Dick Cheney's going hunting today.
You're welcome. Now go knock off early, you scamps.
Calling All Late Night Comedy Writers
Random Cat Blogging
I took some video of her pouncing on the vacuum, too, which
is terribly dark, but you can just make out her launched attacks
with one flailing paw and her crazed fuzzy outline with every
hair on her body standing on end. She does this every time we
vacuum. Last night, she tried to unplug it after her attacks failed.
My Dream Job
I want to be Bush's speech writer. Think about it; you just write the same damn thing over and over and over and over and get your pockets stuffed with cash.
Bush is going to be announcing his "Iraq plan" on Wednesday (shorter version: more cannon fodder), and it's going to be the same old crap. You know how I know this? Because the leadup is the same old crap:
White House press secretary Tony Snow said Monday that Bush "understands there is a lot of public anxiety" about the war. On the other hand, he said that Americans "don't want another Sept. 11" type of terrorist attack and that it is wiser to confront terrorists overseas in Iraq and other battlegrounds rather than in the United States.Still conflating Iraq and 9/11, still using fear of terrorists to sell the war, still refusing to listen to "the public," still speaking for all Americans and still using the tired "fight them there so we don't have to fight them here" talking point. Snore. I'll bet they could rerun the same speech from last year and no one would notice.
Snow said he contacted television networks Monday morning to request air time for the president's speech, to be delivered at the White House. He said the administration welcomes a debate about Bush's new policy.Hint: He won't.
"I think it's important to get congressional support," the spokesman said. Yet he would not say whether Bush will seek specific congressional approval for his new strategy.
You've Got (Upsetting) Mail
So, Bush is planning on sending another 20,000 troops into Iraq to try a little lipstick-on-pig fixup. Of course, there's that nagging problem of where the hell he's going to get these thousands of people willing to sacrifice their lives for his sham.
Well, how about the dead?
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Army said Friday it would apologize to the families of about 275 officers killed or wounded in action who were mistakenly sent letters urging them to return to active duty.Now, I'm a little hesitant to simply bash the Army for making a mistake that, on the surface, looks pretty ghoulish. I've worked at many, many jobs over the years that rely on name databases that would have to be a drop in the bucket compared to the one the Army must use, and there are always going to be errors like this. Still, receiving something like this in the mail right before the holidays must have been devastating. It's encouraging to see that the Army is still able to admit mistakes without scrabbling for a scapegoat, and make amends. It would be nice if their Commander-in-Chief could do the same.
The letters were sent a few days after Christmas to more than 5,100 Army officers who had recently left the service. Included were letters to about 75 officers killed in action and about 200 wounded in action.
"Army personnel officials are contacting those officers' families now to personally apologize for erroneously sending the letters," the Army said in a brief news release issued Friday night.
The Army did not say how or when the mistake was discovered. It said the database normally used for such correspondence with former officers had been "thoroughly reviewed" to remove the names of wounded or dead soldiers.
"But an earlier list was used inadvertently for the December mailings," the Army statement said, adding that the Army is apologizing to those officers and families affected and "regrets any confusion."
(Oh, come on, I had to throw something in there bashing Bush... the wingnuts wouldn't have anything to complain about if I didn't!)
Rocket man
Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning
Even if Lance Bass was still set to become the first liberated and happy gay boy band singer in space, surely he'd see the socially utilitarian benefits of yielding his spot in the space tourism queue in favor of this guy.
Of course, this assumes that (one) Mr. Hawking survives his training ride aboard the vomit comet, and (two) that a really rich guy is willing to foot the bill for the whole thing.
Prof Stephen Hawking is planning a space flight. The world's best-known scientist, who is 65 today, told The Daily Telegraph: "This year I'm planning a zero-gravity flight and to go into space in 2009."A zero gravity flight is what astronauts call the "vomit comet", in which an aeroplane flies in such a way that people inside are temporarily weightless.
Prof Hawking's next step towards the cosmos then depends on the Virgin Galactic space tourism plans of Sir Richard Branson, whose SpaceShipTwo will carry six passengers into a low Earth orbit from 2008.
Maybe he and Bass could split the fare.
(Three...two...one...cross-posted!)
Biden Makes 10,000th Announcement He's Running for President
Sen. Joe Biden on Sunday told NBC's "Meet the Press" that he will seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.As opposed, presumably, to being the best Neil Kinnock he can be.
"I am running for president," he told “Meet the Press” anchor Tim Russert. "I’m going to be Joe Biden, and I’m going to try to be the best Biden I can be."
Radio Shakes
Yesterday, I was interviewed by Paul V. of Brainshrub, for his radio show Tips for Political Bloggers. You can hear the interview here (or click below), in which I talk about the blog, all our wonderful contributors, writing about Scooter Libby's dirty novel for Hustler, and my writing philosophy.
Paul is a lovely guy, I say "um" too much, and it was hard to quickly find a sample post to read that wasn't too blue—by which I mean not its politics, but its language.
powered by ODEO
Rumorzzz
After John Negroponte's move on down to Condi's #2, the speculation is either that Condi might be leaving full stop, or that Condi might be leaving…to move to the White House: "Negroponte is becoming deputy secretary of state as preparation to replace Condi Rice when she leaves her job. Why would she do that? To take over for an 'ailing' Dick Cheney as vice president. Sure, Cheney resignation rumors are about as old as the Bush presidency. But one well-informed person said that, while he doesn't think this will happen, he also doesn't dismiss it out of hand."
If Condi took over for Dick, and Georgie were impeached and removed from office, Condi could be the new Gerald Ford!
Meanwhile…
…in spite of not having a dick, Nancy Pelosi still somehow manages to be tough:
This morning on CBS’s Face the Nation, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced that Congress may refuse to authorize funding for an escalation of U.S. forces to Iraq if President Bush cannot justify the strategy.(Think Progress has the video and transcript at the link.)
Pelosi stated clearly that Congress will fully support all U.S. forces currently in Iraq. "But if the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it," Pelosi said. "This is new for him because up until now the Republican Congress has given a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions, and we have gone into this situation, which is a war without end, which the American people have rejected."
Very impressive. If only she had big muscles!
National Embarrassment
It's a record year for women in the House of Representatives. We've got the first ever female Speaker, and a record-setting 71 female representatives, bringing us to an astounding 16% share. That puts us at #66 on the Inter-Parliamentary Union's list of 190 countries "classified by descending order of the percentage of women in the lower or single House," outranked by China, North Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as some notable examples, for reasons I imagine are self-evident.
An "extensive survey of women in professions that produce many lawmakers: education, business and the law" done by political science professors Richard Fox and Jennifer Lawless found, in part, that women who are asked to run are "just as likely as men to do it," but also that "women are less likely than men to be asked to run for office by party leaders and other officials." Such conclusions certainly seem to be bolstered by Ryan Lizza's The Invasion of the Alpha Male Democrat in today's New York Times.
[E]ven as this nurturing image [of Nancy Pelosi "on the House floor, surrounded by children and bedecked in pearls"] dominated the news, the swearing-in ceremony on Thursday was notable for another milestone in gender politics: the return of the Alpha Male Democrat.I can't tell you how pleased I am to know that the Democratic Party planned a strategy predicated on not asking women to run. Or asking a specific type of woman, like Iraq veteran Tammy Duckworth, whose "toughness" and "red-blooded Americanness" is conferred by a participation in a traditionally male bastion—because the candidate already running was just a plain old woman without any evident credentials to qualify as a "Macho Dem."
The members of this new faction, which helped the Democrats expand into majority status, stand out not for their ideology or racial background but for their carefully cultivated masculinity.
"As much as the policy positions is the background and character of these Democrats," says John Lapp, the former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who helped recruit this new breed of candidate. "So we went to C.I.A. agents, F.B.I. agents, N.F.L. quarterbacks, sheriffs, Iraq war vets. These are red-blooded Americans who are tough."
Mr. Lapp even coined a term to describe these manly—and they are all men—pols: "the Macho Dems."
The return of Democratic manliness was no accident; it was a carefully planned strategy.
The idea here is, of course, to counter the perception that the Dems don't provide "leadership, strength, clarity and sureness" in the same measure as the GOP, whose foremost exhibitor of such characteristics has strongly, clearly, and surely led us into an intractable quagmire that most Americans now deeply regret. Following a bow-legged cowboy whose singular nourishment is the certainty of his own rectitude only seems charming when he leads the posse down the right path. Ultimately, the trail is just as important as the posture of those who blaze it, which is why I'm decidedly unimpressed with a strategy that prioritizes masculinity to the exclusion of sex- and sexuality-based political concerns.
Sure, some Macho Dems express support for, say, abortion rights but one gets the sense that ensuring Roe’s preservation may not be one of their highest priorities in coming to the Senate. It’s hard to imagine them at the next Emily’s List fund-raiser.I'm not unaware of the positive affects economic liberalism can have for women, so I'm exceedingly grateful to see its reemergence among the Macho Dems—but any benefit to women granted by liberal economic policy is undermined if we lose ground on retaining our bodily autonomy. A higher minimum wage matters little if one has no reproductive choice.
Ideologically, many Macho Dems are culturally conservative and economically liberal—making them odd ducks in a party that since the Clinton years has been defined by cultural liberalism and Rubinomics.
As I've said before, It shouldn’t matter, in terms of having women’s issues addressed—from reproductive rights to securing funding for female-specific health issues—what the percentage of progressive women in Congress is, but it does. (It even makes a difference whether male representatives have daughters.) And knowing that it does, I can't help but be irritated by a strategy that is "inherently pro-male." The Democrats simply cannot pretend that deliberately excluding women from running won't have demonstrable consequences for women, or that remolding the party as Daddy Party Lite won't be troublesome for women (and undoubtedly the LGBT community, as well). For some time now, I've been seeing defenses of the Macho Dem strategy that include the argument it's better for women and gays to have a socially conservative Dem in Congress than a Republican, which may be true depending on the Republican, but it would certainly be better if we had a socially liberal Dem. Our "tough guys," however, evidently can't be tough enough to stand unapologetically and unyieldingly in liberal women's corner. And the national party doesn't appear interested in whether they do.
"Joe Sestak—that guy’s muscular!" says Mr. Lapp. "He’s a vice admiral. I’ve told him to spend a lot of time going on the national talk shows. He can really do a service changing the mold and the way the Democratic Party is viewed."Indeed. My view is changing all the time…
Dems can't win in red states if they're pro-choice or pro-LGBT rights. A socially conservative Dem is better than a socially conservative Republican, because at least things won't get worse. Just let us get the majority, and then you'll see things change for the better. Blah blah blah. I've heard it all before, and it all boils down to: "Where else ya gonna go?" That it's the best I'm being offered as a progressive woman in America is shameful; that I represent merely one demographic of many being told exactly the same thing is a national embarrassment.
(Crossposted at Ezra's place.)
The Virtual Bar Is Open
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar and name your poison.
If you're looking to play Fate this evening, head on over and nominate your favorites for the Seventh Annual Weblog Awards, aka the 2007 Bloggies.
And if you're just looking for some good company and fine conversation, let's get things started with a request for what you're listening to lately. I'm all about The Killers' most recent album, Sam's Town.
Uh, What?
I hate this fucking administration:
The White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal declaring that records identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public.Jackholes didn't even disclose the existence of the memorandum until last fall, and—big surprise—they're "using it to deal with a legal problem on a separate front, a ruling by a federal judge ordering the production of Secret Service logs identifying visitors to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney." Imagine that.
…The five-page document dated May 17 declares that all entry and exit data on White House visitors belongs to the White House as presidential records rather than to the Secret Service as agency records. Therefore, the agreement states, the material is not subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
…The White House and the Secret Service declined to comment.
Shark-Fu, who gets the hat tip, explains what the BFD is:
Now, some may ask why this bothers me. That’s a good question with easy answers.Mercy.
If you don’t want a record kept of a meeting…meet somewhere that doesn’t keep a records of who the fuck meets there.
If you already met with someone…and did so because your dumb ass thought no one would ever find out about whatever illegal and/or inappropriate shit you were up to…and now you are thinking that you can prevent or cover up some sort of something or other…fuck you, you sneaky ass motherfucker.
Mercy.
Anne Weismann, chief counsel to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and a 19-year veteran of the Justice Department, says, "It appears the White House is actually manufacturing evidence to further its own agenda." Swell.
Final Jeopardy Answer
Bald Heads
Turkeys
The Constitution
Alex Trebek: Shakespeare's Sister, what is your Final Jeopardy Question?
Shakes: Alex, I have "What are Things George Bush Can't Keep His Filthy Hands Off Of?"
Alex Trebek: That is correct! What did you wager?
Shakes: Al Gore and John Kerry.
Alex Trebek: Well, Shakes, it looks like even though you got the question right, you've managed to lose, anyway.
Shakes: Sure does, Alex.
Alex Trebek: Thanks for playing.
Shakes: What do you care? You're Canadian.
-------------------
[Originally posted July 18, 2006. Sorry for the re-run. I just got nothin' this afternoon.]
Friday Cat Blogging
"No disassemble my pizza box!"
As you may remember, one of Matilda's favorite napping places is a pizza box. The problem (for Matilda) is that: A) we don't like leaving greasy, festering pizza boxes lying around the place; and B) we don't order pizza very often, so there is rarely an influx of new boxes. Thusly, she has learned to guard them very fiercely once she gets her paws on one.
But even a brave pizza box guardian like Matilda needs to visit the old litter box sometime, at which point it's not only humans, who have the annoying habit of discarding refuse you adore, you've got to worry about, but other little furry things who don't respect your authoritay!
Playing it cool…
Oh, snap!
Mmm, tasty.
A wee scuffle ensued when Matilda returned to the room, which shall hereafter be known as The Great Pizza Box Fracas of 2007. Matilda leapt up and thumped Olivia on the head, to which Olivia responded by giving her a "What the fuck?" look and then leaving. For her, the pizza box is a mere curiosity. For Matilda, it's a motherfucking throne.
Matilda and I had a little conversation about the pizza box. Ever since I suggested it might not stick around forever, she won't purr as loudly when I scratch her head. "You're only getting blender, not lawnmower."
Deckchairs. Titanic. Etcetera.
Iceberg? What iceberg?This will make a world of difference, I'm sure.
President Bush is overhauling his top diplomatic and military team in Iraq, as the White House scrambles to complete its new war policy package in time for the president to unveil it in a speech to the nation next week, officials said.
I understand the White House plans a musical accompaniment to Bush's Iraq speech - something along the lines of "Nearer My God to Thee."
Well, that's what I've heard.
(Cross-posted.)Random Announcement
I deeply resent that women are evidently more likely to be given a book deal if the entire purpose of their book is to make large swaths of women feel shitty about themselves for one reason or another.
There are infinitely fewer books written by women determined instead to make women think, make them laugh, and make them feel good about themselves—because making women feel good about themselves is a one-way, dead-end street at the end of which isn't even the narrowest of alleyways to a marketplace full of weight loss books, body enhancement products, anti-aging creams, relationship advice, sex tips, mothering tracts, and all manner of emotional clutter that purports to bring you thismuch close to perfection, but is just more insidious shit designed to reaffirm the only thing we're meant to know for sure: You're Not Good Enough.
Pfft and fuck and harrumph.
(Cuz.)
