It's OK, Angela, he rubs everybody the wrong way...

This is all over the place today, but Shakey's Sis has the best one:

Eclipsing even his father's unfortunate chunk-hurling on the Emperor of Japan, Bush has made yet another shameful blunder on what is now undoubtedly the most embarrassing official trip abroad for any American president. After stumbling from Putin's smackdown at his suggestion that Russia ought to emulate the democracy in Iraq to babbling about wanting to eat a pig to getting caught on tape cursing while chomping on a roll, Bush channeled the Creepy Guy at Work who gives a female coworker an unwanted massage, much to his repulsed target's chagrin.

Of course, it wasn't just any gal The Groper went after. It was German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Video at Crooks and Liars, or in the original German.

Taylor Marsh: This is why Iraq and the Middle East are in flames, and we have no credibility around the world. We have a prepubescent president in charge. It is an outrage.

Lindsay: Every woman will recognize the guy who sidles up and starts "casually" giving you a backrub without even looking at you, because he wants to preserve deniability in case you freak out. Like any practiced groper, Bush stares right past Merkel as she recoils from his touch.

Unannounced back rubs of the knead-'em-'til-they-relax type have helped me on occasion, and I've given them as well, but they're rarely appropriate and then only amongst friends.

Bush's lack of social graces amongst the highest-placed people in the world, and on camera to boot, shows him to be a churlish boor, and personally obnoxious in addition to his arrogance. Chancellor Merkel would have been entirely justified to deck his ass.

The sonofabitch's behavior is downright embarrassing.

Update:

The Carpetbagger Report

But this nevertheless strikes me as troubling. As Dibgy put it, "This woman is the Chancellor of Germany." Indeed, she's entitled to a high degree of respect and decorum, not a rub-down from a frat-boy in chief.

I hesitate to make too big a deal out of this, and most of the U.S. media ignored it completely, but I've long believed there are certain standards for how one behaves in professional settings. If this were a meeting of corporate executives, and a male CEO from one major company began giving an uninvited massage to a female CEO from another company, it'd be considered inappropriate, as I believe it should.

Makes you proud, doesn't it?

Bush has never done anything to make me proud. This puerile antic made me cringe.

Wait ...

Until oil reaches $100/bbl which, thanks to the neocon fuckup of the Middle East, might not be too far down the road. If you think we got power problems now:

...

Con Ed reports that some 9,000 customers in Westchester are without power as a result of the high temperatures.

Thousands of people in Yonkers will have to endure the heat without air conditioning. That's because of a power outage. At one point in the day, around 11,600 customers in Yonkers were without power.

...

Better get used to the heat, folks. Next summer you might not be able to afford your electric bill if you use air contitioning. You know, everybody's so afraid of terrorist attacks in this country. I'm more afraid of what my fellow Americans will turn into when they can't afford to cool and heat their homes or buy gas for their cars. If you think the anarchy in Baghdad is bad, wait until our pampered asses are put in a vise.

Shut up, shut up, shut up ...

I hear this a lot: "Were supporting the world. We give all our money to the U.N. and other coutnries". No, we don't, idiots:

...

Denmark gives the most amount of its GDP (1.01%) to developing countries; Norway gives 0.91%; the Netherlands give 0.79% and so on until the end of list, where the USA sits. Yes, America ranks DEAD LAST in foreign aid at a pathetic 0.1% of its GDP, compared to the other 21 nations listed as developed nations. The idea that the US government is a heroic bunch that runs around the world helping the poor and the disempowered is not backed up by the evidence. We have one of the stingiest governments on earth. [my em]

...

More 'conventional widom' myths busted here.

Tip o' the Brain to the Roo.

You have an outstanding balance, sir

I say this to customers every three months, when I go through the unpaid bills and start hassling people for money, followed by 'pay up or I'm taking your car' if the balance is going on its second quarter. Looks like the government is taking a page from my book:

This information is current as of today, Sat Jul 15 12:20:12 2006.

A message to the American citizens in Lebanon:

The Department of State continues to work with the Department of Defense on a plan to help American citizens depart Lebanon. As of the morning of July 15, we are looking at how we might transport Americans to Cyprus. Once in Cyprus, Americans can then board commercial aircraft for onward travel. Commercial airlines provide the safest and most efficient repatriation options to final destinations.

The Department of State reminds American citizens that the U.S. government does not provide no-cost transportation but does have the authority to provide repatriation loans to those in financial need. For the portion of your trip directly handled by the U.S. Government we will ask you to sign a promissory note and we will bill you at a later date. In a subsequent message, when we have specific details about the transporation arrangments, we will inform you about the costs you will incur. We will also work with commercial aircraft to ensure that they have adequate flights to help you depart Cyprus and connect to your final destination.

The Department of State continues to work around the clock and will continue to send updates as appropriate. [my ems]

Are you fucking kidding me?

Let's see ... We can spend $6bn a month in Iraq, give the wealthiest of us a tax cut, and spend hundreds of millions on a missile defense system that doesn't work, yet we can't afford to rescue American citizens in a war zone? Or do we have a different standard for Americans who can trace their lineage to that part of the world? I may be wrong, but I'm almost positive the students we evacuated from Grenada didn't get a bill for services. Probably, as we (all of us who participated in the 'rescue mission') all suspected at the time, the brand new 10.000 ft. runway the Cubans built was the real prize and the students' lives were the excuse to take it.

Isn't it the duty of the U.S. government to protect its citizens?

Great thanks to Atta J. Turk for the link.

A moment of silence please

MYRTLE BEACH, South Carolina (AP) -- Robert Brooks, the chairman of Hooters of America, Inc. who made his fortune selling chicken wings served by scantily clad waitresses, was found dead at his home Sunday, officials said. He was 69.

...

I'll refrain from comment, but you can probably figure ... a sad day in mandom ... he was a visionary ...

Link thanks to Matt.

Who they are ...

Sumo, blogging over at Froggy's, has a short history of Hamas and Hezbollah. Just in case you're confused.

Where's Bush?

He's eatin' roast pig, scarin' babies, and cussin' on TV in St. Pete. Pretty much like when he's in Crawford.

Geov Parrish wonders where he is on another, possibly important matter:

Only one man stands between Israel and World War III -- unfortunately it's the president

Go read the article.

Hezbollah took the credit for killing 241 Marines of my old regiment, including attached soldiers and sailors, by means of a truck bomb at BIA in 1983. Reagan's response to that is one of the reasons that makes bad guys the world over think they can get away with anything to this day.

Maybe, probably, Bush should intervene and rein in Israel. My personal opinion is "fat chance".

I hope he waits until the IDF sends all those Hezbollah bastards, their families and accomplices, to Hell in little pieces.

We Must Preserve The Earth's Dwindling Resources For My Five Children

If you're gonna take anything in The Onion seriously, well, don't, but sometimes it provides food for thought disguised as satire, irony, and ridicule of those who need it.

As we move into the 21st century, it is our responsibility to think of the future of the earth - not for ourselves, but for those who will inherit what my husband and I leave behind when we're gone. If we do not join together and do what's best for this, our only planet, there may not be an environment left in which my five children, and their 25 children's 125 children, can grow up and raise large upper-middle-class families of their own.

Nothing less than the preservation of my descendents'(sic-G) lifestyle itself is at stake.

Imagine a world devoid of pristine wilderness for my progeny to explore on the weekends in the sport-utility-vehicles of the future, leaving my youngest son, Dylan, with nowhere to blow off steam on off-road adventures. Imagine a world in which my beautiful middle son, Connor, is denied his twice-daily half-hour hot showers because of water shortages. Picture what it would be like for my oldest boy Asher, preparing to start his first semester at Stanford, to have to go without basic amenities such as cable television, satellite radio, central air, or massage chairs, all because of the shortsighted squandering by his parents' generation of our non-renewable energy sources today.

There's more. Go read.

At the top of The Onion is an ad for Bill Maher's new DVD, New Rules: New Rule: "Call things what they are. If your morning coffee contains crushed ice, whipped cream and caramel, it's a milkshake!"

An old Chinese proverb says, "Wisdom begins with calling things by their right name."

There's nothing new.

Trying to Rope In Support for Hemp

Some good news for a change. LATimes via Raw Story:

AB 1147 is not the biggest bill of this legislative session, but it is one of the most intriguing - and most fun.

Start with its purpose: to legalize the growing of hemp, a cousin of marijuana - both members of the notorious cannabis family.

Then proceed to the bill's joint authors, a pun that's unavoidable. (Groooan - G)

One is a liberal San Francisco Democrat, Assemblyman Mark Leno; the other a conservative Irvine Republican, Chuck DeVore.

If nothing else, this bill shows it is possible for two legislators of diametrically opposite ideologies to acknowledge some common ground and work together to change public policy.

Both agree that hemp - advocates call it industrial hemp - is taking off worldwide as a plant used for fiber (in car door panels, for example), food (energy bars, granola, smoothies) and body care (shampoos, soaps).

And they think it's illogical that the federal government allows the importation of foreign hemp for American manufacturing into legally sold products, but bans the growing of hemp by American farmers. So they're trying to force the issue.

Their bill would sanction the growing of hemp in California for sale within the state, but forbid interstate commerce of "viable" seeds - those that can germinate - in an effort to keep the feds from nosing around. No doubt federal courts ultimately would sort it all out.

The bill also would define hemp, under California law, as a safe crop, not a drug.

About fuckin' time.

Hemp has a long and distinguished history, at least until it was unfairly maligned by drug warriors during the last century. Rope, sails and paper have been made from hemp all through civilization. The Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew it.

In the 1800s, hemp was America's third-largest agricultural product. But it was labor-intensive and became less economical because of the cotton gin and the abolition of slavery. Still, hemp was grown in California until the Depression, when the feds cracked down on marijuana and mistakenly booked its innocent cousin in the bust.

During World War II, Washington begged farmers to resume growing the crop, promoting a "Hemp for Victory" campaign. But in 1970, cultivation was banned under the Controlled Substances Act. Any hemp needed for making products had to be imported.

One major opponent is the 7,000-member California Narcotic Officers' Assn. It says officers would have trouble distinguishing between marijuana and hemp. Pot is a short plant. And although hemp grown for fiber is bamboo-tall, when it's cultivated just for seed, the plant looks more like marijuana.

"If the Canadian Mounties can understand the difference, don't you think American law enforcement could?" responds Roulac. "It's an insult to the intelligence of American officers."

It's not very hard to insult the intelligence of most cops. Some of them could maybe learn to tell the difference. The poppy is California's state flower, and no one busts the poppy farmers for growing opium. At least I don't think so...

Besides intriguing and fun, AB 1147 is sensible. Not allowing farmers to grow marijuana's harmless cousin is akin to reefer madness.

No shit.

I hit the wrong button and erased this once, and I ain't even been smokin' nuthin', honest!

Smart kid...

Daily Mail(UK). Go see the photo.

It was supposed to be a light-hearted photo opportunity showing the gentle side of the world's most powerful man.

Unfortunately, nobody told the baby.

Despite being closely vetted by both the U.S. secret service and German intelligence agents, the startled infant voiced a noisy protest as it was handed to George Bush.

Unable to placate the wailing child - despite all his skills of diplomacy - President Bush was forced to hand it back to its waiting mother.

And the baby, whose parents are German, was not the only one unhappy with Mr Bush's presence in the village of Trinwillershagen, in the former East Germany.

Around 5,000 protesters did their best to interrupt the outdoor meeting and meal between the president and Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel. Eventually shielded from the noise by 40 tons of barbed wire and 12,000 policemen, the pair sat down to dine on a roasted wild boar slaughtered earlier that day, uninterrupted by protesters. (my em) Or babies.

40 tons of barbed wire and 12,000 policemen. To have a fuckin' picnic. What a waste of resources. Note to the Chimp: eat at home. It's cheaper for everybody.

Smart as the kid was in bawlin' at the very touch of that slimeball, he missed a golden opportunity to take a great sauerkraut-laden dump on the world's most reviled man and the symbol to the rest of the world of what the United States has become.

"You just want war, war, war..."

Following up on Fixer's post "Our Goebbels" (scroll down), Juan Williams pushes back at Kristol. At Think Progress:

This morning on Fox News Sunday, William Kristol argued that the Bush administration's "coddling" of Iran had "invited" the latest outbreak of violence, and that the United States should join in the current fighting. Juan Williams pushed back:

You just want war, war, war, and you want us in more war. You wanted us in Iraq. Now you want us in Iran. Now you want us to get into the Middle East. ... You're saying, why doesn't the United States take this hard, unforgiving line? Well, the hard and unforgiving line has been, we don't talk to anybody. We don't talk to Hamas. We don't talk to Hezbollah. We're not going to talk to Iran. Where has it gotten us, Bill?

Kristol threw up his hands and didn't answer. Watch it:

Transcript follows.

I don't know if Americans use this word, or even get the concept, but Kristol and his war-mongering ilk need to be publicly denounced. The more, the better.

Signs of the times...

The last line in a good post about Lieberman/Lamont at HuffPo by Jane of Firedoglake:

Battle of the Yard Signs: Lieberman is definitely losing. Overheard at an event recently, "If this boils down to a competition over the most lawn signs, it'll be Ned vs. Coldwell Banker."

Heh.

Our Goebbels

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

It's alot like poking yourself in the eye with a sharp stick...

[ Moved up top for the day. New posts begin below. - Fixer ]

because it feels so fabulous when you stop.I'm warning you now,if you choose to go where angels fear to tread,have a strong drink or a bong hit ready,you're gonna need it.

Now and then,just to get a feel for the swampy,bug infested landscape of Outer Wingnuttia,I visit Michelle Malkin's website.We at the Brain don't do linkies to Outer Wingnuttia,for obvious reasons,so you will have to don your hipwaders and hose yourself down with DEET to go see what I'm talking about.And then go take a shower,otherwise you'll smell like raw sewage and bug spray for the rest of the day.I go there because Michelle is usually among the first to manufacture the outrage of the week,and she's got a syndicated newspaper column in addition to being a Fox "news"regular.Alot of wingnuts take their cues from her(even referring to her as Mama Michelle),so she's useful as a barometer for the entire state of Wingnuttia(inner and outer).

On July 4th,Code Pink,along with Cindy Sheehan and a few Hollywood notables(and regular folks too), began a vigil that included a hunger strike until the troops come home.Personally I think that's a dumb idea,because no way in hell can a person go forever without food.This War on Terra has no end in sight,and let's face it,if you commit to something like a hunger strike,you'd better hope no wingnut sees you eating so much as a saltine and Gatorade or you will pay.I get the symbolic gesture involved here,but we all know wingnuts and what they do by now.When I first heard about this,my immediate response was "crap,just give the wingnuts some more ammo why don'tcha?"A far more effective action might have been raising a few bucks for Operation Helmet or something like that,but I digress. Empty gestures to "Support Our Troops"has already been done to death,literally,do we honestly have to go there anymore? Or perhaps the cost of skipping a meal or two could have gone into sending food to soldiers and Marines who aren't being fed properly in combat.I'm just sayin'...

Michelle's blog entry on this topic includes a You Tube short film from her "Hot Air"(insert your own more than obvious joke here)website,a video that begins with Michelle stuffing her yap with food.Oh Teh Funny,that Michelle,she's such an imp.The most telling part comes when she reads from Cindy's blog,in her "cindy voice".

Is it just me or does this video remind you of a very young teenager,one of the popular kids,making fun of the school nerd or the fat kid?I'm thinking her blog needs a makeover. A theme of some sort. Something befitting the caliber of writing and"thinking"that goes into such an outstanding blog entry.

I bring this up because wingnut women seem to loathe other women,to the point of being pathological. In Michelle's case,she seems to work overtime to garner male approval and yes,even lust. IMO,she doesn't allow comments on her blog and doesn't want HER personal info out there not because she's afraid of some evil liberal doing harm to her(nevermind that she has no qualms about doing it to someone else).I think she's scared of her fanboys showing up at her front door,because she knows precisely what sort of jagoff fantasies they harbor about her. She also knows what they're capable of,she's just hoping they channel that wierd mixture of violence and/or sex towards their "enemies".It's funny that the wingnut women bitch about women who work outside the home(Peggy Noonan for example whines about this often),blaming feminism for the downfall of the American Family,when they themselves spend time not raising a family to forge careers of their own,something that would not be allowed in their vision of America. Wingnut paymasters expect alot of their well compensated servants,there doesn't seem to be alot of vacation time or sleep allowed while meeting those output commitments. That's not very compatible with being a traditional Mom,especially when your kids are young. In Michelle's case the irony goes one step further in that her husband is the stay at home parent and primary caregiver.I for one think that's great,more men should do that if their wives make more money than they do.I know a couple of stay home Dads who do a great job with the kids and all that domestic stuff.It's actually rather,well,Progressive.The irony is staggering,don't you think?

Opposites

While everyone's yelling about the stupid shit Condi said today, I noticed something else. Former SECSTATE Madeline Albright followed Condi on Little George today. I noticed the difference between a Kool-Aid drinking, clueless idiot and an accomplished Foreign Service Officer.

And speaking of clueless idiots, Bill Kristol's balls are dissected by Commander Huber.

"The Sins of Ralph Reed"

Here's an article in GQ via a post at HuffPo.

"The problem now," says Matt Towery, the pollster, "is that he's got to prove to everyone that he wasn't quite bright enough to know [the Abramoff stuff] was wrong but that he's bright enough to govern their state as lieutenant governor."

The reason he doesn't talk to reporters is that he can't afford to. If he does, they'll just start asking him all those uncomfortable questions that have nothing to do with being lieutenant governor. Mostly, they'll ask about his relationship - his multimillion-dollar relationship - with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. And that's if they're only skimming the surface. Give them some time and they'll ask about his work for eLottery or Enron or Microsoft; or his shilling for China; or his close call with the statute of limitations in Texas; or the way John McCain got slimed in the 2000 South Carolina primary; or something called the Black Churches Insurance Program. Maybe they'd even ask how he squares up his professed salvation through his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with...well, with everything else.

Those would be awkward conversations.

Quite a long article, maybe a little snarky:

And that's what Reed was paid to do: froth up the wackos on behalf of the morons and the monkeys.

A 'quote of the day', perhaps? Enjoy.

This post is dedicated to An Angry Old Broad, the Brain's fearless correspondent in the Georgia combat zone.

They get letters

GregR writes to Holy Joe.

The Real Agenda

'Must-reading' from, believe it or not, The New York Times:

It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration's response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power.

Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, the president and his staff preferred to go it alone. While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.

One result has been a frayed democratic fabric in a country founded on a constitutional system of checks and balances. Another has been a less effective war on terror.

...

To a disturbing degree, the horror of 9/11 became an excuse to take up this cause behind the shield of Americans' deep insecurity. The results have been devastating. Americans' civil liberties have been trampled. The nation's image as a champion of human rights has been gravely harmed. Prisoners have been abused, tortured and even killed at the prisons we know about, while other prisons operate in secret. American agents "disappear" people, some entirely innocent, and send them off to torture chambers in distant lands. Hundreds of innocent men have been jailed at Guantanamo Bay without charges or rudimentary rights. And Congress has shirked its duty to correct this out of fear of being painted as pro-terrorist at election time.

...

More sanity ...

...

People are confusing two things, Israel's right to exist and Israel's right to dominate the region. Of course, the Israelis have the right to get back their servicemen. But to cause suffering among innocent people? Lebanon didn't attack Israel. Hezbollah did, and there is a difference.

The illusion of technology makes it seem that the IDF can bitchslap their neighbors at will. Well, Hezbollah shows that time doesn't stand stil.

Israeli leaders think this is the early 80's. where they were surrounded by weak states and could impose their will with ease. But it isn't and Iran has the ability to halt oil production in the Gulf as well as make the occupation of Iraq untenable. Hezbollah isn't the PLO, they're willing to die in place.

...

I hope Gilliard is right and "this ends at a conference table". Unfortunately, we have a bunch of folks in this nation and Israel who are downright giddy over the prospect of a holy war and some of those folks have the ear of people in charge.

Update:

Raising the stakes:

Iran warned its arch-enemy Israel of "unimaginable losses" if it attacks Syria and vowed that it was standing by the Syrian people.

"We hope the Zionist regime does not make the mistake of attacking Syria, because extending the front would definitely make the Zionist regime face unimaginable losses," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.

...

So what's the point of bombing Lebanon when Hezbollah has a safe haven in Syria? Or does Israel plan to ignore the warning? Do I see the dead hand of Franz Ferdinand reaching up from the grave?

Why do you think they love 24?

I've said this for years. The Repukes think the world works like a Tom Clancy novel or a cheesy TV show. Digby notices too:

...

I'm reminded of a story I heard about Kirk Gibson after he made his famous home run in the 1988 world series. Some sportswriter asked him if he thought he really was better than Roy Hobbs in "The Natural." Gibson replied, "Of course I am, Hobbs is a fictional character."

It seems to me that a lot of people on the right really don't understand that distinction. I don't know whether it's a pathetic attempt to appear "hip" or whether they really think it makes sense.

...

Man, I know this first-hand. After my book Lightning Crashes came out, do you know how many people told me, 'if you'd just build one of those engines you talked about, you'd solve the energy crisis'? No shit. Thing is, it's science fiction. I do not have plans in my head for a power source that's a combination of cold fusion (which doesn't work) and strong force theory (we don't have the technology). If I did, I'd be the King of the World and half our problems would be solved.

Now, slowly, read my lips. TV and spy novels aren't real. They are not based on fact. A guy like Jack Bauer (of 24) or my lead character would have been killed by the bad guys in the first hour. Thanks to Tom Clancy, people think every conflict can be solved by small Special Forces units who operate with surgical accuracy. Basing foreign policy in the premise of a fictional TV show is a sign we've lowered the bar to new depths regarding the people we elect to run this country. It's a sign the pundits are idiots.