Oh, and a Roma was elected to the European Parliament for the first time, for Hungary.
As Paul Krugman notes in a column on Ashcroft (channeling the Comic Store Guy, he called him the worst..attorney general..ever), such is the man’s credibility that when he held a news conference Monday to announce the foiling of a dastardly plot to blow up a shopping mall, less than a day after the release of a DOJ memo justifying torture, and following his usual practice of doing this sort of thing as a distraction (the announcement came 7 months after the arrest), no one treated it seriously. If his own paper, the NYT, believed that there had been a real terrorist plot to blow up a mall, it would have placed the story on the front page, not on the bottom of page 14.
Yeah, I knew it, there’s another Confederate widow out there.
The Israeli attorney general has decided not to prosecute Ariel Sharon or his incredibly slimy son for taking bribes. Which has to piss off the guy who will still be prosecuted for bribing them. They’re essentially saying that not only did he bribe Sharon, but did it so incompetently that Sharon didn’t even know he was being bribed. Sharon, who gets to keep his job, presumably won’t mind being labeled too stupid to realize that the people giving his son all that money expected something in return.
I know it would be too much to expect this administration to actually stop terrorist acts, but now it can’t even count them? And took credit for reducing terrorism.
Article on the Pentagon’s new ability to spy secretly on Americans.
The 9/11 Commission, you will have heard, said today that there was no link between 9/11 and Iraq, despite what Bush said yesterday and Cheney a day before. Hopefully somebody will conduct a poll to determine how many Americans are still ignorant of this; the results will no doubt be depressing, but at least such a poll couldn’t be kept secret, like the one Bremer conducted of Iraqis which was suppressed when it revealed that they would feel safer if US troops would just get the hell out.
What you may have missed, given the press coverage, is the finding that 9/11 was implemented in reaction to Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in September 2000, and was originally planned to take place during a Sharon visit to the US.
An Italian senator in Berlusconi’s party is nearing the end of his trial for Mafia associations (his 3rd trial, after convictions for accounting fraud and extortion). So Berlusconi has made the man a delegate to the Council of Europe, which gives him immunity--right in the middle of the trial!
The first virus for mobile phones has been created. Heh heh heh.
Correction: Chris Bell, who is filing the corruption charges against DeLay, is not an ex-Congresscritter but a lame-duck Congresscritter, thanks to DeLay’s gerrymandering of Texas congressional districts.
Bush in support of his stem-cell research ban: "Life is a creation of God, not a commodity to be exploited by man." I’m assuming Bush is now a vegetarian.
(Insert clever segue here): the US army will charge a captain who shot a wounded Iraqi. “Military officials told NBC's Jim Miklaszewski that the soldier was apparently acting in good faith, shooting the badly wounded driver to "put him out of misery."
Time magazine discloses Cheney’s undisclosed location, and the White House is so pissed off: “One White House officials fumed Monday night: "TIME magazine would have revealed the secret location of Anne Frank, if they knew it."” This is the only known instance of Dick Cheney being compared to Anne Frank.
During the Cold War, those guys who sat in underground bunkers in Montana were prevented from launching missiles by a sophisticated 8-digit code. Unfortunately, according to one of those very guys, the military didn’t really like being slowed down and set the code to 00000000.
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Monday, June 14, 2004
F****** is F******. And it's going to stay F******
European Parliament elections today. In Britain: hammering, bloody noses, etc etc. There should be a prize of some sort for the first newspaper that says that the voters gave Tony a bitch-slapping. Actually, ruling parties just about everywhere are pounded, including in France and Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland, so it’s not just about Iraq. The Greens got 11% in Germany. Berlusconi violated electoral laws by ranting at reporters while voting was going on, outside a polling both yet, after having text-messaged everyone in Italy with a toy, I mean phone, capable of receiving text messages the day before.
In all those Eastern European countries having their first Euro-elections, turnout is under 30%.
Interestingly, Sinn Fein has won seats in the European Parliament representing both Britain and Ireland.
Britain also returned 12 members of the UK Independence Party, who plan a guerilla campaign against the Parl.
The torture story keeps moving forward, fleshing out what we already know and pushing it back further in time. Newsweek pushes torture discussions back to November 2001, when the CIA got more heavily involved. The NYT says that complaints about abuse of prisoners were made months earlier than the Pentagon has admitted.
TWO THUMBS UP: And Lynndie England isn’t going down without a fight. Her list of potential witnesses for her hearing reads like a blackmail threat: she plans to call Cheney, Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, whose 2002 pro-torture memo (warning: pdf, 2.9 mb) Marc Cooper notes will disqualify Gonzales from the Supreme Court)(I’ve only taken a quick look, but it looks even more like a smoking gun than the CIA memo), and a certain inmate whose photo we’ve already seen, for whom a witness box would be a step up. She could strip the Bush administration’s torture policy naked, put a leash on it and drag it around the courtroom, metaphorically speaking.
The West Midlands police have recruited the first ever one-legged policeman in Britain. I can’t be the only person to have read that and thought of this Peter Cook/Dudley Moore sketch.
Saw Afghan president-with-a-furry-hat Karzai on McNeil-Lehrer today, saying that elections would go forward in September. This would violate the electoral laws, since voter registration isn’t close to complete, but Margaret Warner didn’t know enough to ask him that question.
Waiting to see if the shit hits the fan over Bush trying to get the Vatican to campaign for him, and to do so by further attacks on gay marriage. The key Bush quote was “not all the American bishops are with me.” Considering he’s running against a Catholic, this is gross.
The Supreme Court refused to remove “under God” from the pledge of allegiance, by ruling that the little girl’s father may be her father, but he doesn’t “count” as her father. Fortunately Scalia had to recuse himself, or we’d probably have wound up with “one nation under our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Latest stupid unnecessary Hollywood remake: Bullitt.
In Russia, someone stole a porta-potty, loading it onto a tractor-trailer. And yes, there was someone using it at the time.
A former Congresscritter will file an ethics complaint against Tom DeLay, shattering the ethically-challenged “gentlemen’s agreement” not to file such charges. In response, Congressasshole John T. Doolittle says that he will file charges against some Democrat, but he doesn’t know who. He actually admits that this is pure retaliation--“you kill my dog, I'll kill your cat.” is how he charmingly puts it, presumably after spending too much time with Bill Frist. Link
From the Sunday Times:
In all those Eastern European countries having their first Euro-elections, turnout is under 30%.
Interestingly, Sinn Fein has won seats in the European Parliament representing both Britain and Ireland.
Britain also returned 12 members of the UK Independence Party, who plan a guerilla campaign against the Parl.
The torture story keeps moving forward, fleshing out what we already know and pushing it back further in time. Newsweek pushes torture discussions back to November 2001, when the CIA got more heavily involved. The NYT says that complaints about abuse of prisoners were made months earlier than the Pentagon has admitted.
TWO THUMBS UP: And Lynndie England isn’t going down without a fight. Her list of potential witnesses for her hearing reads like a blackmail threat: she plans to call Cheney, Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, whose 2002 pro-torture memo (warning: pdf, 2.9 mb) Marc Cooper notes will disqualify Gonzales from the Supreme Court)(I’ve only taken a quick look, but it looks even more like a smoking gun than the CIA memo), and a certain inmate whose photo we’ve already seen, for whom a witness box would be a step up. She could strip the Bush administration’s torture policy naked, put a leash on it and drag it around the courtroom, metaphorically speaking.
The West Midlands police have recruited the first ever one-legged policeman in Britain. I can’t be the only person to have read that and thought of this Peter Cook/Dudley Moore sketch.
Saw Afghan president-with-a-furry-hat Karzai on McNeil-Lehrer today, saying that elections would go forward in September. This would violate the electoral laws, since voter registration isn’t close to complete, but Margaret Warner didn’t know enough to ask him that question.
Waiting to see if the shit hits the fan over Bush trying to get the Vatican to campaign for him, and to do so by further attacks on gay marriage. The key Bush quote was “not all the American bishops are with me.” Considering he’s running against a Catholic, this is gross.
The Supreme Court refused to remove “under God” from the pledge of allegiance, by ruling that the little girl’s father may be her father, but he doesn’t “count” as her father. Fortunately Scalia had to recuse himself, or we’d probably have wound up with “one nation under our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Latest stupid unnecessary Hollywood remake: Bullitt.
In Russia, someone stole a porta-potty, loading it onto a tractor-trailer. And yes, there was someone using it at the time.
A former Congresscritter will file an ethics complaint against Tom DeLay, shattering the ethically-challenged “gentlemen’s agreement” not to file such charges. In response, Congressasshole John T. Doolittle says that he will file charges against some Democrat, but he doesn’t know who. He actually admits that this is pure retaliation--“you kill my dog, I'll kill your cat.” is how he charmingly puts it, presumably after spending too much time with Bill Frist. Link
From the Sunday Times:
Cheap laugh of the week.
The people of F******, Austria, have rejected plans to change the name of their village (pronounced Fooking and spelt with fewer asterisks). The population of 150 considered a new name to stop their road signs being stolen. "Everybody here knows what it means in English," said mayor Siegfried Hoeppl, "but for us F****** is F******. And it's going to stay F******." Similar votes have taken place in the Austrian villages of Vomitville and Windpassing.
Sunday, June 13, 2004
Ratting out the paedophiles
Have I been using the British spelling of paedophiles all this time? Anyway, some unnamed bishop (or somesuch) on McNeil-Lehrer today referred to informing the appropriate authorities as ratting out priests. Others still treat it as their personal right to decide what crimes to report to those legally responsible for enforcing the law.
That might have been the stupidest thing I heard out of the Catholic church today, but for the canonization of Padre Pio (see the London Times for Saturday on this, it’s hilarious), who died in 1968 and who had stigmata, which even the church once realized came from nitric acid, and could be in two places a the same time. Now it’s an opportunity to sell cheap trinkets to tourists.
Speaking of cheap trinkets, a crewman of the Enola Gay has auctioned off parts of the Little Boy nuclear device, 2 plugs used to keep it from going off in the plane. The lucky buyer is a scientist who paid $167,000 (after the US government lost a lawsuit trying to stop the sale because 1) it’s government property, 2) it endangers national security, 3) they wanted to use it in the Smithsonian), because Hiroshima was what inspired him to become a scientist. So amorality isn’t confined to Catholic bishops.
The queen is giving out honors to celebrate her Jubilee, including to Mick Jagger and Harold Pinter, who is to be made a Companion of Honour in a ceremony expected to be marked by long awkward pauses (what, you thought I’d make a Mick Jagger joke rather than a Harold Pinter joke?).
London Times headline: FBI and CIA Call a Truce on Leaks, or So a Leak Says.
The loya jirga is over. The UN and the Afghan government allowed war criminals to participate, women were present but had no power, there were armed thugs everywhere to intimidate delegates, and everything was decided before the thing even opened. So while it doesn’t much resemble democracy, it does look an awful like a Republican National Convention.
The partisan fighting has again postponed the start of investigations of the intelligence failures of 9/11, and all legislative measures to prevent another Enron have also stalled out (the role of Phil Gramm, whose wife worked for Enron, in preventing more transparent accountancy rules, is especially egregious). The US just cannot learn from its mistakes.
And it exports them, if you follow a Guardian columnist who blamed the current image problems of the Blair government on its having followed Bill Clinton’s spinmeistery a little too slavishly. Last week they were caught trying to find out if members of a group of survivors of the Paddington train crash, who are lobbying for better safety measures, were Tories, in order that they could smear.... train crash survivors. This week the fuss is over Blair’s evident attempts to get a bigger role in the Queen Mum’s funeral (actually, although I can’t be arsed to read the 29-page file of documents Downing Street just released, it does look like he was just trying to find out what he was supposed to do. Still, it brings him into conflict with the royal official whose title is Black Rod, and you can imagine how much fun the press is having with that).
That might have been the stupidest thing I heard out of the Catholic church today, but for the canonization of Padre Pio (see the London Times for Saturday on this, it’s hilarious), who died in 1968 and who had stigmata, which even the church once realized came from nitric acid, and could be in two places a the same time. Now it’s an opportunity to sell cheap trinkets to tourists.
Speaking of cheap trinkets, a crewman of the Enola Gay has auctioned off parts of the Little Boy nuclear device, 2 plugs used to keep it from going off in the plane. The lucky buyer is a scientist who paid $167,000 (after the US government lost a lawsuit trying to stop the sale because 1) it’s government property, 2) it endangers national security, 3) they wanted to use it in the Smithsonian), because Hiroshima was what inspired him to become a scientist. So amorality isn’t confined to Catholic bishops.
The queen is giving out honors to celebrate her Jubilee, including to Mick Jagger and Harold Pinter, who is to be made a Companion of Honour in a ceremony expected to be marked by long awkward pauses (what, you thought I’d make a Mick Jagger joke rather than a Harold Pinter joke?).
London Times headline: FBI and CIA Call a Truce on Leaks, or So a Leak Says.
The loya jirga is over. The UN and the Afghan government allowed war criminals to participate, women were present but had no power, there were armed thugs everywhere to intimidate delegates, and everything was decided before the thing even opened. So while it doesn’t much resemble democracy, it does look an awful like a Republican National Convention.
The partisan fighting has again postponed the start of investigations of the intelligence failures of 9/11, and all legislative measures to prevent another Enron have also stalled out (the role of Phil Gramm, whose wife worked for Enron, in preventing more transparent accountancy rules, is especially egregious). The US just cannot learn from its mistakes.
And it exports them, if you follow a Guardian columnist who blamed the current image problems of the Blair government on its having followed Bill Clinton’s spinmeistery a little too slavishly. Last week they were caught trying to find out if members of a group of survivors of the Paddington train crash, who are lobbying for better safety measures, were Tories, in order that they could smear.... train crash survivors. This week the fuss is over Blair’s evident attempts to get a bigger role in the Queen Mum’s funeral (actually, although I can’t be arsed to read the 29-page file of documents Downing Street just released, it does look like he was just trying to find out what he was supposed to do. Still, it brings him into conflict with the royal official whose title is Black Rod, and you can imagine how much fun the press is having with that).
Saturday, June 12, 2004
Fits like a white stetson
WaPo: “"Our 40th president wore his title lightly, and it fit like a white Stetson," said Bush, who is wearing such a hat in the main photo on his campaign Web site.”
Bush of course is most famous for wearing a flight suit, which didn’t fit especially well, even with the sock stuffed down the front.
Also, how well does a Stetson normally fit? If it doesn’t come down over your eyes it pretty much fits, right? And do white ones fit better? I’m sorry, this makes no sense at all.
The NYT says that early in the Iraq war, there were 50 air strikes aimed at assassinating various Iraqi leaders. All failed. Many killed civilians.
Frank Rich mentions something about Reagan I’d meant to contrive a way to work in: when he returned from a presidential tour of South America, he expressed amazement that they were all individual countries. Another I haven’t found a way to use: his claim that people used food stamps to buy a pack of gum and then use the change to buy vodka (food stamps don’t work that way). And about his radio baseball announcer days: someone, Bush the Elder I think, mentioned his ability to make people think they were seeing the game just as Reagan was. Except Reagan wasn’t at those games, he was making up the details based on wire reports. As good a metaphor as any. Reagan’s much-vaunted ability to make Americans feel good about themselves again--nobody ever says how he was supposed to have done that. My answer: anaesthesia. The kindly grampa act was to assure the public that they need no longer pay the sort of attention to what their government was doing in their names that had been felt necessary since Watergate.
Speaking of paying attention, here’s an articleabout the secret American gulags and the “renditions” of people, some after being found innocent by courts, to countries where they will be tortured, such as Morocco, Syria, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Thailand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman. What excellent company we are in. In Reagan’s time, it was a secret fraternity of death squads, now it’s torturers. Now, torture is bad, I’m presuming I don’t have to tell you, and encouraging other countries to torture is bad, but one of the reasons the Bushies do things this way is to keep the extent of torture secret. Which means they’ve put a blackmail weapon into the hands of, well, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, etc.
Bush in the Vatican asked that US bishops be ordered to attack gay marriage, abortion and Democrats even more.
The difference between regulation of voting machines and slot machines: Link
Of course slot machines are just a method to separate chumps from their change, while voting machines....never mind.
Bush of course is most famous for wearing a flight suit, which didn’t fit especially well, even with the sock stuffed down the front.
Also, how well does a Stetson normally fit? If it doesn’t come down over your eyes it pretty much fits, right? And do white ones fit better? I’m sorry, this makes no sense at all.
The NYT says that early in the Iraq war, there were 50 air strikes aimed at assassinating various Iraqi leaders. All failed. Many killed civilians.
Frank Rich mentions something about Reagan I’d meant to contrive a way to work in: when he returned from a presidential tour of South America, he expressed amazement that they were all individual countries. Another I haven’t found a way to use: his claim that people used food stamps to buy a pack of gum and then use the change to buy vodka (food stamps don’t work that way). And about his radio baseball announcer days: someone, Bush the Elder I think, mentioned his ability to make people think they were seeing the game just as Reagan was. Except Reagan wasn’t at those games, he was making up the details based on wire reports. As good a metaphor as any. Reagan’s much-vaunted ability to make Americans feel good about themselves again--nobody ever says how he was supposed to have done that. My answer: anaesthesia. The kindly grampa act was to assure the public that they need no longer pay the sort of attention to what their government was doing in their names that had been felt necessary since Watergate.
Speaking of paying attention, here’s an articleabout the secret American gulags and the “renditions” of people, some after being found innocent by courts, to countries where they will be tortured, such as Morocco, Syria, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Thailand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman. What excellent company we are in. In Reagan’s time, it was a secret fraternity of death squads, now it’s torturers. Now, torture is bad, I’m presuming I don’t have to tell you, and encouraging other countries to torture is bad, but one of the reasons the Bushies do things this way is to keep the extent of torture secret. Which means they’ve put a blackmail weapon into the hands of, well, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, etc.
Bush in the Vatican asked that US bishops be ordered to attack gay marriage, abortion and Democrats even more.
The difference between regulation of voting machines and slot machines: Link
Of course slot machines are just a method to separate chumps from their change, while voting machines....never mind.
Friday, June 11, 2004
Drubbing--a word you don't hear used nearly often enough
I hope everyone enjoyed the 7th day of Reagahannakuh.
Local elections in Britain. The press are divided on the results, with the Guardian saying that Labour was given a beating, the Times saying it was given a kicking, the Indy that Blair was given a bloody nose, the Guardian that he was badly mauled, and UP that he was given a drubbing. Much of the backlash is attributed to a dislike of violence...in Iraq anyway. Labour came in third in total votes.
The Dutch government also did badly in European elections because of Iraq.
Kerry really is as stupid as I thought. He evidently asked McCain to be his veep and was turned down. So now he looks desperate, uncommitted to his own alleged principles, and a loser. I’m sure Ross Perot is available.
The Israeli government, which seems to subscribe to certain stereotypes about the Jews, is offering Gaza settlers $300,000 per family to get out.
Ashcroft refused, as I’ve said, to invoke executive privilege or anything else to justify his stonewalling (not even “writ of douchebaggery”? asked Jon Stewart). American Prospect has turned up this quote from a Senator Ashcroft in May 1998: “Part and parcel of the President's abuse of executive privilege is his unwillingness to acknowledge the mere fact that he has asserted the privilege.”
Afghan elections are being postponed by at least a month. In addition to the violence now escalating against foreigners, there’s the fact that none of the countries which pledged money to pay for the elections, including the US, have paid up a single cent. Almost as if our objective there wasn’t democracy after all.
Local elections in Britain. The press are divided on the results, with the Guardian saying that Labour was given a beating, the Times saying it was given a kicking, the Indy that Blair was given a bloody nose, the Guardian that he was badly mauled, and UP that he was given a drubbing. Much of the backlash is attributed to a dislike of violence...in Iraq anyway. Labour came in third in total votes.
The Dutch government also did badly in European elections because of Iraq.
Kerry really is as stupid as I thought. He evidently asked McCain to be his veep and was turned down. So now he looks desperate, uncommitted to his own alleged principles, and a loser. I’m sure Ross Perot is available.
The Israeli government, which seems to subscribe to certain stereotypes about the Jews, is offering Gaza settlers $300,000 per family to get out.
Ashcroft refused, as I’ve said, to invoke executive privilege or anything else to justify his stonewalling (not even “writ of douchebaggery”? asked Jon Stewart). American Prospect has turned up this quote from a Senator Ashcroft in May 1998: “Part and parcel of the President's abuse of executive privilege is his unwillingness to acknowledge the mere fact that he has asserted the privilege.”
Afghan elections are being postponed by at least a month. In addition to the violence now escalating against foreigners, there’s the fact that none of the countries which pledged money to pay for the elections, including the US, have paid up a single cent. Almost as if our objective there wasn’t democracy after all.
That might provide comfort for you
After this post, I promise to stop with the “Saint Ronny” thing (unless I think of something else, of course). For a replacement, what does everyone think of “Darth Gipper”?
Marc Cooper observes the crowds lining up to look at the Gippercoffin: “Never before in human history has the funeral of any Head of State been attended by SO many people clad in tennis shoes, jeans or shorts.”, suggesting that they aren’t mourning so much as “cruising one more pop culture happening.” Like a Lord of the Rings premiere.
However let’s not underestimate the danger of pop culture. These are the top 2 stories in the Europe section of the Indy:
Best quote from one of the gawkers was someone who said that Reagan was the greatest human being who ever lived.
Elsewhere in Dress-Down Thursday news, Jacques Chirac was the only G8 leader who showed up in a tie, bucking Bush’s attempt to enforce Cowboy Casual in an attempt to achieve that natural macho crap seen in the picture of Saint Ronny of Death Valley Days featured on the covers of two newsmagazines (only to discover, just like his father did, that if you have to work at it, you’ve already failed). Bush got his own back by feeding his guests cheese burgers and forcing Chirac to pretend he liked it.
I haven’t mentioned the story about the US soldier who was told to pretend to be a prisoner at Guantanamo, just like Robert Redford in Brubaker, and was beaten into a pulp, so that he had to be invalided out. It would be funny, except it’s not.
In a story I can’t read yet, a London Times columnist says, “For the second time in a year, George Bush and Tony Blair have declared "mission accomplished" and a "victory for the Iraqi people." Another group of local people has been told to pretend to run the place.” Explains my sense of deja vu. Remember when Pete Wilson was running for president how he kept holding ceremonies announcing he was running for president, because no one had paid attention to the previous one?
Evidently there’s an antidote to chemical attacks by terrorists (mustard gas, sarin, etc). It has FDA approval, but the US Army isn’t letting anyone buy it, including local first responders, who still have to use soap and water.
PISSING CONTEST: The Post says “A military intelligence interrogator also told investigators that two dog handlers at Abu Ghraib were "having a contest" to see how many detainees they could make involuntarily urinate out of fear of the dogs”. It’s nice to have a hobby.
At Bush’s press conference at the G8, he defined his terms: “And we're waiting for the Iraqi government to assess the situation and make requests to the free world. We'll respond to their requests when sovereignty is fully transferred. That's the definition of full sovereignty. You see, when a government is fully sovereign, they then make requests on behalf of their people.” The question was about how none of the other G8 countries were offering troops, debt relief or anything else. Bush’s answer, evidently, is that they’re just waiting to be asked.
And there was this exchange:
The Post report (which is what had me search out the transcript, began, “President Bush said Thursday that he expects U.S. authorities to follow the law when interrogating prisoners abroad, but he declined to say whether he believes torture is permitted under the law.”
On that subject, Jess Bravin of the Wall St. Journal has yet another article, enumerating some of the 24 torture methods approved by Big Bad Apple Rumsfeld in December 2002 for Guantanamo: stress positions" for as long as four hours, hood them and subject them to 20-hour-long interrogations, "fear of dogs", "mild non-injurious physical contact," "deprivation of light and sound," "use of hood as long as it does not restrict breathing and under direct observation," "removal of clothing" and "forced grooming (i.e., shaving of facial hair)." The Post has an article on the use of dogs, without addressing the status of dogs in Islamic cultures, which might make them scarier (or their use more demeaning) than they already are.
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/content/showitem.cfm/issue.1108/section.D-Day
Marc Cooper observes the crowds lining up to look at the Gippercoffin: “Never before in human history has the funeral of any Head of State been attended by SO many people clad in tennis shoes, jeans or shorts.”, suggesting that they aren’t mourning so much as “cruising one more pop culture happening.” Like a Lord of the Rings premiere.
However let’s not underestimate the danger of pop culture. These are the top 2 stories in the Europe section of the Indy:
Fourth Milan death linked to Satanist rock band(Later:) Cooper’s right about the “mourners.” I know because C-SPAN ran something like 5 hours of people walking past the casket. You can always tell when the sweeps period is past. It wasn’t the most exciting television ever, but if Saint Ronny of the Jelly Beans rose from the dead, C-SPAN was going to be right there.
11 June 2004
New details have emerged this week of an alleged cabal of young Satanists connected to Milan's heavy metal scene, who are accused of murdering at least two people while drunk and high.
Woman denies part in fatal 'Jackass' stunt
11 June 2004
A British waitress working in Austria has denied charges of urging a drunken restaurant customer to ram his head into a wall, in a lethal stunt apparently inspired by the cult MTV show Jackass.
Best quote from one of the gawkers was someone who said that Reagan was the greatest human being who ever lived.
Elsewhere in Dress-Down Thursday news, Jacques Chirac was the only G8 leader who showed up in a tie, bucking Bush’s attempt to enforce Cowboy Casual in an attempt to achieve that natural macho crap seen in the picture of Saint Ronny of Death Valley Days featured on the covers of two newsmagazines (only to discover, just like his father did, that if you have to work at it, you’ve already failed). Bush got his own back by feeding his guests cheese burgers and forcing Chirac to pretend he liked it.
I haven’t mentioned the story about the US soldier who was told to pretend to be a prisoner at Guantanamo, just like Robert Redford in Brubaker, and was beaten into a pulp, so that he had to be invalided out. It would be funny, except it’s not.
In a story I can’t read yet, a London Times columnist says, “For the second time in a year, George Bush and Tony Blair have declared "mission accomplished" and a "victory for the Iraqi people." Another group of local people has been told to pretend to run the place.” Explains my sense of deja vu. Remember when Pete Wilson was running for president how he kept holding ceremonies announcing he was running for president, because no one had paid attention to the previous one?
Evidently there’s an antidote to chemical attacks by terrorists (mustard gas, sarin, etc). It has FDA approval, but the US Army isn’t letting anyone buy it, including local first responders, who still have to use soap and water.
PISSING CONTEST: The Post says “A military intelligence interrogator also told investigators that two dog handlers at Abu Ghraib were "having a contest" to see how many detainees they could make involuntarily urinate out of fear of the dogs”. It’s nice to have a hobby.
At Bush’s press conference at the G8, he defined his terms: “And we're waiting for the Iraqi government to assess the situation and make requests to the free world. We'll respond to their requests when sovereignty is fully transferred. That's the definition of full sovereignty. You see, when a government is fully sovereign, they then make requests on behalf of their people.” The question was about how none of the other G8 countries were offering troops, debt relief or anything else. Bush’s answer, evidently, is that they’re just waiting to be asked.
And there was this exchange:
Q Mr. President, I wanted to return to the question of torture. What we've learned from these memos this week is that the Department of Justice lawyers and the Pentagon lawyers have essentially worked out a way that U.S. officials can torture detainees without running afoul of the law. So when you say that you want the U.S. to adhere to international and U.S. laws, that's not very comforting. This is a moral question: Is torture ever justified?Wasn’t that a good question? Do I have to tell you the reporter wasn’t American, but British? You’ll note he specifically said it was a moral question, but Bush answered as if it was a legal one. When His Holiness George W. Bush avoids a moral question, you know you’re in trouble. At this point, he’d obviously prefer a math question to a moral one.
THE PRESIDENT: Look, I'm going to say it one more time. If I -- maybe -- maybe I can be more clear. The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That ought to comfort you. We're a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might look at those laws, and that might provide comfort for you. And those were the instructions out of -- from me to the government.
The Post report (which is what had me search out the transcript, began, “President Bush said Thursday that he expects U.S. authorities to follow the law when interrogating prisoners abroad, but he declined to say whether he believes torture is permitted under the law.”
On that subject, Jess Bravin of the Wall St. Journal has yet another article, enumerating some of the 24 torture methods approved by Big Bad Apple Rumsfeld in December 2002 for Guantanamo: stress positions" for as long as four hours, hood them and subject them to 20-hour-long interrogations, "fear of dogs", "mild non-injurious physical contact," "deprivation of light and sound," "use of hood as long as it does not restrict breathing and under direct observation," "removal of clothing" and "forced grooming (i.e., shaving of facial hair)." The Post has an article on the use of dogs, without addressing the status of dogs in Islamic cultures, which might make them scarier (or their use more demeaning) than they already are.
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/content/showitem.cfm/issue.1108/section.D-Day
Thursday, June 10, 2004
I will gladly pay you 5 Reagans Monday for a hamburger today
It’s funny, no wait I mean sad, because it’s true.
Tried to watch McNeil-Lehrer today, but they seemed to be showing re-runs of the Princess Di funeral. Saint Ronny of AIDS, What AIDS? has been flown to DC, the city he loathed, and will then be flown back to California, which he liked in spite of the many pollution-causing trees (my mother asks who gets his frequent flier miles) for burial in Simi Valley, where I believe his pall-bearers will be the Rodney King jury.
There’s a lot of silly talk about putting Saint Ronny of the Laffer Curve on the dime or the $10 bill or something. Given the record deficits he ushered in, I say put his picture on all the imaginary money.
Zowie Alawi turns out to have been involved with terrorist bombings in the 1990s. So let’s call him a freedom fighter, in a fitting tribute to Saint Ronny of UNITA.
The British health secretary has received a bit of criticism for saying the government should leave smoking alone because it’s one of the few pleasures the poor can afford.
Florida’s secretary of state (the office used to be independent, if you can call Katherine Harris independent, but is now directly under the Jebster) is purging voter rolls of alleged felons, using highly faulty lists. Wouldn’t it be funny if it came down to Florida again?
No, no it wouldn’t.
An Austrian woman gets married with a 1.7 mile-long veil.
Tried to watch McNeil-Lehrer today, but they seemed to be showing re-runs of the Princess Di funeral. Saint Ronny of AIDS, What AIDS? has been flown to DC, the city he loathed, and will then be flown back to California, which he liked in spite of the many pollution-causing trees (my mother asks who gets his frequent flier miles) for burial in Simi Valley, where I believe his pall-bearers will be the Rodney King jury.
There’s a lot of silly talk about putting Saint Ronny of the Laffer Curve on the dime or the $10 bill or something. Given the record deficits he ushered in, I say put his picture on all the imaginary money.
Zowie Alawi turns out to have been involved with terrorist bombings in the 1990s. So let’s call him a freedom fighter, in a fitting tribute to Saint Ronny of UNITA.
The British health secretary has received a bit of criticism for saying the government should leave smoking alone because it’s one of the few pleasures the poor can afford.
Florida’s secretary of state (the office used to be independent, if you can call Katherine Harris independent, but is now directly under the Jebster) is purging voter rolls of alleged felons, using highly faulty lists. Wouldn’t it be funny if it came down to Florida again?
No, no it wouldn’t.
An Austrian woman gets married with a 1.7 mile-long veil.
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Working towards His Fraudulency
More details on the torture memo. No more talk about rotten apples is permissible. A must-read, and must-vomit-afterwards.
I’ve just heard a useful phrase for attempts to blame subordinates for torture, other policies: “power-laundering.” The article was not about Rumsfeld and Bush, but Saddam. There’s a problem with trying Saddam: no written “smoking guns,” no one willing to testify against him. Or be a judge. Or a prosecutor. The only Iraqi prosecutor whose name is public is one of the Chalabis.
I was wondering who would be the 1st to use the obvious pun: Mourning in America. The winner is: Wonkette. Who notes this interview on Fox, which has run out of famous Reaganites, with a Marine guarding the coffin:
Condi Rice: “Yes, I do think that President Bush is inspired by that kind of plain-spokenness [by Saint Ronny of the MX Missile], about that willingness to tell the truth.”
Zimbabwe to nationalize all land. That should go well.
The Wall St. Journal’s follow-up article Tuesday quotes a Pentagon spokesmodel on disagreements over the torture rules: “I am sure that in any broad group like that you will have dissenting opinions that go to the left and to the right.” I quote that in order to point out that he considers the question of whether to torture people to be a “left-right” one. Others have pointed out that the head of the panel, Air Force General Counsel Mary Walker, is outspokenly Evangelical Christian. Billmon.org alternates pious quotes from an interview she gave with passages from the memo. And not to suggest that this is a religious war or anything, but William Boykin was in charge of the actual torture. And actual torturer Charles Graner: “The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'”
Ashcroft refused to release the torture memo to Congress although, psst, if you know any Congresscritters, tell them to go to
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/military_0604.pdf
PDF format, 2 mb (nothing that’s not in the articles, though).
Neither would he give the basis for his refusal (the president can order him not to give testimony or release documents he claims are covered by executive privilege, but if there is no such order, Ashcroft was in contempt of Congress, and Ashcroft refused even to say whether such an order had been given or not). It was a sorry performance, arrogant while at the same time looking like a puppy about to be hit with a rolled-up newspaper. Chuck Schumer of all people became the latest Congresscritter to defend the use of torture.
This story is taking responsibility for torture further and further up the food chain. But the Justice Dept memo has a flaw: it fails to understand political realities. Even if you agree with their position that the president has an inherent authority to authorize torture, in the real world Bush would never sign such an order. He might wink at it, who will rid me of this turbulent priest-type situation, but he’d never leave a smoking memo or sign anything, probably never have to talk about it, because Rumsfeld etc would know what he wanted done and just do it. In Germany, this was called “working towards the führer” and is the reason there is nothing directly linking Hitler to the Holocaust. In practice, this means that the legal protection that the memo claims exists for torturers acting under presidential orders can’t be invoked.
The LA Times has a story about John Walker Lindh. We saw footage more than 2 years ago of Johnny Taliban being treated much as the Abu Ghraib prisoners were. We saw a CIA agent threaten him with death, on film, and somehow it was a big surprise 2 years later that we did the same thing to people who weren’t US citizens.
The Bush campaign has been trying to get churches to campaign for him. This would endanger their tax-exempt status, it was pointed out, so the R’s have decided to fiddle with the law by letting them break the law a few times (two deliberate endorsements per year and one “unintentional,” whatever that might mean) without being punished. Well, as they like to say about torture, if the president orders it, how can it be illegal?
Today is the 50th anniversary of Joseph Welch’s “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” response to Joseph McCarthy.
The UN resolution gave the Iraqi “government” no veto over the activities of US troops except to kick them out altogether, but gave it control of its own alleged army. What happens if they decide to invade the Kurdish areas (the Kurds got screwed, which was so inevitable and was done so parenthetically that I’ve put the fact in parentheses) while the US military is still in the country, we don’t know.
I’ve just heard a useful phrase for attempts to blame subordinates for torture, other policies: “power-laundering.” The article was not about Rumsfeld and Bush, but Saddam. There’s a problem with trying Saddam: no written “smoking guns,” no one willing to testify against him. Or be a judge. Or a prosecutor. The only Iraqi prosecutor whose name is public is one of the Chalabis.
I was wondering who would be the 1st to use the obvious pun: Mourning in America. The winner is: Wonkette. Who notes this interview on Fox, which has run out of famous Reaganites, with a Marine guarding the coffin:
Fox: Did you ever meet Reagan?Wonkette: Clearly, things are getting desperate; at some point, they may have to interview someone who didn't like the guy.
Marine (who appears to be approximately 18 years old): Uh, no, sir.
Fox: How much of an honor is it to be doing this duty?
Marine: It's a great honor.
Condi Rice: “Yes, I do think that President Bush is inspired by that kind of plain-spokenness [by Saint Ronny of the MX Missile], about that willingness to tell the truth.”
Zimbabwe to nationalize all land. That should go well.
The Wall St. Journal’s follow-up article Tuesday quotes a Pentagon spokesmodel on disagreements over the torture rules: “I am sure that in any broad group like that you will have dissenting opinions that go to the left and to the right.” I quote that in order to point out that he considers the question of whether to torture people to be a “left-right” one. Others have pointed out that the head of the panel, Air Force General Counsel Mary Walker, is outspokenly Evangelical Christian. Billmon.org alternates pious quotes from an interview she gave with passages from the memo. And not to suggest that this is a religious war or anything, but William Boykin was in charge of the actual torture. And actual torturer Charles Graner: “The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'”
Ashcroft refused to release the torture memo to Congress although, psst, if you know any Congresscritters, tell them to go to
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/military_0604.pdf
PDF format, 2 mb (nothing that’s not in the articles, though).
Neither would he give the basis for his refusal (the president can order him not to give testimony or release documents he claims are covered by executive privilege, but if there is no such order, Ashcroft was in contempt of Congress, and Ashcroft refused even to say whether such an order had been given or not). It was a sorry performance, arrogant while at the same time looking like a puppy about to be hit with a rolled-up newspaper. Chuck Schumer of all people became the latest Congresscritter to defend the use of torture.
This story is taking responsibility for torture further and further up the food chain. But the Justice Dept memo has a flaw: it fails to understand political realities. Even if you agree with their position that the president has an inherent authority to authorize torture, in the real world Bush would never sign such an order. He might wink at it, who will rid me of this turbulent priest-type situation, but he’d never leave a smoking memo or sign anything, probably never have to talk about it, because Rumsfeld etc would know what he wanted done and just do it. In Germany, this was called “working towards the führer” and is the reason there is nothing directly linking Hitler to the Holocaust. In practice, this means that the legal protection that the memo claims exists for torturers acting under presidential orders can’t be invoked.
The LA Times has a story about John Walker Lindh. We saw footage more than 2 years ago of Johnny Taliban being treated much as the Abu Ghraib prisoners were. We saw a CIA agent threaten him with death, on film, and somehow it was a big surprise 2 years later that we did the same thing to people who weren’t US citizens.
The Bush campaign has been trying to get churches to campaign for him. This would endanger their tax-exempt status, it was pointed out, so the R’s have decided to fiddle with the law by letting them break the law a few times (two deliberate endorsements per year and one “unintentional,” whatever that might mean) without being punished. Well, as they like to say about torture, if the president orders it, how can it be illegal?
Today is the 50th anniversary of Joseph Welch’s “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” response to Joseph McCarthy.
The UN resolution gave the Iraqi “government” no veto over the activities of US troops except to kick them out altogether, but gave it control of its own alleged army. What happens if they decide to invade the Kurdish areas (the Kurds got screwed, which was so inevitable and was done so parenthetically that I’ve put the fact in parentheses) while the US military is still in the country, we don’t know.
Monday, June 07, 2004
Stupid things
2 leftist radio stations in semi-fascist Italy that planned to broadcast the protests against the Bush visit had their power mysteriously cut for 4 hours.
Amidst the eruption of what Wonkette calls Gipperporn, it’s nice that Christopher Hitchens hasn’t turned into a complete loser after all. He reminds us of something I’d forgotten, the single most terrifying moment of the Reagan lurch towards world annihilation, when it became clear that he didn’t know that once you launched the ICBMs, they couldn’t be called back. And that he claimed the Russian language had no word for freedom, which would presumably mean that no matter how mad they got at France, they’d still have to call French fries French fries.
And Marc Cooper gives another vitriolic obit for Saint Ronny of Bitburg. “The mask of equanimity was ripped off American politics, and the winners in our society were finally given permission to publicly gloat. All of a sudden it was socially acceptable to denounce the poor, to blame the victims, to celebrate and even promote inequality.” I’m beginning to recall the 8-year long ulcer that man gave me. One thing I now realize is that Bush’s lies about the threat of WMDs falls into a pattern of pretending that imperialist wars are about the defense of the Heimat from direct threat. Remember the air strips in Grenada? And just how far was El Salvador (or was it Nicaragua?) from Harlingen, Texas? But then even Hitler pretended that Poland had actually attacked Germany first.
Here’s that Wall St. Journal story on the torture memo.
Clinton’s memoirs are out in 2 weeks. It’ll be interesting to watch his memory and that of Saint Ronny of Voodoo Economics fight it out.
A fake family planning center in Louisiana is being sued for trying to dupe women into delaying abortions until it became illegal for them to have one. Link
Bremer bans members of “illegal militias” like Sadr taking part in Iraqi elections for at least 3 years. People whose militias are now pretending to be members of the Iraqi military, like Alex’s droogs in Clockwork Orange, don’t count, of course.
Germany’s government is moving towards gay marriages, although it will be a fight. And France just had its first one.
Iraq has nearly as many people in its Facilities Protection Service (which guards oil pipelines, not toilets), as it does in the entire police force (75,000 v. 90,000).
Amidst the eruption of what Wonkette calls Gipperporn, it’s nice that Christopher Hitchens hasn’t turned into a complete loser after all. He reminds us of something I’d forgotten, the single most terrifying moment of the Reagan lurch towards world annihilation, when it became clear that he didn’t know that once you launched the ICBMs, they couldn’t be called back. And that he claimed the Russian language had no word for freedom, which would presumably mean that no matter how mad they got at France, they’d still have to call French fries French fries.
And Marc Cooper gives another vitriolic obit for Saint Ronny of Bitburg. “The mask of equanimity was ripped off American politics, and the winners in our society were finally given permission to publicly gloat. All of a sudden it was socially acceptable to denounce the poor, to blame the victims, to celebrate and even promote inequality.” I’m beginning to recall the 8-year long ulcer that man gave me. One thing I now realize is that Bush’s lies about the threat of WMDs falls into a pattern of pretending that imperialist wars are about the defense of the Heimat from direct threat. Remember the air strips in Grenada? And just how far was El Salvador (or was it Nicaragua?) from Harlingen, Texas? But then even Hitler pretended that Poland had actually attacked Germany first.
Here’s that Wall St. Journal story on the torture memo.
Clinton’s memoirs are out in 2 weeks. It’ll be interesting to watch his memory and that of Saint Ronny of Voodoo Economics fight it out.
A fake family planning center in Louisiana is being sued for trying to dupe women into delaying abortions until it became illegal for them to have one. Link
Bremer bans members of “illegal militias” like Sadr taking part in Iraqi elections for at least 3 years. People whose militias are now pretending to be members of the Iraqi military, like Alex’s droogs in Clockwork Orange, don’t count, of course.
Germany’s government is moving towards gay marriages, although it will be a fight. And France just had its first one.
Iraq has nearly as many people in its Facilities Protection Service (which guards oil pipelines, not toilets), as it does in the entire police force (75,000 v. 90,000).
An indelible stamp
Billmon on Saint Ronny of Star Wars: “Yes, he was as ignorant and stubborn and incapable of rational thought as our current president, but he wasn't arrogant - or at least, he didn't come across as arrogant. He lacked Bush's infuriating sense of entitlement, and his nasty temper. Reagan smiled, he didn't smirk.” Billmon goes on to remind us of Saint Ronny of Plausible Deniability’s bloody foreign policy, etc. Reagan was arrogant, by the way, being as unwilling to listen to opposing views as Bush. Marc Cooper comments in his blog that the tv coverage has been adulatory and unthinking in a way appropriate to a monarchy with state-controlled media.
Me, I’ve watched none of it (except with the sound off while talking on the phone). I said to people yesterday that there were only two ways to deal with this: unplug the tv and go into hiding until it’s all over, or plunge into the cheese-fest, searching out the worst of it (George Will on Fox, say) and just wallowing in it, yelling sarcastic comments at the tv. You’d think I’d be doing the latter, looking for material to use here and enjoying myself; hell, I would have expected me to do that. But I just couldn’t face the possibility of hearing Reagan described as America’s most popular president.
Also, a little error at my cable company gave me temporary access to HBO, and there was a whole season of the Sopranos to watch, and can you believe that ( ) got whacked? I thought about flipping back and forth between that and Fox News for a compare and contrast between Tony S. and Saint Ronny of Arms for Hostages, but decided not to do that to myself.
Really, can you fuckin’ believe that ( ) got whacked?
Actually, who needs Fox when you have John Kerry planting big wet ones on the dead ass of Saint Ronny of I Can’t Recall. Some excerpts from his statement: “he taught us that there is a big difference between strong beliefs and bitter partisanship.” “He was our oldest president, but he made America young again.” (yeah, crying and shitting itself). “Our prayers are with his family, and the wife he loved in a way all the world could see.” (No that was Al Gore, and it still makes us shudder). “Today, from California to Maine — 'from sea to shining sea' — Americans will bow their heads in prayer and gratitude that President Reagan left such an indelible stamp on the nation he loved."” (Something like the stain Clinton left on a certain dress). And Kerry has decided that the respectful thing to do is not to campaign this week (you mean he was campaigning before?).
The word of the week continues to be “optimism,” which is short-hand for “leftists run down the United States.”
Sharon gets his cabinet to pass his alleged Gaza disengagement plan, which requires the removal of not a single settlement or settler, each of which will require a separate cabinet vote. It’s a recipe for failure, you have to assume deliberately so. In exchange for the crappy original plan, now watered down to nothing, Bush gave in to Israeli demands on several key points, including denying the Palestinians a right of return. Someone needs to ask him whether that still holds.
Bush admin lawyers issued a brief before the invasion of Iraq saying that it was ok for Bush to order torture as part of his “inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign”, and anyone who followed such an order would be immune from prosecution. They could argue that they were just following orders or claim good faith. (Note, however, that the Wall St Journal has only seen a draft version). The brief includes a list of approved torture methods, which the Journal doesn’t have, although it does allow for the use of drugs. It also says that torture could be justified as self-defense, and that mere infliction of pain and suffering doesn’t necessarily even count as torture.
Another Al Qaida operative turned himself in in 2000, offering to give information, only to be told to go away. Link
LeftI says that John Walker Lindh’s plea bargain included him signing a statement that he had never been mistreated by the US military, which he obviously had been.
Me, I’ve watched none of it (except with the sound off while talking on the phone). I said to people yesterday that there were only two ways to deal with this: unplug the tv and go into hiding until it’s all over, or plunge into the cheese-fest, searching out the worst of it (George Will on Fox, say) and just wallowing in it, yelling sarcastic comments at the tv. You’d think I’d be doing the latter, looking for material to use here and enjoying myself; hell, I would have expected me to do that. But I just couldn’t face the possibility of hearing Reagan described as America’s most popular president.
Also, a little error at my cable company gave me temporary access to HBO, and there was a whole season of the Sopranos to watch, and can you believe that ( ) got whacked? I thought about flipping back and forth between that and Fox News for a compare and contrast between Tony S. and Saint Ronny of Arms for Hostages, but decided not to do that to myself.
Really, can you fuckin’ believe that ( ) got whacked?
Actually, who needs Fox when you have John Kerry planting big wet ones on the dead ass of Saint Ronny of I Can’t Recall. Some excerpts from his statement: “he taught us that there is a big difference between strong beliefs and bitter partisanship.” “He was our oldest president, but he made America young again.” (yeah, crying and shitting itself). “Our prayers are with his family, and the wife he loved in a way all the world could see.” (No that was Al Gore, and it still makes us shudder). “Today, from California to Maine — 'from sea to shining sea' — Americans will bow their heads in prayer and gratitude that President Reagan left such an indelible stamp on the nation he loved."” (Something like the stain Clinton left on a certain dress). And Kerry has decided that the respectful thing to do is not to campaign this week (you mean he was campaigning before?).
The word of the week continues to be “optimism,” which is short-hand for “leftists run down the United States.”
Sharon gets his cabinet to pass his alleged Gaza disengagement plan, which requires the removal of not a single settlement or settler, each of which will require a separate cabinet vote. It’s a recipe for failure, you have to assume deliberately so. In exchange for the crappy original plan, now watered down to nothing, Bush gave in to Israeli demands on several key points, including denying the Palestinians a right of return. Someone needs to ask him whether that still holds.
Bush admin lawyers issued a brief before the invasion of Iraq saying that it was ok for Bush to order torture as part of his “inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign”, and anyone who followed such an order would be immune from prosecution. They could argue that they were just following orders or claim good faith. (Note, however, that the Wall St Journal has only seen a draft version). The brief includes a list of approved torture methods, which the Journal doesn’t have, although it does allow for the use of drugs. It also says that torture could be justified as self-defense, and that mere infliction of pain and suffering doesn’t necessarily even count as torture.
Another Al Qaida operative turned himself in in 2000, offering to give information, only to be told to go away. Link
LeftI says that John Walker Lindh’s plea bargain included him signing a statement that he had never been mistreated by the US military, which he obviously had been.
Saturday, June 05, 2004
Every effort was made
I hope you people aren’t looking to me to say anything bad about Saint Ronny. Oh dear god my poor heart is breaking. We shall not see his like again.
OK, I’ll stop that now. Really, how lucky for Reagan’s memory that the current “president” is the only human being on the planet that could make Reagan look, well okay not good, obviously, but not the worst president ever. I mean, Reagan is up there with the worst of them (Coolidge and Buchanan), but holy shit. Bush says of Reagan (who he doesn’t really remember, having spent the ‘80s sniffing coke off a hooker’s ass in the backroom of a Houston bar)(but then again, Reagan’s popularity came at the height of crack cocaine. Coincidence? I think not): “He always told us for America the best is yet to come.” Wrong again, oh orange-haired one.
Some, but by no means all, of the British papers avoid using the word “cowboy” in the headlines about Reagan. And the Telegraph has a story “Reagan and Thatcher: ‘It Would Take a Crowbar to Get Them Apart’”. Or you could turn the hose on them.
Speaking of Reagan and cowboy, here’s the news.google search. My favorite hit is this headline from the Dallas Morning News: “He Liked Texans.” Possibly the most nauseating (although I’m accepting nominees): “Republicans, Democrats Hail Reagan’s Optimism.” (WaPo)
That does seem to be the word of the day. Via Bartlett’s: “Optimism is the content of small men in high places.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald). “Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.” (Ambrose Bierce). “Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.” (Voltaire).
Since Murdoch got greedy(greedier), I have to wait 10 to 24 hours after seeing Times headlines before I can get the actual stories off Lexis-Nexis. One can only hope that “Bush and Chirac Best Buddies for Cameras” is as snarky as it sounds. (I’m told that CNN Headline News called Bush & Chirac opponents in the war on terror.) Then there’s “Scalp Hunters Take Cool Look at Cheney,” written by someone who hasn’t seen a recent picture of Cheney.
FRANKLY MY DEAR...: Just as with the Tenet, the British MI6’s new head John Scarlett, who I mentioned is the guy behind the 45-minutes claim, is facing a report on pre-Iraq war intelligence failures. The report will be written by Lord Butler.
An Iraqi judge has issued an arrest warrant for Achmad Chalabi’s right-hand man, the consultant Francis Brooke, for obstructing the police when Chalabi’s hq was raided. The judge said, “He stopped the raid by telling the police they didn't have the legal power to do it because he was an American and they were Iraqis.” Brooke was once paid by the CIA to work with Chalabi, and is now paid by some private company owned by a Republican. He is an Evangelical Christian who boasted to the New Yorker that he faked WMD intel he passed to the Americans. “I'm a smart man. I saw what they wanted, and I adapted my strategy.”
The Indy has a story about Niaz “I’d rather lose all my money in a casino than fly a plane into one” Khan, which notes that the US government did indeed take action against him: they put him on the list of people banned from commercial airplanes. Just in case. The Indy talked to an (anonymous) FBI spokesmodel, who says they didn’t think he was crazy, they just couldn’t substantiate his story. “Every effort was made.” Hopefully, that phrase will be very slowly, very firmly shoved up the FBI’s collective ass over the next few months.
Oh, and Congress was told about this in 2002.
Having failed to get the FBI or MI6 to listen to him, Khan proceeded to call Crimestoppers. No luck there either.
The story is beginning to move--hope the Reagan thing won’t hurt it.
Radio ad for Vernon Robinson, running for Congress in NC. This will be the most racist ad of the election cycle, I predict, and must be listened to to be believed. And Robinson is black.
OK, I’ll stop that now. Really, how lucky for Reagan’s memory that the current “president” is the only human being on the planet that could make Reagan look, well okay not good, obviously, but not the worst president ever. I mean, Reagan is up there with the worst of them (Coolidge and Buchanan), but holy shit. Bush says of Reagan (who he doesn’t really remember, having spent the ‘80s sniffing coke off a hooker’s ass in the backroom of a Houston bar)(but then again, Reagan’s popularity came at the height of crack cocaine. Coincidence? I think not): “He always told us for America the best is yet to come.” Wrong again, oh orange-haired one.
Some, but by no means all, of the British papers avoid using the word “cowboy” in the headlines about Reagan. And the Telegraph has a story “Reagan and Thatcher: ‘It Would Take a Crowbar to Get Them Apart’”. Or you could turn the hose on them.
Speaking of Reagan and cowboy, here’s the news.google search. My favorite hit is this headline from the Dallas Morning News: “He Liked Texans.” Possibly the most nauseating (although I’m accepting nominees): “Republicans, Democrats Hail Reagan’s Optimism.” (WaPo)
That does seem to be the word of the day. Via Bartlett’s: “Optimism is the content of small men in high places.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald). “Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.” (Ambrose Bierce). “Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.” (Voltaire).
Since Murdoch got greedy(greedier), I have to wait 10 to 24 hours after seeing Times headlines before I can get the actual stories off Lexis-Nexis. One can only hope that “Bush and Chirac Best Buddies for Cameras” is as snarky as it sounds. (I’m told that CNN Headline News called Bush & Chirac opponents in the war on terror.) Then there’s “Scalp Hunters Take Cool Look at Cheney,” written by someone who hasn’t seen a recent picture of Cheney.
FRANKLY MY DEAR...: Just as with the Tenet, the British MI6’s new head John Scarlett, who I mentioned is the guy behind the 45-minutes claim, is facing a report on pre-Iraq war intelligence failures. The report will be written by Lord Butler.
An Iraqi judge has issued an arrest warrant for Achmad Chalabi’s right-hand man, the consultant Francis Brooke, for obstructing the police when Chalabi’s hq was raided. The judge said, “He stopped the raid by telling the police they didn't have the legal power to do it because he was an American and they were Iraqis.” Brooke was once paid by the CIA to work with Chalabi, and is now paid by some private company owned by a Republican. He is an Evangelical Christian who boasted to the New Yorker that he faked WMD intel he passed to the Americans. “I'm a smart man. I saw what they wanted, and I adapted my strategy.”
The Indy has a story about Niaz “I’d rather lose all my money in a casino than fly a plane into one” Khan, which notes that the US government did indeed take action against him: they put him on the list of people banned from commercial airplanes. Just in case. The Indy talked to an (anonymous) FBI spokesmodel, who says they didn’t think he was crazy, they just couldn’t substantiate his story. “Every effort was made.” Hopefully, that phrase will be very slowly, very firmly shoved up the FBI’s collective ass over the next few months.
Oh, and Congress was told about this in 2002.
Having failed to get the FBI or MI6 to listen to him, Khan proceeded to call Crimestoppers. No luck there either.
The story is beginning to move--hope the Reagan thing won’t hurt it.
Radio ad for Vernon Robinson, running for Congress in NC. This will be the most racist ad of the election cycle, I predict, and must be listened to to be believed. And Robinson is black.
Friday, June 04, 2004
But I never apologized to the Arab world
An interview Bush gave to Christian Republican newspaper editors includes this remark about Abu Ghraib: “I said I am sorry for those people who were humiliated. That's all I said. I also said, "The great thing about our country is that people will now see that we'll deal with this in a transparent way based upon rule of law. And it will serve as a great contrast." But I never apologized to the Arab world.”
Adnan Pachachi blames a “shabby conspiracy” led by Chalabi for wrecking his presidential candidacy. And insists that he was never the US’s fave. Which he was.
Saturday is the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square. The LA Times has a story on the confrontation between the guy and the line of tanks. We still don’t know who he is, and no one in China, the LAT exaggerates, has ever seen the film or photos.
Speaking of anniversaries, next week is the 10th anniversary of OJ Simpson killing his wife and that guy. He says the media convinced people he is guilty because he is black, but that he has given up the search for the real killers because he is too busy raising his sons. He says he has never discussed the murders with them, because they never asked. Probably afraid to.
In a travesty of parliamentary democracy, Sharon is trying to stack his government, firing members of the cabinet who oppose his Gaza plan, which is being watered down still further even as I speak. This might get it through cabinet (might: one of them has literally gone into hiding so that he won’t receive the notification), but it would be a cabinet without backing of a majority of the Knesset. The people being fired, by the way, are racist pigs who don’t belong in public life.
Bush met the pope today (and showed up 15 minutes late). Hard to make out what was said because of the barely recognizable, mumbled, badly pronounced English....and the pope’s wasn’t that good either.
Hey, just because a joke is obvious doesn’t mean it’s not worth making.
Kerry says he would expand the military by 40,000, but, the NYT notes, won’t specify how he would attract 40,000 new troops. Or to put it another way, how do you ask the last 40,000 men to die for a mistake? I’m guessing a radio in the shape of a football.
And Rumsfeld is in Bangladesh trying to get them to send troops (for money, of course).
A federal judge rules unconstitutional a federal law banning ads on the sides of buses, train stations etc advocating legalizing marijuana.
The first former head of government tried in an American court since Noriega has just been convicted. Did you even know that Pavlo Lazarenko, former PM of Ukraine, was being tried? Money laundering, wire fraud & extortion.
The story of the Al Qaida hijacker who turned himself in to the FBI has reached NPR NBC, and the Wall Street Journal. His name is Niaz Kahn. The story I sent out was published by the Sunday Times on May 9th. Nice of the big boys to catch up.
2 cartoons:
http://www.msnbc.com/comics/daily.asp?sFile=bo040604
http://www.ucomics.com/tomtoles/2004/06/03/
Reuters: “Tesfaye Gebre Kidan, who ruled Ethiopia for a week in 1991 and then spent 13 years in hiding in Addis Ababa's Italian embassy, has died. He died after a fight with an ex-minister who also took refuge, a hospital source said.”
Adnan Pachachi blames a “shabby conspiracy” led by Chalabi for wrecking his presidential candidacy. And insists that he was never the US’s fave. Which he was.
Saturday is the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square. The LA Times has a story on the confrontation between the guy and the line of tanks. We still don’t know who he is, and no one in China, the LAT exaggerates, has ever seen the film or photos.
Speaking of anniversaries, next week is the 10th anniversary of OJ Simpson killing his wife and that guy. He says the media convinced people he is guilty because he is black, but that he has given up the search for the real killers because he is too busy raising his sons. He says he has never discussed the murders with them, because they never asked. Probably afraid to.
In a travesty of parliamentary democracy, Sharon is trying to stack his government, firing members of the cabinet who oppose his Gaza plan, which is being watered down still further even as I speak. This might get it through cabinet (might: one of them has literally gone into hiding so that he won’t receive the notification), but it would be a cabinet without backing of a majority of the Knesset. The people being fired, by the way, are racist pigs who don’t belong in public life.
Bush met the pope today (and showed up 15 minutes late). Hard to make out what was said because of the barely recognizable, mumbled, badly pronounced English....and the pope’s wasn’t that good either.
Hey, just because a joke is obvious doesn’t mean it’s not worth making.
Kerry says he would expand the military by 40,000, but, the NYT notes, won’t specify how he would attract 40,000 new troops. Or to put it another way, how do you ask the last 40,000 men to die for a mistake? I’m guessing a radio in the shape of a football.
And Rumsfeld is in Bangladesh trying to get them to send troops (for money, of course).
A federal judge rules unconstitutional a federal law banning ads on the sides of buses, train stations etc advocating legalizing marijuana.
The first former head of government tried in an American court since Noriega has just been convicted. Did you even know that Pavlo Lazarenko, former PM of Ukraine, was being tried? Money laundering, wire fraud & extortion.
The story of the Al Qaida hijacker who turned himself in to the FBI has reached NPR NBC, and the Wall Street Journal. His name is Niaz Kahn. The story I sent out was published by the Sunday Times on May 9th. Nice of the big boys to catch up.
2 cartoons:
http://www.msnbc.com/comics/daily.asp?sFile=bo040604
http://www.ucomics.com/tomtoles/2004/06/03/
Reuters: “Tesfaye Gebre Kidan, who ruled Ethiopia for a week in 1991 and then spent 13 years in hiding in Addis Ababa's Italian embassy, has died. He died after a fight with an ex-minister who also took refuge, a hospital source said.”
Analytical, magical skills
British American Tobacco has been testing yummy chocolate-flavored cigarettes. On rats.
North Korea bans mobile phones, possibly because the mysterious train bombing was set off by one.
Debate continues in the UN over authorizing the US to continue occupying Iraq. A major concession: permission won’t be open-ended, with the US able to veto a retraction. The Russians want to know who will be responsible for continuing the search for WMDs.
So the CIA installs its own puppets at the top of the Iraqi fully-sovereign-we-mean-it-why-don’t-you-believe-us government, finally winning one over Rummy, and the DCI is forced out a few days later. For personal reasons, said Bush. So many reasons for Tenet to have been forced out (fewer than the reasons for doing the same to Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz, Rice, but comparing your level of incompetence to those clowns is like saying your torture wasn’t as bad as Saddam’s torture), trust Bush to claim he’s leaving for none of those reasons, but to spend more time hanging out with his son (did you hear Tenet’s speech, it was an intentional parody of such resignation speeches, a big fuck-you to Bush, I think: “Anyway, the point is, John Michael is going to be a senior next year. I'm going to be a senior with him in high school. We're going to go to class together. We're going to party together. I'm going to learn how to instant message his friends--that would be an achievement!”). Because Bush couldn’t admit an error to save his life. Of course, as Juan Cole notes in his blog, there are any number of reasons why Tenet should have resigned in protest long before now, if he had had any honor.
Uh, huh. And on the same day, Rumsfeld blames 9/11 on Tenet.
In fact, it’s not worth my effort to find the transcript (my back hurts), but I think when Bush said today that he’d never been angry with France and Chirac could come to the ranch and see some cows, he had completely forgotten that last year he’d testily announced that Chirac was banned from that edenic paradise.
Bush himself is going to Paris and Rome, requiring only that both cities be totally shut down and no demonstrations of any kind be held. Because if he doesn’t see people who disagree with him, they must not exist.
A WaPo headline shows what happens when reporters are allowed to see the Harry Potter movie, even though it gets them all over-excited: “CIA's New Acting Director Is Known for His Analytical, Magical Skills.”
North Korea bans mobile phones, possibly because the mysterious train bombing was set off by one.
Debate continues in the UN over authorizing the US to continue occupying Iraq. A major concession: permission won’t be open-ended, with the US able to veto a retraction. The Russians want to know who will be responsible for continuing the search for WMDs.
So the CIA installs its own puppets at the top of the Iraqi fully-sovereign-we-mean-it-why-don’t-you-believe-us government, finally winning one over Rummy, and the DCI is forced out a few days later. For personal reasons, said Bush. So many reasons for Tenet to have been forced out (fewer than the reasons for doing the same to Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz, Rice, but comparing your level of incompetence to those clowns is like saying your torture wasn’t as bad as Saddam’s torture), trust Bush to claim he’s leaving for none of those reasons, but to spend more time hanging out with his son (did you hear Tenet’s speech, it was an intentional parody of such resignation speeches, a big fuck-you to Bush, I think: “Anyway, the point is, John Michael is going to be a senior next year. I'm going to be a senior with him in high school. We're going to go to class together. We're going to party together. I'm going to learn how to instant message his friends--that would be an achievement!”). Because Bush couldn’t admit an error to save his life. Of course, as Juan Cole notes in his blog, there are any number of reasons why Tenet should have resigned in protest long before now, if he had had any honor.
Uh, huh. And on the same day, Rumsfeld blames 9/11 on Tenet.
In fact, it’s not worth my effort to find the transcript (my back hurts), but I think when Bush said today that he’d never been angry with France and Chirac could come to the ranch and see some cows, he had completely forgotten that last year he’d testily announced that Chirac was banned from that edenic paradise.
Bush himself is going to Paris and Rome, requiring only that both cities be totally shut down and no demonstrations of any kind be held. Because if he doesn’t see people who disagree with him, they must not exist.
A WaPo headline shows what happens when reporters are allowed to see the Harry Potter movie, even though it gets them all over-excited: “CIA's New Acting Director Is Known for His Analytical, Magical Skills.”
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Not everyone has a burning bush, period.
Creepy, creepy, creepy: WaPo report a Dept of Labor pamphlet telling religious groups how to apply for gov money for job training because “Not everyone has a burning bush to tell them their life's calling.”
Chalabi might have told Iran that the US had broken its codes, it certainly sounds like him. But the story about how we know this is hinky, and if you wanted to throw an enemy into confusion, one way would be to claim that you’d broken its codes and been reading its secret messages for some time. This could be a CIA dirty trick to get two birds with one stone. Just a possibility.
Juan Cole (juancole.com) disputes the notion that Iran used Chalabi to get the US to invade Iraq, repeating what I’ve heard elsewhere, that Iran wouldn’t have wanted to be surrounded, with the US also occupying Afghanistan. Except that if Iran was using Chalabi, it started years before then. Also, the US, as we now know even if Rumsfeld couldn’t figure it out a year ago, the US couldn’t possibly occupy Iraq and Iran at the same time. The real threat to Iran was always fairly slight, but enough to unify the country behind the hardliners. Not that I’m necessarily buying it (though the idea is amusing), but I don’t find the arguments against the theory convincing.
More convincingly, Cole floats the theory that Chalabi peddled his stories about Iraqi WMDs to Iran as well as to the US, thus impelling Iran to escalate its nuclear program.
CNN is suing Florida to get a copy of the list of supposed felons who will be purged from the electoral rolls. Although the list is public, in the sense that parties can make copies of it and journalists can see, but not copy it, Florida is claiming that letting CNN make copies would violate the privacy rights of the many people who are on the list but aren’t really felons. Really, they said that.
In case you missed it, today Bush gave the 2nd of his speeches on Iraq policy. It was emptier than the first one. He says that America is always more secure when freedom is on the march. Should freedom really be marching? And he talked about the dangers of terrorists taking up residence inside failed states. He gave this speech at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, well-known for the rapists who took up residence...oh, you do the rest, I’m tired.
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
A sparkle in their eye
There’s a film floating around on the web of Bush during the commercial when he appeared on Letterman, wiping his glasses on some CBS employees’ sweater. Which can’t be good for the glasses, as well as being rude. But this is the guy who goes around patting the heads of bald people. You live in a bubble that long, everyone turns into Michael Jackson.
The NYT says that the US military will no longer perform offensive operations in Iraq--y’know, going after the “bad guys,” destroying the Mahdi Army, capturing Sadr, capturing the guys who killed the mercenaries in Fallujah, and all the other stuff they promised to do--and just guard buildings and oil pipelines. So they should be able to catch up on their reading. We’ve officially surrendered. Billmon.org has a good analysis of this. He says we have the power to go in and hold any area we want, but lose it again the minute we leave. He compares this to the French efforts to hold Vietnam 1946-54, although most of us have been in classrooms like that. As I’ve said, we lost the battle for hearts and/or minds some time back. On any given day we alienate some number of Iraqis and win over exactly none, and this has gone on for months. There is no Iraqi who disliked us in January who likes us now.
Bush today on how he never had relations with that man, Achmad Chalabi: “My meetings with him were very brief. I mean, I think I met with him at the State of the Union and just kind of working through the rope line, and he might have come with a group of leaders. But I haven't had any extensive conversations with him.”
Both Bush and Rice insisted that the new Iraqi government are not puppets. No reporter asked the obvious follow-up: marionettes?
He also says that intelligence sources report to him that people in Afghanistan “have got a sparkle in their eye.” Presumably he doesn’t mean women, who aren’t allowed to show their eyes in public.
Does anyone remember the Republican candidate for Congress in Santa Cruz in 1982, Gary Richard Arnold? Slogan: “Looks like Lenin, Talks Like Lincoln.” It was a very safe D seat (Leon Panetta’s), of course, but this guy came to our attention because at a meeting of R Congressional candidates at the White House, Reagan told him to--and I’m quoting--shut up. This got him a lot of votes in Santa Cruz from people who didn’t realize he was attacking Reagan from the right, a piece of real estate undreamt of by Cruzians, and was in fact a conspiracy nut (Trilateral Commission). This is an exaggerated version of the love some people on the left have found for John McCain, disregarding 90% of his actual personal beliefs and policies. Anyway, the Voice brings up a possibility: if Bush wanted to stop his nosedive... Bush/McCain 2004.
If you read the WaPo story I linked to a couple of days ago about Bush lies, you must read the humorous reply by the Bushies. My favorite is where they “prove” that Kerry accused Bush of personal responsibility for Abu Ghraib, quoting Kerry thus: “It is an attitude that comes out of how we view the prisoners. It is an attitude that comes out of an overall arrogance and policy.” You’re so arrogant, I’ll bet you think this song is about you.
Trent Lott on Abu Ghraib: “Interrogation is not a Sunday-school meeting.”
Too early for the Alabama election results, but here’s a depressing AP headline: “Ten Commandments Influence Ala. Primary.” Seems unlikely; can Alabamans actually count to ten? It’s hard to count on your fingers or toes when they’re webbed.
White smoke in Baghdad. No, sorry, just another oil pipeline blowing up
The last, honest to God, we really mean it this time, widow of a Civil War veteran dies. She was 97. She married the guy when she was 21 (and already a widow), and he was 81. After he died, she married his grandson.
Despite all previous denials, Cheney was indeed involved in arranging contracts for Halliburton (Time magazine has the smoking email).
(Monday:) The wrangling over the Iraqi interim presidency is still going on. Bremer is threatening to veto any vote by the Governing Council that isn’t for his nominee. Of course, it’s supposed to be Brahimi who makes the decision, so Bremer would be vetoing a non-binding, irrelevant vote by a puppet government for a ceremonial, temporary office in another puppet government. About as important as winning a Golden Globe award. Today Bremer is offering a compromise candidate, a general who was imprisoned by Saddam. But before that, he was slaughtering Kurds, so...
(Later:) Wrangling over, Pachachi steps aside. The IGC is certainly throwing its political weight around effectively, considering it’s not supposed to have any. Ghazi Yawar. The last name sounds like a yawn.
Today a council member suggested that the first act of the new president should be to establish a “de-Bremerisation” committee.
Freedom returns to Gloucestershire, where the forces of oppression have allowed the resumption of the annual Chasing of a Giant Wheel of Cheese Down a Hill. And there was a streaker. Which would have livened up the dedication of the World War II memorial.
Bob Herbert in Monday’s NYT notes that a law passed in 1996 prevents prisoners in the US from suing for “mental or emotional injury,” i.e., the sort of thing that happened in Abu Ghraib, unless they were also physically harmed.
Another good Dana Milbank piece, on Bush’s use of straw men.
Despite all previous denials, Cheney was indeed involved in arranging contracts for Halliburton (Time magazine has the smoking email).
(Monday:) The wrangling over the Iraqi interim presidency is still going on. Bremer is threatening to veto any vote by the Governing Council that isn’t for his nominee. Of course, it’s supposed to be Brahimi who makes the decision, so Bremer would be vetoing a non-binding, irrelevant vote by a puppet government for a ceremonial, temporary office in another puppet government. About as important as winning a Golden Globe award. Today Bremer is offering a compromise candidate, a general who was imprisoned by Saddam. But before that, he was slaughtering Kurds, so...
(Later:) Wrangling over, Pachachi steps aside. The IGC is certainly throwing its political weight around effectively, considering it’s not supposed to have any. Ghazi Yawar. The last name sounds like a yawn.
Today a council member suggested that the first act of the new president should be to establish a “de-Bremerisation” committee.
Freedom returns to Gloucestershire, where the forces of oppression have allowed the resumption of the annual Chasing of a Giant Wheel of Cheese Down a Hill. And there was a streaker. Which would have livened up the dedication of the World War II memorial.
Bob Herbert in Monday’s NYT notes that a law passed in 1996 prevents prisoners in the US from suing for “mental or emotional injury,” i.e., the sort of thing that happened in Abu Ghraib, unless they were also physically harmed.
Another good Dana Milbank piece, on Bush’s use of straw men.
Monday, May 31, 2004
GeeDubya playing with a gun. Can't see how that could go wrong. Say, haven't seen Laura lately
Gen. Mark Kimmitt, M.M., on the BBC saying that the people of Iraqi will forgive the US for torturing some of them at Abu Ghraib. His current estimate of bad apples = 20.
The June 30th fake-deadline for Iraq may be used domestically as a way to declare victory in order to safely fire some of the architects of that victory. In other words, DC rumor is that Secretary of Bad Apples Rummy Rumsfeld will be retiring shortly after that date.
News reports say that Bush has a toy, I mean souvenir: the gun Saddam had when he was captured. He likes to show it off to visitors. The Secret Service has to quietly dispose of the remains of some of these visitors, because, well, Bush with a gun. I mean all the work they had to go through to child-proof the electrical outlets so George wouldn’t hurt himself, and then someone just gives him a gun. He keeps it in the study off the Oval Office where Monica used to blow Bill.
This articlelists all the Bush campaign lies about Kerry’s records in one place. And they never stop when they’re disproved, either. It’s kind of awe-inspiring.
The bloggers have been commenting for days that the Bush campaign website has 4 pictures of Kerry on it, none of Bush. It’s true, and a little jarring (go look). There’s also a picture of Laura Bush and one of the secretary for veterans’ affairs, who this week said that soldiers fight better under a Republican president.
You know how Yowie Wowie Allawi is the guy who wants to bring Baathists back into office in Iraq? Well guess who Afghan Prez Karzai is negotiating with? Actually, everyone. He is in talks with former Taliban officials, including Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, the former Taliban foreign minister, who was in the custody of Americans, who mysteriously released him. And a fundamentalist/warlord party whose leader is on the US Most Wanted list. There is now at least one minister the US previously tried to capture. Karzai, who plans to run for his office again, hasn’t bothered campaigning, or forming a political party, he’s just negotiating with every warlord and zealot in sight.
The Post says this war has surpassed the death toll (only Americans count, of course) of the Spanish-American War and is catching up with the War of 1812 and Mexican-American Wars (wounded is higher than for both those wars).
In Iraq, someone’s been handing out flyers saying that Sadr was killed by the Iraqi police while resisting arrest. It’s not true, evidently they prematurely released the flyers printed up for when Sadr is killed “resisting arrest.” Oops.
We still don’t know what happened with Brahimi and Allawi. I’m sticking with my theory: naked pictures, with a goat, two chickens, and a Jew. The NYT reporter with the unfortunate name thinks Bremer pressured the IGC which pressured Brahimi. Which doesn’t explain what’s happening now, when the Council is trying to pre-empt the choice of president. Although the role is supposed to be ceremonial, the Council and Bremer are fighting over it. Bremer told them not to hold a vote at all, they told him to fuck himself. Bremer wants an 81-year old who won’t make a fuss, the Council wants one of its own members, who’s already calling for the US to go away. The IGC is clearly trying to make the supposed transitional gov permanent. Since the transitional admin organizes the January elections, what happens in the next few days matters, like having your kid brother in place as governor of Florida when you’re running for president.
The June 30th fake-deadline for Iraq may be used domestically as a way to declare victory in order to safely fire some of the architects of that victory. In other words, DC rumor is that Secretary of Bad Apples Rummy Rumsfeld will be retiring shortly after that date.
News reports say that Bush has a toy, I mean souvenir: the gun Saddam had when he was captured. He likes to show it off to visitors. The Secret Service has to quietly dispose of the remains of some of these visitors, because, well, Bush with a gun. I mean all the work they had to go through to child-proof the electrical outlets so George wouldn’t hurt himself, and then someone just gives him a gun. He keeps it in the study off the Oval Office where Monica used to blow Bill.
This articlelists all the Bush campaign lies about Kerry’s records in one place. And they never stop when they’re disproved, either. It’s kind of awe-inspiring.
The bloggers have been commenting for days that the Bush campaign website has 4 pictures of Kerry on it, none of Bush. It’s true, and a little jarring (go look). There’s also a picture of Laura Bush and one of the secretary for veterans’ affairs, who this week said that soldiers fight better under a Republican president.
You know how Yowie Wowie Allawi is the guy who wants to bring Baathists back into office in Iraq? Well guess who Afghan Prez Karzai is negotiating with? Actually, everyone. He is in talks with former Taliban officials, including Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, the former Taliban foreign minister, who was in the custody of Americans, who mysteriously released him. And a fundamentalist/warlord party whose leader is on the US Most Wanted list. There is now at least one minister the US previously tried to capture. Karzai, who plans to run for his office again, hasn’t bothered campaigning, or forming a political party, he’s just negotiating with every warlord and zealot in sight.
The Post says this war has surpassed the death toll (only Americans count, of course) of the Spanish-American War and is catching up with the War of 1812 and Mexican-American Wars (wounded is higher than for both those wars).
In Iraq, someone’s been handing out flyers saying that Sadr was killed by the Iraqi police while resisting arrest. It’s not true, evidently they prematurely released the flyers printed up for when Sadr is killed “resisting arrest.” Oops.
We still don’t know what happened with Brahimi and Allawi. I’m sticking with my theory: naked pictures, with a goat, two chickens, and a Jew. The NYT reporter with the unfortunate name thinks Bremer pressured the IGC which pressured Brahimi. Which doesn’t explain what’s happening now, when the Council is trying to pre-empt the choice of president. Although the role is supposed to be ceremonial, the Council and Bremer are fighting over it. Bremer told them not to hold a vote at all, they told him to fuck himself. Bremer wants an 81-year old who won’t make a fuss, the Council wants one of its own members, who’s already calling for the US to go away. The IGC is clearly trying to make the supposed transitional gov permanent. Since the transitional admin organizes the January elections, what happens in the next few days matters, like having your kid brother in place as governor of Florida when you’re running for president.
Saturday, May 29, 2004
An outrageous abuse of power
Bush, on his talk with the Danish prime minister: “I told the Prime Minister that our government and our coalition will transfer full sovereignty, complete and full sovereignty to an Iraqi government that will be picked by Mr. Brahimi of the United Nations. He said, do you mean full sovereignty? I said, I mean full sovereignty.”
Vaudeville without the laughs. Does anyone really believe the conversation took place in the Abbott & Costello way Bush describes it?
Bush prefaced this with his Mr. Rogers imitation: “It's always good to be with a friend. Friends are candid with each other, friends are open, and friends are constructive -- and that's the kind of conversation we've just and we'll continue to have.”
The NYT (but not the Post) had a story about Richard Perle, James Woolsey and others storming into Condi Rice’s office to demand that the CIA stop telling the truth about Chalabi. Richard Perle, Richard Fucking Perle mind you, called it “an outrageous abuse of power.” As opposed to invading a country in order to install Chalabi in power. God, wouldn’t you love to have been a fly on that wall.
I assume that means Perle et al will start leaking heavily against “Kapowie” Allawi.
So the military knew last November that most of the Abu Ghraib prisoners had done nothing wrong. The very next day, they got the Red Cross report about torture and sexual humiliation at Abu Ghraib.
I’m sorry, John Kerry started a...cookie company? Why didn’t I know this?
The BBC said it, the Indy says it: Wowie Kazowie Allawi has started to form his government. Again, wasn’t that supposed to be Lakhdar Brahimi’s job? I’m telling you, the CIA has naked pictures of him. In a three-way with a goat and a chicken.
No, honestly, I still can’t tell what happened. CIA coup? IGC coup? Allawi coup? Bremer coup? I just know that what was supposed to be the process has been short-circuited. And in more ways than one. It isn’t just that the UN (or its representative, the Algerian with the Italian name) got cut out of the process, but that although this is supposed to be an interim government only, Allawi is clearly going for the whole ball of wax.
I was right about Allawi spying on Iraqi students, according to The New Republic.
Israel is furious at the BBC for having successfully interviewed Mordechai Vanunu. Israel accused the BBC of using “tricks” to do the interview and then sneak the tapes out of the country one step ahead of Shin Bet. Would that be “tricks” like the ones your female whore/agent turned in the honey trap that lured Vanunu to where he could be kidnapped?
At the World War II memorial, Bush talked about how freedom had prevailed. The ceremonies had heavy security and SWAT teams prepared to blow away any terrorists.
WaPo: “SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- Springfield will no longer offer health benefits to the unmarried domestic partners of city employees now that same-sex couples are legally allowed to marry in Massachusetts. Mayor Charles Ryan said couples have 90 days to marry and retain insurance coverage.” Shotgun gay marriages, just like the Christian Right always predicted!
Vaudeville without the laughs. Does anyone really believe the conversation took place in the Abbott & Costello way Bush describes it?
Bush prefaced this with his Mr. Rogers imitation: “It's always good to be with a friend. Friends are candid with each other, friends are open, and friends are constructive -- and that's the kind of conversation we've just and we'll continue to have.”
The NYT (but not the Post) had a story about Richard Perle, James Woolsey and others storming into Condi Rice’s office to demand that the CIA stop telling the truth about Chalabi. Richard Perle, Richard Fucking Perle mind you, called it “an outrageous abuse of power.” As opposed to invading a country in order to install Chalabi in power. God, wouldn’t you love to have been a fly on that wall.
I assume that means Perle et al will start leaking heavily against “Kapowie” Allawi.
So the military knew last November that most of the Abu Ghraib prisoners had done nothing wrong. The very next day, they got the Red Cross report about torture and sexual humiliation at Abu Ghraib.
I’m sorry, John Kerry started a...cookie company? Why didn’t I know this?
The BBC said it, the Indy says it: Wowie Kazowie Allawi has started to form his government. Again, wasn’t that supposed to be Lakhdar Brahimi’s job? I’m telling you, the CIA has naked pictures of him. In a three-way with a goat and a chicken.
No, honestly, I still can’t tell what happened. CIA coup? IGC coup? Allawi coup? Bremer coup? I just know that what was supposed to be the process has been short-circuited. And in more ways than one. It isn’t just that the UN (or its representative, the Algerian with the Italian name) got cut out of the process, but that although this is supposed to be an interim government only, Allawi is clearly going for the whole ball of wax.
I was right about Allawi spying on Iraqi students, according to The New Republic.
Israel is furious at the BBC for having successfully interviewed Mordechai Vanunu. Israel accused the BBC of using “tricks” to do the interview and then sneak the tapes out of the country one step ahead of Shin Bet. Would that be “tricks” like the ones your female whore/agent turned in the honey trap that lured Vanunu to where he could be kidnapped?
At the World War II memorial, Bush talked about how freedom had prevailed. The ceremonies had heavy security and SWAT teams prepared to blow away any terrorists.
WaPo: “SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- Springfield will no longer offer health benefits to the unmarried domestic partners of city employees now that same-sex couples are legally allowed to marry in Massachusetts. Mayor Charles Ryan said couples have 90 days to marry and retain insurance coverage.” Shotgun gay marriages, just like the Christian Right always predicted!
A winged condom in flight
Fox drops its upcoming reality show SERIOUSLY DUDE, I'M GAY, in which straight contestants competed to convince their friends they were gay in order to win $50,000. Astonishingly, something too tasteless for Fox, a sure sign of the apocalypse.
Remember the Panchen Lama? Soon after he was declared at the age of 7, he was taken into custody by the Chinese government, and never seen again. Today the Chinese say the 2nd highest leader of Tibetan Buddhism, now 16, is actually not in prison at all, but free, somewhere, he just doesn’t wish to speak to anyone who is not a member of the Chinese government, so that his family, also seized, can live a normal life. So that’s okay, then.
Evidently Brahimi, who we were all told was going to name the members of the Iraqi transition government, was never going to do anything of the sort, if we’re to believe what we were told today. Which we aren’t. Clearly, some sort of coup just happened, and it will take a while to sort out who foisted Iyad “Owie” Allawi on an unsuspecting world. And who had the naked pictures of Brahimi, who certainly had not been planning to appoint a former exile, politician rather than technocrat type, associated with the discredited IGC. Iyad “Zowie” Allawi is a 30-year exile, a man with connections to the CIA and before that with MI6 (to whom he gave the famous claim that Iraq could launch WMDs within 45 minutes, and endorsed the Niger yellowcake forgery), and before that the Iraqi secret service, for whom he presumably spied on his fellow Iraqi students in London. “Howie” Allawi was involved in that coup attempt against Saddam that the CIA believes was snitched out to Saddam by Chalabi (who’s some sort of relative of “Maui” Allawi)(later: evidently he’s Chalabi’s nephew twice over, and is smack in the middle of the cousinate that is the IGC, being related to several of the appointed ministers). His Iraqi National Accord, like Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, would not have existed without money from Western intelligence services. After enormous confusion among the Bushies, Scott McClellan says that “Wowie” Allawi “appears to have broad support among the Iraqi people.” He didn’t explain how he’d know such a thing. Presumably he actually meant broad support among his relatives who were appointed by the US. Although “Yowie” Allawi is invariably described as a neurologist, I have yet to see a hint he ever practiced.
Prank call opportunity of the week: “The Swedish Organisation for Sex Education has rolled out a "condom ambulance" service. Callers who unexpectedly find themselves requiring protection can dial 696969 to summon a delivery from the van, which features the logo of a winged condom in flight. Reuters, Stockholm”
I suggested Ashcroft’s nebulous THEY’RE COMING TO GET YOU, RUN FOR THE HILLS message was purely political, and so it was. His claims about Al Qaida being 90% ready for the attack turn out actually to refer to another body, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which may not actually exist except as a website that takes responsibility for every terrorist attack anywhere, and some blackouts that had nothing to do with terrorist attacks. Chalabi offered better intel than Ashcroft. Good news: the FBI finally figured out how to use computers and get on the Web. Bad news: they believe everything they read there. And today, the FBI issued a warning to several cities of a terrorist attack within the next 24 hours...and then retracted it.
Arizona’s two-time prosecutor-of-the-year award winner is disbarred for eliciting perjury in a death penalty case. During his career, he prosecuted 250 felonies including 140 murders, of which 60 were capital. Can’t find out how many of those were executed. Or convicted, if it comes to that. The prosecutor is only being disbarred, not sent to prison forever.
Thanks to the Laci Peterson law which made the murder of a pregnant woman count as 2 crimes, a federal judge ruled that a pregnant illegal alien can’t be deported because her fetus is a citizen. Which should also mean pregnant women can’t be sent to jail unless there is a separate trial of the fetus, to say nothing of car poor lanes...
Remember the Panchen Lama? Soon after he was declared at the age of 7, he was taken into custody by the Chinese government, and never seen again. Today the Chinese say the 2nd highest leader of Tibetan Buddhism, now 16, is actually not in prison at all, but free, somewhere, he just doesn’t wish to speak to anyone who is not a member of the Chinese government, so that his family, also seized, can live a normal life. So that’s okay, then.
Evidently Brahimi, who we were all told was going to name the members of the Iraqi transition government, was never going to do anything of the sort, if we’re to believe what we were told today. Which we aren’t. Clearly, some sort of coup just happened, and it will take a while to sort out who foisted Iyad “Owie” Allawi on an unsuspecting world. And who had the naked pictures of Brahimi, who certainly had not been planning to appoint a former exile, politician rather than technocrat type, associated with the discredited IGC. Iyad “Zowie” Allawi is a 30-year exile, a man with connections to the CIA and before that with MI6 (to whom he gave the famous claim that Iraq could launch WMDs within 45 minutes, and endorsed the Niger yellowcake forgery), and before that the Iraqi secret service, for whom he presumably spied on his fellow Iraqi students in London. “Howie” Allawi was involved in that coup attempt against Saddam that the CIA believes was snitched out to Saddam by Chalabi (who’s some sort of relative of “Maui” Allawi)(later: evidently he’s Chalabi’s nephew twice over, and is smack in the middle of the cousinate that is the IGC, being related to several of the appointed ministers). His Iraqi National Accord, like Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, would not have existed without money from Western intelligence services. After enormous confusion among the Bushies, Scott McClellan says that “Wowie” Allawi “appears to have broad support among the Iraqi people.” He didn’t explain how he’d know such a thing. Presumably he actually meant broad support among his relatives who were appointed by the US. Although “Yowie” Allawi is invariably described as a neurologist, I have yet to see a hint he ever practiced.
Prank call opportunity of the week: “The Swedish Organisation for Sex Education has rolled out a "condom ambulance" service. Callers who unexpectedly find themselves requiring protection can dial 696969 to summon a delivery from the van, which features the logo of a winged condom in flight. Reuters, Stockholm”
I suggested Ashcroft’s nebulous THEY’RE COMING TO GET YOU, RUN FOR THE HILLS message was purely political, and so it was. His claims about Al Qaida being 90% ready for the attack turn out actually to refer to another body, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which may not actually exist except as a website that takes responsibility for every terrorist attack anywhere, and some blackouts that had nothing to do with terrorist attacks. Chalabi offered better intel than Ashcroft. Good news: the FBI finally figured out how to use computers and get on the Web. Bad news: they believe everything they read there. And today, the FBI issued a warning to several cities of a terrorist attack within the next 24 hours...and then retracted it.
Arizona’s two-time prosecutor-of-the-year award winner is disbarred for eliciting perjury in a death penalty case. During his career, he prosecuted 250 felonies including 140 murders, of which 60 were capital. Can’t find out how many of those were executed. Or convicted, if it comes to that. The prosecutor is only being disbarred, not sent to prison forever.
Thanks to the Laci Peterson law which made the murder of a pregnant woman count as 2 crimes, a federal judge ruled that a pregnant illegal alien can’t be deported because her fetus is a citizen. Which should also mean pregnant women can’t be sent to jail unless there is a separate trial of the fetus, to say nothing of car poor lanes...
Friday, May 28, 2004
Come out with your hands up! Just kidding!
For the story of the arrest of cleric Abu Hamza, McNeil-Lehrer had a graphic with a picture of handcuffs. Hamza has no hands. Hamza was arrested by the British to be extradited to the US under new rules that allow fast-track extraditions without any of those pesky rights (or having to show that they have a case) slowing things down. John “Lost to a dead guy” Ashcroft, who is an idiot, did a lot of big talking about how Hamza could face the death penalty, without realizing that unless he guarantees that that not happen, there will be no extradition (or perhaps realizing, but not caring how much he insults the British as long as he gets a soundbite, and who’ll see a correction anyway). The British home secretary had to be trotted out today to explain that. Hamza basically helped out various terrorist types, helped set up training camps etc, so I suspect it’ll be darned hard to prove anything solid against him.
Gwyneth Paltrow will play Marlene Dietrich in a biopic. You have to be FUCKING kidding.
The US seems to be giving up in Iraq on the instalment plan. Today it agreed to pull out of Najaf, in exchange for neither of its objectives (which were the arrest of Sadr and the disbandment of his militia). You’ll remember this particular uprising, that we just surrendered to, was started when the US shut down a small newspaper.
Guardian piece points out that the Taguba report didn’t just talk about torture of prisoners, but about the sheer unadulterated incompetence at the top and middle of the military structure, and lack of any training at the bottom. Which comes down to using reservists, who cost 1/7 as much as professional soldiers.
The Post has a poll that says Americans don’t approve of torture, but approve of various torture techniques, as long as they aren’t called torture. They are, however, against applying electrodes to genitals and many of the techniques that have actually been used. Women, the poor and Democrats are less likely to approve of torture.
Governor Ahnuuld snuck an item into his proposed budget to seize 75% of all punitive damages awarded in civil suits. And would limit the awarding of punitive damages to one case, no matter how often the defendant did something horrible and lost in court.
Gwyneth Paltrow will play Marlene Dietrich in a biopic. You have to be FUCKING kidding.
The US seems to be giving up in Iraq on the instalment plan. Today it agreed to pull out of Najaf, in exchange for neither of its objectives (which were the arrest of Sadr and the disbandment of his militia). You’ll remember this particular uprising, that we just surrendered to, was started when the US shut down a small newspaper.
Guardian piece points out that the Taguba report didn’t just talk about torture of prisoners, but about the sheer unadulterated incompetence at the top and middle of the military structure, and lack of any training at the bottom. Which comes down to using reservists, who cost 1/7 as much as professional soldiers.
The Post has a poll that says Americans don’t approve of torture, but approve of various torture techniques, as long as they aren’t called torture. They are, however, against applying electrodes to genitals and many of the techniques that have actually been used. Women, the poor and Democrats are less likely to approve of torture.
Governor Ahnuuld snuck an item into his proposed budget to seize 75% of all punitive damages awarded in civil suits. And would limit the awarding of punitive damages to one case, no matter how often the defendant did something horrible and lost in court.
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Behind the clown nose
2 British MPs are planning to come over and help get Kerry elected. Alan Duncan and Simon Burns. Tories. One of them a gay Tory. Whatever.
It makes sense, given how firmly up Dubya’s butt Tony is, and how badly it works for him. (Later: better biological metaphor by Simon Jenkins in the London Times: “GEORGE BUSH has Tony Blair round his little finger. Indeed I wonder sometimes if Mr Blair is his little finger. When the hand waves the finger waves. When the hand bombs, the finger bombs. When the hand says come, it comes.”) (Jenkins also compares Blair’s plan to send 3,000 more troops, to the holy sites yet, with Churchill’s Dardanelles folly and Gladstone’s sending Gordon to Khartoum. You gotta be impressed. Americans’ ability to apply history to the understanding of foreign policy is confined to how much any given war is or is not like Vietnam and how much our enemy-of-the-day is or is not like Hitler.).
A few days ago Colin Powell said that of course coalition troops would leave if the Iraqi government asked them to. So Blair probably felt safe saying the same thing, evidently believing that Powell has something to do with American foreign policy, which makes him like the actress in the joke who’s so stupid she fucks the writer. Except on the same day, Powell said that US troops would actually do whatever they felt like doing, rather than deferring to any furriners. Blair’s people then had to explain that, evidently, what Blair had possibly meant to say was that if the Iraqi government asked the occupying forces to leave, the British would do so but the Americans would tell them to go fuck themselves.
The real question, which some shrew reporter actually asked, is less will troops leave, but what happens if the US decides to invade Fallujah, say. Can the Iraqis veto the operation? Can Iraqi generals refuse to let Iraqi troops participate? The answer is no and no. I think the Powell position is that we will leave if asked, but that if we stay, we’ll do whatever we damned well want. All or nothing.
Al Gore doesn’t like George Bush. Really. At length. Do you think Kerry will discover this level of passion and outrage 3½ years after he loses to Bush?
The Wall Street Journal has a piece on all that sovereignty we’re transferring. Bremer has been appointing “commissions” with 5-year terms to do the real work of government. The piece quotes the Iraqi in charge of the Ministry of Communications, to whom no one in the occupation government bothered, ahem, communicating, that they were transferring to one such commission all the powers he thought he had to license tv stations, newspapers, and regulate cellphone companies.
Bushism: “I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein.”
Or possibly by Jack Bauer.
Another meaningless vague warning about possible terrorism in the USA? Or are they really just trying to suggest that a vote for Kerry means the terrorists win? Ashcroft: “The Madrid railway bombings were perceived by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida to have advanced their cause. Al Qaida may perceive that a large-scale attack in the United States this summer or fall would lead to similar consequences.” (That quote came from Slate. I tried to get more context, but neither the Justice nor Heimat Security’s websites have anything on this oh-so-urgent warning, not having been updated for a few days.) I did find DOJ’s children’s homepage, with an especially slutty, half-naked representation of Justice.
LeftI points out that the prospective UN resolution on Iraq would let the US keep troops there forever, unless rescinded by a UN resolution, which the US could veto.
Oo-kay:
http://www.bushislord.com/
Speaking of clowns, one of Barnum & Bailey’s was just arrested for child porn. Spanky the clown. Customs Agent Albert Fitchett: “But behind the clown nose this man appears to have been supporting an industry that trades in the exploitation of children.”
A 3-point exit strategy that’s better than Bush’s 5-point one, not least because of the two fewer points:
It makes sense, given how firmly up Dubya’s butt Tony is, and how badly it works for him. (Later: better biological metaphor by Simon Jenkins in the London Times: “GEORGE BUSH has Tony Blair round his little finger. Indeed I wonder sometimes if Mr Blair is his little finger. When the hand waves the finger waves. When the hand bombs, the finger bombs. When the hand says come, it comes.”) (Jenkins also compares Blair’s plan to send 3,000 more troops, to the holy sites yet, with Churchill’s Dardanelles folly and Gladstone’s sending Gordon to Khartoum. You gotta be impressed. Americans’ ability to apply history to the understanding of foreign policy is confined to how much any given war is or is not like Vietnam and how much our enemy-of-the-day is or is not like Hitler.).
A few days ago Colin Powell said that of course coalition troops would leave if the Iraqi government asked them to. So Blair probably felt safe saying the same thing, evidently believing that Powell has something to do with American foreign policy, which makes him like the actress in the joke who’s so stupid she fucks the writer. Except on the same day, Powell said that US troops would actually do whatever they felt like doing, rather than deferring to any furriners. Blair’s people then had to explain that, evidently, what Blair had possibly meant to say was that if the Iraqi government asked the occupying forces to leave, the British would do so but the Americans would tell them to go fuck themselves.
The real question, which some shrew reporter actually asked, is less will troops leave, but what happens if the US decides to invade Fallujah, say. Can the Iraqis veto the operation? Can Iraqi generals refuse to let Iraqi troops participate? The answer is no and no. I think the Powell position is that we will leave if asked, but that if we stay, we’ll do whatever we damned well want. All or nothing.
Al Gore doesn’t like George Bush. Really. At length. Do you think Kerry will discover this level of passion and outrage 3½ years after he loses to Bush?
The Wall Street Journal has a piece on all that sovereignty we’re transferring. Bremer has been appointing “commissions” with 5-year terms to do the real work of government. The piece quotes the Iraqi in charge of the Ministry of Communications, to whom no one in the occupation government bothered, ahem, communicating, that they were transferring to one such commission all the powers he thought he had to license tv stations, newspapers, and regulate cellphone companies.
Bushism: “I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein.”
Or possibly by Jack Bauer.
Another meaningless vague warning about possible terrorism in the USA? Or are they really just trying to suggest that a vote for Kerry means the terrorists win? Ashcroft: “The Madrid railway bombings were perceived by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida to have advanced their cause. Al Qaida may perceive that a large-scale attack in the United States this summer or fall would lead to similar consequences.” (That quote came from Slate. I tried to get more context, but neither the Justice nor Heimat Security’s websites have anything on this oh-so-urgent warning, not having been updated for a few days.) I did find DOJ’s children’s homepage, with an especially slutty, half-naked representation of Justice.
LeftI points out that the prospective UN resolution on Iraq would let the US keep troops there forever, unless rescinded by a UN resolution, which the US could veto.
Oo-kay:
http://www.bushislord.com/
Speaking of clowns, one of Barnum & Bailey’s was just arrested for child porn. Spanky the clown. Customs Agent Albert Fitchett: “But behind the clown nose this man appears to have been supporting an industry that trades in the exploitation of children.”
A 3-point exit strategy that’s better than Bush’s 5-point one, not least because of the two fewer points:
1) Kill all the ones who are trying to kill us, in such a way that none of those who presently do not want to kill us suddenly start wanting to kill us.
2) At the moment of the death of the last person who wanted to kill us, race quickly out of the country before some additional person suddenly decides he/she wants to kill us, thus necessitating our continued presence in Iraq, in order to kill him/her.
3) Having left Iraq quickly, do not look back, so as not to witness individuals claiming they would have liked to kill us, which would then necessitate a return to Iraq, in order to etc., etc.
Monday, May 24, 2004
Bad building. Bad!
Glad I’m not the only one to notice: Salon asks “Is Bush the only American who hasn't discussed the torture scandal enough in the last month to have decided already how to pronounce the prison's name?” Of course he did promise to tear it down, possibly part of a new Bush Doctrine: tear down everything in the world that George W. Bush can’t pronounce. It would take a while, of course, because we couldn’t use the shortcut of nukyular weapons.
Actually, tearing down Abu Ghraib is a rather odd solution, given that I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the actual building that was the problem. I don’t think it’s the haunted hotel in The Shining (which for some reason is my second Shining reference this month). To paraphrase the NRA, prisons don’t force people into naked human pyramids, people force people into naked human pyramids. Although in the period since whenever Bush last spoke about the prison scandal there’ve been another million revelations, this was his only response: punish the building. Bad building, bad! A UN guy commentating in the Guardian notes that the speech “was, of course, laced with repeated denunciations of the inhumanity of Iraqis fighting the occupation. They are "brutal", they show "contempt for all the rules of warfare and the bounds of civilised behaviour". But clearly the period of US penitence over the abuse is now well past; it is once again only the "enemy" who is brutal.”
Saletan at Slate is excellent on the speech.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (in Britain, as you may have guessed) is calling on members of the public to help it prove that the number of insects is declining, by counting the number of dead bugs on their car windshields.
For 6 months, 11 students of high school age beat, humiliated (including the ever-popular making him masturbate in front of them), etc another student, filmed it all and put it on the internet (actually, while 2 newspapers say that, it sounds like they just emailed photos to each other). The students are Germans, and we’ll all just keep our snide comments to ourselves just this once, shall we?
A little more on Nick Berg conspiracy theories. The biggest problem people have with the video (which I still refuse to watch) is that when his head is cut off, there is no blood. Impossible. Unless he was already quite dead. The previous footage of Berg alive, speaking rather more calmly than your average kidnappee, in an orange jumpsuit, was his interrogation by the CIA. His death was either during interrogation, deliberate as a distraction from Abu Ghraib, or he was killed on the street by one of the Iraqis who dislikes Americans (25 million and counting), and his body used for propaganda purposes.
A longish Andrew Cockburn piece on Chalabi’s Iranian connections.
Actually, tearing down Abu Ghraib is a rather odd solution, given that I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the actual building that was the problem. I don’t think it’s the haunted hotel in The Shining (which for some reason is my second Shining reference this month). To paraphrase the NRA, prisons don’t force people into naked human pyramids, people force people into naked human pyramids. Although in the period since whenever Bush last spoke about the prison scandal there’ve been another million revelations, this was his only response: punish the building. Bad building, bad! A UN guy commentating in the Guardian notes that the speech “was, of course, laced with repeated denunciations of the inhumanity of Iraqis fighting the occupation. They are "brutal", they show "contempt for all the rules of warfare and the bounds of civilised behaviour". But clearly the period of US penitence over the abuse is now well past; it is once again only the "enemy" who is brutal.”
Saletan at Slate is excellent on the speech.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (in Britain, as you may have guessed) is calling on members of the public to help it prove that the number of insects is declining, by counting the number of dead bugs on their car windshields.
For 6 months, 11 students of high school age beat, humiliated (including the ever-popular making him masturbate in front of them), etc another student, filmed it all and put it on the internet (actually, while 2 newspapers say that, it sounds like they just emailed photos to each other). The students are Germans, and we’ll all just keep our snide comments to ourselves just this once, shall we?
A little more on Nick Berg conspiracy theories. The biggest problem people have with the video (which I still refuse to watch) is that when his head is cut off, there is no blood. Impossible. Unless he was already quite dead. The previous footage of Berg alive, speaking rather more calmly than your average kidnappee, in an orange jumpsuit, was his interrogation by the CIA. His death was either during interrogation, deliberate as a distraction from Abu Ghraib, or he was killed on the street by one of the Iraqis who dislikes Americans (25 million and counting), and his body used for propaganda purposes.
A longish Andrew Cockburn piece on Chalabi’s Iranian connections.
What do lesbians do on a second date?
Kevin and I were discussing how long it would take for Abu Ghraib to become the basis for a reality tv show. ‘Cause you know there was a Fox executive looking at the tv thinking “Naked human pyramid, say....” And the lovely Corp. Graner has thoughtfully provided the show’s title: “I Love to Make a Grown Man Piss Himself.”
What a great time for the US and UK to be trying to get the UN to give their troops immunity for war crimes or whatever after the so-called handover. The draft resolution also allows the military to do whatever is necessary to restore order, and has no expiration date. I wonder how this wording compares to the UN resolution sending troops into Korea in 1950, if that one was quite so Gulf-of-Tonkin-Resolutionesque.
Last Friday I asked, “What is it with the military and thumbs up?” I thought that was rhetorical, but in fact in that list of cultural do’s and don’t’s they all get--always accept a cup of tea when offered by an Arab, don’t point the soles of your feet at them, nudity really humiliates them, etc--is the fact that in the Arab culture, the thumbs-up is very very obscene.
Saw some of Shrub’s speech. First, in case you’re looking for symbolism, he was wearing heavy makeup to cover his scrapes. He said very little (and he will say it 4 more times), and certainly nothing new except that we’ll build the Iraqis a brand spanking new dungeon and tear down Abu Ghraib (with the Iraqis’ permission, he muttered under his breath). The problem, and the reason he would need permission, is timing; obviously it can’t be built by June 30, and so Abu Ghraib poses a problem: handing over the keys to Iraqis on June 30 is bad symbolism, keeping control over is bad symbolism. If it’s going to be destroyed, that would be the day to do it.
In the space of 3 sentences he pronounced Abu Ghraib 3 different ways.
It just struck me... Another quote: “Under Saddam Hussein, prisons like Abu Ghraib were symbols of death and torture. That same prison became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonoured our country and disregarded our values.” It struck me that no one ever says that the prison’s prior history of death and torture disregarded Iraqi values.
Brahimi will wonder about the precise nature of Bush’s claim that he “fully” supports his work, coming as it did immediately after a sentence referring to the “full” sovereignty Iraq will be getting on June 30th.
He wants credit for his great restraint in Fallujah.
Bush says “Iraqis can be certain a free Iraq will always have a friend in the United States of America,” but doesn’t say who that friend will be. Whoever draws the short straw, I suppose.
A Guardian columnist notes that under international law, “sovereignty” is not George Bush’s to transfer, but always inhered in the Iraqi people. Said so in the UN declarations, too.
Actually, reading over the text of Bush’s speech, you see a lot of things like that, where he suggests that the nature of his authority in Iraq is exactly the same as it is in the US (where it also illegitimate, of course, but for entirely different reasons). “We want Iraqi forces to gain experience and confidence in dealing with their country's enemies.” Those people are Iraqis. George Bush doesn’t get to decide which Iraqis are their country’s enemies. Sadr commands “an illegal militia”. Illegal under whose laws? The US is an occupying power; its authority derives from force, not law.
John Kerry responds with the strength and vision we’ve come to expect from this big loser: “What's most important now is to turn these words into action by offering presidential leadership to the nation and to the world.”
I have a suggestion for Brahimi: since his list of the caretaker Iraqi government (puppet-lite, I will be calling it) will also serve as a hit-list for, well, pretty much everybody not in the caretaker Iraqi government, why not combine the administrative chart with the beloved deck-of-cards symbolism. In fact, instead of using the titles president, prime minister, etc, let’s call them King of Hearts, Jack of Spades, etc.
In the NYT Monday, Elisabeth Bumiller has a piece referring to those times when Bush talks at Republicans for 35 minutes, takes no questions and leaves, meets foreign ministers of the G-8, speaks at them for 8 minutes, takes no questions and leaves, and notes that Bush’s 5 Iraq speeches follow in this mould of one-way communication. The article is titled “The Other Long Occupation: Bush in a Bubble.”
In Britain, a baby was born (2 years ago; we’re just hearing this now) from an embryo created with sperm frozen 21 years before. Which means he or she was born with the right to vote and drink, I’m guessing. And the guy’s wife was 9 when he banked his sperm, which is also kinda creepy.
Israel admits that the protesters it killed were innocent, and not armed.
The Post notes, not surprisingly, that the vast majority of same-sex couples getting marriage licenses in SF, Portland and Mass. have been women.
What a great time for the US and UK to be trying to get the UN to give their troops immunity for war crimes or whatever after the so-called handover. The draft resolution also allows the military to do whatever is necessary to restore order, and has no expiration date. I wonder how this wording compares to the UN resolution sending troops into Korea in 1950, if that one was quite so Gulf-of-Tonkin-Resolutionesque.
Last Friday I asked, “What is it with the military and thumbs up?” I thought that was rhetorical, but in fact in that list of cultural do’s and don’t’s they all get--always accept a cup of tea when offered by an Arab, don’t point the soles of your feet at them, nudity really humiliates them, etc--is the fact that in the Arab culture, the thumbs-up is very very obscene.
Saw some of Shrub’s speech. First, in case you’re looking for symbolism, he was wearing heavy makeup to cover his scrapes. He said very little (and he will say it 4 more times), and certainly nothing new except that we’ll build the Iraqis a brand spanking new dungeon and tear down Abu Ghraib (with the Iraqis’ permission, he muttered under his breath). The problem, and the reason he would need permission, is timing; obviously it can’t be built by June 30, and so Abu Ghraib poses a problem: handing over the keys to Iraqis on June 30 is bad symbolism, keeping control over is bad symbolism. If it’s going to be destroyed, that would be the day to do it.
In the space of 3 sentences he pronounced Abu Ghraib 3 different ways.
It just struck me... Another quote: “Under Saddam Hussein, prisons like Abu Ghraib were symbols of death and torture. That same prison became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonoured our country and disregarded our values.” It struck me that no one ever says that the prison’s prior history of death and torture disregarded Iraqi values.
Brahimi will wonder about the precise nature of Bush’s claim that he “fully” supports his work, coming as it did immediately after a sentence referring to the “full” sovereignty Iraq will be getting on June 30th.
He wants credit for his great restraint in Fallujah.
Bush says “Iraqis can be certain a free Iraq will always have a friend in the United States of America,” but doesn’t say who that friend will be. Whoever draws the short straw, I suppose.
A Guardian columnist notes that under international law, “sovereignty” is not George Bush’s to transfer, but always inhered in the Iraqi people. Said so in the UN declarations, too.
Actually, reading over the text of Bush’s speech, you see a lot of things like that, where he suggests that the nature of his authority in Iraq is exactly the same as it is in the US (where it also illegitimate, of course, but for entirely different reasons). “We want Iraqi forces to gain experience and confidence in dealing with their country's enemies.” Those people are Iraqis. George Bush doesn’t get to decide which Iraqis are their country’s enemies. Sadr commands “an illegal militia”. Illegal under whose laws? The US is an occupying power; its authority derives from force, not law.
John Kerry responds with the strength and vision we’ve come to expect from this big loser: “What's most important now is to turn these words into action by offering presidential leadership to the nation and to the world.”
I have a suggestion for Brahimi: since his list of the caretaker Iraqi government (puppet-lite, I will be calling it) will also serve as a hit-list for, well, pretty much everybody not in the caretaker Iraqi government, why not combine the administrative chart with the beloved deck-of-cards symbolism. In fact, instead of using the titles president, prime minister, etc, let’s call them King of Hearts, Jack of Spades, etc.
In the NYT Monday, Elisabeth Bumiller has a piece referring to those times when Bush talks at Republicans for 35 minutes, takes no questions and leaves, meets foreign ministers of the G-8, speaks at them for 8 minutes, takes no questions and leaves, and notes that Bush’s 5 Iraq speeches follow in this mould of one-way communication. The article is titled “The Other Long Occupation: Bush in a Bubble.”
In Britain, a baby was born (2 years ago; we’re just hearing this now) from an embryo created with sperm frozen 21 years before. Which means he or she was born with the right to vote and drink, I’m guessing. And the guy’s wife was 9 when he banked his sperm, which is also kinda creepy.
Israel admits that the protesters it killed were innocent, and not armed.
The Post notes, not surprisingly, that the vast majority of same-sex couples getting marriage licenses in SF, Portland and Mass. have been women.
Stormed a mosque
The inevitable Susan Sontag piece on the Abu Ghraib photos. 'Cuz, like Chance the Gardener, she likes to watch.
From the Daily Telegraph: “A group of hunting enthusiasts is setting up its own "church" in an attempt to stop the Government from banning their favourite field sport. The founders of the Free Church of Country Sports, whose supporters include a barrister, a publisher and several businessmen, claim that fox hunting is part of their religion and that legislation to ban it would be an infringement of their rights as a religious minority. ... "We baptise our children by blooding them with the blood of that which we kill. Is this any more strange than dressing them in white and totally submerging them in water?" ... "If you look at it from a Race Relations Act point of view we are ethnically and culturally different. We feel that there is a considerable element of discrimination against us.’”
“Inbred” is not an ethnic group.
They blamed Bush’s little mountain bike accident on the recent rain in Crawford. There has been no recent rain in Crawford. Do they have to lie about absolutely everything?
That was a rhetorical question.
American troops stormed a mosque today. That sort of thing always goes down well, doesn’t it? So many eras of peace, stability and democracy have begun with the phrase “stormed a mosque.”
Spike Milligan’s headstone is finally put up. “I told you I was ill.”
From the Guardian: “The original US autopsy said [Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush] had died of a heart attack. It now appears he was suffocated during interrogation when a CIA officer put him in a sleeping bag and sat on him.”
The Bush daughters have graduated, Jenna with a degree in English, Barbara with one in humanities. Their father, of course, lacks both.
The Sunday Times (London) says that the Israeli army has a hit list of 1,000 Palestinians to be assassinated in Gaza before the withdrawal.
The Sunday Times also has an article about Nick Berg’s death and the conspiracy theories around it. Given British libel laws, you have to know how to read between the lines of such stories; it seems to me they’re strongly suggesting that the tape was in part faked, made in Abu Ghraib or someplace like it, that he was in fact executed by Americans. It actually makes a sick kind of sense. The timing was good (i.e., distracting) for the Bushies. Details for the conspiracy minded: the orange jumpsuit, one of the killers has an American cap and, evidently in frame 9,306, a rather pale ear, the can’t-be-a-coincidence connection between Berg and Zacarias Moussaoui (who used Berg’s email password), his father appearing on a right-wing site March 7 on a list of enemies of the country but listing the son’s company, that the US still isn’t admitting that they were the ones holding him, although he was released one day after his parents filed a writ, that the sound on the tape may be dubbed and the accent is wrong.
AP has a video of the wedding the US bombed. The US is still denying that it bombed a wedding.
From the Daily Telegraph: “A group of hunting enthusiasts is setting up its own "church" in an attempt to stop the Government from banning their favourite field sport. The founders of the Free Church of Country Sports, whose supporters include a barrister, a publisher and several businessmen, claim that fox hunting is part of their religion and that legislation to ban it would be an infringement of their rights as a religious minority. ... "We baptise our children by blooding them with the blood of that which we kill. Is this any more strange than dressing them in white and totally submerging them in water?" ... "If you look at it from a Race Relations Act point of view we are ethnically and culturally different. We feel that there is a considerable element of discrimination against us.’”
“Inbred” is not an ethnic group.
They blamed Bush’s little mountain bike accident on the recent rain in Crawford. There has been no recent rain in Crawford. Do they have to lie about absolutely everything?
That was a rhetorical question.
American troops stormed a mosque today. That sort of thing always goes down well, doesn’t it? So many eras of peace, stability and democracy have begun with the phrase “stormed a mosque.”
Spike Milligan’s headstone is finally put up. “I told you I was ill.”
From the Guardian: “The original US autopsy said [Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush] had died of a heart attack. It now appears he was suffocated during interrogation when a CIA officer put him in a sleeping bag and sat on him.”
The Bush daughters have graduated, Jenna with a degree in English, Barbara with one in humanities. Their father, of course, lacks both.
The Sunday Times (London) says that the Israeli army has a hit list of 1,000 Palestinians to be assassinated in Gaza before the withdrawal.
The Sunday Times also has an article about Nick Berg’s death and the conspiracy theories around it. Given British libel laws, you have to know how to read between the lines of such stories; it seems to me they’re strongly suggesting that the tape was in part faked, made in Abu Ghraib or someplace like it, that he was in fact executed by Americans. It actually makes a sick kind of sense. The timing was good (i.e., distracting) for the Bushies. Details for the conspiracy minded: the orange jumpsuit, one of the killers has an American cap and, evidently in frame 9,306, a rather pale ear, the can’t-be-a-coincidence connection between Berg and Zacarias Moussaoui (who used Berg’s email password), his father appearing on a right-wing site March 7 on a list of enemies of the country but listing the son’s company, that the US still isn’t admitting that they were the ones holding him, although he was released one day after his parents filed a writ, that the sound on the tape may be dubbed and the accent is wrong.
AP has a video of the wedding the US bombed. The US is still denying that it bombed a wedding.
Saturday, May 22, 2004
I love to make a grown man piss himself
From the WaPo: “He said that he asked Graner, a Pennsylvania prison guard in civilian life, about the photographs. Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'"
Who doesn’t?
The NYT bleeped out the second sentence in that quote.
That’s from an article which says it wasn’t softening up, it was just for fun.
It’s Newsday, which makes it dubious. But interesting, and plausible. It’s suggested that Chalabi has for years been the agent through which Iranian intelligence manipulated the United States, ultimately manipulating it into taking out Iran’s old enemy Saddam. The question is, who would leak this? This makes everyone involved look bad. Still, if you could come close to proving that Bush was conned by Iran, and paid for the privilege, he can start packing his bags now.
Chalabi tells Al Arabiya that the raid “showed that I was with the Iraqi people all along.” Even Chalabi is now defining Americans and Iraqis as being on opposite sides.
The Post says that the Kurds are threatening not to join any government in which they don’t have one of the top 2 positions. When you do everything at the last minute with an iron-clad deadline like Bush is insisting on, this does give any one of the parties a great deal of leverage. Another sign that Bush doesn’t know how to negotiate.
Or hold a conversation. It was a little story, but Thursday Bush held a closed-door briefing with Congressional R’s, to reassure them about things before the American elections. They were surprised that he took no questions. He’s unable to deal on an unscripted basis even with his own followers, who were supposed to be reassured simply on Bush’s say-so. Bush genuinely doesn’t understand that his word isn’t good enough. He doesn’t know how to create an argument--indeed, he doesn’t himself make decisions based on arguments. In fact, he doesn’t really know what an argument is, mistaking it for accepting at face value the assertions of one of the good guys (or Fox News). It’s not just that he gets the news from Condi or Rove rather than the newspapers because he’s lazy and doesn’t want his beliefs contradicted by inconvenient facts, he thinks it would be discourteous to the people he trusts to listen to any contradictory views, just as he thinks it’s lese-majesty for anyone to do other than believe everything he tells them.
Atrios (and every other blogger and now me) points out that Thursday Bush condescendingly said that Iraqis are ready to “take the training wheels off” and run their own country. Today, Bush fell off a mountain bike.
Who doesn’t?
The NYT bleeped out the second sentence in that quote.
That’s from an article which says it wasn’t softening up, it was just for fun.
It’s Newsday, which makes it dubious. But interesting, and plausible. It’s suggested that Chalabi has for years been the agent through which Iranian intelligence manipulated the United States, ultimately manipulating it into taking out Iran’s old enemy Saddam. The question is, who would leak this? This makes everyone involved look bad. Still, if you could come close to proving that Bush was conned by Iran, and paid for the privilege, he can start packing his bags now.
Chalabi tells Al Arabiya that the raid “showed that I was with the Iraqi people all along.” Even Chalabi is now defining Americans and Iraqis as being on opposite sides.
The Post says that the Kurds are threatening not to join any government in which they don’t have one of the top 2 positions. When you do everything at the last minute with an iron-clad deadline like Bush is insisting on, this does give any one of the parties a great deal of leverage. Another sign that Bush doesn’t know how to negotiate.
Or hold a conversation. It was a little story, but Thursday Bush held a closed-door briefing with Congressional R’s, to reassure them about things before the American elections. They were surprised that he took no questions. He’s unable to deal on an unscripted basis even with his own followers, who were supposed to be reassured simply on Bush’s say-so. Bush genuinely doesn’t understand that his word isn’t good enough. He doesn’t know how to create an argument--indeed, he doesn’t himself make decisions based on arguments. In fact, he doesn’t really know what an argument is, mistaking it for accepting at face value the assertions of one of the good guys (or Fox News). It’s not just that he gets the news from Condi or Rove rather than the newspapers because he’s lazy and doesn’t want his beliefs contradicted by inconvenient facts, he thinks it would be discourteous to the people he trusts to listen to any contradictory views, just as he thinks it’s lese-majesty for anyone to do other than believe everything he tells them.
Atrios (and every other blogger and now me) points out that Thursday Bush condescendingly said that Iraqis are ready to “take the training wheels off” and run their own country. Today, Bush fell off a mountain bike.
Friday, May 21, 2004
An active kind of death zone
The government’s attempt to prosecute Greenpeace using an 1872 law aimed at keeping brothel-keepers off ships was laughed out of court.
Dennis Hastert lectured John McCain about sacrifices in wartime. Really.
And no, Hastert slimed his way out of Vietnam.
Hastert also mocked McCain’s credentials as a Republican. Honestly, can we have an exchange of prisoners, on a bridge in Berlin on a foggy night, where McCain joins the D’s (admittedly, on its right wing), and the R’s have to take Zel Miller?
I find that through an oversight I’ve failed to mention William “My God Can Beat Up Your God” Boykin’s role in getting the Abu Ghraib torture-and-comic-photo center up and running. In fact, that’s why he couldn’t be fired last fall, despite being the poster boy for the invasion of Iraq as holy crusade (Americans may have forgotten about Boykin quickly, but I had a new alert set up at news.google, and believe me the Arabic media figured out a way to insert him into every story for months).
Kerry has promised that if he’s elected, virtually all US troops will be out of Iraq by the end of his first term. Um, that’s 2009. The AP notes that he’s using the same peace-with-honor language as Nixon in 1968. In an interview with AP, he used the sort of language that will make him the 2nd D prez candidate to be soundly trounced by Dubya in debates: “Look, you may have some deployments of people for a long period of time in the Middle East depending on what the overall approach to the Middle East is. I'm not going to tell you we won't shift deployments from one place to another, but we're not going to be engaged in an active kind of death zone the way we are today.” Also, he has to stop saying that he’s going to get other countries to send troops. That will not happen, and no one believes it will, including Kerry.
By the way, have you been reading the “Kerryisms” on Slate?
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2027&e=5&u=/chitribts/giboymistreatedtogetdadtotalk
(I like a URL that tells you what it is)
This story is no surprise to the few of us who haven’t forgotten that the US military arrested the wives and mothers of generals and other Iraqis they wanted to surrender themselves. Another fine old Iraqi custom, like torture and rape, to which American occupiers adopted like a duck to water.
Jon Stewart’s commencement address at William & Mary:
The whole thing here.
Gay Republicans in North Carolina are shocked to discover that non-gay Republicans in North Carolina don’t like gay Republicans.
What is it with the military and thumbs up?
Another Write your own Tom Friedman column, totally different from the last one I sent. And funnier.
Yesterday, the US couldn’t keep its story straight over whether it bombed a house or a wedding party, whether they did it with planes or helicopters. It’s still not clear today, with footage of the mass burials going all over the Arab world. The US’s response: to demand the name of the cameraman from Al Arabiya. The Marine general in charge claims not to understand how all those women and children got dead, although “bad things happen in wars,” but says “These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let's not be naive.” There should be another, what, eight million military-age males, so let’s get cracking! The Indy comprehensively demolishes the US case. Mark Kimmitt, M.M., defends the massacre by darkly observing that guns, Syrian passports and a satellite phone were found. Wedding gifts? Seriously, guns in Iraq not a big surprise, Syrian passports 10 miles from the Syrian border--what are the odds? a satellite phone in an area with no other phone service... The general poo-poos that there would be a wedding in “the middle of the desert 10 miles from the Syrian border... 80 miles from the nearest civilisation”. The survivors respond: that’s where we live, you moron! They also say they did not fire guns off (and certainly not at 2 in the morning, when the attack occurred). This is the first report that answers the obvious question: the bride and groom did both survive. The musicians did not.
Guardian editorial, “Lies about Crimes.”
The FDA bans gay men donating sperm anonymously. Is sperm a food or a drug?
So what to make of the raid on Chalabi’s home? So many reasons have been given for it--thefts of Iraqi government property, currency fraud, his militia is extorting people, giving intelligence to Iran, to make him look good to the Iraqis, he was plotting a coup, and half a dozen I can’t think of at the moment--and most of them good, unlike the reasons for the invasion of Iraq, so many of them false and so many provided by Chalabi. Poetic justice, or something. American policy in Iraq right now is so disjointed and incoherent that I can’t even guess how this fits in. Heard Rumsfeld actually insist that the US had nothing to do with this (a lie), knew nothing about it (a lie no sane person would believe), you should really ask the Iraqis.
Dennis Hastert lectured John McCain about sacrifices in wartime. Really.
And no, Hastert slimed his way out of Vietnam.
Hastert also mocked McCain’s credentials as a Republican. Honestly, can we have an exchange of prisoners, on a bridge in Berlin on a foggy night, where McCain joins the D’s (admittedly, on its right wing), and the R’s have to take Zel Miller?
I find that through an oversight I’ve failed to mention William “My God Can Beat Up Your God” Boykin’s role in getting the Abu Ghraib torture-and-comic-photo center up and running. In fact, that’s why he couldn’t be fired last fall, despite being the poster boy for the invasion of Iraq as holy crusade (Americans may have forgotten about Boykin quickly, but I had a new alert set up at news.google, and believe me the Arabic media figured out a way to insert him into every story for months).
Kerry has promised that if he’s elected, virtually all US troops will be out of Iraq by the end of his first term. Um, that’s 2009. The AP notes that he’s using the same peace-with-honor language as Nixon in 1968. In an interview with AP, he used the sort of language that will make him the 2nd D prez candidate to be soundly trounced by Dubya in debates: “Look, you may have some deployments of people for a long period of time in the Middle East depending on what the overall approach to the Middle East is. I'm not going to tell you we won't shift deployments from one place to another, but we're not going to be engaged in an active kind of death zone the way we are today.” Also, he has to stop saying that he’s going to get other countries to send troops. That will not happen, and no one believes it will, including Kerry.
By the way, have you been reading the “Kerryisms” on Slate?
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2027&e=5&u=/chitribts/giboymistreatedtogetdadtotalk
(I like a URL that tells you what it is)
This story is no surprise to the few of us who haven’t forgotten that the US military arrested the wives and mothers of generals and other Iraqis they wanted to surrender themselves. Another fine old Iraqi custom, like torture and rape, to which American occupiers adopted like a duck to water.
Jon Stewart’s commencement address at William & Mary:
Lets talk about the real world for a moment. We had been discussing it earlier, and I…I wanted to bring this up to you earlier about the real world, and this is I guess as good a time as any. I don’t really know to put this, so I’ll be blunt. We broke it. ...
But here’s the good news. You fix this thing, you’re the next greatest generation, people. You do this—and I believe you can—you win this war on terror, and Tom Brokaw’s kissing your ass from here to Tikrit, let me tell ya. And even if you don’t, you’re not gonna have much trouble surpassing my generation. If you end up getting your picture taken next to a naked guy pile of enemy prisoners and don’t give the thumbs up you’ve outdid us.
The whole thing here.
Gay Republicans in North Carolina are shocked to discover that non-gay Republicans in North Carolina don’t like gay Republicans.
What is it with the military and thumbs up?
Another Write your own Tom Friedman column, totally different from the last one I sent. And funnier.
Yesterday, the US couldn’t keep its story straight over whether it bombed a house or a wedding party, whether they did it with planes or helicopters. It’s still not clear today, with footage of the mass burials going all over the Arab world. The US’s response: to demand the name of the cameraman from Al Arabiya. The Marine general in charge claims not to understand how all those women and children got dead, although “bad things happen in wars,” but says “These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let's not be naive.” There should be another, what, eight million military-age males, so let’s get cracking! The Indy comprehensively demolishes the US case. Mark Kimmitt, M.M., defends the massacre by darkly observing that guns, Syrian passports and a satellite phone were found. Wedding gifts? Seriously, guns in Iraq not a big surprise, Syrian passports 10 miles from the Syrian border--what are the odds? a satellite phone in an area with no other phone service... The general poo-poos that there would be a wedding in “the middle of the desert 10 miles from the Syrian border... 80 miles from the nearest civilisation”. The survivors respond: that’s where we live, you moron! They also say they did not fire guns off (and certainly not at 2 in the morning, when the attack occurred). This is the first report that answers the obvious question: the bride and groom did both survive. The musicians did not.
Guardian editorial, “Lies about Crimes.”
The FDA bans gay men donating sperm anonymously. Is sperm a food or a drug?
So what to make of the raid on Chalabi’s home? So many reasons have been given for it--thefts of Iraqi government property, currency fraud, his militia is extorting people, giving intelligence to Iran, to make him look good to the Iraqis, he was plotting a coup, and half a dozen I can’t think of at the moment--and most of them good, unlike the reasons for the invasion of Iraq, so many of them false and so many provided by Chalabi. Poetic justice, or something. American policy in Iraq right now is so disjointed and incoherent that I can’t even guess how this fits in. Heard Rumsfeld actually insist that the US had nothing to do with this (a lie), knew nothing about it (a lie no sane person would believe), you should really ask the Iraqis.
Fur-lined toilet seats are a luxury. Dangerous rhetoric is a necessity
Nancy Pelosi says that the Boy-Emperor has no clothes, and Tom DeLay practically calls her a communist in response, saying that “if the Democrats truly want to be considered for national leadership again”, they need never to say anything bad about Bush ever again, which is an interesting definition of leadership. “She should apologize to the president and to the troops because this nation cannot afford the luxury of her dangerous rhetoric.” Luxury.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Michael Howard has decided that it’s ok to criticize Blair’s war policy as incompetent, and Labour is responding just like DeLay--irresponsible, threatening the morale of troops, etc.
And Bush will take out ads accusing Kerry of “playing politics with national security”. Did I mention those accusations of playing politics will be made in advertisements directed at the person running against Bush?
I can no longer keep up with torture allegations. They just pile up on top of each others like a pyramid of hooded naked Iraqi prisoners, if I may wax metaphoric. We’ve got Delta Force’s “battlefield interrogation facility” (does every single unit get its own dungeon?) , we’ve got Afghanistan. We’ve got Reuters employees tortured, NBC or is it CBS. We’ve got new pictures every day, and new details: maxi-pads, crawling over glass, food in the toilet, yet more deaths in custody, more prisoners raped, smeared with shit, ridden like animals, force-fed pork and made to curse Islam and thank Jesus (Ann Coulter would be proud).
A story in the NYT today notes that the Pentagon’s list of approved interrogation techniques is classified. Why? The prisoners know what’s being done to them, so the only reason is public relations, which is not only not a legitimate reason to classify something, it’s against stated policy, as set forth by Bush in Executive Order (you could look up the number yourself).
Kerry campaign slogan: “Let America be America Again.” That’ll stop people saying he wants to make America be like France. Wonkette notes it captures the essence of Kerry, stilted yet empty. (Wonkette makes the same obvious France joke I did, but I came up with mine independently; not a good sign for that slogan). Still, the similarity to “let Reagan be Reagan” makes me think he wants America to be a drooling, imbecilic, incontinent has-been, in which case we might as well vote for Bush.
Iraqi universities are complaining that the US has done nothing to rebuild them after the post-invasion looting. The same AP article says that in vocational schools, pupils are taught “theoretical carpentry” because of lack of tools. Some problems contain their own solutions.
The US is still denying having bombed a wedding party.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Michael Howard has decided that it’s ok to criticize Blair’s war policy as incompetent, and Labour is responding just like DeLay--irresponsible, threatening the morale of troops, etc.
And Bush will take out ads accusing Kerry of “playing politics with national security”. Did I mention those accusations of playing politics will be made in advertisements directed at the person running against Bush?
I can no longer keep up with torture allegations. They just pile up on top of each others like a pyramid of hooded naked Iraqi prisoners, if I may wax metaphoric. We’ve got Delta Force’s “battlefield interrogation facility” (does every single unit get its own dungeon?) , we’ve got Afghanistan. We’ve got Reuters employees tortured, NBC or is it CBS. We’ve got new pictures every day, and new details: maxi-pads, crawling over glass, food in the toilet, yet more deaths in custody, more prisoners raped, smeared with shit, ridden like animals, force-fed pork and made to curse Islam and thank Jesus (Ann Coulter would be proud).
A story in the NYT today notes that the Pentagon’s list of approved interrogation techniques is classified. Why? The prisoners know what’s being done to them, so the only reason is public relations, which is not only not a legitimate reason to classify something, it’s against stated policy, as set forth by Bush in Executive Order (you could look up the number yourself).
Kerry campaign slogan: “Let America be America Again.” That’ll stop people saying he wants to make America be like France. Wonkette notes it captures the essence of Kerry, stilted yet empty. (Wonkette makes the same obvious France joke I did, but I came up with mine independently; not a good sign for that slogan). Still, the similarity to “let Reagan be Reagan” makes me think he wants America to be a drooling, imbecilic, incontinent has-been, in which case we might as well vote for Bush.
Iraqi universities are complaining that the US has done nothing to rebuild them after the post-invasion looting. The same AP article says that in vocational schools, pupils are taught “theoretical carpentry” because of lack of tools. Some problems contain their own solutions.
The US is still denying having bombed a wedding party.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Iraq is proving uncooperative
Son of a bitch C-SPAN. The week they decide not to carry Prime Minister’s Questions live is the week someone throws purple-powder-filled condoms at Tony Blair. And hits him! The not-quite-terrorist group turns out to be Fathers-4-Justice (boys will be boys), who want equal access to their children.
Remember yesterday how the US occupiers didn’t even know how toilets work in Iraq? Well, today a helicopter opened fire at a wedding, YET AGAIN!, presumably after they fired into the air in celebration. Supposedly 40+ dead.
Quote of the Day, from unnamed US official in WaPo: “There's overwhelming pressure with the Coalition Provisional Authority and the White House to deliver a successful Iraq transition, and Iraq is proving uncooperative.”
From the British government: “An exciting new arts project was announced today by Arts Minister Estelle Morris. It will give people with mental health issues a chance to express their responses to the Arts and give an insight to all of us about a variety of mental states. The Minister was announcing the latest Culture Online project, MadforArts, which will provide a forum for thousands of people with experience of mental health issues to give their views on a piece of art, architecture or music.” MadforArts? Mad, mad I tell you!! What I like is the contrast between the totally PC “experience of mental health issues” and “mad.”
We now know that the Red Cross reported on conditions in Abu Ghraib & elsewhere months before Rumsfeld testified, under oath, that he first learned of it. Now can we fire his ass?
Israel fired a missile, 4 tank shells, and machine guns at unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza. Evidently the crowd didn’t respond to a...wait for it...“warning missile.” Bush says he will withhold judgment until Israel tells him that they needed to do it. “I'll continue to speak out about the need for all parties to respect innocent life in the Middle East.” Yeah, but will you speak for it or against it? More on Bush’s faith-based Middle East policy.
NYT on Bush taking credit for programs after trying to get them cut or eliminated. Molly Ivins will tell you he did the same in Texas.
The Security Council condemned the massacre of civilians in Rafah refugee camp by Israel. I suppose it’s a step forward that the US didn’t veto it, but abstaining is still pretty wimpy.
Remember yesterday how the US occupiers didn’t even know how toilets work in Iraq? Well, today a helicopter opened fire at a wedding, YET AGAIN!, presumably after they fired into the air in celebration. Supposedly 40+ dead.
Quote of the Day, from unnamed US official in WaPo: “There's overwhelming pressure with the Coalition Provisional Authority and the White House to deliver a successful Iraq transition, and Iraq is proving uncooperative.”
From the British government: “An exciting new arts project was announced today by Arts Minister Estelle Morris. It will give people with mental health issues a chance to express their responses to the Arts and give an insight to all of us about a variety of mental states. The Minister was announcing the latest Culture Online project, MadforArts, which will provide a forum for thousands of people with experience of mental health issues to give their views on a piece of art, architecture or music.” MadforArts? Mad, mad I tell you!! What I like is the contrast between the totally PC “experience of mental health issues” and “mad.”
We now know that the Red Cross reported on conditions in Abu Ghraib & elsewhere months before Rumsfeld testified, under oath, that he first learned of it. Now can we fire his ass?
Israel fired a missile, 4 tank shells, and machine guns at unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza. Evidently the crowd didn’t respond to a...wait for it...“warning missile.” Bush says he will withhold judgment until Israel tells him that they needed to do it. “I'll continue to speak out about the need for all parties to respect innocent life in the Middle East.” Yeah, but will you speak for it or against it? More on Bush’s faith-based Middle East policy.
NYT on Bush taking credit for programs after trying to get them cut or eliminated. Molly Ivins will tell you he did the same in Texas.
The Security Council condemned the massacre of civilians in Rafah refugee camp by Israel. I suppose it’s a step forward that the US didn’t veto it, but abstaining is still pretty wimpy.
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