Farewell, Emma Faust Tillman, we hardly knew ye

A 114-year-old Connecticut woman (the daughter of slaves) dies just 4 days after becoming the oldest person in the world. For those wondering how some people manage to live so long, in this case one need go no further than her name: Emma Faust Tillman.

Speaking of (arms) deals with the devil, some of you may have been confused by the WaPo story about the State Dept’s report to Congress that Israel may have used cluster bombs bought from the US in ways that violated the terms of sale because it doesn’t make clear that the US is refusing to say whether those terms included a ban on their use against civilians. That’s classified. There is no possible legitimate reason for that to be classified.

The war on prepositions

I think it’s important to acknowledge when George Bush gets something right. In an interview with NPR, he said that he has “no intent upon incur – going into Iran,” and so I’m pointing out that one of those prepositions was used correctly.

He is shocked that people “ascribe, you know, motives to me” of wanting to invade Iran.

Asked about the still-thoroughly-unbelievable reports out of Najaf, he said that he’s learned not to react to first reports off the battlefield. And then he went on to react at some length to first reports off the battlefield, saying that it shows that Iraqis are taking the lead “to do in some extremists” and are “beginning to show me something.”

Asked about tomorrow’s Senate vote on the non-binding resolution, he says that “my feeling to the Senate” (he got a preposition right earlier, wasn’t that enough for you people?) echoes what “Tailgunner Joe” Lieberman said, adding, “legislators will do what they feel like they’ve got to do, and, you know, we want to work with them as best we can to make it clear what the stakes of failure will be, and also make it clear to them that I think they have a responsibility to make sure our troops have what they need to do the missions.” My, doesn’t “working with them” sound an awful lot like “telling them what to do”?

He says of Cheney’s over-confident predictions about Iraq that Cheney has a “glass half-full mentality.” Half full of strychnine.

Bush, whose glass is empty because he drank all the Kool-Aid, says that if we pull out of Iraq, “the country could evolve into a chaotic situation.” Imagine! And the Middle East would go to shit, and “people would look back at this era and say, ‘What happened with those people in 2006? Why couldn’t they see the impending threat?’” We’re being lectured about not seeing the future by someone who forgot to turn the page on his calendar.

Asked about his failure to mention Katrina recovery in the SOTU, he said, “Well, I gave a speech I thought was necessary to give.”

Asked if it was necessary to refer to the “Democrat majority,” he claims it was an “oversight.” “I didn’t even know I did it. ... I’m not that good at pronouncing words anyway”. Or defining them, or spelling them, or using them in a sentence. Especially prepositions.

And then he went on to complain about there being “a lot of politics in Washington,” indeed, “needless politics.” “And it’s almost like, if George Bush is for it, we’re against it, and I – and if he’s against it, we’re for it. And the American people don’t like that.” Yes, like when Nancy Pelosi came out in favor of the correct use of prepositions. “And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I’m sorry it’s the case, and I’ll work hard to try to elevate it.” Yes, yes he will.

He explained economics to the NPR audience: “The budget is going to be balanced by keeping taxes low. In other words, we’re not going to raise taxes.”

At the end, he asked “Camera’s off? (Chuckles.)” Yes, moron, the radio cameras are off.

Hoorah

Here’s what we’re supposed to believe: in Najaf American and Iraqi soldiers killed 250 militants from a group that no one’s ever heard of before this very day.

The Japanese health minister has graciously apologized for referring to women as “birth-giving machines,” saying, “I’m sorry to call them machines.”

On one of the Sunday talk shows, Joe Biden described the presidential race as a marathon. Just like one of your speeches then, Joe?

Newsweek has interviewed Dick Cheney. He said of the Middle East, “I think most of the nations in that part of the world believe their security is supported, if you will, by the United States. They want us to have a major presence there.” By “nations... believe their security is supported,” what he actually means is, “unelected, corrupt, authoritarian governments... believe their security is supported”.

You’ll remember that in the Wolf Blitzer interview Cheney referred to a question about his credibility as “hogwash.” In this interview, he once again reached into his Big Bag O’ Old Timey Homespun Sayings (possibly left behind by Donald Rumsfeld), saying of the non-binding anti-surge resolution, “what’s ultimately going to count here isn’t sort of all the hoorah that surrounds these proposals so much as it’s what happens on the ground in Iraq.” Hogwash and hoorah.

He says the war against “the threat [of] extreme elements of Islam on a global basis” will “occupy our successors maybe for two or three or four administrations to come.” So, including the next two years, and given that an administration can last one or two terms, that’s 10 to 34 years, somewhere between 2017 and 2041.

Asked again about his credibility, he said, “Obviously there was flawed intelligence prior to the war. ... [but] we should not let the fact of past problems in that area lead us to ignore the threat we face today and in the future.” I totally agree with that. Assuming that by “the threat we face today and in the future,” he also meant “Dick Cheney.”

Asked about Gerald Ford’s criticism of him, he insinuated that Bob Woodward made it all up. Newsweek pressed on, asking about criticism of him by Brent Scowcroft and others, saying, “You wouldn’t be human if it didn’t have some reaction.” He did in fact have a reaction – “Well, I’m Vice President and they’re not. (Evil laughter.)” (I may have added an adjective, just to make the transcript more accurate) – but I don’t know where Newsweek got the idea that he’s human.

Of cluster bombs and cluster f... well, you know

Still waiting for an explanation of why the Pentagon initially lied about those 4 soldiers who were abducted in Karbala, taken 25 miles away and executed, saying that they were killed “repelling” an attack, and why it let that lie stand for 6 days until the AP discovered the truth.

Actually, I’m still waiting for any hint that any reporter has even asked why they were lied to.

The Bush administration will admit to Congress that Israel violated its agreement with the US by using American-bought cluster bombs in Lebanon. However, according to State Dept spokesmodel Sean McCormack, “It is important to remember the kind of war Hezbollah waged. They used innocent civilians as a way to shield their fighters.” For the life of me I can’t figure out how that is supposed to justify the use of cluster bombs. Surely the presence of innocent civilians is a reason to refrain from using munitions designed to kill indiscriminately over a wide area.

We would like to make utmost efforts

AP headline: “Dems, Bush Call on One Another to Be Bipartisan.” Well, when both sides are accusing the other of being partisan, isn’t that pretty bipartisan all by itself?

Bush, for example, in his weekly radio address, complained that “some” congresscritters “gave a reflexive partisan response” to his State of the Union speech, although he did say that others were more willing to “reach across the aisle,” quoting remarks sort of to this effect by Barack Obama and Ben Nelson, not of course that he uttered their names while taking their comments out of context.

Japan’s Health Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa calls on Japanese women, whom he calls “birth-giving machines,” to have more babies, or as he put it, “do their best per head”. Last month he commented that “There are many young people who want to have children. In order to meet such a wish, we would like to make utmost efforts.” I’ll bet.

Certainly emboldens the enemy

Secretary of War Robert

attacked the Senate’s non-binding resolution, saying it “certainly emboldens the enemy.” Wouldn’t their emboldenedness also be non-binding? And just how emboldened would they be, on a scale of 1 to 10 on the emboldenometer? “I think it’s hard to measure that with any precision, but it seems pretty straightforward that any indication of flagging will in the United States gives encouragement to those folks.”

In that press conference, a member of the press asked for the first time (as far as I know) about the US bombings in Somalia. Gates didn’t answer. And about whether the bombings killed the people they were supposed to kill, he really didn’t answer.

Asked several times about the policy of killing Iranians in Iraq, Gates tried to give the impression that there was nothing new or even very interesting about this, that it was always US policy to “go after... any foreign fighter in Iraq who’s trying to kill Americans.” But the Iranians are not armed “fighters” like the individual foreign jihadis killed in the heat of battle; they are (allegedly) support personnel, and killing them would not be a straightforward act of self-defense (“force protection”), as Gates is trying to suggest.

There’s been a fight in Britain over whether Catholic adoption agencies, financially supported by the state, would be allowed to discriminate against gay couples. The Catholic Church has been supported by Anglican and Muslim religious leaders. It looks like the government, overriding Tony Blair, won’t allow the Church to discriminate. Those agencies may close down rather than follow the law. The interesting thing is that they’re willing to place children with single homosexuals, but not homosexual couples.

The Decision Maker

The Senate voted to approve David Petraeus’s promotion to general (he will always be Colonel Comb-over to me) and to be Commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq. So there was a press conference with the Decision Maker (he will always be Chimpy to me), who proclaimed, “And in that I’m the decision maker, I had to come up with a way forward that precluded disaster. In other words, I had to think about what’s likely to work. ... And the implementor of that plan is going to be General Petraeus.”


The D.M. was amazed: “One of the amazing things about our country is that we’ve got military folks who volunteer to go into a tough zone to protect the American people from future harm, and they’ve got families who stand by them.” Yes, isn’t it amazing, and indeed an amazing thing unique to our country, that “military folks,” “whether you be a general or a private,” have families, when all other countries grow their soldiers in laboratories.

The Decision Maker scoffs in the face of non-binding resolutions: “One of the things I’ve found in Congress is that most people recognize that failure would be a disaster for the United States. ... I understand, like many in Congress understand, success is very important for the security of the country.” So what I think he’s saying – and see if you can follow this – is that failure is bad and success is good.

Asked about his order to assassinate Iranians inside Iraq, or as he termed it, “helping ourselves in Iraq by stopping outside influence from killing our soldiers,” D.M. Bush said, “We believe that we can solve our problems with Iran diplomatically”. Yes, shoot-to-kill orders are the first thing they teach you in diplomat school.

D.M. Bush knows what the Iranians really want better than the Iranians themselves do, he’s Just. That. Good. “As you know, the Iranians, for example, think they want to have a nuclear weapon.” Also, “we want their mothers to be able to raise their children in a hopeful society.” Their fathers, on the other hand, we may have to kill. “My problem is with a government that takes actions that end up isolating their people and ends up denying the Iranian people their true place in the world, driving taxis and running 7-11’s.” I may have added that last clause.

License to kill

So Bush has authorized killing or capturing Iranians inside Iraq. Not civilians or diplomats, although presumably any members of the Revolutionary Guard, to say nothing of members of spy agencies, would not be in uniform, so there might be the occasional little fatal mistake. The story is based on leaks, and the infuriating WaPo refuses to even hint at the motives of the leakers – people worried this will provoke a wider war? people who want this known so that it will provoke a wider war?

And what exactly do they mean by this sentence: “Though U.S. forces are not known to have used lethal force against any Iranian to date, Bush administration officials have been urging top military commanders to exercise the authority.”

A spokesmodel for the NSC says that “Our forces have standing authority, consistent with the mandate of the U.N. Security Council.” One wonders if other members of the Security Council think they gave authority for this policy. And if they did, why was it kept secret? It will be interesting to see what Maliki has to say about this.

Because I told them it had to

Last night I watched the “The Libertine,” a movie set in the 17th century. There was a credit for the company that supplied the mud.

According to AP, the US has been conducting more air strikes inside Somalia this week. Funny how that wasn’t mentioned in the SOTU. How many countries have we actually had military operations in since 9/11? Does even the Pentagon remember? Forty years from now American Marines they completely forgot deploying are going to be coming out of jungles in the Philippines or Yemen or wherever, asking if The War Against Terror (TWAT) is over yet, like those Japanese soldiers they were still finding in the 1970s.

Nancy Pelosi says that Bush, asked why this “surge” would work when the previous ones didn’t, told her, “Because I told them it had to.” Makes you wonder what he’s been telling him the last four years.

Today Bush went to a hospital in Missouri to talk about health insurance. He talked about how doctors practice “too much medicine” for fear of “frivolous lawsuits,” but made no mention of how one should deal with incompetent doctors.

Neither did he see anything wrong with the practices of insurance companies, although several small-business owners stood up to talk about how they couldn’t get insurance for their employees. No, the problems in American medicine are 1) the tax system, which doesn’t encourage enough people to give their money to insurance companies, and 2) sick people, who are all like, me me me, without giving a thought to what their sickness is costing those poor insurance companies. “And our view is, is that in order to have -- to worry about health care costs, the more a consumer is involved, the more likely we’ll be able to deal with the increasing cost of health care.” Those sick people just aren’t worrying enough, they’re all, la la la, I’m sick, cure me.

By the way, Bush claims that his proposal is revenue-neutral. It’s amazing how he can always solve all our problems without spending a cent of federal money.

I’ll leave the summation in Bush’s own words, which is cruel of me, I know: “we’ve got to level the playing field, from a taxes perspective. It is by far the most hopeful and fair option of any medical health care option out there today, unless, of course, you want the federal government providing it all, saying, okay, we’ll provide you insurance, but we’ll provide everybody insurance, which would be a mistake.”

It won’t stop us

TPM has the transcript of Dick Cheney’s interview on CNN before CNN does. He insists that the world is “much safer” because we invaded Iraq, and claims that Saddam was “not being contained” and had in fact “corrupted the entire effort to try to keep him contained.” He emphatically denies Wolf Blitzer’s comment that there is a terrible situation there: “No, there is not. There is not. There’s problems, ongoing problems, but we have, in fact, accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime, and there is a new regime in place that’s been there for less than a year, far too soon for you guys to write them off.”

Asked about Maliki cozying up to Iran and Syria rather than “moderate” but Sunni-dominated nations, Cheney says, “He’s also an Iraqi. He’s not a Persian. There’s a big difference between the Persians and the Arabs, although they’re both Shia.” So what we’re counting on is that ethnic bigotry will be more powerful than sectarian hatred.

Asked whether the Bushies’ credibility is hurt by their blunders, Cheney says, “I simply don’t accept the premise of your question. I just think it’s hogwash.” In fact, he spends most of the interview saying that various things are wrong, that he disagrees with them, etc. A lot of blank refutations, “that’s dead wrong”s, not a lot of rational discussion.

But then, when he did try that, he compared Iraq now to Afghanistan, where the US was “actively involved” in the 1980s but then just “walked away,” which led to Taliban rule, which led to the Cole and 9/11: “That is what happens when we walk away from a situation like that in the Middle East.” Osama has lived in all sorts of countries, and planned and coordinated terrorist attacks in each one. Should we have invaded all of them? Also, rather than “walk away,” what is it he thinks we should have done in Afghanistan in the 1980s and ‘90s?

He says of the Senate non-binding resolution, which I think hadn’t passed out of the Foreign Relations Committee when the interview was taped, “It won’t stop us, and it would be, I think detrimental from the standpoint of the troops”.

He again says that the reason Iraqi Shiites don’t “stand up and take responsibility” is that Saddam had hammered them into submissiveness.

Bush did this too: asked whether he thinks Maliki will go after Sadr, Cheney evaded: “I think he has demonstrated a willingness to take on any elements that violate the law.” Asked twice point-blank if Sadr should be arrested, he finally said, “Wolf, you’ve got to let Nouri al Maliki deal with the situation as he sees fit. And I think he will.”

Cheney insisted that Wolf was “out of line” to ask about the Christian Right’s criticism of Mary Cheney getting herself knocked up. So Wolf was out of line, but Cheney didn’t bother to work up any indignation towards Focus on the Family. Neither did he stand up for his daughter.

So, George, how’d the speech go over?

They preach with threats

Headline of the day: “Diver Used Chisel to Fight off Shark That Swallowed His Head.”

Bush in the SOTU, about the, you know, bad guys: “They preach with threats, instruct with bullets and bombs...” But they grade on a curve, so that’s cool.

Click here for a screenshot of the Miami Herald “Americas” section, with ironically dueling headlines: “Bush Emphasizes Support for Freedom Cause in Cuba” and “Leftist Protesters Accuse Exiles of Assault,” the exiles in question having beaten up some opponents of their rally in favor of anti-Castro terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.

The Guardian ran a competition for a Gordon Brown t-shirt. “My mate was prime minister for 10 years and all he left me, other than a terminally hostile electorate, was this lousy T-shirt” beat out “Brown knows.”

John Kerry will not run for president in 2008. This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions no one was actually asking.

State of the Union: I ask you to give it a chance to work

6:14 “I congratulate the Democrat majority.” He just couldn’t bring himself to say Democratic, could he? (Update: it was Democratic in the prepared version.)

6:15 Evidently they must still “guard America against all evil.” Dude, Cheney’s sitting right behind you, with a hurt expression on his face.


6:19 He’s against earmarks, which I can’t quite recall being mentioned in earlier SOTUs. The time has come to end this practice. I wonder what happened in, say, November that makes this the time.

6:20 I’m watching in high definition and, holy shit, I just caught a glimpse of Ted Kennedy....

6:26 Patrick Leahy is not a high-def kind of guy either.

6:22 A disguised proposal, which I wouldn’t have even recognized had AP not predicted it. Bush’s words: “giving families with children stuck in failing schools the right to choose something better.” What that meant is that he plans to propose letting them use public money to pay for private schools. This is obviously one of those obligatory no-chance-in-hell proposals that so enliven SOTU speeches. He might as well suggest letting them transfer to private schools on Mars.


6:23 Speaking of DOA proposals, here’s his health insurance tax-deduction scheme (order now and get free switch grass!). No reference here to “gold-plated” insurance policies, although poor people will supposedly be helped to get “basic” private insurance.

6:31 We will reduce gasoline use by 20% in 10 years, without a single American having to get out of their car and step on a smelly bus or walk or bike to work.


6:34 “Yet one question has surely been settled - that to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy.”

6:37 Who have “shoreless ambitions”.

6:40 “What every terrorist fears most is human freedom”. And spiders.

“Free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies”. Dude, Cheney is still right behind you.


6:42 John McCain is adorable when he’s sleeping.

6:43 “This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it’s the fight we are in.” If it’s not the fight we entered, shouldn’t there be a new vote in Congress?

6:47 “the consequences of failure would be grievous and far-reaching.”

6:48 Shia or Shiite, make up your mind.

6:50 “Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq - and I ask you to give it a chance to work.” I repeat: you mean give it a chance to fail.

6:50 “The war on terror we fight today is a generational struggle that will continue long after you and I have turned our duties over to others.” Notice the shift: when he first started talking about this being the “struggle of a generation,” he meant a fight that fell to one particular generation. Now he uses “generational” to mean a fight that will last at least a generation.


6:54 We will “continue to awaken the conscience of the world to save the people of Darfur.” So, just talking about it, then.

7:02 Instead of the usual God bless the United States of America, or the creepier May God continue to bless, we just got a perfunctory “God bless.”

Oh, I forgot: the state of the union is strong. He really does have a tiny vocabulary, doesn’t he? We’re lucky he didn’t say the state of the union is interesting.

Well, this wasn’t a very interesting post, but then it wasn’t a very interesting speech. No would-be stirring phrases, no new formulations like “axis of evil,” no clarion call to stop human-animal hybrids. No one will remember a word of it tomorrow.

Transcript.

Chimpy needs all the help he can get

The White House has released a list of people who will be sitting with Laura Bush at the SOTU address. It includes Wesley Autrey, the guy who jumped onto the tracks of the NY subway to rescue a man who had fallen in front of an oncoming train.

Nope, no metaphors here.

Courage

More than 24 hours without blogging. Just had nothing to say (well, I had one thing, which I didn’t post because it was a stupid joke). I have created a label for posts on previous State of the Union speeches.


Liz “No, I’m the other one” Cheney has an op-ed in the WaPo in which she bemoans that Hillary Clinton will do whatever it takes to become president but not to win the war. She points to the waffling of Hillary and others about the war and says that Holy Joe Lieberman is “the only national Democrat showing any courage on this issue.” I can think of a few national Democrats who have shown courage in opposing the war, Russ Feingold, for example, but I guess in her definition of the word, courage can only be displayed by people who support wars.

(“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” Mark Twain)

Courage is not the only thing Liz says opponents of her father’s war can’t demonstrate: “And by the way, you cannot wish failure on our soldiers’ mission and claim, at the same time, to be supporting the troops. It just doesn’t compute.” Yeah, that would be like claiming to support Mary Cheney while denying her right to marry.

The LA Times examines just how little evidence has been offered about the alleged Iranian support for insurgents in Iraq.

My legacy will be written long after I’m president

In an interview with USA Today, Bush says that in the State of the Union Address he’ll scold Congress about earmarks. Well how about this? The Bushies have decided to let a student loan company called Nelnet (say that six times in a row and you turn into Jerry Lewis)(not a one of you said that six times in a row, did you?)(if you’re reading this at work, say it six times in a row in a loud clear voice and they’ll probably give you the rest of the day off) keep $278 million in federal money they weren’t entitled to (I don’t really understand the scheme, but the bottom line is that the Education Dept believes the subsidies were improper but isn’t asking for them back). Nelnet, one finds out in the 17th paragraph but suspected in the first, is a major donor to Republicans.

USA Today asked Bush whether he supported Schwarzenegger’s mandatory health insurance plan. He seems rather to have avoided answering, but did say that it was “interesting” that Arnie, Jeb, and Mitt worked on plans to “meet the needs of their particular states,” which suggests that some states don’t need to have children’s health insured.

Bush more or less admitted that the “surge” plan has convinced no one. In fact, he’s still using the “People want to know whether or not we’ve got a plan to succeed” line. Fortunately, “people” are entirely irrelevant: “the best way to convince them that this makes sense is to implement it and show them that it works”. Hmm, I wonder if there’s a more appropriate way of presenting that sentiment?


But just when will all this convincing take place? Will we, for example, be out of Iraq by 2009? “That’s a timetable; I just told you we don’t put out timetables.” So I ask again, when will we know that “it works”? Here’s a hint from elsewhere in the interview: informed that historian Eric Foner has declared him the worst president ever, he says, “My legacy will be written long after I’m president.” Oh, man, that was the sort of straight line that gives me an ice cream headache.

How about LBJ and Vietnam, they asked, any, you know, lessons from that? “Yes, win. Win, when you’re in a battle for the security … if it has to do with the security of your country, you win.” Really, it’s so simple, I don’t know why Johnson didn’t think of it.

Death squads, you say? Why did no one tell me of this before?

In Israel, Richard Perle, who brings a ray of sunshine to any gathering, promised that if Iran gets close to having a nuclear weapon, within the next two years anyway, Bush will launch a military attack on it.

Say, wasn’t the United States fighting in the Somali civil war a couple of weeks ago? Whatever happened with that?

There’s a piece of hilariously transparent spin-doctoring going around. According to the AP version of it, “Iraq’s prime minister has dropped his protection of [Muqtada al-Sadr]’s Shiite militia after U.S. intelligence convinced him the group was infiltrated by death squads”. See, the reason Maliki has hitherto protected the Shiite militias isn’t that he owes his political position to their leaders, or that he personally is committed to establishing complete Shiite domination of the Iraqi state by violently subjugating the Sunnis, no no no, it was that he had somehow been entirely unaware of the sectarian violence until now. I feel so much more confidence in Maliki now, don’t you?

Stressed

Actually, doesn’t “I’m in, and I’m in to win” sound like something Bill Clinton might have said, but in, um, entirely different circumstances, if you know what I mean?

Headline of the Day, from the Sunday Telegraph: “Stressed Doctor Cuts Off Patient’s Penis.” Boy if you think the doctor is stressed...

The London Review of Books has a very good, comprehensive article by Perry Anderson on Putin’s Russia.

She’s in

Hillary Clinton announces for the presidency with the words, “I’m in. And I’m in to win.” Because it’s all about her. And it’s also about Bush, or more specifically, “the bold but practical changes we need to overcome six years of Bush administration failures.” Is anyone’s pulse set racing by the words “bold but practical”? Also, by January 2009, there’ll be 8 years of Bush administration failures to overcome.

She’s going to start a “national conversation” right now. “So to begin, I’m going to spend the next several days answering your questions in a series of live video Web discussions.” That’s Hillary’s idea of a national conversation: her answering questions. I call her Hillary, by the way, because “Clinton” seems to have gone the way of “Rodham” and those headbands she used to wear; by 2008 she may have run out of names. References to Bill in her website are avoided almost as scrupulously as mentions of her original strong support for the Iraq war.

Her statement is full of the usual content-free clichés: renewing the promise of America, the future is calling us, true to our values, etc etc. I should be excited by the prospect of an election that replaces George Bush; Hillary just makes me feel tired.

A gut feeling

Remember the 4 mercenaries who were killed in Fallujah and strung up on the bridge, giving the US an excuse to besiege and bomb the city? Their families are suing the “security” company that employed them, Blackwater, and now Blackwater has counter-sued for $10 million, claiming that the lawsuits violated the dead men’s employment contracts. Kenneth Starr is involved in this in some way I’m not clear on.

In Basra, British military spokesmodel Major Chris Ormond-King told reporters that he had absolutely no evidence of Iranian arms, money, or anything else in the region but “As a gut feeling we know there is Iranian influence.” Hey, we’ve invaded countries on less than that!

Speaking of gut feelings, Hugo Chavez says that the Venezuelan telecom company CANTV has been spying on him on behalf of “the empire” (whether the United States or CANTV’s part-owner Verizon, he didn’t say). Sigh. Of course it might be true, it might very well be true, but I like for accusations like that to be accompanied by some scintilla of proof. Chavez plans to nationalize CANTV along with... well, we’ll have to see what else he’ll nationalize, because he’ll do it all by decree power, which he claims is a “completely democratic process,” and I know some of you will explain to me in comments how it really is a completely democratic process and I can’t wait for that. To me the fundamental restructuring of a nation’s economy should follow an open national debate involving representative institutions, but what do I know?

There’s a “series of tubes” joke in here somewhere, I just know there is

From AP: “Ted Stevens, the Republican senator, has said that his wife, Catherine, has frequently been identified as Cat Stevens and stopped on US flights.” And the funny thing is, it’s not that they have the same name: they actually look uncannily alike.

An insurance company in Spain failed to get a court to order a man to return €550,000 they’d paid him in compensation for having been 90% blinded in a traffic accident, when he was stopped by police two years later driving a car at 96 mph. He said he’d just asked his wife to let him drive on a straight stretch of road.

Yesterday Maliki claimed that his forces had arrested 400 followers of Sadr. Possible, but who trusts anything Maliki says to be true? So was no one actually arrested? 400 random people, “Casablanca” style? 400 not-so-random Sunnis? Will we ever know?

A cute detail about the ethics measure passed by the Senate today: not all travel paid for by lobbyists would be banned; AIPAC can still pay for trips to Israel, although Sen. Stevens may have trouble getting his wife through security.