skip to main |
skip to sidebar
In comments, alert reader Jean points out another instance of Bush using the one and only adjective he knows, from a tree-planting ceremony at the Australian embassy: “I think it is interesting that we’re planting two trees, and this is a symbol of our enduring friendship.” In last night’s final episode of “West Wing,” one of the things the movers packed up as the Bartlets left the White House on “West Wing” was a book by Foucault (couldn’t tell which one). Bush, well, this is more his speed:
Somehow this slipped by me: in 2004, the deputy operations commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Janet (ahem) Woodcock gave this reason (I guess in a meeting reported in an internal FDA memo) why the Plan B contraceptive pill should not be sold over the counter: “she stated that we could not anticipate, or prevent extreme promiscuous behaviors such as the medication taking on an ‘urban legend’ status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B.” Lady, adolescents could form sex-based cults centered around linoleum.
AP headline: “Md. Officials Find 57 Dogs in Stinky House.”
Dependable Renegade quotes Laura Bush’s refusal to believe George’s poll numbers because, “I travel around the country. I see people, I see their responses to my husband. I see their response to me... I see a lot of appreciation for him. A lot of people come up to me and say, ‘Stay the course’.” I commented that it’s the bubble phenomenon again: she travels around the country seeing only Bush supporters, and has convinced herself that that’s reality. For some people, travel narrows the mind.
And yes, it is such a slow news day that I’m looking to Laura Bush for material.
And to John Cleese, who is evidently the face of anti-football hooliganism for the World Cup. Here is a song he has written:
Don’t Mention The War
Don’t mention the war
That’s what football is for!
In 1966 we were the winning team
We’d rather not discuss what happened in-between
Don’t mention the war
Just get out there and score
At the glorious moment
When the lions roar
Don’t mention the war
Don’t mention the war
That’s what football is for!
They might have bombed our chipshop 60 years ago
But a billion pints of lager later, here we go (come on
then!)
Don’t call them rude names
It’s such a beautiful game
At the glorious moment
When the lions roar
Don’t mention the war
Don’t mention the war
Bend that ball round the wall Instead of saving
Poland we are scoring goals
After 40 years of extra time and bacon rolls (bacon
rolls!)
Rather than the Iraqis standing up so that Americans may stand down, they seem to be standing up in order to get a better shot at other units of the Iraqi army. Patrick Cockburn has the story on that incident yesterday in which units of the Iraqi army started shooting at each other.
Croatia’s football team Dinamo Zagreb is donating the proceeds from a championship match to Croatians on trial at the Hague for war crimes. Isn’t that sweet? It’s like Babe Ruth hitting the home run for that sick kid, except not so much.
The WaPo proves that you can write a good article about something fucking obvious: that the Bush administration is less interested in promoting democracy in countries with oil.
The Bushies expend so much energy trying to get everyone to adopt their slanted, focus-grouped vocabulary that they often forget the difference between arguments about policy and arguments about words. For example, Cheney’s spokesmodel Lee Anne McBride: “As the administration, including the vice president, has said, this is terrorist surveillance, not domestic surveillance.” She thinks she has put forward some sort of logical argument, but actually hasn’t.
I bought 16 books, some of them hardcovers, for $5 at a Friends of the Library book sale today, which is pretty much my definition of a good day.
Received my California voter’s pamphlet today and have been reading candidate statements (under the rules for primaries, which change pretty much every two years as part of a relentless drive to create the stupidest possible system, people who are not registered with any party, such as myself, can request on election day the primary ballot of some parties (Democrat, Republican, American Independent) but not others (Green, Peace & Freedom, Libertarian). Candidates have to pay for their statements, so those from minor parties can be pretty terse. Here, in full, is the statement of the American Independent Party candidate for lite governor: “Political Right is, immediately, from God and, necessary, inherent in the nature of man.” I’m presuming that they were charged by the word but that the commas were free. He also links to his website, except... well, it seems to be for an internet get-rich-quick scheme.
A Barbara Becnel, running for governor as a Democrat, is a former associate of Tookie Williams. It’s not often a candidate tries to bask in the reflected glory of an executed killer, but there you are. She helpfully informs us that in the movie version, she was played by Lynn Whitfield.
And Jackie Speier (D), running for lite governor, still won’t shut up about being shot in Jonestown.
Cruz Bustamante, whose fat ass was handed to him by Schwarzenegger in ‘03, is now running for insurance commissioner and is promising to reduce the size of his fat ass. Really. Obesity increases insurance costs, so he says he will set an example by losing weight and keeping track of it online. Last week, he was down to 235 pounds, you’ll be glad to hear.
An all-religion post. Just happened that way.
The House stuck into the military appropriations bill a provision allowing military chaplains to talk about Jesus during official ceremonies at which attendance is mandatory (nothing now stops them doing so at voluntary events).
The Catholic Church’s leading spokesman on film says that if you have a child on 6/6/06, it is okay to name it Damien. Maybe a little less okay if it’s a girl.
For the duration of Pope Benny’s visit to Poland in two weeks, Polish state tv will not run ads for booze, contraceptives, lingerie... or sanitary pads.
An AFP story yesterday that seems not to have been picked up in the US, the Iraqi government will now essentially license imams in the Baghdad region. Here’s the paragraph I like:
“We reached an agreement that the imams of mosques must be nominated by the Shia and Sunni Waqfs because we have discovered that some imams are impostors who should not be in charge,” said interior ministry commando chief Major General Mehdi Musabah.
Because if anyone has the moral and religious authority to say which imams are legitimate, it’s the interior ministry commando chief.
There was also an agreement that Iraqi forces will not raid mosques in Baghdad without the presence of American soldiers. This was an agreement between the Shiite and Sunni authorities and the interior ministry: the US was only informed later of its new mosque-raiding role. Evidently they’d rather have foreign infidels kicking in the doors of their mosques than Iraqi Muslims. Says Musabah, “It is forbidden to shout [Allahu Akbar] when security forces pass by, unless it is being raided without American forces.”
Someone tried to sell New Zealand on eBay.
Other than that, all you need to know today is contained succinctly in The Times of London’s World in Brief page, including:
● A British tourist to receive compensation for having an 80-foot Christmas tree fall on him in Prague.
● “A man sentenced to ten months’ jail for lobbing a homemade bomb at his girlfriend said he was aiming for a beaver dam.”
● Jogger in Florida eaten by an alligator.
● Also in Florida, “Linda Marks, 57, was jailed for four years and told to return $2 million given to her over eight years after she convinced elderly people that their cash needed to be exorcised.”
● Mark “Chopper” Read, a self-confessed Australian hitman whose exploits have inspired books and a film, has given his name to a boardgame. Players use bullet-shaped counters and evade police, visit brothels and attack fellow gangsters.
● Denmark’s top Muslim cleric is leaving the country because he feels he was humiliated and “viewed as a terrorist” after criticising a Danish paper for publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
● A wheelchair-bound Los Angeles woman, who has filed at least four lawsuits over disabled access, ran for it after police arrested her for fraud. Laura Lee Medley, 35, had claimed to be paralysed from a drink-driving accident.
Bush says “We’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.” So... tens of millions then? Really, I’d like him to provide a definition of pretty much every word he used in this statement. “Innocent” is presumably meant in contradistinction to people that NSA functionaries have decided are guilty. But what does mining mean in an intel context? Or trolling? Or mining by trolls? If we don’t know the meaning of those words, or what Bush thinks the meaning of those words is, then his reassurance is literally meaningless. And of course he didn’t specifically deny the USA Today story that the NSA collected comprehensive phone records from the telecoms, without a warrant. Just by asking. In 2001, by the way, in case you thought that in the Internet Age secrets like this can’t be kept for years.
To that unreassuring reassurance, he adds this: “every time sensitive intelligence is leaked, it hurts our ability to defeat this enemy.”
As obnoxious as that is from the government, it’s problematic in other ways when it comes from AT&T, which told USA Today, “We do not comment on matters of national security”. It added that it only assists government agencies “in strict accordance with the law.” Actually, that’s a bit of misdirection, meant to make us think of formal warrants and courts and such, but those are the laws that apply to government action. Since in this case the NSA only asked, politely, for the information, the relevant laws are those applying to the protection of personal information by the telecoms, and I’m a little fuzzy about whether they were acting legally in just turning over that data or not.
(Update: not so much, according to Think Progress.)
What the NSA claims to be doing with this exercise of recording the details of phone calls made by, well, everyone is to map the pattern of calls made by innocent, decent, law-abiding, god-fearing Americans, so that when people deviate from this pattern, we’ll know they’re guilty terrorists and swoop down on them like vultures, vultures of freedom, liberty vultures if you will. Does that really sound feasible?
I mentioned that the racist British National Party did well in local elections in Barking. One of its newly elected councillors, Richard Barnbrook, turns out to have directed a student film, “HMS Discovery: A Love Story,” which is said to involve those great traditions of the Royal Navy: rum, sodomy and the lash. Barnbrook says, “It was an art film, end of story. It was not a bloody porn film.”
The NSA may be on to something: when the Justice Dept ethics office wanted to investigate the warrantless domestic wiretapping program, it simply turned down their application for the security clearances necessary to do so (after stalling them for 4 months; Justice delayed, then Justice denied). Because it’s hard to be outraged at a cover-up that’s so absurdly funny. For future cover-ups, they should recruit staff writers for The Onion or The Daily Show.
And then of course Justice simply cancelled its plans to have an investigation. Wimps.
Let no one say the Iraqi parliament isn’t dealing with the important issues, like cell-phone ringtones (another Onion-worthy story).
Must-read London Times on how Iraqi militias are imposing their men as administrators of hospitals, schools, private businesses, etc.
When HUD first responded to the reports that Secretary Alphonso Jackson mentioned in a speech having turned down a HUD contract because the applicant had said privately that he disliked George Bush by saying that it hadn’t really happened, it was “anecdotal.” Okay, I thought, someone in HUD just doesn’t know what the word anecdotal means. Possibly they meant allegorical. Or asinine. Then Jackson himself used the word, so I dunno. But it really doesn’t matter that much whether it was true: the point of telling the “anecdote” wasn’t about personal politics but to make clear that prospective HUD contractors are expected to make campaign contributions to the Republican party. “Why should I reward someone who doesn’t like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president?” I don’t really know what’s going on at HUD, but no one was paying much attention to the department during the reign of corruption of Samuel Pierce, Reagan’s HUD secretary – or “Mr. Mayor,” as he was called by Ronald Reagan, who assumed that any black man allowed near him must be an urban mayor.
The White House plans to spend $6.1b to update the presidential helicopter (and buy 23 of them, sounds like) so that there is more interior room, it can survive a crash at 15 G, and most importantly, “The fold-down stair spares the president from ducking during photogenic entrances and exits.” (via J-Walk)
The Pentagon wants to issue different sets of interrogation rules for POWs than for “unlawful combatants.” According to the LAT, DOD says “The United States needs greater flexibility when interrogating people who refuse to fight by the rules.” They refuse to fight by the rules, we are flexible.
In a spate of recent articles on the predictably lethal effects of the collective punishment of the Palestinians by the US and other Western nations, including the ending of medical aid (The Times: “How 14-Month-old Leukaemia Victim Is Suffering for Hamas”), I have yet to hear a Western politician justify the tactic of punishing dialysis patients as a way of pressuring a government – or see any sign that any of them were even asked, by journalists or anyone else, to do so, although Condi said Tuesday that “The Hamas-run Palestinian Authority government bears sole responsibility for the hardships facing the Palestinian people”. Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike Condi? There is some talk now about finding ways to funnel money into Palestine through NGOs, the World Bank, whatever, but shouldn’t they have thought about that before cutting off the aid? I’m also hearing conflicting things about the extent to which Israel is blocking medical and other supplies entering Palestine, especially Gaza.
Something called the Catholic Secular Forum wants Christians in India to starve themselves to death to protest the movie of The Da Vinci Code. Everyone’s a critic.
Some more personals from the London Review of Books (LRB). As always, the complete collection of my favorites is available here.
Hubris made me pen this ad. You will answer, of course, but only ironically. Man, once great and 23, now alone and 51. Box no. 08/07
I’m no Victoria’s Secret model. Man, 62. Box no. 08/08
Man sought, with Mozart tendencies, his own wig and his own arch rival, by a gorgeous(ish) F (39, living in NW) Box No. 09/02 Box no.
If it wasn’t for this column I’d be the loneliest man alive. Box no. 07/06
(You can tell how lonely he is because he’s blatantly trolling for letters from LRB readers telling him it should be “weren’t” rather than “wasn’t.”)
X-rays, blood tests, EEGs, ECGs, lung function, barium, bone density, colonoscopy. Doctors don’t know what to do with me. Medical enigma (M, 33). Confounding science and all the staff at Streatham Hill Burger King since 1997. Box no. 07/07
I’d like to dedicate this advert to my mother (difficult cow, 65) who is responsible for me still being single at 36. Man. 36. Single. Held at home by years of subtle emotional abuse and at least 19 fake heart-attacks. Box no. 09/08
I spent an entire day in the British Library sourcing obscure reference material to cite in this ad, then I lost it all when I stopped off at Burger King on the way home. Man, 34. Box no. 09/12
My subscription to the LRB includes a proviso allowing time for ‘quiet naps’. That pretty much says everything you need to know. Man. Box no. 09/10
Australian painter Tim Patch has done portraits of Prime Minister John Howard and the leader of the opposition using his penis (and also, I assume, some sort of paint).
Iranian President Ahmadinejad, whose out-of-touch-with-reality-ness was already shown by the fact that he sent an 18-page letter to George Bush, who is not widely known as a reader, is also the only person in the world who thinks George’s problem is that he is not religious enough: “We increasingly see that people around the world are flocking towards a main focal point - that is the Almighty God. My question for you is, ‘Do you not want to join them?’”
Headline of the day: “Roach Quits Run for Seat in Congress.”
Reuters has captioned this picture “Bush Taps Hayden to Head CIA.” Um, just where is Bush tapping him?
Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres, you know, the “dove,” warned Iran, “They want to wipe out Israel... Now when it comes to destruction, Iran too can be destroyed.” He says that Iran’s defiance of the international community was making a “mockery” of the world (other planets are laughing at us behind our back – I’m looking at you, Venus!) and that the UN’s credibility is on the line if it fails to make Iran obey UN resolutions...
The president of Iran sent the US an 18-page letter, which is said to be about philosophy and history and, oh yeah, nukes. The mind boggles: 18 pages. Condi immediately dismisses it: “Absence of communication isn’t really the problem here. We and the international community have been very clear with the Iranians what they need to do.” That’s Condi’s idea of communication: her telling someone what they “need to do.”
That’s in an AP interview that seems, even on the AP site, to exist only in excerpt form, which is frustrating. What was the actual question here?:
On whether the United States should have foreseen that problems would follow installation of a former Shiite militia leader as head of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which has been accused of hosting Shiite death squads that target Sunnis:
“There was nothing to suggest that this was going to be a problem. But it turned out to be a problem.”
And last week, at something called the Espacio USA Conference, Condi said, “We want, too, also to recognize that there are still too many marginalized people in this hemisphere,” but didn’t say how many was the right number of marginalized people. She continued, “There have been times in the United States of America when populations were marginalized.” 1776 to present. “I come myself from a community and a population that was long marginalized.” It’s true: the gap-toothed were not allowed to own property until 1961, to vote until 1973, or to hold office until 1989.
According to a member of the Afghan parliament, “I have the right to beat people up if I want to.” That was during a little fracas in the parliament today, in which woman MP Malalai Joya was physically attacked when she dared to say that some mujahidin had done bad things in Afghanistan. Read about it in The Times, which, however, says that “Even women MPs joined in.” From what I read elsewhere, it was especially some of the women MPs.
I don’t know why everyone is making fun of Bush for saying that the greatest moment of his presidency was when he caught a fish. Can you think of anything he’s done that was better than that?
That was in an interview with Bild, which asked what role Germany plays in The War Against Terror (TWAT). Bush: “Germany plays a vital role in the war on terror. Germany is in the heart of Europe.” Say what? “Germany’s will is important.” Yes, it should triumph. No, wait...
Chimpy magnanimously forgives Germany for not supporting the war in Iraq:
I’ve come to realize that the nature of the German people are such that war is very abhorrent, that Germany is a country now that is -- no matter where they sit on the political spectrum, Germans are -- just don’t like war. And I can understand that. There’s a generation of people who had their lives torn about because of a terrible war.
Yes, the Thirty Years’ War was terrible. “Just don’t like war.” He really said that. Just don’t like war. But they like blood sausage. And David Hasselhoff. There’s really no accounting for taste, is there? He followed up with this little Freudian slip:
The point now is not what went on in the past. The point now is how do we work together to achieve important goals. And one such goal is a democracy in Germany [sic].
On Iranian President Ahmadinejad and Israel: “But what he’s also saying is, if he’s willing to destroy one country, he’d be willing to destroy other countries.” Well when you put it that way, it does seem a little unreasonable.
On Pope John Paul II & Pope Ratzi: “These are strong, capable men who challenge the concept of moral relevancy.”
Bush was also interviewed, last week, by German tv. He said his meeting with Angela Merkel “gave me a chance to get a glimpse into her soul.” And she’s “not a fake.” Phew. You’d hate to get stuck with one of those fake Merkels.
On Iraq: “There is a tough Shia as the Prime Minister-designate, there’s a Sunni rejectionist who is now reconciled with the country.” Huh?
On Palestine: “I was not pleased that Hamas has refused to announce [sic] its desire to destroy Israel.”
Asked about his alleged liking for strong women, he went on a bit. “And I’m married to an incredibly strong woman who I love, and that’s my wife.” Thanks for explaining that the woman you’re married to is your wife. Describes Jenna and Not-Jenna as “two incredibly strong women who will have confidence to go out and explore life, and to achieve.” Says Karen Hughes “was one of the most powerful women ever in the White House, simply because she had complete access to the President and I trusted her.” Such a feminist is our George: Hughes was “powerful,” but all her power derived from him.
Says he’d like to “end” Guantanamo and put everyone on trial.
Says he won’t “scold” Putin just to “gain editorial approval.” Says, “I’d much rather be an effective person than a popular person”. And how’s that going for you?
British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is facing an investigation by Scotland Yard for his sex scandal: evidently it’s illegal to have sex in your office during working hours. Honestly, if you can’t have sex in your office during working hours, when and where can you have sex? No, really, I’m asking, when and where?
Hugo Chavez wants a referendum on letting him hold power without the inconvenience of further elections until 2031. Can the bloggy left please stop hero-worshipping this guy now?
(Update: there’s a long and interesting debate on these insightful 27 words in comments.)
Pfizer experimented on sick Nigerian kids, and some of them died. This is not news, although the WaPo makes the extent of the cover-up clearer, and as I mentioned in a 2003 post is one of the reasons many Africans are deeply suspicious of things like polio vaccines. So Pfizer’s lack of ethics creates victims well beyond those given dangerous drugs.
The LAT examines murders in Baghdad. Mostly we haven’t been hearing about them unless they were the result of bombs, which most are not.
Some more Bush pictures. Two Marines and a maroon:
Guess who just found out he’s being sent to Iraq:
Bush delivered the commencement address at Oklahoma State University. They gave him an honorary degree, then snuck behind him, slipped a red hood over his head, and... What happened next? Ideas in comments.
Porter Goss on why he was forced out: “it’s one of those mysteries.” They stopped letting him give the daily briefing to Bush because that’s how he answered every single question.
Enter that veritable Hercule Poirot, Gen. Michael Hayden. His appointment is a sign that the CIA’s intelligence-gathering is being given priority over its covert action side, which Rumsfeld has largely poached for himself.
By the way, is not Kyle “Dusty” Foggo the bestest name ever for a CIA official? Le Carré by way of Dickens.
Follow-up: those officials sent to explain to the UN Committee Against Torture that we don’t torture claimed that “rendition” is legal under the Convention Against Torture so long as the rendee was caught outside the US, that is, the convention’s “obligations do not apply extraterritorially.”
A British helicopter is shot down over Basra, crashes and bursts into flames, sending up plumes of British understatement: the BBC says the crash “sparks unrest”; the Guardian says the reaction of Basrans shows “discontent” over the foreign occupation. You mean dancing around the burning helicopter filled with dead, crispy soldiers, that sort of discontent? And setting armored vehicles on fire and throwing stones at British soldiers, is that what you mean by unrest?
I’m a little curious about the press. How many of them were wandering around the rioting? I mean, these two pictures of the same stone-throwing kid come from two different photographers working for two different news agencies.
Mad dogs and English soldiers...
Some more Basrans. Not a female in sight.
Didn’t I see this in the preview for Mission Impossible 3?
It’s nearly election time again here in California (the rest of you may skip this post; we’re not voting on anything silly or, you know, “Californian” this time, although one of the initiatives is sponsored by an actor). There’s still time to register, if you need to do that. Here are my recommendations. Comments are welcome. The voter’s pamphlet is here (pdf).
Prop. 81. Sigh. I am against bonds as a method of funding anything. They’re an expensive way of funding something, they’re regressive in that they provide their purchasers an undeserved tax deduction, and place tax obligations on future citizens to pay them off--taxation without representation. So normally I would vote no, but since I like libraries and don’t want to vote against them, I will take the intermediate position of not voting for or against 81.
Prop 82. There’s no problem with regressive taxation in Meathead’s initiative, although the use of a dedicated tax, even one on well-off incomes, means that the level of funding is determined by factors unrelated to the needs of the pre-school system, which is just bad budgetary policy.
Now, while I support public education, the thought of state-run pre-school creeps me out. 82 provides for a centrally determined curriculum, which would inevitably focus on some sort of measurable standards, like the test-based No Child Left Behind. Let’s hold off turning the rugrats into automatons until they’re at least, I don’t know, five. Like fishermen, we should throw back the little ones and wait until their souls get bigger to crush them.
The program would be voluntary, in theory, but the more they try to integrate it into the K-12 system by focusing its curriculum on preparation, the more it becomes de facto mandatory, as kindergarten already has, because if it can do what they say it will do, any kid who hasn’t gone through it will be behind the curve. That’s not pre-school, that’s actual school. And that’s if it works; if it doesn’t, then the money could be better spent (textbooks, computers, teacher pay, extending the K-12 school-year, etc etc).
I also worry that this program will compete with K-12 for teachers. California’s public school system needs to find 100,000 new teachers in the next decade. Since paying a decent wage to teachers seems to be contrary to the laws of the known universe, I don’t see where those teachers and the pre-school teachers are supposed to come from, but I imagine some barrels would have to have their bottoms well and truly scraped.
(Post-election update: both props lost, 82 by 61-39, I suspect based less on the merits or demerits of pre-school than on a disinclination to spend money, even the money of rich people.)
Ewen MacAskill suggests that one purpose of the Blair reshuffle, beyond using the excuse of crappy local election results to fire or demote some of the biggest embarrassments-who-aren’t-Tony-himself, was to rid himself of an obstacle to his lap-dog agenda, Jack Straw, the now-former foreign secretary, who announced a couple of weeks ago that military action against Iran was “inconceivable.” I had the feeling at the time that, to quote Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Someone needs to ask Margaret Beckett at the earliest possible opportunity what she could conceive doing to Iran.
I’m not hugely worried by the BNP (British National Party) local election wins, but perhaps that’s because of how amused I am that the place they did really well is Barking (11 seats out of 51).
John Bellinger of the State Dept told the UN Committee Against Torture that the US has been responsible for “relatively few actual cases of abuse and wrongdoing.” Relative to whom, he did not say. The Spanish Inquisition? Josef Mengela? Jack Bauer? Still, I’m sure the UN CAT (or do they prefer UNCA T?) was appropriately impressed by the relativity and lack of actuality of the cases of abuse and wrongdoing committed by America (torture, of course, we do not do. That would be inconceivable).
The announcement of Porter Goss’s resignation on a Friday, with no replacement ready to be announced, suggests something interesting is up. Possibly involving hookers. Bush described the CIA as “known for its secrecy and accountability.”
Speaking of secrecy and accountability, Dick Cheney was in Kazakhstan today, talkin’ about oil and trying very hard not to talk about democracy and human rights (in the 2004 parliamentary elections, Nazarbayev’s party comes in first, with second place going to a party led by... his daughter), right after yesterday’s speech criticizing Russia for its record on democracy and human rights. Asked how he would evaluate Kazakhstan, he said, “I think the record speaks for itself.” Yes, yes it does.
Speaking of the record speaking, the Pentagon has finally put up the transcript of Rummy’s much-heckled speech yesterday. It’s fun because they’ve actually transcribed the heckling, among other things: HECKLER: How can you sit here and listen to this war criminal?
AUDIENCE: Oh! No!
HECKLER: You are a serial killer!
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Sit down! Sit down!
HECKLER: This man needs to be impeached, along with George Bush. How can you sit here smiling and listen to this criminal?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Booo!
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Get out of here!
HECKLER: You’re a war criminal, Mr. Rumsfeld!
(Pause while heckler is removed by security.)
Of course he or she was. The proper form of address is, “You’re a war criminal, Secretary Rumsfeld!”
Israeli PM Olmert has announced his plan to establish unilateral borders for Israel, stealing a good chunk of the West Bank. Netanyahu criticizes him for rewarding Palestinian violence, although to me it looks rather like rewarding Israeli violence. Olmert justifies abandoning small Jewish settlements on the grounds of racial purity, saying they “create an intermingling of populations which is impossible to separate, and which endangers the state of Israel as a Jewish state.” Also, why has so little attention been given in the American media (this is a rhetorical question) to Avigdor Lieberman, who thinks Netanyahu is a dangerous softie, and his racist Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) party, mostly consisting of immigrants from the former USSR, which won 10% of Knesset seats? Lieberman today called for Palestinian members of the Knesset to be executed if they have any contact with Hamas or fail to express adequate enthusiasm on Independence Day.
Iraqi police have been killing homosexuals. Sistani ruled that they must be killed in the “worst, most severe way.”
However, intolerance is not growing everywhere. A Greek court has just re-legalized the worship of Zeus and his posse. Evidently until now, Christianity, Judaism and Islam were the only legal religions in Greece.
Atrios wrote something – “Apparently Frist fristed himself with his grand plan to give out ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS.” – that finally made me realize who it was this whole thing reminded me of: Dr. Evil.
From the WaPo: “More than 1,000 riot officers firing tear gas entered a town at the edge of Mexico City on Thursday to hunt for agents taken hostage in a riot sparked by flower traders that left at least one person dead.” Yes, “a riot sparked by flower traders”. There’s a phrase you do not hear every day.
Another picture from the National Day of Prayer. Captions?
