Apostate!

A McCain ad asks the fundamental question of our times: “If we can’t trust Mitt Romney on Ronald Reagan, how can we trust him to lead America?”

Fund the homeland security

A survey of British youths shows that the majority believe that Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood and King Arthur were real people, but more than 20% think Winston Churchill is a fictional character.

50 years from now, Americans will think that George W. Bush was a cartoon character, like Elmer Fudd.

The US admits killing 9 civilians, including a child, “as coalition forces pursued al-Qaeda.” And by “pursued,” they mean “dropped bombs from airplanes on anything that moved.”

Bush issued his $3.1 trillion budget today. “It’s on a laptop computer,” he said proudly.


Although evidently some copies were printed as well.


“And it’s a good budget,” he said. Who’s a good budget? You are! Yes you are! “It’s a budget that achieves some important objectives.” For $3.1 trillion, it better achieve every important objective, every not-so-important objective, and every trivial objective. “One, it understands our top priority is to defend our country...” It... understands? See, that’s what happens when you put a $3.1 trillion budget on a laptop computer: it achieves sentience. And that never ends well. “...so we fund our military, as well as fund the homeland security.”

“It’s central that we make sure that we deal with the uncertainties -- the economic uncertainties we face.” An interesting slip there. How often does Bush admit that he faces uncertainties? And what might those uncertainties be?

• How to pronounce nuclear.
• What exactly is a laptop computer anyway?
• Is that my ass or my elbow?
• Could someone ‘splain to me which one is Iraq and which one is Iran again?

Oh, I could do those all day. Or you guys could...

With success like this...

Headline of the day (LA Times): “Schools Scramble to Find Questionable Meat.” I didn’t even know there was a shortage of questionable meat.

Secretary of War Robert Gates says that Friday’s suicide bombings in Baghdad markets are a sign of desperation, “a manifestation of the success of our military operations.” Woo hoo! And on Thursday, Gates said that the increasing number of casualties in Afghanistan caused by suicide bombings and IEDs is a sign that the Taliban have “failed in conventional military conflict with the NATO allies.” Double woo hoo! USA! USA!

A rather extraordinary sentence from John McCain, which I evidently missed two weeks ago: “It’s not social issues I care about.” He was talking about abortion and gays, the only social issues Republicans care about, but boy he really is running to be a president who will just occupy himself doing the war thing and not bother with any of the other piddling small stuff.

By the way, when I googled “It’s not social issues I care about,” looking for more context, Google asked, “Did you mean: ‘Its not social issues I care about’”. Et tu, Google? Et tu? Here’s that context: “It’s not social issues I care about. It’s the Constitution of the United States I care about.” That piece from the WaPo’s campaign blog also quotes him saying, “The rights of the unborn are as important as the rights of the born.” Absolutely, the right of the fetus to free exercise of religion, to bear arms, and not have soldiers quartered in the womb he or she inhabits, should be sacrosanct.

We got issues

A NY appellate court has ruled that the state must recognize gay marriages contracted outside of NY (in this case in Canada) since NY law does not specifically say otherwise. The ruling is not especially broad, since it does not challenge the ability of the state legislature to pass such a law, so it’s not much of a challenge to the “sanctity of marriage,” but I suspect that cries of “judicial activism” and the issue of the threatened gayification of marriage and subsequent end of civilization as we know it have just reentered the election campaign. Yippee.

Bush makes the ultimate case for free trade

At the Kansas City headquarters of Hallmark Cards, Inc.: “if we end up having trade wars, it’s going to be less likely Hallmark products will be sold overseas.”

Religious people do not murder the innocent, redux

Something I intended to write two posts back, but it went right out of my head: Bush said that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aren’t religious conflicts because religious people don’t murder the innocent. Of course Pervez Kambakhsh, that journalist whose death sentence was just backed by the Afghan Senate, which, er, is supposed to be on our side in the “ideological struggle between those of us who love freedom and human rights and human dignity, and those who want to impose their dark vision on how people should live their lives,” isn’t innocent: he’s guilty of blasphemy. So that’s okay then.

Democratic Debate: Hillary would be on anyone’s shortlist

Transcript.

Sitting next to each other, Barack and Hillary look like the anchors of the local 11:00 news.

Audience members included Meathead, Josh Lyman, Annie Hall, Ugly Betty, Stevie Wonder, Pierce Brosnan, Leonardo diCaprio....

Obama says he was friends with Hillary before the campaign, and will be after the campaign. But now, I believe that implies, he’s gonna eviscerate her.


Hillary: “Just by looking at us, you can tell we are not more of the same.” And then we open our mouths... (Later: actually, this was the dullest debate yet, and seriously deficient as blog fodder. Some of that in a good way, as when they were genuinely discussing differences in their health insurance plans, but mostly they know that neither of them is changing many minds before Tuesday, and are looking beyond it to the general election.)


Obama says he brings up Hillary’s flip–flopping on illegal immigrants getting driver’s licenses only to show how difficult the issue is.

Hillary on her Iraq war vote: “coercive diplomacy” is cool, she likes “coercive diplomacy,” uses it on Bill all the time, but “what no one could have fully appreciated...” Who is she, all of a sudden, Condi? “...is how obsessed this president was with this particular mission”. Blitzer asks if she’s saying that she was naive in trusting Bush and the crowd, possibly led by Diane Keaton, boos loudly.


Speaking of presidents on a mission, Hillary, when asked how she’d “control” Bill when they were back in the White House when she sure can’t do it on the campaign trail, gave out one of those guffaws, possibly at the thought of Bill, naked, tied up, with a hood over his head, thinking he’s in for some kinky sex, but actually on his way to Guantanamo. Or maybe to that “Lost” island. Then says she doesn’t want the campaign to be about Bill but the issues.


Barack, would you make Hillary your running mate? Astonishingly, he refuses to answer the inane question. He does say that Hillary would be “on anyone’s short list”. Isn’t that cute, it’s nine months before the election and he’s already drawing up death lists.

Thank goodness they didn’t abandon a value system that they believe is universal

McCain’s website not only trumpets his endorsement by The Arnold, but also endorsements by several of what McCain calls “distinguished members of the Vietnamese-American community” (a member of the California State Assembly, members of the Garden Grove and Westminster city councils, and a no doubt distinguished member of the Midway City Sanitary District). At least, he calls them “distinguished members of the Vietnamese-American community” in public – now. In 2000, he commented, “I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.”

Bush gave a speech today at something called the Nevada Policy Research Institute.


He told them that “The world in which we live is a dangerous world, but a world full of great opportunity.” Dangerous opportunity.

We’re facing, he said, an “ideological struggle of people who use asymmetrical warfare.” It’s not a religious conflict, he insisted. “And I’ll tell you why: because one of the tactics, and the main tactic of those enemies of freedom, is to murder the innocent to achieve their objectives. Religious people do not murder the innocent.” Religious people do not murder the innocent. I’m telling you, the principle on which this country is run is government of the people who slept through history class, by the people who slept through history class, and for the people who slept through history class.

IN OTHER WORDS: “The fundamental question is whether or not democracy can take hold. In other words, the security situation is improving, and therefore will there be efforts by the Iraqi people to seize the moment?”

SITTING DOWN WITH ELECTED: “It is vital for this generation to assume the responsibilities of peace and take the lead, so that when we look back 30 to 40 years from now people will say, thank goodness America didn’t lose faith with liberty. Thank goodness they didn’t abandon a value system that they believe is universal. And I believe an American President will be sitting down with elected from the Middle East saying the same thing to audiences in Nevada that I said about Prime Minister Koizumi.”

Wherein I find myself in complete agreement with Sean McCormack

Human Rights Watch has issued a report saying that the US & EU of accepting the pretense of countries such as Pakistan, Kenya, Russia, Thailand to be democracies simply because they have held some form of elections. Responded State Dept spokesmodel Sean McCormack: “In terms of the United States and this administration speaking up in defence of, and advocating for, and putting its effort behind its rhetoric, I don’t think there’s any question about where we stand in terms of promotion of democracy.” No, there really isn’t any question.

A judge in Rio de Janeiro has banned a samba group’s float, with heaps of mannequins representing the Holocaust, from Carnivale.

Republican Debate: You can’t have a president who sees a whole bunch of America as invisible

Transcript.

5:06 McCain: “Let’s have some straight talk...” Oh, let’s.

Speaking of catch-phrases, with Giuliani out of the race we need never hear “The Terrorists’ War on Us” again.

Huckabee thinks Congress has been betraying Reagan’s principles by increasing the deficit. Does Huckles remember the 1980s?

Huckabee: “It’s not gonna get better unless we have some serious leadership in Washington that says that we’re going to have to start having policies that touch the people not just at the top but the people at the bottom.” Well, that’s just kinky.

Defending his record as governor against McCain, Romney says several times that “facts are stubborn things.” Given that they’re in the Reagan (snicker) Library – and that’s actually it’s official name, the Reagan (snicker) Library – shouldn’t he repeat the Great Communicator’s phrase “facts are stupid things”?


Huckabee, wistfully, wishes that Rush Limbaugh loved him as much as he loves Rush.

Romney: they don’t call it America warming, they call it global warming.

Huckles thinks people will spend the stimulus plan’s tax rebates on “shoes that they probably don’t even need” (in Arkansas, shoes are considered a luxury item), and that shoe will probably come from China.

McCain: “When a town on Norway is somehow affected by the housing situation in the United States of America, we’ve gotten ourselves into a very interesting dilemma.” Says a mortgage should be one page long and in big letters at the bottom say “I understand this document.”


McCain: “I’m tired of borrowing money from China.” As Samuel Johnson said, when you’re tired of borrowing money from China, you’re tired of life.

McCain repeatedly refuses to answer whether he would still vote for his own 2006 immigration plan, saying it wouldn’t come up for a vote now.

Romney: “It’s important that we, as Republicans, stay in the house that Reagan built.” Absolutely: someone nail the doors shut.

By the way, the major advertiser on CNN for this debate: the coal industry.


There was much back and forth over whether Romney last April was advocating a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq when he said, “Well, there’s no question that the president and Prime Minister al-Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones that they speak about, but those shouldn’t be for public pronouncement. You don’t want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you’re going to be gone.” McCain has been attacking this, not for the idea of a secret timetable being monumentally silly, but for suggesting that there might actually be a time when we leave Iraq. McC: “If we weren’t leaving, how could the enemy lay in the weeds?” He also repeats, over and over and over, that timetables was a “buzzword” for withdrawal. Romney says the Washington Post “gave you three Pinocchios” for making that claim.


The Huck hopes we won’t be in Iraq for 100 years like McCain says we should be, but “we need to leave with victory, and we need to leave with honor.”

Huckles says if we leave prematurely, “It will erupt in a completely destabilized environment into which that vacuum is exactly the kind of situation that al Qaeda can build a strong base.” Put “in other words” at the start of that sentence, and it’s an almost classic Bushism.

McCain is still touting the judgement that led him to say that Rumsfeld was incompetent. Way to set a high standard.

Romney says that people prefer governors as presidents rather than senators because “They’re actually leading something.”

Mittens says one of his two great regrets in life (he doesn’t say what the other one is) is that he didn’t serve in the military, which he’d “love” to have done. I’m sure everyone who did go to Vietnam just “loved” it.

Curiously enough, it’s one of McCain’s two great regrets in life that he wasn’t a Mormon missionary in the south of France. I see a wacky Disney switcheroo movie in the offing.


COMPETITION: What might the other great regret in Romney’s life be? Polygamy jokes will be disallowed as too easy. Let me start you off: He always wished he could be a real boy.

Romney says that Lincoln wasn’t a military expert either, and he turned out all right. Twitt: Lincoln was a captain in the Illinois militia.

Huckleberry: “You can’t have a president who sees a whole bunch of America as invisible.”

Would Reagan endorse you? Mittens: yes. McCain: yes. Paul: probably, because he was in favor of the gold standard too. Huckabee: Well, I would endorse Reagan. “Reagan was something more than just a policy wonk.” Yes, yes he was.

There are signs that our economy are slowing

Video of the day, from the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing you’ve probably already heard about but perhaps haven’t seen (TPM, from which I’ve taken the video, has the transcript), of Biden gently getting Attorney General Mukasey to clarify that he really does mean that his “conscience” isn’t “shocked” by water-boarding or by extension any other form of torture, unless the method is disproportionate to the information being sought: “the heinousness of doing it, the cruelty of doing it, balanced against the value.” Biden being Biden, he made his point perfectly but then didn’t just stop talking.



I think we all need to take a deep breath and look at Margaret, who is 10 days old.



Today, Bush came all the way to California to tell us, “You know, California is a really important state for our country”. It’s nice to be appreciated.

He took along our esteemed governator to a helicopter factory: “The company was started in the kitchen, and now he’s got the Terminator coming by to herald the success.”


Mostly he talked about the importance of ratifying the free-trade agreements: “And when you’re more likely to sell a helicopter to Panama, it means you’re more likely to keep work, that’s what that means.” And he pretended that the only reason “some” people oppose the treaty with Colombia is that they don’t believe in the principle of free trade – “Some say trade hurts our economy” – as opposed to, for instance, the rather large number of unsolved murders of trade unionists.

IN OTHER WORDS: “Well, we’ve negotiated free trade agreements. In other words, we sat down with countries and said, let’s get a free trade agreement in place.”

IN OTHER WORDS: “Fourth quarter growth slowed to .6 percent. In other words, there are signs that our economy are slowing.”

Heart and soul

McCain says of big ol’ loser Giuliani, that he “invested his heart and soul in this primary, and conducted himself with all the qualities of the exceptional American leader he truly is.” Well no wonder Rudy lost, if his investment was that small.

I don’t care how cheap a shot that was, it was satisfying.

No, I wanted the big flags

After his event at a “faith-based” project (see previous post), Bush had a meeting and a dinner with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and combatant commanders. He may have confused the two: “And our military is compassionate, as well. I’m looking forward to the stories from our commanders who will share with us the great compassion of our soldiers, whether it’s to provide relief from a disaster, or to help some child recognize the beauty of going to school.”

The London Times points us to a profanity-laden press release issued by the Romney campaign earlier this month. The profanities (all purportedly uttered by John McCain) include, and I quote, “F*ck you!”, “chickens---”, “a**hole,” “f*cking jerk,” and “Clinton.” Shocking!

Here’s a picture from a Potty-Mouth McCain “town hall meeting” in Florida Sunday that I haven’t found an excuse to use:


You know what they say: the bigger the flag...

There was the notion that somehow that there needed to be a clear separation of church and state

Today Bush visited something called the Jericho Program, an Episcopalian program that works with ex-prisoners, or, as Bush kept calling them, souls: “There’s no more important goal than to help good souls become -- come back to our society as productive citizens.”


He was there to talk about the importance of the government funding such religious groups (I’m not clear if the Jericho Programs gets such funding) and the importance in general of religion, the practice of which, as we know, had been banned by the Clinton Administration: “When I came into office, the nation’s traditions of religious freedom and equal opportunity were facing unnecessary obstacles. ... There was the notion that somehow that there needed to be a clear separation of church and state”.


IN OTHER UNHOLY WORDS: “Unfortunately, in some instances where there was an interface with government, people were told that in order to interface you have to take the cross off the wall, or take down the Star of David. In other words, you had to abandon the very principle by which you existed in the first place.”

EFFECTIVENESS: “If a program was effective because they were willing to recognize a higher power, if a program was effective because people responded because they felt a call from a higher power, than to deny the higher power really reduced the effectiveness of the program.”


LORD LOVE A DUCK: “That’s, after all, one of the key tenets of faith: Love a neighbor like you’d be -- like to love -- be loved yourself.”

“As you might remember, I drank too much at one time in my life.” And if you do remember, or have some of those missing police records, you might tell him about it, because his twenties and thirties are kind of a blur.

(Update: the WaPo reports that when one of the men told Bush that more mentoring and counseling programs were needed in west Baltimore, Bush, who probably isn’t a big viewer of The Wire, told him, “There are programs like that all over the city; they are called churches,” then started in piously about “the notion that there is a higher power that will help people change their thinking.” The man agreed that there is a higher power. The WaPo writes, “‘Step One, right?’ Bush said, alluding to Alcoholics Anonymous’s second step.”)

State of the Union Address: Spreading the hope of freedom (in 357 days)

Transcript.

6:08 Bush just waggled his eyebrows


and winked


at Congress. Which I’m sure makes them feel special and tingly all over.

I didn’t catch which members of the Cabinet and Congress are staying away to carry on the work of government should there be a terrorist attack or Cheney get hold of an Uzi. (Update: it was Dirk Kempthorne. Had anything of that nature happened, it would have been President Dirk Kempthorne.) (Let me repeat that: President Dirk Kempthorne.) Also, I believe Atrios is sitting this one out in case every blogger’s head explodes.

Both Bush twins, however, are there for the first time. Should there be a terrorist attack or Cheney get hold of an Uzi, the genetic line would be extinguished.

6:12 Bush says the economy is going through uncertainty, and Cheney’s head suddenly jerks.

6:12 Boehner: this is an intervention: you are spending too much time in the tanning salon.

6:13 He says that some people wouldn’t object to paying higher taxes, and “The IRS accepts checks and money orders.” Also, the blood of the innocent and the howls of the damned.


6:15 “American families have to balance their budgets, so should their government.” Wait, I’m supposed to be balancing my budget? Uh oh.

6:22 He wants to “liberate children trapped in failing schools”. PS 23 and Martin Luther King Jr High School: the new axis of evil.

6:24 If we don’t pass the free trade agreement with Colombia, we will “embolden the purveyors of false populism in our hemisphere.” Meaning Hugo Chavez, of course, although ABC’s cameras went amusingly to John Kerry.

6:27 Greenhouse agreements will only work if every country on the planet signs and none gets a “free ride.” Especially on public transportation, which he mysteriously left out of his half-hearted laundry list of measures to reduce global warming.


6:34 “We’ve seen wedding guests in blood-soaked finery staggering from a hotel in Jordan”. Of course, the US has soaked more than our share of finery, bombing or shooting up weddings on several occasions in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
(Update: Eli at LeftI is all over this one too.)

6:37 We are “spreading the hope of freedom.” Afghanistan is now “a young democracy where boys and girls are going to school.” Um, right.

6:44 Al Qaida is on the run in Iraq. Just like last year and the year before that and the year before that. A lot of running, is what I’m saying.

It’s hard to find anything to say about this, it’s all very stale. “Return on success,” other bits of leftover rhetoric.

6:46 He asks Congress to fully fund the troops. ABC zooms right in on some guy who’s yawning, sitting next to a woman in uniform.

6:49 A failed Iraq would embolden the extremists. That’s the second use of “embolden.”

6:52 Iran (which he’s been accusing in rather vague terms of being behind everything we don’t like throughout the Middle East) should “come clean about your [he refers to it in the second person] nuclear intentions and past actions”.


6:56 “America opposes genocide in Sudan.” In case anyone was, you know, asking.

6:57 The US is leading the fight against “global hunger.” Which I think is when you really want a globe for dinner, with maybe a Triptik for dessert.

He never actually said what the state of the union is, although he did say if we did blah blah blah the state of the union will remain strong.

Well that was an hour well spent.

The State of the Union is...

Three hours before kick off, we are now taking bets on what Bush will declare the State of the Union to be:

more at twiigs.com...

A bit of an overreach

Huckabee went from talk show to talk show this morning, trying to explain that what he really meant when he said in the last debate that Iraq might still have had WMDs was that Iraq might still have had WMDs. He admitted “I don’t have any evidence,” but the guy who doesn’t believe in evolution hardly requires any evidence to suggest that they might be in Syria or “some remote area of Jordan.” “But simply saying — we didn’t find them so therefore they didn’t exist — is a bit of an overreach.” He added that “My point was, Saddam Hussein bragged that he had them. We know that he in the past had used them. So there have been weapons of mass destruction. ... They didn’t exist when we got into Iraq, but that didn’t mean they never were there.” Oh, don’t you try to get out of this with your clever verb tenses, mister.


He added that Bush “didn’t lie to us. ... I support that the president did what he believed was necessary. ... But to second guess the president now, I think, is really not a very prudent thing to do. It doesn’t make us feel any better.” Define “us,” Mike. He likened such second-guessing to Monday-morning-quarterbacking, saying “But when you’re out there on the game, and guys that are weighing 320 pounds are rushing at you, you know, you have to make split-second decisions. And sometimes they’re not always perfect.” Of course there may not have been any 320-pound guys, or they may have been in Syria or some remote area of Jordan...

By the way, this week he’s said that he’s afraid of 320-pound football players and of Chuck Norris kicking him in the head. Also cheese, he has an unnatural fear of cheese. My point is: for him, fear is as an acceptable excuse for bad decision-making, which just doesn’t bode all that well for his own decision-making process (plus, of course, the decision to invade Iraq was not made in a split-second).

He concluded, “I think what we’ve got to do is to say, let’s make the best of what we have in Iraq.” Yeah, let’s do that.

Elsewhere, Romney said that McCain is “trying desperately to change the topic from the economy and trying to get back to Iraq.” Indeed, McCain told Tim Russert,

I believe that most Republicans’ first priority is the threat of radical Islamic extremism. Now, I know the concerns about the economy...

MR. RUSSERT: More than the economy?

SEN. McCAIN: More than the economy at the end of the day.

And he told a campaign rally, “There’s going to be other wars.” Oh good, something to look forward to, then.


McCain’s campaign promises: pizza and the draft.

Yes, we can

I’m perfectly content with Obama’s wanting to run as a “candidate who happens to be black” rather than as a “black candidate,” but... the crowds at his victory rally were evidently chanting “Race doesn’t matter!” Er, guys, hello? It kinda does. Still. Sorry.

They were also chanting “Yes, we can!” a rather perfectly emblematic motto for Obama because it is a message of optimism and hope that we can do, er, something that it never quite gets around to specifying.


The Clinton people, who do think that race matters, if only because so few African-Americans in SC voted for her, are quietly briefing reporters that Obama only won because there was such a high turnout among black voters, as if that were some sort of dirty trick.

Actually, I think I do understand the stock market better now

I seem to have no interesting words of my own tonight. I know! Let’s steal other people’s.

Armando Iannucci explains the stock market’s doings:

Last week, they instantly panicked because they thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, which, in turn, made things 10 times worse and so caused them all to panic again.

Some of them are now panicking that how they may panic in the future will affect share values even more and that the only way to prevent this is by panicking so much now that it pre-empts future panic.

So tomorrow, if you see anyone soiling themselves on the Stock Exchange trading floor, it’s actually quite strategic and they’re probably being asked to do it by a man on the other end of a phone in Japan.

WaPo Style Invitational contest for slogans for countries. A rather mixed bag, but here are the good ones:

Burkina Faso: Not Your Father’s Upper Volta

Canada: Home of the Almighty Dollar

Denmark: Oh, So Nothing’s Rotten in YOUR Country?

Germany: It Is Not Necessary to Have a Humorous Slogan

Germany: Genocide Free Since 1945!

Greenland: Site of the 2060 Summer Olympics

India: For More Information Press 1

Iran: World’s Largest Non-American Theocracy

Myanmar: We Liked “Burma” Better Too, but These Guys Have Guns

Qatar: Wish U Were Here

United States: War Is Peace

People would say, uh-oh, I’m losing value

Bush interview with USA Today, um, today.

Says the State of the Union Address “will make it clear I’m going to sprint to the finish.” In fact, he’ll deliver the speech while sprinting around the House Chamber. He hasn’t decided yet if he’ll be using the Rocky theme music or the Chariots of Fire theme music.

“We’re a generous nation when it comes to hunger.”

YES, I’VE OFTEN SAID THAT MYSELF: “And therefore one of the concerns has been there has been a wealth effect - people would say, uh-oh, I’m losing value, and therefore I’m not going to be an active consumer.”

A PIECE OF UNCERTAINTY: “One of the uncertain - a piece of uncertainty is whether or not someone’s taxes are going to go up.”

WHIPPING UP THE POPULOUS: “And I fully understand that you can whip up populous sentiment against trade”

IN OTHER WORDS: “In other words, we’re more accepting of people’s products in our country and, yet, when we try to sell ours into theirs, they face a higher barrier to entry.”

YAY! OPPORTUNITIES! “You really look at the world - you’ve got Iraq, Iran, Middle Eastern peace opportunities, North Korea, Sudan, Burma. This is a world that is full of opportunities to spread freedom and hope and opportunity.”

THAT BRUSH WON’T CLEAR ITSELF: “And when it’s all said and done, I will have finished it with all my soul and all my might, and will go do something different.”