Oh, half a woman in thong, we hardly knew ye

In Britain, the scandal over MPs’ expenses is taking scalps. Speaker Michael Martin, who I always thought rather bad at presiding over Parliament, is out, as is Douglas Hogg (Indy headline: “Hogg Stands Down to Spend More Time Cleaning His Moat”). Many more MPs will stand down at the next election or be de-selected by their local parties.

Chinese authorities have stopped some... entrepreneur’s plans to open a sex theme park called Love Land, and sent in workers to tear it down. CAPTION CONTEST:

Heh, he said bottom

Budget Director Peter Orszag says the economy has “bottomed out.” Or does he mean the economy is a “bottom”?

Obama and Netanyahu: unfortunately, Bibi seems to have misplaced his address book

Today, Obama met with Binyamin Netanyahu, and then had a press conference. Obama said Bibi “has both youth and wisdom,” which in terms of misperception is right up there with Bush looking into Putin’s soul.


While they may have disagreed about a two-state solution, there was no disagreement about Israel’s proper identity as an ethno-sectarian state. Obama: “It is in U.S. national security interests to assure that Israel’s security as an independent Jewish state is maintained.” Netanyahu: “I think that the Palestinians will have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state”. For what other state does the US recognize a principle of racial/ethnic/religious dominance as legitimate?


Bibi said “we don’t want to govern the Palestinians.” Not that he wants anybody else to do it either; anarchic chaos is just fine with him. “We want them to govern themselves, absent a handful of powers that could endanger the state of Israel.” You know, just a handful of powers.

Obama gently twitted Netanyahu on settlements (the Bib-stir authorized a new West Bank settlement just before leaving for Washington, an entirely new one as opposed to “expansion” of an existing settlement), saying that settlements are “a difficult issue. I recognize that, but it’s an important one and it has to be addressed.” Which, as Eli points out, is not a demand that settlement-building stop immediately. What else needs to be “addressed”? “I think the humanitarian situation in Gaza has to be addressed.” I believe the linguists call that the future nebulous tense.

What is it with New York Times columnists?

I mean, Paul Krugman has been stealing all his best ideas from me for years.

But he had a banana

Eyewitness Statement of the Day: “If he had had a gun he would’ve shot me. But he had a banana.”

Nice little social safety net you got here, it’d be a shame if something was to happen to it

Schwarzenegger, trying to influence next Tuesday’s vote, suggests the budget cuts that will ensue if when his initiatives are voted down. For example, do we really need the third and seventh grades?

So Nancy Pelosi said that the CIA failed to tell her about waterboarding in secret briefings, the CIA says it did. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what the secret briefings are for: so that both sides can claim whatever it’s convenient to claim about what took place in them. It’s a feature, not a bug.

Pretty clear

Nancy Pelosi says the CIA lied to her, explicitly denying that there had been any waterboarding. John Boehner thinks he can prove that she is lying by this simple but deadly logic: “When you look at the number of briefings that the Speaker was in and other Democrat members of the House and Senate, it’s pretty clear that they were well aware of what these enhanced interrogation techniques were.” When you have eliminated the impossible – the CIA failing to tell the truth at multiple briefings – whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

“Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” is now Kindliscious

Do you own a Kindle? Me neither. But if you do, you can now pay $0.99 a month to subscribe to this free blog on Kindle. You’re welcome.

Not particularly sensational

So let me get this straight. Obama has decided to fight the court-ordered release of torture pictures which, he claims, are “not particularly sensational” and “would not add any additional benefit to our understanding,” but would, if published, “further inflame anti-American opinion and... put our troops in greater danger.” So the pictures are unsensational but inflammatory. Or maybe he means unsensational to jaded Americans but inflammatory for excitable foreigners.

I’d guess that the real reason here, besides a lot of whining from the military, is that some of the pictures are of abuse that occurred in Obama’s favorite war, Afghanistan, where information about detainee abuse at Bagram – indeed, any information about detainees in Bagram – has been kept relatively quiet – no Lynddie Englands with digital cameras.

He focused on the fact that these abuses of prisoners – which at one point in his statement today he referred to as “alleged abuse” – occurred in the past. But not everyone shares his belief that the United States was born anew on January 20th. He inherited this country’s past along with its government, and while he attempts to sound like an objective outsider making judgments about what is or is not sensational, what will or will not aid the public understanding, he fails to realize that what he sounds like, because it’s what he is, is the head of a government covering up for employees of the government. He is not a disinterested bystander. Bush and Rumsfeld’s cover-up is now Obama’s cover-up.

What, according to Obama, are the dangers of releasing the photos? “I fear the publication of these photos may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse.” I puzzled over that for a while with no success, but I think Digby has successfully decoded it: “Apparently, the logic is that the military will refuse to investigate criminal behavior if there is any chance that pictures of such criminal behavior could be made public. So we simply won’t make pictures of it public anymore.” To put it another way, the military has other goals that it values more than stopping the abuse of detainees, and Obama is validating those priorities.

In the end, it’s all about protecting our troops: “I am concerned about how the release of these photos would be -- would impact on the safety of our troops.” So if you oppose this cover-up, you hate our troops.

Seems to me I’ve heard all this before.

Name that party!

So the RNC intends to rename the Democratic Party the “Democrat Socialist Party.” Ha ha, the Democrat Socialist Party. It’s funny because it’s true.

Clearly the GOP needs a new name too. Any suggestions?

No role in his life and in his personality

Name of the Day (although that day may be sometime in the nineteenth century): the commander of Walter Reed, Col. Coots. Col. Norvell V. Coots, in fact. The V. stands for Vandervall, but then it would, wouldn’t it?

Donald Trump has decided that Carrie Prejean may retain her Miss California title, noting that her views on same-sex marriage are the same as Barack Obama’s. To be fair, I wouldn’t really want him to be Miss California either.

The pope’s spokesmodel, Rev. Federico Lombardi (director of the Vatican Press Office), after first denying that Ratzi had been in the Hitler Youth – “never, never, never” – had to admit that well yes he had but “This fact of the Hitler Youth had no role in his life and in his personality.” The reverend is in the good-and-evil biz, so you’d think he wouldn’t be suggesting that Benny was completely unaffected by the Hitler Youth as if this should be considered a good thing rather than a sign of deep moral obtuseness.

Pope Benny failed to mention his youthful Hitlerian experiences while visiting Israel and giving a speech at the Holocaust Memorial, and he spoke about the Holocaust (he used the approved, Jews-only term Shoah) in the passive voice, that is, without mentioning that Germans had anything to do with it. So perhaps he didn’t learn anything in the Hitler Youth after all.

Cheney is outraged

Icky Quote of the Day, from Randall Terry about Obama’s visit to Notre Dame: “Our mission is to tar him with the blood of the babies so he can never shake it between now and 2012.”

Yesterday on Fox Business News, Neil Cavuto interviewed a man whose mouth always waters when he hears the phrase “blood of the babies,” Dick Cheney.

He accused the Obama admin of missing the big torture picture: “They did it in a way that sort of blocked so far any real discussion of the results of the program, and instead focused upon the techniques themselves.”

Because when you focus on techniques such as sleep deprivation, waterboarding, “walling” and the like, you miss the real outrage: “And they really began the debate then with the suggestions that perhaps people should be prosecuted for having participated in the program or the lawyers who gave us these opinions should be disbarred. I think it’s an outrage.” See, and you thought there was nothing so awful that could outrage Cheney.

A ROLLING CHENEY GATHERS NO MOSS: “I don’t think we should just roll over when the new administration says -- accuses of us committing torture, which we did not, or somehow violating the law, which we did not. I think you need to stand up and respond to that, and that’s what I’ve done.”

EXISTENTIALISM: Asked about the possibility of Israel bombing Iranian centrifuges: “I would find it that it would be a reflection of the fact that the Israelis believe this is an existential threat to the state of Israel. ... So, I would expect them to try to do something about it.”

Cavuto asked if Guantanamo prisoners should be released into the US and go on welfare. Cheney said no.

On Guantanamo, “I think if you didn’t have it, you’d have to invent it.”

He referred to the Uighur prisoners as “Chinese terrorists.”

He said Obama is using the economic situation as an “excuse... to significantly broaden the power and authority of the government over the private sector.” He has another solution, which is... wait for it... wait for it... tax cuts.

ON THE NEED FOR A FRESH NEW FACE FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY: “I like Jeb. I think he’s a good man. ... I’d probably support him for president.” He didn’t say who Jeb should choose as running mate...

Thought of the Day

Maybe we waterboarded Abu Zubaydah 83 times because there were 83 ticking time-bombs.

How many Tories does it take to change a light bulb?

I’ve been enjoying the British scandal (by which I mean a lot of faux moral outrage about something fairly insignificant in the broader scheme of things) over MPs’ taxpayer-reimbursed expenses, which started with Home Secretary Jacqui Smith having to apologize for her husband’s porn pay-per-view habit, continued with David “Two Brains” Willetts (the Tory shadow secretary for innovation, universities and skills) hiring an electrician to change some light bulbs, and today reached Douglas Hogg, who was John Major’s agriculture minister, putting in claims for a mole man at his mansion (sadly, that’s a man who exterminates moles, not an actual mole-man) and of course for clearing the moat. Cleaning the moat. How many American politicians even own a moat?

Speaker of the House Michael Martin is outraged... that someone leaked the expense reports to the press. Says Times parliamentary sketchwriter Ann Treneman, “His attire didn’t help: at times, as the buffoon black robe ballooned away, he resembled an enraged parachute.”

Stand-up Obama

Obama, at the NerdProm: “In the next hundred days, our bipartisan outreach will be so successful that even John Boehner will consider becoming a Democrat. After all, we have a lot in common. He is a person of color. Although not a color that appears in the natural world.”

Read his entire gig here.

Or watch it. Part I



Part II

If we had been about torture, we wouldn’t have wasted our time going to the Justice Department

Dick Cheney went on Face the Nation this morning, because nothing says Happy Mother’s Day like Dick Cheney defending torture.

He was just happy to be there: “It’s nice to know that you’re still loved and are invited out in public sometimes.”

He accused the Obama admin of selective release of documents, and if there’s one thing Dick Cheney hates, it’s the selective release of documents: “They don’t have any qualms at all about putting things out that can be used to be critical of the Bush administration policies. But when you’ve got memos out there that show precisely how much was achieved and how lives were saved as a result of these policies, they won’t release those.”

AN INTELLIGENT INTERROGATION PROGRAM: On shutting down torture, which he says saved “thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives”: “Well, then you’d have to say that, in effect, we’re prepared to sacrifice American lives rather than run an intelligent interrogation program that would provide us the information we need to protect America.”

OH, IT’S NEVER A WASTE OF TIME GOING TO THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: “If we had been about torture, we wouldn’t have wasted our time going to the Justice Department.” The logic is inescapable.


I’M NOT TAKING THE RAP FOR THIS ALONE: Asked if Bush knew about the torture: “I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe he knew -- he knew a great deal about the program. He basically authorized it. I mean, this was a presidential-level decision. And the decision went to the president. He signed off on it.” He “basically” authorized it”?

Why Guantanamo is still needed: “The group that’s left, the 245 or so, these are the worst of the worst. This is the hard core. You’d have a recidivism rate out of this group of maybe 50 or 60 percent. ... I don’t know a single congressional district in this country that is going to say, gee, great, they’re sending us 20 Al Qaida terrorists.”

EVIDENTLY HE STILL HAS THAT MAN-SIZED SAFE: “I think there is room for moderates in the Republican Party.”

Rush and Colin Powell have been trying to expel each other from the Republican party. Where, oh where, does the Dickster stand?: “Well, if I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I’d go with Rush Limbaugh, I think. I think my take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican.”

A bridge over the valley of the Pennsylvania electorate

Follow-up: Arlen Specter’s fake cancer cure website, which I mentioned here yesterday, has now been altered, making it clear that funds raised will go to the Specter campaign and not cancer, unless of course you consider Arlen Specter to be a cancer on the body politic.

Chores

A survey (in Britain) has determined that cleaning the oven is the most disliked household chore.

Wait... you’re supposed to clean the oven?

There are people who want to create panic in the country and destroy it

Obama admin people are referring to prisoners “we cannot release and cannot try” as if that’s an actual legal category.

The Pakistani military is finally responding to American demands that they start killing Pakistanis (or, as the army spokesmodel called them, “miscreants”), using air strikes and mortars (what else you gonna do with miscreants?) and calling for residents of the Swat valley to flee so they can turn it into a free-fire zone. The army is air-dropping leaflets saying, “There are people who want to create panic in the country and destroy it. Do you want that?” That’s a trick question, right?

(Update: and the NYT quotes another government pamphlet which associates the Taliban with the worst miscreants of all: “They are the same as Jewish forces who are against the existence and security of the country and wanted to create disturbance in the region.”)

A bridge over the valley of death

Arlen Specter has launched “Specter for the Cure,” which he calls “a bold new initiative to reform our government’s medical research efforts, cut red tape and unstrangle the hope for accelerated cures.” His website proclaims, “Senator Arlen Specter intends to build a bridge over the valley of death.”

Or, to put it another way, Specter for the Cure is nothing more than a website at which you can donate money they want you to think is going to find a cure for cancer, but which actually goes to Specter’s re-election campaign.

Prick.

(Update: in case Specter is shamed into taking this down, I’ve taken the liberty of taking a screen capture.)