Question of the Day
Today's QotD comes from Shaker gotoL, who notes, as of today, we've only got 167 days left in the Bush administration: How are you going to celebrate when it's over? Does your answer change if McCain wins?
I suppose I ought to start organizing the Shakesville Fuckyeah Goodbye to Bush Celebrate-a-thon now, huh? Party in the Windy City, January 19, 2009. Put it on your schedule and use a pen, Shakers!
If McCain wins, we'll end the night with a collective shot of hemlock.
If not, scotch.
Quote of the Day
"It seemed to me to be like a product of extreme sexism, and I kept thinking to myself, 'God, if this was just, like, Kal Penn or George Clooney or any of the other (Obama) surrogates or supporters ... there wouldn't be (any) question about it. Nobody would even talk about it."—Scarlett Johansson, on the ludicrous media coverage of her comments about exchanging emails with Barack Obama.
(Of course, if she had been Kal Penn or George Clooney, Obama probably wouldn't have implied she was a love-struck cuckoo, either. Which didn't exactly help her out.)
[Thanks to Iain for passing that along.]
lol your poll
Upon reading the latest from Pew:
Close to half (48%) of Pew's interviewees went on to say that they have been hearing too much about Obama lately.—I have come to the conclusion that election polls are primarily designed to make me hate approximately 49% of the American people, with a margin of error of ±2 points.
lol your gauges
Obama goes after McCain some more, to hilarious result:
Transcript: So, I know that Senator McCain likes to call himself a maverick, and the fact is there have been times where, in the past, he did show some independence, but the price he paid for his party's nomination has been to reverse himself on position after position, and now he embraces the failed Bush policies of the last eight years, the politics that helped break Washington in the first place—and that doesn't meet my definition of a maverick. You can't be a maverick when politically it's working for ya, and then not a maverick when it doesn't work for ya and you're seeking your party's nomination.Atrios calls this "the way to drive McCain crazy." Totally.
By the way, while we're on the subject of Senator McCain contradicting himself, a few days ago, somebody asked me what they could do personally to help America save energy. So I said something that some of you have heard, which is all of us could get better gas mileage, and save oil in the process, just by keeping our tires inflated. Turns out the experts agree. Turns out that we could save three to four percent on our total oil consumption just by keeping our cars tuned up and inflating our tires.
Senator McCain and the Republican National Committee, though, mocked the idea. They've been going around sending tire gauges to reporters saying 'Barack Obama's Energy Plan.' Well, that sounded clever, except, last night, after all that, Senator McCain actually said he agreed that keeping our tires inflated was a good idea. [laughter and applause] Which makes sense—because it turns out, uh, NASCAR, which knows something about tires, apparently said the same thing. So did the Triple-A.
And so, in the coming days, it's going to be interesting to watch this debate between John McCain and John McCain.
[H/T to Shaker Constant Comment. Video via.]
Wednesday Blogaround
What's the frequency, Shakers?
Recommended Reading:
Pam: Willard Blank on Dullard's Successes
J. Goodrich (aka Echidne): Do Women Have an Inner Glass Ceiling?
Lauredhel: Homosexual Panic Moment Du Jour
Andy: California Legislature Approves 'Harvey Milk Day'
Shayera: Are You F*ing Kidding Me?
Scout Prime: NOAH Paid to Gut Houses Set for Demolition
And on that "other" presidential ticket...
Jack: The Women Still in the Race
Professor Black Woman: Cynthia McKinney's Platform
Leave your links in comments...
I 
The Onion
Local Idiot to Post Comment on Internet:
In a statement made to reporters earlier this afternoon, local idiot Brandon Mylenek, 26, announced that at approximately 2:30 a.m. tonight, he plans to post an idiotic comment beneath a video on an Internet website.You've got to read the whole thing. I can't stop laughing. lol your humor, Onion.
...Mylenek, who rarely in his life has been capable of formulating an idea or opinion worth the amount of oxygen required to express it, went on to guarantee that the text of his comment would be misspelled to the point of incomprehension, that it would defy the laws of both logic and grammar, and that it would allege that several elements of the video are homosexual in nature.
..."After clicking the 'submit' button, I will immediately refresh the page so that I can view my own comment. I will then notice that my comment has not appeared because the server has not yet processed my request, become angry and confused, and re-post the same comment with unintentional variations on the original wording and misspellings, creating two slightly different yet equally moronic comments," he said. "It is my hope that this will illustrate both my childlike level of impatience and my inability to replicate a simple string of letters and symbols 30 seconds after having composed it."
Thanks to Shaker SarahMC for passing that along. In the sort of coincidence you couldn't make up if you tried, her email with the link came in directly after another piece of "fan mail" re: Fat Princess (oh, yes, I'm still getting them, along with lots of requests for interviews, all of which I'm ignoring), which included the following: "You're really are a dumb bitch arent you." Yes, I'm really am.
They're Like Pigs in Shit
Though I'm not certain it does him any favors with the elusive Swing VoterTM, I do love it when Obama gets testy with the GOP:
"You know the other day I was in a town hall meeting and I laid out my plans for investing $15 billion a year in energy efficient cars and a new electricity grid and somebody said, 'well, what can I do? what can individuals do?'" Obama recalled.Every single presidential election, it's the same thing. The GOP run around acting like complete knuckleheads, the Democratic nominee knits his brow in consternation and chortles bitterly in disbelief, then every media outlet calls him angry and smug. Rinse and repeat.
"So I told them something simple," Obama said. "I said, 'You know what? You can inflate your tires to the proper levels and that if everybody in America inflated their tires to the proper level, we would actually probably save more oil than all the oil we'd get from John McCain drilling right below his feet there, or wherever he was going to drill.'"
…"So now the Republicans are going around - this is the kind of thing they do. I don't understand it! They're going around, they're sending like little tire gauges, making fun of this idea as if this is 'Barack Obama's energy plan.'
"Now two points: one, they know they're lying about what my energy plan is, but the other thing is they're making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent. It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant.
"You know, they think it is funny that they are making fun of something that is actually true. They need to do their homework. Because this is serious business. Instead of running ads about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears they should go talk to some energy experts and actually make a difference."
Meanwhile, the adolescent dipwads of the GOP go giggling off to make jokes about their wives boobies, and no one seems to notice that every time we have a choice between a grown-up and a juvenile delinquent, we go with the guy who blows up frogs for laughs. And then we wonder how we ended up in a war of choice with thousands of dead soldiers.
All the more reason for the Democrats to head in the polar opposite direction from the policies and practices of the GOP. There's no joy in being the grown-up version of an idiot child.
Shirley Doesn't Give a Fuck
Okay, I love Shirley MacLaine with the red hot fiery passion of ten thousand suns (evidence: I saw the unmitigatedly dreadful Rumor Has It in the theater, just because she's in it), so when I saw this picture of her clad in a vest that appears to have been constructed from the remains of a Bill Cosby sweater circa 1985, matching canary yellow tee and trainers, and mothafuckin' parachute pants, I nearly wet myself with sheer glee. She might whip out her 5-gauge pins and entrelac your ass a scarf, or she might bust a move, bitchez. You nevah know, 'cuz that's how she rolls.
And the site whence I saw it had the temerity to label this a "fashion disaster." A fashion disaster? Are you kidding me? That ensemble is couture de génie. And Shirley doesn't give a fuck what you think.
All I want in life is to reach 74 and wear that same outfit.
Actually, I might just start wearing it now. It would be a lovely homage to the woman who's been my principal "I-don't-give-a-fuck" role model for many years now. Plus, I believe my one-billionth viewing of The Apartment would only be enhanced by wrapping my ass in parachute.
Question of the Day
What's the worst novel you've ever read to completion?
When I was younger, I used to finish every book I started, no matter how unenjoyable, just because. (Now, if it doesn't grab me within the first three chapters, I'm outta there. No time for nonsense!) So I've read a lot of crap.
I can't even imagine what the very worst of the lot was, considering, as I admitted in a thread earlier today, that I read some of the V.C. Andrews books published after her death from "unearthed manuscripts," and, at the time, thought they were hot shit.
McCain is a Misogybag
How does Cindy McCain, who frankly sounds like a woman I wouldn't mind knowing, stay married to this guy?
Transcript: You know, I was looking at the Sturgis schedule, and noticed that you have a beauty pageant, and so I encourage Cindy to compete. [Laughter, cheers, applause, wolf whistles.] I told- I told her, with a little luck, she could be the only woman ever to serve as both the First Lady and Miss Buffalo Chip.Well, I guess it's a step up from publicly calling her a cunt.
Cliff Schechter has a NSFW mash-up that illustrates the exact nature of the "beauty pageant" in which McCain was exhorting his wife to participate.
[H/T to Shakers Blue Gal, Constant Comment, and Ryan.]
Stay-at-Home Wives
Shakers Susan and Poly both sent me this CNN article about the "growing niche" of stay-at-home wives (i.e. straight married women who don't have children). First of all, like every other hot vagina-trend (see: the opt-out revolution), the veracity of stay-at-home-wives as a "growing niche" is dubious at best, though it's already warranted an article at CNN on this incredibly thin basis:
Dr. Scott Haltzman, author of "The Secrets of Happily Married Women," says stay-at-home wives constitute a growing niche. "In the past few years, many women who are well educated and trained for career tracks have decided instead to stay at home," he says. While his research is ongoing, he estimates that more than 10 percent of the 650 women he's interviewed who choose to stay home are childless.Yeah, more than SIXTY-FIVE WOMEN (maybe as many as 70!) have reported deciding to stay home instead of work, so that means it's surely a raging fad across the nation.
The thing is, I'd actually find an article on women who decide to stay home rather interesting, if done correctly. But, needless to say, this one isn't. It wholly ignores what an obvious class issue this is, except to note that having a stay-at-home-wife is the newest status symbol for rich men. It combines rather curiously women who "give up a job to focus on an advanced degree, pursue artistic or creative goals, or deal with health issues," with women who just want to be homemakers, as if going to school isn't intimately work-related, or as if being ill is a choice. And it skims right past noting that one of the women spends part of her time doing charity work to quote the same woman saying: "I've actually heard people say that women who don't work are a drain on society," without ever connecting the two, despite the obvious point waiting to be made that charity work done by women who don't have to work is the precise opposite of a drain on society.
But this article isn't really about women, anyway. It's about the men who find "especially with the recent economic pressures, a stay-at-home spouse is often an extreme and visible luxury" and the insistent implication that marriages are improved because the husband is never expected to do anything anymore.
It's a lifestyle, Davis says, that has made her happier and brought her closer to her husband. "We're no longer stressed out," she says; because she takes care of the home, there are virtually no "honey-do" lists to hand over.If the author and her primary source, the aforementioned Dr. Scott Haltzman, author of "The Secrets of Happily Married Women," weren't so busy trying to cram a new vagina-trend down our throats, there might have been a good piece about a non-gendered solution to hectic modern lives being carved by couples who have the luxury to do so. I personally know several gay couples where one partner has stayed home and organized their home and lives, either full-time or while working or attending school only part-time. For straight and gay couples, a designated home-maker of either gender, if they can swing it and if one of them wants to do it, can indeed free up loads of stress- and chore-free time for them to spend together.
But that's a new narrative—and new narratives require thoughtfulness, time, and energy. Why think outside the box when it's just so much easier to stick women in the same old box we all know so well already?
Breaking Dawn on a Saturday Night
by Shaker Joe, who craves the title: Unofficial Librarian of Isle de Shakes
So...what did you do last weekend?
I took my Younger Daughter to "the prom." Hold on a minute. Before you get icky visions of creeped out Purity Balls, let me clarify—I accompanied her to the release party for "Breaking Dawn," Stephanie Meyer's wrap up to the "Twilight Series" about high school senior Bella and her vampire boyfriend Edward.
Early this spring, the "Twilight Series" showed up in our house. Younger Daughter, who is a voracious reader, began talking about "Twilight," "New Moon" and "Eclipse." It became pretty obvious that for her, this could actually become bigger than Harry Potter, Alex Rider and James Patterson's mutant bird kids.
At Younger Daughter's urging, I read the Twilight books (as well as Meyer's "adult book," The Host, which I thought was rather good). The books are a romance series for the teen set. I have seen criticisms of the books that find Bella too passive and unduly fixated on Edward (example here, via), which I understand. But I figured if there's any element of "post feminism" or celebration of a "new chasteness" to the first three books, I wasn't particularly worried for Younger Daughter and her friends. After spending a fair number of years helping to raise my own kids and doing a stint as a youth coach, I've discovered that kids have pretty good BS detectors. On the way to the release party, Younger Daughter, her BFF and I talked about the storyline and what it was they liked about it. Even as Younger Daughter loyally announced that Bella was her favorite character—after all, the story is Bella's and she does read like an old friend—she had picked up on some of the criticisms of Bella and thought she needed a little more depth.
Elder Daughter is completely uninterested in the series and just longs for more Harry Potter.
So off Younger Daughter, her BFF and I went to the local B&N. The store was very busy. In the morning they had handed out more than 150 pre-release wristbands and it looked like there were another 50 or so late arrivals. There was a smattering of moms, dads, and boyfriends hanging out along the fringes of the line, which was comprised almost entirely of middle- and high school aged girls, who provide the largest and most vocal portion of the fanbase for the series. The older school girls (did they feel less inhibited?) were the ones who were decked out in costumes and improvised t-shirts. One read: "My new pick up line is 'Are you a vampire? Because you dazzle me!'" The middle schoolers were uniformly in street clothes.
One of the first girls at the front of the line was very excited about her new purchase and hugged the book to her chest and announced, with no irony intended, "This is my bible."
Was the guy working the counter in the music and video section trying to say something when he put on Götterdämmerung?
Despite the teeth-gritting consumerism of the event, and the concerns about the themes of the book, I'm all in favor of reading of any sort. In the end getting kids into bookstores is a very good thing. The sight of kids cheering and being completely blown away because they were one of the first in the store to get one of the first copies of a book with a female heroine and other decent female characters (like Edward's sister, the creative and future-sensing Alice) was very heartening. My take-away from the event was that a lot of young women really like these books. When they're done with the series, maybe they’ll move onto something more sophisticated.
Kids, after all, try on new identities and different outlooks on life like clothes. Some they like and keep on for awhile; others they change out of quickly. I spent a better part of my 16th year reading and re-reading Stephen King's "The Stand." Maybe Bella and Edward and Rosalie and Alice are to these kids just what Frannie and Stu and Glen and Nick and Nadine were to me—companions on my way to adulthood. I look on those characters today with some fondness and intimacy. But I no longer think that what they said and did was profound.
Reading habits, of course, will usually grow and change. Like a lot of other families, the books in our house have followed the arc of childhood from stories like "Goodnight Moon," to Pooh and Christopher Robin, to Junie B. Jones and the Box Car Children to Anne of Green Gables, Harry Potter and now "Breaking Dawn."
My daughter's critical eye may end the fascination with Bella sooner than I thought.
[Spoiler Alert! Don't read on further if you absolutely, positively don't want even a hint as to what "Breaking Dawn" is about.]
Saturday morning, over some chocolate chip pancakes (I should probably send my "modified recipe" to Misty for review), a very tired daughter and her BFF announced that while they were really liking the book, some of it was "disturbing" and that I would have to read it when she was done to see what I thought.
I've since pieced together that in this final volume, there may indeed be some "post feminist" themes. Apparently Bella gives up college, gets married (at age 18) and has a baby (with her husband, Edward the Vampire). The "ick" factor kicks in when Jacob the werewolf "imprints" on Bella's infant.
So does that tell young women anything? What does this say about choices, autonomy, independence?
Kids who are raised to be independent will most likely take the romantic side of the story with a grain of salt and enjoy the characters for what they are, without being moved to give up their educations or independence. Because it's love, though, they certainly will not be dissuaded from taking what their parents consider to be gut wrenching detours with the love of their choice. But what about the young women who aren't raised to be independent…?
From what I read about the families around the country that tried to ban the Harry Potter series, they'd have the same reaction to "Twilight." And my guess is that in families where a Dad would even spend a minute considering taking his daughter to a "Purity Ball," the "Twilight" series would never make it in the front door (although maybe it would sneak in the back door hidden in the bottom of a backpack). Which means that the kids reading the book may not be discussing it with adults in their lives, and may not have the critical thinking skills to question the series, as did Younger Daughter and her BFF. In the earlier books, Bella does a lot of things to deceive her father, her mother, and some of her human friends. She feels bad about some of them. How would a teen girl who had just gone to a "Purity Ball" and then spent a few days hiding "Breaking Dawn" in her room feel about that?
I'm going to have to spend some time with the book over the next few weeks and figure this out for myself. Maybe Meyers had a nefarious agenda, but maybe she didn't. Maybe she wrote herself into a corner and came up with what she thought would be the best possible solution that would satisfy her needs as a writer and the desires of her fans. Maybe that's what happens when you meld storytelling with marketing.
The World's Tiniest Violin for You, Senator McCain
Did you know the big bad media are beating up on John McCain?It's funny how Boehlert says the Dems "would pay for the kind of respectful coverage McCain has accumulated this summer, which is a common figure of speech—except when it comes to the GOP, who actually do that sort of thing. Ahem.
Aside from asking for the world's smallest violin, I'd like to make the point that rather than bemoaning the type of press attention McCain has been attracting, most recent Democratic candidates for president, who were pummeled and even savaged by the press, would pay for the kind of respectful coverage McCain has accumulated this summer. They would be rejoicing if the press ever treated them as kindly and as softly as it has McCain this campaign.
Let me put it another way: When McCain gets regularly portrayed in the press as a serial liar the way Al Gore was in 2000, then he can complain about the press. When McCain is portrayed as an angry lunatic the way Howard Dean was in 2003, then he can complain. When McCain's war record is dragged through the mud while the press looks on for weeks too frightened to call out the partisan accusers, the way John Kerry's military record was, then he can complain. When McCain's campaign is defined by his haircut the way John Edwards' was, then he can complain. When McCain is portrayed as a cackling witch the way Hillary Clinton was this winter, then he can complain. When McCain is portrayed as arrogant and presumptuous the way Obama is today, then he can complain.
But pretending that when the press simply chronicles McCain's disjointed campaign means that reporters and pundits have somehow turned on the candidate -- that they are attacking him and piling on -- is just ludicrous.
Go read the whole thing.
Somehow, I Don't Think McCain Deserves the Credit for This
A ATV/Zogby poll (and, as always, take every poll with a huge grain of salt) has found that Barack Obama is losing ground to John McCain in what are typically key Democratic demographics, including "young people, women, Democrats and independents […and] has also lost some support among African-Americans and Hispanics, where his lead over [McCain] has shrunk, and among Catholics, where he's lost his lead."
Interesting, isn't it, that all of those groups are presented as mutually exclusive? We'll come back to that.
Zogby called the results a "notable turnaround" from a July survey he did that showed Obama leading by 46-36.Okay, so. First let's note we're comparing this to a survey done presumably not long after Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign. That's notable, because in the interim, McCain picked up lots of women supporters—in almost precisely the same percentage as he picked up independents.
"McCain made signifciant gains at Obama's expense among some of what had been Obama's strongest demographic groups," Zogby said.
His findings:
-Among voters aged 18-29, Obama lost 16 percent and McCain gained 20. Obama still leads, 49-38;
-Among women, McCain gained 10 percentage points. Obama now leads 43-38;
-Among independents, Obama lost an 11 point lead. They're now tied;
-Among Democrats, Obama's support dropped from 83 percent to 74 percent;
-Among Catholics, Obama lost the 11 point lead he had in July and now trails McCain by 15.
Zogby said Obama also lost ground among minorities.
Now, I'm no fancypants pollster like Mr. Zogby—I'm just a cultural anthropologist with a few statistics courses under my belt that my silly wee girl-brain could barely comprehend—but the numbers here suggest to me there's a distinct possibility that the women "McCain gained" and the independents "Obama lost" might be a lot of the same people, and, further, that they were the independent women fired up by Clinton's campaign, who were, in July, generally still nominally in Obama's camp, giving him a look.
Obama started July with the votes of a lot of independent women to lose, but, during the course of that month, he said that "mental distress" shouldn't qualify as part of the mother's health exception to late-term abortion bans, then "clarified" the statement with more of his "between a woman, her doctor, her pastor, and her family" crap, then talked out the other side of his mouth at a "Women for Obama" breakfast, then failed utterly to lead (or even notably weigh in) on a significant national health issue affecting women, then poured more fuel on the rumors (which he started) that he plans to put anti-choice Republicans in his cabinet, and then vetted a "pro-life Democrat" as his possible running mate. It wasn't exactly a banner month for winning the hearts of independent women. Or any women, for that matter.
The logical question is naturally: If those women were so concerned about reproductive rights and other women's issues, why on earth would they switch to McCain? And I can understand why that might not make sense—unless you figure that women for whom women's issues are of primary concern are probably well-versed on the subject and ergo know that a thin promise to "protect Roe" not only fails to acknowledge it's increasing irrelevance for millions of women who have already lost affordable local access to abortion, but also fails wholly to even acknowledge where the real battlefront on reproductive rights even is now: state legislatures. The frustrating reality is that promising to appoint SCOTUS justices who will uphold Roe is, because of the changing face and location of the abortion rights struggle, only marginally better than a candidate who won't. A genuine commitment to reproductive rights requires a lot more now—and it does not make me happy in the slightest to say that.
The long and short of it is that independent women who supported Clinton because of women's issues didn't, in her absence, find a candidate who, unlike Clinton, knows the ins and outs of reproductive rights and passionately defends them. There's no candidate left in the race who does.
So they went on to their secondary concerns. Which may be lower taxes, or staying in Iraq, or any one of a number of issues that favor McCain, which might seem incompatible with supporting reproductive rights to progressives, but welcome to the complexity of womanhood, which it turns out isn't a monolith after all.
The same premise holds for the other flip-floppers in Zogby's polling. Why would young people who supported Obama suddenly switch to McCain? Well, some of those young people may be the independent women discussed above, and some of them may be men and women whose main issue was the war, or FISA, or faith-based initiatives, or welfare reform, or handgun law, or the death penalty, all of which were issues on which Obama potentially disappointed last month. Most voters aren't straight progressives or straight conservatives, after all, but a mish-mash of both.
(Which also means, of course, that by the end of this month, there could be people who have flipped back to Obama.)
Despite all of this, though, Zogby gives the possibility that a loss of support "among young voters may also be due to his perceived reversals on issues they care about, such as the war and government eavesdropping" only passing mention and instead attributes the declining support his poll purportedly reveals to McCain having "turned lemons into lemonade" by making pointed critiques of Obama.
"The survey results come as Obama, fresh off what had been characterized as a triumphant tour of the Middle East and Europe, including a speech to 200,000 Germans in Berlin. That trip quickly became fodder for an aggressive response ad by the McCain campaign that questioned whether Obama's popularity around the world meant he was ready to lead the U.S.," Zogby said.That's really just giving the McCain campaign far too much credit—and it also ignores that McCain's a freaking gaffe machine. The difference is that McCain's mistakes are mostly about revealing he's a belligerent, rude asshole who doesn't know fuck-all about fuck-all, while Obama's mistakes alienate or betray his own potential voters and the things about which they care the most.
"The McCain camp seems to have turned lemons into lemonade. Huge crowds and mostly favorable press reviews of Obama's overseas trip have been trumped by McCain's attacks on Obama."
Consider again the list of groups among which Obama's lost support: young people, women, Democrats, independents, African-Americans, Hispanics, and Catholics. All of them are more progressive than their counterparts.
Young people are as a whole more progressive than older people. Women are as a whole more progressive than men. Democrats are more progressive than Republicans. Independents are as a whole more progressive than Republicans. POC are, as independent wholes, more progressive than whites. Catholics are as a whole more progressive than evangelicals.
What happened in July is that Obama ran right because Democrats are convinced that's what they need to do in a general election to win.
In the process, Obama has bled moderate voters whose primary issues were progressive (repro rights, ending the war, FISA, etc.). And that's to say nothing of the progressives he's turned into undecideds—not between him and McCain, but between him and a candidate for whom casting a vote wouldn't feel like a betrayal of one's principles.
That ain't John McCain's doing. He's not that good.
----------------------------
Once again, I will note, as an aside, I really hope, more than I can say, that Obama turns it around. I don't know how he's going to, and I've got no suggestions—short of a speech to the effect that he feels like he's been compromising, doesn't like it, and is essentially calling a do-over, followed by a renunciation of his shiny new positions on late-term abortion, FBOs, FISA, welfare reform, the SCOTUS decisions on handgun law and death penalty for child rapists, and possibly some shit I'm forgetting. (That would be an awesome speech, btw.) Short of that, I got nuttin'.
Gee, Too Bad Impeachment's Off the Table
Because it would be a useful tool on an occasion like this:
A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.Yeah, absurd. Like the Downing Street Memos were absurd.
Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.
The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”
…"The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001," Suskind writes. "It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link."
The White House flatly denied Suskind’s account. Tony Fratto, deputy White House press secretary, told Politico: "The allegation that the White House directed anyone to forge a document from Habbush to Saddam is just absurd."
The only absurdity here is that it's more reasonable to believe the administration did order the CIA to forge a letter than it is to believe that they didn't.
What say you now, Speaker Pelosi? Want to revisit that whole "grave and intentional" thing, Senator Obama?
Just askin'.
Quote of the Day
"Ain't it awful? If those little girls slept with as many men as they say in the tabloids, why their little butts would have more fingerprints than the FBI! … We should give those two a break."—Dolly Parton, defending Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan by using her folksy touch to obliquely yet pointedly call the tabloids lying, exploitative slut-shamers.
During the same interview, she also said of the presidential race: "We've had a woman, we have a black man and an old stiff" (told ya she was a closet liberal), and recycled one of my favorite lines about why she won't run for president: "I think there have been enough boobs in the White House."
