something to ponder

He was specifically asked if Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, whose office helped go over the speech, should be held responsible for the inclusion of the assertion.

"Dr. Condoleezza Rice is an honest, fabulous person," he said, with her standing not far away.


One entry found for fabulous.
Main Entry: fab·u·lous
Pronunciation: 'fa-by&-l&s
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin fabulosus, from fabula
Date: 15th century
1 a : resembling or suggesting a fable : of an incredible, astonishing, or exaggerated nature b : WONDERFUL, MARVELOUS
2 : told in or based on fable
synonym see FICTITIOUS


And from the thesaurus we have:


Entry Word: fabulous
Function: adjective
Text: Synonyms MYTHICAL, legendary, mythological
Related Word amazing, astonishing, astounding, incredible, marvelous, unbelievable, wonderful; exorbitant, extravagant, inordinate, outrageous, preposterous; monstrous, prodigious, stupendous
Contrasted Words believable, colorable, credible


You wouldn't expect this kind of economy of expression from Our Fearless Leader, but bravo.

department of missing the point

When a presidential nominee appears to fudge three consecutive tax returns, it tends to raise eyebrows on Capitol Hill. When he happens to be a judicial nominee for the U.S. Tax Court, the nominee is in trouble.

...

Bower, a former director of revenue for the state of Illinois, had to amend his federal income tax returns for 1999, 2000, and 2001 after Finance Committee staff found improper deductions in each year totaling about $2,000.

The money does not add up to much, but Senate investigators from both parties raised red flags over Bower's deduction of a $150 Royal Doulton pharmacist's mug he gave to then-Gov. George Ryan, a $109 Tiffany bowl he gave to Ryan's secretary and several meals for staff written off improperly as business expenses.

"Mr. Bower's conduct evidences a belief that the American taxpayer should reimburse him for his personal expenses," Baucus said in a statement released yesterday. "He is wrong."

The deductions were bad enough, Democratic tax aides said, but what really angered Baucus was Bower's insistence that many of the deductions were, in fact, proper, a stance that Baucus said "raises questions about his knowledge of . . . the most basic tax laws -- and his suitability to be a competent U.S. Tax Court judge."

...

"I encourage my colleagues to bear in mind this extensive background and experience as we consider Mr. Bower's nomination," Grassley said. "The Tax Court," he said, "would benefit from an individual who has such a strong understanding of the actual operations of tax administration."

well, it came in by the back door, but it's in there

Garry Trudeau discusses Our Fearless Leader's service record.

maybe that nice Mr. DeLay can get them to moderate their position.

Israeli-Arab school teacher Said Abu Muammar is resigned to hiding his Palestinian wife for the rest of their married life under a law passed by parliament on Thursday barring her from living in the Jewish state.

The government-backed bill, passed at its third and final reading in the Knesset, denies citizenship or permanent residency to all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip who are married to Israelis, usually to Arab citizens of Israel.

...

The law is valid for a year but it includes a provision allowing parliament to automatically renew it annually.

Human rights groups plan to petition the Supreme Court to overturn the law, which they contend violates Israel's unofficial constitution protecting ''human dignity and liberty'' and a gamut of international conventions the country has signed.

The law was proposed after a Palestinian from the West Bank killed 15 people by blowing himself up at a restaurant in the northern port city of Haifa last year.

The bomber was able to pass through military roadblocks separating Israel from the West Bank because he carried a blue Israeli identity card and drove a car with Israeli licence plates -- both issued because his mother was an Israeli Arab.


Of course, under this new law, he would still have been a citizen, but what's more important is that people who look like him won't.

If I were an israeli, I'd feel safer already.


Foreigners married to Israelis are still eligible for residency and citizenship. The law only applies to Palestinians.


Of course, you'd want to keep this in mind:


Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel's population of 6 million. About 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Many families were divided by cease-fire lines after Mideast wars, and over the years, marriage between the two groups has been common.

Some Israelis see this as a security threat. Ezra told the radio that since 1993, more than 100,000 Palestinians have obtained Israeli permits in this manner. "It has grown out of control," he said.

However, Stein from B'tselem said there have been only 20 cases from these 100,000 people who have been involved in terror.

"I am not taking these attacks lightly, but this is an extreme solution to a marginal phenomenon," Stein said.


edit: it's worth remembering that some of the same folks want to deny the right of return to secular or insufficiently orthodox jews.

ok, wading back into the shallows

I've decided it's time to deal with going back to work.

If someone out there knows about a prepress or templating job in publishing, advertising or direct mail in New York that's going begging, tip me a wink.

I'd appreciate it.

hearts and minds watch

Their faces covered in morticians' makeup, patches of hair sprouting from their scalps, two bodies were displayed to journalists Friday in a further attempt by American occupation authorities to convince skeptical Iraqis that Saddam Hussein's sons Odai and Qusai are really dead.

...

Arab satellite media and CNN broadcast images of the bodies throughout Iraq and the Arab world. The corpses appeared markedly changed from the autopsy-style photographs released a day earlier. The thick beards - grown, officials said, during 3 1/2 months on the run - were now shaved and trimmed; their faces rebuilt and a gash gone from the face of the body identified as Odai.

The display appeared to be a calculated gamble by coalition authorities, who may have produced more convincing evidence but who also offended Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere by altering the bodies and delaying burial.

...

Hamza Mansour, secretary-general of the Islamic Action Front in neighboring Jordan, said the display violated Islamic custom.

"The bodies of Odai and Qusai should have been washed, shrouded and buried immediately, but the Americans have no respect for our traditions and doctrine and they acted in a very unethical manner," he said.

...

Their faces were reconstructed by morticians and medical personnel, a common practice in the West and not a bid to fool Iraqis, according to a doctor involved in the autopsy, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

...

Where the Thursday photographs showed a long gash down the face of the man said to be Odai, reconstruction made him appear unblemished but pale. His beard was reduced to the permanent shadow for which he was known. The beard of the corpse said to be Qusai was shaved, leaving only the familiar mustache seen in most pictures.

Both men's eyes were closed, lips pursed, almost tranquil, almost sleeping.

The rest of their bodies were a maze of bullet holes - more than 20 each - severe burns, black-and-blue bruises and scars from previous surgeries. Their chests had been opened, but sutured back in a neat, Y-shape. Their genitals were covered with blue surgical cloths. Inside the air-conditioned tent, the odor of embalming fluid was heady.

Doctors said Qusai had two bullet wounds to his head, but said those were likely from the barrage fired into the villa in Mosul, 240 miles north of the capital, Baghdad.

"We do not believe he killed himself," one of them said.

Odai was killed when debris struck his head with extreme force, resulting in the gash, officials said. He had no bullet wounds to his head.

There was an incision on the left leg of the man said to be Odai where doctors removed a plate that had been inserted after a 1996 assassination attempt. The plate, still attached to the bone, lay wrapped in a plastic bag, sawed from the leg. The leg was limp, the foot at an odd angle.

...

All that remains now, they said, are the final results of the DNA testing being done at a military lab in Washington, which could be completed as soon as next week. A final report on the deaths is expected in about six weeks.

Doctors said the bodies would remain at the morgue, kept in refrigerated storage, until a family member claims them.




Of course, we could have waited for the results of the DNA tests, but that would have taken, like, a week or something.

Much better to let the iraqis get a look at the corpses after we carved them up and shaved them and put makeup on them.

Muslims dig that.

witty little fuck, isn't he.

... "There were of course many reasons for starting the war in Iraq," Perle told reporters when asked about US and British troops' failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq more than three months after the campaign began.

"We are clearly starting to see that up to 300,000 people were killed and buried" by Saddam's regime, he said.

Perle added that "we are absolutely certain" that weapons of mass destruction are hidden in Iraq - Washington's motive for launching the offensive against Baghdad - but that it may take dozens of years to find them.

"We don't know where to look for them and we never did know where to look for them," he admitted.

Asked by a reporter when he thought the evidence of those weapons may be found, Perle joked: "I hope this will take less than 200 years."

Perle is recognized as one of the main architects of Washington's campaign to launch the offensive in Iraq although he has since played down his role in hatching the war plan...


I wonder how many of those 300,000 people identified themselves to Saddam when Bush Sr. told them to rise up and then took a powder?

Well, and some of them were kurds, but we sold them the gas for that little adventure, so it doesn't seem fair to give him all the credit for killing them.

news from "Ground Zero" (as people from somewhere else call it)

...To what extent is it appropriate for the imagery of Sept. 11 to be incorporated into the political appeals of Mr. Bush and his Democratic opponent? Is there a risk that voters will recoil at a perception that a candidate is stage-managing tragedy for political gain, particularly with each side already accusing the other of doing precisely that?

The decision by Mr. Ridge, former governor of Pennsylvania and a close friend of Mr. Bush, not to raise money or appear at presidential or Congressional campaign events was just the latest apparent sign of rising White House sensitivity to Democratic criticism that the president is writing some of the turmoil on the world stage into his re-election script.

In another such sign, Republican leaders who were interviewed used almost identical turns of phrase in maintaining that the decision to hold the Republican National Convention in New York for the first time was a testimony to the city's diversity. The reason, they said, was not that Madison Square Garden, the site of the gathering, is barely two miles from ground zero.

"I think that 9/11 is something that is part of our fabric, part of our being - it's nothing that one exploits," said Ann Wagner, Republican national co-chairwoman. "And it certainly is not a factor in our coming here, other than the fact of us wanting to be part of the recovery."...


"As a matter of fact" Ms. Wagner continued, "We decided to hold the convention after the date that the President could go on the ballot in more than one state not knowing that Pataki was going to hold up the cornerstone laying until he got here."

Well, not really.

So, let's see:

lied about what he was doing on 9/11? well, since the communications system on the plane was out, maybe he was rehearsing all that leadership for when he got somewhere with a phone booth.

tried to get out of paying us recovery funds (it was a "game" according to Mitch Daniels)? check.

vetoed the legislation which would have paid for replacing the communications systems that got the firefighters and cops killed? check.

sending us federal money to maintain a higher level of security than the rest of the country while our Republican governor tries to cut off all our funds or divert them upstate? um, well, no, not as such.

released the full 9/11 report and are currently cooperating with the other 9/11 investigation like the families of the dead asked them to? not technically, no.

spending huge wads of money on a war that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 while the guy who arranged the cold-blooded murder of 3,000 americans is picking up new recruits? well, yeah.

allowed the government of the country which produced almost all of the hijackers to fly suspects out of the country before anyone here got to talk to them? then arrested a whole bunch of folks who had nothing to do with it on suspicion of being arab? what are you gonna do.

decided to ignore a direct connection between that country's ambassador's wife and hijackers? um.

invited the lady and her husband to the President's ranch to make up for the ignominy of someone being tacky enough to bring it up? well.

cutting taxes for rich folks while defunding the flight marshall program in the face of renewed threats of hijacking and underfunding homeland security? see, the thing is...

You know, I very rarely am right there with the Republicans on tactics, but under the circumstances I would be fairly comfortable with their running for office on the legacy of their response to 9/11.

As a matter of fact, if they don't, we should.

miscellaneous links

via Off the Kuff's Killer D roundup, the Dukes of Hazzard version.

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from Tugboat Potemkin, can libertarians eat dim sum?

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Technical non-felon John Poindexter is out.

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Two soldiers killed, five wounded in Iraq, bringing the two week total to 19 killed.

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via Counterspin: Jerry Regier, the fundamentalist wacko who is supposed to be running children's services in Florida (a short brush up on things Regier here) has deprioritized the hundreds of missing children and tens of thousands of at risk children nominally under his care and is off in another state running a (Republican, of course) friend's campaign for office.

You know, in Republican terms this makes him presidential material.

Good luck, kids.


edit: I almost forgot. If you act now, you can save Adam Felber's marriage from gay penguins. Or something.