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Karl Rove weighs in on the “bulge” under Bush’s jacket: “there was nothing there.” See, I’ve been calling Shrub an empty suit for years.
London Times headline: “Funeral Exposes Arafat’s Failings.” You’d think if there was one thing he couldn’t be blamed for...
Colin Powell: “We know that, in the eyes of the Palestinian people, Arafat embodied their hopes and dreams for the achievement of an independent Palestinian state.” I like how he doesn’t quite say that the Palestinian people are idiots for believing that, but nudges right up to the line.
Indeed, many are asking how a people could stick with a leader who constantly failed. But enough about George W. Bush....
A couple of days ago I castigated Bush for saying, “There will be an opening for peace when leadership of the Palestinian people steps forward and says, ‘Help us build a democratic society.’” I thought he meant they should ask the US for help. It’s actually stupider than that, because today he said a Palestinian state would depend on “the Palestinian people’s desire to build a democracy and Israel’s willingness to help them build a democracy.” So they’re supposed to ask Ariel Sharon for help, even though he has done so much for them already.
There’s an amusing exchange in the same press conference in which Bush is asked what would happen, in Iraq as well as Palestine, if a non-democrat is elected, and Bush rejects the whole premise of the question:
Well, first of all, if there’s an election, the Iraqis will have come up with somebody who is duly-elected. In other words, democracy will have spoken. And that person is going to have to listen to the people, not to the whims of a dictator, not to their own desires -- personal desires. The great thing about democracy is you actually go out and ask the people for a vote, as you might have noticed recently. And the people get to decide, and they get to decide the course of their future. And so it’s a contradiction in terms to say a dictator gets elected. The person who gets elected is chosen by the people. ... And if they don’t -- the people of the Palestinian Territory don’t like the way this person is responding to their needs, they will vote him or her out.
It’s a contradiction in terms to say a dictator gets elected. HITLER, you moron, short fella, funny mustache, you must have heard tell of him at some point.
The coup government of Haiti plans to issue an arrest warrant for ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. For corruption.
Picture from Fallujah, prisoners captured by Marines. Say, when Tom Ridge told us to stockpile duct tape, do you think this was what he had in mind?
US Gen. Richard F. Natonski accuses the insurgents of storing weapons in mosques and schools in Fallujah. He does not say where he would consider it legitimate to store weapons. He says, “This is the enemy that we fight. It doesn’t respect the religious mosques or the children’s schools.” 1) mosques: Under the Same Sun has a picture of US soldiers wearing boots in a mosque and lounging around on prayer rugs. 2) schools: to repeat myself, when American occupied Fallujah for the first time a year and half ago, they took over schools and shot people who protested that take-over.
There have been a spate of articles criticizing the US’s Fallujah strategy, it’s belief that it could beat the insurgents in one set-piece “Battle of Fallujah” in which a geographic territory was captured, like this was World War II, or cowboys & Indians. The Pentagon seems to be surprised and annoyed that the guerillas aren’t playing their assigned roles. This is how it’s been for 3 years. The Onion soon after 9/11/01 had an article, something like: US to Give Al Qaida a Country So We Can Invade It. Soon after, Bush decided that Afghanistan would do as a proxy for AQ, and then Iraq. Fallujah is mimetic of a larger failure of understanding, as the US continues to think geographically and fights a take-that-hill war against enemies that do not think geographically (although they would prefer it if Americans kept their dirty boots out of their mosques and schools).
Update: There is, after all, a link to the Atlantic article I mentioned yesterday about Gonzales’s death penalty memos, which I’ve added to that post.
WAR CRIME ALERT: The NYT reports that refugees fleeing Fallujah “were detained by American military patrols, who allowed the women and children to continue but tested the men for explosive residue. All tested negative, and were sent back to Falluja in accordance with procedures established by the American military to maintain the city’s isolation while fighting continues inside”. American procedures are to send males back into an active war zone, where anything that moves is shot, where the population is running out of food and water and electricity have been cut off.
The Iraqi pseudo-government is issuing orders to the media on how news should be slanted, for example that they should “differentiate between the innocent Falluja residents who are not targeted by military operations and terrorist groups that infiltrated the city and held its people hostage under the pretext of resistance and jihad.”
And the Russian Duma votes to ban all depictions of violence from tv between 7 am and 10 pm, including in news programs.
Rumsfeld says that a good model for Iraq to follow would be...El Salvador.
Shrub, on why the Iraqi elections will be a success in spite of everything: “Well, I’m confident when people realize that there’s a chance to vote on a president, they will participate.” In fact, there will no such chance: the president will be chosen by the national assembly. Not a details man, is GeeDubya.
OK, looking beyond that little mistake, what are we to make of the sentence? Is Bush saying that Iraqis would be interested in voting for a president but not for a national assembly, implying that they really want a strong-man rather than a representative democracy?
The US military is increasingly admitting that the leaders of the resistance have long since escaped Fallujah. So why is no one asking whether it’s worth laying waste to an entire city in pursuit of a few low-level gunmen?
The NYT notes that “because the American marines have seized the hospital in Falluja, television and newspapers have not been able to show pictures of bleeding women and children being taken into emergency wards.” Now does that mean that they are preventing the pictures being taken, or that women and children are bleeding, but not being treated?
I’m thinking of starting a pool on which Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, unfamiliar with the whole concept of Hispanics, will be the first to refer to the attorney-general-designate as “Albert O. Gonzales.” Or possibly as Speedy.
ABC affiliates covering 1/3 of the country have decided not to air “Saving Private Ryan,” because of fears that the FCC would fine them for its 3 dozen plus (according to Daily Variety) uses of “fuck”--contractually, and good for Dreamworks, the movie must air unedited. Fines weren’t the issue for the affiliates--ABC promised to pay--rather, the stations were afraid of losing their licenses at renewal time. Now, this isn’t just tv stations running scared and preemptively censoring themselves, post-Janet Jackson: the FCC could easily have stopped this nonsense by giving an advance waiver. Considering that the FCC already ruled in 2002 that Saving Private Ryan is not indecent, in response to a complaint by idiot puritan Donald Wildmon, this should have been a no-brainer, but the FCC instead told the stations to exercise their own judgment and risk the consequences. As far as I’m concerned, that decision to leave the threat of a multi-million-dollar fine hanging over the stations’ heads amounted to an act of state censorship. Tom Coburn, who so objected to Schindler’s List, would be proud.
Viewers in the affected regions will be treated to less f-word-laden fare such as Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in “Far and Away,” “Return to Mayberry” (!), and in Austin, schizophrenically, an episode of Oprah followed by “Lethal Weapon III.” Honestly, I don’t know whether Return to Mayberry or Lethal Weapon III is the better ironic commentary on the whole affair. At least I hope they’re intended as ironic commentary. Happy Veteran’s Day.
Bush, in his condescending, white-man’s-burden mode: “There will be an opening for peace when leadership of the Palestinian people steps forward and says, ‘Help us build a democratic society.’” For a man who keeps saying that freedom is a gift from God, he sure acts like he thinks it’s a gift the United States can give.
I could almost have believed that troops really found a “hostage slaughterhouse” in Fallujah (and didn’t the term slaughterhouse spread rapidly through the media?), but my credulity was strained by the CDs of beheadings and the uniforms, and then they claimed also to have found records with the names of foreign fighters, and, according to an Iraqi general, “huge amounts of weapons and records detailing which country had offered it as a gift,” and I found my intelligence being insulted in a major way.
Remember Afghanistan, that country we brought freedom to? Its supreme court just banned cable tv, because of criticism of Bollywood films and Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments (ok, that one I can understand). A supreme court spokesman specifically cited a criticism from the ulema (clerics) council as reason for the ban. Something I missed: the supreme court tried to ban one of the presidential candidates for questioning whether polygamy was Islamic.
In France, where 22% of male prisoners were convicted of sex crimes, the government will introduce voluntary chemical castration. Insert your own obvious but somehow satisfying joke here.
NYT story on members of Colombia’s congress who support the death squads.
Bush nominates Elian Gonzales, the little Cuban boy with the magic dolphins who won our hearts, to be attorney general. Oh, all right, Alberto Gonzales with his own connection to Cuba, or at least Guantanamo Bay. Here’s a longer version of the “quaint” quote from his memo to Bush (long pdf here) which you will be hearing a lot: “As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war. In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions”. It’s the dismissiveness of the word quaint that makes this quote so obnoxious. After an election that Karl Rove tells us was won by R’s because they support eternal moral values, Gonzales’s view of civil and human rights, as well as international law, is that they are situational and revocable at the will of the executive.
Gonzales has worked with Bush for a long time, so there’s quite a record. One part of it was examined by the Atlantic Monthly in the July-August 2003 issue, the written summaries of 57 death penalty cases prepared by Gonzales for Governor Bush, on which Shrub, made the decision to execute or to...well, okay, he only decided to execute. The memos were cursory, assumed no mistake could ever be made by the legal system, and left out any mitigating evidence, information about ineffective counsel, witnesses with conflicts of interest, mental retardation, evidence of actual innocence, etc. They never included the defense’s clemency petitions, so Bush effectively only heard from one side. Now, Bush always claimed that his philosophy was that the governor shouldn’t second-guess the courts, so the information Gonzales failed to provide him was, arguably, information Bush had no interest in acting on. But does that “philosophy” sound like Bush? Does he seem overly scrupulous about checks and balances?
Bush praises American soldiers for doing “the hard work necessary for a free Iraq to emerge.” Or possibly the free work necessary for a hard Iraq to emerge.
With Ashcroft resigning, I may not be able ever again to subtly work in these two facts, as I have every time I’ve mentioned his name in the last four years: 1) he believes dancing is satanic, 2) he lost an election to a man considerably less frisky than Arafat is today. Ashcroft wrote in his resignation letter--I didn’t believe it either when I first read it, but it’s true--that “The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved”. Ah, but WHICH Americans? “The rule of law has been strengthened and upheld in the courts.” Well, that would be the place for it.
You can see why he’s resigning: after conquering both crime and terror, there’s nothing left to do but sit at home and wait for Jesus. He says that there have been no terrorist attacks in the US since 9/11. Uh, anthrax, does that ring a bell at all?
The letter is a masterpiece of hyperbole: under Bush, evidently crime has disappeared, drug use among young people has declined (which I attribute wholly to a statistical glitch: the Bush twins turned 21), and “corporate integrity has been restored with the work of your Corporate Fraud Task Force.” Had you noticed that corporate integrity had been restored? Me neither.
And finally, the man who brought us the Patriot Act writes, “I have handwritten this letter so its confidentiality can be maintained until the appropriate arrangements mentioned above can be made.”
Rumsfeld on how Iraqis will converted to democracy by the demolition of Fallujah, demonstrating that he has no clue how people think (“tipping” refers to something he calls a tipping point, which shows that although we seem to be making no process, at some point a balance will tip and...) (I think it has something to do with cow-tipping, which seems like Rummy’s sort of a pasttime): “Over time you’ll find that the process of tipping will take place, that more and more of the Iraqis will be angry about the fact that their innocent people are being killed by the extremists. And that they’ll want elections, and the more they see the extremists acting against that possibility of elections, I think they’ll turn on those people. ... And when I use this phrase ‘tipping,’ people don’t go from here over to there, they move this way, just a slight bit, and pretty soon the overwhelming majority are over in this area, recognizing that that’s the future. The future’s not a dark future of cutting people’s heads off.”
How very reassuring.
Hear no evil:
Arafat’s wife accuses Palestinian leaders of wanting to bury him alive. Ariel Sharon thinks about Arafat being buried alive, spontaneously ejaculates.
Asked about the invasion of Fallujah, Rummy Rumsfeld says, “I cannot imagine that it would stop without being completed,” and, true to his word, spontaneously ejaculates.
This AP picture is of an American soldier injured in a car bomb, his Purple Heart taped to his chest so he doesn’t lose it while being evac’ed to Germany.
So the Fallujah hospital was targeted because the last time we invaded Fallujah, it released figures of civilian casualties which the US military claims were inflated even though it also claims not to be doing its own counts; so the hospital is “a center of propaganda.” Let me understand this: American troops attacked a hospital in order to IMPROVE their image.
Allawi, speaking to Iraqi troops: “Your job is to arrest the killers but if you kill them, then so be it.” Wink wink.
And even less subtly: “You need to avenge the victims of the terrorists like the 37 children who were killed in Baghdad and the 49 of your colleagues who were slaughtered.” “May they go to hell,” shouted the soldiers. “To hell they will go,” Allawi replied.
Contrariwise, the Iraqi defense minister told reporters, “We’ve called it Operation Dawn. God willing, it’s going to be a new, happy dawn for the people of Fallujah.”
The American code name for the operation is Phantom Fury. Sounds like a comic book character.
While figures vary considerably as to how many civilians remain in the free-fire zone that is Fallujah, the Pentagon, not surprisingly, low-balls it at 50 to 60,000, and claims, “terrorists in the city are preventing families from leaving Fallujah. According to residents, terrorist plan to use citizens as human shields, then claim they were attacked by friendly forces.” Okay, one, bullshit, two, “friendly forces”?
A couple of recent WaPo article explain how the Iraqi elections will be structured to ensure the “correct” outcome. This one says that there are strict rules governing who can run for the National Assembly. Education, no criminal record, a good reputation, and a number of other vague rules that can be made to disqualify whoever they like. Also, de-Baathification rules, which are very likely to be applied unevenly. And this editorial suggests that a “monster coalition” party list will be hammered out before the elections based on closed-room negotiations in order to forestall any real electoral competition. Read both articles, it’s the details that will ensure elections that might be formally correct but have no democratic aspect to them whatsoever. Also, the Iraqis insisted on letting expats vote, a process which will be highly susceptible to fraud. Also, they just declared 60 days of martial law, renewable. Which is funny, because “Comical” Allawi keeps talking about bringing the rule of law to Fallujah, and martial law is by definition the suspension of ordinary law. And doesn’t martial law imply a military, which Iraq doesn’t really have one of? Unless you count this one:
Can you guess what military objective the boys in green are storming? Yup, the hospital. And here the brave candy-stripers assist what I can only hope are not patients.
And this dethpicable soldier is having way too much fun.
Karl Rove today: “If we want to have a hopeful and decent society, we ought to aim for the ideal, and the ideal is that marriage ought to be, and should be, a union of a man and a woman.” In other words, gay marriage is hopeless and indecent.
Doug Ireland has translated a Le Monde story about an Iraqi judge who challenged the Allawi clique’s unlawful detention of 110 people, supposedly as Iranian spies, and was fired for his troubles.
The US military has taken over Fallujah’s main hospital (which I believe is its only hospital), not that it matters, since the hospital is on the wrong side of a bridge which the Americans closed. All roads and bridges have been closed, and there are one or two obvious questions the press do not seem to be asking:
- Are any provisions being made to get food to the residents of Fallujah, now that it has been sealed off?
- What happened to the patients at the hospital?
- Fallujan men under 45 were given the option of being arrested if they left the city or being starved, shot at and bombed if they stayed. How many have been arrested, and what’s happening to them?
We’re seeing a curious number of pictures of American soldiers praying before the massacre begins. This sort of thing:
And, um, this:
And there are lovely, godly sentiments expressed by commanders at these gatherings. Colonel Gary Brandl (Marine Corps): “The enemy has a face. It’s Satan’s. He’s in Fallujah and we’re going to destroy him.” And Lt-Gen John F Sattler (ditto): “This is America’s fight. What we’ve added to it is our Iraqi partners. They want to go in and liberate Fallujah. They feel this town’s being held hostage by mugs, thugs, murderers and terrorists.” Mugs? Who does this guy think he is, Edward G. Robinson?
Speaking of imperialist wars, when the Ivory Coast asked France to police a peace deal, I don’t think it had in mind France destroying its entire air force--ok, 2 planes and 5 helicopters, but still the entire Ivorian air force.
As I look for sources of humor and outrage in the next few dark years, I suspect much bloggy goodness will be had from Oklahoma’s new senator, Dr. Tom Coburn, he of the lesbian fetish, sterilizations of under-aged girls, racist ads, belief that black men are genetically inferior, calls for death penalty for abortion doctors, etc. He’s also the guy who complained about all the nudity and bad language in Schindler’s List. These are links to earlier posts which mention him, some of which link to outside articles: link link link link link link.
So when I heard that he’d written a book, I bounded over to my public library and checked it out: Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders into Insiders (2003).
Since I just added the Powell’s link, I should make very clear that I am not recommending that anyone read, much less buy this book. For a start, he doesn’t talk about lesbians in bathrooms or any of that good stuff. Mostly it’s about the budget process.
At the time of the book’s writing, Coburn was out of Congress, having kept his pledge to leave the House after 3 terms. He was a Gingrichite (aka Newtzie), one of the bomb-throwers of the class of 1994. He is inordinately fond of using the word “revolution” for the enterprise that group of ideologues was engaged in, and the book is an attack on R’s for having been too soft and compromising in their pursuit of Newtie’s agenda. Ultimately, he even broke with Gingrich, proving himself more royalist than the king (I was going to write that phrase in the original French, but I believe Ashcroft plans to outlaw any use of French as sedition). He was especially let down when the government shutdown of 1995 was abandoned. The adults in the Republican party came home just as the party was getting good; “Enough is enough,” Bob Dole said.
Coburn wanted the government cut down to size. About the size of a basketball team. He’s one of those for whom every time the federal government spends a dollar, an angel dies. And he believes the reason this doesn’t happen is that we don’t have enough citizen-legislators such as, for example, himself. Instead, Jimmy Stewart goes to Washington and is instantly corrupted, “going native” as he describes it, a phrase more telling than he intends since it derives from white imperialists, smugly confident in their own cultural and moral superiority. Seniority in Congress, i.e., going native, “tends to erode sound judgment and character”. He pathologizes power (and Washington DC), portraying it as either a cancer that consumes morality, or as a drug to which people become addicted. He also likens it, over and over, to the ring in Lord of the Rings. You’d never know that, while he kept his commitment to term-limit himself out of the House, he would soon be running for Senate. And while he did deliver a few babies (he makes a big deal about delivering babies, which he did right through his time in the House; I’m gonna take a wild guess that he’s using it as some sort of metaphor for purity)(he doesn’t mention sterilizing under-age girls and then billing Medicare), he got Bush to appoint him to the AIDS Commission, where he fought against condoms and for abstinence-only sex ed.
While his arguments against pork and fraudulent budgeting practices are legitimate (and obvious), there’s a great gap between the need to eliminate highways-to-nowhere, and dismantling most of the federal government. In fact, the connection between the paucity of uncorrupted congresscritters and his goal of microscopic government is so clear in his own head that he doesn’t bother actually to make the case. His ideal is citizen-legislators whose short exposure to the Ring will allow them to make unpopular decisions, except he won’t acknowledge their unpopularity. Several times he describes these little vignettes in which he explains to old people that they don’t really want Social Security increases at the expense of their grandchildren, and they all go away convinced. Unanimously. And the same when he gave up road funds for his district, and agriculture subsidies. This is a man who still believes, or claims to believe, that the 1994 elections were a mandate to destroy 60 years of social programs, just as Shrub thinks 2004 is a mandate.
Coburn does not play well with others, so I’m not too worried about the damage he might inflict. It’s as likely as not to be inflicted on his own side. And I suspect there’ll be a few filibusters in the future--in 1999 he tried to filibuster in the House, which doesn’t actually have filibusters.
I’ve added a Powell’s Books search box to the right column. I get a commission from any sale that goes through it, so it’s a nice way to support this site while engaging in one of life’s great pleasures, buying books. Shipping free on orders over $50. But don’t neglect your local independent bookstores either. Feel free to email me with any comments, suggestions, jeremiads against my crass commercialism, reminiscences about the early days of the Web when it wasn’t about making a fast buck, it was all about the porn, etc.
The Iraqi “government” declares a state of emergency in most of the country. So what has Iraq been in for the past two years if not a state of emergency?
A story from the new improved Afghanistan: An American adviser to the Afghan finance ministry, Vincent White, made the mistake of vetoing several corrupt contracts. So the police beat the shit out of a male Afghan acquaintance of his, forcing him to say that White had paid him to have sex, a crime that carries a penalty of up to 15 years. He spent 4 weeks in prison before being released. The US embassy did nothing besides give him the names of Afghan lawyers--none would represent him. Why is this story not in any American paper, according to news.google?
A new German company sells do-it-yourself gravestones, on the Ikea model. They’re astonishingly chintzy and only $1,600.
Better start screwing a few together for the people of Fallujah, a city whose name is about to join the rank of place names that have been turned into names of events: Dresden, Vietnam, Guernica, Columbine, Hiroshima, and Intercourse, Pennsylvania.
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.”)
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?
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.”
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?
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.
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.”
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?
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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?
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.)
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
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.)
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?
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.”
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.
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).
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.”)
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.
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.’”
