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Friday, April 30, 2004
Signs of the Apocalypse
This week, a rare success visits the Gurdon household as daughter Uvula wins a library short-story contest making America's Worst Mother™ so giddy that she accidentally feeds the other children, (Spartacus, Umlaut, and Mote) cake and ice cream in the afternoon, which angers God (who has commanded only carrot sticks for after school snacks. See: Deuteronomy 3:12). God then proceeds to inflict a plague of locusts on the greater Washington DC area. Yeah, it's kind of a good news/bad news story. Meghan's. Not Uvula's. So let's get started before the rain of frogs starts, okay?
We are freshly back from school and the children are piling into the front hall as I pick up the phone message "Beep.... This is the Georgetown Public Library calling...we will be announcing the winners of our short-story competition shortly...and ah...well, we urge you to bring Molly to the ceremony."
You see, that "ah" tells us that Uvula has won the contest. That's called 'foreshadowing' which is easier to do in an online column than eerie music because a lot of readers don't have the speakers turned up. Anyway:
I hang up the phone and stand there silently, adrenaline surging. There are times when we are required heroically to defy our own natures, and for me this is one of them. I am a blurter, this is potentially big news in our small world, and it will be three excruciating days until the awards, and I can't wait --
With a sudden access of maternal maturity, I realize that it is crucial that I keep the message to myself.
"Food...must...have...food..." says the literary genius, dropping her book bag and wilting against the wall.
As we can see, Uvula is a good writer because at the age of nine or ten or whatever, she is already experiencing Starving Artist Syndrome™. She is also a good writer because her short story doesn't contain these gems:
The children look at each other and their mouths drop open. Paris starts rubbing his stomach and licking his lips, like a cartoon wolf who's just discovered a straw hut filled with pigs, and flings himself at me with violent enthusiasm, "Aw, wow, yes!" he yells.
[...]
"No more than usual," says old poker face, grinning hugely.
[...]
We take our sundaes outside to enjoy the delicious bug-free air. Someone liberates Twitchy from his hutch, and he capers about around our ankles, lolloping now and then through a collapsible wire-and-fabric tube we got at Ikea when Paris was a baby.
[...]
Azaleas have taken over where the dogwoods left off, pierced anti-IMF protesters stomp in and stump off, and children frisk about on lawns and fields which in a week -- or two-- or three-- will erupt, we are told, in horrible whirring clouds of shiny flying insects an inch and a half long.
Ah, yes. The locusts (who are always proceeded by pierced anti-IMF protesters) and who bear a remarkable similarity to feminist leaders:
Washington is bracing for a plague of cicadas. Every 17 years, a type known as "periodicals" hatch like nightmarish time capsules from their underground pods and burst out of the ground, filling the skies and grossing out the populace. Apparently it is Hitchcockian: Commuters have to bat the things away with tennis racquets while they run for their cars; everyone who can stays inside, gazing longingly at scenic decks now crawling with creepitude. According to my friend Paul, small children dare each other to eat live cicadas. According to the Washington Post, expatriate Frenchmen saute dead ones with butter, parsley, and a dash of white wine. For a month the trees are revoltingly full and vibrating, and for the rest of the summer dead bug husks crunch underfoot like the wire hangers on the Mall left by last weekend's infestation of feminists. One could hope that Kate Michelman and Gloria Steinem would erupt only once every 17 years, but alas, no.
Which is probably a good thing since it's hard to tour the Mall while kicking aside the dried-up and empty carapaces of successful and well-known women. Anyway, to make a long story shorter than Uvula's: go to library, fierce tribal gods, cookies Seven-Up, breathless anticipation, and finally:
And there is the librarian.
She coughs shyly, looks around the assembly, and abruptly says, without introduction,
"Ladies and gentlemen, the first prize winner is...."
Yes!
We are spared Meghan's victory dance where she spikes a copy of The DaVinci Code and calls all the other children "losers" and taunts their parents.
Then the locusts come.
As foretold by prophecy.
You can look it up.
posted by tbogg at 7:44 AM
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Thursday, April 29, 2004
Say allo to my leedle fren'
Via Southpaw, we see that a Left Coaster commentor had the line of the day about President Senor Wences' Fist appearance before the 9/11 commission.
"Whenever Kerry publicly demands debates with George, he should be sure to insist that Cheney can't come."
As for Bob Kerrey and Lee Hamilton bailing on the Bushcheney testimony, Kerrey said he had to leave because he got a headache from rolling his eyes for two hours, and Hamilton's right arm cramped up from making continuous jerk off motions while Bushcheney spoke....
posted by tbogg at 11:06 PM
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Pitching for pennies
For just pennies a day you can help Steve at www.oreilly-sucks.com stay online. Steve has run into a bit of bad luck, and could use your help.
Tomorrow morning, buy a grande instead of a vente...and then send Steve the difference.
Otherwise, O'Reilly wins....
posted by tbogg at 10:52 PM
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More good news for people who love bad news*
For Dick Cheney this must read like a good news/bad news joke:
A pipeline that pumps petroleum from refineries in the San Francisco Bay area ruptured, gushing diesel fuel into a marsh that serves as a key nesting ground for migratory birds.
The spill, which began Tuesday, prompted an emergency cleanup effort at Suisun Marsh, about 30 miles northeast of San Francisco. Several dead animals, mostly ducks, were found at the scene, said Coast Guard spokeswoman Clare Maranda.
State officials estimated that 40,000 gallons of fuel spilled. Initial worst-case estimates had put the spill 1 million gallons.
Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, the Houston firm that owns the pipeline, estimated that 500 to 1,000 barrels, containing 42 gallons of fuel each, leaked into the marsh, spokesman Jerry Engelhardt said.
On the one hand, Cheney must be appalled at the loss of precious fuel ("Oh, the humanity!"). On the other hand, he just found another cool way to kill ducks.
*Hat tip to Modest Mouse.
posted by tbogg at 10:42 PM
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Death by proxy
Shorter Andrew Sullivan:
How can I feel safe if you guys won't kill for me?
posted by tbogg at 10:31 PM
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No. It's the LA Times. Not the Washington Times. You know... a real newspaper...
Hugh Hewitt, who writes a column for WorldNet Daily (which is about all you need to know about him) has some suggestions for new La Times Editorial Editor Michael Kinsley:
First, hire Roger L. Simon as a weekly columnist. Do the same with Dennis Prager. Two Angelenos with broad folllowings, writing talent, and deep knowledge on issues that matter assure you of some familiar faces from around town and a finger on the pulse of the west.
You need to entice Patt Morrison to add a column a week. Patt's from the land of the far left, but she can write, and she'll keep LA's hard left happy. Ink Estrich as well, as Susan is another local with zing.
My colleague in the talk radio business, Laura Ingrahm, should be a regular as well, as there aren't many former United States Supreme Court clerks from the right with nationally syndicated radio shows on which they will almost certainly discuss their Los Angeles Times' column. Want traffic? Hire Laura.
Keep Max Boot, the only reason I presently check your page. And grab Lileks' column from Newhouse, and perhaps even dedicate a weekly space to a guest columnist from the ranks of the bloggers. Give us Krauthammer and Will on a regular basis. If you can re-teach Mickey to write in complete sentences, bring him in as well.
For those keeping score at home, that's Roger Simon (who's a nice guy, but basically a mystery writer), Dennis Prager (who is the rightwing's answer to Humbert Humbert), fashionista Patt Morrison (anyone else getting a Devo vibe?), Fox Commentator/Faux Democrat Susan Estrich, ignorant slut Laura Ingraham, James Lileks (make your own joke...really. It's sooo easy), dyspeptic crank psychologist Charles Krauthammer, and George "Axiomatic" Will.
That's not an editorial page, that's an ensemble cast for a sitcom.
posted by tbogg at 10:24 PM
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Goddammit. I'm Mickey Kaus and I don't have time to actually research anything I read in a Drudge headline before I write something!
Black holes don't suck as badly as Mickey sucks at being a journalist:
Let me get this straight. Gore lost the 2000 election by, like, 17 votes and he had $6 million sitting in a bank? Couldn't he have done something with that money that would have put him over the top? [Thanks to reader B.B.] ... Q: What would be fitting punishment? A: Making Gore donate the money to help elect a guy he can't stand! ... Nevermind? From knowledgeable reader M:
Gore's $6 million was in his GELAC -- General Election Legal Compliance Fund. It's used for legal compliance only. He couldn't have used to, say, contest Ohio and Tennessee. The money was directly raised for -- and could only be spent on -- lawyer-type stuff...proving that donors exist...that type of stuff.
Couldn't he have transferred the funds somehow--e.g. gotten the donors that gave to this fund to give to another fund that could have been used to, say, get out the vote in close states (maybe by giving the donors back their money--once it was clear it wouldn't be needed--with a 'suggestion' on where to send it instead)? ...
Couldn't Mickey have spent five minutes looking into this before posting?
Actually, no. So, after being called out, he changes the subject. Mickey ought to take his Slate check and send it to knowledgeable reader M.
Then he ought to try working for a living.
Yeah. That'll happen.
posted by tbogg at 5:47 PM
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Defining "babe" down.....
It goes without saying that making fun of people's looks is inherently wrong (with the exception of making fun of James Lileks' looks, in which case, it should be the National Pastime, with fantasy leagues and everything). It lowers the level of discourse, it debases both the commenter, the reader, and the object of derision, and it is not the type of behavior that a civil society should find acceptable. It is the last refuge of a shallow person who is unable to reasonably articulate a position.
Okay. I don't believe any of that either. So let's go have some fun.
In my mucking about in various rightwing sites I came across IMAO, a site I had never seen nor heard of until today. Along with some French jokes which always a hoot around the Slim Jim barrel, it appears that they are having a IMAO T-Shirt Babe contest.
It's finally here! Here are twenty contestant(sic), and I think we have a good mix of young'ns and more experienced babes. I almost wish we could pick more than one, but someone has to be the IMAO T-Shirt Babe, get all the IMAO t-shirts, and, upon modeling them, one hundred dollars cash and a hundred dollar shopping spree at ThoseShirts.com. Because of the great turnout, second and third places winners will also get a t-shirt, plus I'll try to think of a little something to give all the contestants as thanks for competing.
Now in all fairness (to me) these young and more "more experienced babes" posed for and submited their own pictures for consideration. They have voluntarily put themselves out there to be judged, and, well let's face it, you don't get much more judgemental than me. Herewith is a sampling of the fair, the formerly cute, and the "Low carb diet doesn't mean you eat the whole goddamned cow" babe. :
First there is the Pat Buchanan "Come hither, you little gropenfurher" look.
Then there is the "Democrats are dumb and I have a big ass" look accessorized with a sweat-band and choker.
For those who were wondering, here is where Paula Jones' nose ended up.
The "When I lose twenty more pounds my boyfriend is going to shoot me on the hood of his Firebird for an amateur porn site" look.
The "Fanny pack pretty much says it all" style.
The "No. It's not a demented look. I'm being coy. Jesus. You're so obtuse" look.
Submitted without comment
The "Michelle Malkin would deport me if she could" look.
and finally, the "War is sexy...but no matter how hard I try, I'm not" look.
I have to go now.
My eyeballs feel dirty.
posted by tbogg at 2:30 PM
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Some have the talent and some don't, I guess...
Remember this?:
Stanford colleagues, who remember provost Rice during controversies over affirmative action and minority hiring, have seen her steely side coming to the fore in the current controversy. A telling moment came last month when reporters asked her about Clarke's charge that during a briefing shortly after Bush's election he could tell by her expression that she had never heard of al Qaeda.
Rice's reply to reporters was a deft, understated, stiletto thrust: "I find it peculiar that Dick Clarke is sitting there reading my body language. I guess that -- I didn't know he was good at that, too."
Today:
The president said he felt the testimony "helped them understand how I think ... and how we run the White House."
Asked about critics who claim he and the vice president wanted to testify together in order to present the same story, the president responded: "Look, if we had something to hide we wouldn't have met with them in the first place."
"It was important for them to see our body language, how we work together," he added.
Getting beyond the fact that body language reading has just been given it's imprimatur by the Two-Headed Committe Witness, what is up with the "how we work together" comment. He does know that this is an investigation into 9/11, and not a tryout for the US Ice Dancing pairs competition, doesn't he?
Maybe he was confused by all the spinning he and Dick did....
posted by tbogg at 1:44 PM
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Okay.
I'm back. Just took a bit of time off to deal with life, family, and the animal that I call Puppy-Breath Satan.
posted by tbogg at 1:28 AM
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Calls for comment by the all-powerful, all-knowing deity went unreturned...again
This should probably be a campaign issue for people who don't have really deep thoughts:
Rep. Jim McDermott, a Washington Democrat who criticized President Bush while visiting Baghdad, omitted the words "under God" as he led the House in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance this week.
McDermott, of Seattle, was one of seven lawmakers who voted against a House resolution last year condemning a federal appeals court ruling that reciting the pledge in public schools is unconstitutional because of its reference to God.
Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, accused McDermott of "embarrassing the House and disparaging the majority of Americans who share the values expressed in the pledge."
The "disparaged" are expected to begin physical therapy and begin throwing on the sidelines within the next three weeks.
God willing, of course....
posted by tbogg at 1:20 AM
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0 for 32
With just 4 more hits, he'll be at just a little under a million dollars a hit.
This guy is already there.
All under-rated at $2.5 million.
(I just had to throw some baseball in here)
posted by tbogg at 12:36 AM
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In the future, everyone will be ignorant of the world like Lileks...
I hadn't checked in on old "F-Bomb" Lileks lately. He didn't disappoint:
Boring stuff ahead, but there’s a treat at the end.
Ah, Fallujah. Peaceful, verdant Fallujah. City of Gardens. City of Perfumed Alleys, the Mesopotamian Eden. One day a quiet happy burg of peace, the next a victim of American overbearance. From the Boston Globe, a lede by Thanassis Cambanis:
U.S. warplanes fired on Iraqi insurgents Tuesday in Fallujah in strikes that shattered a fragile cease-fire negotiated over a week ago.
Got that? We had a nice cease-fire going, and for no reason U.S. warplanes went and shattered it without provocation. I just stopped reading right there.
In the future, I think, newspapers will become almost entirely devoted to local news and happy fluff, like me. I depend on my paper for local news, because I don’t watch TV news.
Besides, the local paper always has those great ads from Target for shampoo at 30% off. You know, the big 64 oz. bottles. For Jim, that's like a years supply.
posted by tbogg at 12:30 AM
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I can't think of any other reason to have sex with her....
Whoops. The curbside flagwavers who make up the 101st Keyboarders are getting their camouflage tighty-not-so-whities in a bunch now that one of their role models is taking some flak (of course it's not the kind of flack that people who actually served might have to face):
Leave it to the Democrats to have no shame. This is just outrageous:
Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg on Wednesday called Vice President Dick Cheney the ``lead chickenhawk'' in an escalating war of words over the Vietnam-era military service of President Bush, Democratic rival John Kerry and the vice president.
"We know who the chickenhawks are," the New Jersey senator said on the Senate floor. "They talk tough on national defense and military issues and cast aspersions on others, but when it was their turn to serve, they were AWOL from courage."
[...]
So now we have Democratic leaning groups and the Chairman of the DNC saying that Cheney got his wife pregnant to avoid service, and prominent Senators are calling Cheney a 'chickenhawk' from the floor of the Senate, and re-iterating that Bush was AWOL.
Well, Bush was AWOL. And as for Cheney knocking up Lynn to avoid the draft, I'll let you make the call.
Although I hear she does spin one hell of a hot girl-on-girl fantasy....
posted by tbogg at 12:08 AM
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Wednesday, April 28, 2004
All quiet on the warblogger front...
When it comes to this:
American soldiers at a prison outside Baghdad have been accused of forcing Iraqi prisoners into acts of sexual humiliation and other abuses in order to make them talk, according to officials and others familiar with the charges.
The charges, first announced by the military in March, were documented by photographs taken by guards inside the prison, but were not described in detail until some of the pictures were made public.
[...]
In one photograph obtained by the program, naked Iraq prisoners are stacked in a human pyramid, one with a slur written on his skin in English. In another, a prisoner stands on a box, his head covered, wires attached to his body. The program said that according to the United States Army, he had been told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted. Other photographs show male prisoners positioned to simulate sex with each other.
"The pictures show Americans, men and women, in military uniforms, posing with naked Iraqi prisoners," states a transcript of the program's script, made available Wednesday night. "And in most of the pictures, the Americans are laughing, posing, pointing or giving the camera a thumbs-up."
The CBS News program said the Army also had photographs showing a detainee with wires attached to his genitals and another showing a dog attacking an Iraqi prisoner. The program also reported that the Army's investigation of the case included a statement from an Iraqi detainee who charges that a translator hired to work at the prison raped a male juvenile prisoner.
At the Abu Ghraib prison, where the photographs were taken, American forces have been holding hundreds of Iraqis since the American-led invasion of Iraq. The prison is infamous as a site where Saddam Hussein tortured prisoners while he was in power.
You can go here...or here....or here and not read a thing about it.
In fact, when it comes to atrocities against the people that we are "freeing", they're quieter than John Ashcroft having sex.
Hearts and minds. Hearts and minds. We only want their hearts and minds.....
posted by tbogg at 11:44 PM
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A situation that requires a choice between options that are or seem equally unfavorable or mutually exclusive.
This is a dilemma. Should I pay $47.00 - $77.00 to see Dennis Miller when he comes to the San Diego Civic Theater in July?
Or should I let Miller pay me $15 to sit in the audience at his TV show and laugh when the little sign comes on?
Or maybe I should just take curtain number three that contains the colonoscopy. At least it comes with a mild sedative.
posted by tbogg at 11:29 PM
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The NY Times Stylebook is unclear on whether "chickenshit" is a hyphenate or not....
Shorter NY Time editorial:
The President is a non-responsive chickenshit dumbass.
posted by tbogg at 11:14 PM
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Mickey's my name...stalking's my game
Is there anything more pathetic than the Kerry Obsessive Disorder™ exhibited by Mickey Kaus? No trivial detail about Kerry, no obscure comment about Kerry from Joe "Used To Be A Democrat" at Doublewide & Proud of It Blog, and no reader comment commending Mickey Hack on his dogged pursuit of Kerry is beneath his bottom-dwelling sonar. It used to be that Kaus was just a poor little rich boy from Beverly Hills who made a living off of hating people on welfare who didn't have the drive to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and be born into the Lucky Sperm Club like himself. Now he sniffs around the Kerry Estate garbage cans and pulls out Snapple bottles going, "Ooooo. Raspberry-flavored. How very French!"
Here's Mick's latest:
Where Kerry Slept: John Kerry didn't throw his own medals over the wall in that 1971 antiwar protest and he didn't sleep on the Mall with his Viet Vet buddies either. He snuck off and slept in a Georgetown townhouse.
Microsoft actually pays him for stuff like this.
The guy makes Margaret Ray look a mental-health poster child.
At least the embarassment of having Mickey writing for Slate made Michael Kinsley leave for a better job.
posted by tbogg at 11:01 PM
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Monday, April 26, 2004
Some catching up to do...
I missed this Get Your War On.
I hope you didn't.
posted by tbogg at 7:46 AM
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Sunday, April 25, 2004
Well, as long as he wasn't talking about strippers...
This must be that religious hatred coming from the left thaI hear so much about...
Ann Coulter and Michele Malkin must be swooning...
posted by tbogg at 11:42 PM
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"I knew the intelligence right up until the day of the war and I knew it wasn't there, the threat. "
I was a little bit out of the loop this weekend, but not so out of it that I didn't read this Q & A with Anthony Zinni, Former Commander in chief of U.S. Central command, in the local paper. Here are some of the most important quotes:
Do you think Saddam had any stocks of banned weapons?
I believe there probably might have been some laying around that he wasn't aware of. They would have been obsolete, even dangerous to move around. There might have been some that were destroyed, there just wasn't proper accounting. But he wasn't even focused on that; they (the U.N. arms inspectors) were. So my belief of what was there was the possible, the potential that you had to plan for, of old stocks, artillery shells, rocket rounds. There was probably about two dozen Scuds (ballistic missiles) that were unaccounted for at the outside that could have possibly been weaponized. But as time went on, these things would have been much more difficult to move, much more difficult to upload. If he possessed those tactical weapons, these things would have had maybe marginal tactical effect on the battlefield in the short term. But certainly nothing of a great threat to the United States. So I really did not think this was a major or imminent or grave and gathering or potential threat.
What should we have done, then, in your view?
Continue to contain them. Containment worked. The president has said containment didn't work. I disagree. First of all, containment worked with the Soviet Union, the Cubans, the North Koreans, thus far. Containment was done at very low cost. In Centcom, in my time there when we had the dual containment policy, there were less troops on a day-to-day basis in the entire theater than than report to work at the Pentagon every day in the entire theater.
[...]
You said all of the generals were against this war and the civilians were for it. What were the Chiefs of Staff doing? Weren't they doing the planning? How come that stuff that you're recommending wasn't done?
Look, when I was the commander in chief of Central Command, Gen. Hugh Shelton was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He required all the service chiefs and all the CINCS, to read "Dereliction of Duty," written by H.R. McMaster, a young Army major now colonel. It talked about the negligence of the joint chiefs during Vietnam who all knew what was being done was wrong in many aspects. Not only the strategy and policy in Vietnam, but also the way we were fighting the war, decisions like individual rotations rather than unit rotation. And we not only were forced to read the book and told to read it, we had a meeting in Washington where he brought in young McMasters, who addressed us about that negligence. So you ask why? It's a good question. There's going to be another dereliction of duty written in the future.
So you're suggesting the administration came in and said this is what we're going to do, shut up and do it?
The worst-kept secret in Washington is that as soon as this administration came in there was talk about taking down Iraq from day one. It's the worst-kept secret in Washington. There were Cabinet meetings where the deputy secretary of defense and others were pushing this. And certainly after 9/11 it was even more intense.
posted by tbogg at 11:33 PM
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Friday, April 23, 2004
Now a polecat is a right smelly feller....
Compliments of reader Nathan: Operation Texas-Style Success.
Yeah. There's bad words in it...but probably nothing that James Lileks hasn't used before.
posted by tbogg at 8:21 PM
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My son, the Towelhead
Thank the English and/or American God it's Friday, because that means it's America's Worst Mother™ day and it's time to relive the hilarious hijinks of America's Most Disturbing Family (registered trademark applied for): Meghan, Mr. Meghan, Felspar, Belfast, Precioso, and Addendum.
In today's unlikely episode, featuring a cameo appearance by Mr. Meghan as "the reluctant stroller-pusher", the Gurdons are off to church with son, Precioso, who has accessorized his standard English schoolboy look with a head scarf and driftwood scimitar.
Paris is standing inside our front door, waiting for the rest of the family to come downstairs. He is dressed in shorts, polo shirt, socks, and shoes; in his belt he has tucked a curved length of driftwood. And on his head, he is wearing --
"Oh no," I say, coming into the front hall, "Sorry, but you're not wearing that to church."
"Why not?"
"Well, because it's -- " My husband comes down the stairs and I appeal to him. "I'm just explaining to Paris that it's the wrong time in history for him to ? "
"What's that on your head, Paris?" Molly interrupts from the landing.
"He's a bedouin," says my husband, amused. "Right?"
"What's a... whatever-you-said?"
"Bedouin are Arabs who roam around, nomadic people."
And roam the Gurdon's must, biffing ("biffing" being to Gurdon what "axiomatic" is to George Will) off to church. Unfortunately a rowdy gang of Little Green Football readers passes by in car, and seeing Precioso decked out like The Littlest Arab, they jump out and kick his ass. Then they high-five each other and run home to embellish the story so that they can post it in the LGF comments.
Okay. That part didn't happen, but it would have made this week's column a lot more fun and interesting and satisfying.
Anyway.
Molly drops into place beside me, who am striding along in the middle with the empty stroller. The marital arrangement is that my husband pushes strollers uphill, whereas I push them on flat or downhill portions; perhaps it is my imagination, but the route always seems to be flat or downhill. In fact it is like walking on an enormous Mobius strip that a giant is forever tipping against one's favor.
As you can see, God (in the role of the giant) hates Meghan despite the fact that she is pious and takes her kids to church to worship Him and even though she makes her husband leave his slutty The Hill intern love poodle on Sundays to come home and make a great show of going to church for the neighbors. God is funny that way. He really is.
As we can see from Meghan's "wrong time in history" comment, she's having a little case of the Big Bad Liberal PC Blues, but she soon gets over it when she sees some of them:
Up ahead, Paris has unsheathed his makeshift scimitar and is jumping around making "Pfwaah!" noises as he beheads invisible baddies. Washington streets on Sunday mornings are generally pretty quiet, apart from the inevitable joggers, but today by embarrassing coincidence we cross paths with two women swathed in head-to-toe black who are coming from the vicinity of a mosque in the direction from which we have come.
Paris biffs and pfwaah's past them, and I see them exchange a glance. They pass the rest of us without acknowledgement, but I cannot resist looking back. When I do, I see that they too are looking back, at our small swashbuckling sheik, and only the Supreme Bee knows what is passing through their chador-shrouded thoughts. I hope they are not feeling mocked; at the same time, I hope they are not thinking what I would be thinking if I happened to be strolling through Riyadh and saw a local boy in G.I. camouflage, firing off a wooden M-249, which would be, roughly, "Huzzah!"
Because, you know, the "chador-shrouded" probably all think that way and are probably on their way to hijack a plane and crash it into the Chuckie Cheese where the Gurdon children will playing later in the day. Their God is funny that way.
Oh. And he's probably American or English, because that's what the Bible is written in.
You can look it up.
posted by tbogg at 8:22 AM
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Thursday, April 22, 2004
It does look pretty impressive on a resumé
As you can see here, The Corner has now hired Jonah Goldberg's dog, Cosmo, as a contributor, which has not only raised the level of discourse, but now The Corner can proudly say that it has two contributors capable of licking their own dicks.
They won't say who the other one is...but my money is on Stanley Kurtz.
posted by tbogg at 11:43 PM
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Ahem...(raised eyebrow...knowing look)
I'm only linking to this so that my wife will read it.
posted by tbogg at 11:26 PM
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Fraud, corruption, cronyism. Welcome to the occupation.
From Paul Krugman:
Sure enough, the administration was unprepared for predictable security problems in Iraq, but moved quickly — in violation of international law — to impose its economic vision. Last month Jay Garner, the first U.S. administrator of Iraq, told the BBC that he was sacked in part because he wanted to hold quick elections. His superiors wanted to privatize Iraqi industries first — as part of a plan that, according to Mr. Garner, was drawn up in late 2001.
Meanwhile, the administration handed out contracts without competitive bidding or even minimal oversight. It also systematically blocked proposals to have Congressional auditors oversee spending, or to impose severe penalties for fraud.
Cronyism and corruption are major factors in Iraq's downward spiral. This week the public radio program "Marketplace" is running a series titled "The Spoils of War," which documents a level of corruption in Iraq worse than even harsh critics had suspected. The waste of money, though it may run into the billions, is arguably the least of it — though military expenses are now $4.7 billion a month. The administration, true to form, is trying to hide the need for more money until after the election; Mr. Cordesman predicts that Iraq will need "in excess of $50-70 billion a year for probably two fiscal years."
More important, the "Marketplace" report confirms what is being widely reported: that the common view in Iraq is that members of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council are using their positions to enrich themselves, and that U.S. companies are doing the same. President Bush's idealistic language may be persuasive to Americans, but many Iraqis see U.S. forces as there to back a corrupt regime, not democracy.
Is anyone surprised?
posted by tbogg at 11:23 PM
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It's news to us...
Amidst all the furrrowed brows and experts in journalistic ethics earning their pay for their phony baloney jobs comes this admission regarding the coffin photos from our nice clean "nobody-that-I-know-is-getting-hurt" war:
Executives at news organizations, many of whom have protested the policy, said last night that they had not known that the Defense Department itself was taking photographs of the coffins arriving home, a fact that came to light only when Russ Kick, the operator of The Memory Hole, filed his request.
"We were not aware at all that these photos were being taken," said Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times.
John Banner, the executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight," said, "We did not file a F.O.I.A. request ourselves, because this was the first we had known that the military was shooting these pictures."
Once they started calling Geraldo Rivera and John Stoessel "investigative journalists" we should have known that investigative journalism was deader than Bill Janklow's career...
posted by tbogg at 11:16 PM
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But I'm one of Bush's enemies and people like me...
Usually on Thursday I "do" Peggy Noonan (not in the Biblical "do" sense because that would be... wrong as well as icky) but the not-too-evil Roger Ailes did such a good job of it that...well, I just feel unneeded at this point.
posted by tbogg at 10:41 PM
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Where the hell was I?
I don't have much to say about this Neal Bortz column. I don't really know who Neal Boortz is, I've never heard him on the radio, and generally I don't even bother with his column. But I thought this was just weird:
Pat Boone, a musical icon of the ‘70’s has chimed in. Still smarting over the failure of the keepers of the community standards to derail the rise of that fanny-wiggling upstart from Tupelo, Boone shares with us his belief that government is just grand.
A musical icon of the 70's?
Was that before he was replaced by David Lee Roth?
I must have missed that.
posted by tbogg at 9:42 PM
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Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Back in a jiffy... and a half
I apologize for the lack of blogging but with the new "young'un" (as they like to call them in the red states) in the house, there has been a lot of rapid deployment "puppy-proofing" as well as pee/poo cleaning-up, and, of course the feedings (boy, are my nipples sore...) so there has been little time to write about destroying democracy and bringing America to its heels why Geoge Bush may be an inappropriate choice as a "leader".
So...filling in for me is Mark Morford at his most Morfordesque:
We all do it. We all smack our palms to our foreheads and trip on our own ideological shoelaces, and we are exasperating and thoughtlessly cruel without knowing it, running roughshod over our noble or ignoble intentions on a daily basis because, well, we are just wired this way. Just ask Mel "Spurtin' Blood" Gibson -- I mean, how much more wrong can you get?
But then comes the hard part: We apologize. Profusely and maybe even a bit meekly, we ask for forgiveness or at least offer an olive branch and recognize our shared messy humanness as the thing that differentiates us from the saccharine sexless drone people of the world -- like, you know, Laura Bush. Shudder.
But then there's Dubya. He is, apparently, immune. He is perfect and flawless and without the slightest taint of guilt or error, and, despite looking like a bowl of Jell-O salad in a universe of divine tiramisu, he is, apparently, an angel of purity and light. It's true.
For here is Dubya, mumbling his way through another shockingly insulting news conference just recently, screwing up both his face and his intelligence data (again) and still a-huntin' for nonexistent WMDs in Iraqi turkey farms (?) as reporter after reporter asks him, point blank, why he won't simply come clean.
They ask him, repeatedly, why he cannot find a single mistake in any policy his slithery admin has unleashed upon the nation, much less confess to any rampant missteps and botched decisions and oily ulterior motives and blatant screw-ups regarding 9/11 and Saddam and WMDs and his fetish for warmongering and for rewriting intelligence data to suit his corporate needs, all while taking more vacations than any president in history.
His answer? Nope. Nossiree, no mistakes were made. In fact, we as a nation are more on track than ever and hey lookit my shiny new boots okey doke thanks fer comin' gotta run. Plants wilted, children cried, even semicomatose cats couldn't help but wince at Bush's weird deflections and alcoholism-grade denials. What a surreal and sad country we swim in.
Heh.
Indeed.
Read the whole thing....
I'll be back Thursday afternoon/evening.
posted by tbogg at 11:44 PM
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If we were to count killing brain cells, George Bush would have lapped the field
Just in case you were interested:
John Kerry was "unofficially credited" with killing 20 enemy fighters during his six months in Vietnam, according to military records just released by the Democratic presidential candidate's campaign. The body count reference is included in a glowing 1969 Navy report that noted Kerry, a junior grade lieutenant, exhibited "all of the traits desired of an officer in a combat environment."
For those keeping score at home:
John Kerry 20
George Bush 0
Laura Bush 1
posted by tbogg at 7:55 AM
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Tuesday, April 20, 2004
If we keep chanting loudly, it will drown out the other stuff
Prof. Insta:
It's time to talk about Oil-for-Terror.
Especially with the U.N.'s own investigation into Oil-for-Food now taking shape, and more congressional hearings in the works, it is high time to focus on the likelihood that Saddam may have fiddled Oil-for-Food contracts not only to pad his own pockets, buy pals, and acquire clandestine arms — but also to fund terrorist groups, quite possibly including al Qaeda.
Oddly enough (okay, it's not that odd) Glenn has yet to say anything about oil for votes.
posted by tbogg at 8:20 AM
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Speaking of which.....
Drudge:
After months of Dems haggling over President Bush's military records, the GOP now moves to demand full-disclosure from John Kerry!
The day after Kerry told MEET THE PRESS he would make all of his military records available for inspection at his campaign headquarters, a spokesman said the senator would not release any new documents, leaving undisclosed many of Kerry's evaluations by his Navy commanding officers, some medical records, and possibly other material.
[...]
ON HIS WIFE'S TAX RETURNS, HE HAS SAID 'NO'. ON HIS HEALTH RECORDS, HE HAS SAID 'NO'. ON HIS COMPREHENSIVE MILITARY RECORDS INCLUDING NAVAL RESERVE RECORDS, HE HAS SAID 'NO'...
Developing...
Any word yet on when Matt Drudge is coming out of the closet?
Developing....
posted by tbogg at 8:14 AM
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Monday, April 19, 2004
S'cuse me...busy day
But this, is bad this is worse, this is ridiculous, and this doesn't surprise me.
posted by tbogg at 10:42 PM
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Sunday, April 18, 2004
A helping paw
Many thanks to blogger Chris at Southpaw for hosting pictures of our new "baby"
May I introduce Beckham who later got tired of having his picture taken.
Yeah. Yeah. Awwwwwwww...
posted by tbogg at 11:23 PM
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Things we never said when Bush At War came out...
Poor KJL. Her ox just got gored:
Why does the president sit down with Bob Woodward in the first place? We have, evidently, in the Woodward book, based on 60 Minutes and Post excerpts, a portrait of a simple-minded Christian who thinks he was sent by God to give the whole world freedom, and who doesn't consider himself accountable to Congress, the Constitution, or anyone else. Which would just a typical Beltway book--one current account of history, from the angle of its main sources or writer--if it weren't for the legitimacy stamp it gets from having the president as one of its only on-the-record sources.
Posted at 07:41 PM
That's it...blame the source.
Of course, we've been doing that for three years....
posted by tbogg at 9:42 PM
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In case you had forgotten
Tom Burka is brilliant.
posted by tbogg at 9:35 PM
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Mission accomplished
Hoping to deflect criticism of Condi Rice and President Mumbles, the rightwing echo chamber took the lead from John Ashcroft and start a wilding on Jamie Gorelick. Looks like all their hardwork paid off:
Jamie Gorelick, a member of the commission investigating the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, said Saturday that she received death threats this week after a number of conservatives alleged that her former work in the Justice Department may have contributed to failures leading to the attacks.
In the mid-1990s, Gorelick served as deputy attorney general of the United States.
During that time, she wrote a memorandum establishing distinctions between intelligence that could be used for law-enforcement purposes and intelligence that could be used for national security purposes.
That separation was originally required as a safeguard against abuse of citizens' rights by government investigative agencies. But passage of the Patriot Act in the wake of the attacks eliminated the requirement.
The so-called "wall" governing intelligence uses has been a key subject at hearings of the commission. It has been blamed for being a main obstacle to better sharing of information in connection with the September 11 attacks.
"I can confirm that I've received threats at my office and my home," she told CNN on Saturday. "I did get a bomb threat to my home."
[...]
A law enforcement source told CNN that the FBI is investigating the threats.
Why not? Ashcroft lit the fuse.
posted by tbogg at 11:22 AM
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Friday, April 16, 2004
Not the kind of present he had in mind....
Happy sixth birthday to Satchmo the Wonder Basset. Six years being 42 years in dog years, or 9/10ths of a lifetime in Cheney years.
So, what did Satchmo (who also goes by "Blobbo" and "Lardamus") get for his birthday?
A puppy.
Short story, long dog:
Wife calls from Palm Springs where she and daughter have been tanning all week.....8 week-old basset puppy with freckles on nose and large white feet...AKC registered and microchipped........"Satchmo needs a buddy"........"We'll take care of him"........"Three year warranty" (no...really!)........ "Omigawd, he's soooo cute"...$500 later...
Beckham the Basset.
Pictures to come later (if I find someone to host them since Blogger won't let me upgrade...Bastards...See below)
posted by tbogg at 11:02 PM
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It's late....I'm tired...go make fun of her yourself
This morning I had an absolutely brilliant post about about America's Worst Mother™. A post that was so good that, dare I say it, it might have won me many awards from distinguished but obscure journalism societies as well as presents from admirers and possibly even a backrub from Jennifer Anniston (yes...it was that good). Unfortunately after years of research, months of writing and minutes of proof reading, Blogger ate it. I am distraught and emotionally shattered by the experience and am considering filing suit in a suitable venue where I stand a good chance of hitting the jackpot and never working again which is one of the things that makes this the greatest country ever in the history of mankind, USA! USA! USA!
At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.....
(Added: Since many people sent me the link, you can read about Mr. Meaghan here. (scroll down) Apparently he's America's Worst Boss™)
posted by tbogg at 10:43 PM
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Crap.
Complete post on America's Worst Mother™ blown out by Blogger...and it's time to go to work.
Sorry.
See you tonight.
posted by tbogg at 8:32 AM
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Thursday, April 15, 2004
Biscuits for smut*
Last night I wrote a rather self-indulgent post about my day that I later decided I just didn't care for (the post...not the day). Included in the post was a cookie recipe that more than a few people wanted...and then it was just gone. Poof!
For those that requested it:
Using a non-stick mini-muffin pan (like this one), fill each little muffin cup a little less than halfway with the pre-made Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie dough that comes in the tube. Place in a preheated oven at 375 degrees for about 8 minutes. Remove from the oven. Insert a previously unwrapped Reese's Peanut Butter Cup mini into the top of each cookie/muffin, pushing it down so the top is flush with the top of the dough. Place back in the oven for about 2-3 more minutes. Remove and allow to cool.
Make sure that you have unwrapped the Reese's minis before you pull the cookies out at the 8 minute mark. Trust me on that one.
Did I mention that I paid Neiman Marcus $250 for this recipe?
(*Okay. The headline doesn't have anything to do with the cookies. It's just the name of one of my favorite Helmet songs and I wanted to use it)
posted by tbogg at 11:49 PM
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The view from here
I was just reading faux economist Donald Luskin (don't ask why..it's like reading Marmaduke. It's just there) who wrote:
How would you like go to a doctor who takes your temperature with a thermometer that says you're running a fever even when you're perfectly healthy? Sound good? Well then step into the examining room ? Dr. Kerry will see you now.
Never mind three back-to-back quarters of great GDP growth. Never mind new all-time high levels of household wealth. Never mind strong consumer spending, low inflation, and a recovering job market. Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has come up with what he calls the "Middle-class Misery Index" ? and it purports to prove that the economy is sick, sick, sick.
It's all quackery, of course. And as you'll see in a moment, this economy is so healthy that even John Kerry and his brainless-trust of liberal economists couldn't come up with a fraud nasty enough to make it look really bad.
Hmmmm.
Let's turn it over to the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce who can normally find a silver lining in an oil spill:
Looking for a job with a real future in San Diego County?
You might want to give hamburger-flipping a try.
Nearly one-fourth of the jobs created in the county between 1999 and 2002 were for restaurant cooks and servers, with an average salary of $18,043 per year, according to a report released yesterday by the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.
The chamber's report warns that the rapid growth of low-income jobs is mirrored by a shrinkage in middle-wage jobs, as the county becomes increasingly stratified between rich and poor.
"We are creating some high-end jobs and a lot of low-wage jobs, but the middle class is getting squeezed out," said chamber economist Kelly Cunningham, who wrote the report. "We run the risk of becoming like Santa Barbara, with a stratum of wealthy people and the workers on the lower end who serve them."
[...]
Of the 70,810 jobs created in San Diego County between 1999 and 2002, 42,320 ? or 60 percent ? paid less than $30,000 a year, according to the chamber's report.
Leading the pack were 26,110 new office and administrative workers, earning an average of $29,703 a year; 15,880 cooks and servers, averaging $18,043; and 2,550 janitors and maintenance workers, averaging $22,167.
Many of those salaries are far below the level needed for survival in San Diego, said Paul Karr, communications director at San Diego's Center on Policy Initiatives. In a recent study, the center estimated that a family of four requires at least $50,000 a year to provide such basic necessities as food, rent, clothing and child care.
"That doesn't include such costs as saving for college or the luxuries we all take for granted, such as birthdays, holidays and back-to-school expenses," Karr said. "As a regional local economy, relying on that kind of job growth is unsustainable, since we'll have a large class of folks who are unable to pay basic needs. How can they afford increased costs in housing, let alone gasoline, energy, child care?"
The price of an apartment in the less desirable parts of San Diego is currently about $400 per bedroom. In my neighborhood (and, granted, I live in one of the nicer coastal areas) an average three bedroom house is currently going for $2850 per month. Buying gas today, the cheapest unleaded is selling for $2.39 per gallon which is reportedly the highest in the country. Take those two numbers and then imagine having a family of four and the costs involved in taking care of that family. Now do the math.
To Republicans like Donald Luskin, the idea of "...a stratum of wealthy people and the workers on the lower end who serve them" is like Viagra....
posted by tbogg at 11:17 PM
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Putting the "fat" in fatuous
There's a slap-fight over at the Corner Corral:
FATUOUS AND SELF-INDULGENT [Jonah Goldberg]
Andrew - I have neither the time nor the inclination to restart an argument we've (meaning all of us at NRO) have had many times before. But let me say for the record that I'm often astounded by the inability of drug war opponents to treat with respect or good faith those they disagree with.
I know you obviously meant no offense to me personally, but the phrase "fatuous and self-indulgent," it seems to me, could very well apply to countless legalization advocates who refuse to recognize that there is a good faith argument on the other side.
You gotta admit though, that the terms "fatuous and self-indulgent" do call to mind images of a certain momma's boy pundit who might also be described as a lazy, puffy, couch-dwelling, Star-Trek-quoting, girly-boy.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Calling him that, I mean....
I just think it's funny to see someone named Andrew Stuttaford getting in a fight with Jonah Goldberg. Call it The Thrilla in Vanilla...
posted by tbogg at 3:35 PM
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More evidence that Iraq is not like Viet Nam
I don't remember this kind of thing happening in the sixties:
Brandon Hughey is a teenager living among strangers, thousands of miles from his friends, family and home in San Angelo, Texas. The 18-year-old is one of two American servicemen who recently deserted their units and fled to Canada to claim asylum as refugees. "We plan to argue that the war in Iraq is illegal under international law and that I have a right not to choose to participate," he says.
Hughey, who has been taken in by a Quaker couple in the Ontario city of St Catharines, spends his days preparing his legal case. For breaks, he takes solitary walks downtown. He seems mature, composed, and hopeful that he will be able to build a new life for himself in Canada.
Hughey signed up for the army when he was 17, during his final year in high school. "I joined because it was the only way I was going to get a college education," he says. He went through basic training, and in his spare time began learning about the campaign in Iraq on the internet. He says he became increasingly uncomfortable about the mission, then so disturbed that he considered killing himself. He brought his questions to a commanding officer, who told him to stop thinking so much.
posted by tbogg at 3:07 PM
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As God is my witness, we're gonna keep them that way....
Who knew the Rush Limbaugh Show had a mission statement?
“This is the one business in America journalism where the news consumers are always assumed to be wrong, dupes, morons, idiots and glittering jewels of colossal ignorance, incapable understanding the weighty issues the press is dealing with.”
It may be a niche, but it's his niche....
posted by tbogg at 12:12 PM
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Mr. Wolfowitz also stated that he thought "...the Chargers will totally kick ass in the 2004 Super Bowl".
I sure as hell wouldn't let Paul pick my lotto numbers.
In his testimony, Mr. Wolfowitz ticked off several reasons why he believed a much smaller coalition peacekeeping force than General Shinseki envisioned would be sufficient to police and rebuild postwar Iraq. He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo. He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force that "stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible," but would oppose a long-term occupation force. And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it. "I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction," Mr. Wolfowitz said. He added that many Iraqi expatriates would likely return home to help.
posted by tbogg at 12:03 PM
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Scientists still working on that ancient photo strip from the Little Photo Booth of Turin
MILAN, Italy (Reuters) -- Italian scientists have found a matching image of a man's face and possibly his hands on the back of the Turin shroud, believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, one of the researchers said on Thursday.
The discovery that the ghostly image on the back of the linen cloth matches the face that adorns the front is likely to reignite debate over whether the shroud is genuine or a skilful medieval fraud.
The new image is here.
That's kind of what I expected...
posted by tbogg at 11:11 AM
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That low regard for the Fourth Estate does not apply to us. We're America's newspaper, you know-ed
Spin so forceful it took two days to write and it still almost flies off the page:
The president, who understands very well that Americans are divided right now over the best strategy for achieving victory in Iraq, did not filibuster. Nor did he attempt to deliver some empty, feel-good speech, or play the gotcha game — coming up with some phony confession of incompetence. As a result, frustrated members of the press now say the president is just stubborn and suggest that his unwillingness to admit failure is evidence of a personality defect. But given the low regard in which the Fourth Estate is held by the American people, Mr. Bush shouldn't worry too much.
An admission by Bush of incompetence would be the first time that he has told the American public the truth since before he announced his intention to run for President.
The Times does admit that Mumbles The Speechifying Clown failed to make his case:
Instead of playing the media's game, he offered a sober-minded assessment of the challenges that lie ahead for the allied coalition. As the president made clear, there would be serious consequences if the United States failed to follow through on its promise to bring stability and self-government to Iraq. Mr. Bush did a solid job of explaining what is at stake in Iraq, pointing to the connection between the Iraqi insurgency and outside terrorist groups.
[...]
Given the reality that Americans are polarized over the conduct of the war, Mr. Bush's speech and subsequent performance at the press conference probably will not change many minds. Rather, they will solidify support among wavering backers of the president.
If his cause is just (and can't you just see him using exactly those words when speaking at the South Carolina Christian Contractors Association Prayer Breakfast and Abstinence Festival?) then shouldn't he have been able to change at least a few people's minds? I mean, if you're going to bump American Idol off the air...
posted by tbogg at 10:59 AM
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Memo to Andy: Ditto
Sullivan makes an apology of sorts to Captain James J. Yee:
Very few incidents have made me as angry as the disgraceful, foul and malicious attempt by the U.S. military to accuse Captain Janes(sic) J. Yee, the Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay, of treason and espionage. They had no solid evidence, but, at the time, I worried that the story might be true. I feel terrible for leaping to that tentative conclusion. But it got worse. When the espionage charges fell apart, the military then tried to frame Yee for adultery and for downloading porn from the Internet, dragging his family into the entire affair. It recalled to me the way the military trashes and defames the lives of honorable gay servicemembers. Yesterday, all the charges were dropped.
You see, Andy feels bad because it reminds him of how gay servicemembers are treated which is what truly offends him. I imagine that Yee's response to Sullivan might be similar to what Sullivan had to say to Osama in the post above his Yee comments.
posted by tbogg at 10:33 AM
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Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Now available with the Super-Stigmata™ grip....
You probably aren't going to find this too surprising.
(Thanks to Chris)
posted by tbogg at 11:10 PM
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New to the links
Catch
Make sure you read this.
posted by tbogg at 11:02 PM
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What I saw at the elocution
Here's Tom Shales on He Who Cannot Speak:
Bush similarly struggled, a few minutes earlier, to cite the single biggest mistake of his presidency. He looked baffled and incredulous. "I'm sure something will pop into my head here," he said, noting the intense "pressure" of holding a news conference on TV. Of course people watching throughout the country expect a president to be able to handle that kind of pressure without blinking, based on the assumption that this is one of the milder forms of pressure that come with the office.
Earlier still, Bush stopped in mid-answer and for a few seconds appeared to have lost his train of thought. Looking anxious, he fell back on phrases and thoughts he'd used earlier, saying he and the world changed after 9/11, which was a truism, and that in the 21st century, America is no longer protected by the oceans on either side. But that's been true since the invention of nuclear weapons and of missiles to deliver them from halfway around the world.
After the news conference, CBS News anchor Dan Rather said Bush had come across as "steady, competent and forceful" while answering questions but that he delivered his opening statement "in a rather flat monotone," perhaps intentionally. It was a peculiar performance; Bush would look down, read a sentence, look up, look around, pause slightly, then look down and read another sentence.
Although the short speech was well-written, especially toward the end, Bush looked upon it as an address in which all sentences were created equal. He never stressed any particular point or added any emphasis. He might as well have been reading letters off an eye chart.
And here is Peggy Noonan sitting at Bush's knee, looking up with adoring Daddy-eyes:
What do I think public opinion of the president's news conference will be? Generally positive. Here's why: The president spoke uninterrupted for the first 17 minutes, when most people were tuning in to see what he had to say. His speech/announcement hit every point that had to be covered, crisply and yet somberly.
Here's Peggy calling journalists, with their smarty-pants questions and obsession with facts, traitors:
Imagine it is April, 1943 and FDR is meeting with the press. Mr. President, why did you fail us on Dec. 7? You call it a day of infamy, but didn't it reveal your leadership style to be infamous? Why did you let the U.S. fleet sit sleepy and exposed at Pearl Harbor? Do you think your physical infirmity, sir, has an impact on your ability to think about strategic concerns, and will you instruct your doctors to make public your medical records?
But of course they wouldn't have asked these questions. Our press corps in those days was more like Americans than our press corps is today. They were both less self-hating and more appropriately anxious: Don't be killing our leaders in the middle of a war, don't be disheartening the people. Win and do the commentary later.(my emphasis)
...and here is Peg summing up:
More and more it seems to me Mr. Bush is not only Bill Clinton's successor but his exact opposite: Mr. Clinton perfectly poised and hollow inside, a man whose lack of compass left him unable to lead within the Oval Office but who gave a compelling public presentation of the presidency, and Mr. Bush a strong president with an obvious soul, decisive at the desk, but with no dazzling edifice. It's actually amazing that two such different men came so close together. Lucky for us, considering the history, that Mr. Bush was the one who came now.
Unfortunately for the unlucky 3000, President Decisive At The Desk wasn't sitting at his desk in August 2001 instead of choosing to take a one-month vacation after only seven months on the job.
That Presidentin' is hard, should be apparent to even the most obvious, if not oblivious, soul....
posted by tbogg at 10:54 PM
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More help on the way for Penis-Americans.
Penis talk that you won't find at Wonkette:
New Erectile Dysfunction Ad Is Blunt
She asks in a sultry voice if you want to know a secret. And when she spills the beans, she is quite explicit. The latest ad for an erectile dysfunction treatment is taking the battle for dominance in the $2 billion market up a notch with its frank description of the medicine's purpose.
The Levitra ad, slated to begin airing Thursday, features an attractive brunette saying the drug improves erection quality and how that experience increases her partner's desire to "do this more often."
"For him Levitra works - just look at that smile," she purrs.
First of all, exactly what kind of guy (outside of Karen Hughes' husband) doesn't want to do "this" more often?
And shouldn't that headline have read:
New Erectile Dysfunction Ad Is Straightforward
posted by tbogg at 10:17 PM
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President steals scientist's thunder
After last night's press conference, researchers at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and the University of California San Francisco are just kicking themselves over taking Good Friday off and not releasing their report.
posted by tbogg at 10:04 PM
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Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Meanwhile, on Planet Looking For A Way To Forgive Him About That Whole Gay Marriage Thing
Andrew Sullivan, who apparently used the word "freedom" for his Presidential Press Conference Drinking Game, likes what he saw:
I've just watched the press conference later on C-SPAN. Not only was the transcript encouraging. I found the president clear, forceful, impassioned, determined, real. This was not an average performance. I found it Bush at his best. He needs to do it more.
It's 2am, the bar is closing, and Bush is the only thing left standing for Andy...
posted by tbogg at 11:37 PM
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"This guy was a torturer, a killer, a maimer."...of language.
President Not Quick On His Feet in his own, uh, you know, like, words:
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) Mr. President. To move to the 9/11 commission, you yourself have acknowledged that Osama bin Laden was not a central focus of the administration in the months before September 11th. I was not on point, you told the journalist Bob Woodward. I didn?t feel that sense of urgency.
Two and a half years later, do you feel any sense of personal responsibility for September 11th?
BUSH: Let me put that quote to Woodward in context, because he had asked me if I was -- something about killing bin Laden. That's what the question was.
And I said, you know, compared to how I felt at the time, after the attack, I didn't have that -- and I also went on to say, my blood wasn't boiling, I think is what the quote said.
I didn't see -- I mean, I didn't have that great sense of outrage that I felt on September the 11th. I was -- on that day, I was angry and sad. Angry that al-Qaida -- I thought at the time al-Qaida, found out shortly thereafter it was al-Qaida -- had unleashed this attack. Sad for those who lost their life.
Your question, do I feel -- yes?
QUESTION: Personal responsibility for September 11th?
BUSH: I feel incredibly grieved when I meet with family members, and I do quite frequently. I grieve for, you know, the incredible loss of life that they feel, the emptiness they feel.
There are some things I wish we'd have done, when I look back. I mean, hindsight's easy. It's easy for a president to stand up and say, now that I know what happened, it would have been nice if there were certain things in place.
For example, a Homeland Security Department. And why -- I say that because that provides the ability for our agencies to coordinate better and to work together better than it was before.
I think the hearings will show that the Patriot Act is an important change in the law that will allow the FBI and the CIA to better share information together.
We were kind of stovepiped, I guess is a way to describe it. There was, you know, kind of departments that at times didn't communicate -- because of law, in the FBI's case.
And the other thing I look back on and realize is that we weren't on a war footing. The country was not on a war footing, and yet the enemy was at war with us. And it didn't take me long to put us on a war footing.
And we've been on a war ever since.
The lessons of 9/11 -- one lesson was we must deal with gathering threats, and that's part of the reason I dealt with Iraq the way I did.
The other lesson is, is that this country must go on the offense and stay on the offense. In order to secure the country, we must do everything in our power to find these killers and bring them to justice before they hurt us again. I'm afraid they want to hurt us again. They're still there.
They can be right one time; we got to be right 100 percent of the time in order to protect the country. It's a mighty task.
But our government has changed since the 9/11 attacks. We're better equipped to respond. We're better at sharing intelligence. But we've still got a lot of work to do.
Dave?
... "There was, you know, kind of departments that at times didn't communicate.."
He's just three " like" 's and one " so I'm all..." away from being a 14-year-old girl at the mall.
posted by tbogg at 11:02 PM
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Monday, April 12, 2004
Looks like I'm going to have to do a little research
I have no idea what the hell this is.
posted by tbogg at 11:22 PM
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"Tonight we'll be taking questions from "Stretch", "Dolce", "Poncho", "Fine", "Skippy", the "Will-Meister", "Junk in the Trunk", "Peckerhead", and "Fishlips". The rest of you can just sit down and shut the hell up."
On the eve of George Bush's third Prime Time press conference it is worth remembering that a little over one year ago, the Dodgeball Champion-in-Chief held a press conference where the reporters who were allowed to ask questions were pre-selected:
March 7th, 2003, at an official press briefing, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer twice admitted under questioning that the President's staff preselected which reporters to call, and the order, for the East Room Press Conference on the evening of March 6th, 2003. This Press Conference was President Bush's eighth solo news conference since inauguration, and the second formally presented in the East Room during prime time.
Mr. Fleischer responded to a reporter's query over a short gaffe in which the President was heard to say to a reporter, "You'll be there in a moment," upon which he then called CNN correspondent John King and remarked "...this is a scripted...[pause]", after which an outburst of laughter from the press pool could be heard. The president then moved directly onto the next question.
So you have to wonder, with his withering poll numbers and the public's increasing disatisfaction with his job performance, whether he's going to take a chance with any "journalist" who's not on his team.
Personally, I won't be home in time to see the post-mortem, but I imagine Peggy Noonan will make her way onto Hardball where she will tell us how "masterful" Bush is and how he really has "grown in office and in stature".
Later an MSNBC janitor will mop up under her chair.
posted by tbogg at 11:03 PM
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Lack of blogging
Sorry about the general lack of blogging lately. The girls (wife and daughter) are off in Palm Springs this week getting their pre-Summer tans and, although that should free me up somewhat, I've got MAN THINGS to do around the house while they're gone.
Unfortunately, tonight, one of those things was cleaning up the house before the housekeeper comes tomorrow.
Don't ask....
By the way, thanks to all of you who have stuck around for my new limited schedule. Over the weekend, this blog went over the 1.5 million hits mark. If some one had told me two years ago that I would someday break 1.5 million hits on my blog, I would have said: What's a blog?
No. Really. That's what I would have said.
posted by tbogg at 10:39 PM
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Leading us to the conclusion that it wasn't a good pl---pl---pl--- C'mon. You can say it....
Professor Reynolds provides us with the inadvertent WTF? of the evening:
"Kos and Atrios are fighting the last war. The issue for the Democrats should be that Bush has mismanaged Iraq, not that we shouldn't have invaded in the first place."
That's certainly what the Democrats should be arguing -- except that then they'd have to come up with a plan. Despite Ed's urgings, Kerry has shown no sign of one beyond obviously empty platitudes about "more international cooperation" and the like.
Did the Administration have a good plan going in? I don't know -- but whatever plan they might have had was overtaken by events. (my emphasis)
Excuse me? If one is invading a country with the expectation of occupying it for, oh, a few months or so, shouldn't one have a pretty good plan in place taking into account all the variables (which are the pupal stage of "events") that could come into play and which might result in things going awry?
This administration is more like the car-chasing dog that finally caught one and now doesn't know what to do with it.
posted by tbogg at 10:02 PM
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Flying the friendly skies of Air Cheney...
Just in case he has to start flying business class next January:
Most commercial airplanes now must have cardiac equipment on board to help passengers who suffer heart attacks. The new Federal Aviation Administration rule, which affects about 2,600 airliners, went into effect Monday.
Airliners staffed with at least one flight attendant must have the device, known as an automated external defibrillator. Some already carry the equipment. In 1998, a Boston man became the first person on a domestic flight to have his life saved by a defibrillator.
posted by tbogg at 9:21 PM
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War advice from the Captain Roach Bomb
Regarding Tom DeLay:
Another Democrat questioning President Bush's leadership during the ongoing war in Iraq is former President Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Carter goes so far as to say that "President Bush's war was ill-advised and unnecessary and based on erroneous statements, and has turned out to be a tragedy."
"I'm just glad President Carter wasn't in charge after Valley Forge, Bull Run or Pearl Harbor," reacts House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, a Republican. "Unfortunately, this is becoming a dangerous pattern. Democrat(sic) leaders continue to undermine our troops and our coalition's ability to win the war and bring peace and stability to the Middle East."
Former President and Nobel Prize winner Jimmy Carter's military background:
James Earle (Jimmy) Carter, Jr., who in 1976 became the fifth consecutive President with prior Navy service, was born in Plains, Georgia on 1 October 1924, to Lillian Gordy and James Earle Carter. Carter grew up in a rural atmosphere and attended public schools. Graduating from Plains High School in 1941, he attended Georgia Southwestern College in Americus, Georgia. After a year there, Carter transferred to Georgia Institute of Technology to study mathematics for a year in order to qualify for the U.S. Naval Academy. In 1943, Carter received an appointment to the academy and became a member of the Class of 1947. After completing the accelerated wartime program, he graduated on 5 June 1946 with distinction and obtained his commission as ensign.
After he graduated, Carter was stationed at Norfolk and assigned to USS Wyoming (E-AG 17), an older battleship that had been converted into a floating laboratory for testing new electronics and gunnery equipment. On Wyoming, Carter served as radar officer and CIC officer. Detached when Wyoming was decommissioned on 23 July 1947, he was assigned that day to another similarly used battleship, USS Mississippi (E-AG 128) as Training and Education Officer. After completing two years of surface ship duty, Carter chose to apply for submarine duty. Accepted, he began the six-month course at the U.S. Navy Submarine School, Submarine Base, New London, Connecticut from 14 June to 17 December 1948.
Upon completion of the course, Carter was assigned to USS Pomfret (SS 391) based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii where he reported on board on 29 December. Pomfret left on a simulated war patrol to the western Pacific and the Chinese coast on 4 January 1949. On board, Carter qualified in a submarine on 4 February, and served as Communications Officer, Sonar Officer, Electronics Officer, Gunnery Officer and Supply Officer. On 9 March, he served as the approach officer for a simulated torpedo firing at target ships, and scored a "hit." The submarine returned to Pearl Harbor on 25 March. Soon after Carter's promotion to Lieutenant Junior Grade on 5 June 1949, Pomfret was sent in July to San Diego where the submarine operated along the California coast.
Detached from Pomfret on 1 February 1951, Carter was assigned as Engineering Officer for the precommissioning detail for USS K-1 (SSK 1). K-1, the first postwar submarine built, was under construction by Electric Boat Division, General Dynamics Corporation, Groton, Connecticut. After K-1's commissioning on 10 November 1951, Carter served as Executive Officer, Engineering Officer, and Electronics Repair Officer. During this tour he also qualified for command of a submarine.
When Admiral Hyman G. Rickover (then a captain) started his program to create nuclear powered submarines, Carter wanted to join the program and was interviewed by Rickover. On 1 June 1952, Carter was promoted to Lieutenant. Selected by Rickover, Carter was detached on 16 October 1952 from K-1 for duty with the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Division of Reactor Development in Schenectady, New York. From 3 November 1952 to 1 March 1953, he served on temporary duty with the Naval Reactors Branch, U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Washington, DC to assist "in the design and development of nuclear propulsion plants for naval vessels."
From 1 March to 8 October, Carter was preparing to become the engineering officer for the nuclear power plant to be placed in USS Seawolf (SSN 575), one of the first submarines to operate on atomic power. He assisted in setting up training for the enlisted men who would serve on Seawolf. During this time his father became very sick and died in July 1953. After his father's death in 1953, Carter resigned from the Navy to return to Georgia to manage the family interests. Carter was honorably discharged on 9 October 1953 at Headquarters, Third Naval District in New York City. On 7 December 1961, he transferred to the retired reserve with the rank of Lieutenant at his own request.
Tom DeLay's military service:
In 1988, a little-known Texas congressman gathered a crowd of reporters in the lobby of a downtown New Orleans hotel housing several state delegates to the Republican National Convention. Clutching a pole topped by a drooping American flag, 22nd District two-termer Tom DeLay launched into a rather implausible defense of Dan Quayle, an Indiana senator freshly picked by George Bush as his presidential ticket partner.
Bill Clinton's draft-dodging efforts would become an issue in his successful campaign against Bush four years later, but now Quayle's own past manipulation of family ties to get into a national guard unit was touching off a classic feeding frenzy among the convention press corps.
DeLay seemed to feel the issue applied personally to him, and perhaps it did. He had graduated from the University of Houston at the height of the Vietnam conflict in 1970, but chose to enlist in the war on cockroaches, fleas and termites as the owner of an exterminator business, rather than going off to battle against the Vietcong.
He and Quayle, DeLay explained to the assembled media in New Orleans, were victims of an unusual phenomenon back in the days of the undeclared Southeast Asian war. So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself. Satisfied with the pronouncement, which dumbfounded more than a few of his listeners who had lived the sixties, DeLay marched off to the convention.
"Who was that idiot?" asked a TV reporter who arrived at the end of the media show. When he was told the name, it drew a blank. DeLay at that time was a national nobody, and his claim that blacks and browns crowded him and other good conservatives out of Vietnam seemed so outlandish and self-serving that no one bothered to file a news report on the congressman's remarks.
posted by tbogg at 8:28 PM
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Sunday, April 11, 2004
Destroying two towers in order to save a political career
I just finished reading Greg Easterbrook's " alternative history" where George Bush actually does something before 9/11, and I have to say that I'm ashamed of the way I have acted in denouncing this brave steely-eyed rocket man who simply had the best interests of America his political career in mind back on Aug. 6.
Sure, three thousand people died on 9/11, but, in a country of over 290 million, that's a small price to pay for the steady hand of this great leader.
I am abashed, apologetic, bashful, blushing, chagrined, compunctious, conscience-stricken, contrite, crestfallen, debased, demeaned, discomfited, disconcerted, distraught, distressed, embarrassed, flustered, guilty, hesitant, humble, humbled, humiliated, meek, mortified, muddled, penitent, regretful, reluctant, remorseful, repentant, shamed, shamefaced, sheepish, shy, sorry, stammering, stuttering, submissive by my treatment of our leader.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go hang my head in shame...
posted by tbogg at 11:27 PM
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Endless vacation
It's not as if he's the Hardest Working Man in Politics:
...it's good to know that George W. Bush has found time for a 500th vacation day, even as the ever-rising American death toll in Iraq reaches 628. (For all of you shrill semantic hair-splitters out there who divide war zone sacrifices into those that count and those that don't, the toll of Americans killed in full-on combat action stands, at this writing, at 455. It's no doubt rising even as I type this.)
And yet Bring 'Em On Bush is taking it manfully in stride. As The Washington Post reports, "This is Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office ... Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency."
posted by tbogg at 10:47 PM
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No Bush lovin' in San Diego
Lead Letters to the Editor in San Diego:
I take exception to the March 19 letter to the editor stating that the electorate has a choice in the fall between the equivalent of Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain.
There is no way on God's green earth that President Bush can be compared to Churchill. Not only was Churchill an outstanding orator but also he was a graduate of the Sandhurst Military Academy and fought courageously in India and Africa, participating in cavalry charges against the Dervishes at the battle of Omdurman. Churchill was captured during the Boer War in South Africa but escaped across enemy lines and became a national hero.
Bush has never participated in any military action. Kerry, however, bravely served his country in Vietnam, being awarded no less than three Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for Valor.
The Alabama National Guard, meanwhile, was looking for Bush who was believed AWOL.
Yes, we do have a choice in the fall -- between a coward and a decorated all-American hero who is more like Churchill than Bush will ever hope to be.
BRIAN WARDHAUGH
La Mesa
I think it is appropriate in every election to reflect on an American president's accomplishments. President Bush is inextricably linked to the attacks on our soil. He should be allowed to run advertisements of the leadership he exhibited.
I think it is as appropriate that Democrats should be able to run advertisements examining his leadership. They should show the 600-plus body bags coming back from Iraq, the testimony of several of his former key Cabinet appointments and advisers. People should be informed how he has led character assassinations of dissenters.
Certainly, debate Sept. 11, but make sure that Americans understand that Bush's leadership on terrorism and foreign policy has been lackluster and misguided, possibly creating an even more dangerous world in which to live, spreading terrorism to more nations.
His legacy may be that he created a dispersion of terrorism from Afghanistan to more nations than one coalition can destroy.
ERIC D. BROWN
San Diego
Your editorial of March 25, "Task too important / Keep partisanship out of 9/11 probe" tries to make the important point that politics should be kept out of the commission's proceedings. Unfortunately, the point is lost because of the partisanship in your editorial. You devoted two paragraphs to the partisanship of Democrat Jamie Gorelick but made no mention of the partisanship of any Republicans such as James Thompson.
GRANT HUGHES
San Diego
The judgment of history will be that the war in Iraq was not at all about Sept. 11, 2001, but all about November 2004.
TOM SMITH
San Diego
posted by tbogg at 8:58 PM
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9/11 as a mulligan...
President All Hat, No Clue didn't let a little document entitled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US" keep him form his appointed rounds:
President Bush was in an expansive mood on Aug. 7, 2001, when he ran into reporters while playing golf at the Ridgewood Country Club in Waco, Tex.
The day before, the president had received an intelligence briefing -- the contents of which were declassified by the White House Saturday night -- warning "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." But Bush seemed carefree as he spoke about the books he was reading, the work he was doing on his nearby ranch, his love of hot-weather jogging, his golf game and his 55th birthday.
"No mulligans, except on the first tee," he said to laughter. "That's just to loosen up. You see, most people get to hit practice balls, but as you know, I'm walking out here, I'm fixing to go hit. Tight back, older guy -- I hit the speed limit on July 6th."
...and America hit a wall on 9/11 because the Golfcart Cowboy was asleep at the putter.
posted by tbogg at 5:02 PM
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Blinding glimpse of the obvious
Kaus takes off his Kerry Tunnel Goggles™ and states what a lot of people have been saying for, oh, over a year:
The grimmest lesson of Fallujah? Will any democratic government we could conceivably leave behind in Iraq be strong enough to stop Sunni towns like Fallujah--filled with well-armed, well-trained America-hating young men--from becoming ongoing hotbeds of terrorist plotting? The lesson of recent events in Iraq would seem to be a pessimistic one in this regard. (You'd need a strong, non-American military force able to thoroughly police Fallujah and Tikrit. But the Iraqi national forces haven't exactly proven to be a mighty hammer. And the Sunnis, in a loose federal system, seem unlikely to want to crack down on their own.) ... That's true even if the Marines are able to completely clean out the current Fallujah "vipers' nest"--something that also looks increasingly unlikely, given the political pressure for a cease-fire. ... It means that the Iraq War--even if we basically succeed in nation-building--could result in the creation of a new series of towns that --like the towns on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border--are a terrorist Petri dish. If that's the outcome, then in one respect at least we will have succeeded in replacing one terror threat (Saddam) with another, no? .... 12:42 P.M.
Welcome to "No, duh" Nation, Mick....
posted by tbogg at 4:50 PM
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The fictions of O'Reilly...besides what he says on Fox...
We'll let local book editor Arthur Salm do the dirty work, since he gets paid for it:
An intruder has already beaten Ron Costello, chief White House correspondent for the Global News Network, to a pulp. "No network can help you now," he tells him. Costello, lying on the ground, asks why he's doing this.
"The intruder responded by savagely grabbing Ron Costello's windpipe with his left hand and squeezing hard. Costello gasped, his mouth opening wide, blood trickling down his chin. The assailant's right hand, now holding the oval base of the spoon, rocketed upward, jamming the stainless stem through the roof of Ron Costello's mouth. The soft tissue gave way quickly and the steel penetrated the correspondent's brain stem. Ron Costello was clinically dead in four seconds."
Where to start? There's the killer's "savagely" grabbing the guy's windpipe (why not "throat"?), which assures readers that he did not do so gently. The man was "clinically dead," differentiating him from victims who are simply dead. There's that teaspoon handle, which has not, to the best of our knowledge, been sharpened.
posted by tbogg at 4:39 PM
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Saturday, April 10, 2004
Cranking up the tunes
'Til the windows break
Feeding chocolate to the dog*
Happy Easter to Satchmo the Wonder Basset who managed to eat a whole mini-milkcarton sized box of Whoppers that my wife left within his reach this afternoon.
So far, no sickness. A lot of guilty looks...but no sickness.
...and speaking of cranking up the tunes, the daughter and I went to see Jet this evening at SOMA with the Vines and the Living End. Jet will either become this generation's Ramones or their Oasis. We'll see. Like a lot of people at the show, we didn't even stick around for the Vines.
* Fire Island- Fountains of Wayne
posted by tbogg at 11:51 PM
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Well, we were wondering if she was a man too....
Derb:
MISCHIEF [John Derbyshire]
Daniel Oliver Derbyshire, age 8, and his little friend Michael from next door, were permitted to play on the big computer in Dad's office while Dad went off to fiddle with his tree house.
When Dad came back, he found that his Ann Coulter doll had been STRIPPED TO THE BUFF.
Oh, God. I'm not going to be able to handle my kids' adolescence, I know I'm not.
I'm not too surprised that the little Derb indulged his curiousity, but I am a bit squicked out by the fact that Derbyshire would actually own up to owning a Coulter action figure. The again, Derbyshire does admit to having a treehouse too.
Just the idea of John... in his treehouse...alone with his Coulter doll...is enough to drive down property values within a three-state area.
As for the mini-Derb, after his Crying Game moment, one can only imagine the future therapy bills....
posted by tbogg at 11:43 PM
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Friday, April 09, 2004
"Oh Mummy! A Tree!"...Thirty minutes later: "Yeah, yeah. It's a tree."
It's always Good Friday when it's America's Worst Mother™ day (even though she published on Thursday this week so she could take the kids: Eulalie, Diva Marie, Priapus, and Blister to see The Passion again today since their nightmares had started to abate). So let's check in....
This week the kids are out of school which means Mr. Meghan makes sure that he has plenty to do around the office so he doesn't have to spend time gazing upon his family and pondering Diva Marie's straight black hair and her prominent epicanthic folds and wondering why the Gurdon's Japanese gardener, Matsui, is always hanging around. Or as Meghan puts it:
During this school break, my husband has gone to work, as is his custom, and on this particular day, while other mothers are taking their children to the Louvre, I am taking our children to get their teeth cleaned. It is not for nothing that my left-wing detractors call me America's Worst Mother (TM). (woo-hoo!)
Yes, as we have previously seen, Mummy isn't down with taking the kids somewhere where they might actually have fun thereby broadening their lives with something other than bowls of porridge and playing with hangers. So, in an effort to keep their lives nasty, brutish, and short (much like Jonah Golberg) as well as to make sure that they have nice teeth (unlike John Derbyshire) they go biffing off to the dentist, which allows Meghan to show her truly zany side by confusing him with a Nazi (with an unacknowledged foray into the Marathon Man):
Mummy!" Phoebe is back, milk teeth gleaming. She is radiant. The dentist smiles at me and shakes his head reassuringly. I am radiant.
"Thank you so much, Dr. Mengele -- "
The dentist blinks politely.
"I mean, Dr. Mengelos -- that is to say, Dr. Mongelos. Thank you!"
Suppressing a kind of strangled mortification, I busy myself in wrapping the children up against the bitter April cold. The doctor waves cheerily, "See you in six months!" I think I am forgiven.
You're not.
Anyway...after the dental visit it's time for the Goober-Mobile Ride of Excruciating Boredom™:
Out we go into the blasting wind, which pelts us with thousands of tiny blossoms from Washington's famous cherry trees. The beauty of the annual bloom brings something like a million visitors to D.C. every spring, and this
year neither the threat of OBL nor the risk of frostbite seems to have deterred them. We drive from the dentist's office towards the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson Memorial -- derided as "the muffin" when it was first built, now known fondly only by that name in our family -- to view the profusion of blossoms from the toasty security of our car.
Tourists in parkas stride grimly along every stretch of open ground. Parents pushing blanket-wrapped strollers wait shivering on every corner. A long line of pilgrims snakes up from the main road towards the Washington Monument, past the huge bomb-resistant planters that have sprung up all over the Mall. Teenagers hop up and down in place to keep warm. It is almost incongruous to see the frothy heads of cherry trees poking out from behind the security barriers.
"Wow!" yell various voices inside the car.
"Pink ones!"
"White ones!"
"Blue ones!"
"No, Phoebe," Violet says witheringly, "Not blue -- "
As you can see, the children are endlessly fascinated with the delicate blossoms as they gracefully float down upon the heads of the visiting yokels from Spooner City. At least they are for about five minutes before they grow bored and start making pig noses against the windows at the slack-jawed ricket-wracked visitors from the hinterlands with an occasional giving them the finger while Meghan slips into another reverie:
"There must be 20 trees in bloom -- no, 50!" Paris shouts. "No, five hundred thousand!" In the front seat, I drone on placidly about how the city of Tokyo gave the trees to the people of the United States in 1912 and how in Japan people pack exquisite boxed lunches and eat them beneath the evanescent blossoms in order to reflect on the swift passing of beauty, the brevity of existence --
In the backseat, Diva Marie longs for those "exquisite boxed lunches " while silently observing her siblings with her inscrutable Asiatic eyes.....
posted by tbogg at 8:15 AM
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Thursday, April 08, 2004
On the Internet no one knows you're deluded..until you actually post something.
Found in the comments over at Right Wing News:
"Knocked Ben-Veniste and Kerry on their asses."
No she didn't. She paved them flat, ran them over with a steamroller, then stopped and backed over them. She was brilliant, and unapologetically shoved the BS that Ben-Veniste and Kerry were spewing right back down their throats. She left them redfaced and in full rhetorical retreat. Oh yes, and Dick Clarke is now officially political dog turd.
In a word, awesome.
by Mike_M on 2004-04-08 14:21:08
I've got to get me one of those Bizarro World TV's.....
By the way, Hawkins seems to think that the families of the American soldiers killed in action should just suck it up. Also note that neither Yahoo (or AFP) mentions Viet Nam. Looks like the picture acted as a Rorschach for John.
I see a miserable failure.
posted by tbogg at 11:04 PM
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Yo, St Louis....
We had an elected President throw out our first pitch:
The person who throws out the first official pitch at San Diego's new downtown ballpark April 8 will go down in history. Not because he's tossing out the first pitch, but because he's a former president of the United States. Jimmy Carter, a close friend of Padres owners John and Becky Moores, will open the Padres' season at Petco Park. The friendship of the two men has grown steadily since John Moores became a trustee on the board of the Carter Center at Emory University in Atlanta. Former first lady Rosalynn Carter also will attend opening ceremonies.
...and he also has a Nobel prize.
Neener. Neener.
(Padres win in 10)
posted by tbogg at 10:52 PM
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Miserable failure
No, it's not this guy, this time, although he is a miserable failure. But today, it was Condi Rice's turn in the barrel, and it looks like she had a rough time of it.
When Condoleezza Rice took the national stage on Thursday morning, her task was to defend President Bush against the accusation that he was inattentive to terrorism before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and to defuse a debate that threatens his re-election campaign. She mounted the defense vigorously, but in the hours after she returned to the White House, it was evident that she had not defused the arguments.
At every turn in her three hours of often-contentious testimony, she stuck to the White House script: Everything that could have been done to prevent the attacks had been done. She did not acknowledge failings, apart from the institutional tensions that have long plagued the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a culture that made it impossible for a succession of administrations to see the threat unfolding in front of them.
She also did not concede that the newly arrived Bush administration was part of that problem, or that it, too, underestimated what it confronted or was distracted by other issues like tax cuts, China and missile defense. Moreover, her tone -- as controlled as her delivery at one of her Stanford seminars -- left many panel members wondering if she was defending a position that several of them have publicly said is indefensible.
For viewers who have not been following the details of the argument, there was the lingering question of whether anyone in the Bush White House is capable of admitting error -- a step many of Ms. Rice's current and former colleagues said would help calm the political waters.
"If Dr. Rice wanted to change some minds, she needed to come out and admit that the administration -- like so many of its predecessors -- had made mistakes in addressing international terrorism," said Ken Pollack, a former analyst at the national security council and C.I.A. and now a scholar at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. "Simply denying that this administration has underestimated the threat is unlikely to convince Americans who see the manifest failures of the United States government to address a systemic problem."
Since I was out of the loop all day, I've been checking all the news sources as well as the other blogs for analysis, and the results aren't pretty. I thought at best, Rice might at least walk away without doing any harm. I guess I gave her more credit than she deserved.
CAP has the bloody details.
Billman has the smoking gun
Here's Fred Kaplan:
One clear inference can be drawn from Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission this morning: She has been a bad national security adviser—passive, sluggish, and either unable or unwilling to tie the loose strands of the bureaucracy into a sensible vision or policy. In short, she has not done what national security advisers are supposed to do.
and even Bush leg-humper nonpareil Howard Fineman is running down the rope towards the dock:
A self-proclaimed expert at understanding "structural" change in large institutions, Rice wasn't aware -- may still not be aware -- that the nature of her job had changed by the time she took over as national security adviser in January 2001. Reared in the Cold War era, she saw herself following in the footsteps of Henry Kissinger. "National security" was largely a matter of global state-to-state diplomacy.
In fact, as her predecessor in effect warned her when he was turning over the keys, the model was no longer so much Kissinger as it was, say, Elliott Ness or J. Edgar Hoover. If, as she said, we had been at war with terrorism for 20 years; if, as she said, the terrorists are determined to attack America, then the NSC chief has to be a ruthless hunter for clues around the world -- and on American soil.
Asked at the hearing why she hadn't pressed the FBI more closely about what it knew, or didn't know, about domestic terrorist threats, she acted as though the question was an odd one: It wasn't her job. Well, in retrospect, it was and now certainly is.
[...]
Rice, in the end, is just a cog in a machine. The real political question is: How did her testimony enrich the narrative of what the president did -- or didn't -- know and do about terrorism before 9/11? In an interview with Bob Woodward, Bush admitted two years ago that he didn't have a sense of "urgency" about al-Qaida. He said he wasn't "on point" -- wasn't locked on a target in hunting dog fashion.
That admission caused few ripples when it was published. But now voters may revisit the remark. Why? Because it's now clear that the president may have had urgent reason to be "on point." Rice was told about al-Qaida cells by Richard Clarke in February of 2001. When, if ever, did she tell the president about them? The president was given the now-famous PDB of Aug. 6, 2001, which suggested not only that Osama bin Laden was "determined " to attack inside the United States, but that the FBI had picked up a pattern that suggested the possibility of hijackings here. Did Bush follow up with the FBI? What did he do in the days immediately after getting that PDB? Rice may insist that it wasn't a "warning," but we'll see soon enough when it's released to the public, as it almost surely will be in the days ahead.
The president in the classroom: On vacation?
Remember the picture of the president in the classroom being told by Andy Card of the attack? The American people thought they were seeing a man suddenly thrust into a grave challenge no one could have anticipated. That won him enormous sympathy and patience from the voters. But what if he was literally on vacation -- at the ranch in Crawford -- when he should have been making sure that someone was ringing alarm bells throughout the bureaucracy?
During the Viet Nam war, President Lyndon Johnson watched as Walter Cronkite editorialized against the war on the evening news and then, supposedly, turned to his aides and commented: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America." Now Howard Fineman is no Cronkite (he's barely a Tim Russert and that's a pretty low bar to reach) but this can't be good news for George Bush as he ramps up his re-election campaign. Bush came into office (and let's not get into the particulars of that at this moment) with his resume padded by the supposed strengths of Rice, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. Given the events of the past three years where we have come to see the ineptitude of Rice, the intransigence of Rumsfeld, and the acidic ooze of corporate corruption that is the lifeblood of Dick Cheney, you have to wonder why anyone would have any faith in this gang that can't speak straight.
(Added: Wonkette's description of Rice as "Tracy Flick"... friggin' brilliant.)
posted by tbogg at 10:24 PM
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Cuz, you know, we had been on the job for nine months and we were pretty darned tired....
"Brown Sugar":
Rice read some of the "chatter" that the United States picked up during the spring and summer that raised alarms about a possible attack: "Unbelievable news in coming weeks.""Big event ... there will be a very, very, very, very big uproar.""There will be attacks in the near future."
"Troubling, yes," Rice said. "But they don't tell us when, they don't tell us where, they don't tell us who and they don't tell us how."
...so we went on vacation in Crawford and hoped it would all go away.
posted by tbogg at 8:21 AM
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Spring fashion preview
Whether you're running payroll for Halliburton, fetching a latte for Paul Bremer, or just glaring at the locals while you cruise the strip in your Humvee, you'll look your best in Blackwood's Contractor Collection™. (Oakley sunglasses not included)
(Thanks to Magnus)
posted by tbogg at 8:15 AM
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Wednesday, April 07, 2004
What Kevin Drum is too nice to say....
It's a quagmire.
One other thing. Those who whole-heartedly supported going to war with Iraq (particularly when it was the someone other than themselves who would be doing that messy fighting and dying stuff) now are awful quick to declaim, "Well. What would you do in Iraq now?". This is analogous to sitting in a car with someone who is about to drive off of a cliff and advising them against it. Then, after they do it anyway, they turn to you and say, "Okay. Fine. Mr. Smartypants. You take the wheel.".
posted by tbogg at 11:46 PM
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In society news, a strapping young New York City fireman named Dirk swept Ms. Noonan off her feet telling disappointed supermodels, "Middle-aged Catholic divorcees make missionary-position sex the hottest ever. I'm mainlining Cialis just to keep up with her...."
All of the above has much chance of happening as Peggy's latest fantasy found here.
The people at Pixar should have her imagination....
posted by tbogg at 11:31 PM
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Official War President portrait.
Julia has the face of war...and make sure to read the post below.
Now there's something you don't see on a warblog....
posted by tbogg at 10:55 PM
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After they crucified the bunny, they pelted him with marshmallow peeps. Just like in the Bible.
I have to be honest, Christianity in America has gotten so weird I don't know if this is true or not:
What was supposed to be an Easter celebration for children reportedly turned into a demonstration of how Jesus Christ was crucified.
Several area residents were outraged by a performance sponsored by Glassport Assembly of God church Saturday at Memorial Stadium.
"It was absolutely horrendous," Melissa Salzmann said. "We left after about 45 minutes, it was so bad."
Residents quote performers as saying, "There is no Easter Bunny" and breaking eggs meant for an Easter egg hunt.
A portrayal of the Easter Bunny being whipped and tortured as the 12 stations of the cross reportedly was part of the show.
Some things in life just leave you speechless....
(Thanks to Jim)
posted by tbogg at 10:46 PM
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Shorter Tom Friedman
Everyone involved in the war in Iraq is ruining it for me.
posted by tbogg at 10:31 PM
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Because, if someone says "blow job", the terrorists win
Bill Frist has his priorities straight:
Senate Republican leader Bill Frist is attempting to work out a deal with Democrats to limit debate on legislation that would increase the fines people pay for broadcasting smut so that a vote on the bill could come Thursday, sources said.
Supporters of the legislation had tried to ramrod the legislation through the Senate Tuesday under an expedited procedure, but that ran into problems as various groups and Democrats began to raise objections to voting on the bill without debate.
It's important that Frist ramrods this legislation through with parliamentary thrusts and large throbbing inserted clauses so a vote on the bill can come on Thursday.
Cigarette?
posted by tbogg at 8:30 AM
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Of course not--it's in a book
One Doonesbury comic...about three jokes.
posted by tbogg at 8:22 AM
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Tuesday, April 06, 2004
I think that we don't think that you should think about what she was thinking
Is this the most boneheaded White House ever?:
The White House has refused to provide the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with a speech that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was to have delivered on the night of the attacks touting missile defense as a priority rather than al-Qaida, sources close to the commission said Tuesday.
With Rice scheduled to publicly testify Thursday before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, the commission submitted a last-minute request for Rice’s aborted Sept. 11 address, the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity. But the White House has so far refused on the grounds that draft documents are confidential, the sources said.
You see, if Rice had given the public speech, well, that would have been okay. But 9/11 changed everything and now it's super-secret need-a-decoder-ring not-for-your-eyes-only confidential.
posted by tbogg at 11:16 PM
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Just when you think it's pretty bad...it gets worse
Let's take up the case of Albert Buonanno:
An AT&T Broadband employee who was fired after refusing to abide by company rules that he said violated his religious beliefs about homosexuality has won a federal court case.
Judge Marcia S. Krieger of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado awarded Albert Buonanno of Denver $146,269 for lost salary, loss of 401(k) matching contributions and compensation for emotional distress in a Friday ruling released this week.
The judge found that although there was no direct religious discrimination against Mr. Buonanno, AT&T Broadband failed to show it could not have accommodated Mr. Buonanno's beliefs "without undue hardship" to the company he had been with for nearly two years.
Mr. Buonanno objected to language in a new employee handbook issued in January 2001 that said "each person at AT&T Broadband is charged with the responsibility to fully recognize, respect and value the differences among all of us," including sexual orientation. He was fired after refusing to sign a "certificate of understanding" acknowledging that he agreed to the policy.
[...]
Mr. Buonanno felt his Christian beliefs prevented him from valuing or agreeing with homosexuality, which he views as a sin, but he pledged not to discriminate against or harass anyone, said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, the group that represented Mr. Buonanno.
Ready for the punchline?:
The spokesman, who asked not to be named, said the company is reviewing the case and might appeal the ruling. Mr. Buonanno did not ask the court to reinstate him as a quota specialist, instead seeking monetary compensation. He now works for Mental Health Corporation of Denver as a counselor.
Perfect.
posted by tbogg at 10:44 PM
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Excusez notre désordre
Skeptomai finds a hidden apology.
(Thanks to Chris for the link)
posted by tbogg at 10:32 PM
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Mission Way Not Accomplished
Things are spinning out of control in George Bush's War:
American forces in Iraq came under fierce attack on Tuesday, with as many as 12 marines killed in Ramadi, near Baghdad, and with Shiite militiamen loyal to a rebel cleric stepping up a three-day-old assault in the southern city of Najaf, American officials said.
In Falluja, where last week American security contractors were killed and their bodies mutilated, American warplanes fired rockets at houses, and marines drove armored columns into the heart of the city, where they fought block by block to flush out insurgents. Several arrests were made.
It was one of the most violent days in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, with half a dozen cities ignited. One of the biggest questions at day's end was the role of most of the majority Shiites previously thought to be relatively sympathetic to American goals.
The heaviest fighting raged in Falluja and Ramadi, strongholds of the Sunni minority favored by Mr. Hussein that have been flash points of anti-American resistance.
Correspondents based in Falluja who work for Arab television stations reported widespread damage to homes from the firing and difficulties in getting wounded Iraqis to the hospital because the fighting was so fierce. Falluja hospital officials, quoted by The Associated Press, said they received 16 Iraqi dead on Tuesday and more than 20 wounded, among them women and children.
Fortunately we caught " the guy who tried to kill my dad" for President Inigo Montoya, so I guess it's all been worth it.
posted by tbogg at 10:24 PM
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Kennedy = terrorists
According to the Professor, if you criticize the President for getting us into unnecessary war (much like a certain one back in the sixties), well, you might just as well be a member of a terrorist organization:
But Kennedy is, as I suggested before, a major problem for the Democratic Party. The perception that the Democratic Party is home to anti-American sixties leftovers, after all, is the Democrats' biggest weakness in national elections.
But Kennedy can count on at least some support. Amir Taheri quotes a leader of the Hezbollah terrorist organization as saying: "We may be unable to drive the Americans out of Iraq. But we can drive George W. Bush out of the White House."
Sounds like he and Kennedy are reading from the same playbook.
Where Iraq is different from the Viet Nam war is that, during Viet Nam, many students stayed in college to avoid fighting while others who weren't so lucky fought and died.
Looks like, in Bush's war, it's the Professors who've learned that lesson.
These men died, so he can blog.
posted by tbogg at 10:07 PM
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Man, we used to kick ass in 1984
Jonah Goldberg gets the readers he deserves:
THUGGEES [Jonah Goldberg]
From a reader:
Weren't thuggees the bad guys in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom"? If so, then what's needed is either for us to airlift Harrison Ford into the area, or for Bush to get on TV with a giant sword and bellow a paraphrase of what is undoubtedly the greatest line in cinema history: "Moqtada al-Sadr, prepare to meet Kali... IN HELL!!!" Man, used to be we knew how to deal with bad guys, you know? Frickin' Mola Ram and his child slavery.
Pssst...it was a movi----
Never mind.
posted by tbogg at 9:41 AM
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Dick Cheney wants to pump you up
Just in case anyone wants to talk about Kerry's gasoline tax.
posted by tbogg at 9:34 AM
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Wait a minute...I thought they were "contractors"
Thanks to the Professor for clearing this up:
An attack by hundreds of Iraqi militia members on the U.S. government's headquarters in Najaf on Sunday was repulsed not by the U.S. military, but by eight commandos from a private security firm, according to sources familiar with the incident.
Maybe when they're done in Iraq, they can go do something about those pesky Palestinians.
posted by tbogg at 9:31 AM
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Google? Can you spell that? So it's one of those internet things, huh? And you can find stuff?
Kos stalker, Michael Friedman seems to to do a better job of faking outrage than he does at pretending to be smart:
A lot of people have tried to excuse Kos's comments by saying that they are somehow excused or mitigated by his experiences in the El Salvadoran civil war as a boy and his therefore understandably negative reaction to mercenaries given his earlier experiences with them.
Huh?
I remember the El Salvador's(sic) civil war but I don't remember much about mercenaries during that conflict.
Does anyone know what these people are talking about?
Probably stuff like this...and this...and this...and this.
We finally found someone lazier then Jonah Goldberg.
Imagine that...
posted by tbogg at 12:39 AM
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Another I Don't Like The Drugs But The Drugs Like Me moment
Rush:
"Al-Jazeera, the pro-Arab Middle East TV network, wants to do a story on me. I could understand them zeroing in on this program, but to do a profile? What did I do now? Maybe the Palm Beach state attorney's really calling in all his chips."
It could be that al-Jazeera is doing a documentary on bloated junkies with multiple marriages ending in divorce in order to illustrate the decline of the West.
Or maybe they think he's just a big fat idiot too.
posted by tbogg at 12:20 AM
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Monday, April 05, 2004
From Planned Parenthood
RightWingEye
Go for the animation...stay for Rush in the bathroom.
No. Really.
Then contribute.
posted by tbogg at 11:17 PM
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Pulitzers snub Drudge...again
Oddly enough, the LA and NY Times do fairly well.
posted by tbogg at 11:15 PM
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Sunday, April 04, 2004
Time off for good behavior
With the wife and daughter off in Lancaster Ca. for State Cup Soccer this weekend (final scores 1-0, 2-0, 5-0...on to the round of thirty-two!) I had the opportunity to start reading Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude (graciously purchased for me from my Amazon wish list..thank yew) and it's really good. Beauifully written. I read his Gun, With Occasional Music (which was okay) several years ago, and I never would have thought he was capable of this. In fact, I passed on Motherless Brooklyn because of Gun.
Having said all of that, I'm off to bed and book. See you tomorrow night.
posted by tbogg at 10:04 PM
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Kos
Here
Courtesy of The Fighting Democrat
posted by tbogg at 9:24 PM
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"Blackwater has the people to execute any requirement."
But they're not "mercenaries":
The security firm's website notes that "Blackwater has the people to execute any requirement." Blackwater recruits from the ranks of active-duty special-forces units—particularly Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and Delta Force troops—many of which are based in nearby Ft. Bragg, N.C. The best and brightest among private security consultants earn salaries that run as high as $15,000 a month. And as various commitments have strained the military's capacity to provide day-to-day security for relief workers and diplomats, Blackwater has prospered by filling the void. Since 2002, Blackwater has won more than $35 million in government contracts.
The current business boom is in Iraq. Blackwater charges its clients $1,500 to $2,000 a day for each hired gun. Most security contractors, like Blackwater's teams, live a comfortable if exhausting existence in Baghdad, staying at the Sheraton or Palestine hotels, which are not plush but at least have running water. Locals often mistake the guards for special forces or CIA personnel, which makes active-duty military troops a bit edgy. "Those Blackwater guys," says an intelligence officer in Iraq, "they drive around wearing Oakley sunglasses and pointing their guns out of car windows. They have pointed their guns at me, and it pissed me off. Imagine what a guy in Fallujah thinks." Adds an Army officer who just returned from Baghdad, "They are a subculture."
[...]
It's still unclear whether the four Blackwater employees found themselves in Fallujah inadvertently or were on a mission gone awry. Even by Pentagon standards, military officials were fuzzy about the exact nature of the Blackwater mission; several officers privately disputed the idea that the team was escorting a food convoy. Another officer would say only the detail was escorting a shipment of "goods." Several sources familiar with Blackwater operations told TIME that the company has in some cases abbreviated training even for crucial missions in war zones. A former private military operator with knowledge of Blackwater's operational tactics says the firm did not give all its contract warriors in Afghanistan proper training in offensive-driving tactics, although missions were to include vehicular and dignitary-escort duty. "Evasive driving and ambush tactics were not—repeat, were not—covered in training," this source said. Asked to respond to the charges, Blackwater spokesman Bertelli said, "Blackwater never comments on training methods and operational procedures."
Again, I don't want to diminish the deaths of these men, so much as point out the media's use of the term "contractors" which makes it sound like these guys were out doing land surveys to build playgrounds. Now it looks like the initial stories about delivering food are starting to cast off a Jessica Lynch vibe. It seems like the CPA press office has been doing their jobs, with an added bonus of knocking the Clarke story off of the air for a few days.
posted by tbogg at 4:11 PM
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Gentlemen! We've got to protect our phoney-baloney jobs!
All the news that fit to re-elect:
Known as the Green Room, the press office is inside coalition headquarters in the Republican Palace that used to belong to Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). The palace is in central Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.
The office counts 21 Republicans — 11 of whom have worked inside the Bush administration before their Iraq posting — among its 58 U.S. civilian staffers, according to figures Senor provided.
More than half a dozen CPA officials in the press office worked on Bush's 2000 presidential campaign or are related to Bush campaign workers, according to payroll records filed with the Federal Elections Commission.
Republican figures also permeate the wider CPA staff, including top advisers to U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer and the Iraqi ministries.
The U.S. team stands in deep contrast to the British team that works alongside it, almost all of whom are civil or foreign service employees, not political appointees. Many of the British in Iraq display regional knowledge or language skills that most of the Americans lack.
The drive to re-elect Bush is a sensitive topic. Several coalition officials angered by what they see as CPA politicking — with U.S. accomplishments in Iraq being trumpeted to help Bush — grumbled privately, but would not go on record with complaints.
But Gordon Robison, a former CPA contractor who helped build the Pentagon (news - web sites)-funded Al-Iraqiya television station in Baghdad, said Republicans in the press room intensely followed the Democratic presidential primaries as John Kerry (news - web sites) emerged as the presumed nominee.
"Iraq is in danger of costing George W. Bush his presidency and the CPA's media staff are determined to see that does not happen," Robison said. "I had the impression in dealing with the civilians in the Green Room that they viewed their job as essentially political, promoting what the Coalition Provisional Authority is doing in Iraq as a political arm of the Bush administration," he added.
...and we all know how bad the job picture is back in the good old USA.
posted by tbogg at 12:44 PM
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The winter of our discontent is over.
You know it's time for baseball to start: the days have started getting longer, it's beautiful outside (hey...it's San Diego!), George Will has written the only column of the year that I'll agree with (Albert Pujols...possibly one of the best ever), and Ken Griffey has a leg injury. Around our house, we love baseball. In her wallet, my wife carries around one picture of me...and a 1991 Fleer George Brett baseball card. In her last year of playing Pony League baseball, my daughter (bats left- throws left) could throw a fastball, a curve, and a circle change that she learned from watching Rick Sutcliffe on TV. It's the only time of the year when we all watch Sportscenter together.
This year in San Diego gets even better with a new ballpark that is flat out gorgeous and a full season from possibly the most underrated player in baseball. I don't know where the SD Padres are going to end up this year (the Dodgers seem to have a lock on last place this season), and in many ways, I don't care. I'm just happy that there's going to boxscores in the morning paper.
Can you tell that I'm excited?
posted by tbogg at 12:22 PM
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Take the World O'Crap challenge
It's funny because it's true.
posted by tbogg at 11:37 AM
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Saying a "nasty dumb thing". Yeah. It happens...
The Professor says:
I just noted Kos's comments. And what bothered me about it wasn't Kos. It was that Kos -- who I used to think of as a reasonable if partisan lefty -- seems to be infested with a degree of hatred that I previously associated with the Democratic Underground and other fringe sites.
As Michele Catalano notes, Kos said a nasty dumb thing, and everybody has noticed.
I don't suppose anyone noticed who said this:
THE UNITED STATES SHOULD NOT TRY to play a "neutral arbiter" in the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. We should, in fact, be doing our best to make the Palestinians suffer until they change their ways, because, to put it bluntly, they are our enemies.
Yeah. All the Palestinians. Let's round them up and put them in camps. Suffer the children too...the little America-hating bastards....
More "whoopsies" here.
posted by tbogg at 12:46 AM
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Saturday, April 03, 2004
The focus group isn't getting "Clashpoint". They prefer "Ramblings From A Former Thief and Drug Dealer Who Works the Royal Palm Ballroom".
You've just got to love Doug Giles who has that "hip-hop happenin" Christian youth leader vibe down pat. You know: he's "cool", he's "keepin' it real", he's "been there, brutha", he's a big fake who doesn't really want to work anymore now than when he was dealing dime bags from his backpack in metal shop. So he went out and got himself a schtick: muscular Christianity with a whiff of provocation. And so are born his "Clashpoints" with their trying- way-too-hard analogies:
The times in which we're living are darker than Rob Zombie listening to the Insane Clown Posse in Jimmy Page's dungeon
(Get it? Three generations of music. Kewl.)
...to, well, I guess this is supposed to be funny:
Heck, before he was elected President, people were saying that choosing between Bush and Gore was like choosing between listening to your sister's first clarinet recital or watching Janet Reno floss.
Um. Okay. Sure.
And lest you think he's just some kind of religious huckster only interested in peddling Clash merchandise to a Godsmacked public, well, shut your mouth you non-believer you, he does have an official church found here.
And remember: the pool closes at 10PM.... and no running or Jesus will smite you and not bring you extra towels..
(Don't you just wish that Joe Strummer would come back from the dead and kick Giles' ass for ruining a perfectly good name?)
posted by tbogg at 11:55 PM
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But he said that he could read Rice's body language, so he's probably a liar or something....
It's always bad news for the Bushies when Walter Pincus gets involved:
But the broad outline of Clarke's criticism has been corroborated by a number of other former officials, congressional and commission investigators, and by Bush's admission in the 2003 Bob Woodward book "Bush at War" that he "didn't feel that sense of urgency" about Osama bin Laden before the attacks occurred.
In addition, a review of dozens of declassified citations from Clarke's 2002 testimony provides no evidence of contradiction, and White House officials familiar with the testimony agree that any differences are matters of emphasis, not fact. Indeed, the declassified 838-page report of the 2002 congressional inquiry includes many passages that appear to bolster the arguments Clarke has made.
For example, Rice and others in the administration have said they implemented much more aggressive policies than those of Clarke and former president Bill Clinton. Rice said the Bush team developed "a comprehensive strategy that would not just roll back al Qaeda -- which had been the policy of the Clinton administration -- but we needed a strategy to eliminate al Qaeda."
But in 2002, Rice's deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, wrote to the joint committee that the new policy was exactly what Rice described as the old one. "The goal was to move beyond the policy of containment, criminal prosecution, and limited retaliation for specific attacks, toward attempting to 'roll back' al Qaeda."
The joint committee's declassified report, released last July, contains dozens of quotations and references to Clarke's testimony, and none appears to contradict the former White House counterterrorism chief's testimony last month. In its July 2003 report, the congressional panel cited Clark's "uncertain mandate to coordinate Bush administration policy on terrorism and specifically on bin Laden." It also said that because Bush officials did not begin their major counterterrorism policy review until April 2001, "significant slippage in counterterrorism policy may have taken place in late 2000 and early 2001."
Eleanor Hill, staff director of the House-Senate intelligence committee inquiry, said last week that she heard some of Clarke's March 24 presentation before the 9/11 commission and remembered his six-hour, closed-door appearance.
"I was there," she said of Clarke's 2002 testimony, "and without a transcript I can't have a final conclusion, but nothing jumped out at me, no contradiction" between what he said last month and his testimony almost two years ago. She also noted that Rice refused to be interviewed by the joint intelligence panel, citing executive privilege.
It looks like Kitty Kevorkian, who is shamelessly using his position in the Senate to trade on terrorism fears for a buck, is full of shit.
Big surprise.
He's almost as crappy a hitman as Marc Racicot.
posted by tbogg at 10:57 PM
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Warblogger whacking material
I hope the pages are laminated:
There are an estimated 10 million military history buffs out there—many of them civilians, according to research conducted by Opinion Research Corporation for publisher Eric Weider. And Weider is hoping to reach them with his new magazine, Armchair General, which takes an interactive approach to both military history and strategy. Not only does the glossy highlight the careers, personalities and personal lives of past generals (one is profiled in each issue), but it lets readers step into their combat boots as well, giving them the chance to second guess former military leaders’ tactical decisions.
posted by tbogg at 10:41 PM
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Friday, April 02, 2004
Publication of Little Lesbian House on the Prairie stalled.
Louis L'Amour fans seeking hot girl-on-girl Western action say they are " Rootin' tootin' disapointed".
posted by tbogg at 10:32 PM
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The panel clapped delightedly as the President spoke while Mr. Cheney drank from a waterglass...
I think Eleanor Clift pretty much nails this one:
A top Republican strategist dubbed the legal document striking the unusual deal “the Wizard of Oz letter” because it strips away the myth that Bush is in charge. Until now, it’s been all speculation about Vice President Cheney’s influence. With the revelation of the tandem testimony, nobody with a straight face can deny Cheney is a co-president or worse, the puppeteer who pulls Bush’s strings.
Aside from being fodder for the late-night comics, the arrangement confirms Bush’s inability to articulate anything without a script--or a tutor by his side. There’s a reason lawyers don’t take testimony in groups. The whole idea is to get individual recollections and then compare stories to uncover contradictions. Try thinking about it this way: can anyone imagine Bush’s father in a similar situation bringing his vice president? (For those who need a refresher course, the elder Bush was a rocket scientist compared to his son, and the vice president was Dan Quayle.)
[...]
This is a defining moment in the Bush presidency because it reveals weakness at the top.
What Cheney and the tight circle around Bush are protecting is the myth they have created since 9/11 of a war president astride the world stage. Anybody who punctures that imagery is destroyed. Richard Clarke is only the latest in a series of insiders who have pulled back the curtain. At the center is an incurious president who is so inarticulate that he can’t be left on his own to make a sustained argument on behalf of his policies without falling back on rehearsed talking points and sound bites.
posted by tbogg at 10:24 PM
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Waving their little flags and stamping their little feet in mock outrage
Having had the asses handed to them in the past few weeks by Richard Clarke, the Right Wing Fighting Keyboarders are looking to lash out with some pent-up righteous anger about Kos's comments about the mercenaries in Fallujah.
Give me a break.
We lose almost one American soldier a day in Iraq and if a warblogger mentions it at all (and nothing harshes a warblogger mellow like having to mention the loss of an American life as they sit comfortably at home in their computer cammies preaching online about how we should go kick some Iraqi ass) it's too say, "How sad. But they served their country well..." before they get back to the heady business of indulging their inner-Tom Clancy.
Spare me your outrage. It's as fake and phony as a Sean Hannity sentiment. Americans are dying because you bought whatever the Administration sold you, hook, line, and sinker. It's one thing to be stupid, it's quite another to be bloody stupid.
Digby has more about the "contractors"
posted by tbogg at 10:20 PM
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Happy, funny storytime with Crazy Stick-Up-Her-Butt Lady
Gather round children. It's time for this weeks installment of America's Worst Mother™ where the insular brood (Meghan and her children: Athena, Darvon, Westminster, and Whoops) go on a field trip and they all have a merry time except for being exposed to the world they live in, and don't you hate it when that happens?
As we all know, the Gurdon children are the most delightful and precious children in the whole wide world which is why Meghan has no problems risking the lives of their peers when dropping them off at Miss Stern's Academy For Precocious Poppets:
Bright one morning, when we're normally screeching too late into the school parking lot, the children and I make our way through the wheelchairs, bureaucrats, and hollow-eyed residents of a major Washington hospital to the quiet, carpeted floor given over entirely to the care and healing of children.
Yes, it's time to take the kids in for their annual rickets check-up at the Free Clinic, where Meghan usually wiles away the hours searching through drawers looking for "samples", but this day is made worse when the children are exposed to streptococcus culturallus crapollas:
"Please will you read, Mummy?" Phoebe asks, climbing up beside me. Violet tucks in on the other side, and Paris beside her. Molly sits on the stool, twirling pensively.
"Oh, it's a -- well, it's a book of nursery stories," I begin, in tones of
disappointment. "Once upon a time... um...Duck Woman baked a gingerbread man," I read, substituting bland nouns for commercial brand names. In such circumstances I do this for my own amusement, but also to thwart corporate efforts to implant brand loyalty in my children. Pop culture is filth, quoth the great Derbyshire; so is mass-market kiddie culture.
"Duck Woman?" Molly inquires from across the room.
I hold up the slim volume of Disney Nursery Stories, and she laughs out loud.
"'Mmmm, that smells good,' said Duck Man ? "
"What's so funny, Mummy?" Violet asks, "Why are you shaking?"
We proceed. Occasionally I have to stop to wipe away tears, and then resume in the gingerbread man's falsetto, 'I've run away from Duck Woman, and Duck Man, and Funny Looking Dog, and Anthropomorphic Rodent -- "
As you can see, the Gurdon children are not to be exposed to anything enjoyable, and particularly nothing from the Disney canon or else Mother Gurdon will have to spend the entire afternoon explaining the Oedipal underpinnings of Dumbo, the gender confusion of Peter Pan, and the Grand Guignol of Bambi when she would rather be smoking Pall Malls and laughing along to Uncle Rush's Pharmacopeia Hour on the Philco. And let's not even consider a visit to Disneyland for the Gurdon clan since most every day is either Gay Sodomy Day or NAMBLA Thanks God, It's A Small World Day.
No, the Gurdon brood deserves better things like Mummy sitting behind the hollowed-out TV and performing A Long Days Journey Into Night with sock monkeys. Or those quiet evenings spent reading from Bill Bennett's The Book of Virtues or his more popular Secrets of Modern Slot Playing.
And then there are those annual summer trips to Cotton Mathers' Land O' Perdition & Filial Responsibility (The Most Unrelentingly Grim Place on Earth!!), where the kids go on rides such as the popular Thunder of Wrath Splash Mountain , the Curse of God-o-Whirl and the Dead Sodomites and Blasphermers in the Eternal Flames of Hell Hall.
So you see, the kids are well-entertained and culturally fulfilled... until that dark and stormy night when the Gurdon girls get ahold of a copy of Jeffrey Eugenides' Virgin Suicides....and they make a pact.
Hilarious hijinks probably won't ensue...
posted by tbogg at 8:13 AM
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Thursday, April 01, 2004
Worked up into a complete snit...
"Homosexualists" have broken into John Derbyshire's home and just completely ruined Yeats for him (when they should have been doing something about his hair...and his skin... those clothes... those glasses...and, oh hell, it would take a Queer Eye marathon to clean him up and make him presentable). Anyway...what was I saying? Oh yeah, Derb... he wants his gay back:
THEY CAN HAVE MY VOCABULARY... [John Derbyshire]
...when they prise it from my cold dead fingers. In yesterday's column I indulged myself in a grumble about the loss of the word "gay" to the homosexualists. Language conservatives have been grumbling about this for 40 years, of course; but I don't see why there should be any statute of limitations on linguistic larceny of this kind.
The true outrageousness of this particular crime has just been brought home to me. By way of reviewing Volume 2 of Roy Foster's biography of W.B. Yeats, I have been re-reading my way through Yeats's COLLECTED POEMS. Now, one of the things that makes Yeats such a great poet is that he never "went off." His later poems are just as good -- though in different ways--as his earlier ones. One of his best is "Lapis Lazuli," written in 1936, when Yeats was 71 years old. It spells out, in a very allusive way, an attitude to the transience of life, based on the contemplation of an 11-inch high Chinese carving, in the kind of stone called lapis lazuli, given to Yeats by his friend Henry Clifton. The word "gay" is essential to both the sound and the sense of this poem, for instance in the tremendous final couplet: "Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes, / Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay." (Dylan Thomas, when reading the poem to audiences, used to leave a long pause before the last two words.)
The problem is, of course, that you can't read this poem as it was meant to be read, because that key word has been trashed. This might seem a small thing to get worked up about, in a world where horrors like the Fallujah killings are happening every day, but I am worked up about it. (And the poem, by the way, addresses exactly the propriety of getting worked up over art in a world of war--or, in Yeats's case, incipient war.) I for one will not surrender. I am going to use "gay" in its proper, Yeatsian sense every chance I get.
Posted at 01:45 PM
I say we give it back to him because I think it would make him happy. Or gay, as the case may be. In fact, I think it would make the Derb just about the gayest man on Earth....
posted by tbogg at 11:28 PM
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Unfortunate headline of the week
Chuck Colson- " Checking Boxes: Transgender Chic"
Well, yeah, that's one way to tell...
posted by tbogg at 11:17 PM
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Shorter Gary Aldrich
John Kerry might/could/probably will conspire with OPEC countries and terrorists to disrupt our energy supplies so he can be President because he's a Texas oil man with connections Liberal.
This will happen on the same day that Aldrich is invited to join a mental health task force....
posted by tbogg at 11:13 PM
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This gun for hire
The death of the four Americans in Fallujah was tragic, but I'm starting to get a bit peeved with the media for refering to them as "contractors". They weren't guys who build houses and they aren't temps or consultants either. I don't care how Blackwater spins it, their people are mercenaries:
The four men brutally slain Wednesday in Fallujah were among the most elite commandos working in Iraq to guard employees of U.S. corporations and were hired by the U.S. government to protect bureaucrats, soldiers and intelligence officers.
[...]
But Baker, a former CIA case officer, added that how the military is "responding is going to be very important. If there's not a harsh, well-thought-out response, they will take that as a complete sign of weakness and they will become emboldened."
Blackwater has about 400 employees in Iraq, said one government official briefed by the company. Its armed commandos earn an average of just under $1,000 a day.
Although most of their work is to act as bodyguards for corporate, humanitarian or government employees, they sometimes perform more precarious jobs that are inherently riskier -- escorting VIPs, doing reconnaissance for visits by government officials to particular locations.
Employees of security companies such as Blackwater frequently come under fire from insurgents. When they do, they fire back.
"Nobody wants to be seen as a cowboy, but the truth is that if someone pops a weapon up, you respond," Baker said. ". . . This is a very difficult environment. There is always a potential for a problem."
Blackwater, security experts said, is among the most professional of the dozens of multinational security firms in Iraq, most of them there to protect U.S. government employees, private firms, Iraqi facilities and oil pipelines.
Maybe these four guys were there because they believed in Iraqi freedom or whatever is the Administration's flavor of the week, this week, for being there, but the fact is that were highly paid guns for hire and they chose to be there, unlike the thousands of American soldiers being used as pawns in a neocon's chess game.
posted by tbogg at 10:58 PM
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I Don't Like The Drugs But The Drugs Like Me...So Pilled Up That He Rattles edition
Rush says:
The Democrats are running around trying to downplay the threat of terrorism because they know it's not something they can speak to from a position of strength. Well, we just foiled a big Al-Qaeda plot in London, and also one in Manila, the Philippines.”
Isn't this like the babysitter saying that she has done "soooo much better" since she let one of the kids drown in the tub almost three years ago?
posted by tbogg at 10:32 PM
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The Reuters Style Book doesn't allow us to use "kicked him in the nuts"....
Oddball line in story about an oddball idiot:
A California man has pleaded guilty to residential burglary after he set up a meeting with a woman on a rape fantasy Internet chat page, but instead broke into a different woman's apartment.
[...]
The victim stopped the attack by yelling and attacking Howard's testicles.
Yeah. That would probably do it....
posted by tbogg at 10:08 AM
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Less than zero
At the Bush White House, the lower the score the better the game, just like in golf,.
5. Do people in your company (A) always provide full disclosure—even if it means it would negatively affect the bottom line, (B) sometimes omit information that might get in the way of making money or a sale, or (C) do whatever it takes to close a deal? (Score 2 for A, 1 for B, and 0 for C.)
posted by tbogg at 9:59 AM
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First the spankings...then the oral sex. No. Wait....
It's Peggy "Tough Love" Noonan and she wants to scare some Iraqis straight...or Christian...or something. Okay. She wants to kick some ass, but in a loving, hopeful way:
The four civilians were not the only American who died in Iraq yesterday. We lost five soldiers in a roadside bombing. The statements of American officials in Iraq were appropriate: This stops nothing, the terrorists will not win. A State Department spokesman said the contractors "were trying to make a difference and to help others." Indeed they were. There are many such in Iraq. They are risking their lives for many reasons, including improving the prospects for health and safety of 12-year-old boys like the one quoted by Reuters who witnessed the actions of his elders after the attack on the civilians. "I am happy to see this," he said.
It is hard not to hate the teenagers and young men who celebrated under the bridge where they hanged the charred bodies. They are human expressions of nihilism. They take pleasure in evil, and they were not shy to show it. They are arrogant. They think barbarity is their right.
If this time, in this incident, these young men are left unchecked, their ways and attitudes, their assumptions and method of operating will only be encouraged, and spread. So we had better check them.
[...]
The brutalizing of the bodies was done in a way that seemed imitative, as all have noted, of the incident in Mogadishu, Somalia, where in 1993 a frenzied mob dragged the dead body of a U.S. Army Ranger through the streets. The civilized world was horrified, and everyone knows what followed: a quick American retreat.
It is not a stretch to imagine the young murderers of Fallujah had this on their minds: Do it again to America, kill them and string up their corpses, because when you do this America leaves.
And so this time the response must be the opposite of the response in Mogadishu.
We know what the men and boys who did the atrocity of Fallujah look like; they posed for the cameras. We know exactly what they did--again, the cameras. We know they massed on a bridge and raised their guns triumphantly. It's all there on film. It would be good not only for elemental justice but for Iraq and its future if a large force of coalition troops led by U.S. Marines would go into Fallujah, find the young men, arrest them or kill them, and, to make sure the point isn't lost on them, blow up the bridge.
Whatever the long-term impact of the charred bodies the short term response must be a message to Fallujah and to all the young men of Iraq: the violent and unlawful will be broken. Savagery is yesterday; it left with Saddam.
Actually it looks like savagery will be leaving right after we catch those young men, kill them, and then blow up the bridge, in much the same way that Peggy just blew up the concept of irony.
posted by tbogg at 1:03 AM
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How to become a good writer...as long as you condemn the sodomites, may their faggoty asses burn in Hell.
Marvin Olasky offers handy tips for being a good writer:
Evocative images, provocative thoughts, tension without pretension -- that's what makes for good writing. I've seen so much poor writing lately that, as a public service, I'll offer some advice from great authors who also became fed up with pretentious prose. +
The Olasky tosses out a few quotes that he remembers from his godless college days which, if you took creative writing in college, well, you probably already know them by heart. Oddly he doesn't link to some other writing tips (compliments of Atrios) that will help you become a divine writer:
Class one: explicit biblical embrace or condemnation. The Bible condemns homosexuality so clearly that only the most shameless of those who twist Scripture can try to assert the practice’s biblical acceptability. Biblical objectivity means showing the evil of homosexuality; balancing such stories by giving equal time to gay activists is ungodly journalism. Similarly, in an article showing the sad consequences of heterosexual adultery there is no need to quote proadultery sources.
Remember: it's okay to be fair and unbalanced...
posted by tbogg at 12:46 AM
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The difference between crap-tacular and crap-eriffic
Isn't this like having a debate about which is better: Problem Child or Problem Child 2?
LEFT BEHIND [John Derbyshire]
In fairness to the writers of the "Left Behind" books, numerous readers tell me that they agree with me about the movie, which is low-grade stuff, but the books are far superior.
Posted at 02:05 PM
It is for comments like these that the phrase "damning with faint phrase" was created.
It is for people like Derbyshire that the phrase "close the borders" suddenly makes sense.
posted by tbogg at 12:24 AM
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Reporting live...from a P-Town coffee shop...out of range
Sullivan is a glass-is-half-full-when-my-own-ass-isn't-on-the-line kind of guy:
THE MOGADISHU MOMENT: The appalling brutality in the Sunni Triangle yesterday was designed to have one simple effect: to encourage the West to abandon Iraq to the very people who perpetrated this atrocity. The methods are the same as Somalia. The response will be different. But it's equally hard not to be worried by John Burns' analysis in today's NYT:
On Tuesday, before the Falluja attacks, General Kimmitt, the American military spokesman, appeared to back off at least somewhat from the emphasis on Islamic militants as the principal enemy. At a briefing, he offered an overview of the war in which he suggested that what has occurred, in effect, is a merging of the Saddamist insurgents and the Islamic terrorists into a common terrorist threat, and that, either way, "we just call them targets."
Several Iraqis interviewed on Wednesday, including middle-class professionals, merchants and former members of Mr. Hussein's army, suggested that that the United States might be facing a war in which the common bonds of Iraqi nationalism and Arab sensibility have transcended other differences, fostering a war of national resistance that could pose still greater challenges to the Americans in the months, and perhaps years, ahead.
All the more reason to maintain the deadline for the transition to self-rule, and to keep a close military and police alliance with the incoming government. I'm still an optimist - in the medium term. But the next two or three years could be brutal. We just got a taste of how brutal they could be.
First of all, Andrew, you didn't get a taste of anything except a vanilla latte with a bit to much foam on top. Watching the news doesn't make you a part of what happened in Falluja, just like watching baseball on TV doesn't mean you have to start thinking about warming your arm up. Sitting safely at home and thinking "How very sad" isn't participating. Check your clothes and see if any of them have a hint of Eau de Burned Flesh.
Secondly, isn't the fact that the Iraqi people wouldn't want us occupying their country one of the main reasons that those of us who didn't want this stupid war cited back in those days prior to Shock & Awe & Bluster & Death? As someone once said: an attack on a soveriegn country will make the people of that country support their leader no matter how horrible, evil, or inept that person is.
Just look at what happened after 9/11.
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