else in the provisional government can). It says even doctors sent to restore medical services had to be anti-abortion.

Tony Blair tells David Frost that he would do absolutely nothing different about Iraq. The Labour Party annual conference this week will not be allowed to discuss the matter. “Don’t mention the war,” as every paper inevitably puts it.

I want to make clear I said plucked

Joe Lieberman in the most recent debate: “In the Bush administration, the foxes are guarding the foxes, and the middle-class hens are getting plucked. I want to make clear I said plucked.” So the cultural conservative is the one who alluded to an obscenity in a presidential debate broadcast in the daytime.

The Arnold has run negative ads against McClintock, despite his promise to run a positive campaign. His excuse: it was a clerical error. Oh sure they filmed a negative ad, and oh sure they sent it to tv stations, but only as a “contingency”; they never ever meant them to air.

Spending in this oh-so-populist recall election has passed the $50 million mark.

The Pentagon clears soldiers of yet another massacre, that of the 8 Iraqi policemen, without an investigation.

In honor of Rosh Hashanah, Colin Powell gives us an example of chutzpah in the model of the one about the guy who asks for leniency for killing his parents because he’s an orphan: we can’t turn over the occupation of Iraq to the UN, why it’s even reducing its staff in Iraq because of the terrible security situation there.

And Sharon says he considers himself free of his promise to Bush not to harm Arafat.

I’ve talked often enough about brides in India being murdered in disputes over dowries. Here’s the other side: families of girls may not be able to afford a huge dowry, but they can afford to have some likely bachelor kidnapped and beaten until he agrees to the marriage.

Found this week: tapes of Colin Powell in February 2001 saying that Iraq had no WMDs; and Wesley Clark in March, I think, 2001, saying how wonderful the Bush cabinet was. I asked just when Clark became a D. I’ve thus far heard no date earlier than March of 2003.

Mussolini tried to get the pope to excommunicate Hitler in 1938.

The gov tries to hide the fact that 1-point-something million people have dropped below the poverty line, releasing the information late, on a Friday, and not at the Census Bureau’s central office.

In the biggest fuck-you to teachers since the last one, Florida’s teacher pension fund has just spent $174 million in buying up Edison, Chris Whittle’s company, and taking it private.

For months I’ve been seeing stories in British papers about how fat Brits are becoming. This week, they get their first Krispy Kreme store. Good luck, guys.

The US may have no exit strategy in Iraq, but Putin has one for Chechnya. First, pick someone to be elected president, one week from now. There were other candidates, but they were all bribed into dropping out and leaving the republic. Then, destroy refugee camps, forcing people back over the border. Seal off, then forget.

North Korea calls Rumsfeld a psychopath and a stupid man. Yes, and your point is? I mean, this is Rummy: he puts those things on his resumé.

The Sunday Times has a story about a 17-year old Iraqi who has killed his mother and her lover (her step-son) and oh yes his 4-year old sister in an “honor” killing (because he thought the father of the 4-year old was actually the step-son). He says, “Under Saddam I was too scared to take revenge. The biggest problem was trying to buy a gun off the streets. I was afraid of getting arrested before I could kill them. But since the Americans came, buying a gun is no problem. I found a Kalashnikov for $35 (£21) with a full magazine of 30 bullets.” Honor killings have gone way up since Saddam fell. The killer, who is very proud of himself, is expected to get maybe a year in prison, max. It was an honor killing, after all.

Pakistan is also being Talibanized. In the North West Frontier province, male doctors & technicians have been banned from carrying out ultrasound and EKG examinations of women. The province has precisely one female technician trained in the latter and precisely none for the former. The government is afraid that the medical men would receive sexual stimulation, and that women would “lure men under the pretext of ECG or ultrasound.” Also banned since the Islamists won in the October 2002 elections: kite-flying and public dancing.

I know this will come as a surprise to everyone, but the NYT says the government is using the Patriot Act for things that have nothing to do with terrorism.

Get them dying for their country so fewer Americans have to

The Times says that Britain and the US are considering introducing the death penalty in Iraq, including for attacks on oil pipelines. It’s actually the puppet council calling for it. In fact, the “human rights lawyer” on the council.

Just watched the goober debate. A lot of yelling and interrupting, especially whenever Arianna was speaking. I think Arnold obliquely threatened to drunk her head in a toilet bowl. (Later): Yeah, that’s how everyone else interpreted that line as well. And, being the candidate from Planet Hollywood, as Bustamoney’s new ads call him, he slipped in a product placement (for the Hummer, of course).

When I quoted candidate statements, I missed this one: Leonard Padilla, Independent, Sacramento: As a professional bounty hunter for over 28 years, I have had to make critical and unimaginable decisions while enforcing the laws of California.

Thanks to the wimpishness of one Texas legislator, the Texas Lege just redistricted and gave Tom DeLay several more Republican House seats.

Fablog has Bush’s UN speech interspersed with sarcastic comments. Fun, although not as good as it could be.

Uncle Sam wants you: Paul Wolfowitz says we’re “trying to, in fact, get more Iraqis on the front lines, get them dying for their country so fewer Americans have to.” I trust they’re not letting him write the recruiting material. And to think we bitched when Saddam used human shields.

The woman sentenced to death by stoning in Nigeria has won on appeal. Justice and enlightenment have returned to Nigeria. Well, for part of the day: another court sentenced a man to death for sodomy.

Bhutan will ban smoking everywhere by the end of the year.

Merely speculative

The 9th Circuit decision is the most weasely thing I’ve seen since Bush v. Gore. They’re letting the election go ahead because it’s so late. Well whose fault is that? “The decision to enjoin an impending election is so serious that the Supreme Court has allowed elections to go forward even in the face of an undisputed constitutional violation...” “Enormous resources [have been] already invested” in the election, which outweighs whether it’s actually a fair election. You could go ahead with executing an innocent person on the same logic.

The court said that the possibility of the error-prone punch-card system changing the result of the election was “merely speculative.” Yes, because it hasn’t happened yet. That would be the definition of speculative, so it’s hard to see how they can use it as if it were a term of abuse. The opposite of speculative is “too late.” Using their logic, anyone charged with drunk driving who hadn’t actually run someone over could say that declaring that behaviour dangerous and illegal was merely speculative. So because it was so speculative, they decided not to bother thinking about whether having varying degrees of accuracy violated the 14th Amendment or the Voting Rights Act. They said “there is no doubt that the right to ‘vote’ is fundamental.” OK, they didn’t put those sarcastic quotes around vote, I did, but I’m pretty sure just voting isn’t the point; having that vote counted, accurately, and that count actually deciding something, that would be the point. Otherwise we could just write down our gubernatorial choices on toilet paper and flush it down the toilet in the privacy of our own homes, which would be more convenient and save all that over-time pay for poll workers.

Actually, I don’t care that much when the recall is held, but the stop and restart thing this near the end was a disservice to the voters. And I am enjoying the pander-fest coming from the Lege. For example, they just banned spam email (as of January). And allowed churros to be cooked in mobile food trucks.

You think I’m making that up, don’t you?

The R’s are really pissed off at Ted Kennedy for saying other countries are being bribed to send cannon fodder. The White House said the money is just standard foreign assistance. You say potato, Kennedy says potahto--with lots of butter and extra sour cream--let’s call the whole thing off. John Warner: “Stop to think of the reaction of a young wife surrounded by small children, not knowing from day to day whether her husband will survive another day's engagement in Afghanistan or Iraq. And they hear that this whole thing has been a fraud perpetrated upon this family and was made up in Texas. I find that very painful.” True, of course, but painful. Note that this is the same argument as the 9th Circuit panel used. Enormous resources have been invested, so shut up about whether it’s fair or not. Kennedy notes that Turkey, which we are asking for 10,000 troops, is to get $8.5 billion on top of $1 billion already paid. That’s $950,000 each. Steve Austin cost only six times that and he was bionic. When’s the last time Turkey won a war, anyway? 1453? And has anyone asked the Kurds if they want 10,000 Turkish troops?

Interlocutor

I’ve just been reading the transcript of Bush’s interview on Fox. Now do you think it’s a psychological thing when he says how he never consults his father about anything, or have his handlers told him to distance himself from old One-Term Bush? And which of those puts Junior in the worse light?

His new word of the day: interlocutor. Although he doesn’t seem to know what it means.

He says the slogan of the D. presidential candidates is Vote For Me, I Don’t Like George Bush.

And then he says the thing about Ted Kennedy and uncivil people who use words they shouldn’t be using. Like interlocutor.

Says he never reads the paper or watches the news, and is paying no attention at all to the D. candidates and hasn’t watched any of the debates. Basically, all his news is filtered by people he considers “objective”, like Condi Rice and Andrew Card. Bush: “the best way to get the news is from objective sources, and the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world.” He does enjoy living in that bubble.

Funnily enough, since writing that, I’ve received the American Historical Association’s newsletter, with a piece by the AHA president on Bush’s use of the term “revisionist historians,” which ends:

“The judgmental tone of Rice's derogatory reference to "revisionist historians" brings to mind a review of her book The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, 1948–1983, in the December 1985 issue of the American Historical Review (p. 1236) when she was an assistant professor at Stanford. The reviewer claimed that Rice "frequently does not sift facts from propaganda and valid information from disinformation or misinformation." In addition, according to the reviewer, she "passes judgments and expresses opinions without adequate knowledge of the facts" and her "writing abounds with meaningless phrases."”

I just looked up that review, which is actually even more devastating than those quotes indicate, and suggest just how ignorant of her subject she was. I’m pretty sure its comments about Rice were not personal, since Rice is throughout referred to as “he”--you’ll notice the paragraph I quoted crops its quotes from the review so as to avoid pronouns, which I suppose is another example of revisionist history.

http://www.theonion.com/3937/top_story.html.

Yesterday I commented on the British papers (excluding the Times and the Telegraph) using the word “fuck.” The Guardian’s media reporter notes that the first British newspaper to use the word on its front page, 3 years ago, was of all things the Financial Times.

The Iraqi puppet government not only banned reporters from Al Jazeera and the other one I mentioned yesterday, but has banned any quoting of Baathists of any kind, including those Saddam tapes. The rules were drawn up in consultation with the Americans.

Russia has made a deal with Kyrgyzstan allowing it to establish a small military base there. The US also has a base in the country. Could be interesting.

Jamaica’s PM says that under his administration, “more people have electricity and telephones and more men have girls.”

Speaking of more men having girls, Bush’s speech to the UN today--universally considered a failure--ended with a long bit about sex slaves. And now for a change of pace, we’re invading Thailand.

Haven’t read the 9th Circuit decision on the recall yet, but the eleven were unanimous, which smells like a closed-door deal to me.

If Karl Rove had returned my phone calls

Lulu, the kangaroo’s name was Lulu. Story and picture (looks like any other kanga).

The LA Times has a story about The Arnold, noting that with his lack of experience, what he is touting is his autobiography, while at the same time saying that anything you don’t like about his autobiography--gang bangs, drug use, etc etc--he made up, because in Hollywood you make things up.

The Times also quotes the candidate statements, mostly the same quotes I sent out a couple of weeks ago. And gives the lyrics of the campaign song of Angelyne, "Angelyne — Y'all be Lovin' Her for Governor": "Angelyne, Angelyne, if you live in L.A. you know the scene/It's earthquakes, freeways and Angelyne. What a great governor she will be/With her miniskirts, makeup and anatomy."

One of the things I’ve taken to using to keep up with the recall has been the blog of Sacramento Bee columnist Daniel Weintraub, who is pretty good, and often has good links, although he’s politically to my right (but who isn’t?). Thanks to some comments about Bustamante using his ethnicity to get where he is and about the use of ethnic identity by Latino legislators, his blog now goes through his editors first. An edited blog is of course no blog at all. The first thing not mentioned in his blog you would otherwise have expected to be mentioned in the blog? You guessed it, the fact that he is now operating under censorship.

Speaking of things about this election we aren’t being told, a court allowed Ward Connerly to keep the names of the contributors to Prop 54 secret until after the election. Because they’d be harassed, poor dears.

I just read the arguments on this one in the voter’s pamphlet. Did you know you could be charged with “racial fraud” if you claim to be the member of a race the government thinks you are not a member of? There’s an odd bit in the prop itself: “Otherwise lawful assignment of prisoners and undercover law enforcement officers shall be exempt from this section.”

There are many odd bills being floated right now in Calif. One that Connerly really won’t like will put a question about race on voter registration forms. Voluntary, of course. It just snuck into law. Would be nice to know, but that form is the wrong place to ask it. Another, giving Indian tribes veto over any property development within miles of their burial grounds and “sacred sites,” seems to have stalled.

Bush accuses Ted Kennedy of being uncivil and using words he shouldn’t be using in saying that Bush bribed other nations to send troops into Iraq. He doesn’t deny it. He can’t deny it.

John “Lost to a Dead Guy” Ashcroft is issuing an order that federal prosecutors not charge greater offenses in order to coerce a plea bargain. Which I would agree with. Except that Ashcroft means virtually to eliminate plea-bargaining, further reducing the authority of prosecutors, who are already under orders to push for the death penalty in many cases they don’t think it’s appropriate for, and to appeal any sentences that fall below the sentencing guidelines. And ensuring that no one plea-bargains, which would wreck the federal court system pretty quickly. Which is one of the problems with the current system of coercive plea bargains: the court system isn’t designed to give everyone their day in court; indeed, just 10% getting their day in court would be a disaster for the system. Another thing is that with an increasingly rigid sentencing process, which Ashcroft supports, the real bargaining at the federal level is about what charges will be filed, which is supposed to be about facts. Either a crime happened, or it didn’t, in the real world, but since they can’t bargain on sentence, they negotiate a charge practically out of thin air to achieve the same result, i.e., to get a result of a 5-year sentence, they negotiate a crime to be pleaded to that carries a 5-year sentence. So the system is based on dishonesty, with prosecutors initially charging crimes they know didn’t happen, and/or accepting pleas on the basis of crimes that didn’t happen.

Ashcroft says the move is to equalize justice across the US (just as he’s spreading the death penalty to states that don’t want it, and Puerto Rico). Of course he means equalize at the most draconian level possible.

Ashcroft is going to use the Patriot Act in the government’s 16-year old crusade to deport the L.A. 8.

Did you know that the Dewey Decimal System is copyrighted and libraries have to pay at least $500 a year to use it? Don’t know if my local public library gets a discount for the high number of books they mis-shelve.

The Army exonerates, yet again, an incident of soldiers killing journalists, the photographer outside the jail in Baghdad last month. They say the soldier acted within the rules of engagement. Since they won’t tell anyone what the rules of engagement are, people like the photog only find out they’ve run afoul of them as they see the hail of bullets coming towards them. I still have yet to see a side-by-side comparison of a camera and the RPG launcher the soldier allegedly mistook it for.

One of the things I love about British newspapers is that they can say “fuck.” And sometimes they have to, as when quoting Tony Blair’s disgraced former chief spinner Alastair Campbell saying that releasing the name of Dr. Kelly would fuck the BBC’s Andrew Gilligan, who, ironically, had reported that Downing Street had sexed up reports of Iraq’s weapons capability. It’s all beginning to sound like the Nixon tapes. Defense Minister Geoff Hoon says that the claim about Iraqi’s weapons being ready on 45-minutes’ notice did only mean battlefield weapons, and that the government had no obligation to correct the misapprehension that it meant missiles and bio weapons, although it did in fact correct that--after a full year. From the Indy:

Mr Caldecott asked if Mr Hoon felt people were "entitled to be given a true picture of the intelligence, not a vastly inflated one". The Defence Secretary replied: "That's a question you would have to put to journalists and the editors responsible."

Mr Caldecott asked: "Do you accept that you have an absolute duty to correct it?" Mr Hoon answered: "No, I do not."

The Iraqi “Governing Council” has ordered Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya reporters expelled. 14-2, it wasn’t even close. Paul Bremer could, of course, veto that decision. Any bets?

The Israeli army is signing up Russian immigrants who were snipers in Chechnya to perform a similar service against Palestinians. Russian sniper training is better than Israeli and Russians are considered better snipers than Israelis. More patience.

The presidential front-runner is now Wesley Clark, propelled to the top of polls, ahead of the 9 other D’s and Shrub, solely because of Michael Moore’s endorsement. Still, there’s this quote: “I would have been a Republican, if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls.” Which he says was a joke. Still, just when did he switch parties? cuz the stories haven’t actually said.

From The Guardian: “A drug created by the former KGB to keep its agents sober so that they could drink opponents under the table before stealing their secrets is being sold on the internet to Hollywood stars as a defence against hangovers.” So the Cold War was worth it, after all.

What is it, Skippy? Bruce is in trouble?

Sometimes it's hard to find a subject line for these messages. Then there are days like this, when it acts like the Santa Cruz bus system and 3 good ones come at once. For those playing along at home, see if you can pick out the 2 I didn't use.

For sale cheap: Iraq’s economy. Not content with a supposedly temporary eclipsing of Iraq’s national sovereignty, the US has decided to sell control of almost all sectors of its economy to international corporations which place the highest bid with the Republican party, not exempting health, the water supply, electricity, pharmaceuticals. Ownership can be 100%, and all profits, interests and royalties can be taken out of the country. Business taxes will be capped (in other words, the Occupation Authority is making promises binding on Iraq after sovereignty is restored). Tariffs will be slashed to show that Iraq is a "country that embraces free trade." Iraqis will be forgiven if they don’t remember being asked if they wish to embrace free trade. Treasury Secretary John Snow says the tax breaks are necessary for companies to risk the lives of its employees by sending them into Iraq. “Capital is a coward,” he says.

Heart-warming story of the day: “A partially blind kangaroo was hailed a hero Monday after helping rescue a farmer who suffered serious head injuries when he was hit by a falling branch. The pet kangaroo banged on the door of the family's house in Morwell in Gippsland, southeast Australia, after discovering the farmer lying unconscious in a field”. The AP fails to give the kangaroo’s name, although it is believed that every kangaroo in Australia is named Skippy, just like every philosophy professor is named Bruce.

A book of Ronald Reagan’s letters are to be published this week. Among other things, we learn that he felt guilty about sex until he found out that Polynesians don’t, and that he didn’t think communists deserved free speech. Guess which one of those was in a letter to Hugh Hefner. Right, the second one.

Angle-Grinder Man to the rescue

US immigration turned back a gay, legally married Canadian couple who declared themselves a family on their Customs form.

I can remember when Thomas Friedman was sane and intelligent, and worth reading even when he was wrong. Now, none of that applies, except in as much as he’s worth reading to see what stupid thing he’ll say next. This week he admitted that the war he pushed so hard for in Iraq is a failure, and it’s all the fault of the French, who want us to fail. A good letter responded that it’s more like someone trying to take the car keys away from a drunk.

The Cal. secretary of state agrees with me that a postponed recall election means the process does start all over again. By the way, there are at least 9 certified write-in candidates as well as the 135 dwarfs. Don’t know who the 9 are yet.

In an election where casino money plays such a big role, it’s appropriate that the court challenge is such a crap shoot. First it was heard by a fairly liberal 3-member panel of the 9th Circuit, now it will be heard by an 11-member panel chosen randomly but accidentally the 11 most conservative members of the court. I could never figure what the point of the first panel was, since it was obviously going to be appealed upwards, and the second panel just seems more of the same.

The Cal. Lege votes for gay domestic partnerships, with inheritance, property, child support and other miscellaneous rights and obligations, not quite as good as Vermont but what the hell. Referring to a proposition against gay marriage passed 3½ years ago, one Republican legislator says, "This is a bill that looks at the people of California and says we don't care what you think.” Funny, your position looks at the people of California and says we don’t care what you think, only what sort of genitalia you have.

The US is pressuring the EU not to test chemicals for harmful medical effects.

Observer investigation of the Bush admin’s interference in research on global warming, in which they censored reports and recruited oil-company-funded lobby groups to attack their own scientists and indeed their own head of the EPA.

The Sunday Times says some Israeli Air Force pilots have been refusing to undertake missions that would kill civilians.

The paper also has an article--I’ll give the link, which may or may not work for you--about the CIA recruiting from Saddam’s secret police for their knowledge of Baathists, Iran, and Syria.

There’s also a lovely piece about the Bombay Police’s “Dirty Harry,” a cop who has killed--so far--87 suspects. None of the people he shot ever lived. He has been a cop 13 years. His bosses see no problem with this, and there are Bollywood movies about him.

The angry left

Evidently the new right-wing term of contempt for the left wing is “the angry left.”

The British Labour Party loses its first by-election in 15 years, and a very safe Labour seat (Brent East) it used to be too before this 29% swing. A 29-year old female Liberal Democrat becomes the shockingly old youngest member of Parliament.

The Forbes 400 shows that the 400 richest Americans have increased their fortunes by 10% in the last year. The Bush tax cuts are working. And much of that is in stocks which are currently undervalued, so they’re even richer. The richest family on earth: the Waltons, collectively worth over $100 billion. WalMart gives its new employees information on how to collect food stamps.

A must-read, John Pilger on the state of Afghanistan, including the plight of women, now worse than under the Taliban. I can’t help but having noticed in the past few weeks how small the news stories on Afghanistan are, although US forces may be killing as many Afghans each week as they are Iraqis.

The Catholic church is suing other churches that call themselves “Catholic.” "These men dress as priests and conduct services that appear to be a Catholic Mass," said David Brown, attorney for the archdiocese. "You cannot simply set up in whatever church and call yourself Roman Catholic. That's fraud." This is massively silly, but the core of the church’s case is that they are real priests because God supports only the Catholic Church (TM). It’ll be interesting to watch them try to make their case in court without actually saying that.

Wesley Clark can’t make up his mind whether he would have voted for the Iraq war. What sort of leadership and decision-making skills do you have when you can’t even make a decision with the full benefit of hindsight, knowing how it came out, and it’s in the one field where you’re supposed to have experience?

A bit of a hissy

Berlusconi doesn’t just blame being drunk for his pro-Mussolini comments, he blames British reporters for getting him drunk. One of them, Boris Johnson, says that the only beverage taken was iced tea. Berlusconi turns out to be a remarkably cheap drunk.

Imperial Proconsul Paul Bremer blames Iran for attacks on US troops in Iraq, without mentioning the anti-Iran guerilla groups now offered refuge in Iraq.

Colin Powell & others have been saying that Iraqis are not “ready” to run their own country. As opposed to the Not Ready for Prime Time US Occupation, who once again proved their deep understanding of Iraqi culture by shooting up a wedding where guns were fired in celebration, killing a 14-year old. The Americans not the Iraqis, obviously; ours actually hit what they shoot at, because they typically use about 2,000 bullets.

Do you know the US military still hasn’t given any account of the killing of the 8 police in Fallujah last week?

I am about to use an Australian phrase which I just read and like. The phrase was used by a tv channel spokesman describing the reaction of some viewers to a talk show host breastfeeding her six-month old on-air, but I will apply it to GeeDubya who had “a bit of a hissy” about Yassir Arafat, who he described as a “failed leader”, causing 3 billion all across the world to mutter “well, he should know” simultaneously, their expelled breath causing Hurricane Isabel, according to well-known meteorological principles. You could look it up.

The major goober candidates who don’t speak with an Austrian accent (by the way, do the people who think he can pick up the basics of the job of governor quickly not experience any doubt when they hear the results of 35 years of learning English?) are also throwing a bit of a hissy, threatening to boycott next week’s debate unless the pre-released questions, which are already out and boring as shit, are dropped (Harry Shearer says negotiations on the debate broke down because Arnold wanted the answers in advance as well). The debate he missed yesterday was just across the street from where he went a couple of hours later to be “interviewed” by Larry King.

And what will the US Supreme Court make of all this?

John Ashcroft, during the great Patriot Act road tour of ‘03: “If your idea of a vacation is two weeks in a terrorist training camp" or "if you enjoy swapping recipes for chemical weapons from your 'Joy of Jihad' cookbook, you might be a target of the Patriot Act." Oh good, now he thinks he’s Jeff Foxworthy.

Vacations Of Mass Relaxation

Berlusconi apologizes to Jewish leaders for saying that Mussolini was benign. Note that it took him something like 6 days to do so. He had an excuse: he was drunk. So that’s all right then.

I’m not sure if Rummy and Bush actually went out of their way to say, finally, that Saddam Hussein was not connected to 9/11, or if reporters just got close enough to them to ask the question, but it’s been suggested that Cheney’s bullshit-fest Sunday was the last straw for the political media, which are increasingly tired of being lied through. (A thorough dissection of Cheney’s lies here. Well worth reading, even though none of you would have been taken in, to understand how blatantly the Bushies act as if we are all retarded.) Still, as every lefty blog points out, Bush made the case explicitly in his 3/18/03 letter to Congress certifying that he’d just tried his darndest, but war was now the only option: “(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”

Tuesday, Condi Rice said that Saddam was targeted because he posed a danger in "a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged".

Speaking of the region, Saudi Arabia is mulling over whether it wants nukes. To use against whom? No points for any reply that quotes a Tom Lehrer song.

Speaking of lefty blogs, the Democratic Party just started one, and it’s surprisingly good. They asked for slogans to promote Rumsfeld’s hilarious idea that Iraq should develop its tourism industry.

Colombian war lord, I mean president, Uribe, last mentioned here 2 days ago for his planned amnesty for death squads, today implemented an amnesty for the world’s biggest death squad, signing one of those agreements exempting Americans from extradition to the UN international war crimes court. Oh the irony.

Ashcroft says he’s never used the provision of the Patriot Act allowing access to library and bookstore records. Of course we can legally have only his word for it, because it’s against the Patriot Act for anybody to say differently. The first rule of Patriot Act: you do not talk about Patriot Act. Well, if it’s not being used, he won’t mind it being rescinded, now will he?

More surprises than you can possibly imagine

Quotes you cannot make up: Issa says the 9th Circuit decision to postpone the recall he paid for is a "judicial hijacking of the electoral process." Also, a lawyer for a pro-recall group protests that “The voters deserve finality.” (Possibly he means that rather than face another 6 months, we deserve to be put out of our misery.) Also something I missed, the Republican federal judge whose decision the 9th overturned said the recall election “reflects the will of the people.”

Some tiny technical problems with postponing: first, some people have already voted absentee, and those ballots would have to be destroyed, second, the new voting machines won’t actually be able to handle primaries plus initiatives plus a 135-candidate goober race.

Also, no one’s said anything yet, but I have to think a new deadline means that new candidates should be allowed to qualify. (I asked the Sacramento Bee’s political columnist, but no reply yet).

I don’t have any particular opinion about the 9th Circuit panel’s decision’s legal basis, which puts me at odds with an LA Times writer’s observation that most of the commentary on the decision was unexamined gut reaction; “Hence our edification at rulings that reinforce our beliefs and our impatience with contradiction. Call it faith-based irritation.”

I suspect you could use the argument about not using vote-counting devices which have widely differing rates of accuracy to invalidate every previous state-wide race, including Gray Davis’s election in 1998 and re-election in 2002. But the state had signed a consent agreement not to use punch-cards again, which should be enforced. Looked at pragmatically, though, the truncated campaign was a travesty, another 6 months of this nonsense would be ridiculous, shifting gears in the middle is unfair to candidates who planned their campaigns and spending based on the election being when it was called for, so this could be a combination of the worst of all worlds. Or the best. Davis and the Lege have pushed through some good legislation and I wouldn’t mind some more of that.

Davis, with his usual ability to find the inapt metaphor, said “This recall has been like a rollercoaster; there are more surprises than you can possibly imagine.” (Inapt because a rollercoaster at Disneyland designed to simulate a runaway train went off the rails a week ago, killing somebody).

The Senate voted to force more people on welfare into work and for more hours, but voted down helping them with childcare. Rick Santorum’s comment on that: “Making people struggle a little bit is not necessarily the worst thing.” Cool, someone toss that man into some quicksand. There was, of course, $1.5b the R’s are willing to use from the welfare budget to promote marriage.

The Canadians, as previously reported, have started selling cannabis for medical use. The first customers want their money back. Evidently the phrase “good enough for government work” doesn’t apply to reefer. Oh, and I promised a link to the governmental user’s guide. Here it is. Evidently, it can be prescribed for the cause of tremor I don’t have, but not the one I do. Chris, on the other hand.... Actually, ignore that link, here’s the one for the general public (PDF format, 2 pages).

The Senate votes to overturn Michael Powell’s media monopoly rules. Shockingly, the NYT says that this is only the second time the Senate has vetoed rules issued by a regulator. Do they know the meaning of oversight? House Republican leaders will refuse a vote, Bush is threatening a veto. And Powell said that the Senate resolution was “bordering on the absurd.” That sort of contempt by a lowly FCC head for the United States Senate should be grounds for a serious dressing down, if not dismissal. Who does he think he is, Rumsfeld talking about Powell’s father?

Terrible NYT headline: “US Uses Its Veto to Block Anti-Israel Measure in UN.” Let’s see, it called for an end to all violence and terrorism, supported the US’s “road map”, and asked Israel not to assassinate or exile Yassir Arafat. Where is it “anti-Israel” except in Israel’s mind? The US exercised its veto because the resolution did not include a condemnation of litterbugs. The US really doesn’t like litterbugs.

Burritos AND blow jobs

Clinton came to California to help Gray Davis out, and practically convinced me to vote for the recall by arguing for the most anemic form of democracy possible, an elective dictatorship punctuated every few years by elections: “You hire somebody in an election and you say, ‘Here’s your employment contract. Through good times and bad we are giving you a contract for four years. And then in four years we will make a judgment about what you have done…’” That’s not only the crappiest civics lesson ever, but coming from the king of the focus group and the eternal election campaign, it’s all a bit rich.

He makes the case that if this recall goes through, no politician will ever make a tough choice again. Again, this is Clinton speaking, the man whose idea of a tough choice was between a burrito and a blow job, but his conception of politics is that first you make yourself popular to win an election and then you make unpopular decisions. By implication, he’s saying that the true business of government, the most important decisions, are not made by any democratic process, but in spite of it. That if a choice is tough, it can’t be made democratically. One of two things has to happen under this theory: either a candidate lies and/or evades during the campaign, so that what you get isn’t what you voted for, or you elect someone based on their character and then sit back passively, trusting their judgment will always be correct. Neither one, Edmund Burke to the contrary, is democracy, and as I’m sure you’ve noticed that both describe the modus operandi of George W. Bush.

You can hardly say that politicians were elected to make hard choices, when none of them were elected on a platform of hard choices. It’s all tax cuts plus increased spending and endless wars, burritos and blow jobs. By now you must all be thinking that the American people would never elect a politician who spoke honestly. Possibly, but it’s a chicken and egg thing: did weak-minded voters create pandering politicians, or did the politicians condition voters to respond only to promises of sunshine and puppy dogs? In the end it doesn’t matter. Tough choices are just that, choices, which are tough because they are about making people’s lives harder; exactly the kinds of choices that require democratic input and public discussion.

Here endeth the sermon.

Uh, can I still vote for Thong Girl after that?

(Later): or indeed anyone. Yes, the 9th Circuit issued an order postponing the recall election, unless it is overturned by the US Supreme Court, but I can’t see the US Supreme Court violating the principle that every vote be counted equally and allowing faulty... oh, you know where I’m going with this. Actually, the 9th Circuit claims to have based its decision on the Supremes’ Bush v. Gore travesty, but you know they were snickering as they wrote that, although McClintock, Issa and others are attacking the decision as political in words identical to those of D’s in 2000. Anyway, if the vote gets pushed to March, at the same time as the D primaries, look for the R’s to do something to get their rabid supporters out there like, say, pushing an initiative to repeal driver’s licenses for illegal aliens. The Arnold may have lost this issue, since he seems to have violated his original visa requirements by working illegally here. Actually, a delay to March would definitely kill his candidacy, since he couldn’t possibly avoid taking positions on anything for that long. Well, maybe he could, I dunno, but it would be fun to watch him try.

The Post has a story about the decline and fall of efforts to modernize voting systems. It’s the sort of story that could have been written two years ago and the numbers filled in later, it was that obvious. Congress appropriated 60% of the money it should have (declining to 50% next fy), and none of it has been spent, because state plans have to be approved by a commission that Bush hasn’t bothered setting up. The Post talks very briefly at the end about the fact that the shiny new touch-screen systems states love so much may not actually work or be secure; there was a piece on McNeil-Lehrer today. Still, as the lawyer for one Cal. recall leader says, if punch cards were good enough to elect President Bush... All this would go away if we went back to paper and pencil, like god intended.

The US and EU so contrived the failure of the WTO trade talks so that it was the poor nations that walked out. And all the US wanted in return for not destroying Third World agricultural economies with subsidies, was to be allowed to take over completely every part of the economies of those countries that involved any implement more sophisticated than a hoe. Basically, multinationals could force countries to remove any laws that prevented them making money, including environmental, workplace safety, you name it. And the US rep then made some snotty comment about “can do” people versus “can’t do.”

Speaking of snotty comments, Colin Powell about the French on Iraq: “We were right, they were wrong, and I am here.” Remind yourself of this the next time you feel a need to think of the French as arrogant and obnoxious.

In the continuing Third Worldization of Italy, Berlusconi intends to have an amnesty for illegally built buildings, of which there are many. Forget the lack of planning permission or safety standards, just pay the government a fine. The motive for this, as government officials admit readily, is purely to raise revenue for the state.

A much more evil version of that is offered by the evil president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, who wants to give his buddies in the death squads absolute immunity for assassinations and atrocities in exchange for fines. The NYT says the US helped draft this piece of sliminess. Oh, and drug traffickers are buying membership in the death squads to get access to this immunity.

The British National Health Service is fading fast. Waiting lists and lack of specialists mean that surgery is 4-7 times as fatal as in the US. And here’s a story: a man on vacation in Spain gets a call that his mother in Derbyshire, 86, is going into the hospital with pneumonia. She called an ambulance, he went to the airport in another country, guess who got to the hospital first. She had a stroke the next day and died.