I guess Bush won’t accept Ahmadinejad’s proposal of a live debate. They could have sold that one on pay-per-view and rebuilt New Orleans with the proceeds.
Yesterday Bush was interviewed by Brian Williams, and I’ve finally found where NBC was hiding the transcript. Williams asked if he shouldn’t have asked the American people to make some sort of sacrifice, possibly a goat, after 9/11. Bush:
Americans are sacrificing. I mean, we are. You know, we pay a lot of taxes. America sacrificed when they, you know, when the economy went into the tank. Americans sacrificed when, you know, air travel was disrupted. American taxpayers have paid a lot to help this nation recover. I think Americans have sacrificed.
Those things are not sacrifice. Sacrifice is something people do actively, voluntarily; the things Bush enumerates are things that people endure passively. A passive, demobilized citizenry, which experiences The War Against Terror (TWAT) only as something they see, as Bush often says, on their television screens, as a consumer good, which only turns out for one “accountability moment” every four years, that’s the sort of citizenry that suits Bush.
Asked whether he ever gets advice from his father:
He understands that often times I have information that he doesn’t have [!]. And he understands how difficult the world is today. And I explain my strategy to him, I explain exactly what I just explained to you back there how I view the current tensions, and he takes it on board, and leaves me with this thought, “I love you son.”
He makes it sound like a really crappy finger-painting his father has to coo over and put up on the refrigerator, then shudder every time he gets a glass of milk.
Actually, Bush the Elder not chewing out Chimpy for his massively incompetent foreign policy, now that’s a sacrifice.
I can understand wearing a Ronald Reagan mask to rob a Bank of America, but why the cape?
Improbable government announcement of the day, from the White House deputy press secretary: “President Bush was saddened to learn of the passing of Egypt’s Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, Naguib Mahfouz.”
The three major Russian “opposition” parties merge, because Putin tells them to. They will compete with Putin’s United Russia party as to who can most slavishly implement Putin’s policies. Really, that’s what the head of the Party of Life party said.
Must-read: WaPo article on how Shiite militias dominate Iraq’s Health Ministry, especially its 15,000-strong “security” force (of 30,000 total employees), and periodically drag Sunnis out of their beds and kill them. In the US, this is called “managed care.”
Harper’s has some phrases from a web page, “Military English Learning” on the website of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army:
The principles of war can never be changed.
Special forces can penetrate into an enemy’s rear to gather information.
Without military maps, you don’t know where you are sometimes.
It is necessary for war fighters to master the skills of temporary fixations.
There have been too many famous battles.
Look, there is so much ammunition.
Oh, so many weapons. Great!
The weapons displayed here are almost conventional weapons.
These are tanks, aren’t they?
Yes. But this one is an armored vehicle.
We saw this kind of missile on TV.
As far as we know, there are atomic weapons.
Mass-destruction weapons bring more difficulties to the first aid.
Theoretically, space must be digitized.
Cyber-war techniques can be treated as weapons of mass destruction.
Do you know the most terrorist event?
It was the September 11 attack in New York.
Thousands of people died unnatural deaths.
The World Trade Center can never be mended.
Bin Laden immediately became the most famous person of the world.
Has he been dead or still alive?
No one knows, I’m afraid, except himself.
The original pages have been scrubbed from the PLA site, but some cached versions may be found here. The page of useful phrases for the interrogation of POWs includes these:
92. What do you hope now?
102. How is the morale of your unit?
103. Where is your vanguard?
104. Do you know our lenient policy towards POWs?
105. The chief criminals shall be punished without fail.
106. Those who are accomplice under duress shall go unpunished.
107. Those who perform deeds of merit shall be rewarded.
Bush: “I take full responsibility for the federal government’s response, and a year ago I made a pledge that we will learn the lessons of Katrina and that we will do what it takes to help you recover. I’ve come back to New Orleans to tell you the words that I spoke on Jackson Square are just as true today as they were then.”
Cheney and Rummy’s speeches at the VFW’s annual meeting slash hootenanny [correction: Cheney was at the VFW, Rummy was at the American Legion convention] were designed, just in time for the elections, to limit debate about the war in Iraq. Cheney, while claiming to believe in democratic values, insisted that some forms of speech just aren’t legitimate: “there is a difference between healthy debate and self-defeating pessimism.” The Bushies tend to prefer self-defeating optimism.
By the way, I had to check the spelling of hootenanny at dictionary.com, which has this definition: “3. Older Use. a thingumbob.”
Rummy castigated the “moral and intellectual confusion” of those who don’t see the danger of the “new kind of fascism,” a confusion that “can severely weaken the ability of free societies to persevere.” (To clear up any remaining confusion, he slipped a few more references to fascism into the speech as delivered than were in the prepared version that link goes to.)
He has a whole list of things people, especially people in the journalism business, have said that he doesn’t like. Why, did you know that in the leading newspapers, there were 10 times the number of mentions of one of the Abu Ghraib torturers as of the guy who won the first Medal of Honor in the Global War on Terror? Shocking. He’s also still pissed off at Amnesty International calling Guantanamo the gulag of our times, more than a year later. He wants the VFW to perform a “watchdog role” over the media, citing approvingly the VFW’s successful Mau Mauing of the Smithsonian into censoring its exhibition on the Enola Gay in 2003.
Also, “I know there are some places where Boy Scouts are a subject of scorn.” He does not say where those places are. Girl Scout jamborees, maybe.
Alberto Gonzales says he’s in Iraq today to “promote the rule of law”. Some days it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. To answer this question, I turn to you, the readers:
5 Afghans were returned home to Afghanistan (probably to Afghan prisons) from Guantanamo. One of these most dangerous of men is 71, needs a walker, and his hearing and eyesight are not so good.
From AP, a story from China whose first sentence is the platonic ideal of the silly-season story: “A woman’s vehicle collided with another car while she was teaching her dog to drive.”
Gen. William Caldwell, Military Moron, announces that operations to reduce violence in Baghdad have been going great, except for all the violence: “It was always expected that there would be this extremist element that would get out and try to discredit the operations that are ongoing by striking at areas where civilians are readily available, where they can inflict some casualties.”
Bush went to Mississippi today to talk about how wonderful everything is, one year after Katrina. “I’m amazed by the opportunity, I’m amazed by the hope that I feel down here.” And it’ll just get better: “there will be a momentum, momentum will be gathered. Houses will begat jobs, jobs will begat houses.” He makes it sound so... dirty.
And really, it’s all about the debris: “People say, how can we rebuild with debris? Now it’s gone.”
He praised the Republican governor of Mississippi: “You have a strategy now to build smarter homes.” That’s not one of those computerized homes that start acting weird and then seal the doors and electrocute people, cause I’ve seen that movie and I remember it as kind of crappy.
“And I understand that rebuilding neighborhoods begins one house at a time, and that’s what’s happening here.” Um, wouldn’t it be faster to rebuild more than one house at a time? Just sayin’.
“When somebody goes back to their home, it helps renew the community, and so part of our efforts, and part of our focus is to make sure that people can get back in their homes as quickly as possible.” So, let me get this straight, you’re saying that a community should have people living in it.
Hey, when he’s right, he’s right.
(Update: in comments, Aaron, a resident of MS and a victim of Katrina, writes about the failures of federal funds to make it to actual, you know, human beings.)
In comments on my last post, Mrs. Malaprop suggests an answer to my question, what the Holy Jihad Brigades thought forcing the Fox reporter hostages to “convert” would accomplish: it’s an allegory, like introducing democracy at gunpoint. I’ll buy that. Thus this statement by one of the reporters, Steve Centanni: “It was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns and we didn’t know what the hell was going on.” Pretty much sums up the human condition in the 21st century.
Update: oh for crummsake, they videotaped the “conversion.” Of course they did. Here it is, if you’re curious. The Foxies are forced on pain of death to say that Islam is a religion of peace, and that “Islam is not fascism. Words like that only serve to deepen the great chasm between peoples, to fan the flames of anger and distrust that already burn in the Muslim world.” I know you can’t turn people into democrats by application of military force, but boy if you could bring an understanding of irony to the Middle East... The War to Make the World Safe for Irony, has a ring to it, huh?
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This sounds strangely familiar:
Yesterday there was a completely incoherent interview of Iraqi PM Maliki by Wolf Blitzer on CNN. I assume it was Maliki’s translator who was incoherent rather than Maliki, but who knows? A sample: “Therefore, the agreement of the Iraqis is like a ship that all Iraqis should all be in to face terrorism and explosions that you mentioned with these numbers.” So we got some incoherent answers about when US troops might leave Iraq, an incoherent answer about whether Israel has a right to exist, and an incoherent response to Blitzer’s demand that Maliki apologize for having criticized American troops who massacred civilians “at a time,” said Wolfy, “when the United States military has done so much to try to bring democracy and freedom to Iraq.” Through the translator, this is the “clarification” Wolf asked for: “There’s a difference between the forces that are there to protect Iraqi experience and help Iraqis, and difference between have violations -- which is natural.” About the only comprehensible statement was this: “The violence is in decrease. And our security ability is increasing. And I want to assure he who loves Iraq that Iraq will never be in a civil war.” I’m curious whether the translator worked for Maliki or for CNN, and why CNN bothered putting this gibberish on the air, and I know you’re all waiting for me to say something about Bush’s speech patterns, but I’m not gonna do it, it’s just too easy.
South Africa’s Apartheid-era Law and Order Minister, Adriaan Vlok, washed the feet of Rev. Frank Chikane, a man Vlok tried to have assassinated in 1989 by poisoning his clothes. Vlok said that if Jesus could do it (the foot-washing, not the clothes-poisoning), so could he. “I sacrificed myself,” Vlok says of the incident, adding, “I give up my pride, my own self, my superiority, my uncharitable attitude, and my selfishness.” If I were Chikane, I’d begin to feel like my feet were being insulted. Actually, if I were Chikane, I would have walked through some dog shit first. Which is probably why I’m not a reverend.
The kidnappers of the two Fox reporters forced them to convert to Islam, or else. I can’t imagine what they thought they were accomplishing.
Or the Islamists in Malaysia who are obstructing the attempts to marry of a woman who converted to Christianity. She’s being refused permission by the sharia courts, which she thinks that, no longer being a Muslim, shouldn’t have jurisdiction over her. The constitution of Malaysia, however, defines Malays (that’s an ethnic group, as distinct from Malaysians) as Muslim.
The group in Gaza holding the Fox reporters, by the way, calls itself the Holy Jihad Brigades. Which is redundant and trying just a little too hard.
As long as we’re doing Muslims Behaving Badly stories, Islamist legislators in Pakistan went on a minor rampage in Parliament a few days ago when the government tried to reform rape laws, which make it almost impossible to convict rapists, and then leave the victims in failed cases vulnerable to adultery charges.
In other news: elsewhere, various Muslims were nice to each other, kind to animals, and were perfectly pleasant people you’d be glad to know.
British cabinet ministers are getting “life coaches” at taxpayer expense, to improve their emotional intelligence and blah blah blah. So what would a life coach advise Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales or other members of the Bush cabinet? Offer your sage advice in comments (example, for Condi: “He’s just not that into you.”)
Bush’s radio address today is about Katrina. In contrast to the Iraqi people, who he has said have expressed insufficient gratitude for all we’ve done for them, he had Rockey Vaccarella, who “drove to Washington to thank the federal government for its efforts to help people like him.”
Here’s the sentence I like: “And the floodwaters exposed a deep-seated poverty that has cut people off from the opportunities of our country.” Exposed? I’m pretty sure the poor people already knew about their own poverty. What you mean, George, is that that poverty was temporarily brought to the attention of over-privileged, uncompassionate, oblivious assholes such as yourself.
I distinctly remember the first time I road an AC Transit bus in Oakland. There were people smoking underneath the No Smoking sign. Someone tried to sell me a watch. Now, the buses are getting Wi-Fi.
George W. Bush has signed a proclamation making September National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month, and he “call[s] upon the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs and activities.” I’m thinking toga party. He praises his own policy of funneling federal drug treatment dollars through religious groups “answering the universal call to love a neighbor.” Of course he didn’t write this proclamation himself, but you’d think he’d have a, ahem, personal interest in the subject matter which might impel him to actually read it before signing it. My concern being the passivity and lack of personal responsibility attributed to addicts in the document, especially in the section on methamphetamine: it is called a “scourge,” and Americans are described as needing to be “protect[ed]” from meth “reaching” them. Anyway, the White House website provides a helpful link to a government website for National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month, which suggests as one of those appropriate programs and/or activities a “Recovery Walk.” I don’t know what that is, because I was too scared to click on a link featuring this picture.
Speaking of scary clowns, Jenna and Dubya have been demonstrating this week how much fun you can have without alcohol:
What is the possessive for Harper’s? Harper’s’s Luke Mitchell has a fascinating discussion with Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr. about the ethics and morality of force-feeding of hunger strikers at Guantanamo. The man is a master of logic origami. Winkenwerder claims (wrongly) that the World Medical Association’s 1991 Malta Declaration allows doctors to substitute their own judgment for the prisoner’s when he or she reaches the final stages of delirium or coma, but, he says, why wait that long, let’s strap them into restraint chairs and shove NG tubes into their nose while they’re still healthy and mentally competent.
Pluto has been sent down to the minors, and is now a “dwarf planet.” I think they prefer “little planet.” According to the BBC it was because of its oblong orbit. For me, it was always that its orbit left the plane of the ecliptic that did it.
Nearing the anniversary of Katrina, Bush finds the one guy from Louisiana who doesn’t hold a grudge, a Republican failed office-seeker, as it happens, which the White House says they had no idea of when they invited him. He is one Rockey Vaccarella, who finds it “amazing” that “a small man like me” could meet the president of the United States. It’s the American dream, really. He lost everything he owned, but now he has this precious, precious memory. “The President is a people person,” Mr. Vaccarella informs us. Oh, and FEMA trailers, he thanked Bush for all the FEMA trailers, and drove a replica of one from Louisiana to DC. Read the transcript at the first link, it’s an odd little photo op.
China is considering legislation to ban strippers from funerals. According to Reuters, they’re used to boost attendance. Evidently in China funerals have Nielsen ratings.
The WaPo report today on the Haditha massacre says in as many words that the Marines involved didn’t think that anything unusual had taken place, quoting the statement of a sgt in a “Marine human intelligence exploitation team” who walked the scene and talked to the Marines a few hours later. The Post writer suggests that the Marines “viewed the civilian deaths as accidental rather than the result of a vengeful rampage.” 24 accidental deaths. Oops. Certainly their colonel didn’t consider those deaths to be anything remarkable, much less worthy of investigation. What these stories leave out is the attempted cover-up. As I’ve said before, when the first story the Marines told was a blatant lie (that they were all killed by an IED), it behooves you to look fairly carefully at their next story. Also, I’m not sure how exonerating it is if they killed dozens of civilians calmly following procedure rather than in a furious rage after the death of a Marine, directed not at those responsible but at the nearest available Iraqis. Even had they thought themselves under attack, which they claim and which I don’t believe, how many innocent people do you get to kill in the name of preserving your own life? In the last scene of “Saving Private Ryan,” Ryan wonders if his life had been worth the lives of the men who had been killed “saving” him. How is that question changed if you’re the one who pulled the trigger?
After opening with his customary fart joke, Bush gave a talk about “health transparency” today. I would say if you’re transparent, you should definitely see a health care professional immediately. Maybe one of those Gray’s Anatomy chicks in the shower (cause you’re transparent, see, try to keep up). He said, “I think the new trend in medicine is going to be to encourage transparency in pricing, as well as transparency in quality. ... How do we encourage consumerism.” As I’ve said before, the language of consumer choice disguises, and not very well I’d have thought, that he wants to “empower” patients to make decisions based on cost rather than health. Nowhere does he suggest any way in which doctors posting their prices would improve medical care, although he does mean to give the impression that it would. He even made an interesting slip, which I’ll highlight:
Think about the system today as a third-party payer, how many of you have got insurance and you never really cared about the cost because somebody else is paying the bill, right? You don’t really care about the quality, because some person in an office somewhere is paying the bill on your behalf.
Said quality, meant cost.
The new focus on “transparency” leaves out any mention of the mechanism of change, which is more or less magical.
And if we can get a system down where people are able to have a good program, a good product, good insurance, but where the consumer has more to say with what’s purchased or not, all of a sudden the dynamic begins to change, and costs begin to go down. ... if consumers have more information from which to make decisions, all of a sudden, costs begin to become less of a burden on the system
He brings up his favorite, because untypical of most medical decisions, example, Lasik surgery, whose cost has also dropped... wait for it... “all of a sudden.” The mechanism of change hidden in all this suddenness is the imposition of economic penalties on sick people who choose to seek medical care. If you’re the sort of person fooled by that sort of vocabulary, you might find the sight of someone signing their name a great source of fascination and entertainment.
Oh, wait a minute, now I’m going to sign an executive order. And I think you’ll find this interesting. It doesn’t take very long, and we usually have people stand behind me when I do it.
“Can I see a price list for pulling this cadace... coodace... wingy snakey thing out of my head?”
Slate has a piece about Günter Grass, which I would rather eat grass than actually read, entitled “Snake in the Grass: The pompous, hypocritical hucksterism of Günter Grass.” It is written by... wait for it... Christopher Hitchens, who I assume has already written an attack on Mel Gibson for getting drunk and then saying stupid things.
In Britain, “Tom and Jerry” cartoons are to be censored, with scenes “glamorizing smoking” removed.
Blogs have been complaining about the tv news shows focusing so exclusively on JonBenet Ramsey rather than more important issues. Today, for example, the blogs have all been relaying the news from US News & World Report that George Bush likes fart jokes.
Iran finally gave its answer to the UN: it is ready to enter into “serious negotiations” about its nuclear program. So better not send George Bush; he’d just open with a fart joke.
Bush held a press conference today. He praised himself for giving humanitarian aid to Lebanon, which he called “disaster relief,” as if it was hit by a flood or an earthquake rather than American-made munitions.
Actually, I think he may simply have forgotten just what “disaster” it is that happened to Lebanon, since he also accused Iran and Syria of “working to thwart the efforts of the Lebanese people to break free from foreign domination and build their own democratic future.” He seems to think that the only foreign domination Lebanon has had to contend with recently has been by Iran and Syria. WILL THIS BE ON THE FINAL? Asked if Iran’s influence in “the region,” meaning Lebanon, is growing, Bush says, “The final history in the region has yet to be written.” Final history? That sounds pretty ominous. “They sponsor Hezbollah. They encourage a radical brand of Islam. Imagine how difficult this issue would be if Iran had a nuclear weapon.” Er, how would the one affect the other? And would it have anything to do with that “final history”?
OBJECTIVELY SPEAKING: Bush has been very big on the word “objectives” for a while now. Just in this presser, he said that the US has a plan to help the Iraqis achieve their objectives, that we should help Middle Eastern reformers achieve their objectives, that a UN force will help the Lebanese government achieve “some objectives,” that in relation to Iran’s nuclear program, “we will work with people in the Security Council to achieve that objective, and the objective is that there’s got to be a consequence for them basically ignoring what the Security Council has suggested through resolution.” Also, the terrorists “want to achieve objectives.”
YA THINK? “Obviously, I wish the violence would go down, but not as much as the Iraqi citizens would wish the violence would go down.”
The key sentence was the announcement that we’ll be occupying Iraq at least until January 2009: “We’re not leaving, so long as I’m the President.”
He says that politicians who disagree with that policy are good, decent people who are undercutting our national security and betraying our troops for political gain: “This is a campaign -- I’m sure they’re watching the campaign carefully. There are a lot of good, decent people saying, get out now; vote for me, I will do everything I can to, I guess, cut off money is what they’ll try to do to get our troops out.”
Our old friend Sum has been expressing unlikely opinions about terrorists again: “Now, I recognize some say that these folks are not ideologically bound. I strongly disagree. I think not only do they have an ideology, they have tactics necessary to spread their ideology.” Chimpy may just be stringing words and phrases together in a random order, but I think he just said that terrorism is an effective means of persuading people to believe in an ideology.
Sum’s cousin Sumbody has also been talking: “And somebody said, well, this is law enforcement. No, this isn’t law enforcement, in my judgment.”
On whether the violence in Iraq is now mostly sectarian, i.e., a civil war: “No, al Qaeda is still very active in Iraq. As a matter of fact some of the more -- I would guess, I would surmise that some of the more spectacular bombings are done by al Qaeda suiciders.” I suppose it’s an improvement that when he has no evidence, he now admits he’s just making stuff up.
On Lebanon: “You can’t have a democracy with an armed political party willing to bomb its neighbor without the consent of its government, or deciding, well, let’s create enough chaos and discord by lobbing rockets.” That’s from the Federalist Papers, right?
On Iraq: “Leaving before the job is done would be a disaster, and that’s what we’re saying.” There’s that word again.
Asked about reports that he expressed frustration about the lack of gratitude of the Iraqi people: “Frustrated? Sometimes I’m frustrated. Rarely surprised. Sometimes I’m happy. This is -- but war is not a time of joy. These aren’t joyous times. These are challenging times, and they’re difficult times, and they’re straining the psyche of our country. I understand that.” But “if we ever give up the desire to help people who live in freedom, we will have lost our soul as a nation, as far as I’m concerned.” So we’re straining our psyche but not losing our soul.
As is so often the case with the criminal justice system, it all came down to earwax.
Today I had the opportunity to participate in that sacred duty of every citizen: weaseling my way out of jury duty. Here is my diary of that experience (John Grisham would have spun this out to 400 pages):
8:01 Why am I here at 8:01 am? Every judge in the land is still a-bed. Filled out juror info form. They ask for an email address. No way. At least the tv is off. Last time I was in one of these rooms I was trying to read while they blared Regis Philbin at me. And there’s a not uncomfortable couch. Not long enough to take a nap on, though.
I am by no means the only one in sweatpants. After careful consideration, though, I left my formal Cat in the Hat t-shirt at home.
8:13 The bureaucrat has said she’s going to “go ahead and” do one thing or the other for the 6th time by my count.
Update: 11 12.
8:22 Oh boy, there’s a video. Evidently Cal. is a beautiful state, the greatest of all the states, but it still has crime. Oh no, please tell me where I fit in in addressing that situation!
Uh oh, the video says I’m supposed to use my everyday common sense.
8:40 The Go Ahead Girl must be past 25X now
8:48 45? It’s a little awe-inspiring, really.
9:30 Waiting. Half the people here have no reading material (and some of the rest didn’t bring any, but are reading from the room’s eccentric collection of magazines, none of them news magazines). They’re just sitting there, nearly half of those with their arms crossed. Maybe they have rich inner lives and need no external stimulus. Maybe they’re drunk or hung over. The room is also provided with one jigsaw puzzle, which a guy in his 20s is working, not very efficiently. I’m reading a book on World War I & taking these notes, and feeling a welling civic pride. Or possibly gas.
9:42 Going into the courtroom in a minute. It was in fact gas.
9:51 Jeez, I could take those bailiffs.
And then there was an hour of voire dire, half of which I couldn’t hear (the earwax thing). The case was “resisting an executive officer,” which is something like resisting arrest, I guess. The lawyers on both sides seemed to be in their 20s, as was the IQ of the defense attorney, who asked if prospective jurors believed it was okay to protest being arrested, whether police can make a mistake, whether police can use any kind of force. She didn’t know how to ask a question that would have elicited an answer which would have alerted her to a problem juror. She asked a woman whose son is a cop in Sacramento whether, when he tells her about his job, she always takes his side.
Someone who worked the night shift was excused. Someone with child-care issues was excused. Someone who said he’d been hassled by cops, but wouldn’t say how, and said that police were, he guessed, a “necessary evil,” was excused. An FBI special agent was excused. Several people whose problems I couldn’t make out were excused. And then I was called, corrected the clerk’s pronunciation of my name, told the court about the earwax thing and was excused.
Er, you weren’t expecting a big payoff to this story, were you?
