Enemy Combatant
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Bolton, The Feckless Hobson's Stunner
Look into the history of Republican dirty tricks and deceptions over the course of the Reagan-Bush era, and John "Birch" Bolton -- the virus Bush has sent to kill the UN -- keeps turning up again and again, like a bad penny. Iran-contra? There's our John. The Florida voting fiasco in 2000? Look again. The neocon push for war in Iraq? One of the earliest PNACkleheads of record, baby.
What about the Nestle's Third World baby formula fiasco in the 1980s? There again you'll find El Bigote, valiantly defending the right of American corporations to make short-term profits from criminal misinformation and widespread infant malnutrition.
He's the Zelig of Republican excess over the past thirty years. I half expect that if you dig deep enough, you'll find he was the single Watergate burglar who got away, while a moonlighting Yale student.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Malkin Trash
The Poor Man proves himself more royalist than the demento-Filipina:This race war will come to California eventually, but it won’t start there. No, the seeds of the coming immigrant insurrection were planted a long, long time ago, the roots have already grown deeply in the fertile soil of our homeland, and soon - so, so soon - they will bring forth their bitter fruit. I am speaking, of course, of the Irish. I could write whole treatises on how these degenerate potato-people are working ceaselessly to take over America, . . .
. . . Please stay tuned for my follow-up post on how internment camps for the Irish might be something to think about, not that I’m advocating it or anything, but it’s just something to think about. Before we’re all killed by IRA terrorists would be best, but, you know, whenever you’ve got a free moment.
You know, we loyal Hibernian-Americans have to expose this sort of treachery when it arises, so we don't all get tarred with the same brush.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
The Sins Of The Godfathers
The Next Hurrah has discovered a karmic bit of history in the current filibuster imbroglio:How appropriate that the Republicans like C. Boyden Gray are now forced to twist the historical record to try to convince people that the last Senator to lead a filibuster really didn't filibuster Abe Fortas [in 1968], and how appropriate that [then Michigan GOP Senator] Robert Griffin's own words and actions are now being used to justify denying a lifetime judicial appointment to his own son [Dubya's nominee Richard Griffin of Michigan].
Yeah, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, "Payback's a motherfucker."
Monday, April 25, 2005
A headline on MSNBC just now:CIA’s final report: No WMD found in Iraq
Recommends freeing detainees held for weapons knowledge
In 92 pages posted online Monday evening, [head of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group Charles]Duelfer provides a final look at an investigation that occupied over 1,000 military and civilian translators, weapons specialists and other experts at its peak. His latest addenda conclude a roughly 1,500-page report released last fall.
On Monday, Duelfer said there is no purpose in keeping many of the detainees who are in custody because of their knowledge on Iraq’s weapons, although he did not provide any details about the current number. A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the ultimate decision on their release will be made by the Iraqi authorities.
Translation? "Remember that Iraqi whose nuts you put in a vise, and he told you there were WMDs buried 20 miles outside of Mosul? Well, you can cut him loose from Abu Ghraib now -- we turned over every rock anywhere near Mosul, and no WMDs.
"How were we to know that guy's confession was unreliable?"
When the history of the Keystone Crips who run this administration finally sees the light of day, and is examined closely, its progress will resemble an all-out sprint between criminality and incompetence, to see which will cross the finish line first. My bet is on incompetence.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Crunchy Fraud
Some might argue these sorts of man-feigns-dogbite stories don't deserve to be labelled "news" (or at least should be less emphasized than they are), but I have to confess that ever since CSI started, I'm fascinated by them:Where did the finger come from?
If police know, they aren't saying. Neither, apparently, is the woman who was arrested for allegedly planting the human fingertip in a bowl of Wendy's chili in San Jose a month ago. She remained in jail in Las Vegas, being held without bail.
Reportedly, though, there's no truth to the rumor that this scam has derailed Wendy's new ad campaign ("Finger food you can really sink your teeth into!") and website (www.digitalwendys.com) . . .
Monday, April 18, 2005
Not All Of Our "Best And Brightest" Being Killed
. . . are in the military.
From Billmon, over at the Whiskey Bar:
'Nuff said about the Adam's Apple Blonde . . .
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Hagel May Bolt On Bolton
Has Sen. Hagel telegraphed where he's going on the Bolton nomination?
With a Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote expected Tuesday, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska was asked whether he would endorse Bolton. "At this point, I will . . . but I have been troubled with more and more allegations, revelations, coming about his style, his method of operation," said Hagel, the committee's No. 2 Republican.
If that's the excuse Hagel's looking for, the evidence is already out there:
“He threw some things in the first meeting,” including papers and a tape dispenser, [Texas businesswoman] Townsel said. “He yelled and got really abusive.” When she went to her Moscow hotel room to avoid him, she said, “he proceeded to pound on my hotel door and thrust things under the door”.
With Bolton, it's looking less and less like a political philosophy, and more and more like a psychological disorder.
'Course, all it would take for the Democrats to decisively defeat the Bolton nomination would be to have eight women show up at his hearing Monday, with "No More Anita Hills" taped across their mouths . . .
I Think We've Found Their Playbook
Book One, Chapter 3
"If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say this or that event, it never happened -- that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death." --pg 32
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -- if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'" -- pg 32
"Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary." -- pg 36
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Tom DeLay: More Al Swearengen Than Al Qaeda?
Discuss.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Three Easy "Frames" For The Dems -- Let's Go Bowling!
Why oh why can't the Democrats wise up, and start using the following tactics?
1. Get yourself in front of a camera, and ask: Why don't the Republicans think Terri Schiavo should have been able to choose for herself how much medical intervention she wanted? After all, that's exactly what the state courts in Florida -- duly established to determine those matters -- decided. Repeatedly.
It's still mind-boggling to me that -- just because it's such a hugely inconvenient fact (indeed, devastating to their argument) that Terri Schiavo herself wanted to have her feeding tube disconnected -- the Republicans not only choose to ignore that fact entirely, but -- more unforgivably -- self-styled "Democrats" appear on TV and "politely" go entire debates without mentioning that fact, either.
2. Democrats need to start using the following phraseology: "Bush treats this country like a rental. He treats all of us like a rental."
Not only do you pull in the college crowd who recognize the Jane's Addiction lyric, it's instinctively understandable, particularly by the upper middle class (who can still afford to go on "rental" vacations).
3. Western Democrats (do you hear me, Ken Salazar? Gov. Schweitzer?) need to start using the following phraseology: "This country feels like it's been rode hard and put up wet" by Bush. In fact, even better: Get photographed astride a horse when you use these words.
Besides the sexual double entendre that everyone will get, anyone who works around animals will get the image of a poor beast mistreated by an emotionally-retarded dipshit who ought himself to be horsewhipped in the street.
And, of course, it will get in the minds of the public that, hey, we've never actually seen Bush anywhere near a horse, have we?
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
To Surly, With Love
I am a Japanese School Teacher
By: Azrael
This ongoing blog, by an exasperated young African American English teacher at a Japanese middle school, is one of the funniest damn things I've read in a long time. (For one thing, it'll teach you about the Japanese "kid's game" of Kancho. Trust me, once you read it, you won't forget what that word means.)
Maybe John McCreery can explain Kancho to us. (When Michael Jackson gets wind of this, will he flee this country and make a beeline for Japan?)
Forcefeeding The Fourth Estate
As our mainstream media seem to have deteriorated into a persistent vegetative state for some time now, here’s a question I’m sending down the old feeding tube, for them to ask the GOP Congressional judge-bashers:
“You persistently claim that the federal and Florida state judges who decided the Terri Schiavo case were ‘judicial activists’ for not granting the Schindlers the relief they sought, including the reattachment of Ms. Schiavo’s feeding tube.
“Since you’re the ones criticizing the judiciary for supposedly not following the law – can you explain, specifically, what right or rights under the Constitution or federal law were denied Terri Schiavo, and where is it (in either the text of the Constitution or federal law, or in cases decided by the US Supreme Court) that such a right or rights may be found?”
The fact is, they got nothin’. Beyond their “judicial activism” buzzphrase, they are -- and here I have to use a technical, legal term -- talking out their asses. The ironic thing, of course, is that if the federal judges who reviewed the Terri Schiavo matter had, in fact, been judicial activists, they might have cobbled together some theory by which they could have given Congress what it apparently was asking for: a brand-spankin’ new, never-before-heard-of, constitutionally-mandated “Right to (Mechanically-Assisted) Life.” To do that, however, would have required that the federal courts expand on “privacy rights” established in previous, liberal Supreme Court decisions – like, say, Roe v. Wade, and Lawrence v. Texas. Something makes me think that the Congressional bully-boys – like the Schindlers’ attorneys before them – won’t be making that argument anytime soon.
Monday, April 04, 2005
Separated at birth?
I knew I'd seen that jutting jaw somewhere before . . .
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Mitch Hedberg, R.I.P.:
I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughnut. I don't need a receipt for the doughnut - I'll just give you money and you give me the doughnut. End of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario in which I would need to prove that I bought a doughnut. Some skeptical friend . . . don’t even act like I didn't buy a doughnut, I've got the documentation right here. Oh wait, it's back home in the file . . . under "D", for doughnut.
I was walking down the street with my friend and he said "I hear music." As though there's any other way to take it in. You're not special. That's how I receive it too . . . I tried to taste it, but it did not work . . .
I think Pringles' initial intention was to make tennis balls. But on the day that the rubber was supposed to show up, a big truckload of potatoes arrived. But Pringles was a laid-back company. They said "Fuck it. Cut 'em up."
What's Wrong With This Picture?
No investigation of either the torture, or the billions unaccounted for, in Iraq. No investigation of the WMD lies. Not a peep about kicking out real taxpayers with real opinions from Shrubby's Bamboozapaloozathon Social Security kabuki flufferfests.
But hey, the Republicans still have a Special Prosecutor out there toothcombing Clinton Housing Secretary Cisneros' transgressions -- and still burning through nearly $2 million a year (past $21 million, and counting) to do it.
In a related story, the Five Families of New York have opened up an investigation into allegations of sidewalk-spitting and jaywalking among the NYPD during Mayor John V. Lindsay's administration. (Rumor has it, they may even appoint a Consigliere Speciale.)
