Substance, not symbolism

In perhaps the most pathetic of the post-election pieces on how the D’s should cozy up to “Middle America,” Nicholas Kristof praises Bill Clinton for sacrificing a brain-damaged black prisoner (Kristof doesn’t mention the black part) to his political ambitions in 1992, and urges D’s to do the same by giving up gun control as an issue. In my favorite part, he says D’s should cozy up to religion, and in the very next paragraph says “Pick battles of substance, not symbolism,” by which he means the Confederate flag. Presumably expressing loud obeisance to imaginary gods in the clouds is not about symbolism.

We’ve been hearing a lot about not offending the delicate sensibilities of religious Middle America, and we’ll hear a lot more. I say, in olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now get the fuck over it, Middle America. It’s not 1953 or 1637 anymore and never will be again.

So much of this seems to be pre-emptive self-censorship by wishy-washy liberals like Kristof that I’ve put off posting my “Red states = Red China analogy” for a few days, but here it is. China has been getting its way for years with a “Don’t fuck with us, we’re crazy” stance, which I’ve always thought was mostly put on. Whenever there’s even a hint of acknowledgment that Taiwan exists as an independent nation, which is simply a fact, even down to something as minor as the Taiwanese prime minister catching a connecting flight in a US airport or attending his own college reunion here, there’d be this incredible display of princess-and-the-pea hypersensitivity. Just as San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is now being blamed for Kerry’s defeat because he dared to authorize gay marriages, so timid State Dept diplomats would insist that China not be offended. When Bill Clinton met the Dalai Lama, he didn’t allow pictures to be taken. Ohio and Alabama (to pick 2 states at random) want to be able to go on treating gays as second-class citizens and repress any visible sign of their identities without any criticism from the outside world, just like China does with Tibetans, and want others to do the same, as a sign of concurrence with the values of Middle America/the Middle Kingdom.

(James Wolcott suggests the D’s adopt Kristof’s advice with the slogan “Shoot a fag for Jesus.”)

I think you will be surprised how quickly we gain each other’s trust

Allawi, speaking about the upcoming mass slaughter in Fallujah: “We intend to liberate the people and bring the rule of law”. By the time this war is over, I won’t be able to hear the word “liberate” without spitting.

The military is ordering the population of Fallujah to flee, so the city can be turned into a giant free-fire zone. Except for males under 45, who will be arrested if they try to leave.

Speaking of the rule of law, the, um, specter of Arlen Specter first warning, and then denying he had warned, Bush against trying to pack the bench with anti-abortion judges, is no doubt only the visible part of a vicious little war being fought behind the scenes. We’ll know how it turned out when we see whether Specter gets to chair the judiciary committee. (Later: the right is mobilizing against Specter, for example in this unlovely website.)

Either way, Rick Santorum, whose previous remarks about the judicial branch include this one

If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. (April 2003)

and this one

we’ll have our opportunity someday, and we’ll make sure there’s not another liberal judge, ever! (November 2003)

wants to denude the committee of the power to block nominees reaching the Senate floor, and says “Senate Republicans are committed to approving all of the president’s judicial nominations, despite the Democrats’ rhetoric that they are committed to block judges who fail their litmus tests.”

Did anyone spot what’s wrong with that statement, constitutionally speaking? Santorum is blindly committing Senate R’s to approve anyone Bush decides to nominate, without exercising the oversight mandated by the constitutional system of checks and balances. For people who talk so much about the original intent of the founders, the R’s are awfully willing to dismantle the protections against tyranny the founders built into the Constitution.

Israel is going to be predictably petty about not allowing Arafat to be buried in Jerusalem because, says the Guardian, “it fears that Mr Arafat’s burial in Jerusalem would be interpreted as recognition that Palestinians have political rights in the city.” Jerusalem is like Chicago now? The dead have a right to vote?

I’ve been looking for a couple of days for a good reproduction online of the leaflet the Scottish Black Watch troops have been handing out. I’m curious about the image on the front, sort of seen here.



What’s he carrying, bagpipes? The leaflet says, “Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a Scottish soldier of the Black Watch regiment. ... There will be those who will continue to call us occupiers and encourage you to reject our presence. I ask you to give us an opportunity to prove that we are sincere in our statements that we respect the Iraqi culture and I think you will be surprised how quickly we gain each other’s trust. ...”

Follow-Up: Publishers Holt, Rinehart and Winston, & Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, gave in to Texas and will remove any wording in textbooks suggesting that anything other than a “lifelong union between a husband and a wife” is acceptable. They stood up for themselves only to the extent that they didn’t include language suggested by the Texas Board of Ed. saying that gays and bisexuals were “more prone to self-destructive behaviors like depression, illegal drug use, and suicide.” That’s not even well-written: how is depression a self-destructive behaviour?

I’d like to reach out to everyone who shares my goals too

The Texas Board of Education is trying to insert anti-gay language into health textbooks (remember: Texas bulk-buys in a way that, say, California doesn’t, which means it exerts tremendous control over textbook production, so Texas decisions affect the books other states wind up buying).

Arianna Huffington is right that Kerry’s pandering to undecided, centrist voters, made him seem wishy-washy and poll-driven, allowing Bush to portray him as weak and indecisive. Part of the problem is that Kerry thought that issues were the most important thing in an election campaign, and his focus on issues (well, a greater focus than Bush’s, anyway) was used against him, portrayed as a failure of character. Bush downplayed the importance of issues, asserting that everything was much simpler than Kerry tried to make out, and that correct decisions can be arrived at by gut instinct rather than intelligence and grasp of the facts. And then, of course, Bush turns around and claims a “mandate” on those very issues he hasn’t been talking about.

One thing about Bush’s approach is an insistence that for every problem, there is one and only one correct solution. Not a lot of room for compromise.

If the D’s take seriously the claim of many analysts that Bush won the election (there, I said it, I finally said it, and it feels really... icky) because of moral concerns, then the 2008 election will be even more depressing than this one, with the candidates spending all their time going to churches and talking about their faith. Somewhere, right now, a D governor or senator is making up a drinking problem in his past, which was cured when he found Jesus, hallelujah.

Arundhati Roy: “It is mendacious to make moral distinction between the unspeakable brutality of terrorism and the indiscriminate carnage of war and occupation. Both kinds of violence are unacceptable. We cannot support one and condemn the other.”

Remember, remember the 5th of November

Happy Guy Fawkes Day.




There’s an analysis of Kerry’s failures in the London Times, which not once but twice mistakes things that happened in Saturday Night Live sketches for things that happened in real life.

Alabamians voted Tuesday on a constitutional amendment to remove dormant Jim Crow laws, as well as poll tax provisions and a 1956 amendment, obviously passed in reaction to the Brown v. Board of Ed. ruling, that there was no constitutional right to any education. It’s actually losing, but it’s so close that there will be a recount. The problem Amendment 2 ran into, supposedly, wasn’t that Alabahoovians wanted to keep racist language, it was that thar book larnin’, and the possible lawsuits to enforce funding of it. So the Christian Coalition and former Chief Justice Roy Moore, the 10 Commandments guy, came out against it, and why am I just hearing about this now?

I’ve fallen and I can’t get up

No drug thing in Afghanistan

The scuttlebutt (isn’t that a great word?) is that Tom Ridge will resign soon in order to spend more time with his color charts, and John Ashcroft will leave to take up a private-sector job covering up breasts on statuary and being repellant.

Exit strategy.

The BBC website has a story with a picture captioned, “President Bush is back in the Oval Office for business as usual.” I recognize the picture as the one of Bush receiving Kerry’s concession call. Business...as usual.

“President” Karzai’s victory speech declares that the era of big warlord is over, and “There will definitely not be any drug thing in Afghanistan.”

For more than a decade, Greece has been throwing a hissy fit over Macedonia’s name, claiming that it implied territorial claims on northern Greece. The Greeks haven’t just been sulking in their tent but obstructing EU recognition of, and aid to, Macedonia, eventually forcing it to accept the designation “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.” This week the Bushies have made a foreign policy I can agree with, told the Greeks to stuff it like a grape leaf, and will henceforth refer to it as the Republic of Macedonia. Guess which nation was a COW country, and which wasn’t.

Wisened to the ways of Washington: I watch Chimpy’s press conference so you don’t have to

Transcript.

“Republicans, Democrats & independents all love their country”. Some of us a lot less than 2 days ago.

He keeps calling the tax code antiquated. In what way? Or is this just more of Karl Rove’s anti-gay strategy, you know, antiquing.

On Social Security, he wants people to “own something.” For example.

It’ll be “hard work” to bring people together (to fuck Social Security).

He wants people around him not to tell him “Man, you’re looking pretty.”

Because he’s all about the open-mindedness.

Says he’s been “wisened to the ways of Washington.”

“I’ll reach out to everyone who shares our goals.”

A reporter breaks the news that Arafat is dead (which he isn’t). Bush: “God bless his soul.”

He believes there will be good will in Washington, now that the election is over.

He wants a line-item veto.

And the first place he uses that line-item veto: against reporters asking follow-up questions. Refers to the “one-question rule” as “the will of the people.”

I will serve all Americans, so help me God

My cat just received an email from George Bush himself, thanking her for her work on the campaign (they must be confusing her with another cat). “At every stop I asked you to make the calls, put up the signs, talk to your neighbors, and get out the vote.” What a very Norman Rockwell image of electioneering. Did you notice the major element missing from that description (not counting the deal with the devil and the virgin sacrifices): money. He spent over a billion dollars to buy his “re”-election, no doubt all raised at bake sales, where cherry pies baked by women in aprons were eaten by freckle-faced boys, but he doesn’t mention that billion dollars.

To think we used to be shocked by the Pentagon spending $500 on a toilet seat. Somebody just paid over $1,000,000,000 for George W. Bush. Dude, you were SO over-charged!

Much of the email repeated his victory speech, with the occasional creepy addition: “I will serve all Americans, so help me God.” Somehow I don’t think atheist Americans feel especially served.

Wait... I will serve all Americans... OH MY GOD, IT’S A COOK BOOK! IT’S A COOK BOOK!!

So it was incumbency all round. A WaPo editorial gives these figures: only 7 House incumbents lost, even fewer than last time. 95% of Reps won with margins over 10%, 83% with more than 20. I believe here in Calif., all the state senate & assembly incumbents were returned. I’ll be curious, when the counting’s finished, to see the figures (which are always very hard to find) for national voting by party. And state voting. DeLay’s contribution to turnover was the irregular redistricting of Texas, which removed 4 of those 7 incumbents. But how many Texans voted D, how many R; in other words, did the redistricting increase the distance between votes and representation?

How to dress like a proper lady

Alabama voters voted to include the promotion of shrimp in the state constitution.

Alaska and Maine rejected initiatives to stop hunters using pizza and donuts to lure bears. Alaska also voted against decriminalizing marijuana, figuring that dope fiends would scarf up all the munchies, leaving nothing for hunters to lure bears with.

A man in Taiwan jumped into the lion section of Taipei zoo in order to convert the lions to Christianity. “Jesus will save you!” he told them. He was delicious.




Remember in Woody Allen’s Bananas, when the rebel leader seized the government and went mad with power, ordering that “all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check”? Well, not that I’m implying anything, but look at Jenna.



Just no dignity. She should learn from Queen Elizabeth, who went to a cemetery in Potsdam today, and dressed, um, appropriately.

One future that binds us: I watch Bush’s victory speech so you don’t have to, unless you’re a masochist

Least convincing line: “I’m humbled by the trust and the confidence of my fellow citizens.”

Said he and Kerry “had a very good phone call.” So Bush must have finally figured out which end of the phone you’re supposed to speak into.

(I was going to say that Kerry probably didn’t think it was that good a phone call, but it seems that in his concession speech, Kerry called it a “good conversation.” Yeah, ‘cause our Chimpy Overlord is renowned as a good conversationalist, right up there with Noel Coward and George Bernard Shaw.)

(Kerry also said, “we talked about the danger of division in our country and the need, the desperate need, for unity for finding the common ground, coming together. Today, I hope that we can begin the healing.” Personally, I don’t want to heal the division: I’m heading for the red state/blue state border with a shovel; I’m gonna start digging a moat.)

Similarly, Bush: “We have one country, one constitution and one future that binds us.” Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.

Calls Karl Rove “the architect.” Yes, just like Albert Speer.

“I want to thank you for your hugs on the rope lines.” That’s probably less dirty than it sounds.

“We will make public schools all they can be.” That’s a hint that the new draft will extend to elementary school students. Excuse me: public elementary school students.

Bush: “we are entering a season of hope. We will continue our economic progress.” Chance the Gardner: “As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.”

Riven by ethnic, religious, regional and tribal rivalries

For the surprising number of non-Californians who looked at my recommendations on our propositions, I’ve added the results to the link, which I’ll keep in the upper right for a week or so.


If no one minds, last night’s post will be my last misguided attempt to find a silver lining.


Man, if you thought Shrub was insufferably smug before....

The pre-election polls were all wrong, the exit polls were all wrong, and there’s no reason to think the post-election polls will be any better, which creates certain problems in figuring out why what happened happened. For example, did Rove’s strategy of putting anti-gay marriage initiatives (some of them redundant in effect, in states which already banned gay marriage, and thus put on the ballot purely for partisan political reasons) succeed in bringing significant numbers of gay-hating evangelicals to the polls who would otherwise not have bothered? We won’t know. Much of what you hear will be pure speculation; take it all with a grain of salt or just ignore it.

The BBC says that the president “will try to use his new mandate to unite a country still riven by ethnic, religious, regional and tribal rivalries.” OK, they said it about Karzai, whose election “victory” was also announced today. Obviously Bush won’t do a damn thing about America being riven by ethnic, religious, regional and tribal rivalries, except stoke them further. It’s actually too bad Ohio and Florida weren’t closer, because the Republican party ran such an openly racist voter-suppression campaign in both states that it needs to be talked about (like the gay-bashing tactic), and won’t be. Florida Republicans even showed up at polling stations to challenge people on the discredited felon purge list, which the state couldn’t use when it was discovered that it included no Hispanics, although I’m not sure how widespread this was.

The lack of closeness also means there won’t be the focus there should be on electronic voting machines, which means the prospect of a stolen or buggered election is that much more likely.

Arizona passed an initiative requiring public officials to turn in illegal immigrants who try to use public services, including the police and fire departments.

Another COW country defects: Hungary just announced it will pull its troops out of Iraq in March.

Good Doug Ireland analysis of Kerry’s crap candidacy.

“Kerry ran a tactical campaign, devoid of vision or explicable alternatives”

“History will record that John Kerry lost the election on the day he voted the Constitution-shredding blank check for Bush’s war on Iraq. He was hobbled throughout the campaign by this vote, which shackled him to a me-too posture that included endlessly repeated pledges to “stay the course” in Iraq and “win” the occupation. Kerry could not, therefore, develop and present a full-blown critique of Bush on Iraq, nor offer a genuine alternative to him on it. The non-existent Kerry “plan” (based on the hubris that he could con foreign allies into sending their troops to bleed and die for the U.S. crimes at Abu Ghraib) wasn’t bought by the voters. Bush won by making the link between Iraq and the war on terrorism--the Big Lie which Kerry could not effectively counter, because he’d bought into it at the beginning.”

The silver lining: ignorance

So I had this post I was working on, a visual celebration of Bush’s defeat, and all you people had to do was defeat Bush. But nooooo, you couldn’t even meet me half-way.

Do you think if I had mentioned that I was working on a visual celebration of Bush’s defeat, the American voters would have defeated him so they could see it? And now they never will.

There is one positive lesson to take from all this: the American people are really really really mind-bogglingly pig-ignorant. Stick with me on this. In 2002-3, when Chimpy’s approval ratings were up there with chocolate, puppy dogs and blow jobs, many of my friends were depressed, and so was I. I was beginning to lose the faith of the progressive in the educability and basic goodness of people, that is, the faith that if only they knew all the stuff I knew, their political views would be, if not identical to mine, at least much more like mine. You may call that condescension, I prefer to think of it as believing that people aren’t such big assholes as they might appear.

Anyway, at this point I started seeing polls that demonstrated (again) the prodigious ignorance behind much of Bush’s support, and I began to feel better. Americans weren’t callous bullies, they thought that Saddam and Osama were bestest buddies and that WMDs had been found in Iraq--hell, one poll showed 1/4 saying that WMDs had been used against American troops. They’re confused by (and mostly unaware of) foreign detestation of American foreign policy and of Bush himself because they have no idea of the impact that foreign policy has. They don’t know how many countries the US maintains military bases in, how many governments it has casually overthrown or undermined, the dictatorships and kleptocracies it’s supported, or understand that the reason the US gets the blame for Israel’s actions is that it provides weapons, funding and protection which allows Israel to act with impunity. US trade actions that almost no one know about here decimate the economies of whole countries--remember the banana wars? of course you don’t. Americans probably know that the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, but do they know about the coup attempt it backed in Venezuela, the coup it participated in in Haiti, etc?

So cheer up and try to believe that Americans aren’t really as awful as this election would suggest, they’re just ignorant. And ignorance can be removed.

Holy monkeys

Favorite headline of the day, from the London Times: “Holy Monkeys Prey on Children.” No, it’s not about Bush and the No Child Left Behind Act, but Hindu temple monkeys.

A Russian nuclear scientist kept 8 containers (400g) of weapons-grade plutonium in his garage for 6 years. He found it in the trash of a facility that had been closed down, and then looted, and decided to take it home, rather than letting the looters get hold of it. He did try to turn it in to the authorities, but nobody returned his calls. Now he has tried again, hoping for a reward, but instead is facing criminal charges.

Qian Qichen, China’s former foreign minister and vice-premier, wrote a few days ago that the “philosophy of the ‘Bush Doctrine’ is in essence force” and said Bush was trying to “rule over the whole world.” And your point is?

Mental health warning

A reminder: if you’ve taped any program off commercial tv in the last few weeks, you must burn that tape, or face the possibility of running across a campaign commercial a month from now when you’re catching up on Law & Order episodes. That way madness lies.

Choices--thank God for the two-party system

Enrichment is our natural right!

Iran’s hippy radical students (possibly English majors) strike again: “Thousands of Iranian university students and clerics formed a human chain outside the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization in Tehran to support the resumption of uranium enrichment.”

How dare Osama bin Laden enter into the election process?

Maine and Alaska will be voting on whether hunters can lure bears with pizza and donuts.

I got a robo-call from Governor Ahnuld today (the machine pretending to be him did a better acting job than he ever did pretending to be a machine) asking me to vote against requiring WalMart to provide insurance for its employees (and restaurants, who paid for the call--it’s very strange to hear financial disclosure information at the end of a phone call).

Der Arnold, by the way, has been talking about getting the Constitution changed so he can run for president. No one ever asks him when he’s going to give up his dual Austrian citizenship.

Kerry today, evidently feeling a need to distance himself from Osama: “How dare Osama bin Laden enter into the election process in the United States of America? I think Americans are smart enough not to let this thug get in the way of decisions that affect health care, schools, jobs, Social Security, Medicare, the future of this country.” Yeah, Osama should butt out and stick to his own business: planning terrorist attacks on Americans. No, wait....

Speaking of slightly misplaced outrage, the latest suicide bombing in Israel was by a 16-year old Palestinian with ridiculous eyebrows, and there’s been some condemnation of the recruitment of youths (including by his mother, who pointedly did not condemn suicide bombings per se).

The deputy head of Russia’s long-range nuclear bomber fleet has been shot dead by a hitman. The London Times reassures us that the hitman wasn’t aiming at him but at the man he was traveling with, whose son has been accused of being in the mafia. Somehow, that reassurance opens up whole new areas of worry.

Farmers in India have found a cheap and effective pesticide: Coca Cola. The same story says, “Uncorroborated reports from China claimed that the ill-fated New Coke was widely used in China as a spermicide.”

The long national nightmare of the 2004 election is almost over, try to hang on

So I spent yesterday dressed up as a Republican poll watcher, telling all the black children that Halloween had been cancelled, and they would have all their toys taken away if they tried to trick-or-treat.

It used to be that when senators ran for president, the worry was that they lacked the executive experience that governors had. We no longer have to worry about that, because a presidential campaign is now the size of a Fortune 500 company, with a budget larger than Delaware’s and 10,000 lawyers.

Presidential campaigns are black holes, dragging lesser election fights, money, energy and real political discussion into themselves, while giving off neither light nor energy. I wouldn’t mind half so much if these campaigns functioned as national civics lessons, if they clarified our political philosophies and priorities, if this had been a national dialogue about the role of America in the world, the limits of our power abroad, the future of Social Security, how best to insure every American, etc etc. Needless to say, that hasn’t happened. We’ve spent less time debating the environment than we have whether Laura Bush is nicer than Teresa Heinz-Kerry (probably, but can you imagine someone you’re less likely to have an interesting conversation with?) So literally billions of dollars have been spent that could have gone to the Sierra Club, the ACLU or even Bush’s “faith-based” groups and done some actual good.

GeeDubya has talked endlessly of his “leadership” this year, and I can’t for the life of me figure what he means by the word. If you, like me, don’t understand why it is that people would follow this arrogant moron, well, Shrub doesn’t know how it happens either. You can see this in the shocked, petulant anger he displays when people question his honesty, his point of view, or his facts. They are, as the network exec told Howard Beale in “Network,” screwing with the primal forces of nature. Belief is what the world owes GeeDubya. He does not know how to talk to people who disagree with him, does not know how to persuade. Compare how uncomfortable he looked during the debates with how much he is clearly enjoying himself now, free to yell childish epithets at Kerry, in his absence of course, in front of carefully vetted crowds of the true believers. The man controlling the might and majesty of the most powerful empire the world has ever seen is spending his days declaring that John Kerry belongs in the “flip-flop hall of fame.” Bill Clinton brought more dignity to the office when he was being serviced by Monica Lewinsky; at least he was on the phone at the time, taking care of the nation’s business.

Fine, you’re evil and you’re also excellent dancers

From a WaPo story on a US compound outside besieged Fallujah:

“They’re not used to Marines,” said Cpl. Andrew Carlson, a Marine reservist from the 4th Civil Affairs Group, based in Washington, D.C. “The only thing they hear about us is that we’re evil.”

Running thin

The US military in Iraq keeps saying, and with a straight face, too, that the order to attack Fallujah will rest with Iyad “Not So Comical” Allawi. The American imperative to pretend that its hand-picked puppet exercises real authority is given priority over Allawi’s need for moral authority. Not that Allawi seems to recognize such a need. Indeed, he seems anxious to be known as the man who ordered the mass murder of his fellow Iraqis. His patience is running thin, he says. We have to restore stability in Iraq, he says. The lives of thousands of Fallujans now depend on Allawi’s emotional-control issues and the viscosity of his patience.

The chief demand is that Fallujah hand over Zarqawi and the foreign militants, because as we all know the resistance is the exclusive work of outside agitators. Even American military types are (anonymously) telling reporters that Zarqawi may very well no longer be in the city. My question is: if the city leaders did find, capture and hand over Zarqawi, would they get the $25 million reward?

Uttar Pradesh is struggling to reduce its population. Its solution: if you want a license for a shotgun, two people must be sterilized; for a handgun, five. So you get to combine the population-reducing effects of forced and/or fraudulent sterilizations with increased gun deaths. Genius. And Uttar Pradesh’s population policy is partially funded by the US.

Getting down...on their level

California voters: I’ve expanded my arguments against Prop. 62 and for Prop. 66, if you need more convincing. Link to all my proposition recommendations in upper-right column.

In Kentucky, possibly senile Senator Jim Bunning’s supporters have been hinting in the least subtle way that his challenger, Daniel Mongiardo, is gay. In Kentucky it’s okay to smoke tobacco but not cock. Anyway, Mongiardo has responded so vehemently that it’s clear he considers gay the worst possible thing he could be called, so to hell with him. He’s actually claimed that the innuendo is a violation of the Commandment against murder, because it is character assassination. Mongiardo says he won’t “get down on their level,” which is a straight (ahem) line if I ever heard one.

In Florida, Bush says, “I strongly believe the people of Cuba should be freed from the tyrant.” Note the verb form: “be freed.” Freed by whom?
(Update: other news sources have this as “should be free from the tyrant”. I haven’t heard it myself.)

Finding WMDs Within Yourself

A winner in a New Statesman competition calling for blurbs in new self-help books:

Finding WMDs Within Yourself

Forget spontaneous human combustion - the revelation of this psychogenic fugue state could be devastating to you and those around you. Your finger is on the button.

This book contains comprehensive yet simple methodologies geared to change you and your family’s regime. It is not necessary to believe your own endocrine system has the capability to create WMDs, just have a willingness to accept that it could. From this, all else follows: drawing extensively from the author’s previous bestsellers, The 45-Minute Manager and Just the Tikrit!, the dossier is now complete. This seminal work examines chemical components of human nature and expresses existential viewpoints for readers wishing to experiment further with logical extrapolations of the premise that, as carbon-based life forms, with an accumulated wealth of health-threatening toxic elements sufficient to populate a GCSE-passing periodic table, we similarly own the potentiality for explosive change.

John Griffiths-Colby

Friendly militias redux

Back in August, I reported that Paul Wolfowitz “wants to build a ‘global anti-terrorist network of friendly militias,’ bypassing insufficiently pliable national militaries in favor of building up warlords and death squads and you’ve got to be fucking kidding.” He proposed this in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, but no American newspaper reported it, no American politician that I know of denounced it.

So it’s going ahead. The U.S. Special Operations Command has gotten a slush fund of $25 million in a provision snuck into the most recent Pentagon authorization bill, which was signed Friday. The LA Times seems to be the only newspaper that has noticed, and mostly presents it as only an operational thing--“enabling America’s elite soldiers to buy off tribal leaders or arm local militias while pursuing Al Qaeda operatives and confronting other threats.” The paper ignores Wolfowitz’s more grandiose plans for a global network, indeed it is evidently unaware of them, not mentioning him or “friendly militias” in the story.

Congress does seem to have built in some safeguards, although the lack of public discussion of this move doesn’t suggest they’ll be exercising much in the way of oversight. At best, millions in bribes will be put in the hands of unsavory thugs, such as the Afghan warlords who sold their opponents to the CIA to be spirited away to Guantanamo, and the next generation of Chalabis. At worst, the money will build up forces that will destabilize nations, commit atrocities, or otherwise come back to bite us in the ass, like the aid given to mujahaddin in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Another Manhattan

Tom Ridge held a press conference to announce that he wasn’t raising the alert color. Although he was wearing a red shirt at the time.

A letter to the NYT suggests combining Iraq’s parliamentary elections with a referendum on ending American occupation. Now, that would increase voter turnout!

On that tape, bin Laden said the US would have to do certain things to avoid “another Manhattan.” That’s a hell of a threat to Republicans, who don’t like the one we have now. Threaten them with another San Francisco, and they’ll really panic.

Insurgents in Fallujah claim to have added chemical weapons to mortar rounds and missiles. (I read that a few hours ago, I think on the BBC website, and didn’t copy a link because I figured it would be reported everywhere. It’s not.)

William Saletan on the Bush-Bin Laden codependent relationship:

“That’s the story of Bush. Clear intentions, lousy judgment, counterproductive results. I love his intentions as much as I hate Bin Laden’s, but the two men turn out to be well-matched. Bin Laden pisses people off and drives them into the arms of Bush. Bush pisses people off and drives them into the arms of Bin Laden. Bush keeps Bin Laden in business; Bin Laden keeps Bush in office.”

At war with these terrorists

Bush’s response to bin Laden’s tape: “I also want to say to the American people that we’re at war with these terrorists and I am confident that we will prevail.” What a weird sentence. I read it over and over, and it seems to have less meaning each time. Does he think we haven’t noticed the war? And, of course, he has he often expressed confidence about capturing bin Laden, although not recently for some reason.

Another response, from Republican pollster David Winston: “The response from the American people is going to be more along the line of ‘This guy is trying to inject himself in the process, and we don’t like it.’” Yeah, just like those English people who had the nerve to write letters to American voters. You just hate to see bin Laden tarnishing the favorable impression Americans previously had of him with a trick like that.

Here in California, the Republican challenger for Senate, Bill Jones, who is said to have won the primary based on name recognition--Bill Jones!--has run no ads, because he has no money. The LAT can’t figure out when the last time was that this happened, but does say that the first tv ads in a Senate race were in 1950.

Still in California, the LAT reports that the Scientologists are against a proposition to fund mental health programs. Imagine that!

I just received a mailer from a candidate for school board. It has an improperly placed comma. Tsk tsk.

Just looked at his website, which was mentioned in the mailer. He says school’s when he meant schools’. Tsk tsk tsk tsk.

The WaPo has an article about the Tom Coburn/Brad Carson Senate contest in Oklahoma, without mentioning the 3rd candidate in the race, Sheila Bilyeu, who’s getting 6% in the polls, possibly because she’s the only one running to the left of Neanderthal, presumably at the direction of the radio device implanted in her head by the military in the 1970s, which she has sued the federal government many times to have removed.

We will whack them

In Iraq, U.S. Brig-Gen Denis Hajlik says of Fallujah, “We are gearing up for a major operation. If we do so, it will be decisive and we will whack them.” Whack them? Should our generals really be doing Tony Soprano impressions?

And should Kerry be doing impressions of Shrub in his cowboy mode? “I regret that when President Bush had the opportunity to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora he outsourced the job to Afghan warlords.” Did he mean to say kill or capture, or maybe “bring to justice”? No, because he also said, “There’s no such thing as a negotiation with terrorists. Terrorists are going to be hunted down and killed.”

The US is threatening “a variety of measures” against Ukraine when it steals Sunday’s elections. There are irregularities, and you know how the Bushies hate irregularities in elections. They even, and I’m quoting the Guardian here, “sent a series of emissaries, including George Bush Sr and Henry Kissinger, to Kiev to call for fair elections.” Ask any Chilean about Henry Kissinger’s commitment to fair elections.

Sometimes you’re just thirsty:

Portage, Wisconsin: A woman has been arrested for digging up her dead boyfriend’s ashes from a cemetery more than ten years ago and drinking the beer that was buried with him. Karen Stolzmann, 44, has been charged with concealing stolen property. The urn was found at her home. (AP)

Good David Corn article on unanswered questions about Bush personally and about Bush policies.

Robert Fisk writes about Arafat (the article will appear here in a day or two):

“He is a wearying man, not just in his repeated death but in life as well, a man who married the Revolution - as his wife was to discover - rather than develop a coherent strategy for a people under occupation. And in the end, he became like so many other Arab leaders - and as the Israelis intended him to be - a little dictator, handing out dollars and euros to his ageing but loyal cronies, falsely promising democracy, clinging to power in his shambles of an office in Ramallah. Had he done what he was supposed to do - had he governed "Palestine" (the quotation marks are daily more important) with ruthlessness and crushed all opposition and accepted all Israel’s demands - he would be able now to visit Jerusalem, even Washington.”

Osama and the middle finger of righteousness

Bin Laden shows up again and, say, which finger is he holding up, anyway?




October Surprise indeed, and the only question we all ask is how it will affect the US election. “You’re so vain, you prob’ly think this jihad’s about you.” Well, Kerry supporters will think it shows Bush’s failure to accomplish the first necessary response to 9/11--capture the guy responsible, and the Bush supporters will think that it shows there are still terrorists out there who only Bush can save us from. Bin Laden specifically said he wasn’t endorsing either candidate, just to make that clear.

He says that Bush is “still misleading you and hiding the real reason [for 9/11] from you” and then cites a reason for it I’ve never heard before. For a fairly blunt piece of symbolic communication, his message wasn’t really all that clear. Evidently, it was a response to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, specifically the bombing of tower blocks in Beirut. So his idea was that America should “taste what we taste and would be deterred from killing our children and women.” With yesterday’s Lancet report of 100,000 dead in Iraq, we can now say that bin Laden is actually less effective in his tactics than George Bush.

The “they hate us for our freedom” thing seems to have pissed him off. He responds, “we are a free people ... and we want to regain the freedom of our nation. ... If Bush says we hate freedom, let him tell us why we didn’t attack Sweden, for example. It is known that those who hate freedom do not have dignified souls, like those of the 19 blessed ones.” Dignified souls?

This part is cute: “We had no difficulty in dealing with the Bush administration because they resemble the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by the military and the other half by the sons of kings. He adopted despotism and the crushing of freedoms from Arab rulers and called it the Patriot Act, under the guise of combating terrorism.”

He even zings Bush for the “My Pet Goat” thing, although he thinks the kid was talking about her own goat (“It appeared to him that a little girl’s talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers”), which means 1) he really knows nothing about America, much less Florida, where there are not that many goatherds, 2) he hasn’t seen “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

Maybe the butting thing sounded better in Arabic.

That battle of perceptions

I’ve mentioned before the Bushies’ obsession with visual images in the Iraq War, from the staged toppling of Saddam’s statue to the flight deck, as if they’re constantly auditioning for a postage stamp.

This is especially the case for Secretary of War Rummy, who didn’t consider torture in Abu Ghraib an issue until the photos came out; before then it was “one-dimensional.” He was also much more angry about the release of the photographs than about what was in the photographs. At least one tactical decision, the assault on Fallujah in April, was entirely a response to images, those of the four dead contractors.

This week, Rummy gave a speech in which he said that terrorists are trying to scare off Americans with televised images of carnage. “They’re convinced that if they can win that battle of perceptions, managing the media and affecting people’s thinking, that we will lose our will and toss in the towel. Well, they’re wrong.”

The “war on terror” is not the only thing the Bushies are trying to sell as if it were toothpaste: they’re also trying to sell terror itself. The Blue Lemur has a scan of an RNC mailer with Kerry’s photo juxtaposed with images of the Twin Towers burning.

Precise

I have no idea how accurate the study is which says that 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq, but I do know what to make of the Pentagon spokesman who told the WaPo that this war has been “prosecuted in the most precise fashion of any conflict in the history of modern warfare”. Precise warfare is retail warfare. Swords are precise. Dropping huge quantities of high explosives out of airplanes onto cities, not so much.

Speaking of swords, a worker at a steel car-parts factory in Detroit made himself a sword over the course of several days and then killed a fellow worker with it. Good workplace rule of thumb: when someone suddenly starts making a sword, it’s not good.

Yesterday I mentioned a white Zimbabwean MP (one of three) who hit the justice minister, in parliament. He has been sentenced by that parliament to one year of hard labor. A bill of attainder, you don’t see those much anymore.

Putin is in Ukraine just days before its presidential elections, trying to boost the chances of Viktor Yanukovych. They even brought up the date of a military parade celebrating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Kiev from the Germans. I don’t get this mixing of symbols of national independence and national subservience. I also don’t get why some of the members of the military were dressed up as Snoopy pretending to be a World War I flying ace.



Speaking of Halloween, I’ve had this picture for a couple of weeks without thinking of anything especially funny to say about it. What I like about it is that when picking out a pumpkin, which are customarily carved into faces, he instinctively went not for a round pumpkin, but for one with a long “face” like his own.



(Update: Bob Goodsell finds the rich pumpkinny humor that I couldn’t.)

Or are they clones?

Team Chimpy is caught doctoring a photo in an ad, duplicating groups of soldiers.



It immediately counter-charges that in this picture Kerry stood next to only one flag. What sort of American stands next to only one flag?

Al-Qaqaa Cock-Up

Not to compare Bush with Hitler or anything (I generally find him more Mussolini-esque), but Bush’s political career might also die in a bunker. This one, at Al Qaqaa.



As it turns out, embedded reporters may actually have recorded the Al Qaqaa Cock-Up in real-time. The KSTP footage here (Internet Explorer only). The troops are so relaxed, and they leave the door unlocked behind them, because the area was supposed to have been secured, within a perimeter controlled by the US military.

If Bush can ignore “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside United States,” then he’s certainly capable of ignoring this label.



Speaking of ignoring the bloody obvious, his campaign operatives who gave the kid this sign seem to have forgotten that the Amish are pacifists.

Tom Coburn: genetic predisposition to being a douchebag?

At today’s Oklahoma Senate debate, Tom Coburn (R) took a breather from worrying about lesbianism in girls’ high school bathrooms to say that privatization of Social Security would be good for black men, who are currently cheated by the program because they have “a genetic predisposition to have less of a life expectancy.” And Coburn is supposed to be a doctor, so he should know. OK, after I heard that Coburn had run an ad considered to be racist (which I still haven’t been able to see), I asked how many of those under-age girls he sterilized were non-white. Now I ask it again.

Genetic predisposition, sheesh. Reminds me of former LAPD Police Chief Daryl Gates, who once suggested that the reason black people kept dying when police applied choke holds to them (a practice later outlawed) was that their tracheas might be narrower than those of “normal people.”

Chinamasiswa

Vocabulary word of the day: after a fight in the Zimbabwean Parliament, in which a white opposition MP hit the justice minister, who said that his farm had been seized because his ancestors were murderers and thieves, the justice minister has been given the nickname “Chinamasiswa,” which means “he who took such a beating he messed his trousers”.

Texas judges being, well, Texas judges, one decided to hold a party to welcome back a fugitive murderer, with balloons and streamers and a cake with one candle representing his one year on the lam. “We’re so excited to see you, we’re throwing a party for you,” the judge told Billy Wayne Williams, before sentencing him to life for assaulting his girlfriend.

A blind woman has had partial sight restored after getting a transplant of retinal cells from an aborted fetus. Let the shit storm begin. Cells from an adult would work, but with a higher chance of rejection, requiring immuno-suppressant drugs, which fetal cells do not.

It’s fun, in a shame-inducing way, reading about American politics in British newspapers. Today Shrub called Kerry a Monday-morning quarterback, and the Indy had to explain the term to its readers.

Bush keeps saying that Kerry will say anything to get elected. GeeDubya, of course, can say very few things, and can correctly pronounce even fewer. Someone should teach him how to pronounce his new title: Chinamasiswa-elect.

Meanwhile, Cheney gets at the real issues of the campaign, questioning “how often [Kerry]’s been goose-hunting before.” Yes, America wants to know.

AP story: “An Australian court ruled Wednesday that a convicted heroin dealer can claim a $165 million tax deduction for money that was stolen during a drug deal.”

In the world’s largest democracy, India, one-quarter of the members of Parliament face criminal charges, including over half the members of the Rashtriya Janata Dal party, a member of the ruling coalition.

Charges gone wild

Bushies are denouncing Kerry for talking about the Al Qaqaa Cock-Up, with Andy Card criticizing him for harping on “an old story...yesterday’s news,” and Karl Rove criticizing him for harping on...news, period. “Kerry, by so rapidly embracing the story, is going to end up being tarnished by it. What would he do as president? Get up every morning and say, ‘I’m going to govern based on what I find in the newspapers?’” Heaven forfend.

Bush himself says, “For a political candidate to jump to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief.” Oh lord, it’s just too easy; the man has no self-awareness at all. And Bush calls them “wild charges,” but won’t explain in what way they are wild, indeed won’t explain anything. So his counter-attack on Kerry’s attack also contains no facts, and the circle of life continues. His first words about the Al Qaqaa Cock-Up are an attack on Kerry for talking about the Al Qaqaa Cock-Up, because to do so is “denigrating the actions of our troops in the field.”

The Bush campaign site, georgewbush.com, has blocked access from outside the US (outside North America, anyway).

Quote unquote, register voters

The CIA’s transfer of Iraqi prisoners to other countries was backed up by a legal opinion (which the NYT for some reason called a “US Ruling” in a headline) that they weren’t covered by the Geneva Conventions. The government won’t say how it decides who is or isn’t covered, just that government agencies--the CIA? Defense Dept?--are the ones making those decisions. We do know that non-Iraqis who entered Iraq after the invasion began aren’t considered covered.

Even if we grant for the sake of argument that such people aren’t covered, the US decided to act in Iraq on the basis of secret rules only it knew. If some prisoners are to be covered by one set of rules and others by another set, then there are really no rules. The rule of law--even the international laws which cover warfare--is based on transparency, with everyone knowing what rules apply to them. Without that transparency, there is no more moral legitimacy than the kidnappers of Margaret Hassan have.

Onion headline: “Republicans Urge Minorities To Get Out and Vote on Nov. 3.” Which would be funny except that black Floridians really are getting phone calls that do just that.

Other voter-suppression techniques are actually just voter-inconveniencing, voter-confusing, and voter-discouraging techniques. They’ll accomplish the same goal without leaving quite the same stink as road blocks, “felon” purges, etc. The Ohio R’s just dropped thousands of challenges to voters they had claimed might be fraudulent, citing computer error (they had said that mail sent to these registered voters had been returned). I suspect this was the plan all along, to raise the issue and then drop it in order to create uncertainty (in fact to create the same lack of transparency I just complained about in POW treatment) among voters over whether they were actually registered, to discourage them from potentially waiting on long lines on election day (R’s also plan to make them even longer by challenging voters) only to find that they weren’t allowed to vote. The Ohio D’s have already decided not to challenge a ruling that will hurt them, that provisional ballots only count if cast in the correct polling station (incorrectly decided, as I explain below), because if it dragged through the courts any longer, voters would be too confused on election day.

Oh, the quote I couldn’t find yesterday: Cuyahoga County Republican Chairman James P. Trakas said, “The organized left’s efforts to, quote unquote, register voters -- I call them ringers -- have created these problems”. Quote unquote, indeed.

Why the 6th Circuit and other court’s rulings on provisional ballots are wrong: the federal law that created provisional voting said that voters had to cast provisional ballots in the same controlling authority--or some such phrase--as they were registered. This meant counties or their equivalent, not voting precincts which aren’t “authorities” in any sense.

(Update: My cat just received an email from Team Chimpy chair Marc Racicot, asking for money for the recount fund. It says, “Those who oppose us have already used theft, vandalism and assault as weapons to win this election. Their next stop will be the courts.”)

Thin line

Pakistan, still working on finding that thin line between civilization and barbarism, will get tough on “honor killings” by applying the death penalty to it. Honor killers can still get away with it by paying compensation to the families of their victims.

George Bush, still working on finding that thin line between civilization and barbarism, was asked if Christians and Muslims worshipped the same god. He said yes, except for the bad Muslims like bin Laden and Zarqawi, who “pray to a false god. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be killing innocent lives like they have been.”

It’s Bush’s day to tell people they aren’t living up to ideals which Bush actually opposes. He said that Kerry’s foreign policy “position of weakness and inaction” went against “the great tradition of the Democratic Party.”

Dick Cheney said of the Al Qa Qaa Cock-Up that “It is not at all clear that those explosives were even at the weapons facility when our troops arrived in the area of Baghdad.” This is known as turning lemons into lemonade, since the very reason it is not clear is that no troops were sent to secure the explosives.

Fallujah 1991

Here's what Ramsey Clark said in The Fire This Time: US War Crimes in the Gulf (1992):

“In mid-February [1991], missiles accounted for at least 200 reported civilian deaths and 500 more injured in the town of Falluja. ...These deaths were the result of two separate attacks, allegedly on bridges. ... However, witnesses disagree, calling the bomb placement intentional.” The bridge was 1 1/2 km. from the bridge. “The other attack destroyed a row of modern concrete five- and six-story apartment houses near another bridge, as well as several other houses nearby. As Middle East Watch described it, ‘All buildings for 400 meters on both sides of the street, houses and market, were flattened.’”

More fun with pictures from the Bush campaign web site

“Really; Dick Cheney’s head is like this big!”

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“Are these those Internets I keep hearing about?”

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“I’m with stupid.”

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An unholy ritual of some kind.

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“Hey, did you notice the flag?”

Vox simius, vox dei

Letters to the (London) Times deny that the guy I mentioned yesterday is the first Satanist in the Royal Navy, one claiming to have filled that in on a form in 1947. He was asked what special facilities he would require for Sunday worship.

Funny and all too appropriate John Bunning picture.

I should probably be thinking about the political implications of Rehnquist’s cancer. But instead I keep picturing him in a hospital gown with stripes on the sleeves and his butt hanging out. Please make it stop.

An Indy reporter says that he’s been to Al Qa Qaa, the arms depot with the funny name, before. It was named in Tony Blair’s “dodgy dossier” as a site where chemical weapons were manufactured. The Iraqi government immediately invited reporters to check it out, and they did, and it wasn’t. IAEA inspectors also regularly visited. So by the time the war started, the US knew exactly what was in Al Qa Qaa; it wasn’t an intelligence failure, but a failure to act on intelligence. But you know what they say in the Pentagon: 350 tons of high-quality explosive here, 350 tons of high-quality explosive there, pretty soon it adds up.

The WaPo Tuesday has a truly wrong-headed editorial suggesting that the candidates should promise now to “put the national interest first” and not challenge close election results merely because they might have been, ya know, stolen. That was Scalia’s logic in Gore v. Bush. The logic that the next president’s legitimacy would be harmed by his election being put under judicial scrutiny is the logic that causes the Bushies to complain about his being fact-checked, or about Chimpy’s assertions being questioned. My favorite recently was the campaign threatening legal action against MTV’s Rock the Vote campaign for discussing the possibility of a draft, saying that Shrub’s promise that he wouldn’t start one should have been enough to put the issue beyond doubt or discussion. Thus the title of this post, which hopefully is the Latin for “the voice of the monkey is the voice of God” (there seems to be no Latin word for chimpanzee), a play on the phrase Vox Populi, Vox Dei.

If my readership drops to zero tomorrow, I’ll blame my attempt to make a joke in a dead language I don’t actually know.

Anyway, I’ve heard R campaign officials--there was one today in Ohio talking about why they were planning to put thousands of workers into polling places to challenge voters who, ahem, look ineligible; I’ve lost the quote, but he was blaming it on D voter-registration drives, which he evidently considered tantamount to a dirty trick.

Good for...

The Bush campaign sent another email to my cat. Who is still not impressed.



This one cleverly appeals to her as a Californian, with a link to a webpage that shows “President Bush is Good for California.” Actually, it looks like no one even bothered to customize these pages for each state, just inserted the state name every sentence or two, like a piece of junk mail. There are no pages for Guam, Puerto Rico or the District of Columbia. Each page has pictures, and some of those are pretty generic, too, campaign events, people waving signs. Some are not. See if you can guess which state’s website this picture is from (all pictures are from the Bush website):



That’s right, Texas. Looks kinda naked without the hat.



Ah, that’s....better?

One of the California pictures shows typical young Republicans, at least in California.



And here’s Bush with a typical older Republican. After this picture was taken, he couldn’t color in his coloring books for a week.



After that, he decided it was safer to send a stand-in to California. No one noticed the difference.



He also sent a stand-in to Alaska, because he’s afraid of polar bears.



Arctic Warriors? Um, are we at war with the Eskimos or something? I think we should be told.

Legitimately targeted, regrettably harmed, shit out of luck

In talking about the historical amnesia over Fallujah, I missed a quote, from British Foreign Minister Jack Straw, who after the 4 contractors were killed said that it “was not the Americans who cast the first stone...in Fallujah.” My own historical amnesia was pointed out to me (by email) by blogger ManicNetPreacher, who noted that in the 1st Gulf War, the market in Fallujah was bombed twice (by the British).
(Update: he's written his own post on the subject, with more details.)

The Dayton Daily News used the FOIA to get hold of Iraqi compensation records, and found that most Iraqis were turned down, with such comments as “Coalition forces dropped ordnance during Operation Iraqi Freedom on legitimate targets. Your family was in an area that was being legitimately targeted and therefore regrettably harmed.”

Al Qaqaa Cock-Up

So we let 380 tons of explosives get stolen from the Al Qaqaa military base in Iraq. As Rummy likes to say, freedom is messy.

My contribution to the discussion of this fiasco is to give it a name, that in the title of this post. Please use it widely.

Triumph of the W

A member of the crew of the Royal Navy frigate Cumberland (his rank is “Leading Hand”) has been allowed to practice Satanism aboard the ship. When Churchill was First Sea Lord, an admiral complained that one of his proposed reforms went against naval traditions. Churchill replied that the only traditions the Royal Navy had were “rum, sodomy, and the lash.” No, I didn’t write a segue between those 2 items--does there always have to be a segue?
(Update: a reader informs me that the quote is apocryphal, pointing me towards the “Churchill didn’t say that, dummy” page of The Churchill Centre website.)

Although ethnic Serbs in Kosovo boycotted the elections, they are guaranteed 1/12 of the seats in the Kosovan parliament.

Lithuanian parliamentary elections are likely to produce a prime minister who made his millions from pickles. Should have a lot to talk about with Teresa Heinz-Kerry.

ANGRY BLACK FLORIDIANS FOR KERRY. Amusing AP headline: “Gore Urges Angry Black Floridians to Vote.” He told them, “If anybody ever tells you that one vote doesn’t count, you tell them to come talk to me,” adding, “really, come talk to me, I’m lonely. So very, very lonely.”

Another AP story describes a Bush rally: “And if the helicopter arrivals weren’t showy enough, Bush had Air Force One fly over the NFL football stadium in Jacksonville where tens of thousands of people were waiting to hear him speak.” Am I the only one reminded of the beginning sequence in “Triumph of the Will,” when Hitler arrived by plane for the Nuremberg rally? Just saying.



Really, just saying.

Fallujah, again & again

Kerry, according to the LA Times, is “framing the White House contest as a choice between hope and fear”. Guess which one is which.

Zarqawi has changed the name of his organization from Jamaat al Tawhid wal Jihad to Tanzim Qaedat al Jihad fi Bilad al Rafidain (Qaeda Organization for Jihad in Iraq).

How many of you were thinking “People’s Front of Judea?”

A few days ago I wrote a post which I called “Fallujah, again,” my point being that long before Fallujah became a symbol of Iraqi intransigence in the minds of American political and military rulers (a role it also took on for the Iraqi resistance), the crushing of which was central to the US mission, indeed long before most Americans had heard of the place, military ham-handedness had ensured that Americans would always be hated in Fallujah. I was trying to remind y’all of how in April 2003 US soldiers shot up two crowds of protesters, and any positive mission was irretrievably lost, leaving only conquest and subjugation.

I didn’t realize how necessary my reminder was until I read this LA Times article, quite a long one entitled “Why America Has Waged a Losing Battle on Fallouja.” Actually, before you read that (or if you don’t intend to), look at this sidebar timeline. Everything before the 4 US contractors were killed is ignored, giving the impression that Americans are the victims in all this and that the Fallujans brought on themselves the onslaught that is coming. The article isn’t quite as bad as the timeline, and is worth reading, but it glances over the school protest in 2 sentences in an 8,000-word article, and this near-amnesia about the events of 2003 allow it to buy into the demonization of Zarqawi and talk about the need to “root out insurgents,” as if it’s just “outside agitators” behind the Sunni uprising.

These are the most significant posts in this blog from the “lost year” of American operations in Fallujah:
4/29/03
5/3/03
6/8/03
6/15/03
9/14/03

Every vote counts--I mean, zero’s a number, right?

40% of Albanians live on streets which don’t have names.

The motto of the dark comedy that is Election 2004 is “Now, We’re All Florida!” To ratchet up our embarrassment for our nation one more notch, read about it in a British newspaper. I like the description of Florida’s plan to deal with the manual recounts required by law as “staggeringly devious”:

The state will now permit analysis of the computerised machines’ internal audit logs in the event of a close race, she said, but if there is any discrepancy the county supervisors are to go with the original count. In other words: we will do recounts, but if the recounts change the outcome we will disregard them.

And the article presents a “nightmare scenario” in which the Supreme Court turns the election back to state legislatures, which technically have the right to appoint electors irrespective of how the electors actually voted. One update: the 6th Circuit is allowing Ohio not to count provisional ballots cast at the wrong precinct (which is a bad ruling based on a bad reading of the law, as I understand it). The number of people accidentally disfranchised will certainly be surpassed by the number deliberately disfranchised. People should not be prevented by petty loopholes and technicalities from voting for the people who will create future petty loopholes and technicalities.

On this subject, see also this NYT editorial.

Speaking of crappy elections, the Serbs in Kosovo boycotted today’s elections, almost unanimously.

Dick Cheney was inspired, evidently by the sign pictured behind him, to conjure up a world in which Kerry had always been president: the US would have “ceded our right to defend ourselves to the United Nations,” Saddam would have taken over the whole Persian Gulf, the Soviet Union would still be intact, and the Grinch would have stolen Christmas. Enchantment, indeed.

With the same energy I put into going after that goose...

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court quietly destroyed the 1st Amendment, ruling that a newspaper is not protected when it neutrally reports something defamatory said by one person, in this case a borough councilman, about another.

The Polish parliament fails to reintroduce the death penalty, 198-194. Yay!

After watching Kerry’s 1971 testimony in “Stolen Honor,” it is a weird contrast to see Kerry today trying to use the Vietnamese War to bolster his image. “With the same energy ... I put into going after the Viet Cong and trying to win for our country, I pledge to you I will hunt down and capture or kill the terrorists before they harm us.” “I can wage a better war on terror than George Bush has.” A better war on terror, for chrissake.

What is his current position on the justice of the Vietnam war? Here he’s equating the Viet Cong, whose goals were confined to Vietnam, with terrorists who plan to harm us. The “win for our country” phrase suggests that Vietnam was a just war, in American interests to fight. The “before they harm us” suggests he’s swallowed the Bush Doctrine of preemption hook, line and sinker, and claiming the ability to read people’s thoughts and kill them before they act on those thoughts.

Kerry went on, “And we will wage a war on terror that makes America proud and brings the world to our side.” Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think I’m ever going to be proud of a war on terror(ism). If you support the “war,” you should consider it a necessary evil, if you don’t, it’s an unnecessary evil. Pride doesn’t enter into it.

I watch “Stolen Honor” so you don’t have to

Although if you want to, you can find it here. This is the original, not the version that just aired. And I’m using a not-completely-accurate “rush transcript” from Daily Kos to check quotes against my own notes, but I went into it fresh.

Before I forget: every anti-Kerry former POW interviewed in the film is white. I assume because we only sent white people to fight in Vietnam.

The argument, if one can distinguish it with that word, is that Kerry’s 1971 testimony was a stab in the back (Dolchstoß, in the original German version of this theme),



which resulted in the US losing the Vietnam war (“a cause lost more at home than on the battlefield”), and POWs being kept by the Vietnamese longer than they would otherwise have been (“the anti-war crowd...owe us two years”) (I know how he feels: the makers of this film owe me 42 minutes of my life back).

I’m a little unsure of the causality of all this, but John Kerry in 1971 was evidently the most powerful person in the country--who knew? Because Kerry called some American soldiers “war criminals,” the North Vietnamese thought that the POWs they held must be war criminals and... no, sorry, the logic escapes me.

The existence of actual war crimes is rejected out of hand, Kerry accused of knowingly lying about them. My Lai is mentioned in order to dismiss it, in the fashion of Rumsfeld talking about Abu Ghraib, as an isolated incident, and anyway wasn’t Lt. Calley punished? (With about a year of rather luxurious house arrest, as I recall). There is some talk, mostly from wives of former POWs, of the US military being over there just to help the Vietnamese people.

It should be pointed out that Kerry’s crime consisted of talking (oh, and he went to North Vietnam too) and being believed. He “wrote the first draft of history,” creating the image of the American soldier in Vietnam that has dominated media portrayals (they really don’t like Apocalypse Now, which oddly enough they hold Kerry responsible for).

They don’t like him having talked about Vietnam in 1971, and they don’t like him talking about Vietnam now. “By making his actions during and after the war the corner-stone of his political career, he forces us to feel again the old agonies and regurgitate old doubts.” At this point, the film just sounds whiny.

So the themes are 1) Kerry is a big ol’ liar, 2) criticizing a war while it’s going on, or even 30 years later, is bad, and 3) we don’t want to have to regurgitate old doubts. In fact, doubt is bad, period. And Jane Fonda also sucks.

Tremulous with anticipation

An Ohio case shows one Bush strategy for “winning” the election in the courts by stopping challenges to election-rigging dead. The Ohio secretary of state, Kenneth Blackwell, has already shown his willingness to use petty rules (the thickness of the paper used in voter registrations) to deprive people of the right to vote. Now he’s decided that voters can’t cast provisional ballots except at their own polling places. Let’s pass over the rights and wrongs of this case and focus on the US Justice Dept. position, which is that individuals and the Democratic party have no standing to challenge such rules, and that only Ashcroft’s merry minions may sue to enforce election laws.

Bush says Kerry “does not understand the enemy we face and has no idea how to keep America secure.” Yes, George W. Bush is accusing someone of knowing less about something than he does.

By the way, note Bush’s newest rhetorical trick: strategic non-use of contractions. This is also on display in “He can run, but he cannot hide.”

The London Times has the correction to end all corrections: “In our leading article of Tuesday, November 14, 1854, we described the Charge of the Light Brigade as a disaster...” Evidently it wasn’t that bad. Also, their correspondent’s sentence “This melancholy day, in which the Light Brigade was annihilated by their own rashness” has bad pronoun-verb agreement.

Not that I would ever condone such behaviour, but some advice to the next people trying to hit Ann Coulter with a pie: study the methods used in the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.

The Welfare State: A British consultant psychiatrist writes in the British Medical Journal about discussions over whether to find a prostitute for a resident of an old age home in his 80s whose regular one had stopped coming around. The staff refused to help him find a new one (he was hard of sight and hearing, making it difficult for him to do so), so he started asking female staff members. They hired a male orderly to follow him around, full time, to prevent him propositioning the women, before eventually finding a prostitute for him. “Mr Cooper had been tremulous with anticipation, and the cab had already been summoned, when the liaison was called off by social services. There had been a second change of plan. Social services now took the view that the prostitute was a sort of therapy, and they would only continue the ‘therapy’ if it was initiated in an NHS hospital and was shown to have a beneficial effect on his behaviour in an inpatient setting.” Eventually he died unfulfilled. It’s a funny story, of course, but you can read it as human interest or for what it says about the treatment of the elderly in institutional settings.

My, what big teeth you have, grandmother

Seen the Bush “Wolves” ad yet? Others have dealt with the ongoing slander on wolves and the fact that the intelligence cut Kerry supported was a Republican plan. I want to highlight two words: “In an increasingly dangerous world, even after the first terrorist attack on America ... John Kerry and the liberals in Congress voted to slash America’s intelligence operations.” What was the first terrorist attack on America? The assassination of McKinley? The bomb-thrower at the Haymarket riot? I presume they mean the first attack on the World Trade Center, but if the casual viewer understands it to mean 9/11, that’s just fine with the RNC.
(Update: and what do the wolves have to say, you ask.)

A reader wrote to ask, “How long do you think it will take to have a decision on the presidency? I mean assuming the Republicans don’t steal it outright.” As I thought about all the factors involved--the inevitable court challenges in close states, voting-machine meltdowns, dirty tricks, felon purges, voter suppression, incomplete voter lists, etc--it became clear how much the legitimacy of the electoral process has been damaged (good Orcinus post, with lots of links, on these issues). When you think of Bush or Kerry or Nader or Pelletier “winning the election,” do you think that he will have 1) won the most votes, 2) won the most electoral votes, 3) won the most Supreme Court justices, 4) won the most state Supreme Court cases? The link between votes cast and outcome seems to be more and more attenuated. We won’t really believe the final vote count. We will know that many who wanted to vote were disenfranchised, one way or another. I really don’t want to spend another 4 years putting the word president inside quotation marks.

The same reader has brought my attention to Ohio’s Issue I. 11 states have anti-gay marriage measures on the November ballot. Ohio, which already bans gay marriage, will vote on whether “This state and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage.” This is a roll-back of rights going far beyond marriage. Civil unions, which exist in some localities, would go, but the phrasing is so vague that it might also ban gay adoption, domestic violence provisions for unmarried couples, insurance coverage, etc etc.

Elephant man

“Left I” has 2 Cuban stories. State Dept spokesmodel Richard Boucher, asked about Castro’s broken knee, said of the 78-year old man, “You’d have to check with the Cubans to find out what’s broken about Mr Castro” and refused to wish him a speedy recovery. Class, pure class.

Also, in a story I can’t believe got so little attention, the Bush admin argued in the Supreme Court last week that the 917 Mariels (shipped by Cuba to the US in 1980) still in American detention have no right to be freed, ever. John Paul Stevens asked whether, if they have no rights at all, they could just be summarily shot. The gov lawyer said no, but couldn’t explain why not.

The Washington Post (finally) checks up on one of Bush’s oft-repeated claims: “Townsend, Bush’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, said ‘three-quarters’ of ‘the known al Qaeda leaders on 9/11’ were dead or in custody. Asked to elaborate, she said she would have to consult a list. White House spokeswoman Erin Healy referred follow-up questions to the FBI. Spokesmen for the FBI, the National Security Council and the CIA did not respond to multiple telephone calls and e-mails.”

California is evidently going to pass a proposition to make primaries “non-partisan,” with all voters being able to vote for any candidates in the primaries, irrespective of party, with only the top 2 being on the ballot, and those as centrist, bland, and death-penalty-supporting as possible. After it passes, I will never be able to vote again for major statewide public offices. So please, Californians, and I will say this bluntly to catch the search engines, Vote no on 62 (for the rest of my prop. endorsements, use the link at the top of the right column).

You may have heard that Gubana Aahnuld Schwarzenegger demonstrated his alleged independence from his own party by coming out in favor of stem cell research (Prop. 71). But he did it late. Indeed, he did it to bolster his unearned rep for independence, then use that rep for Republican goals. Today, my mailbox was graced by an expensive booklet of “Gov. Arnold S.’s Ballot Proposition Voter Guide,” which was paid for by the Republican Party ($2 million, 5 million copies mailed out), which does not feature any position on 71. You can see it by clicking below on what I assume is an unintended juxtaposition on their website (it shows up this way on IE & Foxfire, but not Opera), showing an elephant emerging from Arnie’s forehead. It’s an impressive piece of obfuscatory propaganda, designed to uninform. For example, its description of Prop 63, which it opposes, is “new tax and state bureaucracy,” with no explanation that it is for mental health services. It does say that 63 “will not contribute one cent to education or dealing with the budget crisis.” Or to legalizing ownership of ferrets, but it’s not supposed to. And it says Prop 66 “waters down three strikes law,” creating “another loophole”. The loophole is that for a criminal to get life imprisonment for a 3rd strike, it would have to be for a violent crime, not stealing a slice of pizza.

But what annoys me about this document, why I’ve spent so long on it, is the impropriety of its use of the trappings of office: the governor’s seal appears no fewer than 3 times on the cover and 16 times in total, in a leaflet put out by one party. It is legitimate to put the Gropenführer’s influence into play, but not his office. There are no stylized elephants in the pamphlet.

How much training do you need to learn that it’s wrong to force a man to masturbate?

Fidel Castro trips and breaks his knee. The Times of London helpfully provides a photo sequence of the fall.

Bush signed a law providing $82 million in grants for preventing suicide among the young. And yet he still funds abstinence programs, which can’t be helping.

Brad Friedman has a list of some of the audio/video clips of Bush’s more embarrassing moments removed from the White House website.

Alternet on polls showing that Bush supporters (the unreality-based community) still believe that Iraq had WMDs and links to Al Qaida. Oh, and they believe that this is exactly what experts and the 9/11 Commission have determined. And the percentage of people who are wrong on the facts is increasing over time. In some ways it’s reassuring that so much of Bush’s support is based on pure pig ignorance (they are also wrong about his positions on various issues). In other ways, not so much.

Sgt Ivan Frederick of the Abu Ghraib Fredericks is going to jail for 8 years. The prosecutor asked, “How much training do you need to learn that it’s wrong to force a man to masturbate?” I’m pretty sure that’s a trick question.

Be vewwy vewwy quiet, I'm pwooving my manwiness to swing voters

John Kerry went hunting in Ohio today.

Shouldn’t that be cetacean-American?

Kerry: “The president says he’s a leader. Well, Mr. President, look behind you. There’s hardly anyone there. It’s not leadership.” Ah, the old “Look behind you!” ploy.

Clearly, everyone needs to call their Congresscritter and ask if they have had a flu shot. If they have, vote against them, the wimps. That’s what I like about American elections, their sense of perspective: yesterday Cheney threatened that if Kerry were elected, American cities would be hit with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, rains of toads, the slaying of the first born, crappy parking, etc, and today Kerry attacked Cheney for having been vaccinated.

The 9th Circuit throws out a suit by the “cetacean community” against the Pentagon for damage caused to them by the use of sonar. A scientist brought the suit on the cetaceans’ behalf, in order to bring attention to their plight by becoming the butt of late-night comedians’ jokes.

From the White House website, Department of Shamelessness:

Email the White House...
Q:Heidi from Grafton, WI:
My mother called me in a panic today, because she heard that President Bush has a plan to privatize Social Security. Is this right?
-- Click here for more...