Breaking the horn of the big head

Just because he’s crazy doesn’t mean he’s wrong: Iranian President Ahmadinejad called Bush “evil.” And your point is? He said, “We will first have to break the horn of the big head so that justice can be done.” The Press Association helpfully explains that “To ‘break the horn of the big head’ is a Fares expression for blunting arrogant behaviour.” See if you can work it into the conversation around the Thanksgiving table.

The Dutch elections were spectacularly indecisive, with much horse-trading in the weeks to come. Which will presumably be opposed by the Party for Animals, which has won 2, possibly more seats of the 150, the first animal-rights party to win seats in a European parliament, or possibly anywhere else. Muslims are more unpopular in the Netherlands than animals are popular: the anti-immigrant “Party for Freedom” won 9 seats. I don’t know if the government prevented that being even higher by shamelessly poaching its Islamophobia last week when it announced plans to ban burqas.

Notice how all I really wanted to talk about there was the Party for Animals, but I had to include the other stuff so I wouldn’t seem shallow?

I don’t feel the need of an excuse to post some in-utero pictures of an elephant fetus at 12 months, still 10 months away from being born, from a tv program “Animals in the Womb,” airing in the US on the National Geographic Channel Dec. 10, and on Britain’s C4 sometime next month.

A very Chimpy Thanksgiving

Whoever writes Bush’s Thanksgiving proclamations is still mistakenly claiming that the first Turkey Day was “to thank God for allowing them to survive a harsh winter in the New World.” Dude, get out more: first autumn, then winter.

“Americans,” the proclamation says, “share a desire to answer the universal call to serve something greater than ourselves” – a humungous turkey. “Our citizens are privileged to live in the world’s freest country, where the hope of the American dream is within the reach of every person”: to eat more than their own body weight in turkey and pass out in front of the television.

“The Thanksgiving tradition dates back to the earliest days of our society, celebrated in decisive moments in our history and in quiet times around family tables.” Yes, after junior decisively announces that he’s gay, everyone sits around glaring at each other, not talking, just like the pilgrims did. “Thou art a what?”

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 23, 2006, as a National Day of Thanksgiving. I encourage all Americans to gather together in their homes and places of worship with family, friends, and loved ones to reinforce the ties that bind us”. Oo, a kinky Thanksgiving. Excellent.

The People have spoken, and the national turkeys named: Flyer and Fryer. Mocking and spiteful and mean, that’s what that is.

Happy, happy home

The Minnesota Legislature which was just elected will have 70 women out of 201 members of both houses (53 D’s, 17 R’s), which is some sort of record. The state has also elected its first female US senator, Amy Klobuchnar. (Correction: its first elected female US senator. Hubert Humphrey’s wife Muriel was appointed to serve out the remainder of his term when he died in 1978.)

I’m too lazy to look up how many women Minnesota is sending to the US Congress, but I know that the first was Coya Knutson, elected 1954 after a term in the legislature. Knutson got into politics in part to get away from her drunken, physically abusive husband, who sabotaged her second re-election campaign in 1958 with an open letter entitled “Coya, Come Home,” which begged (and indeed, commanded) her to quit politics and “come back to our happy, happy home.” I just had to search for my clipping of her 1996 NYT obit to find a sentence about that letter which is mysteriously missing from the online version (Times Select): “Then, as Mrs. Knutson and the nation discovered, hell hath no fury like a jerk.” The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party backed away from her, and she narrowly lost to one Odin Langen, whose not-at-all-condescending slogan was “A Big Man for a Man-Sized Job.” Coya did not come home, divorced the jerk, who drank himself to death, but her two attempts to return to Congress failed.

Surrounded

Bush, in Hawaii: “You know, one of the jobs of the President is to surround himself with smart, capable, strong people -- and I have done so in Condoleezza Rice.” Yes, he is surrounded by Condi. Not my idea of a good time, but to each their own.


His father, at a World Leadership Summit in Abu Dhabi, tells the audience how sad it makes him when his idiot son is criticized. The audience responded by criticizing his idiot son. “We do not respect your son. We do not respect what he’s doing all over the world,” said one woman, to what AP describes as whoops and whistles. “My son is an honest man,” said 41, “He is working hard for peace.” Says the idea that the US is trying to forcibly open markets for American corporations is “weird and it’s nuts”, and “How come everybody wants to come to the United States if the United States is so bad?”


Every year, the president pardons two turkeys, who are then sent to Disneyland – I’m not entirely sure the pilgrims would have approved – and every year the American public are called upon to vote to name the birds in question. This year the choices are Ben & Franklin, Plymouth & Rock, Washington & Lincoln, Corn & Copia, and Flyer & Fryer. Corn & Copia suggests that whoever’s job it is to come up with these names (Karen Hughes?) is running out of ideas, while Flyer & Fryer is just plain mean.

I believe that you, the residents of the WIIIAIosphere, can do better in coming up with names appropriate to The Year of Our Lord 2006. Consider this a contest. For extra credit, what is George Bush thankful for this Turkey Day?

As long as it takes

Tony Blair went on a surprise visit to Afghanistan, the other disaster. No, this one really was a surprise, it’s his first trip there since 2002. He said that “Afghanistan and its people deserve the chance to increase their prosperity and to live in a proper democratic state.” A “proper” democratic state, isn’t that just so British and adorable?

He said, “You have the same alternative you had five years ago. You either stick with it until the job is done, or you leave it to another generation. I am not prepared to do that.” He evidently saw no contradiction between that and something else he said repeatedly: “We have got to stay for as long as it takes.” And then he got on a plane and went home.

Aloha means hello, goodbye, and “The old bat’s trying to kill me, get her off, get her offfffff!”

You know what counts as a Thanksgiving bounty for a blogger? A choice between the photo sequence from Reuters or the one from the AP of George Bush on a stopover in Hawaii being strangled with a lei by a little old lady. I just can’t choose, so let’s have both.




(Burp) I am so stuffed with bloggy goodness right now.

How big is it?

Bush, who visited Brazil a year ago and observed, “Wow, Brazil is big,” is spending a few hours in Indonesia, of which he says, “I don’t think the American people understand how big Indonesia is.” Not big enough, however, that there was any part of it where he felt safe enough from protesters (and Elmo) to be willing to risk staying overnight. He said of the protests, which have been going on for days, “It’s a sign of a healthy society.” So even George Bush admits that anti-Bush protests are a sign of a healthy society.

Good

Announcing that the US had negotiated an agreement with Russia to support its entry into the WTO, he said it would be “good for the United States and good for Russia,” adding, two sentences later, as if we’d already forgotten, “I repeat, this is a good agreement for the United States. And it’s an equally important agreement for Russia. And it’s a good agreement for the international trading community.” So, it’s good, is that what you’re saying?

It’s not just that he has an under-sized vocabulary, but that he has an over-sized ego, and assumes (still) that our trust in his judgment is such that he doesn’t need to say a single word about why it’s “good” (which he doesn’t), and we’ll just take his word for it.

Here is Bush opening the trading session at the... wait for it... Ho Chi Minh City Securities Trading Center. It’s possible that when they told him he’d be hitting a gong, he was anticipating... something else.


Ah yes, that’s more like it. Here, he and John Howard hook up with those twins from the Mothra movies.


A particularly good episode in the new season of BBC radio’s The Now Show.

When in Hanoi

It’s so awkward when everyone shows up at work wearing the same thing.

Wow, that totally flatters his ass.

I am totally freeballing it under this thing.

Man, I coulda gone commando too.

This is, as Putin would say, totally a caption contest.

Conversing with God in Hanoi

“Miss Israel,” Yael Nezri, who is a private in the Israeli Army, has been given permission not to carry a rifle, because it bruises her legs, which interferes with her modeling career. I believe Dick Cheney used the same excuse to get out of Vietnam. And yes, I looked for pictures that showed her legs, bruised or unbruised – solely in the interests of in-depth news analysis, of course – but no luck.


It’s Sunday morning in Vietnam, and Bush went to a Catholic cathedral built by the French colonialists. Or as he modestly put it, “Laura and I just had a moment to converse with God in a church here in Hanoi.” Poor God, he must have figured Vietnam was the last place George would look for him. Bush went on, “And it’s our way of expressing our personal faith and, at the same time, urging societies to feel comfortable with, and confident in saying to their people, if you feel like praising God you’re allowed to do so in any way you see fit.” Then he paused, and added, “Well almost any way – run Katie Holmes, run!!!”

The president has been doing a lot of waving

Alberto Gonzales attacks not only the August federal district court ruling against warrantless eavesdropping (update: I have now seen the transcript, and he was actually attacking “some people” who see it as “on the verge of stifling freedom”), but “Its definition of freedom -- one utterly divorced from civic responsibility -- is superficial and is itself a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people.” So, to review, being secretly spied on is a civic responsibility, freedom is a threat to liberty, and superficial critics of government surveillance fail to grasp the profundity of Freedom 2.0.

The military coup leader in Thailand is claiming support from Bush, because in Hanoi Bush told him he “understands” the situation, called it an “intervention” rather than a coup, and prattled something about understanding the difficult situation Gen. Surayud is in, because Bush is also in a difficult situation thanks to losing the mid-term elections. Which is odd, because his people spent the conference telling everyone who would listen that American foreign policy won’t be affected in the slightest by the elections.

David Sanger of the NYT notes that Bush chose not to see any part of Vietnam that wasn’t adorned with conference tables, floral arrangements and giant busts of Uncle Ho.

Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, conceded that the president had not come into direct contact with ordinary Vietnamese, but said that they connected anyway.

“If you’d been part of the president’s motorcade as we’ve shuttled back and forth,” he said, reporters would have seen that “the president has been doing a lot of waving and getting a lot of waving and smiles.”

He continued: “I think he’s gotten a real sense of the warmth of the Vietnamese people and their willingness to put a very difficult period for both the United States and Vietnam behind them.”

Those Vietnamese must have been doing some very expressive waving, to convey all that.

A disaster? No, really? You do say.

In an interview on Al Jazeera, Tony Blair agrees with David Frost that Iraq has been a “disaster,” saying, “It has, but you see what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq? It’s not difficult because of some accident in planning, it’s difficult because there’s a deliberate strategy - al-Qa’ida with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other - to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war.” That’s just so wonderfully Blairish, how he makes it sound like he’s offering some profound insight, when what he’s actually saying is just that war is a lot easier if no one fights back.

George Bush, meanwhile, is still in Hanoi, and honestly, if he just remembers which Koreans are the “good guys” and which ones are the “bad guys,” we’ll consider ourselves lucky. Fortunately, after meeting the South Korean president, Bush said, “We had a discussion like you would expect allies to have a discussion.” Sounds very alliancy.

The chimp and the tiger

Simultaneous news stories report that Britain and the Netherlands used torture techniques in the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners. In the case of the British military, which called the torture “conditioning,” the reports say that there were specific orders from high up, while a Dutch defense ministry spokesmodel claims that that was not the case with their torturers, and that although the incidents, which took place three years ago, were reported to the military police, the defense minister may, or on the other hand may not, even have been informed: “It happened a long time ago and you cannot remember everything.”

Those are words George W. Bush lives by every day, but especially so when visiting Vietnam, which he says “shows how hopeful the world can be and how people can reconcile and move beyond past difficulties for the common good.” Carpet bombing, Agent Orange, My Lai, you know, difficulties. He says his impression of Vietnam is, “it’s very hopeful” and “like a young tiger” (a hopeful young tiger, presumably), and that “In our drive through this beautiful city we were pleased to see thousands of your citizens with smiles on their faces. And we’re so grateful.” That it’s not 1969.


Speaking of grateful, he put a positive spin on John McCain’s 5½ years as a prisoner of war: “And one of the most poignant moments of the drive in was passing the lake where John McCain got pulled out of the lake. And he’s a friend of ours; he suffered a lot as a result of his imprisonment, and yet, we passed the place where he was, literally, saved, in one way, by the people pulling him out.” I hope McCain at least sent them a thank you note.

He also explained for the Australian press the meaning of the mid-term elections: “The elections mean that the American people want to know whether or not we have a plan for success”. How does that actually work, how do you vote for a question? Is Congress now dominated by the “Hey, Just Out of Curiosity, Do We Have, Like, a Plan for Success?” party?

And he praised Australia’s evil prime minister John Howard: “That’s why I’m so proud to have a partner like John Howard who understands it’s difficult to get the job done.”

To change the subject slightly, I went to the market and noticed that there are now something like 5,000 varieties of apple. When I grew up there were, I don’t know, red ones and green ones. They’ve succeeded in making apples complicated and confusing, and that’s just not right.

We’ll succeed unless we quit

The word being used to describe Trent Lott’s return to Republican leadership is “redemption.” John McCain, for example, said, “We all believe in redemption.” Just what is it that Lott is supposed to have done to redeem himself?

George Bush decided that Hanoi was the perfect place to talk about applying the lessons of the Vietnam War to Iraq. “We’ll succeed unless we quit,” he said, suggesting that the US hadn’t done enough to destroy the country whose guest he was. Around this time, the Vietnamese must have been sorry they didn’t have an even bigger bust of Ho Chi Minh to stick behind him as a reminder of just who kicked whose butt.

Today in censorship

Iran bans the novels The Da Vinci Code, Girl With a Pearl Earring, and Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, among others.

China won’t ban Casino Royale, the first Bond movie ever permitted to play there.

Turkey has suspended military relations with France in retaliation for France banning Armenian Genocide denial.

In a suburb of Budapest where the town council suspended a newspaper and a tv station for alleged bias, the mayor has hired town criers. That’s what Iran needs: town criers ringing bells and reciting The Da Vinci Code.

I hated Iraqis

One of the rapists/mass murderers in the Mahmudiya incident, Spc. James Barker, has pled guilty and was sentenced to life or 90 years, whichever comes first. The judge asked why he did it. “I hated Iraqis, your honor.” This, to borrow a line from Atrios, has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

He went on: “They can smile at you, then shoot you in your face without even thinking about it.” I’m not sure if a guy who raped a 14-year-old girl, burned her body and killed her whole family should really be pointing fingers. Or possibly it was just the smiling that he objected to.

As an experiment, I’m using the labels feature of Beta Blogger for the first time, allowing you to read my previous posts on this incident. It’s an attractive feature, especially for a blog with 3,402 posts going back over a decade, a way to make those archives useful. I was looking back over some of my old Trent Lott posts just yesterday, for example. Good times, good times. But attaching labels to 3,402 posts seems very much like work. I’m also worried that republishing those posts, like I just did for the Mahmudiya posts, will be obnoxious for RSS users. Opinions? suggestions?

Contrary to what a lot of other people believe

I thought that Gen. Abizaid must not own a dress uniform, but no, yesterday he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in one, showing the committee the respect he failed on Monday to show the Iraqi prime minister, who he sorta praised to the committee: “I believe, contrary to what a lot of other people believe, that he is an Iraqi patriot”.



He also said that he didn’t think more American troops would be a good idea, but that they should step up “training” the Iraqis. Because those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach.

Last night, at the American Spectator’s annual dinner, Rumsfeld praised Milton Friedman, “who’s still going strong.” Within hours, Friedman was dead. Coincidence? I think not.

It’s still all about what you wear on your head

India and Pakistan have come to some sort of deal to share intelligence about terrorism (which no one thinks they’ll actually do) and to prevent an accidental nuclear war between the two countries, which is very important because that’s the most likely location for the planet’s next nuclear war. So it is perhaps a little sad that my reason for writing about it is to post these pictures of the Beating the Retreat ritual at the border (the Pakistani troops are in black), but these are the things a blogger is called upon to do.




And as long as we’re focusing on people in funny costumes, the Queen’s Speech was given today (yesterday she was at the premiere of Casino Royale, possibly in the same clothes; these are the things an octogenarian modern monarch is called upon to do).


Pakistan has moved to eliminate the death penalty and flogging for illicit sex, in favor of five-year prison sentences. Also, if you’ve heard that rape victims will no longer have to produce 4 male witnesses, you heard wrong. At the judge’s discretion, the case may be heard in a secular or sharia court, the latter retaining the nearly impossible evidence requirements. Whether victims who fail to make their cases will still be subject to adultery charges and those five-year jail terms, I’m not sure.

The “new” faces of the Republican party. I’m a very happy blogger right now.



Now for our poll of the day week month whenever I’m bored:

Which is the silliest ceremonial head covering?
	Those fan thingies on the soldiers' hats
	QE2's crown
	Trent's toupee
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Wherein is explained what the Republican party stands for

Yesterday Bush told Ken Mehlman that he had done “a whale of a job” as chair of the RNC, adding, “Of course it turned out he wasn’t so much a killer whale as a sperm whale, if you know what I mean.”

No? Well feel free to try your hand at responding to what he said two sentences later: “I appreciate the fact that you went to neighborhoods where Republicans have never been to talk to people about our message of ownership and hope.”

Mehlman will be replaced by Sen. Mel Martinez, who Bush says “represents what I believe our party stands for, and that is his parents put him on a plane to come to the United States from Cuba because they love freedom.”

Bush and Putin met during a refueling stop at Vnukovo International Airport. As ever when those two meet, Bush stares rapt into Putin’s soul eyes, while Laura stares into space, and Lyudmila Putin stares into existential despair.

What is happening is not terrorism

I’m not sure what definition of terrorism Iraqi PM Maliki is using, but it evidently doesn’t extend to today’s mass kidnapping from the Higher Education Ministry, according to remarks which were televised before the kidnappees were rescued: “What is happening is not terrorism, but the result of disagreements and conflict between militias belonging to this side or that.” Between militias? Possibly there is a Scientific Research and Grant Application Militia, and if so I’m sure it’s quite fierce, but if not, then this was an attack on civilians aimed at spreading terror. Whether a similar attack by a Sunni militia on a ministry run a Shiite party would have met Maliki’s strict standards for consideration as a terrorist act remains unclear. Maliki is acting increasingly openly as the front man and apologist for the Shiite militias.

Adnan Pachachi (remember him? me neither.) said of the kidnapping: “There is evidence of a systematic and very sad attempt to drain Iraq of its brains.” The Zombie Militia responded by issuing this press release: “Braaaaaains.”