Bareskin, geddit, bear skin, huh huh?

Pictures from a PETA protest against the use of bearskin hats by the guards at Buckingham Palace. Don’t say I never did nuthin’ for ya.

I understand that Americans see on their screens violence

I’ve seen breakdowns of the partial Iraqi cabinet by party and religion, but I’d be curious how many of them are former exiles.

Her Condiness was on Meet the Press today, uttering a lot of talking points that conflicted with other talking points.


For example, she explained the low approval ratings for the Iraq war as a problem of the visual: “I understand that Americans see on their screens violence.” But she rejected the UN report about Guantanamo as a result of a lack of the visual: “I only wish that Rapporteur had gone to Guantanamo and actually looked at what was going on there. It’s a little difficult to understand by remote control.” Gitmo comes with a remote? Cool. Can we turn down the “evil” setting a smidge? (And of course if the commission had gone there, they would not have been allowed to speak to the prisoners, something Russert predictably failed to point out). She added, “No one would like to shut down Guantanamo more than this administration.” Oh, I think there are several hundred prisoners who’d like it shut down shut a little bit more than you.

A more disturbing use of the visual came in the Condi di tutti Condis’s other interview today, with Fox, where she insisted that she knows Maliki is a strong leader because “I’ve looked into his eyes.” You mean these eyes?


I just don’t see it.

Another example of contradictory talking points came in a single uninterrupted paragraph in which she first said, about the Iraq invasion, that “everybody knew and believed there was a WMD problem with Iraq.” Now obviously they “knew” no such thing because there was no “WMD problem,” but she then blithely went ahead and justified the hard-line stand against Iran’s nuclear program on the grounds that the same “everybody” who got it wrong last time now knows and believes that there is a WMD problem with Iran: “we are also in very good company in being concerned about what Iran is doing... we have pretty good unity on the concerns about the Iranian nuclear program.”

Asked whether the US might guarantee not to attack Iran if it gave up its nuclear program, she said no, because they are bad and Israel and terrorism and blah blah blah. Then she turned around and suggested that their very desire for a guarantee not to be bombed and/or invaded is proof that their nuclear program is not benign: “If this is a civil nuclear program, and supposed to give energy, what’s, what is with security guarantees? I thought this was supposed to be a civil nuclear program.” I’m pretty sure she thinks she just proved something with her devastating logic.

Wherein we learn what is not normal

I’ve been thinking about whether to ask for the Democratic ballot when I go to vote in the June primary (as previously noted, I am not registered in any party). If I do, I’ll have to leave a lot of it blank given my refusal to vote for death penalty supporters for governor, lite governor or attorney general. Would-be governors Westly and Angelides (currently running negative ads denouncing each other for running negative ads) bow ritually before the sacred death chamber at San Quentin, but even Jerry freaking Brown (running for attorney general, of all things) would implement capital punishment while claiming to oppose it inside his shriveled opportunistic heart.

Lately, Bush is using more and more of those “I understand” sentences. Today: “I fully understand that a free Iraq will be an important ally on the war on terror (etc)”.

Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki says he will use “maximum force against terrorism.” Evidently the problem has been that up until now their phasers have been set to stun. Maliki also claimed that “Militias, death squads, terrorism, killings and assassinations are not normal”. Er, right.

Farewell, Naked Guy, we hardly knew ye.

Which reminds me that the NYT ran an obituary earlier this week of the man who sent Checkers to Richard Nixon. I especially enjoy the obits of people who only entered the public eye for one brief moment. I once tore out of the paper the obit of the man who introduced colored bowling balls to a grateful world, planning to comment about what it must be like to have that as your legacy, but before I got around to it the woman from the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” commercial died. I suggested that her tombstone was already written for her.


The Bushes leave church today, George as always thrilled not to have been struck down by lightning, the LauraBot trying to figure out how its leg attachments work.

UG or BRUG?

Your video of the day: “10 Things I Hate About Commandments.” (The Ten Commandments re-envisioned as the teen comedy it was always meant to be) (78 seconds long).



Looking through the new-books section at the public library today, I found sticking out of the latest Stephen King a business card for a “mental health rehabilitation specialist,” which I thought was an amusing thing to be using as a bookmark in that particular book (they didn’t get very far into it), until it occurred to me that it might have been the, um, specialist, going to the library and sticking his card into all the especially disturbing books.

I’m not sure how a government could be considered formed without proper ministers of interior, defense and national security in a normal country, much less Iraq, but there you go. It’s also being called a unity government (UG) by everyone, and Bush says it’s a “broadly representative unity government” (BRUG?) that “reflects Iraq’s diversity.” Broadly representative? So where are the broads? There are two, the women’s affairs minister and the human rights minister, who as the only Christian is a two-fer. Observer headline: “New Dawn for Iraq Marked by Bloodshed.” So, just like the old dawn then.

Adding to the unity of America

Today is John Stuart Mill’s 200th birthday.


Go re-read On Liberty (see how much credit I’m giving you? I’m assuming that you know more about Mill than that “John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.”) His writing tends towards the precise and rational, so he’s not all that quotable, but there’s this: “Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.” Speaking of which...

George Bush: “Some people think any proposal short of mass deportation is amnesty. I disagree.” You’d think Bush would want to keep the few words he does know, yet he keeps defining so many of them in such a way that they never apply to anything related to his policies: torture, civil war, amnesty.

Still, there are some words I wouldn’t have thought he even knew, much less that they’d ever pass his chimp-like lips. In today’s radio address, he says that on immigration there is a “rational middle ground” between his two straw men, automatic citizenship and mass deportation.

There is no middle ground for aliens though. “[W]e must honor the great American tradition of the melting pot by helping newcomers assimilate into our society. ... When immigrants assimilate, they will advance in our society, realize their dreams, renew our spirit, and add to the unity of America.” Realize their dreams unless... Hey! You’re dreaming in Spanish, aren’t you? Stop it at once!

What does “add to the unity of America” actually mean?

Attention to their detention

I refrained from posting on the story yesterday that Iran was going to require Jews to sew yellow strips of cloth on their clothing and Christians and Zoroastrians to similarly identify themselves because my bullshit detector went off, and sure enough the story was bullshit. Makes you wonder who started it...

The Gitmo authorities are claiming that one of the four suicide attempts yesterday (except they’re now saying there were only three) was actually a cunning plan to lure guards so that they could be attacked by other prisoners, who had slicked up the floors with, well, you don’t want to know. The guards then shot them with rubber pellets and a “sponge-type grenade” fired from a grenade launcher. Rear Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr. said the prisoners were just trying “to bring attention to their detention.” Yes, “attention to their detention” – what do you expect from someone named Harry Harris? Of course, we don’t really know what happened or why because the only ones allowed to present their side are military officials, who haven’t exactly been truthful in the past.

The Pentagon website article linked to above has a picture of a basketball court in the facility where the outbreak took place, which I guess is intended to prove that the prisoners are well-treated, even coddled. Not coddled to the extent that they’re actually given a ball of course...

Indy headline: “At Last, America Has an Official Language (And Yes, It’s English).” I detect a faint whiff of English sarcasm.

Well? Are you?

Unsettled

Something odd happened to the headline of a WaPo story about Michael Hayden: the headline “CIA Nominee Has Ability To Deliver Bad News” (I tried to construct a joke about having to have a really strong back, cause there’ll be, you know, a lot of it, but decided it wasn’t up to my standards) changed between last night and this morning to “Nominee Has Ability To Bear Bad News.” Which is also good, because otherwise he’ll just be sitting in his office all day quietly weeping, but why the change, Post?

Pat Robertson: “if I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms.” So God... mumbles? Are you sure that wasn’t Dustin Hoffman? You’d think if God wanted to say something to you, you’d hear him.

By the way, if you’d heard that quote before and missed the point of it, Robertson is raising money from his viewers, ostensibly to relieve the victims of those storms.

The Senate has voted to make English both the “national language” and a “common and unifying language” (you’d have to ask Pat Robertson if English is the language God mumbles), which is evidently different from making it the official language in some way I don’t understand because I speak English rather than congress-speak. Thus the ironic AP headline, “Senate Sends Mixed Signals on English.” Sadly, no Democratic senator gave a speech against the measure in Spanish.

Speaking of problems with English, George Bush told NBC today (video here, but don’t bother) why his poll numbers are low:

BUSH: Because we are at war, and war unsettles people. Listen, we got a great economy. We’ve added 5.2 million jobs in the last two and a half years. People are unsettled.

GREGORY: But they’re not just unsettled sir. They disapprove of the job you’re doing.

BUSH: That’s unsettled.

He added that Iraq “colors everyone’s vision, it seems like.” Bush’s choice of the word unsettled suggests that for him, the normal, healthy, settled state of affairs is for his leadership to be unquestioned and fully supported. Any other condition is aberrant and temporary. His message that we’ve got a great economy, which I’m sure he sincerely believes because it is in fact a great economy if you’re Exxon-Mobil or the companies that get to build his high-tech border with Mexico, is a blatant appeal to self-interest: you’ve got a job, forget about the chaos in Iraq. But, evidently, it’s not the economy, stupid.

There was a mass suicide attempt at Guantanamo yesterday, with prisoners fighting the guards as they tried to save the four, who all survived. Gitmo’s spokesmodel claims to have no idea what “any intended message” might have been.

Speaking of Gitmo prisoners, could we stop describing them as “freed” when in fact they have just been sent to prison in another country?

I would emphasize getting it right more often

Michael Hayden has a cunning plan for the CIA: “I would emphasize getting it right more often.” That’s so crazy it just might work. Makes you wonder why no one has ever thought of it before.

He will also preserve the CIA’s “proud culture of risk-taking and excellence.” And especially, excellent risk taking.

Bush went to Arizona today, to look at the border. He declared it to be a big border. “You might remember I was the governor of a border state, so I understand how big the border is.” And you thought he didn’t learn anything when he was governor of Texas.

Yes, Mr. President. It certainly is a big border.

It’s not just big, it’s got lots of shiny toys, like motion censors and infrared cameras and unmanned aerial drones (unmanned because that’s work Americans just won’t do). “We’re in the process of making our border the most technologically advanced border in the world.” I’m sure it will make us the envy of xenophobes everywhere.

He said that “We have a duty in Washington, D.C. to conduct this debate with dignity and honor.” Of course he wasn’t in DC when he said that, he was in Yuma, so instead of the whole dignity thing, he went riding in a dune buggy. Wheeee! The driver, by the way, is a Border Patrol agent who rejoices in the name Rocky Kittle. Only in America. Which is the point, I guess.

Fences don’t make bad neighbors

The Senate votes to erect a 370-mile wall on the Mexican border. And, following Israel’s lead, they’ve decided to call it a fence. Says Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, “Good fences make good neighbors. Fences don’t make bad neighbors.” The Senate also rejected a provision that would allow currently illegal immigrants to petition for legalization; instead, employers may petition on their behalf, or not, if they get uppity.

From Mr. Fish:

For the man who has everything

Tony Blair says that all foreign criminals should be deported after serving their sentences, with no regard for whether they face harm in their country of origin. Blair was once an actual human being, wasn’t he?

According to A Tiny Revolution, all terrorist and anti-terrorist politics is local.

An Indy article says that the international community, NGOs, the UN and such, have created a parallel administration in Afghanistan that not only dwarfs the Afghan government, but can outbid it in hiring Afghans with any education or English-language skills. It cites one guy who quit his $50/month job with the Ministry of Education rebuilding the country’s higher-education system for a $270/month job as a security guard for the UN World Food Program.

Your vocabulary words of the day, from the Germans, who have a word for everything, from a story about the voluminous records lovingly kept by the Nazis at the Mauthausen concentration camp and now opened to historians: Totenbuch (death book), and Genickschuss (literally neck shot, a single bullet shot into the back of the head). The latter appears 300 times, once every two minutes, in the record for April 20, 1942, when they killed 300 POWs to mark Hitler’s birthday.

I wonder if the Germans have a compound noun for.... this:

Of course, no one would accept this

Pictures of women, any women, have been banned from Saudi newspapers because King Abdullah thinks that young men “are driven by emotion” and “can be led astray.” Also, he said, “One must think, ‘do they want their daughter, their sister, or their wife to appear in this way?’ Of course, no one would accept this.”

Headline of the day, from the LAT: “Ugliest Dog Contest Marred by Scandal.”

And, because it’s been a while, a caption contest.

What Al Qaeda believes in is mayhem

The Pentagon has been forced to release names of some of the prisoners at Guantanamo. What it still won’t release: heights and weights. Which might reveal something about hunger strikes at Gitmo. Remember them?

New White House press secretary Tony Insert-Snow-Related-Pun-Here had his first televised Gaggle today. Seemed smarter than McClellan, and a better obfuscator. And you can evidently make him cry by bringing up cancer, which should enliven otherwise slow news days. On NSA data-mining: “You are jumping to conclusions about a program the existence of which we will neither confirm nor deny.” So it’s their fault that you’re stonewalling them? Actually, despite saying that he didn’t “want to hug the tar baby” of talking about a story he wouldn’t confirm, he did actually defend the program, without confirming its existence, based on the details of the USA Today story, without confirming their accuracy.

Took him less than ten minutes to adopt the Bush regime stance of condescending arrogance: “Let me remind you — it’s a war on terror.” Also, “Al Qaeda does not believe in transparency. What Al Qaeda believes in is mayhem.” And the Bush regime? It doesn’t believe in transparency either; it believes it will have another beer.

Bush’s immigration speech

Transcript.

“We are a nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws.” After the latest NSA revelations, maybe he should have left that line out.

Not surprisingly, he attempts to come down on every side of the issue. He loves immigrants, immigrants are a threat; immigrants come here “for the dream of freedom,” but should be stuck in a guest worker program that allows them only the freedom to work. Saying that emotions run high on the issue, he rhetorically equates those idiots the Minute Men with the millions who rallied in support of immigrants, just as President Eisenhower liked to pretend there was moral equivalence between Southerners resisting integration and civil rights workers.

He wants to send the National Guard to the border for a year, and then reduce their numbers. Let’s see if this sounds familiar: we’ll train new members of the Border Patrol, and as they stand up, the National Guard can stand down. He says that sending 6,000 members of the military to the border is not militarizing the border. But of course words only mean what Bush wants them to mean. He also accesses his inner lexicographer when he insists that he is against something called “amnesty,” which involves an automatic path to citizenship (which literally no one supports; of course people would have to apply for citizenship and could be rejected), but denies that failing to deport every single illegal immigrant is amnesty. Now he’s just arguing about the meaning of the word.

More dangerous than militarizing the border, and I hope this gets some attention, he talks about involving state and local cops in anti-immigrant “targeted enforcement missions.”

There was a line I didn’t understand about forcing foreign countries to take their nationals who we deport.

And he wants immigrants to “assimilate” and learn English, because you can’t be an Uhmurric’n without knowing you some English. “When immigrants assimilate and advance in our society, they realize their dreams, they renew our spirit, and they add to the unity of America.” They renew our spirit by becoming exactly like us?

What he didn’t do, and hopes no one will notice he didn’t do, was say why now. He said that “the need to secure our border is urgent” and obviously he made a rare foray into prime-time broadcasting (when was the last time we had the opportunity to see him trying to make hand gestures while sitting down behind a too-high desk?), but never said wherein lies the sudden urgency that necessitated screwing up the start time of “24” (except on the West Coast). Can’t say it has something to do with terrorists and 9/11, cuz then there’d be awkward questions about where he’s been the last 4½ years, can’t say Karl told him the R’s need a Willie Horton thing or they’ll be screwed in November, so he avoided the issue.

He ended by mentioning some specific immigrants he actually likes, the type that join our military and get wounded fighting our wars for our oil.

They’re just sour right now on the war

Another thing that Bush finds “interesting”: “The really interesting thing about the law enforcement community is there’s such a strong bond between those who serve on the front lines of fighting crime.”

Karl Rove explains the source of Bush’s low poll numbers: “People like this president. They’re just sour right now on the war.” Imagine them blaming that nice Mr. Bush for something he had nothing to do with. Rove points out that Bush’s likeability numbers are higher than his approval numbers, saying “There is a disconnect.” I couldn’t agree more, although Rove seems to think that people should approve of Bush’s policies because they like him, while I think they should dislike him because of his arrogant, harmful, reckless policies.

The Pentagon website has a day-in-the-life piece about a “presence patrol” in an Iraqi village, designed to “assure people the coalition is there,” much in the same way that cats mark their territory, although they (the soldiers, not cats) seem to have spent most of their times looking for what the insurgents no doubt call “presence bombs.” They’re looking for anything out of the ordinary. Says another sergeant, “We have been here four months now. We know what looks out of place.” Oh yeah, you’re a regular T.E. Lawrence, you are. The patrol spots a stopped car and checks to see if it is really broken down. They ascertain that it is and so refrain from shooting the driver. Then they spot some fresh dirt! They get very excited! But they find out it is just some local children building a speed bump. “They need to tell us that,” says Army Staff Sgt. Timothy Long. “That’s a good way to get shot.” Finally, after a long day of not shooting children and people whose cars broke down, they returned to base. “The soldiers often conduct dismounted patrols, but this day it was enough to let the people see them and know they are there, the soldiers explained. The team checked out a number of things, spoke with groups of people and came home safely. All in all, they declared it a very good Mother’s Day patrol.”

Extreme promiscuous behaviors by adolescent sex-based cults

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.”

1966 and all that

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!)

I say potato, you say potatah, I say Orwellian, you say Kafkaesque, let’s call the whole thing off

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.

More fun and games with the California voter’s pamphlet

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.

Religion round-up

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.”

The three stages of listening to Bush

Going...
Going...
Gone.