Panda

David Brooks makes a mostly-dire effort at a parody of the debates, but does put one good line in Bush’s mouth: “America, we’ve been through a lot together. Imagine how bad things would be if I’d made any mistakes.”

Brazil will start shooting down planes suspected of drug smuggling. The AP story does not say if the CIA will be involved, as it is in Peru and Colombia, in targeting planes for summary execution.

Now, for no particular reason, but who needs a reason?--a panda cub:

Dick Cheney was for his own daughter before he was against her

Watch Jon Stewart on Crossfire, metaphorically strangling Tucker Carson with his own bow tie. The lower-quality video is a 7m. download.

Cheney, after thanking Edwards for speaking about Mary at the Veep debates, lambasted Kerry for doing the same: “I am not just speaking as a father here, although I am a pretty angry father.” What’s with the turnaround or, if you will, flip flop? One theory is that Cheney prefers to attack people who aren’t physically present, but this is disproved by the Pat Leahy “go fuck yourself” incident. Another theory, shockingly, is that he was told to feign outrage.

There is an interesting vice-presidential precedent. In 1992 Larry King asked Dan Quayle what he would do if his 13-year old daughter decided to have an abortion. For a moment Quayle forgot his role and gave a human answer: “obviously I would counsel her and talk to her and support her on whatever decision she made.” Quayle’s awful wife intervened and said that, actually, they would force their daughter to carry the pregnancy to term.

Remember, supporting your daughter is un-Republican.

Take me out to the women’s softball game

US forces have been bombing Fallujah over and over, in what it amuses them to call “precision strikes.” The WordPerfect dictionary has this usage notation in its definition of “precise”: “Strictly speaking, precise does not mean the same as accurate. Accurate means correct in all details , while precise contains a notion of trying to specify details exactly: if you say ‘It’s 4.04 and 12 seconds’ you are being precise, but not necessarily accurate (your watch might be slow).”

Every blog and cable news show is talking feverishly about Mary Cheney. I wonder if this isn’t playing into Team Chimpy’s hands, not by raising the ire of the God-botherers (my favorite silly argument is that Kerry & Edwards are trying to pry homophobic voters away from Bush...by publicly praising and supporting a lesbian), but by not talking about Bush’s poor debate performances and other, ya know, substantive policy issues. This may be why the Chimpites are keeping the issue going.

Not that homophobia isn’t an issue, of course, especially given Alan Keyes’s comments & Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.)’s anti-gay, but rather poorly phrased fund-raising letter: “Leaders of the homosexual lobby know if they can take me out, no one will stand against them in the future.” Oh you just wish, Marilyn. Just sitting by the phone, waiting for the leaders of the homosexual lobby to call, waiting, waiting...

I remember the first US Senate race between two women (1986), in which Linda Chavez started a whispering campaign that Barbara Mikulski was gay, and started calling herself Mrs. Chavez.

It has nothing do with shame

Lesbian-gate continues apace. Elizabeth Edwards wonders aloud if the Cheney’s are ashamed of their live gay daughter. Liz Cheney, the non-gay daughter, responds, “It has nothing do with shame. And I think Mrs. Edwards was also out of line. Mary is one of my heroes. And it has nothing to do with being ashamed of Mary.” No, it’s all about exploiting Mary for “some kind of political gain.” What kind, she does not say, and she is not pressed to define it, or explain how it differs from using this fake outrage for political gain. The best part of the interview:

ZAHN: Was your sister offended?

CHENEY: It was a very offensive thing for him to do, yes.

ZAHN: Did you talk to her about it?

CHENEY: It was very offensive. I think I’ll just leave it there.

Oh yes, a very awkward Thanksgiving indeed.

The English historian Conrad Russell has died. As Earl Russell (I will explain to Americans that Earl is a title of nobility, not an attempt to seem less like a member of the British House of Lords and more like a garage mechanic in Louisiana)(he was actually named after his father’s friend Joseph Conrad), he was also a leading Liberal/Lib Dem member of the Lords, surviving the cull of hereditaries. His father was Bertrand Russell, his great-grandfather the tiny prime minister John Russell, aka Jack Russell, inventor of the terrier.

Neither Bush nor Kerry were willing to be the first to stop their competitive display of public affection for their wives and daughters, but Bush was beginning to panic. Laura whispered, “Stand up straight and don’t scowl.”

Questions

I just came across an old post of mine, from December 2000, in which I noted that there were questions Shrub had been allowed not to answer during the 2000 campaign, despite having made his “character” and his faith his chief selling points. Another campaign is nearly over, and guess what?


--When did you take which drugs and how often?

--Do you really think you would have been given all that money to start an oil business when you were in your 20s if it weren’t for your connections?

--Did you fail in that business because you were drunk a large portion of the time, or were you just incompetent?

--Were you arrested any other times?

--How often did you drive drunk with underage siblings in the car (we know of at least two incidents)?

--Did you use AA to give up drinking, and if not, what methods did you use and what methods do you use currently?

--Do you consider yourself to have been an alcoholic?

--Do gays go to hell?

--Jews?

--Catholics? (and we know that Billy Graham has coached you to avoid this question by saying that it’s not up to you who goes to hell, but that’s not the question and you know it)

--What ever happened to Neil?

Clarity, conviction and compassion, oh my

I mentioned the plans to turn Rocky Flats into a wildlife refuge. They also plan to allow a little hunting, which is a definition of refuge I was not familiar with. At least it’ll make hunting a bit fairer, since the deer will be able to defend themselves by shooting death rays out of their eyes.

The Bush campaign has sent my cat a penetrating analysis of the debate. The email asserts, “The President spoke with clarity, conviction and compassion about the most important issues facing our country.” My cat does not care (evidently, the email has infected my computer with the dreaded Alliteration Virus).

“President Bush revealed John Kerry’s tendency to confuse a litany of complaints with a plan.” Of course Bush tends to confuse Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden. And “Kerry believes education is unrelated to the economy” while Bush “believes that no child should be left behind”. Except maybe Jenna. Bush “revealed just how far out of the mainstream Kerry’s record lies on abortion, gay marriage, immigration, taxes, health care and fiscal discipline.” My cat has a headache now, and wishes the whole thing would go away.


The Village Voice’s John Powers says Cheney is “a run-to-fat version of The Simpsons’ Mr. Burns”.

James Wolcott wonders about Bush’s “cavalier lack of preparation” for the debates. “He not only didn’t have the eloquence, he barely had the facts and figures. For some bizarre reason best left to future psychologists, Bush doesn’t seem to have approached these debates seriously. He refused to acknowledge he couldn’t get by with simply rehashing his stump speech.”

More fun with pictures.

A cheap and tawdry political trick

California voters: Although you will no doubt slavishly follow my recommendations, the SF Bay Guardian also always does a good job of describing the issues and candidates fairly, from a progressive standpoint--and then recommending that you vote for the lesser of 2 evils. But they’ll do it in such a way that you might start out reading their endorsement of, say, Barbara Boxer, planning to vote for her, and finish it convinced to vote for the Peace & Freedom candidate, as I just did.

Oh, and I hate do this to you, but they convinced me to vote against 1A, which I was always suspicious of.

Go Granny Go: In the Senate race in New Hampshire, former governor Judd Gregg was forced to debate the D candidate, 94-year-old Doris Haddock, famous for walking across the US at 90 in support of election reforms. He had initially refused, but she then challenged him to Scrabble, and he had to give in.

Which reminds me that I meant to criticize McNeil-Lehrer last week and yesterday because they keep running interviews with pollsters trying to predict the presidential election. Pointless, time-wasting segments, the reason, along with hurricanes and Fannie Mae stories, that I record the News Hour and watch it with one hand near the fast forward button. But there are 34 Senate races, 435 House races, and how many of them has the program bothered profiling?

Molly Ivins: “Character, says George Bush, is the issue. George Bush. Says character is the issue. ... What are George Bush’s principles, this man who accuses John Kerry of waffling.”

I’m afraid I altered that quote, which is from a column Molly wrote 12 years ago. It was George Bush the Elder accusing Clinton. Plus ca change, huh? More: “he has descended into rank McCarthyism with his unfounded charge that there was some impropriety about Clinton’s having visited Moscow...implying that it was unpatriotic to oppose the war in Vietnam.” Just what the Sinclair documentary says about Kerry. The column is in her new retrospective book, “Who Let the Dogs In? Incredible Political Animals I Have Known,” which I’m currently doling out to myself in little bits, as treats.

Speaking of “plus ca change, plus c’est la même chose,” the Indy has a counterpart to the NYT story I mentioned yesterday about Allawi bringing Baathists back into power: “Alleged war criminals [i.e., the warlords] are poised to take positions of power in Afghanistan’s new government”. As in Iraq, it’s just plain convenient to bring back the old shitheads, because they know how to make the trains/torture chambers/poppy trade run on time.

In the debate, Kerry referred in this wise to Mary Cheney: “I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she’s being who she was. She’s being who she was born as.” That’s the sum total of what he had to say, but Lynne Cheney threw a tantrum, calling it “a cheap and tawdry political trick,” saying he “is not a good man” and generally letting her daughter know how truly ashamed she is of her sexual identity. Really will be a hell of an awkward Thanksgiving this year. Oh, and fuck you Lynne Cheney.

Debate 3: A plan isn't a litany of complaints

Full text.

Bush says Kerry’s quoting him about not being worried about Osama is ex-ag-er-ra-ted, taking the 5 syllable word very slowly.

Bush says we took the right action in not permitting the contaminated flu vaccine into the US. Actually, it was the British that shut them down. He had nothing to do with it. Bush says he hasn’t had a flu shot. I’m waiting for him to turn to Kerry and ask him if he has, the big coward. He blames the reliance for flu vaccine on 2 companies on litigation. Everyone says it’s more to do with the unpredictable level of demand for the vaccine year to year.

Ohmygod, Kerry is going to do that “I have a plan” thing over and over again. Bush says a plan is not a litany of complaints, and calls it bait & switch. Like a lot of Bush’s memorized come-backs, it could be easily turned back by a method Kerry would never use: “President Bush, you just used the word ‘litany.’ Could you define litany? Could you spell it?”

Oh-so-hilarious Bush put down: Pay-go to a senator from Mass., a colleague of Ted Kennedy, means you pay and he goes ahead and spends.

I know Massachusetts isn’t that popular a state, so Kerry isn’t standing up for his home state, but isn’t there something unseemly about a “president” of the entire United States using the name of one of those states over and over as an insult?

Kerry alludes to The Sopranos. Oh, he’s so cool and “with it.”

Oops, there’s that blinking again.

Bush: litany of misstatements. Oh dear, he’s learned a new word. Add it to the drinking game. Also: “his rhetoric doesn’t match his record.”

Question: is homosexuality a choice. Bush doesn’t know. Or care.

Bush uses loaded phrase “culture of life” again. Adoption is “a great alternative” to abortion. Also abstinence. Praises Kerry’s wife for being involved in abstinence programs. I’ll bet she is.

Oh, there’s that chuckle again, that always makes me want to smack him. Bush’s chuckle, of course.

The No Child Left Behind Act is “really a jobs act, when you think about it,” at least if you’re trying to fill up time because you have nothing to say about jobs and the minimum wage.

With an opportunity to go after Bush for refusing to give his position on abortion rights, Kerry hits him with the softest of Nerf blows. Bush responds with an attack on Kerry having a “litmus test.” Again, Kerry should ask him to define it. Why do R’s think that that phrase has any resonance with the American people? Oh no, he has a litmus test! Duck!

Ah, there’s the “global test” again. Kerry suggests instead a “sort of truth standard.”

Bush: Part of being a hopeful society is that somebody owns something. Unless it’s a crack pipe.

Bush: “my faith is very personal.” Then fucking keep it to yourself. Faith gives him calmness. I thought that not knowing what was going on is what gives him calmness. God wants everybody to be free. The freedom in Afghanistan is a gift from the almighty. Can you say crusade?

Kerry: we have a lot more loving of our neighbor to do. Thanks, we had enough of that with Clinton.

What did you learn from the women in your life? Bush’s wife was a librarian so...not much. Although there’s this:

Barrel of fish

The Bush campaign is accusing Kerry of standing “in pulpits across the country using Scripture to make political attacks.”

After John Edwards makes a comment about stem-cell research helping people like Christopher Reeve, Sen. Bill “Here, Kitty Kitty” Frist accuses him of cruelly offering false hope to patients. Frist prefers to offer false despair.
(Later: Edwards said “When John Kerry is President, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get out of that wheelchair and walk again.” The repugnant Mr. Frist may have a point.)

From a letter to the NYT: “The Bush record is a barrel of fish, and John Kerry can’t seem to hit any of them.”

Mass graves are being dug up in Iraq, with children in them, and I’ll bet Bush mentions that fact in tonight’s debate even though it’s supposed to be confined to domestic and economic issues. I don’t think it’s too cynical of me to wonder about the timing of this. (Bob Goodsell was on this first.)

The NYT has a piece on Allawi trying to hobble the de-Baathization process, trying to disband the independent commission, and then not allowing its members sufficient passes to enter the Green Zone, ordering ministries not to deal with it, etc.

Hyman, Hyman, nope, can't think of anything humorous to say about that name

Ha’aretz locates one of the secret CIA detention/torture centers, in Jordan. Human Rights Watch claims that this location is so secret that Bush asked the CIA not to tell him where it was. Not that he could find Jordan on a map. But if the existence of such centers is to remain a (dirty little) secret, how can you release any of the prisoners, or try them in real courts? Ever?

I’ve stayed away from the Sinclair Broadcasting issue, because I don’t want to be on the side of speech suppression, even when the speech involved is nasty and one-sided. Did I say “even”--I meant especially. Sinclair has called its anti-Kerry film (I was going to use a pejorative adjective, but I haven’t seen it, so I shouldn’t be characterizing it--that’s a hint to other bloggers) a news report, and while that may be laughable, we really don’t want lawsuits every time Frontline or NBC News profiles a candidate, and the news programs we’d get if that sort of scrutiny became common would be even duller and stupider than they are now.

And then Sinclair VP Mark Hyman, a jerk of the highest order, goes on tv and makes me want to join the baying crowd. First he tells CNN that if this is an in-kind campaign contribution, then every car bomb in Iraq is a contribution to Kerry’s campaign. Then he goes on McNeil-Lehrer and says that his idea of equal time is for Kerry to come on after and respond to the charges that he’s a traitor. No, Sinclair should be required to air anything Kerry wants it to air. In a perfect world, that would be “Fahrenheit 9/11.” The antidote to bad speech is more speech, not censorship.

Purely coincidentally, I’m pleased to announce that this blog has been mentioned negatively (idiot, schmuck were the words used) on a website I will not name here. And let me extend a big welcome to anyone who may have clicked through from there: a mind willing to listen to multiple viewpoints is a free mind.

Irony in Iraq

The US occupation authorities are not letting the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspect in Iraq. And the interim government isn’t fulfilling its responsibilities to the IAEA either.

Interesting LA Times article, explaining the Duelfer report, “Through Hussein’s Looking Glass.” In the world that only existed inside Saddam’s head, he won the 1st Gulf War, was the greatest Arab leader in history, and, get this, the CIA was smart enough to know that he had no WMDs. He was bluffing Iran, but he assumed--god, this cracks me up--that the CIA was competent.

And then Zarqawi will jump out of the wedding cake...

In preparation for the last presidential debate, I have devised the World’s Shortest Presidential Debate Drinking Game: whenever Bush brings up Kerry’s “reducing terrorism to a nuisance” quote, take a drink. Five minutes into the debate, you will be lying unconscious in a pool of vomit. Drinking game over.

I asked 3 days ago how long the US could deny that it bombed a wedding in Fallujah. Well the NYT (which doesn’t bother updating us on the condition of the bride/widow) quotes a senior Pentagon official, who was having a senior-Pentagon-official moment, saying “We know what the strike was supposed to hit, and we hit it. If a wedding was going on, well, it was in concert with a meeting with a top Zarqawi lieutenant.” Some weddings just have the worst entertainment.

The article also quotes a “Pentagon official” thus:

“If there are civilians dying in connection with these attacks, and with the destruction, the locals at some point have to make a decision. Do they want to harbor the insurgents and suffer the consequences that come with that, or do they want to get rid of the insurgents and have the benefits of not having them there?”

Please note that this official is admitting to deliberately bombing a civilian population in order to get them to “make a decision.” This is the textbook definition of both a) terrorism, and b) a war crime.

The government is dismantling the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. It just gave up the idea of blowing up the old plutonium processing building because that might be unsafe. They are planning to turn the site into a wildlife refuge. Really, really wild life. But at least you’ll be able to see the animals at night. When a superintelligent antelope with two heads takes over the world, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Freedom is not given. It is taken by force

Bush meets his Waterloo
(sorry, couldn’t resist)
(but didn’t try very hard).

Kerry really needs to clarify that reducing-terrorism-to-a-nuisance quote to counter the silly charge that he doesn’t take terrorism seriously. If I may make a suggestion: “I meant to say ‘a fucking nuisance.’”

The WaPo spots a banner in the Iraqi city of Hit: “Freedom is not given. It is taken by force.”

Bush chair Marc Racicot has written to the AFL-CIO accusing it of, well really, an unspecified but indirect connection to vandalism at several Bush campaign offices (the union demonstrated at those offices to protest the new overtime rules). Note the care taken to avoid slanderous accusations in the letter (full text here): “Protests by your organization come on the heels of several other incidents... I hope you will put an end to protest activities that have led to injuries, property damage, vandalism and voter intimidation. We will hold you and your organization accountable for the actions of your members and urge you to immediately discontinue any coordinated protest efforts.” Led to? Come on the heels of? Not exactly proof of a causal connection, and indeed the campaign later clarified itself, according to Reuters: “Bush campaign spokesman Brian Jones said Racicot did not mean to link shootings and break-ins to the union protests. ‘I think what he’s trying to show is that there is this pattern of violence and vandalism and just pointing to the fact that it’s a part of an overall pattern,’ Jones said.”

The over-all message is familiar: your legal, peaceful dissent from governmental positions emboldens the enemy, so shut up.


Freedom is not given. It is taken by force.

Even though we’ve destroyed their houses, the people are happy with us

The military budget just passed eliminates the limit on the number of US troops and “contractors” that can be sent to Colombia in support of the government of death-squad promoter and violent thug Alvaro Uribe (I’m not a big fan of Uribe). I’ve written a lot in the past about Colombia and Uribe, and here’s the results of a Google search for those posts (not in chronological order, I’m afraid, but the dates are clear enough).

The Iraqi “government” has been buying up weapons in Sadr City. They may come from members of the Mahdi Army, or not, since the prices are higher than those on the black market. Just in case you’ve got a few RPGs or machine guns you’ve been wanting to get rid of, I am providing the buy-back price list as a public service:

• Heavy machinegun, $1,000
• Heavy machinegun ammunition, 440 rounds, $200
• 60mm mortar, $225
• 120mm mortar, $275
• Rocket-propelled grenade, $160
• Kalashnikov, $150
• Romanian sniper rifle, $630
• Roadside bombs, $50
• Katyusha rocket-launcher $50
• Empty Kalashnikov magazine, $4
• Grenade, $5
• 350 Kalashnikov rounds, $320

Nothing about bows & arrows. One of the many industries for which tax breaks were just secretly voted by Congress is bow and arrow manufacturers.

Elsewhere in Iraq, Marine Capt. Carrie Batson, herewith declared Military Moron of the Day, said of the massive destruction caused by American bombing of Najaf, “Even though we’ve destroyed their houses, the people are happy with us” because Sadr had “hijacked” their town.

The divine right of incumbent Congresscritters

Happy Indigenous People’s Day (Berkeley only).

The LA Times says that of California’s 53 Congressional seats, exactly one is even close to being a competitive race (and that one isn’t very close). Also, 2 out of NY’s 29, 1 out of Florida’s 25. “We’re getting back to the divine right of kings,” says alliterative Rob Richie of the Center for Voting and Democracy. Which explains why members of Congress so often seem like the result of generations of cousins marrying cousins.

Kerry tells the NYT, “We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives but they’re a nuisance.” Even when he’s right, you just want to slap him, don’t you? Although from the look of his face, that would probably hurt your hand more than his face.

Saudi Arabia will have municipal elections in February, its first elections of any kind since the 1960s. And no, women won’t be allowed to vote. The voting age is 21.

Tom Coburn, the asshole running for Senate in Oklahoma, says (said, actually, on 8/31/04, and we’re only hearing this now?) “lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that’s happened to us?” Us? Spend a lot of time in girls’ bathrooms in schools in southeast Oklahoma, do ya, Tom?

Coburn also has an ad out which “shows images of Hispanics and dark hands receiving welfare payments,” echoing an old Jesse Helms ad, which I’ve been unable to see. It’s not, for example, on Coburn’s website, although many other of his ads are. If anyone’s seen it online somewhere, drop me an email.

And given that he’s running racist ads, it occurs to me to ask how many of those under-age girls he sterilized were non-white.

They do exist

Rumsfeld is upset that the media are ignoring the Iraqi security forces: “They do exist. Over 700 of them have been killed.” There’s something wrong with that logic, I just can’t put my finger on it...

The party line is that the complete failure of safeguards against fraudulent voting in Afghanistan is irrelevant. So what if the condom broke, baby, we had a good time, didn’t we? Karzai says the ink thing “did not diminish the value people gave to the vote.” Robert Barry, the OSCE guy I quoted a while back, says talking about the fraud would “put into question the expressed will of millions of citizens.” As Antonin Scalia wrote in Bush v. Gore, counting the votes accurately might “cast a cloud on what [Karzai] claims to be the legitimacy of his election.” Vote-counting is the boring, messy bit, like cleaning up after a party, and I say we don’t bother doing it. If the only thing that’s important is that people showed up to vote, who needs to count ballots? Let’s declare victory and go home.

Many of the candidates have been bribed/pressured/whatever to back away from demands to re-run the election. They will accept the findings of an independent commission. An “independent” commission, in Afghanistan. Really now.

Ground zero

The Indy: “Bombs in Baghdad killed 18 people as the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, declared during a visit to Iraq that America was winning the war against insurgency.” Also, “Mr Rumsfeld’s trip had not been announced beforehand for security reasons.” He held a Q&A with Marines, who were ordered beforehand not to ask him when they would be going home. He told the Marines that Iraq was “ground zero” in the war on terrorism, which must have reassured them no end (American Heritage Dictionary: “Ground zero. n. 1. The target of a projectile, such as a missile or bomb. 2. The site directly below, directly above, or at the point of detonation of a nuclear weapon.”).

For a change of pace, a religious story, from the London Times:

Spanish count jet skis to heaven
From David Sharrock in San Sebastián

A SOCIALITE count hopes to avoid Purgatory by embarking on a maritime pilgrimage, using a jet ski to undertake one of Europe’s most well-trodden paths, the Camino de Santiago.

Alvaro de Marichalar, Spain’s most eligible bachelor, was expected to be somewhere off Spain’s “Coast of Death” this morning, bearing down upon Santiago de Compostela at 35 knots.
For centuries weary pilgrims have walked the Camino de Santiago, from the French Pyrenees and through northern Spain, to atone for their sins, taking an average of three weeks.

But Count Alvaro, who earned a place in The Guinness Book of Records in 2002 by crossing the Atlantic by jet ski, is pioneering what could turn out to be the salvation of time-starved believers.

This is a Xacobeo year — when the day of St James falls on a Sunday in Spain — which means the souls of pilgrims who complete the Camino are excused from Purgatory.

Count Alvaro hopes that by Wednesday evening, having made landfall on the Galician coast and marched the last 18 miles inland, the Camino will have been completed in record time.

The count, 43, was anxious to dispel thoughts that this 650-mile journey is no more than a jaunt for someone who took 63 days to complete the 10,000 nautical miles from Rome to Miami about two years ago.

“Success is never guaranteed, and I will be standing up all the time to avoid injuring my back,” he said.

Credibility test

Although Bush didn’t like the idea of global tests, he says that Kerry “doesn’t pass the credibility tests.” Must not be graded on a curve.

Everyone is rushing, prematurely, to proclaim the Afghan elections good enough. For example, the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), which had just a handful of its own election monitors, has pooh-poohed calls for the Afghan election to be re-run, its ambassador saying that that “would not do service to the people of Afghanistan who came out yesterday, at great personal risk, to vote.” This is a variant of Bush’s “You can’t call the war a mistake, that would demoralize the troops” argument.

Oh, and this should be obvious, but the news reports featuring pictures and interviews with happy voters came from the few parts of Afghanistan it was safe enough for reporters to travel to.

Another piece of animation by the guys who did “This Land.” This one’s even better.

Posturing

Afghan women (one presumes) on line to vote.

It’s bad enough to see the word election applied to the event that just took place in Afghanistan, but to use the word democracy is to strip the word of 90% of its meaning, to turn it into a signifier without a signified (that’s my little homage to the late Jacques Derrida; don’t worry, I won’t do it again.)

First, democracy is a SYSTEM of government. But there won’t be elections for a legislative body for another 6 months. Even if you accept this election as legitimate, it was only for a single branch of government. There are no checks and balances, unless of course you count the fact that the only power he really has grows out of the barrel of an American gun. If he weren’t a puppet, he’d be an absolute dictator.

As for the elections, there seems to be an unspoken agreement in the media to pretend that the mere fact that a lot of people voted, without too many casualties, legitimizes the election, no matter how little the final vote count will correspond to the votes actually cast by the people who voted who were actually qualified to vote. We all know that more people registered than were eligible to register (one of my readers has pointed out that population figures for Afghanistan are just estimates, which is true but the over-registration was highly uneven geographically, with some regions reaching more than 140%). Given that, you’d think the failure today of the procedures that were supposed to prevent multiple voting would be considered serious, but when 15 candidates have the presumption to complain, the WaPo dismissively describes them as “posturing,” which is as childishly insulting as those “Sore Loserman” placards in 2000.

And then there’s the absence of newspapers or national media of any kind, or any other form of political infrastructure, the fact that the country is occupied by a foreign power and too unsafe for the candidates to campaign (I doubt whether the majority of voters could have named more than 2 of the candidates), the attempts by the US ambassador to force candidates to quit, little stuff like that. This is not to denigrate the brave Afghans who went to the polls, some of them children, some of them repeatedly, some enthusiastic at the thought of rejecting warlordism and embracing democracy. But the majority of countries have elections, and the majority of those countries are not democracies.

Moving on alphabetically, I’d also like to reject the results of Australia’s elections. Just because I don’t like John Howard, a liar and racist douchebag.

In 1941 Americans were deeply affected by the diary of a little Dutch boy (Dirk van der Heide, My Sister and I), whose mother had been killed by German bombing during the invasion of Rotterdam and who had fled with his sister to safety in America. Turns out, the whole thing was manufactured by the British Secret Service to help convince the US to join the war.

I haven’t yet mentioned the warning issued, and then retracted, that Al Qaida intended to attack schools in Florida, Oregon, NJ and Michigan. All of which are swing states.

The story about Bush possibly having worn an earpiece in the 1st debate, which was originally just one of those “rumors on the Internets,” has now received play in the WaPo, NYT & Independent. This may not contribute anything, but in Marlon Brando’s last film, the not-very-good “The Score,” Brando refused to memorize lines, which were fed to him through an earpiece.