Our duty as an ally

I will not run for president in 2008. I know this is a question no one has asked, but I’m sure the groundswell for me to run is no smaller than that for Jeb Bush, and he felt compelled to announce yesterday that he wouldn’t be running either. Of course, now that he knows he won’t have to compete against me, he might change his mind.

A fun article on neologisms in the Guardian. I love these things. There are always words that appeared astonishingly late (sex, 1929, ceasefire 1918, racism 1935), and those that appeared astonishingly early (celeb, 1913, hip 1904, awesome 1961) (I once saw the 1938 movie Bringing Up Baby in a theater in the Castro district, and when Cary Grant explains his appearance in a women’s bathrobe with the line, “I just went gay, all of a sudden,” the cheering drowned out the next five minutes of dialogue), and those you just never thought about: bagels 1932, egghead 1907, dumb down 1933, pissed off 1943, hippy 1953, F-word 1973).

Speaking of linguistic usage, when did the abbreviation USA--to say nothing of the creepily aggressive/militaristic chant USA! USA!--become the property of the jingoistic right-wing?

In Parliament, British Defense Minister Geoff Hoon defended his accession to American requests that he redeploy British troops in Iraq in the most lap-doggy terms he could think of, saying that to refuse would mean “we will have failed in our duty as an ally.” Most MPs believe that British soldiers will now pay the price for the incompetent policies of the Americans in the areas they will be moving into, as well as for whatever barbarities will be inflicted on Fallujah. They know that this is entirely about sharing the blame and the bleeding in advance of the US elections, since there is no operational reason for 650 British soldiers being added to the 130,000 American soldiers already in northern Iraq. Hoon had no real support in the House, and one MP said that Hoon reminded him of the song in “Oklahoma,” “I’m just a girl who can’t say no.”

In Florida, people are being called up and being registered to vote right over the phone. Except, of course, they aren’t being registered, just tricked into thinking they have been. Others are getting automated phone calls telling them that they can actually vote over the phone right now, press 1 for George Bush, 2 for Patrick Buchanan etc. Except, of course, they aren’t. It’s gonna be a dirty, dirty election.

Speaking of dirty elections, Tsar Vladimir I of Russia has endorsed Bush. Bush once claimed to have looked into Putin’s soul. We know this is false because everyone else who has looked into Putin’s soul spends the next hour huddled in a corner, saying over and over, “So cold, so cold...”

A September 10 attitude

Bush accuses Kerry of having a “September 10 attitude.” Every time Shrub makes one of these statements suggesting that his own view of the world changed drastically on 9/11, doesn’t he just underline his own pre-9/11 ability to ignore intelligence reports entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside United States,” reminding us that September 11 might possibly have been prevented if not for Bush’s own “September 10 attitude?”

The excerpts of the speech I saw on tv were creepy, as much for the audience as for GeeDubya. A bit from the White House transcript:

THE PRESIDENT: Most Americans still felt that terrorism was something distant, and something that would not strike on a large scale in America. That is the time that my opponent wants to go back to.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: A time when danger was real and growing, but we didn’t know it. A time when some thought terrorism was only a “nuisance.”

AUDIENCE: Booo! .....

My opponent has a fundamental misunderstanding on the war on terror. A reporter recently asked Senator Kerry how September the 11th changed him. He replied, "It didn't change me much at all."

AUDIENCE: Booo!

Some White House flunky, paid out of your tax dollars, decided how many o’s to put in “Booo!” It appears 15 times in the transcript.

They even booed Kerry for having criticized the Contras and “Ronald Reagan’s policies of peace through strength.”

Bush accused Kerry of having “chosen the easy path of protest and defeatism.” Hey, the path of protest and defeatism isn’t that easy, believe me.

Your self-righteous civics lesson of the day, from someone else whose name ID is nothing

Tom DeLay is refusing to debate his opponent. The Daily Kos points to DeLay’s comment that “A debate would be for his [challenger Richard Morrison’s] benefit, not for mine,” and asks, aren’t debates supposed to be for the benefit of the voters. I’d like to elaborate on that. The Galveston County Daily News story cited by Kos quotes DeLay saying that Morrison’s “name ID is nothing,” and DeLay doesn’t want to raise his profile. DeLay, in other words, is openly and unapologetically counting on voter ignorance, on the differences between their views not being laid before the electorate, and on not having to go before any forum where he might be contradicted or his positions examined critically. Bush’s Boy in the Bubble act writ small. And he’s not the only one. Following the Galveston paper’s website’s links, I find that 69% of Texas’s congressional and state legislative candidates, including DeLay, refused to respond to Project Vote Smart’s questionnaire.

Putting the elements of this story together creates a larger picture of utter contempt for democratic processes and, by extension, for the electorate. One element of this which we’ve become so desensitized to that you probably missed it: DeLay’s stated reasons for refusing to debate Morrison are all hyper-pragmatic, without the smallest sop towards the ideals of democracy. I mean, he’s talking about “name ID”...IN PUBLIC! A campaign manager might speak like that in private, but a candidate in public? It might be the real reason for not wanting to debate, but DeLay announces his cynical political calculus to the world as if it were a legitimate reason, which they should accept and say, “Why of course I shouldn’t expect him debate his opponent, if it might help make his opponents’ name and opinions more familiar to me.” It’s as if Bush had said he wanted to invade Iraq not for WMDs or to bring democracy, but because he wanted the oil, and was going to keep it all himself.

This is, truly, how a republic collapses. People like DeLay think that not just debates, but the entire political system, is for their benefit and theirs alone. Not everyone gets literally to pick and choose their own electorate, as DeLay did when he redrew the boundaries of his district to ensure his easy re-election (one reason this particular electorate might not recognize Morrison’s name), but the continual refusal of imperious candidates to speak to possibly hostile audiences or media or even to the other candidate displays a fundamental reversal of the principles and values of representative democracy: election campaigns and elections are not about the candidates speaking to the people, but about the people choosing the representatives through whom they will speak.

Undisclosed

Team Chimpy decided not to pony up the $1,000 to put a biography and photo of Dick Cheney next to Bush’s in the Oregon voters’ pamphlet. Can’t imagine why.

Transubstantiation?

AP headline: “Bush Says He’s Best Protection from Draft.” Great, can I nail him to my window frame? In another curious example of Shrub misrepresenting Kerry, he says, “The person talking about a draft is my opponent.” Yes, to warn about the threat of YOU instituting a draft.
(Follow up: Tom Tomorrow attempts to lampoon this sort of behaviour in his latest cartoon, but can't really improve upon the original.)

The story also noted that today Kerry “went to Mass and picked up a hunting license”. I blame Vatican II.

I’m not sure exactly what’s going on in Haiti just now. There are evidently gunbattles, or possibly massacres, between the US-backed coup government, which did a spectacularly bad job of coping with the hurricanes, and supporters of twice-ousted President Aristide. The head of UN peacekeepers, a Brazilian general, is blaming John Kerry for the violence, would you believe it, because he “gave hope” to Aristide supporters. That bastard, always giving people hope: spinal-cord injury victims, Haitians... And today Chinese riot police are being deployed. These guys (and 13 women):



Insert your own subtle allusion to Tiananmen Square here.

Bob Harris’s site has a poll:

What would we look forward to most in a second Bush term?

• A Supreme Court with three more Clarence Thomases
• Social Security administered by Halliburton
• A wider, more fascinating variety of national enemies
• Envying the dead

I won’t tell you which I voted for, because the secret ballot is sacred.

How can we revive the Belarusian villages?

Addendum on Brazil’s plans to shoot down drug-smuggling planes, from the BBC: “the authorities have also warned that drug planes that do not obey air force orders will be shot down even if they are carrying children.” Priorities.

Belarus is holding fraudulent elections to eliminate those pesky term limits on Lukashenko. Some of the ballots came conveniently pre-voted. You know, with a picture like this, Wonkette would make some joke about baby-eating. With Lukashenko the laughter produced by such a joke would be a touch more nervous.



Anyway, here’s Lukashenko’s website, English-language version. Go participate in a forum on “How can we revive the Belarusian villages?” Look at any of 873 pictures of the glorious president and his glorious mustache. Look at a glorious military parade in which soldiers march behind what appears to be a glorious 1960s sedan.



And here are 3 posts of mine that deal with Belarus. Link.
Link. Link.

The reality-based community

I know every blogger is saying this but you must all read the Ron Suskind NYT Magazine piece about Bush’s incredible belief that his “instincts” are always right. I hadn’t realized that the “faith-based presidency” was predicated so explicitly on the complete rejection of empiricism. Suskind says that after an earlier piece, a senior Bushie told him that people like him were “in what we call the reality-based community,” but that the US acts, and in so doing creates its own reality. “We’re history’s actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” Reminds me of a quote (this is approximate, from memory): “A man of action can always find a philosopher to explain afterwards what he did.” Benito Mussolini.

While reading another, less subtle article about Bush’s brain, asking “Has Bush Lost His Reason?”, I suddenly realized that Shrub, in his petulant refusal to brook disagreement, reminds me of the little kid with god-like powers who everyone is afraid to contradict in Jerome Bixby’s story “It’s a Good Life,” which was the basis of a Twilight Zone episode, and look, someone put it on-line.

Speaking of people unlike you or me, the London Sunday Times has a story on the notes of a US Army psychiatrist who interviewed Nazis awaiting trial at Nuremberg. Goering told him that the Holocaust went against his “chivalric code”: “I revere women and I think it unsportsmanlike to kill children.” This is also why Republicans oppose abortion but support the death penalty: hunters and fishers throw back the small ones, in order to kill them later. Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz for 4 years: “I don’t know what you mean about being upset about these things because I didn’t personally murder anybody. I was just the director of the extermination programme in Auschwitz.” The same standards will be used to promote Gen. Sanchez after the elections.

Kerry may have forgotten about Poland, but Poland wants to forget about Iraq and start withdrawing troops; it’s official now. And just when Bush wants to shift casualties to other COW countries (coalition of the willing). So it’s poor Britain’s turn yet again to send soldiers with silly hats



into harm’s way. Something like 650 soldiers will be moved from the relatively calm south to Baghdad, and put under American command, so that American troops can invade Fallujah yet again. In Britain, this is widely seen, and resented, as being driven by the American election.

Perhaps only in Germany: a restaurant for anorexics will open in Berlin, called Sehnsucht (“Longing”).

Halliburton has been dodging US sanctions on Iran by using foreign subsidiaries to sell it oil-drilling equipment. The Cayman Islands subsidiary is just a front, with correspondence to it forwarded to Houston.

Bob Harris, frequent contributor to the This Modern World blog, now has his own blog, Bobharris.com. Check it out. Like me, he sees Lesbian-gate as a deliberate distraction: “pick one non-inflammatory, coherent, compassionate sentence, and try to blow it up into a freakin’ sign of Kerry’s lack of compassion and communication skills. ... Classic Rove. You almost admire the skill. The same way a bullet aimed at your chest might glint in the sunlight just before impact. Nice workmanship, you can think, just before it hits you.” And earlier, on the elder Cheneys’ attitude towards Mary: “Closet. Undisclosed location. Whatever you want to call it is fine.”

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.