I would hope that the Senate would take my word

Iraq’s parliamentary elections are now scheduled for Jan. 30. A BBC caption notes, “Violence in hotspots like Falluja threatens to disrupt the poll.” But no one ever asks if the poll threatens to disrupt the violence, the one utility we’ve succeeded in getting to run on time (little Mussolini reference there), with great efficiency. Fallujah may not have electricity or water, but it does have hot and cold running violence.

Meanwhile, back in the other imperialist war, the Catholic cardinal of Abidjan and Ivory Coast’s President Gbagbo have accused the French military of decapitating several young protesters. The defense minister of France, where the guillotine was invented, said the “outrageousness” of the claims “strips them of any credibilité.”

The Senate voted to buy Chimpy a presidential yacht, and Rising Hegemon is having a contest to name it. My entrees:

SS Shock and Awe

SS Mission Accomplished

SS Can’t Get Fooled Again

SS And I Can Start Drinking Again On It And No One Would Ever Find Out And Why Are You Writing That Down?

SS Freeance

I could do this all day. Go add your own.

Ted Stevens thinks that because he has given his word that he would never use his power to look at tax returns and then post them on the internet, they should just pass the bill. “I would hope that the Senate would take my word.” Ted, I don’t actually think you asked for this power or would use it, but I don’t want my privacy dependent on the “word” of anyone. Does the phrase “a government of laws, not men” mean anything to you? If we wanted government by unaccountable hereditary monarchs with unlimited powers we’d have... never mind.

In America, patience and fortitude will always lose to biscuits and gravy

The WaPo notes, in an editorial I can’t be arsed to link to, that Bush has made almost no use of the power of clemency, despite the fact that we’re all supposed to forgive and forget everything he did before age 40 because, you know, God did. The article worked in some reference to the annual Thanksgiving pardon of turkeys, which reminded me that last week I was at the White House website and saw a link to a page where one could cast a vote in that pardon process. Which sounded like it meant they’d show you pictures of various turkeys and you could vote on which ones to save, a bit macabre, but turned out to be voting to name the pardoned ones. To spare you further suspense, I will just say that “Biscuits” and “Gravy” won, with 19,581 votes, crushing Adams & Jefferson, Salt & Pepper, and what must have been intended as a sop to the Puritans: Patience & Fortitude. I did not vote, because there was no place to write in Shock & Awe.

Gene Weingarten, naming either liberals’ fears about the next 4 years, or Dick Cheney’s secret checklist:

They think that we will begin invading small countries for frivolous reasons, such as that we want their sorghum. They think we will so inflame global hatreds that we will destabilize the world the way a baseball bat destabilizes a flamingo. They think we will become a corporate kleptocracy -- that big businesses will no longer even have to go through the formality of getting tax breaks because the federal treasury will simply mail them cash. That the portraits of the presidents on our money will be replaced by portraits of famous robber barons. That it will be illegal to be black. That Planned Parenthood clinics will be allowed to issue only chastity belts and clothes hangers. That the pledge of Allegiance will include the phrase ". . . under our Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, King of the Patriarchs, Master of the Apostles, Redeemer of Souls, Shepherd of the Only True Way, Vanquisher of Islam . . ." That, in terms of puritanical zeal, we will come to resemble 17th-century Salem, with ritual stoning of heretics or potty-mouths. That we will be forced to use words such as "thee" and "thine." That it will be illegal to have sex unless you are wearing pajamas.

Auditions for the Baghdad Rep production of Chorus Line are not going well.

Get rid of

Bush: “the will is strong, that the effort is united and the message is clear to Mr. Kim Jong Il: Get rid of your nuclear weapons programs”. See, this is why we need a president who can speak the English language, because someone is going to have to explain that by “get rid of” he didn’t mean sell them on Ebay.

The new delicacy in Europe: horse milk.

Somebody tried to sneak a provision into the appropriations bill giving committee the chairs of the appropriations committees of the House and Senate access to anyone’s income tax returns. Ted Stevens, chair of the Senate committee, said it was all a mystery to him how that happened.

Rep. Jerry Weller has married a member of the Guatemalan parliament, the daughter of former dictator and genocidal maniac Efrían Ríos Montt. See this previous post for a rant on the subject.

Partisan stalker

Tom DeLay, who once said he supported the impeachment of Clinton because Clinton held “the wrong worldview,” calls Chris Bell, who successfully brought an ethics charge against DeLay, a “partisan stalker”.

Little known DeLay fact: he was expelled by Baylor U. for drinking and carousing.

A WaPo editorial suggests that Bush & Condi should “Watch Venezuela,” which it accuses of moving in an authoritarian direction. Which may be true, but after Bush supported a coup attempt against the democratically elected president, his administration now has no moral standing to say anything about Venezuela. The editorial, which mentions the coup attempt but not the American support, says, “It is difficult for the United States to respond to Mr. Chavez, in part because he has adopted Mr. Castro’s practice of portraying the United States as an enemy bent on imperial intervention in Venezuela.” Yeah, can’t imagine what reason Castro and Chavez would have to think of the US that way.

The AMA is considering going after the medical license of Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher. Doctors aren’t supposed to participate in executions--do no harm, you know--and he signed a death warrant. As much as I’d like to side with the AMA on this one, its job is to police doctors’ ethics only when they’re acting as doctors.

Not just for Christmas

Israel apologizes for its army killing 3 Egyptian border policemen. You’d never know from some of the press descriptions--the NYT writes that “an Israeli tank crew fired on an Egyptian patrol near the border with Gaza”--that the Israelis fired into Egypt which is another country. Also, the Israeli tank being on that particular road was a violation of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Egypt is being very forgiving about the whole incident, which does legally constitute an act of war, including letting the Israelis investigate, although the deaths occurred, as I said, in Egypt.

Putin announces that Russia will soon build a totally awesome new nuclear weapon that none of the other cool kids have, only he can’t say what it is. He also totally has a girl friend, only you’ve never seen her because she goes to another school. Absent from the announcement: any hint as to why Russia needs new weapons, and against whom they’d be aimed.

Worthy charity of the week: http://www.adoptasniper.org/

Aware of information

On his way out the door, Colin Powell is turning up the heat on Iran, saying it’s working on delivery systems for nukes. Well, gosh, I’d sure hate for the smoking gun on that to be a mushroom cloud--I’ve heard that that’s bad. He says he has “seen intelligence” and is “aware of information that suggests” that Iran is up to mischief. Uh huh. Aware of information would be a step up for most Bushies, but it’s still not a ringing endorsement of the truth of the charge: “This is a date which may well live in infamy, if I have my facts straight.” “J’accuse, j’pense.”

A UN report says that opium production now employs 10% of Afghanistan’s population and is the “main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond among previously quarrelsome peoples”. Isn’t that sweet?

Divorce is legalized in Chile as of today. In the entire world, only Malta and the Philippines have no provision for divorce.

The Scottish Parliament legalizes public breastfeeding in any location where children are allowed, and makes trying to stop breastfeeding a crime. Plan your vacations accordingly. The Conservatives opposed the law, oddly enough using the phrase “nanny state.”

Molly Ivins has more on Tom DeLay and ethics rules. A must-read.

Canadian PM Paul Martin expels from the Liberal Party an MP, Carolyn Parrish, who appeared on a comedy show and stamped on an effigy of George Bush.

The world deserves better toilets

I’m still hoping for more amusing stories than this one to come out of the world toilet summit in Beijing. But it did have this quote:

“People are saying ‘We want good toilets!’ because toilets are a basic human right and that basic human right has been neglected,” said Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organisation, a co-sponsor of the summit. “The world deserves better toilets.”

That did lead me to that organization’s website, which should be viewed if only for the logo. And one may “join us as a toilet ambassador today.” Don’t bother downloading the song, though.

Speaking of toilet ambassadors, the real problem with changing the rules to let DeLay stay in power after he’s indicted is the claim that the prosecution is politically motivated. That claim might be marginally acceptable for the R’s to make against a district attorney, even a judge, but not a grand jury composed of citizens.

Now if there were some way to torture blasphemers using origami....

Following the model of sorryeverybody.com, there’s a new one where Californians offer amends for electing Ahnuld. No, wait, it wants to amend... the constitution ... so he can become president. Dear lord no. Still no sign of him giving up his Austrian citizenship.

From the American Prospect website: “FUN WITH NAMES. You have to hand it to George W. Bush: He has a very sophisticated sense of humor. Naming a ‘Spellings’ (his former education policy advisor in Texas, Margaret Spellings) as education secretary? Next, perhaps someone named ‘Nucular’ to replace former energy secretary Spencer Abraham?”

The Netherlands’ government thinks it has the solution to the religious violence, burning of mosques, etc, that has escalated since the murder of Theo van Gogh: revive the blasphemy laws. The law against “scornful blasphemy” was enacted in 1932 for use against a communist paper which had suggested banning Christmas. Presumably, van Gogh would have been prosecuted for saying mean things about Islam, so there would have been no need to kill him.

In a sillier but less obnoxious response to religious violence, the Thai prime minister has called on Thais to fold 60 million origami birds, to be dropped from military planes on the country’s Muslim provinces. Said PM Thaksin, “The birds will also send the message that Thais of all races and religions love peace.” I did mention that they’d be dropped from military planes, didn’t I?

The strength, the grace and the decency of our country

Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state. It is to shudder. Although to give Shrub credit, Rice is not the least diplomatic person he could have found for the job, but Rumsfeld was busy, doing such a good job fucking up Iraq. Bush said today, “in Dr. Rice, the world will see the strength, the grace and the decency of our country.” Really, that’s what they’ll see?



Speaking of the world seeing the strength, grace & decency of our country, I can’t help noticing that we haven’t heard a word from Rummy on the subject of the prisoner execution in Fallujah. Or from Bush. Or from anyone with a familiar name. That incident badly needs a name, to help ensure it doesn’t get swept under the rug. Pending somebody offering a better name, I suggest the alliterative Murder in the Mosque, with apologies to T.S. Eliot. Also, we still haven’t heard from any US member of Congress willing to go on record against the summary execution of wounded prisoners. There was a time when such a shooting bothered people just a little.

Cultural sensitivity

The military responds to the shooting of that unarmed wounded prisoner in Fallujah by taking a firm stance in favor of moral relativism. The Times says, “Pentagon officials quickly let it be known that in a separate incident the same day a Marine was killed and five were wounded by a dead body that was booby-trapped.” So that’s ok then. In fact, many of the Marines interviewed by various press people defend the killing (for example), and none express outrage of even the mildest sort.

The marine commander in Fallujah says, “The facts of this case will be thoroughly pursued to make an informed decision and to protect the rights of all persons involved.” All persons? I can’t wait to see how they protect the rights of the guy who was shot to death.

AP has a story, “Iraqis Remove Corpses under U.S. Oversight,” implying great cultural sensitivity on the part of the Marines for using Muslims to ensure the burial of the dead of Fallujah according to Muslim burial practices. Did I mention the booby-trapped corpses?

AP also brings us this stunner: “Shooting of Iraqi in Mosque Angers Muslims.”

Speaking of cultural sensitivity:

A Nigerian court has sentenced a man to death by hanging for murdering his wife so that witch-doctors could use her organs to bring him riches. Robert Ibrahim Chilaka, 42, killed Cecilia, 25, and took her body parts to the ritualists who promised him one million naira (£4,060) but fled without paying him. (AFP)

Speaking of cultural sensitivity (in as much as campaign corruption is part of Republican culture) House Republicans will tomorrow change their rules so that Tom DeLay can remain Majority Leader when he is indicted for campaign finance violations.

Settlers in Gaza will be richly compensated when/if they are ever removed. They can use the money to move to... the West Bank.

Sec of Ed. Rod Paige resigned, according to his spokesmodel, to “devote attention to a personal project”--remodeling his home.

Google special

I wasn’t sure if I would put up a link to the “unedited footage of marine shooting unarmed Iraqi,” to quote the Google search that led many disappointed punters to this site today, but I’ve seen the video in its bowdlerized (see, I said that word would come up again) form several times now, on the News Hour, BBC, etc, and the act of sanitization annoys me a little more each time, even though I have no desire to watch it. So I just hope you’re all here for the “right” reasons, and here’s the link.

I’m not sure it is in the nature of our American friends at the moment to return favours systematically

US troops are in the process of sealing off Mosul.

Bush spoke to Muslim leaders at an Iftar dinner to celebrate the end of Ramadan: “We will always protect the most basic human freedom, the freedom to worship the almighty God without any fear.” He was then immediately struck by lightning.

Tony Blair: “It is not a sensible or intelligent response for us in Europe to ridicule American arguments and parody their political leadership.” That’s just for people in Europe, right? Because if I couldn’t parody American political leadership, life would not be worth living.

In that speech, Blair pathetically explained to Europeans that Britain was a bridge between the US and Europe, and implied that Bush’s very crassness made him valuable to the Europeans: as a lightning rod for terrorism: “If America were to pull up the drawbridge, retreat from its obligations and alliances abroad, the terrorists would attack the rest of us.”

Jacques Chirac responded by pointing out that Blair has gotten nothing out of his alliance with the US: “I’m not sure it is in the nature of our American friends at the moment to return favours systematically.” Yeah, Jacko, but revenge for that sort of comment is something we still do pretty darned systematically, so unless you want a rerun of the whole “freedom fries” thing, watch it.



Oh dear lord, four more years of being his butt monkey.

“He’s fucking faking he’s dead. He faking he’s fucking dead.”

Cheery thought of the day: since 4 years of fronting policies he wasn’t allowed to help formulate has left him with no credibility, Colin Powell has a choice: either remain “loyal” and watch his memoirs go straight to the remainder bin, or say what he really thinks about Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz etc.

Powell will be replaced as chief diplomat by the least diplomatic person in the White House. Condi grew up in the South and has convinced herself that she had to be twice as good as everyone else to succeed (what does that say about everyone else?). In that as in so much else, she is deeply delusional. Should fit right in.

Expect State to be ideologically purged, just like the CIA.

Bhutan will ban tobacco sales next month.

A 93-year-old Englishwoman named Dorothy Bland has blown up her house in Newcastle. “I was only making a cup of tea,” Ms. Bland said. I’m going to hell for finding that story amusing.



The Hungarian parliament has turned down the government’s request to extend the deployment of its (non-combat) troops in Iraq another 3 months.

A Marine kills a wounded, unarmed prisoner. In a mosque. On camera. “He’s fucking faking he’s dead. He faking he’s fucking dead,” one Marine says (and try saying that five times fast), and then he or another Marine shoots him. “He’s dead now.”

As I understand this, a day or two before, one unit captured 5 wounded insurgents, and then just left them in a mosque, making no attempt to get them treated. A day later another unit came back (not to get the wounded, but because they thought the mosque had been re-occupied. By that time, 1 was dead and 3 were close, and the incident ensued. I haven’t seen the footage yet, but I gather it’s widely available, and widely censored to preserve our delicate sensibilities.

The haircut of President Ion Iliescu is not in the public interest

There is only one known German survivor of World War I.

With elections coming up in Romania, the opposition has formally protested a tv report on President Iliescu, who will be running for a senate seat, getting a haircut. “The alliance considers that the haircut of President Ion Iliescu is not in the public interest,” says the Truth and Justice Alliance.

The Massacre of Fallujah involved a number of war crimes, from the shutting off of water to the refusal to let male inhabitants flee to the shooting of dogs (which may not technically constitute a war crime, but isn’t very nice). Now, the Iraqi Red Crescent is being denied access to the city, on the grounds that the US military can provide relief. The only reason for this is to force every inhabitant to be seen by the Americans, which is to make humanitarian assistance a subordinate, integrated part of the counter-insurgent operation (with a little ritual humiliation thrown in--hey, Bob Hope’s dead, they have to get their entertainment somewhere). A Col. Shupp of the Marines insisted he knew of no civilians in Fallujah, adding “We are on the radio telling them how to come out and how to come up to coalition forces.” Radio? The electricity was cut days ago.

So where’s the outrage? Is there a single Democratic politician complaining about the needless deaths of Fallujan children from diarrhoea, or any of the rest of it? I said days ago that Fallujah would enter the ranks of places whose names are transferred from places to events, like Dresden. Now I think it will be ignored and quickly forgotten, a little speedbump to roll right over, just like...

(That is indeed a dead body everybody’s just ignoring like a fart in church.)

We still haven’t seen a figure for how many of the Iraqi soldiers who were supposed to participate in Operation Dawn of the Dead actually showed up. They did no actual fighting, just searched a few buildings the Americans had already cleared, and stood around looking all Coalition-of-the-Willingy for the cameras. Once again, they have proven that if the US pulled its troops out tomorrow, Allawi would be swept away within days.

At least the Iraqi soldiers, I assume, didn’t bring their dolls, excuse me, “action figures.”

What, not even his deep-fried Mars bar?

The Bible, which has already been translated into Cockney rhyming slang and Yorkshire dialects, will soon make it into Scots. Here’s the 10th commandment: “Ye maunna covet yer neibour’s hoose; ye maunna covet yer neibour’s wife, nor his sairvant chiel, nor his sairvant lass, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor onything that is yer neibour’s.”

Ah, Republican values! Linda Schrenko, the first woman elected to a statewide office (school superintendent, of the creationist/prayer-in-school type) in the backward state of Georgia in 1994, is being indicted for misappropriation of funds. She stole money intended to buy computer services for deaf children to pay for her cosmetic surgery when she ran for governor.

So Bush is ordering an ideological purge of the CIA. Just when I thought it was impossible for the Bushies to disappoint me, there they go again. I had hoped for the sake of the country that the absolute refusal to admit mistakes was just an electioneering stance, and they would quietly work to correct the conditions that led them to get it consistently wrong on WMDs, yellowcake, being greeted as liberators, etc etc. But no, they really don’t want to be told uncomfortable truths. Not only are they unwilling to learn from their mistakes (or incapable of doing so), but Junior is also unwilling to learn from his father, who was quite upset that Jimmy Carter didn’t keep him on as director of central intelligence. That post was traditionally supposed to be non-partisan, like the FBI director, because intelligence is not supposed to be politicized. So Richard Helms, appointed DCI by Johnson, didn’t give Nixon a letter of resignation in 1969.

Stop and think about what sort of people would prefer not to have objective analysis (not that the CIA was truly objective, but on the big issues of the last few years it’s been right much of the time): the answer I come up with is people who don’t believe in the existence of objective facts separate from ideology.

No casualties

Correction: it wasn’t the US that said the fighting in Fallujah was over, it was the Iraqis. The Americans say that there are still pockets of resistance, adding “you know, like pockets in the pants of a really fat guy, like Fallujah-sized pockets.”

And “Comical” Allawi says that there have been “no casualties among civilians” in Fallujah. None. For that single statement, that outrageous denial of the human cost of a massive assault on a city, he deserves to be driven out of public life. The sort of person who could utter a lie like that does not care two shits for the people of Iraq.

Some mission. Some mop.

The US is declaring mission accomplished in Fallujah except for the, you know, mopping up.

AP reports that the GAO found that for some of the newly “trained” Iraqi troops, their only “training” consisted of putting on the uniform.

Bush’s Saturday radio address, a speech so Panglossian as to give a bad name to Panglossian speeches, talks of 115,000 “trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other security personnel ... serving their country”. It’s that “other” you have to wonder about.

Also, remember the phrasing Shrub used in the 2003 State of the Union address, “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” and how Condi Rice would claim that Shrub’s clearly false statement was “accurate” because of the attribution to British intelligence? Well, today he said, “An Iraqi general has described hostage slaughter houses, where terrorists have killed innocent victims and proudly recorded their barbaric crimes.” My bullshit detector just went off.

I don’t think any press source has asked this question: those quarter-million Fallujans who supposedly evacuated the city before the Massacre of Fallujah began--where did they all go?

The London Sunday Times has seen records of a Gulfstream executive-type jet hired by the CIA & Pentagon to fly prisoners to countries that will torture them, including Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Syria and Uzbekistan. Over 300 flights. They also have a 737.

Let the bowdlerization begin

Senate Democrats seem likely not to oppose Alberto Gonzales’s nomination, because setting the legal groundwork for Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib is nowhere near as significant as, for example, hiring an illegal immigrant as a nanny. Remember Zoe Baird? Remember Kimba Wood? If not, go have a look, and remember the standards nominees of a Democratic president were expected to meet. At the time, I thought that Baird had disqualified herself from being attorney general (Wood was another matter), but Nannygate somehow doesn’t compare to the disregard for the rule of law Gonzales has demonstrated.

The LA Times has a good editorial on the Saving Private Ryan incident, which, like the legal work of Mr. Gonzales, shows the dangers when the predictable application of the rule of law is replaced by the whim of the executive:

the FCC’s refusal to provide advance guarantees to affiliates that it wouldn’t take action if they aired “Saving Private Ryan” makes it look as if the commission’s main priority is to tailor its response to whatever level of pressure it feels from self-appointed morality guardians.

A more sinister interpretation (and the LA Times may be right that it’s just weak-minded opportunism) would be that maintaining ambiguity about what standards it would apply, and applying them unevenly, induces self-censorship, as we just saw happen, which isn’t the PR problem that overt censorship would be, but gets the job of bowdlerization done at least as well. (If you don’t know the word bowdlerization, look it up, because I guarantee you will see it again as the puritans settle into their work with the special sort of glee seen only in those who are improving everyone else’s morals, whether they like it or not.

Democracy will have spoken

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?

This is the enemy that we fight

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).

Searching for role models in the wrong places

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.

A chance to vote on a president

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.

It’s not like it’s “Shaving Ryan’s Privates”

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.

Help us build a democratic society

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?

It's hard work

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.

The president is not a panel

A federal judge has ruled against the Bush claim that he can act by himself in tossing people into Guantanamo without a proper hearing, saying “The president is not a panel.” He is thick as two planks of wood, but I guess that’s not close enough.

So remember:

≠

Speaking of his nibs, today he said that the goal in Fallujah was to “bring to justice those who are willing to kill the innocent”. I’m telling you, he has absolutely no self-awareness.

I must quote the Guardian, solely because of the colonel with the hilarious name.

“My concern now is only one - not to allow any enemy to escape,” said Colonel Michael Formica, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division. “I want them killed or captured as they flee.”

This one doesn’t seem to be fleeing.



Nor these guys, the Fallujah Theater Troupe doing an adaptation of the classic Italian Neo-Realist film “The Bicycle Thief.”

Hurrah! “The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved”

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.”

The future’s not a dark future of cutting people’s heads off

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:

I cannot imagine that it would stop without being completed

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.

A new, happy dawn for the people of Fallujah

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”?

Why children in Fallujah will soon scream at the sight of a teddy bear

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.

Here: a hopeful and decent society. There: mugs, thugs, murderers, terrorists and the face of Satan

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.

Know your enemy: your stupid, stupid enemy. Part I: Tom Coburn

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.

Now they tell us

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?

DIY gravestones, in time for Christmas

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.

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.”