Deep inside every man is a knight in shining armor, ready to rescue a maiden and slay a dragon. When a man feels trusted, he is free to be the strong, protecting man he longs to be.Oh, and, if your subscription to Seventeen has expired, not to worry. The U.S. government has come up with a list of 5 things you need to know about your knight or your princess:
Imagine a knight traveling through the countryside. He hears a princess in distress and rushes gallantly to slay the dragon. The princess calls out, “I think this noose will work better!” and throws him a rope. As she tells him how to use the noose, the knight obliges her and kills the dragon. Everyone is happy, except the knight, who doesn’t feel like a hero. He is depressed and feels unsure of himself. He would have preferred to use his own sword.
The knight goes on another trip. The princess reminds him to take the noose. The knight hears another maiden in distress. He remembers how he used to feel before he met the princess; with a surge of confidence, he slays the dragon with his sword. All the townspeople rejoice, and the knight is a hero. He never returned to the princess. Instead, he lived happily ever after in the village, and eventually married the maiden—but only after making sure she knew nothing about nooses.
Moral of the story: Occasional assistance may be all right, but too much will lessen a man’s confidence or even turn him away from his princess.
5 Major Needs of Women:I think they skipped the chapter on Brokeback Enchanted Forest, where Lance and Galahad have fun with swordplay, with nary a thought of princesses or dragons.
Affection, Conversation, Honesty and Openness, Financial Support, Family Commitment
5 Major Needs of Men:
Sexual Fulfillment, Recreational Companionship, Physical Attractiveness, Admiration, Domestic Support
Marshall Wittmann, a former Republican political strategist now with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, said Pelosi may have resurrected her party's most deadly liability -- voters' lack of trust in the party on national security.
“By attacking Congressman Murtha, Congresswoman Pelosi, and the Democratic Party for criticizing Bush’s failed war strategy the Administration and the Republican Party once again display their arrogance and their alienation from the American people. An overwhelming majority of the American people knows this war has been mishandled. These same Americans know that the road to security and peace is an exit strategy from Iraq that the Administration doesn’t have. The Bush Administration’s response to criticism of its flawed "Plan for Victory" demonstrates its contempt for the very citizens who are paying the taxes that support this war. Scandalously, the Republican attack shows what they think of the citizens whose sons and daughters, husbands and wives, and whose fathers and mothers are paying for this mishandled war with their lives.”
Democrats can look to the future and find a populist message that doesn't cater to white fear and tendencies to scapegoat minorities. And we can add the Hispanic community permanently into our coalition, denying Karl Rove his most coveted goal. Or we can take the easy way out and catch a few Bubbas until the economy turns around, at which point they'll go right back home to the party that really knows how to feed their worst instincts on regular basis --- the Republicans.
...the CIA is maintaining secret facilities outside the U.S. where it is holding suspected terrorists. The point of these extra-territorial holding pens... is "to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay."Wait a minute...so what the CIA is doing to these suspected terrorists is illegal in the U.S., and probably illegal in other western democracies like ROMANIA and POLAND. But somehow what Dick Durbin said was going way too far and he was forced to apologize on the floor of the Senate?
Unfortunately the unwillingness of the Republican-controlled Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities is not limited to just Iraq. We see it with respect to the prisoner abuse scandal. We see it with respect to Katrina. And we see it with respect to the cronyism and corruption that permeates this Administration.Even Lou Dobbs can read the manual:
Ed, a couple of points if I may. One, you suggested the Senate melted down today. There are those who would argue that the Senate began doing its job today.As that other Harry put it, "just give 'em the truth, and they'll think it's hell."
Dear Scooter,
Dick tells me you were on his staff or something, and that you were having some kind of law thing. Jeez, I'm really sorry about that. Boy oh Boy - I cannot even begin to tell you what it's been like for me here lately - what with the tragedy in New Orleans (poor, poor Brownie), that whole 'war thing' and then that nice judge lady who up and quit on me, this place is in shambles! Anyway, listen, if you get through this thing, I may have something else lined up for you, so try to pay attention to all the legal stuff when you're in court, it'll make the confirmation hearings better.
- The Prez
Dear Scooter,
What a travesty of justice! You train someone from scratch in the black arts, share with them the ecstasy of the hunt and the glory of the kill, and then BAM! Some uppity prosecutor goes and unloads a round of buckshot in you! Truly a shame. That having been said, I need you to understand this - if you turn on me, I will gut you like a Wyoming trout! I will hunt you down like an elk and fire a crossbow into your heart. Otherwise - all the best!
- Dick Cheney
Dearest Loving Scooter,
In the wilds of Connecticut where you vacation, the poplars are just turning to the amber hues of autumn. They all turn as if on cue, because their roots are as deeply connected as you and I. We have shared wonderful moments together, and please know that I will wait for you - however long it takes.
Lovingly - Judith Miller
ps - Most of the guards are pleasant, but watch out for Johnson - he can be a real bear in the morning!
Hey Scoot -
I call top bunk!
- Tom Delay
Dear Scooter -
I saw you on TV - it's made me see you in a whole new light! Gosh - you're famous now! I think you're the best - the absolute best. I hope you know that I think you did a fantastic job and I am so so so proud of you. Please write me as much as possible, and I'll keep the autographed photo you gave me last Christmas right by my bed.
- Harriet Miers
Scooter -
Tom's crazy if he thinks he's getting the top bunk. I outrank him. Besides, he was like a bug killer before politics - I'm a Doctor! Plus, I don't snore.
- Bill Frist
Dear Mr.. Libby -
Thank you Thank You Thank you! This has been a great week for us. Now if we could only find a way to capitalize on all of this. Some kind of message or something.
- Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi
...in the past several days, former secretary of state colin powell had a meeting with senator john mccain (R-AZ), primarily about the mccain-sponsored amendment on inserting a rider prohibiting torture onto the us defense budget (a bill which powell has himself been lobbying heavily for, against objections of president bush).Thanks to Bartcop for the link.
during the meeting, powell recounted to the senator that he had traveled on air force one with bush and cheney, and brought to their attention a classified memorandum about the issue of whether there was indeed a transaction inolving niger and yellow cake uranium. the document included ambassador joe wilson's involvement and identified his wife, valerie plame, as a covert agent. the memorandum further stated that this information was secret. powell told mccain that he showed that memo only to two people--president and vice president. according to powell, cheney fixated on the wilson/plame connection, and plame's status.
powell testified about this exchange in great length to the grand jury investigating the plame case. according to sources close to the case, powell appeared convinced that the vice president played a focal role in disclosing plame's undercover status.
Should war in the Gulf commence, the Pentagon proposes to take radical new steps in media relations - 'unauthorised' journalists will be shot at. Speaking on The Sunday Show on Ireland's RTE1 last Sunday veteran war reporter Kate Adie said she had been warned by a senior Pentagon official that uplinks, i.e. TV broadcasts or satellite phones, that are detected by US aircraft are likely to be fired on.Oh, and granny pointed me to Project for the Old American Century. While I'm generally wary of any one who hankers for the "good ole days," this site has lots of neat lists and charts and links to documents released by the Freedom of Information Act, not to mention timely reporting. Thanks granny!
It was a routine assignment that, like too many in Iraq, went wrong. Tipped off that police had clashed with gunmen in western Baghdad, the Reuters news agency dispatched Haider Kadhem, a cameraman, and Waleed Khaled, a soundman, to the scene. As their car headed down Ghaziliya bridge American troops opened fire, hitting Khaled in the face and the chest, killing him instantly and spattering blood over the US military and Reuters press cards clipped to his shirt.
By the time relatives and colleagues arrived American armoured vehicles had sealed off the street and Kadhem, slightly wounded from fragments, was under arrest. Having found nothing suspicious the troops allowed the car to be towed away and handed relatives a body bag. One soldier told them not to look too closely at the corpse. "Don't bother. It's not worth it." Other soldiers standing a few feet away joked among themselves.
For Reuters and many other foreign media organisations in Baghdad the August 28 shooting was further evidence that American troops are out of control. Since the 2003 invasion US forces have killed at least 18 media workers in incidents for which no one has been charged or punished. "Whitewashes. There have been no satisfactory investigations that we know of," said Rodney Pinder, director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI), a Brussels-based advocacy group.
In addition to shooting them, US forces have a habit of detaining journalists without charge. Weeks can pass before a bureau is able to confirm that an employee has been arrested, possibly injured, and held incommunicado in Abu Ghraib or another prison. A driver for the Guardian, accredited with the US authorities, was held without explanation for five days.It kind of makes you wonder...
An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.
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A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President.
"Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said.
Patrick Fitzgerald interviewed President Bush (at least, he was interviewed by his team; I don't remember whether it was Fitzgerald specifically who conducted it, though I would assume it was). The president's lawyers succeeded in getting Fitzgerald to agree that the interview not be under oath. Still, though, an interview took place and at the top of the list of questions must have been just what happened and what the president knew.
Conservatives have already used the storm for causes of their own, like suspending requirements that federal contractors have affirmative action plans and pay locally prevailing wages. And with federal costs for rebuilding the Gulf Coast estimated at up to $200 billion, Congressional Republican leaders are pushing for spending cuts, with programs like Medicaid and food stamps especially vulnerable.
"We've had a stunning reversal in just a few weeks," said Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal advocacy group in Washington. "We've gone from a situation in which we might have a long-overdue debate on deep poverty to the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that low-income people will be asked to bear the costs. I would find it unimaginable if it wasn't actually happening."
Mr. Greenstein's comments were echoed by Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut: "Poor people are going to get the short end of the stick, despite all the public sympathy. That's a great irony."
But many conservatives see logic, not irony, at work. If the storm exposed great poverty, they say, it also exposed the problems of the very policies that liberals have supported.
"This is not the time to expand the programs that were failing anyway," said Stuart M. Butler, a vice president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research and advocacy group influential on Capitol Hill.
While the right has proposed alternatives including tax-free zones for businesses and school vouchers for students, Mr. Butler said, "the left has just talked up the old paradigm: 'let's expand what's failed before.' "
Doubt about the effectiveness of some programs is only one factor shaping the current antipoverty debate. Another is political muscle: poor people do not make campaign contributions. Many do not even vote.
A third factor is the federal deficit, which leaves little money for new initiatives. And a fourth is the continuing support for tax cuts, including those aimed at the wealthiest Americans, which further limits spending on social programs.
Indeed, even as he was calling for deep spending cuts last week, Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, who leads the conservative caucus, called tax reductions for the prosperous a key to fighting poverty.
"Raising taxes in the wake of a national catastrophe would imperil the very economic growth we need to bring the Gulf Coast back," Mr. Pence said. "I'm mindful of what a pipe fitter once said to President Reagan: 'I've never been hired by a poor man.' A growing economy is in the interest of every working American, regardless of their income."
...As a soldier I have been involved in this war in one way or another since 1990. I was in Baghdad early on when we actually thought we could rebuild the country. It was a tough decision then to cut down the trees on the airport road then but when you are getting shot at, you have to do something. Now we are blowing up bridges. For the first time I believe we have lost. For the first time as a military professional I think we have no way of winning this. We are willing to destroy the basic structures of the country to deny the enemy their use. This means we have no other way to deny them the use of these assets. We can't stop them, the Iraqi Army can't stop them, the Iraqi police can't stop them and we can't collect enough intelligence to make the enemy pay for using what should be choke points.If the boots on the ground think we're done...wow.
There is no way to sugar coat this. This is a MAJOR development. That we have made it public is also a big deal because every other military professional in the world knows we are done. This war may go on for a long time but the conclusion is decided as far as I can see. I never imagined I would see this day.
A big chunk of the national media establishment do live and work in New York. As such, they understand that the subway is massive, it's how people get to and from their jobs, that most people are going to pay little attention to these warnings (or even be aware of them). The hysterical reporting is ridiculous.
When pressed, she said she did believe one should be able to legally discriminate against gays, and it is the recollection of two of the organization's officers that the response involved her religious beliefs.
Miers' church states on its website that it believes in biblical inerrancy, full immersion baptism, original sin and salvation dependent entirely upon accepting Jesus Christ. Everyone else is going to hell.
She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met.
What happened in New Orleans is the culmination of twenty-five years of disparagement of any idea of public responsibility; of a concerted effort--led by the right but as part of a bipartisan consensus--to reduce government's functions to enhancing plunder by corporations and the wealthy and punishing everyone else, undermining any notion of social solidarity.
...
The abstract, moralizing patter about how and whether "race matters" or "the role of race" is appealing partly because it doesn't confront the roots of the bipartisan neoliberal policy regime. It's certainly true that George W. Bush and his minions are indifferent to, or contemptuous of, black Americans in general. They're contemptuous of anyone who is not part of the ruling class. Although Bush and his pals are no doubt small-minded bigots in many ways, the racial dimension stands out so strikingly in part because race is now the most familiar--and apparently for many progressives the most powerful--language of social justice. For roughly a generation it seemed reasonable to expect that defining inequalities in racial terms would provoke some remedial response from the federal government. But for quite some time race's force in national politics has been as a vehicle for reassuring whites that "public" equals some combination of "black," "poor" and "loser"; that cutting public spending is aimed at weaning a lazy black underclass off the dole or--in the supposedly benign, liberal Democratic version--teaching blacks "personal responsibility."
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Class will almost certainly turn out to be a better predictor than race of who was able to evacuate, who drowned, who was left to fester in the Superdome or on overpasses, who is stuck in shelters in Houston or Baton Rouge, or who is randomly dispersed to the four winds. I'm certain that class is also a better predictor than race of whose emotional attachments to place will be factored into plans for reconstructing the city.
...
Race is too blunt an analytical tool even when inequality is expressed in glaring racial disparities. Its meanings are too vague. We can see already that the charges of racial insensitivity and neglect threaten to divert the focus of the Katrina outrage to a secondary debate about how Bush feels about blacks and whether the sources of the travesty visited upon poor New Orleanians were "color blind" or racist. Beyond that, a racial critique can lead nowhere except to demands for black participation in decision-making around reconstruction. But which black people? What plans? Reconstruction on what terms? I've seen too many black- and Latino-led municipal governments and housing authorities fuel real estate speculation with tax giveaways and zoning variances, rationalizing massive displacement of poor and other working-class people with sleight-of-hand about mixed-income occupancy and appeals to the sanctity of market forces.
The only hope we have for turning back the tide of this thuggish Administration's commitment to destroy every bit of social protection that's been won in the past century lies in finding ways to build a broad movement of the vast majority of us who are not part of the investor class. We have to be clear that what happened in New Orleans is an extreme and criminally tragic coming home to roost of the con that cutting public spending makes for a better society. It is a shocking foretaste of a future that many more of us will experience less dramatically, often quietly as individuals, as we lose pensions, union protection, access to healthcare and public education, Social Security, bankruptcy and tort protection, and as we are called upon to feed an endless war machine.
Not only is legislation increasingly skewed to benefit the richest interests, but Congress itself has been changed. The head of a public policy strategy group told me, "It's not about governing anymore. The Congress is now a transactional institution. They don't take risks. So when a great moral issue comes up— like war—they can't deal with it." The theory that ours is a system of one-person-one-vote, or even that it's a representative democracy, is challenged by the reality of power and who really wields it. Barney Frank argues that "the political system was supposed to overcome the financial advantage of the capitalists, but as money becomes more and more influential, it doesn't work that way."
I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.
A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday.
The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was expected to identify the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa.
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Pentagon officials said this month they had found three more people who recall an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Two military officers, Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, have come forward to support Weldon's claims.
After a wrenching debate that reopened 37-year-old wounds, Chicago on Wednesday became the nation's largest city to demand an "orderly and rapid withdrawal" of U.S. troops from Iraq.
Michael Brown, the embattled head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, approved payments in excess of $31 million in taxpayer money to thousands of Florida residents who were unaffected by Hurricane Frances and three other hurricanes last year in an effort to help President Bush win a majority of votes in that state during his reelection campaign, according to published reports.
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The South Florida Sun-Sentinel uncovered emails from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush that confirmed those allegations and directly implicated Brown as playing politics at the expense of hurricane victims.
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But the most interesting charge against Brown is that he helped speed up payments in Florida and purposely bypassed FEMA's lengthy reviews process for distributing funds in order to help Bush secure votes in the state during last year's presidential election.
At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.
The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Hundreds of Katrina evacuees who fled to Tallahassee seeking refuge from the storm have been politely told by their hotels and motels to leave this weekend to make room for a football game: FSU vs. Miami.
Hotel space is traditionally scarce any time the Florida State Seminoles take on the University of Miami Hurricanes, one of the choicest tickets on the college football schedule.
But with hotels packed with families from Louisiana and Mississippi, and room space booked for Monday's game for months, hotel operators say they are trying to accommodate the evacuees but have no choice but to nudge them out.
''We have to let them know what's going on in town and they're going to have to leave,'' said Angie Rayman, manager at the Howard Johnson. ``Many of them are trying to get closer to home anyway.''
The evacuation of patients from Charity Hospital was halted Thursday after the facility came under sniper fire twice.
A physician at the hospital said that despite the incidents staff members and patients were eager to get out after three days with no water and electricity and sparse food rations.
That official told me they were able to take a couple of people out. One woman so desperate that she actually handed up her 2 month old baby and said take my child. I can't get on this bus, but you've got to try to save this child. She didn't even know the woman's name.
Just moments ago at the Ferragamo on 5th Avenue, Condoleeza Rice was seen spending several thousands of dollars on some nice, new shoes (we’ve confirmed this, so her new heels will surely get coverage from the WaPo’s Robin Givhan). A fellow shopper, unable to fathom the absurdity of Rice’s timing, went up to the Secretary and reportedly shouted, “How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!” Never one to have her fashion choices questioned, Rice had security PHYSICALLY REMOVE the woman.
President Bush will cut short his vacation to return to Washington on Wednesday, two days earlier than planned, to help monitor federal efforts to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina, the White House said Tuesday.
"We have got a lot of work to do," Bush said, referring to the damage wrought by the hurricane along Gulf Coast areas.
The president had been scheduled to return to the nation's capital on Friday, after spending more than four weeks operating from his ranch in Central Texas. But after receiving a briefing early Tuesday on the devastation Katrina unleashed, the president decided that he needed to be in Washington to personally oversee the federal effort, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
The insurgency is on the rise in our area, with a most impressive coordinated assault on one of my sister FOBs (St. Joe) under their belt. ...
What the fuck has my chain of command been doing? We were winning somewhat when I left. And now we're being pinned down in our own fucking homes? Insurgents are pushing locals out of their homes and taking over my area at will? What kind of fucktarded plan have we been half-assedly executing? Obviously the kind that neglects sound contact with locals. Obviously the kind that gives further distance to unbridged gaps between soldiers and locals. Obviously the kind that has shown enough weakness when confronted by the insurgency that it has been encouraged to grow.
Back home (the USA kind) I have no home, no job, and my commander in chief is on vacation (he's about 20 days behind Ronald Reagan right now in the race to become the most vacationing president ever. Hey W! we all got our fingers crossed! Here's to you and two more years of presidency...er vacationing!). Luckily pretty much everything that is important to me can fit into the back of a truck. Luckily I just paid off one of those.
In their fear to build relationships and get out of their hiding holes the FOBbits above me have fucked my friends and I.
We've just completed the first 1/4 of our tour. we've sent 4 of 24 members of this platoon home with injuries.
Thankfully we're not like another who has sent 8 home in body bags...but we got 9 months to go.
Stay true lambs,
REV
Roads were shut down Wednesday and residents living in nearby apartments between Dooley and Ruth Wall Roads were warned not to look out of their windows Wednesday. School busses from Grapevine-Colleyville ISD formed a perimeter around the site where President George W. Bush was scheduled to land. No one was going to get a glance of the president on his way to the Galylord Texan Resort and Convention Center.
Here's the thing about Ohio. Until you really look at it, you won't understand its significance, which is this: the techniques used in this particular theft have the capacity to alter elections not by dozens or hundreds or even thousands of votes, but by tens of thousands.
Obviously people who have followed this story before know the basic facts already, but for those who ignored Ohio until now, here's a very brief greatest hits of Ohio irregularities:
* As was the case in Florida, the secretary of state (Kenneth Blackwell, in Ohio), who is in charge of elections, was also the co-chair of the state's Bush-Cheney campaign.
* In a technique reminiscent of the semantic gymnastics of pre-Civil Rights Act election officials, Blackwell replaced the word "jurisdiction" with "precinct" in an electoral directive that would ultimately result in perhaps tens of thousands of provisional ballots--votes cast mainly by low-income residents--being disallowed.
* Blackwell initially rejected thousands of voter registrations because they were printed on paper that was, according to him, the wrong weight.
* In conservative, Bush-friendly Miami County, voter turnout was an Uzbekistan-esque 98.55 percent.
* In Warren county, election officials locked down the administration building and prevented reporters from observing the ballot counting, citing a "terrorist threat" (described as being a "10" on a scale of 1 to 10) that had been reported to them by the FBI. The FBI made no such report. Recounts conducted during this lockdown resulted in increased votes for Bush.
* In Franklin County, 4,258 votes were cast for Bush in a precinct where there were only 800 registered voters.
Do you ever feel like you don't recognize your country anymore? Maybe the moment came for you when five Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court handed a presidential election to one of their own. Maybe it came when the president took America to war based on pretenses that turned out to be false. Maybe it came when you saw those photographs from Abu Ghraib, or when you learned that the man who helped orchestrate America's torture policies would become its attorney general. Maybe all of those things built up in your mind until your idea of America started to seem a long way off from the reality around you.
Although Qassim and al-Hakim were cleared in March, the United States didn't bother to share that fact with anyone outside Guantánamo. And having been denied contact with their lawyers or their family members, the men had no way to spread the word themselves. So for four more months, they sat in Guantánamo, cleared but not freed.
The U.S. says it can't send the men back to China because it fears they'll be persecuted there, and it hasn't found any other country that is willing to take them. Why not release them into the civilian population at Guantánamo until something better can be arranged? Can't do that, either, the government says. "They have been detained in here with some very bad people, under some very bad influences," Guantánamo spokesman and Army Maj. Jeff Weir tells the Globe.
Seeing Robertson in that commercial with Bono - and Bono's hair - is a little like listening to Paul Anka's new recording of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." At first, it's jarring to hear the guy who wrote "Puppy Love" for Donny Osmond sing Kurt Cobain's lyrics: "a mosquito, my libido." But listen hard and you can hear what Anka hears. He doesn't hear the ranting of weirdos. He hears the poetry, the architecture of a justifiably standard song like "Autumn in New York," like "Fly Me to the Moon."
My soft spot for strange bedfellows aside, I am a capital-D Democrat who still believes in the value of partisan politics. And I hold onto that belief despite the fact that I belong to a party whose only true talent is writing exceedingly eloquent concession speeches.
Durbin's remarks were not aimed, not even implicitly, at Holocaust victims or at your average soldier on patrol in Baghdad. He did want to say both directly and indirectly that all people under U.S. detention, no matter what we happen to think about their guilt or innocence, should not be subjected to certain kinds of treatment. But by construing his remarks as innuendo, Durbin's opponents were able to sidestep that discussion.
Ironically, one reason why Washington can persuade the outside world that its venture in Iraq is finally coming right is that it is too dangerous for reporters to travel outside Baghdad or stray far from their hotels in the capital.OK, note to American reporters: if it's too dangerous to leave your hotel, then the situation is getting worse not better.
Most violent incidents in Iraq go unreported...Last year US soldiers told the IoS that they do not tell their superiors about attacks on them unless they suffer casualties. This avoids bureaucratic hassle and "our generals want to hear about the number of attacks going down not up". This makes the official Pentagon claim that the number of insurgent attacks is down from 140 a day in January to 40 a day this month dubious.Boy, does that tactic sound familiar.
The White House finds its military commitment in Iraq politically damaging at home. The easiest way to bring the troops home is, as in Vietnam, to declare a victory and full confidence in US-trained Iraqi forces to win the war. These soldiers and police supposedly number 152,000, but it is not clear who. The figure may include the 14,000 blue-uniformed Iraqi police in Nineveh province, the capital of which is Mosul, with a population of 2.7 million. But Khasro Goran, the deputy governor and Kurdistan Democratic Party leader in Mosul, told the IoS that the police had helped insurgents assassinate the previous governor.
Mr Goran said that when guerrillas captured almost all of Mosul on 11 November last year, the police had collaborated, abandoning 30 police stations without a fight. "They didn't fire on terrorists because they were terrorists themselves," he said. Some $40m-worth of arms and equipment was captured by the insurgents.
It is a measure of how far the reality of the war in Iraq now differs from the rosy picture presented by the media that the fall of Mosul to the insurgents went almost unreported abroad because most journalists were covering the assault by the US marines on Fallujah.
At least 16 people were killed when an American military helicopter crashed in bad weather near the town of Ghazni, south of the capital Kabul, an American military spokeswoman said.
The American spokeswoman, Cindy Moore, said that 18 people were listed as having been aboard the helicopter. It was not known, however, whether the two people unaccounted for had actually boarded the aircraft.
Nor had the nationalities of all the victims been determined, she said.
...the conversation has been conducted almost exclusively among men. It's like that recent God panel on Meet the Press that consisted of five men theologizing, with Jon Meacham of Newsweek mewing the most awful pious twaddle, at one point using Bush and Dante in the same sentence with a straight face.
An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq.
According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq's alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a spy described as 'crazy' by his intelligence handlers and a 'congenital liar' by his friends.
The defector, given the code-name Curveball by the CIA, has emerged as the central figure in the corruption of US intelligence estimates on Iraq. Despite considerable doubts over Curveball's credibility, his claims were included in the administration's case for war without caveat.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich filed an emergency rule Friday requiring pharmacies that sell contraceptives to fill prescriptions for birth control quickly, following recent incidents in which a Chicago pharmacist refused to fill orders for contraceptives because of moral opposition.
"Our regulation says that if a woman goes to a pharmacy with a prescription for birth control, the pharmacy or the pharmacist is not allowed to discriminate or to choose who he sells it to or who he doesn't sell it to," Blagojevich said. "The pharmacy will be expected to accept that prescription and fill it ... No delays. No hassles. No lectures."
''There are pharmacists who will only give birth control pills to a woman if she's married. There are pharmacists who mistakenly believe contraception is a form of abortion and refuse to prescribe it to anyone," said Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, which tracks reproductive issues. ''There are even cases of pharmacists holding prescriptions hostage, where they won't even transfer it to another pharmacy when time is of the essence."
After reading the article you will notice that no mention is made of pharmacists declining to sell condoms, which are disposable gulags for the pre-Fetus-Americans. And ribbed condoms? Forget it, Sparky. Sex is for babies, not for pleasure. Well, her pleasure anyway.
If female pharmacists suddenly started refusing to dispense Viagra or Cialis to men, Congress would reconvene in the middle of the night and George Bush would make another midnight run from Crawford to sign the Tentpole Act of 2005 (also known as Bob Dole's Law).
"From all over the world we are getting letters of condolence, the Red Cross has come, but the so-called Great White Father in Washington hasn't said or done a thing," said Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder and national director of the American Indian Movement here. "When people's children are murdered and others are in the hospital hanging on to life, he should be the first one to offer his condolences. . . . If this was a white community, I don't think he'd have any problem doing that."
Via A Tiny Revolution, a look at the Rockwellian childhood of Jerry Falwell, from his autobiography:There were times that Dad’s pranks bordered on cruelty. One of his oil-company workers, a one-legged man he nicknamed “Crip” Smith, complained about everything. Dad and Crip’s co-workers got tired of the old man’s bellyaching and decided to take revenge. One morning Crip called in sick and Dad volunteered to send by lunch to his grateful but suspicious employee. Dad and his chums caught Crip’s old black tomcat, killed it, skinned it, and cooked it in the kitchen of one of Dad’s little restaurants. They called it squirrel meat and delivered it to Crip on a linen-covered tray. When Crip returned to work the next morning, Dad and his co-conspirators asked him how he liked his meal. They knew he would complain even about a free home-cooked lunch, and when Crip called it “the toughest squirrel meat” he had ever eaten, they were glad to tell him why.
