Desperate Insurgents

Molly Ivins on John Bolton: “Good news! If there is a distinct possibility a Bush nominee is a vile-tempered, lying, ineffective bully, the U.S. Senate is willing to hold off on the vote for two weeks.”

As I write, I’m watching Tony Blair being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on the BBC, broadcast here on C-SPAN. The first question is whether Blair wants to apologize for anything. If you want to see what tough questioning of a politician looks like, it repeats at 8:30 pm PT and Sunday night 6 & 9.

Waiting for that to come on, I caught some of a briefing by Pentagon spokesmodel Larry DiRita. He explained that “spectacular” Iraqi insurgent attacks were a sign of “desperation,” in much the same way that Teri Hatcher’s breasts on Desperate Housewives are spectacular. OK, he didn’t say that, but it would have made more sense than what he did say.

Also from that briefing, our Jargon Alert of the Week: Iraqi military and governmental types are “Iraqi elements of progress.”

Burma evidently used chemical weapons against the Karen rebels. Now watch the world spring into action. Really, just watch, it’ll spring into action any... minute... now...

From the AP: “Two Norwegians who thought a rowing boat was the perfect getaway vehicle after robbing an ambulance boat were foiled because they could not row. Police who arrested the men near the town of Askvoll said they were rowing in opposite directions.”

A Japanese company is producing a ghost detector. I want one.

Da means nyet

Scotty McClellan on the Bolton nomination (via Gaggle-obsessed Holden): “I think what you’re seeing is some Democrats on the committee trumping up allegations and making unsubstantiated accusations against someone the President believes will do an outstanding job at the United Nations.” Why are tax dollars paying for this man to call elected representatives liars?

And then a bit later he accused the D’s of “lower[ing] the discourse”.

Hugo Chavez is distributing 1 million copies of Don Quixote free to Venezuelans.

In Russia, Condi Rice gave another of her lectures on democracy, saying that Putin should have less control over the media. Her speech was not covered by any of the national tv networks. So that would be a no. (She spoke in a live radio interview.)

Speaking of “no,” although some media keep calling Rice a Russia expert, when she tried speaking Russian during the interview she several times said Da when she meant Nyet (when asked if she would be running for president).

Her mouth says da, da, but her eyes say nyet, nyet.

Oh, and she also called for regime change in Belarus.

The mystery of Madaen (also spelled Madain, I note for Google purposes) continues. 57 bodies (other reports give other figures) were pulled out of the Tigris. President Talabani insisted they were some of those hostages he still claims were taken by Sunnis — in fact, he claimed to know the names of all the victims and all the kidnappers. So the high standards of veracity and, dare I say it, comicality set by Iyad Allawi will remain intact.

Anyway, here’s a sentence about the bodies from the London Times; it contains three verbs — see if you can spot which verb is missing: “Police identified and photographed them before burying them.” That’s right: they seem to have been buried without being autopsied. There isn’t any mention of a proper forensic investigation in any other report I’ve seen either.

Most unnecessary article of the day, from the Times: “Analysis: Why Iraqis Fear Militias.”

Tom DeLay says scrutiny of his ethical shortcomings “certainly has gotten me closer to God.”

Poor God.

Habemus papam

Isn’t it nice to see the papacy return, if not to Italy, at least to another member of the Axis Powers?

I thought about staying away from this pope thing, not being Catholic. I thought I didn’t have a dog in this fight, and then “God’s rottweiler” won. A member of both the Inquisition and the Hitler Youth. And yes, I know he was a youth (14) when he was in the Hitler Youth, but I’m not willing to write it off as a Hitler Youthful indiscretion, not when he’s supposed to be a spiritual leader of a billion people. The fact that membership was compulsory is neither here nor there. The Catholic church has saints who were boiled or stoned or impaled to death for maintaining their beliefs when they were younger than he was when he joined. Is the position of the church now that no one has to behave morally until they reach at least 14? And as far as I know, he’s never apologized. There were no good choices in Nazi Germany, but he followed the easiest path, the path of — dare we say it? — moral relativism.

And he’s done a lot of unpleasant things — a whole lot — in his clerical career as well, but the Hitler Youth thing alone is disqualifying.

BREAKING NEWS: Condoleezza Rice turns against her master, saying that she was worried by “the centralisation of state power in the presidency.”

Oh, sorry, she meant in Russia.

The Tom DeLay Defense: Their Only Agenda Is the Politics of Personal Destruction

Tom DeLay sends out an email to his dwindling, but fanatical, fan base.

It should come as no surprise that following the 2004 election-year attacks on the President

That’s called an election campaign, moron.

that the Democrats, their syndicate of third party organizations (Common Cause, Public Citizen, Move-On, etc.)

Oo, syndicate, that’s a really scary word, Tom. Very Murder Incorporated. Very machine-guns-in-violin-cases.

and the legion of Democrat-friendly press would turn their attention to trying to retake Congress.

Democrat-friendly. You make it sound so... dirty.

It would be quite easy to write an entire book about how Democrats, and many in the press, have chosen to selectively report and strategically ignore many FACTS about me and my work as Congressman for the 22nd District.

Yeah, go write a book, Tom, that should keep you out of mischief. Although watch how many WORDS you CAPITALIZE, it tends to make you look like a NUT.

Tom DeLay does not stand accused of any violation of any law or rule in any forum and has never been found to have violated any law or rule by anyone.

He prefers to remain seated. If he stands up too quickly, his toupee goes all askew.

Democrats and their Outside Front Groups are Colluding to Target DeLay

Very 1950s. I like how “outside front groups” combines McCarthyite rhetoric about front groups with Southern racist rhetoric about outside agitators.

Democrats have made clear that their only agenda is the politics of personal destruction, and the criminalization of politics.

Oh, and universal health care, some of them want universal health care.

They hate Ronald Reagan conservatives like DeLay and they hate that he is an effective leader who succeeds in passing the Republican agenda.

Bringing in the big guns. Really envy Ronnie’s teflon, don’t ya, Tommie boy?

He follows by listing the various ethics complaints he claims to have been exonerated on, although that “exoneration” tends to take convoluted, legalistic forms such as this (about his attempt to bribe Nick Smith into voting for the Medicare drug bill in exchange for DeLay supporting Smith’s run for Congress):

The issues raised by the conduct of the Majority Leader in this matter are novel in that conduct of this nature and the implications of such conduct have never before been addressed or resolved by the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Indeed, the Majority Leader’s testimony indicates that he did not believe he acted improperly under House rules during his encounter with Representative Nick Smith. In addition, the Investigative Subcommittee believes that the relevant facts related to the Majority Leader’s conduct — described in detail in this Report - already have been fully developed. In the view of the Investigative Subcommittee, these factors mitigate against further investigation and proceedings in this matter.

See, wasn’t that a clear exoneration? Or maybe they called him a douchebag, I’m not fluent in gibberish. And if he didn’t believe he was acting improperly, well, ignorance of the law (or the ethics rules) is always a defense, isn’t it? Anyway, having defined exoneration to his own satisfaction, if no one else’s, he moves on to more Dictionary Fun:

An “Admonishment” is Not a Sanction ... The verb “admonished” was used and is now exploited to mean some sort of sanction.

Writing about this in October, I said that admonishment was “from the Latin word admonere, meaning to moderately chide someone with no sense of shame.”

The Democrats refuse to let the [Ethics] Committee meet because they are still trying to politicize the ethics process and block the Committee from doing its work.

How can they politicize a process they’re preventing from occurring?

Next, DeLay again falsely accuses D.A. Ronnie Earle of partisanship.

Texas has only recently become a Republican state, so Earle’s claim that he prosecuted Democrats too is a red herring.

Read that again; try to follow the logic. Warning: don’t read it a third time, as your head will explode.

The trip DeLay to Russia [sic] in 1997 and the United Kingdom in 2000 were proper.

Here I agree wholeheartedly: it’s the fact that he returned to the United States that I object to.


Tom DeLay, and friend

Unimaginative

In Russia today, Condi Rice says, “One can’t imagine reverting back to Soviet times”.

And Condi, 4/8/04: “No one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon”

Recycling racist propaganda for grins and giggles

This picture of an anti-Japanese protest in Hong Kong appeared in today’s NYT:



The poster is adapted from a 1942 American poster. In the original, the words on the arm read “American labor.” In this version, they read People's Republic of China. A little odd to see Chinese using this poster.

Talabani: We are independent now

So that whole story about Sunnis taking hostages in Madaen and ordering all Shiites out of a town was a fake. The government that the US planted in power after a war justified by false rumor and innuendo is now governing by false rumor and innuendo, quel surprise. The story was evidently planted in order to foment sectarian discord and discredit the army, which Rumsfeld told the Iraqi government, just last week, that it shouldn’t (read: couldn’t) purge of Baathists (read: Sunnis). Today Talabani says that he favors such a purge, but if not, he’ll be happy to use Shiite and Kurdish militias — “popular forces,” he calls them — instead. “We cannot wait for years and years of terrorist activity because we haven’t enough government forces,” he says, although the two months it took after the elections before he was selected for his current post doesn’t indicate any great sense of urgency up until now. He dismisses American opposition to the use of militias by saying “But we are independent now.” Funny, wasn’t he the guy just a few days ago saying how American troops would need to stay for some time yet? Being independent would entail, sort of as a minimum, his government being able to survive five minutes without Americans keeping him alive.

Talabani also repeats his opposition to the death penalty for Saddam Hussein, but says he might just happen to be out of the room when that decision gets made. A man of strong principle... but weak bladder.

Remain calm

From the Daily Telegraph’s contents page:

Shias asked to flee

Sunni Arabs who seized control of a town near Baghdad threaten to kill hostages
unless the Shias in the area flee, Iraqi officials have said.

Asked?

The town, by the way, named Madaen, is only 20 miles from Baghdad, in case you were taken in by all the happy talk about the insurgency declining. It’s hard to tell how big a deal this particular event is, but given all the stories today in the NYT & elsewhere marking the 30th anniversary of the Khmer Rouge ordering everyone out of the cities, this tactic of the "Sunni Arabs" (!) is a little worrying.

Fortunately we have Iyad ("Comical") Allawi, who somehow is still interim prime minister, to reassure us. This sentence is from the Reuters report:

He said some people were trying to implement "wicked plans of extremist terror"
and urged Iraqis to remain calm.

Not exactly a lullabies and sweet dreams kind of guy.

A gift to humanity

Follow-up: West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin has vetoed the Hillbilly English-only bill.

But is it art? From the Observer: “A Berlin couple plan to have their first baby at an art gallery on 24 April. Winifried Witt and Ramune Gele described their decision to have their child at the DNA-Galerie in central Berlin as ‘a gift to humanity’. About 30 people are expected to attend the birth.” I’ve heard of an art opening, but this is ridiculous.

A WaPo exclusive contains the stunning news that the American military commander in Afghanistan claims to be winning. Lt. Gen. David Barno went on to assert that any really spectacular military action by the Taliban will just show their desperation. Heard that one before. Barno says that Talibani are giving up because “they don’t want to be in this fight that goes against the tide of history here in Afghanistan any longer.” Yes, Talibani hate going against the tide of history, they positively pride themselves on their trendiness.

California prison guards, who have a ridiculously powerful union, have been getting training credits for finding words in jumbles, you know the sort of thing. For example at Pelican Bay last December, guards found words like candycane, elf, Frosty, and Santa Claus for one hour’s credit. Guards are of course supposed to be finding actual elf and frosty, which are I believe street slang for amphetamines and cocaine respectively, up prisoners’ asses, at least I assume that must be the rationale.

An LA Times article gives the D’s their strongest approach to combating Bush’s judicial nominees. It points out the existing strong R majority on most federal circuit courts, with only the currently evenly divided 6th Circuit due to change hands. So it’s not, can’t be, about fighting R domination of the judiciary; rather, the article says, it’s about “the kind of Republican who joins the courts”. That’s what the D’s should be saying. And oh look, here’s Rick Santorum writing an op-ed piece in the WaPo, paving the way for the nuclear option by pretending that Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown (she’s the daughter of a sharecropper, you know) are middle-of-the-road jurists unfairly hurt by an “unprecedented campaign of obstruction.” He uses the word “extreme” two times in as many sentences. Rick Santorum does. Rick fucking Santorum. And then accuses the D’s not only of dissing the American people by their stalling of Bush nominees, but of threatening the separation of powers.

A NYT article Saturday about the US cancelling water projects in Iraq and shifting the money to the military contains this killer quote from a civil engineer: “If the Americans think that training the Iraqi Army comes before clean drinking water for the people of Halabja, then we can’t expect anything from them.” And of course Halabja is a Kurdish town, so a stronger Iraqi army doesn’t protect it but actually threatens Kurdish autonomy.

The Sindy reports that the US has been selling arms to the Haitian coup government in violation of its own supposed arms embargo.

At long last, someone has developed a methodology for the typical unification of access points and redundancy

The Pentagon website appends this helpful datum at the very bottom of an article on Rumsfeld’s triumphal tour of the colonies (Iraq, Afghanistan, Kyrgystan): “He also made an overnight stop and met with local leaders in Baku, Azerbaijan.” Yes, it’s the local color that makes travel writing come alive. I’m sure he couldn’t be up to anything clandestine and unsavory in Azerbaijan.

Here is the ad for the Bill Frist anti-filibuster telecast, called “Justice Sunday,” which won’t be available on tv but will be streamed on the internet.



The choice would probably be more equal if the gavel were a bit bigger, if you know what I mean. The words, too small to read, are “The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and now it is being used against people of faith.” Of course, if they’re saying that the D’s oppose Bush’s judicial nominees because of their overt religiosity, the corollary is Bush chose them precisely for that religiosity. They’re delusional if they believe that that’s an argument that will appeal to, instead of frighten, the public at large. Equating attempts to preserve the separation of church and state with Southern opposition to racial integration, which the American Talibani have decided is their best line of attack, requires portraying the nominees as part of a specific, identifiable class of people which can be discriminated against. I say, if they want to depict the nominees as Evangelical Christian activists rather than as qualified jurists, let them.

What’s curious is that the same people who are so politically tone-deaf about how Americans view the role of the judiciary, do understand that their real agenda, which is of course overturning Roe v. Wade, is unpopular, which is why you never hear them use the word abortion when attacking judicial filibustering.

A chimney is being erected at the Sistine Chapel, to indicate when a new pope is chosen. It’s all about the phallic symbols today, isn’t it? Also, the body that will choose the next pope is called a conclave, the device that is supposed to be used to destroy the flu strain accidentally mailed out is an autoclave. It would probably be bad to reverse the two.

I rather like that the legislative calendar has put the permanent repeal of the estate tax adjacent to the bankruptcy bill. Shows the war against the poor in all its glory. Honestly, they should just pass a bill to require families bankrupted by illness to hand over their cars and houses directly to the ne’er-do-well offspring of plutocrats; call it the Capitalism Simplification Act of 2005.

Bush depicted the bankruptcy bill as making credit more available to the poor. Three hundred years ago people made the same argument about the poor financing their emigration to America through indentured servitude.

Nine years after the journal Social Text printed a deliberately meaningless paper entitled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” gibberish has gone high-tech. Three MIT students programmed a computer to generate a paper, “Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy,” which was accepted for an academic conference.

Being tough when it comes to running down people in caves that are trying to do harm to free people

Entomologists have named newly discovered species of slime-mold beetles after Bush (Agathidium bushi), Cheney and Rumsfeld. Being entomologists, they thought that was a compliment. Guardian headline: the axis of weevils. I can’t find a picture, and you know I tried.

Fun with abstinence. I think it was on Atrios where I found this link; I pretty much figured out it was a parody when I saw the phrase “faith-fucking.” It includes a section, “Ask Dr. Frist,” in which he gives such advice as “whenever you masturbate, God kills a kitten.”

A study in the Lancet says that executions performed in the US are incompetently done and therefore painful. The executioners are supposed to administer anesthesia but have no training in it, and in 21 of 49 bodies autopsied, didn’t administer enough to render the prisoner unaware of pain, much less unconscious. 43 received less anesthetic than the standard for surgery. Since they were also given a paralytic, any pain would have been invisible to observers.

One thing that should reduce the number of executions: the Texas legislature has voted to allow juries to give sentences of life without parole. Faced with the possibility that a killer could be released one day, juries have often preferred to execute. Of death-penalty states, now only New Mexico lacks the no-parole option. When Bush was governor, I believe he was a strong opponent of the culture of life-without-the-possibility-of-parole.

He was asked today how he reconciled his support of the death penalty with the culture of life. Of course, Bush being Bush, the amazing thing wasn’t that he kept two contradictory ideas in his head, but how he kept two ideas in his head, period. He said that the difference between Terri Schiavo and a convicted killer is “the difference between guilt and innocence”. And the death penalty saves lives.

That was Bush talking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors today. Talked down to them, in fact:

Today I was with the Indian Foreign Minister, and we were talking about the neighborhood. [what’s with the thing he’s been doing lately where he says “neighborhood” instinstead of “region”?] And I reminded him that I was appreciative of the efforts of President Musharraf and his efforts in fighting al Qaeda. I thought it was in the best interests of the United States and India that President Musharraf be tough when it comes to running down people in caves that are trying to do harm to free people. After all, India is a free country. It made sense to encourage a leader like President Musharraf.

And when asked about his failure to give the details of his Social Security plan, he slipped into an Edward G. Robinson impersonation:

we have been talking about it for a while, but it’s going to take a while more to continue making clear to people in Congress that we got a problem, see.

None of the editors asked him how he felt about the slime-mold beetle. But then again, no one asked the slime-mold beetle how it felt about being named after Bush.

Outlawing nuclear terrorism. And Swahili

The West Virginia legislature has made Hillbilly English the state’s official language. There’s a bit of a fuss because many legislators voted on the bill (regulating the size of park and recreation boards) without knowing the provision had been added on, because they had not read the bill, which was written in Swahili, just proving how necessary the whole thing is.

The UN General Assembly has voted in favor of a treaty outlawing the use of nuclear weapons by terrorists, and about time because there was this big legal loophole just waiting for terrorists to walk right through it. As we know, terrorists are very concerned with legal niceties.

The treaty doesn’t apply to nuclear war conducted by nation-states; it would hardly be worth the bother to establish a state, write a constitution, blah blah blah, and then not be able to nuke another country).

Oh, and if the terrorists use nuclear weapons within the countries of which they are citizens, that’s also kosher. That should increase the chances of it being ratified in the US, where the NRA supports the right to keep and bear nuclear arms for, say, hunting purposes. If nuclear terrorism were outlawed, only outlaws would... you get the idea.

They’ve been working on this treaty since 1996.

The Labour Party manifesto: banishing the demons of outside toilets

Britain’s Labour party issues its election manifesto.

Tony Blair says he has proven his party’s competence; they “banished the demons of ten per cent interest rates, mass unemployment, wages of £1.50 an hour, and outside toilets in our schools.” Outside-toilet demons? Someone call Stephen King. “I have heard teachers in Bexley, Middlesbrough and Sheffield tell me how they no longer have to work in crumbling classrooms without books and computers – and pupils show me, with pride, round their sparkling new school.” Sparkling schools? Someone call J. K. Rowling.

Tony says, “we refuse to accept false choices. The British people never wanted to choose between wealth creation and social justice. They never wanted to choose between national security and overseas aid. They never wanted to choose between equal rights and protection from crime.” The false choices thing might seem a touch more sincere if he hadn’t said the page before, “Now we have to decide whether to go forward or back.”

Interestingly, Blair implicitly acknowledges his personal unpopularity by including a promise that this is his “last election as Leader of my party and Prime Minister”. In other words, he will step down in favor of Gordon Brown sometime in the next 4 years.

Mostly it’s detailed and wonkish and not really meant to be read; you’re meant to turn the pages rapidly and receive the reassuring impression of solidity and competence without actually absorbing any details (pretty much what I did, but then I’m not British and if I were I’d be voting LibDem or Green or Monster Raving Loony). It doesn’t have any of the space-filling tricks of the Tory manifesto, those pages of scrawled slogans and pictures (my favorite was the stills from CCTV footage of a woman’s handbag being stolen). Labour’s 112 pages includes 1 picture — Tony, of course.

I’m expecting the LibDem manifesto to consist entirely of pictures of Charles Kennedy and his newborn son. The kid was born yesterday, just after midnight, and some time before the sun went down, he and his mother were out of the hospital for a photo op across from the Houses of Parliament.

A quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy

To keep their deliberations on the next pope secret, the Vatican will use an “electromagnetic force field,” and the cardinals will be frisked to ensure that they don’t sneak in cell phones, laptops, Gameboys and suchlike. And speaking of people who should never speak in public, I’d have more sympathy (well, no I wouldn’t, but play along) for the Vatican decision to give Cardinal Bernard Law, the enabler of so much child sexual abuse, an honored speaking role if these were not the same people who ordered all those Liberation Theologians to repent their views or shut up.

A former subordinate suggested that John Bolton does not play well with others and is a “a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy.” Precisely the character traits which the Bushies consider make him perfect for the job of ambassador to the UN.

You’d think the WaPo would have put this paragraph higher up:

Negroponte was unable to answer some of the panel’s questions. He did not know what his authority is under the USA Patriot Act, was not conversant in the difference between clandestine and covert military operations, and believed that the government is classifying fewer documents than it had previously. That interpretation is at odds with the findings of numerous government commissions.

Actually, the first of those is a little unfair: he said he didn’t know what his authority was in relation to wiretaps under the Patriot Act. (Transcript). What he was, though, was legalistic: he said that as ambassador to Honduras, “my comportment was always in an absolutely legal and entirely professional manner.” On torture he said he would try “to make sure that all practices of the intelligence community are in full compliance with the law” and on rendition that “the law will be obeyed”. “Not quite breaking the law” is a pretty low standard to set. If the best thing you can say about a doctor is that her practice of medicine always stayed within the boundaries of the law — or a plumber, or a checkout clerk, if it comes to that — it wouldn’t be a ringing endorsement.

Hoo-ah!

When I quoted Rummy in my last post warning Iraqi leaders about being “attentive to the competence of the people in the ministries,” I should have made it clear that he was telling them not to purge Baathists. He said a purge would make it difficult to “defeat a doggone insurgency.”

The Emperor Chimpy inspects the troops at Fort Hood. From the transcript:

Many of you have recently returned from Iraq. (Hoo-ah!) Welcome home -- and thank you for a job well-done. (Hoo-ah!) Others are preparing to head out this fall -- (Hoo-ah!) -- some for a second tour of duty. (Hoo-ah!)

I think that’s the soldiers doing the hoo-ah’ing, unless Shrub has come down with Tourette’s. He went on:

Whether you’re coming or going, you are making an enormous difference for the security of our nation and for the peace of the world.

It’s official: he doesn’t know whether we’re coming or going in Iraq.

When Ironhorse soldiers left for Iraq, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator sitting in a palace, and by the time you came home, he was sitting in a prison cell.

What I’m saying is, he sits down a lot. Not a lot of standing.

In Baghdad, soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division launched Operation Adam Smith, and the new generation of Iraqi entrepreneurs you helped nurture will create jobs and opportunities for millions of their fellow citizens.

Operation Adam Smith? Does the military enforce the division of labor in pin manufacture by force of arms? Somehow I think the 1st Cavalry Division is a rather more visible hand than the Scottish philosopher envisioned.

Donald “Unnecessary Turbulence” Rumsfeld speaks

Secretary of War Rumsfeld issues a warning to Iraqis: “It’s important that the new government be attentive to the competence of the people in the ministries and that they avoid unnecessary turbulence.” Sage advice from a man who eats, drinks, breathes and craps unnecessary turbulence. You want less unnecessary turbulence, you warmongering idiot? Stop invading shit!

I’ve been meaning to write a little about the British elections, although they haven’t yet become as interesting as in years past.

In fact, LibDem leader Charles Kennedy’s wife gave birth today and he took parental leave from the campaign.

I’ve skimmed the Tory Party election manifesto, which was issued yesterday. It’s always amusing to see policy wonks trying to sound like loudmouths at the local pub. It’s full of such clever policy pronouncements as “I mean, how hard is it to keep a hospital clean?”, “What’s wrong with a little discipline in schools?”, “It’s not racist to impose limits on immigration”, “Put more police on the streets and they’ll catch more criminals. It’s not rocket science, is it?” Still, Michael Howard is most persuasive (which isn’t saying much) when he attacks Tony Blair personally, threatening that Labour’s (near-inevitable) victory will mean “five more years of smirking.” The Tory campaign slogan is, for fuck’s sake, “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?”

Fortunately, there is an alternative.

Settling on the settlements

Chimpy met Ariel Sharon today.

Bush went out of his way to be vague about settlements. His handlers had given him a really short mantra from which he did not stray: “the road map says no expansion of settlements.” Also, “road map road map road map.” At no point did he say that Sharon’s plans for major expansions of the settlements contravened the road map, although he said it in such a way that you might think he had, which was the point. But when Sharon stood up and insisted that Israel will “meet all its obligations under the road map” but that he intends to build new housing to make the settlements contiguous with Jerusalem, Bush didn’t object. Clearly, Sharon will be allowed to interpret the road map to mean the exact opposite of what it says. In fact Bush said that “the United States will not prejudice the outcome of final status negotiations” and went on to do just that: “changes on the ground, including existing major Israeli population centers, must be taken into account in any final status negotiations.”

Sharon kept talking about an “opportunity” that shouldn’t be missed. By which he means the death of Yasar Arafat. A little hint: when you’re making nice with people, you don’t usually refer to the death of their leader as an opportunity.

When talking about the settlements, Sharon slipped in some wording as carefully chosen as Bush’s: Judea and Samaria.


And we’ll make Mahmoud Abbas jump this high.


Speaking of unnecessary expansion, here George offers Ariel cookies in the shape of the Israeli flag.

Accountability and the bull in the China shop

USA Today reports that the State Dept is trying to spend $3m on “educational institutions, humanitarian groups, non-governmental organizations and individuals inside Iran to support the advancement of democracy and human rights.” Interestingly, the US is prohibited from interfering in Iran’s internal affairs by the 1981 agreement under which Iran released the 52 hostages. The State Dept website describes this project as seeking “to raise public awareness of accountability and rule of law as an important aspect of the democratization process in Iran.” So Iranians taking money secretly from a foreign government will explain the importance of accountability? We’re like those American tourists in Europe complaining about all the tourists: we just don’t see our interventions into the politics of other countries as peculiar, alien, foreign in any way. We expect the governments of every other country to consist of four branches: the executive, the legislative, the judiciary, and the CIA.

Speaking of accountability, John Bolton was evidently questioned so harshly at his confirmation hearings that his mustache turned white.

Responding to a question about how much respect he had for the UN.

Joe Biden: “Some have said that sending you to New York would be like sending Nixon to China. I’m concerned it will be more like sending the bull into a China shop.” (Most of the news stories mutilate this bon mot by only giving the second sentence.)

Bolton explained that he didn’t really hate the UN, just the fact that it was run by all those foreigners, saying “for the UN to be effective, it requires US leadership. I deeply believe that.” So he sees his role less as ambassador, and more as King of the World.

Under strain

Iraqi President Talibani is opposed to the death penalty! Even for Saddam Hussein.

Guardian headline about the Israeli shooting of 3 Palestinians involved in soccer, or gun-smuggling, or possibly soccer-ball smuggling, depending on who you listen to: “Killing Puts Ceasefire under Strain.” Ya think?

The tool was there to be picked up

Just ran across a 4-month old post in a blog hitherto unknown to me, Apostate Windbag, on the Orange Revolution and all the other “cookie-cutter uprisings,” those media-friendly, focus-grouped, pro-democracy movements in former Soviet republics and elsewhere, and the American role in creating or assisting them, and a follow-up which extends the discussion to Venezuela, Bolivia and Mexico. Mr. Windbag argues that resistance to tyranny is still resistance to tyranny, even if Americans in trenchcoats are wandering around the periphery, and should be supported as such. The US, he argues, is amoral rather than immoral and is

“as happy with Stalinoid dictators who boil people alive - as in Uzbekistan - as it is with bourgeois democrats such as the Ukraine’s Yushenko - it doesn’t matter which form of government, so long as it suits its needs. ... at least in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the US has decided to exploit the strategy of popular ‘revolution’. They would not be able to if the land were not fertile for the planting of such geopolitical seeds in the first place. They have used this tool because the tool was there to be picked up.”

Both posts are quite long, but are full of good information, clear-headed analysis and good writing. And he attacks the same WaPo editorial I eviscerated last month.

Rather less believable “spontaneous” demonstrations have been popping up in oh-so-spontaneous China, to protest “Japanese militarism.” Just as despots in Kyrgyzstan and Zimbabwe feel obligated to uphold their credentials with rigged elections, China is creating this simulacrum of popular outrage to justify vetoing Japan’s attempt to gain a seat in the UN Security Council. To be fair, Japan has once again put out school textbooks that whitewash the Nanjing Massacre, just to see if there’d be less outrage this time around.

Show of force

The American Street points out that CNN low-balled today’s Baghdad demonstration (the one I posted the pictures of two posts ago) by describing it as “several thousand protesters.”

Well, the WaPo not only gives it more accurate number, “tens of thousands”, but is somehow magically able to determine that they are all “Shiite Muslims loyal to militant cleric Moqtada Sadr”. The Post characterizes the entirely peaceful demonstration as “a show of force” and “as much a show of strength as a declaration of grievances”. What force? What strength? It takes a certain amount of nerve to describe the inhabitants of a country which was bombed, invaded, and occupied for two years, with tens of thousands killed, as conducting a show of “force” when they wave banners and chant slogans to protest that occupation. Hell, they didn’t even so much as pull down a statue.

Friends to whoever wants to be a friend

Prince Charles’ wedding (Indy headline: Charles Makes an Honest Duchess of Camilla) was postponed so he could go to the pope’s funeral (and set off a minor furore by shaking Robert Mugabe’s hand), but that made it conflict with the Grand National — that’s a horsie race. So the queen began her speech at the reception by announcing that Hedgehunter had won.

So how scared should we be of this Marburg virus?

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani: “We will be friends to whoever wants to be a friend, and enemy to whoever wants to be an enemy.” And friends “with benefits” to whoever wants....

In an attempt to humanize Michael Howard, the leader of the Tories (who have announced that they’d really rather not be called Tories anymore), his wife has informed the world that he always cries at the end of Sleepless in Seattle.

The ruling apartheid party of South Africa for so many decades, the National Party, later called the New National Party, has dissolved itself. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, now that you no longer have a black guy in livery to hold the door to prevent it hitting you in the ass.

No, no to the occupiers

Many thousands of Iraqis, after reading my previous post, took to Firdos Square to protest that the sculpture which replaced Saddam Hussein’s statue doesn’t really look much like an abstract representation of freedom to them. They take the plastic arts very seriously in Iraq.






Evidently in Iraqi culture it is customary to thank a country for liberating it by burning its flag in homage.



From left to right, Blair, Hussein, Bush (or the “triangle of death,” as they are known).




The traditional re-enactment of Abu Ghraib torture.

There were no such scenes last year because the Americans sealed off the square with razor wire.

Happy anniversary, toppled statue!

Two years ago today, American troops completed the winning of Iraqi hearts and minds by staging the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in what they tried to tell us was a spontaneous act by jubilant, liberated Iraqis.

Dancing and behaving like women

The Greeks are still bitching about the nation of Macedonia being called Macedonia, as they have been bitching about it for something like 12 years now. Greece wants them to use the name “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” held up EU recognition of the country for years, etc etc. Now a UN envoy is suggesting as a compromise the “Republic of Makedonia-Skopje.”

Speaking about thuggish behavior.. well, hell, this whole post is going to be about various forms of thuggish behaviour:

A WaPo article on something I wrote about in late February, the creation by Putin of a youth movement to fight any attempt at an Orange Revolution in the streets.

Another WaPo piece about a prisoner beaten to death by the shiny new Iraqi police force. His family complained to the American military, which told them they should complain to the police. Evidently the Americans respect Iraqi “sovereignty” too much to intervene. I suspect that before too long, Iraqis will spit whenever they hear an American talk about Iraqi sovereignty.

Saudi authorities have sentenced 105 men who attended a gay wedding to sentences ranging from 6 to 24 months and 200 to 2,000 lashes. Their crime: “dancing and behaving like women.”

No doubt in my mind about that

On the plane home, Chimpy spoke to reporters. Because he’s not a big “reader.” Although he did say he was reading Robert Massie’s biography of Peter the Great, so if next year’s budget includes a beard tax, you’ll know who to blame.

Shrub doesn’t realize that the government of Palestine extends to Gaza: “We need to have institution-building, and there needs to be an international effort that encourages and fosters economic vitality so that a government which does emerge in Gaza will be able to better speak to the hopes of those who live in the Gaza.” Someone explain to the moron that a government doesn’t need to “emerge” in Gaza.

He also never heard that Italy announced it was going to pull its troops out of Iraq, after we shot up that hostage/reporter’s car. “I don’t know why you say that. I’m not sure why you said what you just said.”

He also says (asked about Saudi Arabia and Egypt), something he’s said repeatedly: “we shouldn’t try to impose our democracy on other nations. What we should say is, we’ll work with you to develop a democracy which adapts to your own cultures and your own religions and your own habits.” Never does anybody follow up and ask in what ways democracy should be adapted to the culture and religion of the Middle East.

On the pope: “at the end of his life he made his points to me with his eyes” and “a lot of Christians gain great strength and confidence from seeing His Holiness in the last stages of life.” That could be taken more than one way.

On the next pope: “I’m not going to pre-judge the selection process.”

On why we need to “fix” Social Security now: “Every year we wait costs billions of dollars more.” How so?

And then he plays Freaky Friday: “Now, I was born prior to 1950. But if I were my daughter hearing somebody predict that at some point in time she’s paying an 18 percent payroll tax, I’d be suggesting to the old man -- me -- that I get something done.” Also, if he were his daughter, he’d be drinking even more heavily and doing more butt-dancing. Actually there’s a $10 billion item in the Pentagon budget for “paper clips” which is actually a program to create a device that would allow him to switch bodies with his daughter. Some people say it has already been created. Which would explain a great deal.

And there was one thing he wanted to make perfectly clear, just in case we might get it wrong:

By the way, I think when you discuss religion -- on doubt --there is no doubt in my mind there is a living God. And no doubt in my mind that the Lord, Christ, was sent by the Almighty. No doubt in my mind about that. When I’m talking about doubts, I’m talking about the doubts that an individual struggles with in his or her life. That’s important for you to make sure you get that part of the dialogue correct, if you don’t mind.

Q Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: Got it? Everybody got it correct? All right.

Q Thank you.

Prime Minister Whatsisname, I know it has one of those double a’s in it....

Democracy at its finest:

The solemnity of the moment yesterday was marred when the new Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, mysteriously left the ceremony. When he reemerged he explained that he had momentarily forgotten the name of the new Prime Minister whom he was appointing.

Richard Perle and the Case of the Chronic Failure and Smug Confidence

Slow news day, so I’m gonna make fun of the place I got my lunch, a Chinese food chain called Panda Express (so sue me, I like the orange chicken). The cashier was a Chinese man named Danny, if one were to believe his nametag. I’ve noticed this before: everyone there works under an American pseudonym, a nom de eggroll, if you will.

And as long as I’m in Seinfeld mode, what’s the deal with the expiration date on my shampoo?

Followup: Well, I’ve read Perle’s prepared statement to the House Armed Services Committee (pdf, 4 pages), which included the bit that perplexed me two posts ago. In context, the exact nature of the cunning conspiracy by Saddam to draw us into a war against him is no clearer, at least to me.

His attack on the CIA says its last 30 years have been marked by “chronic failure: faulty estimates accompanied by smug confidence about future developments rendered in the face of repeated nasty surprises.” Dude, that’s your resumé:

1981-87 Assistant Secretary of Defense for Faulty Estimates Accompanied by Smug Confidence about Future Developments Rendered in the Face of Repeated Nasty Surprises.
2001- Chairman and then member of Defense Policy Board in charge of chronic failure and faulty estimates accompanied by smug confidence about future developments rendered in the face of repeated nasty surprises.

Perle argues that all the failures in Iraq stem from not working with “those whose interests parallel our own,” by which he means Chalabi, whose name he never uses (although he didn’t testify wearing Groucho glasses, so I guess he doesn’t realize that his name is even more discredited than Achmad Chalabi’s). We should have invaded side by side with his people, who we should have trained, and we should have handed over the country the day after Baghdad fell. He thinks many of our problems occurred because of “the image on Iraqi television of an American pro-consul informing the Iraqi people of the rules we made for them.” Oh, I doubt it. For a start, they didn’t have electricity.

Taking arrows for us all

I don’t think I mentioned the US soldiers participating in the war on drugs on Colombia who are charged with drug smuggling. Charged by the US, of course, which says they have the protection of diplomatic immunity against the Colombian legal system.

Rep. Roy Blunt says Tom DeLay is “taking arrows for us all.” Again, it’s just as well I don’t have Photoshop, or I’d be spending the morning trying to put Tom’s hair on a picture of St. Sebastian. Or General Custer.

The Chinese government, ever eager to play the role of the petulant 3-year old who must be appeased, rolls out the deputy head of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association to complain about the president of Taiwan being allowed to go to the pope’s funeral: “The decision to let Chen Shui-bian attend has hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.”

There is a push to have John Paul named a saint as quickly as humanly heavenly possible. To that end, I present two miracles performed by his corpse:



1) The saintly corpse did not slide down. It can defy gravity!

2) Bill didn’t put his hand on Condi’s ass for an entire hour!

Richard Perle and the Case of the Appalling Incompetence

Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday, Richard Perle blames the lies he used in arguing for the invasion of Iraq on the “appalling incompetence” of the CIA, although we all know that he considered the CIA a bunch of limp-wristed pacifists and got his intel straight from Achmad Chalabi. He also said, “There is reason to believe that we were sucked into an ill-conceived initial attack aimed at Saddam himself by double agents planted by the regime.” What? WHAT?? Is he really claiming Saddam was behind our invasion of Iraq? There doesn’t seem to be a transcript anywhere, so I can’t put the quote into better context than the Post did (and no other news source in Lexis-Nexis or news.google has this). One could in theory listen to the hearings here but we’re talking 3½ hours.

What’s better than a quilt?

Last week it was dogshit, this week a 17-year old in London is arrested for spitting at a bus driver after that spit is DNA tested.

From the DOD website, I learn that

A group of San Antonio area quilters are doing their part to support wounded veterans. Stitched with love and gratitude, their lap quilts are just big enough to cover the legs of those in wheelchairs or on stretchers. ... “A quilt means so many things,” said Lytle Stitcher Kitty Janiga. “Warmth, cheer and caring, as well as something for the (servicemembers) to wrap themselves in. They’re perfect; what’s better than a quilt?”

Um, legs?

If I’m attacked, I should not have to retreat

The state legislature in Florida, where persistent vegetative state is a way of life, passes the “Stand Your Ground” Bill, allowing people to shoot other people for lookin’ at ‘em funny. Previously, one could not defend oneself with deadly force if one could save oneself from harm by running away. Now, one can shoot the perp dead because, explained legislative moron Dennis Baxley, “If I’m attacked, I should not have to retreat.” Yeah, that’s worth taking a human life for. I’m telling you, these people won’t be happy until they bring back dueling.

The tourist fields

To commemorate the death of the pope, China arrests a couple of priests, including a bishop. And the next day, the Vatican sends out a trial balloon that it might drop diplomatic recognition of Taiwan in exchange for more freedom to operate in China. Very realpolitik.

Cambodia has privatized the Killing Fields, whose mass graves will now be managed by a Japanese company, which will charge admission and plant some trees and flowers to pretty up the tower-of-8,000-skulls area. According to the provincial governor responsible for this, “We need to beautify the site to attract tourists.”

I don’t care, as long as he’s 17

The LA Times has a (long) article on the military recruiters roaming the halls of high schools, giving out goodies to students and staff, getting the schools to require students to take military aptitude tests. It’s not an especially tough piece — it doesn’t for example mention the rampant lying by recruiters — but you do get a sense of the aggression (and limitless resources) with which these recruiters go after potential cannon fodder. Here’s the ending:

Carloss [the Marine recruiter] asked them to fill out cards with their name, address, phone number, age and grade. Students must be at least 17 to enlist. Those younger than 18 need parental consent.

“Are you scared?” Carloss said jokingly to one boy.

Carloss waved down a girl: “Go to one of these boys over here who you think is cute and tell him to do it.”

“Who?” she replied.

“I don’t care,” Carloss said, “as long as he’s 17.”

Haiti and “the only recourse”

The WaPo has another wacky foreign policy editorial, this one entitled “Haiti, One Year Later.” Actually it’s been one year, one month and a few days since, in the Post’s words, “U.S. forces escorted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile,” but who’s counting. Escorted! like they were taking him to a high school dance. The article notes the violence that has roiled Haiti since then, which it then blames entirely on the (unexplained) existence of armed thugs and the weakness of the UN’s armed thugs peacekeepers, who are weak by definition because they are led by Brazilians and not Americans. The Post’s conclusion is that the Bush admin needs to bite the bullet and bow to the “inevitable,” which is to intervene now alongside the UN (fat chance!) because later, “the only recourse, as so often before in Haiti’s history, may be the Marines.”

Haiti is referred to as a “quasi-failed state,” a description I can’t disagree with, without any suggestion that that failure might have something to do with the repeated “recourse” to the United States Marines. The Post demonstrates the same blithe disregard for Haitian political institutions that was behind the removal of its elected president when it says that now, “[h]eavily armed gangs loyal to Mr. Aristide or to drug traffickers roam urban neighborhoods”. Note the false equivalency: drug traffickers, President Aristide, same thing.

Recourse, according to Webster’s, means “a turning to someone or something for help or protection.” If asked whether they want, “as so often before in Haiti’s history,” the help or protection of an invasion by the Marines, not that we ever do ask, the Haitians would doubtless respond, Thanks, you’ve done enough already.

And he didn’t like war, and I fully understood that

Bush on the pope: “And he didn’t like war, and I fully understood that and I appreciated the conversations I had with the Holy Father on the subject.”

Israel has decided to use the West Bank as a garbage dump, violating international law, threatening the local water supply, and generating more symbolism than should be contained in a single news story.

Bush, hypnotized by Yushchenko’s scarred skin reaches slowly, slowly, to touch it, but at the last moment gives a little screech and runs from the room.

If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve

So what channel do the candidates for pope run their attack ads on?

Wouldn’t it be fun to have a pope who wasn’t white?

Or a pope who actually did shit in the woods?

Not that I’m suggesting a non-white pope would shit in the woods.

Anyway, good luck to the next pope, whoever he or she is.

Ye dare not stoop to less

Not the best-chosen AP headline: “World Gets First Glimpse of Pope’s Body.”

The WaPo has an op-ed piece on Zimbabwe that is typical of several I’ve seen the last few days in British and American newspapers in placing much of the blame for Mugabe stealing last week’s elections on South Africa in general and Thabo Mbeke in particular. This article says Mbeke “did everything... to signal that mass fraud would be acceptable.” It helpfully suggests, just as a ferinstance, that SA could have “strangle[d] its smaller neighbor’s economy by switching off its electricity.”

Now I yield to no one in my contempt for the corrupt, fascist thug Mugabe and I am appalled and disappointed by Mbeke’s continued support for him, but how exactly the white man’s burden passed to South Africa I’m not sure. Mugabe has been stealing elections for decades, and officially turned Zimbabwe into a one-party state in 1987, when SA was still an apartheid state and most ANC leaders were in prison. Mbeke’s negative opinion would have made no difference at all (and Mugabe is capable of strangling Zimbabwe’s economy all by himself).

There’s an unspoken assumption in all these pieces that there is a hierarchy of civilization and that those higher up, like SA, have a duty to instruct those beneath them, their “new-caught, sullen peoples, Half devil and half child,” just as we are now in articles like the Post’s instructing the South Africans in their duty. Presumably SA is higher up the ladder because it was run by white people more recently, so it hasn’t fully degenerated or “gone native” yet.

(Update: Matthew Yglesias says something similar here.)

A calculated risk

Carl Hiaasen today:

Life is the hot issue in Tallahassee these days.

State lawmakers could hardly wait to hurl themselves into the Terri Schiavio dispute, wiping their feet on the U.S. Constitution along the way.

Even now, rebuked and embarrassed by the courts, they still preach on about the incalculable value of life.

But here’s what they really think a life is worth: barely $9,000 a year.

That’s what the House Claims Committee has told a man who was wrongfully imprisoned for more than 22 years.

More (registration/BugMeNot).

After thinking about it for a couple of months, the US decides that Mark Thatcher, son of Maggie, is disqualified for a US visa by his conviction for his role (note to London Times: not “alleged” role) in trying to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea. Says Mark: “It was always a calculated risk when I plea-bargained in South Africa.” No, Mark, it was a calculated risk when you invested in a coup.

Archeologists in Germany have found the oldest known clay figurine of a man. The 7,200-year old man was evidently depicted fucking a 7,200-year old woman (or a 7,160-year old woman if he was a Stone-age Woody Allen, or possibly a 7,225-year old woman if he was a Stone-age Ashton Kutcher). Prior to this discovery, the oldest known porn was 5,000 years more recent. I don’t have a picture, but who really wants to see their great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandparents having sex?

Say it ain’t so, Holy Joe, updated

For a couple of days I’ve been getting a lot of hits from people who googled “Joe Lieberman nudist,” which took them to a 2000 archive in which I used both terms in the same month but not in relation to each other. I’ve finally gotten curious and yes, Joe Lieberman is indeed a nudist. Read all about it here, if so inclined, but I accept no responsibility for any images that may stick in your mind.

(Update: a New Haven reader has suggested that the story is an April Fool’s joke, and she may well be right. Just as well then that I don’t have Photoshop, or I’d have been spending my Saturday night putting Holy Joe’s head on Jeff Gannon’s body.)

He will be the one who means it

In keeping with my goal of bringing to light news stories that are ignored by the mainstream press, I must inform you that the pope is dead.

Maybe they’d have been this obsessive about reporting in detail a story that really has no details — dead is dead — if they hadn’t made such a fuss about Terri Schiavo, but since they did, they had to make sure that the fuss they made about the pope was even bigger and more circusy.

When Bush in his statement on the pope’s death (and indeed in his statement on Terri Schiavo’s death two days before) insisted on bringing up the “culture of life,” I wanted to slap him.

From the NYT obituary for Frank Perdue, the chicken king, who did his own commercials: “It helped that he looked like a chicken.”

The man at Sandhurst (Britain’s West Point) who will be in command of Prince Harry: “Prince Harry will call me sir. And I will call him sir. But he will be the one who means it.”

A great moral figure

Condi Rice says the pope is “a great moral figure, as well as religious figure.” There just might be something wrong with organized religion when you have to specify which religious leaders are also “great moral figures.”

Speaking of great moral figures, Capt. Rogelio Maynulet was sentenced to no jail time for murdering putting out of his misery a wounded Iraqi, although he was discharged from the army. Said Maynulet, “I’m happy to have my life back, but I’m being forced out of my family. It’s hard to leave the Army this way.” I’m sure the guy he killed felt the same way, except for the having-his-life-back part.

Arrogant, out of control, unaccountable

Tom DeLay not only doesn’t clarify yesterday’s fatwa, even to call for there to be no violence against judges in the Schiavo case, but threatens to impeach those judges, who he describes, in a pot-calling-the-kettle-black moment, as “arrogant, out of control, unaccountable.” It’s called the separation of powers, Bug Boy: they’re not supposed to be under your control, they are not accountable to you.

I’ve finally looked at the government website 4parents.gov there’s been all the fuss about. Yup, it really calls for parents to take their gay children to therapists “who share your values,” and implies that homosexuality is a choice or a “lifestyle.” Here’s a sentence that hasn’t been widely quoted, but invokes the Christian right’s fears that children are “recruited” into homosexuality: “Since adolescents are impressionable, parents need to address the issue of sexual orientation within the context of their own value system.”

Georgia passes a law requiring photo ID for elections. Leaving aside the obvious bad faith behind this, it’s unconstitutional if Georgia doesn’t provide picture ID’s for free (Georgia has some sort of provision for doing that for the indigent or elderly, but it has to be universal).

First, he has not been to Iraq

Headline of the day, Thank-You-For-Sharing division: “Pope Has Urinary Infection.”

Kevin Moley, US ambassador to UN organizations, denies the report of UN food expert Jean Ziegler that children in Iraq are starving and that malnutrition rates have doubled under the American occupation. Said Moley, “First, he has not been to Iraq, and second, he is wrong.” Ooo, so sure of himself, but he then insisted that malnutrition data is “difficult to validate,” meaning he has no actual data to rebut Ziegler’s, and that even if malnutrition was increasing, it started when Saddam was still in power. Yes, let’s blame Saddam Hussein for starvation occurring two years after he was forced out of power. Also, why is it relevant that Ziegler hasn’t been to Iraq; how would that in any way help him correlate data? When they throw in that sort of thing as a refutation, you know they don’t have a leg to stand on.

The time will come

Every blog is quoting Tom DeLay on Schiavo: “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today.” They’re assuming he meant some sort of secular retribution, but when I first read it I thought he meant they would all go to hell. Really, it could be read either way, and isn’t it frightening that when he speaks you can no longer tell if it’s in his capacity as House Majority Leader or his capacity as Spokesman for the Wrath of God.

(Afterthought:) and how stupid a politician do you have to be to leave that sort of hostage to fate? If someone attacks the husband or the judge, that comment will be tattooed across DeLay’s forehead forever.

Playing and/or attacking God

Bush commends the Schindler and Schiavo families for “the example of grace and dignity they have displayed at a difficult time.” Yeah, grace, dignity, just the words I would have used.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, head of the Catholic Church’s office for sainthood (now there’s a weird job to put on your resume) says that letting Terri Schiavo die is “an attack against God.” Dude, we totally kicked God’s ass.

That army captain, Rogelio Maynulet, has been convicted for shooting a wounded Iraqi prisoner. The court martial judge says he “played God” in shooting rather than treating him. Whereas deciding to invade a country, bomb its cities and depose its leader, that’s not playing God at all.

The intelligence commission says that the spy agencies were “dead wrong in almost all of [their] pre-war judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction,” and still know jack shit about WMDs. Scotty McClellan says they’ll get right on that “in a fairly quick period of time.”

Of course, as Left I points out, intel had little to do with the decision to invade Iraq. I’m agnostic on Eli’s contention that the Bushies never believed there were WMDs. I would guess they expected there to be something, a few anthrax samples, a centrifuge or two, that they could claim was a WMD program, but that they knew there was nothing that was a threat to anyone, no imminent “smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud.” Eli uses as evidence the “decidedly lackadaisical search for WMD after U.S. troops had taken control of the country,” but that could just be incompetence. When you are both evil and stupid, it’s hard to differentiate which characteristic is behind any given action.

(Update: Eli responds here and I respond to his response in his comments section.)

Misery for everyone

Eyeglasses that play DVDs. Civilization is officially at an end.

Some of the Save Terri people have taken to making mock-feminist arguments, saying that Mrs. Schavio is being treated like property by her husband. Where were these people a couple of weeks ago when some businessman actually tried to buy her from her husband for $1 million?

If you look at a newspaper, it’s all medical ethics, all the time. Here’s Tom DeLay, defending taking his father off life support: “My father was in a coma. Schiavo is a living person. My father was on life support and dying. Schiavo is living and wants to live. There is no similarity at all and to even suggest so is pretty sad.” So there you have it, from one of the Every Sperm is Sacred Brigade: people in comas are not living people. I’m not clear what they actually are. And there’s the pope’s nasal-gastric feeding tube. And there’s the US tank commander who told a court martial that he shot a wounded Iraqi prisoner to “put him out of his misery”. Guess he hasn’t understand that America’s rulers are firmly pro-misery. “Misery is on the march!” they proclaim proudly. His lawyer is evidently arguing that mercy killing is allowed under the Geneva Conventions.

Laura Bush in Afghanistan: “As a teacher, I know how important teaching is.” I think she means that as a former teacher, she knows how important teaching was.

Thanks to you, millions of little girls are going to school

Although she spent less than 6 hours in Afghanistan, Laura Bush evidently ran out of Afghans worth speaking with, and decided to hang out with American troops instead. She told them, “Thanks to you, millions of little girls are going to school in this country.” Great, they’re like the world’s most heavily armed school crossing guards.

Follow-up: Juan Cole says that the reason Allawi stalked out of the National Assembly after the cameras were turned off and the press expelled was that his choice for Speaker was rejected for having been too close to Saddam.

The NYT has a story, “U.S. Helped to Prepare the Way for Kyrgyzstan’s Uprising.” The US supplied paper and a printing press and money to an opposition newspaper, and broadcast its stories on the local Radio Free Europe. All relatively mild activities, and Akayev was certainly on my list of Top 40 Dictators Who Need to Be Sent Into Exile, but it still amounts to the US considering it its right to undermine willy nilly any government it dislikes. The difference between this and the covert actions which overthrew the governments of Arbenz, Mossadegh and Allende is one of degree only. It will also give other dictators the ability to paint their oppositions as American puppets, in much the same way that Robert Mugabe is currently campaigning in Zimbabwe’s fake elections as if Tony Blair were running against him.

Also, the NYT puff piece on these activities was pretty obviously spoon-fed to the Paper of Record by someone in State or the CIA.

We want them to develop their education that works for them

Laura Bush is going to Afghanistan to demonstrate America’s deep commitment to women’s education there. She will spend a total of 5 hours in the country, but they will be a deeply committed 5 hours. She had this to say: “We want them to develop their education that works for them, just like we do the same thing in our country.” They say married couples begin to look alike, but hanging around with George has obviously done horrible things to her verbal skills. Also, she says she plans to tell Karzai “how moved we are by their efforts, by the big huge vote that turned out earlier this year”. Actually, that was October of last year. Hopefully she’ll demonstrate her deep commitment to Afghanistan by figuring out the difference between it and Iraq before she touches down.

Evidently there will be an “American University in Afghanistan,” which sounds like a really bad idea, and why have I not heard of this before? A cursory googling doesn’t really say who’s behind this, although the US military is currently building it a $370,000 wall (it has to be of good quality because of all the student-hostages who will be shot in front of it)(graduates wear a mortar board and blindfold).

Laura says that Georgie was right to intervene in the Schiavo affair — “It is a life issue that really does require government to be involved” — but also told reporters that she and George both have living wills, presumably so that the government isn’t involved. Aren’t you curious about the details of Chimpy’s living will?

Standing on the side of those who defend life

Headline in The Onion: “History Sighs, Repeats Itself.”

The Iraqi parliament met today and, as predicted, accomplished nothing. In fact, it descended into chaos and the acting Speaker (they can’t agree on a Speaker) ordered the tv cameras turned off. Iraqi viewers were then treated to an orchestra playing the national anthem. Disharmony followed by harmony. So they missed “Comical” Allawi storming out and the acting Speaker (chosen because he’s the oldest man there) telling everyone to go home.

Asked about Terri Schiavo, Scotty McClellan said no fewer than six times that Bush is “standing on the side of those who defend life.” I suppose it’s better than standing on their foot.

I don’t know if that joke means I’ve taken too many Vicodin (back trouble) or not enough.

One thing about Bush’s repeated claim that he is “erring on the side of life”: at least he’s finally admitting that he is capable of error.

Bring out your dea... uh, people in a persistent vegetative state

Not to suggest that the Terri Schiavo protesters are becoming Pythonesque, but I couldn’t help noticing in yesterday’s NYT that some of them were disabled people holding signs saying “Not dead yet,” while elsewhere in the paper the same phrase appears in an article on Spamalot, the theatrical adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which has a song of the same name.

Another juxtaposition that might or might not mean anything: yesterday there was a segment on McNeil-Lehrer on the attempt to insert “intelligent design” into school curricula. The sorts of people who were insisting that they could discern an intelligence behind the development of human life are the same sorts who persist in discerning an intelligence in the living corpse of Terri Schiavo.

As long as we’re talking about intelligent design, here’s today’s Tom Toles:



The Supreme Court let stand a state supreme court ruling allowing newspapers to be sued for accurately reporting false statements made by politicians. This is extremely dangerous. It would be nice if it made them fact-check politicians more, but more likely it will make them even more timid than they already are.

Dude, no one even heard of Kyrgyzstan before last week, they still can’t find it on a map, so I wouldn’t get too worked up over its street cred

Kyrgyz politicians, in a backroom deal, have agreed to retain the newly, but fraudulently, elected parliament, although presumably without the two offspring of Akayev who were elected it. No one seems to be talking about holding new elections, maybe free and fair ones this time. Akayev fired off another email saying the “revolutionaries” have “ruined our nation’s reputation for the entire world.” Yes, Kyrgyzstan’s... reputation.

The Iraqi parliament is due to meet again Tuesday, and then to adjourn again, having again accomplished nothing. 8 weeks since the election and they haven’t agreed on the shape of the conference table yet. And remember, this is the body that’s supposed to write an entire constitution. I think it’s obvious that’s not going to happen; not these people, not in less than 20 years. So what now?

RX: obnoxious paternalistic moralism

How far has Russia come since the days of repressive godless communism. The organizers of an art exhibition at the Andrei Sakharov Museum which was attacked by Russian Orthodox thugs have been fined for blasphemy (the thugs were not charged). The exhibit included an icon with a hole for the face where visitors could put their own faces, a Coca Cola logo next to Jesus’s face with the words “This is my blood,” and so on. So the proper charge should not have been blasphemy but first degree triteness.

Speaking of religious zealots, there have been several articles recently about pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions they morally disagree with, like contraception, or contraception for unmarried women. No word on pharmacists who refuse to sell Viagra to unmarried men.

And verily the Lord said, “There’s Oil in them thar hills. Black gold, Texas tea...”

An Evangelical businessman from Michigan has started a company, Zion Oil and Gas, to drill in the spot in Israel where he thinks the Old Testament says oil is located.

Kyrgyzstan now has two parliaments, with different members and government declaring allegiance to one or the other, and the electoral commission and supreme court on opposite sides. Felix Kulov, who would not have his current job as security chief (and indeed would still be in prison) if not for the protests against the patently rigged elections, says the parliament “elected” in those elections is the legitimate one and threatens to arrest any member of the old parliament who protests (and no, I don’t know how much overlap there is, because no reporter has thought to ask that question). The 2000 parliamentary elections were actually probably not much fairer than this month’s.

Dresden city council wants to require dog owners to register their dogs’ DNA so that any poop not picked up by the owners can be tested.

The notion that this might infringe “canine rights” has been dismissed by Saxony's data protection commissioner, Andreas Schurig, who ruled that as dogs were not human they had no rights over their data and could not object to the compulsory tests.

Michael Jackson explained why he showed up at court in pajamas in an interview with Jesse Jackson. No, I won’t tell you why, I didn’t read the article because I don’t care (and neither should you), but I did want to point out that Jesse Jackson interviewed Michael Jackson about why he wore his jammies to court.

If you haven’t seen this comparison of Tom DeLay and Jesus, run click, do not walk.

Old World Order

Rumsfeld can’t imagine what Venezuela wants with automatic weapons. And Cheney says “Nobody can figure why [the Iranians] need nuclear as well to generate energy.” Yes, it’s all part of a new strategy to preserve American security by making the entire rest of the world... Amish. From Timbuktu to Riyadh to Machu Picchu, it’ll be all buggies and barn-raisings. And quilts, lots of quilts.

The Culture of Life

Egypt announced that it would allow more than one candidate for president run in the September elections. It made this announcement after the deadline for voter registration. Subtle, huh?

Bush finally spoke about the Minnesota school massacre today, in his weekly radio address, after he spent several minutes somehow linking Easter and Christ rising from the dead with the US military. It wasn’t too bad, if a bit generic and a lot late. But what to make of this: “To keep our children safe and protected, we must continue to foster a culture that affirms life and provides love”. Ah yes, the “culture of life,” that term which covers a range of issues from abortion to Terri Schiavo and creates linkages between them, performing the same function for cultural conservatives that the “right to privacy” performs for those who oppose them on these same issues. So in Bush’s latest presentation of the culture of life, the banning of abortion would, presumably, stop future school shootings. Or something. (Actually, it would make the schools more crowded, and crowded with unwanted children at that).

Back to Terri. While some people have doubtless truly deluded themselves into believing she is other than vegetable matter, or that Jesus or Elian Gonzales will come riding in on the back of his magic dolphins and restore her to sentience, I suspect that a great many of the politicians bloviating about this case don’t really want what they say they want. If they “win,” all they’ve got is a brain-dead woman with a feeding tube, not much of a victory prize. If they lose, they’ve got an issue and an icon, poor martyred St. Terri. The fact that this proved not to be a particularly popular issue with the general public may have been a miscalculation, or it may not, because the faithful, for whom this was a crusade, will remember it long after the general public, for whom it was an entertainment, like the Michael Jackson trial, will have forgotten.

Isolated

Condi Rice tells the WaPo that “It’s very important that Russia not get isolated.” Isolation is something with which she often threatens nations. Last month I was startled by her warning to North Korea that it was isolating itself further, when any intelligent observer of the Hermit Kingdom would see a country not eager to be anything other than very isolated indeed. The Russia quote impelled me to search Rice’s speeches on the State Dept website, which brings up such remarks as:

• “It’s the North Koreans who are isolated, not the United States. It’s North Korea that is isolated.”
• “It’s the Iranians that are isolated, not the United States.”
• “we need to remember that the Iranians are the ones who are isolated.” “the Syrians, who I do not believe want to be as isolated as they are now. They are very isolated.”

Etc, etc, etc.

So evidently for this black woman, feeling isolated is the worst possible thing, and can be avoided by conforming to the values of the big boys. Poor Condi, she just needs a hug. Not that I’m offering; that woman scares me.

From: ousteddictator@hotmail.com

NRA vice president Sandra Froman responds to the school shooting in Minnesota by suggesting that teachers be armed. Gee, why didn’t I think of that.

80% of the tsunami fatalities were women.

Kyrgyzstan’s ousted president Akayev insisted he was still president because he hadn’t resigned and that he will return from wherever he’s hiding. In a nicely modern touch, this message came by email. No word on whether Akayev used any emoticons.

Putin denounces the change in government as illegitimate and says in the next breath that he can work with the new illegitimate government. The man who turned Chechnya into a charnel house then denounced the violence in Kyrgyzstan, which so far has mostly consisted of looting and is on a smaller scale than, say, the Rodney King riots.

Rummy’s imagination

Kyrgyz dictator Akayev has been forced to flee by a popular uprising which still hasn’t settled on a name, although it seems now to be more tulip than lemon. He has been replaced by former-cronies-turned-opponents as prime minister and president, so look for the authoritarianism to be dialed back a notch, not for actual democracy. Street protests can create a power vacuum, but that’s it.

Secretary of War Rumsfeld speaks in ominous tones about Venezuela’s efforts to purchase assault rifles. “I can’t imagine what’s going to happen to 100,000 AK-47s,” he said. And then resumed military aid to Guatemala, proclaiming its army a lot less death-squad-y now. I don’t know if this means Rummy can’t imagine what the Guatemalan military will do with its weapons... or that he can.