Getting tough in a diplomatic-pressure way

Hillary Clinton: “I also believe we have to get tough in a diplomatic-pressure way with Iran, and I think that helps us do it. If it saves American lives by labeling them a terrorist organization, I’m going to label them a terrorist organization.” For the children. For the children.

Speaking of our children, our dirty, dirty children, does anyone else see a giggling attempt to insert irony into this WaPo headline: “Abstinence Programs Face Rejection”? The article quotes one Stan Koutstaal, director of the Office of Abstinence Education in the Dept of Health and Human Services, deploring the increasing number of states pulling out (ahem) of federal abstinence-only programs: “It’s the youths in these states who are missing out.” No comment.

They deserve... action!

Bush’s radio address today is yet another attack on Congress for failing to pass war funding, with a Christmas-y theme: “Congress’ responsibility is clear: They must deliver vital funds for our troops -- and they must do it before they leave for Christmas. Our men and women on the front lines will be spending this holiday season far from their families and loved ones. And this Christmas, they deserve more than words from Congress. They deserve... action!” (Punctuation tweaked to give it the proper Buzz Lightyear vibe.)

Really, action. For Christmas. Kind of a crappy gift-giver, isn’t he? Must have been hell on the twins growing up. “Jenna and Not-Jenna deserve more than the Malibu Barbie Dream House, they deserve... action!”

Less than one week per stab

Lance Cpl. Delano Holmes has been sentenced to the time he served awaiting his court-martial, less than 10 months, for “negligently” stabbing an Iraqi soldier 44 times.

Stop the Hand Shows!

I’ve just received an email from the Fred Thompson campaign with the above subject line (I added the exclamation point; obviously Fred Thompson doesn’t do exclamation points, they plum tucker him out). In it, Fred’s campaign manager says Ronald Reagan’s “I paid for this microphone” line in 1980 was a “defining moment” and that “Fred had a defining moment on Wednesday in the Iowa debate, when he refused the liberal moderator’s demand to raise his hand to say yes or no to a complex question. The similarities were incredible.”

Freezing Cabinet members, what we just need to know, and what the Peruvian people understand

This morning, Bush met with his Cabinet, then made them stand behind him in the Rose Garden while he blathered.

He and the Cabinet, he reported, “discussed the priorities that we’re working on to meet for the needs of the American people”. Always nice to hear that they’re working to meet for our needs.


One of those needs: baseball. He wants to put “the steroid era of baseball behind us”. Which just sounds kinky. Unlike this: “And I just urge our -- those in the public spotlight, particularly athletes, to understand that when they violate their bodies, they’re sending a terrible signal to America’s young.”


Earlier this week, Bush sent a letter to Kim Jong-Il, who sent a letter in response, which Bush evidently does not plan to read have someone read to him: “you know, I got his attention with a letter, and he can get my attention by fully disclosing his programs, including any plutonium he may have processed and converted -- into whatever he’s used it for; we just need to know.”

He cut it short after two questions, saying “I’ve got freezing Cabinet members out here”. Insert Condi joke here.


In the afternoon, he met with President Alan Garcia of Peru to sign a trade treaty. “I thank those from the -- who care about trade, who’ve joined us today.”


What will the free trade treaty bring Peruvians? “Peruvians will benefit from more choices and more lower prices -- or better prices.”

What do the Peruvian people understand? “The Peruvian people understand that expanding trade with the United States will improve their lives; that’s what they understand.”

Negligent

Marine Lance Cpl. Delano Holmes has been found guilty of negligent homicide, but not of unpremeditated murder, for stabbing an Iraqi soldier 44 times. Sorta gives a new meaning to the word negligent.

I said I wasn’t going to watch the last Democratic debate, and I didn’t. But here are the pictures I would have run, featuring the many hand gestures of the Democratic party.

Republican Debate: You can’t really respect ‘em if you’re killing ‘em in the womb

I thought we were done, but today there was another tedious debate (tedious transcript), there’s always another tedious debate – indeed, it seems that there’s a Democratic debate tomorrow, which I will happily watch and write about upon receipt of one million (1,000,000) dollars via the PayPal link. Even with the added crazy that only Alan Keyes can bring, it was not exciting, is what I’m saying.

The first question was about the national debt. Giuliani said that he’d solve the national debt by cutting taxes. Oh, he also wants to cut non-military spending 10%, which I guess is what you say if you don’t want to go through all the tedious effort of actually examining programs and figuring out what should be spent on them. Asked how people affected by those cuts should manage, he said they’d have to “figure out other ways to do it” and not rely on “the nanny government”. This is the guy who had cops walking his mistress’s dog.


Romney said the sacrifice he’s calling for from the American people is to “let the [government] programs that don’t work go. Don’t lobby for them forever.” Gosh, that doesn’t sound like very much sacrifice at all.

Asked who is paying more than their fair share of taxes, Alan Keyes said we need to get rid of incumbent politicians (Keyes wasn’t big on saying anything relevant to the actual questions). McCain said that poor people don’t pay any taxes except for the payroll tax, which will come as a surprise to poor people. Huckabee said we should have a “fair tax,” “and that means the rich people aren’t going to be made poor, but maybe the poor people could be made rich”. Whatever the hell that means. Romney said he doesn’t lie awake at night worrying about the taxes rich people are paying. Thompson said he’d like to be in Romney’s situation so he wouldn’t have to worry about taxes either. Romney said he’d like to be in Thompson’s situation. Thompson said Romney’s gettin’ to be a pretty good actor. This is what passes for wit in a presidential debate. Make that two million (2,000,000) for me to watch tomorrow’s debate. I don’t want to have to worry about taxes either.


Giuliani says we should have a flatter tax that you could file on one page. He then held up a piece of paper to show us what that would look like, in case we were unfamiliar with the concept.

Huckabee on regulation: “I can’t part the red sea, but I believe I can part the red tape.”

Asked whether the US should have economic trade with human rights abusers, McCain said hell yes, promising to “open every market in the world to Iowa’s agricultural products.” Of course he said it as a throwaway applause line, but, putting the question of human rights abuse to one side, don’t other countries have the right to set their own trade and economic policies, to not take Iowa’s agricultural products against their will?


Romney: “We call it global warming, not America warming. So let’s not put a burden on us alone and have the rest of the world skate by.” Oh I don’t think anyone will be doing much skating.

McCain said we can solve global warming with “capitalist and free enterprise motivation.” Which is like O.J. Simpson looking for the real killers.

We’ll never know what Fred Thompson thinks, because he refused to do a show of hands on whether he believes in global warming.

On education, Duncan Hunter thinks the problem is “bureaucratic credentialing” of teachers and that Jaime Escalante was hounded out of school by the Cylons unions. Alan Keyes thinks it’s that judges drove God out of the schools and that children aren’t told that their rights come from God not from the Constitution or our leaders. Huckabee wants to unleash weapons of mass instruction, which he also said in the last debate, and which shows incredible tone-deafness. Who is impressed by a line like that? Ron Paul thinks it’s the federal government and the Dept of Education getting in the way. Thompson thinks it’s the teachers’ union.

Keyes: “People talk about our prosperity, but you can’t really respect ‘em if you’re killing ‘em in the womb, it doesn’t make any sense.”


Giuliani says he has led an open, transparent life. Although what he seems to mean is that he keeps getting caught.

I wasn’t a knee-walking drunk

My new favorite name, a guy on McNeil-Lehrer yesterday talking about malaria: Dr. Ripley Ballou.

Bush tells ABC, “I doubt I’d be standing here if I hadn’t quit drinking whiskey, and beer and wine and all that.” Is it wrong of me to wish I had a time machine and a bottle of Wild Turkey?

He says that he was never a “knee-walking drunk.” That’s right, when he was drunk he usually preferred to drive. He does say he had an “addiction.” Is this the first time he’s admitted that?

What really got him to quit was that it was interfering with... his mountain biking: “Alcohol can compete with your affections. It sure did in my case. Affections with your family, or affections for exercise.”

Until they look at it, from a, just experience beyond human, they’ll never figure it out

Mike Huckabee says (video below) of his growing poll numbers, “There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one.” Zombies? Aliens? Southern Baptist androids? “It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of five thousand people.” Heroin? “There literally are thousands of people across this country who are praying that a little will become much, and it has.” Coincidentally, that’s the subject line of half the spam email I get. “And it defies all explanation, it has confounded the pundits. And I’m enjoying every minute of them trying to figure it out, and until they look at it, from a, just experience beyond human, they’ll never figure it out.” Which is why Bill O’Reilly is uniquely qualified.



Iraq’s Shiite-run Interior Ministry has ordered all policewomen to turn in their guns, or lose their salaries. The women were recruited by the Americans. Now that the Iraqis are in charge of recruitment, there are no more women being recruited.

Bush had a meeting about teenage drug use today. He explained the economics of the drug trade: “It’s one thing to affect supply, but when you reduce demand, it affects the capacity of people to supply. If we have people -- fewer people using, there’s not going to be a need to supply as much.”

Later in the day he explained to Italian President Napolitano, “Iran is dangerous.” But not that sexy, bad-boy kind of dangerous.

George ’n Jews

Bush met some Jews today at the White House. Betcha he didn’t know they came in black.


It’s International Human Rights Day, so Bush talked about the only human right he really cares about, religious freedom, while unwittingly practicing the right to mangled speech: “We discussed how America must remain engaged in helping people realize the great blessings of religious freedom; and where we find societies in which religious freedom is not allowed to practice, that we must do something about it.”

This AP picture was taken through the magic of Hasid-o-cam.


Then he celebrated Hanukkah, and what’s Hanukkah without a honking big Christmas tree? (And a shout-out to Reuters photographer Jim Young for framing the shot so as to take in the entire tree.)

Republican debate, Hispanic-style: It’s no picnic to be living as an illegal immigrant

At the Univision debate (transcript), which would have been a lot more fun if Tancredo had shown up, the Republican presidential candidates evoked a special bond (or “peculiar connections,” as Romney put it) between their party and Hispanics. Romney noted that “Hispanic Americans serve in the military and care about our military,” while Duncan Hunter compared JFK, a Democrat who failed to provide air support at the Bay of Pigs, with Ronald Reagan, a Republican who supported El Salvador’s government and death squads as they massacred peasants and nuns.



Everyone thought immigration should be more like a credit card. Huckabee: “If you can get an American Express card in two weeks, it shouldn’t take seven years to get a work permit to come to this country in order to work on a farm.” Don’t leave your hovel without it. Romney: “Isn’t it amazing in this country, with the fact that American Express or Visa or Mastercard can tell you that fast whether the card is authorized or not,” but there’s no system for employers to verify immigration status.

Everyone was asked whether it was right that children with American citizenship because they were born here should be separated from their parents. No one really answered, mostly suggesting that the issue should wait until after the border is secured or the Second Coming, whichever comes first.

Giuliani: “It’s no picnic to be living as an illegal immigrant.” Although many of the agricultural products utilized in a picnic are picked by illegal immigrants. That’s what we call a paradox.

Asked about foreign rulers, Giuliani said “I actually agree with the way King Juan Carlos spoke to Chavez.” McCain actually quoted the hereditary monarch in Spanish (“Por que no te callas?”) (yes, the king used the familiar tu form, as if speaking to a child). Fred Thompson, asked about Castro having survived 9 American presidents, said, “I’m going to make sure that he didn’t survive 10 U.S. presidents. (LAUGHTER)” Ha ha, assassination is funny!

McCain on health care: “Ronald Reagan said nobody ever washed a rental car. And that’s true in health insurance. If they’re responsible for it, then they will take more care of it.” So if the government provides health coverage, we’ll all stop washing, is that what you’re saying?



The Huck uses the health care discussion to offer that he wouldn’t mind shipping Michael Moore to Cuba. At the last debate, he said he’d put Hillary on the first rocket to Mars. I’m beginning to see a pattern here.

The Huck also sent this important message: I am wearing an orange tie.



On education, Thompson says “if families would stay together, if fathers would raise their children, especially young men when they get into troublesome ages, we would solve a good part of the education problem in this country.”

Asked what role Hispanics will play in the development of American society, most suggested that they stop being so Hispanicky and become more like reg’lar Amurricins. Only McCain, from Arizona, said that “We will be enriched by their music, their culture, their food, their language”. The Huck: “Our equality is not based on our ancestry, our last name, it’s not based on how much money we make.” Last name, Huckabee, you don’t need me to make a joke out of that one. Hunter said their role is to become Republicans. Fred Thompson praised Hispanics’ work-ethic. You don’t need me to make a joke out of that one either. He added, “The Hispanic community is known for their values. They know that marriage is between a man and a woman, for example.” Romney: “The Hispanic community, like all other communities in this great nation, need to come together and strengthen America. Because this is the land of the brave and the home of the free. And Hispanics are brave and they are free, as are all of the people of this great nation.” Just as long as they’re not free to bravely mow his lawn.

Bombs or BlackBerries?

The Archbishop of York cut up his dog collar – I saw it on the BBC news – and won’t wear one again until Robert Mugabe is out of office in Zimbabwe. Well if that doesn’t do it I don’t know what will.

Watch the footage... IF YOU DARE!



McCain was on Fox News Sunday. He said that face-to-face negotiations, for example with Iran, are overrated. “BlackBerries work. Emissaries work. There’s many thousands of ways to communicate.” Including his favorite way to communicate: “I’d remind you that when we stopped the bombing in Vietnam, we were going to talk in Paris. It took 2.5 years because of the shape of the table. Bombing started of Hanoi. And guess what? Negotiations started again.”

Can’t find a transcript of the Republican debate on Univision, but I think this picture perfectly sums up the attitude of Republicans when confronted by Hispanics:

Giuliani, dressing normally and very, very empathetic with people

Giuliani went on Meet the Press this morning. He defended his business dealings with the government of Qatar: “This is a country that’s modernizing. It’s a country that’s moving in a direction we want it to move in. ... You and I can have dinner there. We can have dinner there, and we can dress normally.”

He said that he doesn’t believe, as Huckabee does, that homosexuality is aberrant. As long as they don’t have any, you know, homosexual sex: “It’s the acts, it’s the various acts that people perform that are sinful, not the, not the orientation that they have. Which includes me, by the way. I mean, you know, unfortunately, I’ve had my own sins that I’ve had to confess and had to deal with and try to overcome and so I’m very, very empathetic with people, and that we’re all, we’re all imperfect human beings struggling to, to try to be better.” See, being gay is just like cheating on your wife, then “dealing with it” by dumping your wife, and... okay, you’re not paying attention because you’re still laughing at Giuliani saying he’s very, very empathetic with people, aren’t you?


AP headline: “Pope Laments Christmas Consumerism.” Why, when I was a kid we got a new Hitler Youth uniform and we were happy to get it.

You say potato

Musharraf is not just firing judges who won’t take an oath of allegiance to him, he is taking away their pensions.

Warsaw prosecutors have ended a 17-month criminal libel investigation of a German newspaper that called President Kaczynski a potato, citing “a lack of evidence.”

Did that story remind all of you of the caricatures of King Louis Philippe as a pear, or was that just me?

And as filler for an uninspired blogger, a New York magazine competition, from 2/24/92, calling for a familiar quotation (1), and the silent reaction (2) of a listener or reader.

1. “Tomorrow and tomorrow...”
2. Is that from “Annie Hall”?

1. “I was a child and she was a child/ In this kingdom by the sea/ But we loved with a love that was more than love...”
2. Nobody doesn’t like Annabel Lee.

1. “I shot an arrow into the air,/ It fell to earth, I knew not where.”
2. Dial 911, I’ll try to work his hat off.

1. “Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?”
2. Coming soon, “Little Caesar II.”

1. “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.”
2. Quick – where’s the “Kick me” placard?

Driving that train

More from Cheney’s Politico interview. He used this week’s favorite Bush administration metaphor: “Al Qaeda in Iraq has been sort of the long pole in the tent, if you will, in terms of the opposition we face.” Bush used the long pole line for enrichment of uranium, copying Boo Hadley. These guys must be doing a lot of “camping.”

Phallic metaphors abounded. Cheney suggested that male congresscritters like Jack Murtha and John Dingell are letting themselves be ordered around by Nancy Pelosi, who “is driving that train. ... They’re not carrying the big stick I would have expected with the Democrats in the majority.”

Speaking of phallic metaphors, when asked about Sen. Thune, he said, “I hunt with the Senator -- he’s a courageous man.” It’s nice to know that Cheney has so gotten over shooting an old man in the face that he feels he can make jokes about it now.

Romney’s big religion speech: Freedom requires religion

Transcript.

Romney was introduced by Bush the Elder, who Romney thanked for the whole greatest-generation-World-War-II thing: “You left us, your children, a free and strong America.” This is where commas are so important: “You left us your children” would not be quite such an applause line.


He said that our generation also faces threats, such as “radical, violent Islam.” In a speech about religion, which was presumably written very carefully indeed, he decided to blame Islam rather than Muslims. Other threats: “over-use of foreign oil and the break-down of the family.” So to prevent your family breaking down, fill it with only domestic oil.

The Founders called on “the Creator” and “discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom.” “Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom.” “Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.” Um, no.

The JFK part: “No authorities of my church” which he is steadily refusing to name “will ever exert influence on presidential decisions.”

10 minutes or so in, he does finally use the dread word “Mormon.” It is the faith of his fathers, and he will be true to them.


He believes Jesus Christ is the son of God and the saviour of all mankind. And, um, that’s all he’s going to say about that. He essentially says that if he did the “what Mormonism means to me” speech some expected he would have to do, that would make him the spokesman for his church, so naturally he couldn’t do that.

There are features of other faiths he wish Mormons had: the profound ceremony of the Catholic mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit of the Pentecostals, the confident blandness of the Lutherans, the money of the Jews... er, sorry, I got bored with transcribing. Here’s what he came up with for the Muslims: their commitment to frequent prayer.

Complains that people trying to remove mention of God in public life are trying to establish a “new religion” of secularism. We should acknowledge the Creator in words and ceremony. Nativity scenes, that sort of thing. Judges should respect “the foundation of faith on which our Constitution rests.” “I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from the God who gave us liberty.” “Liberty is a gift from God, not an indulgence of government.” We do trust in God, we are one nation under God.

Europeans are all atheists and their cathedrals are just backdrops for postcards. Oh, wait, his point is that there are people of faith, but the churches are withering away. That’s actually telling: for him, faith requires an organized church to be any good. You can’t just believe in God willy nilly.

At the “other extreme” to the Europeans is the creed of conversion by conquest. He means Muslims, because Christians have never done that sort of thing. In the US, by contrast, reason and religion are allies (in other words, he thinks Christian tenets, unlike oh say Muslim ones, are supported by reason. Hah!).

Anyone who kneels in prayer to the Almighty has a friend and ally in the Mittster.

He concluded, “Let us give thanks to the divine author of liberty, and together let us pray that this land will always be blessed with freedom’s holy light.” (his emphasis).


In fact, the word “Mormon” escaped his lips exactly once, no doubt slipped in so he wouldn’t be accused of not using it at all.

He failed to acknowledge, as even George Bush does, that some of us don’t believe in any of these religions. Presumably we’ll be sent in chains to the salt mines, since “freedom requires religion.”

In a good place

Dick Cheney says that by the time his administration leaves office, Iraq will be “in a good place”: “self-governing... capable for the most part of defending themselves, a democracy in the heart of the Middle East, a nation that will be a positive force in influencing the world around it in the future.” This sunny, not to say insanely out-of-touch, optimism, is not his most wrong-headed statement about Iraq, which is this: “we’ll have [Iraq] in a good place, where we’ll be able to look back on it and say, ‘That was the right decision. It was a sound decision going into Iraq.’” Even were Iraq to become the paradise on earth he posits, it could not justify the years of brutality and death he inflicted on that country. He is looking for the moment that makes invading Iraq a right decision, a sound decision. That moment cannot exist.

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.