What he had to do

Marine Lance Cpl. Delano Holmes is being court-martialed for bayoneting an Iraqi soldier he was on sentry duty with in Fallujah 44 times (or, as the LAT helpfully breaks it down, 17 stab wounds, 26 cuts and one chop). Holmes’s attorney is claiming it was self-defense because he thought the Iraqi, Priv. Munther Jasem Muhammed Hassin, was signaling a sniper. Naturally, his Marine training to fight “until the threat is removed” kicked in, although one would have thought he was vulnerable to the supposed sniper throughout however long it takes to bayonet someone 44 times. Update: oh, Holmes didn’t even think Hassin was deliberately signaling a sniper (really crappy reporting job, LAT), just giving away their position by smoking and using his (illuminated) cell phone. The North County Times says the fight resulted when Holmes tried to get Hassin to stop doing so. They didn’t speak each other’s language, but bayoneting someone 44 times is like the international sign for “please stop doing that.” Clearly, as his lawyer says, Holmes “did what he had to do.” Holmes is 6' 2" and 190 pounds, Hassin was 5' 4" and 124 pounds. Holmes sustained no injuries. He fired Hassin’s rifle to make it look like self-defense.

The WaPo reports on former Guantanamo prisoner (2002-6) Murat Kurnaz, a 19-year old German seized in Pakistan, who the CIA, US military intelligence and German intelligence rapidly decided was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but who continued to be held, the military tribunals ignoring the intelligence reports in favor of a memo written by a general who noted that Kurnaz prayed while the National Anthem was being sung, and that he asked the height of the basketball rim in the prison yard, which the general took to be evidence that he was planning an escape attempt.

Tactical suicide

Guantanamo update: there are still 9 hunger strikers being forcibly fed, the longest of whom has been subjected to this torture for 816 days. And there was a previously unreported suicide attempt one month ago, a prisoner slashing his throat with a sharpened finger nail. The deputy commander of the guards at Gitmo, Cmdr. Andrew Haynes, said such suicide attempts were just a move to discredit the US military, adding, “Suicide is clearly a tactic that the detainees employ in the continued struggle.” Haynes said the unnamed prisoner produced an “impressive effusion of blood,” but, the Miami Herald paraphrased, “nothing compared to what the Navy commander said he had witnessed on the battlefield in other military assignments.” Guy tries to kill himself, and Haynes is playing “well if you think that was bad” games. Classy.

The London Times reproduces a current and a 2005 UN map which show the parts of Afghanistan safe for its workers to operate in. They’re shrinking.



Finally, one last picture of George Bush from today’s press conference:

Bush press conference, wherein is revealed the most disappointing thing in Washington

Not the most entertaining of these things. Bush was kind of subdued and careful. And he used the word “codicil” in a sentence. Correctly, even. These quotes are my transcription. (Official transcript).

“Americans could be forgiven for thinking that Santa will have slipped down their chimney on Christmas Eve before Congress has finished their work. Let’s hope they’re wrong.” Silly Americans, there’s no such thing as Congress finishing their work.

He kept talking about the danger that Iran will some day “show up with a weapon”. Makes it sound like Aunt Martha showing up for Christmas with her godawful fruitcake again.

“I’m sayin’ that, uh, I believed before the NIE that Iran is dangerous, and I believe after the NIE that Iran is dangerous”.


Says he was told in August that there was new intelligence on Iran, but Mike McConnell “didn’t tell me what the information was,” and indeed they only told him last week what it was, and didn’t try to stop him making threats against Iran.

He must have used the phrase “there’s a better way forward” about Iran twenty times.


Asked what went through his mind when he heard about the gang-raped Saudi woman sentenced to 200 lashes, he said he thought, what if it had been my daughter (he didn’t say which daughter), adding that he’d have been very emotional. For example, he’d have been “angry at those who committed the crime” and at the state. However, he can’t even remember if he brought it up when he talked to King Abdullah. But “he knows our position loud and clear.” And he knows that you don’t care enough about that position to actually, you know, mention it, or, in the unlikely case that you did in fact mention it, remember that you’d mentioned it.


Bush’s sophisticated analysis of the Venezuelan referendum: “The Venezuelan people rejected one-man rule. They voted for democracy. ... a very strong vote for democracy”. 51%, anyway. Says Congress must pass the free-trade agreement with Colombia or it will be “a destabilizing moment.”


Asked about the Republican candidates, he said he will resist efforts to make him be “pundit-in-chief.” I’m pretty sure you only get to be pundit-in-chief if you’ve defeated Paul Krugman in hand-to-hand combat. Two pundits enter, one pundit leaves.


The putz said, “The most disappointing thing about Washington has been the name-calling”.


“And, uh, it seems like to me that this Congress oughta be congratulating our military commanders and our troops, and one way to send a congratulatory message is to give ‘em the funds they need”. Or a card. A card is always nice.

Welcome to the real world

We’re all relieved that Gillian Gibbons has been released from a Sudanese prison for the crime of letting her students name a teddy bear “Mohammed,” and safely on her way back to Britain (even if that’s not what she wanted), but what happened to poor Mohammed?

Read the whole statement (it’s short) issued by National Security Adviser Boo Hadley on the NIE which says that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons program in 2003. He doesn’t challenge its conclusion but rather says that even though the entire factual basis behind Bush admin policy was wrong, the policy has in fact been proven correct (“It confirms that we were right to be worried”), and even more pressure should be put on Iran to stop its nonexistent weapons program.

The WaPo reports, “Hadley disagreed that the report showed that past administration statements have been wrong, noting that collecting intelligence on a ‘hard target’ such as Iran is notoriously difficult. ‘Welcome to the real world,’ he said.” Er, did Hadley really just condescend to us about “the real world”?

George Bush, in rapt attention during a performance of A Christmas Carol by, get this, actors from Ford’s Theater. The mind boggles. The mother of Tiny Tim there, next to Bush, is deployed in Iraq.

The other white meat

The Biden campaign is sending me fundraising emails more often than any other three campaigns combined. Anyway, today’s has this subject line: “I will eat Rudy Giuliani alive at a debate.” It’s not every candidate who boldly appeals to the cannibal vote in this way. Which leads me to my most ill-advised, tasteless and repulsive CONTEST ever: Tastes like chicken? I don’t think so. So what would Giuliani meat taste like? If you prefer, you may submit recipes (cook at 911° for 30 minutes and then... it’s Giuliani time!)

A full day in the United States Senate

Elections, elections. Chavez’s referendum lost “for now,” as he put it, words he famously used after the failure of his 1992 coup attempt, when he had surrendered and was allowed to broadcast a call for the other coup commanders (Chavez surrendered first) to do the same. He seems rather subdued today, considering 51% of the electorate have turned out to be “traitors,” as he called opponents of the referendum last week.

And Putin’s party “wins” the Russian parliamentary elections. Wouldn’t a straightforward dictatorship without the trappings of election which fool no one just be simpler? Or hold the election, but make up the results, as in Chechnya where there was a 99% turnout and a 99% vote for United Russia. Instead, they went to really a lot of effort to coerce millions of people into getting absentee ballots and filling them out as directed. Seems like a lot of wasted effort to me, but perhaps threatening people and breaking up demonstrations is just how they stay warm.

Andrei Lugovoi, the man believed to have murdered Alexander Litvinenko with polonium, has been elected to the Duma, gaining parliamentary immunity. Hurrah for democracy!

Bush made another little speech attacking Congress this morning for not doing his bidding fast enough on the budget, Telecom amnesty, warrantless electronic surveillance, and the alternative minimum tax. He even made a little joke: “In a political maneuver designed to block my ability to make recess appointments, congressional leaders arranged for a senator to come in every three days or so, bang a gavel, wait for about 30 seconds, bang a gavel again, and then leave. Under the Senate rules, this counts as a full day. If 30 seconds is a full day, no wonder Congress has got a lot of work to do.” He’s just jealous that they get to bang a gavel and he doesn’t. And because if they gave him one, it would take him a full day just to figure out how to make it work.

Now if he could only find some other sort of symbol...

Welcome

A lawyer for the US government told a British Court of Appeals that it is the position of the US that it has the legal right to seize without legal proceedings (i.e., kidnap) anyone, anywhere in the world, wanted for trial in the US on any charge, not just terrorism. Of course that’s a legal right under American law; the countries in which these kidnappings take place might have different rules. Or not. Possibly it’s just time to declare every other nation on earth null and void. Because, really, the continued existence of other “nations” with “national” “sovereignty” just gets in our way.

One country that is entirely welcoming is Scotland. We know this because after spending, if memory serves (I somehow forgot to post this story a week or two ago), to come up with a new national slogan, they came up with “Welcome to Scotland.” Reminds me of a British city council some years ago that held a contest among city employees to come up with the best money-saving idea. The winner of the £100 prize had this cunning scheme: offer a prize to members of the public to come up with the best money-saving idea.

Hey, did you know that Belgium hasn’t been able to form a government since June and may be about to fall apart as a nation? Someone should look into that.

OMG, it’s Ruprecht and Ruprecht!

Sectors hiding toilet paper

Hugo Chavez threatens to nationalize Spanish banks operating in Venezuela unless the king of Spain apologizes for telling him to shut up. This follows his intemperate exchange of words with Uribe. Venezuela will hold a vote tomorrow for Chavez’s referendum for a raft of sweeping presidential powers and an end to presidential term limits (Chavez said yesterday “If God gives me life and help, I will be at the head of the government until 2050,” when he will be 95), with the term being extended to a not-very-democratic seven years. Also, the voting age would be dropped to 16. And the working day and week reduced. And lots of other things, all stuffed into a single yes or no vote. Bloomberg News says, though I haven’t seen it elsewhere, that Chavez is threatening to resign if the referendum fails.

The Chavez administration is accusing – and it wouldn’t surprise me – business leaders of creating the shortages of recent weeks to influence the vote. The finance minister says, “We know there are sectors hiding toilet paper.”

In contrast to George Bush’s speech on HIV/AIDS yesterday, Laura Bush’s piece in the WaPo does actually mention gay (and bisexual) men. So although it’s against the strict policy of this blog to give credit where credit is due, I will give her credit for that. Elsewhere in the paper, the WaPo notes that George “chose to emphasize only the role of about 20 percent of the contractors, which come from the religious community.”

Headline of the day, AP: “Maine Town Honoring Earmuff Inventor.”

A robust culture of reporting things

Of all the subject lines in emails I’ve received from presidential campaigns, this has to be the most pathetic: “Biden surges past Richardson in Iowa.” He has 8% to Richardson’s 4% in a poll of likely caucus-goers. The email adds that he is “closing in on the front-runners” (Edwards, Clinton & Obama range from 23 to 27%).

Speaking of fuzzy math, the LAT notes that the US military is relying on Iraqi numbers about things like civilian deaths, enemy attacks, etc, and that those numbers... wait for it... may not be altogether accurate. Says a colonel on Petraeus’s planning staff, “The Iraqis don’t have a robust culture of reporting things.”

Late in the article there’s a mention of something I hadn’t heard before: “In October, for example, the entire command and control system used by Iraqi security forces to communicate with headquarters was shut down for two weeks when the government failed to pay the U.S. contractor that provides the satellite communications. For those two weeks, U.S. commanders and the Iraqi government received no reports from Iraqi forces in the field.”

In honor of World AIDS day (tomorrow), Bush gave yet another speech on the subject (at a Methodist church, naturally) which failed to mention gay people. Indeed, he mentioned the people who actually have HIV/AIDS only in passing, and none by name. Instead, he focused on “people who have dedicated their lives to save lives.” Especially if those people are motivated by religion, by the “universal call to love a neighbor”, the “timeless calling to heal the sick [he may have forgotten that AIDS can’t actually be healed] and comfort the lonely.” Generosity is a favorite word of Bush’s, especially when talking about American assistance to Africa, although I’m not sure such fulsome praise of one’s own “generosity” is really consistent with a generosity of spirit. People with the disease appeared in the speech only as the passive objects of that generosity. Or worse, since he implies that they got it because of their lack of proper Christian morals: “Faith-based groups... are changing behavior by changing hearts -- and they are helping to defeat this epidemic one soul at a time.” World AIDS Day, he said, is “a day we resolve to continue this work of healing and redemption.” Who is it he thinks requires redemption?

Above the fray

In re-runs of last night’s debate, CNN censored (without mentioning that they were doing it) the question posed by the gay retired brigadier general, and the candidates’ responses to it, because he has links to the Clinton campaign, which as we know invalidates both his question about gays in the military and his 43 years’ experience as a gay in the military.

Among the emails I’ve received from various Republican presidential campaigns today claiming victory in the debate is one from the Fred Thompson people, claiming he “was able to stay above the fray and out of the constant bickering between others around him.” Dozed off, did he?

Multiple caption contest

After blogging last night’s Republican debate, I’m still slowly recovering the will to live, so I’ll throw it open to you, the discerning blog reader, to caption pictures of 1) Laura Bush in a coat Nancy Reagan left behind, looking at a Christmas decoration with the sort of rapt attention George usually gives to shiny objects, 2) George and El Salvador’s President Saca, 3) Elsewhere in the Oval Office during that event, Condi and Bob Gates.

Republican debate: working in a small tight unit

Transcript (somewhat faulty), part 1, part 2.

Another YouTube debate and, oh good, the first video is a song.

Romney says Giuliani had a “sanctuary city,” except, occasionally, a Haitian would have a plunger shoved up his ass. Rudy says Twitt had a sanctuary mansion. Romney asks if he, as a home(mansion)owner, was supposed to go out and ask for the papers of any worker with a “funny accent.”


Tancredo rejects the idea that there are jobs no American will take, not even mowing Romney’s yard with a funny accent.

Huckabee, attacked for Arkansas’s merit-based college scholarships for undocumented aliens, says if he hadn’t gotten a college education, he might be picking lettuce in Mitt Romney’s yard.

Ron Paul, your weirdo followers think there’s a secret conspiracy to merge the US, Canada and Mexico, do you? Paul: heh, heh, no of course I don’t – the conspiracy isn’t a secret.


McCain takes another swipe at a program to study the DNA of bears, making a so-so joke that he doesn’t know if it’s for paternity or a criminal matter. What the hell does he have against bears? Other examples of wasteful spending he’s fought against in the Senate? Children’s health care.

Oh good, an animated Uncle Sam. Sam wants to eliminate income tax in favor of a national sales tax.

McCain says that Ron Paul, with his “isolationism,” would have allowed Hitler to come to power. In fact, McCain was in Iraq last week (I’m still waiting to see pictures of him in a helmet and flak suit), and evidently all the American soldiers stationed there gave him a message for Ron Paul: “and their message to you is... let us win.” If all 160,000 soldiers have a candidate they’re supporting, McCain was too modest to say who that might be.


Paul points out that it is not isolationism not to want to invade other countries. But he completely evades the whole Hitler thing. What were you doing while Hitler came to power, Congressman Paul, and why won’t you talk about it?

Chuck Norris is in the audience.

A guy in Manhattan Beach eats some corn and asks if the candidates would cut farm subsidies. All candidates: thanks, we’d like to win in Iowa.


Tancredo video: I am prepared to take on Hillary Clinton, or at least tiny snippets of Hillary Clinton taken out of context.

Thompson video: white lettering on black background just like Law & Order credits. Attacks Romney as a hypocrite on abortion and Huckabee as a hypocrite on taxes.

McCain video: I am also prepared to take on tiny snippets of Hillary Clinton taken out of context. Out-of-context Hillary is toast!

A guy with an assault rifle asks if anyone supports gun control. Anderson Cooper only puts the question to one of the candidates, possibly because of his name. Duncan Hunter says “from Bunker Hill to New Orleans to the rooftops of Fallujah, the right to keep and bear arms and use them effectively is an important part of America’s security.” I didn’t know the Second Amendment applied to Fallujah.

Asked what guns they own and which is their fave, Thompson says he owns several but won’t say what they are or where they are. McCain, interestingly, owns no guns.


A video made by a black father and son in Atlanta asks about black on black violence. Which Romney, racist prick that he is, blames on black children being born out of wedlock: “Well, one, about the war in the inner city -- number one is to get more moms and dads. That’s number one. And thank heavens Bill Cosby said it like it was. That’s where the root of crime starts.” Yes, thank heavens Bill Cosby gave cover for all the racist pricks.

Asked by a woman from Texas who called herself “Journey” whether women who have abortions should go to jail, everyone skirts (so to speak) the question by saying that that would be up to the states. Paul reminds us that he was an obstetrician, says in 30 years he never saw a medical need for an abortion, which suggests that some of his patients died needlessly. Thompson, while saying it’s up to the states, added that in state laws on post-viability abortion now, “It goes to the doctor performing the abortion, not the girl, or the young girl, or her parents, whoever it might be.” The questioner said nothing about the people seeking abortions being “girls” or “young girls.” Thompson, sexist prick that he is, just automatically infantilized them.

Q: “The death penalty, what would Jesus do?” Huckabee: fry ‘em, like I did as governor. Pressed, he added that Jesus was too smart to run for public office, ha ha.

Do you believe every word of the Bible is true? Giuliani: some of it’s allegorical, especially the stuff about not cheating on your wife. Romney: the Bible is the word of God. For some reason, he doesn’t mention the Book of Mormon.


Romney video: “ordinary isn’t good enough,” so go with slightly creepy.

Giuliani video: hey, I used to be mayor of New York, did you know that? Has a joke about “the city’s nemesis, King Kong.” Doesn’t mention 9/11.

Romney refuses to say if waterboarding is torture. McCain upbraids him for that, while Romney looks at him with a fixed look of slightly sour bemusement. McCain says “life is not 24 and Jack Bauer.” Life is Chloe O’Brien, however. Life is so Chloe O’Brien.

On Iraq, Thompson says “Too many people in this country are vested in a scenario of defeat. I’m vested in a scenario of victory”. 1) That language is lifted directly from Joe Lieberman. 2) Maybe Frederick of Hollywood should be avoiding words like “scenario.” He sounds like a producer who doesn’t understand why Rick can’t get the girl at the end of Casablanca.

Asked about using 9/11 excessively, Giuliani denies it.

Huckabee video: I’m Mike Huckabee, and God approves this message.

Retired Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr says he is openly gay. So why shouldn’t gays be in the military? Duncan Hunter says that most people who join the military are conservatives with Judeo-Christian values like, you know, hating queers, and they shouldn’t be forced to, and I swear to God I’m quoting, “work in a small tight unit” with gays. Gays in the military is evidently another issue Romney has flip-flopped on. McCain says don’t ask don’t tell is “working” (for whom, he does not say), and seems to say that Gen. Petraeus has told him this.


Asked about the space program, Huckabee says he’d send Hillary to Mars. Tancredo says Martians are trying to steal our jobs.

Ron Paul video: “There’s something going on in this country, and it stinks.”

The last question is about why Giuliani supported the Red Sox after the Yankees lost. Ten minutes after this thing was supposed to have ended, and they’re torturing us with a baseball question?

Command shtick

General Musharraf of Pakistan is a general no longer. He said, “I am bidding farewell to the army after having been in uniform for 46 years,” adding that it had gotten just a little bit gamey.


We’ve had many cheap laughs about the imagery of Mush taking off his uniform. Here’s another one: “Although I am taking off the uniform the army will always be in heart.”

It’s not just the uniform he’s giving up, but evidently also something called the “command stick,” which he can be seen fondling here:


That’s what we need, a command stick. Give Bush a command stick to play with and it’ll keep him out of trouble all day.

This march to war claim is pretty well created by punditry

AP has finally put out a partial transcript of its interview with Bush, some of which I dealt with in my last post.

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM? “And therefore, the first step in getting to the process we ended up on today is to - for me to have recognized that the problem is terror, and states cannot accept terror on their border, particularly democracies, nor can a state be formed because of terror.”

IN OTHER WORDS: “A moment like today just doesn’t happen. In other words, it requires work to set - to lay the groundwork for what was a successful conference. And now the hard work between Israel and the Palestinians begin.”

IN OTHER WORDS: “In other words, there has to be something more positive than that which is being - that which is on the horizon today.”

IN OTHER WORDS: “Well, it’s going to take a while for any agreement to be reached, and so I think that there is a - in other words, it’s going to take - it’s going - the negotiations between Israel and Palestine aren’t going to occur in one week. And so there’s a - there’s going to be an opportunity for expectations to be set right over time, if - for success and/or for failure.”

YOU’D THINK THAT, WOULDN’T YOU? “You would think that people would say, what a great opportunity, let’s all go promote a free society in Iraq.”

IN OTHER WORDS: “It is going to be very difficult for that Palestinian state to come into being, so long as there are terrorists who are able to exploit the - a weak government and launch attacks against their neighbors. And that’s exactly what the road map says must not happen. In other words, the implementation of the vision is subject to the road map.”

Asked what arguments he could make that would convince China to join in sanctions against Iran: “Other than they would be a major threat to peace? I think that’s pretty significant. That’s a pretty significant argument. And that’s the argument I’ve been making. In all due respect, I think this ‘march to war’ claim is pretty well created by punditry.”

Worth it to try

Riots in Paris, again. Says the secretary of the police union, “Our colleagues will not allow themselves to be fired upon indefinitely without responding.”

Here’s the thing about our perceptions of the French: no matter how francophilic you are, your immediate response to that quote was, “By surrendering?”

The Virginia Republican Party convinced the state Board of Elections to require voters in the presidential primary to sign this pledge: “I, the undersigned, pledge that I intend to support the nominee of the Republican Party for president.” That is just so wrong in so many ways. For a start, you cannot “pledge” to “intend” something. And the state has no right to require us to make any statement about what we will do in the privacy of the polling booth, to sign our name to what some people will believe is a legally binding document (because what’s the point of requiring you to sign something in an official setting that isn’t a legally binding document?). And it suggests that the basic unit of a democracy is not the individual citizen but the political party.

But at least Virginia isn’t under martial law – yet. In an interview with AP, which annoyingly hasn’t made a transcript available, George Bush said that General Musharraf “ought to lift the emergency law... It’s hard for me to envision a free and fair election under emergency law.” As opposed to the elections held in an Iraq under military occupation and civil war.

Bush also said that the quest for Israeli-Palestinian peace is “worth it to try” and that the Annapolis Conference was “the beginning of an outline of a vision.” Or possibly an outline of a vision of a beginning. Or a vision of an outline of a beginning of a dream of a sketch of the start of a... Say, George, do you think we might be past the beginning of an outline of a vision stage if you’d done anything about this, say, seven years ago? What am I saying? if George had tried to solve the Middle East problem seven years ago, the earth would be a smoldering irregular ball of charcoal now.

Now, though, he’s completely committed to making peace: “I work the phones, I listen, I encourage, I have meetings. I do a lot of things.”


“The danger,” he said, “is for the Palestinians that unless there’s a vision described, that people can aspire to, hopeful, it is conceivable that we could lose an entire generation - or a lot of a generation - to radicals and extremists.” Or they could be bombed by the Israeli Air Force, that’s also kind of a danger for the Palestinians.

(Update: more on this interview in my next post.)


Extremists and extremism, by the way, were his words for the day, appearing seven times in his statement at the Conference: “we must not cede victory to the extremists” “the extremists are seeking to impose a dark vision on the Palestinian people” “if Palestinian reformers cannot deliver on this hopeful vision, then the forces of extremism and terror will be strengthened, a generation of Palestinians could be lost to the extremists” “The day is coming when the terrorists and extremists who threaten the Israeli and Palestinian people will be marginalized and eventually defeated.” (Isn’t that two days?)


I’ve forgotten which blog had the video, maybe someone could post the link in comments, but Bush totally screwed up Abbas’s first name. I never knew “Mahmoud” had so many syllables.

Who could ask for anything more?

AP headline: “Doctors Restore Cheney’s Heart Rhythm.”

Seeing whether or not peace is possible

If Bush was insistent on meeting the Israeli and Palestinian leaders separately ahead of the Annapolis Conference, couldn’t he just once have prevented the (admittedly correct) impression of collusion by meeting Abbas rather than Olmert first? Anyway, Bush met Olmert this morning and will meet Abbas in the afternoon.


He told Olmert, “I’m looking forward to continuing our serious dialogue with you and the President of the Palestinian Authority to see whether or not peace is possible.” See, and you thought there was no point to this conference.

Let’s pull back a little, so we can see the nice Christ-Mass decorations.


For the hell of it, here’s a picture of a special prayer session against the Annapolis Conference held at the Wailing Wall.


And here’s one of Bush this morning, looking especially chimp-like.


A reminder: there’s a label for posts dating back to 1996 about Trent Lott: the man, the – for lack of a better word – hair, the legend, if you feel like reviewing his career as it comes to an end.

Reject the extreme within them

The Annapolis Conference (motto: “Lower Your Expectations... No, Lower Than That... Lower... Keep Going...”) is about to begin. George Bush has issued a statement about it: “I remain personally committed to implementing my vision of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.” Yes, George, it’s all about you and your “vision.”

Twitt Romney says that the real problem is “broader than in that one hot spot as we help the Muslims themselves reject the extreme within them.” Why can’t they all be bland and boring (but with a slightly creepy undertone), just like Mitt?

Fred Thompson spent the post-Thanksgiving weekend shoring up his position as the gun nuts’ fave’rit candidate, going from a gun store in New Hampshire to a gun show in South Carolina to a hobo hunt in an undisclosed location. Here, a bored AP photographer takes a, so to speak, shot of the Fredster behind a row of rifles, kinda like prison bars.


New Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced that he will join the Kyoto Accords. Also, he plans to get to the bottom of the whole toilets-flushing-counter-clockwise thing.

But do ants really need an aphrodisiac tonic?

Reuters: “Troops and police in Shenyang, northeast China, were deployed after thousands of demonstrators demanded help to recover their savings from a get-rich-quick scheme that involved raising ants to make an aphrodisiac tonic.”

The London Times has an article about increasing corruption in Afghanistan, full of good but annoyingly anonymous quotes. “The British public would be up in arms if they knew that the district appointments in the south for which British soldiers are dying are there just to protect drug routes.” “It’s not Afghan culture. It’s a culture of impunity. We created it. We came in in 2001 with cases of cash and made certain people untouchables.” The article suggests that “The Afghan Government fears that if corrupt officials in the south were replaced by staunch law enforcers, the huge profits from heroin trafficking would end up with the Taleban.”

Humanitarian minimum

In case you were wondering, I had Chinese take-out today, commemorating the first Thanksgiving, when the Pilgrims were saved from starvation by the native Chinese with orange chicken and potstickers.

Speaking of people threatened with starvation, Israel, as it threatened, will start cutting power supplies to Gaza next month, but claims the cuts won’t “harm the humanitarian minimum to which Israel is committed.” It’s nice to know they’re committed to a humanitarian minimum.

Speaking of humanitarian minima, and of minimal humans, George Bush called several no doubt carefully screened members of the military to wish them a happy Thanksgiving, saying it was “the least I can do.” Never let it be said that George Bush doesn’t do the least he can do.