Fashion

Now Lou Dobbs is complaining that Mexican lepers are coming into this country and taking jobs away from American lepers, or something.

Secretary of War Robert Gates has made a “surprise” visit to Iraq. How does he stack up against previous surprise visitors?

more at twiigs.com...

There is terror going on

Romney on Bush: “Everything he does, he does from the standpoint of what is best for the American people.”

Romney channeling Bush: “If you look across the world you can recognize that there is terror going on.”

I just found some old clippings of New York Magazine competitions from the ‘90s (and one from 1982!). I’ll type up selected entries from some of them and post them every so often. I did this in old posts, and have collected those comps here.

This is from the 4/20/92 issue, songs from the crap musicals based on a good book, movie etc. You’ll have to guess the original source; New York didn’t list them because its readers are soooo literate that, unlike me, they didn’t have to google the entry
“Can’t This Be Our Little Secret?” – Arthur Dimmesdale
because they’d already know that that referred to The Scarlet Letter. If I had to figure them out, so do you. If I didn’t figure them out, I didn’t bother typing them up. Some have multiple songs, which I’ve grouped together. You’ll get the idea.

“If I Were a Hit Man” – Michael Corleone
“We’re Going to the Mattresses, They’re Sleeping With the Fishes” – Entire Company

“Can’t We Get Some Ice Cream First?” – Lolita

“A Lovely Day for a Ride in the Cah” – JFK
“Waiting for President K to Come Our War” – Oswald and People of Dallas
“The Grassy Knoll” – CIA and Mafia
“Oh, My Suit, My Poor Pink Suit” – Jackie

“How Can We Ignore the Guy Next Door?” - Nick
“What’s New, Old Sport?” - Jay
“Is This Absolutely Where You Live?” – Daisy
“Shirts, Shirts” - Jay
“East Egg, West Egg, All Around the Sound” – Entire Cast

“Look at Me, I’m Madame B!” – Emma

“Honey, I’m Home” - Agamemnon

“The Silence of the Lambs When You Are Gone.”
“Hey, There’s a Moth in Her Mouth” - Clarice

“Decisions, Decisions” – Solomon

“I Hate Spunk” - Mr. Grant
“Hey, Mare” - Rhoda

“My Mama Done Ptolemy” - Cleo
“It’s Only a Papyrus Moon” - Antony
“B-A-D-D- A-S-P-P, Bad Asp” - Cleo

“Here’s Atticus” - Townspeople
“Boo Who?” - Arthur Radley

“Don’t Cry for Me, Oklahoma” - Ma Joad
“I’m Gonna Wash That Dust Right Outta My Hair” - Rose of Sharon

“Call Me Ish, My Game Is Fish” - Ishmael

“There is Nothing Like a Thane” - Chorus
“I Enjoy Being a Churl” - Macbeth
“Greymalkin’s Gonna Clear Up, Put On a Happy Face” - Three Weird Sisters
“Ripp’d Untimely Rag” - Macduff
“Into the Woods” - Macduff

“Boo” - Voice on the Battlement
“Are We Having Fun Yet?” - Gertrude, King
“I’ve Got Those Uncle-Killed-My-Father-Stole-the-Throne-and-Married-Mother Blues” - Hamlet
“Nothing Could Be Finer Than to Be in Asia Minor” - Agamemnon
“Oh, the Hoplites and the Helots Should Be Pals” - Achilles and Myrmidons
“The Last Time Paris Saw Me” - Helen
“A Big Wooden Horse, of Course, of Course” - Priam and Trojans

“A Suitcase Full of Dreams” - Willy
“Attention Must Be Paid” - Linda
“What Am I, Invisible?” - Happy

“We Got Trouble, Right Here in Theban City” - Mr. Oed
“It’s a Wise Child” - Oedipus
“Break the Jinx, Go See the Sphinx, You Little Minx” - Village People
“I Know Something You Don’t Know” – Tiersius
“Uh-Oh” - Jocasta
“I’m A – What?” - Oedipus
“It’s Funny Till Somebody Loses an Eye” – Creon

Or not at all

Bush, in his weekly radio address, called for the abolition of the American government. “The American people expect us to spend their tax dollars wisely, or not at all”. “The American people do not want to return to the days of tax and spend policies.” No taxing, no spending, no government, no problem.

Wherein your humble blogger’s motives are reconsidered

Headline of the day: “Rushdie ‘Humbled’ by Knighthood.” Er, isn’t that rather missing the point of the whole knighthood thing?

Kurt Waldheim, in a document released after his death yesterday, still denies having committed any war crimes, but does acknowledge having taken an “unambiguous position far too late on Nazi crimes,” because, he says, of the “hectic pace of an overloaded international life.” Busy busy busy, what with running the UN and covering up his past, there just weren’t enough hours in the day. He even reached out to the people who hounded him: “I pay respect to all those who confronted me critically and ask them to reconsider their motives and, if possible, grant me reconciliation.” Hmm, let me reconsider my “motives.” Reconsidering... Reconsidering... Reconsidering... Nope, I still don’t like Nazis or torture or mass murder, so I would have to say no, Kurt.

Current UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon managed to come up with this to say about his predecessor: “He was a man who had lived history.” Yeah, that was kind of the problem.

Speaking of war crimes, the Haditha hearings continue. Sharratt’s lawyer says he should get a medal. Sharratt says the reason he went into the house with guns blazing was that he saw male Iraqis repeatedly “turkey peeking” at him over a wall. Clearly they were asking for it.

The Haditha massacre is the subject of a forthcoming motion picture by the director of the documentaries (although the Haditha film is a dramatization) “Kurt & Courtney,” “Biggie and Tupac,” and “Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam.” Which may just make him uniquely qualified to make sense of the Iraq war.

Plus ça change...

Holy Joe Lieberman has another Wall Street Journal op-ed article on Iraq. He insists that in the five months between his trips to Iraq in December 2006 and May 2007, “almost everything about the American war effort in Baghdad has changed”. Except for Joe Lieberman’s Wall Street Journal op-ed pieces, which haven’t changed in the slightest.

He castigates critics of the war for failing to understand, um, something:

Some argue that the new strategy is failing because, despite gains in Baghdad and Anbar, violence has increased elsewhere in the country, such as Diyala province. This gets things backwards: Our troops have succeeded in improving security conditions in precisely those parts of Iraq where the “surge” has focused. Al Qaeda has shifted its operations to places like Diyala in large measure because we have made progress in pushing them out of Anbar and Baghdad.

Yay! Al Qaida is killing people in Diyala province! That means we’re winning!

Lieberman doesn’t say if he’s planning another trip to Iraq, perhaps to Diyala to explain the good news to them.

I’ve been told I’m done

The alliterative Peter Pace explained that he had refused to just retire, he made Gates fire him. Because it would be a bad message to the troops if he “voluntarily walked off the battlefield. That is unacceptable as a leadership thing, in my mind.” How does this thing called leadership thing work?: “I need to be told that I’m done. I’ve been told I’m done.” So, having made some point, now he’ll be retiring. In other words, he’d have happily stayed in the military another two years as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but (and I guess this is a good message to the troops) give him anything less than the top job and he’s outta there. By the way, Pace may have convinced himself that this is a leadership thing, that he’s acting all manly and leadership-y, but one way or another he was going to be out of a job in September, so all he’s actually doing is spinning a decision made by others. If he had known the difference between those two things, maybe he’d have been a little better at his job.


This morning, Bush attended the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast. “This prayer breakfast has come a long way since it started five years ago. We could have held it in a little tiny closet. And now, as Luis tells me, it’s oversubscribed the minute it gets announced. It’s a good sign for our country, isn’t it? People want to come together in prayer.” 1) Why does he assume it’s the prayer part and not the breakfast part that is popular? Who doesn’t like huevos rancheros? 2) Yes, there is something about the last five years of your presidency that makes people want to pray, in a no-atheists-in-foxholes kind of way. Good sign for our country, though? Not so much.

This is Bush afterwards, in the White House Rose Garden, clearly uplifted by all that national Hispanic praying.


Little known fact about Rose Garden protocol: one must sieg heil the white roses, but never, ever, the pink ones.


Then he hopped to Air Force One


for a trip to the Boys & Girls Club of South Central Kansas, which he called “a beautiful facility full of beautiful people,” where he was amazed by an exhibition of levitation. Or maybe the Secret Service took away their jump ropes.

Astonishing signs of normalcy

John Negroponte, now in the State Dept, says that the enemy in Baghdad is “increasingly desperate.” As I said in some old post, for four years now the enemy has always been described as becoming more desperate, never once as getting a little less desperate. So that’s pretty desperate, is what I’m saying. Here’s a 2003 Billmon post on this particular cliché, which was getting old even then, and now just seems a little, um, desperate.

Negroponte called the bombing of the minarets at Samarra both “a deliberate attempt by al Qaeda to sow dissent and inflame sectarian strife among the people of Iraq” and “further evidence of the enemy’s indiscriminate violence”. Dude doesn’t know what the word indiscriminate means.

You know, even if Petraeus is right that “If you drive around Baghdad, you’ll find astonishing signs of normalcy in perhaps half to two-thirds of the city,” he’s probably missing a sign of lack of normalcy: the convoy of armored vehicles that is the only way he can drive around Baghdad and live to tell the tale.

Bush gave yet another damn speech, to the Associated Builders and Contractors, and I only skimmed it, so there.

PAST TENSES ARE NOT HIS FRIEND: “Since I’ve took office...”

Most of the speech was on the immigration bill, because if there’s one thing builders and contractors can’t stand, it’s illegal alien workers. “And so the bill we’re talking about says, okay, enough is enough when it comes to document forgery”. This is Bush’s new favorite phrase. In the past couple of weeks, he’s declared that enough is enough in Darfur, and enough is enough for Kosovo independence.

In Iraq, he says, “The population is tired of al Qaeda. They’re tired of murder.” As Samuel Johnson said, when you’re tired of murder...

ON THE SURGE, THE DECIDER DECIDED: “The sectarian violence was getting more severe. And I had a choice. It’s what Presidents do. They make decisions. And that’s what you do. You make decisions. I made a decision.”

CAPTION CONTEST:





And here’s a bonus – if that’s the word I’m looking for – picture of Bush & Cheney in the Oval Office this morning.

An unqualified success

Tonight Bush went to the aptly-named and no doubt delicious “2007 President’s Dinner,” of which he said, “The only way to call this dinner is an unqualified success.”

In his speech, he only found two things “interesting”: 1) “It is interesting that David Petraeus, our commander on the ground, has declared that al Qaeda is the number-one enemy to the people of Iraq.” 2) “Isn’t it interesting, my dad fought the Japanese, I’m making peace with the Japanese.”

If you’re wondering about that last one, no, he hasn’t started and ended a war with Japan without you noticing. He means that 60 years after World War II, he can sit down with the Japanese prime minister and “talk about peace in the world.” Which isn’t really the same thing as making peace. But then they also, he says, “sit at the table talking about making sure that the leader of North Korea doesn’t get a nuclear weapon.” Um, has no one told him that North Korea has had nukes for a while now?

Anyway, now he’s making peace with the Japanese. “Something happened. What happened was, liberty took hold in Japan. Liberty has the capacity to convert enemies into allies.” You know what else happened? We “converted” two of their cities into charcoal. Somehow in all these anecdotes about Koizumi and Graceland and “Japanese-style democracy” that he tells over and over and over, that part always gets left out of his little just-so story. Maybe Japan isn’t really a template for how the United States should, in Bush’s words, “spread freedom far and wide across the globe.”


But for Bush, it is. Elsewhere in the speech, he says, “Our strategy is, in the short-term, to take the fight to the enemy and defeat them where we find them. In the long-term, the way to defeat an ideology of hate is with an ideology of hope.” Got that? Short term: mass slaughter; long-term: ideology of hope. How could that possibly fail?

He doesn’t see why, correctly and repeatedly and simply explained, that policy wouldn’t be tremendously popular in this country: “And I believe if our candidates take the message of doing what is necessary to protect the American people, and take the message, the hopeful message of helping others realize the blessings of liberty, that we will retake the House and retake the Senate, and hold the White House in 2008.” Can’t wait to see the bumper stickers. 2006 elections or no 2006 elections, dude still thinks his policies are wildly popular.


Speaking of wildly popular, it does seem as if Bush’s surprisingly cheap Timex was not stolen, that he really did take it off because he was afraid some Albanian would steal it. This action has made him just a little bit less popular in Albania than he was.

The price is worth paying

Bush issued a statement about the latest attack on the Samarra mosque. He’s against it. The US will send troops to the area to guard the rubble, and to “restor[e] calm and security to the area.” The Samarranians will no doubt be interested to hear that their area was calm and secure right up until this morning. Bush also said, “The United States also stands ready to help the Iraqi people rebuild and restore this holy shrine.” As I said last year, when he made the same offer about the dome, the Shiites really don’t want your infidel fingerprints on their holy site.

Iraqi PM Maliki, who just yesterday said, “we have eliminated the danger of sectarian war,” has an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal today, suggesting that “Americans keen to understand the ongoing struggle for a new Iraq can be guided by the example of their own history,” specifically, the American Civil War, which “took hundreds of thousands of lives but ended in the triumph of freedom and the birth of a great power.” And Iraq is just like that. Well, the taking of hundreds of thousands of lives part; obviously not the triumph of freedom part or the birth of a great power part.

He gives a little history of Iraq. Under the Baathist Party, “Countless people were put to death on the smallest measure of suspicion.” Thank god that could never happen in Iraq today. Also, “Wars were waged by that regime and our national treasure was squandered without the consent of a population that was herded into costly and brutal military campaigns.” I can’t even imagine what it would be like to live under such a regime. Oh, wait.

He uses the word “national” a lot, as if repetition will convince us that Iraq isn’t irreconcilably fragmented: national army, national government, national interests, national ideas, and, most laughably, national reconciliation.

He says that freedom “is never cheap but the price is worth paying if we are to rescue our country.”

He doesn’t say precisely what that price will be.

Also, I don’t recall Iraq being a whole lot of help during our Civil War.

Where we know what to do...

Bush today received the report he commissioned after the Virginia Tech shootings. The key to preventing another such event seems to be “information sharing,” a phrase Bush repeated three times in a single sentence.


From the grins on these clowns’ faces – Jeebus, just look at Gonzales, he looks like a 5-year old just told he’s getting ice cream and pony rides – I can only assume that the information that 32 people were slaughtered at Virginia Tech less than two months ago was not shared.

This picture from the White House website shows how serious Bush is about the report. He has his special readin’ glasses on and everything.


My favorite recommendation in the report: “Where We Know What to Do, We Have to be Better at Doing It.”

Meanwhile, the House passed a bill that would require states report to the federal government people who aren’t supposed to buy guns because of mental problems. Veterans receiving disability benefits because of mental-health problems, however, will have their gun-purchasing rights restored automatically. Oh good.

He’s the Understander

Polls show that if Fred Thompson entered the presidential race, he would be preferred by Republicans over everyone except Giuliani. Does that mean Republicans think that “9/11” is a better tv show than “Law and Order?”

Bush met with Republican senators today, to push them not to block the immigration bill, which he ominously called “the product,” saying he hoped Harry Reid “has that same sense of desire to move the product that I do”.


In his brief statement after the meeting, he used the word “understand” twice. He uses it often, and in two distinctive ways. Applied to himself, it is meant in the usual cognitive sense. Today, for example, he said, “Some members in there believe that we need to move a comprehensive bill, some don’t, I understand that.” Often he says that he “fully understands” something. That’s usually good for a giggle. But when applied to other people, he quite often means that they agree with some opinion of his. Because he does not acknowledge the legitimacy or often even the existence of other people’s opinions, he treats his own opinions and preferences as if they were factual statements about the universe. Thus this peculiar construction: “I want to thank those senators on both sides of the aisle who understand the time is now to move a comprehensive piece of legislation.”

Our spirit is not broken. Although everything else is.

Haditha massacre hearings update: last week Lt Col. Chessani tried to call an expert witness on Islamic culture, to prove... well, what exactly we’ll never know because the court decided hearing from a Benedictine monk would look bad in Iraq. This week we’ve learned that Corp. Justin Sharratt said in a 2006 statement that he believed the entire Haditha area (pop. of city 90,000) was hostile, so he was free to “use any means necessary and my training to eliminate the hostile threat.” For example, after shooting one armed man (or so he says), he took out several others. That’s the “any means necessary” part. Here’s the “training” part: “I could not tell while I was shooting if they were armed or not, but I felt threatened.” Of course he felt threatened; after all, there were Iraqis around, and he considered every single Iraqi to be hostile.

Although, to be fair, I don’t imagine Sharratt is the most popular guy in Haditha.

There has been a parade of Americans visiting Maliki to tell him to, you know, accomplish something. Anything, really. Maliki, while saying that “There are lots of difficulties that are not well understood from outside,” also claims that there have been many successes that aren’t well understood from outside Maliki’s head. He says that Petraeus’s report in September “should list the accomplishments.” For example, “Our spirit is not broken.” I’m not sure “accomplishment” is the precise word for “our spirit is not broken.” What else’ve ya got? “Another success is that no one is above the law.” Or below it, because, really, what law? Also, and I’ll reprint in full the every-so-slightly sceptical NYT sentence containing the quote, “Without providing evidence, he added, ‘we have eliminated the danger of sectarian war.’”

Bush in Bulgaria: I call him George

Bush went to Bulgaria today.


He met with its President Parvanov, of whom he said, “I call him George. He calls me George.” Parvanov probably calls himself by his actual name, which is Georgi.

He praised Bulgaria for joining the EU and NATO: “These are big achievements for this country, and the people of Bulgaria ought to be proud of the achievements that they have achieved.” Cuz they’ve, you know, achieved them.


The forthcoming confidence vote on Alberto Gonzales made George positively incoherent with rage: “I, frankly, find it interesting that in -- a so-called important subject they need to get to would be to pass a political resolution on my Attorney General that’s going to have no bearing on whether he serves in office, or not. ... this process has been drug out a long time, which says to me it’s political.” You know, because of the drugging. “[H]e -- they haven’t said, here’s -- you’ve done something wrong, Attorney General Gonzales. And therefore, I ascribe this lengthy series of news stories and hearings as political. And I’ll make the determination if I think he’s effective, or not, not those who are using an opportunity to make a political statement on a meaningless resolution.”


Sounds like he needed a little something to take the edge off. Fortunately, there was a lunch, with toasts,


and that got him in a more mellow mood. “And I care deeply about the Bulgarian nurses,” he said.

Don’t we all, George, don’t we all.

The Sopranos conclusion (no spoilers)

I have a few thoughts. But so anyone who hasn’t seen it yet and plans to do so won’t accidentally read about the thrilling series finale – who expected Furio to come out of nowhere and throw himself in front of the bullet the Russian from the Pine Barrens meant for Carmela? – I’ve put it here.

We cannot let them get away with it

An Orthodox rabbinical court has placed a curse on anyone who participates in a gay pride parade in Jerusalem. And the cops guarding the parade. “[T]hey will feel in their souls a curse, a bad spirit will come over them and haunt them, they will never be cleansed of their sins, from the judgment of God, in their bodies, their souls and their finances.”

Ousmane Sembene, Senegal’s most famous novelist (God’s Bits of Wood) and film director (I especially like “Ceddo” and “The Camp at Thiaroye”) has died. Yes, it’s a small country to be the most famous novelist and director from, but he was still pretty good.

Holy Joe Lieberman went on Face the Nation (pdf) (or video if you can bear it) and called for bombing Iran, because if we bomb Iran, everything will be fine in Iraq. In a five-minute interview he said that Iranians and/or people trained in Iran are: “killing American soldiers and Iraqis,” “killing Americans,” “killing Americans in Iraq”, “coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers”, “coming in and killing Americans”, “have killed as many as 200 American soldiers”, and “come in and kill Americans”.

“It’s just--we cannot let them get away with it.”

I’d say something sarcastic, but it’s time for The Sopranos.

They love him in Albania (they can keep him)

Thomas Ricks of the WaPo writes of Pentagon plans for Korea-style bases in Iraq, “One of the guiding principles, according to two officials here, is that the United States should leave Iraq more intelligently than it entered.” Talk about setting the bar low.

Speaking of WaPo journalists, Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” will be made into a movie. With Matt Damon.

George Bush is in the only country in the world that actually likes him, the only country where he could risk going out in public,


the only country whose prime minister would describe him as “the greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all times” (well, almost the only country, but Tony Blair’s out by the end of the month).

Oh, sorry, it’s Albania, which Bush called “a country that has casted off the shackles of a very repressive society”.


(And by the way, headline of the day, from the White House website: “President Bush Makes Toast in Albania.” White or wheat? No, wait, I’ll bet it was raisin.)

Bush uttered a prime example of the “in other words” genre: “I commended the Prime Minister for the progress that Albania has made in defense reform -- in other words, part of becoming a member of NATO requires a reformation of the defense forces.” Followed two sentences later by another: “In other words, you’re just not accepted into membership; you just can’t say, I want to join”. He suggested that, “The politicians have got to work together now to meet the standards. They’ve got to set aside political differences and focus on what’s right for Albania.” It’s generally considered bad form to lecture condescendingly to politicians in other countries as if they were Democrats and to accuse them of partisanship.


On the subject of Kosovo, a rather sputtering “in other words”: “In other words, I put a sense of -- I made it clear that -- two things, one that we need to get moving; and two, that the end result is independence.”


A reporter began a question, “Yesterday you called for a deadline for U.N. action on Kosovo...” Bush responded, “A couple of points on that. First of all, I don’t think I called for a deadline. I thought I said, time -- I did? What exactly did I say? I said, ‘deadline’? Okay, yes, then I meant what I said.” Here is what he did say yesterday:

Q: And the deadline for the Kosovo independence --

PRESIDENT BUSH: What? Say that again?

Q: Deadline for the Kosovo independence?

PRESIDENT BUSH: A decline?

Q: Deadline, deadline.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Deadline. Beg your pardon. My English isn’t very good. (Laughter.)

For example, as with Iraq, he literally does not know the meaning of the word deadline.

Here Bush is seen arriving at Tirana Airport and receiving the traditional gift of flowers and a 12-year old girl.

And I was in awe, and it was a moving experience for me

Condi Rice explained in an interview that the thing about Iraq being like Korea is a metaphor, not an analogy. So that’s okay, then.

Bush had a brief press conference with Italian PM Prodi (who thinks that all American high schools offer Italian classes) (which may not be true, but many of us have picked up some practical Italian from The Sopranos).


Mostly, Bush talked about his meeting with the pope (sadly, the two did not have a joint press conference), who he again called “His Holy Father.” When they met, he called him “sir,” which is evidently such a breach of protocol that people gasped. “First, I’ll give you an impression. I was talking to a very smart, loving man. ... And I was in awe, and it was a moving experience for me.”


Pope Benny evidently expressed some concern about Christian Iraqis – or as Bush put it, “he’s worrisome about the Christians inside Iraq being mistreated by the Muslim majority” – but none about the non-Christian Iraqis dying every day – “We didn’t talk about ‘just war.’” What exactly is the point of a pope, if when meeting a man in charge of an unjust war, he doesn’t even bring the subject up?


Bush said that the decision not to renominate the alliterative Peter Pace “speaks to the U.S. Congress and the climate in the U.S. Congress.” Cloudy with a slight chance of oversight?

The president talked a lot about what we talked about

Yesterday at the G8 summit, Bush finally showed up, not looking hung over at all:


“I keep telling you, I’m Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico.” “I don’t care who you are, Pepe, just get me a beer, pronto.”
“You’re a genie, aren’t you, genie? Get me a beer, genie.”
Then he went to Gdansk, to meet tiny Polish President Kaczynski, or possibly tiny Polish Prime Minister Kaczynski (they’re twins, you know).


Said Bush, “We really thank you for inviting us to Jurata. Thank you for the walk in the woods.” I’m pretty sure Kaczynski tried to ditch him in the woods, but couldn’t out-run him with those stubby legs.

Bush said, “The president talked a lot about what we talked about.” The way he describes it, it’s almost like you’re there.

“One thing I do want to do is praise this good country for being so strong for freedom.” He hasn’t learned a new adjective since he was five years old, has he?

By the way, ask gay Poles how strong they feel Kaczynski is for freedom.

He thanked Poland for sending troops to Iraq; “The people of Iraq will never forget it.” Because they never knew it in the first place.

“We discussed, as well, the efforts by Poland to help people who are -- need to be free from governments that are -- darken their vision. I thank you very much for your leadership for Belarus”. Either he’s saying that the little twin is leading Belarus, or that Belarus’s government needs to be overthrown. Possibly both.

He affirmed plans to piss Putin off by installing missile interceptors that won’t work on Polish soil to “enhance... the security of the entire continent against rogue regimes who might be willing to try to blackmail free nations. That’s the true threat of the 21st century.” In case you were wondering what the true threat of the 21st century is.

“All in all, we had the kind of conversation you’d expect strong allies to have. It was candid, it was over a really good meal...” You know, the kind of meal you’d expect strong allies to have. Not with brussel sprouts. Strong allies don’t eat brussel sprouts. “...and I’m looking forward to bringing you back, Mr. President, to the White House.” Er, I don’t think you get to keep him.

A divisive ordeal

Secretary of War Robert Gates had made a momentous decision: saying that “a divisive ordeal at this point is not in the interests of the country or of our military services, our men and women in uniform,” he has decided to replace the alliterative Peter Pace as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because his confirmation hearings would have been “contentious” and “backward-looking.” So the divisive ordeal Gates wished to spare our men and women in uniform was... the sight on C-SPAN of Pace being asked some questions about his previous job performance, possibly in a harsh tone of voice. His replacement is, Reader points out in comments, the alliterative Michael Mullen.


Gates makes it clear that he thinks Pace the better man for the job, and that it is solely the contentious hearings at which he balked. Not the vote, which he knows he’d win. He also said he made his decision after he was warned about the hearings being all contentious-y by senators. Of course it’s obvious that the Democrats would be a problem, and I’m sure the prospect of listening to Joe Biden go on and on makes us all feel tired, but I suspect what Gates was told that made him bail on Pace was that the Republican senators weren’t prepared to cheer-lead for him this time.

What happens in Heiligendamm, stays in Heiligendamm

Sheriff Clark, the white supremacist responsible for so much violence against civil rights activists in Selma in the 1960s, has died. I must say, I didn’t know he was defeated for re-election in 1966, or that he went to prison for marijuana smuggling in 1978. Read the NYT obit.

It will be interesting to see how big a scandal BAE Systems’s bribing of Prince Bandar develops into. On the one hand it’s a case of graft on a massive scale, and Tony Blair intervened personally to quash a legal investigation, but on the other hand it’s not exactly news that arms companies and Saudi princes are corrupt. Caught red-handed, Blair could only pretend that nothing serious had taken place. Hell, bribing foreigners wasn’t even illegal in Britain until 2002, and, he said, those contracts provided thousands of jobs for British workers in the arms trade. Of course, anyone who pays a bribe to secure a contract can say the same thing, but usually don’t have Tony’s self-delusion.

Headline of the day: “Cops Raid Wrong Place, Kick Man in Groin.” Is there a right place to kick a man in the groin?

Okay, as I wrote that, I realized some of you would read that and instantly go to comments to answer, “The Oval Office.” I know how you people think.

So you’ll just have to settle for watching Bush get shit-faced:

“Thanks, fraulein, that’ll do for a start.”

“Heh heh, I got ‘em all fooled in ta thinkin’ this’s a non-alcoholic beer.”

“One more beer an’ I go in for the neck rub.”

“What Laura don’t know won’t hurt me.”

“An’ another thing...” Bush says as he goes into Cliff Claven mode.


Oh, I know these are cheap shots, but they’re satisfying. So you people want a caption contest so you can join in, don’t you? (I said I know how you people think).

Also, what on earth is going on with Sarkozy?


(Update: the next morning, Bush missed meetings and was said to be “resting in his room with a stomach ailment.” Mm hmm.)

And the missile defense system should say, we can work together

While in the Czech Republic, Bush was presented by Defense Minister Vlasta Parkanova with a CD in which she sang (she used to be a jazz musician; the former president was a playwright: it’s a Czech thing) a song in praise of the missile defense base to the tune of an old Communist-era song, “Good Afternoon, Mr. Gagarin.”

I have some pictures from yesterday to burn off:


“Ew, he’s sniffing his hand again.”
“Oh please mein Gott, not another back rub.”
At the G8, Bush and Blair met for the very last time of Blair’s premiership. So many memories, all of which Blair will spend the rest of his life trying to repress. Unsuccessfully, if there is any justice in the world.


Someday, he’ll be a real boy.
The main subjects were AIDS in Africa and global warming. Bush bounced back and forth between them disconcertingly: “And as we discuss global climate change, it’s really important we don’t forget those who are dying.” “Over the past three years, anti-retroviral drugs has been extended from -- to over a million people, up from 50,000. So it’s important to debate the environment and discuss it.”

On global warming, Bush said, “I view our role as a bridge between people in Europe and others and India and China.” There’s a joke about rising water levels in there somewhere, but not a very funny joke.

He said the US will reduce its use of gas by 20% in 10 years, “And the way you do that is through technologies and ethanols and battery technologies”. Many technologies and many ethanols.

There were other issues discussed. “But enough is enough in Darfur.” Although, “I don’t know how long it’s going to take for people to hear the call to save lives.”

Blair also spoke, defending his decision to quash an investigation into the massive bribes British Aerospace Engineering paid to Saudi Prince Bandar – “my job is to give advice as to whether that [the investigation] is a sensible thing”, what with the strategic interests and British jobs. Not even a hint that corruption might be a, you know, bad thing at all.


On the missile defense system, Bush laid out the fact: “In other words, the facts are, is that -- the fact is this...”

What’s important? “[I]t is important for Russia and Russians to understand that I believe the Cold War ended”. Well, pretty sure anyway, he was kind of drunk that year.

“I repeat, Russia is not a threat. They’re not a military threat. They’re not something that we ought to be hyperventilating about.”

Oh, who wouldn’t hyperventilate?
What should we be hyperventilating about? Some people would say, talking missile defense systems: “And the missile defense system should say, we can work together.”

The process and progress move at different paces and different places

Austria has lowered the voting age to 16. Will this be followed elsewhere?

Bush had a press conference at the G8 summit. Before he took questions, he felt he had to say something about his speech yesterday: “The purpose of the speech is to remind our allies and those who are wondering as to whether or not the United States is firmly committed to democracy that we are.” So that clears that up.

He previewed his upcoming chat with Putin about the missile defense stations: “And we’ll have a good dialogue about how we can constructively work together to deal with -- modernize our capacity to deal with the threat to the -- the true threats.” Yeah, that’ll be a good dialogue, all right. He says it’s okay that Putin is threatening to re-target missiles on European targets, because, “I don’t think Vladimir Putin intends to attack Russia -- I mean, Europe.” In fact, he twice says that Russia won’t attack Europe. It will not escape Russia’s notice that Bush doesn’t consider Russia to be part of Europe. He says we don’t need to respond militarily to any re-targeting “because we’re not at war with Russia.”

He explained the necessity of a missile shield: “I mean, if somebody pops up with a weapon and says, hands up, people will say, well, how come we didn’t have a shield?” They’ll also be wondering why someone with a nuclear missile is saying “hands up.” “And so it’s -- I think we need to do both. I think we need to protect ourselves of what might happen, and then work collaboratively to make sure it doesn’t happen.”

Protect ourselves of what might happen? Prepositions are really not his friend. He also warned about the dangers of “cells moving through our societies with the intent upon killing”.

He managed to portray Putin’s threats of nuclear confrontation as a positive sign. A reporter asked if Putin had some “political purpose.” Bush responded, “It’s interesting you would ask the question, do you think he is trying to position himself at home -- thereby meaning that he is concerned about public opinion, which is a sign that there is a -- when public opinion influences leadership, it is an indication that there is involvement of the people.” So war-like threats are a sign of a vibrant democratic process. Tell me again, why are we “firmly committed to democracy”?

Of course, there’s firmly committed, and there’s firmly committed. About Musharaf: “And in terms of the democracy issues, he’s going to have to deal with it. ... democracy is -- it’s a lot more established in Pakistan than some of the other nations I mentioned. And there’s upcoming elections. And what you’re seeing is a lot of posturing about the election process, and it’s not perfect. Either was our democracy perfect for 100 years when we enslaved people.” Posturing about the election process?

He warned against demanding changes “overnight,” touting “incremental reforms” in Saudi Arabia. He said, “The process and progress move at different paces and different places”. Let’s stop for a moment to marvel at the sophistication of that sentence, with its not one but two internal rhyme schemes. Oh sure, he screwed up when he said “and” instead of “in,” and he’s excusing despotic states, but, hey, two internal rhyme schemes.

He continued, making the point that while democracy is all well and good, there are more important matters at stake: “and the role of the United States is to help encourage them along, while at the same time achieving certain national objectives. It just so happens that the key national objective in the beginning of the 21st century is to make sure we don’t get attacked again and innocent people get murdered. And so we can do both. We can say that in the long run, the best way to secure your society is through liberty. In the short run, let’s work collaboratively to protect ourselves.”

On Iraq: “it should frighten the American people that al Qaeda is active in Iraq looking for a safe haven from which to launch further attacks.” Dammit, why aren’t you people more frightened?

About the Iraq-South Korea comparison: “It’s not to say that the cultures were the same, or the difficulties in the different countries are the same. It is to say, however, that the U.S. can provide a presence in order to give people confidence necessary to make decisions that will enable democracies to emerge, and say to other people, step back and let the democracies emerge.”

Says cellulosic ethanol “will help nations once that becomes able to compete in the market.” Bush can mangle a sentence that badly but somehow they taught him to say “cellulosic ethanol.”

On carbon emissions: “I said I’m for sitting together with the nations to sit down and discuss a way forward.” So there’ll be sitting involved.

And it will be at a table: “you’re not going to have greenhouse gas emissions that mean anything unless all nations, all emitters are at the table.” And you do not want to be near the table with all the emitters, if you know what I mean.

Always end on a flatulence joke, that’s my philosophy.