Click here to go to Opinions You Should Have at tomburka.com. TITLE: We've Moved! AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/16/2004 11:32:00 PM ----- BODY: Go to TOMBURKA.COM. Click here -------- TITLE: Opinions You Should Have Has Moved! AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/24/2003 03:07:00 PM ----- BODY: Opinions You Should Have has a new look elsewhere. You can get the same opinion-y goodness by clicking here. Archives of articles will remain here for a while, and will also be available over at the new spot. -------- TITLE: FBI Arrests Karl Rove On Anonymous Tip From John Ashcroft; Use Of Tips Subsequently Narrowed AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/23/2003 12:39:00 PM ----- BODY: In the wake of news that false terrorism tips have been uprooting the lives of innocent suspects, a recent encounter between Karl Rove and the FBI has come to light. An anonymous tipster (John Ashcroft) provided the FBI with information leading to the subsequent arrest of Karl Rove as a suspected terrorist about two weeks ago. Special Agent Hans "Christian" Anderson and partner Martin Asphalt had received a wanted notice for a "chubby balding man with glasses and expensive, ugly ties" who "was up to no good" and "possibly linked to terrorist activities." Several hours after receiving the APB, Anderson and Asphalt saw a man fitting this description lingering over the magazine section at Walmarts, where he was purportedly "fondling a copy of Maxim." (Rove late claimed that the magazine was The Weekly Standard, and that he had not been "caressing" it, as agents had described.) The agents immediately picked Rove up and transported him to a secret detention center in Arlington, where, during interrogation, Rove repeatedly turned bright red screaming, "I'm the President, you morons." Agent Asphalt often responded by picking up a copy of The Washington Post and showing him the cover. "This is the President," he would say. Rove blustered in response, "That man's a complete simpleton. I run everything." Correcting himself later, Rove told the agents that "He was one of the most prominent members of President Bush's staff, and that he worked at the White House," but the agents noted that they had never seen him anywhere. Agent Asphalt later recalled bleakly that he and his partner had laughed "really loud and hard" whenever Rove had pointed out the m that they "were in a world of trouble now." Agent Asphalt is presently awaiting trial on charges stemming from the discovery of over 20 pounds of cocaine found in an FBI evidence bag in his bedroom closet, moments after Rove's release. Things might have been straightened out quickly if the agents had permitted Rove access to a phone or provided him with a lawyer, but FBI policies prohibited allowing suspects of terrorism to have any contact with anyone in the outside world. As a result of the debacle, President Bush immediately issued guidelines narrowing the use of anonymous tips by the FBI. One of the changes prohibits FBI agents from arresting anyone who is caught reading Maxim magazine. -------- TITLE: New Litmus Test For Supreme Court Nominees Involves Membership In All-White Golf Club AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/21/2003 07:16:00 PM ----- BODY: Justice Thomas A Member For Past Seven Years In the wake of a Supreme Court ruling upholding affirmative action, angry conservatives are calling for a new "litmus test" to be applied to prospective nominees to any newly vacated Court seat. The test will measure the potential Justice's position on affirmative action. Conservatives are divided over whether the test should involve actually dipping candidates in a solution to see how white they are, or something else. "The test should be whether they can successfully join the Riverdale Country Club," said John Milk, a senior analyst at the Brookings Institute. The Riverdale Country Club is an exclusive single-race club, where non-whites are permitted to enter -- as waiters and servants. -------- TITLE: Rumsfeld Points Out D.C. Crime Worse Than Baghdad's; D.C. Residents Pack Immediately AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/20/2003 03:24:00 PM ----- BODY: In the wake of a remark by Donald Rumsfeld in which he noted that the Baghdad crime rate was lower than the District of Columbia's, thousands of D.C. residents packed their bags and readied themselves to leave the Nation's capital for greener pastures. "We just want to raise our children in a safe place," said Miles Seecars, a former Pentagon pool reporter. "Secretary Rumsfeld echoed what many have of us have said for a long time: D.C.'s crime rate is so awful, I'm just grateful that we have someplace better to go. East L.A. might be better, too, but I prefer Baghdad." Billy Mickelson, whose bags were packed and was ready to go, had a slightly different take on it. "Why should only U.S. soldiers get to occupy Iraq?" -------- TITLE: Rumsfeld Unveils Invisible Can of "Whoop Ass" To Take Care of "Crime Problem" In Iraq AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/19/2003 04:27:00 PM ----- BODY: At a press briefing today, Donald Rumsfeld pooh-poohed suggestions that anti-American violence by Iraqis was out of control and noted that the Baghdad crime rate was lower than the District of Columbia's. Rumsfled added that he and Paul Bremer had decided to open invisible cans of "whoop-ass" which would quickly take care of the problem. "I say to the U.S. soldiers in Iraq: your wives and children need not worry," said Rumsfeld, holding up a proto-type invisible can for the press. "Whoop-ass is here." When asked by reporter Miles Seecars why the mysterious cans of "whoop-ass" had not been used in the District of Columbia, Rumsfeld appeared to pull on a invisible tab on the top of the invisible can he was holding, tilted it toward Seecars. Seecars suddenly crumpled to the ground. When questioned later about it, all Seecars would say was that he thought that his ass had been whooped. -------- TITLE: Following Ancient Diplomatic Tradition, Sharon Will "Hound" Hamas Into Sanctioning Peace Treaty AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/18/2003 08:16:00 AM ----- BODY: Most Notable Diplomatic Posture Since Churchill Nagged Stalin At Yalta In 1945 Ariel Sharon joined the ranks of history's finest negotiators yesterday after promising to hound Hamas into supporting a Mideast peace agreement. In doing so, Sharon joined the ranks of the elite few who have successfully nudged the opposition party into signing a treaty -- or even into what some might call "extreme compromises." The tactic has only been used by some of history's greatest leaders. A few famous examples: 1066 - The Badgering of Hastings: William the Conqueror harangues the Saxons until Harold II agrees to yield the English crown. 1190 B.C. - Odysseus hectors Aeneas into withdrawing from Troy and possibly Helen. 215 B.C. - Hannibal needles Philip of Macedonia, taunting him with elephants until he allies with Carthage. 1865 - Grant bullyrags Lee at Appomattox. 1876 - Custer pesters Sitting Bull at Little Big Horn. (considered to have been a mistake) 1914 - Extreme razzing of Archduke Ferdinand by Slav Gavrilo Princip (could I make this name up?) leads to World War I. 1941 - Roosevelt mercilessly heckles Hirohito until he resigns from World War II. (Some consider dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a factor.) -------- TITLE: Democrats Divided Over How To Sink Party AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/16/2003 08:41:00 AM ----- BODY: Debate Is Whether To Offer Lukewarm Disagreement Or Simply Mimick Republican Position Democrats, members of the "opposition" party, are engaged today in a disagreement about how to ensure their parties failure in upcoming national elections. The crux of today's debate centers upon how to characterize blatant untruths told by George W. Bush about Iraqi weapons possession during the national "debate" on whether to invade Iraq. Should they be called "lies"? Or should Democrats say, as Senator Hillary Clinton urged, that "serious questions have been raised that need to be answered." Another position backed by Senators Edwards, Kerry and Lieberman was that lying for political gain is perfectly acceptable, as long as it's for a good cause, or on a weekday. A highly placed anonymous source in the Democratic Party (Terry McAuliffe, head of the DNC) said, in a panicky voice, "What if we say he was lying about WMD and then he finds some? What are we gonna do then? What are we gonna do?" Only a few, like Sen. Bob Graham, who keeps diaries noting where he scratches himself each day, assert that Americans might be interested in knowing that President Bush induced them to back a war on the basis of completely fabricated notions he reported in State of the Union speeches as cold, hard facts. While Democrats were wrestling over the issue of whether to point out that Bush told Americans that Saddam Hussein had purchased uranium to make nuclear bombs when it was well known that this never occurred, Bush raised another $50 million in campaign funds. Or at least, that's what he says. -------- TITLE: White House Chides Israel For Attempted Murder Of Hamas Leader AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/12/2003 09:15:00 AM ----- BODY: Could Ruin Future Photo Opportunities, Say Bush, Rove The White House, concerned that Israeli attempts to snuff out the life of the leader of Hamas, sent "strong signals" to Prime Minister Sharon today not to try anything like this until after the 2004 election. "This kind of violence," said Rove, "is absolutely dangerous to the practice of showing photographs of Bush shaking hands of Mideast leaders and claiming to have engineered peace. Any attempted assassination puts us in the position of having to organize another photo opportun-- excuse me, "peace summit." It even endangers our ability to pass around the old pictures and say that they're new ones." Sharon was unapologetic, and suggested airbrushing any Hamas leaders out of the pictures already taken. Ari Fleischer, who was in the middle of packing his bags to go on a world wide cruise around America, said, "This kind of violence is a threat of the worst kind to any image that President Bush is actually promoting peace in the Middle East. I am shocked that anyone would consider impeding President Bush's attempts to get elected." -------- TITLE: Claimed Iraqi Bioweapons Trailers Revealed To be Winnebagos AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/11/2003 08:53:00 AM ----- BODY: Leather Bucket Seats Were Key Clue Independent analysts who were permitted to inspect several recovered trailers which the CIA had concluded were mobile biological weapons factories reported that the trailers were clearly Winnebagos. "I'm not sure which tipped me off first," said Dr. Alvin Irkman of the North Atlantic Biological Confederate. "It was either the spacious living room with custom-designed, sculptured carpet and imported Italian ceramic tile floorcovering or the exclusive Ulti-Bay chassis with multiple slideout floorplan and Storemore ® undercarriage slideout storage space. Maybe it was the deluxe bedroom with spacious cedar-lined closet, beautiful wood cabinetry, decorative wainscoting, real wooden headboard, 19" TV and standard rear stereo that I've come to expect from Winnebago." CIA officials disputed the suggestion that the trailers were anything but mobile bioweapons labs, pointing out that the labs had fermenters for growing germs connected to pipes for siphoning off the "bioweapon slurry" for further processing elsewhere. "That's a chemical toilet with waste disposal hookup for connection to trailer park facilities," said Irkman. "It's next to the exterior wash station with pump switch, paper towel holder, and soap dispenser."

CIA drawing of trailer interior.


CIA photograph of trailer exterior.
-------- TITLE: Revisionist Historians Angry At Rice; Vow To Omit Her From Future AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/10/2003 12:27:00 AM ----- BODY: Revisionist historians, angry at Condoleezza Rice for casting revisionism in a negative light, threatened to remove her from future history books if she did not retract the reference. This past Sunday, Rice called accusations against the White House's manipulation of intelligence data "revisionist history," and derided those who were "rewriting history to suggest that the White House went to war because of Hussein's WMD." Professor Demetri Gazpacho, the President of the Revisionist History Association of America (RHAA), pointed out, "Revisionists have simply revised views of history which misrepresent what actually occurred. We recently corrected, for example, an American History textbook which devoted a chapter to the U.S. victory in Vietnam." Ironically, that textbook was in use at one of Rice's old universities, the University of Notre Dame. "By associating the word "revisionism" with falsehood, Rice is essentially recasting the meaning of revisionism," Gazpacho said. Gazpacho and his associates were considering how best to deal with Rice's offensive statements. Gazpacho said that the association was debating rewriting Rice out of future history books or perhaps just saying she was part of the Clinton administration. Other options included depicting Rice as an FBI agent at Ruby Ridge or as an American working with the Taliban. "This was not a smart move,' Gazpacho coldly intoned. "If you're part of history, we're the last people you want to mess with." -------- TITLE: Rice, Powell: Nothing Wrong With Intelligence; It Was Decision-Making That Sucked AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/09/2003 12:54:00 PM ----- BODY: WASHINGTON, D.C., Sunday - Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell made the rounds on Sunday Morning television yesterday, stating firmly that there was nothing wrong with intelligence estimates of Saddam Hussein's possession of WMD. Rice commented on recent charges that the intelligence reports were "cooked" to back up political motivations. "This is absolutely untrue," said Rice, appearing on ABC's "This Week." "The intelligent reports were not tailored or doctored in any way," she said. "It was the speeches and statements of the Administration that were politically motivated. It is revisionist history to say otherwise." Powell defended the Administration's handling of the intelligence. "It would be silly to put political pressure on the CIA analysts. We don't have to. We're the only ones who get to see their reports. We can say those reports said whatever we want." Powell was speaking to Tim Russert on "The Sunday Beginning-of-the-Week Propaganda Cycle" (also known as "Meet The Press"). "Everyone knows truth is the first casualty of war. Any misstatement by the Administration regarding the true nature of the threat posed by Hussein was just collateral damage." -------- TITLE: Unemployment Rate Skyrockets To 6.1%; Bush Team Calls It "Great Opportunity for Economic Growth" AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/08/2003 04:55:00 PM ----- BODY: Prefers To Call Unemployed "Democrats" Faced with the longest sustained period without job growth since the period before World War II (that is, since the Great Depression), the White House noted that the enormous number of lost jobs shows that the economy is recovering. White House economists explained projections had been for even more massive job losses: "Frankly," said Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao, "We are encouraged by the pace of the lack of growth." White House economists pointed to record purchases of flat screen TVs and Playstation 2's with maxed-out credit cards as a sign that the economy is doing well. (One umployed person explained: "There are no jobs out there. Might as well sit around and play Medal of Honor.") While the White House was toying with a variety of phrases for the unemployed, such as "previously owned workers," and "pre-employed laborers," Karl Rove simply called them "Democrats." "Typical democrats," said Rove,"losing their jobs and blaming it on the Republicans. Next thing you know they'll be whining that they can't afford adequate health care." Vice-President Dick Cheney added, "I know there are some real people out there who might be in-between jobs, but this is just a phase. " "After all," he continued, "Everyone I know is working." -------- TITLE: Bush Performs Faith Healings For Troops; Says "You Are Hee-yalled! Yay-ah!" AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/06/2003 11:10:00 PM ----- BODY: -------- TITLE: Bush Promises To "Ride Herd" Over Peace Meetings; Mideast Interpreters Mistakenly Fired AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/06/2003 12:57:00 PM ----- BODY: Some Arab Leaders Privately Tantalized By Suggestion

Israeli and Palestinian leaders could not understand one whit of President Bush's cowboy rhetoric at a recent photo opportunity cum meeting, so they fired most of their translators today, thinking that President Bush's garbled speech and strange Texan turns of phrase could only have been the result of poor translation. President Bush's most confusing statement was his recent declaration that he was going to "ride herd" over them until they came to an agreement. Virtually all of the translators involved in the meetings were fired, replaced, or suspended, or, in the case of some, summarily executed. Part of the problem lay in the fact that the Arabic translation of "ride herd" was, according to one source, "Morrocan and profane." "He's going to what over us?" said Prime Minister Abbas. "Is that legal in his country?" Sharon was no less startled by the remarks. "We in Israel ride many things," said Sharon, "but never that." Some lower level Arab officials were secretly curious about the statement, saying they "were willing to try it," and that it sounded like they might "really, really like it." -------- TITLE: Constant U.S. Rain, Winds Result of Putin Weather Control Machine AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/05/2003 10:56:00 AM ----- BODY: Russian leader Putin has acquired a weather control device that he has apparently used to destroy Spring in America. The thaw in U.S./Russia relations has led to a corresponding wave of bad weather in America which had U.S. officials puzzled until Putin unveiled his device to ensure sunny weather during a parade in Moscow. Then all became clear. "Ha, ha," exclaimed a gleeful Putin, speaking on the "red phone" to President Bush, "Now you will go directly from a cruel, snowfilled winter to an excruciatingly hot, humid summer without one perfect picnic day!"



Putin recently bragged to a delighted Gerhardt Schroeder at the G8 summit about making spring "werry unpleasant for Americans." He also took credit for the beautiful and sunny days enjoyed by world leaders at the summit. "With this weather device," laughed Putin, "I can control . . . the world!" -------- TITLE: Martha Stewart's Real Crimes AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/04/2003 10:51:00 AM ----- BODY: -------- TITLE:

"Opinions You Should Have" Bought By Rupert Murdoch; Will Now Be Called "Opinions You Will Have"

AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/03/2003 12:02:00 AM ----- BODY: Barely a minute had passed after the FCC voted to ease media ownership restrictions when Opinions You Should Have was purchased in a hostile takeover by Rupert Murdoch . Mr. Murdoch, who owns 20th century Fox, Fox TV, The New York Post, The Sydney Mirror, Asia's Star television, and is the only media mogul to have created and controlled a truly global media empire, waited not one moment before snatching up the highly prized weblog Opinions You Should Have. The staff of Opinions You Should Have Opinions You Will Have regrets any impression given by previous articles. While there may be a place for specious juvenilia and left-wing satire,the new management looks upon previous articles as "youthful indiscretions" of a maturing weblog and is willing -- even enthusiastic -- to put such adolescent and bitter parodies behind them. We at the weblog look forward to achieving a sensible maturity with more serious reporting and views more appropriate to the tenor of the media jewel "Opinions" has become. While members of the Graphics and Research departments will stay on, Mr. Thomas Burka is seeking to ingratiate himself with the new ownership while occupying the temporary position of Coffee Boy, which is a little like a cabana boy but far more limiting. -------- TITLE: Tony Blair, President Bush, Find WMD, Forget Where They Put Them AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/02/2003 07:30:00 AM ----- BODY: Today, President Bush announced that he had found WMD in his left pants pocket during a dinner with Tony Blair but that they had misplaced them during dessert and a really fine cup of coffee. The WMD, which Bush swears was discovered somewhere in Iraq and relayed to him by somebody, were almost certainly there when dinner started, although Bush said, "They could be in my other suit." Blair was unconcerned. "We're going to find more WMD, we're going find them soon, and we're going to keep on finding them." Blair went on to say that he had seen plenty of evidence of WMD and that "sooner or later, at some point, maybe not today, but hopefully by tomorrow -- or as late as mid-summer -- the people will hear about it, and they'll know what we knew and know now but won't tell them because we don't want to tell them now and we have our own truly fine, impeccable, unimpeachable reasons for hiding from them the evidence that we now known -- and have known all along.' -------- TITLE: "Waldorf Transcripts" Show Straw, Powell, Had Excellent Appetites, Knew How To Pick Wine AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 6/01/2003 04:47:00 PM ----- BODY: The Waldorf Transcripts , transcripts of taped conversations between British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Gen. Colin Powell in New York's lush Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in February just hours before Powell's "big pitch" to the U.N., have surfaced, and some say they don't look too good in daylight. The transcripts have been anonymously leaked to the press by a member of the U.N. Security Counsel who was lied to about WMD in order to gain support -- in other words, Cameroon. "We not very happy about this in Cameroon," said an unidentified Cameroonian named Jack deBont Ngongo, who drives a white porsche with the license plate JL45-E and lives on East 51st Street in New York. "Just read this," he said, handing over a portion of the transcripts:
[sound of loud crunching] Straw: More salad? Powell: No, no – but you can’t beat those apples and walnuts. Whoever thought of this was a genius. Straw: Quite, quite. And this sherry is absolutely superb. Powell: Damn fine. Straw: Not like those intelligence reports. Powell: [gunshot laugh] No. [to waiter] Can we get more of these , uh, little crackers? Unidentified Waiter With Boom Microphone: Of course. Powell: Nope, those reports don't have the crispness or the fine finish of this 1897 Chateau neuf de pape. They’re [expletive deleted]. Straw: Quite right, old chap. [talking with mouth full] I wish we had something REAL to present to the U.N. (to waiter) I need a clean fork. Powell: I’m very troubled by it. Damn, this paté is outstanding. Straw: Croissant? Powell: Thanks.
Ngongo said, "Listen to that. We met with him just an hour before and we were famished. What did we get? Baloney." -------- TITLE: War Mistakenly Declared Over AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/30/2003 08:40:00 AM ----- BODY: Iraqi Opposition Apparently Uninformed of End of Hostilities U.S. Commander Lt. Gen. David McKiernan today said he had realized that the Iraqi war was still going on. Vital clues included the continuing deaths of U.S. soldiers due to opposition sorties and a smack on the head from Staff Sergeant Minnie Dubloon. It also dawned on those few U.S. generals and colonels that they would have to call back many of the troops the U.S. had just spent millions of dollars sending back home, placing them back in harm's way. "We'll probably need some of them tanks and missiles and stuff, too," said Sgt. Omar "Tecumseh" Bradley of Maine. "It would be totally hard to fight this war without them thangs." Some were quick to point fingers and other quick to point rifles, depending on how exposed their positions were. "I sure am glad that we have such great armed forces," said Private Irving Ukulele, who wished to remain unidentified for this article. "Because our leadership sure sucks." -------- TITLE: Karl Rove Has Orgasm At Tax-Cut Signing Ceremony AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/30/2003 08:39:00 AM ----- BODY: Smokes Cigarette Outside Of Oval Office Afterwards
During President's Bush's signing of an enormous $350 billion tax cut bill, Rove suddenly emitted a low moan, gave a gasp of pleasure, and shouted, "YES, YES, YES!" just as the President put his pen to the paper. After the ceremony, Rove took the bill into his private office for "some quality time." Rove later claimed that he had had a "religious experience" and refused to talk further about it. -------- TITLE: Showtime To Air Original Horror Flick; Filmed in Karl Rove-a-Vision® AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/29/2003 10:36:00 AM ----- BODY: Two-Hour Campaign Commercial Most Frightening Film Ever The Big Dance, a cross between Frankenstein and War of the Worlds, is about a powermad dictator who hijacks the U.S. government, hypnotizes the people and installs a dumb non-elected idiot in the White House who will do his bidding. Timothy Bottoms will play the willing puppet of a crazed Machiavellian schemer who capitalizes on the worst tragedy in American history to maintain power, and plunges the world into war for personal gain while forsaking all at home except for the few privileged rich he needs to keep him and his schemes alive. "I've never seen anything so scary," boasted Tod Schmeckman, of Showtime Films. "This film will literally make your blood congeal." He went on to say the film was "kind of like Pinky and the Brain but much grimmer: Pinky is much more presentable, wears suits with expensive ties, and works out a lot, so he stays in shape and plays well to cameras. The Brain is far more frightening than his cartoon counterpart -- he doesn't have the fantastic voice of Orson Wells, and he's diabolically smarter. Even spookier, he stays completely behind the scenes, a terrifying unseen presence, like the ghosts in The Haunting, but much, much more -- did I say terrifying?" The film also utilizes Karl Rove-a-vision® , an immersive interactive technique where viewers are placed under electronically controlled Scottish sweaters and chains, so that at critical points in the story, their chains are yanked and the wool is pulled over their eyes. Screenwriter Lionel Chetwynd, writer of the award-winning drama movie The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, said, "I always wanted to do horror. It wasn't until the Bush Administration that the right material came along to do it with." Thanks to Eric Tam of Antidotal for his tip about the film. -------- TITLE: Bush Fund Raising Letter Asks For Cash, Offers Prizes AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/28/2003 10:11:00 AM ----- BODY: President Bush has kicked off his campaign for reelection with an appeal for cash in his first fundraising letter to a million prospective cash wranglers. In the letter, President Bush said that the election "could be close," so he needs piles and piles of money; excess cash, if any, will be raked into excess piles that donors can jump into, a popular mid-November GOP sport. The letter set out to "incentivise" fundraisers by, among other things, awarding them fancy titles: Anyone who raises $50,000 will be called a "Pathfinder;" anyone who raises $100,000 will be called a "Man of Yale;" anyone who raises $200,000 will be called an "Industry Lobbyist;" anyone who raises $500,000 will be called a "Monopolist;" and anyone who raises more than $500,000 will be called "Kenneth Lay." Additionally, select photo sets and valuable items will be given to the most successful fundraisers, among these being: -------- TITLE: "Leadership Luncheon" With Karl Rove To Include Braised Flank of
Laidoff Auto Worker And More AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/23/2003 02:12:00 PM ----- BODY: Millionaires Call Dishes "Absolutely Divine"
Karl Rove is kicking President Bush's fundraising activities into high gear, featuring a raft of spectacular events that monied corporate interests and wealthy financiers just can't miss. Coming up soon is a $5000 a plate meal featuring the finest cuisine Republicans have to offer.
First Course
Carpaccio of Disenfranchised Minority
served with a variety of corporate capers, picked fresh from the exploits of Enron, Global Crossing, Halliburton, and drizzled with Harken Energy oil

Second Course
Glazed-over Gaze of Average American
served under a reduction of diversified and unbiased media

Third Course
Filet of Middle Class Taxpayer
lightly seared, gently cajoled, cradled in a bed of insincere promises and propelled by a subtle distillation of fear

Dessert
Poor Man's Souffle
soaked by the essence of Privileges of the Very Rich
-------- TITLE: Homeland Security Department Replaces Vigiliance With Inquisition; Ridge Unveils "Clever New Tool For Rooting Out Terrorism" AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/22/2003 11:08:00 PM ----- BODY: Feels Safer Than Ever
"With breathtaking clarity of vision and great ingenuity," Tom Ridge noted at a congratulatory press conference, "Judge William Crosbie has uncovered a sly and ingenious device for the detection of terrorrists living among us. It is with this in mind that I have created the Bureau of Civilian Inquisition. Tom Ridge was praising a new tool in the fight against terrorism invented by Judge Crosbie, who capably deployed it in his courtroom in Tarrytown, New York. Judge Crosbie was presiding in Tarrytown's village court when Anisa Khoder, a 46-year-old American citizen of Lebanese descent came before him to challenge the validity of two parking tickets. That's when Judge Crosbie leapt into action. "Are you a terrorist?" Judge Crosbie asked. He now recalls he may have pointed an accusing finger at her and announced, in a loud clear voice, "J'accuse!" Khoder fainted dead away, undoubtedly from the shock of having her terrible secret revealed. She was immediately spirited to an undisclosed location for interrogation; whatever her fate, authorities have been careful to point out that she will still have to take care of those two parking tickets. Ridge, who demonstrated the technique for reporters, will be stocking the newly created Bureau with Will Parker, Beth Parker and Sam Parker, a family known for its great curiosity. The Parkers -- known for their large probosci -- will roam the countryside, asking those they encounter, "Are YOU a terrorist?" Anyone who answers yes or faints dead away will be placed in federal custody. -------- TITLE: Public Service Retirees Discovered to Have Been Spending "More Time" With Wrong Familes AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/21/2003 02:55:00 PM ----- BODY: In the wake of Christy Todd Whitman's recent announcement that she was resigning from the Bush Administration so she could "spend more time with her own family," it was discovered that Karen Hughes, who had retired from the White House staff to spend more time with her own family, was mistakenly living with Norman and Brenda Kildare and their three children in Eastern Kentucky. "We didn't know who she was," said Mrs. Kildare. "But she was just so well organized and everything that we were afraid to ask her to leave." Rumsfeld and Cheney denied rumors that they were thinking of leaving their jobs. "The last thing I'd want to do," said Cheney, "is spend more time with my own family." "And I think they feel the same way," he added. -------- TITLE: Terrorists Raise Threat Level To Orange Because Of Increase In Cable News Network Chatter AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/21/2003 09:33:00 AM ----- BODY: Anonymous sources from terrorist groups indicated that they had increased the likelihood of committing a terrorist act because of what they called "an incredible rise in the level of punditry and unfounded speculation" detected on MSNBC, CNN, Fox, and the Cartoon Network. An unidentified source named Hamid Baq-ti-qar Amith, a member of al Qaeda, said, "We cannot take it anymore. This Chris Matthews with his Hard Ball is making us crazy. These Fox news people with their reporting and deciding have us climbing the walls. Someone must silence this Geraldo man. The violence must be stopped!" Cable news networks declined to comment or speculate about the nexis between 24/7 news "coverage" and any increase in terorrorist activity. However, they did ask Ann Coulter to appear on MSNBC at 7:00 p.m. tonight to discuss the question with Greta Van Susterin, Bill O'Reilly, James Carville, Jeffrey Toobin, a host of former government officials and armed forces retirees, John Gleeson (author of "Cable News Networks, the Five Second News Cycle, and You"), and Jerry Mathers. -------- TITLE: War Constant Obstacle to Peace in Mideast AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/21/2003 08:07:00 AM ----- BODY: Numerous suicide bombings in Israel are significantly deterring efforts to stop suicide bombings in Israel. "If this war would just stop, we could get down to the business of negotiating the end of it," said Ariel Sharon today, after he cancelled a planned trip to meet with President Bush to discuss plans to make trips to discuss negotiations for peace with the Palestinians. -------- TITLE: Bush Committed to "Road Map" For Mideast Peace, Despite Problems "Backing Out of The Driveway" AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/20/2003 11:33:00 AM ----- BODY: Rejects "Process," "Plan" "Schedule of Interim Goals," "Itinerary," "Agenda" As Metaphors For "Diplomatic Initiative" President Bush today declared that he was dedicated to the "road map" as the phrase he will use to connote his otherwise undescribed plan for acheiving peace in the Middle East. "We talked about a plan," said Bush, "and some other words. But 'Road Map' is much better, because it sounds like we know where we have to go and how to get to it." Bush added that the stream of rhetorical metaphors which come from the phrase "road map" make it all the more enticing as an emblematic phrase: "We can say 'it's a bumpy road,' we've come upon an 'obtacle' on the road to peace, we're making an 'unscheduled U-turn' on the way to peace, 'there's a signpost up ahead,' that kind of thing. It always sounds like we're making progress -- 'coming a few clicks closer to peace' -- no matter what happens. It doesn't even matter whether we get these guys to meet, or talk, or agree upon anything. We've got a road map. They can follow the route we've charted or they can drive right off the road, but at least we can claim we've shown them the way." -------- TITLE: Ari Fleischer to Resign This Summer; Has "Really Big Steak" To Grill AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/19/2003 06:20:00 PM ----- BODY: Ari Fleischer, the erstwhile press secretary famous for his deadpan delivery of Bush Administration bon mots, drollery and outright evasion -- which he comically called "information" -- today announced his pending resignation this coming summer. Fleischer stated that, after mastering the task of saying as many as twenty-eight completely contradictory things in one day, sometimes in as little as one hour, and often going for days answering hundreds of questions without providing even one meager sliver of information, he was either going to take a well-deserved rest, or he wasn't. Asked about whether he was going to work in the private sector and whether he had yet received any job offers, Fleischer said, "That's certainly a question that we'll all want to know the answer to, and about which anyone would naturally be curious, and I'm sure the information will be made available as soon as we can get that out to you." Fleischer did say that if it was a really hot summer he might try to see how many eggs he could fry on the top of his head "for a lark." Although he was seen wearing a "Baghdad Ari?' t-shirt at a recent White House barbeque, Fleischer refused to answer questions relating to the upcoming opening for a Minister of Information in a soon-to-be-formed Iraqi democracy. "I'll have to get back to you on that," Fleischer told reporters. -------- TITLE: U.S. Forces Stop Shooting Iraqis; Offer Them $40 Instead AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/19/2003 11:35:00 AM ----- BODY: Iraqis Complain "Nothing To Spend It On" U.S. forces desperate to stop the tide of Iraqi looting and unrest despairingly offered each Iraqi 40 dollars if they would just "shut up and accept democracy already." Iraqis complained about the payoff, saying they should hold out for at least a nice DVD player or "quality watch." Baghdad resident Sahab Sharifi complained that the settlement was not acceptable to him because "the stores have nothing left to buy," and that, in any event, there was no electricity available to run "even the cheapest of toaster ovens." He also mentioned his belief that, in America, you could get more valuable items for opening a bank account. Sharifi said, "This would be true here, as well, if any of the banks were still operating." -------- TITLE: Dog to President Bush: Walk This AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/16/2003 10:12:00 PM ----- BODY: According to U.S. News and World Report, Barney, President Bush's black scotty, refuses to listen to President Bush's commands, and "rarely plays with Bush." Barney explained, "I am so sick of him bringing that damn ball back to me, him wagging his tail, expecting me to throw it again." Barney continued, "He always has this big goofy grin and slobbers over everything. He disgusts me. It has nothing to do with my being black." Barney dismissed the idea of spending more time with Bush. "Look, I have better things to do than lead that dope around by the nose all the time. Who do I look like, Karl Rove?'" Barney sniffed. "I'm very busy. I'm trying to solve this dog longevity thing. There must be a way for intelligent animals like myself to outlive morons." Barney's ears dropped and his tail was listless. "Life isn't fair," he said. "There are good people with bad hearts who can't afford to get cardiac caths every two years like Dick Cheney. Good dogs get worms. When you scratch my belly, no matter how damn smart I am, my leg goes up and down like I have freaking palsy." -------- TITLE: In Parallel Universe, Professor Richard Cheney Horrified To Discover Other-Dimensional Self To Be Friendly With Rumsfeld AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/15/2003 10:32:00 AM ----- BODY: Nobel Laureate and renowned genius Professor Richard Cheney, famed for ending the world's dependence on fossil fuels by inventing the button-sized fusion cell and revered for ushering in an era of world peace and prosperity, today fired up his newest invention -- a device capable of retrieving visual information from what he believes to be alternate and parallel universes -- and was thoroughly stunned to discover newspaper accounts of his longtime friendship with Donald Rumsfeld. Professor Cheney's blood congealed as he read about his vice-presidential alter-ego:
It is part of Washington lore that Donald Rumsfeld gave young Dick Cheney his start in government, hiring him as an assistant in the Nixon administration. But Mr. Cheney revealed today that 35 years ago, when Mr. Rumsfeld was still a congressman, he flunked his first interview with the man who would eventually become his mentor, boss and hawkish ally. "It was clear that we hadn't hit it off," the vice president said of his ill-fated 15-minute meeting in Mr. Rumsfeld's Capitol Hill office in 1968. "He thought I was some kind of airhead academic, and I thought he was rather an arrogant young member of Congress."
Professor Cheney stated: "I remember that meeting. Rumsfeld was an arrogant young man and now he's an arrogant and unrepentant convict." Reading of a purported 35-year long relationship with Rumsfeld, Professor Cheney added, "I don't know what bothers me more, my friendship with Rumsfeld or that that crook Nixon was President. I want to puke." Professor Cheney, known for his glowing, positive demeanor and a joie de vivre that is the envy of all, not to mention his phenomenal health, has never been so publicly demoralized. "In this other world," Professor Cheney said, "I'm a penny-pinching miser bent on destroying the environment just so I can make a few lousy bucks. I am arrogant, my friends are arrogant, and we are bent on world domination. No wonder this other Cheney has heart trouble." -------- TITLE: Iraq Reloaded AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/14/2003 09:54:00 PM ----- BODY: Today, U.S.Administrator Paul Bremer adopted a new policy to combat crime in Iraq permitting U.S. forces to try and sentence alleged criminals as soon as, or even before, they have been taken into custody. To speed up the process, which can normally take as long as ten minutes, U.S. forces will execute sentence first, shooting and killing alleged criminals, and hold the trials afterward. Families of suspects who are acquitted will receive stunning floral bouquets. Bremer called this a "more muscular" approach to crime fighting. He said that he had rejected an "intestinal" approach, a "monosylabic" approach, a "gesticular" approach, an "aerodynamic" approach, and a "septicemic" approach before settling on "muscularity" as the buzzword for his plan. Iraqis took comfort in the thought that the tide of violence and anarchy awash in the streets of Baghdad since Saddam's ouster would soon be stemmed by roving groups of U.S. soldiers firing at them willy-nilly. -------- TITLE: Jay Garner Demoted to Shoulder Rest For Reporters At Iraq Press Conferences AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/13/2003 09:03:00 AM ----- BODY: Retired U.S. General Jay Garner was visibly unsettled when he was demoted from the position of U.S. Administrator of Iraq to shoulder rest at the press conferences of the new administrator, civilian Paul Bremer III. "It's humiliating," said Garner. At Bremer's first press conference, Garner was asked to prop up the arm of television news reporter Hans Needleman of WZID, so Needleman could position his tape recorder microphone in front of Bremer before playing his tape over the phone to his boss back in Cornhaven, Idaho. Reporters later asked Garner who he was, and why he was looked like Harvey Keitel playing a disgruntled assassin in Reservoir Dogs, but without the nice suit. -------- TITLE: Dr. Germ and Mrs. Anthrax Captured; Colonel Mustard Still At Large AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/12/2003 12:23:00 PM ----- BODY: Today, U.S. officials announced to feeble-minded Americans and President Bush that "Dr. Germ’" had surrendered in Baghdad. "Dr. Germ" is Dr. Rihab Taha, the scientist alleged to have been the leader of Iraq's biological weapons program. Today, Condoleeza Rice, whom President Bush calls "Professor," informed the President that "Dr. Germ" was in custody but that the whereabouts of "Mr. Dictator" were still unknown. President Bush learned of the incident while he was using "Mr. Fork" and "Mr. Knife" to eat his lunch. The infamous Colonel Mustard, chief of Iraq's chemical weapons program and a suspect in a number of killings in ballrooms, libraries, studies, and conservatories all over the world, remains unapprehended, although it is rumored that a lead pipe and a candlestick were found suspiciously near a knife, pistol and rope in a secret passageway connecting two rooms in one of Baghdad's Presidential Palaces. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld, whom the President knows as "Mary Ann," had no comment. -------- TITLE: Mideast Road Map Hard To Read, Impossible to Fold AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/10/2003 07:45:00 PM ----- BODY: Yesterday, a bitter dispute broke out between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas over whether to take an immediate left turn, or stop at the next service plaza and ask directions on the way to peace. At last report, the pair had pulled over to the side of the road to once again examine the road map. Sharon insists on taking the Interstate at least as far as the West bank, but Abbas want to take backroads to avoid traffic. "The Interstate gets completely backed up this time of year," said Abbas. shaking his head in frustration. "It's crazy," he told Sharon. "We'll just be sitting there, inching ahead, barely moving -- we'll get stuck there a million miles from an offramp, I know it." "Many of these roads are not even on the map, as far as I can see," Sharon replied. "We're just going to get lost." Among other disagreements the parties have encountered are who gets to drive, who gets to ride shotgun, and whether to listen to Kelly Clarkson's "Thankful" CD (Sharon) or Duran Duran (Abbas) during the trip. Finally, Secretary of State Colin Powell's backseat driving has become, according to the Prime Ministers, "intolerable." "I don't think he has a clue about how to get where we're going, but he won't shut up," said Abbas. Sharon was more direct: "Don't make me reach back there." -------- TITLE: Enterprising GOP Senators Raise Taxes So They Can Cut Them; Will Also Restore Frederick Douglass House Then Tear It Down AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/09/2003 11:41:00 AM ----- BODY: Enterprising GOP Congressmen were on a roll, stopping at nothing, working around the clock to get some real work done in Washington. First they're going to raise taxes so they can cut them, then they're going to restore the home of Frederick Douglass, then bulldoze it. "Since we renamed the French Fry, we've just been on a productive roll unlike anything Americans have seen before," said Dennis Hastert. Future GOP projects include: -------- TITLE: Are We Not Men? We Are Devo: Scientists Discover New Subspecies of Man AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/07/2003 02:37:00 PM ----- BODY: Scientists have discovered a subspecies of hominids which demonstrates "devolution," or the process of a complicated species regressing down the evolutionary chain. The sub-species, called Homo sapiens democraticus, is notable in that, while it retains the characteristics of mammals (mammalia), it has lost the spinal chord or backbone typically found in vertebrates and also lacks the gift of true speech. Said Anthropologist Dr. Norman Brewster, "They gibber somewhat but are largely silent." He added, "There are other ways in which this represents a dramatic differentiation of the species: while they appear to reproduce sexually, as is characteristic of mammals, huge numbers of the subspecies seem totally impotent." Biologists were also investigating another subspecies, which also has traditionally been classified as human but is quite thick-skulled and lacks the diastema (the space between the teeth that allows the mouth to close) found in all hominids since Australopithecus. This is especially perplexing, said scientists, because this species walks around fully erect. "These animals have permanent hard-ons," said Dr. Brewster. "Moreover, while they reproduce sexually and, in fact, have sex all over the place they are culturally ashamed of the act. Perhaps this is because almost all of them are absolutely terrible in bed." The proposed name for the subsecies is Homo sapiens republicanus. Brewster stated, "Anyone having difficulty pronouncing it should remember this simple rule: The emphasis is placed on the "anus." -------- TITLE: Sitting Democrat Discovered To Have Orbs of Alloyed Copper and Zinc; Rest of Party Flees in Fear AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/07/2003 12:04:00 AM ----- BODY: Yet again, Senator Robert Byrd shocked his colleagues when he criticized President Bush for using "an aircraft carrier . . . as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan," and made other remarks suggesting that Bush's address on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, as well as his arrival by jet wearing a U.S. Air Force flight suit, was improper. Byrd said that Bush was a "desk-bound president" improperly assuming the "garb of a warrior" to make a campaign commercial. Upon hearing Byrd's remarks, Congressional democrats wet themselves and fled in a panic from the Capitol, trampling several pages in the process. Unconfirmed reports indicate that Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who is running for President, coughed up a matzoh ball onto the lap of Teddy Kennedy, who found it there several hours later and put it with his golf clubs. Richard Gephardt was said to have become quite pale, but the allegation was impossible to confirm. Byrd had already frightened his colleagues last year when he voted against the war in Iraq, saying that giving the President the authority to go to war in order to help the President resolve the conflict peacefully "was absurd.' Senate Democrats called him "insane," "dangerous," and "wacky." The only Democratic member of Congress to stay in the Capitol with Byrd was Congressman Henry Waxman, who caused many of his colleagues to throw themselves off of the top of the Congressional Record (Vol. 5, 2003; height of nearly one foot) by asking the GAO to investigate and provide Congress with the cost of President Bush's trip to an aircraft carrier that was so close to the San Diego shoreline, he could have rowed himself out to it. -------- TITLE: Another False Alarm: "Mrs. Anthrax" Actually Mrs. Antifungal Powder AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/05/2003 10:56:00 PM ----- BODY: Full story at Smoky Mountain Journal. -------- TITLE: Excerpts from William Bennett's "Children's Book of Virtues" AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/05/2003 02:36:00 PM ----- BODY: -------- TITLE: Cheney Suggests Bush Make Absurdly Dangerous Landing On Aircraft Carrier AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/02/2003 11:16:00 AM ----- BODY: In three Presidential firsts, George W. Bush was visibly excited after arriving on board the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on a S-3 Viking jet wearing a flight suit over the largest codpiece worn by any President in U.S. history. A jet landing on an aircraft carrier is considered to be the most dangerous maneuver a pilot can perform. The pilot flying the jet was told that if he failed to make a successful landing, he would be punished severely, but because an unsuccessful landing constitutes crashing and blowing up, the pilot was simply told that his remains would not be scraped off the back of the carrier if he screwed up. President Bush decided to arrive by jet at the suggestion of Dick Cheney, who said, "You'll be o.k. as long as you keep your privates covered." Cheney has also suggested that, for future press conferences, national addresses and pubic appearances, the President should:
Upon the President's return to the White House that evening, Cheney greeted him at the door to the Oval office with a cool drink and a snack. "Pretzel?" he offered. -------- TITLE: Poll Conclusively Shows That Bush's Drive to Deprive Americans of Health Care, Education, and Clean Air Paying Off AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 5/01/2003 09:16:00 PM ----- BODY: Sick, poor, Americans, poorly informed and barely educated, told pollsters even as they choked on rancid air and drank water with god-knows-what in it, told pollsters they thought the President was doing great. A new poll by the Washington Post and ABC News found that Americans think very well of the job President Bush is doing, even though they don't think he's doing a very good job at all. Americans consistently and overwhelmingly decided that Bush was a "strong leader," and they all agreed that he was leading them to lose jobs, money, and government services. 57% of Americans gave Bush low marks for presiding over the only job-losing Presidency other than Hoover's , and that he was doing a horrible job dealing with rising costs of prescription drugs, health care, and insurance. Thus, most of these Americans said, they thought Bush was doing "a pretty good job," and would almost certainly "vote for him again." Pollsters found the data easy to interpret. Glenn Sandersonsky of Rigby Biweekly Polls said, "These numbers look good, but they could still mean trouble for Bush. Terrorism at the expense of domestic welfare could be the big issue that drives the G.O.P. into the hole here or, it could be the issue that saves them from the disastrous economy, as in the previous midterms. Democrats may be able to use the economy and Bush's foreign policies to sink him; then again, the way they handle it may give Bush little floaties that help him to swim. I have to go now. I'm betting on some horses." -------- TITLE: Iraqis Protest Shooting of Iraqis by U.S. Soldiers; U.S. Soldiers Shoot Them AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/30/2003 12:58:00 PM ----- BODY: FALLUJAH, Iraq -- In a 2nd Incident, U.S. troops fired on Iraqi protesters protesting the shooting and killing of Iraqi protesters by U.S. troops the day before. Two protesters were killed. Meanwhile, Donald Rumsfeld addressed Iraqis from one of the Presidential palaces in Baghdad. "Iraq belongs to you," he said. "It's only the bullets that belong to us." Tomorrow, President Bush will stand on the deck of a really big aircraft carrier and announce that the war is over. "We've licked this whole thing," he said today. He was later heard to mutter, "If only we could get those Iraqis to stop shooting at us." -------- TITLE: Iraqis Celebrate; U.S. Soldiers Shoot Them AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/30/2003 12:44:00 PM ----- BODY: A small horde, group, or mass of Iraqis were either protesting the occupation of a school by U.S. forces or unwisely celebrating the birthday of Saddam Hussein when U.S soldiers in the school opened fire and either killed 13 or 15 of them or killed some of them while others were killed by what was called "celebratory gunfire." Soldiers in an elevated, enclosed schoolroom, unaware of either the lack of firecrackers in Baghdad or the practice of firing guns into the air to celebrate an event, apparently mistook the "celebratory gunfire"-- bullets fired up into the air that, obeying the laws of gravity, return to earth and accidentally revisit the shooter -- for "noncelebratory gunfire" -- in other words, people trying to kill them -- and killed members of the birthday party. News accounts differ. Some said the Iraqis were unarmed; others said that they were shooting off the guns into the air to protest the presence of U.S. soldiers in the schoolhouse; other said they were firing into the air to celebrate Hussein's birthday; others said that the Iraqis were dancing around a maypole and occasionally playing London bridge; one account said that Iraqis were threatening American forces with nuclear weapons and water pistols. The Washington post squared all of these accounts by simply reporting: "Details remained murky." -------- TITLE: Bush Signs Pact With Terrorist Group; White House Analysts Conclude That U.S. Must Invade Self AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/29/2003 11:02:00 AM ----- BODY: In light of President's Bush's repeated statements that nations that are against terrorism are "for us," and that nations that deal with terrorists are "against us," Senior White House officials have reluctantly concluded that a contract between the United States and a terrorist group on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations means that the United States will have to declare war on itself unless the United States ignores its own demands that the agreement be terminated "or else." "President Bush has repeatedly stated that countries that harbor, promote or support terrorism are against us and will be considered a hostile regime," said Theodore Shmeckman, a senior White House advisor. "The People's Mujahedeen is a large terrorist organization that has killed Americans in the past and supported the takeover of the American Embassy in Iran years ago. By contracting with them to allow their continued existence, we have just become a hostile regime. We have weapons of mass destruction, and we're a super-superpower. We're very dangerous, we pose a great threat to ourselves, and we must be stopped at all costs." -------- TITLE: Bush Insists Tax Cuts Will Cure SARS AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/28/2003 12:38:00 PM ----- BODY: At a speech today before the ASA ("Association of Stupid Americans"), Bush said, "Tax cuts will cure SARS. That much we know. If we don't pass this tax cut, God knows how many people will needlessly die because we failed to act -- to act now -- to give people the tax cuts that will stop this disease and heal the world's sick." Bush did not merely suggest that tax cuts would cure SARS: he also said tax cuts would cure the common cold, stimulate the economy, revive tired, aching muscles, bring peace to the Middle East, and give pigs wings. -------- TITLE: WHO Convenes Emergency Meeting of Hollywood Screenwriters to Combat SARS AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/26/2003 10:34:00 PM ----- BODY: In a move some called desperate and others hailed as an attempt at a creative solution to a difficult problem, the World Health Organization formed a "think tank" of Hollywood screenwriters and directors to craft strategies that would stem the spread of the pulmonary disease SARS. George Lucas proposed naming the initiative "SARS Wars," and said that, with some luck, they could "drag the thing out" for a good twenty to twenty-five years, turning it into "a surefire franchise." "The merchandising possibilities alone are staggering," he added. Other had more useful suggestions. Director Michael Bay (Armageddon) suggested rounding up all the people suspected of having the disease, blasting them off into space, marooning them on a giant asteroid, and then sending a team of blue-collar oil rig workers to blow them up. Writer-director James Cameron (Terminator, Terminator 2) suggested sending a killer robot with an Austrian accent back in time to track down and annihilate the doctor who originally treated the disease and exposed countless people by jetting around the globe before returning to Hong Kong and dying from the illness. "It might not eradicate the disease altogether," Cameron said, "but it might go a long way towards discouraging rank stupidity." Robert Towne (Chinatown) said he said some good ideas but hadn't yet come up with a good story structure. "I've got one or two plot points, but that's it." He then asked some questions about the Chinese water supply and whether any orange groves existed near Hong Kong. "They're probably the key to the whole thing," he said. Roman Polansky (Chinatown") was unable to attend the conference because it was held in Los Angeles. Michael Crichton (The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park) suggested making a female virus that's like a black widow -- "it mates with the male virus and eats the male during the sex act" -- that has infertile viral progeny, killing off the species. When told the virus was asexual, Crichton pooh-poohed the whole thing. "Nobody's really asexual," he said. "it's all about sex. Survival. Reproduction. Nature finds a way. Haven't you read just one of my books?" Buzz Meritt (Producer: Dragnet 2: Joe Friday Takes A Vacation, Remake of Flintstones 3 (the movie), working on a sequel to The In-Laws called The In-laws-In-Law, Gilligan's Island: The Becoming) said, "We could do that whole Fantastic Voyage thing. Shrink a team of scientists and a microscopic sub -- a handsome guy, a babe, some bald-headed genius, maybe someone else for comedic relief -- inject them into the body of someone with SARS. They grapple with the virus while, unbeknownst to them , a member of their own team -- who's say, a secret fundamentalist religious nut who believes SARS was God's plan to bring about the end of the world -- is working to sabotage them -- and then there's the whole potential for romance between the lead guy and the girl. And it's complicated because even though he's falling for her, and she for him, the guy they've been injected to is her fiance. Man, that's just brilliant. Anyway, it works out, they get a sample of the virus and witness how it works so they know how to defeat it -- they get out and we create nanorobots or something to inject into everyone else that stops them from getting it. Something like that." He got up to make a quick cell phone call to "his people," adding "whether or not you use it -- it's mine." -------- TITLE: North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il Discovered Just to Be Doing Bad Dr. Evil Impression AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/25/2003 11:41:00 AM ----- BODY: "I big fan," Kim Jong Il said, "I just have some fun." He explained that people had simply misinterpeted him when he threatened to blow things up, and that was simply portraying Dr. Evil, the famed madman from the Austin Powers movies. He put a stubby pinky finger to hs lips and said, "I blow up Califohnia unless you give me . . .. a bazill-yun dollah. Bwa-ha-ha-ha." Jong Il said that the U.S. had misunderstood him. "Bad joke, maybe. Maybe in bad taste. I sorry. We no have nuclear weapon," he said. "We just bunch guys try have fun on slow day, like anyone else. We have some small missile, yes, that we like take out when things dull, blow something up, pass time, you know? Not that different than American." -------- TITLE: Indiana Husband Claims Wife Has WMD, Wants Regime Change and $100 Billion For Rebuilding AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/24/2003 06:16:00 PM ----- BODY: Gerald Fishenbote declared today that his wife possessed serious "weapons of mass destruction," declared that she was dangerous, and asked the White House for urgent intervention to prevent her from using them. He also asserted that his wife was a ruthless dictator who unrelentingly tortured him with a social calendar that included dinners with unbearable couples and saddled him with inhumane tasks that turned him into a virtual slave during those few hours when he wasn't working to bring home money, which she controlled completely and spent on whatever she deemed appropriate. He told congressional leaders in his district and the White House switchboard that he was "pretty sure" she had a nuclear arms program, and possessed a stockpile of dangerous chemical and biological weapons that she kept "behind the bathroom mirror." He asked for a rapid deployment of U.S. troops, and $100 billion dollars for rebuilding his home after the invasion. "Either that," he said, "or maybe just redo the kitchen." -------- TITLE: Angry Rumsfeld Crushes Reporter's Left Testicle AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/22/2003 10:44:00 AM ----- BODY: In a stunning display of his supremacy over the media, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld crushed the left testicle of a reporter as his sole response to what he later said was "an annoying, time-wasting, meaningless question." The reporter, Daniel Kingsly of The Sacramento Sludge, later said, in tones several octaves higher than usual, that "these are the risks you take as a pool reporter when you ask a question that maybe you shouldn't have. Secretary Rumsfeld was fully justified in ripping my testicle off and I am just hoping that he will give me the opportunity to come back and thank him for my very just, very deserved punishment." That morning's press conference started normally. The Secretary took some simple questions regarding the number of troops stationed in Iraq and whether Rumsfeld was pleased that the POWs had returned home vefore he called upon Kingsly. Kingsly asked, "My question is twofold: First, are we really rebuilding Iraq or are we just saying that, and, second: if we dictate to the Iraqis the nature of their democratic government, that's not truly democratic, is it?" There was a pause before Secretary Rumsfeld suddenly reached into the press pool, ripped Kingsly's testicle from his body, crushed it, and held it up for the rest of the press pool to see. "Ok?" said Rumsfeld. "Any more smart-alecky questions?" He later told the press pool, "Don't think I can't get to an ovary if I have to." After Kingsly had been medically evactuated, the press conference resumed. The first question was "How does it feel to have managed such a perfect execution of Hussein's demise?" -------- TITLE: First Free Election in Baghdad Results in Election of George W. Bush; Angry Iraqis Claim They "Intended to Vote For Pat Buchanan" AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/18/2003 11:14:00 PM ----- BODY: Baghdad, April 18 - The installation of democracy appeared stalled here after election returns from the first free election in Baghdad appeared to indicate that 100% of Iraqis had voted for President George W. Bush. The White House seemed perplexed and denied that the administration of the elections by what it called "the independent interim government" was tainted or improper. Donald Rumsfeld appeared irritated at any suggestion of impropriety. "The voting process was very simple. You punched a hole in a card next to the name of the person whom you wanted to lead Iraq. The cards were collected, and the holes were counted. And apparently, there were a lot of holes in those little cards, all for the same guy. End of story." Angry Iraqis protested outside of Baghdad's Liberty Square, saying that the ballots had been confusing, and should have been in Arabic, at the very least. Some Iraqis claimed that the ballots that they had been given had only one hole that could be punched. Others said that it was unclear to them, after years of living under Saddam Hussein, whether the hole should have been punched, kicked, or maimed. Some Iraqis called for a recount, but it was unclear whether the Iraqi constitution and the laws set forth by the interim Iraqi government allowed for a recount, or specified the manner in which a recount could be done. Donald Rumsfeld again commented, "What's the problem? The votes were counted, they counted the holes in the cards. To recount them, you would count the holes in the cards again. In my view, that would constiute recounting. It doesn't need a description. The word itself tells you what you have to do. Re-count. It's that simple. Next question." President Bush immediately organized a bipartisan committee composed of Republicans to investigate the election and also to render an opinion as to whether a "sitting president can preside over more than one country at a time." Congresswoman Kathryn Harris was appointed to chair the committee; assisting her will be former Secretary of State James Baker, Jeb Bush, Ted Olsen, and at least one Iraqi who had not been to Iraq in the past forty years. -------- TITLE: Too Soon To Judge the War? AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/18/2003 10:57:00 PM ----- BODY: There's an excellent post by "Jkstraw" (Jack Straw?) which led to a spirited debate over at The Daily Rant. Many conservatives jumped on the "lefties were wrong in their doom and gloom outlook" bandwagon, referring to liberal perspectives on the course of the war, the aftermath of the war, and the failure (so far) to find WMD, which they now say was not the justification or goal for the war to begin with, and not proffered as such by Bush. I liked my response there so much I reprint it here:
It's fair to say that the administration trumped up and overestimated both the strength of Saddam Hussein's weapons, his possession of WMD, and his imminent or eventual threat to the U.S. or tot he security of the area to make the case for an urgent war where no such urgency existed. The left, which the conservatives here like to say have been proveed wrong at every turn, said all along that Saddam had been significantly, perhaps irrevocably weakened by the 1991 war and that he posed very little if any threat to our national security. So far, we (I'll put myself in with those lefties, since I said the above many times) have been proved completely correct. Saddam is the worst oppressor of his people in the world? (as one poster above said) No way. North Korea is a perfect example of a more despicable regime. China is considered not big on human rights. The debate -- when it is justifiable to use military intervention to cure human rights violations -- is an entirely different debate than the one Bush and his pals led the country in when they made the case for war (it was all about WMD -- e.g., Powell's pitch to the U.N.? WMD). When liberating the people from Hussein was thrown into an administration argument for the war, it was in the context of "WMD (and he's a brutal dictator, too)." If you say it's too soon to judge the need for the war based on the lack of WMD, then you have to admit also that it's too soon to judge whether the war was wise or justifiable. What will the next government be like? Will the region become more or less unstable? 5 or 10 or 20 years down the line, will the Iraqi people (who we claim to be helping) be better off, or worse? Will American security (and let's face it, we were never acting on behalf of anyone's interests but our own) be better? Will our foreign relations be better for us? Will the war damage us domestically? My position is that the Bush administration's actions are short-sighted, reckless, and dangerous. My opposition to the war was (and still is) based on the fact that the war was an unnecessary gamble that risks too much and stands to gain too little; that it has produced problems which you can see immediately and could foresee yesterday (with the international community and the domestic economy to start) -- and that the administration has not been the slightest bit honest about its aims or goals,so I can't even trust them on their judgment. Those who blindly support the administration in its claims, moves, pronouncements, wars and other actions are the ones who are being hasty.
-------- TITLE: The Truth Behind The Daily Rant AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/17/2003 11:20:00 AM ----- BODY: I thank Jane Finch and Jay Caruso (they're just one guy, actually) for letting me tell the real story behind the blog. -------- TITLE: Thanks to Antidotal AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/17/2003 07:05:00 AM ----- BODY: The fine folks at Antidotal (I think it's one guy, actually) were kind enough to reprint my coverage of the search for WMD in Iraq. I forgot, by the way, to mention Col. Richard McPhee, Commander of the 75th Exploitation Task Force, who must have spoken recently with General Walsh when he said, "It's only a matter of time." -------- TITLE: Lance Bass Offers To Strap Himself Into Warhead of U.S. Missile AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/16/2003 11:35:00 AM ----- BODY: Lance Bass, the frustrated N'Sync member whose dreams of rocketing into outer space in a Russian spaceship were crushed when he was apparently outbid by a Texas billionaire, has offered to pay one million dollars to be placed in the nose of a cruise missile and shot "wherever the U.S. needs to send it." "This would be such a rush," said Bass, whose spiked hair and amiable grin have endeared him to millions. "Hugging the contours of hostile terrain at like 500 miles per hour would be awesome." It was not explained how Bass intended to survive such an adventure, or whether he intended to be used as a "payload in the service of his country." U.S. officials declined to comment, but sources who wished to remain anonymous said the Pentagon was trying to evaluate the destructive force of a Lance Bass strike. Some speculated that the successful use of Mr. Bass could breathe "new life" into boy bands, "kind of." Murray-Bunim-Muenster, producers of the reality shows "The Real World: Somalia" and "When Good Dictators Go Bad" were reportedly interested in developing Bass's exploits as a sitcom. -------- TITLE: Scientific Testing Proves Careers of Jackson Browne and Darryl Hannah Destroyed By Breakup AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/16/2003 11:19:00 AM ----- BODY: Splitup of intellectually challenged couple who were "perfect for each other" doomed them to professional failure; Worst feared for Brittany Spears and Justin Timberlake. -------- TITLE: Task of Rebuilding Begins: Florida Election Booths to be Installed in Baghdad Tomorrow AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/16/2003 11:17:00 AM ----- BODY: Also coming: Walmart, Staples, Subway, Pizza Hut, CompUSA, TGIF, and Sizzlers. Statue of Hussein to be replaced with large wax model of Colonel Sanders. -------- TITLE: Bush Declares War Goal Met; Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction Gone AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/16/2003 11:14:00 AM ----- BODY: President Bush, in a press conference held at 4:10 a.m. today, said:
The Hussein regime harbored terrorists and possessed enough fissionable plutonium to extinguish the planet. It had a nuclear weapons program that was designed to build a nuclear bomb much larger than Eqypt, had tons of biological weapons -- Powell, show them the fake anthrax vial -- that could have killed us all, and chemical weapons that, as I understand it, were weapons containing chemicals. Now all of those weapons of mass destruction, as you can all see, are gone. I thank God that we were able to act so swiftly to eradicate a menace which so urgently threatened us all. The gun which Saddam Hussein was holding up against our heads has been taken from him, the bullets removed, and the revolver holstered. Americans can sleep more soundly, as they are no doubt sleeping now. Our coalition forces -- meaning U.S. forces and a British guy -- are now scouring Iraq to see if any traces of these terrible weapons still exist. But I am pleased to say that our mission worked -- our military served us -- and it appears that, in Iraq at least, they have effectively vanished due to our intervention. God bless us, God help the American People, and God -- An American God -- bless the Iraqi people.
After the conference, Bush had an early morning jog and a lengthy discussion with his wife about Katie Couric's hair. -------- TITLE: Bush Plan To Invade Iraq, Syria, Iran, and North Korea "Totally Different" Than Neocon Plan to Invade Iraq, Syria, Iran, and North Korea AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/16/2003 10:52:00 AM ----- BODY: The Bush Administration today denied that its plans to pressure and reshape the governments of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and North Korea bore no resemblance whatsoever to Neoconservatives' plans to dominate the world in precisely the same way. The Neoconservatives plans, drawn up in 1991 and documented in 1998 in a letter to President Clinton, outlined in the Weekly Standard, and commented upon in The Washington Monthly "have nothing to do with us," said Dick Cheney, who, said that his authorship of some of the neoconservative schemes was just part of the "incredible coincidence" linking neocoservative aims to the moves of the Bush Administration. "We've been perfectly honest about our constantly shifting rationales for the Iraq invasion. Right now, it's -- what is it?" Cheney asked, looking at some notes on his desk. "Oh, yes, we're liberating the Iraqi people." Asked about whether the Administration's threats to Syria demonstrated that the real motivation for invading Iraq was to execute teh neocon plan -- a grand scheme to forcibly reshape the Middle East and the rest of the world to insure the supremacy of America -- Cheney replied. "That's preposterous. It's a sheer coincidence. It's as unbelievable as those Dickens novels where Little nell discovers that Ms. Havesham and Pip are actually siamese twins who were seperated at birth, which makes her the heir to the entire Halliburton fortune. You know what I mean." President Bush described it differently. "It's completely absurd. It's like in The Fugitive, where the fugitive is always like one step behind the Man with One Arm, but he doesn't ever catch up with him, or like -- this is better -- in Spiderman, where Gwen Stacy dies, and then she comes back a bunch of years later as a clone, and then Peter Parker discovers that he's not even the original Peter Parker, he's a clone. That just confused the hell out of me." Donald Rumsfeld put it this way: "Just because one guy says, hey, let's do A and B, and then we'll do C, D, and E, and another guy does A and B, it doesn't make sense that that means the second guy will do C, D, and E, or that he even knows the first guy. Like, they could be complete strangers. Did I mention that freedom is untidy?" -------- TITLE: Whe are we fighting? We're invading -- I forget. CalPundit fills us in. AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/15/2003 11:59:00 PM ----- BODY: Click here. -------- TITLE: Suspected Chemical Weapons Actually Mammoth Collection of Pocket Lint AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/14/2003 11:02:00 PM ----- BODY: Suspect containers found in Karbala today housing many boxes containing a "suspect white, fluffy material," according to U.S. forces on the scene, turned out to contain pocket lint. Upon the initial discovery of the material, Sgt. Hurly Groton of the Fifth Brigade of the Third Column in the Second Row on the Righthand side of the Fourth Division, "Medical Doodads Unit," said something about the discovered material which sounded like "Immible tebs for chestible weemonds messle bled possibut," as far as could be heard through his 27-layer isolation suit. Later testing proved the huge stores of material to be, according to chemical analysis and documents buried with the materials, the largest collection of pocket lint ever found above or below ground. Officials from the Guinness Book of World Records were en route to the scene, but reportedly deeply excited. A spokesman for the Guiness Organization called it "the most significant collection on record since the discovery of the toenail clippings trove in Madras, 1976." General Robert Walsh of the Chemical Detection Engineers expressed disappointment, but was optimistic about the eventual discovery of weapons of mass destruction. So far U.S. forces have made many promising disscoveries: 1) Many tons of a white powdery substance in a chemical plant which turned out to be many tons of a (benign) white powdery substance. (General Walsh declined to elaborate.); 2) Some stuff U.S. forces thought was fissionable plutonium in a gum factory that turned out to be (benign) gum; and 3) Some really large anthrax-like spores in a bicycle factory that turned out to be bicycle spokes. (Benign.) Walsh was undeterred. "They're out there," he said, wading into a tank filled with a white, oozing paste-like substance in what the Iraqis claimed was a toothpaste factory. -------- TITLE: Deck of Cards Mixup Leads to Accidental Killing of King of Hearts AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/12/2003 02:49:00 PM ----- BODY: Yesterday, in an attempt to assist U.S. solidiers in the efforts to identify members of Saddam Hussein's regime, the Military issued a deck of cards featuring Iraqi officials. That deck contained 55 cards, and featured pictures of Qusay Hussein (as the Ace of Clubs) and Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz (the Eight of Clubs). Today, however, soldiers who were confused about decks of cards they had in their posession mistakenly shot the King of Hearts, who they claimed "failed to respond to repeated requests to take off his crown." In other of areas of Iraq, the Queen of Hearts was discovered making some tarts, and immediately placed in custody. The Jack of Diamonds evaded capture after a lengthy chase by coalition forces. When contacted, the Bicycle Corporation had no explanation why so many members of their decks were present in Iraq, but bemoaned the accidents and threatened legal action. "This is a terrible tragedy for card players all over the world," said Fred Bazillionaire, chief spokesman for the Bicycle Corporation. Officers of the Bicycle and Bee Corporations were considering filing wrongful death suits, but could not, at press time, decide who would lead and which suit would be trump. The incidents have affected games everywhere. Terry Hinkle, President of the Hearts Gaming Club of America, complained, "The Jack of Diamonds is now impossible to get. He just doesn't show up in any hand. That's -10 points that I personally could pick up in pretty much every round I ever played. If only they had taken out the Queen of Spades." In an unrelated story, Pfc. Norman Ishkowitz, who had been on something of a "lucky roll," was shaken upside down until his pockets were emptied after a poker game with members of his platoon in which he was discovered to have two Saddams and an extra Uday hidden in his cargo pants. Tariq Aziz, in Secret Communication, Complains He "Should Have Been a Face Card" Details to follow suit. -------- TITLE: Headlines In Briefs AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/09/2003 10:10:00 PM ----- BODY: Jubilant Iraqis Topple Statue, Accidentally Crush Small Dog Kurds Victorious in North, Will Be Joined By Whey Both small kurds and large kurds rejoice, claim complete control of tuffet. Marines Wage Fierce Battle For Baghad University, Immediately Demand Curriculum Change Want credit for beer pong. Arrogant Toppled Statue of Saddam Hussein Asks for Tips -------- TITLE: Marines Encounter More Than Just Pockets of Resistance in Baghdad, Try to Fend Off Complete Pants AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/08/2003 11:28:00 PM ----- BODY: April 8, Baghdad -- Marines encountered pockets of resistance in southeast Baghdad, zippers of incomprehensibility in the west, inseams of irregularity in the north, and trouser cuffs of indefatigability in the center of town. The Pentagon confirmed that U.S. forces were trying to secure the seat of Baghdad, and hoped to control the belt buckle as early as Tuesday. "It depends how deep those pockets, how irregular the inseams, how incomprehensible the zippers prove, and -- whatever we said the cuffs were, how whatever we said they were turn out to be, " said General Hugh Fitzimmons today. "We're also going to try to have the waist taken in by Saturday," he added. -------- TITLE: U.S. Marines Discover Hidden Trove of Extra Hussein Sons AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/07/2003 11:40:00 AM ----- BODY: Baghdad, April 6 - U.S. Marines securing an atomic energy facility discovered a hidden room containing seven "backup" sons of Saddam Hussein who were prepared to take over the throne if Hussein's known sons, Uday and Qusay, were killled or otherwise unable to exercise power. Documents revealed that in addition to Qusay and Uday, Saddam's seven other sons are named Buday, Ruday, Huday, Cruday, Mamuday, Yahuday, and Sunday. When the Marines found them, the "secret sons" were playing a spirited game of poker, with the exception of Sunday, who was resting. Rumors that three additional sons, Juday, Daduday, and Puday, exist in another location, are unconfirmed. -------- TITLE: Kerry Remark About Need for U.S. Regime Change Inflames and Baffles GOP AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/06/2003 12:41:00 AM ----- BODY:
Republicans were up in arms and confused about Sen. John Kerry's recent suggestion that it was time for regime change here in the United States. "The comparison of George W. Bush to Saddam Hussein is outrageous and unfair," sputtered Deputy RNC Chair Jack Oliver. He ticked off several facts on his large, stubby fingers. "First of all, President Bush doesn't have any lookalikes, at least not that I know of. He doesn't have a big bushy mustache and he stays in decent shape. I've never seen him wear a beret. I guess Senator Kerry -- and I use the term Kerry loosely -- is blind or stupid or both." Rush Limbaugh pooh-poohed the notion altogether. "Regime change in America?" he considered on a recent talk radio show, "That's preposterous. For one thing, we can't invade ourselves. Those are just the kind of absurd ideas these liberals toss about when they have no idea of what it's like to serve in the military, or how it works, or when to use it." RNC Chairman Marc Racicot responded swiftly as well, calling Kerry "a racist, a pornographer, and a guy who looks like he's had some kind of rod shoved up his ass." He continued: "Senator Kerry is nuts to suggest the replacement of America's commander-in- chief at a time when America is at war. If we replaced the commander-in-chief, how would the generals know how to reach this new guy? They wouldn't know what this new commander-in-chief would look like and probably wouldn't believe him when he told them that he was the Commander. And nobody else could tell them there was a new Commander because the only person they'd accept that from would have to be like, a Commander of the Commander in Chief. And there can't be a Commander of the Commander in Chief because, if there were, then the Commander-in-Chief wouldn't be "in-chief"--he'd be the Commander-second-most-chief or something. I don't think Senator Kerry -- and I use the term Kerry loosely -- has thought this through."
-------- TITLE: Where are those chemicals weapons? An Example of Media Bias in CNN Reporting AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/06/2003 12:12:00 AM ----- BODY: William Schneider, Senior Political Analyst of CNN, just proffered several reasons why many of the doom and gloom scenarios in Iraq have not come true. These involved the possible use of chemical and biological agents on U.S. troops, blowing up bridges, etc. One of the prime scenarios involved the use of chemical weapons. Schneider opined that the reason these agents have not been used may be because the command and control structure of the Iraqi resistance has been severely damaged (and there are certainly indications of that), or (and he placed special emphasis on this) that those in charge had been scared pantsless by George W's threat to try those who use them after the war as war criminals. Schneider thus seemed to highlight Bush's tough talk as a possible major factor in the Iraqi failure to use non-conventional weapons while completely ignoring the more plausible explanation that these weapons simply do not exist in the quantities or manner which Bush and his pals would like us to believe. That these weapons may not exist now is certainly more credible than that idea that Iraqi forces -- who seem bent on genuinely resisting the invasion -- would refrain from using weapons available to them because of the threat of trial. In a war wheer people are willing to blow themselves up to eliminate the invaders, it is difficult to accept the premise that these same people would be afraid of a little American jail time. I'm not saying that Hussein does not have these weapons. I'm saying that the complete omission of a news commentator -- who holds himself out as special "analyst" (meaning a guy who speculates about stuff based on a couple of rumors and sometimes facts, just like you and me) and reporter -- is unforgiveable. Not mentioning the option -- that Hussein has less of these weapons than we had believed -- can only be demonstrable of conservative bias; especially since no chemical weapons have yet been found anywhere so far. (The many boxes of "suspicious" white powder found in a chemical factory -- reported with great gusto by every American news media outlet -- have been tested; intial tests indicate that they are "not chemicals," according to a CNN banner. I have to ask, if they are not chemicals, what are they? Talc? Chalk? Concrete dust?) It is exceptionally surprising that no chemical weapons have been found, in light of the American intelligence which reported in the 48 hours preceding the war that there were strong indications that Republican Guard units southeast of Baghdad -- controlled by the famed Iraqi Commander nicknamed "Chemical Ali" -- had been supplied with them, and in light of our allegations that Hussein had them. Certainly, one would think that the goal of the Iraqi military would be defend Baghdad with whatever weapons they could find. Schneider also opined that perhaps Hussein would be afraid to use chemical weapons in this war because of the "proganda" tool using them would hand the U.S.. Look, if Hussein has these weapons, when would he use them if not now? After his exile or death? Does Schneider really think Hussein is more worried about how it would look than about staying in power? Hussein has been comfortable with getting caught in a lie or two before. And then there is the interesting (and convenient) rumor circulating (Schneider said nothing about this) that Hussein moved his WMD to Syria so we would not find them when we invaded. This certainly is plausible as a convenient excuse to invade Syria later ("Look! Another dictatorship that harbors terroists that has WMD! And it's right over there! We must invade today!) but not believable in the context of common sense. I find it hard to accept the notion that someone who goes to the trouble to get WMD to stay in power and to increase his power would give away the very weapons that might help him retain his power on the eve of an invasion of his country. -------- TITLE: Bush Faced Terrific Quandry in White House NCAA Pool AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/04/2003 03:07:00 PM ----- BODY: Karl Rove put extraordinary pressure for Bush to favor Florida over Texas in his submission to the popular White House NCAA pool. There was great debate among top aides to the President about whether to favor "red-state" teams or "blue-state" teams, meaning teams from states that voted for or against Bush. However, it was finally decided that the imperative of securing Florida in the 2004 election mandated fprcing Bush to pick the number 2 seeded Florida to beat number 1 seeded Texas in the Elite 8, because "we'll carry Texas anyway," said Rove. "Why can't we just make them move to the East Division?" asked Bush, who was supported by Cheney in his suggestion to pressure the NCAA organizers to move Florida to another division so that Bush could avoid making the difficult choice. Powell was sent to negotiate with the NCAA on Bush's behalf where, typically, he failed. When Florida was wiped out in the Sweet 16 against Maryland, Bush became despondent, moping around the White House and seeming "steely eyed but burdened":
[Bush] rarely jokes with staffers these days and occasionally startles them with sarcastic putdowns. . . .Interviews with a dozen friends, advisers and top aides describe a man who feels he is being tested.
The White House found an upside, though. "We'll make this about the war," said Ari Fleischer. And so they did. Cheney did not participate in the pool, preferring to run it in exchange for a percentage of the winnings. "Last year that pool bought me a pool," he joked, smiling or grimacing -- it was impossible to say which. -------- TITLE: Saddam Talks About the NCAA's AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/04/2003 12:46:00 PM ----- BODY: So, Saddam Makes Speech on TV Designed to Prove He Is Alive, with some references to attacks and things that have occurred since the invasion. Why doesn't he just hold up today's frigging newspaper? If Saddam wanted to prove he was still alive and in charge, he should say:
My fellow Iraqis, I lost the goddamn NCAA pool! Who would have believed that Syracuse and Marquette would come so far? We will be victorious against the stupid Americans even if is true, as I suspect, that they have rigged the college basketball tournaments of their petty country to get rid of the fine Ivy league team and, of course, the valiant Gonzaga.
-------- TITLE: I Promise I'll be Funny Tomorrow AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/04/2003 08:53:00 AM ----- BODY: -------- TITLE: That Silver is For Us; Brilliant Congressmen Pass Bill To Bar France and Germany From Helping Rebuild Iraq AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/04/2003 08:49:00 AM ----- BODY: According to NPR, when Congress approved Bush's request for $75 billion today for the war, someone sipped in a rider barring France and Germany from being allowed to contract to rebuild Iraq. Some irate confressman said, "We're not sending our boys in harm's way so that the French and German can stand back and hold their hands out for ten pieces of silver!" Um, that's a pretty effective stance. Except that Bush's plan to rebuild Iraq gives the lion's share of the rebuilding contracts to -- have you guessed it -- U.S. businesses! Our boys died to help put a couple of pieces of silver into some major CEOs' pockets. The Wall Street Journal reported:
The Bush administration's audacious plan to rebuild Iraq envisions a sweeping overhaul of Iraqi society within a year of a war's end, but leaves much of the work to private U.S. companies. . . . [M]ore than $1.5 billion in Iraq work being offered to private U.S. companies under the plan, just $50 million is so far earmarked for a small number of groups such as CARE and Save the Children.
Also, isn't it a tad inconsistent to claim that the U.N. should have broad participation in rebuilding Iraq when you pass laws denying security council members the ability to allow their businesses to have a hand in the reconstruction? Might that not impede efforts to involve the U.N.? -------- TITLE: Buildings, Schmildings AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/04/2003 08:33:00 AM ----- BODY: We're liberating the Iraqi oilfields -- and protecting them well, even at the cost of sending men into harm's way without adequate backup -- because they're the "property of the people of Iraq." Rumsfeld is fond of saying this -- "it's the wealth of the Iraqi people, we're protecting it." OK. Isn't the infrastructure of Iraq also a treasured possession of the Iraqi people? The buildings, electric plants, sewer systems, schools and the, like, cities -- how come we're just bombing the hell out of them? By the way, the link just up there is from an Iraqi who has been reporting on the web his experience of the war in Baghdad -- but he hasn't been able to update since March 24. That could be for many reasons -- maybe internet access was cut off by central authorities in Baghdad, maybe the infrastructure was damaged (Rumsfled might call it a "shock and awe" attack on the internet backbone), maybe Raed, the author, had to take off and get the hell away from his desktop. Still, look at it for an excellent view of the war from inside. Much better than any reporting you'll see on cable. -------- TITLE: SARS Is From Mars AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 4/04/2003 08:20:00 AM ----- BODY: It seems clear to me that the outbreak of SARS is directly related to those people who claim to have been picked up by UFO's and later, after lengthy journeys, adventures, and encounters of all numeric kinds, get dropped back on Earth because the aliens on board clearly could not stand them. This claim that viruses like SARS just "spring up" -- isn't that like the claim that Spinoza made -- that life just "bloomed spontaneously" from inanimate matter? Doesn't it make more sense that those aliens are depositing people back on Earth after they've infected them with some biological agent? I mean, why would an alien go to the trouble of dropping an abductee back on Earth instead of just putting them in the space waste chute? By the way, I was so pleased to see a local news station -- or it may even have been MSNBC -- say that, CDC researchers were that much closer to discovering a treatment plan for SARS because they had determined that it was a type of virus -- specifically, a coronavirus. My, that's reassuring. Coronaviruses are the same kind that cause the common cold. We've been really successful at figuring out a cure for that. so this SARS thing will be licked in no time. The really hopeful thing is that we kind of have to find a cure for SARS. Until we do, we're going to be quarantining the heck out of populatations and, as reported universally, SARS will have a chilling effect on world business. Actually on world business travel, which one would think we have almost no need for in today's electronic age. Maybe SARS will promote the growth of videoconferencing technologies far beyond where they are today -- so that videoconferencing gets to the point where you can artificially shake your Hong Kong business partners hands without really touching them. (We have a technology for that, actually -- they're called "gloves.") No, we find an effective treatment plan for SARS, pump money and good old fashioned research into cracking that illness -- and if we do, maybe we will be that much closer to discovering a cure for the common cold. -------- TITLE: An Apology : It's not always humor you'll find here . . . AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/29/2003 08:55:00 PM ----- BODY: When I have the time to work up a humorous take on events, I do. When I don't, I just say what I wanted to say straight-on, without the satire. If you want more humor here (and I certainly do), try to think of the funny pieces as humor, and the straight-on pieces as "grim humor." -------- TITLE: Bush Did Not Want To Hear Of Possible Iraqi Resistance Before War AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/29/2003 08:51:00 PM ----- BODY:
It was not all that many months ago that Ari Fleischer was... boasting, I guess... that Ari Fleischer actually said that "[General Tommy] Franks wasn't invited to the next strategy meeting because 'the president doesn't have time to listen to what the president doesn't want to hear,'" and one of the things the President did not want to hear was that Saddam's forces might fight bravely.
This (and Rumsfeld trying to cover his behind) courtesy of Brad Delong's weblog. -------- TITLE: Boy, Those War Games Sure Are Worth Every Penny AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/29/2003 08:38:00 PM ----- BODY: The Guardian reports:
If the US and Iraq do go to war, there can only be one winner, can't there? Maybe not. This summer, in a huge rehearsal of just such a conflict - and with retired Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper playing Saddam - the US lost. Julian Borger asks the former marine how he did it.
Whole article here. What's really scary is that what the U.S. wargamers did is exactly what I do when I'm having a hard time in a first-person shooter. (Gamers are the same everywhere.) -------- TITLE: White House Knew Fantastic "Edge" of American Military Was An Absurd Fiction Months Before Starting War AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/29/2003 07:27:00 PM ----- BODY: In Supplying the Enemy, the New York Times rails aginst the Russians for supplying Iraqis with night vision goggles, antitank missiles, and GPS jamming devices (which can essentially make "smart" weapons very dumb). The amazing part of the editorial is this: "U.S. officials say they have been pressuring Russia for many months now to end sales of these types of equipment." They knew months in advance about this? In other words, for months before committing a too-small force to this war, White House officials had reason to suspect -- and had good reason to believe -- that Iraq had equipment which could neutralize the much-flaunted and repeatedly touted technological advantages which would supposedly enable our American forces to prevail in a fortnight, at most. (Oh, and about pressuring Russia, good job. Another diplomatic and foreign relations triumph.) The article also notes that Rumsfeld is aware that Syria has been providing this equipment to the Iraqis for a certainty. We're back to the Reagan question here: when did he know this -- and if he didn't know it months before the war, why not? First: it has recently been made clear that we started this war with too small a force, regardless of our "technological advantage." Second: Oops. In street-to-street fighting in a moonlit night -- or in the desert, whatever -- the fantastic edge our guys had over the Iraqis has just disappeared. And the incredible "precision bombing" and other GPS guided weapons can now be misdirected -- to Iraqi civilians in Baghdad and, in a skirmish or major battle where our ground forces need air support, to our guys. There's enough "fratricide" and "friendly fire" wiping out our forces as it is -- without GPS jamming devices in the hands of the enemy. Third: White House officials -- Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfled -- knew or should have known that this war was going to much worse than they told the American people. And the worst part of it is, I beleive that this was sheer ineptitude on the part of the big deceision makers, who were so intent on fighting this war that they neglected to get accurate intelligence or see what the intel already showed: it was a bad choice to enter this war of choice. And that's if you support the war. (Never mind the million other reasons not to fight it -- the world hates us -- destroying alliances that have taken 60 years to build -- screwing up the force of international law -- weakening the Geneva convention -- scads more -- but here's another one, now: destroying the deterrent effect of our threat to use military force, and diminishing the reputation of our fighting forces as an effective tool for peace and diplomacy.) Am I saying that we're going to lose this war? No. I'm saying that it will be much longer and more drawn out than we had been led to believe or that the White House expected -- and a lot of people -- many of them our own 19 and 20 year olds -- will die needlessly as result of White House mistakes. The Bush Administration: Inept at diplomacy. Inept at peace. Inept at war. That's foreign relations and policy. Thank goodness they're so good at domestic stuff. (For anyone who wants to quote that last bit, you must include: "uttered with the utmost bitterness and sarcasm." Or, "And then Burka, slouching over the counter of a dark, depressing bar, downed six shots of whisky in quick succession.") -------- TITLE: Rumsfeld Confuses Situation Room With TIVO, Attempts to "Pause" and "Rewind" War AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/29/2003 06:58:00 PM ----- BODY: Today, Donald Rumsfeld sent White House workers into complete disarray by attempting to "pause" the war to take a phone call from his niece while going downstairs to get some ice for his Coke. Rumsfeld repeatedly punched several buttons on what he believed to be the "remote" -- but which was in fact an electronic handheld joker poker game left there by President Bush the preceding day. "This dadblasted piece of crap doesn't work for shit," he said. "And where did all these kings come from?" Rumsfield then issued orders to "rewind" the push toward Bagdad and is apparently negotiating with Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic to digitally insert 150,000 more troops near Nasiriyah. (In a related story, George Lucas expressed disgust that 250,000 actual American soldiers had been ordered to engage in the war with Iraq, saying that he could have done it "with a bare handful of extras, digitally reproduced and multiplied to resemble an enormous horde of invading Americans." Upon being pressed, Lucas admitted that he would probably need one or two principals, "but nobody pricey." He also expressed dismay about the location. "You don't need Iraq at all -- Tunisia would have done fine." He also would have saved billions of dollars by getting the location shots with a second unit and fighting the rest of the war in a studio. "The savings?" said Lucas. "At least $74.9 billion.") -------- TITLE: War Paused, Posting Light AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/29/2003 06:33:00 PM ----- BODY: Actually, the war isn't paused, I'm on vacation (sort of). Anyway, to my scads of devoted followers (read: both of you), I'm pretty tied up until next Thursday. Or until the 4th Infantry arrives, whichever comes first. -------- TITLE: Boy, That Eric Alterman Sure Knows How to Cheer a Guy Up AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/27/2003 10:17:00 AM ----- BODY: On March 25, a Eric Alterman wrote (accurately):
The invading force turns out to have been too small.                 Homeland security is a joke, and starved for resources.                 Oil prices are going sky high and the market had its worse day in six months, during which time it had a lot of bad days.                 The first $75 billion is just a downpayment. Expect to pay hundreds of billions in the short-term, trillions in the long run. Expect it to come out of your schools, your police forces, your highways, your future and your children’s future                Oh, and then there’s the rest of the world. Arthur Schlesinger lays it out in Newsweek” and the Los Angeles Times :        “Today it is we Americans who live in infamy.”
-------- TITLE: We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/27/2003 09:39:00 AM ----- BODY: Today, the Second Batallion came under heavy attack from Marine units farther south when they called for artillery support to protect them from an Iraqi attack in the north. 37 marines were wounded, 3 critically, and numerous trucks, armored vehicles, and humvees were destroyed. "It's these damn cell phones," said one marine, who preferred not to be identified. "The Second said they wanted to be supported. We thought they said they wanted to be mortared." A spokesman for Sprint decried the mistake. Sgt. Hugo Spurgeon of the Second Batallion, 8th Marine Division had this to say. "We asked for help and they gave us help. I'm just glad they weren't trying to hurt us." General Hy "Goferit" Phlegmington said, "We have the best prepared men, the most sophicated weapons. We have stuff that can see through walls -- that's classified -- stuff that can pinpoint the tail on a donkey in a pasture on a farm in a town near a city hundreds of miles away. Just think what we could do if we could figure out if our guys were far enough from the tail of the donkey to safely blow that donkey's tail plumb off." -------- TITLE: Commanders Misplace 4th Infantry Division; "I Thought You Had Them," Says General AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/25/2003 08:11:00 PM ----- BODY: High ranking officials in the White House who had never been to war were stymied when the democratic processes underlying Turkey's government continued to thwart U.S. intentions to use Turkish land as a military staging area. (See Middle East Democracy deals Blow to Plan to Install Other Middle East Democracy) "I don't understand it," snarled Paul Wolfowitz. "Just because a governmental body votes one way, doesn't mean you have to follow the dictates of a democracy. In America we wouldn't stand for it." Dick Cheney fumed. "Those Turkish [expltive deleted] don't have the slightest idea how a few people at the top can totally override the will of the people." Although Turkey's Parliament had barred U.S. ground action in Turkey, White House officials told U.S. commanders to keep the 4th Infantry Division, a heavy Army unit force deemed essential to a ground war in Iraq, floating in the Med instead of moving them to join ground forces in Kuwait. As a result, Cheny continued to fume. "What the hell do those [expletive deleted] Turks want anyway? We tried diplomacy, we offered them $30 billion dollars or something. That damn Powell cannot do anything right." In contrast, Donald Rumsfeld was calm and resolute. "We didn't need the British and we don't need the 4th Infantry. We'll go it alone and even if we're not there, we'll do it." -------- TITLE: Bush Cautions That War He Promised Would Be Over in Days Might Actually Take Weeks AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/24/2003 12:37:00 PM ----- BODY: President Bush and members of the White House backed down off their initial soft sell of the war in Iraq. "We are the best prepared, most awesome force in the world," said President Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and later First Specialist Michael Abromowitz, who repeated the sentence no less than 12 times during a CNN interview in the field. "However," said President Bush, for the first time, "A lot of people are going to die. Really a lot. I mean, it's a war. I had been led to believe that nobody was really going to fight back, but it seems they are, and that's going to make it a lot more difficult. I've totally revised my expectations. Pass the salt." The American people didn't blink at the bloodshed. Although Americans were just realizing that "significant casualties" would occur in a war, American support was still strong. Clive Berkinstocking, of Coalpile, Pennsylvania, put it this way: "It just had not dawned on me that U.S. soldiers might get hurt. I mean, we have all these bombs and machines and trucks and stuff. But now -- well, even if a lot of soldiers die, it's worth it. i'm sure President bush knew the risks, and weighed the costs, and I'm right behind him, along with a mystifying 70% of Amercians who feel the same way." Students overwhelmingly supported the war, although they continued to oppose having to go fight it. "I have trig tomorrow," said Clyde Bark, a senior at Oklahoma State. "And I don't wanna miss the NCAA's, even though I think you can still watch those over in Iraq." Marla Binks put it this way: "I don't mind making sacrifices, like having people die. It's for a good cause." She then got in her SUV, went shopping at K-mart, watched TV, ate a sumptuous dinner from KFC, and played video games with her toddler Ralph. After Ralph slept, she talked about Adrien Brody's "funny nose" for an hour with her best friend Susie Button on the phone. She was repulsed that Susie found Brody sexy, and she liked Salma Hayek's dress. "This war sure is awful," she said, the next day, watching CNN on her couch in a bathrobe while eating two bags of Cheez Doodles. -------- TITLE: Precision Bombs Hit Turkey Exactly Where We Wanted Them To AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/24/2003 12:35:00 PM ----- BODY: Qatar, March 24. In today's press briefing by the American High Command, Lt. General Zacharias Kelp (two, maybe three stars, who really knows?) told reporters that he would summarize and illustrate several recent U.S. attacks on "combat systems," by which he meant people and buildings. Kelp showed several grainy films in which "precision bombs" were able to strike "targets" in "compounds" with such accuracy that the walls surrounding structures were left intact. Kelp also showed reporters instances in which bombs were able to take out Republican Guard units while leaving their shaving gear untouched. "This is the Iraqi people's shaving gear," he explained. "It is part of the wealth of their nation." He denied rumors that the U.S. had its own interests in the valuable triple-edged Mach III razors, as well as suggestions that U.S. military weapon names had been inspired by marketing campaigns developed by Schick. Kelp went on to show several other examples of precision bombing, which included two cruise missiles which struck an unpopulated area in Turkey. "That's exactly where they were headed," said Kelp. "Notice that the tufts of grass immediately outside of the cruise missile's landing site were completely undisturbed." During the briefing, George Stephanopolous stood up and pretended to ask some questions, in order to demonstrate that he was actually there. He expressed hope that "in the future, other White House officials will be able to resign and become credentialed members of the independent press." He said being in the Qatar press pool was a great accomplishment, and that he felt almost as close to the seat of power as when he was an integral part of President Clinton's staff. When asked to explain his remark, his status sometimes permitted him a seat near the front of the press pool bus. "And I get all the Fresca I can buy, " he added. -------- TITLE: Bush Prolongs War With Thoughtless, Irresponsible Talk AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/23/2003 09:27:00 PM ----- BODY: MSNBC learned that today Powell was trying to diplomatically negotiate the exile of Hussein in an effort to end the war quickly. When asked by reporters if Hussein could still seek exile, Bush destroyed Powell's diplomatic efforts by saying "No way. I gave him his 48 hours and they're over," or some such thing. Thanks. We can thank Bush for spilling the blood of those lost in a prolonged war -- Americans and Iraqis both. How many Americans will support the war if 1000 U.S. soldiers die? 2,000? 3,000? How many deaths were projected when Bush decided to go ahead? -------- TITLE: Responsible Reporting AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/23/2003 09:21:00 PM ----- BODY: When a correspondent told MSNBC's Forrest Sawyer moments ago that "chemical plants" had been found, he said, "But we don't know -- they could just be chemicals," and the correspodnent said, "That's right." A news ticker crawl under Sawyer then said "Chemical Weapons Plants found," and Sawyer said,"That's not true. that crawl is unsubstantiated. Take it down." And they did. Of course, this is the network that has "Operation Iraqi Freedom" -- a piece of propoganda -- continually emblazoned on theri screen during "news" coverage. -------- TITLE: War Crimes and Taking The Low Road AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/23/2003 05:58:00 PM ----- BODY: Maybe it's just me, but it seems absurd for Donald Rumsefeld to complain about Iraq violating the Geneva convention (concerning showing captured and dead marines on TV) when we haven't had very clean hands in our treatment or prisoners, or even in the legality of the current action. We insist on others following the Geneva Convention but we violated internatioanl law by invading Iraq to begin with. We captured Taliban and others and said we did not have to follow the Geneva convention, claiming that these people were "unlawful combatants." I believe there were corroborated reports that we kept prisoners naked and hooded for hours upon hours, often during interrogation. there have been questions concerning our treatment of detainees in Cuba. The point: We have chosen to become exactly like the very governments and people we used to criticise for human rights violations. I and many others have said that we can no longer criticize them for using practices that we have adopted. And don't tell me 1441 authorized war. Our own U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. said, when 1441 passed, that it was not "self-authenticating" (read: self-actuating), and another respolution was needed to authorize the use of military force. We can't pretend otherwise now. -------- TITLE: First Time Shock and Awe Used in Military Attack AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/23/2003 12:37:00 AM ----- BODY: Previous Uses: 1) Don King's hair; 2) Non-cancellation of Anna Nicole Smith Show; 3) Result of last Presidential Election; 4) James Traficant Jr.'s lawyering skills -- and his hair -- his membership in Congress -- everything about him, really; 5) Halle Berry's entrance in Die Another Day; 6) Ability of Helen Thomas to refrain from strangling Ari Fleischer at any given press conference; 7) Childbirth; 8) Inability of Gorilla to damage Samsonite luggage; 9) 1996 first-round victory of Princeton Tigers basketball team over defending champion UCLA on backdoor layup with 3 minutes left in game; 10) The Atkins Diet. Feel free to add your own in the comments. -------- TITLE: Unbiased Media AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/21/2003 06:32:00 PM ----- BODY: The war seems to be going well. What do I mean by that? Although I'm opposed to it -- and believe that Bush could not have handled the diplomacy worse -- up 'til A-Day, there seemed to be a concerted attempt to try and get it over as fast as possible, hitting as little as possible. Of course, I, like you, am entirely dependent on our very well-controlled media for my information. And these embedded reporters -- I question their independence. So the above serves to remind us all that there's a spin on everything. (Poster courtesy of The Propaganda Remix Project, which is a cool site full of old WWII posters that have been retooled to reflect current perspectives on today's news.)(via Orcinus) -------- TITLE: Bush Declares: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/20/2003 06:18:00 PM ----- BODY: The bombing won't stop until every last double of Hussein is decapitated. (courtesy a friend who is much funnier than I am, even when he is anonymous) -------- TITLE: The Bush Plan For Taking Iraq AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/18/2003 09:34:00 PM ----- BODY: Wednesday night. Bomb the heck out of 'em. Friday Take Basra. Saturday Take Baghdad, win war. Sunday Install democracy. Monday Order new curtains. Tuesday Refurbish Presidential Palace in teal; arrange with sanitation workers to haul away old dictatorship. Maybe redo kitchen. Wednesday Put in strip lighting. Thursday Decorate Kurdish region in aqua. -------- TITLE: Oh. Now We See Why We're invading Iraq. (Because we can.) AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/18/2003 09:48:00 AM ----- BODY: Last night on Chris Matthews's Hardball (MSNBC), William Bennett and a former CIA Chief, enthralled with the heady bouquet that is preemptive war, outlined the real plan for this war. First we take Iraq. Then, in order to expedite a Middle East peace between Israel and Palestine, we "pressure" (read: threaten to invade) Syria to get out of Lebanon and we take Damascus. Presumably we follow up by "imposing upon" (read: threaten to invade) Iran to give up their nuclear weapons program and then we do something to Libya, too. This plan was echoed in Paul Krugman's analysis today (get it here) in the New York Times:
It's a matter of public record that this war with Iraq is largely the brainchild of a group of neoconservative intellectuals, who view it as a pilot project. In August a British official close to the Bush team told Newsweek: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran." In February 2003, according to Ha'aretz, an Israeli newspaper, Under Secretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria and North Korea.
One of the guys on hardball last night defended this as perfectly justifiable, saying, "Well, it took 70 years for us to clean up Europe, get rid of all those petty dictators . . ." (Link to the transcript will be up as soon as MSNBC makes it available.) These pinhead neoconservatives forget: that was a World War. And we had a true coalition of the International Community on board. (Last night Bush said we had a "broad coalition." Read: Britain, Spain, and Australia.) And that was a war of self defense. A war of necessity. The world will not accept the U.S. plowing through the Middle East and dictating (like those dictators) who does what and how and where and what their "democracy" will look like. (Can true democracy occur when it is imposed and orchestrated by another country that is acting in its sole interest?) I've said it before and will say it again. This militant go-it-our-own-way madness will unify, embolden, and fuel the terrorist opposition to this country, until what happened on 9/11 will seem like peanuts. No one and no place will be safe. It's no surprise that the New York Times reported that al Queda is using our hostility as a recruiting tool. The philosophy espoused by Sean Connery in The Untouchables, where he said, "They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue," makes for a fine Oscar award winning speech, but in the real world, it leads to Armageddon. Israel and the Palestinians have taught us that that cycle never ends. -------- TITLE: Interpreters Mistakenly Fired For Translating Actual Words of Bush Speech AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/17/2003 11:44:00 AM ----- BODY: Almost all of the interpreters at the U.N. were fired or suspended without pay after President Bush, at a Joint News Conference today, expressed hope that in the future, the U.N. could "get its legs of responsibility back." Virtually all of the U.N. interpreters were fired, replaced, suspended, or, in the case of some countries, summarily executed after they related Bush's words to the Ambassadors they served. The Chilean Ambassador, who unfortunately cannot now rehire his interpreter and is having problems replacing him, said, "I have heard that in Camaroon, they have a saying about `arms of butter', and of course I have the videotape `Abs of Steel,' but there is no such idiom in any language as `legs of responsibility'.'" Ari Fleischer defended the President, saying that Bush had simply had a "language spasm," but that it required no medical attention and was nothing to worry about. "The President was clearly explaining that the U.N. needs to develop some intestines of jocularity," he stated. He then excused himself, saying something about "inventing a teleprompter that can fit on a President's head like a hat." -------- TITLE: Recent Poll Shows More Americans Oppose War Than Support It AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/17/2003 11:06:00 AM ----- BODY: A recent poll showed that 50% of Americans oppose the war on Iraq. That poll, which indicates that 37% of Americans would only support the war if the U.N. voted to give Bush the go-ahead, and 13% would oppose the war even if the U.N. voted for it. Strangely, the Associated Press reported this result as indicating Bush Has Solid Support for War. MWO published a letter to the Associated Press asking them to correct the strange and misleading headline. Yesterday CNN/USA Today came in with a poll which was had some similarities. Smug President Has Painted U.S. Into a Corner. An excerpt:
The callow, smug, inarticulate man who was the lead player in a farce called "White House News Conference" gave us no new reasons to go to war, no sense of the dangers involved and no confidence in his leadership. The television appearance itself—more a blustering tape loop than exchange with the press—could only be called a national disgrace; President George W. Bush’s performance in front of a docile collection of game-show hosts posing as reporters ought to frighten all of us. We live in terrible times, dangerous times, and all this man can do is mouth platitudes and assertions put on his podium cards by his war-crazed handlers. Eight times he interchanged the war on Iraq with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and eight times he was unchallenged. Amazingly, in the immediate aftermath of the President’s disgraceful performance, news outlets described him as "solemn" and "determined." These pieces must have been put together before the President actually spoke, because there was nothing solemn or determined about him; "clueless" and "lost" would have been closer.
-------- TITLE: Good Evidence That U.S. Is In It For the Oil, In Part AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/15/2003 09:48:00 PM ----- BODY:
This report about U.S. Intentions is a fairly thorough analysis of the reason Iraq's oil is so crucial to U.S. interests in the near future (if not today). It is chock full of something you won't find in many places discussing the war: facts. The facts (in summary) are that OPEC is already producing oil at peak capacity. The demand for oil is rising throughout the world in industrialized countries, and is beginning to be larger than the supply -- hence, rising oil prices over past years. There can be no question that Bush and Cheney -- intimates of the oil business -- thoroughly understand this. The U.S. gets 1/4 of its Middle Eastern oil from Iraq. That's with Iraq's oilfields severely damaged (from the 1991 war) and operating well below capacity due to sanctions. If Iraq's oil fields were properly developed and if sanctions were no longer in place, Iraq would compete with Saudi Arabia as the number one source of oil imports for the United States. Any disruption of that crucial supply would be counter to our national security interests. In an August 2002 Report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, entitled "World Areas to Watch," the U.S. Government noted that
[i]n anticipation of the eventual lifting of economic sanctions, Iraq already has signed potentially lucrative oil and gas deals (which will come into effect when sanctions are lifted) with companies from Russia, France, and China, and has invited international partners to invest in natural gas projects worth $4.2 billion. In August 2002, reports indicated that Russia and Iraq were ready to sign a $40 billion economic cooperation agreement covering a variety of fields, including oil, electricity, and petrochemicals.
Ok. So this would support the argument that France, China, and Russia were set to veto the war resolution because it would disrupt enormously profitable arrangements with the present Iraqi government. But it would also mean a potential change in the ability of the U.S. to secure sufficent oil to meet its needs; there's only so much oil to go around, and France, Russia, and China were set to grab a huge amount of the supply. They could either use this oil for their own needs, and then have none left over, or sell some to the U.S. for exorbitant prices. It cannot be the case that, as pro-war people cynically (and I have nothing against cynicism) point out, France, Russia, and China (and the claim involves Germany as well), are basing their decisions on money and oil while we are not. If the oil in Iraq is of such precious value to these nations, it can be no less valuable to our own interests and no less influential in the decision to invade Iraq. Of course, I have already mentioned this Heritage Foundation report from 1991 which posits that no goal is "as critical to America as maintaining access to Persian Gulf oil or militarily assisting Israel." The argument presented in the National Review that we can't be in it for Iraqi oil because, even if Iraqi oil is snapped up by others in the world market, it always gets sold back to us, is specious when viewed in light of the diminishing supply of world oil and the increasing demand for it elsewhere. Yes, the U.S. will always be a large consumer of the available oil. This, the National review argues, means that we will always be ensured access to the available supply. This is not logical. The only other explanation for this war is plausible, and certainly plays a large part in the decision to invade Iraq: to ensure America's domination as the only world superpower. This was the world order advocated in Paul Wolfowitz's famous 1991 memo. Is it any wonder that Paul is one of the chief hawks leading the charge?
-------- TITLE: France Isn't in It For the Oil AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/15/2003 09:35:00 PM ----- BODY:
I've heard time and time again the argument that France's opposotion to the war in Iraq is due to the worth of its many oil contracts with Iraq. I heard one person quote to me that France had $60 billion in oil contracts that would dissolve if there was a war. I never knew whether there was any truth to this -- but one of the most hawkish publications you can find anywere,Jane's Information Group, a compendium of everything about modern weaponry and military affairs, a publication that is for he who delights in all things military, says France will lose barrels of money by opposing the war:
France used to have large oil interests in Iraq, and a reasonable expectation of retaining some influence in the region. Chirac's current policy has put all this at risk.
The point is that France could have stood to gain a great deal from backing the U.S. war in Iraq, putting its hand out when the time to divvy up the oil contracts (and the other industrial contracts), but that France squandered that opportunity to enhance its standing as an international leader. I don't necessarily buy this (see above about France's oil deals with Iraq), but, then again, France's prospective oil deals with Iraq all depended on the lifting of economic sancions against Iraq. So what's wrong with France saying, the inspection process can work, and eventually we will get Saddam to disarm, and we can lift econmic sanctions agianst him? Then everyone will be happy.
-------- TITLE: Much Better Than Dan Rather's AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/14/2003 10:56:00 PM ----- BODY: Mister Crunchy shares his interview with Saddam Hussein. -------- TITLE: Your Horoscope For Today AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/14/2003 01:57:00 PM ----- BODY: Check it out. Frenchify girl, soon to be forced to redesign her web page by Congress, no doubt, tells you your horoscope. A preview? Aries: "Your head will swim with delusions of adequacy today." -------- TITLE: Bush makes Last Ditch Attempt to Avoid Diplomatic Solution AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/14/2003 01:38:00 PM ----- BODY: In what he called a "last ditch attempt to go the extra mile for peace," President Bush -- who never left his seat to meet with a single leader of any country opposed to war with Iraq -- flew to the Azores to meet only leaders of the meager coalition of countries he managed to scrabble together in support of a war -- Britain and Spain -- to make a couple of final plans about blowing off the U.N. vote Bush had earlier called for even while vowing to ignore the certain defeat of the measure. Bush had earlier explained his pledge to call for a vote of the U.N. whatever the outcome, so that countries could "lay their cards on the table." Today he asked countries to "keep their cards close to their chests" so that he could try bluffing. "It's called Texas Hold'em," he joked, after which several White House press pool reporters rushed him, vowing to "put the poker metaphor to death forever." A resolution was immediately introduced before the U.N. security council calling for the United States to immediately disarm itself of the use of harmful, confusing, and almost incoherent rhetoric. The resolution proposed several conditions, the first of which was for President Bush to "stop abusing the English language," for Donald Rumsfeld to give up sports metaphors, and for Ari Fleischer to "simply stop speaking." Mexico voted for the measure before realizing that it was the only country in the room. Ari Fleischer described the meeting this way. "The President is determined that peace will break out in the Middle East, even if he has to force it to break out with really big tanks, huge numbers of helicopters, thousands of bombs, some aircraft carriers, and 250,000 men with guns and nightvision goggles." -------- TITLE: Who Says Those Cable News Networks Don't Really Provide Any News? AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/13/2003 09:26:00 PM ----- BODY:
Courtesy of Eric Muller at IsThatLegal? comes proof that those pundits who cable stations pay top dollars to are worth their weight in gold.
-------- TITLE: White House Flunks Remedial Math -- Will Be Forced To Take Summer Course AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/13/2003 12:26:00 PM ----- BODY: George W. Bush -- who has joked that he had a C - average at Yale -- and his Administration pouted openly when learning that they would be forced to give up summer vacation so they can retake a course involving basic addition and subtraction. The Administration funked a test of the most basic math skills when it concluded that it had nine votes authorizing the use of force in Iraq. "We have Camaroon, Britain, the U.S., and another African nation,"" said Powell. "That's nine.' Little Jackie Hargrew, age 7, of Split Head, Indiana, was quite certain Powell was wrong. "Isn't that four?" he asked, before becoming absolutely certain. "That's only four." Jackie is in Second Grade at MoreScience Elementary School. Powell later reconsidered his calculation in light of Jackie's conclusion. He then announced that he believed they had two more countries on board. "Four countries and we've got two more," said Powell. "That's nine." Donald Rumsfeld later agreed, stating that the sum of any number of countries combined with any other number of countries always equals nine. "Or more," he added. Bush was particularly put out when he was told that "could not skip" the remedial course. "Man, this whole thing blows," he said. -------- TITLE: A Truly International Body AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/12/2003 10:25:00 AM ----- BODY:
Paul Wolfowitz suggests that, if the U.N. doesn't back the U.S. war with Iraq, the U.S. will find another "international body" to replace the United Nations. Maureen Dowd asks: Who is he talking about? "Salma Hayek? The World Bank? The Hollywood Foreign Press Association?"
-------- TITLE: WarBloggerPundit: Operation Imminent Bluster AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/11/2003 07:29:00 PM ----- BODY: I think fair is only fair. You've heard all of my antiwar rants. Oliver Willis gives you a look at the other side of the coin. -------- TITLE: Bored Congressmen Look For Ways to Justify Existence AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/11/2003 04:00:00 PM ----- BODY: Representative Bob Ney (R-Ill.), known around Capital Hill for complaining about the lack of "real work" for legislators, finally introduced and pushed the House to adopt a ridiculous joke bill renaming some of the cafeteria food. "The boredom just got me I guess," said Ney, who failed to vote on the recent cloning bill in Congress because he "got engrossed in the Season One Survivor DVD." "What surprised me was how long it took to draft one of these so-called bills," said Ney. "Just renaming French Fries to Freedom Fries -- well, it took me a week or so just to get the phrasing right. We didn't want anyone calling them liberty fries or soemthing like that. We wanted to draft that baby narrowly, so it would be interpreted correctly." Congress spent three days debating the measure, "just to have something to talk about," said House Leader Dennis Hastert. "We really don't have that much to do. But this was a real hoot. We laughed and laughed." Hastert explained that the Republicans had run out of ways to reverse laws enacted under Democratically controlled House leadership and pretty much "had nothing left to do. We were all grateful for the opportunity to stretch our legs and get out on that Capitol floor." House majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who couldn't quite stop chuckling, suggested they rename everything which had the word "French" in it. "Let's see, we got Freedom Fries" he said, gasping for breath, "Then freedom cuffs, the freedom horn, the freedom doors, and my favorite, the freedom kiss!" after which he fell on the floor guffawing. The House leadership is considering passing a law removing all references to France from the American film, "Casablanca," replacing "La Marseilles" in a key sequence with John Phillip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever." DeLay explained that "it could be done with modern special effects computers." A discarded bottle of Vichy water in would be visually modfiied to bear the "Poland Spring" label. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) backed the measure, saying, "There's no place in an American film for this filthy French sentiment. We liberated them, and what did they do for us? Snails." Hyde was one of the sole Republicans who voted against the "Freedom Fry" bill, on the ground that they should be renamed "Frog Fries." When asked if any substantial work awaited the House, Ney laughed. "We can keep doing this or we can pass bills cutting taxes and increasing spending," he said. "Which would you prefer?" -------- TITLE: The Axis of Just as Evil AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/10/2003 01:24:00 PM ----- BODY: Wil Wheaton has a very funny entry in his weblog. Allegedly written by John Cleese, but certainly written by someone else (Cleese would never use the phrase "wickedly cool") -- I'm told it from Satirewire, which I have to check out -- it is a funny news story I wish I had written myself. It starts:
Bitter after being snubbed for membership in the "Axis of Evil," Libya, China, and Syria today announced they had formed the "Axis of Just as Evil," which they said would be more evil than that stupid Iran-Iraq-North Korea axis President Bush warned of in his State of the Union address.
This is entirely seperate from the issue that Wil Wheaton has one of the most popular weblogs in America. Perhaps the world. You have to be a complete Star Trek sci fi geek to know who Wil Wheaton is, by the way. He is perhaps best known as the actor who played young Wesley Crusher on Start Trek:TNG. He claims that he started writing his weblog when a Hooters waitress asked him, "Didn't you used to be an actor?" -------- TITLE: Several Cows on New Hampshire Farm Still Wondering If U.S. Will Invade Iraq AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/10/2003 12:05:00 PM ----- BODY: -------- TITLE: Powell Shocked to Learn Security Council Resolution Subject to Veto AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/10/2003 12:01:00 PM ----- BODY: Today Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed frustration and outrage that a majority vote of the U.N. Security Council approving the use of military force against Iraq could be vetoed by one of the Council members. "What was I wasting all this time on?," he complained, speaking of his repeated 24/7 (but unsuccessful) efforts to secure a majority vote. "I had heard about France, Germany, Russia and China, but I still thought we had a fighting chance," he said. "This changes everything." Powell was rocked by other unpleasant realizations. "My God!," he said, I made absolutely ridiculous deals for some of these yes votes. I gave away stuff we don't even have !" Powell was also reportedly "startled" to learn that more than one country had vowed to veto the vote. "I thought Russia, China, Germany, and France were going to vote no." When a reporter informed him that they could also simply abstain from the vote, Powell muttered, "They can do that?" Powell spent the rest of his day accidentally locked in a bathroom. -------- TITLE: Florida State Debate Team Moving "Will We Go to War With Iraq?" Debate Up in Schedule AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/10/2003 12:08:00 AM ----- BODY: The debate had been scheduled for October of the next fiscal year. Now, according to RaeAnn Fitch of Jacksonville, it will be moved into the June 12th slot, where it will replace "Should English Be Compulsory or Is it, Like, A Language We Already Know?" -------- TITLE: Several Cows on New Hampshire Farm Still Wondering If U.S. Will Invade Iraq AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/10/2003 12:02:00 AM ----- BODY: But the sheep moved past this topic a long time ago. They're all talking about cloning. -------- TITLE: A Damn Good Question AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/09/2003 10:49:00 PM ----- BODY: Mister Crunchy asks the question about the coming war with Iraq nobody else dared ask. "[E]veryone until now seems to have ignored: what does the oil want?" -------- TITLE: Rescued From An Evil Tyrant AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/09/2003 12:09:00 PM ----- BODY: Ted Rall postulates a scenario where aliens come to "free us from the evil tyrant Bush." Cooperation with alien stormtroopers is compulsory. I have to admit that the alien leader looks nothing like Gen. Tommy Franks. -------- TITLE: A Personal Observation AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/08/2003 11:28:00 PM ----- BODY:
Today I saw a pretty girl coming out of a public restroom in Central Park. So there you have it. Pretty and brave.
-------- TITLE: Maybe It's Time To Trim That Beard AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/08/2003 11:26:00 PM ----- BODY:
One of my numerous girlfriends (read: "My wife -- who wishes to remain anonymous on my web page--") told me that with my winter coat on, my hood up, and my sunglasses, I look like the Unabomber.
-------- TITLE: Totally Convincing AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/08/2003 12:51:00 PM ----- BODY:
The Washington Post noted that the U.S. relied upon forged documents as "evidence" of an Iraqi nuclear arms program. The forged documents -- letters -- were replete with "crude errors," "including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written":
"We fell for it," said one U.S. official who reviewed the documents.
This isn't satire. That's what our government said. Very believable. Either our intelligence officials are being -- what's the word I'm looking for -- dishonest, or they're simply incompetent. Moreover, the same article explains that Powell's claim -- repeated by Bush in latest State of the Union address, and presented to thre U.N. is Powell's recent presentation -- that aluminum tubes ordered by Iraq were clearly intended to be used in Iraq's purported nuclear weopons program, appear to be patently false. Bush: Reluctant. Cowboy. I'll accept cowboy.
-------- TITLE: Totally Unconvincing AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/08/2003 12:33:00 PM ----- BODY: Eric Alter said what his companions (notably Howard Fineman) have failed to say:
[A]t one point in the news conference, Bush said: “That happens to be my last choice—the use of force.” Sounds good, but it simply wasn’t believable. Everyone knows that war has been the president’s first choice—not his last—since at least the summer of 2002. In trying to play the reluctant sheriff, Bush cast himself in a role that rang false. He has, for months, been the eager sheriff.
Alter thoughtfully contrasts Bush's actions over the past year with possible and far more reasonable paths the President might have taken if he had really wished to pursue a diplomatic solution to Iraqi disarmament. Worth looking at. -------- TITLE: Some Good News AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/07/2003 02:00:00 PM ----- BODY: According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, if President Bush were to run today against Democratic Candidate X, he would lose 48-44. That's either percentage points or numbers of Justices on a greatly expanded Supreme Court. The Unnamed Candidate does fine. The problem is when you name him. (Or her.) Then, according to the poll, Bush wins. That's why I think we should get someone unnamed to run for the Democratic Nomination. An anonymous nominee. (Say it three times fast.) The anonymous candidate. He could run with a big bag over his head, like the unnamed comic. (Who was that guy, anyway?) -------- TITLE: Is the Media biased? Is Pat Kadell a ticking human bomb? AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/07/2003 01:50:00 PM ----- BODY: This is what I mean by media bias. After the President's press conference, the media fawned over him with the same degree of repressed pride that a parent might exude after a successful performance by a child as a shepherd in a school nativity play. Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball," repeatedly called the President's speech "dramatic," and other stations reported the event with all the journalistic integrity of a puff piece in Vanity Fair. Howard Fineman seemed to go out of his way to paint the President in a light that just wasn't there. He called him "a reluctant warrior," and likened him to Shane, strapping on the guns because he has to:
FINEMAN: If he’s a cowboy, he’s the reluctant warrior, the Shane (ph) in the movie, strapping on the guns as the... MATTHEWS: Because he has to. FINEMAN: ... last resort because he has to, to protect his family, drawing on the emotions of 9/11, tying them to Saddam Hussein, using the possible or likely rejection vote from the U.N. as a badge of honor.
That may be what the White House wants us to think, and how they wanted Bush to appear, but it is astonishing to see someone who purports to be an objective journalist spinning the speech for the White House in this way. There was certainly no attempt to explore this pose, and no attempt to contrast that image with the facts: that the White House agenda has been all-Iraq all-the-time since Bush's 2001 State of the Union address, paintsakingly and methodically built up into an international crisis -- and a diplomatic disaster -- by Bush. Bush has crammed a war with Iraq down our throats -- speaking for Americans and the world at large. There was no comment about the fact that the White House carefully chose Bush's pose last night -- some found Bush's tone almost sonambulent -- to be deliberately calm, not aggressive. The Republicans want and need to paint Bush this way so they can turn the facts on their head. The "reluctant warrior"?! Bush is more like war's peppiest cheerleader. He has so doggedly and determinedly sought this war that it makes his push for tax cuts seem half-hearted and unenthusiastic. The only thing he was reluctant about was going to the U.N.; I understand he was practically dragged kicking and screaming to them. It is understandable that he plans to ignore the U.N. now, since he never honestly sought U.N. intervention, oversight, opinion, or investigation. It was his intention to go to war a year ago and nothing will dissuade him from that path. Reluctant indeed. In this context -- the factual context -- the treatment Bush received from Matthews and Fineman was astounding. The tone of their "analysis" and discussion was as of those who had learned a great deal from an accomplished elder statesman, and whom they were lucky to see in action. Nor did they comment upon his failure to meaningfully answer questions put to him about the war. (Instead, they praised him for his "Viet Nam" answer, where he said we knew what we were going to do, had a "clear goal," in Iraq, and praised his saying we were planning to win this war. Were we ever planning to lose Viet Nam? Were our goals that vague -- or any less strongly articulated than our "goals" and "reasons" for the Iraq war are today?) And the failure of the media here, regardless of the personal belief of any journalist, is the failure tp examine the manner in which Bush presents himself in light of his chosen actions and the perceptions of the millions upon millions of people who see his actions toward Iraq differently. The media should not be just channeling the President's message to viewers and repackaging it for them to digest. The story is that the message has been packaged -- and why and how much? Aaron Brown of CNN, interestingly enough, asked his correspondent-on-the-scene about his impression that the President did not seem to be answering the questions asked of him, and even pointed out that one or two of the answers seemed to have nothing to do with the questions asked. However, the correspondent sidestepped any consideration of Aaron's actual question, instead muttering something about the briefing and rehearsal the President had received for the conference but concluding that the President "sought to reassure the nation that" blah-blah-blah -- essentially shrugging off the fact that the President did not answer any question that demanded a substantive answer about the rationale for going to war in the face of worldwide anti-war sentiment, about the economy, about the cost of the war, or about the need for it. (Yes, Bush did reasssure the public that he believes we need to do it, and that it is in the interest of our national security, but he avoided elaborating meaningfully on those conclusions.) Pat Caddell, a democratic pollster who appeared on MSNBC, did nobody a favor by pointing out that the vast majority of Americans do not support the war, because he seemed actually to foam at the mouth as he did so. He was so angry (who can really blame him?) that he appeared to be free associating about how the American people were not going to take this or something to that effect, while his Republican counterpart ably and calmly spun the press conference into another bang-up performance for this "very effective" President that the country loves and wants to support:
(Caddel said) I’m not representing any party, but the audience needs to know. When I looked at “The New York Times” pieces, when I talk about - - there are all kinds of different lies. This “New York Times” piece about this-your memo about the Republican Party about obfuscating, about global warming and the environment... the problem I’m having is how the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) did we get from 9/12 when the entire world was standing with us, when we were going after the people who killed those 3,000 people to a war with Iraq, which is on the agenda of these Jacobins as I call them, the cabala Jacobins for the last five years or 10 years.
See? The substance may be correct, but he seems to be gibbering. Which is a shame, because Pat Caddell is a smart pollster and a skillful advocate. He was, like many of us, so angered by the treatment of Bush and the Republicans in the press that he was, frankly, almost incoherently sputtering. i think the point he meant to make was that, for the most part, the media is now in the position of republishing, without analysis or question, fact-checking or investigation, anything the White House says. One of the reasons for this is that the news cycle -- the time between the event and the reporting of it -- has diminished to such a degree that reporters really don't have time to do much more than relay the information received directly to their viewers and readers. It doesn't really help people much to throw in "commentary" from one Republican pundit and one Democratic pundit and say that's the story. There are still some great investigative reporters out there. Seymour Hirsch comes to mind. But there doesn't seem to be a lot of journalistic integrity. (Unless you're Aaaron Brown. Kudos to Jon Stewart too.) -------- TITLE: President Bush Calls For U.N. Vote He Vows to Ignore AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/07/2003 01:10:00 PM ----- BODY: In President Bush's Recent News Conference, Bush clearly stated that he wanted the U.N. to pass a resolution authorizing him to use military force on Iraq, and repeatedly said that he was going to use force whether or not the U.N. authorized it anyway. "I think it's very important to accord the U.N. the respect it deserves," he said, reading his statements from teleprompters with such great care that he appeared to be sleep-walking, "and that means pretty much doing whatever we please, whatever the result." Some expressed concern that the President was losing his hearing during the question-and-answer period. For instance, when asked why other countries with whom the U.S. had fully shared its intelligence reports still opposed war, the President replied, "I'm fine, thank you. Thanks for asking. How are you?" At other times, the President apeared to be contradicting himself. "This is unscripted," he said at one point, reading from a large placard on the wall that read, "This is unscripted." Theater critic Noah Watson of the Daily Vernacular later commented onthe President's performance. "Perhaps it was unscripted. But it was so over-rehearsed that it had lost the tang of true spontaneity and lacked the breath of life that is the hallmark of a great theatrical performance." Watson gave the press conference five bananas out of a possible ten. -------- TITLE: Powell Accuses Hussein of Trying to Divide Security Council AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/05/2003 09:36:00 PM ----- BODY: Powell accused Saddam Hussein of creating a "vicious rift" in the U.N. security council with his "divisive tactics of destroying weapons," and his "ruthless acommodation of U.N. inspectors' demands." "This guy will simply not stop at anything," said Powell. "We must put a stop to these foul and despicable tactics of acceding to U.N. desires," he said. If Saddam Hussein can satisfy France, Russia, and Germany, "there's no telling who else he might disarm for." Powell added that the "time for action was now," lest Saddam Hussein destroy even more of his "vile arsenal." "He's not fooling anyone with this crap," said Powell. "Well, except for a lot of nations. And a lot of people who live in those nations. And a lot of people outside of those nations. I don't know what he's up to with this disarmament stuff, but I do know this." Powell said nothing more but kicked a chair over and clenched his fists several times. -------- TITLE: Ridge Lowers Snack Food Threat Warning to Sour Cream and Onion AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/05/2003 11:43:00 AM ----- BODY: Tom Ridge lowered the snack food threat warning level from "Mesquite BBQ" to "Sour Cream and Onion." Despite reports of snapping, crackling, and popping in various cupboards, Ridge said that intelligence points to "a decreased likelihood that snack foods will be mounting any specific attacks in the near future." He added that everyone should still "treat their snack foods with extreme caution," to "be on the lookout for suspicious snack food activity," and reminded folks to "stock up on dip" for emergencies. -------- TITLE: A Modest Reposte to Jingoism AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/05/2003 11:31:00 AM ----- BODY: Bill Moyers, on Patriotism and the Flag, makes some fine points, among them:
The flag's been hijacked and turned into a logo - the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism. . . . So I put this [flag pin] on as a modest riposte to men with flags in their lapels who shoot missiles from the safety of Washington think tanks, or argue that sacrifice is good as long as they don't have to make it, or approve of bribing governments to join the coalition of the willing (after they first stash the cash). I put it on to remind myself that not every patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us. The flag belongs to the country, not to the government. And it reminds me that it's not un-American to think that war -- except in self-defense -- is a failure of moral imagination, political nerve, and diplomatic skill. -------- TITLE: One of These People Has to Be Lying AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/04/2003 11:31:00 PM ----- BODY: There is an old logical parable involving two villages. It goes something like this. The people of one village always tell the truth. The people of the other village always lie. You come across a person on the island where both villages are situated. He must come from one of the two villages. He can tell you how to get off of the island and save yourself. What question can you ask him to determine which village he comes from? The reason this comes up is because of Eric Alterman's quotation of some analyses he found on some other weblogs. These weblogs engage in sophisticated examinations of the "intelligence" set forth as hard fact supporting the conclusions that the administration claims to have drawn about Iraq's weapon plans and its intent to use its weapons aggressively. The problem is one of credibility. In order to support the Iraq war, we have to credit Bush's claim that it is necessary to do so. This is difficult because the administration's proffered explanations for the need forcibly to depose Saddam Hussein have shifted from time to time. Sometimes the reason is regime change. Sometimes the reason is to "install" democracy and stabilize the Middle East (and bring peace to Israel and the Palestinians, too). Sometimes it is because Hussein will give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, particularly to al Quaeda. Another reason has been that if Saddam Hussein gets nuclear weapons he is going to use them to blackmail us to look the other way (threatening to nuke Israel if we intervene) while he takes over Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. It is also hard to credit the Bush Administration because they are the most secretive government in the history of U.S. politics. This does not inspire trust. If they want the people to trust them, then they should be more open. A lot more open. Secrecy is the enemy of a democracy. Information wants to be free. People deserve to know upon what information their representatives are basing their decision. Not some of the truth, but the whole truth. ( For god's sake, will Dick Cheney just give us the list of the people he met with on that energy commission, already? It's just a list of names. Not what they said even.) The failure to disclose suggests that they do not trust the American people to come to the "right" conclusions about the material, and suggest a patriarchal "we-know-better-than-those-kids" attitude toward the people who have empowered them. (Unless you take into account that we didn't elect them, but that's another story.) So now the meat of this entry. Via Eric Alterman, via Atrios, comes this fine examination of the intelligence the administration has set forth as proving Iraq's evil intentions and their nuclear program: Unqualified Offerings. Problem is, the intelligence comes from two individuals (Kamel and Hamza), one of whom says the other is a big liar. They can't both be right. A says X and B says Y and also A is a liar. This has been presented to us as X and Y are true. As Jim Henley points out:
1) [These two informants] can't both be telling the truth. 2) Quoting Hesiod again: "The Bush admninistration, and its pro-war allies, have been hyping the information provided BOTH from Khidir Hamza and from Hussein Kamal. The problem is...one of them has to be lying." 3) But there's one more problem. Pollack too touts both defectors to support his case, just as the administration does. And since Pollack was, after all, "a former analyst of the Iraqi military at the C.I.A.", who has written an entire book on Iraq since (supposedly) leaving the Agency, he must have known that Kamel and Hamza conflict.
He's talking about Keven Pollack, the man who wrote the book "The Threatening Storm: Why We Should Go To War With Iraq," and who also made the most convincing case I had yet heard for the war -- summarized best in Ira Glass's interview of Pollack on This American Life (and noted elsewhere on this page.) What this boils down is that there are huge gaping holes in the arguments supporting a war against Iraq which center on the lack of credibility of those urging its necessity. As I recently noted, there have been reports that Hussein is not nearly as dangerous as has been claimed, and that his ambitions have been successfully curtailed by inspections and sanctions over the past twelve or more years -- that containment works. All of this supports the conclusion that Bush and his pals want to invade Iraq for another reason: not because he is dangerous but because it would advance U.S. interests to occupy the country and have a base of operations in the Middle East that we controlled -- in an area that includes a large supply of oil. The Heritage Foundation has been flogging this as a strategic goal of U.S. foreign policy for many years. See this 1991 document for examples. It advocates, among other things, that we "[m]ake the ouster of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein the top short-term U.S. policy goal in the Persian Gulf." This is because no goal is more important than
preventing hegemony by Iran, Iraq, or any other hostile power over the Persian Gulf. Nor [is any goal]as critical to America as maintaining access to Persian Gulf oil or militarily assisting Israel.
I've seen many a conservative dismiss antiwar demonstrators "No War for Oil" signs as being insane leftist rhetoric. But how can you say it's crazy when conservative think tanks have advocated the importance of getting control of Middle East oil as fundamental to United States security? That's why many of us oppose the war. We can't just take people's lands and resources because we need them, and because we have the power to do so. That's why this war with Iraq is imperialistic and colonialist in nature. It's not preemptive. It's aggressive. And it's wrong. (And the rest of the world knows that it's wrong, too.) -------- TITLE: War of the Polls AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/04/2003 03:54:00 PM ----- BODY: According to a Washington Post poll, 59% of the country supports a war with Iraq even without U.N. support. Tom Friedman says, however, "don't believe the polls. I've been to nearly 20 states recently, and I've found that 95 percent of the country wants to see Iraq dealt with without a war." I myself find the poll numbers hard to accept, even taking into account the fact that almost all the people I talk to live in New York City. A close relative of mine who is a retired Army general and very conservative is against the war, although he is usually very supportive of the use of force to support American interests and in conservative agenda. All of the young people I know are against the war. I know precisely one person who is for the war. The reason I bring this up is that these polls generally seem to miss the mark. There is either a conservative bias at work or some flaw in the way the polling data is collected, or the questions are asked. Anybody out there really know anything about this? I have to say, most of these polls are conducted by the very same conservative news media, large corproations, etc., who demonstrate a conservative bias in their reporting. -------- TITLE: Daily Kos: Let's help Bush with some campaign slogans AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/03/2003 09:37:00 PM ----- BODY: Those fine people at The Daily Kos have solicited campaign slogans from their readers. (See the comments section for some of them.) My favorite? "Bush '04 -- Because Five Justices Just Can't Be Wrong . . ." -------- TITLE: Confused American Citizenry Wonder When War Will End, Already AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/03/2003 05:08:00 PM ----- BODY: Tired of the endless barrages of rhetoric raining down upon them daily like rain, millions of terrified Americans hoped for the end of "this horrifying war," although the war had not yet started. "It's like, relentless," said Sherry Clark, a mom from Duluth. "It's on all the channels. The endless wrangling. The sharp retorts. I just want it all to be over." A recent joint poll by Zogby, ABC News, Harris, Time, and Newsweek all showed that people were anxious for the war to end. (A poll by Fox News indicated that over 70% of Americans wanted the White House to "bring it on," and "let's wrassle," but was based on an interview of a group of guys outside a Hardees in Lubbock, Texas.) Over 70% of Americans polled indicated that they were willing to make almost any sacrifice to avoid the neverending stream of speeches, presentations, warnings, pie charts and bar graphs released from the White House almost every day. Polls also suggested that incendiary rhetoric and "tough talk" was wearing down people all over the world. Both "old Europe" and "new Europe" denizens organized for antitalk talks in the face of escalating gibberish.

Negotiators for Americans sought a U.N. resolution in favor of stopping the proliferation of abusive rhetoric. However, experts say have said that any chance at a resolution may be stalled by a proposed ban on the use of similes.

-------- TITLE: Saddam destroyed his biological and chemical arsenal in 1995? AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/03/2003 02:58:00 PM ----- BODY: Eric Alterman points out a Newsweek article indicating that valuable information from a top Iraqi defector -- noting that Saddam had destroyed his bilogical and chemical weapons stockpile years ago -- was "hushed up" by Iraqi inspectors. This also begs the question of Powell's recent presentation to the U.N., where his evidence of Saddam's nuclear evidence was weak, and in whichhe correspondingly played up -- even holding up a vial of "play Anthrax" -- Iraq's purported biological and chemical weapons programs. As Alterman notes, "This crucial piece of information of seems to have been deliberately buried, but if it can be verified, it could disable entirely the argument for war." Wisdom. And, I might add, excellent grammar. -------- TITLE: Middle East Democracy Deals Blow to Plan to Install Other Middle East Democracy AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/03/2003 02:16:00 PM ----- BODY: Turkey's parliament voted not to allow Bush to use Turkey as a base for military operations aimed at installing a democracy in Iraq. Opposition members explained that they "had seen U.S. schematics of the Iraqi government," and that the plan to install democracy in Iraq was doomed to failure because, among other things, it relied almost exclusively on the availability of representative widgets and gerrymandering cogs. Members of the Bush Administration expressed frustration at the loss of military bases in Turkey. One senior White House official wondered, "Where are we going to put all of these Florida voting machines?" -------- TITLE: If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck . . . AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/02/2003 07:18:00 PM ----- BODY: I used to think Tom Friedman was a really smart guy. Until he started touting Bush's war. It was ok, he said. It was even ok to have a war with Iraq for oil, he said. Without any provocation. He said the war would be a good thing, but only as long as Bush could do a bang-up job of rebuilding Iraq, while simultaneously noting that Bush is terrible at rebuilding -- or for that matter, building -- anything. Today he somehow notices that Bush is a moron, but Friedman still supports the war. He mentions that if he, Friedman, had been planning on invading Iraq and "installing" democracy there, he would have done all the smart, foresighted things Bush has neglected to do-- i.e., not alienated the world by blowing off the Kyoto treaty, not proposed huge tax cuts on top of other massive tax cuts when the government needs the money, "rallied the nation for real energy conservation and initiated a Manhattan Project for alternative energies so I would not find myself with $2.25-per-gallon gasoline on the eve of this war," and Friedman would have made tough new demands on Iraelis and Palestinians to try and direct the Middle East toward a lasting peace. His conclusion: Bush's vision of domino-directed democracies in the Middle East, fueled by a military ouster of Saddam Hussein and a forced U.S.-led occupation of the country, is a "big, bold, gutsy vision." Hey, Tom, if it smells like a myopic pinhead, if it walks like a myopic pinhead, if it acts like a myopic pinhead, then any of its "visions" are the hallucinogenic fantasies of a myopic pinhead. I don't know if anyone noticed it, Tom, but you can't swap out government types like agitators in washing machines. You can't "install" a democracy. Governments aren't modular components, like circuit boards in some huge electronic machine. They're infinitely complex and dynamic societal systems. On the same page, Maureen Dowd highlights some facts which show how myopic and short-sighted -- and utterly imbecilic -- the Bush plan for Iraq is. It was being touted by Bush's lackeys -- or should I say, his superiors? -- as early as 1992, when Cheney and Wolfowitz were championing it and Bush's dad was -- never believed I'd be writing this -- smart enough then to reject it. 1992? This administration is so short-sighted that double-thick coke-bottom-bottle glasses couldn't help them out. -------- TITLE: The American burka? AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/02/2003 05:25:00 PM ----- BODY: Those folks at Metafilter opine that "the HAZMAT suit [has become] the American burka." Let's be clear. I'm the American Burka. The HAZMAT suit is just one of my lackeys. -------- TITLE: The Right Hand and the Left Hand. And you know what they use the left hand for . . . AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/01/2003 11:33:00 PM ----- BODY: Do These Men Work for the Same Government? quotes from Bush and Powell this week on the proffered rationales for using military force in Iraq. Guess what? Powell: Disarm. Bush: Regime change and we want to install democracies all the over the Middle East like little houses in Monopoly. -------- TITLE: Bush Insists Hussein Must Disarm, Cede Power, and "Do the Chicken Dance" AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 3/01/2003 12:24:00 PM ----- BODY:
The United States continued to elaborate on the conditions it requires to deter an invasion of Iraq today, asking Saddam Hussein to step down from his dictatorship and run around the country flapping his arms like a chicken. Ari Fleischer defended the demands, saying, "Look, does the guy want to cooperate with us, or what?" Fleischer denied that the U.S. had also at one point considered making Hussein deliver a "really nice shrubbery" to the White House.
Fleischer pooh-poohed any suggestion that the ever-shifting rationales offered by the White House as purported justifications for the use of military force demonstrated that the decision to go to war with Iraq was ill-conceived or based on some mysterious "voodoo logic."
"There has never been any shift in our rationale," said Fleischer. "The chicken dance has always been the priority."
-------- TITLE: Dennis Miller Becomes a Wimp AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/28/2003 03:40:00 PM ----- BODY: Perhaps because of old age, perhaps because of his terrible stint on Monday Night football, Dennis Miller loses his ability to courageously oppose insane warmongering Republicans. Most disturbing is when Miller says he's for the war because Bush must know what he's doing. If I were his wife, I'd be getting him an MRI stat to find the brain tumor. Read the whole sorted tale here. -------- TITLE: George Soros Says I Am Absolutely Right AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/28/2003 10:44:00 AM ----- BODY: Not a big surprise here. But he's worth billions and I'm worth a little bit less than that. Annoying. In any case, Soros says that Bush is pursing "an Imperialist vision," and what the world really needs is for "the Bush administration to live by the rules it seeks to impose on the rest of the world." -------- TITLE: The Death of a Wise Man AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/28/2003 10:12:00 AM ----- BODY: Anyone who heard Davy Rothbart's extraordinary interview of Mr. Rogers as broadcast on This American Life can now relive it in his op-ed piece in the New York Times today, A Friend in the Neighborhood. A comparison of the pics from the episode (showing Davy meeting Mr. Rogers when Davy was 3 and again 20 years later reveals that Davy dyed his hair blonde when he was three. If you listen to the actual interview (at the This American Life website -- just find the episode "Neighbors" from May of 2001), you'll hear how Davy initially could not believe that Mr. Rogers really invited his family -- based on the receipt of a fan letter -- to spend a day of Mr. Rogers's vacation with him. He wondered if he had imagined it, or if Mr. Rogers did this all the time. Turns out Mr. Rogers invited scads of his fans -- all of these young kids -- to visit him, and he would give each family the royal treatment. Sounds like he spent his every waking minute -- including his vacations -- catering to others. The main impression you get from the interview is -- hard to believe about a guy who meticulously changed his shoes and put on his comfy sweater at the beginning of every show -- a wise and enlightened person. If only Fred Rogers had had a show for adults. I guess he did. -------- TITLE: Great Minds 3 AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/26/2003 08:54:00 PM ----- BODY: Chas Freeman, in The New York Times writes:
The last war with Iraq greatly enhanced American prestige and influence. The irony is that this war with Iraq, intended by its proponents to consolidate United States hegemony, may erode and undermine it. Even if things go well, it could yield weakened American alliances and influence, a more anemic presence overseas, a diminished capacity to project power, fewer options and allies in the Middle East, and an increased threat of terrorism. From here, it looks like a bad bet against long odds.
-------- TITLE: Bush Destroys American Advances of Past 60 Years, Embraces Colonialism: From Bully Pulpit to Bullying Pulpit AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/26/2003 12:55:00 PM ----- BODY: This Washington Post article about the alienation of "old Arab friends" is really about how, with the Iraq war, Bush is turning back half a century of American leadership in world affairs in democracy, international relations, and fairness. The view of one pro-American Arab shows how the rest of the world now sees us:
The United States wants to partition Iraq, he argues in slow, deliberate tones, and covets the world's second-largest oil reserves. An invasion, he says, serves only Israel and a clique within the Bush administration "whose ignorance is matched only by their greed." A preemptive war, whose very premise he believes defies international law, signals the rebirth of colonialism and imperialism that seemed finished generations ago.
The coming war is seen as a repudiation of the most democratic and great American ideals of self-determination informed by a respect, above all, of individual rights. America is throwing away the principles on which this country was founded in favor of a colonialist, power hungry stance, where the American superpower extends its tendrils everywhere and forces its will upon the rest of the weak world. This shift in America's place in the world -- from the embodiment and protector of democratic ideals and freedoms to that of bullying titan intent on serving only its own interests -- is the most dangerous makeover in American's history. America now serves as a countermodel for what is right -- locking up people without due process, paritioning the lands of others, threatening members of the U.N. to support the new world order "or else. We spent years trying to increase the credibility and utility of the U.N. as a governing body and conduit of international law, and witrh one fell swoop, we're wiping that out. How can we urge others to follow U.N. resolutions if we don't see them as necessary or binding? How can we complain that Saddam Hussein is in defiance of U.N. resolutions when we, at the same time, say that we don't feel the need to follow them ourselves? Many see this war as the first "Arab-American war." We cannot and should not follow the script which bin Laden wrote when he strategized his conquest of Americans. Bin Laden obviously sought to provoke the U.S. into reacting to 9/11 with the use of force, and in Bush, he has a mighty ally. Bush is destablilizing the world's most dangerous regions -- the Middle East, Pakistan and India -- and helping bin Laden to divide the world into Moslems and non-Moslems, moving us all toward a great clash of civilizations. Bush embodies the worst that America ever has been or ever could be. The millions of protestors are just the tip of the iceberg. These are our friends urging against an unjust course of action. They are now our friends, protesting peacefully. They will become our enemies, fighting against us for what is right. -------- TITLE: Your Attorney Will Now be Required to Turn You In. You'll Be Billed Later. AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/25/2003 07:08:00 AM ----- BODY: IsThatLegal?, a weblog that comments on a variety of things -- mostly the American Internment of Japanese during WW II, but really, other stuff too -- that the Patriot Act requires lawyers at real estate closings to
first check a federal database to ascertain whether either seller or buyer is a "Specially Designated National"--that is, a person or entity on a "terrorist list" compiled by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Treasury Department. And here's the kicker: if seller or buyer is on the list, then the lawyer must (a) report the fact to the federal government, (b) delay the closing, and (c) not tell the client(s) that the lawyer has done (a) and (b).
He goes on to note that:
Two things jump out at me here. First, this is a spot where the reach of the USA PATRIOT Act is just enormous. It affects every single real estate transaction in the nation. From an administration that purports to be concerned about protecting state and local power from the reach of the federal government, this is an extraordinary foray into what has always been understood to be a core matter of state and local concern--transactions in real property.
What else is hiding in the Patriot Act? Who put this in? Was there a lobby (the Background Check Association of America maybe?) that got this slipped in? -------- TITLE: Bush Use of U.N. Makes Head Spin Like Exorcist Chick AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/25/2003 06:37:00 AM ----- BODY: President Bush today said that because he had already decided to invade Iraq, the U.N. better vote to do it, already. "We asked for your approval as an international body making rulings of binding law rubberstamping our previously-formulated policies and decisions," Bush said. He complained that the U.N. "seemed to kind of misunderstand the whole point" of going through them. "They're not like, the law, or anything. They're just, like, this bunch of guys hanging out in some horseshoe kind of thing." Ari Fleisher explained that Bush was applying his understanding of golf to the United Nations. "The President thinks that the object of golf is for the golf course to shift itself until the President's ball is directly over the hole." -------- TITLE: A Very Special Sneak Peak at the Upcoming Saddam Hussein/ George W. Bush Debate AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/25/2003 12:04:00 AM ----- BODY: CBS News reports that Saddam Hussein refuses to destroy those missiles of his and instead wants a one-on-one "dialogue" or debate with George W. Bush. Although I have thought the whole deal would best be resolved by single combat (kinda like that scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), I think a debate is the perfect antidote to the whole Iraq/U.S. mess -- not to mention that it solves another enormous problem -- it gives people something to watch now that "Joe Millionaire" is over. That debate would be something like this: President Bush: We know what a disarmed country looks like and, uh . . . Iraq doesn't look like that. Saddam Hussein: [long muttering in Arabic] Interpreter: You have big stupid ears that stick out strangely from your ugly American face. President Bush: I didn't come all the way here just to stand up and be insulted. Saddam Hussein: [quick, deft rattling off of Arabic] Interpreter: That's fine. You can sit down in this comfortable chair over here and I'll start over. Powell: Boys, boys. . . . Hours later, after a tense, behind closed-doors meeting, Bush and Saddam will come out of the room awkwardly touching and friendly. President Bush: (sheepishly) We realize that we actually have a lot in common. . . . He has weapons of mass destruction, I have weapons of mass destruction . . . He tried to kill my Daddy, my Daddy tried to kill him. The world is really such a small place. We've said some things to each other maybe we shouldn't of and we've used some harsh words. Things got a little outta hand. And maybe we were both kinda having trouble backing down. And then I was reminded of Isaiah . . . Journalist: The bible passage? President Bush: No, just this guy we both know. Anyway (blushes, shifts weight uncomfortably), let's see if we can just put this whole mess behind us and start again. Life is too short. (to Saddam) I'm sorry I called you a big fat evil insane powerhungry dictator guy. Saddam: I'm very soggy. [They shake hands, awkwardly pat each other on the shoulder. ] Saddam rattles something off in Arabic. Interpreter: We're touching but that doesn't mean we're like, gay. Bush laughs, winks, points finger. Jacques Chirac: (tearfully smiling and hugging everyone) I am SO happy! -------- TITLE: Ridge Raises Snack Food Threat Warning to Mesquite Barbeque Flavor AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/22/2003 04:44:00 PM ----- BODY: Ridge stated that the threat level had been raised because of increased snack food rustling on certain shelves, and said, "I'm pretty sure that this threat level is higher than Burnt Sienna." Ridge noted that Vice President Cheney had been moved to an undisclosed location, and advised people to "be prepared," and "stock up on dip." -------- TITLE: Bush Scorns Formulation of Policy Based on Americans' Opinions AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/22/2003 04:37:00 PM ----- BODY: In a recent New York Times article, President Bush stated that deciding whether to go to war with Iraq based on Americans' support for it would be "like deciding, well, I'm going to decide policy based upon a focus group." Bush made the statement after focus groups indicated that they would like to see Bush making decisions that were not focus group tested or poll driven. -------- TITLE: A Reasonable Republican Voice? AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/19/2003 08:21:00 AM ----- BODY: I'm a little stunned by the extremely moderate tone struck by funny Republican Christopher Buckley. He concedes that protestors should be at least spoken to in Another March of Folly?, and also reveals that he is against the war unless all of our allies support it:
For what it's worth, I do not support a war with Iraq unless we all — defined as a clear majority of the American people, plus New Europe and good "Old Europe," as feckless and posturing as they are — ultimately agree that it is the only way to make the world safer. If we can't agree, I say: contain Saddam Hussein with all means at our disposal. Indeed, contain him with extreme prejudice.
That's two uses of feckless I've seen this week. (One below.) An investigation into the decrease in the world's supply of feck is in order (with U.N. sanctions, if appropriate). The amazing thing about this is, I've seen Republicans scoff at the anti-war protests ("do they really believe that the war has anything to do with oil????") and make fun of the notion that millions of people really might care about people killing innocent Iraqi civilians. It's nice to see a conservative voice acknowledge that those that oppose the war deserve to have their opinions treated with respect. Here on this page that's we're all about. Respect. I respect everyone's opinions, even the opinions of utter morons. -------- TITLE: Le Monde To Retaliate For Post Snub AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/18/2003 11:12:00 AM ----- BODY: Today, French newspaper Le Monde vowed to retaliate for the New York Post's cavalier and prepubescent treatment of French and German delegates by publishing photos of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney' faces with big buck teeth and devil's horns scrawled on them in crayon. -------- TITLE: Great Minds Think Alike 2 AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/17/2003 02:27:00 PM ----- BODY: While Bush and his pals have made the war completely inevitable, Jonathan Schell courageously continues to lay out The Case Against the War, among other objections noting the weakness of the "Saddam will give nukes to terrorists" argument:
It has turned out that the supplier of essential information and technology for North Korea's uranium program was America's faithful ally in the war on terrorism, Pakistan, which received missile technology from Korea in return. The "father" of Pakistan's bomb, Ayub Qadeer Khan, has visited North Korea thirteen times. This is the same Pakistan whose nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahood paid a visit to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan a few months before September 11, and whose nuclear establishment even today is riddled with Islamic fundamentalists. . . . Indeed, an objective ranking of nuclear proliferators in order of menace would place Pakistan (a possessor of the bomb that also purveys the technology to others) first on the list, North Korea second (it peddles missiles but not, so far, bomb technology), Iran (a country of growing political and military power with an active nuclear program) third, and Iraq (a country of shrinking military power that probably has no nuclear program and is currently under international sanctions and an unprecedented inspection regime of indefinite duration) fourth. (Russia, possessor of 150 tons of poorly guarded plutonium, also belongs somewhere on this list.) The Bush Administration ranks them, of course, in exactly the reverse order, placing Iraq, which it plans to attack, first, and Pakistan, which it befriends and coddles, nowhere on the list. It will not be possible, however, to right this pyramid. The reason it is upside down is that it was unworkable right side up. Iraq is being attacked not because it is the worst proliferator but because it is the weakest.
I made the same point here. (Boy, am I good!) -------- TITLE: Your Big Chance to Get Your Name in the Paper AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/17/2003 11:52:00 AM ----- BODY: Yes, yes. You, too, can be a star. All you have to do is expose the most blatantly stupid and useless security arrangements at the places that need security most and you could win the Stupid Security Competition sponsored by Privacy International. I don't really know what Privacy International does, but if they're for pointing out blatant stupidity that harms us I'm all for them. As they say:
The sensitive and sensible folk at Privacy International have endured enough of this treatment. So until March 15th 2003 we are running an international competition to discover the world's most pointless, intrusive, stupid and self-serving security measures.
See, putting a nameplate on a door or a building that says "Dept. of Homeland Security" doesn't actually make the "homeland" more secure. Most places I go that require security merely have guards stationed at the entrance glancing at bags and asking people to show them photo i.d.'s. Someone should tell somebody that it's not so hard to get a little card with a name and your photo on it these days. Have any of these security guys seen Adobe Photoshop? Adobe Photoshop Lite? Adobe Photoshop Lite for Terrorists (APLT)? -------- TITLE: New Photo AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/17/2003 12:28:00 AM ----- BODY: Like I said, this is a work in progress. (Actually, I never said that. Pretend I did.) That's why this pic is up in the left hand corner. It's also why it will only be there for a very little while. I'm sure you're all duly relieved. -------- TITLE: Fair and Balanced Reporting at Its Best AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/14/2003 11:02:00 PM ----- BODY: The New York Post is so classy. Today, their front page was this huge photo of the U.N. with weasel heads pasted on over the heads of the French and German delegates. The headline? "Weasels to hear new Iraq evidence." I don't care what you say, this paper has a lot more journalistic integrity than the Enquirer -- although their work seems somewhat derivative: this is the same technique used by the guys in my old shop class when they pasted a dog's head on the shop teacher's photo in every yearbook. That was wicked funny. If I figure how out to post that image here, I will. -------- TITLE: Our Homeland Security Department at Work AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/14/2003 10:41:00 PM ----- BODY: Daily Kos: Everyone needs to chill notes that Tom Ridge defended his "duct tape" recommendation to the general public by suggesting, among other things, that the idea had been tested in focus groups. As Kos says: "So there you have it. Duct tape -- focus group tested for your protection." -------- TITLE: Decision Making At the Highest Level AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/14/2003 10:28:00 PM ----- BODY: Adventures with George, Ari, and Karl @ OliverWillis.Com gives us a fine look at the inside workings of the White house. -------- TITLE: Great Minds AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/14/2003 10:14:00 PM ----- BODY: Today, Paul Krugman, showing how brilliant he is, made the same point I made yesterday on this page. Great minds and all that. Krugman: "[bin Laden's] tape calls Saddam Hussein an 'infidel' whose 'jurisdiction . . . has fallen,' but says that it's still O.K. to fight the 'Crusaders' — and Mr. Powell claims that it ties Saddam to Al Qaeda. Huh? All it shows is that Al Qaeda views a U.S. invasion of Iraq as an excellent recruiting opportunity." -------- TITLE: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/13/2003 10:57:00 PM ----- BODY: Best headline of the week: North Korea Wonders What It Has To Do To Attract U.S. Military Attention -------- TITLE: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/13/2003 10:49:00 PM ----- BODY: Notably, according to the Associated Press, CIA Director George Tenet told Congress today that the ties alleged between Iraq and al Queda were weaker than has been described. (Strangely, Tenet also warned about a "dirty bomb" being exploded despite the fact that the primary source for this "intelligence" was an Iraqi "defector" who had never been polygraphed. And when he was, they concluded the defector was lying. See ABCNEWS.com : Alert Partly Based on Lies. This tends to undermine any sense I might have that Bush and his folk are making well-considered decisions based upon secret information that they have kept from us. I would not put a lot of stock in an Iraqi defector's statements unless they were well corroborated.) -------- TITLE: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/13/2003 10:33:00 PM ----- BODY: Amazing how times change. The Washington Post editorial board has become a haven for conservative thought (Bush cheerleaders but without those nifty uniforms) and the New York Times editorial board has tilted a little to the left. Today, in an editorial entitled "The Perils of Passivity," the Post correctly noted that attacking Iraq is ratcheting up anti-American sentiment and that the path to war is a dangerous and reckless (I would even say feckless) path. Astonishingly, the Post concluded that those who feel this way do not advocate peace because it might promote a stable and safer international and domestic envornment; they do so simply because of "anxiety." The Post further argues that diplomacy has been exhausted and that war is the only option available to America. The New York Times editorial board today came out with precisely the reverse conclusion: the U.N. may still resolve the problem of Saddam hussein, if given a chance, and America cannot and should not go to war without U.N. approval. Frankly, the Washington Post's reasoning is almost entirely circular: the reason for the increased threat of terrorist action is not because of the fiery rhetoric and warmongering of the Bush Administration, they posit; it is because we didn't do anything before. The beasts were always there, but we're just rousing them by moving to meet them in open battle. This argument entirely misses the mark. If only we were meeting the beast in open battle -- that beast being bin Laden. The Post fails to make any meaninglful distinction between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden even though the links between them are incredibly weak. bin Laden's recent radio address was careful to avoid any praise for Saddam -- he referred to him merely as the "communist government" and his appeal was to Iraqi moslems. We have given bin laden the opportunity to reach out to Iraqi Moslems because of our reckless campaign against Saddam Hussein. (Hey, that rhymes!) The beast has many arms, surely, but Saddam Hussein is not one of them. When America wars against Iraq, we're playing right into bin Laden's hands. -------- TITLE: Today's headlines AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/12/2003 07:11:00 PM ----- BODY:

North Korean Nukes Can Reach Western U.S., Says CIA Republicans rejoice at possible loss of California

Full story here.

Hardware Stores See Record Sales of Duct Tape White House pleased that ducts will be well protected
States express concern about people and buildings

Full story here. -------- TITLE: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/11/2003 10:19:00 PM ----- BODY: When attending a wedding, eat as many of the hors d'ouvres at the reception as you can. The dinner following will never be as good as the food served earlier, and it will be a good two to three hours before the main course comes anywhere near you. -------- TITLE: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/11/2003 01:42:00 PM ----- BODY: This American Life is the finest show on the radio, and possibly the best on TV, or anywhere. Latest episodes: Somwhere in the Arabian Sea "Last year, during the conflict in Afghanistan, the staff of This American Life spent two days aboard an aircraft carrier stationed in the Arabian Sea. This week, as more and more troops deploy to the Gulf in preparation for a new war, we rebroadcast that hour of stories from the people on the ship, about what life is like fighting in the war on terrorism." This episode includes the profile of a woman who spends 12 hours a day simply restocking the vending machines with Cheez-its and a Navy sailor who got there because, in Texas, they offer military enlistment as an alternative to prison. When asked how he liked being there, he replied, "I hate it. This is like a big prison on the ocean." Why We Fight An exploration of the reasons for and against the war with Iraq, which includes some thoughtful explanation by foreign policy experts on the reasons for and against the war. Time to Save The World "The story of a standardized test, just eighteen questions long, created by scientists, that not only can tell you things about yourself that will haunt you for weeks, it can diagnose just how good you are ... and how evil. That and other simple schemes to make the world a better place. " This American Life covers this stuff -- American life -- in a way you'll never hear or see on the news programs, reality shows, anywhere else. (Every episode ever aired is available at their site.) -------- TITLE: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/11/2003 01:25:00 PM ----- BODY: Is attacking Iraq increasing our security or is it greatly heightening tensions and endangering us? One thing is for sure, it is helping Muslim extremists band together: Hamas is joining the fray. -------- TITLE: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/11/2003 11:12:00 AM ----- BODY: The war is already hitting home. I haven't been able to post because this very good friend of mine -- ok, my wife -- has been very concerned about the threat of a terrorist attack and I've been scurrying around getting supplies for the next disaster. We live in New York. (Don't try to find me -- I have an intelligence network on the street that will sweep you up and spirit you away to an undisclosed location in the Bronx. Ok, Yankee Stadium, but you won't get out of there until you buy a $6 Coke and a humongous soft pretzel for $10.) The spectre of 9/11 looms large here. I don't know a family who doesn't have a disaster plan or kit or something. (My single friends are like, I'm prepared. I have voicemail and stuff.) I have a friend who keeps 20 gallons of water somewhere in his small, cluttered apartment and rotates his stock once a month. I notice that Tom Ridge has been careful to say that the elevated terrosist threat alert has "nothing to do with Iraq," and today the White House is suddenly handing out detailed advice on how to prepare for a chemical or biological attack but saying that "there is no specific, credible intelligence that says an attack using chemical or biological weapons is imminent." Just an amazing coincidence. Our disaster kit includes calamine lotion in case someone gets smallpox. I don't really think that will be much help. I'm not sure how much the kit will help us in an emergency. I know that stocking the kit is giving us some sense of control -- that there's something we can do to prepare us for a disaster. And how I wish that there was something we really could do, that there is something that we can do today, besides putting some bacitracin in a bag, to make us all safe. My wife just returned from the hardware store triumphant. She got the last roll of plastic sheeting. It all sold out today. -------- TITLE: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/11/2003 10:24:00 AM ----- BODY: A good rant is worth, like, a picture. -------- TITLE: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/11/2003 10:22:00 AM ----- BODY:

War is Cathartic

America loves a good war. They like the drama, they like the excitement, they like the idea of really teaching somebody a lesson -- the lesson being that if push comes to shove, America will kick your booty if you don't shape up. Americans love the spectacle and the notion of American Might, and the illusion of American Might Makes Right. In our role as "global policeman," (a role which Bush campaigned on relinquishing), we have sent troops helter skelter and willy-nilly all over the world ousting dictators, rebuffing attempts to annex other countries, promoting human rights, even stopping warlords from stealing the food from the mouths of the hungry. Since Vietnam, almost all of those conflicts has been very small and involved the use of American force against small armies, or merely organized militant bands. (The sole exception is, of course, Operation Desert Storm, rebuffing the invasion of Kuwait by Hussein.) The action in Afghanistan did not seem like a real war because, while it took place in that country, we were not at war with the country but really only at war with terrorists who had set up bases of activity inside of that realm.) It's been too long since we've had a really good conventional war, one where there is some real opposition, one where we can send in lots of reporters who can be right on the battlefield, attached to actual units, transmitting pictures and dispatches from the front lines. Very soon American television will be filled with wall-to-wall coverage of the war. When they're not showing us clips of the battles or summaries of the action, they'll be interviewing every military pundit they can find, all of whom will be filling us in on each particular weapon and explaining how they are used and how effective they are. Every sports event will begin with a jingoistic salute to our men and women of the armed forces fighting the good fight for us overseas (it's already started -- remember the Superbowl?) They'll be plenty of pro-military press and a lot of rah-rah-ing from us lucky folk they're defending. Initially the support for the war will be high -- finally, many people will think, we're going to get that bastard Saddam -- and polls will indicate popularity for the President and his position on the war. Bush's ratings will go up even as the economy continues to tank. As the war goes on, and it is discovered that the effort involves a prolonged and difficult, bloody ground attack, with street fighting in Bagdad that never seems to let up, this initial swell of support will erode, at least to some degree. There will be reports of civilian casualties, U.S. losses caused by friendly fire, tragic mistakes and missteps, and grisly photographs. The reality of war will come home to some people. The Bush administration will try to shore up support by aggressively controlling the media and by manipulating the information released to demonstrate that the war is justified. there will be news of the truly horrific crimes Saddam has committed against his people, people liberated from torture, and many, many claims of discoveries of prohibited weapons and weapons facilities, and much evidence presented of how close Saddam was to using them. Inevitably, because he has nothing to lose, Saddam will use his weapons of mass destruction -- certainly on the battlefield and perhaps, if he can, in the U.S. -- and the Bush administration will point to this as confirmation of every prediction they ever made. (There will certainly not be any acknowledgment of the fact that invading Iraq will be the direct cause of the unleashing of these weapons. Indeed, absent a U.N. resolution calling for war, U.S. actions would be in violation of international law while Saddam's -- defending an invasion of his country --- would not.) The war is inevitable. There will be a massive anti-war protest in cities all over the country on February 15. More people will turn out than did at the beginning of the Vietnam war. (I'm pretty sure of this -- the recent demonstration in Washington, D.C. at the beginning of the awful January cold snap satisfied this statistic.) The war will probably begin the week after. (Maybe two weeks after, but certainly no later than early March.) Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times puts forth a cogent and compelling argument that containment is a far more effective solution to any threat posed by Saddam Hussein here. It's too bad that no one in the Administration is listening to him, or us. -------- TITLE: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/10/2003 11:16:00 PM ----- BODY: Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, commenting on John Ashcroft's recent announcement of the elevated Terrorist Threat Status from yellow to orange: "Can't we get someone to make these announcements who makes us want to survive?" -------- TITLE: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/10/2003 10:53:00 PM ----- BODY: The Onion has a stunning investigative piece on the Wonka crisis. -------- TITLE: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/10/2003 10:09:00 PM ----- BODY:

Recent Headlines

Bush Makes State of the Union Speech, Promises the World Will Start with Iraq Bush Laments Shuttle Disaster, Proposes Immediate Tax Cuts for Safety -------- TITLE: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/10/2003 06:57:00 PM ----- BODY: Baby back ribs are definitely superior to beef ribs. -------- TITLE: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/09/2003 05:43:00 PM ----- BODY: I'm new to this blogging stuff, and I'm a little confused about my voice. I try to have a wry, sometimes sarcastic but always incandescent humor, and I overwrite frequently (this is a good example), but my first post here confused all (read both) of the readers. For one thing, my tone is meant to indicate sarcasm, but my tone isn't coming through. Guess what? I don't really think that we can mount a special op to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein and his "weapons of mass distraction." My last post was colored by the information that the age group with the lowest voter turnout is 18-24. These guys don't vote at all, hardly. There are, I think, huge numbers of them, but, according to a recent All Things Considered piece (the great news show on NPR), they don't believe that there are any issues which affect them. I'm told that, when polled, college students who supported the notion of going to war with Iraq were also entirely against being drafted. I had the faintest whiff of an idea that this blog could take the voice of a fellow 18-24 year-old speaking to others about politics and the world but perhaps the world and I are not ready for this development. I don't think we should go to war with Iraq. Preemptive war -- based upon the idea that someone or some country might commit an act of war in the future -- is an offense to democratic principles and the most firmly established principles of international law. The U.S. has, in the hands of the present -- what's the word I'm looking for? -- lunatics running the White House, totally destroyed its credibility as a forthright nation doing good all over the planet and undermined its position as the model for democracy. The blatant erosion of civil liberties -- the most firmly established and basic rights accorded Americans by the Constitution -- is now being accompanied by what many properly see as opportunistic, imperialistic behavior. The reason I mention the vast divide between our policy toward Iraq and other nations that pose the same, or greater, threats than Iraq is to call into question the reasons proffered by the administration for urgently seeking to invade Iraq. Another good piece of evidence that we haven't heard truthful motives for the war is that, as many have pointed out (Maureen Dowd comes to mind, for one), that the White House has proffered many different rationales for this war, some at the same time. There's disarm, there's regime change -- Bush then redefined regime change by saying that if Saddam changed his mind about using weapons than that would constitute regime change -- and others. (If Saddam changed his shirt would that constitute regime change? If he gave us four quarters for a dollar bill, would that constitute regime change?) No less an authority than Al Gore (can't believe I'm referring to him) has described the war as a "distraction." There are many reasons to suspect that Bush and his pals may, at least in part, be using the war to distract from many things, the tanking economy, and the failure of the Bush administration to combat al Qaeda (the CIA reports that it as strong as it was before September 11) among them. Part of my skepticism springs from Bush's lack of credibility with me. We have to "trust him" that we need to do it, based upon information the Administration won't reveal (I know, the dog and pony show at the U.N. revealed something but I'd like to see all the information in context -- I'll explain later). This is the most secretive administration in the history of the U.S. I cannot trust a group of people who believe that I shouldn't have meaningful information about and input into the most important decisions facing the President. Why all the secrecy? If there's nothing to hide, let us know about it. Let us know how decisions are made, the processes used, the people consulted, the information upon which the White House relies. The only reason that information is kept from normal citizens like you and me is that this would diminish support for the actions which this Administration is taking. Don't talk to me about "chilling" the President's ability to make decisions, Mr. Cheney. We want him to make decisions with us in mind. I'm not saying he should be poll driven, but he should derive his power from the people. That's what democracy is all about. -------- TITLE: AUTHOR: Tom DATE: 2/06/2003 09:49:00 PM ----- BODY: Hey! What's with this Powell slideshow and all? Was that PowerPoint? Couldn't he have a made a really cool movie instead? That Powell guy has all the vocal enthusiasm of a tenth grader reading a thousand-page contract aloud during detention. I heard his speech on the radio, in a cab, thinking this isn't Rush Limbaugh, but some right-wing AM talk-show host whose following must be the over-70 crowd. His delivery reminded me of Paul Harvey, who used to announce his page-turns on the air -- as if he couldn't distinguish between the real copy and the scripted instructions to the announcer -- but without the verve and flair that made Harvey beloved by those people who beloved him. I found his speech much more compelling when I read it the next day in the paper. For the non-politically minded, his speech boiled down to: Hey! That Hussein guy really has a lot of weapons he was supposed to have ditched a long time ago! And he's trying get more! And he's lying about having them! Dude, was this a shock to anyone except for people who don't know American Idol is a show on Fox? The question is, like, should anyone do anything about it? Is this guy really dangerous, or what? And then there's this question: Man, should we just be bombing these guys when those French and German dudes don't think we should be doing it? Does that German guy really wear a helmet or is that, like, his name? Seriously: How big a priority is getting rid of Hussein and how doable is it? Can't we just bomb their weapons facilities? We've seen a lot of Mission Impossible lately and the IMF force should be able to just go into Iraq and straighten the whole mess out --- I'm guessing frame Saddam's son for plotting a major coup while Barney destroys the weapons facilities. Couldn't something covert and special ops-like be worth trying? (I don't really think so.) And what about North Korea and, especially, Pakistan. Pakistan has members of Al Qaeda completely protected in their strange southern wasteland, which is known as the "lawless region" -- I'm guessing something like the old west badlands but without sheriffs (plural should be "sherr-i"?), marshals, or posses -- you know, like that place James Brolin hid out in Westworld after he broke out of the jail. Plus, the SIS -- the Pakistani secret service -- is openly sympathetic to terrorists, those that invade India, as well as al Qaeda. So, members of the Pakistani government work with al Qaeda, basically. And the anti-al Qaeda faction, if you will, including the general who leads the country after a successful coup -- not the most stable form of government there, mind you, and wholly undemocratic -- cannot reliably be counted upon to hold these other forces in check, or to stay in power at all. And they have a whole bunch of nuclear weapons. How hard would it be for some of that processed uranium to find its way to a suitcase bomb? And of course, Russia has bombs -- and biological weapons -- which they have not accounted for and for which there are no inspections, and how secure is that stuff and where is it? Shouldn''t we know? So why does the current administration refuse to sign onto any nuclear non-proliferation treaties -- and refuse to sign any treaties providing for meaningful inspections related to worldwide biological weapon control and non-proliferation? --------