If the ethics of perfidy don’t work, why is Chalabi in office?

The WaPo characterizes these comments by Iraqi PM Jafari, addressed to Sunni insurgents as “conciliatory”: “Come back to our people with atonement and apology... The dialogue of words will take you to what the language of bullets and the ethics of perfidy failed to do.” A great big sloppy kiss, that is, straight out of the John Bolton school of diplomacy. I can’t find the whole speech, so I have only the word of the Post and a few other papers that it was specifically Sunni insurgents he meant, as opposed to the Sunni politicians who refused to join his administration, so that a Cabinet was sworn in today missing 7 members. There was a deadline of early May (the 7th?) after which, if no cabinet had been formed, a new prime minister would need to be chosen. Hard to see how a cabinet without proper ministers of defense, oil, etc counts.

A measure setting stricter standards for driver’s licenses went through the House, attached by James Sensenbrenner to a measure to fund the military in Iraq. No one has attacked him for this tactic, designed to circumvent a proper debate, because this sort of blackmail goes on in the legislative branch all the time. “Nice little supplemental appropriations bill ya got here, shame if something wuz to happen to it.” Without extortion, nothing would get done in Congress. Just wanted to point out, in the midst of all the recent talk about filibusters, that the normal processes of law-making would make Tony Soprano turn away in disgust.

Oh, and Sensenbrenner also snuck through a provision removing the right of habeas corpus for non-citizens.

A cunning plan

From the Daily Telegraph: “China offered the people of Taiwan a pair of giant pandas yesterday... But it was not clear last night if Taiwan would accept the pandas, with some members of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party denouncing it as a ploy to undermine Taiwan’s sovereignty.” I’m a little foggy on how they’d do this, but they may be super-ninja pandas.

Ann Widdecombe, Tory MP and former Employment Minister, among other things, was asked in a phone-in program how she would improve the life of the (woman) caller, said, “I would buy you a cat.”

Brazil has rejected American AIDS money, finding it to have moralistic strings attached to it. The US wanted every group receiving money, including those which work with prostitutes, to condemn prostitution.

On its opening weekend in Britain, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” earned... £4.2m.

Former Polish military ruler Wojciech Jaruzelski reveals that Erich Honecker was a lousy kisser.

Shout, show, shove, shoot

Health & Human Services Secretary Mike “Pull the Plug” Leavitt suggested that one way to save money in the Medicare program would be getting people in the program to make out living wills.

Well, I’ve been reading the Pentagon whitewash (pdf). The WaPo notes that it was posted “in a form that allowed outside computer specialists to manipulate it and reveal the deleted portions.” That arcane bit of computer “specialist” knowledge, I can reveal to you now, is called cut-and-paste.

The rules of engagement for the Iraqi checkpoint were called “shout, show, shove, shoot,” meaning a car would be successively hit by a searchlight, a green laser pointer, warning shots, and disabling shots. Sounds like a night at the strip club.

The report admits failing to have done proper forensic analysis of the scene, because when they tried, someone threw a hand grenade at them. “As a result, the forensic studies of the car could not be as conclusive as they normally would be.”

The checkpoint had no radar gun, but one of the soldiers was a NYC cop, “trained in vehicle speed estimation.” I’d accept that in lieu of a radar gun... if not for his conflict of interest.

The report confirmed something I knew about way back on March 10, but haven’t heard another word about since: the roadblock was set up around a curve which is less than, ya know, optimal if you want people to actually see your roadblock before you start shooting them. It’s a roadblock, not a speed-trap.

When oddly large burritos are outlawed, only oddly large outlaws will have oddly large burritos

The American whitewash of the shooting of Italian journalist/hostage Giuliana Sgrena’s car repeats the claim that it was driving at 50 mph. I haven’t read the report but... did the hastily set up roadblock come equipped with a radar gun? Incidentally, one part of the report I’m looking forward to seeing describes for the first time the US military’s rules of engagement at roadblocks; it was one of the ineptly redacted sections.

Once again, the Kuwaiti parliament fails to enfranchise women. I’m so glad we fought Gulf War I, the war to make the world safe for feudalism, to restore that country’s “freedom.”

In response to a British academic boycott of an Israeli university connected to the “College of Judea and Samaria” in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank (talk about a land-grant college!), Israel has decided to upgrade the college to a university. That’ll show ‘em.

Ariel Sharon says, as if it were his decision to make, that Hamas can’t participate in Palestinian elections unless they disarm.

A washing machine has been developed in Spain to deal with the problem of husbands not doing their share of the chores: using fingerprint-recognition technology, it will not allow the same person to push the start button twice in a row.

Why obesity is a danger to our young:

A call about a possible weapon at a middle school prompted police to put armed officers on rooftops, close nearby streets and lock down the school.

Someone called authorities Thursday after seeing a boy carrying something long and wrapped into Marshall Junior High. [in Clovis, New Mexico]

The drama ended two hours later when the suspicious item was identified as a 30-inch burrito filled with steak, guacamole, lettuce, salsa and jalapenos and wrapped inside tin foil and a white T-shirt.

The burrito was part of Morrissey’s extra-credit assignment to create commercial advertising for a product. "We had to make up a product and it could have been anything. I made up a restaurant that specialized in oddly large burritos," Morrissey said.

In France, a man sued his ex-wife & her lover for compensation for the time he spent with the 13-year old girl he thought was his daughter. The court ordered them to pay him €23,000, almost the cost of the personality transplant he so obviously needs, because “It has not been proved that he would have voluntarily carried out his natural duties knowing that he was not the father.” To be fair, the ex-wife had married the lover and asked for legal paternity (and custody) to be changed. €8,000 of the award was for moral and psychological damage. For the non-father, of course, not for the girl.

Speaking of 13-year olds being treated as symbols rather than human beings by those who are supposed to be taking care of them, the judge in Florida has ruled that that 13-year old may have her abortion after all.

Cheng Yizhong, the editor of a newspaper in Guangdong, China, which broke stories about SARS and about a fatal police beating, was to be given a press freedom prize by UNESCO. But the Chinese government told him not to go. Not big on irony, the Chinese government.

That led me to check the availability of “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” in China, through this helpful site, but its connection to China is down right now. I have had one or two hits from China in the past, but not in quite some time.

Vote Tory and win a date with a dentist

In the British elections, Michael Howard has taken the Clinton idea of running on small policies to laughable extremes. Sez Howard, “People don’t want a date with destiny, they just want a date with the dentist.” Insert your own oral sex/laughing gas joke here. One of his major platform planks is keeping hospitals cleaner. Possibly by closing the National Health Service and sending poor patients to die in the streets, but at least the hospitals will be clean. The latest Tory email (I also signed up for the LibDems, which sent just 1 email the whole campaign, but couldn’t find a place on the Labour site at which to do so, or indeed at the Monster Raving Loony Party’s site) promises that if the Tories win, “on 9th May plans to prevent police officers having to fill in a form every time they stop a yob in the street would be unveiled; and on 6th June NHS trusts will have agreed to put matrons in charge of delivering cleaner hospitals.” They’re also setting their sights on disruptive 8-year olds, wanting to give schools unfettered power to expel unruly students. Here’s a poster they’re running in Scotland (where they currently have 1 MP out of 72).



England being England, Howard has begun speaking in rhyming couplets:

People have had enough of spin and smirk;
they just want someone who’ll make things work.

Mostly, though, it’s all immigrant-bashing, all the time. If you saw Michael Howard on C-SPAN yesterday, you saw a questioner get him to say that he would have kept his own grandparents (Romanian Jews) from immigrating to Britain. However, there are is some sort of invisible line, and one Tory candidate got in trouble for asking “What part of ‘Send them back’ do you not understand?”

Etiquette

Here’s an AP story, verbatim:

The US military released 85 Afghans from jails at its Bagram and Kandahar bases yesterday after deciding they posed no threat. The 85 all swore loyalty to the Afghan government and were given gifts and cash. They had been held for between three months and 2 years.

I’m trying to visualize this scene, and I can’t quite do it. What sort of gift is appropriate under these circumstances? Does Hallmark make a “sorry for holding you captive for no good reason” card? And when receiving such a gift, is a thank-you card de rigeur? And were they made to recite an actual oath of loyalty, and how was it worded?

The best interest of the child

Carl Hiaasen excoriates the Florida Department of Children & Families for its insistence that that 13-year old girl not be allowed to have an abortion: “A spokeswoman for DCF Secretary Luci Hadi said the agency is doing ‘what we believe is in the best interest of the child.’ Sure. If you happen to believe that unplanned pregnancy is a real character-builder for teenage girls. Don’t be surprised if DCF uses the same cold-blooded tactics against L.G. as it did against the retarded woman in Orlando -- dragging the case out in court until it’s too late for a safe abortion.”

Condi Rice and the Monroe Doctrine: “We have a positive agenda for this hemisphere.”

Condi Rice has been on a secret tour of Latin America. Well, not really secret, but for all the media attention it’s been getting, it might as well be. A pop quiz: did she visit Ecuador? Do you know the answer? Me neither. Answer, and transcripts of her various interviews and press conferences, here.

If there is an agenda to this trip, presumably it involves Venezuela. In Colombia, Rice said, “We don’t have a problem with the Venezuelan people.” As you know, “we don’t have a problem with the ___ people” is code for “the bombing begins in five minutes.” She carpet-bombed a press conference with utterances of the word hemisphere. “This is a question of what kind of hemisphere do we want to see, what kind of hemisphere do we want to live in, and what states are going to contribute to that hemisphere and what states will not contribute to that kind of hemisphere.” First, Colombia is actually in the Southern, Northern and Western hemispheres. Second, if Venezuela doesn’t properly contribute to the hemisphere, does it get towed to another hemisphere? Third, how many times can we repeat the word hemisphere before it loses all meaning? Fourth, since when does the rather broad geographic expression that is a hemisphere impose a demand for unified institutions? “We have a positive agenda for this hemisphere,” she says. This is imperialism dressed up in the blandest, least ideological language she could find, that of geographic imperative: “You can’t nationalize your oil industry, don’t you know you’re in the Western hemisphere?”

Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh

Go to any British Sunday newspaper site, especially the Independent or the Observer, for new details fleshing out what we already knew: Bush determined on invading Iraq many months before he said so in public (I don’t think anyone now remembers how often and over how long a period of time Bush claimed that he had taken no such decision and that Saddam could avoid it if he just complied with international blah blah blah), that Tony Blair signed up immediately, and that the British attorney general believed the war would be illegal, until he was sent to Washington to be pummeled into agreeing with the American view, presented to him by, among others, Alberto Gonzales.

So let’s move on to pictures of the commemorations in Vietnam of the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. There may or may not be something comforting in the thought that the war, and all its horror and devastation, has been transmuted, like every other war 30 years after its finish, into scruffy old veterans, bored students enduring yet another assembly, hot chicks dressed up as Viet Cong, Uncle Ho waving at tourists, and a fat American veteran happily taking pictures.

Frustrated

Insurgents greet the formation of an Iraqi semi-government (is this one provisional or interim, I’ve forgotten) with the traditional 21-car-bomb salute. Imagine for a moment what it must have been like for those insurgents waiting for that government: they’ve worked themselves up into a proper jihadist state of mind, made out their wills, they’re all ready to blow themselves up for the greater glory of Allah and ascend to heaven etc etc... and then have to wait for more than three months of squabbling and back-room intrigue by pettifogging politicians. Must be frustrating. Must be darned frustrating.

Speaking of frustrated people, I’ve been reading the London Review of Books personals for as many issues as I’ve been able to find online. Over the last few years it’s become an odd little writing phenomenon. Some examples:

Ordinary woman seeks ordinary man for the usual. Box no. 01/01

LRB? Never read it... hoping for a better class of tottie. F, 35. Eric Morecambe, dogs, spring, crispy duck, good dialogue (written and oral), tea, slapstick, Thatcher’s death, vodka, cheek muscles.

Toilet duties. That’s where you come in – buxom, 22-year-old blonde stereotype not shy of adjusting the surgical stockings of 73-year-old misanthrope with poor bladder control. Failing that, just send care home brochures to Box no. 08/05

Woman, 43, would like to meet a man – any man – whose evolutionary path isn’t that of Homer Simpson. Suspecting that’s too difficult, I may go lesbian. Box no. 08/10

I’ve committed every decorating sin listed in the March edition of Elle Decoration and I’m proud. M., 41, with carpeted bathroom, artex ceilings and a wealth of porcelain shepherdesses seeks laminate-crazy woman to 45 for nights of painting the hallway magnolia. And after that, insane sex in front of my MDF mock-Victorian TV cabinet (I’ll polish the brass handles just for you). Box no. 07/05

Ploughing the loneliest furrow. 19 LRB personals and counting. Only one reply. It was my mother telling me not to forget the bread on my way home from B&Q. Man., 51. Box no. 07/06

This is as gay as I get. Man, 37. Box no. 07/07

There’s enough lithium in my medicine cabinet to power three electric cars across a sizeable desert. I’m more than aware that this isn’t actually a selling point, but nonetheless it’s my favourite statistic about me. Man, 33 – officially Three Cars Crazy. Box no. 07/10

Every woman I’ve ever met is painted with unnerving accuracy by the ads placed in this column. You’re all my mother, aren’t you? M., 37, Worcs. Box no. 07/11

... Can’t say I’m choosy. You’re a biker, or worse.

‘Guilty, your Honour.’ Don’t let these be my last words ever spoken to a UK resident female. Long distance offers of love (one letter per month, weight-restricted, and all contents vetted) to Box no. 21/13

Angry trollop, 37. Offers? Box no. 21/14

Man, 46. Appears quite normal, but probably best avoided. What do the doctors know? Box no. 21/15

Easily, but rarely, led forties M post-graduate gooseberry, London/SE, seeks beautiful twenty-year old snake for fun evenings/engagement/crushing disappointment.

My hobbies include crying and hating men. F., 29. Box no. 14/10

Like I’ve said so many times before here, ‘desperate’. Do I have to spell it out? D-E-S-P-E-R-A-T-E. Jeez, what does it take to catch a 20-year old athletic male in this magazine? F., 67. Box no. 14/08

It only takes a minute girl. Not to fall in love, but to realise how futile it is to expect a normal relationship from these ads. With that in mind I’m after a juggling, trombone blowing F. in the finest gold lame this side of Elvis (you’re not a day older than 97). Box no. 22/05

Baste me in butter and call me Slappy. No, really. M. 35. Box no. 20/09

I’m a Pisces – which makes you and I a bad match, but how about your good-looking friend? Non-committal, easily-distracted, fly-by-night F (35). Sorry, I think I just heard my phone ring. Box no. 0222

Meet the new me. Like the old me only less nice after three ads without any sexual intercourse. 42-year old fruitcake (F.). Box no. 17/06

I’ve thought long and hard about all the things I look for in a woman and I’ve condensed their essence into a single word: clankerstanchion. If you are a London-based F with clankerstanchion to spare, please contact man with lashings of wumpflapsy. You will not be disappointed. Often scared, yes. Disappointed, never. Box no. 23/09

[More of my LRB favorites here.]

Here I am, brain the size of a planet...

C-SPAN will indeed be broadcasting the program I mentioned yesterday, in which the 3 British party leaders are questioned by a studio audience, Sunday 6 & 9 PM, PST. Its 1 1/2 hours.

Putin, not satisfied with having taken back into state control most tv & radio, now plans to register mobile phones and control the internet, giving the KGB access to records of which sites people view.

Speaking of unstoppable behemoths capturing medium after medium, I saw the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie today. Although the credits insisted it was adopted from Douglas Adams’s book, for me the definitive H2G2 will always be the original radio series, which I first heard in 1980 (the next sequel of which will begin to be available on bbc.co.uk within a couple of days after it airs on the radio May 3rd. Remember, each episode is online for a week and then disappears forever.)

My review of the movie: mostly harmless. It has more plot and less digression than I’d have liked, but less damage was done in accommodating it to the Procrustean bed of the film format than I expected. A lot of the best material was in the narrative by the Book, and a lot of that is lost. Marvin never complains about having a terrible pain in all the diodes down his left side. Some of the comedic timing is off. And here’s my last caveat: while the sets, the visual effects and puppets are very good (even Marvin the Paranoid Android, who looked so different from how I visualized him, but somehow it worked) the sound effects aren’t much of anything. I wouldn’t even have noticed, except that those in the BBC radio series, more than 25 years ago, were so good. As for casting, Martin Freeman as Arthur and Stephen Fry as the Book were inspired choices and so, surprisingly was Mos Def, who is evidently a musician of the sort the kids like (shows how with-it I am, when I saw the name I thought Albanian, not American rapper). On a second or third viewing, it might be wise to focus on his performance. Of all the actors, he seems to have thought the most about his acting choices (Bill Nighy just did Bill Nighy), about how to portray an alien posing not very well as human, as shown by his choice of a name, “Ford Prefect,” which he thought would be “nicely inconspicuous.” Sam Rockwell, perhaps inevitably, portrays Zaphod Beeblebrox, the fugitive Galactic President, as a parody of George W. Bush, and why not? Anyway, I liked the movie more than I expected to, and you all have my permission to see it, but if you’ve just read the books and never heard the original series (and the less said about the 1980s tv series the better), do yourself a favor and buy the CDs. Update: OK, I’ll admit I had a nefarious plan to get you all to buy those admittedly pricey CDs (12 episodes, 6 hours) through my Amazon link — if 20 of you did, the commission would give me enough money to replace my old, scratchy cassette tapes — but Amazon doesn’t seem to have them in stock. Way to fail to cash in on the movie, BBC!

George Bush and his magic wand

Variety reports that Bush’s decision to hold a pointless press conference in prime time cost the networks $40 million.

The least believable-sounding thing Bush said last night was also the truest: that on gas prices, he “can’t wave a magic wand.” I mean I know he can’t and you know he can’t, but we also know that he neither knows nor believes that. His magic wand has always been privilege. He has never done anything himself, so it’s all magic to him: he speaks commands and they are transformed into reality, he knows not how. His magic wand is his Dick... Cheney, that is. And all his other minions, practicing their pedestrian crafts. During the press conference, he disdainfully swept away the notion that he should have any idea of how things work; “I’m not an economist,” he said at one point, later asserting “I’m not a lawyer.”

So when he says he can’t bring gas prices down, it sounds like he’s lying, and he is, because he is not telling the truth as he (mis)understands it. He said, as he often does, “I’m an optimistic fellow.” Even if Americans understand that that optimism is grounded in self-delusion, they also realize that when he says he can’t wave a magic wand and reduce oil prices, what he means is that he is unwilling to exercise the magical powers he thinks he possesses on behalf of his less magically gifted subjects.

Making the unemployed run on time

Blogger generates the URL for my posts out of the first words of my post title, or the first line if there is no title. For my last post, entitled “Bush press conference: how can I live-blog if they start it early?,” the URL turned out to be http://whateveritisimagainstit.blogspot.com/2005/04/bush-press-conference-how-can-i-live.html

I missed a detail of the bill passed yesterday against helping a minor cross state lines to get an abortion, and it’s a detail that refutes the R line that this is about “dodging” parental-notification laws or helping sexual predators: even if the minor female is accompanied by her parents, this bill adds a 24-hour waiting period. It’s about creating more hoops for pregnant women to jump through (and yes, that is a problematic metaphor).

Britain just opened a Robin Hood Airport in South Yorkshire. Motto: “Your Luggage Isn’t Lost, We Gave It to the Poor.”

Israel refuses an American proposal to give the Palestinian police actual weapons. Israel’s response: “Let them first take the weapons from the terrorists.” Yeah, that’s a plan.

The Christian Democratic justice minister of the German state of Hesse (who is neither Christian, democratic nor just) suggested that the unemployed be fitted with electronic tagging ankle bracelets to give them “the chance to return to a regulated daily schedule”.


You go to war with the superheroes you have... Captain America strategically deploys his shield because he caught Rummy looking at Spiderman’s package earlier.

Bush press conference: how can I live-blog if they start it early?

My apologies to anyone who listened to me and tuned in to Bush’s press conference late. 5:30 was the announced time, really it was. And no thanks to McNeil-Lehrer, which two hours beforehand said that there would be a press conference without giving the time. (Update: they moved it up because the networks would otherwise have gone with their regular crap, on the first day of sweeps. I suspect the White House knew about sweeps, figuring the networks would have to carry Bush but have no time for analysis afterwards.)

Bush doesn’t often address the nation in prime time, and hasn’t held a prime-time press conference in over a year. Since they aren’t routine, you’d expect him to come to one with an agenda. But he didn’t. And with major partisan firefights in Congress, I was wondering if he would come in order to 1) attack the D’s, or 2) offer compromises. He did neither (although he did say he wouldn’t resort to name-calling, in response to a question about partisanship, possibly from “Stretch”). Evidently (and thankfully) he has no plan for getting his agenda passed, and tonight he used one of the great weapons of the presidency, the ability to commandeer the airwaves, for no particular purpose, except that it was the 100th day of his second term. He didn’t help any of his positions (Social Security, Bolton, judges), he didn’t hurt them.

Why does Shrub “Southern up” his pronunciation of Yoownited Nations in a way he doesn’t for United States?

He said his administration is “doing everything we can to make gasoline more affordable”, and said that there was nothing it could do. Guess they can all go home early then.

He said America will stand by its commitment to Iraq, but that its commitment to pay Social Security was “file cabinets full of IOUs.” Commitments he does believe are real: on rendition, “we send people to countries where they say they’re not going to torture the people”; on Vladimir Putin, “he stood up and said he strongly supports democracy. I take him for his word.”

By Bush standards, it was a superficially good performance, meaning he didn’t step on his own tongue much. He accomplished this by saying nothing he hasn’t said ten or more times before, and saying it at length, which ensured that few actual questions were asked over the course of an hour, and none of those questions were unexpected.

Nightline tonight will compare this press conference with a BBC program in which the British party leaders were fiercely questioned by members of the public (I saw excerpts on the World News; hopefully C-SPAN will show it Sunday night). Might be fun.

And you think the DMV has long lines

Bush press conference tonight, 5:30 pm PST.

The Road to Surfdom notes that religious groups will oppose a new vaccine against cervical cancer, a sexually transmitted virus, being given to under-age girls because, says a rep of Tony Perkin’s Family Research Council, “they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex.” Are a lot of teenage girls waiting to be issued with a sex license before having premarital sex?

Follow-up: as promised, Ramune Gele gave birth in an art gallery in Berlin. Audra, in case you were wondering. Also, and I say this for the benefit of certain users of Google, and you know who you are: there are no pictures. Live with it.

In the new Iraqi cabinet, Achmad Chalabi will be acting oil minister. I hope somebody checks before he leaves work every day that he isn’t smuggling oil out in his pants.

The National Security Archive has pictures of dead soldiers’ coffins that the Pentagon stalled releasing (the pictures, not the coffins) for over a year. Note that the DOD dirtbags blacked out the faces and insignia of the honor guard.

Nothing can go wrong can go wrong can go wrong can go

Part of the R’s argument for killing the filibuster is that the Constitution requires that the Senate vote on every judicial nominee. It doesn’t, I’ve read it, there’s no way to squeeze that interpretation out of it. But in the spirit of compromise, I say fine, let’s have a vote on all the judicial nominees who haven’t had one. Chronologically. We don’t get to Priscilla Owen until the last remaining Clinton nominee has been voted on. In fact, I think it’s long past time Abe Fortas got a vote, I don’t care if he is dead, he’s not a lot more dead than Rehnquist, and he doesn’t have those stupid stripes on his sleeve.

The Daily Show had a clip from CNN of GeeDubya talking about how we gotta build more nukyular power plants, and how today’s technology makes them so much safer... and then CNN lost its feed from the speech. Also, he gave this speech just over three hours after spending part of his morning in the White House bunker because a cloud passed before the sun.

The more significant coincidence is the claim today that Chernobyl’s containment sarcophagus is falling apart. There was supposed to be a new one built, but a lot of that money, Ukraine being Ukraine, has vanished.

Most of us don’t have so much blind faith in technology — especially those of us who rely on Blogger — but Bush is in awe of what he can’t understand, which is almost everything.


George Bush and friends place their faith in technology.

Bush’s answer, by the way, is to reduce regulation on nuke plants and give them federal insurance against delays. “A secure energy future for America must include more nuclear power.” Yes, secure... nuclear... secure...

“I have never told a lie,” Tony Blair lies

Michael Howard has been on the attack against Blair’s character, which rather awkwardly requires him to say simultaneously that Blair lied about the case for war in Iraq but that he, Howard, supports the war anyway. Here’s the new Tory poster:



Subtle, huh?

Blair responds, “I have never told a lie. No. I don’t intend to go telling lies to people. I did not lie over Iraq.” So that settles that.

I have too many remote controls, with too many buttons. But I don’t think any of them do this:

The BBC this summer will try to persuade viewers to donate a kidney by pressing the red interactive button on their remote controls.

Iraq’s National Security Adviser shows the savvy that won him that position by announcing of the assassination of MP Lameah Abed Khadouri al-Sakri, “We believe it is politically motivated.”

The House voted to make it illegal for anyone to transport a minor across state lines to have an abortion. You’ve probably heard about R’s rewriting the official description of D amendments to exempt grandparents, siblings (or innocent participants like bus drivers) etc from the law to make it look like D’s were trying to protect “sexual predators.” But some of the purpose of this bill is lost in the focus on abortion rights rather than abortion availability. The AP story, for example, describes this bill as intended to “make it illegal to dodge [!] parental-consent laws”. Actually, with fewer and fewer counties in which abortion services are available, and more women farther from abortion providers than before, for many of them this bill would cut off the use of the nearest provider.

Speaking of the culture of life, Florida’s Department of Children & Families decided to make a child have a family, getting a court order to block a 13-year old in a shelter from getting an abortion.

Their capacity is still pretty much what it is

The Putin Youth movement, the Nashis, of whom I have written before, will start drawing up lists of people they consider to be “fascists” and their liberal sympathisizers. It must nearly be time for a purge of the kulaks again. Doesn’t look good.

Here, it was all about numbers yesterday. Gen. Richard Myers (at the press conference I mentioned in my last post, before I had the full transcript) had to admit that the number of attacks in Iraq was about the same as a year ago, adding about the insurgents, “I think their capacity is still pretty much what it is,” which may be the only thing Myers said that I can’t disagree with, but then inexplicably said, “Almost any indicator you look at, the trends are up. So we’re definitely winning.”

Rumsfeld, who tried to intervene to stop reporters nailing Myers down on whether “their capacity is still pretty much what it is” means that we’ve made no progress at all against them in one year, clarified:

what you have is a relatively small number of people who have weapons and who have money and who are determined to try to prevent democracy from going forward. And it does not take a genius to go out and kill innocent men, women and children. That’s a perfectly doable thing in a society.

And “the Zarqawi thing, numerically, is relatively small. It just happens to be the most lethal element.”

Also, it doesn’t necessarily matter if one or more rises to replace every insurgent we kill or capture: “You can have – the insurgency could be actually increasing and our capability to deal with it increasing, in which case the level stays about the same.” So that’s ok, then.

Honestly, I’d make fun of these comments, but it would be so redundant, gilding the lily as it were.

Also, and this should get more critical attention than it will, Rumsfeld insists that Zarqawi is now in Al Qaida. His proof? Well, he says, they are “connected in a variety of different ways.” Asked if he means they are in communication, he sez, “Well, maybe other things. Maybe people. Maybe money. Maybe communications. Maybe an oath of allegiance. Who knows?” Well, I’m convinced. Actually, his ideas of what constitute evidence and logical argument show less engagement with the real world every day. Watch the slippage, answering a question about where Zarqawi’s resources and recruits are coming from, from supposition to absolute conviction:

I’m going to speculate here that a non-trivial portion of his finances and his recruits come from outside the country. And they undoubtedly come through Syria, and they come through Iran, probably, and through other countries

See how that happened? Just by having a thought, he convinced himself that it was true. If he can think it, it must be so.

Rummy, of course, agrees with Myers that we’re winning: “And the more [our folks] scoop them up and the more they visit with them, the more they learn. And the more they learn, they more -- go out and scoop up others.” Visit with them? Has there ever been a blander euphemism for torture?

Meanwhile, the State Department has decided not to release figures showing the number of terrorist attacks in 2004 was way up over 2003. Here’s my favorite part: State’s acting counterterrorism chief, one Karen Aguilar, explained, according to the WaPo, “that the statistics are not relevant to the required report on trends in global terrorism.” In another humorous, “Yes, Minister” touch, Aguilar said that the National Counterterrorism Center would release the figures, but that if it didn’t (and it won’t), State wouldn’t release them either.

Also, less entertainingly and more shamefully, State is low-balling figures on deaths in Sudan.

To conclude this post, the Bushies are doing great damage to political discourse by their cavalier attitude towards facts and evidence, by their belief that they generate reality through their rhetoric, that if they say something often enough it becomes true. They weren’t kidding about deriding the “reality-based community.”

But will a piece of paper protect them from being terrorized by solar panels or the Bee Gees?

Greenpeace members climbed on to the roof of British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, and, in a protest action that Prescott claimed “terrorized” his wife, installed solar panels.

From the Daily Telegraph: “Australians expressed their outrage yesterday at the playing of the Bee Gees song Stayin’ Alive at this week’s anniversary of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign.”

The Syrian occupation troops are out of Lebanon (as are some of Syria’s puppets, like the head of Lebanese military intelligence). According to Robert Fisk, “They even took their statues with them.” You’d think that would have been a bigger news story today.

Secretary of War Rumsfeld says Iraq will be won by “giving the Iraqi people a sense... that they’re going to be protected by a piece of paper called a constitution, for the first time in their lives; and that that paper will protect them”.

That sound you hear is 25 million Iraqis guffawing.

And in yet another of Rummy’s patented pot-calling-the-kettle-black moments, he adds, “The Iraqis will prevail in the insurgency also because over time, it will become clearer and clearer that the insurgents have no plan; they have nothing other than killing people.” Like his boss, Rummy is not over-endowed with self-awareness.

It’s not a shooting war, but it is a war

Janice Rogers Brown, one of the Bush judicial nominees there’s been all the fussin’ and the feudin’ about (my cat just received an email from RNC chair Ken Mehlman about Brown’s general wonderfulness, which mistakenly called her the first African-American on the California Supreme Court, an honor belonging to Jerry Brown appointee Wiley W. Manuel [1977-81]), told a group of Catholic lawyers that “There seems to have been no time since the Civil War that this country was so bitterly divided. It’s not a shooting war, but it is a war.” Wait, it’s not a shooting war? But I was nearly finished sewing my 101st Fighting Secular Humanists uniform (the epaulets are the tricky part).

Evidently considering “bitterly divided” to be a good thing, Brown then enlisted on the side of “people of faith” against the secular humanists and says that, without God, “Freedom... becomes willfulness.” In other words, freedom is only a good thing for Christians. If she winds up on the circuit court after this little performance, something will be seriously wrong with this country.

It’s funny Bush insisting that it’s not good enough that only 95% of his nominees are confirmed. Most of his life, he considered a “gentleman’s C” to be a sufficient rate of success. Now all of a sudden his standards go up.