Let God protect Bosnia and Herzegovina

Robert Fisk: charges against 6 Algerians, some with Bosnian citizenship, held at Guantanamo that they planned in 2001 to blow up the American embassy in Bosnia have been dropped. According to the Bosnian prime minister, American Deputy Ambassador Christopher Hoh threatened to withdraw NATO peacekeeping troops from Bosnia if they were not handed over, and “then let God protect Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

How is it that the only mentions of Hoh on the interwebtubes are about this story?

The Defiant One

Well, I watched the Obama infomercial last night, and here is the sum total of what I took away from it: I never noticed before how much he talks with his hands.

“SPREADING THE WEALTH” REPUBLICANS CAN BELIEVE IN: Banks spending all that government bailout money (all right, half of it anyway) on dividends rather than loans: everyone grab your pitchforks and torches and head over to one of these banks.

Bush went to the graduation ceremony for the FBI Academy in Quantico, you know, the place Jodie Foster jogged through in The Silence of the Lambs. He said, “The FBI has inspired generations of children to dream of joining the force. (Laughter.) Sounds like I inspired one or two myself. (Laughter and applause.)” Oh, George, I don’t think they joined the FBI just on the off-chance that they’d be the ones leading you off in handcuffs one day. (Actually, they may be laughing at his calling the FBI “the force.”)


McCain campaigned today in Defiance, Ohio, just so that this picture would be taken:


Or possibly so that this picture would be taken:


The Daily Telegraph has a photo tribute to George Bush, 29 pictures (of which long-time readers will have seen about 25 here).

99 and 44/100 percent of the American people are going to make a decision on who is best to lead this country

John McCain was interviewed by fellow decrepitudinous oldster Larry King today. Judging by the transcript, he fumbled rather a lot, and lost track of exactly whose guilt-by-association he was accusing Obama of, saying that the LA Times had a tape of Obama and William Ayers. He meant Rashid Khalidi. I guess all the insinuations run together after a while.

Oh O!

He said he hadn’t expected Palin to be so controversial but “I got to tell you, every time I’m around her, I’m uplifted.” Eww.

He said that the government should not do the only thing that governments do: “But it is not the job of government that I believe in, that would take a group of Americans who have some money and say, we’re taking your money, and we’re giving it to others.”

How will he eliminate the deficit in a single term? “By growing the economy. By growing the economy. You know, when Ronald Reagan came to office, inflation was double-digit, interest rates were double-digit, unemployment were double-digit, and everybody said, you can’t do it by cutting taxes and by increasing wealth and having our economy improve.” So his model for reducing the national debt is... Ronald Reagan.

HE WAS ONLY A HUMBLE ADMIRAL’S SON: “You know, I’m a guy that’s had a little bit humble beginnings, who only wanted to be a Navy pilot.”

IT FLOATS!: He doesn’t think racism will play a role in the election: “It -- look, there is racism in America. We all know that, because we can’t stop working against it. But I am totally convinced that 99 and 44/100 percent of the American people are going to make a decision on who is best to lead this country.” 99 and 44/100ths is of course how pure Ivory Soap advertises itself to be. Ivory, as in, well, white.

Took godless money

An Elizabeth Dole ad you’ve probably already seen:



Isn’t all money pretty much godless?

Or, alternatively, how can money be godless when money is in fact God?

Palin, a few days ago: “Friends, now is no time to experiment with socialism.” But you’ll tell us when it is a good time, right?

Caption contest

About time

Sarah Palin: “It’s about time we had a dude in the White House.”

John McCain makes a campaign promise: “No one will delay a World Series game with an infomercial when I’m president.”

Another “Proposition Hate” commercial, featuring adorable miniature musical homophobes (can anyone read what her shirt says?).

But did someone think to take a picture? No they did not.

Headline of the Day: “Man’s Arm Trapped in Train Toilet.” A mobile phone was, naturally, involved. “The man was carried away by emergency services, with the toilet still attached to his arm.”

Syria is claiming the American raiders also seized two men. They’re not best pleased.

Of rubber bands, cats and killing Syrians

Did I really just wash off a rubber band my cat dropped on the bathroom floor, rather than throw it out, because it’s her favorite rubber band?

Okay, who had “war with Syria” in the October Surprise office pool? Launching this splendid little war from Iraqi soil should make any status-of-forces agreement with Iraq impossible.

Anti-abortion propositions

Did a quick trawl for ads for anti-abortion ballot initiatives in California, South Dakota and Colorado, because that’s what my Saturday nights are like.

This ad for California’s Prop. 4, for parental notification for minors seeking abortions, is a dramatization based on actual facts!



The proponents of Measure 11 in South Dakota are pushing the claim that it would only ban abortions performed for the purposes of birth control. However they also claim that 99% of all abortions are performed for the purposes of birth control.

The initiators of Colorado’s Prop. 48, whose website’s banner



for some reason features the profile of Alfred Hitchcock,


have this ad, which I think you’ll agree proves with impeccable logic why “human life” must be defined as beginning at conception:




The rather anodyne ads opposing Prop. 48 all say, more in sorrow than in anger, that 48 “goes too far,” a phrase I find obnoxious because it suggests that there is some acceptable compromise with the anti-choicers.

What the stories of Albania and Croatia will be

Today Bush held a signing ceremony for the accords for Albania and Croatia to join NATO, saying, “May the stories of Albania and Croatia be a light to those who remain in the darkness of tyranny.” Yes, I’m sure people who remain in the darkness of tyranny comfort each other by whispering tales of Albania and Croatia.

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His Irrelevancy also went to the National Security Agency today. “We have been here at NSA, which is on the front line of protecting the American people.” If by “front line,” you mean a building in Maryland where they listen to your phone calls and read your emails.

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Thandie Newton is Sarah Palin, in the performance you didn’t know you were waiting for:



Thandie, it’s called eating, you might want to look into it.

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Finally, what’s the point of having a blog is you can’t run pictures of baby pandas whenever you feel like it?

I don’t know if you’re gonna use the word terrorist there

Daily Telegraph headline: “McCain Turns to Elderly in Drive for Votes.” Twenty miles under the speed limit, with the turn signal blinking the whole way.

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This week, McCain has repeatedly brought up his bit role in the Cuban Missile Crisis to show that he has been “tested”: “I had a little personal experience in that. I was a navy pilot on board the USS Enterprise. We were training to go into combat at any moment. I know how close to a nuclear war we came.” Is it my imagination, or is he trying to con us into thinking he was one of the guys who would have dropped the nukes?

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I read the People Magazine interview with Sarah and Todd Palin, so you don’t have to.

VULNERABLE: Todd: “When she’s working for me out there in my fishing boat, she’s pretty vulnerable. It’s my element.” Sarah: “He’s the boss out there on the boat while we commercial fish. Yeah. That’s a different story then.”

I ARE A INTULEKSHUAL: Sarah, do you think you’re an intellectual? “Yessss.” “You have to go with what the foundational knowledge is that you have on issues in front of you”.

WHAT INTELLECTUALS NAME THEIR CHILDREN: “I always wanted a son named Zamboni.”

BRISTOL AND LEVI WILL BE LEFT ON AN ICE FLOE: “they’re not going to be looking for anybody to hand them anything.”

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In the second part of the Palin-McCain NBC interview (video here), Palin said that William Ayers is a domestic terrorist “on his own admittance,” but abortion clinic bombers, “I don’t know if you’re gonna use the word terrorist there.” She did add that bombing abortion clinics was “unacceptable.” No, “unacceptable” is when Piper leaves her Louis Vuitton bag just lying around; blowing up clinics, that’s terrorism.

Brian Williams asked Palin to define “elite”: “just people who think that they’re better than anyone else.” So they’re not people who live in the anti-America parts of America. McCain disagreed, saying they live in New York City and D.C. Sarah wouldn’t know, he said, because she’s never been invited to a Georgetown cocktail party. McCain is oddly obsessed with Georgetown cocktail parties.

Are you a feminist, Governor Mooseburger? “I’m not gonna put a label on myself.”

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Speaking of designer labels, in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Sarah says of the $150,000 in clothes and whatnot, “that is not who we are. ... Oh, if people only knew how frugal we are.” Well, no one’s accusing you of spending your own money. She says the clothes weren’t really worth that and were just a loan anyway – “that’s not even my property” (otherwise known as the Ted Stevens defense).

I see all these attacks on Governor Palin. I don’t live in a bubble.

Last night NBC aired part I of an interview with McCain and Palin.

Asked whether she’d release her medical records, Palin said people, who she called “curiosity seekers,” would be reassured “if” she released them.

They’re trying to make hay over Joe the Biden’s stupid comment about foreign countries creating a crisis to test Obama, although McCain was remarkably unprepared to respond to being confronted with Joe the Lieberman’s similar remark that “Our enemies will test the new president early.” McCain: “I -- look, I don’t know when Joe Lieberman said that. [WIIIAI: June] Joe Lieberman is supporting me.”

McCain did make a guarantee of his own: “And when I’m president, there’s not going to be an international crisis that he can -- that Senator Biden can guarantee.” Elect John McCain, nothing can go wrong can go wrong can go wrong.

Palin added that Biden’s was “the most telling comment that has been made yet on this campaign trail in all of these months.” She didn’t say what it told.

Addressing Colin Powell’s remarks about Palin being totally unqualified, McCain testily dismissed them as ill-informed, saying that Powell hadn’t even bothered to meet Palin and “obviously... does not know Gov. Palin’s record.” In fact, everyone who criticizes her “obviously are either not paying attention to, or don’t care about, the record of the most popular governor in the United States of America.”

McCain and Palin are showing increasing exasperation with anyone who dares to question them or otherwise show less than the deference they feel due them. People who want medical records are “curiosity-seekers,” people who think Palin unqualified are “obviously” ignorant. The Chimperial Presidency lives.

Tom Toles:

You got anybody who says they’ve changed their mind and they support me?

John McCain was interviewed by Wolf Blitzer today.

PRESIDENT MCCAIN WOULD GO BACK IN TIME AND DO BATTLE WITH SENATOR MCCAIN IN A FIGHT TO THE DEATH, MY FRIENDS: “I would have vetoed literally every spending bill, even those that I voted for, if I were president of the United States”.

Blitzer had a question from a viewer who no longer supports McCain because of his negative campaigning. McCain asked, “You got anybody who says they’ve changed their mind and they support me? You got a question from them, Wolf? I’d just love to hear that.” Ha ha, John, that’s very funny. There are no people like that.

WILL THIS BE ON THE TEST? “Look, I’ve been tested. Sen. Biden referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was there.”

Will he honor a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq that requires pull-out by the end of 2011? “With respect, Wolf -- and you know better, my friend. You know better. It’s condition-based. It’s conditions-based.” I guess that’s a no.

The funnest part of the interview was Blitzer repeatedly asking if McCain still thinks investing Social Security in the stock market is a good idea, and McCain filibustering and firing off desperate attacks in all directions.

MCCAIN: The reason why the talks collapsed is because the Democrats insisted on agreeing to tax increases before we sat down. So let’s understand history.

BLITZER: What about Social Security investments ...

MCCAIN: That’s what they wanted to do. And all this other stuff was worth negotiating. And I will protect as president of the United States the Social Security benefits of retirees and future retirees. I will protect those benefits, and I’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect those benefits, and I’ve said that time over time. Every even-numbered year, Democrats run out, scare the senior citizens, say they’re going to raise your taxes, they’re going to destroy Social Security. Same old stuff. I’ve seen it for more years than I can count. I’m not scaring any senior. I’m going to preserve their -- protect their Social Security benefits, despite what ads may be run. And the senior citizens, as well as all citizens in this country ...

BLITZER: And the notion of using 10 percent in the stock market?

MCCAIN: ... They know about how I’m going to fix Social Security. And I’m going to make their Social Security the best I can, and we’ll preserve the benefits that they have, and I’ll protect Social Security.

BLITZER: And the 10 percent?

MCCAIN: And I’ll protect Social Security, and I’ll sit down at the table with the Democrats. And by the way, we can keep -- you know, this is -- I’ll give you -- I’m telling ...

BLITZER: This is an important issue.

MCCAIN: ... I’m going to protect Social Security, and that’s what I’ve done my entire career. And I will do what Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill did, and that is save Social Security and make Americans aware that, unfortunately, present-day retirees have -- working Americans today are not going to receive the same benefits as present-day retirees unless we fix it. And I think I can convince the American people that we’ll sit down together.

$150,000 on Palin’s wardrobe, and poor hobo John McCain owns only one shirt.

Sarah Palin and the Prayer Warriors of Doom

Sarah Palin was interviewed today by James Dobson (audio at the link).

Dobson said he and his wife are praying for the McCain campaign. She said that she could “feel the power of prayer” and thanked him and other “prayer warriors” for their intercession with, you know, God.

She spoke of the need to “seek His perfect will for this nation and to, of course, seek His wisdom and guidance in putting this nation back on the...” wait for it... “right track.”

He thanked her for not aborting Trig. In her response, from about 6:40, she called herself a “hard-core pro-lifer,” said something about “walkin’ the walk,” and suggested that she was “chosen” by God to have a baby with Down Syndrome in order to advance the “greater good” of the pro-life political agenda.


Meanwhile, her running mate was hanging out with naked painted men.

You ruffle feathers and you have the scars to prove it afterwards

Afghan journalism student Pervez Kambaksh, convicted of “insulting Islam” for downloading material about women’s rights from the Web and sentenced to death in a four-minute trial, has had his sentence reduced to a mere 20 years in prison. So really, the invasion and seven-year occupation of Afghanistan has all been worth it.

Speaking of setbacks in women’s rights, Sarah Palin was interviewed yesterday by CNN.

She was asked whether Obama is a socialist, and wouldn’t answer herself, but did defer to a distinguished economist: “I’m not gonna call him a socialist, but, as Joe the plumber had suggested, in fact he came right out and said it sounds like socialism to him and he speaks for so many Americans who are quite concerned now”.

She was asked what her role as veep would be: “You take on the special interests and the self-dealings. Yep, you ruffle feathers and you have the scars to prove it afterwards”. If you have scars from ruffling feathers, you’re probably doing it wrong.


Should she have let Todd use the governor’s office to try to destroy her ex-brother-in-law? Yes indeedy. Todd did “what any reasonable husband and father would do”. Also, Frank Murkowski’s wife sat in on meetings when he was governor so clearly there’s “you know, kinda, of a double standard here.”

She insisted that when she talked about pro-America parts of the US, and the true America, she certainly did not mean to imply that there were anti-America parts of the US and a false America. Really, she doesn’t know how anyone could even get that idea. It’s just that at the rallies she goes to, “we see the patriotism just shining through these people’s faces and the Vietnam veterans wearing their hats so proudly and they have tears in their eyes as we sing our national anthem,” and at Obama rallies virgins are sacrificed to Satan.

I refuse to accept the development model that says, oh, these people are doomed forever, let’s just throw money at the problem

Today Bush held a White House Summit on International Development, or as he called it, “a summit to herald the outstanding work being done to lift up souls in need.”

WHAT POWER TO SAVE LIVES COMES WITH: “We believe that power to save lives comes with the obligation to use it.”


IT DOES SOUND LIKE KIND OF A CRAP DEVELOPMENT MODEL: “I refuse to accept the development model that says, oh, these people are doomed forever, let’s just throw money at the problem.”

WHAT THERE’S NOTHING MORE BASIC THAN: “In the new era of development, America and our partners are helping to meet basic human needs like food and clean water. There’s nothing more basic than food and clean water.”

OR THEY WOULD, IF THEY COULD HEAR IT OVER THE SOUND OF THE POTATO CHIPS THEY’RE EATING: “The American people care when they hear people are going hungry around the world.”


IN OTHER WORDS: “I believe that as the United States moves forward, we ought to purchase up to a quarter of our food from local farmers. In other words, of all the food aid we get we ought to take a quarter of that, Donald, and purchase the food directly from local farmers.”

WHAT LAURA DIDN’T THINK OF: “I want to share with you an interesting program -- for two reasons, one, it’s interesting, and two, my wife thought of it -- (laughter) -- or has actually been involved with it; she didn’t think of it. But she thought of it for this speech.”

That idea? Something called PlayPumps Alliance, in which children are chained to water pumps which they’re told are really merry-go-rounds and that they’re having fun endlessly turning the contraptions and are certainly not slaving away in Dickensian satanic mills. “And as my good wife says, PlayPumps are fueled by a limitless energy source -- (laughter) -- children at play.” Limitless, he says. Those poor, poor children.


TOO MANY PRESIDENTS: “Yet too many people can’t read.”

AN INTERESTING STATISTIC: “For developing nations, the value of trade is 40 times the value of foreign aid. Isn’t that an interesting statistic? What should that tell you?” Er, that the value of foreign aid is one-fortieth the value of trade?

WE JUST NEVER SEEM TO GO ON VACATIONS AS A NATION ANYMORE: “I’m just so sorry that not every American could have been with Laura and me to see what we saw in our trip to Africa last year.” Next summer, let’s all 300 million of us go to Tahiti. I call dibs on that nice spot on the beach by those rocks.

WHAT WE MISSED BECAUSE WE DIDN’T ALL GO WITH GEORGE AND LAURA TO AFRICA LAST YEAR: “Schoolchildren sang songs about America’s generosity.”


CONTEST: What might the titles of those songs about America’s “generosity” be?

Condi on top

Tom Toles (click for larger):



An insight from an interview of Condi Rice by Girl Scout Magazine: “when I want to feel really on top of things, I wear red.”

Excuses, excuses

Most Insultingly Implausible Excuse of the Day: Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was supposed to go to a regional summit in Swaziland for negotiations to save the doomed power-sharing deal that Robert Mugabe signed but never intended to honor, but he has not been issued a passport because... Zimbabwe is running out of paper. That’s what the government said. Because of sanctions, it said (and possibly because these days you now need a dump truck full of Zimbabwean currency to buy one peanut).

Second Most Insultingly Implausible Excuse of the Day: Ted Stevens, testifying at his trial, on why an expensive lounge chair given to him seven years ago should not be considered a (unreported) gift: “We have lots of things in our house that don’t belong to us”. Indeed, “I don’t know how it got in the house.”

I would call it near panic

Today Bush spoke to the Central Louisiana Chamber of Commerce about the economy.

HE HAS AN MBA, YOU KNOW: “And then the question I’ve asked here is, what are the attitudes like? And I have heard that people’s attitudes are beginning to change, from a period of intense concerns -- and I would call it near panic -- to being more relaxed and beginning to see the effects of changes and the liquidity that is being pumped in the system, that we got a long way to go.” Near panic, more relaxed, liquidity being pumped in the system, long way to go... should you really be making with the dirty talk to the Central Louisiana Chamber of Commerce, George? For shame.

You set yourself up just to continually be mocked

Sarah Palin was interviewed recently by the 700 Club (it airs Tuesday, clips at the links below).

She supports amending the US Constitution to ban gay marriage.

I’m not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can’t do, should and should not do, but I certainly can express my own opinion here and take actions that I believe would be best for traditional marriage and that’s casting my votes and speaking up for traditional marriage that, that instrument that it’s the foundation of our society is that strong family and that’s based on that traditional definition of marriage, so I do support that.

How is banning them from marrying not telling people what they can and can’t do?

She says that she would certainly condemn those people shouting violent sentiments towards Barack Obama at her rallies if she ever heard them, but she’s never heard anyone do that. She has heard Obama tell people to “get in their face, argue with them,” which is “kind of inciting and a bit negative” and presumably is the exact moral equivalent of cries of “terrorist” and “kill him,” just as arguing with someone is exactly the same thing as assassinating them.

What does she pray for? She prays “that my kids will not be adversely affected by some of the political shots of course that, that we’ve been taking the last couple of months.”

Obama, she says, is trying to “pretty up” his extreme views on abortion.

She says she avoids interviews with the mainstream media because “I mean you set yourself up just to continually be mocked” by the “filter.” Sarah, do you mean there are people so low that they would mock you? The effrontery! Names, I want names.

And that, she says, was why she couldn’t respond to Katie Couric’s question about what newspapers she reads: “it was, I guess my being such an outsider from the Washington elite and the media elite is the questions she kept asking me were, I kept thinking why aren’t you asking me things that really, really matter right now”.

So the 700 Club guy asked about something that really, really matters right now, her baptism in middle school in... wait for it... Little Beaver Lake. “Well, it was a neat thing to be able to do.”