I know how you feel, buddy

Tavis Smiley-hosted debate scheduling conflicts, according to the top 4 Republican candidates:

Rudy Giuliani: Nothing to wear, besides, just washed his hair and couldn’t do a thing with it.

John McCain: Straight Talk Express making funny rattling noise, had to take it to mechanic.

Mitt Romney: Had to clean campaign bus upholstery after unfortunate “accident” that followed strapping campaign mascot to the roof.

Fred Thompson: Still working on hand-held device that would punctuate every remark with Law & Order-esque “Dah – dum!”

Uh-uh, you can't tell me nothing

I know y’all have been checking my blog daily, waiting, waiting for the day when I will finally weigh in on the Kanye v. 50 controversy.

Well, I’m throwing my weight behind Kanye. And not just because his new album is pretty freakin’ rad. Although it is.

I know, I know, Kanye’s an asshole. I get it. I watch the award shows, I’m aware that he seems to have made a hobby out of throwing very public fits over the industry’s not-quite-sufficient appreciation of his genius.

How can I truck with such a self-absorbed young man? Well, to get the answer to that question, you have to check out this self-deprecating and hilarious song from his new album. It’s called Can’t Tell Me Nothing. And except for the part about buying lots of jewelry, I soooo identify with this song. I’m a know-it-all. It’s a fault of mine. I admit it freely. And Kanye gets me, yo.

But more than that, I love Kanye because during a fundraiser for victims of Katrina, he chastised himself on camera for going shopping before he made his own donation. And most of all, I love him for blurting out, during that same segment, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

Because he doesn’t. Otherwise, why would W turn his back on blacks drowning in their attics while he was off on the Redneck Riviera assuring wealthy crackers that they would get their vacation homes rebuilt?

Why would he oppose minorities receiving admission points on college applications, while remaining a happy recipient of the “my daddy” form of affirmative action, as in “my daddy went to Yale so I get to, too.”

Why else would his election campaign coordinate with Republican officials in Florida in 2000 to intimidate black voters or simply scrub them from voter lists entirely, rather than attempt to win their votes in a legitimate manner? Why else ensure the continuation of ill will by directing the Department of Justice to side with those who sought to keep blacks from voting in Ohio in 2004?

Why systematically dismantle the Civil Rights Division of the DoJ, and install so many partisan operatives that his administration actually pursued more cases claiming discrimination against whites than against blacks?

So it’s no surprise that W, when asked to comment about the racially-motivated intimidation, and unequal treatment of black youths by law enforcement, in Jena, Louisiana, responded that the events there “saddened him,” and that he could “understand the emotions.”

What. The. Fuck.

What the hell kind of response was that?

Unfortunately, I know the answer to that question. It was a response carefully worded so as to avoid taking sides.

Because George W. Bush does not want to offend racists. Hey, who do you think those 25% of Americans are that still support that clown?

It’s not like I expect W to, for once, act like he is president of ALL of the people in this country, but given the white supremacist backlash in Jena in the wake of the showings of support for the black students, W had better get the fuck off the redneck fence and show some fucking support for people who are on the side of EQUALITY. Because if he doesn’t, and if he doesn’t send someone down there to tell all those honkies to simmer down, then he’ll be responsible for whatever bad shit happens.

C’mon W, this week it’s been exactly 50 years since a Republican president last stood up for black people, and given the current crop of contenders, it’ll likely be 50 more.

Down the Jonah Goldberg rabbit hole (and back out , thank all that is sweet and holy)

Sure, Jonah Goldberg is a douchebag, but he’s a nationally syndicated douchebag. And because his weekly column runs in the LA Times, he’s also our nationally syndicated douchebag.

Goldberg’s got a problem. He thinks everyone is taking Alan Greenspan out of context in this minor dust-up over Greenspan’s little admission in his recently released memoir that the war in Iraq was motivated by oil. He called his column on it “Bashing Bush with Greenspan,” which I have to admit makes me laugh, because “Bush bashing” is SO 2003. I mean, even Chris Matthews must by now be admitting that people who don’t like Bush aren’t necessarily all “whack-jobs.”

But, as usual, let’s just let Goldberg speak for himself:

Greenspan wrote that the Iraq war was "largely about oil," according to an excerpt in the Washington Post on Saturday. The statement quickly raced around the globe, with headlines like this one from Britain's Daily Telegraph: "Iraq was about oil -- Greenspan attacks U.S. motivation for war." The Independent began its own editorial by declaring: "The credibility of President George Bush's policy on Iraq has suffered another devastating blow. It is all the more powerful for having come not from a political enemy but from someone who was showered with plaudits by the administration."

It’s funny how he makes it seem like “the statement” that “raced around the globe” was only this: “largely about oil.” Here’s the entire statement: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Yeah, see, that’s a tad bit different, isn’t it? But hang on, there’s more dissembling in store from Mr. Goldberg.

The quoted phrase ran through the Sunday news shows and the blogosphere like a bad intestinal virus.

He’s comparing it to poop, see? That’s how nationally syndicated columnists express disdain.

Hey, watch me, I’m going to write like a nationally syndicated columnist:

Jonah Goldberg’s a shithead.

Wheeeeee! That was fun!

On CNN's "Late Edition," Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame) was asked if he agreed with Greenspan. "To a very large extent I agree with him, and I think it is very remarkable that it took Alan Greenspan all these many years and being out of office [to state] the obvious."

Well, that is very interesting. But first we should clear the air about something. Greenspan claims that the quote was taken out of context. Greenspan called the Post -- Bob Woodward, no less -- to say that, in fact, he didn't think the White House was motivated by oil. Rather, he was. A Post story Monday explained that Greenspan had long favored Saddam Hussein's ouster because the Iraqi dictator was a threat to the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world's oil passes every day. Hussein could have sent the price of oil way past $100 a barrel, which would have inflicted chaos on the global economy.

Yes, let’s do clear the air about something, namely, that as influential as Greenspan was in his time, it is not within his power to change the meanings of words.

He said “is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” He did not say “what everyone knows to be my opinion,” or “what everyone knows I would’ve done if I were the decider.” So Greenspan’s protestations that he was taken “out of context” are a little disingenuous, don’t you think?

And even if I were to believe that Greenspan meant what he now says he meant, it’s simply ridiculous to attribute Greenspan’s fear regarding the Strait of Hormuz into a rationale for our current entanglement. What, Hussein takes over the strait, and instead of taking back the goddamn strait, we capitulate, and the price of oil goes through the roof?

Huh?

Thereby making an indefinite, bloody, trillion-dollar engagement in Iraq unavoidable?

Say what?

So let's get back to Lantos, the California congressman who agreed with the misconstrued Greenspan that it was "obvious" we went to war for oil. What's funny -- though not really ha-ha funny -- is that Lantos voted for the war. If it was so obviously a war for oil, why did he vote for it? Unless, of course, he thinks it's hunky-dory to go to war because of oil -- though that didn't sound like what he was trying to say.

Um, dude, okay, even though you work for the National Review, I’m pretty sure you do things like “read,” and maybe even “think.” So by now you’ve surely been made aware that most members of congress believe they were, at best, misinformed by those interpreting the intelligence on Iraq, and that the majority of them have now stated that they based their decision to go to war on information that was not exactly, er, true?

Surely you must have heard that. Surely you must. So to write the above paragraph like you’ve never heard that, and to therefore encourage an erroneous conclusion among your sympathetic readers, (which, I’m sure, are legion) is kinda creepy and integrity-free and not exactly worthy of a nationally syndicated columnist, now, is it?

As several other politicians and officials noted over the weekend, no White House briefer ever told Congress that this was a war for oil.

Yeah, and unless career suicide becomes the hot new trend in DC, it’s not very likely they ever will.

The debates in Congress didn't say this was a war for oil.

Which debates? The debates in 2003? Well, first of all, one could hardly call them “debates.” I would characterize what when on in congress as “I’ve been told Saddam is a bad man who wants to kill us and has the power to kill us which seems unlikely but everyone else is doing it and I hate being called a traitor and I do kinda want to be re-elected so I guess I’m going along because the Republicans hold the majority anyway vote.”

Bush never gave a single speech saying this was a war for oil.

That’s correct. And you know what else Bush has never done? Gotten down on his hands and knees and begged forgiveness from the American people for being so obsessed with his hard-on for American oil companies and their desire for a seat at the Middle East oil table that he ignored the warning signs that could have prevented the attacks on 9/11. And you know what? The latter seems much more likely than the former.

(If oil was all Bush wanted, he hardly needed to go to war to get it.)

Oh, really? How else do you propose to force an enemy government into giving American oil companies the contracts to extract, refine, and export their oil?

So why is it so "obvious" to Lantos that it was a war for oil?

You know, I’m getting a little tired of this guy’s false ignorance, but sure, okay, I’ll bite one more time: It is “obvious” to Lantos, and to any thinking person who is not so emotionally invested in the lie that they have drawn a lead curtain around their brain and forbidden the truth to enter, because we have, since the war began, become aware of a number of incidents that point to no other reasonable conclusion.

Look, Goldberg, stop pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about. The head of the British intelligence service told the Prime Minister of Britain that all of our stated reasons for going to war in Iraq were, you know, kind of, um, made up.

So clearly there was a reason for going to war that we were not being told. We could guess about what it was, but we don’t have to, because, for one thing, Cheney and his little energy task force forgot to burn their big post-Iraq Christmas wish list, dated two years before the war was begun, which makes fairly plain their motivation, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it, Goldberg? C’mon, Goldberg, forget your crazy-ass momma and your family legacy of hating on the Dems, and admit the logic of the whole thing for just a second.

Perhaps the answer is that when it comes to bashing Bush about the war, no accusation is inaccurate -- even if it contradicts all the accusations that came before. Some say it's all about the Israel lobby. Others claim that Bush was trying to avenge his dad. Still others say Bush went to war because God told him to.

Look, the US didn’t go to war for Israel. If we were merely Israel’s fairy godmother, I’m sure Iraq wouldn’t have been at the top of their wish list. And if an enduring US presence in Iraq that inflames anti-western (and anti-western-ally) sentiment in the Middle East gets Israel off, that’s their fucking problem. It’s merely a perk of the war, and not the cause.

Ditto the dad-avenging thing. Look, clearly Bush has daddy issues. But even a freshman psych student could tell you that Bush’s issues lie not so much in the “avenge daddy” area, and more in the “show up that cold-hearted bastard who sired me but never thought I was smart enough or good enough to carry his name” area.

And as for God telling Bush to invade, well, I’m afraid you’ve gotten your attribution wrong, Goldberg. That story originated not with Bush-bashers, but with Bush himself.

Again, not the sort of quality of investigation one would expect from a nationally syndicated columnist.

Which is it? All of those? Any? It doesn't seem to matter. It's disturbing how many people are willing to look for motives beyond the ones debated and voted on by our elected leaders.

You know what’s more disturbing? Leaders who lie to their people. But that reality seems to be beyond your grasp. Except, of course, when a Democrat is in charge. Goldberg, your agenda is so laughably transparent I don’t know how you manage to churn out these ridiculous screeds. Doesn’t all the guffawing, and pants wetting, and thigh slapping, and eye tearing-up make it really hard to type?

The last time Greenspan made a gaffe of sorts, his comment about Wall Street's "irrational exuberance" sent worldwide markets into a tizzy. This gaffe is more ironic because it was so plain-spoken, but it also managed to call attention to a case of irrational exuberance -- among Bush-bashing war opponents.

Yes, it was a plain-spoken “gaffe,” wasn’t it? Some people would say that therefore it required the most minimal of interpretations, because its meaning was clear. Some people would seek to spin it backwards, and try to make it mean what it clearly did not, and then claim that they are the ones possessing the rational heads.

Fuck it. I’ll admit it. I am fucking exuberant, okay? People are finally starting to acknowledge the truth, and it makes me feel like at long last, we can get somewhere.

Question:

How many times do you have to stick a gun in the face of a woman and threaten to blow her brains out before a jury believes that you stuck a gun in the face of a woman and blew her brains out?

Answer: at least six times.

Because five different women testified at Spector's trial that they had been held hostage by Spector at gunpoint in his home, and threatened with death when they tried to leave, but apparently that information was not particularly damning in the minds of the jury.

An argument they found more compelling, apparently, is that the victim committed suicide. Yeah, it made more sense to them that a beautiful actress would choose to bite it by shooting herself in the face while standing with her purse in her hand next to the front door of a man she had not known before that night.

This argument was made compelling by the defense's assertions that the victim was "depressed."

I know! A forty-year-old non-working actress in Hollywood, depressed? Holy shit! The streets of LA must be literally running with blood! It's a wonder we haven't all been made poor, persecuted, innocent witnesses to actress suicides, just like Phil Spector!

Not only fools, but fat, badly-dressed fools

The clues were all there. We just collectively, as a nation, refused to see them.

The first clue was when Cheney was chosen to head the search for a VP candidate to run with W in 2000 – and chose himself. As CEO of Halliburton, Cheney had made the following remarks in 1999:

"Oil companies are expected to keep developing enough oil to offset oil depletion and also to meet new demand...So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of 90 percent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. The Middle East with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost is still where the prize ultimately lies."

The second clue was the Cheney energy task force, a group formed in order to establish "a national energy policy designed to help the private sector." Remember how hard BushCo fought to keep its members, and its documents, secret? Now we know why. It wasn’t just that the preponderance of oil executives participating would make them look bad. No, it was a little bit more important than a mere image problem, as former CIA intelligence analyst Ray McGovern explains:

[A] Freedom of Information Act lawsuit forced the Commerce Department to turn over task force documents, including a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries, terminals, and potential areas for exploration; a Pentagon chart "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts;" and another chart detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects – all dated March 2001.

Another clue: In post-invasion Baghdad, every public or commercial building, from banks to libraries to universities, was looted and stripped down to the drywall. Thieves walked out of the Iraqi National Museum with priceless artifacts tucked casually under their arms. But the oil ministry was guarded by 50 tanks and sharpshooters on every floor and corner of the building.

Another clue: Richard Clarke, in his memoir, tells how, on September 11, 2001, BushCo responds to the attack on the Pentagon and WTC by wondering if they could use it to justify invading Iraq.

Another clue: The Downing Street memo is leaked to the press, and we find out that the chief of British intelligence told Tony Blair that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." He also said that, as of July 2002, Bush was determined to invade. Of course, our leader would tell us right up until the invasion in March of 2003 that he hadn’t made his mind up yet.

Another clue: We find out that we are building large permanent US military bases in Iraq, complete with fast food restaurants, gyms, car dealerships, and a swimming pool.

I could go on, of course. The clues have come at us constantly and from all directions, but still we continue to attribute our war to WMD and/or terrorism. Never mind that the terrorists moved into Iraq AFTER we invaded. Any rookie detective could’ve told us that you can’t assign a motive based on a condition that occurred after the crime, but by now we are grasping at any straw of respectability that we can find.

Look, everyone. It was for the oil. It was. It was for the oil. I know you don’t want to believe that our country would invade another country so that we could force them into a sweetheart deal for their oil, but we did. We did do that. I know it sounds like it might be some kind of war crime, some kind of thing that only a very bad country would do, and not us, because we are a good country, aren’t we? Aren’t we a good country?

History will say no. History will look upon the citizens of the United States at this time and conclude that we are all either liars or fools.

"Shut up," he explained.

So Giuliani’s campaign took out an attack ad against Hilary Clinton in which he says “These times call for statesmanship, not politicians spewing political venom.”

It gets better.

In the ad, which seeks to create a non-existent alignment between Clinton and the left-wing political group MoveOn.org, Giuliani accuses the Democrats who questioned Petraeus of an “orchestrated attack.”

I’m not kidding.

In defending the ad, in which Giuliani characterizes Clinton’s remarks to Petraeus in the Senate as a “character attack,” Giuliani said "I can't imagine why we can't get beyond maligning other people's motives nowadays in politics."

This shit is not from The Onion. I swear it is for real.

Meanwhile, I would just like to say to Clinton that telling General Petraeus that his progress report on the Iraq war required a “willing suspension of disbelief” is not really all that effective as a criticism. Because Americans ARE ALL ABOUT the willing suspension of disbelief, baby. C’mon, our politicians talk about tv characters like they’re for real. They’ve been doing it for years!

Not only that, but a significant portion of us actually buy into theories such as “fighting them over there, so we don’t have to fight them here,” as if, in defiance of our own use of the pronoun “them,” we actually thought there was only one of them, and that one was unable to move beyond certain geographical boundaries as long as we kept driving through the place in Humvees.

And to MoveOn.org, I would just like to say: stop it with the “General Betray Us.” Not because you shouldn’t malign a member of the armed forces, because I think they’re as fair game as the rest of us, and not because I think Petraeus is particularly steeped in integrity, because, seriously now, how can you have exactly the same optimistic assessment of Iraq three years ago that you have now and have it NOT be a pose, but because, well, it’s just a really bad pun. And I hate puns. I hate even good puns.

I take it back. There are no good puns.

Furthermore, if you really want to smack down the Petraeus, or any other military official who sells his soul to his commander-in-chief, may I suggest a different insult?

You could call it “pulling a Colin.”

I know. Ouch. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

It gets worse here every day

Just when I thought Bush couldn’t hurt me anymore, I hear on the radio that he is considering nominating uber-toady Ted Olson to replace Gonzalez, and I have to pull my car over to side of the road and scream and pound my steering wheel for a few minutes. And then I have to turn off All Things Considered entirely and play the classic rock station really really loud and sing “Welcome to the Jungle” until my rage is mollified.

And I don’t even like Guns N’ Roses.

It’s not just that this ass-kisser was W’s attorney in the Bush v. Gore case, although lord knows that’s enough.

He was a member of the Arkansas Project, the organization financed by Richard Mellon Scaife for the sole purpose of removing President Clinton from the White House. Scaife is so fucking rich and so fucking scary and so fucking mean that he makes Mr. Burns look like Teddy Ruxpin. Scaife, with the help of attorney Olson, was so intent on finding dirt on Clinton that they paid people to lie about their encounters with him. They proposed theories so nasty that even Ann Coulter refused to endorse them. He shook the bushes so hard in Clinton’s home state that sad, tragic people fell out and were picked up and used by them and eventually discarded.

Not only is Ted Olson vile, but his dead wife, conservative commentator Barbara Olson, was so vile that she managed to be condescending and presumptuous while dying heroically on Flight 77 on 9/11. Allegedly phoning her husband from the plane, she asked him “What should I tell the pilot to do?”

Excuse me while I retch.

Trouble with a capital T

As I said to a friend of mine yesterday, the capacity of the American public to engage in massive self-delusion seems to know no bounds.

Case in point: Fred Thompson, Republican frontrunner!

Thompson is all over Iowa, talking about his humble beginnings, natch, in places like Music Man Square, a museum full of picket-fenced and hay-baled settings based on the rural-Iowa-as-utopia musical The Music Man.

Look, it's none of my beeswax if the Repubs want to nominate him. They seem to fall pretty hard for that "aw shucks" act. It worked for Reagan, and for W. In fact, I think at the times those two were elected there was very little else that WAS working for them, so it might be safe to safe that as far as Americans are concerned, a pick-up, a pair of cowboy boots, and whiff of le shirt-collar bleu, however improbable, is just about ALL you need to con the electoral college.

It is interesting to me, however, that Democrats are smacked down pretty hard whenever they are perceived to be condescending to be one of the people. Witness the harsh treatment of John Edwards, who is a perfectly fine and upstanding candidate, even if he does obsess about his hair.

The hair obsession doesn't phase me. C'mon, I date a musician. What does bother me, though, is that Edwards, whose positions are solid, and whose campaign focus is right on, is dismissed as a light-weight, whereas Thompson, who has so far dodged stating a position on just about every issue except one, is being slavered over like he's John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Abraham Lincoln all rolled into one.

And what's the essential, urgent, high-priority issue on which Thompson has rushed to press his agenda in these dangerous times of ours?

Gay marriage. He's agin it.



Yes, and the whole country just sunk a few millimeters lower into the abyss of lost integrity and moral wrongity-wrong-wrongitude.

Oh, and by the way, lovers of Thompson, before you go and burden the country with another election based on appealing to the "git 'er done!" demographic, I beg you to consider this:

The Music Man is a story about a swindler who convinced a whole town that he was what he wasn't.

Think about it.

This just in: Pope is Catholic!

Petraeus says we are winning in Iraq!

Yes, we are winning. Just very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very slowly.

So if a general in the army says we are winning, it must be true.

Know how I know? Because I am an American, and 68% of us believe that only the military can resolve the war in Iraq.


See?

Only the military can resolve the war. Now if only we can figure out who is in charge of the military.

I hope it's not that 5% guy.

But if it is, at least he's better than no one. By 2%.

Be reasonable

Hey guys, sorry I’ve been neglectful. Life is busy these days.

If you haven’t seen this BBC interview (above) with former interim UN Ambassador John Bolton, check it out. The dude still won’t admit that there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq! Because to him, see, just even THINKING ABOUT WMDs is as bad as actually having them. And they can prove that Saddam was thinking about them, see? He was thinking about them in the north, south, east and west - right Rumsfeld? Plus, Bolton tells us that our mistake was not invading Iraq, because no reasonable person would ever question THAT, but how it was handled afterward.

What?! He’s admitting that we screwed the post-invasion pooch?

Not really. What he’s saying is that we should’ve let the Iraqis decide things for themselves earlier. For instance, whether or not to disband the army totally should’ve been their call.

Okay, I’m not saying that I would disagree with that as an idea, but exactly who would he have picked to put in charge? Um, Chalabi?

And speaking of totally chock full o’ integrity and non-US puppet Iraqis, there is now more evidence that there were extremely reputable intelligence guys in the CIA who were screaming from the rooftops (or the CIA equivalent, which I think equates to very loud, urgent-type whispering) that Saddam had no WMDs. Their source? An informant in Saddam’s inner circle. But Bush said at the time that he didn’t believe that intelligence. He chose to believe the intelligence from one (now completely discredited) source: Curveball.

Ah, Curveball. We trusted you, and you turned out to be about as reliable as…well… as reliable as your code name would seem to imply. Curveball, Curveball, Curveball, how on earth could someone so completely steeped in “Hi, I’m a crackpot!” hold entire factions of the US government in thrall? Could it be that those same factions didn’t truly believe you, either? But simply propped you up in order to justify their own reasons for invasion? Reasons that had more to do with our reluctance to continue life bent over a Saudi oil barrel, and our eagerness to expand profits for US companies with significant, dare I say familial, ties to aforementioned factions?

No reasonable person would believe otherwise.

Heckuva job, Bremer

(L. Paul Bremer receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom)

The latest in a long line of twisting-in-the-wind former Bushies?

L. Paul Bremer. He of the less than distinguished batting average in Iraq as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Or, as I prefer to call the CPA, the group that came in and fired all the career diplomats with any experience rebuilding countries, and installed instead an army of loyal, if grossly under-qualified, Christian-y Bush disciples.

One of Bremer's more genius early moves, and one which was not shared with Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, or (so they claim) the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was to disband the Iraqi army. According to many working in Iraq prior to Bremer's decision, the Iraqi army had been standing down, and in negotiations with "the coalition of the willing" to re-form and to cooperate with the rebuilding and the establishment of some much-needed order. But when BushCo decided that all members of Hussein's political party need not apply (all of them Sunnis), the CPA cut them loose, fully armed and pissed as hell and well aware of where Saddam kept all the spare armament that was laying around Iraq unguarded.

And thus was born the insurgency.

You know, so few things are predictable in this upside-down, topsy-turvy world of ours, and of course I know that hindsight don't need no lasik, and yet....

The insurgency, predictable? Yeah, I think I would put that in the category of, oh, night following day, or spring following winter, or even the ultimate in predictability: that BushCo will betray anyone, no matter how loyal, if they think it will deflect criticism from themselves.

Apparently, in a recent interview for a book that has yet to be released, W has been quoted as saying that our policy in Iraq was “to keep the army intact” but that it “didn’t happen.”

Or, more accurately, "Didn't happen. Heh heh."

And Mr. Bremer, unwilling to provide the sole set of shoulders for that load of blame, called up a reporter at the New York Times and said “This didn’t just pop out of my head."

And he produced letters from W to that effect. Sort of. That is, the letters detail Mr. Bremer's plans, and our great leader's reply was “Your leadership is apparent...You have quickly made a positive and significant impact. You have my full support and confidence.”

Sooooo....am I the only one who looks at W's reply and thinks that maybe he never read Bremer's letter?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Apologies to Mr. Chandler

The gal kicked off her flip-flops and hoisted her bare, sweaty gams onto the coffee table. She was the kind of leggy brunette that still turned the occasional head, despite the fact that she was clinging to her forties like a roof rat clings to the last orange on the tree. And despite all her years in what could more accurately be called the City of Demons, the utter misery of Los Angeles in late summer never failed to take her by surprise. How could this city be a virtual paradise for 11 months of the year, and then, in late August, become a plastic raft in the Lake of Eternal Hellfire; a hot, sweltering, endless expanse of stripmall-lined blacktop, devoid of life, hope, or even the smallest nugget of human compassion.

Yeah, it was hot. And it had been hot for days. It was so hot she couldn’t remember a time when it wasn’t hot, when she didn’t feel a murderous impulse every time the oscillating fan turned its limp ripple of air away from her and toward the boyfriend who sat sweating beside her on the sofa. “If I killed him,” she thought, “there’d be more cool air for me. Besides, I wonder how much heat his body is generating, even at rest.”

But she soon abandoned her calculations and ambled slowly into the kitchen. It was too hot—even for physics. “All I want to do,” she thought as she opened the icebox door “is crawl inside and curl up next to the pickles and beer.” She sighed heavily. “Maybe tomorrow will be cooler,” she said to herself as she pushed a damp curl back from where it clung to her forehead like a cheap starlet clings to Bruce Willis at a movie premiere.

Hey, want to be the star of your own pulp novel? Check out PulpStar, this awesome site run by two friends of mine. You can order a detective story customized to include yourself (and someone you love) as the main characters. It's pretty freaking cool. You can enter your stats and get a free sample if you want a taste of what the final product will look like.

Is everyone alright?

(photo of Robert Kennedy and Cesar Chavez during Chavez’s 1968 hunger strike)

When I lived in Chicago, I once tried to unionize the restaurant where I worked. I called the Service Employees International Union, and was really surprised when they set up a meeting between me and the head of the local chapter. I remember that he worked in a very posh, if somewhat old-timey office, with a large wooden desk that looked like it weighed about a thousand pounds. It was polished to a mirror finish. I remember he was impeccably suited in a navy chalk stripe, with his red hair slicked back and wearing a gold pinkie ring. I remember wondering if the ring might be new, as he frequently appeared to be admiring it as he turned a cut glass tumbler of water around and around in his hand. I could tell he lost interest in my cause once I told him how small the restaurant was, but he continued through the rest of his spiel for my benefit.

Some weeks later, I was killing time in that same restaurant, waiting at the end of the evening for the last diners to trickle through. I was standing in the waiter’s station and reading a beautiful and heartbreaking memoir/history written by a labor lawyer in Chicago, called Which Side Are You On? The hostess walked by and told me she had seated my section, and when I looked up, I saw a single man sitting at a two-top. He looked to be in his mid-30s, with blue eyes, blond hair, and that unmistakable simultaneously pale & ruddy Chicago Irish complexion. His face looked familiar to me. I turned over my book, and god damn if it wasn’t his face on the back cover.

I approached him while holding his book behind my back and asked him if he was who I thought he was. When he said yes, I said “I’m reading your book right now. It’s wonderful.” He thanked me. He seemed really flattered. I pulled the book out from behind my back and asked him if he wouldn’t mind signing my copy. He said “You weren’t kidding about reading it right now, were you?”

Later, after he had paid his bill, he walked into the bar area where I was watching television while waiting to close down the dining room. I was watching a PBS documentary about Robert Kennedy. He stood next to me and commented that he was taping the show so he could watch it later. I told him that one of my prized possessions is a photo I have of my mother at a rally for Bobby in my home town in Indiana. He said “Oh, yeah?”, and so I described the photo to him. The photo was taken right before the state primary, when my mom was working his campaign. In the photo, Bobby is standing on the back seat of an open convertible, speaking and gesturing toward the thousands of people filling the city square, and my mother stands right beside the left rear door, with her arms outstretched as if to hold back the crowd. Her face is uplifted toward Bobby, with an exhilarated smile and an adoring look in her eyes.

Bobby Kennedy went on to win the Indiana primary. He would be dead in less than a month.

At that moment, the documentary on television turned to Bobby’s assassination in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. They showed that famous photo of him lying on the floor as a uniformed kitchen employee kneels beside him. Kennedy’s last words before he succumbed were “Is everyone alright?”

I couldn’t help it. Tears sprang to my eyes. I grabbed a bevnap off the bar and tried to dab them dry as nonchalantly as I could. I could feel him, the author, staring at me, and I turned to look at him and rolled my eyes in an “I’m a dope” kind of way.

He said “Can I have your phone number?”

We saw each other a few times, but there was not really any kind of spark there. I wish, however, I had stayed in touch, because sometimes I really need to talk to someone like him.

Someone who is as sad as I am for what our dreams have become.

Unions have made millions of lives better, but it’s hard to defend the unions that have become as corrupt and as evil as the industries in which they operate. It’s hard to imagine that we are headed for anything other than a union-less future, where workers will be about as protected and well-cared for as the serfs in Russia under the tsars.

When I was growing up, a friend's father was in the UAW, and if he hadn’t been in the union, he would’ve been fired after his first heart attack, and without his job and his insurance, he wouldn’t have survived the second one. He would be dead now, if not for his union. Of that I am sure.

And it’s hard to listen to the stories of those miners trapped in Utah without wondering if they wouldn’t be alive if they had worked in a union mine. The UMWA opposes retreat mining, and perhaps they could’ve prevented it from being hastily approved for the Crandall Canyon mine by BushCo’s industry crony-run Mine Health and Safety Administration. Would those six men be alive right now if they’d been union, I wonder?

I dunno. I guess I’m a little depressed this week, listening to the news stories of people in New Orleans still struggling two years after Katrina. We could’ve used that opportunity to mobilize a government workforce, like FDR did in the depression, and given the residents a good job and decent paycheck for rebuilding their own city. But no, that kind of massive operation is reserved only for people outside the United States of America, people who live in countries with large oil reserves. If we had spent 500 billion to rebuild the Gulf Coast instead of Iraq, think what we could have done.

The slogan for Robert Kennedy’s 1968 campaign was “These are not ordinary times.”

No, they were not, and as tiresome as our times are now, they are not ordinary either. And just for the record, I do try, I really do, to resist the urge to wonder where we would be if we had chosen our leaders a little more wisely. We can make things better, I think to myself. We can. I don’t know how, though. I just don’t know how. And right now, I’m a little tired of trying.

Burn, baby, burn!

DeadSpot had a funny post yesterday about what a lame-ass “news” program Marketplace is, and I have to say that I agree. I mostly listen to it because it’s good to know what the capitalists are up to. Well, that, and I’m WAY too lazy to change the station for 10 minutes every morning.

But DeadSpot’s point is a good one. Frequently, their “news stories” are pretty much straight copy from the press releases of giant, evil corporations. And then sometimes, like this morning, they run a story so infuriating in its pro-business bias that I have no choice but to start screaming at the clock radio. And that really throws off my schedule. See, I gotta get out the door in, like, twenty-five minutes in the morning. Screaming at the clock radio just does not fit in my active a.m. lifestyle.

But here, check out the story for yourself:

Stacey Vanek-Smith: California is asking residents to conserve energy this week. But there's not much of a reason to listen, says Jim Bushnell with the University of California energy institute.

Jim Bushnell: When we get to these tight electricity situations, the rates paid by customers don't change.

Not that energy comes cheap these days.

Bushnell says companies like PG&E that sell electricity to consumers, buy it from wholesale suppliers and wholesale prices have been skyrocketing.

Bushnell: And, yes, that is actually a good thing because prices tell us we're running out, and when we're running out, we want to reduce consumption.

But Bushnell says companies like PG&E can't pass wholesale prices onto consumers because of regulations that cap electricity costs, and that stifles innovation.

He says energy-saving technology would become profitable a lot faster if people could save money by using it.

That’s the whole story. I’m not kidding.

First of all, right now, in Southern California, it’s about a hundred and eleventy-six degrees, and it has been for days. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that for some reason, it’s not cooling down at night like it usually does. We normally go down to seventy during the evening in the summer. But last night, at 11pm, it was STILL NINETY-THREE DEGREES.

Not that I’m complaining. Dry heat, blah, blah, blah. Hey, I know I have it good, overall. But my point is that the temperatures are driving power usage very high.

So, usage is high. Therefore demand is high. Therefore supplies are “limited.” Now, they’re not really all that “limited,” because of course the supplies have been artificially lowered by all sorts of means. Watch The Smartest Guys in the Room if you need more info there.

So, when supplies are “limited,” the price goes up.

Hey, whatever the market will bear, baby.

And the point of that lame-ass Marketplace story is that consumers should pay for this jacked-up system.

Notice that, although businesses are by far the largest consumers of energy, that Bushnell guy isn’t really talking about making businesses use energy more efficiently. Because hey, businesses are energy-efficient already, right? Because it’s cheaper, right? I mean, businesses never adopt practices that waste money, do they? No way. Businesses are never short-sighted like that. They much prefer to risk a drop in the price per share and go for those long profits.

And it’s not like businesses can influence public policy and drive innovation. I mean, it’s not businesses who contribute to politicians, is it? It’s not businesses who employ the overwhelming majority of lobbyists, right? It’s not businesses that invest in and build those very technologies that we need so desperately, is it?

Naw, it’s those damn “people” who are falling down on the job, turning on their air conditioners when it gets over a hundred degrees because hey, it’s just as cheap as running it when it’s only seventy-five out, which I guess is what I should be doing, because the energy supplies are more plentiful then.

His logic is mind-boggling, isn’t it? I mean, electricity isn’t like strawberries in January, I can’t just decide not to splurge because the price is too high. I can’t just buy electricity in the spring, and put it in the freezer and take it out when the price for fresh electricity goes too high. Of course the usage is high!!! It’s hotter than fucking hell outside!!!!!

But, according to that Bushnell guy, it’s our pansy-ass consumer protections that have “stifled innovation,” not, oh, say, corporations with a stake in the status quo. And yes, according to the geniuses at Marketplace, the benevolent power of the open market will watch over us and protect us like a soft, downy blanket. If only we would let it.

Yeah, where have I heard that before?

Sister gal, Chanel don't even make sunglasses big enough for THAT press conference

Look at that poor woman.

Not only does she have to live with that hypocritical right-wing asshole, but she has to stand next to him while he makes his bogus protestations that he did not solicit gay sex in a public restroom when he most certainly did.

And everyone who is listening to him is either thinking:

1. If my wife looked like that, I would have anonymous gay sex too, or
2. That woman clearly has not been fucked in a really long time. And that's just not good for a gal.

Me, I lean toward the second. Also, I would totally take her out for a little shoe shopping and girl talk. Later, over margaritas, I would confide in her that I, too, once had a relationship with a closeted homosexual, and how good it felt to finally face the truth. And then, perhaps, if I've had too many margaritas, I might even let a gal know that periwinkle is really not her color.

Sometimes a microphone is just a microphone

Are all religious conservative homosexual-rights-opposing Republican legislators secretly cruising for anonymous gay sex in public restrooms? Or does it just seem that way?

Senator Larry Craig of Idaho has pled guilty to lewd conduct charges after being arrested in an airport restroom by an undercover officer after Craig engaged in a mating ritual not unlike that of Florida State Representative Bob Allen’s, who was arrested earlier this month under similar circumstances.

Allen claimed that he was forced into offering oral sex because he feared that the black men in the public park restroom might harm him if he did not.

With that excuse taken, Senator Craig has merely offered that his actions were “misconstrued,” and that he should not have pled guilty. He further lamented that, even though he is a United States Senator, presumably familiar with the U.S. Constitution and other legal-type documents, he did not think to consult with an attorney before pleading guilty to the charge, even though he entered his plea two months after the event for which he was arrested.

I mean, is anyone buying this? Seriously, what is that point of offering up such lame and unlikely excuses? But, I guess when you’re a religious conservative homosexual-rights-opposing Republican legislator who secretly cruises for anonymous gay sex in public restrooms, lame and unlikely excuses are pretty much your stock in trade, huh?

Good night, Gonzalez. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.

BushCo has declared itself an Express Administration, that is, they are not making any stops between here and 1/20/09, so if you’re going to get off, you got to do it now, or else ride it all the way to the end.

I call bullshit.

Of all the brazen, unlikely, manufactured reasons given why disgraced Bushies are jumping ship, that one is the unlikeliest.

First of all, I don’t think the “rats off a sinking ship” metaphor is very apt, because it implies that the former BushCo employees are merely saving themselves. I think we can more accurately look on them as ballast being tossed overboard in the hopes of keeping their decrepit and moldering ship of state afloat. Firing, or resigning Gonzalez might not exactly be akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic; it might be more like firing the ship's navigator who dismissed the dangers of icebergs by referring to them as "quaint," or "obsolete."

In any event, the end result is the same.

So far, the coverage I’ve heard of the Gonzalez resignation has come remarkably close to intimating that AG the AG was a fine public servant, until his loyalty to the Bush administration done did him in.

Again. I call bullshit.

AG was a private attorney until he was tapped by then Gov. Bush of Texas to join his administration, and he proved his loyalty right away, by conspiring to keep W’s D.U.I. from becoming public knowledge, and by making sure W needn’t worry his pretty little head with any of the sordid details of death row clemency considerations.

Gonzalez was an eager toady from the get-go, and everyone knew it. The silence from prominent Latinos about the criticism of the AG has been deafening, in spite of Chris Matthews’s musings about the probable humiliation level of “the Hispanic community.” Geez, Chris, do you feel humiliated every time some lily-white talking head with a hard-on for men in uniform and a deep abiding love for the sound of his own voice gets his ass handed to him when the facts of the story finally come to light? I’m going to guess not, so why don’t you quit prodding Latinos about their humiliation level and take a good hard look at your own humility mechanism? Because I think yours might be broken.

As for Gonzalez, well, you live by the sword, you fall on the sword. I can’t imagine that someone who has kept quiet about so many crimes would mind choking back on the truth one last time. Even if the truth is that you were chewed up and spit out, just like all the rest.

Sorta like Octoberfest. Only in August. And instead of beer, um, tofu.

Last weekend Spooney and I went to the Los Angeles Tofu Festival.

I am not making that up.



See? Tofu Festival.



It has to be real. They have t-shirts! Adorable Japanese-inspired cutsey girlie-art t-shirts!



Here's one admission stamp you'll want to keep on your hand for a few days. Gives you mad street cred, dog.



Mostly, when at the LA Tofu Fest, you eat tofu.



Lots of tofu.



Some more tofu.
Oh, and they do try to sell you miscellaneous festival crap too, of course.


If I was an asian chick, you KNOW I'd being rockin' this shirt.



More tofu eating.



And some more.



Oh, some tofu cheesecake. And unlike every other tofu cheesecake I've had in my life, it was actually pretty good. You can see Spooney's digging it.



It's amazing how walking around in the 95 degree heat can really work up your appetite for tofu. No, really.



You know what doesn't taste good in 95 degree heat?
TOFU MARGARITA.



Fortunately, there's plenty of Thai beer to take the taste away.



As if eating tofu all afternoon weren't emasculating enough, Spooney was so dehydrated that he drank some French water "for women." I warned him that there might be some kind of female hormones in there, but he was too thirsty to care.

Then when he got home, he started watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants on cable.

Coincidence? I think not.

Spooney's encounter with HOT LAVA!

So Spooney goes to a job interview last week. Once he got there, he found out that the company is called Diskeeper, and they make a defragging software that is included in many versions of Windows.

What he notices immediately is that there are copious amounts of Scientology literature posters, calendars, etc. placed EVERYWHERE throughout the offices.

He was also informed that because office hours end at 3:30, employees are expected to attend “classes” after work, on their own time.

Classes in being a Scientologist, of course.

He was also given a copy of the infamous “free personality test” and asked to complete it in order to be considered for the position. He got 20 questions into the 200 question “test” before asking himself "What the fuck am I doing?", and left.

What I am curious about is how a company like this, albeit a privately-owned company, is allowed to impose a “religious” test upon their employees. I’m going to be generous here and allow that they truly are a “religion,” and not a “crazy cult,” or a “criminal organization.”

In a cached version of the Wikipedia web page on Diskeeper, a statement that 95% of the corporation’s employees are Scientologists, and that new employees are required to read the “Scientology bible,” is still visible. A more recent version of the page has the statement scrubbed, I going to guess by one of the faithful.

What is not disputed is that the company reneged on a service agreement with a drug company once they found out that the company manufactures Ritalin, a drug they oppose, and that they do not offer support services to any companies connected with psychiatry, which is a field I’ve heard the Tom Cruise is very well versed in.

In Germany, where they’re still a tad touchy about cults that traffic in paranoia, doing business with Scientology-owned businesses is illegal, and the government conducted an extensive investigation into whether the Diskeeper software could transmit user data. They concluded that it did not, but the dispute was resolved when Microsoft allowed for Diskeeper to be removed from their OS by users.

Sure, it’s easy to conclude that Germany was overreacting, but don’t say that to Jon Atack, a former member whose life has been ruined by Scientology and their policy of “Fair Game,” wherein their enemies, or “suppressive persons” may be attacked any number of ways with impunity. Or in the words of L. Ron himself, a suppressive person: "May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."

Dang. And Spooney thought his last boss was a pain in the ass.