Big Watermelon

A Guardian piece sees a rise in conspiracy theorists in the US, such as the theory that the US has Osama bin Laden on ice somewhere and will bring him out in October, as a semi-legitimate response to an administration itself so excessively secretive and conspiratorial, an administration that took the tactics of the "War on Terror," the "tactics for conducting a secret, asymmetric war and applied them wholesale to the day-to-day governance of the US." And the market for Michael Moore’s "connect-the-dots paranoia" is so strong because "People are hungry for classified information on their rulers, in part because their rulers are so busy collecting classified information on them, and Fahrenheit 9/11 promotes the happy illusion that, for once, the magnetometers and security cameras have been turned on the president and his gang."
 
And Jon Carroll is holding a "Guess the October Surprise" contest:

Operatives from al Qaeda could be discovered staffing the office of the Ohio Democratic Party. Jeb Bush could discover that he had "misplaced" 40,000 eligible Cuban American voters. An "old friend" of John Kerry's could reveal that Kerry spent the entirety of the Vietnam War in the basement of a brothel in Berlin. Dick Cheney could rush into a burning building and save 17 orphans from certain death. Then he could reveal that he is really Spider-Man and that he does whatever a spider can.

The LA Times looks into the source of Shrub’s accusation that Fidel Castro supports prostitution--it came from an unsourced paraphrase in a paper written by an undergrad that the Bushies found on the Web, the font of all true information. What’s curious is that the story, like the initial stories about Shrub’s speech, doesn’t mention that he accused Castro of supporting not just prostitution but child prostitution, as I mentioned earlier.

According to the London Times, when the Chinese sell pirated editions of books, they make stuff up. So a Mandarin edition of Bill Clinton’s My Life now on sale begins, "The town of Hope, where I was born, has very good feng shui." It demonstrates for the first time Clinton’s intellectual indebtedness to the Little Red Book, and says this of Monica: "She was very fat. I can never trust my own judgment." And describes meeting Hillary for the first time: "She was as beautiful as a princess. I told her my name is Big Watermelon". Ok, that part’s probably true.

Steve Lopez has a Harper’s Index-type piece on Kallyfohrnian politics:

Number of times Gov. Schwarzenegger used the term "girlie men" to describe state legislators during a 16-minute speech at an Ontario mall: Twice.

Number of star-struck legislators who have cuddled up to Schwarzenegger for months and deserve the title: Dozens.

Ratio of time Schwarzenegger has spent applying makeup to time spent by all the female legislators: 3:1.

Last national celebrity with hair the color of Schwarzenegger's: Woody Woodpecker.

Number of budget deadlines missed by Woody Woodpecker: Zero.

Schwarzenegger's whereabouts just hours after vowing to stay in Sacramento and fight like a warrior to end the budget stalemate: Beverly Hills fund-raiser.

Amount raised at Beverly Hills fund-raiser by Schwarzenegger, who earlier promised to end fund-raising during budget season: Roughly $400,000.

Amount Schwarzenegger has raised for himself and committees he controls since the day he said he doesn't need anyone's money because he has his own: $30 million.

How can I rejoice when I haven't joiced yet?

I’m not sure how to explain the depth of Tony Blair’s stupidity today. More than 20 years ago, Margaret Thatcher suggested that the British people "rejoice" over the re-occupation of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands, a word taken to sum up her callousness. Today, Blair: "Let us rejoice that Iraq is liberated."

Speaking of history repeating itself after 20 years: Sandy Berger = Fawn Hall.

The Cheney-Leahy debate continues: "Mr. Leahy then suggested that the president of the Senate take his gavel and use it to perform an act that, while not technically impossible in anatomical terms, would certainly be considered both unseemly and unhygienic, and which would require an unusual combination of single-minded ambition and physical relaxation."

The Science Museum in London is thinking about using visitors’ shit to generate electricity. Says the museum’s director, "With free admission it would be a great way for visitors to give something back to the museum and help keep the overheads down".

I suppose a little internal contradiction is what you should expect from someone elected to the European Parliament on a platform of pulling Britain out of the EU: newly elected UK Independence Party MEP Godfrey Bloom--sounds like a character out of Jeeves & Wooster, doesn’t he?--has joined the European Parliament’s committee for women’s rights, saying "I want to deal with women's issues because I just don't think they clean behind the fridge enough."

The battle of the one-word weapons

The WaPo has two campaign stories that would have been better if either acknowledged the existence of the other; a compare & contrast would have been nice. Dana Milbank writes of "The Kerry Campaign’s One-Word Weapon," "There is seemingly no charge the Bush campaign can level against John F. Kerry that will not produce a one-word retort: Halliburton." (At least the word isn't Llanhyfryddawelllehynafolybarcudprindanfygythiadtrienusyrhafnauol). And Ceci Connolly writes about Cheney, who usually has a two-word retort at the ready, speaking about malpractice. Or actually, malpractice awards, since the Bushies continue to say nothing about reducing actual malpractice. Cheney essentially kept shouting lawyer lawyer lawyer at Edwards. The Milbank piece is a touch snide, and the Post should really leave snide to me, thank you very much. The Connolly article loses its critical thinking at a key point in its opening sentence. Read it and see if you can spot the problem: "Vice President Cheney, with a swipe at his Democratic trial-lawyer counterpart, yesterday blamed rising health care costs on 'runaway litigation' and promoted a $250,000 cap on medical malpractice awards as the central tenet of the White House program to improve access, affordability and quality of care." Did you see it? Well, you can maybe make a case that reducing awards would improve affordability and access to medical care, especially care by incompetent doctors, whose premiums wouldn’t keep going up, and who wouldn’t be forced into "defensive medicine," like running tests, spending more than 45 seconds on a patient, or showing up sober. But how does it have anything to do with quality of care? Cheney said, "This problem doesn't start in the waiting room [where they should be reading about this speech in about 3 years, if I know doctors’ waiting rooms]. It doesn't start in the operating room. The problem starts in the courtroom." Except, of course, it does start in the operating room, because awards only follow findings of malpractice. When Cheney says, "the Bush-Cheney ticket is on the side of doctors and patients," he means the doctors who fuck up.

Speaking of awards, the Indian government may finally pay Bohpal victims some of that all-too meager compensation money Union Carbide paid in 1989, little of which was actually distributed.

Llanhyfryddawelllehynafolybarcudprin-danfygythiadtrienusyrhafnauole

Transcript of the Daily Show discussion of talking points.

For a sense of the current health of Russian political life, look no further than an Indy story wonderfully headlined: "‘Winnie the Pooh’ Is Elected Mayor of Vladivostok after Rival ‘Trips’ on Grenade." Mr. Pooh (Vinni-Pukh in Russian) is actually Vladimir Nikolayev, a mafioso with a record, whose mob nickname is less than terrifying (and completely unexplained).

Israel clarifies Sharon’s comments about anti-Semitism in France, saying that it isn’t as bad as in Germany in the 1930s. I’m glad they cleared that up. In his first insulting comment (Sharon insulting the French, it’s hard to know what side to take), Sharon said that Jews were in danger because Muslims were now 10% of the French population, which of course they aren’t (6%), and anyway, Israel is 20% Muslim even if you exclude the Occupied Territories.
 
Reminds me: I read somewhere an article on how the news media don’t explain things enough, which was illustrated by a poll saying that many Americans think the phrase Occupied Territories refers to occupation by Palestinians.

Tony Blair tries to win back support through a get-tough-on-crime campaign. He calls for an end to "the 1960s liberal, social consensus on law and order."  I thought the only ‘60s consensus on law and order was that everyone liked watching Diana Rigg karate-kick bad guys while wearing cat suits.

Oddest protest of the week: "People in a remote Welsh beauty spot have renamed their village in a protest against a wind farm. The village of Llanfynydd, south Wales, has been transformed into Llanhyfryddawelllehynafolybarcudprin-danfygythiadtrienusyrhafnauole. The Carmarthenshire village will temporarily eclipse Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwchllanty-siliogogogoch in north Wales, the longest name title, by eight characters. ... The village’s new name means ‘a quiet beautiful village, a historic place with rare kite under threat from wretched blades’."

With little notice

A WaPo article on the US slippery slope towards war with Iran in a 2nd Bush term has the nerve to say that Congress has been moving in that direction "with little notice." Jeez, it’s too bad that the Washington Post has no means of bringing information like that to the public attention, like shouting it on street corners or, I don’t know, printing it on sheets of paper. I mentioned more than 2 months ago that the House had voted to "use all appropriate means to deter, dissuade and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons." I was surprised then that it had happened without any advanced discussion, but there’s also been nothing in the last 2 months. 
 
Israel has also been speaking quite loudly of late about bombing Iranian nuclear facilities.

The US bombed Fallujah again today, killing 14, including children. Humorously, Allawi claims to have been asked permission, and to have given it. The US claims to have hit a "known terrorist fighting position," whatever one of those might be, especially in a town where "they" won completely and absolutely and where, consequently, there is no fighting, just air strikes. Robert Fisk reports: "This is how they like it. An American helicopter fires four missiles at a house in Fallujah. Fourteen people are killed... But no Western journalist dares to go to Fallujah. ... The US authorities say they know nothing about the air strike; indeed, they tell journalists to talk to the Iraqi Ministry of Defence - whose spokesman admits that he has "no clue what is going on"." The country is now so dangerous that the war, certainly Fallujah, is uncoverable.

Anti-Semites gone wild

Ariel Sharon suggests that anti-Semitism is growing in France, and does his best to help by urging all French Jews to emigrate to Israel. Sharon blamed the increasing Muslim population of France for "the wildest anti-Semitism."

Given that the US has put a bounty of $25m on Zarqawi, I can’t wait to hear US officials (if they ever speak to the press again) explain how Zarqawi is an evil-doer for putting $280,000 on Allawi’s head.

After a day of careful consideration, Governor Ahnuuld has decided that yes, he stands behind calling the California Legislature a bunch of "girlie men." They can evidently prove their manliness (especially the women legislators) by giving him everything he wants in budget negotiations. The manly venue for these manly taunts from our manly governor? The food court of a mall. More ominous is his rhetoric denigrating the democratic credentials of everyone except Arnold "L’etat, c’est moi" Schwarzenegger: "I am representing you, and the people know they [leigslators] are representing the special interests rather than the public interest."

News story of the day: "A man was arrested in Florida yesterday after allegedly beating his girlfriend with a pet alligator which he kept in the bath. David Havenner, 41, faces misdemeanour charges of battery and possession of an alligator. ... But Mr Havenner's version of the story differed. He told investigators that Ms Monico bit his hand because she was upset they had run out of alcohol." Did I mention they live in a mobile home? Did I have to?

Updates

Remember how Bremer started a major uprising in Najaf in March by banning a newspaper?  (Link.  Other link.)  Allawi just let it reopen.

When I talked about Rumsfeld (and other Iraq war bigmouths) having disappeared, I missed an AP piece on Rummy’s pariah status. But a check of the DOD website shows that he was allowed to meet the president of Mongolia.

We are an oriental people and it is the will of the people

Some Iraqi judges have started sentencing people to death without waiting for the death penalty to be restored first. Said a Karbala judge who sentenced 3 men to death, "We are an oriental people and it is the will of the people."

Allawi has not denied shooting 6 prisoners, but he has denied chopping off the hand of a prisoner with an axe. Have to draw the line somewhere. You know he’s starting these rumors himself don’t you? Oriental people, indeed.   (Update: ok, NOW he's denied shooting 6 prisoners.)

Here in California, we Occidental people are led by a man who can pretend to kill more people before breakfast than Allawi can actually kill all day. Says the Governator: "I will fight like a warrior for the people of California. There is no one that can stop me. Anyone who pushes me around, I will push back". Oh, don’t let it bother you, little boy.

Team Chimpy has to return a donation from an Iraqi-American businessman who had dealings with Saddam Hussein’s government. Guess that means they can’t take donations from Rumsfeld either.

Negroponte has finally held a press conference, mere hours after I commented on the previous lack of one, showing that even though my daily readership is in the high single digits, my influence is like unto a god’s. AP headline: "US Ambassador Optimistic at Iraq Future." Someone has to be. Flying cars and robots for everyone, no doubt.

Speaking of sexing up intelligence (and depending on your idea of sex, I suppose), Blair has said repeatedly that mass graves with 400,000 bodies have been found in Iraq. In fact, the British government has now admitted that at most 5,000 bodies have been found. What’s a couple of orders of magnitude between friends?

First Whoopi, now Corrine Brown....

Congresscritter Corrine Brown (D-Fla) suggested on the floor of the House that the 2000 election was a coup d’etat (during a debate which resulted in a 243-161 vote to ban any federal official asking the UN to monitor US elections, as Brown had suggested). So they censured her, threw her out for the day, and struck her words from the record. She didn’t tell anyone to fuck themself, didn’t call anyone a name, she just expressed an opinion. The justification for the party-line censure was that she accused other members of a crime, viz, stealing an election.

Today the NYT reported that investigations by the Senate into prisoner abuse incidents in Iraq have been shut down or postponed. The story has certainly slipped off the radar screen, so that Seymour Hersh’s comments and German tv reports about more incidents involving rape and child prisoners, and no doubt rape of child prisoners, haven’t been picked up by almost anyone.

One reason for that is that the Bushies have stopped putting people forward to talk about Iraq, except for Shrub’s "Americans are safer" speech. Where has Bremer been since he left Iraq? When’s the last time you saw Mark Kimmitt, Military Moron? Or even Rumsfeld? Has John Negroponte gone in front of the press once? Hell, they refused even to comment on the report, which I can’t say I believe, but it’s not entirely implausible, that Kapowie Allawi personally shot 6 prisoners dead last week.

The New Republic has an article by Jonathan Chait that places that blackout in the context of the many things Congress no longer bothers to oversee, and how the Bushies routinely simply refuse to testify or supply information, with no consequences. Chait notes that the admin has gotten many of its signature policies passed by hiding information--the cost of Medicare changes, how much Iraqi oil revenues would really amount to, etc. "over the last few years, misinformation has become fundamental, rather than incidental, to the political process." The article also goes into the abuse of process in Congress, where anything proposed by the D’s isn’t allowed to reach the floor, while everything else goes through with little or no debate allowed, the abuse of conference committees to rewrite legislation in secret, etc. Bush has yet to veto a single bill, because he doesn’t need to. If all this seems familiar material--I’ve certainly written about every example he cites--it’s woven together into a scary picture indeed. His conclusion: "most of the abuses under Bush--things like suppressing cost estimates, or redistricting more than once a decade--have violated norms, not rules. When you violate norms, you're limited only by your sense of shame and your party's willingness to stick together. Which suggests the most frightening lesson of the Bush administration: The institutional restraints on an anti-democratic presidency are weaker than we believed."

Right after Blair is exonerated--or so he claims--by the Butler report, comes news that his government essentially lied to two previous inquiries, not telling them that MI6 had reversed itself on several key issues. That’s called a cover-up, although at present they’re trying to blame MI6 for it.

Bush accuses Cuba again of welcoming sex tourism and indeed child prostitution.  "We have put a strategy in place to hasten the day when no Cuban child is exploited to finance a failed revolution and every Cuban citizen will live in freedom." There's probably a really bad pun about No Left Child's Behind that I could use here, but I'll refrain.

Baghdad has a city council of 750. It has to be that large because they keep getting killed, 61 this year, 6 since the "handover." The same is happening with other councils. The councils were actually almost sorta elected, under an indirect process overseen by the American occupiers and their private contractors.  Link.

Bringing down the barriers that stand in the way of our democracy--with extreme prejudice

Iraq announces the formation of a new secret police, or should I say death squad, since PM Owie Allawi says its purpose is to "terminate" insurgents (the LA Times translation is "annihilate"; you say tomato, I say terminate with extreme prejudice, let’s call the whole thing off) and to "bring down all the hurdles that stand in the way of our democracy." Freedom, ain’t it grand.

But at least there's the freedom to demonstrate, or at least to demonstrate in favor of Saddam Hussein being executed. "Let every fool listen, Saddam has to be executed," they chanted in Baghdad.

The Poor Man has a quote from John Kerry from October 2002 before he voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, which makes clear that he was indeed voting to authorize war only to disarm Iraq of weapons we now know it didn’t have. It should acquit Kerry of the charge of hypocrisy relentlessly thrown at him by Team Chimpy, although not the charge of having been outwitted by a half-wit.

I guess I failed to mention a while back that Israeli Mossad agents were caught trying to acquire a New Zealand passport under the name of a cerebral palsy victim who cannot travel. It used to be fake Canadian passports; they kept getting caught and kept promising not to do it again (I posted on this 6 Nov 1998)(in a post that also said I was happy to see Minnesota hit at the two-party system, "as long as it's another state that elects the wrestler.") Israel hasn’t so much as offered an explanation to NZ, which just did everything short of cutting off diplomatic relations (and put the 2 agents in prison for 6 months). This is the sort of thing that can get real Canadians and New Zealanders killed.

The Florida felons list is not dead after all. Individual counties can still choose to use it, and those run by Republicans doubtless will.

No one wants to discriminate against gays

Orrin Hatch: “No one wants to discriminate against gays. Simply put, we want to preserve traditional marriage.” I’m sorry, did you say that no one wants to discriminate against gays? NO ONE? Oh, I don’t fucking think so. I just SO don't fucking think so.

I’ve had it up to here with talk about “traditional marriage” from the party that last month wouldn’t shut up about Saint Ronny, who was divorced and whose second wife was pregnant when he married her, and whose 1996 standard bearer had this memorable line about marriage, spoken to his first wife: “I want out.” If I were a reporter or had more time on my hands, I’d find out how many Senators have been divorced, and how that relates to the way they voted (how do you count Teddy Kennedy, who got an annulment from the church and a divorce from the secular authorities?)
(Update: it's not the complete list I want, but this article talks about divorced Senators.)
(Later): and it seems that an activist is planning to name married supporters of the Unequal Rights Amendment in Congress who are having affairs.

Let’s all just acknowledge that the laws governing marriage have actually changed over time as social customs have evolved. Watching the Senate on C-SPAN today, I saw John Cornyn waxing on about how guys in tuxedos and chicks in white dresses have been marching up aisles since before there were aisles or organized religion, how marriage hadn’t changed in thousands of years. You don’t have to go back very far to see that this is nonsense. Go back to the birth of this republic: wives had no control over their own money, could not sign contracts, were not the legal parents of their own children while their husbands were alive or even after, and could legally be beaten (“chastised,” “corrected”) or raped by their husbands. Marital rape was considered an oxymoron by most people and by the legal system within our lifetimes. All of these husbandly powers were considered essential, fundamental elements of marriage, without which it could not survive. In Britain, after a court case (Jackson v. Jackson) ruled against a husband who had kidnapped his estranged wife and held her prisoner in 1891, the London Times said, “one fine morning last month marriage in England was abolished.”

Most of those aspects of marriage were, of course, predicated on sexist notions of the appropriate roles for men and women. Today you could hear the senators struggling to make a heterosexist case for banning gay marriage that was not also an obviously sexist one. This is not really possible, since the argument that marriage must consist of one member of each gender entails the notion that men and women are fundamentally different. They can’t really get away with making such an argument--and gay marriage is no longer considered so absurd that they can laugh it away or dismiss it with that "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" nonsense, the way they could just a couple of years ago--but come closest when they talk about marriage as being about child-rearing and that you need role models from each gender, an argument that only really works if you consider the sexes as having fundamentally distinct attributes, if gender determines identity completely. Otherwise, it would not matter if parents are both of the same gender. The argument against gay marriage, therefore, is a sexist one at its base.

Baghdad calm

Headline of the day, London Times: “Baghdad Calm Shattered as Bomber Kills 11.” Baghdad calm?

Charming: “Israel has drawn up contingency plans to prevent hundreds of thousands of Palestinians trying to bury Yasser Arafat at the disputed holy sites of Jerusalem when he dies.”

Jonathan Idema, that gonzo ex-Special Forces guy who kept a private dungeon in Afghanistan, captured at least some of the people he was hanging upside down by their feet in raids he tricked NATO forces into helping him with--three times.

Remember when the KGB was broken into separate agencies by Yeltsin? Putin just reversed that.

“Bush Twins Help Dad with Spread in Vogue.” Uh, right. This is supposed to “humanize” Shrub, although “simianize” might be a bit more accurate for Chimp Boy.

The Butler Report

Blair says he acted in good faith. In fact, he says he will take “full responsibility for any mistakes in good faith.” Very big of him. Simon Carr of the Indy supplies the missing part of the sentence: “I take full personal responsibility, so shut up.” Blair: “That issue of good faith should now be at an end,” which Simon Hoggart of the Guardian translates as “Now, will you stop picking on me?”

The Labour spin is that Butler cleared him, and this is simply not true, although god knows he tried. Actually, Butler’s relationship to reality is an exact mirror of Blair’s. Butler says that the “Dodgy Dossier” Blair used to justify going to war went to the “outer limits” of the available intelligence and that it’s language was, ahem, “fuller and firmer” than intel warranted. Most of us would call that deliberate misrepresentation, but not Butler, who himself takes the facts to their outer limits with his claim that there was no “deliberate distortion or culpable negligence.”

The Indy offers this helpful summary of Butler:

The intelligence: flawed
The dossier: dodgy
The 45-minute claim: wrong
Iraq's link to al-Qa'ida: unproven
The public: misled
The case for war: exaggerated
And who was to blame? No one

There are many stories in the major British press. Here’s a good summary.

Defending the peace, protecting the peace and extending the peace

Headline of the week: “Daschle Denies Hugging Moore.” [Michael, not Demi or Roger]

The Justice Dept releases a report detailing some of the successes it attributes to the use of the Patriot Act. Many of these cases had nothing to do with terrorism, the purported justification for the Act, like the rescue of a kidnapped 88-year old woman. The report misses the point: those of us who object to the police state Ashcroft is constructing do not criticize it on the grounds of its not being an efficient enough police state. No one ever said that letting law enforcement violate people’s rights wouldn’t enable them to solve some crimes they could not solve otherwise. Imagine what the FBI could do with Abu Ghraib techniques. Not really the point. Vlad the Impaler’s Wallachia had a really low crime rate, from what I’ve heard.

In Britain, the Butler Report on Iraqi intelligence claims came out today. More later, when the British papers come out, but it seems to admit to many many flaws in intel while finding no one in particular at fault. The thing about “group-think” as a criticism is that it’s also a way to avoid blame.

Jon Stewart asked at what point “intelligence” becomes its own oxymoron.

Speaking of words that sound funny when spoken by GeeDubya, more from the Oak Ridge speech: “We are defending the peace by taking the fight to the enemy. We have followed this strategy--defending the peace, protecting the peace and extending the peace--for nearly three years.” Someone get that boy a dictionary.

Lightning "Rod"

How does the Pentagon come up with names for military operations? It must be something like the formulas used to determine one’s porn name, since you so often wind up with two macho but completely unrelated terms. Case in point: Operation Lightning Resolve, just launched in Afghanistan. Which means what? That our resolve never strikes the same place twice? That our resolve has the duration of a bolt of lightning? That the thunder of political verbiage can be heard long after the event is over? Op Lightning Resolve has something to do with voter registration in Afghanistan, where “rock the vote” refers to what happens to any woman who dares to register.

Governor Terminator has gone through the Cal. gubernatorial rite of passage, negotiating a sweetheart deal with the prison guards. He got very short-term delay in wage increases in return for larger benefits and even greater autonomy for the guards and their supervisors. But the part I like best is that the union gets to have the video of prison incidents to use in PR--commercials showing how hard their jobs are and why they should be paid so much more than teachers.

Israel bulldozed a house in a Gaza refugee camp, killing the 70 (or 73)-year-old, wheelchair-bound man trapped inside. Israelis have risen as one in outrage and put a stop to the bulldozing of houses. Just kidding.

The Guardian: “A man who shot himself in the testicles with a sawn-off shotgun was jailed for five years yesterday.” Beer was involved (you knew that). After the 15th lager, he got into an argument with a friend over whose turn it was, went home to get the gun, shoved it in his trousers...

Robert Fisk reports that at least 13 professors at the U of Baghdad, and more at other universities, have been murdered since the invasion. Including history professors, which is totally uncalled for.

Dictator Mugabe bans the color red, associated with the opposition, from Zimbabwean tv. Link

Diddle the Vote

Shrub [I’m trying to minimize my use of “B*u*s*h*,” in the hopes that there’ll be fewer sponsored ads for Republican sites at the top of mine; the problem is that “B*u*s*h*” is so much shorter than His Fraudulency, Smirking Chimp Boy, etc, and I’ve fallen victim to my own laziness, often using his name with no mockery of any kind] today, defending the war: “Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq. We removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder [this speech was given at the Oak Ridge nuclear weapons lab!] and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after September 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take.”

The problem with that rationale, of course, is that it would equally justify invading at least a dozen other countries.

Chimpy also said that Saddam refused to give a full accounting of weapons to the UN in 2002. Of course GeeDubya made that assertion at the time, when he was claiming that Iraq had all manner of infernal devices, but has someone actually checked out the long report which Iraq submitted against what we now know?

THE QUALITY OF MERCY IS NOT STRAINED: The Iraqi “government” is going ahead with an amnesty for people who have not committed “too many atrocities.” An interesting concept. Presumably those eligible have committed just the right number of atrocities. Sort of a Goldilocks thing.

IT DROPPETH AS THE GENTLE RAIN FROM HEAVEN UPON THE PLACE BENEATH: The brother of an Australian surfer killed by a, what else, killer shark (the more politically correct term is great white shark, which really isn’t very PC at all, is it?), has asked for the shark not to be killed. Authorities are not moved, and are trying to track the shark through its dental records (it left bite marks on the surf board).
Link.

The Philippines will pull its troops out of Iraq a bit earlier than planned to get a hostage back. By the way, he was wearing an orange jumpsuit too. Where are the hostage-takers getting them? Is there a store that sells kidnapping supplies? Maybe a chain? Can I invest in it?

Oh dear. Last post, it was Fuck for Forest, this post: Fuck the Vote. Oh deary dear.

The Indy rips the lid off Kerry’s college soccer career. Ready? His nickname was “the Diddler.”

But if we cancel another chance for Diebold and Florida election officials to steal the elections, don't the terrorists win?

Time Magazine notes that the military wouldn’t have needed to recall musicians if it hadn’t kicked so many musicians out for being gay.

The latest ad on my blog is for the Wall St Journal. Somehow, I don’t think so.

An article on Bush’s support for the Unequal Rights Amendment (banning gay marriage) mentions as a key player one Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. And nothing says defense of family like dressing up as your mother and killing your motel guests.

However, and with no media fanfare, Bush did come out in favor of ass-fucking: “if people decide to -- what they do in the privacy of their house, consenting adults should be able to do.”

There are increasing rumblings about creating a mechanism to cancel/postpone elections in case of terrorist attack. The decision might be left to Tom Ridge, who has certainly not shown himself alarmist at all, or the head of the United States Election Assistance Commission, faceless bureaucrat, Baptist pastor and failed R candidate for Congress DeForest B. Soaries. If we’re worried about holding an election where one of the candidates may have been killed by a terrorist attack, the job should go to John Ashcroft, who knows all about it. LeftI asks why Al Qaida would bother trying to disrupt US elections, “With the election between a guy who launched the invasion of Iraq, and a guy who wants to send 40,000 more troops there, what exactly would be their motivation?” and both offering unquestioning support of Israel.

The University of New Brunswick has an intensive English immersion program. Students must pledge to speak only English for the 5 weeks of the course. When a blind student from Quebec signed up, they told him not to speak to his guide dog in French. His guide dog does not know English (or perhaps only pretends not to know English, like all those damned furriners). Eventually, after a media uproar, the university gave in.

A Norwegian couple were arrested after having sex on stage during a rock concert. They are members (evidently the only members) of a group called Fuck for Forest, dedicated to saving the rain forests by having public sex (I think it’s like sponsored runs, where people pledge a certain sum per orgasm). The band: the Cumshots.

Of course, when Sharon's wife asks him to stop hogging the pickles, he accuses her of encouraging terrorism

Iraq passes its first post-fake-handover death sentences, three of them. Let freedom reign (of terror).

Ariel Sharon accuses the International Court of Justice, which ruling against the Wall, of “encouraging terror.”


Gene Weingarten has questions for the candidates:

Question for John Kerry: Please outline the key elements of your plan to reduce injuries and deaths from the misuse of yo-yos.

Question for George W. Bush: Please disclose the single fact about yourself that, if published, would reveal you to be a morally deficient person and might even doom your reelection.

Question for John Kerry: Senator, just how rich are you? For example, do you buy yachts and throw them away after using them once, like disposable razors?

And so does Andy Borowitz:

QUESTIONS FOR DICK CHENEY

1. Former Senator Alfonse D'Amato has suggested President Bush dump you from the ticket. What's your response to him, in two words?

3. Over the past four years, how many days would you say you spent above ground?

5. Didn't "Fahrenheit 9/11" totally rock?

QUESTIONS FOR JOHN EDWARDS

6. On the night Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, which pajamas were you wearing, the ones with the cowboys or the ones with the ducks?

8. What's Malibu Barbie really like?

9. If, as you say, there are two Americas, which one is your vacation home in?

Here to stay

More on "values": I posted this in October 1997; it seems to be a quote from some newspaper:

George Bush, the Texan governor following in his father's footsteps as a Republican presidential prospect, is well ahead in opinion polls. But Don Sipple, his campaign adviser, has been accused of wife-beating by both his former wives. In last year's presidential campaign, Sipple created the Republican adverts that proclaimed: "It all comes down to values."

Kerry wants to “wipe the slate clean” on Iraq. While I see the point, how insulting is that to all the dead Iraqis, American and other COW (Coalition of the Willing, for my new readers--hi, new readers) troops, etc? There’s an awful lot of blood to wipe off that slate. Also, neither Kerry nor Edwards will say whether they would have voted for the war knowing what they know now. Until they answer that, how seriously are we supposed to take them?

The idea of refusing communion to Kerry originates in a memo from Rome, written by the head of the organization they’re no longer calling the Inquisition. Rome, not the American archbishops.

Florida won’t use the felon list.

The Sunday Telegraph reports, “Waiters wore condoms on their heads to greet diners at restaurants in Bangkok in the run-up to an international Aids conference in the city this weekend.” American delegates to the conference (of whom there will not be many because we’re punishing the conference that last year booed Tommy Thompson) will be arguing for abstinence instead of condoms. For everyone, that is, although they probably don’t want waiters having sex on their food either. Criticizing this approach, Poul Nielson, the EU’s Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, quoted Groucho Marx (don’t we all!), who, when asked his opinion of sex, said “I think it’s here to stay.”

Christopher Buckley on Bill Clinton. Funny.

Not MY homie

The problem with using a free blog-hosting service is that I can’t stop them putting a sponsored link at the top to a website selling “Bush is My Homie” t-shirts.

To tarnish one of life’s joys

Rep Jerry Weller (R-Ill.), who is on the House Committee on International Relations and its sub-committee on the Western Hemisphere, is engaged to the daughter of Efrían Ríos Montt, former Guatemalan dictator, scum, and genocidal religious fanatic. She helped run strategy for his failed presidential run last year and is a member of the Guatemalan congress, so this isn’t just guilt by association. This would be the first marriage between a US Congresscritter and the member of the legislature of another country. Neither will give up their seats; he will commute from Guatemala. Weller doesn’t like being criticized for this: “To tarnish one of life’s joys, marrying the woman you love, is simply beyond the bounds of decency.” Poor baby. His spokesmodel says this is no more controversial than a congressman who is a farmer overseeing agricultural issues. Farms, genocide--a family business is a family business. During the elections, she called an incident where peasants threw stones at Ríos Montt’s car a violation of human rights, as opposed to the 10,000+ who were disappeared during his reign of terror. Weller’s website’s announcement of the marriage noted that she wrote the legislation banning smoking.
Link. Other link

Afghanistan will hold presidential elections in October but delay parliamentary elections until April, “in an effort to ensure a more democratic process,” the NYT says. Evidently presidential elections needn’t be quite so democratic.

Speaking of undemocratic presidential elections, the list of supposed felons Florida is using to purge its electoral roles is tilted towards D’s (28,025 versus 9,521 R’s), but it also includes almost no Hispanics, 61 on a list of 48,000. Hispanics in Florida are, of course, heavily R. The reason there are so few is that even if felons have the same name and birth date as names on the electoral role, they aren’t purged unless their races match--and the felon list’s racial categories don’t include Hispanics, just white, black, Asian, Native American and unknown (the 61 purgees are the unknowns). So the standards for purging felons were designed to be racist. Why voting records would record race is beyond me--maybe something to do with the Voting Rights Act.
Link

The NYT says in an editorial what I’ve been saying: “When Tom Ridge, the secretary of homeland defense, holds a news conference to warn the nation of dire peril and it winds up as fodder for comedy shows, there’s something very wrong somewhere.”

Gobsmacked

Best headline of the day: “Outcry after Fish Sex Survey” (Daily Telegraph, about fish changing sex because of pollution from contraceptives). Worst headline, same newspaper: “Stabbed Schoolboy 'Gobsmacked.'”

More vapid values talk (indeed, more vapid values, period). Edwards: “When they talk about values, bring it on.” Bush says Kerry is “out of step with the mainstream values that are so important to our country.”

[Later: WaPo article, “Rhetoric On Values Turns Personal.” Sheesh.]

Bush has already stomped out of a room when a reporter asked him a question about Kenny Boy Lay, but it also can’t help that Lay’s defense--that he was misled by CIA intelligence analysts--seems "separated at birth" from the Senate report blaming Andrew Fastow for misleading Bush about Iraq (or something like that). Neither defense will fly. D's should refer to the attempt to blame the CIA, who do seem to have been remarkably unprofessional but let's face it, Bush was going to war with Iraq no matter what the CIA said, as the Ken Lay Defense. I would like to know how the D’s on the Senate Intelligence Committee got rolled so badly that they signed on to a report that specifically exonerates Cheney and Bush of pressuring the intelligence agencies, while postponing publishing any discussion of Bush admin manipulation of intelligence to make a false case for war until after the election. You don’t release half a report. The D's evidently decided that having a unanimous report was more important than having an honest one, and compromised on the facts and on interpretation to get that false unanimity.

Stupid, dirty girl

I’ve written before (Link, Link) about the declining credibility the Bush admin has when it cries wolf about terrorism. Yesterday the Daily Show reported Tom Ridge’s announcement that Al Qaida planned terrorist acts to disrupt the US elections in tones of total disbelief, and outrage at a warning with, yet again, no there there, clearly timed to undercut Kerry-Edwards and suggest that Osama wants them to win. I hadn’t even thought that far, because my response to the story had been to dismiss it out of hand and forget about it instantly, such is my lack of faith in these pronouncements.

The Daily Show also made a big deal over the story I had yesterday about the military recalling musicians who’d retired from the service, to meet the needs of the many military funerals. Jon Stewart said that only the military would think that problem was best solved by hiring more musicians, and urged the Pentagon to “think outside the coffin.” I’m not sure if the story would have gotten any play without the Daily Show. I found the story in the LA Times literally by accident, because there was a copy in the library I looked at while waiting for a librarian to deal with a microfilm screwup. When I looked for a link to post for the story that didn’t involve a registration process, I found that no other news source had it.

THE DOG ATE... Speaking of microfilm screwups, the records covering the period Bush claims he wasn’t really AWOL from the National Guard were evidently accidentally destroyed. Oops. I hope this didn’t seriously inconvenience the other people whose records they had to destroy at the same time to make this look less fakey. If you were inclined to give them a benefit of the doubt, there’s this:
“Mr. Talbott's office would not respond to questions, saying that further information could be provided only through another Freedom of Information application.” To which they’ll respond some time after November, no doubt.

A Texas jury on Monday found a British streaker guilty of criminal trespassing for racing on to the field during the Super Bowl in February… Prosecutor Kristin Gurney argued that Roberts’s antics could not be tolerated in post-11 September America. ‘As light-hearted about this as I’d like to be, we don’t live in a society any more where we can excuse this kind of behaviour,’ she told the jury.” — Reuters.

Governor Ahnuuld’s Education Secretary, former-L.A. mayor Richard Riordan, was asked by a 5-year old girl if he knew what her name, Isis, meant. He told her “stupid, dirty girl.” He later said it was a joke. Whatever you want to say about the Gropenführer (who is not going to ask Riordan to resign), at least he waits until they’re a bit older before humiliating them.

Is there not a way to do without the euphonium player?

Daily Cal headline: “Bay Area Chews on Kerry’s Choice for Running Mate.” Nibble him, chew on him, eat him up with a spoon, all right we get it already, he’s purddy.

The US admits that the Iraqi insurgency may be larger than the 5,000 previously estimated. They figured this out in part by the fact that they’ve killed more than that many of them. Vietnam, body counts, any of this ringing a bell?

Nearly 3 years after 9/11, we’re still waiting for the pendulum in favor of civil liberties to swing back. The House fails, 210-210, to remove the Patriot Act provision allowing the Thought Police to subpoena libraries, bookstores etc to find out people’s reading habits. The Justice Dept, lobbying against the move, said that just a few months ago, a terrorist used the Internet at a public library. That would be funnier if I hadn’t read it after a day at the library, where I twice used the computers and in a brilliant self-advertising ploy left them showing this site.

The number of American soldiers killed in Iraq plus Afghanistan has reached 1,000 (on Bush’s birthday yet; most people use candles), the number of “coalition” soldiers killed in Iraq will reach or has reached the same number this week (a pretty fair number have died since the underhand, but largely unreported). However, on the bright side, that one Marine was not actually beheaded. He seems to have been tricked into defecting by the Lebanese Tourist Board as part of a diabolical plot to induce newspapers to use a phrase that hasn’t been used in decades when they reported that the Marine turned up “safe in Lebanon.”

The European Court of Human Rights rules 14-3 that fetuses are not full human beings with a right to life. That leaves it with the individual nations. Tony Blair indicated yesterday that he was open to reducing the time in which an abortion is legal, currently 24 weeks.

Some American got caught in Afghanistan playing Abu Ghraib: The Home Game, having kidnapped 8 Afghans and hanging them by their feet. It seems not to be a rogue CIA operation but rather that the huge bounties on bin Laden, Mullah Omar etc have, shock horror, inspired some people to use dastardly methods to try to collect. The Guardian points out the irony: “Now Mr Idema remains in the custody of Afghanistan's intelligence officials. In a country where the legal framework barely exists, his stay could be even longer than that of his detainees.”

Yes, I have used the words diabolical and dastardly today. I think it’s the tar fumes from the work being done on the roof next door going to my head.

The LA Times reports (excerpted):

Does the global war on terrorism really need an electric bass player? The question was posed to senior Pentagon officials Wednesday by Rep.

Vic Snyder, an Arkansas Democrat, who had spent part of his morning looking through the list of retired soldiers the Pentagon announced last week that it was pressing into service to support military operations in Iraq. The call-up of the 5,674 troops from a pool of 118,000 who left the service and did not join the reserves has provoked outrage among members of Congress and others. ...

Snyder, a former Marine, noted that the Army's list included two trumpeters, one trombonist, four clarinetists, three saxophone players, an electric bass player and a euphonium player.

"Is there not a way to do without the euphonium player?" Snyder asked Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff. "Do we need to really draft an electric bass player, to pull them back in? Is there not a way that we can't let that kind of thing slide?"

After a laugh in the hearing room, Cody answered with a straight face that the bands have been busy, tending to services and funerals. These days, Cody said, "our bands are being stressed quite a bit."

You didn't say "may I"

Values, values, values, enough talk about values from the candidates. It’s really the emptiest of empty rhetoric. If a cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, a political candidate is someone who will spend $100 million in ads whittering on about his “values.”

Although some newspapers, and Slate’s Today’s Papers quote Bush as responding to a question asking him to compare and contrast Cheney with Edwards, who the questioner breathlessly described as “charming, engaging, a nimble campaigner, a populist and even sexy,” with “Dick Cheney could be president,” he actually said “Dick Cheney can be president.” The conditional tense is a little beyond Shrub (“is our children learning?”). Still, there’s an arrogance to the words he chose to challenge Edwards’ qualifications, which everyone notes are comparable to Bush’s 4 years ago, or indeed Dan Quayle’s when Bush the Elder picked him, as if Bush gets to decide what the minimum standards are. The question isn’t whether Edwards “can” be president--he’s over 35, native-born, and a rich white male--but whether he “should” be. Cheney spent the rest of the day crying in an undisclosed location because he thought Dubya thought that he WAS sexy.

Follow-up: 3 months ago I mentioned a 99-year old (now 100) British man who killed his wife of 67 years. Today he “walked free,” although possibly with a cane or walker. He was given a 12-month “community rehabilitation order,” which I looked up. It’s basically probation. “You must work with your supervising officer to find ways of stopping your offending. You are expected to make every effort.”

Correction: that Iraqi minister of human rights is actually the “minister of justice and human rights,” which Robert Fisk points out is a unique combination of responsibilities. He’s a floor wax AND a dessert topping.

A few days ago a Russian tv news show host, Savik Shuster, criticized Russian politicians for not debating changes in social legislation. He said that “when those in power refuse to embark on a dialogue with society,” the result is street protest and repression. Speaking of refusing to embark on a dialogue, Mr. Shuster has been pulled from the air, the second tv commentator canned in the last month.

Eternal President in the land of the gogigyeopbbang

The New Republic claims that the Bushies have ordered Pakistan to find Al Qaida leaders and capture/kill them late this month, preferably during the Dem. convention. The story’s sources are all anonymous, so it’s close to worthless as proof, but it’s certainly plausible enough.

Speaking of dirty tricks Bush might be capable of, do you think he’d hire a hooker to seduce Kerry, and then turn the results into a campaign commercial? Because I’m wondering if John McCain might not have been that hooker (or ten-dinar prostitute, to coin a phrase), in exchange for replacing Rummy as secretary of war in a 2nd Bush term.

The Indy points out that although Kim Il-Sung died 10 years ago Thursday, he is still head of state, or “Eternal President,” which makes it darned hard to overthrow him. Don’t tell the Republicans about this, or they’ll figure out a way to give that title to Reagan. The Daily Telegraph sees signs of a thaw, though: the hamburger has arrived in North Korea. Or, as they call it there, gogigyeopbbang, literally “double bread with meat”, in case you’re writing a screenplay for Pulp Fiction II.

A civics class for the whole country

Japan’s Defense Ministry will issue the annual defense white paper in manga form. I’m picturing exploding heads and little girls with really big eyes.

Iraqi PM “Kapowie” Allawi not only supports yesterday’s American airstrikes on Fallujah, but hell, he says, we provided the intelligence for the 83rd attempt to kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. And a new group sent a videotape to Al Arabiya, threatening to kill Zarqawi if he didn’t leave the country. Ah, a pro-government death squad: John Negroponte has definitely arrived.

I could have sworn that the US told Allawi he would not be allowed to declare martial law, but yesterday a law (possibly called the "Patriot Act") was passed giving him the power to do that, impose curfews (which will be enforced by the US military, resolving my question about whose military “martial” refers to), ban “seditious” groups and parties, arrest dissidents, seize mail...
(Later:) I was joking, sorta, about the Patriot Act thing, but the Iraqi--you should pardon the expression--minister of human rights made the same comparison, and not to condemn the law. He referred to the targets of those powers as "evil forces," which is perhaps not a phrase the minister of human rights should be using. I would also question whether "law" is the right word, since it was issued by the executive; decree is more like it, or ukase.

The DHS’s internal investigation whitewashes the former administrator of Medicare Thomas Scully for threatening the chief actuary if he told the Congress the truth about the cost of Bush’s drug plan (Scully is now a lobbyist for drug companies). It says the threat was not illegal, and that Scully had “the final authority to determine the flow of information to Congress.”
Earlier
comments

An article by Tom Parker, who told the Iraqis how to run this business we call show trial. A limited number of cases, because Allawi needs someone to run his secret police, in a limited period of time, the use of harsh Iraqi law rather than wimpy international law so that they can execute Saddam rather than see him “live out his days in a comfortable Dutch prison,” televised as a “civics class for the whole country” (the condescending jerk doesn’t mention whether the US military will continue to seize and censor the video before it’s aired, or whether the courts will only operate during the 23 minutes a day the power supply needed to run the tv’s will be on). Justice Jackson must be rolling over in his grave. Speaking of justice, Parker only uses the word once, and then in the sense of jurisprudence rather than something which is just.

The Senate confirms Leon “No shit, Sherlock” Holmes to District Court in Arkansas 51-46. Holmes is the guy who thinks wives should be subservient to their husbands and really really doesn’t like abortion. He thinks there needn’t be rape exceptions to bans on abortion, because raped women never get pregnant.


A few from Al Kamen’s contest for attack ads:

For Kerry:
• "Bring back complete sentences"
• "Elect a man who can pronounce 'nuclear'"
• "It's Skull and Bones, not Numbskull and Bones"
• "Let's make ketchup a vegetable again"

For Bush:
• "It's still my turn"
• "Standing behind a Bush -- Not using the John"
• "50 million Frenchmen can be wrong"
• "Vote Bush: To Forgive is Divine"

Edwards

John Edwards, I don’t really have anything to say about John Edwards, the most inevitable choice of a running mate since GeeDubya asked Dick Cheney to find him the best possible veep.

Smacking law chaos

The House of Lords refuses to ban child abuse altogether, allowing “a light tap.” London Times headline: “Police Warn of Smacking Law Chaos.” Indeed, by refusing a ban on violence, they have created an impractically fine line between permissible and illegal: causing bruises and cuts is a crime, but reddening of the skin is only a problem if not transitory.

The Chinese are “re-educating” the doctor who broke the conspiracy of silence on SARS.

Indonesia has held its first vote ever for the office of the president. A general, one Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, evidently a living sound effect, is in the lead, but will have to face a run-off against either another general (the war criminal Wiranto) or the daughter of a dictator. A little unclear on the concept of democracy, the Indonesians.

Limited smacking

A beauty contest for goats in Croatia, because even Croatian goat-herders need love. No picture of the winner.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who may have the most English English accent ever, has actually admitted that he was wrong to assert before the war that Saddam Hussein had huge stockpiles of WMDs. “We were wrong on the stockpiles; we were right on the intention,” he now says. Saddam was indicted for these thought crimes last week. The problem with this “right on the intention” argument is that it paints him as so incompetent--not a single vial of anthrax, not even a teeny bit of yellowcake in spite of his intentions--that he must have been even less of a threat.

There must be a good segue between that item and the next, which is the ongoing debate in Britain over child-beating. Some people are now advocating a compromise, known as “limited smacking,” which in Victorian times was known as “reasonable chastisement” (and applied to wives as well). Reasonable chastisement still exists in law as a defense for causing your children actual harm; the limited smacking approach would remove this as a defense. In a choice of language that might make the Brits think about their child-rearing practices, a ban on smacking would be attacked as redolent of the “nanny state.” And the parties are allowing MPs a free vote, in a procedure known as “removing the whip.”

The real military danger in Iraq may be in the Coca Cola cans, which turn out to be better equipped than the Iraqi army ever was. There is a promotion, and some Coke cans have GPS devices and mobile phones, which the Pentagon worries could be used to track soldiers down, or which soldiers could use to listen in on their superiors. Here’s a sentence you never expected to see in a news story--or maybe you did: “The Coca-Cola company said the prize cans posed no threat to national security.”

Why couldn't they be both?

A website which asks the burning question, dogtoy, or marital aid?

The Pentagon still hasn’t admitted that it was a wedding it bombed in May.

Be sure to read this WaPo piece on how we’re spending Iraqi funds like drunken sailors for “reconstruction” projects that were supposed to be paid for by funds voted by Congress, of which only 2% have been spent. There needs to be a name--other than looting, I mean--for this variant on Keynesianism, where another country’s money is spent keeping Americans in employment at twenty times the wages Iraqis would do the same job for (and the Iraqis wouldn’t require quite as much security). The details in the article are what make it so infuriating. Much of the Iraqi money was quickly earmarked in the last weeks of the Bremer viceroyalty, so that the feckless natives wouldn’t get their hands on it.

A bit of meat

The NYT quotes Cheney at a campaign rally, saying of Kerry, “His big idea for cheering up the country? Raise your taxes.” Who knew Cheney was so concerned with cheering up the country?

The British mother of a soldier killed in Iraq says that Tony Blair thought of her son as just “a bit of meat.” And considering the awful things the Brits do to meat....

According to an Indy headline, members of the British House of Lords have been “Given Free Vote on Smacking.” Yes please, they vote. Actually, it’s about child-beating, which they call smacking, like they call elevators lifts, soccer football, etc.

Who says theater is dead?

Robert Fisk reports that US military officers censored coverage of the hearings of Saddam et al, destroying video of Saddam wearing chains. Initial reports that the judge wanted no recordings made were lies by those Americans. That you heard any of it was due to cameramen saying that they were complying with orders not to record sound, and then recording sound. The military was able to censor the words “this is theatre - Bush is the real criminal.”

Speaking of theatre, the LA Times reports, a little late, that it was an American Marine colonel who decided to topple that Saddam statue. (My previous comments on the statue thing are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Rightful owners

Robert Fisk, in a good piece about the out of town (well, undisclosed location) try-outs of the Saddam show trial, says that the unnamed judge presiding over Saddam is the same judge who accused Sadr of murder in April. And he wasn’t very good, either: he was trying to put Saddam in his place, but Saddam had him for breakfast.

The next several items all come from a Dana Milbank WaPo story on how Bushies are claiming we’re actually safer now.

Cheney: “After decades of rule by a brutal dictator, Iraq has been returned to its rightful owners, the people of Iraq.” Isn’t “owner” an odd and telling word?

Rumsfeld makes another claim to have found WMDs; his story is that Polish troops found a whole bunch of warheads with sarin and mustard gas--not that they’ve been tested or anything. So low is Rumsfeld’s credibility, or the credibility of any Bushie on the WMD/terrorism issue, that it makes it into the 8th paragraph of a WaPo story on p.12. Like I said about Ashcroft and the plot to blow up a mall in... Ohio, was it?...they feel they have to print it, and can’t quite bring themselves to say, “Just ignore this story,” so they give it one 10,000th of the play it would get if they believed it (heard anything else about that mall plot?). The funny thing is, Rummy himself is equally off-hand about what would be a big discovery if anyone believed it: he announced it on a San Diego radio station (transcript).
(Later:) yup, the story was another lie.

And Cheney made up yet another connection between Iraq and Al Qaida, which no one has ever heard of before, something about one Iraqi training AQ in Sudan more than 10 years ago.

Condi says that we are in fact safer than before 9/11, which polls show most Americans do not believe, although it’s not a high standard, considering that before 9/11, we were in danger from, well, the events of 9/11. Which by definition is not very safe.

The British government announced that ambulances making emergency calls will no longer be given speeding tickets. And yes, that really was a problem.

Making money the old-fashioned way

Not to bite the hand that's giving me free blog-hosting or anything, but my first post's reference to Saddam's claim that Kuwait wished to reduce Iraqi women to "ten-dinar prostitutes" generated the google ad "Buy Iraq Dinar Currency, Make Money Invest In Iraq's Rapid Growth!" Uh, sure, but don't spend it all on one hooker.

Ten dinar prostitutes

A NYT editorial on Pentagon stonewalling on Abu Ghraib, including the 2,000 pages of the Taguba report still “missing,” lies by Rummy et al that the International Red Cross isn’t letting them release its reports, and other stuff that should really have been reported in the news section of the paper instead of op/ed.

Ashcroft comments that “The Supreme Court accorded to terrorists, in a variety of cases this week, a number of additional rights”. Additional to zero? The attorney general here shows an ignorance of the function of the judicial branch. The Supreme Court does not “accord” rights; those rights are already there, in the Constitution.

Qatar sentences those 2 Russian spies to life for car-bombing a former president of Chechnya in February.

I hope if Kerry is elected, he won’t be bogged down by a long heresy trial.

Saddam is, what, indicted, by an American-appointed court operating under American rules with American advisors to both the judges and prosecutors, along with 11 other officials (or “henchmen” as they are being called in the interests of neutrality, John O'Farrell says in a funny Guardian piece) and a ham sandwich, which was charged with being unIslamic. Can you say show trial? It was timed for American tv; American networks were allowed in but no Iraqi reporters (one had showed up, but was ordered to leave). In other words, we were watching yet another Bush campaign ad. I’m surprised it wasn’t conducted in English. O’Farrell comments, “The west's biggest baddie could have been tried by a democratic Iraqi regime, but that might have meant waiting until after the American elections.” He also notes that while Hussein is charged with invading Kuwait, nowhere is there mention of his invasion of Iran, with US encouragement.

The highlight was when Saddam said that he invaded Kuwait to prevent “those Kuwaiti dogs” reducing Iraqi women into 10-dinar prostitutes. Reducing from how much? American troops want to know. And what do dogs need prostitutes for anyway? Maybe the 10 dinars is just for leg-humping. Again, American troops want to know.

This was good for the Iraqi puppet government as well, because the way to establish your bona fides from the gitgo is not to say, announce a jobs program, but to piss on the former ruler and cut off his head. I’m pretty sure that’s how FDR did it.

The quotes from the hearing in news stories simply do not capture the hilarious tone of the proceedings. Here’s a transcript, from the Indy (note that the judge has no name, and this is not an accident--transparent justice at its finest):


The Judge opened proceedings by asking Saddam for his name:

SADDAM: ...Hussein Majid, the president of the Republic of Iraq.

The judge then asks his date of birth

SADDAM: 1937.

[Somewhere in here, the judge asked his address. Saddam may not know where he currently resides--Robert Fisk thinks Qatar--but answered “I live in each Iraqi’s house.”]

JUDGE: Profession? Former president of the Republic of Iraq?

SADDAM: No, present. Current. It's the will of the people.

JUDGE: The head of the Baath Party that is dissolved, defunct. Former commander and chief of the army. Residence is Iraq. Your mother's name?

SADDAM: Sobha. You also have to introduce yourself to me

JUDGE: Mr Saddam, I am the investigative judge of the central court of Iraq.

SADDAM: So that I have to know, you are an investigative judge of the central court of Iraq? What resolution, what law formed this court?

The judge's response could not be heard.

SADDAM: Oh, the coalition forces? So you are an Iraqi that - you are representing the occupying forces?

JUDGE: No, I'm an Iraqi representing Iraq.

SADDAM: But you are...

JUDGE: I was appointed by a presidential decree under the former regime.

SADDAM: So you are reiterating that every Iraqi should respect the Iraqi law. So the law that was instituted before represents the will of the people, right?

JUDGE: Yes, God willing.

SADDAM: So you should not work under the jurisdiction of the coalition forces.

JUDGE: This is an important point. I am a judge. In the former regime, I respect the judges. And I am resuming and continuing my work.

SADDAM: So, please let me - I'm not complicating matters. Are you a judge? You are a judge? And judges, they value the law. And they rule by the law, right? Right? Right is a relative issue. For us, right is our heritage in the Koran, sharia, right? I am not talking about Saddam Hussein, whether he was a citizen or in other capacities. I'm not holding fast to my position, but to respect the will of the people that decided to choose Saddam Hussein as the leader of the revolution. Therefore, when I say president of the Republic of Iraq, it's not a formality or a holding fast to a position, but rather to reiterate to the Iraqi people that I respect its will.

JUDGE: If there is evidence, then I'll defer it to a court of jurisdiction.

SADDAM: Let me understand something. Who is the defendant? Any defendant when he comes to a court, before that there should be investigation.

JUDGE: I'm investigating, interrogating you. Second, the president is a profession, is a position, is a deputy of the society. That's true. And originally, inherently, he's a citizen. And every citizen, according to the law in the constitution, if this person violates a law has to come before the law. And that law you know more than I do. So the crimes, the charges: intended killing by using chemical weapons in Halabjah.

SADDAM: No.

JUDGE: Second, intended killing of a great number of Iraqis in 1983. Three, intended killing of a number of members of political parties without trials. Fourth, intended killing of many of the Iraqi religious people. Fifth, intended killing of many Iraqis in Anfal without any evidence against it.

Details of the sixth charge are not picked up

JUDGE: The seventh charge was against Saddam Hussein as president of the republic and the commander-in-chief of the army. And the army went to Kuwait.

SADDAM: Even though this was not an invasion. Will the law judge Saddam Hussein because he defends Iraq?

Saddam refers to Kuwaitis as "dogs".

JUDGE: You are in a legal hearing and we will not allow you to speak in any way that is disrespectful to this court.

SADDAM: Then in the formal capacity, is it permissible to charge an official title? And the person is to be dealt with in violation of the guarantees that are afforded by the constitution. This is the law that you're using to use against me now.

JUDGE: I would like you to sign these documents formally, and this will go into the record. Answer to those charges. This is investigation. Answer. If you read the minutes, we say that we postpone the investigation.

SADDAM: Then please allow me not to sign anything until the lawyers are present.

JUDGE: That is fine. But this is your...

SADDAM: I speak for myself.

JUDGE: Yes, as a citizen you have the right. But the guarantees you have to sign because these were read to you, recited to you.

SADDAM: Anyway, why are you worried? I will come again before you with the presence of the lawyers, and you will be giving me all of these documents again. So why should we rush any action now and make mistakes because of rushed and hasty decisions or actions?

JUDGE: No, this is not a hasty decision-making now. I'm just investigating. And we need to conclude and seal the minutes.

SADDAM: No, I will sign when the lawyers are present.

JUDGE: Then you can leave.

SADDAM: Finished?

JUDGE: Yes.

Or maybe he was just trying to order some freedom fries

Bush’s “let freedom reign” doodle is niggling at me. As a phrase, I don’t know what it means: freedom isn’t something that reigns. To a large extent, freedom is about carving out spaces where larger structures do not reign. I smell something religious in the phrase but I can’t pin it down. In my last, I quoted a Guardian writer saying the phrase showed Bush’s image of himself as a George Washington leading subject peoples to liberty. It’s hard to tell what his self-image actually is. Even a simpleton--and a highly unreflective simpleton--like GeeDubya, but really anyone who has to campaign for high office, making endless speeches about their own virtues, and then living out life pretending to be president, being on tv a lot, seeing posters of himself and so on, well, their ego and self-image develop an architecture of a complexity the rest of us simply do not have.

It’s unclear to me how he envisions the “liberty” to which he plans to bring, if not the world, at least the entire Middle East. He uses the word democracy, but it ain’t that. He has no interest in elections, representative government, the rule of law, etc in this country, so he certainly doesn’t plan to bring that to the Arabic (and Persian) peoples; the contempt for “nation-building” he evinced during the 2000 campaign is still intact. Possibly he intones the sacred words--freedom, democracy--without envisioning anything, abstract thought not being his strong suit. But I suspect he sees it as some sort of conversion experience, where the removal of tyrannical rulers transforms their liberated subjects in the same way he claims his decision to stop drinking and come to Jesus transformed him.

OK, I’ve just googled “let freedom reign,” and there are an odd assortment of sites indeed, 3,140 of them. It’s a phrase mostly used by right wingers of various persuasions, for sure, and it still sounds to me like people misheard the last words of that song with the terrible lyrics and bad grammar sung to the tune of God Save the Queen, but I don’t think this is an innocent phrase.

Still more googling shows that many people, presumably not right-wingers, wrongly think Martin Luther King used “let freedom reign” rather than “ring” in the I Have a Dream Speech. And really, you don’t want to know how many people think he said “let freedom rain.”

Premature Iraqulation

In Turkey, Bush said, “Turkey meets the EU standards for membership. The EU should begin talks that will lead to full membership for the Republic of Turkey.” Chirac tells Bush to butt out.

Wonkette nicely deems the early underhand of sovereignty “Premature Iraqulation.” The media seem to be only mildly embarrassed that they’re using the words “transfer of sovereignty” that the Bush admin put in their mouth, just as they did last year when they talked about the “end of hostilities”, and then the “end of major hostilities”, for months after it was obvious that nothing had ended at all. The media’s stenography habit must end. Even Bush isn’t going to be so stupid--although I’ve been looking back at some of my old emails and no prediction I’ve ever started that way has turned out not to be confounded by Bush’s actual stupidity--as to start in with the “mission accomplished” rhetoric; he’s talking about “freedom” a lot, but that won’t survive Allawi’s determination to impose martial law, even with someone’s else’s military. I suspect the media are so anxious to move on from the Iraq story so they don’t have to pay for expensive campaign coverage and expensive war coverage at the same time that they’ve adopted the Bush admin’s happy-talk exit strategy as their own.

If it were a true handover of power, it would be frightening. Imagine you were going to take a vacation in Hawaii starting Wednesday and were suddenly told on Monday that you had to get to the airport NOW NOW NOW! You’d be in a panic, you’d forget to pack something important, it would be utter chaos. Now running a whole, like, country is probably a bit more involved than a vacation, so if this were real... And don’t look for Bremer to break in the newbies on how to use the xerox machine, he’s already skedaddled.

Owie Allawi said today, “God and truth are with us.” That and a dime’ll get you a cup of coffee. And “we will not forget who stood with us and against us in this crisis.” That’s the sort of talk you like to hear on the first day of “full sovereignty.” And if it sounds familiar, think “you’re either with us or with the terrorists.”

I’m blanking on which columnist (or even which paper, but I think in Monday’s NYT) who wrote that Allawi needs to demonstrate his admin’s independence by picking a fight with the Americans, one he can win. This isn’t independence, this is good cop, bad cop, a farce instantly recognizable as a farce even to Iraqis who haven’t seen an episode of NYPD Blue. And no kabuki display of “independence” can get around the fact, as Robert Fisk puts it, that “Allawi is relying on the one army whose evacuation he needs to prove his own credibility.”

Possibly the WaPo is trying to say something: an article on the reappointment of Christian loon W. David Hager to the FDA panel on reproductive drugs (see the article Dana Milbank piece on the “administration ritual: disavowing the conclusions of official documents.”

Boldly extending the habeas statute to the four corners of the earth

Paul Krugman quotes Bremer’s aide in imposing free-market capitalism on Iraq talking about the need to educate Iraqi businessmen away from the paradigm of cronyism. That aide: Ari Fleischer’s brother. Cronyism bad, nepotism good?

Actually, Science news, tampering in God’s domain division: the first successful pregnancy after ovary transplants make menopause a thing of the past. Oh fine, and let cancer survivors give birth. Can’t they just fucking adopt?

Evidently, Governor Ahnuuld has not actually switched the capitol’s toilet paper, that was an inside joke between him and a reporter, dating back to the election, when the Gropinator evaded questions about what he was willing to cut until the reporter suggested the tp thing.

The pope apologizes for the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the 4th Crusade.

OK, Daily Kos has bothered to do the research I didn’t yesterday on the media parroting the Bush line:

Washington Post: “Despite the end of the occupation …”

Knight Ridder: “Iraqis see hope in end of U.S.-led occupation”

Los Angeles Times: “…end of a deeply divisive American-led occupation…”

San Francisco Chronicle: “the U.S.-led military occupation had formally ended…”

Miami Herald: “…ended its occupation of Iraq…”

Associated Press: “…the end of the American occupation …”

Arizona Republic:: “…the 160,000 foreign troops in Iraq were transformed from occupiers into guests of a U.S.-backed government.”

Bitter differences

Slate says exactly what I had meant to say yesterday, but forgot during an unusually slow download: “Evidently operating under the assumption that it was his call to make, Bush declared in Ireland yesterday an end to the "bitter differences" between the U.S. and Europe over the Iraq war.”

Bush also used the NATO summit to declare that he was willing to forgive France, Germany and Turkey for their unseemly displays of independence.

Isn’t it insulting when he praises Turkey for being “secular in politics”? They must know that he only finds secularism admirable in non-Christian countries.

And what luck that the Iraqi Resistance captured one of the few Muslim US marines. I’m guessing he’s not going to get the whole-hog Jessica Lynch treatment, but will be quietly ignored until his body and/or head are recovered (by the way, Fahrenheit 9/11 fortuitously has some shots of a public execution by beheading in our good ally Saudi Arabia.)

Something else I forgot to say. A message to Jack Ryan on his having to step down: remember, crying is so unattractive. You twat.

Bremer has issued 97 edicts, and put people into government jobs on long contracts, to impose his ideology on Iraq for years to come. And given that power to others in the future, like an election commission that can simply ban parties and candidates. Edicts include capping taxes at 15%, protecting intellectual property (the occupation government really is a Mickey Mouse outfit), requiring automobile drivers to keep both hands on the wheel and stop honking the fucking horn...

Some of the people Bremer hired are inspectors-general to guard against corruption, or override the puppet government, as the case may be. So it’s ironic that he lost rather a large sum of Iraqi oil money. The stories disagree on the amount, but the word “billion,” possibly in the plural, is involved. Have you checked in all your pockets? Have you checked in all of Halliburton’s pockets?

Bremer has left Iraq, appropriately, like a thief in the night, quite possibly in the trunk of a car like Chalabi did when he fled Jordan. Bremer “handed over sovereignty” two days early because he has done such a terrible job that any ceremony would have been blowed up, which tends to look bad on CNN.

I can’t seem to get the video at this site of Bush’s interview with Irish tv, which I gather is a hoot and possibly a holler. The connection keeps dropping, and has for 2 days now. Maybe your luck will be better (link below). Hasn’t shown on CSPAN either, and no transcript that I know of. The embassy made an official protest that the interviewer was rude to Mr. Sensitive. And they cancelled an interview with Laura Bush. Possibly at some time in the future, Bush will declare the end to his bitter differences with Irish state television.

Nothing contrived in what he said

You can’t judge by the Bay Area, but Fahrenheit 9/11 may be quite the little phenomenon. I didn’t expect a long line for the 4:30 show, but there it was, with the 7:00 already sold out, and this mind you at just 1 of the 3 theaters within a 5-mile radius showing it on 4 screens. I felt like I was on line for a Star Wars movie.

The movie is fun, intellectually lightweight, sure, but great fun, although Moore has some problems in the second half dealing with the war itself. None of it will be new to you; hell, every quote he uses from Bush was one I’d used myself (and, indeed, the Daily Show). The film is like an illustrated pointillist version of a blog. In retrospect, I’m not entirely sure how many of the points he touches on very briefly will be lost on the uninitiated. But the fun to be had at Shrub’s expense is endless, and every piece of footage is a gem. This is actually another of the film’s problems: Moore (legitimately) takes strong and yes sometimes unfair positions on many things, but in the end can’t decide if Bush is evil or a clown. Then again, neither can I.

Speaking of evil clowns, this article neatly sums up the Bush failure to properly handle North Korea.

Disease has hit South American cocoa crops. There could be a...world chocolate shortage. Oh dear god no.

The US bombs Fallujah heavily, again. And Yowie Allawi makes another speech about how he will defeat the insurgents. The Indy notes that to attend while he makes these defiant speeches, one must first pass through 4 checkpoints entirely manned by Americans, with no Iraqi officials anywhere to be seen. The Indy seems to imply that Allawi’s complete lack of troops somehow deflates his boasts about defeating his enemies.

Governor Terminator has not backed down on his cruel imposition of single-ply toilet paper on state employees (he himself uses a twig to wipe between his singularly muscular buttocks and sees anything else as girly)(ok, I made that up, but for a minute you believed me, didn’t you?), but has had to back down from his plan to let animal shelters kill strays in less than the current statutory 6 days, to save money (3 days, including days when the shelter is closed, was his plan). However, strays will now be allocated to girly-man state employees to wipe their singularly flabby buttocks. I have just grossed myself out.

The Nation’s Naomi Klein says that the US office which overseas reconstruction spending in Iraq has hired the incredibly scummy British mercenary firm Aegis to protect the office’s employees from “assassination, kidnapping, injury and embarrassment.” Klein says the latter is impossible, since these people have no shame, having stolen $184m from drinking water projects to use for the new US embassy, which is already in a fucking palace so what more do they need, 3-ply toilet paper? Klein suggests that the reason almost none of the allocated money has actually been spent is to give Negroponte $15b worth of leverage to make the “sovereign” Iraqi government dance to his tune (his tune, judging from his time in Honduras, is whatever music death squads play when they shoot at people’s feet to make them “dance”). She notes that insurance for the foreign contractors costs up to 30% of payroll, for obvious reasons, plus security at 25% of total spending, and say 20% lost to corruption.... And latest Halliburton story: when their $85,000 trucks get a flat tire, they abandon them rather than, say, carry spare tires.

The same article coins a brilliant term to use instead of the obviously inaccurate “handover”: underhand. In fact, go read it now.

Cheney says about Fuckgate (he won’t admit, or deny, having used the word), “I think that a lot of my colleagues felt that what I had said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue.” In other words, Leahy can go have a frank exchange of views himself. Cheney as usual misses the fucking point: he doesn’t just need to apologize to the senior Senator from Vermont, he needs to apologize to the Senate.

The White House’s response to Fuckgate: Shit happens.

Alan Simpson’s response: Cheney’s obscenity “comes from the gut” (well, Cheney was certainly speaking out of some part of his gastro-intestinal tract....) and “there was nothing contrived in what he said.”

Saudis including Crown Prince Abdullah are blaming the recent bombings on Zionists rather than (or possibly in addition to?) Al Qaida.

Times story: “A LOTION made from human breast milk is a highly effective treatment for warts, Swedish doctors have discovered.” The story does not explain how they happen to have discovered that. A breast pump connected to a water pistol at the office Christmas party would be my guess, knowing Swedish doctors.

Vexatious litigation

According to the Post, which was clearly enjoying itself, Cheney’s exact words to Leahy were “Fuck yourself.” The Post includes the words, but the NYT merely says that Cheney used “an obscene phrase to describe what he thought Mr. Leahy should do.” Cheney was later defended by none other than Orrin Hatch, who is a fucking Mormon. The WaPo notes that just before the cursing out, the Senate voted 99-1 for the Defence of Decency Act (which is the ten-fold increase in FCC fines for any broadcaster who quotes “Dick” Cheney--you knew anything passed 99-1 couldn’t be good--the one is John Breaux, mostly because it was attached to a defense budget bill), while the Times notes that earlier in the day, Tom Daschle called for increased cross-party understanding. Well, you can’t accuse Cheney of being unclear, but that’s probably not what Daschle meant.

The Post also got a little snarky towards Wolfowitz, who said a few days ago that the reason reporters in Iraq weren’t talking about how things are improving is that they’re afraid to leave their hotel rooms because of the near certainty of being killed or kidnapped. The WaPo points out that Wolfy, when he visited the country: “is completely unafraid to leave the hotel. In fact, he travels about the entire country, as he did last week. Unlike reporters, however, who tend to travel on land, his feet never touched the ground except in a U.S. military base or secured zone. Probably just for convenience, Wolfowitz prefers to travel by air, in a fleet of Black Hawk helicopters with several Apache attack helicopters -- bristling with machine guns, rockets and Hellfire missiles -- flying escort. Wolfowitz choppered from the secured airport to the secured Green Zone downtown, a distance of maybe 10 miles as the RPG flies. (Cabs are expensive.) Heading north to Mosul? No problem, take a C-130 transport plane to the U.S. base and meet with Kurdish leaders in a totally secured area. Need to trek to Basra? The C-130's the way to go. Get some nice views of the country and a good feel for what Iraqis are thinking.”

Last month I mentioned that the US military was running out of bullets, domestic suppliers not being able to keep up with its 2 billion bullet a year habit. So they’ve turned to...Israel. Now some congresscritters are suggesting that maybe shooting Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan with Israeli-made bullets is not such a good idea.

In turning back a lower-court decision to force Cheney to give up records from his energy policy cabal, the Supreme Court rather insultingly referred to the case as “vexatious litigation that might distract it from the energetic performance of its constitutional duties.” Assuming you consider environmental rape and general evil-doing to be among the government’s constitutional duties. The Court is basically saying that the executive is not above the Law, where the Law is a Platonic ideal, just most of the piddling, vexatious, actual laws. The point of returning it to the lower court is to postpone shining light into Cheney’s dank lair (I picture it like the “Stonecutters” episode of The Simpsons) until after the elections.

Speaking of unseemly events on the bench, an Oklahoma judge used a noisy penis pump to masturbate during trials, including a murder trial. The OK. attorney general wants him removed because any red-blooded American judge should ejaculate constantly during murder trials without resorting to any mechanical devices. Must be a fairy.

Sadly, Jack Ryan is pulling out of the Il. senatorial race, meaning there may be no more stories combining the words “Jeri Ryan” and “public sex.”

Bizarre story that a Paraguayan vice president supposedly assassinated in 1999 actually died having sex.