Rehnquist may soon join O’Connor,
Doubling fears which rested upon her
Decision to quit;
Who will Bush see fit
To be called by the country Your Honor?
Friday Limerick
Who's that old lady yelling about Freepers?
Why, it's Pam Spaulding, who declares herself officially ancient today. And she's right, too--what a relic!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PAM!!!
We loves ya big time over here in Shakesville.
Lautenburg versus Halliburton
It’s no contest, of course. Everyone loses against Halliburton.
But Senator Frank Lautenberg gave a valiant effort nonetheless, responding to the news that Halliburton has been given five billion dollars of additional work in Iraq, on top of the nine billion dollars they’ve already made, with the following bit of snark:
At this point, why don't we just hand Halliburton the keys to the U.S. Treasury and tell them to turn off the lights when they are done?I guess since no one seems to be able to stop Bush & Co. from transferring every last American dollar into one account or another that will serve Cheney well in his retirement, the only thing left to do is make disdainful jokes.
I don’t mean to sound like I’m picking on Senator Lautenburg (even though I guess I am, a little); I really like Senator Lautenburg. It’s just kind of disappointing that this is what it’s come to—snide comments from a helpless opposition—especially when I remember back before the Iraq War, a time when suggesting that Cheney and Halliburton would be getting filthy rich off this deal would elicit charges of being a crackpot conspiracy theorist. And it wasn’t just the Republicans who lobbed those charges. As I recall, the Dems were fairly determined to separate themselves from the traitorous anti-war set who dared suggest there might be ulterior motives for this war in the first place.
People who said the exact same thing Senator Lautenburg is quoted as saying above, but said it three years ago, were called lunatic fringe. Funny how things change, isn’t it?
I wanna go home! I miss me wife and me oxygen!
Yes, Yes, we all miss our loved ones and gases.
Hello childroon-
I'm back from NYC; the show went quite well, and now we're waiting to see if the UCB wants to keep us as a regular act. If not, que sera sera, we've been doing it on our own for three years now.
I'm REALLY out of the loop; I didn't hear about the London tragedy until much later yesterday. I've got a lot of catching up to do, so please excuse the light blogging until I can figure out what's been going on the past few days. I do, however, have a little article about your friend and mine, Karl Rove. Apologies if you've seen this already.
Anyway, it's good to be back, and thanks for still checking in (over at Spudville) during my absence!
Shakes, I'm sorry I left so many dirty dishes in the sink when I left. I'll make it up to you.
(Cross-post is not my lover... it's just a post that claims that I am the one...)
Rehnquist to Retire Today?
So goes the rumor.
My instinct on this is that two retiring justices isn’t really any worse than one, considering the balance of the court. But my instincts tend to be based on logic, which the Bush administration continually defies, so who the hell knows?
I’m Angry
And here’s why…
I’m angry because on September 11, 2001, terrorists struck on US soil. These terrorists were part of a group called al-Qaida, which is led by a man named Osama bin Laden. Nearly four years later, and after a war in Afghanistan to remove the regime which supported him, bin Laden remains on the loose.
I’m angry because that corrupt Afghani regime, the Taliban, is regaining power, opium production in Afghanistan is skyrocketing, women are still being killed for trying to assert a modicum of independence, and we have all but abandoned the country to further ruin.
I’m angry because we shifted our focus away from Afghanistan and al-Qaida to a vague “war on terror,” which diluted our emphasis on the perpetrators of a great American tragedy and made it eminently easy to position ourselves as the consummate victims, thereby indefinitely delaying any examination of our own role in the global community, other than the self-proclaimed purveyors of freedom and liberty at the end of a gun.
I’m angry because our leaders used Americans’ fear to secure carte blanche to commence a strategy for stabilizing the Middle East that was developed long before 9/11 ever happened, because they denounced dissenters as traitors, because they used national security as a justification for trampling recklessly on our civil liberties, and because it now appears as though the administration deliberately manipulated intelligence to rationalize their case for war.
I’m angry because it looks very likely that the President’s deputy chief of staff and ubiquitous Svengali, Karl Rove, sought vengeance on someone who tried to tell the truth about their machinations by revealing the name of his wife, who was a covert CIA operative, and I’m especially angry that the biggest part of that story, that she was working on weapons proliferation—the very thing that allegedly was of primary concern in selling the war to the American people—has been ignored. That he may have acted unethically or even broken the law is small potatoes compared to how thoroughly he may well have jeopardized good intelligence-gathering on a very real threat to Americans.
I’m angry because four years after 9/11, our borders are still insecure, the upgrading of our Coast Guard has been postponed until the year 2030, thereby leaving our shores insecure, our military and national guard are stretched thin, leaving us vulnerable at home, we still don’t have a comprehensive list of terrorists that can be used to monitor people entering the country by airplane, car, or boat, we still don’t have a satisfactory container check system for containers coming through our ports, we still lack strengthened security around chemical and nuclear energy plants and our water facilities, and our soldiers sent to fight the war on terror aren’t even properly protected in many cases.
I’m angry because when a senator suggests that a description of the mistreatment of prisoners sounds like something that one would expect from a violent, totalitarian regime, he is accused of inflaming hatred against us, or when a magazine prints accounts of mishandling of prisoners’ holy books, they are accused of inflaming hatred against us, but never, ever are the underlying acts condemned with quite the same fervor.
I’m angry because we launched a preemptive strike on Iraq, ostensibly because its dictator, Saddam Hussein, was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. When no such weapons were found, the rationale for war was slowly changed into a humanitarian effort. When it was revealed that we had replaced Saddam’s torture chambers with our own, and pictures of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib were made public for all to see, the rationale was slowly changed into Iraq’s being a front on the war on terror; we were fighting the terrorists there so we wouldn’t have to fight them at home. Today, our closest ally was the victim of a coordinated terrorist attack for which al-Qaida has taken responsibility. What will be the new rationale for this war, now that all others have failed?
And I’m angry because I just don’t know how we’re going to get out of this mess.
Inspiring
Cookie Jill at Skippy:
imagine if you will....
you are mayor of a major american city. you are woken up at 3:30 a.m. by your police chief with news of a terrorist bombing on public transportation in london. what would you do?
antonio villaraigosa gets up and spends the morning riding public transportation and talking with passengers about their lives, troubles and concerns. he, by action, reminds the public that public transportation is not to be feared today, tomorrow or down the road.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonia Villaraigosa
I like that. I like that Mayor Villaraigosa made a positive statement, affirmed that which is best in us all, in such a simple way. I like it a lot, and I want to give him a big hug.
Others’ Thoughts
Agitprop offers a moment of silence for our friends across the pond.
Pandagon’s Jesse Taylor astutely, and sadly, notes:
I hate to say it, but the first thing that crossed my mind was, "I thought we were fighting them in Baghdad so we didn't have to fight them in Britain."…Avedon Carol reports from London and has some interesting thoughts about that now-disproved lie about Iran’s newly-elected president. Related? It’s all related.
I doubt there will be any terrorist attacks in America today, but I just can't stop thinking about the fact that we're fighting a war in Iraq (unless the reason's changed again) to draw terrorist attention there rather than the rest of the world. As much incredible bullshit as that is, it was and is a serious line of thought among war supporters, held so strongly that anyone who rejects it when terrorist attacks happen on their home soil is seen as a quitter and an appeaser rather than a sane individual (see: Spain).
Kathy Flake also reports from London:
UPDATE: We're safe now; Tony Blair is on his way back from Gleneagles, probably with plans to invade another country that has nothing to do with Al Queda.The Fixer at Alternate Brain:
So, we're winning the 'War on Terra', just like we're winning the War on Drugs. That reminds me, I gotta pick up a bag o' cheeb from the Jamaicans today…G.D. Frogsdong:
Another note: Security's real good too, being that all the G8 leaders are in the Kingdom. Way to go, assholes.
Do we all feel safer with Bush in the White House and the Republicans in control of Congress? Anyone think we're really fighting them "there rather than here"?Mannion conjures Shakespeare.
Maha recounts the “wake-up call” theme and wonders to what, exactly, we will wake up to, or if we’ll wake up at all.
Pam waxes realistic:
The bottom line, and folks feel free to disagree with me on this point, is that this incident in London, is worse than 9/11, for these heads of state. Not because of the horrible human toll of that day, but because it bursts the fragile bubble of denial, the fantasy that officials have been trying to create for the sheeple that a major city can be made safe. I suppose you can possibly secure a large office building with enough money, time and personnel, but it's laughable to think complex infrastructure that has to shuttle millions of people about can be protected in any realistic way.Yelladog quotes the inimitable George Galloway.
Telling people to go about their business and be vigilant is useful only as a soothing device, and a lame one to avoid panic and economic disaster. It's ultimately useless against any enemy that is able to move freely in a major transit system. For every suspect that may be caught out of dumb luck, there are hundreds of determined killers that can simply carry a backpack full of explosives and find a way to create physical (and economic) terror on a major scale like this.
Slack LaLane notes:
Al-Qaeda also just claimed responsibility for killing the top Egyptian diplomat in Iraq. Sadly, it's a good day to be an insane jihadist.And Laura Rozen says simply, among other things, “Huge sympathies to our British friends.” Indeed.
Please leave links to what you’re writing, or other things you’ve seen that we should, too, in comments.
Statements
Read Blair’s statement here.
Read Bush’s statement here.
Blair: Here at the summit, the world's leaders are striving to combat world poverty and save and improve human life. The perpetrators of today's attacks are intent on destroying human life.
Bush: The contrast between what we've seen on the TV screens here, what's taken place in London and what's taking place here is incredibly vivid to me. On the one hand, we have people here who are working to alleviate poverty, to help rid the world of the pandemic of AIDS, working on ways to have a clean environment. And on the other hand, you've got people killing innocent people. And the contrast couldn't be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill -- those who have got such evil in their heart that they will take the lives of innocent folks.
Gentlemen, would it be possible to let the sites of this tragedy cool off before you start to exploit it? It’s appallingly inappropriate to treat the occasion of your first official statements as yet another opportunity to reinforce the good vs. evil mantra. Have you no shame?
Meanwhile, the Pope has described the attacks as "anti-Christian," which is spectacularly stupid and unnecessarily inflammatory, considering how non-religious Britain is; as it happens, a recent survey found that even though only 3% of Britain’s population practices Islam, more people attend Friday prayers than go to Sunday church. Statistically speaking, these terrorists were likely to kill or injure a practicing Muslim than a practicing Christian, so let’s tone down the fucking rhetoric that is not only factually inaccurate but plays directly into the hands of the madmen who see this as a bloody holy war. Totally irresponsible.
London Terrorist Attack
Information here.
Posting may be light this morning, as I'm trying to reach people there to make sure they're okay. The mobile system is down; I'm having trouble connecting to landlines, too.
Waiting on emails. Hoping.
UPDATE: The Guardian is blogging it here.
UPDATE 2: Flickr slideshow here.
UPDATE 3: Text of The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe's claim of responsibility here.
UPDATE 4: Three hour panic attack ebbing. My Londoner Andy is alive and well and grumpy as ever. Waiting to hear from a few more people, but none who take any of those lines regularly (unlike Andy, who does).
UPDATE 5: Andy tells me: "I guess the BBC has the most up to date information, although the US media is claiming forty or forty five dead. They're not saying that here as far as I know."
UPDATE 6: Andy says thirty-three now confirmed dead, according to the news reports he's watching.
Scouting for Victims
Well, it’s certainly a good thing the Boy Scouts don’t let in those filthy homosexuals or atheists.
Molestation allegations continue to emerge against Boy Scout officials who worked under the current Grand Teton Council leadership.So they knew he was a pederast, but didn’t think that was quite bad enough to sever relations with him. Yeesh.
[…]
The statement, filed by former Boy Scout Jeff Bird in support of a lawsuit brought by younger Scouts against the Grand Teton Council, alleges that counselor Dennis Empey mutilated animals, showed off his firearms and then raped Bird at the Island Park Scout Camp.
[…]
In May 1991, Empey was arrested in Utah for allegedly molesting children. In those cases, Empey was accused of flashing a gun before sodomizing his victims. He pleaded guilty to three felonies -- two counts of forcible sodomy on a child and one count of sexual abuse of a child.
Empey was sentenced to probation on Oct. 8, 1991, and two years later moved back home to eastern Idaho.
But despite his conviction, Empey was apparently able to continue working for the Scouts.
[…]
When asked why a convicted pedophile was supplying material to the Grand Teton Council, Hansen wrote in a May 13 letter: "In recent years, Dennis Empey donated graphic designs to the council. All materials were sent by either electronic means or mail. He has not been in our office and has not had any volunteer positions."
I don’t want to hear another fucking word about how liberals want to give therapy to terrorists or any more of the insufferably familiar rhetoric of a similar nature from any more conservatives. Elected officials who have ethical challenges so severe they probably technically qualify for Medicaid are protected like sacred cows. Men of the cloth who repeatedly abuse children are encouraged to pray for help—and promptly relocated to another parish where they can repeat their errors. Leading members of a conservative group like the Boy Scouts (and before any male liberal Scouts get up in arms, let me remind you, I’m a female, gay-friendly atheist—it’s a conservative group from my perspective!) are left in their positions, unchecked and not held accountable, given continued access to unwitting potential victims.
The Left is constantly accused of forming a circular firing squad faster than Howard Dean can say trucks with confederate flags; when was the last time such a charge was leveled against the Right? Some may say it’s a failing of the Left that we hold each other accountable so often, but if it’s a choice between that and allowing our members to behave like animals without consequence, I’ll take the former.
Calling for due process is not the equivalent of coddling terrorists. Protecting those in your ranks irrespective of whether they deserve to be protected is, however, dangerously close to condoning the behavior you continue to protect.
Absolutism: Or How I Learned to Stop Thinking and Love Hypocrisy
Mannion is absolutely right (har har):
Right Wingers are in love with their own image of themselves as moral absolutists these days.This is what’s so hard for conservatives to understand: It’s not that liberals don’t know right from wrong; it’s that liberals believe in context, which means that some things are right in one situation and not in another, or right for one person and not another, and we believe that each person should decide that for him- or herself, as long as that decision doesn’t infringe on the rights of someone else. The curious and frustrating thing about this is that, as Mannion astutely points out, conservatives believe this, too, in certain situations (they don’t seek to punish a soldier who kills an enemy combatant in battle with the death penalty or life imprisonment, because they know that killing someone isn’t always murder), or for certain people (President Bush not going to church on Sundays is excusable as long as he cites security concerns, even though the Clintons managed it).
They, and they alone, are grown-up and tough enough to know there's RIGHT and there's WRONG. Liberals, those damn namby pamby, criminal coddling, terrorist-therapy-offering, decadent, dirty movie-making, rap song-singing, drug-taking, blow job-enjoying moral Relativists, don't know right from wrong and don't care that they don't.
Mannion sums it up nicely. The unfortunate thing is that those who are intellectually lazy enough to embrace absolutism don’t give a shit how often it’s pointed out to them that their vision of the world is incomplete at best.
Ernest Lehman, RIP
Screenwriter Ernest Lehman had died. Lehman penned some of the greatest films, including Executive Suite, Sabrina, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Portnoy’s Complaint, The King and I, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and North by Northwest, which has one of my favorite ever exchanges of dialogue in it:
Roger: How does a girl like you get to be a girl like you?
Eve: Lucky, I guess.
Roger: Lucky? More like naughty. You’re the kind of girl who can harass a man to death without half trying. So stop trying.
That happened to be Lehman's favorite bit that he wrote for that film, too.
Easy Rider
President Bush collided with a local police officer and fell during a bike ride on the grounds of the Gleneagles golf resort while attending a meeting of world leaders Wednesday.Okay, seriously. What’s wrong with this guy? He sure has a lot of accidents.
Bush suffered "mild to moderate" scrapes on his hands and arms that required bandages by the White House physician, said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. The accident occurred on asphalt, McClellan said, but Bush was wearing a helmet at the time.
The police officer was taken to a local hospital as a precaution, McClellan said. Police said the officer suffered a "very minor" ankle injury.
It was raining lightly at the time.
[…]
The presidential bike suffered some damage, McClellan said, so Bush rode back to the hotel in a Secret Service vehicle.
The fall did not affect the president's schedule. Dressed in a tuxedo, he attended a dinner hosted by Queen Elizabeth at the annual Group of Eight economic summit. He showed no signs of distress.
Mr. Shakes spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours mountain biking in the Highlands, and in all that time, he took one bad tumble. Bush can’t even pedal around a golf resort without a near-death experience.
Keep him away from the shortbread while he’s there—it’s at least as dangerous as pretzels!
(And by the way...the presidential bike?! Come on.)
W is for Man Woman
You may recall that the pres recently came under fire after a press conference in which he directed only a single question to a female reporter.
Perhaps the problem is that he simply can’t tell the difference:
PRESIDENT BUSH: Reuters man, Toby. Woman -- excuse me. I can see that. (Laughter.) So how long have you been on the presidential beat?Or maybe it’s just that he can’t get it through his head that the “Reuters man” could actually be a woman. The boys’ club just ain’t what it used to be, eh, George?
Q Since February.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes. Well, make yourself less scarce.
“Toby,” by the way, is Tabassum Zakaria (see “additional reporting by” at the end of the story; the exchange above comes from the press conference in Denmark.)
The thing that bothers me about this is Bush’s immediate instinct to blame the reporter herself for his mistake. It’s a subtle thing, but it’s there. The response isn’t that he needs to pay more careful attention, or even a lame joke about aging eyes needing glasses, or an even lamer attempt to blame it on jetlag, or any one of a million possible retorts. Instead, it’s to suggest to Ms. Zakaria that she ought to make herself less scarce.
This man is patently unable to accept responsibility for anything, unwilling even to admit fault for a mistake as ultimately meaningless as this. He is pathetic, and by refusing to take the blame for his own error, passive aggressively turning it around on Ms. Zakaria’s having made herself “scarce,” he is rude and bullying, too. I know it’s a small thing, but it’s representative of something much bigger—a resistance of accountability that permeates his entire presidency.
He isn’t a good man who happens to be a bad president; he’s a bad president because he’s not a good man.
Dems Call for Rove’s Head
Conyers is at it again:
Dear Mr. President:Damn. Read the whole thing—it’s good.
We write in order to urge that you require your Deputy White House Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, to either come forward immediately to explain his role in the Valerie Plame matter or to resign from your Administration.
[…]
Regardless of whether these actions violate the law – including specific laws against the disclosure of classified information as well as broader laws against obstruction of justice, the negligent distribution of defense information, and obligating reporting of press leaks to proper authorities – they seem to reveal a course of conduct designed to threaten and intimidate those who provide information critical of your Administration, such as Ambassador Wilson.
Are there no other Democrats who are as fired up about all this shit as Conyers? I mean, I know some of them are signing their names to letters he’s drafting, but why is he leading the charge seemingly every single time? Come on, Dems. Conyers is doing the right thing here. Get with the fucking program.
Judicial Woes
Check out The Heretik, your source for one-stop-shopping on all the news that's shit to print.
We're so fucked.
Question of the Day II: Underrated Actors Edition
After the brilliant Phillip Seymour Hoffman was brought up twice in the Tom Cruise comments thread, I figured we needed to have a discussion of those actors we all know and love, who just don't get the love they deserve.
A few names come immediately to mind, in addition to Phillip Seymour Hoffman: Illeana Douglas, William H. Macy, Christian Bale (although I suspect that's about to chance, thanks to Batman Begins), Paul Giamatti, Catherine Keener, Parker Posey, Hope Davis, Laura Linney, John C. Reilly, Kevin Corrigan, Elias Koteas, Mary Stuart Masterson...hell, just about anyone in a Coen Brothers or P.T. Anderson film.
Recently, after seeing Batman Begins and Kinsey within a few days of one another, I would also say Liam Neeson has to be on the list, even though I think he's considered A-list. He's just brilliant, and I never think of him when I'm asked who my favorites are...but I should.
Who are some of your favorite underrated actors?
