Mother Courage and the Bastards of War Dresden, 1945
This afternoon I was reading an article on a local production of Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children and I was struck by this sidebar:
"The [Thirty Years'] war solved no problems. Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict. The overwhelming majority in Europe, the overwhelming majority in Germany, wanted no war; powerless and voiceless, there was no need even to persuade them that they did. The decision was made without thought of them. Yet of those who, one by one, let themselves be drawn into the conflict, few were irresponsible and nearly all were genuinely anxious for an ultimate and better peace...They wanted peace and they fought for thirty years to be sure of it. They did not learn then, and have not since, that war only breeds war."
John Hinckley is my co-pilot You had me at "allah akbar"...
Well it looks like Naveed Haq isn't the (insert Malkin-sneer) "lone Muslim shooter" afterall, he was much more a religious off-price shopper:
Naveed Haq, now widely portrayed as a Muslim American so angry at Israel that he shot up a Jewish charity in Seattle, had recently converted to Christianity.
His conversion is perhaps the most startling contradiction in a puzzling life.
He had a degree in electrical engineering and was the son of a successful engineer. But he couldn't hold a job and recently worked as a security guard and retail clerk in the Seattle area.
His father was a founding member of the Islamic center here. But the son was rarely seen at a local mosque for more than 10 years.
Haq, 30, told a ministry leader that he saw too much anger in Islam and wanted to find a new beginning in Christianity. He converted to Christianity, but, as with many other endeavors in his life, drifted away from the faith.
So, reasonable and not-unserious people might ask, why did he announce he was a Muslim before he went all-Wayne LaPierre?
I think he was trying to get Michelle Malkin's attention.
C'mon. If he had announced he was Catholic and he that hated the jews (and he was positively identified as not being a drunken Mel Gibson) she wouldn't have given him another look, swarthy skin or not. Him, not her. The swarthy. Okay, her too.... but don't mention it because she's really s-e-n-s-i-t-i-v-e about it, 'kay? But "muslim"? Nothing activates her bigot gland like a Muslim Gone Wild (unless it's a Mexi-muslim, in which case you best leave the room and hide the pets).
Personally, and I can't prove this but it would be wrong not to speculate, I think that there might have been a few emails that went unanswered, possibly tucked away in the 'unhinged' folder, and maybe a CafePress package containing a T that said Naveed's Girl that was returned unopened. And, sure, he could have hung around Fox studios waiting for his honey-bunny to show, but have you ever stood downwind from Sean Hannity? Axe Body Spray and ham. It's like he rolls in it. That's why they had to give him his own elevator (you can look it up).
And it's not like Naveed didn't have his eye on another little wingnutette:
A neighbor of Haq's parents told the Tri-City Herald that Haq expressed anger at Jews, having convinced himself that the Jewish community controls the nation's media and economic system. The neighbor, Caleb Hales, also said Haq expressed an interest in the Mormon faith.
But K-Lo was already promised to Mitt and so it was a love that withered and died on the vine... and then dropped off and eventually it was mulched and spread on a lawn in Tappahannock as part of the great Disney Circle of Life proving that there is a silver lining to everything if you make enough stuff up...
I cover the crazyfront What's that wacky dame up to now?
It looks like I drew the short straw which means I get to follow the adventures of Tits On A Blintz as she tours Israel and annoys the people who just want to wage their war in peace without some crazy Long Island housewife sticking her D-cups into their business.
"I had this encounter with an Arab Muslim when viewing the top of Mount Olive. Mount Olive, the oldest Jewish cemetary in the world on Mount Olive...".
Oh. That Mount Olive.
Unfortunately you can't hear what Muhammad has to say because his voice is overwhelmed by the sound of the wind rushing through Pam's head, but trust me, he's totally down with her since she didn't end the video by clawing him to death with her razorsharp Acrylics of Wrath.
Let's see....hmmmm.... oh yes, the Arabs are vermin:
I spent the morning in East Jerusalem which is mostly Arab. The differences between the Jewish areas and the Arab areas is to break your heart. It is inexplicable to me why the Arabs would live in such abject squalor, throwing their garbage in the streets when they could all work together with the Jews for a far better life. But Jihad Islam will never let that happen.
Because there are no HeftyBag cinch-tops in the Koran.
Then a security guard checks Pam's bag, she has a lovely salad at a tony Jerusalem salad bar ( Radishes & Kaddishes ), she meets a nice Jewish boy who happens to be a rabbi from LA, and then she goes back to her hotel room and has a solo ragegasm (preserved here in its original format):
Returning to my room and turning on the news (No FOX!), I can not make it official, CNN (Crescent News Network) makes Goebbels propaganda look like childs play. At least then we knew it was Naza state propaganda but CNN is "independent" They are anything but. They are jihad TV. Their portrayal of events in Lebanon are such lies, such Jew hatred -- it is nothing short of frightening. Nothing is as they say it is.It is as if they are getting their talking points straight from Hezb'Allah. If I hear the "Israeli war machine" one more time, I'll scream. It's a handful of Jews fighting for their lives. Where are the news reports of the bombing of Nahariyah Hospital and the destruction of its fourth floor and the Department of Eye Diseases, in which Arabs and Jews have been treated, and where Arab and Jewish interns wor? All this whining about the Lebanese people not having enough money to leave their towns (as the benificent Israel has told them to do.) Tell Hezb'Allah to stop buying armaments and bombs and buyt their human shields a one way ticket out.
CNN screaming all day for a HUDNA so that the jihadis can rearm. Sick, sick, sick. Why? For access as they did by covering for Saddams heinous acts of barbarism? These CNN dhimmis will be the first ones getting their pretty little heads chopped off if the savages they are supporting should win. A CEASEFIRE IS A DEATH SENTENCE FOR iSRAEL.
Tomorrow: breakfast and an outing with Rabbi Dave while roomservice refills the depleted minibar.
The scary thing about our current jam is that 9/11 was supposed to have been the wakeup call, but we are again asleep. For this I blame our leaders — both the administration and the Dems. The administration is constitutionally unable to explain itself, and the Dems have no qualms about losing all present battles so long as they can elect their candidates and bring down this president.
The greatest failure of our leaders, with rare exceptions, is their refusal to see the war plain, which means Iran and Syria (might as well call them “Syran,” since they operate in tandem, with Tehran pushing most of the buttons). It was never possible to “win in Iraq” so long as we insisted on fighting in Iraq alone. You can not win a regional war by playing defense in one country. It was, and remains, a sucker’s game. Syran pays no price at all for killing our kids and our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now in Gaza and Lebanon/Israel.
Later Michael says:
Meanwhile, a collection of frauds, writing in places like Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Mother Jones, continuously recycles a story saying that a neocon (code for “Jewish”) conspiracy duped Bush into going to war in Iraq, and is now arranging the invasion of Iran. Documented lies, like those peddled by Joe Wilson to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, are treated as reliable. Fantasies about American armed forces operating covertly in Iran, like those written by Seymour Hirsh, get taken seriously. And people like me are accused of masterminding the whole thing, even though I oppose a military campaign against Iran.
Which is true. He wants to attack "Syran"...which is different.
Iran
Syran
And anyone who can't see the difference is a total jew-hating fraud who is objectively pro-Islamofascism and anti-neologism.
Ashlee Simpson appeared on the July cover of Marie Claire magazine extolling the virtues of appreciating one’s body as it is — then she had a nose job.
Marie Claire readers erupted in fury at what they said was Ms. Simpson’s hypocrisy and the magazine’s “cluelessness.” They wrote 1,000 letters in protest to the magazine, according to Joanna Coles, the new editor of the magazine. And she agreed with them.
In the first issue (due Aug. 15) over which she exercises full editorial control, Ms. Coles gives expanded space in the letters column to readers to vent against Ms. Simpson. Ms. Coles adds in a note: “We’re dazed and confused — and disappointed — by her choice, too!”
Rare is the day when the editor of a women’s magazine will openly criticize a celebrity. But Ms. Coles is planting a flag: A new Marie Claire is in town and it is making a clean break with its past. No girly goo, no teeny-bopper covers, no blind obedience to the traditional rules of the road.
Sooooo... according to the cover of the first issue of Marie Claire under the control of Joanna Coles the articles inside include:
Strong, Confident, Sexy: Be A Triple Threat
Big Bags, Hair, and Heels
Total Body Makeover Starting Today
Fall Fashion: What to buy and how to wear it.
...and Maggie Gyllenhaal is the covergirl.
I'm not sure America can handle this much edginess...
Regardless of his comments, if you weren't already avoiding Mel Gibson movies after The Patriot, Maverick, Bird On A Wire, What Women Want, or any of the crapulent Lethal Weapon movies (pick one...any one)then you haven't been paying attention.
Michael Ledeen knows that the best offense is to kill all of the Muslims in the Middle East a good defense which is why he ran to his good buddies Special Ed, themanwhocreatedmoseswine, and the Three Neo-Stooges to get the word out.
HP Printers: Quality printing for all of your terrrorist needs Finding that big roll of papyrus was a bitch
Revisting his halcyon days of kerning and typescripts and overthrowing the MSM, Captain Corndog can't seem to put his finger on this most suspicious development:
This AFP photograph shows Beirut demonstrators with a giant poster of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that was used in a rally protesting the accidental killing of civilian human shields, along with terrorists, in Qana:
What seems odd about this is that the banner was unfurled within hours after the Qana attack took place. The building where the civilians died was bombed on Sunday morning, and the demonstration took place during daylight hours, later the same day. I have no idea what kind of facility it takes to produce a 30-foot-high banner like this one. It is obviously professionally done. It would be interesting to know where this banner was produced; who designed and paid for it; and how its production was expedited so that it was ready for use, on the street, within hours after the event being protested. For example, was the image of Rice produced in advance, awaiting a pretext for its use, with only the script added at the last minute? I've often been curious about the logistics of pro-terrorist demonstrations, and this seems like an especially curious example.
It's almost as if a sleeper cell of terrorist Islamonerds have been taking Photoshop® classes at The Learning Annex these past few years awaiting the call to produce large-scale graphics while America slept.
She'll be up all night trying to get her head around this one:
ENCINITAS – Gang members who allegedly took a wallet from a migrant at knifepoint found themselves attacked by vengeful workers who put two of the robbers in the hospital, a sheriff's sergeant said.
The fight was reported about 7 p.m. in the 1100 block of Gardena Road, sheriff's Sgt. Mark Varnau said.
Sheriff's deputies arrived to find several men injured, Varnau said.
Two of those injured were alleged gang members, Varnau said.
“One of them got his head split open from one side to the other,” Varnau said.
Investigators determined that one of the migrants involved in the street brawl had been robbed earlier at a coin laundry on Santa Fe Drive, Sgt. Chuck Yancey said.
The migrant quickly pointed out the gang members to some friends and they went after the suspects, Yancey said.
The gangsters, said Yancey, “promptly fled the area with the migrants in hot pursuit.”
The gang members eventually stopped to face their opponents but pulled out knives, Yancey said, whereupon the migrants quickly dismantled a wooden fence and made clubs, Yancey said.
The fight left one migrant worker stabbed in the chest and another gang member with a fractured bone in his back, Yancey said.
The three men were taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, which has a trauma center, authorities said.
Deputies determined that the wallet robbery was part of an ongoing pattern of victimization of migrants by gang members in Encinitas, Yancey said.
The Quisling Who Came To Dinner "Is there a man in the world who suffers as I do from the gross inadequacies of the human race? "
I'm sure that someone will take offense at my refering to Joe Lieberman as a quisling, but what else can one call a man who, on the major issues, can only be described as a willing collaborationist?
... Mr. Lieberman is not just a senator who works well with members of the other party. And there is a reason that while other Democrats supported the war, he has become the only target. In his effort to appear above the partisan fray, he has become one of the Bush administration’s most useful allies as the president tries to turn the war on terror into an excuse for radical changes in how this country operates.
Citing national security, Mr. Bush continually tries to undermine restraints on the executive branch: the system of checks and balances, international accords on the treatment of prisoners, the nation’s longtime principles of justice. His administration has depicted any questions or criticism of his policies as giving aid and comfort to the terrorists. And Mr. Lieberman has helped that effort. He once denounced Democrats who were “more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq” than on supporting the war’s progress.
At this moment, with a Republican president intent on drastically expanding his powers with the support of the Republican House and Senate, it is critical that the minority party serve as a responsible, but vigorous, watchdog. That does not require shrillness or absolutism. But this is no time for a man with Mr. Lieberman’s ability to command Republicans’ attention to become their enabler, and embrace a role as the president’s defender.
•
On the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Lieberman has left it to Republicans like Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to investigate the administration’s actions. In 2004, Mr. Lieberman praised Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for expressing regret about Abu Ghraib, then added: “I cannot help but say, however, that those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, never apologized.” To suggest even rhetorically that the American military could be held to the same standard of behavior as terrorists is outrageous, and a good example of how avidly the senator has adopted the Bush spin and helped the administration avoid accounting for Abu Ghraib.
Mr. Lieberman prides himself on being a legal thinker and a champion of civil liberties. But he appointed himself defender of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the administration’s policy of holding hundreds of foreign citizens in prison without any due process. He seconded Mr. Gonzales’s sneering reference to the “quaint” provisions of the Geneva Conventions. He has shown no interest in prodding his Republican friends into investigating how the administration misled the nation about Iraq’s weapons. There is no use having a senator famous for getting along with Republicans if he never challenges them on issues of profound importance.
If Mr. Lieberman had once stood up and taken the lead in saying that there were some places a president had no right to take his country even during a time of war, neither he nor this page would be where we are today. But by suggesting that there is no principled space for that kind of opposition, he has forfeited his role as a conscience of his party, and has forfeited our support.
I don't know whether Ned Lamont can beat Joe Lieberman in either the primary or, should it come to that, in the general election assuming that Lieberman makes good on his threat to run as an independant. He is already claiming martyrhood for a cause which seems to have only two adherents (himself and rent-a-whore Marshall Wittman), but I'm sure the lazy cocktail-weenie pundits will run with that narrative (not to mention the wingnuts who are all so concerned with the state of the Democratic party since their liberal internment camp wet-dream seems unlikely... for the moment). Lieberman, having taken his press clippings to heart has convinced himself that he is the "soul of Democratic party" that must save the party from itself. One almost expects him to rebrand himself as Joe "Scoop Jackson" Lieberman and claim his own wing of the party...a wing barely large enough to fill a four-top at Denny's.
As it is now, Lieberman has officialy become damaged goods and hence has become the Democratic Party's Sheridan Whiteside who threatens, condescends, manipulates and blackmails the Stanley familiy (played by the Democratic party in a star turn) who just wish that he would just go away.
Taylor Hicks of Birmingham, Ala., the most recent winner on the show, also gave Bush a black T-shirt emblazoned with “Soul Patrol” — the name of Hicks’ fan club.
Kind of make you yearn for the sweet release of death and an eternity spent in a bloody rain writhing and screaming as the flames of hell sear your flesh and serpents rip and tear at your internal organs....
Don't make Paris go back to working at Hardees So strapped for cash she had to eat her dog
Congress is willing to raise the minimum wage for stupid ugly poor people only if they can ease the onerous tax burden on Paris Hilton:
Republican leaders are willing to allow the first minimum wage increase in a decade but only if it's coupled with a cut in future inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates, congressional aides said Friday.
[...]
''It's political blackmail to say the only way that minimum wage workers can get a raise is to give a tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans,'' said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. ''Members of Congress raised their own pay -- no strings attached. Surely, common decency suggests that minimum wage workers deserve the same respect.''
''It's outrageous the Republican Congress can't simply help poor people without doing something for their wealthy contributors,'' said Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio.
House lawmakers were to discuss the package at an early afternoon session, while the Senate GOP aide professed confidence the bill could advance through the chamber next week.
The aide asked not to be identified publicly because of the ongoing closed strategy sessions on the bill.
''It's the one chance for Democrats who want to get a minimum wage increase,'' the aide said.
Now it's not like there aren't jobs out there paying good wages like the oneJeannemarie Devolites Davis' landed which paid her "...$78,000 last year for working "10 to 20 hours a week," primarily at home on her cellphone", but those kind of jobs are few and far between. And besides, you have to sleep with a man who looks like this to make that kind of big bucks.
Considering that there is a new fresh hell in the Middle East each day, I thought this excerpt was somewhat appropriate:
In the alleys of Nablus's Old City we got tea from really some friendly guys, talked with them a little, high-fived them all, the walked farther in. Minutes later two Humvees started shooting large-caliber bullets down the street, red tracers slashing the dusk over our heads. We ran and hid behind a dumpster. A few more bursts of gunfire erupted, and then it was dead silent again. The Palestinians we'd been talking to had coolly split up the side streets and away from the Israelis.
Twenty minutes passed before one of us decided it was a good idea to head back to the central square, where the tank had been and the gunfire had come from, because that was the way back to the hotel. As we got back to the city's center, we spotted two Red Crescent ambulances parked where we had been talking to LLoyd an hour or so earlier. One of the drivers from the ambulance crew said that a seventeen-year-old boy, Naji Sayeef, had been shot dead, bullet wounds to the neck and head. We lied and told the drivers we were journalists (Sara once interned at the Cairo Times) and the guys let us ride along to the site, the Balata refugee camp.
The clinic we pulled up to was riddled with huge bullet holes - from an IDF drive-by. We spent twenty minutes inside and got all of the details on the killings: Supposedly Naji Sayeef was in the wrong place at the wrong time and the IDF soldiers had shot his head off. The bullets exploded his head and his neck. Earlier that day, another Palestinian kid had also been shot, but he'd survived. According to the clinic workers, neither kid was doing anything wrong. With the story told, the two guys in the clinic offered to take us to the camp.
Balata, founded in 1948, was one of the first Palestinian refugee camps. It's entrance had a huge Hamas banner strung across the road. A huge metal loudspeaker bolted to the exterior on the camp's mosque was blaring a pissed-off-sounding voice in Arabic. A group of guys with megaphones walked around the corner, yelling Naji's name and saying all kinds of stuff in Arabic.
We lurked around in the narrow streets, passing Hamas and PFLP graffiti, and ended up at the home of the ambulance driver's friends. The building was run down. It looked more like a shrunken public-housing project than a refugee camp. Our host was a young man with a beard. Inside, just past the apartment door, was a huge floor-to-ceiling painting of our hosts dead brother, fronted by a pair of crossed AK-47's. The man told us his brother had been killed several years earlier during the Intifada's worst fighting, at thirty-one years old. He'd been killed defending the camp's gates from invading IDF troops. On the opposing wall was a cap-and-gown graduation photograph of his other brother, a lawyer, who was in jail and hadn't been heard from for a long time. The whole thing had a staged feel, as if the same litany had been told in the same way to many foreign observers before us. Finally we said our goodbyes. Back in the hotel we watched bad Egyptian pop videos on satellite TV in the lobby, trying to register all that he had seen in the past seven or eight hours.
Of course, that is from before they get to Iraq where things go considerably downhill. You'll particularly enjoy their take on the CPA which makes FEMA under Heckuvajob Brownie look like a model of efficiency.
¿Dónde está la casa de Michelle Malkin? I have come to fill the buns that American hot dogs won't fill
Michelle Malkin is only one woman, a petty immature rageaholic woman, but one woman nonetheless, so it is not surprising that, at a time that she absolutely swamped protecting us from Cindy Sheehan, Hezbollah, photographers who make babies cry, as well as taking a brief timeout to shake her Lil'Tyke's tambourine in a music video, well, that things would take a turn for the worse at the border and giant mutant Mexiricans would just start waltzing into our country without a care in the world.
This wouldn't have happened if Chris Simcox hadn't blown all of the Minuteman money on copies of the F-Troop Season One DVD collection to be used as training videos.
I think that we have reached the point where she is invited onto the cable shows purely to make a fool out of herself. She is so ridiculously horrible that she has become the Carrot Top of pundettes.
Pre-Friday Random Ten Go find a jukebox and see what a quarter will do I don't wanna talk I just wanna go back to blue Feed's me when I'm hungry and quenches my thirst Loves me when I'm lonely and thinks of me first Blue is the color of night When the red sun Disappears from the sky
For some reason my iPod has decided to delete all my playlists and when I try to update it through iTunes it adds any new songs...but doesn't reinstate the playlists. Leave suggestions in the comments with the usual lists, snark, and cooler than thou comments. Here we go:
Clampdown - The Clash Nadir (synchronicity) - Lisa Gerrard & Pieter Bourke Turn That Heartbeat Over Again - Steely Dan Several Arrows Later - matt pond pa Tennessee Sucks - Ryan Adams Divine Intervention - Matthew Sweet Let It Drive - ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead Escape Pod [from The World of Medical Observation] -Stereolab Stigmata - Ministry Blue - Lucinda Williams A Distorted Reality Is Now A Necessity To Be Free - Elliott Smith
Thursday Night Basset Blogging Hot dogs (click to enlarge)
It has been hot by San Diego standards this week (high 80's - very humid) and the beastie boys aren't too darn thrilled, which explains my finding them sitting in front of the fan the other night.
Yes. They do have big asses.
For a little face-time, here is a repeat of young Satchmo Satchmo at eight months
Much will be made of this article. In fact, by this time tomorrow, you will be tired of hearing about it, but this quote deserves a spot in the What Women Don't Know About Men Hall of Fame :
"I'm totally supportive of it — I just don't like the flashing," she says. "I don't want my son or husband to accidentally see a breast they didn't want to see."
I don't know about you, but it's like she's talking some kind of crazy moonman language.
To be fair, there are some breasts that I probably don't want to see, but her son is thirteen. He'd probably sell his mother into slavery for a glimpse of whatever Scarlett Johansson is packing.
After today's hearing, UN Ambassador John Bolton stopped for a chat with Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Dad's A Perv) and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana). Sen. Coleman was overheard asking Ambassador Bolton to sponsor his dad into a private sex club in order to keep him off the street and out of sex slave gangs.
Assured that the the senior Coleman is white, has his own ballgag, and is "totally hetero" the ambassador said he would take the request under consideration in exchange for a "yes" vote in commitee as well as naked pictures of Senator Coleman's wife...just as soon as Senator Lugar is done with them.
The multibillion-dollar surge in federal contracting to bolster the nation's domestic defenses in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been marred by extensive waste and misspent funds, according to a new bipartisan congressional report.
Lawmakers say that since the Homeland Security Department's formation in 2003, an explosion of no-bid deals and a critical shortage of trained government contract managers have created a system prone to abuse. Based on a comprehensive survey of hundreds of government audits, 32 Homeland Security Department contracts worth a total of $34 billion have "experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement," according to the report, which is slated for release today and was obtained in advance by The Washington Post.
[...]
"Every dollar that is wasted on a contract is a dollar less that could be used to make Americans more secure," said former department inspector general Clark Kent Ervin. "This kind of abuse constitutes a security gap all its own in America's defense."
Ervin said that though an undue reliance on contractors might have been excused when the agency was launched, it "is not understandable or justified all these years after the creation of the department." The private sector, he said, has had the opportunity "time and time again to take the department -- and thereby taxpayers -- for a ride."
Just a reminder that this happened on Bush's watch, as did the 9/11 attack, the failed response to Katrina, the loss of $9 billion by the CPA, the erosion of Constitutional protections, and the fake war that has resulted in thousands of needless deaths while creating a training ground for terrorists.
Did I mention that the Vice President shot an old man in the face?
It's the end of the world as we know it, and we can't wait I've got two tickets to paradise. Won't you hang yourself for me tonight
Borrowing a term from Our Beloved Leader, I think the proper name for these people should be suiciders. If they really want to see Jesus in the very near future, might I recommend setting up an appointment with Mr. Rope and Mr. Stout Overhead Beam and leaving us the hell out of it. Just take that last step off of the chair and then you can see if you were right...or you were wrong. Either way, it's gonna be a lot more peaceful for one of us.
So you folks can go on ahead and kill yourselves. Take a walk with Jesus and bask in His heavenly glory or whatever it is you plan on doing for eternity. The rest of us want to see our kids grow up, we want to grow old together, we want to watch a few more sunsets, and maybe do a few things that aren't in Bible.
It's Quiet. Yeah. Too quiet.... With World War ∞ busting out all over and Iraq (remember Iraq?) operating like a well-oiled abattoir, I find it a wee bit creepy that we have heard so little from Dick Cheney as of late. I guess he's waiting until after the upcoming Rapture/Apocalypse/Endtimes Jamboree before he pokes his head out of his hidey-hole to claim his dominion over Earth.
Not that he doesn't already think he owns it, mind you...
It is time to say it unequivocally: We are winning in Iraq.
If current trends continue, our counter-insurgent campaign in Iraq will be fit to be mentioned in the same breath as the British victory over a Communist insurgency in Malaysia in the 1950s, a textbook example of this form of war. Our counterinsurgency has gone through the same stages as that of the Brits five decades ago: confusion in the initial reaction to the insurgency, followed by a long period of adjustment, and finally the slow but steady erosion of the insurgency's military and political base. Even as there has been a steady diet of bad news about Iraq in the media over the last year, even as some hawks have bailed on the war in despair, even as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has become everyone's whipping boy, the U.S. military has been regaining the strategic upper hand.
This doesn't mean the war couldn't still go wrong.
BAGHDAD, July 26 Army Staff Sgt. Jose Sixtos considered the simple question about morale for more than an hour. But not until his convoy of armored Humvees had finally rumbled back into the Baghdad military base, and the soldiers emptied the ammunition from their machine guns, and passed off the bomb-detecting robot to another patrol, did he turn around in his seat and give his answer.
"Think of what you hate most about your job. Then think of doing what you hate most for five straight hours, every single day, sometimes twice a day, in 120-degree heat," he said. "Then ask how morale is."
Frustrated? "You have no idea," he said.
As President Bush plans to deploy more troops in Baghdad, U.S. soldiers who have been patrolling the capital for months describe a deadly and infuriating mission in which the enemy is elusive and success hard to find. Each day, convoys of Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles leave Forward Operating Base Falcon in southern Baghdad with the goal of stopping violence between warring Iraqi religious sects, training the Iraqi army and police to take over the duty, and reporting back on the availability of basic services for Iraqi civilians.
But some soldiers in the 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Division -- interviewed over four days on base and on patrols -- say they have grown increasingly disillusioned about their ability to quell the violence and their reason for fighting. The battalion of more than 750 people arrived in Baghdad from Kuwait in March, and since then, six soldiers have been killed and 21 wounded.
"It sucks. Honestly, it just feels like we're driving around waiting to get blown up. That's the most honest answer I could give you," said Spec. Tim Ivey, 28, of San Antonio, a muscular former backup fullback for Baylor University. "You lose a couple friends and it gets hard."
"No one wants to be here, you know, no one is truly enthused about what we do," said Sgt. Christopher Dugger, the squad leader. "We were excited, but then it just wears on you -- there's only so much you can take. Like me, personally, I want to fight in a war like World War II. I want to fight an enemy. And this, out here," he said, motioning around the scorched sand-and-gravel base, the rows of Humvees and barracks, toward the trash-strewn streets of Baghdad outside, "there is no enemy, it's a faceless enemy. He's out there, but he's hiding."
If you're like me you have to ask:
Why do the men of the 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Division hate Rich Lowry?
Jennifer Harper of the Washington Times reports on a Harris Poll that, among other things, shows that 50% of respondents--up from 36% last year--believe that "Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded."
The Harris folks term this result "surprising," but it's hard to see why. "Yes" is indisputably the right answer to that question. Liberals can dispute whether Iraq had as many WMDs as we believed they did; or whether they had all the kinds of WMDs of which they were suspected; or whether the WMDs Iraq had were mostly, or entirely, left over from the 1980s and 1990s; or whether the alleged mobile weapons labs really reflected nothing more than Saddam's taking a sudden, and very expensive, interest in weather balloons on the eve of war. But about the fact that Iraq possessed WMDs, there is no doubt.
The problem for liberals is that once that basic fact is admitted, and the discussion becomes more nuanced--e.g., old WMDs versus new WMDs--then the discussion also has to include addional facts: that Saddam remained committed to building more WMDs at the earliest opportunity; that he had at his command ample staff and other resources to carry out that command; and that Iraq was moving successfully toward ending the corrupt U.N. sanctions regime, at which point WMD production would have resumed.
Indisputably. And only the deeply unserious who are objectively pro-terrorist and are therefore treasonous would disregard a rationale so anemic that it can barely raise its head, much less invade a country...
You could have knocked me over with a feather Hmmm. He says he likes long walks on the beach, having his back-hair cornrowed, and unilaterally invading Middle Eastern countries.
The Phoenix, the Unicorn, and Mrs. Coburn's orgasm Nobody told me there was gonna be a quiz.
In a desperate bid to be known as Oklahoma's Stupidest Senator™, Tom Coburn one-ups fellow Okie James Inhofe:
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) is the nation’s most prominent global warming denier. He famously declared that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Now, he’s taken the argument a step further. In an interview with Tulsa World, Inhofe compared people who believed global warming was a problem to Nazis:
In an interview, he heaped criticism on what he saw as the strategy used by those on the other side of the debate and offered a historical comparison.
“It kind of reminds . . . I could use the Third Reich, the big lie,” Inhofe said.
“The big lie,” is a propaganda technique Adolf Hitler attributed to Jews in his book Mein Kampf. It involves telling lies “so colossal” that no one would believe “others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
Inhofe added that every claim in An Inconvenient Truth “has been refuted scientifically.” He also admitted he’d never seen the movie.
Abstinence is the best way to prevent teenage pregnancy, responded Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.
"How many people really think it's in the best interest of young people to be sexually active outside of marriage? Does anything positive ever come from that?" Coburn asked.
I guess, since he threw marriage into the mix, we can also include in that young people subset, people who have graduated high school, college graduates, students still in college, and all of those who haven't married as of yet. In which case all we can say is:
American Idol star Taylor Hicks is set to meet President George W Bush after he and his fellow former contestants were invited to join the US leader and his wife Laura at the White House during a tour stop in Washington DC.
The American Idol winner that America would like to forget meets the American President America wishes it had never met.
As all of our wars turn to shit and we don't have enough cannon fodder to turn every neo-con pipedream into a wetdream, Jeff Jacoby is getting tired of being called a chickenhawk and fights back, as only a chickenhawk can, by missing the point:
You hear a fair amount of that from the antiwar crowd if, like me, you support a war but have never seen combat yourself. That makes you a ``chicken hawk" -- one of those, as Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, defending John Kerry from his critics, put it during the 2004 presidential campaign, who ``shriek like a hawk, but have the backbone of a chicken." Kerry himself often played that card. ``I'd like to know what it is Republicans who didn't serve in Vietnam have against those of us who did," he would sniff, casting himself as the victim of unmanly hypocrites who never wore the uniform, yet had the gall to criticize him, a decorated veteran, for his stance on the war.
``Chicken hawk" isn't an argument. It is a slur -- a dishonest and incoherent slur. It is dishonest because those who invoke it don't really mean what they imply -- that only those with combat experience have the moral authority or the necessary understanding to advocate military force. After all, US foreign policy would be more hawkish, not less, if decisions about war and peace were left up to members of the armed forces. Soldiers tend to be politically conservative, hard-nosed about national security, and confident that American arms make the world safer and freer. On the question of Iraq -- stay-the-course or bring-the-troops-home? -- I would be willing to trust their judgment. Would Cindy Sheehan and Howard Dean?
You have to admire Jacoby for not having the balls to actually go and fight while, at the same time, pretending that he too is one with the few, the proud, the hairy-chested. Actually, you don't have to admire Jacoby at all because his argument is what they refer to in debating circles as "bullshit". In fact, he seems to be recycling the same "not-a-chickenhawk" argument that we have heard before (not that this is anything new for Jacoby).
It's very simple; nobody is saying that Jacoby can't blather on and on about the great moral choices we Americans make about whether to attack and invade countries because they might pose a threat (real or imagined) to us. But at the same time he is making the moral choice to say, "Well, you go on ahead. I have other priorities which don't include getting my ass shot at or blown up. Your life is worth less than mine. I 'll just stay here and wave my little flag. Godspeed!"
That is a chickenhawk. He lets others, who have entrusted their lives to their country, believing with all their hearts that the people in charge have their best interests in mind won't send them off on a fools errand or a bloody debacle. And if they get killed, well, Jeff can always write a somber full-of-regret athlete-who-died-too-young column about the brave man (or woman) they were, file the story, and then go back to bouncing his son on his knee. No risk of harm, no foul.
And yet in one of Jacoby's open letters to his son that he submits as a column each year he writes:
I'm in no hurry to dispel your innocence, but I know that the world outside won't stay outside forever. My power to shelter you from the worst of what's out there is gradually decreasing; your awareness of human evil and suffering are slowly on the rise. I want to prepare you for the ugliness and injustice that you are bound to encounter as you make your way in the world -- prepare you not just to recognize that such things exist but to understand that you have a duty to combat them.
We talked about the war in Iraq the other day. I explained to you that the ruler of that country is an extremely cruel man who for a very long time has been killing and hurting many people -- including even children your age and younger -- and that the United States was now leading a war to stop him. War can be very terrible and frightening, I told you, but it would be more terrible and frightening if we did nothing to stop the cruel man.
"Imagine how you would feel," I suggested, "if somebody were hurting you very badly -- hurting you so badly that you were crying -- and everyone else just watched and did nothing to stop him." That is a very simple way to frame the case for war in Iraq, Caleb, but you'd be surprised how many adults cannot seem to grasp it.
[...]
The lesson I hope you are gradually internalizing is that when victims are suffering, those who can rescue them have an obligation to do so. "Do not stand aloof from the blood of your neighbor," commands the Bible in Leviticus 19:16. When someone is in a desperate predicament, you must help if you can. And sometimes the only way to help is through fighting and bloodshed. Awful as war is, the alternative can be even worse.
Unless, of course, the alternative is to send someone else to go do the fighting and the shedding of blood, in which case, it's good work if you can get it.
Seen in his light, Jacoby isn't just your average run-of-the-coop chickenhawk. He's also a hypocrite and a liar who talks awful big for his little boy and walks awful small for a man.
As much as I made fun of M. Night Shyamalan's Lady In The Water a few weeks ago, I never thought it would tank as bad as it did:
Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan made his smallest splash since his Sixth Sense breakthrough with Lady in the Water, his first major feature apart from Disney. Shyamalan's self-described "bedtime story" drew $18 million at 3,235 venues, compared to the $50.7 million debut of his last picture, The Village. According to distributor Warner Bros.' research, 56 percent of the audience was female and 64 percent was under 25 years old, while the verdict from moviegoer pollster CinemaScore was a discouraging "B-."
Both Lady in the Water and The Village, lacking stars, were sold primarily on Shyamalan's name, with references to his previous movies and the promise of mysterious creatures creeping about an isolated location. The problem is that Shyamalan's brand was damaged by The Village, which many detested, after building his name to extraordinary heights with The Sixth Sense and Signs. To recover, more was needed for Lady than a marketing campaign that simply mimicked past successes.
Venturing my humble outside-of-the-industry opinion, part of the problem was too much marketing of Shyamalan as a Hollywood storyteller non-pareil; from the American Express commercials to the starstruck hagiography by Michael Bamberger timed for release with the film.
Bamberger professes objectivity about his subject, but the book reads as an extended paean to Shyamalan -- his intelligence, his vigor, his magnetism and his remarkable skill as a filmmaker. Bamberger is prone to such comments about Shyamalan as "I felt a powerful force coming off the guy," "all had felt the force of his personality," and "If he had these powers, where did they come from? Could another person develop them?" -- and this just in the book's first 10 pages. Even those favorably inclined toward Shyamalan (among whom I include myself) will inevitably feel an overpowering urge to smack the director around when he makes pronouncements such as, "I believe if I had unlimited time to practice, after two years, I'd be able to shoot with any NBA player," and a concomitant frustration with Bamberger for not being ever so slightly tougher on his subject.
Knowing he has gone soft for Shyamalan, Bamberger admits at book's end that he has been wooed into the director's camp: "I was rooting for him and his movie. Maybe that sounds like the writer getting too close to his subject, but to me honest reporting is you dig as deep as you can and you write what you find, and what you feel." It is hard to fault Bamberger for liking his subject, but it would have been nice not to feel that we were seeing Shyamalan through rose-tinted glasses. Nonetheless, the most important favor Bamberger bestows on Shyamalan is the one the director most richly deserves: the right to have his movies taken seriously, to have them treated as the work of an enormously gifted young filmmaker with titanic self-confidence in his own abilities and a seemingly magical ability to inculcate similar belief in others.
Fortunately for Warner, the film wasn't that expensive and it should make money, but it's not going to help them forget the disasters known as Poseidon and, to a lesser degree, Superman Returns with its $260 million budget. Based upon the consensus from the all-important 17-year old high school demographic (made up of the lovely and talented Casey and several of her friends who all went together and saw LITW this weekend) word of mouth is not going to be good. Shorter L&T Casey review: not interesting enough to make you pay attention...ending is just "blah"...The highlight: monkeys with dreadlocks (or as we have dubbed them: chimpafarians.)
Passive/Aggressive "Did somebody order a handjob?"
At least it is nice to know that Condoleezza Rice isn't doing any showy grandstanding in a vain attempt to win a Nobel Peace prize:
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought to buttress Lebanon's fragile democratic government Monday after nearly two weeks of warfare, making this stricken capital a surprise first stop on a high-stakes Mideast diplomatic mission.
At the same time, the Bush administration announced it was sending humanitarian aid.
Rice's visit marked the first high-level U.S. diplomatic mission to the area since fighting erupted on July 12. But she disappointed Lebanese leaders who had hoped her lightning trip would hasten a cease-fire in the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militants in Lebanon that has claimed hundreds of civilians' lives.
''Thank you for your courage and steadfastness,'' she told Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, who has repeatedly asked for international help in bringing a halt to cross-border Israeli-Hezbollah shelling. Rice flew next to Jerusalem but made clear that she would not pressure Israeli leaders for an immediate cease-fire during meetings Monday and Tuesday.
This is kind of the equivalent of promising someone bandaids while your best friend, who you just got stinking drunk, punches them repeatedly in the face.
The Amazing Adventures of the Outrage Patrol A short walk from hysterical to historical
The ever-vigilant Michelle Malkin catches the NY Times releasing state secrets, in this case, the fact that the US is moving up the shipment of bombs that will be used to kill Lebanese civilians as part of WWeyeyeyeye:
Anonymous blabbers and their stenographers at the NYTimes are at it again:
The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said Friday.
The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration, the officials said. Its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others because of the appearance that the United States is actively aiding the Israeli bombing campaign in a way that could be compared to Iran’s efforts to arm and resupply Hezbollah.
Reader Thomas W. writes: "Michelle, the NYT is doing it again. Throwing one of our best allies under the bus, and openly disclosing future military war plans against our enemies."
Reader Thomas W., using his mad photoshopping skillz, then provides Michelle with a screen cap of the article and makes a brilliant comparison between this story and the totally not-secret Manhattan Project, because unlike the Manhattan Project, the fact that the US sells billions of dollars worth of weaponry to Israel every year is a closely held secret. Kind of:
Pentagon and military officials declined to describe in detail the size and contents of the shipment to Israel, and they would not say whether the munitions were being shipped by cargo aircraft or some other means. But an arms-sale package approved last year provides authority for Israel to purchase from the United States as many as 100 GBU-28’s, which are 5,000-pound laser-guided bombs intended to destroy concrete bunkers. The package also provides for selling satellite-guided munitions.
An announcement in 2005 that Israel was eligible to buy the “bunker buster” weapons described the GBU-28 as “a special weapon that was developed for penetrating hardened command centers located deep underground.” The document added, “The Israeli Air Force will use these GBU-28’s on their F-15 aircraft.”
American officials said that once a weapons purchase is approved, it is up to the buyer nation to set up a timetable. But one American official said normal procedures usually do not include rushing deliveries within days of a request. That was done because Israel is a close ally in the midst of hostilities, the official said.
FRIDA BERRIGAN: Sure. Almost all of the weapons used by Israel are from the United States. There might be a couple French fighter planes that they’re using, but its F-16s made in Fort Worth, Texas; its Apache helicopters; its Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles; it’s all from the United States. So you have this real disconnect between an overemphasis on the supply by Iran and Syria of Hezbollah's weapons and no discussion of the fact that all of the Israeli arsenal is from the United States, and that that is in contravention to U.S. law. to the Arms Export Control Act, which says that U.S.-origin weapons are only to be used for self-defense and for internal security.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And your report indicates that Israel has always been the largest recipient of military aid from the United States, but that that’s actually increased since 2001?
FRIDA BERRIGAN: We’re looking at incredible increases in U.S. military aid and weapons sales to Israel. Military aid stands at about $3 billion a year. That’s about $500 for every Israeli citizen that the United States provides on an annual basis. And then, weapons sales, most recently, since the Bush administration came into power, we’re looking at $6.3 billion worth of weaponry sold to Israel.
Israel's relationship with the United States is unique in a number of ways. And one of those ways is that essentially the United States provides 20% of the Israeli military budget on an annual basis, and then about 70% of that money that is given from the United States, from U.S. taxpayers, to Israel is then spent on weapons from Lockheed Martin and Boeing and Raytheon. Most other countries don't have that sort of cash relationship, where they go straight to U.S. corporations with U.S. money to buy weapons that are then used in the Occupied Territories and against Lebanon.
I guess so.
Color me outraged.
(I see those bastards at Sadly, No were already on this while I was enjoying myself in San Francisco instead of defending the republic. There are no vacations for patriots.)
I want to like novelists. Really, I do. For example, T.C. Boyle. I read him sometimes. That is to say: I subordinate my mind to his and let his thoughts become my thoughts. But then I read quotes like this, and it sets me to wondering all over again about this practice of reading novels. They're written by novelists, you know.
ADDED: Roy thinks I'm objecting to Boyle's politics. He specializes in calling me an idiot, in numerous posts, but he never seems to begin to understand my writing. Here, he comes to the defense of writers. But do writers even want to be defended by a man who is such a poor reader?
You can have your own fun by connecting the dots between "They're written by novelists, you know" and "...he never seems to begin to understand my writing". Me? I'm just glad to see that Ann, who once annointed me " ...a somewhat popular blogger", has bestowed upon Roy the title of "...specializes in calling me an idiot."
If I were Roy, not only would I be putting that on my resume, I'd be looking into having it screened on t-shirts.
When Miss Israel kicked Miss Lebanon's ass....that rocked. Get out the corndogs and Mr. Pibb! It's time to "unleash your enthusiam for the winner" if you know what I mean...
Just like the annual Sports Illustrated bathing-suit issue that no one bothers with anymore because Victoria's Secret catalogs are free, Captain Corndog makes his annual return to blogging the Miss Universe pageant once again and gives us the inside scoop on how it should have gone down:
The initial impression is that this was an evening of upsets. A number of the betting favorites didn't make the top twenty, while several underdogs broke through. The big shocker was that Miss Australia, the betting favorite just twenty-four hours ago and the contestant who accompanied Donald Trump on the David Letterman Show, didn't make the cut. What a diss by Trump, who got to name five of the twenty finalists! No Miss Iceland, who made a late rush among bettors, either.
Another shocker was that Miss Sweden survived the National Costumes exhibition and made the cut-off. And Miss Sri Lanka didn't make the cut, which took some of the fun out of it for me. But I was happy to see Miss Trinidad & Tobago, another of my favorites, in the finals.
Okay. It has to be said:
This is really really sad. What? Hinderaker has, like a Miss Universe betting pool at work and he's laying down odds on Miss Trinidad? White bread lawyers are dropping big cash on Third World hoochie-mamas? I mean besides going on Neil Bush junkets.
Perhaps we should be glad that Miss Sri Lanka "didn't make the cut". Now another bottle of hand lotion has been spared a horrible and icky death.
(Just a note...when I go to the Powerline site for the post I get that hideous Vote for Ann Coulter ad which is a well-known antidote for a Cialis overdose)
Okay. First thing first. No, I did not need pants in San Francisco as there was record heat, so 'nyah'. Just ask the guy behind the counter at City Lights bookstore which has neither air conditioning or fans and was sauna-like forcing the assorted literary pilgrims to grab copies of The Sheltering Sky with which to fan themselves. I settled for Jonathan Lethem's The Disappointment Artist, which is a light breezy read...(get it?) perfect for filling the time waiting on delayed planes at SFO as well as keeping seatmates from talking to you.
Regardless of the heat, the lithe and plucky mrs tbogg and I walked the ridiculously steep hills of San Francisco all weekend visiting Chinatown and North Beach where we Thai fed ourselves and visited assorted trattorias, sampling their wares and drinking massive amounts of wine (her) and San Pellegrino (me). We also visited many bookstores (because, as you know, San Diego is pre-literate), saw a baseball game (nice park) and witnessed a spectacular fireworks show (still don't know what the hell that was about) Friday night from our hotel room balcony.
Our only disappointment was getting to San Francisco on Friday and seeing that Kathy Griffin was at the Warwickfield that night...and the show was sold-out.
That once there was a fleeting wisp of looney. Called Pamalot Talent on loan from Bellevue
She Who Makes Our Ears Bleed condones killing toddlers in the Holy Name of Rand:
I am not buying into the innocent civilians meme. If by ignorance, complicity, neglect or helplessness the Lebanese wouldn't throw Hezbollah out and establish a strong government, then they must pay the price for the sins of Hizbollah. And if people put up with dictatorships, theocracies, totalitarian regimes - as they did in Nazi Germany -- they deserve what Hezbollah deserves. Our only concern should be who started the war. Hezbollah/Hamas initiated the use of force and so stepped outside the principle of rights.
NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO GIVE UP THEIR RIGHT TO SELF DEFENSE FOR FEAR OF HURTING SOMEONE ELSE GUILTY OR INNOCENT. --Ayn Rand
Seven Canadians — including four children — were killed in an Israeli air raid that hit a Lebanese town on the border with Israel on Sunday. Three Canadians were seriously injured.
Israel has acknowledged carrying out the attack and has apologized to Ottawa, CBC's Nahlah Ayed reported from Beirut.
Most of the dead were members of one extended Montreal family, on vacation in the village of Aitaroun at the time of the Israeli attack. Among those killed was Ali El-Akhras who came to Montreal from Lebanon 15 years ago. His wife, Saada El-Akhras, was among the injured.
The nephew of Ali El-Akhras, also named Ali, had accompanied his uncle and aunt on their annual summer vacation. His wife, Amira, and their four children, ages one, four, six and eight, were killed in the attack.
And, in an act of Randian self-interest, Israel finally, finally, says "Never again" to protect its people:
The Press secretary of the Embassy of Israel called to cancel my trip to Israel. They recommend that I not go to Israel. Apparently they have canceled all my interviews and war coverage. Ugh.
If only they could cancel her war coverage.
(Added) From the comments because it sooo good:
She should go anyway. There's so much she could do to show Israel what a good friend she is. Hang around, be there in case it needs her. Show up at Israel's office right at lunch time, saying she was just in the neighborhood and do you want to grab a quick bite. Call Israel several times a day and leave emotional messages on its answering machine. Go to clubs where Israel hangs out just in case it wants to talk to her. Sleep in her car outside Israel's house. Break in and boil Israel's pet bunny in the kitchen. --deNoVa
President Bush's unwillingness to pressure Israel to halt its military campaign in Lebanon is rooted in a view of the Middle East conflict that is sharply different from that of his predecessors.
When hostilities have broken out in the past, the usual U.S. response has been an immediate and public bout of diplomacy aimed at a cease-fire, in the hopes of ensuring that the crisis would not escalate. This week, however, even in the face of growing international demands, the White House has studiously avoided any hint of impatience with Israel. While making it plain it wants civilian casualties limited, the administration is also content to see the Israelis inflict the maximum damage possible on Hezbollah.
As the president's position is described by White House officials, Bush associates and outside Middle East experts, Bush believes that the status quo -- the presence in a sovereign country of a militant group with missiles capable of hitting a U.S. ally -- is unacceptable.
The U.S. position also reflects Bush's deepening belief that Israel is central to the broader campaign against terrorists and represents a shift away from a more traditional view that the United States plays an "honest broker's" role in the Middle East.
In the administration's view, the new conflict is not just a crisis to be managed. It is also an opportunity to seriously degrade a big threat in the region, just as Bush believes he is doing in Iraq. Israel's crippling of Hezbollah, officials also hope, would complete the work of building a functioning democracy in Lebanon and send a strong message to the Syrian and Iranian backers of Hezbollah.
"The president believes that unless you address the root causes of the violence that has afflicted the Middle East, you cannot forge a lasting peace," said White House counselor Dan Bartlett. "He mourns the loss of every life. Yet out of this tragic development, he believes a moment of clarity has arrived."
One former senior administration official said Bush is only emboldened by the pressure from U.N. officials and European leaders to lead a call for a cease-fire. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan demanded yesterday that the fighting in Lebanon stop.
"He thinks he is playing in a longer-term game than the tacticians," said the former official, who spoke anonymously so he could discuss his views candidly. "The tacticians would say: 'Get an immediate cease-fire. Deal first with the humanitarian factors.' The president would say: 'You have an opportunity to really grind down Hezbollah. Let's take it, even if there are other serious consequences that will have to be managed.' "
Having been proven completely wrong about Iraq where "freedom on the march" made a quick right onto "anarchy in the streets", George Bush now wants to swat a hornets nest just to see what happens. This reminds me of the old Steven Wright joke about picking up hitchikers and telling them, "Put on your seat belt. I want to try something. I saw it once in a cartoon, but I think I can do it."
It is truly stunning to survey how much damage this shallow stupid man has done to the world in six short years, and to realize that we will be picking up after his mess for generations to come while he and Laura go back to Crawford and drink their dullwitted selves into oblivion.
Pre-Friday Random Ten But I'm the stuff Of Happy endings Though mostly bluff Belief suspending But close enough For just pretending to care
And I'm pretending to care When I'm not even there Gone, but I don't know where
This was quite an assortment. A real good assortment. Usually I just read them off and don't even listen to them, but this one was worth the time. Here you go:
How The Heart Approaches What It Yearns - Paul Simon Revelator - Gillian Welch The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow) - The Jam Lord Can You Hear Me - Spirtualized September Gurls - Big Star Satellites - Rickie Lee Jones Jaded - The Crystal Method Lost In Space - Aimee Mann Don't Wanna Know About Evil - Beth Orton Ten Storey Love Song - The Stone Roses
And the everloving bonus #11: You Will Never Be No Good - Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
I would hope, I really really hope, that there was at least one Senator who was laughing so hard during Brownback's show & tell that they had to call in the paramedics.
Please Senator Brownback - run for President. I beg you.
Even Warren Buffett doesn't have enough money to pay for the therapy her children are going to require. I'd thank Watertiger for the link but I'm waiting to see if my testicles will ever come back out of hiding.
“I come from a family committed to civil rights,” Bush said. “My faith tells me that we are all children of God — equally loved, equally cherished, equallyentitled to the rights He grants us all.
In 1964, Bush ran for the U.S. Senate. In the Republican primary, Bush ran first with 62,985 votes, but his total was 44.1 percent, not the required majority. He was thus forced into a runoff primary with Jack Cox, also of Houston, the 1962 Republican gubernatorial nominee, who had 45,561 votes (31.9 percent) in the primary. A third candidate, Robert Morris of Dallas, who had been a member of the Senate Internal Security Committee and an ardent constitutionalist and "cold warrior," polled 28,279 ballots (19.8 percent).
Bush easily prevailed in the GOP runoff, with 49,751 (62.1 percent) to Cox's 30,333 (37.9 percent). As the Republican nominee, Bush then aimed his campaign at the incumbent Democratic Senator Ralph Yarborough, making an issue of Yarborough's support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. At the time many Southern politicians (including the Republican Senator John Tower of Texas) opposed the legislation on constitutional or libertarian grounds.
Bush called Yarborough an "extremist" and a "left wing demagogue" while Yarborough said Bush was a "carpetbagger" trying to buy a Senate seat "just as they would buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange." Bush lost in a Democratic landslide but ran considerably ahead of the GOP presidential nominee, Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona.
Glenn Greenwald stalker and the obviously girlfriend-less Patterico still won't let it go:
Read on, Gentle Reader. I promise you, this will be worth your time.
See if you see any similarities between the following comments, from three completely different people. (Or are they?)
Listen to their amazing praise for the great Glenn Greenwald . . . and note how similar all the comments sound.
And then Patterico finds similarities in words like "the" "and" and "14-inches of man-meat" and tries to make something out of it, which, I guess is worth your time if you're just a lonely guy trying to fill the the desperate hours until the sweet oblivion of sleep claims you and then morning comes and you must once again face the black shrieking void of a meaningless life devoid of joy and human interaction...at least until lunchtime because it's Taco Thursday today.
Then it's back to that shrieking void thing again.
Anyway, I just received an email attachment of a Microsoft Solitaire screenshot from my Dark and Petulant Lord, Kos and I just wanted to say that Raymond Shaw Glenn Greenwald is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.
I fear that Patrick Buchanan's intemperate remarks about Israel may cost him all of those votes in Palm Beach County that the Bush campaign conceded to him in 2000.
This does not bode well for Bay Buchanan ever finding employment that doesn't involve being a tag-along sister.
I know I promised a post on it tonight but I want to take my time with it so that I don't come off as being glib since we (the tasteful and ghetto-fabulous mrs tbogg and I) take the issue quite seriously what with the lovely and talented Casey being a private school kid.
Not that any one comes here for policy discussions when there are wingnuts to be mocked and pelted with tater-tots.
Anyway, it'll be sometime next week since since I'll be on the road in San Francisco this weekend with the aforementioned and whistle-worthy mrs tbogg to see a ballgame at AT&T Park with some tickets that she won in a golf tournament. Yeah, she's all that and a bag of peanuts. It is purely icing on the cake that the Giants will be playing the Padres.
In the meantime, we are open to restaurant suggestions in the SF downtown area, keeping in mind that I wear shorts 360+ days a year and I'm not packing any pants, dammit.
So I get out of the shower and see if Drudge has anything that I missed, and I see a picture of one decent looking chick and another regular chick (see here) above the headline - Supporters of Lebanon protest outside Israeli consulate in NY.... But when I click the headline I'm taken to this Reuters photo in one of Yahoo! News' photo slideshows
Hey. Hey! Where's the babes? WTF?
Now if Randy, who suddenly became a little less randy, had popped over to John Hawkins' place he could have indulged himself (which is a nice way of saying that he treats his body like an amusement park {seinfeld reference}) with fantasies of porn stars turned Republican nominees.
Yesterday, I got together with Mimi Miyagi, a former porn star running for Governor of Nevada as a Republican. Her campaign is quite a ways back in the polls at the moment, but I thought she'd still be a fun interview -- and she was! What you'll find below is an edited transcript of our conversation. Enjoy!
John Hawkins: When did you start getting into politics and what drew you to the Republican Party?
Mimi Miyagi: I am an avid supporter of bearing arms since 2001....I love the people in the (Republican Party). I have been to some of the Democratic parties here and there, but the positivity, the upbeat attitude of the Republicans was more for me.
Here is the lovely Miss Miyagi: No. This is not another Vent screen cap
Conversation overheard in a suburban home in Maryland:
MM: Jesse! Did you see this? JM: Mmmm-hmmm. MM: Bitch best not be cutting into my action is all I'm sayin'. JM: Mmmm-hmmmm. MM: You coming to bed? JM: I'll be there in a little while. I've got some.....work to do. MM: Come to bed soon. Tomorrow is Hate the Mexicans Thursday. JM: This shouldn't take me more than a minute or two. MM: Love you. JM: Mmmm-hmmmm.
There is a pretty good discussion of the voucher/private school issue in comments right here. I don't have time to contribute but will address it later tonight. I just need some time to make shit up collect my thoughts.
President Bush cast the first veto of his 5-1/2-year presidency Wednesday, rejecting legislation to ease limits on federal funding for research on stem cells obtained from embryos.
"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life of the hope of finding medical benefits for others. It crosses a moral boundary that our society needs to respect, so I vetoed it," Bush said at a White House event where he was surrounded by 18 families who "adopted" frozen embryos that were not used by other couples, and then used those leftover embryos to have children.
"Each of these children was still adopted while still an embryo and has been blessed with a chance to grow, to grow up in a loving family. These boys and girls are not spare parts," he said.
[...]
Bush has supported federally funded research on only those stem cell lines created before Aug. 9, 2001, the date of his speech to the nation on the subject.
This must be that pre-9/11 mindset that I keep hearing about which states that the post-9/11 embryos are the Sacred Snowflake Babies of Jesus while the ones from before 8/9/11 are fair game so feel free to go ahead and toss them in the blender, hit frappe, and blame it on the Clenis.
Meanwhile over at the empty K-Lo Wombatorium (Vacancy. Cable TV! No Pets.):
Veto [] The president has lifted his veto pen for the first time in defense of the sanctity of human life. And he just got an enthusiastic — standing ovation, cheering — reception announcing that at the White House, surrounded by "Snowflake " children ... former "surplus" IVF embryos. Posted at 2:15 PM
...as K-Lo takes this months unfertilized egg and gently tucks it into it own compartment in the ice cube tray next to it's siblings: Mitt Jr. , Mitt Jr. Jr. , Mitt Jr. Jr, Jr., Mitt Jr. Jr. Jr. Jr., Mitt V, Mitt VI, and Sarah Jean.
She's always wanted a daughter named Sarah Jean....
The Bush administration and Republican legislators yesterday proposed a $100 million national plan to offer low-income students private-school vouchers to escape low-performing public schools. The plan was immediately assailed by Democrats, unions and liberal advocacy groups.
The proposal comes four days after the independent research arm of the Department of Education issued a report showing that public schools are performing as well as or better than private schools, with the exception of eighth-grade reading, in which private schools excelled. The results prompted questions from foes of vouchers about why taxpayer money should go toward private schools instead of toward improving public schools.
[...]
The report also found that conservative Christian schools -- a constituency that supports vouchers -- lagged significantly behind public schools in eighth-grade math. The report supported similar findings from a University of Illinois study on math.
Fundamentalist conservatives will be sorely disappointed if the government doen't come through with those vouchers because they are really counting on the eleventy three-hundert dollars per student which will allow them to purchase copies of Heather's Mommy Speaks in Tongues and Biology 101: Men Are From Dust, Women Are From Ribs.
The soft bigotry of lowered expectations in action I just flew in from DC and boy do I look dopey...
Thanks to a link from Rich Lowry (of all people) we see that White House isn't going to put any pressure on Condoleezza Rice to have a plan:
The vaguest diplomatic trip ever [Rich Lowry]
From Tony Snow’s briefing today:
Q: Tony, what would Secretary Rice's — the goal of a trip from the Secretary of State be, then? She's not going to meet with anybody from Syria, Iran or Hezbollah, so what would a trip to the region do, in terms of getting it closer to the end of a crisis?
MR. SNOW: Well, we're going to have to wait. Look, the Secretary's going to go, but she's not even sure when. I think — I'm going to kick the can down the road a little bit, Jim, because I think at this point, we do know, but — it is a legitimate question to ask precisely what she wants to do and accomplish, and I think it's probably better left to when they figure out when they're going to do it, we'll be in a better position to announce precisely what it is she wants to do.
Translation: We’re giving Israel more time.
Nice to know that the Administration has a handle on things as we stand on the brink of World War Eye-Eye-Eye or Eye-Vee... depending on your neocon of choice.
Not that this hasn't been noticed by a few from his party.
What women want First start by holding her hand...
It is, to use George Will's favorite word, axiomatic that one doesn't go running to conservatives for tips on dealing with chicks:
Angela Merkel Liked It - Geez
Crooks and Liars, in a post called Presidential Groping, with help from Bild, is attempting to do a hit on Bush that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. No wonder they are only using a four second video. I doubt they want you to see the rest.
The usual useful idiots are all a twitter, but if one looks closely at the video, you'll find that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is actually smiling at the very end. What was perhaps a fond exchange, perhaps a bit of a jest (maybe Bush told her to lighten up, given her previously tense look) who knows. Unfortunately, some are trying to turn it into something it obviously wasn't - something we might have expected from Bill Clinton, perhaps? Interesting, I thought the Left didn't have any problem with that?
As someone who has, you know, actually been with a woman (several in fact) I can point out that unsolicited neck-rubs as well as back-rubs aren't high on the touchy-feely list, although I will admit that they reside higher up than the ever popular boob-rub and the let-me-warm-my-hands-between-your-thighs move. And what appears to be smiling at the end might also be relief that Chester the Molester is looking elsewhere to cop a feel.
Just a thought from someone without an imaginary girlfriend.
Either way, having noticed Merkel's look of distaste at being publicly manhandled, I'm willing to bet that Bush later IM'd Dick Cheney and pronounced her a "total lez" and offered to fix her up with Mary.
In an emotional session marked by tales of death and hope, the Senate debated on Monday whether the government should pay for new embryonic stem cell research, pushing a measure to do it toward passage and President Bush's first veto.
"He would veto the bill," the White House declared in a written statement, underlining the words for emphasis.
[...]
Though several Republican Senate leaders support the measure, many GOP lawmakers oppose it, as do conservative voters in a midterm election year.
"The bill would compel all American taxpayers to pay for research that relies on the intentional destruction of human embryos for the derivation of stem cells, overturning the president's policy that funds research without promoting such ongoing destruction," the White House said.
[...]
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., appeared with three children adopted from in vitro fertilization clinics in an effort to put faces on the argument that frozen embryos could have a future other than being subjects of stem cell research.
"It is immoral to destroy the youngest of human lives for research purposes," Brownback said. "It is an age-old human debate, whether you allow the stronger to take advantage of the weaker. We have already regretted doing it in the past; we will regret this, too."
Is there anyone out there who doesn't think that Sam Brownback would tear the living heart out of Dakota Fanning and eat it raw on live TV if he thought it would allow him to live just...one...more...year?
Culture Cap Actually, the whole thing is a fashion don't...
Does anyone know when Lee Siegel is going to write a 3000-word essay on Michelle Malkin's Vent cap? When considered from a purely aesthetic point of view, it kind of makes it hard to take her seriously.
I mean, besides the fact that she's a bitter hate-filled sneering loon with delusions of competence.
Next thing you know Boston will be overrun by the Irish next March 17th.
Okay, I'm being glib, but Israel kind of lost that virginal glow it used to have for me years ago, right after it filled up its shopping cart with lots of American dollars and weapons and became the bully on the block knowing fully well that the US was standing behind it, smiling passively like a mother with an out-of-control toddler, while armed with biggest Louisville Slugger in the world at the ready.
Basically it is impossible in America to criticize Israel, or speak in defense of the Palestinian people, without being called an "anti-semite" which is why I believe that so many blogs on the left have been so quiet about the attack on Lebanon and what is benignly referred to as Israel's "overreaction". In fact, I hesitated to even write this post remembering how Juan Cole was smeared and denied an appointment at Yale. It is a very rare occurrence when I hesitate to write what is on my mind; but you know us liberals and how we hate to be called a "bigot" or to be accused of being "intolerant" by people who are bigots and are intolerant. Well, as my grandmother used to say: "fuck that noise". Also, I'm not staying up late waiting for a call from Yale.
I know that many on the right (and this would include those on the right who have kind of forgiven the jews, if only for the moment, for killing their savior) are cheering on Israel as our proxy in the fight against Islamowhateverism, because the right loonisphere constantly demands that someone must fluff their hate hard-on, particularly at a time when the commies, homos, negroes, and Mexicans (temporarily at least) lie dormant. As James Wolcott writes:
Lawrence (Larry) Kudlow, CNBC host, columnist, and an editorial advisor at Pisspoor Media, is a Catholic convert who credits his faith with helping him achieve and maintain sobriety. But his Catholicism has limits, especially when it conflicts with a higher creed--the neoconservative agenda.
"Israel is doing the Lord’s work," he proclaimed today, a sentiment of which the Vatican would hardly approve, and which makes some of us non-believers want to hurl, preferably in his direction. "They are defending their own homeland and very existence," Kudlow continues, "but they are also defending America’s homeland as our frontline democratic ally in the Middle East." So when Israel bombs the Beirut airport or hits a viaduct, it's really looking out for us--I mean, U.S.
"When the dust clears the world will applaud Israel for its courage. Sensible freedom-loving people everywhere will realize that Israel’s furious response in the face of senseless terrorist attacks will have made the world a better place.
"In fact, we are all Israelis now."
You know what, I don't want to be an Israeli. Include me out. Pardon me for not wanting to be conscripted into the Israeli division of the 101st Fighting Wankers. I'm an American, a New Yorker, and a world citizen, and I don't see why empathy is supposed to reside exclusively on the Israeli side when Lebanese civilians are suffering so. Why I should identity with the humanity of those fleeing Haifa and not with those fleeing Beirut? Is this supposed to make me want to become an honorary Israeli?
We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.
Even if we have to use Israel to do our dirty work for us...
Well if they weren't sluts we wouldn't have to lie to them... That third commandment is really more of a "guideline"...
If you lie with a man, it's fair game to lie to you:
Women who consult with pregnancy resource centers often get misleading information about the health risks associated with having an abortion, according to a report issued Monday by Democrats on the House Government Reform Committee.
Congressional aides, posing as pregnant 17-year-olds, called 25 pregnancy centers that have received some federal funding over the past five years.
The aides were routinely told of increased risk for cancer, infertility and stress disorders, said the report, which was prepared for Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
Only a small fraction of the more than 4,000 pregnancy clinics nationwide get any federal funding, mostly for promoting sexual abstinence.
With a few exceptions, the federal government doesn't give money specifically for the counseling operations, but Waxman's staff said 25 centers got ''capacity building grants.'' Thus, Waxman said, they should be held accountable for the information they dispense.
Of the 25 centers called, two could not be reached. Eight told the caller that abortion leads to a greater risk of breast cancer, the report said.
Care Net, an umbrella group for evangelical pregnancy centers across the country, instructs its affiliates to tell callers there is a possibility that abortion can lead to greater risk of breast cancer, according to Molly Ford, an official with the organization. She said there have been several studies that say it does, and several that say it doesn't.
''I know the report is wanting to say that it's conclusive, but it isn't,'' Ford said.
So who are you going to believe, the National Cancer Institute and the New England Journal of Medicine:
The National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society agree that concerns about breast cancer should not influence a women's decision about abortion.
According to the New England Journal of Medicine, published in 1997, induced abortions have no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer, based upon a review of the study in Denmark of 1.5 million women.
Molly joined the Care Net team in 2006 to assist the Vice President of Communications with the expanding responsibilities of the department. She serves as web editor for the corporate website and is a regular contributor to the Center of Tomorrow Journal, Care Net’s leading publication.
In the spring of 2004, Molly participated in the Witherspoon Fellowship, an academic internship program under the direction of the Family Research Council. She spent the following summer working on Capitol Hill for Virginia Congressman Bob Goodlatte.
She graduated from Liberty University in May of 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in government and history and spent several months working as an associate for Jerry Falwell Ministries and the Helms School of Government before accepting a position as Communications Manager for the American Conservative Union, the nation’s oldest conservative lobbying group.
Bush expressed his frustration with the United Nations and his disgust with the militant Islamic group and its backers in Syria as he talked to British Prime Minister Tony Blair during the closing lunch at the Group of Eight summit.
“See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s--- and it’s over,” Bush told Blair as he chewed on a buttered roll.
[...]
As he chats with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bush expresses amazement that it will take Putin and an unidentified leader just as long to fly home to Moscow as it will take him to fly back to Washington. Putin’s reply could not be heard.
“You eight hours? Me too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country. Takes him eight hours to fly home. Not Coke, diet Coke. ... Russia’s big and so is China. Yo Blair, what’re you doing? Are you leaving,” Bush said.
...will be that George Bush is a "regular guy" and how much the wingnuts just love their straight-talking Prez with his simplistic world view.
Which is why we're in the mess we're in because we need to do better than Earl from down at the garage who thinks that fixing the Middle East is as simple as gettin' folks to stop doin' that "shit". George Bush doesn't offend because he's crass...he offends me because he is such a dumbass.
Cry Cialis! and let slip the cheerleaders of war Gimme a W...gimme an A....gimme an R....
Weekends at the Corner are usually reserved for the B-team (I know...I know, it's hard to tell them apart from the A-team. You have to squint...) but that was before the IDF slipped a little something into the NRO Yoo-Hoo™ cooler and suddenly it was war erections a-poppin'!
Syria, Iran [Michael Ledeen] John: You have wonderfully made my point by cheering speeches and words instead of actions. There is a real opportunity now. The Lebanese—even, a couple of hours ago, thousands of Lebanese in Paris—are demonstrating against Hezbollah and Syria and Iran. The Saudis and the Egyptians have publicly criticized Hezbollah, and for the first time in human memory have not blindly condemned Israel.
They are taking a risk here, hoping that we will understand the gravity of the moment and the dimensions of the opportunity. The great opportunity, and indeed the just consequence of the attack against Israel, is to bring down Assad along with destroying Hezbollah. That must be the mission. There are many Syrians who are ready to act, but the first step toward the removal of Assad is for the president and the secretary of state to call for regime change in Syria.
The hard work on the ground belongs to the Israelis, and you are right to say we have done well to support them rhetorically. But we have to after Assad, and we have not done that. Perhaps this is due to my own ignorance; it may be going on behind the scenes (not movie scenes, the real ones). I hope so. But I don't see it. I don't see or hear our leaders condemning the Syrians and the Iranians, aside from the original White House statement (in direct conflict with the statement from the State Dept, let's not forget) holding Syria and Iran responsible. Okay, so they're responsible. And then?
There has to be a "then." And it has to be aimed at the total destruction of Hizbollah and the downfall of the regime in Damascus.
Like I Say, Michael... [John Podhoretz] ...a wonderful notion, that — America helping to take the lead in destroying Hezbollah and taking down the regime in Syria even as we fight a difficult war in Iraq. Wonderful. And science-fictional.
Not to be left behind, Cliff May cancels his weekly Sunday paintball and steambath appointment with Victor Davis I Am Spartacus Hanson to post here:
The more dovish talking heads are calling for more diplomacy in the Middle East. What does that mean? Initiate bilateral talks with Hezbollah? Offer incentives to Assad? Send Condi to Tehran to ask for assistance?
No, the proper role for diplomacy is this: to provide a backchannel between moderate members of the Lebanese government and Israel, so those two parties can begin to plan for an eventual handover of southern Lebanon to Lebanese forces – after Hezbollah has been effectively disarmed by Israeli forces.
Diplomacy also can make it difficult for Europeans and UN officials to object, since the disarming of Hezbollah is demanded by UN Security Council Resolution 1559.
If Israel doesn’t disarm Hezbollah now, no one else will later.
“Hizballah is in possession of four types of advanced ground-to-ground missiles: Fajr missiles with a range of 100 km, Iran 130 missiles with a range of 90-110 km, Shahin missiles with a range of up to 150 km, and a 355 mm rocket with a 150 km range.”
“The London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat quoted a senior Iranian army official as saying that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards set up dozens of advanced rocket and missile bases in the Lebanon Valley and along the border with Israel.”
BTW, you think the Lebanese government was consulted by Hezbollah about having the Iranian Revolutionary Guards operating on Lebanese soil?
More and more, it appears that Israel has determined that its goal is to cripple Hezbollah. If that trick can be managed, it will deliver a blow not only to Hezbollah but also to Syria and Iran and the entire Militant Islamist movement.
It also would produce a huge benefit for the vast majority of Lebanese who do not want their country run by Hezbollah/Syria/Iran and who do know that the Israelis have no wish to remain.
Since disarming Hezbollah is what is called for by the “international community” in UN Security Council Resolution 1559, it is hard to see how even the French could call such an action disproportionate.”
It makes one wonder what the French would regard as a proportionate response. Forming a collaborationist government in Vichy, perhaps?
John at the OP-FOR blog writes that he concurs with my assessment of Israel’s goal and provides a military analysis:
By which time May, who usually posts maybe once a day, was clearly depleted of bodily fluids and began to cramp up, so was sent to the locker room for an aprè la guerre rubdown.
Oh, there were also posts from Jonah but everyone ignored him because he's not supposed to run around and play war with the other guys when his mom forgets to pack his asthma puffer...
American public diplomacy has been virtually invisible on all this, at a time when it is more urgently needed than ever. I can understand this – you have to have a policy if you want to try to explain or defend it, and right now the Bush administration doesn’t seem to have any policy at all beyond supporting Israel and issuing calls for “restraint” which Israel promptly and publicly rejects. And what administration official wants to subject him or herself to tough Arab questioning on live TV right now? The idea that Palestinian-Israeli relations could be cordoned off from wider Middle East questions was always misguided. It’s now become actively destructive to all of our interests in the region.
The only reason I’m not calling more loudly for Bush to get involved and take a leadership role in the conflict is the expectation that he would probably do the wrong thing. But at this point, doing nothing is, in fact, doing something. The Bush administration right now looks weak, confused, and vaguely pathetic... which is better than batshit crazy (like the folks who are demanding that America either smile on or even join in a war with Damascus and/or Tehran), but not nearly as good as exercising actual grown-up leadership at a time when the world could really, really use some.
I watched some clips of Condoleezza Rice today and, even taking into account that her hands are tied by our recent history, our existing policies and that little quagmire that nobody is talking about much these days, she has never looked more out of her depth than she did today, and that is saying something. The 2006 edition Condi makes the one from a year or two ago look like Winston Wolfe in Pulp Fiction.
As for Israel, did they overreact to the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit? No more so than the US overreacted to 9/11 by invading Iraq, which is to say: yes. Some people are just spoiling for a fight and will take whatever little opening they can get to do what they really wanted to do all along.
Silly monkeys, give them thumbs they forge a blade and where there's one they're bound to divide it, right in two.-Tool
He who is wise never tries to revise what's past and gone
I know that the YouTube thang is starting to get out of control on the blogs (hey, it beats putting words together and, you know, posting), but I was watching this concert on DVD last night and I thought this was a pretty good sampling for those who haven't ever seen Diana Krall in concert, particularly because too little attention is paid to her piano playing. Enjoy.
This is the end. My only friend, the end So how is it gonna end? We set out to finish M. Night Shyamlan's latest opus for dopuses and we got back some interesting scenarios including a replay of the surprise finish from The Crying Game (although LITW is a story that M. Night wrote for his young daughter and we're guessing that we won't find the a description of "narf schlong" anywhere in the script.) Actually most came up with the same idea (phrased differently) based on the fact that the narf is named Story which is the kind of no-duh obvious clue generally found in a $100 square on Jeopardy. But, let's recap the story so far:
Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) has been quietly trying to disappear among the burned-out lightbulbs and broken appliances of the Cove apartment complex. But on the night that irrevocably changes his life, Cleveland finds someone else hiding in the mundane routine of the modest building -- a mysterious young woman named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), who has been living in the passageways beneath the building's swimming pool. Cleveland discovers that Story is actually a "narf" -- a nymph-like character from an epic bedtime story who is being stalked by vicious creatures determined to prevent her from making the treacherous journey from our world back to hers. Story's unique powers of perception reveal the fates of Cleveland's fellow tenants, whose destinies are tied directly to her own, and they must work together to decipher a series of codes that will unlock the pathway to her freedom. But the window of opportunity for Story to return home is closing rapidly, and the tenants are putting their own lives at great risk to help her. Cleveland will have to face the demons that have followed him to the Cove -- and the other tenants must seize the special powers that Story has brought out in them -- if they hope to succeed in their daring and dangerous quest to save her world... and ours.
...and so to wrap it up we turn with this one from Lons at Crushed By Inertia because of its respect for cinematic history and because it contains your minimum daily requirement of snark:
Okay, so obviously, we know that M. Night will eventually get around to revealing that "it's all a story," possibly being read by Cleveland to a little girl or some crap like that. I'm thinking he might take the notion one step further this time, sensing that everyone's catching on to his little tricks. Soooo....
We pull back to reveal Cleveland reading the entire film's plot, as a bedtime story, to a little girl.
THEN
We pull back to reveal Peter Falk from "The Princess Bride," reading the film's plot as a bedtime story to Cleveland
THEN
We pull back to reveal M. Night Shyamalan reading the film's plot as a bedtime story to Peter Falk
THEN
We pull back to reveal God reading the film's plot to M. Night Shyamalan
Because, let's face it...The guy's divinely inspired.
Sounds plausible to me. Well, at least more plausible than Unbreakable.
Congratulations Lons. You the Shyamlan-man...
By the way, with our new improved comments, this might be a good time to share your favorite movie finishes (Yeah yeah...Casablanca yadda yadda yadda). Me? I go for the bittersweet ones; The Accidental Tourist, Lost in Translation, and my favorite, Resurrection (which you still can't get on DVD)
We now have Haloscan comments just like the big kids. So:
No racist comments about Malkin. No threatening toddlers. Keep blog-whoring to a minimum. No posting Creed lyrics. And keep your avatars clean...and not too geeky.
And do it off the clock. We can't afford the overtime Tell us where the bomb is or the employee gets it...
Proving that nothing can happen these days that wasn't forseen at the movies, we present the bomb-sniffing employees:
Why did Wal-Mart clear customers out of a Quebec store and then order 40 of its workers to stay in the store and search for a bomb? On July 5 workers at a Wal-Mart in St-Jean-Sur-Richelieu, Quebec were ordered by Wal-Mart to help police search for a bomb, even though police recommended to Wal-Mart that the store should be completely evacuated.
An investigation is underway and some of the workers continue to be traumatized from the forced search.
So, Valerie Plame is suing the vice president and Lewis Libby. Yes, it will be a distraction to the vice president, but it will also be a great opportunity for Cheney and Libby's lawyers to pursue aggressively discovery. Plame, and her detestable husband Joe Wilson, may well have blundered. To the extent possible, through depositions and document production, Cheney and Lewis's lawyers should get to the bottom of the real scandal, e.g., who exactly is Valerie Plame, what was her role in sending her husband to Niger, who were all of her contacts, what media sources did she speak to, what politicians did she speak to, and on and on. And the same with her husband.
UPDATE: Here's a self-serving release from the Plame side. Notice a left-wing law professor is among her lawyers. The suit also names Karl Rove.
The world is at war and these fools bring this lawsuit. Another 15 minutes of shame.
Yes, Cheney is a public man so his actions are public -- but in this case, they are public and unimportant. David Gregory and his band of pampered colleagues may be offended but many of us are not. Sorry, I don't see any great offense or principle on display here. And I dare say most Americans are tuning out. The vice president is safe, his lawyer friend is okay, and nothing tawdry occurred. Now, back to the war.
Mark Levin on mowing the lawn:
Sure the neighbors are complaining, but they have to realize that we're at war
Mark Levin on not leaving a tip
I'm very sorry the government taxes their tips, that's fucked up. That ain't my fault. And besides, there's a war on.
Mark Levin on his erectile dysfunction:
This has never happened to me before. Must be the war. Let's cuddle...
The view from the couch I insulted the sister, but I did not kill the deputy...
It comes as no surprise that the Zidane incident in the World Cup final seems to have empowered those who have never watched World Cup soccer, or Premier League soccer for that matter, to weigh in on the matter. I wouldn't say that my knowledge of the sport approaches that of Steve Gilliard or that third goofy-looking guy over at Powerline (not that guy...the other one), but I do know a bit about soccer having given up what seems like years of weekends and vacations for it, traveling for it, spending thousands of dollars on it, arguing about it (we can spend hours discussing the flat back four), and watching continuous coverage of it on, what is now called, Fox Soccer.
Now everyone is entitled to their opinion on Zidane's actions but, really, only those who are new to the sport would say that he gave the game a black eye...or a bruised sternum as the case may be. Regardless of the flopping and dramatics of certain players who fall to the ground attempting to draw a foul call, soccer is an incredibly physical game that has more than its share of cheap shots and subtle, and not so subtle, ways of cheating in order to gain advantage. (A favorite among high school girls is to grab your opponents shorts before they go up for a header thereby giving your opponent the feeling that they're being pantsed as they attempt to go up which causes them to abort the mission).
We would all like to believe that soccer is a game of incredible grace with gazelle-like athletes running up the field with a ball seemingly glued to their feet as they do full-speed stepovers, give-and-goes, and other amazing things. And it is. But is also jersey grabbing, hooking, hard tackles, shoving, head-butting, and trash talking. Lots and lots of trash talking. This isn't to excuse Zidane because his timing couldn't have been worse. But when you have been running and being pulled on and tackled from behind for ninety plus minutes (and let's not forget that there are no timeouts in soccer outside of injury stoppages) sometimes you're going to lose control and do stupid things.
Zidane, Moral Logician [Jonah Goldberg] Not that I'm particularly invested in any of this, but Zidane's position is just sorta stoopid. He says about his decision to headbutt that other guy: "I would like to apologise because a lot of children were watching the match. I do apologise but I don't regret my behaviour because regretting it would mean he was right to say what he said."
I-apologize-but-regret-nothing is already a pretty contradictory stance. But since when is regretting an over-reaction a blanket endorsement of somebody else's provocative behavior? If Rich deliberately steps on my toe and I respond by burying a ballpoint pen in his skull, I will regret it later. But that doesn't make Rich right for stepping on my toe. And saying, "I apologize but I don't regret it," wouldn't count as a lot of sincerity.
I now leave this topic forever, unless I'm dragged in by forces beyond my control. Should that happen I will apologize for breaking my word, but I won't regret it.
Leaving aside Jonah's thinly veiled deathwish for Rich ("Ha ha ha! I was joking, Rich. Y'know? Trying to make a point? I'm a kidder. I kid!") we are left with Jonah Goldberg, Pantload Pâteux, who only plays rhetorical games in which nobody wins or loses ("Everyone gets a trophy day" - Simpson's reference!) and whose idea of working out is sitting on a leather couch in a warm room on a hot and humid day and watching TV while making his own gravy.
I'm glad to see that Josh Trevino (or as he was known in the Army: Sgt. PiddlePants) has finally found his blogging calling and has taken to fisking articles on actresses in Glamour magazine.
I look forward to his deconstruction of Kate Hudson's different looks as he addresses whether she will ever defeat Reese Witherspoon in a winner-take-all America's Sweetheart deathmatch...
Pre-Friday Random Ten I'm sixteen hundred miles from the people I know Been doin' all I can but opportunity sure come slow Lord I'd be in the sun all day But I'm sweepin' out a warehouse in west L.A. But it's all right 'cause it's midnight And I got two more bottles of wine
Without the comments you'll just have to hang onto your own personal RT until next week and suffer through mine. This would probably be a good week to break out some Linkin Park/Limp Bizkit/Puddle of Mudd just to annoy people who won't be able to respond.
Here we go:
Feel - Stereophonics Let The Bells Ring - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Mystic (Interlude) - Les Nubians Two More Bottles of Wine - Emmylou Harris Young Lungs - Stereolab Radiation Vibe - Fountains of Wayne Sugar Cane - Space Monkeys In France They Kiss On Main Street - Joni Mitchell Mountain Song - Metal Hearts World Waits For You (Reprise) - Son Volt
Sorry. Just got home. Here's a double feature: Portrait of a Satchmo with a remote
Then: Portrait of a Beckham contemplating doing something really bad
Just a reminder that comments are still turned off and I hope to have them back this weekend. Also you can click to enlarge the pictures if you are so inclined.
He made us say, "What the --? Are you kidding me? Jesus, that's stupid!" at the ending of Unbreakable
He tested our faith, our patience, and our good nature with Signs.
And with The Village he reminded us that we had seen that episode of Twilight Zone about thirty years before
Yes, M. Night Shyamlan, who makes the auteur theory want to move to Milwaukee and change its name to Larry, is back...and he's discovered water imagery! with Lady In The Water.
Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) has been quietly trying to disappear among the burned-out lightbulbs and broken appliances of the Cove apartment complex. But on the night that irrevocably changes his life, Cleveland finds someone else hiding in the mundane routine of the modest building -- a mysterious young woman named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), who has been living in the passageways beneath the building's swimming pool. Cleveland discovers that Story is actually a "narf" -- a nymph-like character from an epic bedtime story who is being stalked by vicious creatures determined to prevent her from making the treacherous journey from our world back to hers. Story's unique powers of perception reveal the fates of Cleveland's fellow tenants, whose destinies are tied directly to her own, and they must work together to decipher a series of codes that will unlock the pathway to her freedom. But the window of opportunity for Story to return home is closing rapidly, and the tenants are putting their own lives at great risk to help her. Cleveland will have to face the demons that have followed him to the Cove -- and the other tenants must seize the special powers that Story has brought out in them -- if they hope to succeed in their daring and dangerous quest to save her world... and ours.
You mission, should you accept it, is to come up with the kind of ending that we have come to expect from M. Night. You know: ridiculously tacked on and painted into a corner. The kind of ending that will surprise the goobers who still get all goosebumpy at the s-l-o-w-l-y turning doorknob shot that M. favors so much (one wonders how he will manage to insert it into the Life of Pi screenplay that he is at work on).
How to enter? Just come up with a classic M. Night Shyamalameassending for Lady In The Water in 150 words or less and email it to tblogg @ hotmail.com by Saturday night. Put lameass in the subject line so that I can pick it out from the commands from My Dark Lord Kos that fill my box each day. Only one entry per person. And no stealing plot twists from Rapebear.
The winner will be chosen by me, so c'mon dazzle me, amuse me, make me your prize-givin' bitch.
Oh yeah. The prize. The winner gets the two-disc special edition of Network which actually has a beginning, middle and end. If you already own Network, you'll get its direct descendent: Harold and Kumar. Winner to be announced Sunday night if I don't have anything better to do.
I think it is a shame that, in these highly polarized times, people cannot be honest , set aside their differences and agree on what it is that truly unites us as a people.
I speak, of course, of Le'Affaire Goldstein. As Jeff so eloquently put it:
Second, the Sadly, No! post is clearly a hit piece on me; that you would use it as proof of anything just shows how disingenuous, cynical, and calculating you are. It doesn’t take a Constitutional scholar to recognize that the entire piece relies on removing context, rearranging chronology, etc., to make it’s "points" — which, if I remember correctly, are that I eat paste and want to slap people with my cock when I’m not dreaming about sexing up animals and being a failed academic hausfrau who is probably also a closeted homosexual.
I am inclined to be somewhat sympathetic with Jeff's complaint but must admit that he loses me when he fails to credit the guys at Sadly, No! for being accurate in a stunning five out of six characterizations which is a remarkable achievement, even in an age of steroids and blood-doping.
In addition I want to thank Amy Ridenour for taking time out to say:
I was heretofore unaware of our responsibility as conservative bloggers to scour the Internet for posts of this nature and condemn them on an individual basis. Given the overwhelming nature of the task, I fear I will fail to meet the challenge. Number of hours in a day and all that. Yet, I do not wish my all-too-human limitations to be mistaken as an endorsement of murder, homicide, maiming, injury, force or threats of force or any other illegal means of making life unpleasant or nonexistent for another. I'm not for that kind of thing, no sir.
Which should come as no surprise as Amy is more of a "white collar crime" type of person:
The Senate committee report also details Abramoff's dealings with two others from the College Republicans crowd: Ralph Reed, former Christian Coalition executive director; and Amy Moritz Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, which sponsored a golf trip in 2000 to Scotland for then-Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).
[...]
Ridenour, appearing before the Indian Affairs Committee last year, acknowledged that her organization had accepted grants lined up by Abramoff and disbursed funds at his suggestion. She insisted that she told Abramoff that the National Center for Public Policy Research would be willing to finance only programs consistent with the group's tax-exempt purpose, listed in tax records as "nonpartisan analysis, study and research."
But dozens of e-mails show that Abramoff and his team considered the national center and other tax-exempt groups a ready resource in their efforts to influence Congress.
In one instance, Abramoff's team wanted to send two lawmakers on a trip to the Mississippi Choctaw reservation in 2001, but one congressman's office had concerns about accepting such a trip from a gaming tribe.
"How about getting National Center for Public Policy Research to sponsor the trip?" Abramoff suggested. "Works for me," replied a lobbying colleague.
E-mails suggest Ridenour was well aware that Abramoff viewed her organization as a convenient pass-through.
In September 2002, Abramoff suggested to one of his associates placing $500,000 in client funds with the national center because the group "can direct money at our discretion, anywhere if you know what I mean."
The same morning Abramoff messaged Ridenour: "I might have $500K for you to run through NCPPR. Is this still something you want to do?" Ridenour was enthusiastic: "Yes, we would love to do it."
Ridenour did not respond to requests for comment on the Senate committee report or the e-mails released with it.
Odd. One would think that, with Abramoff sitting on the bench, Ridenour would have tons of time to "scour the internet" since she's not emailing Jack or making drop-offs on park benches with the cash inside of a folded newspaper.
That she would take time out for us is very special.
The hidden balls trick Which one is the quarterback?
As Mr Mark B. from Austin Texas will tell you, I am prone to the occasional misspelling or typo when putting up posts. Hey, it happens to the best of us. But I found this comment over at Ann Althouse particularly humorous in light of the subject matter.
To set the stage, Althouse has linked to a John Tierney column that few will read (thank you TimesSelect) because Tierney is an overpaid tool hired to make Bobo look erudite. Tierney's column deals with Title IX (and we'll assume that Tierney will surprise us and come down on the side of free markets and invisible hands and Randian exceptionalism because that's the only trick that the Tierney pony knows). Now before getting to the comment, a bit of a disclaimer. It should come as no surprise that the regal and MILFesque Mrs tbogg (whose undergraduate degree is in physical education, I might add) and I are big supporters of Title IX for obvious reasons. Although we can afford to send the L&T Casey to college we're not going to turn down any assistance if it comes from the right school. It's called 'vested interest' and I'm sure that Tierney could go on all night about it. But we're getting off track here...
Let's go to the comments where Fitz (who I should mention is a thirty-five year old attorney) states his case:
The argument for Title IX was that participation in sports gave men a competitive advantage in pursuing power in other areas of life. (business, politics, ect)(sic) It was obviously a crass and successful effort by feminists to enforce androgyny.
The goal itself, weather(sic) stated directly or coached(sic)in civil rights language seems silly and destructive. (as it has been) Men tend to be more interested in sports, play them more often, and relish there(sic) participation. Naturally you get larger men’s sports teams.
Its(sic) telling that feminist(sic) have attempted to reject physical activity’s(sic) that women are interested in as being labeled a sport under title IX. (Aerobics, cheerleading, dance) It seems they want competitive sports to be the norm among women. Once again, their androgynizing(sic) impulse supersedes the needs or wishes of actual women.
At my own school wrestling teams and diving teams were being cut. The programs that do attract women, like volleyball had 5 squads and over 100 team members. I knew these girls. They liked to play volleyball and showed up for practice in order to maintain there(sic) scholarships. Meanwhile the competitive best players made up the real “team” that competed at the intercollegiate level.
Examples like this abound. Just another case of ideological zeal, crass academic fiefdoms and leftist politics making our universities silly and inhospitable places.
11:40 AM, July 11, 2006
Once we finish giggling at the petty nitpicking we can consider these gems:
It was obviously a crass and successful effort by feminists to enforce androgyny.
Outside of mandatory bowl-cuts and baggy jumpsuits I'm not sure how one goes about enforcing "androgyny"
Men tend to be more interested in sports, play them more often, and relish there participation. Naturally you get larger men’s sports teams.
And because lots of men love baseball and basketball, all teams should be required to carry, oh, about a hundred players because a deep bench is a strong bench.
Its telling that feminist have attempted to reject physical activity’s that women are interested in as being labeled a sport under title IX. (Aerobics, cheerleading, dance) It seems they want competitive sports to be the norm among women. Once again, their androgynizing impulse supersedes the needs or wishes of actual women.
Oh. God. This one is a doozy. I know men who are interested in lifting weights, screaming at NASCAR races, and doing that white-guy dance where they shuffle from foot to foot while biting their bottom lip... but I don't think that Division I and ESPN2 are quite ready for National Championships just yet. As for "actual women" as opposed to "feminists", I'm not going to be greedy and I'll let the likes of Amanda or Bitch PhD handle that one. Hilarious hijinks are sure to follow.
At my own school wrestling teams and diving teams were being cut. The programs that do attract women, like volleyball had 5 squads and over 100 team members. I knew these girls. They liked to play volleyball and showed up for practice in order to maintain there scholarships. Meanwhile the competitive best players made up the real “team” that competed at the intercollegiate level.
That is also known as a football "team".
You know? The big dumb guys with the low grades and bad SATs who are in school on a full ride scholarship?
One could make several arguments regarding Title IX or scholarships for athletes, male or female, and whether schools should even be in the sports business, but the one stated above?
They could play a little... 1965 was a very good year
In lieu of in anyway discussing tonights All Star Game which I can't get myself interested in watching for about the tenth year in a row, here is the batting order for 1965 National League All Star Team:
Willie Mays Hank Aaron Willie Stargell (who started in the outfield) Dick Allen Joe Torre Ernie Banks Pete Rose Maury Wills Juan Marichal
On the bench
Roberto Clemente Ron Santo Frank Robinson Billy Williams
In the bullpen
Sandy Koufax Don Drysdale Bob Gibson
I will not even try to compare it to this years starting line up.
For more baseball, here is a good post about Joe Mauer. If you follow baseball, you may remember when the Twins took a lot of crap for taking Mauer over Mark Prior with the first pick five years ago.
This exchange (courtesy of Crooks & Liars) indicates that George Bush is not responsible for anything that has happened in the past six years, he is still out of the loop, and he gets pretty damned snippy when called on it:
Q Mr. President, if I could follow up, you say diplomacy takes time –
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, it does.
Q — but it was four years ago that you labeled North Korea a member of the "axis of evil." And since then it’s increased its nuclear arsenal, it’s abandoned six-party talks and now these missile launches –
THE PRESIDENT: Let me ask you a question. It’s increased it’s — that’s an interesting statement: "North Korea has increased its nuclear arsenal." Can you verify that?
Q Well, intelligence sources say — if you can — if you’d like to dispute that, that’s fine.
THE PRESIDENT: No, I’m not going to dispute, I’m just curious.
Q Our intelligence sources say that it’s increased the number — its nuclear capability –
THE PRESIDENT: — dangerous — it has potential danger.
Q It’s increased is nuclear capabilities. It’s abandoned six-party talks, and it’s launched these missiles.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
Q Why shouldn’t Americans see the U.S. policy regarding North Korea as a failed one?
THE PRESIDENT: Because it takes time to get things done.
Q What objective has the U.S. government achieved when it comes to North Korea? And why does the administration continue to go back to the same platform process if it’s not effective in changing North Korea’s behavior? Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Suzanne, these problems didn’t arise overnight, and they don’t get solved overnight. It takes a while. Again, I think if you look at the history of the North Korean weapons program, it started probably in the ’80s. We don’t know — maybe you know more than I do — about increasing the number of nuclear weapons. My view is we ought to treat North Korea as a danger, take them seriously. No question that he has signed agreements and didn’t stick by them. But that was done during — when we had bilateral negotiations with him, and it’s done during the six-party talks.
You’ve asked what we’ve done. We’ve created a framework that will be successful. I don’t — my judgment is, you can’t be successful if the United States is sitting at the table alone with North Korea. You run out of options very quickly if that’s the case. In order to be successful diplomatically, it’s best to have other partners at the table. You ask what we’ve done. We got the six-party talks started. And that’s a positive development. It’s a way to solve this problem diplomatically.
Apply some of those same questions and answers ("We don’t know — maybe you know more than I do...") to Iraq and you start to understand how we got to where we are today.
I've been having some problems with Blogger for the past few weeks that has made it almost impossible to post. I've been spending almost all evening watching and waiting. Tonight I turned off the comments and...voila (that's French) my posts all loaded in about twenty seconds.
Soooo.... we are going to go commentless for a few days and see what happens. I apologize to all the regular commenters here (and the ones who are reading this post and saying,"What? He had comments?"). In the meantime you may find some release by muttering under your breath just as long as you don't threaten any toddlers, even though I hear it is all the rage.
I promise to make it up with a contest tomorrow night. Won't that be fun? No. Really. It will be. I swear....
Instead of showing boobs in movies, hire a boob to direct one Utah welcomes back the twins
In yet another sad pathetic appeal for a job before Govindini makes him take that job in the claims department at Geico, Jason Apuzzo uses the CleanFlicks case to (hint hint) urge conservatives to make more movies:
I’m sorry to say that these companies had been encouraged in part by Republicans in Congress and in the White House. Why? Apparently because it never occured to these people that the best way to change the type of movies people watch is to encourage the creation of different sorts of movies. I will re-iterate our constant message on this blog and through our activities with the Liberty Film Festival (which we founded for this express purpose): conservatives need to make more movies, period. Provide more choice in the marketplace, and a lot of the problems we all complain about will go away.
Which, of course, completely misses the point which is that the people who rent the sanitized films want to see what everybody else is watching but without having their eyes seared by a stray nipple or Bruce Willis' penis (Go on. Click on it. You know you want to) in The Color of Night. Okay. That's a bad example. Nobody wants to see either le peepee de Bruce or The Color of Night, but you get the idea.
Anyway, Jason hopes that the good people of Utah will maybe tithe a few bucks his way and then he can make that great American film that is just dying to get out him.
THE British military defines experience as the ability to recognize a mistake the second time you make it. By that standard, we should be very experienced in dealing with captured terrorists, since we've made the same mistake again and again.
Violent Islamist extremists must be killed on the battlefield. Only in the rarest cases should they be taken prisoner. Few have serious intelligence value. And, once captured, there's no way to dispose of them.
Killing terrorists during a conflict isn't barbaric or immoral - or even illegal. We've imposed rules upon ourselves that have no historical or judicial precedent. We haven't been stymied by others, but by ourselves.
[...]
Consider today's norm: A terrorist in civilian clothes can explode an IED, killing and maiming American troops or innocent civilians, then demand humane treatment if captured - and the media will step in as his champion. A disguised insurgent can shoot his rockets, throw his grenades, empty his magazines, kill and wound our troops, then, out of ammo, raise his hands and demand three hots and a cot while he invents tales of abuse.
Conferring unprecedented legal status upon these murderous transnational outlaws is unnecessary, unwise and ultimately suicidal. It exalts monsters. And it provides the anti-American pack with living vermin to anoint as victims, if not heroes.
Isn't it time we gave our critics what they're asking for? Let's solve the "unjust" imprisonment problem, once and for all. No more Guantanamos! Every terrorist mission should be a suicide mission. With our help.
We need to clarify the rules of conflict. But integrity and courage have fled Washington. Nobody will state bluntly that we're in a fight for our lives, that war is hell, and that we must do what it takes to win.
Our enemies will remind us of what's necessary, though. When we've been punished horribly enough, we'll come to our senses and do what must be done.
This isn't an argument for a murderous rampage, but its opposite. We must kill our enemies with discrimination. But we do need to kill them. A corpse is a corpse: The media's rage dissipates with the stench. But an imprisoned terrorist is a strategic liability.
Nor should we ever mistreat captured soldiers or insurgents who adhere to standing conventions. On the contrary, we should enforce policies that encourage our enemies to identify themselves according to the laws of war. Ambiguity works to their advantage, never to ours.
Our policy toward terrorists and insurgents in civilian clothing should be straightforward and public: Surrender before firing a shot or taking hostile action toward our troops, and we'll regard you as a legal prisoner. But once you've pulled a trigger, thrown a grenade or detonated a bomb, you will be killed. On the battlefield and on the spot.
Of course this would be all swell and good if there was a battlefield as opposed to skirmishes in neighborhoods and it's not as if we're actually doing a bang-up job of only killing the bad guys as it is.
Peters' column is timed to coincide with the release of his latest book: Never Quit the Fight where we assume that he advocates throwing more cannon fodder on the quagfire and possibly building a giant wooden vole that we will sneak into Sadr City because this time, dammit, it's gonna work.
We look forward to his next book slated to be released in one Friedman, entitled; Fuck It - Let's Just Nuke 'em.
The terrorists have posted a video of their multiple desecrations of the bodies of Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker, the two American soldiers who were captured in Iraq. The video apparently shows one of the corpses being beheaded; thankfully, it appears that both men were already dead by that point.
The terrorists who were responsible for this atrocity need to be hunted down and killed. When Russian diplomats were murdered by Iraqi terrorists, Vladimir Putin publicly directed Russia's secret service to track down the perpetrators and kill them. And Russia doesn't even have any armed forces in Iraq.
Has our government issued a similar order? Not that we know of. We chose this war; we chose this battlefield; we chose to send men like Menchaca and Tucker to Iraq because we believed it was important to our security. Their brutal murders have exposed, once again, the face of pure evil that we are fighting in this war. They must be avenged, and the American public must know that they have been avenged, not forgotten.
President Bush started this war with the right spirit, when he said, for example, that he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." More recently, he has internalized and repeated the sophisticates' criticisms of some of his early rhetoric. In this instance, he should put that reticence behind him and commit the full resources of this nation to avenging our soldiers' murders. And I'm not talking about capturing the perpetrators and feeding them three religiously appropriate meals a day in Guantanamo Bay. Posted by John at 09:00 PM
Asking for UN sanctions against countries using Ben Affleck Japan on North Korea:
Japan agreed Monday to delay a vote at the U.N. Security Council on whether to impose sanctions on North Korea for its long-range missile tests, a report said, but maintained it was time to consider pre-emptive strikes on North Korea's long-range missile bases to defend itself.
I'm kind on the fence about this, but the last time Japan thought a surprise attack was the answer to all of their problems, it didn't turn out so good for them or us. And I'm not talking about a Michael Bay film which is always a disaster...
One more thing: can we have a preemptive ban on referring to North Korea as NoKo on the blogs. Jesus, you're bloggers. It's not like you don't have the spare time to spell out the whole name...
Somewhere on Long Island there is a hungover guy with a chewed-off arm and he considers it a small price to pay:
Invited to a hot happening par-tay tonight.....never go to these things because I relate to no one, and the tiny talk is well tiny but I decided to suck it up and go because I wanted to shake my tail feather off. Dancing rocks me mon.
Have you noticed how many women think they can use the internet to make threats against toddlers, flash their tits, and air their dirty laundry in public, all without repercussions? I have read that women are often afraid to comment on blogs because they do not want to stand up to criticism. However, it seems that there is also the opposite extreme: those women who think that they can say and do anything and no one is supposed to take notice or hold them accountable.
My guess is that these women feel so ineffectual that they do not believe anyone would take them seriously, kind of like when a woman slaps a man, it is seen as funny since she is so "powerless." On the other side, there is the possibility that these nutjobs have such a sense of entitlement (reinforced by society) that they can get away with saying and doing anything. Luckily, people are catching on to these nutcases and taking action-- for example, the professor who threatened Jeff Goldstein's toddler lost her job. (The whole sad story is here.)
Good for Goldstein for standing up for women's rights everywhere--maybe women will learn that their actions are not as ineffectual and powerless as they would have others believe. And for those who suffer from a sense of entitlement just because they are women? Maybe a dose of reality will help those women realize what men have always known--freedom and justice requires people to be responsible for their own actions, regardless of gender.
Okay. I don't know what her point was supposed to be either and how she made the leap from from women acting like asses to Jeff Goldstein standing up for womens' rights, but I assume that she hadn't read Goldstein's latest after his delicate sensibilities were stabilized by a team of doctors and an outpouring of Paypal contributions:
There are a million stories in the naked city-
-Roughly 850,000 of which contain, in one form or another, some reference to cooze.
The National Organization of Women might want to put a hold on that plaque they were planning on giving to Jeff...
A mob of gunmen went on a brazen daytime rampage through a predominantly Sunni Arab district of western Baghdad on Sunday, pulling people from their cars and homes and killing them in what officials and residents called a spasm of revenge by Shiite militias for the bombing of a Shiite mosque on Saturday. Hours later, two car bombs exploded beside a Shiite mosque in another Baghdad neighborhood in a deadly act of what appeared to be retaliation.
While Baghdad has been ravaged by Sunni-Shiite bloodletting in recent months, even by recent standards the violence here on Sunday was frightening, delivered with impunity by gun-wielding vigilantes on the street. In the culture of revenge that has seized Iraq, residents all over the city braced for an escalation in the cycle of retributive mayhem between the Shiites and Sunnis that has threatened to expand into civil war.
The violence coincided with an announcement by American military officials that they had formally accused four more American soldiers of rape and murder, and a fifth soldier of "dereliction of duty" for failing to report the crimes, in connection with the deaths of a teenage Iraqi girl and three members of her family.
With movement in Baghdad difficult after a military cordon was established to suppress the violence, facts were hard to ascertain. The death toll from the shootings alone ranged from fewer than a dozen, according to the American military, to more than 40 reported by some news services. The bombing near the mosque later claimed at least 19 lives and left 59 wounded, officials said.
The military's announcement about the soldiers brought to six the number implicated in the rape-murder, one more than previously disclosed. The case has enraged Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and led to apologies by the highest American military and civilian officials in Iraq. A photograph of the girl's passport distributed by news agencies on Sunday showed that she was 14.
Only seven weeks old, Mr. Maliki's government is facing increasingly difficult obstacles. Worsening violence has undermined his intention to disarm the country's sectarian militias. At the same time, the growing furor over criminal accusations against American troops has tested Mr. Maliki's divided loyalties to his American allies and to an Iraqi public that has grown weary of the American presence.
The next time that Rich Lowry goes on TV to discuss the war in Iraq, someone needs to ask him why anyone should ever take him seriously ever again.
Where do I return my twelve minute version of Scarface?
Families in Utah are about to discover that there is more to X-rated films than good music and fine acting:
Sanitizing movies on DVD or VHS tape violates federal copyright laws, and several companies that scrub films must turn over their inventory to Hollywood studios, an appeals judge ruled.
[...]
Matsch ordered the companies named in the suit, including CleanFlicks, Play It Clean Video and CleanFilms, to stop “producing, manufacturing, creating” and renting edited movies. The businesses also must turn over their inventory to the movie studios within five days of the ruling.
“We’re disappointed,” CleanFlicks chief executive Ray Lines said. “This is a typical case of David vs. Goliath, but in this case, Hollywood rewrote the ending. We’re going to continue to fight.”
CleanFlicks produces and distributes sanitized copies of Hollywood films on DVD by burning edited versions of movies onto blank discs. The scrubbed films are sold over the Internet and to video stores.
As many as 90 video stores nationwide — about half of them in Utah — purchase movies from CleanFlicks, Lines said. It’s unclear how the ruling may effectthose stores.
Next up: Cinemax's AfterDark Family Funtime Theatre.
Official condemnation. So recorded. (Updated) Apparently a blogger that nobody knows wrote some ugly things in the Protein Wisdom comments section (that we are all supposed to have read) about Jeff Goldstein, his son and his wife. Therefore we, the liberal side, are guilty of not "policing our own" (which means, I guess, we have to vote her off the internets), and so we want to officially apologize to Mr. Goldstein and his family for the duress that they have been under.
We would also like to apologize to all of the conservative bloggers, who blanketed this story, for forcing them to take time off from fighting terrorists, jihadis, Islamicists, homosexuals, the UN, Darwinists, the MSM, college professors, Blogofascists, people who read books, people who go see movies, people who don't like Lee Greenwood, people who don't have little yellow ribbon magnets on their SUVs, people who aren't white, people whose primary language is not english, "civil liberty hysterics", Michael Moore, Ward Churchill, Howard Dean, Cindy Sheehan, John Murtha, Al Franken, Arianna Huffington, our Dark and Tempermental Lord Kos, all of those salespeople who didn't say, "Have a Merry Christmas", people who wear hats in movies, people who don't find a song about killing little Iraqi girls the height of wit, and all of the bloggers who were too busy this weekend with their own lives to wonder what was going on in Jeff Goldstein's life and hence they weren't aware that they were required to run to their computers and make a symbolic condemnation as if anyone on the right sincerely gives a flying fuck.
We're truly truly sorry that we put all of you through l'affaire Goldstein and if you are unable to save western civlization before the apocalypse and/or the rapture (whichever comes first) or if the Mexicans take over... we will accept the blame for that too.
Again, our deepest regrets.
So sorry.
(Added): Confederate Yankee still doesn't think that we have done enough to separate ourselves from Deborah Frisch, who made little to no attempt to hide who she was, the true sign of a cyber-stalker. Therefore those who haven't done their part to wave virtual pitchforks and torches and bellow incoherently are part ot the" toddler-threatening community" which is somewhat similar to the "mountain out of a molehill" community that can't find enough to bitch about in order to fill their empty vapid lives with rage and meaning.. and maybe pick up a few extra hits on their blogs as a bonus. Confederate Yankee might better fill his time pondering the prospect of someone who has to be medicated for anxiety attacks considering purchasing a weapon. He could probably get a five-part series out of that.
The writer - with whose work I am not overly familiar but who is clearly full of rage toward the Connecticut Senator - calls Lieberman "Rape Gurney Joe," an apparent reference to the reviled "Tail Gunner Joe" [McCarthy]. Evidently Lieberman has defended the post-rape policies of Catholic hospitals, which this blogger (FDL) finds anathema. Now I don't know where Lieberman really stands on this issue in detail. It is certainly a complex one because those of us who are particularly staunch on church-state separation (traditionally a liberal position) might find ourselves constrained to defend the Catholics, although we might not agree with their pro-life policies, especially in this instance.
I believe that, in the matter of this post, Mr. Simon is invoking what is known as the Jonah Goldberg Rule which states that a blogger who isn't really up on what is going on and can't be bothered to delve into the finer points because of some impending prior commitment (in Roger's case we assume that he needed to get to Dennys before they stopped serving the senior meals and the steam tables were in danger of being turned off) tosses off a little post... but they'll get back to us later with a sophisticated exegesis, I promise.
The beauty of the Goldberg Rule is that you can make some broad general claim based upon a cursory or "drive-by" observation on a topic that everyone else is talking about even if, not to put too fine of a point on it, you don't know what the fuck is going on. Later you just move on to the outrage or spin point du jour and no one is any wiser, not that they would have been any way.
Following on the heels of pseudo-human Michelle Malkin's post absolving herself from having anything to do with the suicide of Denice Denton (although she couldn't help herself from doing a little postmortem smearing. It's a bitch being a bitch.) she points out that "We are not afraid" in honor of the London attacks and yet fails to mention Jean Charles de Menezes who took, in the words of lesser-human-than Malkin-if-possible John Gibson, "five in the noggin".
He was innocent, but, you know, whatever. As long as Michelle is not afraid.
Second-half century digital boy Not dead yet...but the day isn't over
Well I'm off to Santa Barbara Friday afternoon where I will join the legendary and groovy Mrs tbogg for the weekend as we celebrate a couple of milestones.
First off, on Saturday I will have sucessfully completed the first year of my second half-century and my report card will show that I made it through the entire year without accidentally setting anything on fire, creating an international incident, fomenting revolution, shooting anyone in the face, or falling down the stairs and breaking a hip.
Not that I didn't try, mind you.
I've heard people say that they've put more birthdays behind themselves then they have still to come, but when you pass fifty, well, you can pretty much bet the house on it, providing, of course, you don't end up with your head kept alive in a large jar because you just never know what technological advance is lurking around the corner; all wires and electronic beeps and co-payments and icky fluids. I intend to be around for some time providing I don't start listening to soft rock radio ("Phil Collins or Billy Joel: Who rocks harder?") or developing a fondness for elastic-waist pants, in which case I have left strict instructions that I be smothered in my sleep, preferably with Shakira's ass, if at all possible. Since I have given much, I would demand no less...
Moving onward and definitely upward, on Sunday the aforementioned adjective & adjective Mrs tbogg and I will celebrate our 23rd wedding anniversary; she now having been married more than half of her life to moi, lucky gal. And lucky me for having a wife who has indulged me, tolerated my moods and ignored my eccentricities (and mentions of Shakira's ass) without complaint, remonstration or restraining order.
Pre-Friday Random Ten So I drifted down to New Orleans Where I happened to be employed Workin' for a while on a fishin' boat Right outside of Delacroix. But all the while I was alone The past was close behind, I seen a lot of women But she never escaped my mind, and I just grew Tangled up in blue.
'Scuse me while I whip these out:
Superstylin' - Groove Armada Tangled Up In Blue - Bob Dylan Our Way To Fall - Yo La Tengo Dear Chicago - Ryan Adams I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better - The Byrds Chicago - Groove Armada Honey White - Morphine Ego Tripping At The Gates Of Hell - The Flaming Lips The Beautiful Sea - Hem Shine It - Medeski, Martin & Wood*
Thursday Night Basset Blogging Not until he is ready...(just click it)
Beckham's latest alpha dog trick is to not come in with Satchmo and me. Instead he waits on the top step until we get all the way down the walkway, then he comes running and barking and trying to be first in the door.
Lil bastard.
(Added): I wanted to explain about the harnesses because I get a lot of emails about them. Bassets have really thick necks and small heads and, for example, when Satchmo hears a loud bang he'll turn and bolt for home (he's a lot like Roger L. Simon themanwhocreatedmoseswine like that) and slip a conventional collar. We never had that problem with the Cooder The Best Dog That Ever Lived™. So, in Satchmo's case, we went to the harness. It just something we stuck with when Beckham came along. Not that it doesn't make handling him a lot easier.
Driving on the lawn Sleeping on the roof Drinking all the alcohol All the kids from school Will be naked in the pool While our parents are on Fire Island Son of a congressman? Check. Drinking problem? Check. Future presidential material? Wouldn't be the first.
Newly elected Congressman Brian Bilbray (R-Lives at his moms house) calls for more enforcement at our borders and, by extension, less enforcement of underage drinking laws:
Rep. Brian Bilbray called Wednesday for increased immigration enforcement well beyond the border, but local law enforcement leaders said they could not take on a federal mandate to arrest suspected illegal immigrants.
Bilbray, R-Carlsbad, made his comments during a hearing held at the Border Patrol station here within site of the U.S.-Mexico border, one of several such sessions Republican leaders in the House of Representatives plan to hold around the country to focus more attention on the immigration issue.
Bilbray said the recent debates on illegal immigration show that not enough has been done to find and remove illegal immigrants.
“The United States has not been serious enough about our national sovereignty, defending our neighborhoods,” Bilbray said. “The problem is coming across the border and not being regulated under a mandate by our federal Constitution.”
This, of course, has nothing to with the problems in our neighborhoods where the children of certain congressmen are par-taying.
I'm going to have to go with: Facts don't mean shit to them. Lost and can't understand why
Michael Ledeen takes time out from inciting war against Iran (his daughter must need the work) to provide his take on soccer coverage:
In today's "reportage" of the World Cup semifinal between Italy and Germany, the (lefty) Washington Post reported that the game-winning goal was scored on a left-footed kick, while the (righty) Washington Times reported it was scored on a right-footed kick. The Post account was correct, but don't you find it mysteriously symbolic of something or other?
Sooooooo? C'mon. You can figure it out.
Oh nevermind.
He continues, although we wonder why after that exercise in obtuseness:
Also, for those, like Dr. Kissinger, who insist on seeing national character reflected in the style of play by national soccer teams, I am reminded that Italy always beats Germany in the World Cup, and they do it by demonstrating those qualities that are invariably (and mistakenly, I think) ascribed to Germans: discipline, patience, courage, tenacity, stamina.
And, lest we forget—and we always do—the Italians have fought bravely, tenaciously and patiently in Iraq, taking many losses and pressing forward nonetheless. I frankly haven't noticed brave Germans out there, but no doubt it's an oversight on my part.
I guess that those who insist on seeing national character reflected yadda yadda yadda would also point out that the US national team was eliminated early and ended up tied with Iran's national team with identical numbers.
I hope that is factored into the war planning. It must mean something.
****
Speaking of soccer:
Six months after blowing out her ACL, and five moths after surgery, the lovely and talented Casey is back to playing...sort of. Two weeks ago she was cleared to start working out with a ball. This week she started practicing, but no contact. Next week she is at a college combine (picture from last year). Here we go again...
A sufficient amount of time has passed and Box Turtle Ben Domenech pokes his little plagiarizing head out from the shell of shame and posts a patriotic story about his grandfather.
Well, we assume that it's Ben's grandfather. He could be Josh Trevino's grandfather for all we know....
What was the "soundbite line" from the press conference where Senator Joe Lieberman announced that he may cut and run to an "unaffiliated" ballot line if Connecticut Democrats don't renominate him in August? That's easy:
"I have loyalties that are greater than those to my party."
That is an honorable-sounding line.
But to whom are the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee's loyalties directed?
That, of course, is the senator's problem.
Were Lieberman merely a predictable centrist Democrat, willing to mumble mild criticisms of the Bush administration's foreign policies but unwilling to make a serious break with the administration, he would not be worrying about the increasingly-viable Democratic primary challenge he faces from anti-war progressive Ned Lamont.
But Lieberman is not a predictable centrist. He is an in-the-pocket Bush man -- at least as far as the war in Iraq goes.
Lieberman called for war with Iraq before Bush did -- in a 2001 letter to the president that was also signed by Arizona Senator John McCain -- and he has been such an enthusiastic booster of the occupation that Bush actually kissed the Connecticut senator at the 2005 State of the Union.
Nothing, not realities on the ground in Iraq, nor realities on the ground in Connecticut, has caused Lieberman's loyalties to waver.
Principled? Perhaps.
But it is possible to be principled and wrong. And, in the case of both Lieberman and Bush, it is certainly possible to mistake principle for a stubborn refusal to admit fundamental errors.
It would appear that Joe Lieberman has become the Democratic Party's Colonel Nicholson:
"What about this chap, for instance?" he said, stopping to speak to one of the patients. "What's wrong with you, my lad?"
He was walking between two rows of prisoners who lay on bamboo beds, either shivering with fever or in a state of coma, their cadaverous faces protruding from the threadbare blankets.
"Temperature of 104 last night, sir. Malaria."
"Right, I see," said the Colonel, moving on. "And this man?"
"Jungle sores. I had to dig into his leg yesterday - with an ordinary knife; I haven't any other instruments. He's got a hole in him as large as a golf ball, sir."
"So that was it," muttered Colonel Nicholson. "I thought I heard someone shrieking in the night."
"That was it. Four of his pals had to hold him down. I hope I'll be able to save his leg, but it's touch and go,' he added, lowering his voice. "Do you really want me to send him out to work, sir?"
"Don't talk rot, Clipton. Of course I don't. What you say goes. Let's get this clear. I'm not trying to force sick and wounded men to work. But we must face this fact: we've got less than a month to finish the job we're doing. It'll require a superhuman effort, I know, but I can't help that. Consequently, each tme you take one of these men off work, you make it harder for everyone else. You ought to bear that in mind every moment of the day, do you understand? Even if a man's not at the top of his form he can still make himself useful and help on light duties - the trimmings and finishing touches, for instance; that general wash and brush-up that Hughes will soon be organizing, you know."
"I suppose you're going to have the thing painted, sir?"
"Don't even think of such a thing, Clipton," said the Colonel testily. "The most we could do would be to give it a coating of lime - and a fine target that would make for planes, wouldn't it! You seem to forget that there's a war on!"
All along I have assumed that Mr. Pamela must have left her (in the dead of night... after burning his ID, cutting up his credit cards, and taking a sharpened melon-scoop to any identifying marks on his body so that she couldn't track him down or identify the body) and headed for parts unknown. I mean, let's face it, she makes Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction look like Rosario Flores in Talk To Her. But I'm thinking that, if Mr. Pamela would like to get sole custody of the kids, well let's just say that he should be archiving these Pamela moments on DVD. I bet the judge throws in a restraining order at no extra charge.
What a waste of gunpowder and sky... Bust out the fireworks and the barbeques
As I point out every year, I hate the Fourth of July as the mongol hordes of inlanders (no life east of I-5? Hell, there's no life east of Ingraham St) and the Zonies (hence the expression: an annoyance of tourists) flock to the beach for the day where they get horrific sunburns and drink copious amounts of light beer celebrating...what?..patriotism...freedom...oblivion? This year has been especially lovely what with the four-to five day weekend people have taken allowing them to get a running start in the drunken idiocy marathon.
Me? I go to work in the morning where all is calm and quiet and then later bunker in on my deck and watch the chaos as the second leg of the summer holiday trifecta plays out below; the Fourth of July bookended by Memorial Day and Labor Day after which peace descends, one again, upon the neighborhood.
Come Wednesday we'll be crawling from the wreckage.
Pray to the imaginary deity of your choice for me.
(Added): I drove through Mission Bay Park (prime viewing space for the the Sea World fireworks) at about 8AM and the parking lots are already full, meaning these folks have thirteen hours of sticking it out in the heat to watch fifteen minutes of colorful explosions. Neat.
(Added...even later): Just got home and it's not as bad as usual. There are probably two policemen for every three blocks not counting the police helicopter eye-in-the-sky that circles every few minutes. The streets are surprisingly dead and not a lot of premature firecrackers going off, meaning that I was able to coax Stachmo out from under the bed. Of course this will be the last I see of him until four in the morning when he lumbers up on the bed. Beckham? He doesn't give a damn.
The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday.
The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, the officials said.
The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."
The realignment reflects a view that Al Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, intelligence officials said, and a growing concern about Qaeda-inspired groups that have begun carrying out attacks independent of Mr. bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Agency officials said that tracking Mr. bin Laden and his deputies remained a high priority, and that the decision to disband the unit was not a sign that the effort had slackened. Instead, the officials said, it reflects a belief that the agency can better deal with high-level threats by focusing on regional trends rather than on specific organizations or individuals.
(Note to self: watch for rightwing goobers to complain about the Times refering to the him as "Mr. bin Laden". More treason!)
Sure the unit was responsible for taking out about fifteen "number three" members of al Qaeda Speedwagon, but they continually failed to reach number one on the charts and Goss had to pull the plug explaining, "I don't hear a hit here." Members of the group are expected to reform a Flock of Seagulls tribute band and cover their hit Iran.
Smell the excitement. Or excrement. Whatever. Certain to be revolting...
I see that Hugh Hewitt (fourth rate law professor, Nixon apologist, evil albino...that Hugh Hewitt) has moved his blog over to the new improved Townhall (and how could it not be improved?).
And it's going to get itself born on the fourth of July just like our country! How special is that? Of course I would have gone with a red/white/blue color scheme instead of one that reminded me of
I am trying to maintain my restraint in taking Andrew Sullivan's endless baiting seriously. But this argument-and fact-free-tantrum really is a jewel of the genre. I particularly like the use of the word "hysterical" amidst all the talk about degenerate souls and tyranny.
All together now:
Straight outta Goucher crazy motherfucker named Jonah From the gang called Fatboyz With Attitude When I'm called off I get a bleg off Hittin' "enter" and then I take the day off You too Andy if ya fuck with me The police are gonna hafta come and get me Off yo ass but not in a gay way Stanley Kurtz sez that that's not a good way Sully start to mumble, make me wanna rumble Gonna make all of his sophistry crumble Goin off on a motherfucker like that with a post that's pointed at yo ass So give it up smooth Ain't gettin' off this couch and makin' a move Here's a posting rap to shake your ass with a fact record like Steve Glass Bleg requests are the motherfuckin tool Keeps me from lookin' a motherfuckin fool Me you can go toe to toe, no maybe If I lose a few pounds, make you look a baby yo weekly, monthly and yearly until you stupid motherfucker see clearly that I'm down with William F. Buckely Friend of my mom, got this job for me So when I'm in your neighborhood, you're gonna get schooled Cuz Jonah G. don' mess with no fools And as I leave, best believe I'm down Cuz I'll send your dead ass back to Provincetown.
Hugh Hewitt: America's Worst Law Professor™ Inattention to detail is one of my virtues. Actually, it's my only virtue...
One would think that someone who is sincerely incensed over the NY Times story covering the SWIFT program would at least come on TV prepared to make his case:
KURTZ: Hugh Hewitt, you've been enormously critical of the "Times'" decision to publish this story. Do you believe that its editors and reporters should be prosecuted?
HUGH HEWITT, AUTHOR, "PAINTING THE MAP RED": I don't know enough to answer that question, because 18 USC 798 (ph) has a lot of elements to it, Howard. But I know this. Eric's story helped terrorists elude capture. That's what the outrage is about. That's the widely shared opinion among people with intelligence background. It's widely shared by soldiers in the field, as made evident on their blogs.
I would guess that in Hewitt's classes just knowing that the statute exists is hard work enough without having to get into all those tricky details and subsections and that fancy-schmancy legal moonman language. Word on the street and assumptions...now that's lawyering.
Jared Fogle is my muse "brown, braised, obliquely alive"
While much has been made of the call and response to Jeff Goldstein's ode to vagina-Americans (who Jeff thinks are sad because they have no cock with which to slap) I think it is illuminating to spelunk ever deeper into the Goldstein oeuvre in order to consider a portrait of an artist as a hungry young man who is torn between the all consuming passion of youth and a visit to Subway. Shhh. Attention must be paid:
Sometimes, too, he thought of hillsides. As a child his father would take him up steep inclines, would motion to the sky, would show him where God lived. Now, most days after school he'd drive with friends to a sandwich shop, have a footlong turkey sub on a whole wheat roll, gaze absently at freshly chopped fixings glistening in stainless steel buckets behind the sneeze guard. On these occasions he could imagine himself becoming his father; with watering mouth he'd given silent thanks for green pepper slices and fresh tomatoes, for the terrestrial wonder of black and green olive wedges, for rings of red onion. Mayonnaise and bits of moist bread collected in his molars, mortared in place by the plastered chew of potato chips, a paste of salt and dough. On Fridays, Rachel would meet him here after work, her lips stained a faint, sweet green from wheat grass juice, and they would drive to a sunny stretch of hill about seven miles out in the country. On a soft plaid blanket, she'd lay herself open to him, her legs taut, and he'd maneuver himself over her, rest between her on raw kneecaps, kiss honey (or when all else failed, Diet Dr. Pepper) from her smallish breasts. Breathless after, she'd dart half-formed stories into the air; and he, for his part, would half-listen, would stroke her nipples, brown, braised, obliquely alive -- large flat saucers glazed with his own saliva and hard with the ghost of his tongue. Home, he'd change his clothes and move languidly to the garage, watch his father mutter strange words over sandpaper and wood. It was his father's halting, breathy music which drew him here -- his father's song. His father prayed so often, he told the boy once, because heaven is everywhere. God is everywhere.
One imagines the author agonizing over the choices that he must make in order to deliver these young lovers to their fate since they have no free will of their own and, if they did, they would probably rather be in an Ethan Canin short story or even a Danielle Steele novel because the post-story gift bags are way nicer. Should Isaac go with the "whole wheat roll" signifying earthiness and the heartland, or possibly "sour dough bread" redolent of San Francisco liberalism. Ahh! "Rye bread"! No. No.... Too jewish even if leavened with "mayonnaise"; that sweet holy manna of the WASPS. No. It is the "whole wheat roll" (and a "footlong" one at that, hubba-hubba) that sets the tone for the harvest of "fixings", those vegetables and fruits (because tomatoes area fruit, you know) that speak to us of fecundity and the loamy earth from which life germinates in heat and moisture. Oh, and also "plowing the field" if you know what I mean and I think you do.
We could go further but I think you take my point that writing, like grocery shopping, should never be done when hungry.
Got an appetite for writing? First, have a Hot Pocket™.
This would be the same Malkin who had no qualms publishing the names and phone numbers of students at UC Santa Cruz and then justified it because they could be easily discovered on the internet. That was done with the specific intent to harass. The Rumsfeld/Cheney story was part the weekend travel section which we all know is a prime source of intelligence for the Islamojihaditourista who want to get away for the weekend, maybe do a little antiquing, and impose Sharia on the locals right after Sunday brunch...
Actually I think that Malkin is coasting for the holiday weekend. Her last few posts have been about the travel story above, the Superman movie that she couldn't sit through, and the "moonbats" who were out in front of Graceland when Bush visited..as if those "moonbats" looked any different than the usual salt-of-the-earth Elvis pilgrims making their mental hejira from Realityland to Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich-land.
