Secretary of Edukashion Margaret Spellings and George Bush. Don’t tell Condi that someone’s eyeing her husband.

Western-style budgeting

Comical Allawi says he will “begin a national dialogue to guarantee that the voices of all Iraqis are present in the coming government.” Funny, I thought that’s what the fake-election was for.

If, according to the Bushies, the ideals of freedom and liberty are universal, those of accounting are evidently not. Paul Bremer responds to a report that his Proconsulship failed to keep track of $8.8 billion in Iraqi money: “Western-style budgeting and accounting procedures could [not] be immediately and fully implemented in the midst of a war.” Knowing how you actually spend money is “Western-style budgeting”?

With “only” 50 or so Iraqis killed yesterday, many Americans, such as Gen. Carter Ham, whose name really could not be more Caucasian, say that they expected many more dead. So how many dead Iraqi civilians was considered an acceptable price for the Iraqis to pay for this little exercise?

And how many dead Iraqi civilians were there, anyway? An alert reader emails to point out that we’ve seen no figure, but they claim to know what the election turnout was. Must be some more of that non-Western counting.

Bush today congratulated the Iraqi people for “supporting those who have helped make this world a more peaceful and free place.” Oh, did I say Iraqi people, I meant the Detroit Pistons.

More details on the Israeli plan to steal land from Palestinians on the wrong side of the Wall: the decision was made secretly last July, and implemented secretly, which is quite a trick. Palestinians who lived on one side of the wall and owned olive groves and whatnot on the other side were simply refused transit permits, not told until recently that Israel considered their land no longer theirs. The seizure is under a 1950 law meant to apply to lands abandoned by Palestinians who fled Israel in the war of independence, not people who can literally see their property from their houses.

What we’re seeing here is the voice of freedom

Condi Rice, who evidently processes auditory sensations through her eyeballs--which would explain a lot--says, “What we’re seeing here is the voice of freedom.”

Enough about the plucky Iraqis already. My polling station is usually in the local Methodist church, so each election I run the risk of bursting into flame and you don’t hear any CNN anchors singing my praises.

Less brave were the candidates whose names were not made public before the election. Perhaps the details of the constitution will be worked out entirely by people wearing ski masks. And how is it so many Iraqis seem to own ski masks, anyway? Does Iraq possess many ski slopes? Is Halliburton importing them?

How lazy and uninformed and easily bamboozled were the journalists who quoted turnout figures based on the number of registered, rather than eligible, voters? And which even then turned out to have been made-up.

Stick it

Bush hails the “courage” of the Iraqis who came out to vote (“They have demonstrated the kind of courage that is always the foundation of self-government”), ignoring the fact that it was his failure to create the conditions of security which some would consider the prerequisite of a free vote that made voting an act of courage in the first place.

Wednesday I predicted there wouldn’t be much violence today. Yesterday I guessed (not here in the blog, which I thought would be ghoulish) 15-20 dead. It was higher than that, but as far as we know mostly confined to Baghdad. Elsewhere, weeks of threats did their job. With the travel ban, and journalists in fear for their lives, 1) we won’t hear of some of the violence outside the Green Zone, 2) turnout figures will be inflated with little fear of discovery.

Juan Cole gives a nice summary of how these elections were forced on the Bushies against their will by Sistani and his followers, and why the cheerleading press should refrain from making this another “Mission Accomplished” moment (I think of it more as another Bush-and-the-plastic-turkey moment).

Just tuned in to Fox News, because it is both fair and balanced. It could have settled for just being fair or just being balanced, but no, nothing less than fair and balanced would do. Evidently, the Iraqi people told the insurgents to “stick it.”


To prevent fraud, voters dipped their fingers into the blood of infidels.



Bullets and ballots, like belt and suspenders.


Maybe it’s me, but this polling station in Mosul doesn’t really inspire much confidence.

Their future in the making

Iyad “Comical” Allawi: “They should take part because this is their future in the making and people have to take their fate in their own hands.” Their own hands? Interesting words, coming from a man put in office by an army of occupation.

After reading Michael Ignatieff in the NYT Magazine (the same piece appears in the Observer), I have to respond to his assertion that “antiwar ideologues can’t support the Iraqis because that would require admitting that positive outcomes can result from bad policies and worse intentions.” He suggests that those of us who denigrate tomorrow’s elections are ivory-tower purists--note the use of the word “ideologues”--to which I answer: damned straight. Even if I personally accepted on pragmatic grounds that these elections were good enough, I would not be able to tell an Iraqi who took the position that elections held under occupation were unfree that she should settle for less-than-free. If the election workers putting up banners at your polling station looked like this



and were dressed in the uniform of a foreign power, would you feel the elections were legitimate? Would you vote in them, and if you did choose to vote rather than lose your say in your country’s future, would you feel at least a little ashamed?

One thing the Americans “forgot” to enact was a McCain-Feingold campaign finance provision, and money became rather important with 111 parties, many with similar names (think People’s Front of Judea/Judean People’s Front on a larger scale) trying to distinguish themselves, and the only people able to practice retail politics being the snipers. Lots of printed matter, lots of tv commercials, lots of money paying for those things coming from the US government, from exiles, various Arab states and Iran and who knows where else.

The Sunday Times of London has an amusing parody of English history, amusing, at any rate, for the minority of you who can follow a joke in which William the Conqueror’s “battle plan hit a snag when his troops became ensnared in an enormous tapestry being woven by the embedded war reporters.” Also describes Henry VIII as the perfect Jerry Springer guest.

Since prostitution is now legal in Germany (plan your vacations accordingly), brothel-owners can advertise in their local (government-run) job centers. And under the new reforms in welfare laws, unemployed people can be sent into the sex industry, on penalty of losing their benefits. A liberalizing policy cross-fertilizes with a conservative policy to create a stupid result; there’s a lesson in that somewhere.

Speaking of stupid results in Germany, the latest reality tv program in that country: Sperm Race. The winner gets a Porsche. A red one.

The best way to ensure the success of democracy is through the advance of democracy

Appointed Iraqi President Yawer says that while the vast majority of Iraqis won’t vote, it will not be because they are boycotting the poll, but because they are afraid for their lives. So that’s alright, then.

Bush’s radio address today: “The terrorists and those who benefited from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein know that free elections will expose the emptiness of their vision for Iraq.” Funny, if anyone would know how elections reward empty visions, you’d think it would be Shrub. “The best way to ensure the success of democracy is through the advance of democracy.” Must be a Zen thing. “One Iraqi, speaking about the upcoming vote, said, ‘Now, most people feel they are living in darkness. It is time for us to come into the light.’” You sure he/she was talking about elections and not your failure to restore electricity?

Governor Terminator wants teachers in low-income neighborhoods to get “combat pay,” which he means literally, saying that they are “threatened always with their lives and their cars are stolen.”

His Muscleness is also moving ahead with a plan he claims is opposed by both major parties, to redistrict California in 2006. This is not good.

Plus ça change: Ronald Reagan, 1987: “I think it’s far better if the Iranians go to bed every night wondering what we might do”.

I know this is shocking to you

Bush, interviewed by the NYT, says little of interest, but in a follow-up to the Wednesday press conference, where he said he’d never read a 2000 article by Condoleezza Rice setting out foreign policy, he had this to add:

“I don’t know what you think the world is like, but a lot of people don’t just sit around reading Foreign Affairs,” he said, chuckling. “I know this is shocking to you.”

No I’m not shocked, Chimpy, but you’re not “a lot of people” but the leader of the most powerful country in the world, and yet you find so incongruous, so beyond your ken as to be a source of amusement, the thought that anyone would think that a president would actually read a journal about foreign policy, or indeed read the opinions of an applicant to head the NSC before hiring her, or indeed read, period.

The Foreign Affairs website, by the way, has a link at the top to the article in question.

In case you were wondering what happened to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, deposed as Haitian president by thugs and the US last year, he has been hired by the University of South Africa, Pretoria.

This Labour Party poster is being attacked as anti-Semitic (the Tory party leader and shadow chancellor pictured here are both Jewish).



The London Times’s “The Week on the Web” has directed me to the PostSecret site, which began at the Washington DC arts festival, where people were given postcards to write secrets which are posted anonymously. A mixed bag, as you’d expect: downloading porn, sex with strangers, not washing hands after going to the bathroom. Some of my favorites, for different reasons: I liked myself better as a boy; I love one of my children; I talked someone into suicide; I archive my farts in carefully labeled mason jars; I used to pee into snowballs before throwing them at friends; I’m secretly fed up with irony.

The Times also mentions this site, which mail-orders toast at ridiculous prices. It may be a joke.

Vulgar names

The LA Times’s editorial page has joined that of the Washington Post in its crusade against Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. I wouldn’t mind--they’re entitled to their opinions and I’m not a big fan of Chavez or some of his policies either--but both papers’ editorials (I analyzed the Post’s two weeks ago and in November) are egregiously biased and drip with such contempt for Chavez that they sound like me talking about Bush. If they want to take over this blog and give me control of their editorial pages I’d be happy to oblige, but in the meantime they’re supposed to be better behaved than a mere blogger. The LAT accuses the “demagogic” (fair enough) Mr. Chavez of “picking a fight” with George Bush, neglecting to mention US involvement in a coup attempt against him. The paper applauds Colombia’s use of bounty hunters to kidnap a FARC leader, neglecting to mention that the bounty hunters were actually bribed members of the Venezuelan police, and describes Chavez’s reaction to this incident as throwing a fit. And he called Bush “vulgar names.” Oh deary dear, let’s not give the LA Times the vapors by using vulgarity; after all, they’re used to the high-minded sophistication of Governor Schwarzenegger, who always gives the State of the State Address before the House of Girlie-Men in iambic pentameter.

If he votes, we leave

GOTV under occupation:

Soldiers then surrounded a two-story house. The battalion had received reports that it was being used as a meeting place for insurgents.

A paunchy, middle-aged man invited the soldiers to search the house. As they did, the 1st Platoon leader, 2nd Lt. Jason Shick of Grand Rapids, Mich., questioned the man on the second floor.

“Ask him does he know any anti-American forces or anti-coalition forces at all in this area,” Shick told the interpreter. ...

“We don’t have anything to tell you,” the man’s wife said plaintively, in halting English.

The man shook his head no.

Shick checked the man’s name against a list of suspects. Satisfied he was not a terrorist, Shick then tried to lock up his vote.

“Is he going to vote in the upcoming elections?” he asked the interpreter.

“Yes, they are going to go vote,” the interpreter said after consulting with the couple.

“Good. Tell him thank you very much,” said Shick, heading back down the stairs. “And make sure he votes. If he votes, we leave. Americans go home.”

You’ll notice he didn’t ask the wife if she was going to vote, focusing exclusively on the man even after the interpreter said that both would be voting. But what I adore about this little vignette is the utter lack of self-awareness that allows the soldiers to first terrorize and then canvass this couple.

Hi mum, having a wonderful time, wish you were here

The Times answers something I’d been wondering about, how candidates and election workers can’t appear in public in Iraq, but all those posters get put up (and torn down): street urchins. How sweet.

The British soldier who took those photos of prisoner abuse, testifies at the court-martial of other soldiers that he took them to show his mum. How sweet.



“Comical” Allawi’s election slogan: “Strong leadership, safe country.”

I may be reading too much into this, but what’s a blog for if not to read too much into things? Bush has said, roughly 12,073 times and most recently in his press conference, that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. Presumably he means without Saddam Hussein in power, but that’s not what he says. I think Bush’s grasp of reality is so attenuated that he believes that when he dismisses someone from his mind, that person is no longer present in the world in any meaningful way. Begone Saddam, begone Osama, I banish you from reality!

The fact that they’re voting, in itself, is successful

OK, one final stab at Bush’s press conference:

Can I ask a follow-up, sir? What would be a credible turnout number?

THE PRESIDENT: The fact that they’re voting, in itself, is successful.

So... one?

Really, if there are more parties on the ballot than there are electors, something has gone a little bit awry.

There is a nice piece in the Indy, behind the usual obnoxious pay barrier, by British comedian Mark Steel on the Iraqi elections, which he thinks are a bit of a farce since real power will continue to lie with the occupiers.

They won’t have any say on who runs the country, owns the country, or arms the country. So it won’t be a governing body, it will have the powers of a parish council, making pronouncements such as, “With regard to the incessant artillery fire behind the Burger King, we can’t alter the military situation. But we can come up with suggestions for how to deal with the congestion this is causing at the traffic lights on Rumsfeld Street. Now, Mrs Aziz has proposed a special lane for suicide bombers, with hefty fines for anyone blocking their way, and I for one think that’s jolly clever. But most importantly, it’s that time of year where we invite all those who wish to have stalls for the Baghdad Village Fayre. And I can tell you that Mr Mohammed has very kindly offered once again to take responsibility for the guess the weight of the hostage’ competition.”

The over-riding issues in Iraq are the occupation and the mass privatisation, which the new body will be unable to have any say in. Half of Britain goes berserk if the European Union interferes with British law by recategorising whelks or insisting we can’t set fire to asylum-seekers. So imagine what the Tories and the Daily Mail would say if we were told that, in line with EU regulations, our parliament no longer had the right to oppose the French riding tanks through our cities or the Italians swiping all our oil.

The elections only make sense in the context of the whole war, having been set up by the Americans as part of their process of controlling the region. It’s as if a pack of burglars came into your house, robbed you, then set up an election so you could vote for which member of the family filled out the form for the insurance.

So on the night of the elections in Iraq, there ought to be the shortest Election Special programme ever. Peter Snow will yell, “On the board behind me is a huge map of the country. There are hundreds of candidates, so let’s see what happens if this one over here gets 86 per cent, or if he gets absolutely none at all. All this region, from right up here to way down there, will still be run by the Americans. So there’s the result - goodnight.”

Any time we lose life it is a sad moment

In the opening remarks of his press conference (there’s a link to the transcript in my earlier post on it), Bush failed to mention the transport helicopter that had crashed, leaving it up to one of the reporters to bring up the topic. Similarly, a White House that is pathological about controlling spin, as we have seen in their insistence that the media stop using the term privatization, failed to announce that the search for Iraqi WMDs had been abandoned, leaving the timing and manner of the inevitable leak up to fate (and it was in December, a perfect time to bury a story). I’d also like to include this week’s revelation that 23 Guantanamo prisoners made a mass attempt at suicide, but since that occurred in 2003, perhaps they were right in thinking they could cover up that particular tidbit.

What I’ve concluded is that Bush especially, but also his merry minions, cannot deliver bad news; they don’t know how. Maybe it’s a psychological thing. We know that they lie, of course, deny that bad things have happened, that bad things are bad (increased violence in Iraq spun as a sign that the baddies are becoming “desperate,” etc), but when it’s undeniable and unspinnable, like a helicopter crash, and there isn’t a culprit to hunt down, they haven’t a clue how to talk about it. When he was asked about that crash, here’s what he said: “And, obviously, any time we lose life it is a sad moment.” And later he added that the American people “value life. And we weep and mourn when soldiers lose their life,” a line delivered in a very once-more-without-feeling style (three seconds later he was joking with a reporter).

I’m not looking for Clintonesque mawkishness, but he is not just any other life-valuing American experiencing a sad moment, he is the commander in chief of the armed forces, at the top of the chain of command that included those 31 dead troops. Some acknowledgment of that would be appropriate.

A Bush line I somehow missed earlier: “I will remind [Putin] that if he intends to continue to look West, we in the West believe in Western values.”

---

Douglas Feith announced his resignation today. The WaPo describes him as “a principal architect of the Defense Department’s postwar strategy in Iraq” who “devis[ed] the Pentagon’s overall counterterrorism strategy, including that used in Iraq and Afghanistan,” and quotes him:

“I don’t have any definite plans,” he said of his post-Pentagon life. “I just have some notions.”

Wasn’t that always the problem?

Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. What’s that you say, Mr. Feith? The door would never hit you in the ass, but will greet you as a liberator? Whatever you say, Mr. Feith.

Getting out the fanatic vote

Four days before Iraqi elections, and the locations of polling stations still haven’t been released, but we now know that there will also be fake polling stations, to lure suicide bombers. Good, because it wasn’t going to be confusing and chaotic enough.

Personally, I doubt there will be all that much violence on election day, but you’d be a fool to count on it, so the threats have done one thing: skewed the participating electorate heavily towards the fanatics. Some of them will be the brave pro-democracy fanatics Bush keeps invoking, some will be other varieties of fanatics; Iraq has rich and diverse assortment of fanatical fauna. But in much of the country, the lack of security has already determined that the electorate will consist of an unrepresentative minority: those willing to risk their lives for their beliefs. Left out will be the “afraid of all the violence” majority.

I passed on a suggestion months ago, I think from a letter to the New York Times, that adding on a referendum on whether the US occupation should end would increase turnout dramatically. Since that didn’t make it onto the ballot, if we are to understand Sunday’s results we need to ask how the voters who are most concerned with that are going to vote. I’m unclear on this. Will they vote for anti-American parties, or will they vote for Allawi and other American puppets on the theory that if the US gets the result it wants it will leave the country alone, much the same way that the Sandinistas were voted out in Nicaragua by a country weary of years of American attacks and economic pressure.

The 4 Brits who were held in Guantanamo for 3 years have been released by the British police, and are now looking forward to selling their stories of American torture (one was told that his wife was being tortured in the next room) to the tabloids. And in response the Pentagon rolled out a spokesmodel new to me, because I think I would have remember the name: Lieutenant Commander Flex Plexico. That’s better than my previous faves, Carter Ham and Michael Formica.

Ah, I’ve just googled him. Flex is a nickname, though not so identified in the news stories. Real name: Alvin Plexico.

The Blair government, responding to a Law Lords decision that its detention of foreigners without trial was illegal because it was discriminatory, will change the law (and opt out of the European Convention on Human Rights) to expand it to include British citizens (which means they can also go after animal rights activists, who are regularly demonized by right-wing newspapers), and allow the government to order house arrest, monitoring bracelets, etc. And there’s surprisingly little outrage evident.

“I firmly planted the flag of liberty”: I blog Bush’s press conference so you don’t have to

Transcript.

our own freedom is enhanced by the expansion of freedom in other nations

You make it sound like a condiment.

We anticipate a lot of Iraqis will vote. Clearly there are some who are intimidated. ... I urge all people to vote. I urge people to defy these terrorists.

I assume he’ll be setting an example by going to Fallujah and walking people to the polls. He is so brave when others’ lives are at stake. Bring it on!

I appreciate the hard work of the United Nations, which is providing a good leadership in the ground.

Freudian slip, transcription error?

And I anticipate a grand moment in Iraqi history. If we’d been having this discussion a couple of years ago and I had stood up in front of you and said the Iraqi people would be voting, you would look at me like some of you still look at me, with a kind of blank expression.

That’s a mirror, George.

And it’s exciting times for the Iraqi people.

Terrifying, George, the word is terrifying.

Iraqi insurgents lack the “vision thing”:

These terrorists do not have the best interests of the Iraqi people in mind. They have no positive agenda. They have no clear view of a better future.

That’s also a mirror, George.

Asked what a credible turnout would be, he astonishingly fails to answer, except with the standard Special Olympics line:

The fact that they’re voting in itself is successful. Again, this is a long process. ... It’s a -- it is a grand moment for those who believe in freedom.

in the long term, our children and grandchildren will benefit from a free Iraq.

How long, George, got a time frame?

In his inaugural speech, he said something about America standing with victims of oppression, “Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there” sort of thing. So today a reporter asked about a Jordanian arrested for an anti-American speech.

PRESIDENT BUSH: I am unaware of the case. You’ve asked me to comment on something that I didn’t know took place.

If reporters only ask about stuff Shrub knows took place, press conferences would be very short affairs indeed.

Describes the Social Security crisis as “dictated by just math,” “the math shows that we have an issue,” and then tries to figure out how old a reporter’s son (who he refers to as “she” even after being corrected) will be when the system goes broke. To give him credit, he almost got his sums right. Further on Social Security:

we have a duty to act on behalf of their children and grandchildren.

We’re already giving them the benefit of a free Iraq, what more do they want?

About his mission to spread freedom everywhere:

There won’t be instant democracy.

Isn’t that we were promised in Iraq? Just add saturation bombing and stir?

And I remind people that our own country is a work in progress.

Explains all the scaffolding and visible butt cracks.

You know, we -- we -- we declared all people equal, and yet all people weren’t treated equally for a century. We said, you know, everybody counts; but everybody didn’t count.

Very zen.

He undeftly evades a question about Gonzales’s confirmation hearing remarks “that cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of some prisoners is not specifically forbidden so long as it’s conducted by the CIA and conducted overseas. Is that a loophole that you approve?”

THE PRESIDENT: Listen, Al Gonzales reflects our policy, and that is we don’t sanction torture. He will be a great Attorney General, and I call upon the Senate to confirm him.

On how wonderful his second inaugural speech was:

I firmly planted the flag of liberty

Enough with the phallic imagery already.

Peaceful nations cannot close their eyes or sit idly by in the face of genocide

I’ve been meaning for some time to swipe this quote from the website of a Grinnell College professor whose personal page links to this blog: “I wept because I had no answers, until I met a man who had no questions.”

Four British citizens are released from Guantanamo, flown back to the UK at British expense, and were then arrested. They are expected to be released in a day or two (they did confess during their 3-year sojourn at Gitmo, but that evidence can’t be used in a British court), but the UK gave some sort of promise to the US that they would be prevented from posing a threat again, one of the conditions of their release. How the UK is supposed to do that with citizens unconvicted of any crime is not clear. Yet again, the US has demanded that other countries act with as little regard for the law as we do.

Several bloggers have asked just how Iraqi voters are supposed to know where their polling stations will be. I’m rather curious about this myself. Follow the sound of gunfire? The trail of blood?

Australians are losing their accents.

You may remember stories about the last two Jews in Kabul, who were engaged in a decades-long feud. Last week one of them died.

Margaret Spellings started as secretary of education yesterday; it took her one whole day before she decided to gay-bash a PBS children’s program which will show cartoon Vermont lesbians, and demand that PBS return the federal money used in producing the program. I’m a little unclear on how PBS distribution works, but evidently PBS plans to pull the episode, but WGBH will distribute it. Unbanned in Boston. Pretty good for WGBH, which used to censor the episodes of Upstairs Downstairs that might offend the delicate ears of Boston bluebloods.

R’s have been attacking Barbara Boxer for mentioning her questioning of Condi Rice in a fundraising letter. A spokesmodel for Rice, who last week didn’t think it was legitimate for her integrity to be impugned, said the letter “puts to rest any doubts some may have had that this is all about politics.”

The last Italian veteran of World War I dies, at 110.

Paul Wolfowitz, in a speech trying to yoke the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps to Bush foreign policy objectives, says that “peaceful nations cannot close their eyes or sit idly by in the face of genocide,” but allows as how people might want to close their eyes during the comb-licking scene in “Fahrenheit 911.”

Have you accepted oppression of the crusader harlots and the rejectionist pigs?

The Justice Dept gives Arizona permission to implement the parts of an anti-immigrant initiative passed in November that require voters to present proof of citizenship and other i.d. DOJ permission is required under the Voting Rights Act because of the Arizona Republican Party’s historical practice of using “literacy challenges” to intimidate and harass black and Hispanic voters, a practice William Rehnquist was involved in back in the day. But I’m sure they’d never do anything like that with these provisions now....

Speaking of voter suppression, the tape issued by Zarqawi (supposedly) asks Iraqis the question, “Have you accepted oppression of the crusader harlots and the rejectionist pigs?”

Well, have you?

Really, though, it’s nice to see Iraqis practicing coalition politics, with the crusader harlots reaching out to the rejectionist pigs in a spirit of bipartisanship. Rainbow politics, Iraqi style.

Maybe Saddam’s plumber still has some of those gold bidets in stock

While doing my evening trawl through the British press tonight, I’ve seen articles about scared Iraqi election workers who hide their identities, scared Iraqi security men (“even in the hospital ward they refused to remove their black ski masks as they were treated by doctors”), and scared Iraqi candidates (“They are being told how to campaign for the election without getting killed. The instructions are simple - avoid public places and do not reveal your identity, the cleric advised. Most candidates should stay at home as much as possible, he added.”) The entire country is in witness protection.

The Indy points out the problem with banning all cars before and during the elections: insurgents know that any moving car is likely to contain people connected with the election. There really is a very fine line in Iraq between elections and free-fire zones, isn’t there?

Shrub used to like to say that Saddam Hussein built palaces instead of schools and hospitals. Today, the US announced plans for a new $1.5 billion embassy.

Back in the continent no one’s paying attention to right now, the former head of the US Army’s Southern Command accused Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez of funding Bolivian opposition parties and providing a haven for (Colombian) FARC training camps, while Chávez accuses the US of being behind Colombia’s kidnapping of a FARC leader from Caracas. This reminds me so much of the mid-1980s, when it was the US, Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica.

I was going to write something asking why Yushchenko should be “wooing” Putin, when Putin should be apologizing for interfering in Ukrainian elections (see if you think this counts: “we did only that which was asked of us by the Ukrainian Government”). But then Pock-Faced Mr. Y appointed as his prime minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, the “Gas Princess,” who is actually wanted in Russia on charges of having bribed officials, and has talked about exporting the Orange Revolution to Russia. Interestingly, though, her first language is Russian rather than Ukrainian.

Not bending any statutes

DOD spokesmodel Lawrence DiRita, whose special way with a weasely “rebuttal” of reports of Pentagon malfeasance has won him a special place in all our hearts, responds to reports that Rumsfeld set up a clandestine spy unit thusly: “There is no unit that is directly reportable to the secretary of defense for clandestine operations”. You’ll have spotted the key word. He also says the Pentagon isn’t “bending” any statutes. For once, I agree with him.

Speaking of plausible deniability, Richard Nixon’s secretary Rose Mary Woods, seen here attempting to demonstrate how one could accidentally delete 18½ minutes of secret tapes with one’s foot while answering the phone, has died.



Speaking of uncomfortable positions, this is from the Sunday Times:

An eight-month pregnant Russian woman wanted to give her baby the thrill of its life before it was even born by going parachute jumping near Moscow. But she got more of a rush than she bargained for when she went into labour before reaching the ground. “I was already in the air when I felt a massive pain,” Marija Usova said. “I cried out, ‘Oh, God, help me’ and kept my legs tightly together, but beyond that there wasn’t much I could do.” She said she was close to passing out but managed to control her descent. The baby girl was born minutes after she landed.

Her name is Larisa, which means seagull.

Speaking of keeping your legs tightly together, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family sells packages of materials to help deal with the after-effects of abortion, because they are such loving Christians. Here, for example, is the Post-Abortion Grandparents’ Kit, because “Your heart still aches for the grandchild you’ll only hold in heaven.”

The Cardinal of Madrid says that in that city there is “sinning on a massive scale.” Plan your vacations accordingly.

At least American civil and military officials have stopped claiming that the Iraqi voters will be safe. Proconsul John Negroponte does say that “I believe in a preponderance of the country it will be safe for people to go and vote.” He doesn’t specify in which areas it is not safe. US officials keep citing polls which say Iraqis want to vote, as if supporters of a boycott would nonetheless choose to participate in Western polls.

Exterminate! Exterminate!! Exterminate!!!

The Pentagon is planning on deploying killer robots in Iraq. This puppy, named Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems or SWORDS by the folks at the Pentagon’s Department of Mindbogglingly Bad AcronymS (Dumbass), comes with cameras, machineguns, and absolutely no desire to rise up and destroy humanity.



Fortunately, like its...predecessor...it doesn’t look like it can deal with stairs. So I’d get started building some stairs, if I were you. Just in case.



(Update: evidently the military’s little toy can’t go faster than 4 mph, which makes its range especially limited given its short battery life (or fuel or whatever runs it). No word on the price tag.)

Unless someone wants to make a major strategic blunder

My head would have melted if I’d had to compile this: “The Beast 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2004.” I agree with much of the list. Best line, re Rumsfeld (who is number 2, in more ways than one): “Carries himself in press conferences like a cranky grandfather who is sick of hearing his daughters whine about how he molested them every now and then.”

The real problem with Rumsfeld is that people overestimate his intelligence. For example, today a spokesmodel for the Iranian foreign ministry dismissed American talk of invading Iran as merely psychological warfare: “We think the chance is very low unless someone wants to make a major strategic blunder.” What he neglects to take into consideration is that Rummy, Cheney, etc live to make major strategic blunders. It’s their thing.