A Blah presidency

To combine metaphors used to describe the California recall, it’s like a car wreck you can’t help but look at, and then 37 clowns (as of yesterday) all tumble out of the car. On CNN today, I saw a split-screen of Gary Coleman and Schwarzenegger.

Actually, I have a lot in common with Der Arnold. Like him, my most difficult decision was getting a bikini wax in 1978.

Speaking of plastic action figures.

Darrell Issa, who spent $1.7m of his own money on the recall, has pulled out of the race, crying like a little girl. (That last phrase was meant to be read in a Hans und Franz accent). Turned out he was less plausible as a candidate than Gary Coleman or that guy practicing sumo wrestling, by himself, in a big diaper in his backyard. To buy the lousy t-shirt (“I spent $1.7 million to attack democracy and all I got was...”), click here.

Speaking of recalls, Charles Taylor has named his successor, his current vice president, whose name is...drum roll please... Moses Blah.

In response to the possible legalization of import of (legal) drugs from Canada, Pfizer has decided to put Canadian pharmacies on a leash, only selling them the amount of drugs Pfizer thinks suitable for Canadian use only.

I said 2 days ago that the theme of the week is Bush admin deception across the board. Al Gore made a speech yesterday on that very subject. He said that on Iraq, taxes and the budget, and global warming (which he called “climate change,” which is the term the Bushies use--they are banned from using the phrase “global warming”), the president seems to have been pursuing policies chosen in advance of the facts -- policies designed to benefit friends and supporters -- and has used tactics that deprived the American people of any opportunity to effectively subject his arguments to the kind of informed scrutiny that is essential in our system of checks and balances." He says he’s thought long and hard about this and has concluded that the problem is not Bush’s advisers, but Bush himself. He has, amazingly enough, concluded that Bush should be replaced by a Democrat next year. But he repeated that he will not run for president but will endorse one of the nine candidates. In a first sign of unity, all 9 said, Gee Al, thanks but no thanks.

And more on the systematic deception theme: a report I haven’t read, but it’s at www.politicsandscience.org. Evidently there have also been recent editorials in Science, Nature, The Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Post belatedly realizes just how often and by how many top admin officials the Niger uranium lie was uttered. You’d think a Lexis-Nexis or Google search would have turned up all these examples two months ago.

Killer robot

Hans and Franz go to Sacramento: Arnie will run after all, forcing me to add “Schwarzenegger” to my WordPerfect spellcheck dictionary. The Arnold, the LA Times notes, is best known for playing a killer robot. Yeah, and he was in those Terminator movies too.

The paper also refers to his “trademark Austrian accent.” I didn’t know you could trademark those. Could I take a copyright out on sarcasm? On the Leno show, he said “There is a total disconnect between the people and the politicians.” As opposed to the very real connection between the people and multi-millionaire Austrian weight-lifters. It’s unclear just what happened here. Everyone said he would announce that he wasn’t running. If nothing else, you would have thought even Der Arnold would have known how un-serious using the Tonight Show for this announcement was, right up until you heard him quote every crappy tag-line from every movie he ever made--honestly, who ever thought “Hasta la vista, baby” was clever?--during the announcement and press conference, showing that he does have one clear connection with the people of California, who can’t tell the difference between politics and show biz either.

Democratic discipline reverted to type, shrinking away like Arnie’s testicles under the influence of steroids, as Loretta Sanchez, Lt Gov Bustamante and maybe John Garamendi are joining the race.

Speaking of wrecks, a giant cargo ship is wrecked on the coast of Cornwall after, and I quote the Guardian, “the chief officer got his trousers stuck on a lever in the wheelhouse, fell over and was knocked unconscious.”

The Iraqi scientist who turned over to the US those pieces buried in his backyard since 1991, who thought he had an asylum deal, has actually been kept since then in house arrest in Kuwait, because while he told the US everything he knew, he didn’t tell them what they wanted to here about there being an ongoing program.

What the Guardian calls a conference of Dr. Strangeloves, scientists & Pentagon officials, will meet today at an air force base in Nebraska to discuss nuclear strategy. Hopefully there will be leaks. But if you think about it, this statement by a Pentagon spokesmodel is scary enough: "We need to change our nuclear strategy from the cold war to one that can deal with emerging threats." In other words, they want to figure out how to use nukes, or the threat of nukes, in new and exciting ways.

Athenian democracy

In a deniable leak to the press, the Bush admin threatens that if Israel doesn’t stop building its wall-fence, US aid to Israel might be cut back by up to 1%.

London Times headline: “Walkout after Gay Bishop Is Finally Elected.” That’s the Episcopal Church of America, of course. And you just know what was going through the heads of each one of the 20 bishops who were walking out: Try not to sway your hips, try not to sway your hips, try not to sway your hips...

For those who say that California’s recent doings suggest we’re less than an Athenian democracy: Arianna’s running.

I mentioned that the recall ballot will also include Ward Connelly’s initiative to create a “color-blind” California. Does that mean he supports keeping Gray?

Don’t know if Arianna is color blind, but we know her gay-dar doesn’t work very well.

Greg Palast traces Shrub’s unwillingness to look too closely at Saudi funding of terrorism to the strong possibility that that would include Saudis who funded some of his failed attempts at running businesses.

The Village Voice has an article on how the Bush admin has been systematically attempting to force NGOs & government social service agencies to follow the Bush line on condoms, HIV, education, etc etc., or at the very least to live in fear that anything they say can be used to deny them funding.

Molly Ivins’s current column also talks about systematic deception by the Bushies, as did Paul Krugman, I think, on the NYT op-ed page a couple of days ago, who talked about the distortion of evidence in budgetary policy as well as Iraq and every damn thing else. Seems to be the theme of the week, the discovery that every scientist, statistician, social worker and probably janitor is expected to suppress evidence and opinion that goes against Bush policies, and cheerlead for those policies.

And the FDA will allow potato chips and suchlike that use Olestra to discontinue warning about the explosive diarrhoea and other possible side effects.

Because labeling is so important, isn’t it? Like the US military says that it no longer uses napalm, but still sets people on fire using petroleum-based firebombs. And did, in Iraq.

Larry Flynt is organizing a vigil to pray for the death of Bill O’Reilly.

Not pouring money into a black hole

You may remember that in April US forces made a big fuss about a prison for children they had found in Iraq. It was actually an orphanage, but by the time they figured that out, the children had been “liberated” on to the streets and a future of begging, prostitution and drugs. Well, the orphanage has been reopened, now run by Shiite mullahs, who have recaptured many of the former occupants. The girls must cover their hair and so forth, or they are beaten. And they are being “married” off, some as young as 13. Imams are encouraging their congregations to go down and pick one out for themselves. UNICEF pulled out a month ago in horror.

Similarly, the NYT has a story Monday about the proliferation of unofficial Islamic courts that people can go to to mediate disputes or give them permission to kill a Baathist or a female relative or whatever.

Similarly, the London Times says an Islamic Shia army is being formed. It claims a million men have already joined. Obviously it’s less, but evidently a shitload.

Although 52 US soldiers have been killed by hostile fire since the war, um, ended (54, I’ve read elsewhere), another 60 have died from other causes: 23 car & chopper accidents, 12 weapons accidents, 3 suicides, 3 drowned. The number of wounded is many hundred. The story on this says, I think correctly, that the impression that this was an easy victory has been erased. Good.

The British Green Party spokesman on drugs was just tried for, what else, drugs, but won his appeal, the court saying his 19 pot plants were for medicinal use for his bad back.

Azerbaijan’s parliament (it doesn’t deserve an initial capital letter) elects as prime minister the son of president-for-life Aliyev. Fellow dictator in Belarus, Lukashenko has announced plans to change the constitution to let himself run for a 3rd term. So of the 12 non-Baltic former Soviet republics, there are a grand total of no democracies.

A few days ago US troops in Afghanistan shot 3 Afghan army officers, justifying it by saying that the taxi in which they had been riding was “driving aggressively” toward them. Driving aggressively? An Afghan? Surely not!

John Poindexter has announced that he will retire, saying he plans to spend more time sailing. In a boat no doubt paid for with betting-on-terrorism-and-assassination money.

Economics from Dummies, as presented by George W. Bush: “Remember on our TV screens -- I'm not suggesting which network did this -- but it said, 'March to War,' every day from last summer until the spring," Bush said. "'March to War, March to War.' That's not a very conducive environment for people to take risk, when they hear 'March to War' all the time.” George has an MBA, you know. How ever did that network get the idea last year that the US was marching to war? We don’t march to war, we drive. That’s kinda the point of the war.

The WaPo finally gets around to a story (11 days after I wrote about it) about Liberia that mentions the terrible human rights record of Nigerian peace-keeping troops, such as the ones now entering Liberia with America’s blessings and no doubt money. Including that little thing in Sierra Leone where 98 prisoners were thrown off a bridge. The US got the UN to give the troops immunity from prosecution for war crimes.

In recall news, the 99-Cent Store chain has offered to pay the filing fee for any 99-year old who wants to run for governor. Larry Flynt now says he plans to conduct polls to see if he’s a viable candidate. "I have money, but I'm not going to pour it down a dark hole ..." He also says that children are our future, which is also a little nervous-making coming from him.

No, I don't have a problem with a smut peddler as governor. Do you have a problem with a smut peddler as governor?

Many of the rules for the Cal. recall election have been made up, or imported from other laws. For example, the $3,500 filing fee comes from the law for primaries, which specifically says it does not apply to recall elections, but it’s still being used. What the hell, if we can just get 10,000 candidates--and evidently we can--the election will be paid for. “Government by mood ring,” Jon Carroll calls the recall, which is very 1970s of him (he might have said government by pet rock, but Arnie decided not to run). Some of my faves among the candidates: the unemployed woman-- she’s selling merchandise! The cute 26-year old software engineer-- she’s selling merchandise! thong underwear! Look at the links on her website: she’s actually been mentioned by or interviewed by a fair number of newspapers and tv stations. She’s against the death penalty, so I may vote for her. Slogan: “she won’t go gray until her term limits are up.” Also Larry Flynt ("California is the most progressive state in the union. I don't think anyone here will have a problem with a smut peddler as governor.") and a bunch of joke candidates with names similar to other people’s--a Bob Dole and a Michael Jackson, for example. Some of whom will have been put up to it by Davis, I predict.

One of the rules that got made up is that if the recall succeeds, voters get to choose a new governor. Since 1974 the state constitution has said this: "An election to determine whether to recall an officer and, if appropriate, to elect a successor shall be called by the Governor and held not less than 60 days nor more than 80 days from the date of certification of sufficient signatures." What does appropriate mean? No one really knows. If it means that it’s appropriate when a recall succeeds, then it’s really poor writing. It could also mean when the office is not judicial (when, say, Rose Bird was recalled as chief justice, the voters didn’t get to vote in a replacement). Or it could mean when there is no other provision for succession. For governor, this is such provision: "The Lieutenant Governor shall become Governor when a vacancy occurs in the office of Governor." The 1974 initiative that included the “if appropriate” language was voted on without anyone ever talking about this.

The Bush admin sent someone all the way to Niger to tell them to shut up about Yellowcake-gate. Which means not to defend themselves against charges of complicity with Iraqi plans to acquire nuclear weapons.

BUT IS IT ART? From the Observer: “Using techniques of advanced plastic surgery, performance artist Stelarc, originally called Stelios Arcadiou, is to grow the ear in a biotech laboratory and have it grafted on to his forearm. Samples of Stelarc's cartilage and bone marrow will be taken and grown in a laboratory. The cartilage will be nurtured into the shape of an ear, similar to the technique used to grow ears on laboratory mice. The ear will then be surgically placed under a flap of skin on Stelarc's arm, where it will develop its own blood supply. Stelarc hopes to fit the ear with a sound chip and a proximity censor so that it can emit sounds or words when people approach. ... Last month a French artist cut off his own finger with an axe and donated it to a museum.”

The Pentagon is planning to avoid the problem of using airbases altogether by developing a bomber capable of traveling 10,000 miles in 2 hours, striking anywhere in the world from the US.

Oh, this can’t be real. In the tradition of “Heather Has Two Mommies,” here’s a book to prepare children to accept being abducted by aliens. Review here. It is real, there’s an Amazon.com listing.

http://www.acknowledgegodamerica.com/ is the site for people who want an amendment to the US Constitution saying that God exists (putting the amen in amendment, as the site that referred me to it put it).

Playing opera to Australian camels

The Vatican’s statement ordering Catholic lawmakers to oppose gay marriages also has this to say about adoption by gays: “Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development.” But priests fucking choirboys is still ok, right? Read the thing (excerpts here), it’s actually more gratuitously insulting to gays than you’d expect even from the Vatican.

The New Mexican Standoff: The Texas Lite Governor is poo-pooing earlier stories about bounty hunters. But did threaten to expel the missing D’s from the state senate altogether (and then quickly pretended he hadn’t).

I said Queer Like Me yesterday. The show is actually Queer as Folks. The aphasia of impending middle age. Two days ago I couldn’t come up with Henrik Ibsen’s name. However, I can always bring to mind the word aphasia. Forty years from now it’ll be the only word I can still say; “Maybe it was the name of his sled,” the nurses will say as they change my diapers.

Speaking of which, Harvey Fierstein has an op-ed piece in the NYT (reprinted in the London Times) on AIDS that may stir some controversy. He thinks all the ads for AIDS drugs and all the attempts to foster acceptance of HIV-positive people has made catching the virus appear a great way to win popularity and acceptance, and still live an active lifestyle while the drugs control the disease.

Maybe everyone in the world but me already knew this, but Howard Dean’s brother was executed by Communists in Laos in 1974, who said he was a spy.

The Knesset passes the racist bill denying citizenship or residency to Palestinians who marry Israelis. This includes West Bank/Gaza Palestinians who marry Israeli Palestinians. Also, their children would be forced out of Israel at the age of 12. Anyone who isn’t a Palestinian who marries an Israeli is entitled to citizenship. The government evidently argued, in a closed session addressed by security types, that this class of people become suicide bombers.

Article on how technological resources, drone planes and the like, were transferred from the search for Al Qaida in Afghanistan to the war in Iraq. Also, some of the few soldiers who actually speak Arabic.

An enterprising Bahraini company established the first-ever mobile phone service in Iraq. The US authorities shut them down, threatening to confiscate their equipment, in order that Iraq wind up with a system using the American technical standard rather than that of the whole rest of the world (something like ordering that all VCRs be Betamax, is my understanding). And all medical equipment will have to meet American technical standards as well.

Malaysia reverses itself on text-message divorces.

Despite reports that Schwarzenegger has decided not to run for governor, he won’t make his official announcement until next Wednesday, on the spot where all official announcements are made in California politics, the Tonight Show. Incidentally, the election may not cost $35m after all, because they’re going to do it on the cheap, by not using that many polling places, half the usual number in LA County, for example.

I believe I said that the six old Jews Israel got out of Iraq were all men. One was a 99-year old woman.

Here’s the first sentence of a Guardian story: “Six Australian camels are being played opera music to prepare them for an appearance in Aida in South Korea.”

And don't forget to put a condom on that log

In the same issue of Ha’aretz, two stories: 1) Tel Aviv will give to homosexual couples the same discounts at sports and other municipal facilities as married couples (also straight unmarried but domiciled couples, and married people not recognized by the Orthodox; not exactly civil unions, but a step in the right direction). 2) The Knesset is voting this week on preventing Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens from getting citizenship or residency status. It’s now official: better gay than Palestinian.

Also in Ha’aretz, a cute story on Israel’s efforts to talk Iraqi Jews (all 34 of them) into moving to Israel. They netted 6 old men. It’s now official: better an old Iraqi than Palestinian.

Another Robert Fisk story (he’s really on a roll lately. By the way, although the Indy charges, many of his stories make it into New Zealand and other papers within a couple of days, so news.google is an option) wonders about the fate of 200,000+ Iraqi refugees in Iran, that is, whether the US will let them back in, worried that they have been radicalized by their stay in refugee camps in the Islamic Republic. Of course, these are the same people who are refugees precisely because they responded to Bush the Elder’s call for them to rise up in 1991. There are also 300,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan, and tens of thousands each in Germany, Britain, Holland, etc etc., not to mention 800,000 Kurds displaced by Saddam and their homes given to Arabs. There are also refugees in Iraq--Kurds from Turkey and Iran, 80,000 Palestinians who are not quite as welcome in Israel as the six old Jews.

Bush is still pushing the Iraq/Al Qaida connection claim, saying that the US must sort through “literally miles of documents” to ascertain the truth about that and weapons, and we’ve only been there 90 days, and we’re not very fast readers.

Also at the press conference, Bush’s 9th (compared to Clinton’s 33 by this stage, and Bush I’s 61): “I didn't expect Thomas Jefferson to emerge in Iraq in a 90-day period.” A less than diplomatic remark on the same day the puppet “governing council” picked a leader, for one month anyway. (They decided on a 9-man rotating presidency. And I do mean “man.” Don’t know if Chalabi is one of the 9.)

And on homosexuality: “I am mindful that we're all sinners, and I caution those who may try to take the speck out of their neighbor’s eye when they've got a log in their own. ....That does not mean that somebody like me needs to compromise on issues such as marriage”. 1) He just called homosexuals sinners, 2) A log in the eye? Someone really needs to sit him down with an episode of “Queer Like Me,” cuz I’m pretty sure that’s not where the “log” goes. 3) Somebody like me? What the hell does that mean?

The LA Times has a story about the man who toppled Gray Davis, Daryl Issa, and discovers that nearly every claim he has ever made about himself is a lie, including some pretty petty stuff. My favorite is his claim that he was in President Nixon’s security detail when he went to the 1971 World Series (which he didn’t). This guy is a sitting US Congresscritter.

Davis said the politically unthinkable: “I'll own up to my mistakes. I haven’t done everything perfect.” Grammar, to name one.

The CIA finally returned the looted Stasi files to Germany. And hey guess what, the current head of the neo-Communist party, if I may coin a phrase, was an informant.

Saw a new noodle restaurant in Berkeley today. It’s called Slurp.

Article on Guatemala. And today, the Constitutional Court put Ríos Montt’s unconstitutional candidacy back on track.

The US has started paying blood money in Iraq to families of those it kills ($500 for wounds, $1,500 for death), as is the local custom, although I don’t think Saddam did it. Or possibly they’re just doing this in Fallujah.

Did you know the occupying authorities fired a tv director for broadcasting “incitements”?

A good article on the deteriorating conditions in Afghanistan.

The unexpected

A somewhat unfortunate paragraph in the NY Times’s obit for Alan Bates: “One of the memorable scenes of his film career unfolded in Ken Russell's 1969 film "Women in Love," based on the D.H. Lawrence novel, in which he wrestled nude with Oliver Reed. Glenda Jackson, his co-star, told the BBC, "He always brought the unexpected to everything he did."” Which does rather raise the question what unexpected thing be brought to nude wrestling with Oliver Reed.

The No-Longer-Puppet Government of Iraq says Saddam Hussein’s trial will probably be held in secret.

A South Korean POW escapes from North Korea after 50 years. He has a lot of back pay coming to him.

Mother of the week: Deana Mader of Greenwich, CT, is suing the city because her 2-year old ran into a guard rail in a playground. He is a child model, so she’s suing for lost wages.

Chicago Trib story about suicide among US soldiers in Iraq.

2 stories about naming people. The first, just a link, is from the Atlanta Journal Constitution, on people naming their poor kids after products, brand names or ESPN.

Imagining Ted Kennedy landing on an aircraft carrier

Tom DeLay: “To gauge just how out of touch the Democrat leadership is on the war on terror, just close your eyes and try to imagine Ted Kennedy landing that Navy jet on the deck of that aircraft carrier.” That sentence is so silly on so many levels I wouldn’t know where to begin.

A federal judge strikes down part of California’s recall election law, in the first of many such decisions that will leave voters hopelessly confused. This one correctly decided that people who refuse to vote on the recall can still vote for a candidate. (Democratic) state officials quoted on this (the sec of state, attorney general) all supported the blatantly unconstitutional provision for no reason I can figure out. The deputy atty general gave this opaque explanation: “Allowing voters to abstain on the recall question would allow those with only an indirect or remote interest in this crucial question to decide who will replace a recalled officer.” A remote interest in who the governor is?

Just as Bush’s State of the Union lie (well, one of them) became “sixteen words,” so the censored pages about Saudi Arabia in the 9/11 reports have become 28 (or 29, or 27, although only Bush is using the latter number) pages of a 900-page report. I’m not sure what the length has to do with anything. Bush said he couldn’t release them, to protect “sources and methods,” a phrase straight out of the CIA’s Big Book of Stonewalling. So Tenet is now fully engaged with Bush’s speeches. Goodie. Saudi Arabia is now pretending to really really want those pages released, knowing they won’t be.

Canada’s government, having legalized medical marijuana, will now issue a 59-page user’s manual. No doubt more later on this...

What happened to all those bodies the Liberians dumped in front of the US embassy?

Japanese police replaced their sirens with the recorded sound of church bells, in hopes of soothing agitated criminals.

Fob James may be gone, but Alabama looks like continuing to provide amusement. The new weirdo governor, Bob Riley, says that voters should support new taxes as a Christian duty. Cool by me, as long as only the Christians have to pay it. How about a virtue tax (opposite of a sin tax) on holy water and crucifixes? The referendum on September 9 should separate Christian from heathen (the latest poll has the heathens winning). In a measure of how stupid Alabamaniacs are, the poorest people, who would pay fewer taxes, oppose it 2 to 1.

http://www.theonion.com/onion3929/wdyt_3929.html

Standing next to Ariel Sharon, Bush today referred to the Israeli security thingy as a fence. Friday, when he was with Palestinian PM Abbas, he called it a wall. Actually it’s both, in different areas (it’s a floor wax! no, it’s a dessert topping!). Sharon, standing next to Bush, defied him and said he’d continue to build it, “to defend our cities.” Actually, if it was just that, and followed the border, it would be a lot less controversial than all the detours it takes to include settlements. Here’s a Ha’aretz opinion piece saying that Bush showed that he has given up pushing Israel, at least until the election. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/323516.html

At the event, an, I presume, Israeli reporter asked Bush about releasing Jonathan Pollard, convicted for spying for Israel. Bush had no idea who he was taking about, but answered the question as if he did: “I said very clearly at the press conference with Prime Minister Abbas, I don't expect anybody to release somebody from prison who'll go kill somebody. That doesn't make any sense. I mean, if we're trying to fight off terror and we're interested in a peaceful settlement, it doesn't make any sense to release somebody who's going to get out of prison and start killing...” Beyond the fact that Pollard has a good slander suit, Bush, I repeat, tried to fake an answer, because he can never admit his own ignorance.

The top 40 US lies about war & terrorism.

Latest project of Shrub and his contributors: a gas pipeline through the Peruvian rainforest.

I mentioned that Texas R’s are considering using bounty hunters to retrieve D. state senators from New Mexico. The state atty general has approved the idea--has approved sending off-duty cops or whomever into *another state.* NM Governor Richardson said anyone who tried it would face kidnapping charges. Well, no, that would be up to the Bush administration, wouldn’t it?

Working on re-establishing the death penalty in Illinois, the governor vetoed a bill that would actually have fired cops who committed perjury in a capital murder case.

Viagra and £60m

From the WashPost: “Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." Such tactics are justified, he said, because, "It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info." They would have been released in due course, he added later. The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered.” And the colonel is actually proud of himself.

Press Association headline: “Saddam's Sons Had Viagra and £60m.” Now, that’s a party! The article notes that that’s 3X the amount of the American reward. A Times story says that many Iraqis believe Saddam hasn’t been caught because he has a magic stone.

Now that things are going so badly (50 dead US soldiers since the war “ended”), the army has stopped “embedding” reporters.

Residents of the Liberian capital had their water cut off by the fighting days ago. Fortunately American soldiers are there--protecting shipments of beer to the American embassy. I saw it on the BBC. While the US has been doing nothing to get rid of Charles Taylor, it has demanded that the rebels, who are doing something about it, withdraw from their positions in Monrovia, which would give those positions back to Taylor.

I HATE SUMMER RE-RUNS. Texas state senators have fled the state, to Albuquerque, as another special session to pass the redistricting plan is called. They are surrounded by NM state police to protect them from any bounty-hunters that the Texas R’s might use. Really. Incidentally, this is the second special session, coming immediately after the first one. So why call it a separate session? Because the Lite Governor had promised to abide by the senate rules requiring 2/3 for a bill to be considered. Since he lost that by one vote, he decided that his promise only applied to that session.

Given the complete failure of US intelligence (in more than one sense of the word) in predicting events in Iraq and elsewhere, the Pentagon has decided to turn to the futures market, and let investors bet on assassinations, terrorist strikes and North Korean missile attacks.

George Monbiot, however, says it’s a failure not of intelligence but of ideology. Or perhaps theology because, he says, the US is no longer a nation but is now a religion:

Its soldiers have entered Iraq to liberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, but also from their darkness. As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory: "Wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, 'To the captives, "come out," and to those in darkness, "be free".'"

So American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; they have become missionaries. They are no longer simply killing enemies; they are casting out demons. The people who reconstructed the faces of Uday and Qusay Hussein carelessly forgot to restore the pair of little horns on each brow, but the understanding that these were opponents from a different realm was transmitted nonetheless. Like all those who send missionaries abroad, the high priests of America cannot conceive that the infidels might resist through their own free will; if they refuse to convert, it is the work of the devil, in his current guise as the former dictator of Iraq.

As Clifford Longley shows in his fascinating book Chosen People, published last year, the founding fathers of the USA, though they sometimes professed otherwise, sensed that they were guided by a divine purpose. Thomas Jefferson argued that the Great Seal of the United States should depict the Israelites, "led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night". George Washington claimed, in his inaugural address, that every step towards independence was "distinguished by some token of providential agency". Longley argues that the formation of the American identity was part of a process of "supersession". The Roman Catholic church claimed that it had supplanted the Jews as the elect, as the Jews had been repudiated by God. The English Protestants accused the Catholics of breaking faith, and claimed that they had become the beloved of God. The American revolutionaries believed that the English, in turn, had broken their covenant: the Americans had now become the chosen people, with a divine duty to deliver the world to God's dominion. Six weeks ago, as if to show that this belief persists, George Bush recalled a remark of Woodrow Wilson's. "America," he quoted, "has a spiritual energy in her which no other nation can contribute to the liberation of mankind." ....

So those who question George Bush's foreign policy are no longer merely critics; they are blasphemers, or "anti-Americans". Those foreign states which seek to change this policy are wasting their time: you can negotiate with politicians; you cannot negotiate with priests. The US has a divine mission, as Bush suggested in January: "to defend ... the hopes of all mankind", and woe betide those who hope for something other than the American way of life.

The dangers of national divinity scarcely require explanation. Japan went to war in the 1930s convinced, like George Bush, that it possessed a heaven-sent mission to "liberate" Asia and extend the realm of its divine imperium. It would, the fascist theoretician Kita Ikki predicted: "light the darkness of the entire world". Those who seek to drag heaven down to earth are destined only to engineer a hell.

Prepared to act on the basis of murky intelligence

The recall rules are so complicated that no one understands them. For example, if Davis resigned, would there still be a recall election? Some people say there would, but no one knows what would then happen if he won the election. Given that the turnout is low, it seems that it would behoove the D’s to start a recall of the next governor the day after it, because the number of signatures they need will be based on the turnout in October. Jerry Brown could run in the election (or Duekmejian or Ronald Reagan, if it comes to that), but Pete Wilson couldn’t, because term limits didn’t start until 1990.

The London Times has a headline that the net is tightening around Saddam. Now come on, is it a net or a noose? Of course this is the sort of statement that can only be made in retrospect, and so is completely inappropriate for a newspaper, except in the astrology section. Still, what they’re referring to as a sign of this net-or-noose-tightening is a raid on a villa which didn’t even come close to Saddam, but which Robert Fisk in the Indy describes so: “OBSESSED WITH capturing Saddam Hussein, American soldiers turned a botched raid on a house in the Mansur district of Baghdad last night into a bloodbath, opening fire on scores of Iraqi civilians in a crowded street and killing up to 11, including two children, their mother and crippled father. At least one civilian car caught fire, cremating its occupants.”

Paul Wolfowitz: “I think the lesson of 9/11 is that if you're not prepared to act on the basis of murky intelligence, you're going to have to act after the fact, and after the fact now means after horrendous things have happened to this country.”

Wolfowitz also blamed “biased reports” on Al-Jazeera for the continuing attacks on American soldiers. Well, if you’re not prepared to act on the basis of murky intelligence....

Damn, that was too easy.

I d4ce u, I d4ce u, I d4ce u: The Malaysian government’s chief religious adviser says that under Islamic law men can divorce their wives by text-messaging them.

Temporarily blinded by the underpants

Some commentator said that the California recall could presage events in the rest of the country, as Cal. trends so often do (like fish tacos, the Daily Show said). No worries there, this is too silly to replicate. Unlike at the national level, the D’s here are disciplined and unified, with none looking like running against Davis; if they lose, it’ll be that discipline that does it to them. Conversely, the R’s are highly undisciplined here, which could be their downfall: suddenly this week a dozen or more R’s realized that the cost of entry into this election is almost nill--just $3,500, 65 signatures and a pure heart--and developed an interest in becoming. Who knew we’d ever have Michael Huffington to kick around again, much less Gary Condit? Incidentally, the candidates evidently can’t be independents, since those signatures must be from members of their party, which also means those of us registered with no party preference can’t sign. Also, if you don’t vote yes or no on the recall, your vote for a replacement won’t be counted (some of this will no doubt be changed as a result of several legal cases before the election).

Many counties were gearing up to replace punch cards with new voting systems. These won’t be ready by October (and possibly not by March anymore either, since many counties are robbing the funds for next year’s primary to pay for the recall election), which should lead to all sorts of electoral mayhem. Something else no one thought of: there will be something else on the recall ballot, Ward Connelly’s latest screw-the-black-people initiative, something about not counting the race of people served by various state programs, which should have been March, but had to be put on the next state-wide ballot after it qualified, which is this one. All in all, a circus, even if The Arnold doesn’t run.

Remember how Jessica Lynch was supposed to have been shot and stabbed after making a heroic stand, emptying her gun at the Iraqis, etc? Evidently it was all true. The story came from intercepted Iraqi communications, but as usual the US got it wrong. It wasn’t a moderately cute hillbilly girl, but a 33-year old named Sgt. Don Walters, and he was killed. His family is not pleased at missing out on the media deal...sorry, I meant the honor, of course, not the media deal at all.

Jeb Magruder says that Nixon authorized the Watergate break-in, which if true finally answers the question, what did the president know, and when did he know it. Asked why he didn’t mention this before, Magruder says, because nobody asked.

Ariel Sharon will be meeting Bush yet again soon, so he has made the generous offer of withdrawing troops from two more West Bank cities. That they aren’t actually in.

Head-on-a-stick politics

Rumsfeld justified showing the pictures of Uday & Qsay as demonstrating to Iraqis that they were truly dead. But what about the 14-year-old grandson? Aren’t Iraqis living in fear that he might return?

Seriously I’d like to see someone in the administration just once acknowledge that they just assassinated a 14-year old. The general who made the initial briefing had to refer to him as an “individual,” because he could hardly call him a man and didn’t want to call him a boy or youth or teenager or whatever.

I’M READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP, MR. DEMILLE. Excerpts from the latest Fisk: “THE AMERICANS followed a grand Iraqi Baath party tradition by showing their dead enemies on television yesterday. Back in 1963, when Abdul Karim Qassem's corpse was shown on the screen, there was no colour television and the executed prime minister - Baathists and army officers had jointly condemned him to death - appeared in black and white, propped up in a chair but very, very dead. ... The US authorities creepily announced that they had treated the bodies at their mortuary at Baghdad airport with "the same respect" they would accord any corpse, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to parade dead bodies on television. ... Then the US authorities announced that they were waiting for "a family member" to come forward to claim the brothers for burial, as if Saddam was going to turn up at the airport in a Mercedes to sign the release papers.”

TONIGHT, ON A VERY SPECIAL “SIX FEET UNDER.” At the Guardian, Mark Lawson calls the footage of the dead Husseins “head-on-a-stick politics.” He notes, talking about British politics but it applies here: “in only six years, politics has jumped from a culture in which reality was nothing and perception everything to one in which citizens need to be shown a raw, bleeding corpse before they will even begin to consider the possibility that their rulers are telling them the truth.”

Liu Yang-wan of Taiwan dies at 103 after 86 years of marriage (March 1917!). Scary. Oh, or was that supposed to be heart-warming?

The Saudis have responded to the Congressional report. Their ambassador says "Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide. We can deal with questions in public, but we cannot respond to blank pages." I say we take him at his word and print everything it said about the Saudis.

Incidentally, right during the press conference releasing the report, Rumsfeld coincidentally started his own press conference. CNN, Fox and MSNBC all dropped the former in favor of the latter.

Liberians now understand that Bush has betrayed them. This is not true because of course Bush never promised them a damned thing to begin with. He will support a Nigerian force going in, propping up Charles Taylor and looting the country like they did in Sierra Leone when they kept the peace there.

Ríos Montt was blocked from registering to run for president of Guatemala, so his supporters put on ski masks and went on the rampage. Although he was Reagan’s favorite in the ‘80s, presumably because he was the only Fundamentalist Christian ruler in Latin America, the current State Department may well have stopped this little action by blaming him and his party for funding the protesters and today he called off his dogs. But, here’s the thing: the government ordered the military to stop the violence, and it ignored the orders. Not good.

Gone and will not be coming back

If you’re wondering, as I was, why the governor of N Dakota was recalled in 1921, lookie here.

The Congressional 9/11 report is out, and there are serious conclusions, such as that evidence of Al Qaeda intentions were more specific than we had previously been told. Still, the report can’t be taken that seriously because the Bush admin effectively stonewalled it. Its people refused to testify, release information, and this is not to the public, this is to the United States Congress, which is supposed to have oversight authority, that they told to go fuck itself, and which in fact obediently went and fucked itself, not even making a peep about being given too little information to do its job. And if you want a subtle clue about why the CIA failed to deliver helpful information before 9/11, note that they ordered Congress (!) not to report Saudi connections to the terrorists because that would offend the Saudis connected to terrorists. The Post article is good at listing the types of info the Bushies refused to share with the inquiry.

Bush: "Now more than ever, all Iraqis can know that the former regime is gone and will not be coming back." That’s what his mother told him about his pet hamster when he was 23.

Dental records?

Oh dear, it’s worse than I thought last time. The drug industry is actually subsidizing the anti-RU486 program of the Traditional Values Coalition against the drug re-importation bill.

Robert Fisk, in another of those vital stories in the Indy that the non-paying public mostly can’t read (it must be vital, it says several things I’ve been thinking all day), comments on the decision to kill rather than capture the brothers Hussein (and it was a decision: 10 anti-tank missiles, helicopter gun-ships and .50 machine guns were used [and with the usual American accuracy--one missile hit a house 5 doors away; while this was going on, neighbors whose houses were being shot up were not allowed to leave.] If they were worried about taking weapons fire, they could have mounted a siege. With bad pop music, like Noriega.) that it is unbelievable that the decision was an “operational decision” made at a low level. Not only would a trial have been better than deaths, and more indicative of a transition to a rule of law, but Iraqis might have believed images of the brothers surrendering rather than the hilarious claim that Tariq Azi was brought in and id’d the bodies. As of this writing, no pictures have been released, although Rumsfeld says they’ll get around to it “soon.” It is already too late for them to be believed. And how exactly does the US have the sons’ dental records? Interesting question: where will they be buried?

Saw Bush on tv giving an award to former president Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic. The dissident playwright did not say anything about Bush’s Secret Service going to the LA Times to try to interrogate an editorial cartoonist.

Wahey

Bush: “The desire by the North Koreans to convince the world that they’re in the process of developing a nuclear arsenal is nothing new.” Oh sure, *now* he gets sceptical about foreign nuclear programs. I mean, the smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud, right? Do you think his failure to engage with the NK problem is because he hasn’t personalized it? He always refers to NK rather than Kim Jong Il. Kim didn’t “try to kill my dad.”

Although I guess Shrub got his revenge for that one today.

Treasury Secretary John Snow says that the killings of Saddam’s sons will be good for the US economy. And the killing of Qusay’s 14-year old son will be darned good for stock prices, too.

Robert Fisk notes that the American unit in charge of the operation, Task Force 20, was the same one that supposedly killed these very same people, and their father, when it attacked a convoy near the Syrian border earlier this month. Fisk also wonders whether the two sons would really have been together. And he questions the American assumption that killing the Husseins would end all resistance to the occupation. Indeed, “many Iraqis were reluctant to support the resistance for fear that an end to American occupation would mean the return of the ghastly old dictator. If he and his sons are dead, the chances are that the opposition to the American-led occupation will grow rather than diminish - on the grounds that with Saddam gone, Iraqis will have nothing to lose by fighting the Americans.”

Just as the US recruited Hitler’s spies because of their knowledge of the USSR, the NYT says today that they’re recruiting Saddam’s spies because of their knowledge of Iran and Syria. And that Chalabi is doing the same, presumably in order to discredit his political opponents as dupes of Iran.

Congress is dealing with a bill to allow re-importation into the US of drugs produced by US drug companies for the export market and sold at much lower prices. What’s fun about the debate is that all these Congresscritters who took money from Big Pharma are having to claim that the drugs their bosses are peddling abroad are unsafe. The NYT story on this says that they’re teaming up with anti-abortion groups to warn that RU-486 might become affordable under this bill.

From the Harper’s weekly review: “The Department of Homeland Security announced that Microsoft was chosen as its exclusive supplier of desktop and server software; shortly thereafter Microsoft acknowledged a critical security flaw that permits hackers to take over computers running the latest version of its Windows operating system.”

Has anyone linked those stories about teenagers not being able to find summer jobs with the 25-40% tuition increases at public colleges and universities? The latter is, of course, class warfare at its finest.

Israeli transport minister Avigdor Lieberman has offered to provide buses to transport any released Palestinian prisoners to a place "whence they will not return," specifically the Dead Sea, where they would be drowned.

After Ambassador Joseph Wilson went public about his investigation in Niger of the uranium claim, the Bushies, who had asked him to go in the first place, decided to smear him, personally, and his mission. Ari Fleischer, for example, sneered that all he’d done was heard the Nigerien government deny the allegation, which is of course what they’d do; no reporter asked Ari what then was the point of sending him in the first place. Since then, they have leaked to the press that Wilson’s wife is a CIA officer. This is a felony. If you or I revealed the name of a CIA employee, we’d go to jail.

Be Careful What You Wish For: the prospective Museum for Contraception and Abortion (in Austria) is asking for people to contribute exhibits, old condoms and such.

Something I hadn’t heard: when the civil unions law passed in Vermont, the U of Vermont immediately ceased offering health benefits to gay employees’ domestic partners unless they registered. That was in this moderately thought-provoking article on why gay marriage isn’t enough, in the Voice.

At Buckingham Palace, a 17-year old streaker, yards away from the queen, shouting “Wahey,” was tackled by a Beefeater. There’s a sentence you don’t get to write every day. Lembit Opik, the Liberal Democrat MP, who was also at the party but who missed the incident, said: “I feel he showed a naked loyalty to the Queen. I applaud him.”

OK, flatter than a pancake

That mysterious disappearing WaPo story about the Dept of Heimat Security’s shortcomings finally reappears. Pretty much as expected, at least by me, the dept that Bush didn’t want got crushed by its competitors, the CIA and FBI, and where it does anything at all, it’s another layer of bureaucracy where another layer is not needed. It is not performing and never will perform any function in coordinating intelligence. Which is probably just as well, since it wouldn’t have the institutional strength to stand up to demands to “prove” whatever the administration wants proven.

From William Safire’s column: “Drop the premature conclusion that if we can't yet find proof of the destructive weapons, they never existed. That's like saying because we haven't found Osama or Saddam, those killers never existed.” Or the Easter Bunny.

I complained a while back that the petitions to recall Gray Davis weren’t being turned in immediately (of course once the recallistas did get around to turning them in, they wanted them counted immediately, faster than the law required, and got a tame judge to go along, necessitating the hiring of new personnel by registrars--hey, might I suggest you hire some of those day care workers the state just stopped paying because of the budget crisis? God this state is fucked up). This got up my nose because of the attitude that petitions, which are properly a matter between citizens and their government, were being treated like the property of the recall committee. Well, it’s even worse than that. Some of their paid signature-takers were not legally qualified to take signatures, being felons and non-Californians and whatnot, so they just threw away all the signatures collected by those people. That should be a criminal act, just like tampering with an election. The right to petition is mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, one of the things that is supposed to prevent government from becoming a tyranny between election periods.

For that last sentence, I looked through the Declaration. It is especially ironic reading because the “representative” “Governing” Council in Iraq’s first action was to declare April 10, “Independence Day.” (The Daily Show asked whether that means next year they’ll advertise Independence Day sales--almost as cheap as looting!) Ironic because the things our Founding Fathers were complaining of are exactly the things we bequeathed to Iraq on its “Independence Day”: standing armies, protected “by a mock Trial” from punishment for murders of the locals; “He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution,”; depriving us of trial by jury, transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences; “He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts [ok, deserts], burnt our Towns, and destroyed the lives of our People”; excited domestic insurrections--check--large armies of foreign mercenaries--check--multitude of new officers, swarms of officers to harass our people & eat out their substance--let’s see, Paul Bremer, Achmad Chalabi, Haliburton, check and double-check.

(Later:) Kofi Annan says the UN should certify the US-appointed fake government in Iraq, and the Security Council should “confer legitimacy on the process”. As far as I’m concerned, Annan just declared himself unfit for the office he occupies.

The US has finally sent troops to Liberia. Of course they’re only there to protect the embassy, which is pretty much the definition of adding insult to injury. Liberians are piling up their dead bodies in front of the embassy, which I take to be a subtle criticism of Bush’s wait & see policy of “monitoring events,” events which included the massacre of 90 civilians in Monrovia today.

The first human tongue transplant has been performed successfully.

It is scientifically proven that Kansas is in fact flatter than a pancake. Whether this says more about Kansas or about pancakes, I simply lack the scientific credentials to say.

My daily thought showers

A Mexican special prosecutor insists that a human rights lawyer committed suicide in 2001 by shooting herself in the head. And the leg. Not necessarily in that order.

Bush is trying to destroy yet another international treaty, that on ozone, possibly a swipe at Al “Ozone Man” Gore. He is demanding that the US be allowed to retain and even increase use of a pesticide which is the most ozone-depleting substance still used in the developed world (it also causes prostate cancer in farmers unless of course they masturbate a lot in their 20’s rather than having sex with farm animals). He wants the US still to be able to use it for critical applications, like tending golf courses.

Tony Blair went to Hong Kong, which he evidently washed his hands of completely when he handed it over in 1997. He refused to meet privately with Martin Lee or any other democracy advocate.

In contrast, the French embassy in Cuba invited every Cuban dissident it could think of to its Bastille Day celebrations.

From the Telegraph: “Two Zimbabwean mortuary workers have been arrested on charges of renting out corpses to motorists to enable them to take advantage of special fuel deals for hearses.” (The version of this story in the Observer is that they merely borrowed the bodies in order to purchase fuel themselves at a discount, and then re-sold it.)

A NYT story (oo, and in the Post) says the obvious, that the actual war on Iraq started months before it started. Also, this half-chilling, half-humorous tidbit: “Air war commanders were required to obtain the approval of Defense Secretary Donald L. Rumsfeld if any planned airstrike was thought likely to result in deaths of more than 30 civilians. More than 50 such strikes were proposed, and all of them were approved.”

Robert Fisk (and others) are reporting that the US is hushing up any attack on US forces in Iraq that doesn’t result in casualties, and some that do. Including: an attack by 15 armed men on a patrol 3 days ago; a bomb consisting of a series of mortar shells injured a US soldier outside a bank 5 days ago. Basically, they only report successes, and then in oddly Stalinist terms, saying for example that recent raids "successfully achieved the objectives of neutralising subversive individuals". Reports of attacks on Americans, however, are reported more seriously than those on Iraqis, which are stuck under the heading “crime.”

You little fruitcake. You little fruitcake. I said you are a fruitcake

Bill Thomas claims he didn’t call the cops to intimidate D members of the House Ways and Means Committee, but because they were afraid of getting beaten up by septuagenarian Pete Stark, a man who does not like fruitcake.

Dick Cheney’s ultra-secretive energy committee asked for maps of oil sites in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, well before 9/11.

The White House plumbers are getting remarkably petty. After ABC interviewed some really pissed off soldiers in Iraq, they spread the word that the reporter was gay and Canadian. And they gave Matt Drudge a picture of D presidential candidate (not that you’d know it) Bob Graham near a Jaguar.

The reporter thankfully has thicker skin than Dr. David Kelly, a fatality in the war between Tony Blair (Alastair Campbell, really, but you’ve never heard of him) and the BBC. That war concerned the government trying to get the BBC to name its sources for the claim that Campbell had “sexed up” the dossier on Iraq, falsely asserting that it could launch WMDs within 45 minutes. This is the British equivalent of Yellowcake-gate (by the way, that term is my own, and I like it precisely because of how difficult it is to saw out loud. Others are using Niger-gate, but since Americans insist on mispronouncing the name of that country, I went elsewhere).

US deaths in Iraq are now higher than in Gulf War I.

Ríos Montt has a campaign slogan: “I am Guatemala.” How very Louis XIV.

The WaPo cites a Bush admin source, who coordinated the State of the Union Address they say, doing a somewhat crappier job of hiding their source than the BBC, as saying that Bush was unaware of the bits in the National Intelligence Estimate saying that the Niger claim (and the aluminum tubes claim) was doubtful. The Post:

“The official said Bush was "briefed" on the NIE's contents, but "I don't think he sat down over a long weekend and read every word of it." Asked whether Bush was aware the State Department called the Africa-uranium claim "highly dubious," the official, who coordinated Bush's State of the Union address, said: "He did not know that." "The president was comfortable at the time, based on the information that was provided in his speech," the official said of the decision to use it in the address to Congress. "The president of the United States is not a fact-checker."

No fucking kidding. And....a “long weekend”? The NIE was 90 pages long. Are they supposed to just come out and admit that Boy George is not a good reader?

Universal values

Tony Blair in DC: “We promised Iraq democratic government. We will deliver it.” And then they’ll find that it looked better in the catalog. But really, can something “delivered” from the outside actually be called “democratic government”? Elsewhere in the speech, Tone talks about spreading universal values--not American or British values, he said, universal values. Of course if they were universal values, they would hardly need spreading, now would they? Although the Independent editorializes that he might have tried spreading them in Washington by pointing out the lack of universality in treating non-citizens in Guantanamo by different rules.

A cute LA Weekly column on Bush’s recent travails points out that Bush, who “adversity always turns...rabbity and mean,” “acted as if the charges against his speech somehow concerned the depth of his convictions. ‘There’s no doubt in my mind,’ he kept saying. ‘There’s no doubt in my mind . . . I’m confident in the decision I’ve made.’”

Indeed, it’s Bush’s confidence and lack of doubt that we find so scary.

Marc Cooper notes in the same issue that “Bush bullied and bullshitted to get his way, and the top Democrats fully accommodated him” months before that speech. They didn’t even really need to be lied to. “You had me at hello.” [that’s me, not Cooper][I wouldn’t be that fastidious about taking credit, but Cooper himself suggests Bush’s speeches should be footnoted so we know who’s responsible for which lie].

A story allegedly in the WashPost today about how the Dept of Heimat Security isn’t up to the job of dealing with intelligence never returned more than an empty page when I clicked on the link, then it vanished altogether from the table of contents, and it’s not in Lexis-Nexis either. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

A reminder of the longevity of war’s effects: 2, possibly 3 Austrians were killed by an unexploded American bomb from the Second World War, near the train station in Salzburg, where I never committed armed robbery.