I’ve never heard a single word of complaint

Bush, on Katrina: “To the extent the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility.” The conditional means that if we ask what it is he’s actually taking responsibility for, we’re playing the blame game. Or if we ask what “taking responsibility” actually entails, since I assume he’s not planning to resign and join Michael Brown in that stiff margarita. Also, George, you already took responsibility when you took the oath of office; don’t come in today acting like it’s optional.

Laura Bush tells the Heritage Foundation that the evacuees from Katrina are all thankful for how well they’ve been treated. “And that’s what I’ve seen at each of the shelters I’ve visited. I’ve never heard a single word of complaint.” But then she also thought the hurricane was named Corinna, so clearly an ear examination is in order. Or possibly she couldn’t hear the words of complaint over the voices in her head.

The Metropolitan Police say that, despite their murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, the shoot to kill policy is the “least worst option” and will be retained. But not explained to the British public, who don’t know what the “rules of engagement” are under which the police operate, that is, what they have to do in order not to be shot in the head seven or eight times. So to my British readers: good luck with that, and try not to make any sudden movements.

I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat

Don’t hate me for this, but I have to pass on the grossest news story of the week: “A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe”. Collagen.

662 Russian soldiers have died this year, not counting those killed in Chechnya. 182 suicides, and who knows how many of the rest “hazed” to death. That is one seriously fucked up army.

The Israelis have sort of ended their occupation of the Gaza, unless you count the borders, the airspace, water supply, power supply, and their claim to have the right to send in the IDF any time they feel like it. Still, Gazan children can bathe in the Mediterranean for the first time, which is not nothing. Synagogues and settlements are ablaze. The last thing the IDF did Sunday before leaving was to put new signs on the former saying “Holy Place” in English and Arabic but not, you’ll notice, Hebrew, allowing Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom (in Hebrew, shalom means hello, goodbye and hypocritical douchebag) to decry “This... barbaric act by people with no respect for holy places.”



Schwarzenegger, defending his $45m special election: “People say it’s a waste of money to have the election. I say it’s a waste of democracy not to have an election.” Um, does that actually mean anything?

John Roberts: “I come before the committee with no agenda.” Funny, I never heard of him working for a Democratic administration. He’s been a Republican hack lawyer from the start. Suddenly we’re supposed to ignore his entire life before he started wearing black robes to work two years ago, just like we’re supposed to ignore Shrub’s life before he turned 40. Also, “ump,” enough with the baseball metaphors. We’ve heard about all the confirmation coaches he’s been spending his time with, and I strongly doubt there was even a word of his oh-so-unthreatening opening statement that came from his own pen and hadn’t been focus-grouped, including his claim to be a mere umpire: “I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.” You’ll notice his speech writers didn’t include a mention of home runs, and it’s the home runs he’s planning to call for Chimpy that worry me. This whole “judges are umpires” line may play well in the country, but anyone who knows anything more about the Supreme Court than that there are nine of them and they wear black robes knows it to be arrant nonsense.

The storm didn’t discriminate

As I write, Orrin Hatch is giving a long speech to John Roberts, imploring him not to answer any questions.

Bush finally goes to New Orleans, the town he used to get drunk in. He does so in order to look all manly and in-controlly.


Sorry, don’t know how that got in there. The real picture:


He went armed with a set of canned responses. Like everything else from this administration lately, they arrived a week late and were totally inadequate. Asked how racial considerations affected the response to Katrina, he sidestepped the issue and responded to an absurd accusation no one actually made: “The storm didn’t discriminate, and neither will the recovery effort. When those Coast Guard choppers ... were pulling people off roofs, they didn’t check the color of a person’s skin, they wanted to save lives.”

And after a week, here’s what Karl Rove came up with as an explanation for Bush’s remarks that no one anticipated the breaching of the levees: he meant AFTER the storm had bypassed New Orleans, when it was said that it had “dodged a bullet.” That’s not what he said, that’s not what he meant, he’s fooling no one.

Asked about federal failures, he snapped that the reporter was playing the blame game. Another reporter specifically asked him to name a single thing, just one, that had gone wrong. He stood in the middle of all that wreckage and devastation (his credibility I mean, although yeah New Orleans looked pretty trashed too) and couldn’t think of even one.

(Update: Here’s his answer to that one, in its full gibberishy glory:

Oh, I think there will be plenty of time to analyze, particularly the structure of the relationship between government levels. But, again, there’s -- what I think Congress needs to do -- I know Congress needs to do -- and we’re doing this internally, as well -- is to take a sober look at the decision-making that went on. And what I want the people of this state and the state of Mississippi to understand is that we’re moving forward with relief plans. And we’re going to move forward with reconstruction plans, and we’re going to do so in a coordinated way. And it’s very important for the folks of New Orleans to understand that, at least as far as I’m concerned, this great city has got ample talent and ample genius to set the strategy and set the vision. And our role at the federal government is -- obviously, within the law -- is to help them realize that vision. And that’s what I wanted to assure the Mayor.)

And I’m sure he felt very assured indeed.)

Just a clash between soldiers

From WaPo, “World in Brief”:

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Soldiers who fired at the defense minister’s convoy Saturday were not trying to assassinate him, but were shooting at other troops they were angry with, a government spokesman said.

“It was not an assassination attempt on the defense minister,” Gen. Mohammed Saher Azimi, a Defense Ministry spokesman, said at a news conference. “It was just a clash between soldiers.”

So that’s ok then.

From the same section comes more evidence of the benefits of privatization: the privatized Nicaraguan electricity company, now owned by a Spanish multinational, not being allowed to increase rates, has started “rationing” electricity, blacking out the capital (this is also indirect Katrina fallout, as most of Nicaragua’s electric plants are oil-fueled; expect a lot more of this throughout the Third World).

Bush is thinking, “I was told there’d be balloon animals.”

Every American has memories of that day that will never leave them

The WaPo Saturday

on security contractors/mercenaries in Iraq is a must-read.

From the Sunday Times:

The world testicle cooking championships have fallen victim to a hoax. Kangaroo testicles were specially imported for an contestant who phoned the organiser claiming to be Australia’s top testicle chef, but he never showed up for the competition in Serbia. “We were disappointed when no Australians arrived,” says organiser Gornji Milanovac. “We even had a band ready to welcome them”. Co-organiser Ljubomir Erovic said: “We would like to compare the testicles of a kangaroo to those of wild boars and bulls.”

Another September 11 is upon us, a sort of anti-July 4th in which we celebrate our collective victimhood. It’s a sullen, unlovely form of nationalism. Bush said in his Saturday radio address, speaking of 9/11/01, “Every American has memories of that day that will never leave them.” Yeah, I remember watching it on CNN on a tv screen from 3,000 miles away. Really, I no more have “memories” of the attacks than I do of Luke destroying the Death Star (one good thing you can say about Vader’s management style: Michael Brown wouldn’t have lasted very long. “But Lord Vader, I sent you a report, ‘Skywalker determined to attack inside the Death Staaaarrrrgh.’”). Let’s not pretend it was something every American went through; most of us were just spectators.

Bush continued, “And in the days and weeks that followed, America answered history’s call to bring justice to our enemies and to ensure the survival and success of liberty. And that mission continues today.” In other words, still haven’t caught that bin Laden fella.

“Today, America is confronting another disaster that has caused destruction and loss of life.” FEMA? Michael Brown? You? “This time the devastation resulted not from the malice of evil men, but from the fury of water and wind.” Notice how he anthropomorphizes nature, attributing “fury” to it for rhetorical balance to “malice”? You know in private he refers to Hurricane Katrina as an “evildoer.” The man is a Manichean down to his toes, just could not exist without an enemy to define himself against.

The underlying message, of course, is “You guys liked me after the last disaster, really rallied around and stopped criticizing me all the time, why can’t it be like that again?” But like Fat Elvis doing a medley of his hits when he was Thin Elvis, it’s not really working anymore.

Not with the general public anyway. Joe Lieberman will still roll over for his tummy to be rubbed, and a Fourth Circuit panel just ruled that Bush can detain any American citizen “enemy combatant.” The opinion said that Jose Padilla was “associated with Al Qaeda, an entity with which the United States is at war.” How many problematic words can you find in that sentence? “Entity” is the lynchpin from which the problematicity of the other words derives, because by refusing to define what exactly Al Qaeda is (the word entity means, literally, something which exists; where words like navy or school or legislature or wife-swapping club give you some idea what those organizations do, the word entity only tells you that it exists), it’s hard to say what being at war with it means or what constitutes being “associated” with it. The Bush admin uses these calculated ambiguities to insist on being allowed the maximum discretion to define who the “enemy combatants” are and what it can do with them, and the court has given it exactly that.

And no, problematicity isn’t a real word, but you all knew what I meant.

Michael Brown has done everything he possibly could

Still refusing to admit that Brownie is an incompetent fuck-up, Chertoff spins his “reassignment” to a nice quiet office far away from where he can do damage thus: “Michael Brown has done everything he possibly could.” And the sad thing is that probably really is everything he could do. He has now been tasked to stay in his office and make paper-clip chains, which he’s been told are vitally important to the rescue work.

And of course he’ll continue to get a hefty paycheck for that vitally important work, as opposed to the people who actually haul away wreckage, restore electricity, etc. I’ll be interested to see how much play is given to Bush’s suspending the Davis-Bacon Act in order to let Halliburton (and other federal contractors) pay its workers in the storm-damaged areas less than the prevailing wage. My gift to the unions is a term I just made up that should be applied to this and future attempts to screw workers using the pretext of “national emergency”: storm profiteering.

Hunger-striking prisoners are being forcibly fed by tube in Guantanamo. Guantanamo spokesmodel Maj. Jeff Weir says, “No detention facility in the world will deliberately let their people commit suicide, so we can’t let that happen.” Obviously he’s never heard of Bobby Sands and the other 9 IRA men who were indeed allowed to starve themselves to death in 1980. This is a form of torture which is considered by the medical profession (and more importantly, by me) to be unethical when the hunger striker is not insane. The military seems to be unclear, or lying, about the numbers involved in the strike, and didn’t see fit to inform the outside world until the second month of the strike, and Weir claims not to know their demands.

Iraqi “president” Talabani says that US troops are needed in Iraq not only to fight insurgents, but also “to frighten our neighbours and prevent them from interfering in our internal affairs”.

Positive and upbeat

Time says most of Brownie’s resumé was hash. Geddit, hash brownie? Other, competent people have now been appointed to do the job for which Brown will evidently still be getting a paycheck. Bush had his chance to fire Brown and offload some of the blame onto him, but it’s a little late in the (blame) game now, to say nothing of “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” and “What didn’t go right last week?” but possibly he’s trying to game the blame game, figuring that if he attributes all the incompetence so far to Brown and fires him but things continue to be as fubar as ever, then he might be in trouble. A good scapegoat is hard to find.

The Iraqis are still negotiating the text of the constitution, and the UN is refusing to print it for the citizens who are supposed to be voting on it, since it was never ratified by the National Assembly.

The WaPo reports on the stringent security arrangements for the DOD’s 9/11 Freedom Walk and Hootenanny, or whatever they’re calling it. There will be walls and cops to keep out people who didn’t register with the Pentagon, and the press will be restricted. “Freedom” – the thing “they” hate us for – post-9/11-style. At the Pentagon website you can still “register to walk.” Ever since I first saw that, I’ve been itching to juxtapose it to a picture of a veteran in a wheelchair who can’t, you know, walk. My regular readers may be surprised to find that there are some things too tacky even for me (I also thought it would be disrespectful to use someone’s image for my own political ends like that).

Also on the Pentagon website, “Cheney Impressed by Can-Do Attitude of Katrina Survivors.” Everyone he met, he said, “is positive and upbeat.” The International Herald Tribune not too subtly says “Standing before piles of debris, he said that ‘the progress we’re making is significant’”.

Caption contest:

Never let a director of FEMA be appointed and confirmed without having the background of emergency management and that experience

Chimpy has finally leapt into action, declaring a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, although oddly enough for next Friday. If it takes 8 whole days to prepare for prayer (try saying that ten times fast), it can only be because FEMA is making the arrangements. (Update: the Poor Man finds some irony.)

Lou Dubose article on the eerily familiar failures of FEMA under Bush the Elder and the rebuilding of the agency by Clinton, who urged Congress not to let, ahem, future presidents dump their cronies, and college roommates of their cronies, on the agency: “In any future administrations, I challenge you as members of Congress to never let a director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency be appointed and confirmed without having the background of emergency management and that experience.” Dubose doesn’t mention the contribution of Ronald Reagan, who redirected FEMA’s focus away from natural disasters and towards building bomb shelters and preparing for the Reagan myth of a survivable and indeed “winnable” nuclear war, a myth Bush Senior believed in (Robert Scheer, With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War, page 29). We heard a lot of dark muttering in those days about the Moscow subway system, in which Russians would huddle cozily until the radiation went away, emerging as the new Red Overlords of a world of mutated cockroaches, or something like that. FEMA was cheerily optimistic about its ability to cope with nuclear holocaust with, as Scheer’s title quote puts it, enough shovels. Here’s a FEMA report from December 1980: “With reasonable protective measures, the United States could survive nuclear attack and go on to recover within a relatively few years.” (p. 111) Not that that cockeyed optimism has completely gone away.

Finally, help is on the way

From the BBC: “Dick Cheney has arrived on the country’s Gulf coast for a tour of the areas worst affected by Hurricane Katrina. Mr Cheney will review whether enough is being done to tackle the disaster... His visit comes as 25,000 body bags are sent to New Orleans”.

Triumph of the will

Schwarzenegger plans to veto the gay marriage bill, not because he is against gay marriage, why heaven forfend, but because the voters passed a ballot measure in March 2000 not to recognize gay marriages entered into outside California. Very respectful of “the will of the people” (it does not sound better in the original German) is the governator, except perhaps for the November 2002 re-election of Gray Davis. Der Arnold is of course trying to have it both ways, claiming to be a friend of the gays, why he’s perfectly happy to let them marry, it’s just his pesky constitutional scruples that get in the way. The LAT asks, “Schwarzenegger has also indicated that this is an issue best left to voters and the courts, not mere lawmakers. Does he not believe in the American system of representative democracy?” That’s a trick question, right? The gay marriage bill’s author, Mark Leno, says Arnie is “pandering to the far right.” He makes it sound so... dirty.

George Skelton points out that the California electorate voted in 1964 to overturn the Legislature’s recent ban on racial discrimination in housing.

Sen. John Cornyn says of the second Supreme Court vacancy, “I don’t know whether John Roberts has a twin, perhaps a sister or, uh, someone with a Hispanic last name.” So hilarious, and not racist or sexist or terminally cynical at all.

Jon Stewart says that those who don’t want to play the “blame game”... are the ones who are to blame.

Did the military really set up a recruitment drive among the refugees in the Astrodome? Fucking vultures.

More London Review of Books personals:

My ad comes in the medium of whistles: ppfffttttt, ssshhhhhhhwwwwt, peeffwt, pfftpt. Man. 36. Bad at whistling. Box no. 17/02

Employed in publishing? Me too. Stay the hell away. Man on the inside seeks woman on the outside who likes milling outside hospitals guessing illnesses of out-patients. 30-35. Leeds Box no. 17/08

Don't speak, you'll only destroy my already low opinion of you. And put your pants back on. And your wig. Terminally disappointed woman (38, Barnstaple) WLTM a man. Form a queue, then I'll negotiate the criteria. Box no. 16/03

Gynotikolobomassophile (M, 43) seeks neanimorphic F to 60 to share euneirophrenia. Must enjoy pissing off librarians (and be able to provide the correct term for same). Box no. 16/04

American man, 57. I just want a girlfriend. What the hell is going on here? Box no. 16/08

[More of my LRB favorites here.]

Unwilling to reveal the most damning evidence

The interesting thing about the California Legislature’s vote in favor of legalizing gay marriage is that it was almost entirely partisan, with the support of 41 of 47 Democrats (with only 4 against and 2 abstaining) and zero Republicans (1 abstaining).

The Miami Herald notes that the US plan to “contain” Hugo Chávez isn’t working. The Herald is happy to pass along that “administration officials say they’re unwilling to reveal the most damning evidence against Chávez for fear of compromising intelligence sources.” Oo, where have we heard that one before. I’ve been trying to track for a while how serious the Bushies are about overthrowing Chavez, and the Herald isn’t that helpful, which is annoying because it is paying attention to the issue, unlike say the NYT or WaPo. But just because it’s interested doesn’t mean it can get anyone to give it the inside scoop. The article conveys echoes of strong intra-Bushie arguments about what to do about Venezuela without saying what the various sides are or what they’re advocating, giving us unhelpful hints like “There was at least one proposal that would have affected Venezuela’s oil industry.”

It’s not out of the question that the US will cut a sub rosa deal with Chavez, a quicker and less risky way of ensuring a continued flow of oil than attempting an overthrow.

Heck of a job

Yahoo helped the Chinese government put a journalist in jail for 10 years for exposing the text of orders the gov sent to newspapers on how to report about dissidents.

Via Josh Marshall, a Salt Lake Tribune article that must be read to be believed, about firefighters who volunteered from around the country to go to Katrinaland to save lives, but on arrival found that they were to be deployed... handing out leaflets. After, of course, they sat through hours of classes on community relations, sexual harassment and so on. And for a group of 50 firefighters from Atlanta, their first task on arrival was to stand behind George Bush for his photo op.

According to Jesse Jackson, the US has refused Venezuela’s offer of assistance. Well, it’s not like Venezuelans are even properly trained. I mean, do they even have sexual harassment classes in Venezuela?

From today’s Gaggle:

Q Is “Brownie” still doing a “heck of a job,” according to the President?

McCLELLAN: We’ve got to continue to do everything we can in support of those who are involved in the operational aspects of this response effort. And that’s what we’re going to do. There will be plenty of time –

Yes, just as anyone pointing out the failures of Bush’s prosecution of the war in Iraq was “attacking the troops,” now anyone criticizing Arabian Horse Boy is attacking the brave and heroic rescue workers, who are even now attending sexual harassment classes over there so we don’t have to attend them over here. How dare they.

We’ve got to solve problems. We’re problem-solvers

George “Inspector Clouseau” Bush will “lead,” personally mind you, “an investigation to find out what went right and what went wrong.”


“I’ve gathered all the suspects together. One of you is the killer,” he said, not knowing it was a Murder on the Orient Express scenario

“And I’ll tell you why. It’s very important for us to understand the relationship between the federal government, the state government and the local government when it comes to a major catastrophe. And the reason it’s important is, is that we still live in an unsettled world. We want to make sure that we can respond properly if there’s a WMD attack or another major storm. And so I’m going to find out over time what went right and what went wrong. ... There will be ample time for people to figure out what went right and what went wrong.”

I mean, O.J.’s still looking for the real killer, right? Ample time.”

Until then, “We’ve got to solve problems. We’re problem-solvers.”

Speaking of inept, how about the reporter who asked the question that led to this announcement of the establishment of CSI: Crawford. He or she asked whether Bush would be replacing anyone, rather than asking a specific question requiring a specific response about, say, Michael “Fuck you and the Arabian horse you rode in on” Brown.

Bush went on, “[A]nd we want to see Biloxi rise again.” Uh, right.

Asked about the Supreme Court: “I want the Senate to focus not on who the next nominee is going to be, but the nominee I’ve got up there now.” Which I take to mean he’s refusing to name his second nominee until after the Senate has acted on Roberts. Which is not a good sign.

Later, he oh so articulately suggested Americans give to NGOs trying to “save the life who had been affected by Hurricane Katrina.”

Like a dog watching television (but not as intelligent)

Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation: “Yet as scenes of horror that seemed to be coming from some Third World country flashed before us, official Washington was like a dog watching television. It saw the lights and images, but did not seem to comprehend their meaning or see any link to reality.”

Barbara “Rhymes with Socksucker” Bush, after hanging out with some of the storm refugees: “Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we’re going to move to Houston. ... What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this (she chuckles slightly)--this is working very well for them.” Looking for a picture, I ran across the fact that just two weeks ago, Albion College gave her an honorary doctor of humane letters degree. Her letters may be humane, but she forms them into some quite inhumane words.

Flash

Bush says that “Mississippi is a part of the future of this country.” Just in case you were wondering.

If it’s not going right, we’ll make it right

Bush, at the Bethany World Church in Baton Rouge: “Listen, Laura and I have come back down to Louisiana and then we’re going over to Mississippi to let the good people of this region know there’s a lot of work to be done”. Oh I think they can figure that out for themselves. And later he reminded everyone, “And -- but remember, this is a project that not only deals with the immediate, we’re going to have to deal with the long term, as well.” It’s because of just that sort of high-level sophisticated understanding of complex problems that he’s the president and you’re just a lowly peon.

He went on, “[W]e can help save lives once a person finds a shelter such as this. That means getting people food, and water, and medicine, and help, and in a place like this, love.” I say, steady on, we’ve only just met.

He uses that creepy phrase “armies of compassion” again. Who knew that some day we’d miss his father’s “thousand points of light”? He says, “So long as anybody’s life is in danger, we’ve got work to do”. Yeah yeah, as long as a cop’s beatin’ up a guy, he’ll be there, wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, he’ll be... well maybe not right there, possibly at a fundraising dinner, but those can be pretty grueling too, you know.

A pleasant thought, for once

As much as I shudder at the thought of a Roberts Court, I can’t help giggling when I imagine the look on Scalia’s face when he found he wasn’t inheriting Rehnquist’s Gilbert & Sullivan-striped robe.

Nobody, especially the president, would have left people unattended on the basis of race

Like those obnoxious pharmacists who refuse to fill morning-after or birth control pill prescriptions, judges have taken to refusing to hear parental-notification-bypass cases. The most serious danger of this development is hidden deep in the NYT story: pro-lifers could target elected judges who don’t opt out or who grant exemptions.

Chertoff: “We are in control of what’s going on in the city.” Remember that. Everything that happens now is officially his fault.

Rice: “Nobody, especially the president, would have left people unattended on the basis of race.” Unattended? Of course not. That’s what all that talk about restoring law ‘n order was about, attending to people on the basis of race with extreme prejudice.

The gasoline fallout attendant on Katrina has been bringing up memories of those several-hour lines in the ‘70s, and the odd & even rationing that made those lines so much worse. Hasn’t happened here yet, but a version has appeared in Iraq, where people will only be allowed to drive their cars every other day.

Although Israel’s highest court ordered the military to stop using Palestinians as human shields, they still do, as recently as Wednesday, including a 13-year old. The IDF commander, evidently unaware that this was a no-no, freely admitted it to Ha’aretz, saying “I’m ready to do anything to protect my soldiers.” Asked what he would do if someone had done that to his family, he replied, “You’re going into politics now, and I don’t deal with politics.”

No need for a caption contest here, because the caption is so fucking obvious: Get out and help those women (81 and 62 years old, respectively).

We’re going to go out and take this city back

More on the Fallujaization of New Orleans. An article in the Army Times is headlined, “Troops Begin Combat Operations in New Orleans” and quotes Brigadier General Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force, “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.” The article refers to the “insurgency” in NO.

Condi Rice: “That Americans would somehow in a color-affected way decide who to help and who not to help, I just don’t believe it.” Condi will be traveling to Alabama tomorrow to look at storm damage, probably not wearing any of her expensive new footwear. Maybe she can lead the storm victims in a rousing chorus of Always Look On the Bright Side of Life.

Bush today: “The main priority is to restore and maintain law and order, and assist in recovery and evacuation efforts.” Wouldn’t that be three main priorities? Organize a response, fuck, the man can’t even organize a simple sentence. Also, shouldn’t food and medicine be on that list somewhere? certainly ahead of law & order.

Evidently every scene of the food distribution and levee work that Bush got himself pictured in front of yesterday, all of it, was fake, with workers, equipment and food going away again when he left. Blah3.com, a site I was unfamiliar with, does a nice job of pulling in the details from various news sources, and the site has lots of other posts about the ineptitude of the response to Katrina. Mary Landrieu today castigated this as “a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity.” Got news for you, Mary: as far as Bush is concerned, we’re all hastily prepared stage sets for him to strut around in front of. Including the people. Especially the people. Did you notice in that footage of him talking to the two black women yesterday that he had his arm draped over the shoulder of the one who looked to me to be in her teens the entire time he was talking to her sister, but never thought to make eye contact with her. And somehow he never met even one of the many people inclined to yell at him for his manifold failures. No Cindy Sheehan moments here either.

So, if you’re up for one, a caption contest (those aren’t the same black women I was just referring to).

I’m looking forward to my trip down there

Via DailyKos, this Grover Norquist memo, dated today, to US Senators, opposing the move to delay a vote on eliminating inheritance taxes permanently, which he says is “Proof that they are exploiting this tragedy is that they were never for repeal of the Death Tax in the first place.” The Grovester would never consider doing that, well, except for saying that repeal would produce “higher levels of economic growth is exactly what the residents of the Gulf Region need at this time to start the rebuilding process for their neighborhoods and more importantly for their lives.” Hey, why don’t you go and make that argument with the true beneficiaries of your charitable proposal in Biloxi or New Orleans or better yet the Superdome: one moron enters, no moron leaves.

Dana Milbank in the WaPo:

“I’m looking forward to my trip down there,” President Bush said in the White House driveway yesterday morning before leaving to tour the storm wreckage.

Something must have happened in flight, because when he arrived in Mobile, Ala., two hours later, he reported: “I’m not looking forward to this trip.”

And evidently all helicopters were grounded for the duration of the Clueless One’s visit.

The president obviously was just stunned

Trent Lott told CNN that it’s only people in the media who are asking whether rescue efforts were hampered by all the National Guard units being in Iraq. Anderson Cooper, doing a quieter version of his Howard Beale moment yesterday with Mary Landrieu, said no, there’s a guy down the street here who just said that to me.

Lott said of Bush’s tour of the wreckage: “The president obviously was just stunned”. Uh no, that’s his normal expression.

The BBC showed a large group of stranded refugees (and I honestly don’t understand the problem black leaders seem to have with that term) in New Orleans, getting no help at all from the authorities, then pulled the camera back to show 20 cops a block away, all focusing their attention on a single looter.

If somebody would like terms about which to get pissy when applied to American cities, how about “shoot to kill policy” and “urban warfare” (the latter being the conditions under which FEMA is operating, according to its head, Michael Brown). Or the commander of the National Guard promising to “put down” violence “in a quick and efficient manner,” using guard troops back from Iraq and “highly proficient in the use of lethal force.”

I’m not satisfied with all the results

Bush clarifies the “not acceptable” comment: “I am satisfied with the response. I’m not satisfied with all the results.” The operation was successful, but the city died.

Bush: “You know, there’s a lot of sadness, of course. But there’s also a spirit here in Mississippi that is uplifting.” So that’s all right then.

We’re not into the blame game

New Orleans asks, “Is Dennis Hastert worth reclaiming?”

LA. Governor Blanco, asked by Diane Sawyer how many people died because of the incompetent governmental response: “We’re not into the blame game.”

Bush: “A lot of people are working hard to help those who have been affected, and I want to thank the people for their efforts. The results are not acceptable.”

Bush is going on a tour, but promises not to enjoy it: “I’m not looking forward to this trip. ... It’s as if the entire Gulf Coast were obliterated by the worst kind of weapon you can imagine”. Stupidity?

(Update: Dennis Kucinich: “Indifference is a weapon of mass destruction.”)

The war comes home

Iraq is now truly liberated and free: it resumed executing people today, three of them.

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco:

“Three hundred of the Arkansas National Guard have landed in the city of New Orleans. These troops are fresh back from Iraq, well trained, experienced, battle tested and under my orders to restore order in the streets. They have M-16s and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.”

See what’s going on here? She’s telling the Guards that the “looters” (who are distinguishable by their skin color) are sub-humans who need to be shot down in the streets like dogs or Iraqis. At the same time she’s telling the residents of New Orleans they’d better behave because the Guards she’s sicced on them are animals, I mean have you seen the things they did in Iraq? and they like to kill (what else does “more than willing” mean?) so don’t fuck with them.

Divide and rule the under-class, the first rule of governance since time immemorial.

New Orleans = Fallujah

Bionic Octopus has it exactly right: they’re focusing on the criminal acts of a few of the people in New Orleans who might just feel that they’re being left to starve to death, as an excuse for their failure to bring in the relief they promised or carry out the evacuation in a competent and timely fashion. If this sounds eerily familiar, it’s because this is the excuse we’ve been hearing for two years now for the failed reconstruction in Iraq. They’re trying to make us think of the “looters” as the equivalent, or at least lesser versions of, Iraqi guerillas.
(Update: And just as unworthy of life. Via Media Matters, Peggy Noonan wrote today: “I hope the looters are shot.” Bitch.)

Those looters, those people who refused to evacuate their homes, why do they hate America?

Bush and Katrina: The devastation I saw was very emotional

Bush can no longer, if he ever could, distinguish between the real world and what goes on inside his chimp-like head: “The devastation I saw was very emotional. It is so devastating it is hard to describe it.”

He said, “I just can’t imagine waving a sign that says ‘Come and get me now.’” Well he doesn’t need to: every time he gets that little pouty look like he’s about to cry, Dick Cheney comes running up to get him.

He wants “zero tolerance” for looting and insurance fraud, and suggests that citizens “take personal responsibility [advice from the master of personal responsibility] and assume a kind of a civic sense of responsibility so that the situation doesn’t get out of hand, so people don’t exploit the vulnerable.” Like Wal-Mart. So he wants vigilantism now. “Zero tolerance” (including the shifting of New Orleans police from rescue operations to anti-looting) privileges property over people.

(Update: a reporter asked McClellan if zero tolerance applies to the many people who have received no aid and are “looting” food and water. Scotty says yes, because he insists the relief effort is perfectly adequate and “There are ways for them to get that help. Looting is not the way for them to do it.” Basically, they’re too lazy to make their way to wherever the aid is and are just taking the easy way out, just like they were too lazy or stupid or stubborn to evacuate. Fucker.)

Or possibly the vulnerable person Bush didn’t want exploited was himself, as he fashioned the disaster into another shield behind which to hide from criticism: “I hope people don’t play politics at this time of a natural disaster”. Yes, let’s not mention the National Guard units sent to Iraq or the money shifted away from flood control projects to, again, Iraq, or the complete falsity of his claim that “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees” (a sentence that would have been completely truthful had he just stopped after the third word). “And what we need to do as a nation is come together to solve the problem and not play politics. There’ll be ample time for politics.” Yeah and he’ll be sure to tell us when that time comes and it is okay to criticize him again.

Also, this is not a “problem” that can be “solved.” That phrasing suggests yet again Bush’s short attention span. He thinks this can be solved so he can move on to something else.

Showing a keen understanding and that incisive grasp of events that we all know and love, he points out, “Nine-eleven was a manmade attack, this was a natural disaster.” But he loves all his criticism-deflecting catastrophes equally.

Posada update

The Dept of Heimat Security prosecutor, who is supposed to be trying to get Luis Posada Carriles deported to Venezuela (note, by the way: deported, not extradited, although Venezuela has demanded his extradition), instead more or less backed up his assertion that he would be tortured in Venezuela, even though Venezuela does not (at least not under the current government) torture people, nor would it be likely to torture an old man with a high profile if it did. Said the alleged prosecutor: “We have serious concerns about Mr. Posada’s claim to torture in Venezuela,” but helpfully added, “we have no opinion” about the claim. With the government not trying to deny the claim, the judge is forced to follow the only “evidence” that’s been presented, which was a statement, without supporting evidence, from one of Posada’s old cronies. Posada hopes to have his deportation deferred indefinitely, in which case he could actually be released. He plans to apply for US citizenship. (My sources: AP, the Miami Herald, Narcosphere.)

Independent and unbiased

Netanyahu, running against Sharon on a pro-settler, Palestinian-bashing platform, refers to Palestinians living in Jerusalem as a “siege.” “Who will overcome? It’s either them or us.”

Wales in a bottle.

A Reuters cameraman is consigned to 6 months in Abu Ghraib after a secret hearing in which he was unrepresented held by what the US military laughingly describes as “an independent and unbiased board and consists of nine members: six representatives of the Iraqi government ... and three senior multinational forces officers”. Independent. Unbiased. He was evidently arrested by Marines after they looked at the pictures he’d taken. Everyone’s a critic. This is a different Reuters cameraman than the one arrested a few days ago by the Marines who had just shot the soundman he worked with.

Varied origins and predilections

The (gay) mayor of Berlin is being criticized by some for sending a message of greeting to the second annual leather and fetish festival: “We are proud that people of varied origins and predilections feel at home in our city and celebrate together.”

Canada recognizes gay adultery (a woman has been allowed to divorce her husband on the grounds of adultery with another man), which I guess is progress of a sort. Is gay adultery legally recognized anywhere in the US?

Is it my imagination, or has the US really stepped up the use of aerial bombardment in Iraq?

The BBC World News reports that the people in Louisiana are now “waiting for Deliverance.” Great, after what they’ve been through, now they’re gonna have to squeal like a pig.

Synthesis

The selling of the Iraqi constitution to the American people continues apace. On Meet the Press Sunday, Ambassador Khalizad was asked if 1,800 Americans had really died to create an Islamic republic and replied, “The words that you read are exactly the same words that were in the constitution of Afghanistan which we celebrated.” So that’s okay then. Evidently this constitution is “a new synthesis between the universal principles of democracy and human rights and traditions in Islam.” Ohhhh, we thought there might be some contradiction there, but it’s a synthesis, why didn’t you say so before.

And the grubbier and messier events on the ground are, the more elevated Bush’s rhetoric becomes. Today:

We will prevail because this generation is determined to meet the threats of our time. We will prevail because this generation wants to leave a more hopeful world for our children and grandchildren. We will prevail because the desire to live in freedom is embedded in the soul of every man, woman and child on this Earth. And we will prevail because our freedom is defended by the greatest force for liberation that humankind has ever known, the men and women of the United States Armed Forces.

From the BBC:

Families of Israeli Arabs shot dead on a bus in Galilee are not considered terrorism victims because their killer was Jewish, the defence ministry says.

Under Israeli law, only attacks by "enemies of Israel" are considered terrorism, the ministry said.

The ruling means families of the four victims will not be entitled to the lifelong monthly payments given to Israeli victims of Palestinian attacks. ...

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, called the shooting "a despicable act by a bloodthirsty terrorist".

Pakistan requires candidates for election to public office to have a 10th-grade education, and has just decided that being educated in madrassas which are not regulated by the state doesn’t count.

I’m going to give the Palestinians a chance to develop a democracy

Must-read George Monbiot article on why the Iraqi referendum on the draft constitution will be a meaningless exercise and how the Iraqi people might have been involved in the process, making the final product their own rather than the result of haggling behind doors which are not only closed, but guarded by the troops of an occupying army.

Still, there must have been some real compromise to produce what demonstrators in Tikrit today called a “Zionist-American-Iranian constitution.”

Bush today: “I hope you’ve watched what has happened in the Holy Land. [Does he have to use that term?] Prime Minister Sharon made a courageous decision to remove settlements out of Gaza. He said to the world, I’m going to give the Palestinians a chance to develop a democracy.” Yes, because Ariel Sharon is all about spreadin’ democracy, just like George!

And he describes the Iraqi draft constitution thus: “This constitution is one that honors women’s rights, and freedom of religion.” Well, freedom of one religion, anyway, and how many religions do you really need?

And finally, a caption contest.


1) What are these two laughing about? (And for extra points, what might the cropped-off parts of that banner say?)
(Update: oh dear, he really was promoting his Medicare drug benefit at... El Mirage, Arizona.)


2) That’s McCain’s birthday cake. Tell us what he’s thinking/saying, and/or what’s written on the cake.

Get well soon, Vice President al-Yawer

From the Guardian:

The country’s Sunni vice president, Ghazi al-Yawer, did not show up at a Sunday ceremony marking completion of the document. When President Jalal Talabani said that al-Yawer was ill, senior government officials including Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi howled with laughter.

The WaPo reports on the increasing number of state measures imposing burdens on women seeking abortions and raising the legal status of fetuses. South Dakota even passed a law that would go into effect if Roe v Wade were overturned, because they don’t want to wait even a single day (although surely passing an unconstitutional law is just a little bit unconstitutional itself). This country still has a pro-choice majority, but legislatures are acting as if supporters of abortion rights will not exact a price from legislators who nibble away at those rights. Hopefully they’re wrong. D’s are increasingly acting as if the whole issue is toxic and they wish it would go away, which doesn’t bode well for their willingness to fight the right-to-lifers if Roe is reversed.

And perhaps some Kurds who are concerned about the constitution

BBC headline: “UN Shocked by Kosovo Serb Deaths.” Yes, violence in the former Yugoslavia, shocking. That peaceful land has lost its innocence.

I know I’ve been commenting about headlines a lot, but I do read the stories too, honest.

Bush, in a statement oddly juxtaposing storm relief and patting himself on the back for the wondrous events going on in the Iraq that exists only inside his chimp-like head, does admit there might be some friendly differences of opinion: “And I suspect that when you get down to it, you’ll find a Shiia who disagrees with the constitution and Shiia who support the constitution, and perhaps some Kurds who are concerned about the constitution.” Yeah I suspect that perhaps that’s the case too.

Sunni buy-in

BBC headline: “Underground Chinese Bishop Dies.” Well that’s convenient.

Sunday Telegraph headline that I just can’t tell if they realized how tasteless it was: “British Diplomat Extends Helping Hand to Europe’s Last Leper Colony.” In Romania, if you were wondering.

The WaPo has a story sub-headlined “Iraqi Draft Fails To Win Support of All Sunni Delegates.” Which under-states it just a bit, since the article fails to name a single Sunni supporter. Yesterday Chalabi, no, it was an aide to Chalabi, was asked to name one; he cited the speaker of the National Assembly, who denied it. (The LAT, however, quotes the defense minister, who it describes as a “secular Sunni Arab,” whatever that means, attacking the Sunnis on the constitutional committee because one is a truck driver and the other, he says, was an intelligence officer under Saddam Hussein.) US Ambassador Khalilzad is quoted twice by the WaPo on the need for a “Sunni buy-in,” a phrase not exactly redolent of Jeffersonian idealism. The document that will be rammed through the Nat. Assembly later today is not really a constitution, since it leaves fundamental questions, like the mechanisms of federalism, to be decided later by a simple majority of the parliament. The reason you have a separate body write a constitution is that 1) a body such as the next parliament shouldn’t decide on its own powers, 2) voters shouldn’t have to vote for people whose powers have not yet been determined.

And over in Afghanistan, things aren’t going so well either, but there aren’t enough American casualties for anybody to be asking whether there’s an exit strategy there. Well ok, they may be asking that in Afghanistan, but here, not so much. The WaPo notes about next month’s elections, “candidates who are suspected of involvement in atrocities can only be barred from running if they were convicted of an offense. But there have been no war crimes trials to date, and many former militia commanders were given posts in the transitional post-Taliban government in an attempt to win their support for democracy.” All this time there has been only one branch of government in Afghanistan, the executive, and Karzai has imposed an electoral system for the parliamentary elections which I’ve never heard of before, in which voters have only one vote in multi-seat constituencies. This will produce a fractious, disorganized and unrepresentative parliament too weak to challenge Karzai, whose power would therefore continue to be that of a dictator, if it operated beyond a few square blocs of Kabul.

We don’t accept that a non-Iraqi should try to enforce his control over Iraqis

Guerilla porn: separatist rebels in Tripura, India, are raising money by producing pornographic films, using kidnapped women (and, to a lesser extent, men).

Bush today: “the Iraqis are grappling with difficult issues, such as the role of the federal government. What is important is that Iraqis are now addressing these issues through debate and discussion -- not at the barrel of a gun.” Is there maybe another entirely different Iraq?

Here’s something that happened in the Good Universe Iraq, according to Bush:

We saw that unity earlier this month when followers of the terrorist Zarqawi tried to force Shiite Muslims to leave the Iraqi city of Ramadi. Sunni Muslims in that city came to the defense of their Shiite neighbors. As one Sunni leader put it, “We have had enough of Zarqawi’s nonsense. We don’t accept that a non-Iraqi should try to enforce his control over Iraqis.”

Yes... a non-Iraqi... trying to enforce his control over Iraqis... that would be bad.

Of course to Chimpy, “chutzpah” probably sounds French

Bush’s argument for continuing the war to honor the (American) dead, it occurs to me, is rather like the classic definition of chutzpah, someone who kills his parents and asks for lenience because he is an orphan.

The University of California system is being sued by religious schools for a new admissions policy I didn’t know about, not certifying high school science courses that teach creationism, as well as other overly religious courses.

Our troops overwhelmingly want reassurance

General Richard Myers, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is finally at long last thinking ahead about Iraq. He is planning strategically to assign blame for that clusterfuck and, surprise surprise, it’s the old stab-in-the-back theory (Dolchstoß in the original German, and most recently seen in the smearing of John Kerry for undermining the national will to win in Vietnam). The soldiers are all great and “want to finish the job at hand” and don’t think they’re losing at all, says Myers, but “Our troops overwhelmingly want reassurance that they will be allowed to finish what we began four years ago.” Really, that’s what the troops want, reassurance that they can stay in Iraq waiting for victory, or an IED as the case might be? “This military can do anything as long as they have the will and resolve of the American people.” No it can’t. It can’t turn another country into a liberal, democratic, peaceful state by military means, and your failure to understand that is an ongoing problem. Stop blaming the media for not showing all the good news. Stop talking about our nation’s “will and resolve,” because closing our eyes and wishing really hard will not actually change the facts on the ground in Iraq.

This sort of talk is no longer about trying to silence the war critics. The US has already lost and I think Myers, if not Bush and Rumsfeld, knows this. It’s about explaining why it wasn’t his fault. Good luck with that, Myers, you’ll need it.

Boyo

The juxtaposition of three stories in the UK news section of the Indy shows that Britain has its priorities well and truly straight; it 1) deported a mother and her 4 children to Malawi, despite protests from their neighbors, 2) is about to deport Iraqis back to the, you know, safe parts of Iraq, despite protests by the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, 3) fined a local councillor in South Lanarkshire (Scotland) £750 for a “racially aggravated breach of the peace” for calling a Welshman “boyo.”

Home Secretary Charles Clarke reacted to the UN criticism of his plan to deport any wogs foreigners for a long list of “unacceptable behaviours” by accusing the UN of coddling terrorists: “The human rights of those people who were blown up on the Tube in London on July 7, are, to be quite frank, more important than the human rights on the people who committed those acts.” Clarke gets it entirely wrong in a way that demonstrates his failure to understand the concept of human rights, which is worrying but not uncommon in a home secretary. Human rights are by definition rights which accrue to humans. Those of some humans are not less important than those of other humans, because all humans are in fact human. Stop me if this is too fucking complicated.

The Times says “The Home Office says that Muslim leaders helped them to identify these undesirables, but officials refuse to name the Islamic groups involved.” The largest Muslim groups deny having named names. What the HO is doing here, claiming Muslims are finking for them but we can’t say who, is a blatant, indeed astoundingly blatant, divide-and-conquer tactic to make Muslims suspicious of each other. And its blatancy won’t make it less effective.

A member of Thailand’s cabinet, a woman involved in a lawsuit has disclosed, had silicone injected into his penis. But which one? Which member, not which penis. Oh dear, I said member, didn’t I?

A library in the Netherlands will start loaning out human beings. You can check out a homosexual (so to speak), a Gypsy, a drug addict, etc, and ask them about their lives for an hour.

And from the Guardian: “Belarus retaliated against Lithuania’s decision to build a radioactive waste dump close to their shared border by announcing plans to put two giant pig farms in sniffing distance of its neighbour.”

‘Take him out’ can be a number of things

Normally I’d invite you to provide captions for this picture,

and you may still do so, but I need to identify the woman for you. Bush’s people found themselves an anti-Cindy Sheehan, a Stakhanovite military mother, Tammy Pruett (even the name is over-the-top homespun) who has not one, not two, not three, but four sons in the military in Iraq. Come back with your hillbilly armor or on it, she told them.

Bush said, at that event in Idaho, that after 9/11, “We faced a clear choice. We could hunker down, retreating behind a false sense of security, or we could bring the war to the terrorists, striking them before they could kill more of our people.” I’m sorry, that was the choice? First, putting aside the whole “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside America” thing, who had a false sense of security after 9/11? So that’s obviously not actually a choice at all (the word “false” was kind of a clue), and what he’s saying is that there was only one choice, doing exactly what he did.

He says of the “Terrorists [who] have converged on Iraq” (he’s still pretending that only non-Iraqis are fighting us; I think he secretly believes that the Iraqis actually did dance in the streets and throw rose petals in our path) that they “lack popular support so they’re targeting innocent Iraqis with car bombs and suicide attacks.” As opposed to the smart bombs and depleted uranium shells we used?

Pat Robertson takes back, sorta, the whole hey-I-know-let’s-assassinate-Hugo-Chavez thing, saying, “I spoke in frustration that we should accommodate the man who thinks the U.S. is out to kill him.” I’ve read that sentence several times now, and I can only think that by “accommodate,” he means “not assassinate.” And then he compared Chavez to Hitler and Saddam Hussein, so it wasn’t really much of an apology. When I first wrote about this, I didn’t include a joke I decided was a bit weak, that Robertson wasn’t advocating breaking any commandments because it says Do Not Kill, not Do Not “Take Out.” But today Robertson himself gave a variant of that joke, saying his comments had been taken out of context: “I didn’t say ‘assassination.’ [Actually, he did] I said our special forces should ‘take him out.’ And ‘take him out’ can be a number of things, including kidnapping; there are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him.” And you could have meant “take him out to dinner and a movie,” but you didn’t. You could have meant “take him out to the ball game, take him out with the crowd, buy him some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, I don’t care if he ever gets back, wink wink,” but again, you didn’t.

Checking back through my old notes (which are archived dating back to 1986, links on the right, I pause to remind you), I find that Robertson said in February 1988 (when he was running for president) that he would have had Qadaffi offed (and that he wanted Ollie North as his veep; I’d forgotten that). And he sent money to the Contras and RENAMO.

Honoring the dead

20 months ago, the WaPo reports, the Pentagon decided that 15 Chinese Muslims, Uighurs, being held at Guantanamo had either done nothing wrong, at least not to us. They haven’t been released because they can’t be sent back to China. My favorite detail: nobody bothered telling them for some months that they had been cleared. My favorite new piece of military jargon: the Justice Dept says it has the right to hand on to them under its “wind-up power,” the power to hold onto POWs for a while at the end of a war while making arrangements to return them.

The Post also has a lively story about a near major prison break by Iraqis held by the US, who dug a 357-foot tunnel, involving the removal of 100 tons of dirt. Full of great details. Only took 5 months for anybody to tell us about it.

Bush has responded to Cindy Sheehan after all, by a slight change in rhetoric. Seeing that the death of her son gave her so much moral authority, he has taken to trying to give himself stature by standing on top of his much higher stack of corpses, even going so far Monday as to say out loud for the first time the number of dead. Suddenly they’re useful to him, even Casey Sheehan, as the basis for an argument that the dead need to be “honored” by continuing the war. “We will finish the task that they gave their lives for. We will honor their sacrifice by staying on the offensive against the terrorists etc etc”. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here...

Not to my knowledge and I would think I would have knowledge

Rumsfeld pooh-poohs Pat Robertson’s suggestion that Hugo Chavez be assassinated, “Our department doesn’t do that kind of thing. It’s against the law.” I feel soooo reassured. Don’t you feel soooo reassured? Given his many attempts to do just that “kind of thing” to Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar, I think what he meant to say is “Our department doesn’t do that kind of thing successfully.” He added that there was no planning to assassinate Chavez: “Not to my knowledge and I would think I would have knowledge.” After five years as secretary of war, no one else thinks Rummy would have knowledge about much of anything.

Except for things that aren’t actually true, like progress in Iraq. He says, rebutting those who are “being tossed about by the winds of concern,” that “It’s worth noting that the enemy does not appear to share that view. On the contrary, terrorists like Zarqawi are indicating concern about the lack of support from the Iraqi people.” Really, where precisely is he indicating that?

From The Onion:

The fact that they’re even writing a constitution is vastly different from living under the iron hand of a dictator

The blackout of blogs in South Korea, mentioned here one week ago, went on for some days and perhaps still goes on. The censorship isn’t completely effective, depending on who provides your web access, so honestly what’s the point, Korea? Blogger support informs me that it is indeed the government which is responsible.

White liberal bingo.

Bush blathers on about the wondrous Iraqi political process: “First of all, the fact that they’re even writing a constitution is vastly different from living under the iron hand of a dictator.” And he insists that the comparable American process was kind of sucky too: “We had trouble at our own conventions writing a constitution.” Oh ƒure, becauƒe Madiƒon kept forgetting to make his S’s look like F’s and having to ƒtart over. “It took a lot of work and a lot of interest, and willingness of people to work for the common good.” Can you name one Iraqi involved in this process who is working for the common good?

On Cindy Sheehan: “So I appreciate her right to protest. I understand her anguish. I met with a lot of families. She doesn’t represent the view of a lot of the families I have met with. And I’ll continue to meet with families.” A few questions later, avoiding answering a question about what the US would do in the event of a Sunni uprising, he says, apropos of nothing, “And I suspect most mothers, no matter what their religion may be, will choose a free society, so that their children can grow up in a peaceful world.” Bush idealizes mothers in the abstract; it’s the actual mothers, like Cindy Sheehan or Barbara Bush, that he can’t stand. Still, if the influence of mothers is so beneficial, he seems rather complacent about the status of women in Iraq. Asked by Fox, of all sources, about how women would fare under Sharia law: “as I understand it, the way the constitution is written is that women have got rights”. So that’s ok then.

A statesmanlike decision

Cute NYT headline Monday: “Critics Say Soda Policy for Schools Lacks Teeth.”

Unintentionally (probably) funny WaPo headline: “Federal Funds For Abstinence Group Withheld.” Well I’m sure if the group (“Silver Ring Thing”) respects the federal government, it won’t mind waiting.

The Iraqi constitution is postponed again, and the Bushies again portray it as a great victory. Condi sez, “In a statesmanlike decision, the men and women of the Assembly have decided to use the next three days to continue reaching out to build the broadest national consensus for Iraq’s new Constitution. ... The process by which Iraqis have reached this point is historic and in the best tradition of democracy.” I don’t know, the best tradition of democracy usually entails fewer car bombs, beheadings and the like.

Here’s the factor that determines whether this constitution ever goes into effect: who counts the votes in the Sunni provinces.

In happy times and sad, let’s be friends

The Metropolitan Police’s story is that all 8 cameras in the tube station that should have recorded de Menezes on the day he was shot were non-functioning. Eight of them. Just went dead. All at the same time. Funny, that.

For fans of printed propaganda, of whom I am one, there is a nice example here of a Japanese World War II pamphlet, translated, aimed at the children of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. Pictures of the Japanese being welcomed as liberators (“Our Commander is a friendly Japanese Commander”), you know the sort of thing.

Even with our differing languages and religions, let’s adopt a good attitude and be friendly like brothers. In happy times and sad, let’s be friends.

America, Britain, and the Netherlands were scared of East Asian prosperity; we must not forget this undeniable fact. If we have good relations and help each other, we shall definitely be happy.

Pat Robertson has come under fire for promoting a diet drink, “Pat’s Age-Defying Shake,” on his tax-exempt tv ministry. And he might get into trouble for that, as opposed to praying for the death of Supreme Court justices or calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, cuz, c’mon people, li’l perspective.

Department of Yeah, That’s Gonna Work: “A U.S. judge has taken out ads in Colombian newspapers and magazines ordering the country's main rebel group to appear in his Washington courtroom to face charges of kidnapping three Americans in 2003.” He explained that he had to because he doesn’t have FARC’s address on file.

Thoughtful deliberations

In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, George Bush, a veteran of hanging out in Houston bars wearing a Texas Air National Guard uniform, is still talking about how a free, democratic Iraq will deal a decisive blow yadda yadda, totally disconnected from the events taking place in the actually existing Iraq, the one that exists outside of Bush’s chimp-like head. “We admire their thoughtful deliberations; we salute their determination to lay the foundation for lasting democracy amid the ruins of a brutal dictatorship.” Yeah, thoughtful deliberations, lasting democracy. Sure.

Which brings us to today’s caption contest:

Let go of my damned hand, old man.

The balance of reporting is in the wrong place

How did I miss this detail before? The Metropolitan cop in charge when Jean Charles de Menezes was shot is named Commander Cressida Dick. Anyhoo, Sir Ian Blair, in an interview with the News of the World (not a permanent URL), complains that “this part of the story is concentrating on the death of one individual when we have 52 dead people from all faiths and communities in London and from abroad. ... It seems the balance of reporting is in the wrong place.” Well thank heavens the guy responsible for the death of that one individual and the cover-up that followed is here to put it all in proper perspective.

It was inevitable: a Fort Qualls to counterpoise Camp Casey, and named after another dead soldier, one whose father is pro-war and can’t wait for his other, 16-year old, son to come of age so he can sign up. The “Fort” consists, according to the AP, of a “large tent with ‘God Bless Our President!’ and ‘God Bless Our Troops’ banners and a life-size cardboard cutout of Bush.” What do those banners have in common, besides the religiosity? That they say nothing about the war and in fact have almost the minimum amount of content possible to still count as communication, barely above the content level of a chant of “USA! USA!” Cindy Sheehan wants answers. These people have none; they can provide only a life-size cardboard cutout Bush and life-size cardboard cutout patriotism.

The funnier side of military life in a combat zone

Pope Benedict XVI suggests to Muslim leaders that they should really crack down on terrorists and steer young Muslims away from “the darkness of a new barbarism” through proper religious instruction, that is, instruction in Islam, which I assume would be the old barbarism in Pope Benny’s eyes. Pope Benny knows a lot about steering young people away from extremism from his days in the Hitler Youth.

Ariel Sharon, that’s Ariel fucking Sharon mind you, accuses the settlers of playing politics and causing unnecessary suffering. Presumably as opposed to necessary suffering, which is when Palestinians do the suffering.

Robert Fisk mentions a news release from the US military in Iraq entitled “Comics Bring Barrels of Laughs to Baghdad.” But does he quote from it? Depressive sod that he is, of course not. Evidently the comedians “touched on the funnier side of military life in a combat zone”. It will help, when you read the story, to imagine it spoken over the MASH public address system. That is all.

The fairest way in a pluralistic society

Good article by Andrew Arato, posting on Juan Cole’s site, on the constitution-writing process in Iraq.

Bill Frist says that intelligent design should be taught in public schools so as not to “force any particular theory on anyone. ... I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future.” I can only assume that when he’s practicing medicine, he tells patients, “I recommend heart surgery and I am a doctor, as you can tell by my degrees, handsomely displayed in the cat-fur-lined picture frames, but in a pluralistic society it’s fair that I also tell you about the options of faith-healing, crystals, sacrificing a goat to Odin...”

For Willie Brand, the war on terror ends today

Excuse the longish (by my standards) silence. I was feeling stale and uninspired and didn’t wish to blog just for the sake of blogging. At one point I got as far as “John Roberts turns out to have been quite the snide little shit, doesn’t he?” before giving it up as a bad job. Not that he isn’t a snide little shit, but the various quotes from his old memos speak for themselves.

Jonathan Steele’s op-ed on the “theatre of the cynical” playing out in Gaza notes the settlers’ inability to understand how they, and Israel, are seen, epitomized in their obnoxious chant “Jews do not expel Jews.” The settlers mean to imply that “Jews do not expel Jews; Nazis expel Jews,” but what most of us actually hear is, “Jews do not expel Jews, they expel Arabs.”

The king of Swaziland has ended one year early his 5-year ban on teenagers having sex, which was supposed to end AIDS in Swaziland, a year early. Girls will no longer be required to wear a tasseled scarf to indicate their virginity (I assume they wore other clothes as well).

We now know that Sir Ian Blair, the least competent commissioner of the Met since Sir Charles Warren (a little bone for all you Jack the Ripper fans to gnaw on, you know who you are), tried to prevent investigation of the Menezes shooting, that the Met tried to bribe the Menezes family with $1 million in “compensation” (yes, that’s US dollars, the currency of choice for cover-ups, not British pounds), that the pathologist was given the same false information the public was, and that Blair does not intend to resign.

The 9th Circuit rules that when Congress banned abortions being performed at military bases, along with other measures intended to prevent service members and their families exercising their right to abortion, it actually intended that the Navy’s insurance not pay for a woman with a fetus lacking most of its brain to terminate her pregnancy. The government, in a brief written by some future John Roberts, argued that this case represented a “slippery slope.”

Pfc. Willie Brand, convicted of a variety of crimes in relation to a prisoner he beat to death in Afghanistan in 2002 by hitting him in the knee thirty times (one of two prisoners he beat to death: he was acquitted for the other one), including assault, maiming, and making a false statement, but not murder, is sentenced to diddly squat, that is, a reduction in rank to private, no jail time. That’ll show him. Brand told the jury, “We were trained on these things and when we implement them we were condemned; if we asked questions we are condemned.” Yup, damned if you beat two prisoners to death, damned if you don’t. And here’s what his lawyer said, with no trace of irony: “For Willie Brand, the war on terror ends today.”

Promoting stability, Rummy style

NYT headline: “Rumsfeld’s Tour of South America Is Directed at Promoting Stability.” Because when you think stability, you think Rummy.

While in Peru, we are informed, Rummy visited a museum featuring the arts and crafts of the Indios. Something tells me the Secretary of War isn’t much of a museum person, possibly this quote about the looting of the Iraqi museums in 2003: “It is the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase and you see it 20 times. And you think, my goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?”

Minimizing the loss of innocent life

When Rumsfeld et al accuse Venezuela of being “unhelpful” about drug trafficking, perhaps they had in mind its failure to participate in the “Air Bridge Denial Program,” under which Bush just reauthorized helping Colombia shoot down planes suspected of carrying drugs. Bush claimed the Colombians are working to “minimize the loss of innocent life,” although evidently not by refraining from shooting at airplanes. Best way to minimize loss of life, innocent or otherwise: stop with the shooting.

This is just a little reminder that Americans have been sent by our government to help kill people, without trial, for something that is not a capital crime in our country. The AP story mentions the incident in which a plane full of missionaries was shot down over Peru in 2001 by a Peruvian fighter “guided by US intelligence operatives” who nevertheless “couldn’t stop the Peruvians from shooting.” For what AP left out about who those “operatives” were and why they couldn’t stop the missionaries’ deaths (hint: they didn’t speak the fucking language), read my 2002 post here. It would also have been nice if the AP had mentioned how many planes have been shot down under this program; I know dozens have been in Peru but I’ve never seen a number for Colombia.

Unhelpful, redux

Rumsfeld deployed his word of the day a second time yesterday, calling the delay in adopting an Iraqi constitution “unhelpful,” adding that the sooner it was done, “the fewer Iraqis will be killed and the fewer Americans and coalition forces will be killed.” But no pressure or anything. He couldn’t find WMDs, but he can sure keep finding new scapegoats to blame for the continuing violence in Iraq, anyone and everything except his own incompetence.

Singapore once again cancels its presidential elections, because all candidates (3 of them) except the incumbent were disqualified. To qualify, one must evidently be a cabinet member, chief judge, speaker of the parliament, a civil servant, the head of a company with $60m in capital, or an elderly impotent figurehead.

Russia’s president is not an elderly impotent figurehead, but he does love playing dress-up, putting on both air force and navy uniforms yesterday to attend, ahem, missile launches. As always, captions are welcomed in comments. No Village People references.