The following conversation just took place in the Shakes household…
Mr. Shakes: Did you ’ear that Zellweger’s marriage is already oover?
Shakes: Uh huh. Fraud? What’s up with that?
Mr. Shakes: He was proobably gay.
Shakes: Oh! You think?
Mr. Shakes: Too’ally. Doon’t you fink ‘fraud’ soonds like a coode word withoot really saying what it was? It’s better than saying ’e woodn’t fook me.
Shakes: I never even thought of that.
Mr. Shakes: I canny believe you didn’t fink of that one.
Shakes: ‘Gay’ and ‘She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy’ just can’t exist in the same sentence in my brain.
Achy-Breaky Heart
Cheney To Go Under the Knife
Nothing to worry about. Just a little aneurysm. In his knee.
He'll be back to scaring children in no time.
How NOT on the Same Page Are We?
A new political party in Sweden says it will abolish marriage if it gets into power. The Feminist Initiative, which expects more than 20% of the vote in next year's election, claims marriage "is not about love, but about ownership". FI founder Tiina Rosenberg, said: "Instead of marriage we want to promote a co-habitation law that ignores gender and allows more than two people in a partnership." But she said in allowing relationships to involve more than two people, the FI did not want Sweden to fall back into a "patriarchal structure" with one man having a harem of women. "A man who lives with eight women in a patriarchal structure, where the man decides and the women obey is not what we are aiming for," said Rosenberg. And in order to encourage men to vote for them as well, the party's all-female board is also calling for the introduction of a six-hour working day.Denmark:
The Danish government is under attack for paying for its disabled citizens to have sex with prostitutes. The official 'Sex, irrespective of disability' campaign pays sex workers to provide sex once a month for disabled people. The legal guidelines advise: "It could be of great importance that the carer speaks to the prostitute together with the person in their care, to help them express their wishes."In Sweden, a brand new political party will get 20% of the vote and can create a discussion about patriarchy that the entire country understands, even those who don’t agree. In Denmark, they’re so beyond providing basic necessities for the large majority of their population that a debate about granting “the same possibilities as other people” means access to recreational sex; here, it means access to a doctor.
But opposition parties have attacked the regulations, claiming it is an immoral way of spending tax-payers' money. Social-Democrat spokesperson Kristen Brosboel said: "We spend a large proportion of our taxes rescuing women from prostitution. But at the same time we officially encourage carers to help contact with prostitutes."
But Stig Langvad of the country's Disabled Association said the politicians critical of the plan are showing "double standards". He said: "The disabled must have the same possibilities as other people. Politicians can debate whether prostitution should be allowed in general, instead of preventing only the disabled from having access to it."
Meanwhile, we’re still bickering about condoms and dinosaurs.
Kicked When He’s Down
John at AMERICAblog points to a Clarion Ledger article that reports the administration seems to be fishing for alternative targets of blame for the Katrina disaster, and are focusing on environmentalists:
The Clarion-Ledger has obtained a copy of an internal e-mail the U.S. Department of Justice sent out this week to various U.S. attorneys' offices: "Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the (U.S.) Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation."Now, I imagine that an administration putting out feelers like this isn’t at all unusual. I’m sure that when the shit hits the fan and splatters squarely on the president, his handlers look for any possible course of redirection of blame—Republicans and Democrats. But, what I think is quite curious indeed is that we’re hearing about it. Lots of little leaks a-drip-drip-dripping these days.
Cynthia Magnuson, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said Thursday she couldn't comment "because it's an internal e-mail."
Shown a copy of the e-mail, David Bookbinder, senior attorney for Sierra Club, remarked, "Why are they (Bush administration officials) trying to smear us like this?"
The lame duck is getting kicked when he’s down, because everyone knows he doesn’t have a leg to stand on, no less one with which to kick them back, anymore.
Further proof? See Brian Williams:
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.
(Hat tip to Cookie Jill for the B.W. post.)
I really like Brian Williams, and have for years; I think he’s a pretty decent reporter, and he’s got a wicked sense of humor, which you know if you’ve ever seen him on a show like Conan. But I have to call bullshit on his “duty-bound” comment. He’s not bound by anything—including the spell that held the media in deference to the president for five long years. Brian and the rest of the media are free at last, free at last, because everyone has finally noticed that the emperor’s wearing no clothes.What they choose to do with that freedom, of course, remains to be seen, but at the moment, it looks like they’re ready to keep kicking him, as long as he’s down. Which might just ensure that he stays there.
Quote of the Day
John Howard (even though it's actually from yesterday):
Germans to vote with heads, not heartsLOL!!!
Not that I give a shit about Geman politics, but I thought this headline was interesting. So how do we get Americans to vote with their heads instead of their asses?
(By the way, if Schroeder loses and the Christian Democrats win, part of their platform is improving relations with the US. It'll be nice for Britain to have a playpal while busily providing a thin veil of credibility for crackpot US foreign policy initiatives.)
Friday Blogrollin'
Sirotablog. One of those that I just should have added long ago. Cursed by being stuck on my favorites list.
The Talent Show, which is another one of those oversights of which I am embarrassed. Should have been added ages and ages ago.
CapitolBuzz. Buzzin' with sassy info all the time.
The Gypsy's Caravan. Pretty pictures, yummy recipes, and politics. What else do you need?
Byzantium's Shores. For all kinds of good stuff.
Pre$$titues. Focusing on the role of the press in propping up the Bush administration. How can they keep up? (Added under "Media.")
Also:
John Lombard is now at Yes, Hate Is Enough.
And Lab Kat has moved here.
As always:
If I should be reading your blog, let me know in comments. And if you know I am reading your blog, and still haven't put you on the blogroll, don't be shy about reminding me to add you! Or recommend other blogs you like. Always a chance to expand the horizons at Shakes.
President Peepee
Get this: the president’s potty break note to Condi is becoming a popular international news story.
The fact is, according to Reuters -- and this has not been widely reported -- President Bush did indeed take a bathroom break after passing the note to Rice.Good lord. I pity any American tourist in Europe right now who has the misfortune of needing to ask directions to the nearest loo.
This apparently raised some eyebrows around the room, because American representatives (among others) have a reputation for suddenly bolting, though normally for a far different reason than this latest one. Fair or not, the European press has already had a field day with the photo, often centering on the notion that Bush had to ask Rice for permission.
The Times of London, for example, ran no less than three separate articles about it on its Web site, one at the top of its front page. (It's a Murdoch paper.) One headline reads: "Excuse me Condi, can I go to the bathroom?" Another story, believe it or not, opens: "The need to relieve oneself diplomatically has on occasion determined the fate of nations." The third discusses the sordid history of the particulatar [sic] lavatory in question, and contains this passage: "Medical experts said that the 59-year-old President was wise not to wait any longer."
The headline at the BBC news site suggested that Bush had been "caught short" at the U.N. summit. From The Sun: "I fear a leak, Condi." The Irish Examiner headline? "To Pee or Not to Pee, That is the Question." Der Spiegel in Germany translated "a bathroom break" as "eine Toiletten-Pause."
Haben Sie eine Notiz?
Presidenting is Hard Work
So Bush gave his awesome speech last night, and looked super relaxed and confident doing it, too—not a hint of panicked desperation that he’s on the fast track to becoming the most loathed president in American history.
I can’t decide what my favorite line was, but here are a couple of favorites:
I have asked for, and the Congress has provided, more than 60 billion dollars. This is an unprecedented response to an unprecedented crisis, which demonstrates the compassion and resolve of our nation.Call me jaded, but I think Congress signing off on $60 billion is less indicative of compassion or resolve, and more of the enormous scale of the fucking disaster.
To meet this goal, I will listen to good ideas from Congress, state and local officials, and the private sector.Here’s a good idea from the private sector: RESIGN! And take your gaggle of useless cronies with you.
As all of us saw on television, there is also some deep, persistent poverty in this region as well.Seriously—I know that he isn’t literally trying to suggest he learned about the poverty in New Orleans for the first time when he saw it on television, but since a whole hell of a lot of people think that’s probably pretty damn close to the truth, his speechwriters should have reworked that one. Unless they’re sick of him steering the country straight down the turd tunnel, too, and figure maybe they ought to let him tell he truth about his detached ignorance for a change, heh.
At the end of the speech, the president lugged his tired ass back up the steps of Air Force One and returned to Washington.
President Flopsweat
I’m not altogether sure he feels that speech went as well as he’d hoped.
Read The Heretik for a really excellent take on the speech, too.
Be Nice to the Ladies and Increase Your Life Expectancy!
Sounds like a shady ad for a miracle hair growth product, but it’s actually true. A study done by British researchers at the University of Liverpool, and published in the current issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, has found that patriarchy may be responsible for the lower life expectancy of men. Using the pervasiveness of violence against women as a indicator of patriarchal control (and controlling for socioeconomic factors), the researchers analyzed rates of female murders and male death rates (natural and otherwise) in 51 countries, and discovered that women lived longer than men in all 51 countries, but the higher the incidence of violence against women, the shorter the male life expectancies. (As expected, a greater prevalence of violence against women also correlated with higher male death rates from non-natural causes.) The data “suggest that oppression and exploitation harm the oppressors as well as those they oppress," and that the shorter life expectancy among men is "a preventable social condition, which can potentially be tackled through global social policy."
So there you have it. Not only does feminism save women’s lives; it can also extend men’s lives.
Read 'Em and Weep
Think Progress has a list of GOP talking points on Bush’s Katrina speech tonight, which were distributed in advance to right-wing pundits. Looks like it's going to be a substance-free evening. If you're hungry for rhetoric, though, belly up to the buffet and tie on your bib, because it's all-you-can-eat, baby.
(Hat tip RJ.)
The Golden Age
Shaker Deborah, Deliverer of Delicious Things, just forwarded me this article, which is from a 1955 issue of Housekeeping Monthly. (Click on the picture to enlarge.) The name of the rag alone is priceless, no? Deborah says, "Just think: most of those old white guys running the House and the Senate grew up believing this shit. Come to think of it, this article is as scary as it is funny." So true. I mean, as much as women in the real world ever played this kind of role, it would have been in the most conservative homes. Not just Republican homes, either; my grandmother was an old-school Republican, born and raised in NYC, but she was a working mother and a sophisticated woman and didn't take any shit. These were the moms of the modern-day wingnuts; it's no wonder they want to go back to "the good old days" when women locked themselves in self-imposed servitude to please their men.
More Shit I Couldn’t Make Up
Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government and includes the direct involvement of Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development.Yep. That makes perfect sense.
I Couldn’t Make This Shit Up
There’s a nasty, nasty Bush-lovin’ woman who works next door to me, and I often see her on smoke breaks. She is an inveterate racist, the most virulently outspoken person about hating people of other colors that I have ever had the misfortune of meeting. Just now, she was telling me about how someone at a local restaurant got her lunch order wrong, and she said (I kid you not): “She was of a different color than we are, if you know what I mean.”
I said, “Uh, people of all colors make mistakes.”
She sniffed and said, “She was an import from Louisiana,” and then launched into a tirade about how “clueless and screwed up those people” from New Orleans are, how they were useless before the hurricane and they're useless now, spewing out her vitriol with such enmity that I was left feeling as though I’d been singed with a blowtorch.
I said, very calmly, “You know, I think what those people have gone through is a tragedy of proportions we can’t begin to contemplate.”
She kind of hesitated, then stammered, “I told my husband we ought to take in one of those families.”
I wanted to tell her, “I’m sure they’re better off without help from the likes of you, you dour bitch,” but instead I just walked away. Some people just aren’t worth my fucking time.
Dangerously Distracted
All kidding aside about President Antsy-Pants’ need for the toilet, Ezra registers a very real concern about Bush’s apparent tendency to be easily and dangerously distracted once something gets too wonky or too difficult. Ez calls it the “merging of his ADD and Great Man of History pretensions,” and I think that’s a spot-on description of what causes Bush to so frequently disengage. It’s either plain old boring, a bit (or a lot) too complicated, or doesn’t offer the requisite level of potential glory-mining that will help define that beauteous legacy he’s determined to have. Says Ez:
What worries me is that he's already extracted his Manichean satisfaction from [the Iraq] confrontation and, now bored by its inexorable descent into sectarian division, is willing to leave the Iraq cliffhanger floating and move onto the next cosmic clash. Little could be more dangerous. One of the requirements for holding the modern American presidency should be the possession of a serious attention span. If you want to engage in the sort of global remodeling that Bush does, it needs to be near inhuman -- they should be able to synthesize Ritalin from your nail clippings. That George seems more interested in knocking down the blocks rather than slowly, carefully, putting them back together is quite scary. That he seems ready to play Godzilla on another set is downright terrifying.Not only does he seem ready, but it also seems like they’re using the same damn script (hat tip Blue Meme). The WaPo reports that members of the administration are making the rounds with an hour-long slide show called “A History of Concealment and Deception,” designed to convince foreign diplomats that Iran’s nuclear program will be able to produce functional nukes quite soon (despite evidence to the contrary). Luckily, not everyone’s being taken in by it, and one hopes that the justifiable hesitancy to unquestioningly embrace Bush administration alarmism over WMDs will prevent a repeat of the debacle in which we’re still mired in Iraq. (Let’s leave aside for a moment that we’re in real danger of becoming The Country Who Cried Wolf, which is the topic for a whole other post.) That they are even contemplating such a course of action is, quite evidently, insane, but talk about method in the madness—Bush is bored, his approval is tanking, and the only thing he and his handlers know how to do to combat bad polling is orchestrate some cockamamie grand gesture, because the only thing they can do competently is politics.
It is, quite literally, the recipe for a disaster.
Tonight, Bush is slated to give an address from New Orleans. No doubt it will be filled with his usual rambling nonsense and empty, subtly self-congratulatory platitudes, but I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if, beyond detailing the grand (old) plan to rebuild NOLA as Neo Orleans (as it has been cleverly dubbed by The Green Knight), he starts to lay the groundwork for the Next Big Thing. After being forced to squirm his way through a half-assed acceptance of responsibility for Katrina, and feeling unloved by the peeps so soon after being given his spectacular mandate, Bush is just a petulant bundle of pent-up frustration, and he’s gonna need some blocks to knock down pretty soon to soothe the beast within.
My Kinda Town
CHICAGO (September 15, 2005) -The Chicago City Council Wednesday passed a resolution demanding the removal of US troops from Iraq. Passing by a Council vote of 29 to 9, with 12 abstaining or not voting, the resolution urges 'the United States government to immediately commence an orderly and rapid withdrawal' from Iraq. In addition to the death and suffering of the war, the resolution stressed that 'Chicago residents' share of monies appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now exceeds $2.1 billion.'
Chicago is now the largest U.S city to take this stand. The only other major US city to pass a similar resolution is San Francisco. The Evanston, IL City Council voted against the war yesterday, and Gary, IN did so last month.
We also have the best hotdogs and pizza in the freakin' world.
I'll say it again... I love my city.
(My kinda people too... people who... cross-post at you...)
Question of the Day
What do you think of this?
Editor and Publisher details "a secret arrangement formed more than 10 years ago" where the New York Times and Washington Post "send each other copies of their next day's front pages every night."I happen to think it stinks, but I’m guessing that doesn’t really surprise anyone around here.
"When the swap first began in the mid-'90s, each paper would fax copies of its Page One layout," according to Post editor Len Downie, "adding that he does not remember which paper proposed the idea first. In recent years, they have moved to electronic transmissions of the front pages, usually sent between 10:30 and 11 p.m."
A Town Called GOPE
At least, that’s what they might as well rename New Orleans, since it’s apparently going to little more than a Grand Old Party Experiment. The Wall Street Journal (subscription only; no link available—Sept. 15 edition, page B1) reports:
Congressional Republicans, backed by the White House, say they are using relief measures for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf coast to achieve a broad range of conservative economic and social policies, both in the storm zone and beyond.Waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region?! So, basically, Halliburton (you know, just as a random example, ahem) gets a no-bid reconstruction contract, doesn’t have to pay a prevailing wage, and can hire whomever they bloody well please without being constrained by affirmative-action requirements. Mm-hmm. All the rightwingers who howl about illegal immigration from Mexico are intractably stupid if they don’t see that this is exactly the kind of shit designed to allow corporate friends of the administration to exploit cheap labor.
Some new measures are already taking shape. In the past week, the Bush administration has suspended some union-friendly rules that require federal contractors pay prevailing wages, moved to ease tariffs on Canadian lumber, and allowed more foreign sugar imports to calm rising sugar prices. Just yesterday, it waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region.
Now, Republicans are working on legislation that would limit victims' right to sue, offer vouchers for displaced school children, lift some environment restrictions on new refineries and create tax-advantaged enterprise zones to maximize private-sector participation in recovery and reconstruction. Yesterday, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would offer sweeping protection against lawsuits to any person or organization that helps Katrina victims without compensation.The list of good ideas for the Grand Old Party Experiment just goes on and on and on, doesn’t it?
"The desire to bring conservative, free-market ideas to the Gulf Coast is white hot," says Rep. Mike Pence, the Indiana Republican who leads the Republican Study Group, an influential caucus of conservative House members. "We want to turn the Gulf Coast into a magnet for free enterprise. The last thing we want is a federal city where New Orleans once was."I don’t even know what the hell “a federal city” is even supposed to mean, although it certainly appears to mean “a city where federal labor laws are actually enforced, thereby prohibiting corporate exploitation from running rampant.” What I do know for certain is that Mike Pence is a knob-end, just like every other Republican Representative from the State of Indiana.
Many of the ideas under consideration have been pushed by the 40-member study group, which is circulating a list of "free-market solutions," including proposals to eliminate regulatory barriers to awarding federal funds to religious groups housing hurricane victims, waiving the estate tax for deaths in the storm-affected states; and making the entire region a "flat-tax free-enterprise zone."Edwin fucking Meese?! Is there a single stinking criminal from the Reagan administration that hasn’t found his way back into favor and aristocratic privilege under the reign of President Sideshow? Fucking hell. Meese ought to be in a motherloving dungeon, but of course Daddy Bush pardoned him (and all the other Iran-Contra scoundrels) right before he ended his pathetic single-term, do-nothing, limp-dicked presidency. (Oh, except for that little Persian adventure, of course.) Edwin Meese—pfft! These people are unbloodybelievable.
Members of the group met in a closed session Tuesday night at the conservative Heritage Foundation headquarters here to map strategy. Edwin Meese, the former Reagan administration attorney general, has been actively involved.
Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R., Kan.) said that the plans under development "are all part of a philosophy of lowering costs for doing business." He said southern Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama offer a "microcosm" where new ideas can be applied to speed the rebuilding.Kind of like how costs were lower for businesses back when they didn’t have to deal with pesky shit like child labor laws, minimum wage requirements, worker safety regulations, offering healthcare, and all that other junk for which liberals keep fighting, damn them. If only we could go back to the glory days of the Gilded Age, then deserving men like Tiahrt wouldn’t have to hustle for penny-ante kickbacks in Congress, but could get filthy flippin’ rich on the backs of the poor and desperate, just like capitalism always intended.
Here’s the best part in the whole article:
In response, Democrats are pressing for other proposals that suit their ideology. Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois has suggested creating a national emergency airlift program so that U.S. airlines can help evacuate Americans from areas before a natural disaster strike. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Louisiana Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu unveiled a plan that would, among other things, preserve victims' Medicaid health coverage, provide $2,500 education grants to displaced students and give victims a 180-day extension on outstanding loan payments.“Proposals that suit their ideology” has to be the nastiest way of saying, “proposals that help rather than exploit (current and future) victims.” Yeah, technically it’s correct that these proposals suit a liberal ideology of having a social conscience and providing a safety net for the most vulnerable among us, but to present the Democratic proposals as if they’re somehow equally as avaricious as the GOP’s agenda for the disaster region is incredibly disingenuous. Anyway, good on the Dems for trying to do right by the survivors of Katrina.
FYI, in a separate article (Sept. 14 edition, page B1), the WSJ reports that U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is expected to ask Congress soon for authority to waive the McKinney-Vento Act, a federal law banning educational segregation of homeless children, so that evacuees can be educated right in their shelters, rather than integrated into public schooling in the areas to which they were relocated. No shame. No shame at all. Brazen vultures.
The King of Obvious Body Language
Someone's losing enthusiasm for his job. Especially now that it's, you know, work.
I hate my job I hate my job I hate my job...
It always struck me how shockingly easy it is to read Bush's real thoughts and intentions by his body language. He simply has no ability to project any countenance other than "cool, tough, and in control." When the situation calls for any other demeanor... compassion, dignity, basic interest... his real thoughts and feelings couldn't be more obvious than if they were laid out in easy-to-read text on a jumbotron screen right behind him. For all the training they've done on Georgie, I'm surprised they haven't spent more time on that particular bad habit.
Of course, with stories like these, I'm sure it's difficult to look happy-go-lucky. (Bolds mine.)
3 Crises Define Bush Presidency
Well, I would argue that every moment of Bush's presidency has been a crisis... for this country, at least, but that's beside the point.
WASHINGTON - It's August in Crawford, Texas, and President Bush is on vacation. His poll ratings are slumping. He hears warnings of a looming crisis that will soon change the course of his presidency.
Is this August 2001? Or August 2005?
The answer is both. Historians will ultimately judge Bush's presidency based on his leadership through two tragedies — the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and Hurricane Katrina, plus a conflict of his own design: The war in Iraq.
Woah. A conflict of his own design. Am I crazy, or did this story just admit, in black and white, that every justification for this war was complete and utter bullshit that Georgie and his team managed to put through a Play-Doh fun factory and sell to the public? That it's all been manufactured out of thin air? That this war, and the horrible crisis that has mushroomed after "Mission Accomplished" is completely the fault of one George W. Bush?
Catch me, I'm swooning.
Critics now accuse Bush of not making terrorism a priority before Sept. 11. Supporters say he could not have prevented the attacks.
Either way, Bush's initial response to the strikes was shaky, capped by a grim-faced address to the nation that night. He quickly gained his footing and won favor with Americans when he stood atop a charred fire truck in New York and vowed vengeance.
That bullhorn-waving event occurred four years ago Wednesday.
Bush could use a defining moment like that now. Katrina caught him flatflooted in Texas, though forecasters saw it coming for days. He seemed slow at the levers of power and took more than two weeks to acknowledge his own responsibility for the government's sluggish response.
Wow. Am I nuts, or did that story just point out that Bush's "Defining Moment" was all an act? That this one little flagwaving bullhorn speech is the only moment in the Bush presidency that it appears anyone can point to with pride? And now even the fawning press appears to be admitting that they were, to quote Phillip J. Fry, "Words. Nothing but sweet sweet words that melt into bitter wax in my ears!"
I do declare, I feel faint. Mercy me, I have the vapors. Fetch me the smelling salts.
This could be Bush's legacy. According to various independent polls:
_Two-thirds of the public think he could have done more to help Katrina's victims. More than half say he deserves blame for the slow response.
_Fewer than half say Bush has strong leadership qualities, down from 63 percent in October 2004.
_More than half say they don't trust Bush's judgment in a crisis.
And then there's Iraq.
Owie. Truth hurts, donut? No wonder he's looking all pissy.
Bush's challenge is to convince Americans that the war on terror, the war in Iraq and the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast can be tackled together. "I can do more than one thing at one time," he said defensively Tuesday.
His case is tougher now that growing numbers of people are wondering whether he can lead the nation in crisis. The last time that was an issue was August 2001.
I think we all know the answer. It's all just another baseball team or oil company to him.
(What's new, Cross-Post? Woah-oah-oah..)
Great Day for Accountability
Yesterday, the GOP not only killed a bid for a 9/11-style independent, bipartisan commission to investigate what went wrong with the government’s response to Katrina, but also blocked Democrat-backed resolutions that would have compelled Bush & Co. to turn over records relating to the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
This is why I think the whole “give ’em enough rope to hang themselves” passivity is a bad idea. It just doesn’t work, because the Dems don’t have enough power and the GOP refuses to hang anyone who’s got an R after his or her name, no matter how corrupt or dangerous. Does the average voter even know that the GOP pulled this shit? If they do, will they remember come midterm elections? I don’t know if there’s even enough rope in the world to hang these criminals.
In the nation’s capitol today, the GOP introduced and quickly passed legislation requiring a steep luxury tax on rope, which co-sponsor of the bill Senator Bill Frist hailed as a bipartisan victory, having garnered the support of Demoratic Senators Joe Lieberman and Joe Biden.Okay, that’s not really in a story anywhere. It just seems like it should be.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi immediately issued a statement in response to the legislation. “Gee, that’s not very nice,” it said. Her Sentate counterpart, Harry Reid, noted that giving the GOP additional rope would now be much more difficult for the Democrats, and they would proceed judiciously.
DNC Chairman Howard Dean also weighed in, going red-faced as he lambasted Congressional Democrats as “spineless twits who need to buy some [fudging] balls.” Senators John Kerry, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton immediately condemned Dean’s comments, noting that he doesn’t speak for the entirety of the party, “and should probably be shot,” according to Clinton.
Senator Edward Kennedy was quoted as saying, “I need a damn drink.”
Please, can we start playing hardball now?
Potty Time for the Pres
OMG. I thought this was a joke, some kind of Photoshopped thing, at first, but it’s not. It’s a real photo. I’ve included Reuters’ caption that accompanied the photo.
U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York September 14, 2005. World leaders are exploring ways to revitalize the United Nations at a summit on Wednesday but their blueprint falls short of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's vision of freedom from want, persecution and war. REUTERS/Rick Wilking
Is it just me, or does this seem wildly weird? First of all, "exploring ways to revitalize the United Nations" seems like kind of an important topic that warrants his full attention, especially considering that he justified sending Mr. Moustache over there sans confirmation hearing because he and his big crazy temper were going to sort out the UN. Secondly, did he need to write Mommy a note about it, or could he have just waited until a break or excused himself, if needed? Hell, I’ve spent whole days in management meetings or conferences where there wasn’t always a convenient time to “go,” but no one was scribbling notes about it to each other; if you were so desperate that you couldn’t pay attention, you just went and did your business. Jeezy Creezy. Grow up.
