In the California election, 4.6% skipped the recall question. Except for the 3 counties which used those Diebold voting machines all the controversy has been about. There, evidently, no one skipped it. Oh yeah, that’s not suspicious at all. Paper and pencil, people, paper and pencil.
LA Times on what the claim of 130,000 Iraqis now under arms actually means.
I just ran across a quote from Lord Clanricarde, an absentee Irish landlord during the land wars of the 1880s: “If you think you can intimidate me by shooting my agent, you are mistaken.” Or as Dubya would put it, “Bring them on.”
Creepy creepy creepy.
The Washington Post points out that Bush gave an interview to a low-rent British tabloid--owned by Rupert Murdoch, natch--which features naked women on page 3. Don’t know if they also pointed out--The Sun sure did--that he hasn’t given a one-on-one interview to ANY American newspaper this year. Here’s a quote: “Nobody likes war. See, I understand the consequences of war. I understand particularly when I go and hug the moms and dads and brothers and sisters and sons and daughters of those who died.” Yuck. And again I say, yuck.
A tv station asked Secretary of War Rummy Rumsfeld if the mortar attack in Baghdad on the hotel Paul Wolfowitz was staying in might be a wee hint that Iraq wasn’t so peaceful after all. His answer: “It seems to me that doesn't really follow. The fact of the matter is in any major city in the world, there are attacks of various types that take place.”
Serbian presidential elections, for the third time, fail to attract enough voters to be valid. The thing is, this has somehow been going on for something like a year now.
Here’s a cute AP story [link no longer works] about the US renewing diplomatic ties with Equatorial Guinea, despite the facts that “Equatorial Guinea's president had his opponents imprisoned and tortured, had his presidential predecessor executed by firing squad, helped himself to the state treasury at will. State radio recently declared him ‘like God.’” But they have oil.
Monday, November 17, 2003
Saturday, November 15, 2003
Freedom is a beautiful thing
A letter to the NYT notes that while Bush’s people talk about him not going to any military funerals because he’s just so busy, since June he has gone to 35 fund-raisers.
Actually, he is planning to visit with families of dead soldiers for the first time next week. Dead British soldiers. Many of whose families said thanks but no thanks. Others will go and ask difficult questions. Heh heh. Bush says about the demonstrations he will encounter, “I'm so pleased to be going to a country which says that people are allowed to express their minds. That's fantastic. Freedom is a beautiful thing.” In other words, Britain turned down the Secret Service’s demand that they ban the demos. A beautiful thing indeed. The Sindy points out that Bush hasn’t visited any wounded soldiers. I said this a few days ago, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in print anywhere.
Still, the UK refused to grant diplomatic immunity to US Secret Service and snipers. Nor will they close the Tube, nor will the US Air Force patrol London with fighters and Blackhawks, nor will battlefield weaponry be shipped in for use against rioters. Nor will Buckingham Palace be completely rebuilt with blast-proof windows and reinforced walls. I include a link in case you think I’m making this up.
Laura Bush, interviewed for British tv, said that for Americans, the British monarchy is a “fairytale.” Insert your own Prince Charles joke here.
Here’s an article on scam-baiting, which is where you respond to Nigerian emails and string them along as long as possible. One of the goals is to get the sender to prove his identity by sending a photo of himself holding up a sign with the name you’re using: Iama Dildo, for example. There are websites for those as well.
Israel responds to synagogue bombings in Istanbul by blaming anyone who criticizes Israel.
From the NY Times piece on the Senate marathon, quoting Rick Santorum (R-Moronville): “we'll have our opportunity someday, and we'll make sure there's not another liberal judge, ever!” And this, on the staginess of it all: “In fact, the Republican cots, which were wheeled into the room on Wednesday morning before a summoned throng of photographers and reporters, were quietly wheeled out, having never been used by anyone. Only Dr. Frist appeared to have briefly napped in a cot, one that was ostentatiously placed not in his inner office, which has abundant comfortable sofas and where one might choose to sleep privately, but near the door to a public hallway where it could be seen and photographed.”
The Iraqis took down two US helicopters with a single RPG today. US death toll: 400. Sorry, 419.
It may be pointless to criticize the current American plan for turning over power to Iraq, since there’s bound to be a new plan in a day or two, but the NYT correctly points out that it would occur before there is a constitution (which looks likely to be such a farce that the US doesn’t want to be associated with it), or even national elections. No protection for minorities, or women, nothing about Islamic law. The Kurds should regard this as yet another sell-out. Of course the US military won’t leave, but they’ll evidently stop using the word occupation. And they’ll keep control of the $20 billion.
Actually, he is planning to visit with families of dead soldiers for the first time next week. Dead British soldiers. Many of whose families said thanks but no thanks. Others will go and ask difficult questions. Heh heh. Bush says about the demonstrations he will encounter, “I'm so pleased to be going to a country which says that people are allowed to express their minds. That's fantastic. Freedom is a beautiful thing.” In other words, Britain turned down the Secret Service’s demand that they ban the demos. A beautiful thing indeed. The Sindy points out that Bush hasn’t visited any wounded soldiers. I said this a few days ago, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in print anywhere.
Still, the UK refused to grant diplomatic immunity to US Secret Service and snipers. Nor will they close the Tube, nor will the US Air Force patrol London with fighters and Blackhawks, nor will battlefield weaponry be shipped in for use against rioters. Nor will Buckingham Palace be completely rebuilt with blast-proof windows and reinforced walls. I include a link in case you think I’m making this up.
Laura Bush, interviewed for British tv, said that for Americans, the British monarchy is a “fairytale.” Insert your own Prince Charles joke here.
Here’s an article on scam-baiting, which is where you respond to Nigerian emails and string them along as long as possible. One of the goals is to get the sender to prove his identity by sending a photo of himself holding up a sign with the name you’re using: Iama Dildo, for example. There are websites for those as well.
Israel responds to synagogue bombings in Istanbul by blaming anyone who criticizes Israel.
From the NY Times piece on the Senate marathon, quoting Rick Santorum (R-Moronville): “we'll have our opportunity someday, and we'll make sure there's not another liberal judge, ever!” And this, on the staginess of it all: “In fact, the Republican cots, which were wheeled into the room on Wednesday morning before a summoned throng of photographers and reporters, were quietly wheeled out, having never been used by anyone. Only Dr. Frist appeared to have briefly napped in a cot, one that was ostentatiously placed not in his inner office, which has abundant comfortable sofas and where one might choose to sleep privately, but near the door to a public hallway where it could be seen and photographed.”
The Iraqis took down two US helicopters with a single RPG today. US death toll: 400. Sorry, 419.
It may be pointless to criticize the current American plan for turning over power to Iraq, since there’s bound to be a new plan in a day or two, but the NYT correctly points out that it would occur before there is a constitution (which looks likely to be such a farce that the US doesn’t want to be associated with it), or even national elections. No protection for minorities, or women, nothing about Islamic law. The Kurds should regard this as yet another sell-out. Of course the US military won’t leave, but they’ll evidently stop using the word occupation. And they’ll keep control of the $20 billion.
Friday, November 14, 2003
French fake dog droppings
I’m having no trouble resisting the urge to turn on CSPAN 2 to watch the 30-hour marathon the R’s are staging, Cry-Baby Expo ‘03, highlighting the failure to give Shrub every single ludicrous judicial nominee he pulls out of his ass. Sadly, the impact of the message of this little stunt--I believe the message is “Do as we say, not as we did”--may be diminished by the leak of the memo from Majority Leader Bill “Kitty Killer” Frist’s office about stage-managing the event for Fox; quote: “the producer wants to know will we walk in exactly at 6:02 when the show starts so they get it live to open Brit Hume's show?”
(Later): well, I gave in and watched some of the windbaggery. Before you schedule 30 hours of talking you should really make sure that you have something to say. Sen. Enzi just said that the words “with liberty and justice for all” in the pledge of allegiance requires the approval of Bush’s nominees.
Orrin Hatch is quoting H L Mencken and The Far Side.
Sharon says that critics of Israel’s use of force against Palestinians are exercising “a new form of anti-Semitism.”
Pakistan bans fashion shows as un-Islamic.
Reuters: “For many days, aides have portrayed California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger as hard at work in meetings on his new administration which takes office on Monday. It turns out that the actor and his wife Maria Shriver have been vacationing in Hawaii with their four children, a person close to the family told Reuters.” Ah, how Reaganesque.
This week we’ve been getting conflicting estimates of the size of the enemy in Iraq, ranging from 5,000 to 50,000. This all has a very nostalgic, “military intelligence says there were 3,500 Vietcong and our body count this month is 3,300,” feel to it.
When Israel bombed an alleged terrorist training camp in Syria last month, its planes buzzed a presidential palace. Isn’t that sweet?
So if I read a NYT story correctly, Tom DeLay set up a charity for abused children that is a cover for paying for parties at the 2004 Republican Convention. It’s a way of not having to report campaign contributions.
Can you resist the headline “French Fill Lyon With Fake Dog Droppings”?
(Later): well, I gave in and watched some of the windbaggery. Before you schedule 30 hours of talking you should really make sure that you have something to say. Sen. Enzi just said that the words “with liberty and justice for all” in the pledge of allegiance requires the approval of Bush’s nominees.
Orrin Hatch is quoting H L Mencken and The Far Side.
Sharon says that critics of Israel’s use of force against Palestinians are exercising “a new form of anti-Semitism.”
Pakistan bans fashion shows as un-Islamic.
Reuters: “For many days, aides have portrayed California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger as hard at work in meetings on his new administration which takes office on Monday. It turns out that the actor and his wife Maria Shriver have been vacationing in Hawaii with their four children, a person close to the family told Reuters.” Ah, how Reaganesque.
This week we’ve been getting conflicting estimates of the size of the enemy in Iraq, ranging from 5,000 to 50,000. This all has a very nostalgic, “military intelligence says there were 3,500 Vietcong and our body count this month is 3,300,” feel to it.
When Israel bombed an alleged terrorist training camp in Syria last month, its planes buzzed a presidential palace. Isn’t that sweet?
So if I read a NYT story correctly, Tom DeLay set up a charity for abused children that is a cover for paying for parties at the 2004 Republican Convention. It’s a way of not having to report campaign contributions.
Can you resist the headline “French Fill Lyon With Fake Dog Droppings”?
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Americans don't know....
Yesterday I mentioned that Bush avoids actual individual soldiers, especially dead or wounded ones, but I didn’t think to connect it with The Photo last week of Bush signing the “partial-birth abortion” ban with nary a woman in sight (unless you count Rick Santorum).
An interesting Guardian column on the state visit of Bush to Britain. No one there will even admit to having invited him, and he does seem actually to have invited himself. Like the aircraft carrier, he decided pictures of himself and the queen would make him look like a world leader in his campaign ads. Problem is: “Americans don't know shit. They're not going to recognise the prime minister of the Philippines. The only foreign leaders they could pick out are the Queen of England and the Pope.” (That was an American speaking.)
Protesters are planning--and I can’t for the life of me think why no one has done this before--to topple a giant effigy of Bush, in Trafalgar Square.
On the Bush strategy to erode abortion rights.
An Ellen Goodman piece with fewer facts but more outrage.
The Israeli High Court reverses a ban on the film “Jenin, Jenin,” about the Jenin massacre, which is also a reversal of its statement in April that “The right of expression exists in full force even when a differing viewpoint is forbidden due to a legislative arrangement.”
Dunno if the right of expression exists in full force in Greece, but a tv station was fined $100,000 for showing two men kissing.
The Resistance manages to kill a dozen Italian Carbinieri, who were in Iraq to bring the benefits of Italian policing to the benighted natives.
And the US evidently plans to start running away, after all, and turn over power to any Iraqi who wants it. Which I believe is the plan we made fun of France for suggesting two months ago. This is serious chicken-with-its-head-cut-off time, as you can tell by the number of ridiculous plans being bandied about. Hand power to one leader, as in Afghanistan. Who? Ok, speed up election to a constitutional assembly. Which would entail running an election during the middle of a war, and who would man the polling booths, and there isn’t an electoral registrar; there is, in other words, none of the infrastructure that would make an election anything other than a joke.
An interesting Guardian column on the state visit of Bush to Britain. No one there will even admit to having invited him, and he does seem actually to have invited himself. Like the aircraft carrier, he decided pictures of himself and the queen would make him look like a world leader in his campaign ads. Problem is: “Americans don't know shit. They're not going to recognise the prime minister of the Philippines. The only foreign leaders they could pick out are the Queen of England and the Pope.” (That was an American speaking.)
Protesters are planning--and I can’t for the life of me think why no one has done this before--to topple a giant effigy of Bush, in Trafalgar Square.
On the Bush strategy to erode abortion rights.
An Ellen Goodman piece with fewer facts but more outrage.
The Israeli High Court reverses a ban on the film “Jenin, Jenin,” about the Jenin massacre, which is also a reversal of its statement in April that “The right of expression exists in full force even when a differing viewpoint is forbidden due to a legislative arrangement.”
Dunno if the right of expression exists in full force in Greece, but a tv station was fined $100,000 for showing two men kissing.
The Resistance manages to kill a dozen Italian Carbinieri, who were in Iraq to bring the benefits of Italian policing to the benighted natives.
And the US evidently plans to start running away, after all, and turn over power to any Iraqi who wants it. Which I believe is the plan we made fun of France for suggesting two months ago. This is serious chicken-with-its-head-cut-off time, as you can tell by the number of ridiculous plans being bandied about. Hand power to one leader, as in Afghanistan. Who? Ok, speed up election to a constitutional assembly. Which would entail running an election during the middle of a war, and who would man the polling booths, and there isn’t an electoral registrar; there is, in other words, none of the infrastructure that would make an election anything other than a joke.
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Words of wisdom from Mahatma Wolfowitz
A must-read Molly Ivins, on the Medicare drug plan, 61% of which will go straight into drug company profits, and pork in the energy bill. Turning coal into coal?
A tidbit in the Post says the Bushies are proposing letting drug companies destroy Medicaid records after 3 years, and with them any evidence of Medicaid fraud.
How did I miss this? War-Monger Extraordinaire Paul Wolfowitz said that “If the Palestinians would adopt the ways of Gandhi, they could, in fact, make an enormous change very, very quickly. I believe the power of individuals demonstrating peacefully is enormous.” Wolfowitz then announced that he would retreat to an ashram after he had started 3 more wars.
Speaking of individuals demonstrating peacefully, Bush is visiting the UK soon, and his security people would like it if the entire West End was shut down for a couple of days. Oh, and they want demonstrations banned, and they especially don’t want demonstrations where Bush might actually see them. And they want immunity for Secret Service agents who might shoot somebody; they want to bring 250 armed agents. When Nixon visited in 1969, the Secret Service brought water.
Because he does need completely subservient audiences, doesn’t he? Does anyone else think that his giving a speech today at the Heritage Foundation was an insult to Veterans’ Day, which is supposed to be a national and not a partisan day? Bush also laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, because god forbid he should come face to face with one of the known soldiers stuck at the sharp end of Bushian foreign policy. The fact that he never goes to a funeral of one of the soldiers is well known, and the ban on coverage of the arrival of coffins, but have you noticed that no one from the administration ever visits the wounded either?
A blogger goes looking for the schools in Iraq the Bushies keep claiming they’ve “rebuilt.” Incidentally, this blog, which I haven’t seen before, isn’t bad.
Several German states are working to ban the wearing of Muslim headscarves. The story says that Christian and Jewish symbols won’t be banned. In fact...
Just kidding.
This link looks kind of generic, so it may reach a different story by the time you click on it, but it’s got some really heart-warming pictures of US soldiers interacting with Iraqis, frisking a 4-year old, and I like how one kneels down to tie up the 6-year old girl. (If the link doesn’t link, the story title is “Shocking images shame US forces”.)
Of course, that’s nothing like what we do in our own schools.
Daily Telegraph: Iraqi police officers have been offered the use of a pink Rolls-Royce belonging to the former dictator Saddam Hussein's son Uday, as a wedding car. The deputy interior minister, Gen Ibrahim Ahmad, has authorised the vehicle's use by police officers and ministry officials when they marry. A spokesman said he wanted to honour their work.
After a radical reinterpretation of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde was booed in Brazil, the director mooned the audience.
A tidbit in the Post says the Bushies are proposing letting drug companies destroy Medicaid records after 3 years, and with them any evidence of Medicaid fraud.
How did I miss this? War-Monger Extraordinaire Paul Wolfowitz said that “If the Palestinians would adopt the ways of Gandhi, they could, in fact, make an enormous change very, very quickly. I believe the power of individuals demonstrating peacefully is enormous.” Wolfowitz then announced that he would retreat to an ashram after he had started 3 more wars.
Speaking of individuals demonstrating peacefully, Bush is visiting the UK soon, and his security people would like it if the entire West End was shut down for a couple of days. Oh, and they want demonstrations banned, and they especially don’t want demonstrations where Bush might actually see them. And they want immunity for Secret Service agents who might shoot somebody; they want to bring 250 armed agents. When Nixon visited in 1969, the Secret Service brought water.
Because he does need completely subservient audiences, doesn’t he? Does anyone else think that his giving a speech today at the Heritage Foundation was an insult to Veterans’ Day, which is supposed to be a national and not a partisan day? Bush also laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, because god forbid he should come face to face with one of the known soldiers stuck at the sharp end of Bushian foreign policy. The fact that he never goes to a funeral of one of the soldiers is well known, and the ban on coverage of the arrival of coffins, but have you noticed that no one from the administration ever visits the wounded either?
A blogger goes looking for the schools in Iraq the Bushies keep claiming they’ve “rebuilt.” Incidentally, this blog, which I haven’t seen before, isn’t bad.
Several German states are working to ban the wearing of Muslim headscarves. The story says that Christian and Jewish symbols won’t be banned. In fact...
Just kidding.
This link looks kind of generic, so it may reach a different story by the time you click on it, but it’s got some really heart-warming pictures of US soldiers interacting with Iraqis, frisking a 4-year old, and I like how one kneels down to tie up the 6-year old girl. (If the link doesn’t link, the story title is “Shocking images shame US forces”.)
Of course, that’s nothing like what we do in our own schools.
Daily Telegraph: Iraqi police officers have been offered the use of a pink Rolls-Royce belonging to the former dictator Saddam Hussein's son Uday, as a wedding car. The deputy interior minister, Gen Ibrahim Ahmad, has authorised the vehicle's use by police officers and ministry officials when they marry. A spokesman said he wanted to honour their work.
After a radical reinterpretation of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde was booed in Brazil, the director mooned the audience.
Monday, November 10, 2003
No amount of money can compensate
Efrain Ríos Montt, 77, a coup leader, former dictator, religious fanatic, and fomenter of genocide, has failed to make the runoffs for the Guatemalan presidency. I blame age discrimination.
Seriously, the first business of the new president has to be purging the courts of the clowns who allowed the candidacy to go ahead in violation of the constitution. Trying Ríos Montt for genocide would be good, too.
Speaking of dinosaurs and elections, and don’t get me started on Haley Barbour, described by the Daily Show as the candidate of Big Drawl, Shevardnadze just stole an election in Georgia. The number of post-Soviet states in which the leader was elected by an even halfway believable electoral process is now zero, if my count is correct.
(Later): Shevardnadze has fled the capital, possibly in advance of a vicious crackdown. Keep an eye on Tbilisi.
The Israeli Cabinet agrees to one of those lopsided prisoner exchanges that show the relative value placed on Jews in relation to non-Jews, releasing 400 live Arabs from various nations in exchange for one kidnapped Israeli drug dealer and 3 dead soldiers.
Al Qaida seems finally to have committed an atrocity capable of pissing off the Arab world (assuming it’s really responsible), without even killing off Deputy Secretary of State Richard “Dude, where’s my neck?” Armitage. Armitage says the bombing is part of an attempt to topple the Saudi monarchy, but fails to explain why that would be a bad thing.
CBS head Les Moonves tells Daily Variety that there was absolutely no pressure on him to censor the movie about the Reagans. He said it was a “moral decision,” not a political or economic one. Speaking of which, CBS’s crappy Hitler movie last spring: the filming was observed by rabbis.
William Saletan in Slate says what I’ve been thinking: “When he seizes on Dean's flag comment to bash Yankees who think they "know what's best for you," Edwards is asking for the Confederate-flag vote on much creepier grounds than Dean did.”
I haven’t said anything thus far about the NY Times report a few days ago that Iraq was offering inspections by the US military, and elections. I still have no idea how seriously to take it, nor how serious the offer was. Since it was rejected outright, we’ll never know either. George Monbiot, who adds that offers to negotiate from the Taliban were also rejected before the war, makes a better case for outrage, giving quotes from Bush & Blair that it was Saddam’s choice, and he’d been given every opportunity to negotiate, when in fact his offers were shot down.
The Institute of Physics, which clearly has too much time on its hands, has condemned the diet of Homer Simpson as being not at all healthy. They say Bart is heading down the same road, and watches too much tv, as opposed to the clowns who watched all the Simpsons videos counting donuts.
Footage of Bush prancing around on the aircraft carrier has finally appeared in the first campaign ad--John Kerry’s.
Speaking of aircraft, the US has escalated its attacks on the Iraqi Resistance, employing airstrikes. That’s new. Also, they shot dead the head of the city council of Sadr City, in a story that I suspect is very interesting, if we ever get to hear it.
Michael Moore (who appears in next week’s Simpsons, and could use a few less donuts himself): “it's only fair that for every kid that dies, Halliburton has to slay a mid-level executive.”
A Louisiana judge went to a Halloween party dressed in black face, with an afro wig, wearing a prisoner costume.
Read the transcript of Scott McClellan explaining how the Bush admin is screwing POWs from the 1st Gulf War because no amount of money can compensate them, so they’ll be compensated with no amount of money. You have to read the whole thing to get the effect, which is hilarious.
Seriously, the first business of the new president has to be purging the courts of the clowns who allowed the candidacy to go ahead in violation of the constitution. Trying Ríos Montt for genocide would be good, too.
Speaking of dinosaurs and elections, and don’t get me started on Haley Barbour, described by the Daily Show as the candidate of Big Drawl, Shevardnadze just stole an election in Georgia. The number of post-Soviet states in which the leader was elected by an even halfway believable electoral process is now zero, if my count is correct.
(Later): Shevardnadze has fled the capital, possibly in advance of a vicious crackdown. Keep an eye on Tbilisi.
The Israeli Cabinet agrees to one of those lopsided prisoner exchanges that show the relative value placed on Jews in relation to non-Jews, releasing 400 live Arabs from various nations in exchange for one kidnapped Israeli drug dealer and 3 dead soldiers.
Al Qaida seems finally to have committed an atrocity capable of pissing off the Arab world (assuming it’s really responsible), without even killing off Deputy Secretary of State Richard “Dude, where’s my neck?” Armitage. Armitage says the bombing is part of an attempt to topple the Saudi monarchy, but fails to explain why that would be a bad thing.
CBS head Les Moonves tells Daily Variety that there was absolutely no pressure on him to censor the movie about the Reagans. He said it was a “moral decision,” not a political or economic one. Speaking of which, CBS’s crappy Hitler movie last spring: the filming was observed by rabbis.
William Saletan in Slate says what I’ve been thinking: “When he seizes on Dean's flag comment to bash Yankees who think they "know what's best for you," Edwards is asking for the Confederate-flag vote on much creepier grounds than Dean did.”
I haven’t said anything thus far about the NY Times report a few days ago that Iraq was offering inspections by the US military, and elections. I still have no idea how seriously to take it, nor how serious the offer was. Since it was rejected outright, we’ll never know either. George Monbiot, who adds that offers to negotiate from the Taliban were also rejected before the war, makes a better case for outrage, giving quotes from Bush & Blair that it was Saddam’s choice, and he’d been given every opportunity to negotiate, when in fact his offers were shot down.
The Institute of Physics, which clearly has too much time on its hands, has condemned the diet of Homer Simpson as being not at all healthy. They say Bart is heading down the same road, and watches too much tv, as opposed to the clowns who watched all the Simpsons videos counting donuts.
Footage of Bush prancing around on the aircraft carrier has finally appeared in the first campaign ad--John Kerry’s.
Speaking of aircraft, the US has escalated its attacks on the Iraqi Resistance, employing airstrikes. That’s new. Also, they shot dead the head of the city council of Sadr City, in a story that I suspect is very interesting, if we ever get to hear it.
Michael Moore (who appears in next week’s Simpsons, and could use a few less donuts himself): “it's only fair that for every kid that dies, Halliburton has to slay a mid-level executive.”
A Louisiana judge went to a Halloween party dressed in black face, with an afro wig, wearing a prisoner costume.
Read the transcript of Scott McClellan explaining how the Bush admin is screwing POWs from the 1st Gulf War because no amount of money can compensate them, so they’ll be compensated with no amount of money. You have to read the whole thing to get the effect, which is hilarious.
Sunday, November 09, 2003
What would a half-woman half-tigress be executed for?
The New Hampshire Supreme Court rules that adultery does not include lesbian sex. They looked it up in a dictionary.
And then they just felt dirty all over, so:
http://christian-toiletries.com
Also, homosexual sex with a servant does not count, according to Prince Charles.
Speaking of dictionaries, the latest edition of Merriam-Webster’s has a listing for “McJobs.” McDonald’s is not at all pleased.
Daily Telegraph: “Fifty people were arrested in Qom, Iran, as police broke up a crowd that had assembled to watch the rumoured execution of a half-woman half-tigress, the Jomhuri-Eslami newspaper reported yesterday. The police tried to persuade the crowd that the rumour was false but as security forces attempted to disperse them they smashed several windows in nearby buildings.” Extra points for anyone who can think of the Siegfried and Roy joke I couldn’t.
The oldest person in the world, and possibly of all time, if it’s true, Hava Rexha, dies in Albania at 123. She was forcibly married at 14 to some guy in his 60s. Who thought that would be the secret to longevity? Can you imagine having to live in Albania for 123 years?
The US has put a $2 million bounty on former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, who is living in Nigeria, which gave him asylum and is not at all pleased at this attempt to sponsor a kidnapping in their country.
States with Republican legislatures--Kansas, Colorado, Utah, and more to come--have decided not to bother having primaries in 2004. Other states have dropped them to save money--Maine, NM, and more to come. Maybe we can have the D primaries decided solely by people who weren’t smart enough to move out of Iowa or New Hampshire. Maybe to Albania.
And then they just felt dirty all over, so:
http://christian-toiletries.com
Also, homosexual sex with a servant does not count, according to Prince Charles.
Speaking of dictionaries, the latest edition of Merriam-Webster’s has a listing for “McJobs.” McDonald’s is not at all pleased.
Daily Telegraph: “Fifty people were arrested in Qom, Iran, as police broke up a crowd that had assembled to watch the rumoured execution of a half-woman half-tigress, the Jomhuri-Eslami newspaper reported yesterday. The police tried to persuade the crowd that the rumour was false but as security forces attempted to disperse them they smashed several windows in nearby buildings.” Extra points for anyone who can think of the Siegfried and Roy joke I couldn’t.
The oldest person in the world, and possibly of all time, if it’s true, Hava Rexha, dies in Albania at 123. She was forcibly married at 14 to some guy in his 60s. Who thought that would be the secret to longevity? Can you imagine having to live in Albania for 123 years?
The US has put a $2 million bounty on former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, who is living in Nigeria, which gave him asylum and is not at all pleased at this attempt to sponsor a kidnapping in their country.
States with Republican legislatures--Kansas, Colorado, Utah, and more to come--have decided not to bother having primaries in 2004. Other states have dropped them to save money--Maine, NM, and more to come. Maybe we can have the D primaries decided solely by people who weren’t smart enough to move out of Iowa or New Hampshire. Maybe to Albania.
Saturday, November 08, 2003
Progressive pig legislation
The response in the Arab world to Bush’s demand that they democratize has been unanimous: they have all scheduled free and fair elections. “We were just waiting to be asked,” said King Mohammed of Morocco.
Bush has decided that the new “partial-birth abortion” ban will be enforced by--wait for it--the Justice Dept’s civil rights division. Because this is all about the civil rights of the unborn, geddit?
The WaPo on General Boykin. Yes, he is a religious wingnut of the highest order. I like the story about how Jesus fixed his radio.
Christian Science Monitor on the new textbooks the US picked for Iraq.
The R’s have stopped work of the committee investigating what the intelligence agencies knew about Iraq before the war, demanding an apology from the author of a draft memo, that was not sent to anyone, that they dug out of a garbage can. If the CIA had done as good a job spying on Iraq as the R’s have done spying on D’s staffers, there might never have been a war. The memo suggested that if R’s tried to limit the inquiry, the D’s make that fact public.
As you know, the first state to choose in the presidential primaries will be Iowa, which has 5 times as many pigs as humans, thanks to the rise of huge factory farms. Or to put this another way, one of the most important issues in choosing the man who might be the next president: pig shit smell. The Kerry campaign told the Sunday Telegraph, “We take the problem of pig smell very, very seriously.” “Faced with such brazen electioneering, a spokesman for Richard Gephardt, a leading Democratic candidate, points out that he has the longest history of any candidate in promoting progressive pig legislation.” And that’s why I love America.
The Sunday Times (London) hired a former Iraqi general to buy a rocket-propelled grenade launcher (rocket included). It took him 3 days to find one, and it cost $500. He drove it through Baghdad, passing through 3 checkpoints and past the hq of the “Coalition Provisional Authority.” On the reporter’s lap, not in the trunk. They tried to turn it in at a US checkpoint, but the soldiers refused to take it.
I’m told the big new thing in the US for the man who has everything: a urinal in his own home.
Bush has decided that the new “partial-birth abortion” ban will be enforced by--wait for it--the Justice Dept’s civil rights division. Because this is all about the civil rights of the unborn, geddit?
The WaPo on General Boykin. Yes, he is a religious wingnut of the highest order. I like the story about how Jesus fixed his radio.
Christian Science Monitor on the new textbooks the US picked for Iraq.
The R’s have stopped work of the committee investigating what the intelligence agencies knew about Iraq before the war, demanding an apology from the author of a draft memo, that was not sent to anyone, that they dug out of a garbage can. If the CIA had done as good a job spying on Iraq as the R’s have done spying on D’s staffers, there might never have been a war. The memo suggested that if R’s tried to limit the inquiry, the D’s make that fact public.
As you know, the first state to choose in the presidential primaries will be Iowa, which has 5 times as many pigs as humans, thanks to the rise of huge factory farms. Or to put this another way, one of the most important issues in choosing the man who might be the next president: pig shit smell. The Kerry campaign told the Sunday Telegraph, “We take the problem of pig smell very, very seriously.” “Faced with such brazen electioneering, a spokesman for Richard Gephardt, a leading Democratic candidate, points out that he has the longest history of any candidate in promoting progressive pig legislation.” And that’s why I love America.
The Sunday Times (London) hired a former Iraqi general to buy a rocket-propelled grenade launcher (rocket included). It took him 3 days to find one, and it cost $500. He drove it through Baghdad, passing through 3 checkpoints and past the hq of the “Coalition Provisional Authority.” On the reporter’s lap, not in the trunk. They tried to turn it in at a US checkpoint, but the soldiers refused to take it.
I’m told the big new thing in the US for the man who has everything: a urinal in his own home.
Friday, November 07, 2003
A forward strategy of freedom
From the Daily Telegraph: “Making a mobile phone call could soon be as simple as clicking your fingers and putting your forefinger in your ear.” Yes, technology has finally caught up with what crazy homeless people have been doing for years.
The Schwarzenegger people smeared one of the women who accused him of groping her, the day before the election. They misled lazy and rushed reporters into accessing the criminal record of someone with the same name and a different birth date, but the careful wording of their email to the press strongly suggests to me that they knew it wasn’t the same person.
The Arnold’s search for the real groper will consist of hiring a private detective, who would of course be working for him and, since Arnie presumably knows what he did, the only purpose in using a PI is to find out what can be proven, and hence this is not about discovering the truth, but part of the cover-up. Hell, if the PI talks to Arnie’s victims it looks like harassment, if not there’s not much point. That’s probably obvious, but the LA Times etc aren’t saying it. Arnie talked to the Cal. attorney general Bill Lockyer (who a couple of weeks ago dismissed the alleged criminal acts against women as frat-boy stuff and said he’d voted for the alleged criminal) about this. Lockyer told him it wasn’t good enough, then told the press. Arnie accused him of violating attorney-client privilege; Lockyer noted that Arnie isn’t governor yet (he also isn’t governor-elect as the press keeps saying; the election isn’t certified)(also, it wouldn’t matter; the atty gen isn’t the governor’s private lawyer). It’s always nice to have someone else to point your over-sized muscular finger at. Also, it gives him an excuse not to show Lockyer the results of his “investigation.”
Immediately after getting its nominee to head the EPA approved by the Senate, the admin decides to drop 50 Clean Air Act investigations, effectively gutting the act retroactively, and stop protecting all sorts of bodies of water under the Clean Water Act.
Well, I thought the stupidest secret mission I’ve heard of this week involved an MI5 agent who met an asset in a public place, having forgotten to take off her MI5 name-badge. And then Israel beamed a live feed of the control room of a secret missile test to every satellite dish in the Middle East. “Hey, I’m getting officials punching in launch codes! Where’s my porn?” Oh, and the test failed.
Dubya is pretending to be interested in democracy in the Middle East, or as he put it “a forward strategy of freedom.” Arab dictators might have been worried, but he quickly added, “This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we have shown before. And it will yield the same results.” In other words, jack shit. Bush criticized 60 years of Western nations accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East. I’m curious what he thinks started 60 years ago. Anyway he says that all that accommodation “did nothing to make us safe” and that it “would be reckless to accept the status quo.” He used the word “security” more than once, meaning ours, not theirs. In other words, our status quo is to be preserved by undermining theirs. Actually, in a speech reported as if it ended the old hypocrisy regarding democracy, Bush actually continued the old policy of threatening regimes we don’t like with democracy while whitewashing others. In the parts of the speech that weren’t reported, he praised Bahrain, Oman, Morocco, Kuwait, Indonesia and even Saudi Arabia for whatever slivers of democracy they have. If the speech was Reaganesque, it reminds me of the “demonstration elections” staged in Honduras and El Salvador in the 1980s.
Finally, in a speech that insisted that Islam was not incompatible with democracy, he didn’t stop himself concluding “May God bless your work. And may God continue to bless America.” Just couldn’t help himself.
Speaking of democratic standards, a few of the new Iraqis being deployed as police are getting from the US a full 3-week course covering ethics and everything else, most are getting less than that. Fortunately, many of Saddam’s old cops are returning to work, and I’m sure he made sure that they were well versed in ethics and the rule of law. And, according to “Jerry” Bremer, “Iraqis bring vital language and cultural skills to the task of fighting terrorism.” Yes, they speak Arabic, and that’s good enough. Bremer: “The Iraqis will be better able to tell who the bad guys are. They are going to be out in the streets, they will recognize the strangers, they will hear different accents, see different customs, see different ways of dressing and be able to help us identify the strangers and particularly the foreign fighters and the terrorists.” In other words: profiling.
The WaPo reports that the White House has decided to stop answering any questions about how taxpayer money is spent that come from Democratic congresscritters.
The Schwarzenegger people smeared one of the women who accused him of groping her, the day before the election. They misled lazy and rushed reporters into accessing the criminal record of someone with the same name and a different birth date, but the careful wording of their email to the press strongly suggests to me that they knew it wasn’t the same person.
The Arnold’s search for the real groper will consist of hiring a private detective, who would of course be working for him and, since Arnie presumably knows what he did, the only purpose in using a PI is to find out what can be proven, and hence this is not about discovering the truth, but part of the cover-up. Hell, if the PI talks to Arnie’s victims it looks like harassment, if not there’s not much point. That’s probably obvious, but the LA Times etc aren’t saying it. Arnie talked to the Cal. attorney general Bill Lockyer (who a couple of weeks ago dismissed the alleged criminal acts against women as frat-boy stuff and said he’d voted for the alleged criminal) about this. Lockyer told him it wasn’t good enough, then told the press. Arnie accused him of violating attorney-client privilege; Lockyer noted that Arnie isn’t governor yet (he also isn’t governor-elect as the press keeps saying; the election isn’t certified)(also, it wouldn’t matter; the atty gen isn’t the governor’s private lawyer). It’s always nice to have someone else to point your over-sized muscular finger at. Also, it gives him an excuse not to show Lockyer the results of his “investigation.”
Immediately after getting its nominee to head the EPA approved by the Senate, the admin decides to drop 50 Clean Air Act investigations, effectively gutting the act retroactively, and stop protecting all sorts of bodies of water under the Clean Water Act.
Well, I thought the stupidest secret mission I’ve heard of this week involved an MI5 agent who met an asset in a public place, having forgotten to take off her MI5 name-badge. And then Israel beamed a live feed of the control room of a secret missile test to every satellite dish in the Middle East. “Hey, I’m getting officials punching in launch codes! Where’s my porn?” Oh, and the test failed.
Dubya is pretending to be interested in democracy in the Middle East, or as he put it “a forward strategy of freedom.” Arab dictators might have been worried, but he quickly added, “This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we have shown before. And it will yield the same results.” In other words, jack shit. Bush criticized 60 years of Western nations accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East. I’m curious what he thinks started 60 years ago. Anyway he says that all that accommodation “did nothing to make us safe” and that it “would be reckless to accept the status quo.” He used the word “security” more than once, meaning ours, not theirs. In other words, our status quo is to be preserved by undermining theirs. Actually, in a speech reported as if it ended the old hypocrisy regarding democracy, Bush actually continued the old policy of threatening regimes we don’t like with democracy while whitewashing others. In the parts of the speech that weren’t reported, he praised Bahrain, Oman, Morocco, Kuwait, Indonesia and even Saudi Arabia for whatever slivers of democracy they have. If the speech was Reaganesque, it reminds me of the “demonstration elections” staged in Honduras and El Salvador in the 1980s.
Finally, in a speech that insisted that Islam was not incompatible with democracy, he didn’t stop himself concluding “May God bless your work. And may God continue to bless America.” Just couldn’t help himself.
Speaking of democratic standards, a few of the new Iraqis being deployed as police are getting from the US a full 3-week course covering ethics and everything else, most are getting less than that. Fortunately, many of Saddam’s old cops are returning to work, and I’m sure he made sure that they were well versed in ethics and the rule of law. And, according to “Jerry” Bremer, “Iraqis bring vital language and cultural skills to the task of fighting terrorism.” Yes, they speak Arabic, and that’s good enough. Bremer: “The Iraqis will be better able to tell who the bad guys are. They are going to be out in the streets, they will recognize the strangers, they will hear different accents, see different customs, see different ways of dressing and be able to help us identify the strangers and particularly the foreign fighters and the terrorists.” In other words: profiling.
The WaPo reports that the White House has decided to stop answering any questions about how taxpayer money is spent that come from Democratic congresscritters.
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Winston and me
At the latest Democratic debate, number 534 I believe, Al Sharpton says he’s never used marijuana. Dean has.
One US Army captain tells the LA Times that Saddam’s birthplace, now surrounded by barbed wire & soldiers, hasn’t been made into a gulag/stalag/strategic hamlet/concentration camp at all. “They have a level of security most people don't have," he said. "Once they get their ID cards, they are free to come and go. You could compare it to one of those gated communities.” OK, let’s try it: Tikrit is nothing like one of those gated communities.
Infinitely sillier than the CBS Reagan biopic: Tom Selleck as Eisenhower. Really.
The R’s are saying that the movie is a disgrace because Saint Ronnie has Alzheimer’s and can’t defend himself. So what are we supposed to do, wait for him to get better? It’s not like he, y’know, minds. Still, it’s hilarious that R’s are pretending to believe that the American viewing public would be confused into believing that this was a documentary. It’s even more hilarious that this little debate is about Reagan, who himself couldn’t distinguish between movies and real life, evidently believing on a couple of occasions that he had been a soldier during WW II, rather than an actor playing one.
Bush signed the ban on “partial-birth abortions” today. He was surrounded by a bunch of middle-aged men. I saw a dozen men and literally no women. NO WOMEN! An administration so control freakish about presentation failed to notice, or just plain didn’t care. Hah, just checked the White House web site, and there’s even a picture; 10 angry men. No feminist group could have staged this better to show Republican indifference to women than the White House did it itself.
(Later): I’m not the only person to have noticed. Here’s a, um, variation, on that photo.
Speaking of presentation, a piece in today’s NYT notes that Bush not only has attended no military funerals but never mentions any of the war dead by name. His handlers are quoted as saying that if he mentioned one, he’d have to do it for all of them, otherwise some of the families would feel left out. “He never wants to elevate or diminish one sacrifice made over another,” says communications director Dan Bartlett, sounding like he’d been asked which of the twins Shrub loved the most. One example: Bush never spoke about the downing of the Chinook and deaths of 15 soldiers. Here’s an actual quote from a handler: “If a helicopter were hit an hour later, after he came out and spoke, should he come out again?” Grotesque. When a reporter finally cornered Bush about the Chinook a couple of days later, he couldn’t even acknowledge that it happened during a war, a war which he had ordered: “I am saddened any time that there’s a loss of life.” Any time? I mean, holy shit, he came out against death! And on the facing page of the NYT, there’s a picture of Bush touring the fire damage in California and hugging someone who lost her home. Gosh, if there’s another fire an hour later, does he have to hug someone else? The difference, of course, is that he’s responsible for the war, but didn’t start the fire (probably).
Today I went to a talk at UCB by an old political scientist from Oxford, David Butler, who I’ve previously seen doing commentary for the BBC in election-night coverage. He’s something like 79 and spoke without notes, which is just plain scary. He told a story about having written an article for The Economist in 1950 about the effects of the first-past-the-post system in magnifying the effects of small electoral swings, which caused a bit of a fuss at the time and he was asked to come to Chartwell for a chat with the leader of the Conservative party, Winston Churchill, for four hours. Winnie drank four large brandies, talked about the Dundee by-election of 1908, and performed the Blood sweat & tears speech for him. I’m betting there hasn’t been a week since 1950 that Butler hasn’t told the story. Wouldn’t you? Anyway, I asked a couple of questions at the end, so basically I discussed politics with a man who has also discussed politics with Churchill.
An Israeli lawyer tried to get a court to require his wife to commit to having sex with him twice a day. It said no, which is a word he should probably get used to.
More abortion news: the Austin Area Pro-Life Concrete Contractors and Suppliers Association (!) has intimidated every cement company within 60 miles of Austin, Texas, into boycotting the construction of a Planned Parenthood clinic. One subcontractor received 1,200 phone calls.
Britain is down to 27 surviving veterans of World War I.
Denmark gives Norse priests the power to conduct weddings. Reception and pillaging to follow.
One US Army captain tells the LA Times that Saddam’s birthplace, now surrounded by barbed wire & soldiers, hasn’t been made into a gulag/stalag/strategic hamlet/concentration camp at all. “They have a level of security most people don't have," he said. "Once they get their ID cards, they are free to come and go. You could compare it to one of those gated communities.” OK, let’s try it: Tikrit is nothing like one of those gated communities.
Infinitely sillier than the CBS Reagan biopic: Tom Selleck as Eisenhower. Really.
The R’s are saying that the movie is a disgrace because Saint Ronnie has Alzheimer’s and can’t defend himself. So what are we supposed to do, wait for him to get better? It’s not like he, y’know, minds. Still, it’s hilarious that R’s are pretending to believe that the American viewing public would be confused into believing that this was a documentary. It’s even more hilarious that this little debate is about Reagan, who himself couldn’t distinguish between movies and real life, evidently believing on a couple of occasions that he had been a soldier during WW II, rather than an actor playing one.
Bush signed the ban on “partial-birth abortions” today. He was surrounded by a bunch of middle-aged men. I saw a dozen men and literally no women. NO WOMEN! An administration so control freakish about presentation failed to notice, or just plain didn’t care. Hah, just checked the White House web site, and there’s even a picture; 10 angry men. No feminist group could have staged this better to show Republican indifference to women than the White House did it itself.
(Later): I’m not the only person to have noticed. Here’s a, um, variation, on that photo.
Speaking of presentation, a piece in today’s NYT notes that Bush not only has attended no military funerals but never mentions any of the war dead by name. His handlers are quoted as saying that if he mentioned one, he’d have to do it for all of them, otherwise some of the families would feel left out. “He never wants to elevate or diminish one sacrifice made over another,” says communications director Dan Bartlett, sounding like he’d been asked which of the twins Shrub loved the most. One example: Bush never spoke about the downing of the Chinook and deaths of 15 soldiers. Here’s an actual quote from a handler: “If a helicopter were hit an hour later, after he came out and spoke, should he come out again?” Grotesque. When a reporter finally cornered Bush about the Chinook a couple of days later, he couldn’t even acknowledge that it happened during a war, a war which he had ordered: “I am saddened any time that there’s a loss of life.” Any time? I mean, holy shit, he came out against death! And on the facing page of the NYT, there’s a picture of Bush touring the fire damage in California and hugging someone who lost her home. Gosh, if there’s another fire an hour later, does he have to hug someone else? The difference, of course, is that he’s responsible for the war, but didn’t start the fire (probably).
Today I went to a talk at UCB by an old political scientist from Oxford, David Butler, who I’ve previously seen doing commentary for the BBC in election-night coverage. He’s something like 79 and spoke without notes, which is just plain scary. He told a story about having written an article for The Economist in 1950 about the effects of the first-past-the-post system in magnifying the effects of small electoral swings, which caused a bit of a fuss at the time and he was asked to come to Chartwell for a chat with the leader of the Conservative party, Winston Churchill, for four hours. Winnie drank four large brandies, talked about the Dundee by-election of 1908, and performed the Blood sweat & tears speech for him. I’m betting there hasn’t been a week since 1950 that Butler hasn’t told the story. Wouldn’t you? Anyway, I asked a couple of questions at the end, so basically I discussed politics with a man who has also discussed politics with Churchill.
An Israeli lawyer tried to get a court to require his wife to commit to having sex with him twice a day. It said no, which is a word he should probably get used to.
More abortion news: the Austin Area Pro-Life Concrete Contractors and Suppliers Association (!) has intimidated every cement company within 60 miles of Austin, Texas, into boycotting the construction of a Planned Parenthood clinic. One subcontractor received 1,200 phone calls.
Britain is down to 27 surviving veterans of World War I.
Denmark gives Norse priests the power to conduct weddings. Reception and pillaging to follow.
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Crisco?
Paul Krugman’s review of books on the Bush admin by Molly Ivins and Joe Conason. It starts by retailing the recent decision to allow mining companies to dump waste on public lands, which I meant to write about but didn’t. Also, John Ashcroft anointed with Crisco.
Robert Byrd’s speech on the $87b is a must-read on the fall of the democratic process, not just on the now dominant role of conference committee, which I’ve written about a couple of times (for example a provision for audits passed the Senate 97-0, and was then stripped out in committee by a 15-14 party-line vote), but also in the refusal to include a provision that the new inspector general for the occupation gov in Iraq would have to testify to Congress, or even release his reports to it, truly a great victory for the cause of corruption and secretiveness. Byrd, who must be the last Senator with any knowledge of classical history, explains the derivation of “pyrrhic victory.”
An SF Chronicle reporter notices something odd about soldiers wounded in Iraq: they never die of their wounds.
The Voice says that the DEA is going after doctors who subscribe pain meds.
Kind of repulsive: the White House Ramadan page, although it does helpfully deny, right at the top, that Islam is all about the terrorism. Um, in case you thought that. On the main page, the link to it is right below the link to “Ghosts of the White House.” Halloween, Ramadan, same dif’, right?
Which reminds me: Boykin still has his job. I set up a news.google alert on Boykin, and every day I get links to a bunch of stories in newspapers in Muslim countries, and no this is not doing our image a lot of good.
But of course we believe in free speech in this country, except for tv movies that suggest that Saint Ronnie didn’t like gays and that Mystic Nancy wasn’t a warm person.
Robert Byrd’s speech on the $87b is a must-read on the fall of the democratic process, not just on the now dominant role of conference committee, which I’ve written about a couple of times (for example a provision for audits passed the Senate 97-0, and was then stripped out in committee by a 15-14 party-line vote), but also in the refusal to include a provision that the new inspector general for the occupation gov in Iraq would have to testify to Congress, or even release his reports to it, truly a great victory for the cause of corruption and secretiveness. Byrd, who must be the last Senator with any knowledge of classical history, explains the derivation of “pyrrhic victory.”
An SF Chronicle reporter notices something odd about soldiers wounded in Iraq: they never die of their wounds.
The Voice says that the DEA is going after doctors who subscribe pain meds.
Kind of repulsive: the White House Ramadan page, although it does helpfully deny, right at the top, that Islam is all about the terrorism. Um, in case you thought that. On the main page, the link to it is right below the link to “Ghosts of the White House.” Halloween, Ramadan, same dif’, right?
Which reminds me: Boykin still has his job. I set up a news.google alert on Boykin, and every day I get links to a bunch of stories in newspapers in Muslim countries, and no this is not doing our image a lot of good.
But of course we believe in free speech in this country, except for tv movies that suggest that Saint Ronnie didn’t like gays and that Mystic Nancy wasn’t a warm person.
The Longish March
Patrick Cockburn writes in the Indy: “Another comforting method of downplaying the resistance is to say it is all taking place in the "Sunni triangle". The word "triangle" somehow implies that the area is finite and small. In fact the Sunni Arabs of Iraq live in an area almost the size of England.”
Fearing for my sanity, I avoided all 3 appearances by Rummy Rumsfeld on Sunday morning news programs. But in all 3 he talked about a terrorist group: “There's an organization called Ansar al-Islam, which was in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was there, it was functioning, and Saddam Hussein knew all about it.” But he couldn’t do anything about it, since it was in the Kurdish north, which was an American protectorate in which Hussein had no power. You’ll notice Rummy doesn’t actually (or in the other 2 versions) state any real link with Saddam, but he sure does imply it to the casual listener.
Speaking of sins of omission, the Smithsonian, hopelessly cowed by the right-wing, has a new exhibit of the Enola Gay. Guess which of the plane’s missions it fails even to mention?
The R’s snipped a provision that the D’s had added to the $87b. appropriation making war profiteering a criminal act. The Senate refuses to go on record on the whole bill, passing all that money by a voice vote, because god forbid they should ever be held responsible (we do know that Robert Byrd yelled No).
The Bushies are claiming that Saddam Hussein is behind the latest attacks on US troops in Iraq. Says Jon Stewart: Somebody should do something about that guy...again.
The Sharon government has suggested making all Palestinian citizens of Israel take a loyalty oath before being given identity cards.
So the US has these 13 ancient oil tankers, built in 1945, full of tons of hazardous waste, including PCBs, asbestos, mercury, etc etc. Naturally, it decides to tow them across the Atlantic Ocean to have them recycled in Britain (2 have arrived, 2 are on their way, so far). Before they started their journey, Britain changed its mind. The US (it’s the US government responsible for this) decided to send them anyway, despite being told they wouldn’t be allowed to dock, and maybe just leave them off the British coast.
Linda Tripp (remember her?) lied on her Pentagon security application about having been arrested as a teenager, and somehow she now gets $595,000, plus a retroactive promotion and back-pay at an undisclosed amount, because that being made public is a violation of her privacy rights, which is too much irony even for me. The thing is, the records unlawfully released didn’t by themselves indicate anything. Tripp says, “This government should never be permitted to use Privacy Act-protected information to discredit a political opponent,” but the records don’t show the arrest, because she lied about the arrest. Anyway, now she wants retirement benefits.
Bush says the US will not run from Iraq. Hey, we’re Americans, we not only don’t run, but if we can’t find the remote we’re too lazy to get up and change the channel. Anyway, we wouldn’t run, we will fucking drive, and we will do it in an SUV or better yet a Hummer, because otherwise our soldiers will have died in vain.
Bush: “A free and peaceful Iraq will make it more likely that our children and grandchildren will be able to grow up without the horrors of September the 11th.”
Outgoing Tory leader Duncan Smith says that the media treated him like a paedophile.
A couple of Brits decided to backpack the route of Mao’s Long March. Their conclusion: it wasn’t that long. The history books say 6-8,000 miles, but it was actually 4,000. It took them 384 days, compared with the Communist force’s 368 days. They are in their thirties, and have no lives (obviously).
Fearing for my sanity, I avoided all 3 appearances by Rummy Rumsfeld on Sunday morning news programs. But in all 3 he talked about a terrorist group: “There's an organization called Ansar al-Islam, which was in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was there, it was functioning, and Saddam Hussein knew all about it.” But he couldn’t do anything about it, since it was in the Kurdish north, which was an American protectorate in which Hussein had no power. You’ll notice Rummy doesn’t actually (or in the other 2 versions) state any real link with Saddam, but he sure does imply it to the casual listener.
Speaking of sins of omission, the Smithsonian, hopelessly cowed by the right-wing, has a new exhibit of the Enola Gay. Guess which of the plane’s missions it fails even to mention?
The R’s snipped a provision that the D’s had added to the $87b. appropriation making war profiteering a criminal act. The Senate refuses to go on record on the whole bill, passing all that money by a voice vote, because god forbid they should ever be held responsible (we do know that Robert Byrd yelled No).
The Bushies are claiming that Saddam Hussein is behind the latest attacks on US troops in Iraq. Says Jon Stewart: Somebody should do something about that guy...again.
The Sharon government has suggested making all Palestinian citizens of Israel take a loyalty oath before being given identity cards.
So the US has these 13 ancient oil tankers, built in 1945, full of tons of hazardous waste, including PCBs, asbestos, mercury, etc etc. Naturally, it decides to tow them across the Atlantic Ocean to have them recycled in Britain (2 have arrived, 2 are on their way, so far). Before they started their journey, Britain changed its mind. The US (it’s the US government responsible for this) decided to send them anyway, despite being told they wouldn’t be allowed to dock, and maybe just leave them off the British coast.
Linda Tripp (remember her?) lied on her Pentagon security application about having been arrested as a teenager, and somehow she now gets $595,000, plus a retroactive promotion and back-pay at an undisclosed amount, because that being made public is a violation of her privacy rights, which is too much irony even for me. The thing is, the records unlawfully released didn’t by themselves indicate anything. Tripp says, “This government should never be permitted to use Privacy Act-protected information to discredit a political opponent,” but the records don’t show the arrest, because she lied about the arrest. Anyway, now she wants retirement benefits.
Bush says the US will not run from Iraq. Hey, we’re Americans, we not only don’t run, but if we can’t find the remote we’re too lazy to get up and change the channel. Anyway, we wouldn’t run, we will fucking drive, and we will do it in an SUV or better yet a Hummer, because otherwise our soldiers will have died in vain.
Bush: “A free and peaceful Iraq will make it more likely that our children and grandchildren will be able to grow up without the horrors of September the 11th.”
Outgoing Tory leader Duncan Smith says that the media treated him like a paedophile.
A couple of Brits decided to backpack the route of Mao’s Long March. Their conclusion: it wasn’t that long. The history books say 6-8,000 miles, but it was actually 4,000. It took them 384 days, compared with the Communist force’s 368 days. They are in their thirties, and have no lives (obviously).
Monday, November 03, 2003
The Supreme Court allows an execution of someone for a crime committed when 16, on the urging of the Clinton admin.
Christopher Hitchens, in Salon, suggests having international monitors evaluate how free and fair American elections are. Personally, I not only went to the polls to vote for the empty suit of my choice today, but I walked there, enabling me to feel doubly self-righteous. Since it was two days after Halloween, a holiday which always pisses me off, especially as a former black cat owner, I voted against a parcel tax for the local schools. Take that, you little creeps!
It is with great restraint that I don’t report the crash of the EgyptAir plane off Nantucket in the form of a limerick. Or mention that today’s workplace shooting is identical to the one that happened yesterday in the Xerox office. That would be just too early. By the way, the guy yesterday shot 7 co-workers because he thought he was about to be laid off. I’m just guessing this won’t help his chances of avoiding a pink slip.
I just started writing something else, but suddenly realized that my use of the term pink slip was probably an unconscious tribute to Tom Amiano, whose last-minute write-in candidacy stopped Willie Brown’s re-election. I remember when Amiano, a gay stand-up comic, was first running for school board, and said that laying off teachers would be hard because he’d rather
wear pink slips than hand them out. And now he could be the next mayor of SF, a city like no other. The current DA was running ads for his re-election bragging about how much the police hate him. Where else in the country would that be an effective tactic?
Speaking of elections, Australia is voting on whether to abolish the monarchy. And they may well not do it, oddly enough, because as irrelevant as the Queen is to Oz life, they looked around and realized that no Aussie has the dignity, the gravitas, to be president. The monarchists have been using Clinton and Lewinsky as an example of why presidents are undignified, although since the next King will be Prince Tampon, you have to wonder.
The US has changed its sanctions policy on Serbia, according to the paper. We will no longer require that Milosevic be ousted (Milosevic, by the way, is president of Yugoslavia, not Serbia, but tell the papers that), but that there be free and fair elections, even if Milosevic is re-elected. However, our definition of free and fair elections is that if Milosevic is re-elected, it can’t have been free and fair.
Christopher Hitchens, in Salon, suggests having international monitors evaluate how free and fair American elections are. Personally, I not only went to the polls to vote for the empty suit of my choice today, but I walked there, enabling me to feel doubly self-righteous. Since it was two days after Halloween, a holiday which always pisses me off, especially as a former black cat owner, I voted against a parcel tax for the local schools. Take that, you little creeps!
It is with great restraint that I don’t report the crash of the EgyptAir plane off Nantucket in the form of a limerick. Or mention that today’s workplace shooting is identical to the one that happened yesterday in the Xerox office. That would be just too early. By the way, the guy yesterday shot 7 co-workers because he thought he was about to be laid off. I’m just guessing this won’t help his chances of avoiding a pink slip.
I just started writing something else, but suddenly realized that my use of the term pink slip was probably an unconscious tribute to Tom Amiano, whose last-minute write-in candidacy stopped Willie Brown’s re-election. I remember when Amiano, a gay stand-up comic, was first running for school board, and said that laying off teachers would be hard because he’d rather
wear pink slips than hand them out. And now he could be the next mayor of SF, a city like no other. The current DA was running ads for his re-election bragging about how much the police hate him. Where else in the country would that be an effective tactic?
Speaking of elections, Australia is voting on whether to abolish the monarchy. And they may well not do it, oddly enough, because as irrelevant as the Queen is to Oz life, they looked around and realized that no Aussie has the dignity, the gravitas, to be president. The monarchists have been using Clinton and Lewinsky as an example of why presidents are undignified, although since the next King will be Prince Tampon, you have to wonder.
The US has changed its sanctions policy on Serbia, according to the paper. We will no longer require that Milosevic be ousted (Milosevic, by the way, is president of Yugoslavia, not Serbia, but tell the papers that), but that there be free and fair elections, even if Milosevic is re-elected. However, our definition of free and fair elections is that if Milosevic is re-elected, it can’t have been free and fair.
Operationally insignificant
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND: Rummy Rumsfeld has found the cause of all our problems in Iraq and the rest of the Muslim world--Islamic schools (Rummy’s new word for the day: madrassa). He blamed attacks on US forces on the literally ones of foreign Muslim militants streaming, well, trickling, over the border. Rummy was speaking after a Chinook helicopter was shot down over Fallujah. I’m guessing no one reminded him that the bad relations between US forces and the Fallujanians began when they shot up two crowds of people protesting the military’s occupation of the town’s school, and that when they left the school, they left graffiti such as I love pork, Eat shit Iraq, etc.
The US commander in Iraq, Ricardo Sanchez, described the attacks as “operationally insignificant,” which should look good on the tombstones of the 18 US soldiers killed today.
Ah, India: “Three people died and 35 were injured yesterday when religious violence broke out after Muslim boys tried to get their cricket ball back from a Hindu temple in India. A provincial official said the boys were beaten up, prompting the clashes in Viramgam, Gujarat.”
Some excerpts from a Tariq Ali article:
The US commander in Iraq, Ricardo Sanchez, described the attacks as “operationally insignificant,” which should look good on the tombstones of the 18 US soldiers killed today.
Ah, India: “Three people died and 35 were injured yesterday when religious violence broke out after Muslim boys tried to get their cricket ball back from a Hindu temple in India. A provincial official said the boys were beaten up, prompting the clashes in Viramgam, Gujarat.”
Some excerpts from a Tariq Ali article:
One of the more comical sights in recent months was Paul Wolfowitz on one of his many visits informing a press conference in Baghdad that the "main problem was that there were too many foreigners in Iraq". Most Iraqis see the occupation armies as the real "foreign terrorists". Why? Because once you occupy a country, you have to behave in colonial fashion. This happens even where there is no resistance, as in the protectorates of Bosnia and Kosovo. Where there is resistance, as in Iraq, the only model on offer is a mixture of Gaza and Guantanamo.
the resistance is predominantly Iraqi - though I would not be surprised if other Arabs are crossing the borders to help. If there are Poles and Ukrainians in Baghdad and Najaf, why should Arabs not help each other?
As for the UN acting as an "honest broker", forget it - especially in Iraq, where it is part of the problem. Leaving aside its previous record (as the administrator of the killer sanctions, and the backer of weekly Anglo-American bombing raids for 12 years), on October 16 the security council disgraced itself again by welcoming "the positive response of the international community... to the broadly representative governing council... [and] supports the governing council's efforts to mobilise the people of Iraq..." Meanwhile a beaming fraudster, Ahmed Chalabi, was given the Iraqi seat at the UN. One can't help recalling how the US and Britain insisted on Pol Pot retaining his seat for over a decade after being toppled by the Vietnamese. The only norm recognised by the security council is brute force, and today there is only one power with the capacity to deploy it. That is why, for many in the southern hemisphere and elsewhere, the UN is the US.
After Baghdad fell, the Israeli war leader, Ariel Sharon, told the Palestinians to "come to your senses now that your protector has gone". As if the Palestinian struggle was dependent on Saddam or any other individual. This old colonial notion that the Arabs are lost without a headman is being contested in Gaza and Baghdad. And were Saddam to drop dead tomorrow, the resistance would increase rather than die down.
Sunday, November 02, 2003
Medieval lesbian strip show and banquet
OR TREAT: Scott McClellan explains why a question about troop levels is a “trick question”: because, like the Mission Accomplished banner, that’s entirely a matter for the military, of which Shrub is only the commander in chief, after all.
US troops surround the town of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s birthplace, with razor wire; no one in or out without US-issued i.d. cards. Some commentator said this was the first “strategic hamlet,” but I suspect the model is Gaza.
2 American soldiers in Iraq have been arrested for converting to Islam and marrying local women, in defiance of orders not to get married.
At an EU-Chinese conference in Beijing, one subject of which was counterfeiting, the Italian foreign minister is caught by journalists buying a fake Rolex.
Paul Wolfowitz says that Iraqis want Bush to be reelected. “When they hear the message that we might not be there next year, they get very scared.” This is the man who once warned “foreigners” against meddling in Iraq.
The Republican Party tried to get CBS to let it vet a miniseries about Ronald Reagan. “[RNC chairman] Gillespie said that if CBS denies the request, he will ask the network to run a note across the bottom of the screen every 10 minutes during the program's presentation informing viewers that the miniseries is not accurate.”
Speaking of not accurate, how is it that a WW II film (Windtalkers) shows a 50-starred American flag and not a single actor or member of the crew noticed? 80 years ago, Erich von Stroheim had the actors playing Austro-Hungarian officers wear historically accurate underwear, so I don’t think I’m asking for too much for the flag to be right.
Safire deals with that annoying thing Bush does, which I’ve complained about before, where he says that people “need to” do something.
The sheriff’s dept for the Columbine area is selling, repeat, selling, videos of the trench coat gang practicing shooting guns.
There’s a lot of talk about Iraqification. What the Pentagon actually means by this is an old Iraqi custom: human shields. They don’t expect Iraqi military or police to do stuff, they expect them to take the brunt of Resistance attacks. We know this because they are being kept short of guns and ammunition, training (Bush talked this week about speeding up training, which is already less than a week), and bullet-proof vests.
Massachusetts’s Governor Mitt Romney is trying to restore the death penalty, including requiring higher standards of evidence for execution than for conviction. What does that say about his toleration for wrongful convictions?
Get ready for Jessica Lynch week, with a tv movie next Sunday, then a Diane Sawyer interview grotesquely scheduled for Veteran’s Day. And she has that book, “co-”authored by one of the NY Times’s disgraced former writers, which is why her publishers wouldn’t let her meet with the Iraqi who told US soldiers where she was and who has his own book coming out. This is a 1940s screwball comedy about someone who was in a car crash but turns into a celebrity as a series of lies about her spirals out of control (remember the amnesia the Pentagon ordered her to have had?). In fact, it’s a specific screwball comedy: Preston Sturges’s Hail the Conquering Hero.
The Baltic states are, according to a London Sunday Times article, specializing in bachelor parties for Brits. “Now the latest “must-do” for a British stag weekend is to fly to the Baltic states and fire machineguns at pictures of the groom. Some, it is rumoured, have even paid locally for the privilege of firing rocket-propelled grenades at live cows.” Tallinnpissup.com offers a “medieval lesbian strip show and banquet.”
Tom Friedman may have reached his nadir, talking about aid to Iraq. “Saudi Arabia actually cares more about nurturing democracy in Iraq than Germany and France.” Yeah, ‘cause that aid is all about democracy. Sure it is. The aid conference, like the sudden drive to rehire the Iraqi military, is all about fungibility, the latter replacing dead GIs with dead Iraqis, the former about reducing US expenses. Does anyone think that extra aid from Germany or Saudi Arabia will actually mean more money spent in Iraq? Of course not, the US will just reduce its spending by $1 for every dollar received. The aid is for Americans, not Iraqis.
Also benefitting: rich Iraqis, since Paul Bremer imposed a flat tax, max 15%, on Iraq.
Second garden gnome story this week: a British study shows their presence reduces the value of a house by £500.
Friday, October 31, 2003
A hatched-again Christian
I hope you are all making the best of Protection from Pornography Week.
From the Independent: “A British version of a reality television show featuring 44 dwarfs competing against an elephant in a tug-of-war contest has been pulled before broadcast after protests by Dame Judi Dench and animal rights activists.”
More great British tv: “A group of reality show contestants are taking legal action against Sky after being tricked into seducing a woman who turned out to be a transsexual.”
I forgot to mention something about Michael Howard: he is Jewish (his father changed his name from Hecht). His son converted to Christianity at Eton and likes to try to convert Jews. One writer suggests that this is the reason the Tory party is so anxious not to let its bigoted members have a vote. When first looking for a parliamentary seat, Howard was turned down by 40 constituency parties. Here’s the right-wing Daily Mail: “Michael Howard would like to be seen as the very model of... the proper English gentleman... [who] loves the countryside and stands for those very Anglo-Saxon virtues of fair play and decency... his enemies would complain that he is a chilly, calculating, heartless, ruthless, ambitious, calculating political machine, bent on passing himself off as something he isn't.” They said the exact same things about Disraeli, who wasn’t Jewish but his father was, 150 years ago.
Former Italian PM Andreotti’s conviction for ordering the murder of a journalist is overturn. Honestly, I have no idea if he was guilty. With the Italian justice system, it’s anyone’s guess.
From the Times: “President Putin summoned 14 investment bankers to the Kremlin last night in a desperate bid to assure them Russia was still a safe place to do business.” Of course when Putin summons people, they tend to arrive tied up and with hoods over their heads.
Lemmings do not commit mass suicide. A Disney documentary in 1958 faked footage.
And FDR may not have had polio, but rather Guillain-Barré syndrome.
Ted Costa, the guy who brought us the goober recall, now wants to change the way redistricting is done, and hey he wants it done in 2006, 6 years early.
The Center for Public Integrity has issued a report which says that the companies getting the big contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan are all big campaign donors and employ former officials. Just as the cynical among you suspected, of course. Indeed, just as anyone with two brain cells to rub together suspected. But I have to ask if this tells us something special about these companies, or if American business is just hopelessly mired in cronyism and corruption. One way to tell would have been to compare these companies with the ones that didn’t win contracts, but of course these were mostly no-bid contracts.
In a new move to intimidate, the US government is prosecuting Greenpeace, as an organization, for the action of 2 members who boarded a ship to protest mahogany imports. They are using a nineteenth century law about unauthorized boarding of ships, enacted to prevent boarding-house owners jumping onto ships as they arrived to get clients. Greenpeace’s director may not (for once) be exaggerating: “The government's action is unprecedented - prosecuting an entire organisation for the expressive activities of its supporters.”
Putin’s law against election commentary in the press is overturned by the courts.
Billmon notes that the pro-war semi-neo-libs like Tom Friedman have been writing columns saying that Iraq is not Vietnam. Of course it isn’t: it’s a dry heat.
From the Independent: “A British version of a reality television show featuring 44 dwarfs competing against an elephant in a tug-of-war contest has been pulled before broadcast after protests by Dame Judi Dench and animal rights activists.”
More great British tv: “A group of reality show contestants are taking legal action against Sky after being tricked into seducing a woman who turned out to be a transsexual.”
I forgot to mention something about Michael Howard: he is Jewish (his father changed his name from Hecht). His son converted to Christianity at Eton and likes to try to convert Jews. One writer suggests that this is the reason the Tory party is so anxious not to let its bigoted members have a vote. When first looking for a parliamentary seat, Howard was turned down by 40 constituency parties. Here’s the right-wing Daily Mail: “Michael Howard would like to be seen as the very model of... the proper English gentleman... [who] loves the countryside and stands for those very Anglo-Saxon virtues of fair play and decency... his enemies would complain that he is a chilly, calculating, heartless, ruthless, ambitious, calculating political machine, bent on passing himself off as something he isn't.” They said the exact same things about Disraeli, who wasn’t Jewish but his father was, 150 years ago.
Former Italian PM Andreotti’s conviction for ordering the murder of a journalist is overturn. Honestly, I have no idea if he was guilty. With the Italian justice system, it’s anyone’s guess.
From the Times: “President Putin summoned 14 investment bankers to the Kremlin last night in a desperate bid to assure them Russia was still a safe place to do business.” Of course when Putin summons people, they tend to arrive tied up and with hoods over their heads.
Lemmings do not commit mass suicide. A Disney documentary in 1958 faked footage.
And FDR may not have had polio, but rather Guillain-Barré syndrome.
Ted Costa, the guy who brought us the goober recall, now wants to change the way redistricting is done, and hey he wants it done in 2006, 6 years early.
The Center for Public Integrity has issued a report which says that the companies getting the big contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan are all big campaign donors and employ former officials. Just as the cynical among you suspected, of course. Indeed, just as anyone with two brain cells to rub together suspected. But I have to ask if this tells us something special about these companies, or if American business is just hopelessly mired in cronyism and corruption. One way to tell would have been to compare these companies with the ones that didn’t win contracts, but of course these were mostly no-bid contracts.
In a new move to intimidate, the US government is prosecuting Greenpeace, as an organization, for the action of 2 members who boarded a ship to protest mahogany imports. They are using a nineteenth century law about unauthorized boarding of ships, enacted to prevent boarding-house owners jumping onto ships as they arrived to get clients. Greenpeace’s director may not (for once) be exaggerating: “The government's action is unprecedented - prosecuting an entire organisation for the expressive activities of its supporters.”
Putin’s law against election commentary in the press is overturned by the courts.
Billmon notes that the pro-war semi-neo-libs like Tom Friedman have been writing columns saying that Iraq is not Vietnam. Of course it isn’t: it’s a dry heat.
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Prancing around the aircraft carrier
Yet another lovely Bush judicial nominee, Claude Allen for the 4th Circuit. On a non-personal level, Bush has screwed with procedure by picking someone from Virginia for what should be a Maryland seat. On a personal level, let’s just say Allen is a black man who worked for Jesse Helms in his campaign against Governor Jim Hunt, who Allen said was vulnerable because his campaign could be “linked with queers.” He says he meant no offense to the queers. Allen is now deputy sec of Health & Human Services, where he pushes for sex ed. classes that only advocate abstinence until marriage, and he doesn’t mean gay marriage. Under Clinton, 4 black nominees to the 4th circuit were blocked by the R’s. Previously, Allen was the top health official in Virginia, where he fought extending health coverage for uninsured youth to abortion in cases of rape & incest, which was required by federal law.
IDS out. Only 2 other Conservative party leaders have never been allowed even to run in a general election (Neville Chamberlain, Austen Chamberlain).
The key description of the Tory Party leader-in-waiting Michael Howard is Anne Widdecombe’s that he has “something of the night” about him--the BBC Newsnight presenter last night referred to his “Transylvanian ancestors” in alluding to this, hopelessly confusing the people he was questioning. There may not even be a leadership contest, as all the decent candidates are too old or were pressured not to run (IDS was elected under a new system that gave much of the decision to the scariest people on earth, the card-carrying members of the Tory party; by having a coronation rather than an election, the Tory MPs are trying to deprive the membership of a vote). Howard, previously seen playing the John Ashcroft role as home secretary, has the advantage of never having had sex with a man, and never having suggested that the EU wasn’t the whore of Babylon. As I suggested, he is a place-holder who will never be prime minister. Not only are the Tories now unelectable, but so is Howard.
Maybe the alleged experts will just shut up. Earlier this week all the talk was that Iraqi rebels were targeting civilians now, because it was easier. Today they blew up a tank.
The Afghan opium industry has restored itself to pre-Taliban levels. Hurrah.
Wesley Clark on Bush’s claim about the banner: “I guess that next thing we are going to hear is that the sailors told him to wear the flight suit and prance around on the aircraft carrier.”
At his press conference, Bush refused to answer a question about whether he could promise there would fewer American troops in Iraq in one year, on the grounds that it was a “trick question.” Incidentally, the other thing Michael Howard is famous for is evading and refusing to answer a question in an interview with Jeremy Paxman, despite being asked it 14 times in a row.
IDS out. Only 2 other Conservative party leaders have never been allowed even to run in a general election (Neville Chamberlain, Austen Chamberlain).
The key description of the Tory Party leader-in-waiting Michael Howard is Anne Widdecombe’s that he has “something of the night” about him--the BBC Newsnight presenter last night referred to his “Transylvanian ancestors” in alluding to this, hopelessly confusing the people he was questioning. There may not even be a leadership contest, as all the decent candidates are too old or were pressured not to run (IDS was elected under a new system that gave much of the decision to the scariest people on earth, the card-carrying members of the Tory party; by having a coronation rather than an election, the Tory MPs are trying to deprive the membership of a vote). Howard, previously seen playing the John Ashcroft role as home secretary, has the advantage of never having had sex with a man, and never having suggested that the EU wasn’t the whore of Babylon. As I suggested, he is a place-holder who will never be prime minister. Not only are the Tories now unelectable, but so is Howard.
Maybe the alleged experts will just shut up. Earlier this week all the talk was that Iraqi rebels were targeting civilians now, because it was easier. Today they blew up a tank.
The Afghan opium industry has restored itself to pre-Taliban levels. Hurrah.
Wesley Clark on Bush’s claim about the banner: “I guess that next thing we are going to hear is that the sailors told him to wear the flight suit and prance around on the aircraft carrier.”
At his press conference, Bush refused to answer a question about whether he could promise there would fewer American troops in Iraq in one year, on the grounds that it was a “trick question.” Incidentally, the other thing Michael Howard is famous for is evading and refusing to answer a question in an interview with Jeremy Paxman, despite being asked it 14 times in a row.
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Failed liberations: Iraqis, garden gnomes
In the Tuesday NYT, Paul Krugman (who gave a great talk broadcast on CSPAN, I believe viewable online at booknotes.org) writes about the wilful ignorance of Bush and America in general about the views of others, the column brought on by 1) Bush’s failure to understand moderate Muslims’ distrust of the US (I made the same point yesterday by mocking Bush’s hyper-simplified analysis of Iraqi militants as hating freedom and loving terror), 2) the hate mail he got when he tried to explain, not excuse, the Malaysian PM’s anti-semitic remarks. Trying to understand, rather than issuing anathemas, is taken to be moral weakness. There was a mini-series about Hitler a few months ago, which originally was supposed to have been about his early years and based on the very good Ian Kershaw biography. By the time it reached tv, his childhood was reduced to about 2 minutes (presumably because showing his father beating him up would have been taken as sympathy for Hitler), the title was changed to something like Hitler: Rise of Evil, in case you mistook CBS’s moral stance, Kershaw had demanded his name be removed, and Hitler was played as a ranting lunatic, with no attempt in 4 hours to get into his head at all, much less explain how a nation could respond to him. 58 years later and CBS was scared it would be perceived as soft on Hitler. It was a film that filled Americans’ deep need NOT to understand.
For another example of wilful misunderstanding, there’s been a lot of condemnation in the last 2 days of the bombing in Iraq of the International Committee of the Red Cross, but I have yet to hear a suggestion that there’s a reason beyond sheer assholery: a big red symbol of Christ’s death and alleged resurrection didn’t carry that much weight in fucking Iraq.
I mean, in the same newspapers there are stories about the shitstorm in Italy where a judge ordered crucifixes removed from public schoolrooms (following one of Mussolini’s laws), after objections from a Muslim student. In case anyone needed a reminder that not everyone is a Christian. (Yes, I know that the ICRC claims the cross isn’t Christian but Swiss, but c’mon.)
Iain Duncan Smith is facing what we Kallyfohrnians call a recall as Tory party leader, under rules that also made recall way too easy (15% of Tory MPs could secretly demand it). Simon Hoggart of the Guardian: “This looks likely to be the fourth leadership election in eight years. The Tories seem to work their way through leaders like other people get new cars, except that a new car will get you somewhere. ... Heaven knows what the Tories would do if they ever found a leader they liked. They'd have nothing to do to fill the empty hours.” He might retain his job, simply because no one else really wants it--no one thinks the Tories will win the next election, so the next Tory leader will lose the election and be knifed in the back in his turn--but IDS is mortally wounded and can’t survive until the next election (probably in 2005).
And nearly 6 months after the flight carrier thing, Bush claims that the “Mission accomplished” banner did not refer to the war, but to that carrier’s mission, and that it was the work of the crew, not his PR people at all. Actually, it turns out to have been made by a private vendor, and no one is saying who paid for it. Also, Bush used the words “mission accomplished” in speeches, so blaming the carrier crew is especially weaselly.
Trent Lott on how to deal with Iraq: “If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens. You’re dealing with insane suicide bombers who are killing our people, and we need to be very aggressive in taking them out.”
From the Daily Telegraph:
For another example of wilful misunderstanding, there’s been a lot of condemnation in the last 2 days of the bombing in Iraq of the International Committee of the Red Cross, but I have yet to hear a suggestion that there’s a reason beyond sheer assholery: a big red symbol of Christ’s death and alleged resurrection didn’t carry that much weight in fucking Iraq.
I mean, in the same newspapers there are stories about the shitstorm in Italy where a judge ordered crucifixes removed from public schoolrooms (following one of Mussolini’s laws), after objections from a Muslim student. In case anyone needed a reminder that not everyone is a Christian. (Yes, I know that the ICRC claims the cross isn’t Christian but Swiss, but c’mon.)
Iain Duncan Smith is facing what we Kallyfohrnians call a recall as Tory party leader, under rules that also made recall way too easy (15% of Tory MPs could secretly demand it). Simon Hoggart of the Guardian: “This looks likely to be the fourth leadership election in eight years. The Tories seem to work their way through leaders like other people get new cars, except that a new car will get you somewhere. ... Heaven knows what the Tories would do if they ever found a leader they liked. They'd have nothing to do to fill the empty hours.” He might retain his job, simply because no one else really wants it--no one thinks the Tories will win the next election, so the next Tory leader will lose the election and be knifed in the back in his turn--but IDS is mortally wounded and can’t survive until the next election (probably in 2005).
And nearly 6 months after the flight carrier thing, Bush claims that the “Mission accomplished” banner did not refer to the war, but to that carrier’s mission, and that it was the work of the crew, not his PR people at all. Actually, it turns out to have been made by a private vendor, and no one is saying who paid for it. Also, Bush used the words “mission accomplished” in speeches, so blaming the carrier crew is especially weaselly.
Trent Lott on how to deal with Iraq: “If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens. You’re dealing with insane suicide bombers who are killing our people, and we need to be very aggressive in taking them out.”
From the Daily Telegraph:
More than 40 gnomes stolen and liberated by a shadowy French underground movement were yesterday condemned to life in a "dusty cupboard" by a police chief hunting the thieves.
Earlier this year priests arriving at the cathedral in Saint-Die in the Vosges found 84 stolen garden gnomes lined up on the steps as if waiting for Mass.
Flapping above them was a banner, which read "Free at last!" But after months of investigation, the police have given up trying to find the culprits.
An open day was held on Monday for those wanting to claim the gnomes. Fewer than half were collected.
"The liberators have failed," said Michel Klein, the local police chief. "The gnomes are now going to spend the rest of their lives locked up in dusty cupboard."
Despite M Klein's remarks, the closing of the Saint-Die gnome theft case marks another victory for France's gnome liberators. Since 1997, they have freed some 6,500 gnomes around France, stealing them from private gardens and leaving them in forests, beside lakes, or in one case encircling a roundabout.
In the strangest case, 11 gnomes were found hanging from a bridge in Briey accompanied by a suicide note saying: "When you read these few words, we will no longer be part of your selfish world, where we serve merely as pretty decoration."
Suspicion in the Saint-Die case naturally fell on the Front de Liberation des Nains de Jardin (Garden Gnome Liberation Front), whose leaders were arrested in 1997 and given suspended prison sentences.
Whereas in Britain thieves steal garden gnomes to resell them there is no suspicion that the FLNJ is out for money. Instead, they repaint the gnomes in green, representing trees, and blue for the sky, and cover up their clownish red noses. The gnomes are then liberated in a ceremony involving techno music, fireworks and, police suspect, drugs.
Monday, October 27, 2003
Highly protected
NYT: “an American colonel was killed and at least 16 people were wounded when a barrage of air-to-ground missiles from a homemade launching pad slammed into a highly protected hotel where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was staying.”
Define “highly protected.”
A long expose of the Teapot Dome of the Bush admin, well, one of them and possibly a bigger waste of money than that going to Halliburton, the leasing of refueling tankers from Boeing, at a cost many billions greater than if the Air Force bought them outright. But it couldn’t afford that, so it put it on the ol’ credit card, because tomorrow is another day and interest doesn’t “count.” It’s also another example of the use of conference committees: this lease was initially approved two years ago by one, and will get the final go-ahead soon from another, without ever having been considered by either the House or Senate. Which I believe used to be called taxation without representation. It’s also an example of a contractor being allowed by the Pentagon to rewrite rules, for example eliminating a provision that the new tankers be at least as good as the old ones. And yes, all the Air Force officials involved will be moving to Seattle and taking up highly paid no-show jobs after they retire from the service. It’s worth the read, and very reminiscent of the Reagan years, another period when infinite resources were lavished on the military with no regard for waste.
In Kallyfohrnia, all state employees, and legislators, have to take a sexual harassment training course. Governors don’t have to, and our incoming one has been training his entire life, so doesn’t feel he needs it.
The Post Office wants to ban anonymous mail.
Least believable statement from Iraq of the day: “the policemen say that, as he was shot and fell, he said he was Syrian.”
Whoops, spoke too soon: “George Bush yesterday tried to stifle rising doubts on the occupation of Iraq by insisting yesterday's bombings were a sign that life had improved under America's watch.” Shhh, soon everybody will want suicide bombings. No town will be considered civilized without at least 3 Starbucks and its police station a mass of smoking rubble.
Kerry responds: “Does the president really believe that suicide bombers are willing to strap explosives to their bodies because we're restoring electricity and creating jobs for Iraqis?”
Bush also showed a deep psychological understanding of his enemies: “[They] can't stand the thought of a free society. They hate freedom. They love terror. They love to try to create fear and chaos.”
In June, Ariel Sharon pledged to dismantle illegal settlement outposts. Today, he announced that 8 of them will receive lighting, school buses and military security.
3 Muslim states in northern Nigeria have blocked injections to deal with a polio outbreak, saying it is a western plot to spread AIDS. The annoying thing is that the idiot obscurantists have reason to be suspicious, since US drug companies have tried out experimental drugs there, including one for meningitis allegedly administered in one of the Nigerian states without the patients being informed of the risks.
George Monbiot has a story about Uzbekistan, which tends to imprison Muslims and, occasionally, boil them, but which has the full support of the US and UK, including increased aid, much of it going to the security services responsible for quite a lot of torture. Still, the State Dept focuses on the good news: "Average sentencing" for members of peaceful religious organisations is now just "7-12 years", while two years ago they were "usually sentenced to 12-19 years". Hurrah.
The European war against immigrants continues. Austria just tightened its laws, and France is actually setting “expulsion targets” for local authorities, with the aim of doubling expulsions.
George Lakoff, a leftie linguist who I’ve always liked, interviewed on how conservatives control the debate by controlling the language.
And, along those lines, Billmon points out the frequent use by Bushies of the word desperate to describe the Iraqi resistance.
In a discussion that’s way beyond my technical knowledge, this site says that the White House website has been deliberately tinkered with to make it hard to get information about Iraq from it through an external search engine like Google (although a search conducted within whitehouse.gov via its internal search function still works). More importantly, those pages won’t be archived at Google & elsewhere. Why? Well, the Democratic Party’s website notes that the White House has sometimes altered old pages, for example to have Bush saying on May 1 that “major combat” had ended, when in real life he didn’t qualify the word combat.
Sunday, October 26, 2003
I came, I saw, I pressed a crease
“In an act of callous political opportunism, Gov. Jeb Bush last week basically kicked down the door of a hospice and forced a feeding tube down poor Terri Schiavo's throat.” Read more.
Never has a Washington Post editorial, or at least its headline, expressed an opinion so diametrically opposed to the wishes of everyone in the United States and indeed the world: “Speak Up, Mr. Rumsfeld.”
Oddly, the same section has an op/ed piece by Rummy, which seems to call for a hard slog, to coin a phrase, against terrorists and what he calls terrorist states, in which the nearly pointless war in Iraq is once again conflated with the war on terrorism. By the way, last week the Senate voted 97-1 to allow the “War on Terrorism” medal to be awarded to soldiers who fought in Iraq (Jim Jeffords was the one). I hope soldiers who think they were lied to about the reasons they were sent into Iraq will publicly throw those medals away; indeed, I don’t see what else they can do with honor.
We’ve heard a little bit in the last week about the wounded in our little colonial brush war. I’d have said casualties, but the Pentagon has redefined that word to refer only to dead soldiers. You’ll be pleased to hear that wounded reservists will be moved from their current facilities to some place with indoor plumbing (they’re in Georgia, so what do you expect). Hurrah!
Click here, if you don’t believe me about the lack of indoor toilets.
The Post has an analysis of Iraqi weapons, and concludes that there were none of the weapons programs the Bushies claimed. I’m not sure it says anything we didn’t know, but others are treating the story as a big deal, so I pass it on.
Russia has arrested its richest man, an oil tycoon. Before you giggle too much, understand that Mikhail Khodorkovsky is the main financial support of the liberal opposition and that elections are less than 2 months away. A previous richest man in Russia was granted political asylum by the UK last month.
From the Times: “THE bishop at the centre of the dispute over same-sex blessings in the Anglican Church yesterday compared homosexuals in the Church to the Israelites wandering for 40 years in a wilderness infested with snakes.” But not in a good, you know, metaphoric way.
Israel releases its plans for the fence/wall, and yes it will cut 15 miles into Palestinian territory. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: Mr. Sharon, stick this wall up your ass.
This weekend, Israel destroyed several 13-story apartment blocks in Gaza, leaving thousands homeless. Also, all those homes destroyed, allegedly in the search for tunnels, were actually to create a giant buffer zone. Also, the military is ordering Palestinians who live in 15 villages near the Berlin Wall to get permits to live in their own homes; they are deeming the area a “closed military zone.” Any Palestinian (but not a Jew) visiting the area will require a pass. Note that when the UN Security Council was debating condemning the wall, Israel promised that the legal status of Palestinians would be unaffected.
Never has a Washington Post editorial, or at least its headline, expressed an opinion so diametrically opposed to the wishes of everyone in the United States and indeed the world: “Speak Up, Mr. Rumsfeld.”
Oddly, the same section has an op/ed piece by Rummy, which seems to call for a hard slog, to coin a phrase, against terrorists and what he calls terrorist states, in which the nearly pointless war in Iraq is once again conflated with the war on terrorism. By the way, last week the Senate voted 97-1 to allow the “War on Terrorism” medal to be awarded to soldiers who fought in Iraq (Jim Jeffords was the one). I hope soldiers who think they were lied to about the reasons they were sent into Iraq will publicly throw those medals away; indeed, I don’t see what else they can do with honor.
We’ve heard a little bit in the last week about the wounded in our little colonial brush war. I’d have said casualties, but the Pentagon has redefined that word to refer only to dead soldiers. You’ll be pleased to hear that wounded reservists will be moved from their current facilities to some place with indoor plumbing (they’re in Georgia, so what do you expect). Hurrah!
Click here, if you don’t believe me about the lack of indoor toilets.
The Post has an analysis of Iraqi weapons, and concludes that there were none of the weapons programs the Bushies claimed. I’m not sure it says anything we didn’t know, but others are treating the story as a big deal, so I pass it on.
Russia has arrested its richest man, an oil tycoon. Before you giggle too much, understand that Mikhail Khodorkovsky is the main financial support of the liberal opposition and that elections are less than 2 months away. A previous richest man in Russia was granted political asylum by the UK last month.
From the Times: “THE bishop at the centre of the dispute over same-sex blessings in the Anglican Church yesterday compared homosexuals in the Church to the Israelites wandering for 40 years in a wilderness infested with snakes.” But not in a good, you know, metaphoric way.
Israel releases its plans for the fence/wall, and yes it will cut 15 miles into Palestinian territory. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: Mr. Sharon, stick this wall up your ass.
This weekend, Israel destroyed several 13-story apartment blocks in Gaza, leaving thousands homeless. Also, all those homes destroyed, allegedly in the search for tunnels, were actually to create a giant buffer zone. Also, the military is ordering Palestinians who live in 15 villages near the Berlin Wall to get permits to live in their own homes; they are deeming the area a “closed military zone.” Any Palestinian (but not a Jew) visiting the area will require a pass. Note that when the UN Security Council was debating condemning the wall, Israel promised that the legal status of Palestinians would be unaffected.
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