Turkmenistan, home to the looniest dictator of all the loony dictators in all the former-Soviet Central Asian dictatorships, now has the plague, possibly because most of the health-care professionals were fired, and all those with foreign credentials. The government has responded by making the word plague illegal.
In South Africa, the National Party of Verwoerd, P.W. Botha, F.W. DeKlerk and Vorster, the party that built apartheid and imprisoned Nelson Mandela, will dissolve itself and be absorbed by the ANC. It got 1.65% at the last elections. President Thabo Mbeki calls the Nats a “party of oppression” and, um, welcomes its members into his own party. I have mixed feelings about this. The Nats are, obviously, no great loss and should not let the door hit them in the ass on the way out (they used to employ black servants to hold the door open for them), but SA is moving slowly but not irreversibly in the direction of a one-party state, one result of which is an AIDS policy only slightly saner than that of Turkmenistan (which also made the word AIDS illegal, although to be fair, it made the disease illegal as well), and no proper opposition party able to hold the government’s feet to the fire on the issue.
Bob Harris at the This Modern World blog reports that September will be National Preparedness Month, nicely coordinated with the Republican convention. Harris covers that well, so I don’t need to, but while following links through government websites, I came across the FEMA for Kids website, hosted by Herman the spokescrab. I encourage everyone to get a Disaster Action Kids Certificate, by filling out the online form provided. You must fill out Two Things You Learned (mine: FEMA has nothing to do with the femoral artery; Natural disasters are a sign that God hates America.) and list One Disaster You Learned About (the Bush administration)(naturally). Oh, gyp, they don’t mail it to you, you have to print it out yourself.
Sunday, August 08, 2004
Saturday, August 07, 2004
Exudation of Optimism
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told a BBC World Service interviewer who was asking too many questions about the excuses for going to war with Iraq to "fuck off." Sadly, the Beeb didn’t broadcast the words. Can’t find a transcript on their website, either. I guess they took his advice.
The American-appointed administration in Iraq bans Al Jazeera for 30 days, renewable, claiming it instigated violence (by reporting on it) and that it failed to show the "reality of political life," and should "readjust its policy agenda" during this time-out. While that certainly reflects the appointees, and of Arab governments which have also banned Al Jazeera (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc), I have to wonder whether they did it on their own, or at the instigation of the Americans. Bremer, Rumsfeld and Kimmit certainly would have loved to be able to get away with that (they could only "accidentally" bomb its offices, although they did try to get Qatar to clamp down), but now have plausible deniability. Here are some old posts of mine which mention the US’s verbal and sometimes literal war on Al Jazeera: 4/8/03, 6/15/03, 7/27/03, 4/13/04, 4/29/04.
Al Jazeera’s website, which has several details that, say, the NYT does not, notes that the closure did not have the legally required court order, and that thing about them adjusting their policy agenda is actually a piece of paper they have to sign before they will be allowed to reopen. And that the order followed remarks by Rumsfeld Friday in which he said that AJ and Al-Arabiyah "have persuaded an enormous fraction of the people that we’re there as an occupying force, which is a lie, that we are randomly killing innocent civilians, which is a lie. ... And they’ve persuaded a pile of people that what's happening is a terrible thing." Rummy also says that its reporters were paid by Saddam Hussein (who actually also banned the station). By the way, after those Abu Ghraib pictures, maybe Rummy shouldn’t be using the phrase "pile of people."
Is there actually a need for an "Anna Kournikova of chess"? After reading that story, I put that phrase into Google, quite frankly looking for pictures (which the Telegraph didn’t have) so I could judge for myself as part of my quite legitimate blogging duties, and it turns out there are actually a bunch of women (and girls) trying to be the Anna Kournikova of chess.
Headline (WaPo) that makes you too scared to actually read the story: "Ga. Town Torn Over Feelings for Wild Chickens."
Another WaPo headline: "Kerry Leads Bush in Exudation of Optimism." They probably make a salve for that.
The American-appointed administration in Iraq bans Al Jazeera for 30 days, renewable, claiming it instigated violence (by reporting on it) and that it failed to show the "reality of political life," and should "readjust its policy agenda" during this time-out. While that certainly reflects the appointees, and of Arab governments which have also banned Al Jazeera (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc), I have to wonder whether they did it on their own, or at the instigation of the Americans. Bremer, Rumsfeld and Kimmit certainly would have loved to be able to get away with that (they could only "accidentally" bomb its offices, although they did try to get Qatar to clamp down), but now have plausible deniability. Here are some old posts of mine which mention the US’s verbal and sometimes literal war on Al Jazeera: 4/8/03, 6/15/03, 7/27/03, 4/13/04, 4/29/04.
Al Jazeera’s website, which has several details that, say, the NYT does not, notes that the closure did not have the legally required court order, and that thing about them adjusting their policy agenda is actually a piece of paper they have to sign before they will be allowed to reopen. And that the order followed remarks by Rumsfeld Friday in which he said that AJ and Al-Arabiyah "have persuaded an enormous fraction of the people that we’re there as an occupying force, which is a lie, that we are randomly killing innocent civilians, which is a lie. ... And they’ve persuaded a pile of people that what's happening is a terrible thing." Rummy also says that its reporters were paid by Saddam Hussein (who actually also banned the station). By the way, after those Abu Ghraib pictures, maybe Rummy shouldn’t be using the phrase "pile of people."
Is there actually a need for an "Anna Kournikova of chess"? After reading that story, I put that phrase into Google, quite frankly looking for pictures (which the Telegraph didn’t have) so I could judge for myself as part of my quite legitimate blogging duties, and it turns out there are actually a bunch of women (and girls) trying to be the Anna Kournikova of chess.
Headline (WaPo) that makes you too scared to actually read the story: "Ga. Town Torn Over Feelings for Wild Chickens."
Another WaPo headline: "Kerry Leads Bush in Exudation of Optimism." They probably make a salve for that.
Friday, August 06, 2004
7 minutes
Kerry said that if it had been him in that classroom on 9/11, he would have gotten up and left. Guiliani accused him of taking his cues from Michael Moore, who is rapidly becoming a figure of hate among the R’s. But the fact that Guiliani could link Pet-Goat-gate to Moore just shows that almost no one else talked about it for almost 3 years; Moore owns the issue. Now, I suggested not two weeks after 9/11 that if someone ran film of those 7 minutes in a split screen with images from NY from those same minutes, or with sound from the Pennsylvania plane’s black box, Bush would be finished.
And it’s not a cheap shot. Once the second plane hit, it was clear that terrorists were using passenger planes as weapons, and the only person then legally allowed to order civilian planes shot down was the president (although we now know that Cheney illegally ordered planes to be "taken out"), who should have been collecting information in case there were other hijacked planes, as indeed there were. It was criminally negligent of Bush to remain in that room.
And it’s not a cheap shot. Once the second plane hit, it was clear that terrorists were using passenger planes as weapons, and the only person then legally allowed to order civilian planes shot down was the president (although we now know that Cheney illegally ordered planes to be "taken out"), who should have been collecting information in case there were other hijacked planes, as indeed there were. It was criminally negligent of Bush to remain in that room.
Affirmatively taking action, but not affirmative action. Head... hurt.
Asked by minority journalists about affirmative action at colleges & universities, Bush, evidently thinking he was fooling somebody, said "I support colleges affirmatively taking action to get more minorities in their school." Showing what happens the one time a year he lets himself be questioned by a group that hasn’t been properly screened, he is asked about legacy admissions--such as his own undeserved admission into Yale--and forced to come out against them.
Russia is stonewalling Poland’s war crimes/genocide investigation of the Katyn massacre.
And an Indonesian appeal court quashed 4 more of the few convictions for the 1999 massacres in East Timor, leaving only 2 people whose convictions stand. 18 were convicted; the 16 whose sentences were overturned were all in the military or police, the other 2 were civilians.
A shorter version of that story appears in the "news in brief" section of the Daily Telegraph. Now, the Tel is a right-wing newspaper with low journalistic standards, but I’ve been reading it online for 8 years. Today’s news in brief section demonstrates why. Along with the genocide story, there’s a story about Dutch politicians considering making unsolicited toe-licking a crime after a man who engages in that hobby can’t be convicted of anything (better headline in the Guardian: "Toe-Sucker Not Brought to Heel"), a man who shot himself in his own buttocks, the world’s hairiest man gets his ear hair trimmed, a German in a Spanish jail who glued his hand to his girlfriend’s during a visit to prevent his being extradited, and a sect of Muslim wife-swappers in Nigeria fighting off the police with bows and arrows.
Russia is stonewalling Poland’s war crimes/genocide investigation of the Katyn massacre.
And an Indonesian appeal court quashed 4 more of the few convictions for the 1999 massacres in East Timor, leaving only 2 people whose convictions stand. 18 were convicted; the 16 whose sentences were overturned were all in the military or police, the other 2 were civilians.
A shorter version of that story appears in the "news in brief" section of the Daily Telegraph. Now, the Tel is a right-wing newspaper with low journalistic standards, but I’ve been reading it online for 8 years. Today’s news in brief section demonstrates why. Along with the genocide story, there’s a story about Dutch politicians considering making unsolicited toe-licking a crime after a man who engages in that hobby can’t be convicted of anything (better headline in the Guardian: "Toe-Sucker Not Brought to Heel"), a man who shot himself in his own buttocks, the world’s hairiest man gets his ear hair trimmed, a German in a Spanish jail who glued his hand to his girlfriend’s during a visit to prevent his being extradited, and a sect of Muslim wife-swappers in Nigeria fighting off the police with bows and arrows.
The greatest of Satans
Muqtada al-Sadr issues a sermon calling the US "the greatest of Satans." Aw shucks, now we’ll just get a swelled head.
To answer my question of yesterday, the NM Republicans did indeed demand driver’s licenses from the people they required to sign the loyalty oath.
The wingnuts are entering the electoral process in all their glory. First up, James Hart has won the Republican primary for Tennessee’s 8th district congressional seat. Wasn’t James Hart the main character in "The Paper Chase"? "Mister Hart, here is a dime, call your mother, tell her you will never be a wacky United States congressman." Hart is running on a platform of "Stop Welfare and Immigration Replace it with a War on Poverty Genes." His website has to be seen to be believed. I especially liked the "Socrates Vs. Jesus" link (a dialogue, not a cage wrestling match), which, fortunately, I read before going back and seeing all the eugenics stuff about black people having low IQs, after which it became harder to laugh. I know it’s a very safe D seat, and I once lived in a safe D seat where the R candidacy for Congress went to a guy running against the Trilateral Commission conspiracy to take over the world, but that’s not the same thing as an open racist running for Congress in the South.
And the R’s in Illinois offered the US Senate candidacy to dotty right-wing talk show host Alan Keyes, who does not live in Illinois. There might be justification for the very occasional carpetbagger--Hillary Clinton and Bobby Kennedy as senators for NY--but if we (especially those of us who live in under-represented California) have to put up with the Electoral College and the Senate as violations of the principle of one-person-one-vote, then we have a right to demand that it is actually the states themselves that are being represented, and not political parties. In most other representative democracies (France, the UK, etc etc), the national parties drop candidates into districts chosen by the parties (parachutists, they’re called in France), so that senior members of the parties get the safe seats and the interests of local voters don’t get heard at all. So Keyes was not wrong in 2000 when he decried Hillary’s candidacy as a violation of the principle of federalism. A system in which local interests are overridden by those of the national parties is entirely different than the system we have known up till now, and we shouldn’t just back into it without considering the consequences. The constant interventions of Tom DeLay in Texas give some sign of where that leads.
To answer my question of yesterday, the NM Republicans did indeed demand driver’s licenses from the people they required to sign the loyalty oath.
The wingnuts are entering the electoral process in all their glory. First up, James Hart has won the Republican primary for Tennessee’s 8th district congressional seat. Wasn’t James Hart the main character in "The Paper Chase"? "Mister Hart, here is a dime, call your mother, tell her you will never be a wacky United States congressman." Hart is running on a platform of "Stop Welfare and Immigration Replace it with a War on Poverty Genes." His website has to be seen to be believed. I especially liked the "Socrates Vs. Jesus" link (a dialogue, not a cage wrestling match), which, fortunately, I read before going back and seeing all the eugenics stuff about black people having low IQs, after which it became harder to laugh. I know it’s a very safe D seat, and I once lived in a safe D seat where the R candidacy for Congress went to a guy running against the Trilateral Commission conspiracy to take over the world, but that’s not the same thing as an open racist running for Congress in the South.
And the R’s in Illinois offered the US Senate candidacy to dotty right-wing talk show host Alan Keyes, who does not live in Illinois. There might be justification for the very occasional carpetbagger--Hillary Clinton and Bobby Kennedy as senators for NY--but if we (especially those of us who live in under-represented California) have to put up with the Electoral College and the Senate as violations of the principle of one-person-one-vote, then we have a right to demand that it is actually the states themselves that are being represented, and not political parties. In most other representative democracies (France, the UK, etc etc), the national parties drop candidates into districts chosen by the parties (parachutists, they’re called in France), so that senior members of the parties get the safe seats and the interests of local voters don’t get heard at all. So Keyes was not wrong in 2000 when he decried Hillary’s candidacy as a violation of the principle of federalism. A system in which local interests are overridden by those of the national parties is entirely different than the system we have known up till now, and we shouldn’t just back into it without considering the consequences. The constant interventions of Tom DeLay in Texas give some sign of where that leads.
Thursday, August 05, 2004
Soldiers in the army of compassion
Slate has a report on a Bush campaign rally in Columbus. What’s interesting is Bush’s tendency to use the same words in different contexts (granted, he has a small vocabulary) in ways that are suggestive. One word is heart. He advocates government funding of religious anti-addiction programs because "sometimes it requires a change of heart in order to change habit." But talking about terrorism, he says "we’re facing an enemy which has no heart, no compassion." Compassion is something Our Side has, and evidently it’s a weapon of some kind, because "All of you are soldiers in the army of compassion." He again calls on citizens to love their neighbors, and tellingly says that "We can change America one soul at a time by encouraging people to spread something government cannot spread, which is love." Why on earth not? He didn’t mention gay marriage in this speech, I don’t think, but his approach to that subject makes it quite clear that he thinks government can tell you what to feel about certain people. And while he castigates government, which "can never...put love in a person’s heart," some of us don’t want government or anyone else telling us what emotions to feel towards whom. P.S.: David Brooks, in his 8/7/04 NYT column, says Bush campaign events are "like a travelling road show of proper emotions."
Getting back to the army of compassion, he says that "change agents" can put an arm around someone who needs love and help make their life better. But in the part of his speech about terror, he says "we’ve got to say to people who are willing to harbor a terrorist or feed a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorists." (This could be a reference to the various Islamic charities whose funds the government has seized, to individuals who did nothing illegal themselves but whom the government wishes to criminalize because they knew other people who the government does not like, or nations like Afghanistan under the Taliban.) So change agents are supposed to make judgments about who they feed and shelter, and be darned careful about who they offer love and compassion to, which isn’t particularly Christian, I’d have thought. To sum up, there can be no compassion without judgment of the worthiness of people to receive that compassion, government can’t spread love, and the enemy has no heart. His use of the same sort of words to describe both domestic and foreign policy gives some insight into his thinking, but that’s as far into the dark recesses of Bush’s brain as I care to go today; I’m getting claustrophobic in these cramped environs.
The full text of the Columbus event isn’t online now, but he used very similar language in Dallas Tuesday.
Update: the NYT also has an article on the Columbus rally, but doesn't say whether and how members of the audience were screened. After the "loyalty oath" thing in New Mexico, this needs to be an element of news reports of all Bush/Cheney campaign events.
Getting back to the army of compassion, he says that "change agents" can put an arm around someone who needs love and help make their life better. But in the part of his speech about terror, he says "we’ve got to say to people who are willing to harbor a terrorist or feed a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorists." (This could be a reference to the various Islamic charities whose funds the government has seized, to individuals who did nothing illegal themselves but whom the government wishes to criminalize because they knew other people who the government does not like, or nations like Afghanistan under the Taliban.) So change agents are supposed to make judgments about who they feed and shelter, and be darned careful about who they offer love and compassion to, which isn’t particularly Christian, I’d have thought. To sum up, there can be no compassion without judgment of the worthiness of people to receive that compassion, government can’t spread love, and the enemy has no heart. His use of the same sort of words to describe both domestic and foreign policy gives some insight into his thinking, but that’s as far into the dark recesses of Bush’s brain as I care to go today; I’m getting claustrophobic in these cramped environs.
The full text of the Columbus event isn’t online now, but he used very similar language in Dallas Tuesday.
Update: the NYT also has an article on the Columbus rally, but doesn't say whether and how members of the audience were screened. After the "loyalty oath" thing in New Mexico, this needs to be an element of news reports of all Bush/Cheney campaign events.
Preserving Tigger's Magic
In an effort to make passports harder to forge, the British government will reject any passport photos in which the subject is smiling. Screws up biometric readings. I think in future we should all beam like demented monkeys on any photo id’s. Got through that without making any comments about British dentistry.
(Update): Funny, I wrote that before seeing this WaPo story about American US's plans to use biometric data in passports, even though it won't work. The Post doesn't mention the thing about smiling.
A Disney World employee was acquitted of fondling a 13-year old girl while dressed as Tigger. His lawyer (who himself moonlights as Tigger and Goofy at Disney World, which is normally not the best recommendation for an attorney) put on the suit in court and demonstrated to the jury how the costume limited vision and motion. The jury members were also invited to try on the suit, although Disney had tried to prevent the costume being entered into evidence, in order to preserve Tigger’s "magic."
Alabama executes a 74-year old. He was the oldest person executed in the US since 1941.
The US is thinking about writing a jolly stiff letter of protest to Israel, which just started building new settlement housing in violation of promises made to the US. The settlements will completely encircle East Jerusalem, and probably be annexed to Jerusalem (since 1967, the area defined by Israel as the West Bank has been steadily whittled away as land is annexed to what Israel defines as Jerusalem).
(Update): Funny, I wrote that before seeing this WaPo story about American US's plans to use biometric data in passports, even though it won't work. The Post doesn't mention the thing about smiling.
A Disney World employee was acquitted of fondling a 13-year old girl while dressed as Tigger. His lawyer (who himself moonlights as Tigger and Goofy at Disney World, which is normally not the best recommendation for an attorney) put on the suit in court and demonstrated to the jury how the costume limited vision and motion. The jury members were also invited to try on the suit, although Disney had tried to prevent the costume being entered into evidence, in order to preserve Tigger’s "magic."
Alabama executes a 74-year old. He was the oldest person executed in the US since 1941.
The US is thinking about writing a jolly stiff letter of protest to Israel, which just started building new settlement housing in violation of promises made to the US. The settlements will completely encircle East Jerusalem, and probably be annexed to Jerusalem (since 1967, the area defined by Israel as the West Bank has been steadily whittled away as land is annexed to what Israel defines as Jerusalem).
Republicans Anonymous
The Florida Republican Party is refusing to make public the names of the delegates to the national convention, citing privacy concerns (I suspect anti-Cuban nutjobs). Someone needs to make clear to them the difference between private and public, and a convention that votes on the top candidates and platform of a political party is not private. One hint: the US taxpayers will be paying millions of dollars. This is the same lack of understanding of the distinction between public and private shown by the requirement that members of the general public sign a semi-literate loyalty oath to George Bush in order to enter an event with Dick Cheney. On that, I’ve been waiting in vain for a follow-up story to tell whether signatures were checked against id’s, or if an unusual number of attendees shared the name Michael Mouse. Link (which may get past the annoying registration barrier).
A day after Memphis’s city council chairman refused to let an Iraqi delegation enter city hall to learn about democracy and civil rights, two of the delegates were the victims of armed robbery in the city. So really, they just need that visit to Graceland, and to talk to the supporter of eugenics about to become the Republican candidate for Congress in Tennessee’s 8th district, and they’ll have learned everything we have to teach them.
A day after Memphis’s city council chairman refused to let an Iraqi delegation enter city hall to learn about democracy and civil rights, two of the delegates were the victims of armed robbery in the city. So really, they just need that visit to Graceland, and to talk to the supporter of eugenics about to become the Republican candidate for Congress in Tennessee’s 8th district, and they’ll have learned everything we have to teach them.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Best forgotten
Happy 90th anniversary of the start of World War I. Here’s more on the survivors, 4 of whom showed up at the Cenotaph in London (there are 23 British veterans of the Great War still living), and are profiled and interviewed here. One of them even has one of those and-if-I-didn’t-have-a-pocket-watch-to-take-that-German-bullet.. stories. As I noted a couple of days ago, there is tension in their stories between the need to remember and the awfulness of those memories. One said, "I will never forget my comrades. You cannot think about the morbid things that took place. If you did, you could not go on." He’s 108 (and doesn’t look a day over 107), so no one can accuse him of not going on. Another: "You've gone over the top, you're buried in muck and when they dig you out you've got another face looking at you. And that face hasn't got a body, and the rest has been blown away. ... No one would know what it was actually like unless they were there. Your imagination won't go that far. It's best forgotten." Story. Other story.
Speaking of historical memory, one of those surveys I’m never entirely sure whether to believe says that half of 16- to 24-year olds in Britain know that when Protestants march on July 12 in Northern Ireland, they are commemorating the Battle of the Boyne (1690), while 15% think it was the victory at Helm’s Deep (in the second book of The Lord of the Rings).
While both Bush and Kerry were campaigning in Davenport, Iowa, three banks were robbed. Does anyone know where Dick Cheney was at the time?
Speaking of historical memory, one of those surveys I’m never entirely sure whether to believe says that half of 16- to 24-year olds in Britain know that when Protestants march on July 12 in Northern Ireland, they are commemorating the Battle of the Boyne (1690), while 15% think it was the victory at Helm’s Deep (in the second book of The Lord of the Rings).
While both Bush and Kerry were campaigning in Davenport, Iowa, three banks were robbed. Does anyone know where Dick Cheney was at the time?
Knowing what I know today
I have another take on OrangeAlertGate. The July Surprise failed: the capture of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani didn’t distract from the Democratic Convention and got so little attention that it was hardly worth whatever Pakistan was bribed. So this week they tried for a second bite at the apple, claiming that the arrest was accompanied by this incredible intelligence coup. Well, this time it earned the Bushies the publicity they didn’t get last week, but the wrong kind.
Missouri, the "For God’s Sake Don’t Show Me" state, votes in a referendum to add a ban on gay marriage to the state constitution.
Update: I just figured it out, when I saw a headline "Gay Marriage Ban in Mo." This is actually part of Fox's strategy to get everyone talking about which character on The Simpsons is coming out of the closet in January and getting married. Now we know it isn't Mo the bartender. Isn't it clever of them to get an entire state to participate in their PR campaign?
The Chalabis and other former exiles are trying to ensure that the 3 million Iraqis living abroad can vote in the next elections.
Bush said this week that "knowing what I know today, we still would have gone on into Iraq." But just what does Bush know today?:
Missouri, the "For God’s Sake Don’t Show Me" state, votes in a referendum to add a ban on gay marriage to the state constitution.
Update: I just figured it out, when I saw a headline "Gay Marriage Ban in Mo." This is actually part of Fox's strategy to get everyone talking about which character on The Simpsons is coming out of the closet in January and getting married. Now we know it isn't Mo the bartender. Isn't it clever of them to get an entire state to participate in their PR campaign?
The Chalabis and other former exiles are trying to ensure that the 3 million Iraqis living abroad can vote in the next elections.
Bush said this week that "knowing what I know today, we still would have gone on into Iraq." But just what does Bush know today?:
- That Dick Cheney sure has a big head.
- That pet goat sure is funny.
- I like pie.
- Nuclear is pronounced nookyuler.
- Ride bike, fall down boom, ow.
We don't do politics
The White House is claiming that there was other, better intelligence behind this week’s orange alert, it was just happenstance that the only intel they told us about was years old. Sound familiar? Yes, the same White House insists that there was other intel about Iraq trying to buy Nigerien yellowcake, much better than the only evidence they ever released, which happened to be amateurish forgeries.Tom Ridge said yesterday, "We don’t do politics in the Department of Homeland Security." Right: if politics is the art of the possible, what they do at HeimatSec is the art of the imaginary.
The Post has a must-read on how Bremer stole billions dollars of Iraqi money (I say "stole" advisedly: there are strict rules in international law on what occupiers can do) and awarded them in contracts to Halliburton and other American companies. So the Iraqis are made to pay for their own occupation, and the money can be doled in secret and out without oversight. Saves all that paperwork. And the American corporations, also acting without oversight, hire non-Iraqis at inflated salaries, lose equipment (see 2 posts ago), and spend most of the money for "administration" and security, so they accomplish very little at the most expensive price possible. Which is one reason why almost nothing has been done, as the LA Times points out today, to supply Iraqis with clean water, resulting in epidemics of typhoid and hepatitis E.
This is part of a pattern in which the Bushies see any government program with a large budget as a way to reward their friends. Think of the attempts to shift social-service spending to "faith-based" groups. Or compare Iraqi "reconstruction" with Bush’s AIDS initiative of 2003. If the goal is to deliver services, both do so in the least efficient way possible, with American contractors/drug companies charging First World prices the host countries can’t afford, while making them more dependent on American multinationals in the future because locals with the appropriate skills are starved out of the field (Iraqi builders, engineers, etc) or not trained in the first place (African doctors, nurses). Another comparison is the way Bush has used African famine as a lever to force countries to take genetically modified foods.
The Post has a must-read on how Bremer stole billions dollars of Iraqi money (I say "stole" advisedly: there are strict rules in international law on what occupiers can do) and awarded them in contracts to Halliburton and other American companies. So the Iraqis are made to pay for their own occupation, and the money can be doled in secret and out without oversight. Saves all that paperwork. And the American corporations, also acting without oversight, hire non-Iraqis at inflated salaries, lose equipment (see 2 posts ago), and spend most of the money for "administration" and security, so they accomplish very little at the most expensive price possible. Which is one reason why almost nothing has been done, as the LA Times points out today, to supply Iraqis with clean water, resulting in epidemics of typhoid and hepatitis E.
This is part of a pattern in which the Bushies see any government program with a large budget as a way to reward their friends. Think of the attempts to shift social-service spending to "faith-based" groups. Or compare Iraqi "reconstruction" with Bush’s AIDS initiative of 2003. If the goal is to deliver services, both do so in the least efficient way possible, with American contractors/drug companies charging First World prices the host countries can’t afford, while making them more dependent on American multinationals in the future because locals with the appropriate skills are starved out of the field (Iraqi builders, engineers, etc) or not trained in the first place (African doctors, nurses). Another comparison is the way Bush has used African famine as a lever to force countries to take genetically modified foods.
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Chilling
The White House continues to insist that they didn’t over-react to the antique intel discovered in Pakistan, which they still describe as "chilling." Anybody else reminded of SCTV’s Count Floyd, always having to pretend that the terrible movies he was showing were "scary stuff"?
The right thing to do
More of Bush’s brilliant argumentative skills, from the same press conference: asked why he now supported the creation of an intelligence tsar, he responded: "Because I thought it was the right thing to do." So that settles it.
The laughably unrealistic idea of Muslim countries sending troops to help occupy Iraq--and then putting them under US command--is going as well as such an idea can be expected to go. Pakistan has just announced that it will not send troops, which is too bad because the Pakistani military has always done such a good job supporting democracy in Pakistan.
Halliburton has lost 6,975 out of 20,531 items of US government property it was supposed to be managing in Iraq. Items that fell off the backs of trucks include computers, office furniture, and trucks themselves.
Russia is about to destroy the country’s pension system, converting rights old people now have to free medicine, transportation, etc. into a tiny cash payment. There have been protests by pensioners, mostly led by the Communist Party. Here’s a slogan from one placard that puts Russian history into perspective: "Hitler took our youth, Yeltsin and Putin took our old age."
The laughably unrealistic idea of Muslim countries sending troops to help occupy Iraq--and then putting them under US command--is going as well as such an idea can be expected to go. Pakistan has just announced that it will not send troops, which is too bad because the Pakistani military has always done such a good job supporting democracy in Pakistan.
Halliburton has lost 6,975 out of 20,531 items of US government property it was supposed to be managing in Iraq. Items that fell off the backs of trucks include computers, office furniture, and trucks themselves.
Russia is about to destroy the country’s pension system, converting rights old people now have to free medicine, transportation, etc. into a tiny cash payment. There have been protests by pensioners, mostly led by the Communist Party. Here’s a slogan from one placard that puts Russian history into perspective: "Hitler took our youth, Yeltsin and Putin took our old age."
Turned the corner, turned the corner, turned the corner, turned the....
So in fact Tom Ridge just scared the orange juice out of NY, NJ & DC based on information that is 3 years old. Somewhere in a cave, Osama bin Laden is laughing his ass off. Shrub, however, demonstrating the irrefutable logic that only his razor-sharp mind could bring to this matter, said today, "It’s serious business. I mean, we wouldn’t be, you know, contacting authorities at the local level unless something was real." See, that proves it.
Well, according to the Daily Show, in recent days Bush has said that "we have turned the corner" 23 times in 5 speeches. So maybe he’s just dizzy from going around in circles.
Speaking of the Daily Show, the guest today was Rep Henry Bonilla, and Jon went after him like I haven’t seen since the Spice Girls were on. Bonilla started by saying that he hadn’t watched the show, which may be why he didn’t realize he was repeating every "talking point" dissected in the famous talking points episode (transcript here). Jon kept repeating innocent questions (Who is it who compiled the figures proving Kerry to be the most liberal senator?), drawing him further and further out, then springing the trap on him. Glorious; catch the repeat if you missed it.
Well, according to the Daily Show, in recent days Bush has said that "we have turned the corner" 23 times in 5 speeches. So maybe he’s just dizzy from going around in circles.
Speaking of the Daily Show, the guest today was Rep Henry Bonilla, and Jon went after him like I haven’t seen since the Spice Girls were on. Bonilla started by saying that he hadn’t watched the show, which may be why he didn’t realize he was repeating every "talking point" dissected in the famous talking points episode (transcript here). Jon kept repeating innocent questions (Who is it who compiled the figures proving Kerry to be the most liberal senator?), drawing him further and further out, then springing the trap on him. Glorious; catch the repeat if you missed it.
Monday, August 02, 2004
Driving the Turkmen way
Saw Bush on tv today, being asked questions about his plans to restructure the intelligence bureaucracy, and he remembered that his handlers had told him he opposed making the intelligence czar a cabinet post, but clearly couldn’t quite remember why. Kerry is saying that if Bush was really serious about this, he’d call Congress back into session. Of course Kerry wasn’t serious about that. A special session would make no particular demands on Bush’s time, but force Kerry and Edwards to abandon campaigning and do their senatorial jobs for a change.
The NYT cites a US intelligence report from 1991 saying that Colombia’s current president slash warlord, Alvaro Uribe, was closely associated with Pablo Escobar. The Sunday Times (London) said the same thing nearly 2 years ago, and I mentioned it here. The US State Dept rushed to defend him, saying that Uribe’s gov extradites lots of drug suspects to the US, although he spent his career as a legislator slash cartel flunky fighting any extradition. Ah, but is he doing that with all the cartels equally?
In Turkmenistan, applicants for driver’s licenses will have to demonstrate knowledge of the sacred writings of wacky megalomaniacal president-for-life Niyazov (the guy who renamed the months) to "ensure future drivers are educated in the spirit of high moral values." And you can bone up, too (a cache file because the book's website went out of business).
Speaking of wacky megalomaniacs, Governor Schwarzenegger has settled his lawsuit with the company making bobble-head dolls of him. They will continue to make them, but they will no longer carry weapons. Remember: when toy guns are outlawed, only toy bobble-headed outlaws will have toy guns.
The Second Annual Homeless World Cup was just held. 26 teams of homeless people from all over the world compete in soccer. Italy won.
Signs you’ve been spending too much time online: I just read the headline of an AP story, "Assault on Afghan Site," and for a second I actually thought they were talking about a website.
The NYT cites a US intelligence report from 1991 saying that Colombia’s current president slash warlord, Alvaro Uribe, was closely associated with Pablo Escobar. The Sunday Times (London) said the same thing nearly 2 years ago, and I mentioned it here. The US State Dept rushed to defend him, saying that Uribe’s gov extradites lots of drug suspects to the US, although he spent his career as a legislator slash cartel flunky fighting any extradition. Ah, but is he doing that with all the cartels equally?
In Turkmenistan, applicants for driver’s licenses will have to demonstrate knowledge of the sacred writings of wacky megalomaniacal president-for-life Niyazov (the guy who renamed the months) to "ensure future drivers are educated in the spirit of high moral values." And you can bone up, too (a cache file because the book's website went out of business).
Speaking of wacky megalomaniacs, Governor Schwarzenegger has settled his lawsuit with the company making bobble-head dolls of him. They will continue to make them, but they will no longer carry weapons. Remember: when toy guns are outlawed, only toy bobble-headed outlaws will have toy guns.
The Second Annual Homeless World Cup was just held. 26 teams of homeless people from all over the world compete in soccer. Italy won.
Signs you’ve been spending too much time online: I just read the headline of an AP story, "Assault on Afghan Site," and for a second I actually thought they were talking about a website.
Orange alert: no rhyming for the duration
So Tom Ridge raised the alert color, displaying a naive belief that it still works to the administration’s advantage to scare the American people because they have such faith in the Bushies’ competence on security matters. (By the way, I’ve noticed that John Kerry now uses the abominable phrase "homeland" security). According to the WaPo, the orange alert is because documents found in that suspiciously timed raid in Pakistan revealed this stunner: "The information that emerged confirmed that al Qaeda continues to plan operations and conduct surveillance against targets inside the United States." Gosh, and I thought they’d all retired to Florida.
If you’re looking for a conspiracy theory about this that doesn’t involve the election, you can read one between the lines of another WaPo story, by Walter Pincus, who I believe is the guy who usually writes whatever the CIA wants him to. Pincus’s story spells out the lesson you’re supposed to draw from this little morality shadow play right in the headline: "Agencies Shared Intelligence That Led to New Alert." So there is no need for a reorganization which would shift power away from the entrenched intel bureaucracy.
Happily, this threat, if real, just targets the financial sector. Remember: if they don’t go on cheating little old ladies out of their pensions and making sure Fortune 500 companies pay no corporate income taxes, the terrorists win.
If you’re looking for a conspiracy theory about this that doesn’t involve the election, you can read one between the lines of another WaPo story, by Walter Pincus, who I believe is the guy who usually writes whatever the CIA wants him to. Pincus’s story spells out the lesson you’re supposed to draw from this little morality shadow play right in the headline: "Agencies Shared Intelligence That Led to New Alert." So there is no need for a reorganization which would shift power away from the entrenched intel bureaucracy.
Happily, this threat, if real, just targets the financial sector. Remember: if they don’t go on cheating little old ladies out of their pensions and making sure Fortune 500 companies pay no corporate income taxes, the terrorists win.
Sunday, August 01, 2004
Our Lady of Survival
Kuwait bans Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911, because it insults the Saudi royal family.
Must-read Robert Fisk article on the current state of Iraq.
In what was either a Freudian slip or a bad translation, the BBC said today that one of the Christian churches bombed in Iraq was "Our Lady of Survival." That would be: Our Lady of Salvation.
Update: the NYT calls it Our Lady of Deliverance. Squeal like a piggie.
Speaking of churches and survival, Kerry went to church today. Now if he needs to prove to the god-botherers that he’s one of them, fine, whatever, but does he need to denigrate rational thought at the same time? "More physicists and more and more scientists, the more they learn in some ways the less they know about some things and the more they believe in that power," he said.
It will be the 90th anniversary of the start of World War I on Wednesday, and the British papers are talking to veterans. Unlike Kerry, who won’t shut up about Vietnam, these men didn’t talk about their experiences. One is described by the Telegraph as never discussing it with his wife of 68 years, his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren or great-great grandchildren. Another, who was at both Jutland and Passchendaele, says, "I used not to think about it at all, but now that I keep getting bothered by people like you, because I am one of the few left, I suppose I think about it more."
Must-read Robert Fisk article on the current state of Iraq.
In what was either a Freudian slip or a bad translation, the BBC said today that one of the Christian churches bombed in Iraq was "Our Lady of Survival." That would be: Our Lady of Salvation.
Update: the NYT calls it Our Lady of Deliverance. Squeal like a piggie.
Speaking of churches and survival, Kerry went to church today. Now if he needs to prove to the god-botherers that he’s one of them, fine, whatever, but does he need to denigrate rational thought at the same time? "More physicists and more and more scientists, the more they learn in some ways the less they know about some things and the more they believe in that power," he said.
It will be the 90th anniversary of the start of World War I on Wednesday, and the British papers are talking to veterans. Unlike Kerry, who won’t shut up about Vietnam, these men didn’t talk about their experiences. One is described by the Telegraph as never discussing it with his wife of 68 years, his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren or great-great grandchildren. Another, who was at both Jutland and Passchendaele, says, "I used not to think about it at all, but now that I keep getting bothered by people like you, because I am one of the few left, I suppose I think about it more."
This is what democracy is all about
When delegates and speakers at a party convention are stage-managed, that’s not good. When George Bush speaks over and over to crowds of military personnel, ordered to be there and under threat of military discipline if they express any disapproval, that’s bad. But when Team Chimpy starts requiring signed endorsements of his candidacy from members of the general public before they are allowed into a public appearance by Dick Cheney (key word = public), that’s...and here’s a word you won’t often if ever hear me use...unAmerican. In March, John Kerry earned my respect--something else I haven’t said too often--when he responded to a heckler by questioning him in return, and then defending him against his own supporters, who he told, "This is what democracy is all about."
In 1950, the London Times ran an editorial entitled "A Good Word for Hecklers," which argued that too much polite applause only shielded politicians from the facts of political life and did nothing for their performances, that (this is a rough quote) a few well-timed interventions and a sprinkling of laughter in the wrong places, would hasten politicians’ political development and promote their spiritual welfare. George Bush stands in desperate need of greater contact--hell, any contact--with the real world, which he is as unfamiliar with in his bubble as is Michael Jackson in his. Maybe the first sign was when he started giving everyone nicknames. Then he started rubbing the head of every bald man he passed, and wiping his glasses off on the sweater of whoever was standing by. If he gets elected in November, within two years he’ll be just like Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria.
In 1950, the London Times ran an editorial entitled "A Good Word for Hecklers," which argued that too much polite applause only shielded politicians from the facts of political life and did nothing for their performances, that (this is a rough quote) a few well-timed interventions and a sprinkling of laughter in the wrong places, would hasten politicians’ political development and promote their spiritual welfare. George Bush stands in desperate need of greater contact--hell, any contact--with the real world, which he is as unfamiliar with in his bubble as is Michael Jackson in his. Maybe the first sign was when he started giving everyone nicknames. Then he started rubbing the head of every bald man he passed, and wiping his glasses off on the sweater of whoever was standing by. If he gets elected in November, within two years he’ll be just like Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria.
Saturday, July 31, 2004
Listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting
Bush starts a "Heart and Soul of America" tour. If I had Dick Cheney on the ticket, I wouldn’t be reminding people of hearts (not that their souls are any healthier, of course).
Update: that Vatican document I mentioned in my last post says feminism has created "a new model of polymorphous sexuality". Apologists for the document point to its acknowledgment that women work. Big deal. It says women "should be present in the world of work and ... have access to positions of responsibility which allow them to inspire the politics of nations and to promote innovative solutions to economic and social problems." Notice how women’s functions here are all passive ones--to inspire, to promote. Clearly the real work is to be done by men. Oh, and this is priceless: women’s characteristic traits are "Listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting."
The Sunday Telegraph says that Paul Wolfowitz is dating an Arab (born in Tunisia, raised in Saudi Arabia) feminist. For whatever that’s worth.
In Chechnya, the strongest challenger to Moscow’s choice for president was disqualified from running this week, along with several other candidates.
Results matter
TRUST, BUT DON’T VERIFY: the US supports an international treaty banning production of weapons-grade uranium & plutonium, but this week decided to oppose any inspections to enforce such a treaty. Well, they didn’t believe in the inspections in Iraq, either, and that went all right didn’t it? Didn’t it? The Bushies claim that inspectors would be too expensive--too expensive, to prevent stray plutonium being sold to the highest bidder? Didn’t we just spend $200 billion on a war to prevent the smoking gun being a mushroom cloud?
Evidently, in order to participate in a program for federal employees to give to charities through payroll deductions, those charities have to promise not to employ anyone on watch lists of suspected supporters of terrorism. Blacklists of suspected sympathizers, that’s not even slightly reminiscent of McCarthyism, is it? One definition of a police state is where the police have draconian powers; another is where many non-police organizations are expected to enforce the law. Why should charities be punishing terrorist-symps? The NYT says there is controversy within the ACLU, which signed such a promise, but will not look at the lists, and will not therefore knowingly hire such a person.
Update: once it became public, the ACLU pulled out of the program, foregoing $500,000 per year.
Two days ago I said that Kerry’s refusal to say whether the Iraq war was a war of choice or necessity undermined his line about never going to war because we want to. A letter in today’s NYT points out that Kerry said in his acceptance speech, "I defended this country as a young man." That does suggest a rather expansive definition of wars we "have to fight," since Vietnam is surely the most discretionary of all America’s wars. He used to know better.
Similarly, Chimpy is now attacking Kerry with the line "Results matter," although Shrub’s entire resumé and indeed his entire life constitute a definitive refutation of that idea.
Actually in a SJ Mercury interview (registration), Kerry refuses to say the Iraq war was a mistake, and his only goal is to reduce troop levels there to somewhat below where they are now by the end of his first term, 4½ years from now. Asked how he would create the stability in Iraq that he says is required before troop withdrawal, Kerry said, "There are a number of different game plans, none of which I can put in play until I'm president. I can't negotiate this publicly, and I'm not going to." Ah, so he has a secret plan (or actually "a number" of them), just like Richard Nixon.
Evidently, in order to participate in a program for federal employees to give to charities through payroll deductions, those charities have to promise not to employ anyone on watch lists of suspected supporters of terrorism. Blacklists of suspected sympathizers, that’s not even slightly reminiscent of McCarthyism, is it? One definition of a police state is where the police have draconian powers; another is where many non-police organizations are expected to enforce the law. Why should charities be punishing terrorist-symps? The NYT says there is controversy within the ACLU, which signed such a promise, but will not look at the lists, and will not therefore knowingly hire such a person.
Update: once it became public, the ACLU pulled out of the program, foregoing $500,000 per year.
Two days ago I said that Kerry’s refusal to say whether the Iraq war was a war of choice or necessity undermined his line about never going to war because we want to. A letter in today’s NYT points out that Kerry said in his acceptance speech, "I defended this country as a young man." That does suggest a rather expansive definition of wars we "have to fight," since Vietnam is surely the most discretionary of all America’s wars. He used to know better.
Similarly, Chimpy is now attacking Kerry with the line "Results matter," although Shrub’s entire resumé and indeed his entire life constitute a definitive refutation of that idea.
Actually in a SJ Mercury interview (registration), Kerry refuses to say the Iraq war was a mistake, and his only goal is to reduce troop levels there to somewhat below where they are now by the end of his first term, 4½ years from now. Asked how he would create the stability in Iraq that he says is required before troop withdrawal, Kerry said, "There are a number of different game plans, none of which I can put in play until I'm president. I can't negotiate this publicly, and I'm not going to." Ah, so he has a secret plan (or actually "a number" of them), just like Richard Nixon.
Friday, July 30, 2004
Never trust a text message from God
No doubt the Bushies did many sneaky things this week while the press’s attention was distracted the bright, shiny object that was, um, John Kerry, but here’s one: the EPA changed its rules on approving pesticides so that they don’t have to find out first whether they might harm endangered species.
Colin Powell, in Iraq, accuses the various kidnappers of "doing it for the purpose of returning to the past". Nostalgic kidnappings? I hope it’s not another 1970s revival: Patty Hearst, "death to the fascist insect that preys on the life of the people" thing. Maybe he meant the Lindbergh kidnapping, since a return to Great Depression chic, if there is such a thing, would be more within Iraqi budgets, and involve a lot less hairspray, and I’ll stop now.
A couple of weeks ago I made the case that "The argument against gay marriage...is a sexist one at its base." Well, today the pope proved my point by making the obverse case, attacking feminists for "call[ing] into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and mak[ing] homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent", in other words blaming gay marriage on feminism.
Speaking of religious types and marriage: "A Swedish pastor has been jailed for life for faking text messages from God to get his nanny-lover to murder his wife and try to kill the husband of a second mistress."
Colin Powell, in Iraq, accuses the various kidnappers of "doing it for the purpose of returning to the past". Nostalgic kidnappings? I hope it’s not another 1970s revival: Patty Hearst, "death to the fascist insect that preys on the life of the people" thing. Maybe he meant the Lindbergh kidnapping, since a return to Great Depression chic, if there is such a thing, would be more within Iraqi budgets, and involve a lot less hairspray, and I’ll stop now.
A couple of weeks ago I made the case that "The argument against gay marriage...is a sexist one at its base." Well, today the pope proved my point by making the obverse case, attacking feminists for "call[ing] into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and mak[ing] homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent", in other words blaming gay marriage on feminism.
Speaking of religious types and marriage: "A Swedish pastor has been jailed for life for faking text messages from God to get his nanny-lover to murder his wife and try to kill the husband of a second mistress."
Knee deep in the big muddy
The Census Bureau gave Homeland Security breakdowns of how many Arabs & Arab-Americans live in each zipcode, sorted by country of origin. HeimatSecDept claimed this was only to help it identify in which airports they should post signs in Arabic; the NYT does not say if the spokesborg who told them this kept a straight face.
The Kerryites ordered Penn. Governor Rendell to remove a pretty good line from his speech about our energy policy having been written by big oil, of big oil and for big oil (the "of big oil" part doesn’t really work). He was told it was because big oil also gave money to the D’s. Oh good.
I missed that the filmed biopic on Kerry that ran at the convention skipped his time as lt. governor of Massachusetts under Michael Dukakis (or, indeed, his time in PIRG under Ralph Nader). But then the Clinton biopic in ‘92 mentioned him standing up to his abusive step-father without mentioning that he’d been a Rhodes scholar, ‘cuz Americans don’t cotton to that there book larning. Actually, not a lot has been said about Kerry’s Senate career either (or his first wife). Instead, it’s all Vietnam, all the time. Evidently, his several decades in politics didn’t prepare him to be president nearly as much as did the several months he spent hunting Victor Charlie. He’s like one of those 40-year old failures who go on and on about their glory days playing high school football. With Kerry, you get the impression that life since The Nam hasn’t been entirely real to him.
With all the talk about Kerry distancing himself from big ol’ loser Dukakis, I can’t wait to see the same commentators point out how much Bush distances himself from the winner in that election, his own father.
The Kerryites ordered Penn. Governor Rendell to remove a pretty good line from his speech about our energy policy having been written by big oil, of big oil and for big oil (the "of big oil" part doesn’t really work). He was told it was because big oil also gave money to the D’s. Oh good.
I missed that the filmed biopic on Kerry that ran at the convention skipped his time as lt. governor of Massachusetts under Michael Dukakis (or, indeed, his time in PIRG under Ralph Nader). But then the Clinton biopic in ‘92 mentioned him standing up to his abusive step-father without mentioning that he’d been a Rhodes scholar, ‘cuz Americans don’t cotton to that there book larning. Actually, not a lot has been said about Kerry’s Senate career either (or his first wife). Instead, it’s all Vietnam, all the time. Evidently, his several decades in politics didn’t prepare him to be president nearly as much as did the several months he spent hunting Victor Charlie. He’s like one of those 40-year old failures who go on and on about their glory days playing high school football. With Kerry, you get the impression that life since The Nam hasn’t been entirely real to him.
With all the talk about Kerry distancing himself from big ol’ loser Dukakis, I can’t wait to see the same commentators point out how much Bush distances himself from the winner in that election, his own father.
Thursday, July 29, 2004
All in the same boat--just like in Apocalypse Now
(40 minutes before Kerry’s speech): The convention is almost done, and unless Kerry makes a brilliant speech for the first time in his life, I’d call it a failure. But Kerry would call it a success, because it didn’t do any particular damage, didn’t give the R’s any ammunition to replace Shove-It-gate (I wonder if it makes a difference that Cheney’s similar mini-scandal involved a phrase that can’t be broadcast, unlike Teresa H-K’s).
But the convention neither strengthened anyone’s understanding of Kerry, nor damaged Shrub. In their efforts to do no harm, they wound up doing nothing at all. In retrospect, the way to take on Bush without seeming like meanies beating up the retarded kid would have been to leave Bush mostly alone and attack Ashcroft, Rumsfeld etc.
Oh dear Christ, Alexandra Kerry is relating a story about Kerry having given mouth to mouth to a hamster. Well, I’m sure no one will make fun of that story, and we’ll never hear about it again.
(Later): Now Kerry is speaking, and it would have been a good speech, if it been shorter (although the "reporting for duty" line at the beginning had me sick to my stomach for the next several minutes). He even kind of attacked Ashcroft & Rummy, for a couple of seconds, just like I advised, before veering off.
Kerry has a good line, that the US must never go to war because it wants to but because it has to, but he always undercuts the line by his refusal to say which one of those categories the Iraq war falls into.
(15 minutes later): No, he’s lost it completely. "Help is on the way," indeed. No word on whether hope, which was on the way yesterday, has shown up yet.
He wants an America where we’re all in the same boat, like he was on the Mekong, where "No one cared about our race or our backgrounds" and they just killed gooks. Thanks, I’ll walk. I get motion sickness anyway, even without VC shooting at me.
Speaking of models of democracy, the Iraqi convention was just postponed. A Sunni party pulled out because of death threats during the meetings that were supposed to select delegates, and the meetings were held in fewer than half the provinces.
Just as The New Republic predicted, a "high-value" Al Qaida target is captured by the Pakistanis during the Dem convention (actually a few days ago, but the news was mysteriously not released until today).
The US has decided not to push for sanctions against Sudan after all, but will give it more time to stop killing black people.
The Florida Republican party is advising party members to vote absentee, because you can’t trust those machines.
But the convention neither strengthened anyone’s understanding of Kerry, nor damaged Shrub. In their efforts to do no harm, they wound up doing nothing at all. In retrospect, the way to take on Bush without seeming like meanies beating up the retarded kid would have been to leave Bush mostly alone and attack Ashcroft, Rumsfeld etc.
Oh dear Christ, Alexandra Kerry is relating a story about Kerry having given mouth to mouth to a hamster. Well, I’m sure no one will make fun of that story, and we’ll never hear about it again.
(Later): Now Kerry is speaking, and it would have been a good speech, if it been shorter (although the "reporting for duty" line at the beginning had me sick to my stomach for the next several minutes). He even kind of attacked Ashcroft & Rummy, for a couple of seconds, just like I advised, before veering off.
Kerry has a good line, that the US must never go to war because it wants to but because it has to, but he always undercuts the line by his refusal to say which one of those categories the Iraq war falls into.
(15 minutes later): No, he’s lost it completely. "Help is on the way," indeed. No word on whether hope, which was on the way yesterday, has shown up yet.
He wants an America where we’re all in the same boat, like he was on the Mekong, where "No one cared about our race or our backgrounds" and they just killed gooks. Thanks, I’ll walk. I get motion sickness anyway, even without VC shooting at me.
Speaking of models of democracy, the Iraqi convention was just postponed. A Sunni party pulled out because of death threats during the meetings that were supposed to select delegates, and the meetings were held in fewer than half the provinces.
Just as The New Republic predicted, a "high-value" Al Qaida target is captured by the Pakistanis during the Dem convention (actually a few days ago, but the news was mysteriously not released until today).
The US has decided not to push for sanctions against Sudan after all, but will give it more time to stop killing black people.
The Florida Republican party is advising party members to vote absentee, because you can’t trust those machines.
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Rural electrification for everyone!
Daily Telegraph: "A gang of big women is terrorising stores in Durban, South Africa, police said yesterday."
Best description of the convention, by thepoorman.net: "It’s No Exit choreographed by Busby Berkeley."
Médecins sans Frontieres is pulling out of Afghanistan. After decades of operating there, it took an American occupation to make it too unsafe. There are frontiers after all, and they were largely created by the US, which is treating aid as an instrument of war, giving aid only to villages that inform on the Taliban, having soldiers operate out of uniform, putting the real aid workers at risk. 30 have been killed this year.
After Tony Blair’s relentless smooch-fest with GeeDubya’s ass, the Republican party has banned Labour MPs from its convention.
Today a suicide car-bomber killed dozens of people waiting on line to apply to join the Iraqi police. The idiots keep making applicants for the police or military line up in the streets, completely vulnerable to this sort of attack, which happens every 2 or 3 weeks.
Al Sharpton tells the convention that if Bush had appointed the Supreme Court in 1954, Clarence Thomas wouldn’t have gotten to law school. The crowd erupted in applause, possibly for Clarence Thomas having gone to law school, or for Bush not having been Ike, or something. Too deep for me.
I could swear I heard Dennis Kucinich refer to the D’s as the party of rural electrification. Who said the convention was content-free? It didn’t turn out to be as big an applause line as the Clarence Thomas thing.
John "Dizzy" Edwards keeps repeating "Hope is on the way." Maybe Hope got stuck in traffic, or is being cavity-searched by security. Oddly, a lot of people were waving pre-printed signs that said "Hope is on the way," which means they expected Hope to be late. Maybe it’s a Waiting for Godot thing. I guess if hope isn’t here yet, we’re hoping for hope, but wouldn’t that mean hope was already here? Too deep for me.
Mind-clearing
What I would give for the Dem. convention to go negative. Optimism is just plain boring. Since the speakers are unwilling to go into policy specifics, staying positive just means bland speeches about unifying America which won’t change the mind of a single swing voter. [Right after writing that, I came across the results of a competition in the Guardian for a definition of Blairism, one of which sums up the Dems’ strategy perfectly: "The intangible in pursuit of the electable."] Why not admit that you’re pissed off at the direction Bush has taken the country and explain why? Do you think the only swing voters are those who don’t really have any problem with Shrub, but would like a more boring president? If Kerry loses, it will be because of people not voting at all.
And Bush is actually cooperating this week, by falling off his bike again, and giving an AP reporter the perfect straight line: "mountain biking, he said, has a certain ‘mind-clearing’ effect." If he pedaled in reverse, would he get smarter?
Meanwhile, over in that other great democracy, Iraq, Appointed Fake Prime Minister Allawi has created a committee to censor the press. The head of the new committee said that restrictions will include a ban on "unwarranted criticism" of Mr. Allawi, and is already threatening to close down Al Jazeera.
And Bush is actually cooperating this week, by falling off his bike again, and giving an AP reporter the perfect straight line: "mountain biking, he said, has a certain ‘mind-clearing’ effect." If he pedaled in reverse, would he get smarter?
Meanwhile, over in that other great democracy, Iraq, Appointed Fake Prime Minister Allawi has created a committee to censor the press. The head of the new committee said that restrictions will include a ban on "unwarranted criticism" of Mr. Allawi, and is already threatening to close down Al Jazeera.
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
And red friends in the gay states
Today I mostly watched the convention while doing other things. Can’t say I was as impressed by Barack Obama as everybody else: his speech seemed to be a superior version of the sort of gosh-ain’t-America-diverse speech we get every convention, which is not a particularly compelling speech to me. You’ll notice his "We coach Little League in the blue states and have gay friends in the red states" line carefully avoided creeping out the homophobes of Middle America by keeping the Little Leaguers and the gays in separate states.
At one point I looked up and saw Little Orphan Annie, founder of Kids for Kerry (the horror, the alliterative horror!), scolding Cheney for saying a bad word.
Ron Reagan Jr. gave a serious speech in favor of stem cell research in the cadences of a bad nightclub comic.
And Teresa Heinz Kerry seemed drugged, or sleepy, and bored by the speech she was giving. I was watching C-SPAN, so I missed hearing the cable news channels scramble to explain Portuguese and Portuguese colonial history, which should have been a hoot.
If you’ve been reading too many convention bloggers, this is something of an antidote.
At one point I looked up and saw Little Orphan Annie, founder of Kids for Kerry (the horror, the alliterative horror!), scolding Cheney for saying a bad word.
Ron Reagan Jr. gave a serious speech in favor of stem cell research in the cadences of a bad nightclub comic.
And Teresa Heinz Kerry seemed drugged, or sleepy, and bored by the speech she was giving. I was watching C-SPAN, so I missed hearing the cable news channels scramble to explain Portuguese and Portuguese colonial history, which should have been a hoot.
If you’ve been reading too many convention bloggers, this is something of an antidote.
Let's all just assume I came up with a humorous title for this post, cleverly linking kidnapping and gay marriage
The press is catching up to the tactical nature of kidnapping in Iraq. Of course it took the kidnapping of Westerners to make them notice that kidnappings of Iraqis aren’t always about ransom. The Wednesday London Times has a story about doctors being kidnapped in large numbers and being told to leave the country, which is evidently a surprise to them; the LA Times had the story 2 or 3 months ago, but no one else ever followed up. As with the people killed in Iraq, you can probably find a number for the non-Iraqis kidnapped in Iraq, but the hundreds of Iraqis kidnapped every month go unenumerated.
STUPID KIDNAPPER TRICKS: A few days ago some Egyptians were seized by people who evidently thought that Egypt had troops in Iraq, and released when they found out Egypt does not.
The first gay marriage in France, 7 weeks ago, was just invalidated. Gay marriage will, however, come to Homer Simpson’s Springfield.
STUPID KIDNAPPER TRICKS: A few days ago some Egyptians were seized by people who evidently thought that Egypt had troops in Iraq, and released when they found out Egypt does not.
The first gay marriage in France, 7 weeks ago, was just invalidated. Gay marriage will, however, come to Homer Simpson’s Springfield.
Go In, Stay In, Tune In
The British government is planning to distribute to every household a pamphlet on what to do if the terrorists attack. It’s on the web at preparingforemergencies.gov.uk, and speaking of preparedness, the uk.gov should really have snapped up the URL preparingforemergencies.co.uk as well....
Actually, it’s a little hard to parody the real one, whose slogan is "GO IN, STAY IN, TUNE IN." Although at least it doesn’t say a thing about duct tape and plastic sheeting.
Strength and wisdom are not opposing values
There’s something a little bit askew about Clinton giving a speech for Kerry. The disparity between the two would have been a million times more obvious had the two appeared on the same platform, which will never happen, because Kerry is too afraid that the newspaper captions would all be: "Former President Bill Clinton (left) and some guy." Clinton was able to insult Bush’s intelligence in a way Bush will need to have explained to him: "Strength and wisdom are not opposing values." And he was able to come out as both a Vietnam draft avoider, and as a member of the non-non-rich [if you don’t get the reference, click here], which Kerry and Bush are afraid to do: "When I was in office, the Republicans were pretty mean to me. When I left and made money, I became part of the most important group in the world to them."
Do Bostonians actually like their town being called Beantown?
Juan Cole says much of what I was going to about the way the Iraq war is being treated at the Dem convention, which is that it is being mostly ignored. You’d think Bush’s biggest failures were not going to Vietnam, and stealing the 2000 election. The D bosses made sure that no resolution against the war even came to a vote--which is actually fine, I suppose, ‘cause who really cares what the opinion of the delegates is? But then they issued a fatwa against any significant criticism of the way the war was conducted, much less discussion of whether it should have been conducted at all. Juan Cole: "The attack on Bush is not that he went to war against Iraq. It is that he did so virtually unilaterally, ‘walking away from our allies.’" Me: which is the least criticism of the war you can have and still be criticizing the war, which is obviously exactly why that line was chosen. It still suggests that the US should, somehow, have talked Germany, France, etc into joining our splendid little war, and fails to acknowledge that they were pretty much correct not to get involved, and neither should we.
Do Bostonians actually like their town being called Beantown?
Juan Cole says much of what I was going to about the way the Iraq war is being treated at the Dem convention, which is that it is being mostly ignored. You’d think Bush’s biggest failures were not going to Vietnam, and stealing the 2000 election. The D bosses made sure that no resolution against the war even came to a vote--which is actually fine, I suppose, ‘cause who really cares what the opinion of the delegates is? But then they issued a fatwa against any significant criticism of the way the war was conducted, much less discussion of whether it should have been conducted at all. Juan Cole: "The attack on Bush is not that he went to war against Iraq. It is that he did so virtually unilaterally, ‘walking away from our allies.’" Me: which is the least criticism of the war you can have and still be criticizing the war, which is obviously exactly why that line was chosen. It still suggests that the US should, somehow, have talked Germany, France, etc into joining our splendid little war, and fails to acknowledge that they were pretty much correct not to get involved, and neither should we.
Monday, July 26, 2004
He needs more than 40 acres just for his hair-care products
Friday I said I was waiting for Bush’s speech to the Urban League to be denounced for its cynicism. It has been, by Al Sharpton: "The insult there was that he acted like we have become Democrats by some unthinking process, rather than that we had been rejected and treated hostile by the Republican Party." Then he brought up that 40 acres and a mule thing again. Can someone just give Al Sharpton 40 acres and a mule, so he’ll shut up about it, and because it would make a great photo.
The trial of Pitcairn Islanders for sexual abuse of children has finally begun, although the defendants are claiming that they declared independence from Britain in 1790 when they burnt the Bounty. I keep hearing that the Pitcarinites speak in something like 18th-century English (combined with Tahitian), and I’d love to hear it. I have no idea of guilt or innocence, but if 7 men in a population of under 50 are sent to prison, the island ceases to be viable.
The trial of Pitcairn Islanders for sexual abuse of children has finally begun, although the defendants are claiming that they declared independence from Britain in 1790 when they burnt the Bounty. I keep hearing that the Pitcarinites speak in something like 18th-century English (combined with Tahitian), and I’d love to hear it. I have no idea of guilt or innocence, but if 7 men in a population of under 50 are sent to prison, the island ceases to be viable.
Well-known torturers and mass killers
The Sunday Times (London) reports that Allawi is hiring some of Saddam’s secret police, as long as they are not, "as one intelligence official put it, ‘well-known torturers and mass killers’". It’s nice that they’re giving the lesser-known torturers and mass killers a chance to make a name for themselves. The secret police have their headquarters inside the Green Zone, under the protection of the American military.
Sunday, July 25, 2004
Chain letter
100,000 Israelis form a human chain to demand retention of the settlements in Gaza. Like "We are the world," but with ethnic cleansing. Said one link, "We are all holding hands to return to the land of Israel". Since these are people capable of being lost for 40 years in a remarkably small piece of desert, that makes a certain amount of sense.
I can’t find a single follow-up today on the state of the porta-potties for the media at the Dem. convention. Dammit, we need to know! America needs to know!
I can’t find a single follow-up today on the state of the porta-potties for the media at the Dem. convention. Dammit, we need to know! America needs to know!
Saturday, July 24, 2004
And it's still better than an election in Florida
Sometime next week, an interim parliament will be elected in Iraq. We don’t know when or where or by whom, for security reasons. Jefferson would be so proud.
Speaking of Jeffersonian democracy: AP headline: "Media Upset With DNC Restroom Facilities."
An Iranian court--and I use the term loosely--has acquitted an agent of beating a Canadian journalist to death.
The British government is talking about vaccinating children against experiencing pleasure from cocaine, heroine, maybe even nicotine (the vaccines are not on the market yet). The vaccine would also work on adult addicts, but the idea is to prevent addiction. This is certainly a good idea, but there’s still a lingering creepiness factor, isn’t there?
Bush: "One thing is for certain, though, about me—and the world has learned this--when I say something, I mean it." But do you understand it? And can anyone else?
Speaking of Jeffersonian democracy: AP headline: "Media Upset With DNC Restroom Facilities."
An Iranian court--and I use the term loosely--has acquitted an agent of beating a Canadian journalist to death.
The British government is talking about vaccinating children against experiencing pleasure from cocaine, heroine, maybe even nicotine (the vaccines are not on the market yet). The vaccine would also work on adult addicts, but the idea is to prevent addiction. This is certainly a good idea, but there’s still a lingering creepiness factor, isn’t there?
Bush: "One thing is for certain, though, about me—and the world has learned this--when I say something, I mean it." But do you understand it? And can anyone else?
My cinematic mid-life crisis, with elephant battle scenes
This week I watched a Thai film that turned up on one of the cable channels, "The Legend of Suriyothai," and I watched it because of a fear that I’m getting old (some people would have bought a red sports car or gone bungee-jumping; me, even my mid-life crises are sedentary). See, in the last semi-annual rejuggling of channels by my cable company, which they do so that when you sit down to watch the "Daily Show" you thought you taped, you find yourself with half an hour of golf, I started getting the Sundance Channel, and I’ve been finding that my approach to which movies I’m willing to watch on that channel is much more unadventurous than it would have been twenty years ago. I mean, I’m a person who has watched more than one movie with an all-midget cast, and more than one movie in which the actors were hypnotized (movie adepts will have recognized that one in each category was directed by Werner Herzog, who has much to answer for), but now I find that my reaction to the prospect of watching a partly-improvised Icelandic movie directed by an American who could not understand the language his actors were speaking in ("Salt") is to reject it utterly. So in reaction to my own newfound conservatism, and since it’s been a while since I’ve added to the list of countries I’ve seen movies from, I felt I had to watch the Thai film, despite not very good reviews, because I couldn’t remember ever having seen a Thai film before (I’ve seen several Icelandic movies, so that wasn’t an issue; a few months ago I saw an Icelandic, updated version of King Lear--in case you liked the Shakespeare play but thought it didn’t have enough herring). And since you ask: the Thai movie was an overlong lavish historical spectacle, with cardboard characters, beautiful to look at, and its battle scenes had elephants, like all good battle scenes should.
Friday, July 23, 2004
Into the lion's den
Bush finally finds an almost-receptive-or-at-least-polite black audience to speak to, the National Urban League, after turning down the NAACP. I’d missed that after claiming he had a scheduling conflict, he actually went bike-riding that day. Imagine Shrub speaking to an audience that included Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in the front row.
Oh Lord, get me out of here alive
He asked the audience, "Is it a good thing for the African American community to be represented mainly by one political party? ... How is it possible to gain political leverage if the party is never forced to compete?" The question is, as he says, legitimate, but here’s the problem with it: it suggests tactical, collective voting. Communities don’t vote, individuals do. How would they go about following his advice, anyway--draw up lots and 25% of black voters would have to vote Republican? I’m waiting to hear this speech denounced for its cynicism toward the democratic process: a Republican "president" giving advice to black people on how to put pressure on the Democratic party, how to increase their "leverage" by voting for the R’s. On the cynic-o-meter, it’s right up there with R’s funding the Ralph Nader ballot-access campaign (which, by the way, I consider, yes, cynical, but hardly the dastardly dirty trick so many on the left seem to find it. After all, most of those people are supporting Kerry more to get rid of Bush than for Kerry’s own sake).
HELLO MUDDA, HELLO FADDA: a summer camp on Sakhalin, in Siberia, has been found actually to be a training center for young thieves, aged 12 to 18.
Oh Lord, get me out of here alive
He asked the audience, "Is it a good thing for the African American community to be represented mainly by one political party? ... How is it possible to gain political leverage if the party is never forced to compete?" The question is, as he says, legitimate, but here’s the problem with it: it suggests tactical, collective voting. Communities don’t vote, individuals do. How would they go about following his advice, anyway--draw up lots and 25% of black voters would have to vote Republican? I’m waiting to hear this speech denounced for its cynicism toward the democratic process: a Republican "president" giving advice to black people on how to put pressure on the Democratic party, how to increase their "leverage" by voting for the R’s. On the cynic-o-meter, it’s right up there with R’s funding the Ralph Nader ballot-access campaign (which, by the way, I consider, yes, cynical, but hardly the dastardly dirty trick so many on the left seem to find it. After all, most of those people are supporting Kerry more to get rid of Bush than for Kerry’s own sake).
HELLO MUDDA, HELLO FADDA: a summer camp on Sakhalin, in Siberia, has been found actually to be a training center for young thieves, aged 12 to 18.
Does life begin? Yes, it begins
The Army’s inspector general releases a report slash whitewash on the prisoner abuse scandal which is also clearly the product of a committee, but falls into a different genre than the 9/11 report. Rather, it is a "the system is perfect, it’s the individuals--lots and lots and lots of individuals--who failed" report. While that genre might seem to be the exact opposite of the approach of the 9/11 report, both have the effect of absolving everyone--everyone who counts--of any responsibility.
MISTAKES WERE MADE: In the interests of full disclosure, in my first-ever post mentioning bin Laden, in August 1998, I wrote "I suspect this bin Laden character has been promoted, and probably promoted way out of his league, to Darth-Vader-of-the-year to put a human face on the Enemy." Oops, I guess.
The 9/11 commission blamed a failure of imagination. Bill Clinton can’t be faulted for lack of imagination: think of the innovative uses he found for cigars. Actually, the Clintonites more or less understood the dangers, but weren’t clear how to respond to them and didn’t want to screw up their doomed efforts to secure Middle East peace. The Bushies were the ones who didn’t get it, and I suspect this was because they were so ideologically contemptuous of the wimpy Clintonites that they were unwilling to be briefed by them or take their concerns seriously. It’s the partisanship, stupid.
Kerry answers a question on whether early-term abortions are murder: "No, because it's not the form of life that takes personhood in the terms that we have judged it to be in the past. It's the beginning of life. Does life begin? Yes, it begins. Is it at the point where I would say that you apply those [criminal] penalties? The answer is, no, and I believe in choice. I believe in the right to choose, and the government should not involve itself in that choice, beyond where it has in the context of Roe vs. Wade." And by the time he’s finished answering the question, another trimester has passed.
MISTAKES WERE MADE: In the interests of full disclosure, in my first-ever post mentioning bin Laden, in August 1998, I wrote "I suspect this bin Laden character has been promoted, and probably promoted way out of his league, to Darth-Vader-of-the-year to put a human face on the Enemy." Oops, I guess.
The 9/11 commission blamed a failure of imagination. Bill Clinton can’t be faulted for lack of imagination: think of the innovative uses he found for cigars. Actually, the Clintonites more or less understood the dangers, but weren’t clear how to respond to them and didn’t want to screw up their doomed efforts to secure Middle East peace. The Bushies were the ones who didn’t get it, and I suspect this was because they were so ideologically contemptuous of the wimpy Clintonites that they were unwilling to be briefed by them or take their concerns seriously. It’s the partisanship, stupid.
Kerry answers a question on whether early-term abortions are murder: "No, because it's not the form of life that takes personhood in the terms that we have judged it to be in the past. It's the beginning of life. Does life begin? Yes, it begins. Is it at the point where I would say that you apply those [criminal] penalties? The answer is, no, and I believe in choice. I believe in the right to choose, and the government should not involve itself in that choice, beyond where it has in the context of Roe vs. Wade." And by the time he’s finished answering the question, another trimester has passed.
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Uncomfortable reading
A BBC reporter said that the 9/11 Commission report would make “uncomfortable reading” for GeeDubya. Granted, most things make uncomfortable reading for our Functional Illiterate in Chief, except maybe:
http://sadlyno.com/uploads/sadlynogoats.htm
Yet another strangely unsatisfying report. Anyone can cite it as vindication of their own actions or their pet theories--and they have--because it goes in all directions, like any report written by a committee. Everyone is to blame but no one is to blame. There were a million chances to prevent 9/11, but we don’t know if 9/11 could have been stopped. It’s a bureaucratic report, suggesting that the only problems were in bureaucratic structure, and will therefore encourage members of the intelligence “community” in the future to continue to act like members of a bureaucracy, which was the problem in the first place. (UPDATE: James Ridgeway sets out a similar view of the report at greater length.)
And some of the talk about centralization looks good on paper but would kill creativity at the bottom, where a lot of the hints about 9/11 were uncovered. The problem is one of encouraging independent thought at the bottom while coordinating better at the middle and upper levels. Similarly, the talk about Congressional oversight being so weak because of fragmentation is only partly right. A super-committee with all-powerful senior politicians, which is basically what the commission called for, sounds like leaving foreign policy in the hands of dinosaurs.
Mr. Godfrey Bloom, the MEP I mentioned a couple of days ago, has been kept off the women’s rights committee, except as an alternate. He was challenged by, among others, Allesandra Mussolini, the Duce’s granddaughter, who questioned whether he himself could clean behind a fridge. Link.
http://sadlyno.com/uploads/sadlynogoats.htm
Yet another strangely unsatisfying report. Anyone can cite it as vindication of their own actions or their pet theories--and they have--because it goes in all directions, like any report written by a committee. Everyone is to blame but no one is to blame. There were a million chances to prevent 9/11, but we don’t know if 9/11 could have been stopped. It’s a bureaucratic report, suggesting that the only problems were in bureaucratic structure, and will therefore encourage members of the intelligence “community” in the future to continue to act like members of a bureaucracy, which was the problem in the first place. (UPDATE: James Ridgeway sets out a similar view of the report at greater length.)
And some of the talk about centralization looks good on paper but would kill creativity at the bottom, where a lot of the hints about 9/11 were uncovered. The problem is one of encouraging independent thought at the bottom while coordinating better at the middle and upper levels. Similarly, the talk about Congressional oversight being so weak because of fragmentation is only partly right. A super-committee with all-powerful senior politicians, which is basically what the commission called for, sounds like leaving foreign policy in the hands of dinosaurs.
Mr. Godfrey Bloom, the MEP I mentioned a couple of days ago, has been kept off the women’s rights committee, except as an alternate. He was challenged by, among others, Allesandra Mussolini, the Duce’s granddaughter, who questioned whether he himself could clean behind a fridge. Link.
New Ben & Jerry's flavors. Or not
NYT headline: "Bush Tells Iowa Crowd What He Learned From Sept. 11." Something about a pet goat, probably.
Most repulsive news story of the day, until you get to my next item: A 14-year old British girl had a miscarriage. The hospital gave her the 11-week old fetus in a specimen bottle to take home. No one is quite sure why.
Most repulsive news story of the day, until you get to my next item (it’s been that kind of a day): JAPANESE ice-cream makers are testing taste boundaries with this summer’s flavours, which include eel, shrimp, oyster, ox-tongue, octopus, squid and highly popular raw horse. "I don’t know why someone would make horse ice-cream, but I’m surprised that it tastes so good," said Miona Yamashita, 23. "It has a vanilla taste but you can really get the flavour of the horse meat if you bite into a piece." But Kanako Hosomura, 22, said the oyster ice-cream tasted "really bad".
Mad scientists working for the military have developed dried food that soldiers can carry and rehydrate by adding water or...peeing on it. While the stories on this development all ask the reader whether he or she would eat food cooked in their own urine, trying to find where people draw that line, I notice they all automatically assume that the urine you’d use would be your own, drawing their own unconscious line.
Federal prosecutors are looking into whether Halliburton illegally did business with Iran when Cheney was in charge. Halliburton says it is a witch-hunt. Excellent: let’s throw Cheney and the other executives in a vat of crude oil and see if they float.
In a nice line, the Independent’s sketchwriter Simon Carr says of Michael Howard’s attempt at a self-deprecating comment during Prime Minister’s Questions, "his self-deprecation takes work away from those who need it more."
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
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:
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:
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.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
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."
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.
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.
Monday, July 19, 2004
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’."
Sunday, July 18, 2004
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.
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?
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.
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.
Saturday, July 17, 2004
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?
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?
Friday, July 16, 2004
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.
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.
Thursday, July 15, 2004
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
