I'm on a mission from God

[. . .]

[Palestinian Foreign Minister] Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq ..." And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"

[. . .]

Time to take the Chimp out in a straightjacket.

Link via Maru

No Reich here

Thankfully for all the single women and unmarried couples in Indiana, this Nazi has been silenced. Thank God Shakespeare's Sister (and Mr. Shakes too of course) lives there. I think some of her smarts are rubbing off on the locals. From Pam:

[. . .]

Did she just come out from under a cultural rock? This gal had no clue the poorly conceived (pun intended) legislation to control procreation outside of the fertile, married, male-female, faith-based experience was a flaming pile of sh*t? Looks like a little fire was lit under the ass of this Hoosier, so she pulled it.

[. . .]

Quality

No, Harriet Miers doesn't need to be a judge to be qualified for a seat on SCOTUS. No, she doesn't need any experience arguing cases before SCOTUS to be qualified. In fact I am qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice. Go figure. But there's one little fact that's telling. It's where Ms. Miers learned the vagries and intricacies of the U.S. legal system. Now I've seen politicians from Harvard and Yale in action. I know quite a few of their alumni. I'm not impressed but as far as educations go, they're probably the best places to get a law degree. Zoe contrasts and compares the sitting Justices' educational credits to Ms. Miers'. It's about quality, folks, as opposed to a faith-based education.

Don't bother

Jo Fish:

Joe Biden is forming an "exploratory committee" to gauge his chances for a presidential bid in 2008. Here's why his committee will find that his chances of having sex with a polar bear are better.

[. . .]

Mr. Biden, Ted Kennedy got the message long ago. Here's yours. Don't waste your time running for the Presidency, you won't get my vote. Note to John Kerry: The same goes for you. Don't bother, you've shown what you're made of too. I respect your service to this nation, but you're no Presidential candidate. Don't waste your time and ours.

Job interviews

Can't they do anything right? AMERICAblog via the Sister:

ABC just released an exclusive. A US Marine was working in the White House as a spy for the Philippines. He worked in the White House for 3 years, and most recently for Dick Cheney. He then stole classified documents and passed them to the Philippines opposition. He's a naturalized US citizen from the Philippines.

[. . .]

I'll let Gord deal with the fact this guy is a Marine (let them take care of their own). He'll explain, I'm sure, what kind of dishonor this act brings.

Meanwhile . . .

Back in Iraq . . .

Pork and Fishes

[. . .]

With great fanfare, Alaska Airlines recently rolled out what it calls the "Salmon-Thirty-Salmon." Thirty painters worked around the clock for 24 days to paint a 100-foot salmon on a 737 airplane, which went into service today.

The $500,000 paint job is part of a campaign to promote the Alaskan seafood industry, and was paid for by the federal government. It's a pork project that some are calling "fishy."

"Only Congress can turn fish into pork," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "Paint jobs for private airplanes are one thing, but Uncle Sam should not be paying for it."

The Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board actually paid for the paint job. The board was created less than three years ago. Since then, the group has received nearly $30 million from the federal government - funding pushed through by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. [my emphases]

[. . .]

Must be nice living in Alaska. Being less people live in our largest state than on the twenty-five thousand acres of Manhattan Island, they sure get their fair share of my tax money. Might be nice to fix the bridges to Manhattan before we build bridges to nowhere in Alaska.

Link via Maru

Heh Heh

Got this one from Suburban Guerilla.

Reporters were asking the openly gay congressman Barney Frank if David Dreier was denied DeLay's leadership position because he was too moderate - or because he was gay. Frank said it was because Dreier was too moderate, and then quipped, "And I'm going to a moderate bar after work tonight."

After Greenspan?

Go see Whiskey Bar. Heh.

Iraqis reverse ruling

Yesterday I posted about the rules change in Iraq that defined what a "voter" is. I expressed displeasure. Well, as regular readers of the Brain, the Iraqi Parliament took note and reversed themselves. From Reuters.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's parliament reversed on Wednesday a ruling that would have helped a new constitution win approval, hoping to appease minority Sunnis after the United Nations warned it might refuse to endorse the referendum vote.

Many Sunnis had complained of double standards in Sunday's ruling that defined the word "voters" in two different ways in one sentence of the interim constitution, to the disadvantage of Sunnis hoping for a blocking "No" vote in three provinces.

"They have reversed their decision as we had hoped they would," said U.N. spokesman Said Arikat in Baghdad.

"No one asked us about it," Sunni politician Saadoun al-Zubaidi said. "If it had not been for the United Nations, nothing would have changed."

Hussain al-Shahristani, the Shi'ite deputy speaker, insisted that parliament had acted on its own initiative.

Keep readin' the Brain, boys. It'll make ya smart.

Besides, you still got that shipload of Diebold machines....

Business is good

For mercenaries. CN Todd:

How nice: Haitian security has been subcontracted out to a U.S. corporation.

And don't forget to keep up with his ongong reports about what we're fucking up in Haiti that's sliding under the radar.

Edicts and Declarations

I left a comment, on Jo Fish's post over at Main and Central, about a memory of mine when in Korea at the time the AIDS epidemic was just entering the national consciousness. The military said we had to limit casual sex with the locals. Fellas, I was 19, in Asia, surrounded by millions of beautiful, almond-eyed women; you figure out what I was doing in my spare time. Besides, anybody who knows Air Force folks . . . Well, Jo has an example of the military's bludgeon vs. stiletto approach to problems.

Well, we all know that the DoD can't stuff that horse that was the Porn-for-WarPorn back into the proverbial barn. So they've done the next best thing. They're subjectively restricting the use of "photographs" by "bloggers" on web sites. Why subjectively? Well, it seems that the forbidden pictures can be whatever someone who stands to be embarrassed by them wants to forbid.

[. . .]

And yer cellie can read over yer shoulder...

Found this great post at Campus Progress on how DeLay's words may be coming back to haunt him. Thanks to Paul the Spud at Shakespeare's Sister.

Rep. Tom Delay, until recently the House Majority Leader, has long been outspoken about the criminal justice system. He's been tough on crime, tough on the accused, enthusiastic about long prison sentences, bullish about building more prisons, and skeptical about claims of prisoners' innocence or abuse by prison authorities.

Now, Tom DeLay has entered the criminal justice system in a new role: defendant, charged with money laundering and conspiracy, and facing a potential term of five years to life in a Texas prison. To be helpful, we've compiled a brief dossier on Tom DeLay's guide to criminal justice. DeLay can take a look now, and maybe print out all the materials that are hyperlinked, and everything hyperlinked from those, and so on. It should take about five years to life to read.

Go read. It'll make your day!

The Queen of Propaganda

M and T should write a book or get jobs working for The New Yorker. I love their writing, especially when they take down a hag like Karen Hughes.

[. . .]

Appointing the Hughes to market Bush America in the Middle East and make 'nice' with those 'folks' was a bit like appointing Pope Urban to make smilely face in Jeruselem after the first Crusade. Hughes ridiculous medicine show, a cross between Shirley Temple and the Music Man, fooled no one. Her American pie, made of posion apples, was called out time after time from Saudi Arabia, Turkey to Egypt.

[. . .]

If the Adgita Diaries ain't on your blogroll, you're missing something.

Semper Fubar

After being sucked into reading Steve Harvey's column in the LATimes by this line:

For your Only-in-Malibu sub-file, Nanci Vernon read in the Malibu Chronicle that a local urgent-care center has a botox specialist.

I found the following:

Something strange going on: A while back I mentioned that Brooklyn-born Eddie Raheb of Arcadia received a letter from the U.S. Marine Corps offering to transform him into an "elite warrior" - the only problem being that Raheb is 78. The Marines wanted to make use of his Arabic-language skills. Raheb had no idea how the Marines knew about his Arabic-language skills.

Since then, I've heard from Donna Attallah of Long Beach, who wrote: "My husband received the same letter recently - and he celebrated his 96th birthday in August!"

And an 81-year-old woman and her 80-year-old sister say they got the same letters.

I wonder if the names might be crack intelligence passed on to the Marine Corps from the Department of Homeland Security.

This is getting serious! If they're desperate enough to come after us old farts for other reasons, I'm probably OK because my knowledge of radios is pretty dated, but if they show up here I'm gonna snitch off a friend of mine in New York who knows how to glom onto expeditionary airfields!

Didn't Ponzi ride a Triumph on "Happy Days"?

A good take on Miss Miers' nomination from a coupla contributors at TPMCafe. First, from Mark Schmitt:

The reaction from the right to the Miers nomination should be a reminder of just why the Rove strategy of playing to the hard-right base is such a dangerous and unwise political choice: There's no turning back from it. It's like a Ponzi scheme, you have to continually borrow new money/enthusiasm to pay off the old, and you can never turn back.

And like any Ponzi scheme, when it collapses, the collapse is total, and absolute. (By the way, I had written this before Ed Kilgore weighed in with his "balloon-mortgage" metaphor below. Choose the metaphor that works for you.)

I don't really understand Harry Reid's earlier comments about Miers, quoted by Sam Rosenfeld: "The reason I like her is that she's the first woman to be president of the very, very large Texas bar association, she was a partner in a law firm, she's actually tried cases, she was a trial lawyer, and she's had experience here. I could accept that. And if that fits into the cronyism argument, I will include everybody as a crony, but not her, when I make my case." Essentially what Reid was saying here is that he's so interested in non-judicial real world experience (anyone who thinks big Texas law firms are the real world, raise your hands) that he thinks that outweighs the crony problem. But it seems to me exactly the opposite: the crony problem ("the most brilliant man she had ever met") vastly outweighs this thin and perfectly ordinary legal experience. There are a thousand Harriett Mierses in the law firms of America, and at this point even a good number of them who are women.

But maybe Reid is cleverer even than I gave him credit for, and just lured Bush into the room with his angry, defrauded investors.

That would be good! In his post, Mr. Kilgore makes a good point:

Sure, it's possible the strategy here is to give the Right what it wants over its loud objections--that she will turn out to be a Thomas rather than a Souter. And I'm definitely not saying Democrats should support her, either.

But at this point, it's going to be Senate Republicans who are demanding more information about Miers; hell, with guys like Coburn in the Senate, we could even see a conservative filibuster effort.

So I think we should just sit back and watch the spectacle on the other side for a while.

I think I need to cop some more popcorn. This might be a good show.

What's next ? Diebold?

New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 3 - Iraq's Shiite and Kurdish leaders quietly adopted new rules over the weekend that will make it virtually impossible for the constitution to fail in the coming national referendum.

The move prompted Sunni Arabs and a range of independent political figures to complain that the vote was being fixed.

Under the new rules, the constitution will fail only if two-thirds of all registered voters - rather than two-thirds of all those actually casting ballots - reject it in at least three of the 18 provinces.

In effect, the new interpretation makes not voting a show of support for the constitution and runs against the apparent intent of the law.

Do I want Iraq to fail? No.

Do I want them to succeed by cheating by using similar tactics as Republicans have used in elections here? No.

Your Warm and Fuzzy Feeling for the Day

I feel safer now, Shrub has found a way to let the military take over:

Bush Considers Military Role in Flu Fight
Updated: Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2005 - 12:38 PM


By JENNIFER LOVEN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush, increasingly concerned about a possible avian flu pandemic, revealed Tuesday that any part of the country where the virus breaks out could likely be quarantined and that he is considering using the military to enforce it.

"The best way to deal with a pandemic is to isolate it and keep it isolated in the region in which it begins," he said during a wide-ranging Rose Garden news conference.

The president was asked if his recent talk of giving the military the lead in responding to large natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and other catastrophes was in part the result of his concerns that state and local personnel aren't up to the task of a flu outbreak.

"Yes," he replied.

After the bungled initial federal response to Katrina, Bush suggested putting the Pentagon in charge of search-and-rescue efforts in times of a major terrorist attack or similarly catastrophic natural disaster. He has argued that the armed forces have the ability to quickly mobilize the equipment, manpower and communications capabilities needed in times of crisis.

But such a shift could require a change in law, and some in Congress and the states worry it would increase the power of the federal government at the expense of local control.

Bush made clear that the potential for an outbreak of avian flu is much on his mind, and has him talking with "as many (world) leaders as I could find" and reading a book on the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed 40 million and consulting staff and experts.

"I have thought through the scenarios of what an avian flu outbreak could mean," he said.

He acknowledged that a quarantine _ an idea sure to alarm many in the public _ is no small thing for the government to undertake and that enforcing it would be tricky.

"It's one thing to shut down airplanes," Bush said. "It's another thing to prevent people from coming in to get exposed to the avian flu."

He urged Congress to give him the ability to use the military, if needed.

"I think the president ought to have all ... assets on the table to be able to deal with something this significant," he said.

Bush also said he has been urging world leaders to improve reporting on outbreaks of the virus, and exploring how to speed the production of a spray, now in limited supply, that "can maybe help arrest the spread of the disease."

"One of the issues is how do we encourage the manufacturing capacity of the country, and maybe the world, to be prepared to deal with the outbreak of a pandemic?" he said.

Experts agree there will certainly be another flu pandemic _ a new human flu strain that goes global. However, it is unknown when or how bad that global epidemic will be _ or whether the H5N1 bird flu strain now circulating in Asian poultry will be its origin.

Just in case, experts are tracking the avian flu, which has swept through poultry populations in large swaths of Asia since 2003, jumped to humans and killed at least 65 people.

Most human cases have been linked to a contact with sick birds, but the World Health Organization has warned the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans _ changing it from a bird virus to a human pandemic flu strain.

More Ha-ha!

The Wingnuts are pissed.

If you live in Jersey . . .

Our pal, and also our favorite amphibious pornographer, G.D. Frogsdong (of Skippy and Blanton's and Ashton's fame) is the guy to see about New Jersey politics. Luckily for my Jersey neighbors, he's part of a new project:

[. . .]

Packed full of sophistication, humor, and beautiful men and women, Blue Jersey is the brainchild of ten progressive-bloggers-in-search-of-a-can-opener who have the real story on what is happening in the Garden State.

[. . .]

Go see Froggy and his friends early and often.