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Now they tell us

The Iraqi “government” declares a state of emergency in most of the country. So what has Iraq been in for the past two years if not a state of emergency?

DIY gravestones, in time for Christmas

A story from the new improved Afghanistan: An American adviser to the Afghan finance ministry, Vincent White, made the mistake of vetoing several corrupt contracts. So the police beat the shit out of a male Afghan acquaintance of his, forcing him to say that White had paid him to have sex, a crime that carries a penalty of up to 15 years. He spent 4 weeks in prison before being released. The US embassy did nothing besides give him the names of Afghan lawyers--none would represent him. Why is this story not in any American paper, according to news.google?

A new German company sells do-it-yourself gravestones, on the Ikea model. They’re astonishingly chintzy and only $1,600.

Better start screwing a few together for the people of Fallujah, a city whose name is about to join the rank of place names that have been turned into names of events: Dresden, Vietnam, Guernica, Columbine, Hiroshima, and Intercourse, Pennsylvania.

Substance, not symbolism

In perhaps the most pathetic of the post-election pieces on how the D’s should cozy up to “Middle America,” Nicholas Kristof praises Bill Clinton for sacrificing a brain-damaged black prisoner (Kristof doesn’t mention the black part) to his political ambitions in 1992, and urges D’s to do the same by giving up gun control as an issue. In my favorite part, he says D’s should cozy up to religion, and in the very next paragraph says “Pick battles of substance, not symbolism,” by which he means the Confederate flag. Presumably expressing loud obeisance to imaginary gods in the clouds is not about symbolism.

We’ve been hearing a lot about not offending the delicate sensibilities of religious Middle America, and we’ll hear a lot more. I say, in olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now get the fuck over it, Middle America. It’s not 1953 or 1637 anymore and never will be again.

So much of this seems to be pre-emptive self-censorship by wishy-washy liberals like Kristof that I’ve put off posting my “Red states = Red China analogy” for a few days, but here it is. China has been getting its way for years with a “Don’t fuck with us, we’re crazy” stance, which I’ve always thought was mostly put on. Whenever there’s even a hint of acknowledgment that Taiwan exists as an independent nation, which is simply a fact, even down to something as minor as the Taiwanese prime minister catching a connecting flight in a US airport or attending his own college reunion here, there’d be this incredible display of princess-and-the-pea hypersensitivity. Just as San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is now being blamed for Kerry’s defeat because he dared to authorize gay marriages, so timid State Dept diplomats would insist that China not be offended. When Bill Clinton met the Dalai Lama, he didn’t allow pictures to be taken. Ohio and Alabama (to pick 2 states at random) want to be able to go on treating gays as second-class citizens and repress any visible sign of their identities without any criticism from the outside world, just like China does with Tibetans, and want others to do the same, as a sign of concurrence with the values of Middle America/the Middle Kingdom.

(James Wolcott suggests the D’s adopt Kristof’s advice with the slogan “Shoot a fag for Jesus.”)

I think you will be surprised how quickly we gain each other’s trust

Allawi, speaking about the upcoming mass slaughter in Fallujah: “We intend to liberate the people and bring the rule of law”. By the time this war is over, I won’t be able to hear the word “liberate” without spitting.

The military is ordering the population of Fallujah to flee, so the city can be turned into a giant free-fire zone. Except for males under 45, who will be arrested if they try to leave.

Speaking of the rule of law, the, um, specter of Arlen Specter first warning, and then denying he had warned, Bush against trying to pack the bench with anti-abortion judges, is no doubt only the visible part of a vicious little war being fought behind the scenes. We’ll know how it turned out when we see whether Specter gets to chair the judiciary committee. (Later: the right is mobilizing against Specter, for example in this unlovely website.)

Either way, Rick Santorum, whose previous remarks about the judicial branch include this one

If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. (April 2003)

and this one

we’ll have our opportunity someday, and we’ll make sure there’s not another liberal judge, ever! (November 2003)

wants to denude the committee of the power to block nominees reaching the Senate floor, and says “Senate Republicans are committed to approving all of the president’s judicial nominations, despite the Democrats’ rhetoric that they are committed to block judges who fail their litmus tests.”

Did anyone spot what’s wrong with that statement, constitutionally speaking? Santorum is blindly committing Senate R’s to approve anyone Bush decides to nominate, without exercising the oversight mandated by the constitutional system of checks and balances. For people who talk so much about the original intent of the founders, the R’s are awfully willing to dismantle the protections against tyranny the founders built into the Constitution.

Israel is going to be predictably petty about not allowing Arafat to be buried in Jerusalem because, says the Guardian, “it fears that Mr Arafat’s burial in Jerusalem would be interpreted as recognition that Palestinians have political rights in the city.” Jerusalem is like Chicago now? The dead have a right to vote?

I’ve been looking for a couple of days for a good reproduction online of the leaflet the Scottish Black Watch troops have been handing out. I’m curious about the image on the front, sort of seen here.



What’s he carrying, bagpipes? The leaflet says, “Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a Scottish soldier of the Black Watch regiment. ... There will be those who will continue to call us occupiers and encourage you to reject our presence. I ask you to give us an opportunity to prove that we are sincere in our statements that we respect the Iraqi culture and I think you will be surprised how quickly we gain each other’s trust. ...”

Follow-Up: Publishers Holt, Rinehart and Winston, & Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, gave in to Texas and will remove any wording in textbooks suggesting that anything other than a “lifelong union between a husband and a wife” is acceptable. They stood up for themselves only to the extent that they didn’t include language suggested by the Texas Board of Ed. saying that gays and bisexuals were “more prone to self-destructive behaviors like depression, illegal drug use, and suicide.” That’s not even well-written: how is depression a self-destructive behaviour?

I’d like to reach out to everyone who shares my goals too

The Texas Board of Education is trying to insert anti-gay language into health textbooks (remember: Texas bulk-buys in a way that, say, California doesn’t, which means it exerts tremendous control over textbook production, so Texas decisions affect the books other states wind up buying).

Arianna Huffington is right that Kerry’s pandering to undecided, centrist voters, made him seem wishy-washy and poll-driven, allowing Bush to portray him as weak and indecisive. Part of the problem is that Kerry thought that issues were the most important thing in an election campaign, and his focus on issues (well, a greater focus than Bush’s, anyway) was used against him, portrayed as a failure of character. Bush downplayed the importance of issues, asserting that everything was much simpler than Kerry tried to make out, and that correct decisions can be arrived at by gut instinct rather than intelligence and grasp of the facts. And then, of course, Bush turns around and claims a “mandate” on those very issues he hasn’t been talking about.

One thing about Bush’s approach is an insistence that for every problem, there is one and only one correct solution. Not a lot of room for compromise.

If the D’s take seriously the claim of many analysts that Bush won the election (there, I said it, I finally said it, and it feels really... icky) because of moral concerns, then the 2008 election will be even more depressing than this one, with the candidates spending all their time going to churches and talking about their faith. Somewhere, right now, a D governor or senator is making up a drinking problem in his past, which was cured when he found Jesus, hallelujah.

Arundhati Roy: “It is mendacious to make moral distinction between the unspeakable brutality of terrorism and the indiscriminate carnage of war and occupation. Both kinds of violence are unacceptable. We cannot support one and condemn the other.”

Remember, remember the 5th of November

Happy Guy Fawkes Day.




There’s an analysis of Kerry’s failures in the London Times, which not once but twice mistakes things that happened in Saturday Night Live sketches for things that happened in real life.

Alabamians voted Tuesday on a constitutional amendment to remove dormant Jim Crow laws, as well as poll tax provisions and a 1956 amendment, obviously passed in reaction to the Brown v. Board of Ed. ruling, that there was no constitutional right to any education. It’s actually losing, but it’s so close that there will be a recount. The problem Amendment 2 ran into, supposedly, wasn’t that Alabahoovians wanted to keep racist language, it was that thar book larnin’, and the possible lawsuits to enforce funding of it. So the Christian Coalition and former Chief Justice Roy Moore, the 10 Commandments guy, came out against it, and why am I just hearing about this now?

I’ve fallen and I can’t get up

No drug thing in Afghanistan

The scuttlebutt (isn’t that a great word?) is that Tom Ridge will resign soon in order to spend more time with his color charts, and John Ashcroft will leave to take up a private-sector job covering up breasts on statuary and being repellant.

Exit strategy.

The BBC website has a story with a picture captioned, “President Bush is back in the Oval Office for business as usual.” I recognize the picture as the one of Bush receiving Kerry’s concession call. Business...as usual.

“President” Karzai’s victory speech declares that the era of big warlord is over, and “There will definitely not be any drug thing in Afghanistan.”

For more than a decade, Greece has been throwing a hissy fit over Macedonia’s name, claiming that it implied territorial claims on northern Greece. The Greeks haven’t just been sulking in their tent but obstructing EU recognition of, and aid to, Macedonia, eventually forcing it to accept the designation “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.” This week the Bushies have made a foreign policy I can agree with, told the Greeks to stuff it like a grape leaf, and will henceforth refer to it as the Republic of Macedonia. Guess which nation was a COW country, and which wasn’t.

Wisened to the ways of Washington: I watch Chimpy’s press conference so you don’t have to

Transcript.

“Republicans, Democrats & independents all love their country”. Some of us a lot less than 2 days ago.

He keeps calling the tax code antiquated. In what way? Or is this just more of Karl Rove’s anti-gay strategy, you know, antiquing.

On Social Security, he wants people to “own something.” For example.

It’ll be “hard work” to bring people together (to fuck Social Security).

He wants people around him not to tell him “Man, you’re looking pretty.”

Because he’s all about the open-mindedness.

Says he’s been “wisened to the ways of Washington.”

“I’ll reach out to everyone who shares our goals.”

A reporter breaks the news that Arafat is dead (which he isn’t). Bush: “God bless his soul.”

He believes there will be good will in Washington, now that the election is over.

He wants a line-item veto.

And the first place he uses that line-item veto: against reporters asking follow-up questions. Refers to the “one-question rule” as “the will of the people.”

I will serve all Americans, so help me God

My cat just received an email from George Bush himself, thanking her for her work on the campaign (they must be confusing her with another cat). “At every stop I asked you to make the calls, put up the signs, talk to your neighbors, and get out the vote.” What a very Norman Rockwell image of electioneering. Did you notice the major element missing from that description (not counting the deal with the devil and the virgin sacrifices): money. He spent over a billion dollars to buy his “re”-election, no doubt all raised at bake sales, where cherry pies baked by women in aprons were eaten by freckle-faced boys, but he doesn’t mention that billion dollars.

To think we used to be shocked by the Pentagon spending $500 on a toilet seat. Somebody just paid over $1,000,000,000 for George W. Bush. Dude, you were SO over-charged!

Much of the email repeated his victory speech, with the occasional creepy addition: “I will serve all Americans, so help me God.” Somehow I don’t think atheist Americans feel especially served.

Wait... I will serve all Americans... OH MY GOD, IT’S A COOK BOOK! IT’S A COOK BOOK!!

So it was incumbency all round. A WaPo editorial gives these figures: only 7 House incumbents lost, even fewer than last time. 95% of Reps won with margins over 10%, 83% with more than 20. I believe here in Calif., all the state senate & assembly incumbents were returned. I’ll be curious, when the counting’s finished, to see the figures (which are always very hard to find) for national voting by party. And state voting. DeLay’s contribution to turnover was the irregular redistricting of Texas, which removed 4 of those 7 incumbents. But how many Texans voted D, how many R; in other words, did the redistricting increase the distance between votes and representation?

How to dress like a proper lady

Alabama voters voted to include the promotion of shrimp in the state constitution.

Alaska and Maine rejected initiatives to stop hunters using pizza and donuts to lure bears. Alaska also voted against decriminalizing marijuana, figuring that dope fiends would scarf up all the munchies, leaving nothing for hunters to lure bears with.

A man in Taiwan jumped into the lion section of Taipei zoo in order to convert the lions to Christianity. “Jesus will save you!” he told them. He was delicious.




Remember in Woody Allen’s Bananas, when the rebel leader seized the government and went mad with power, ordering that “all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check”? Well, not that I’m implying anything, but look at Jenna.



Just no dignity. She should learn from Queen Elizabeth, who went to a cemetery in Potsdam today, and dressed, um, appropriately.

One future that binds us: I watch Bush’s victory speech so you don’t have to, unless you’re a masochist

Least convincing line: “I’m humbled by the trust and the confidence of my fellow citizens.”

Said he and Kerry “had a very good phone call.” So Bush must have finally figured out which end of the phone you’re supposed to speak into.

(I was going to say that Kerry probably didn’t think it was that good a phone call, but it seems that in his concession speech, Kerry called it a “good conversation.” Yeah, ‘cause our Chimpy Overlord is renowned as a good conversationalist, right up there with Noel Coward and George Bernard Shaw.)

(Kerry also said, “we talked about the danger of division in our country and the need, the desperate need, for unity for finding the common ground, coming together. Today, I hope that we can begin the healing.” Personally, I don’t want to heal the division: I’m heading for the red state/blue state border with a shovel; I’m gonna start digging a moat.)

Similarly, Bush: “We have one country, one constitution and one future that binds us.” Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.

Calls Karl Rove “the architect.” Yes, just like Albert Speer.

“I want to thank you for your hugs on the rope lines.” That’s probably less dirty than it sounds.

“We will make public schools all they can be.” That’s a hint that the new draft will extend to elementary school students. Excuse me: public elementary school students.

Bush: “we are entering a season of hope. We will continue our economic progress.” Chance the Gardner: “As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.”

Riven by ethnic, religious, regional and tribal rivalries

For the surprising number of non-Californians who looked at my recommendations on our propositions, I’ve added the results to the link, which I’ll keep in the upper right for a week or so.


If no one minds, last night’s post will be my last misguided attempt to find a silver lining.


Man, if you thought Shrub was insufferably smug before....

The pre-election polls were all wrong, the exit polls were all wrong, and there’s no reason to think the post-election polls will be any better, which creates certain problems in figuring out why what happened happened. For example, did Rove’s strategy of putting anti-gay marriage initiatives (some of them redundant in effect, in states which already banned gay marriage, and thus put on the ballot purely for partisan political reasons) succeed in bringing significant numbers of gay-hating evangelicals to the polls who would otherwise not have bothered? We won’t know. Much of what you hear will be pure speculation; take it all with a grain of salt or just ignore it.

The BBC says that the president “will try to use his new mandate to unite a country still riven by ethnic, religious, regional and tribal rivalries.” OK, they said it about Karzai, whose election “victory” was also announced today. Obviously Bush won’t do a damn thing about America being riven by ethnic, religious, regional and tribal rivalries, except stoke them further. It’s actually too bad Ohio and Florida weren’t closer, because the Republican party ran such an openly racist voter-suppression campaign in both states that it needs to be talked about (like the gay-bashing tactic), and won’t be. Florida Republicans even showed up at polling stations to challenge people on the discredited felon purge list, which the state couldn’t use when it was discovered that it included no Hispanics, although I’m not sure how widespread this was.

The lack of closeness also means there won’t be the focus there should be on electronic voting machines, which means the prospect of a stolen or buggered election is that much more likely.

Arizona passed an initiative requiring public officials to turn in illegal immigrants who try to use public services, including the police and fire departments.

Another COW country defects: Hungary just announced it will pull its troops out of Iraq in March.

Good Doug Ireland analysis of Kerry’s crap candidacy.

“Kerry ran a tactical campaign, devoid of vision or explicable alternatives”

“History will record that John Kerry lost the election on the day he voted the Constitution-shredding blank check for Bush’s war on Iraq. He was hobbled throughout the campaign by this vote, which shackled him to a me-too posture that included endlessly repeated pledges to “stay the course” in Iraq and “win” the occupation. Kerry could not, therefore, develop and present a full-blown critique of Bush on Iraq, nor offer a genuine alternative to him on it. The non-existent Kerry “plan” (based on the hubris that he could con foreign allies into sending their troops to bleed and die for the U.S. crimes at Abu Ghraib) wasn’t bought by the voters. Bush won by making the link between Iraq and the war on terrorism--the Big Lie which Kerry could not effectively counter, because he’d bought into it at the beginning.”

The silver lining: ignorance

So I had this post I was working on, a visual celebration of Bush’s defeat, and all you people had to do was defeat Bush. But nooooo, you couldn’t even meet me half-way.

Do you think if I had mentioned that I was working on a visual celebration of Bush’s defeat, the American voters would have defeated him so they could see it? And now they never will.

There is one positive lesson to take from all this: the American people are really really really mind-bogglingly pig-ignorant. Stick with me on this. In 2002-3, when Chimpy’s approval ratings were up there with chocolate, puppy dogs and blow jobs, many of my friends were depressed, and so was I. I was beginning to lose the faith of the progressive in the educability and basic goodness of people, that is, the faith that if only they knew all the stuff I knew, their political views would be, if not identical to mine, at least much more like mine. You may call that condescension, I prefer to think of it as believing that people aren’t such big assholes as they might appear.

Anyway, at this point I started seeing polls that demonstrated (again) the prodigious ignorance behind much of Bush’s support, and I began to feel better. Americans weren’t callous bullies, they thought that Saddam and Osama were bestest buddies and that WMDs had been found in Iraq--hell, one poll showed 1/4 saying that WMDs had been used against American troops. They’re confused by (and mostly unaware of) foreign detestation of American foreign policy and of Bush himself because they have no idea of the impact that foreign policy has. They don’t know how many countries the US maintains military bases in, how many governments it has casually overthrown or undermined, the dictatorships and kleptocracies it’s supported, or understand that the reason the US gets the blame for Israel’s actions is that it provides weapons, funding and protection which allows Israel to act with impunity. US trade actions that almost no one know about here decimate the economies of whole countries--remember the banana wars? of course you don’t. Americans probably know that the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, but do they know about the coup attempt it backed in Venezuela, the coup it participated in in Haiti, etc?

So cheer up and try to believe that Americans aren’t really as awful as this election would suggest, they’re just ignorant. And ignorance can be removed.

Holy monkeys

Favorite headline of the day, from the London Times: “Holy Monkeys Prey on Children.” No, it’s not about Bush and the No Child Left Behind Act, but Hindu temple monkeys.

A Russian nuclear scientist kept 8 containers (400g) of weapons-grade plutonium in his garage for 6 years. He found it in the trash of a facility that had been closed down, and then looted, and decided to take it home, rather than letting the looters get hold of it. He did try to turn it in to the authorities, but nobody returned his calls. Now he has tried again, hoping for a reward, but instead is facing criminal charges.

Qian Qichen, China’s former foreign minister and vice-premier, wrote a few days ago that the “philosophy of the ‘Bush Doctrine’ is in essence force” and said Bush was trying to “rule over the whole world.” And your point is?

Mental health warning

A reminder: if you’ve taped any program off commercial tv in the last few weeks, you must burn that tape, or face the possibility of running across a campaign commercial a month from now when you’re catching up on Law & Order episodes. That way madness lies.

Choices--thank God for the two-party system

Enrichment is our natural right!

Iran’s hippy radical students (possibly English majors) strike again: “Thousands of Iranian university students and clerics formed a human chain outside the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization in Tehran to support the resumption of uranium enrichment.”

How dare Osama bin Laden enter into the election process?

Maine and Alaska will be voting on whether hunters can lure bears with pizza and donuts.

I got a robo-call from Governor Ahnuld today (the machine pretending to be him did a better acting job than he ever did pretending to be a machine) asking me to vote against requiring WalMart to provide insurance for its employees (and restaurants, who paid for the call--it’s very strange to hear financial disclosure information at the end of a phone call).

Der Arnold, by the way, has been talking about getting the Constitution changed so he can run for president. No one ever asks him when he’s going to give up his dual Austrian citizenship.

Kerry today, evidently feeling a need to distance himself from Osama: “How dare Osama bin Laden enter into the election process in the United States of America? I think Americans are smart enough not to let this thug get in the way of decisions that affect health care, schools, jobs, Social Security, Medicare, the future of this country.” Yeah, Osama should butt out and stick to his own business: planning terrorist attacks on Americans. No, wait....

Speaking of slightly misplaced outrage, the latest suicide bombing in Israel was by a 16-year old Palestinian with ridiculous eyebrows, and there’s been some condemnation of the recruitment of youths (including by his mother, who pointedly did not condemn suicide bombings per se).

The deputy head of Russia’s long-range nuclear bomber fleet has been shot dead by a hitman. The London Times reassures us that the hitman wasn’t aiming at him but at the man he was traveling with, whose son has been accused of being in the mafia. Somehow, that reassurance opens up whole new areas of worry.

Farmers in India have found a cheap and effective pesticide: Coca Cola. The same story says, “Uncorroborated reports from China claimed that the ill-fated New Coke was widely used in China as a spermicide.”