And it’s… in The Corner! World O’Crap has the exclusive story:
The Cornerites weighs in on Bush’s Capitol Hill meeting — Rich reports disappointment from the Republican members of congress; Kathryn Jean falls into a suicidal depression:
In other words: more good news!
Yesterday was a holiday over here, so today we “make blue” as the Germans might say and do little to no actual work, leaving that to our American colleagues.
General Glut comments on the Yglesias/Drum/DeLong tussle on whether conservatives or liberals have been most effective at implementing their agenda:
What Newman is too polite or coy to point out is that liberals like Yglesias, Drum and DeLong reflect the interests and ideology of the new middle class. Thus it’s no surprise that things like union-smashing, deregulation, capital mobility, lower real wages, shifting tax burden, privatization, imperialism and free trade are all ignored by them, because these are working class issues. To liberals, getting bigger government, birth control, working mothers, abortion rights and gay marriage is far more significant than anything going on at the bottom rungs of the class struggle.
Pete M., who used to occupy his time productively by posting comments here and over at World O’Crap, has decided to start his own blog instead. We applaud him for his not at all transparent efforts to get a link from us, and direct you to his discussion of a somewhat different Birds and the Bees comic strip.
Nitpicker’s CJ reports on the declassify, reclassify game being played by those wacky kids at the Justice Department.
And to wrap things up with something from the “let’s not put these people in charge of winning hearts and minds shall we?” department, we offer the following comment posted by Mike at Trying to Grok about the wedding party/foreign fighters gathering that left 40 people dead:
Wars will always kill children…and adults. For some reason we value the life of a child higher than that of an adult. But in a region of the world where children are just as likely to be combatants as adults, how can that still hold?
You just can’t make up shit like that. From the article linked to above:
The body of a girl who appeared to be less than five years old lay in a white sheet, her legs riddled with wounds and her dress soaked in blood.
Then we’d add some comment on today’s Wall Street Journal Editorial:
Someday we hope U.S. officials will explain to us how in scarcely a year they managed to turn one of our closest allies in ousting Saddam Hussein into an opponent of American purposes. We’re referring to Ahmed Chalabi, the member of the Iraqi Governing Council whose home and office were raided by coalition forces yesterday in Baghdad.
Wow. Just, wow. Added bonus, three paragraphs later:
We don’t know enough of the facts to take sides.
Are WSJ readers really this stupid?
We’ve mocked our share of folks over the months. Amber Pawlik (a few times,) Doug Giles, (thanks to World O’Crap) Steven “Stratego” Den Beste. Adam Yoshida. Yet all of those freaks unusual authors were brought to our attention by other bloggers (thank you!) That’s not a problem per se, but we’d be lying if we didn’t admit to wanting to find our own freak. Someone whose hidden talents could be discovered and shared on the greater platform that has become Sadly, No! Have we now found such an individual? Chances are no, but as we came across him earlier by accident, we shall proceed as if he is ours.
Readers, say hello to Brian Cherry. Brian, who is totally not gay no sir why do you ask?, has some pretty strong thoughts on the matter of homosexuality, as evidenced by the title of his article:
But before getting down to business, it turns out that Brian is nostalgic for a time when men were men and tigers could feed on something tastier than German homosexuals:
History?s greatest empire had its own special set of problems. Every now and then an emperor would go off the rails and burn the whole place down. A person getting bitten by tigers was considered normal entertainment and not just the result of a Vegas magic act gone awry. Add in that time when they decorated several miles of their main road with crucified bodies, just to make a point, and you have a nation with the type of problems that would make Dr. Phil rethink his career path and go into plumbing.
As we’re not sure which parts of that are meant to be funny and which are the serious ones, we’re going to move along, as Brian explains why he needed to bring Rome into the picture:
What do Rome and Gay society have in common? When you take away the penchant for bath houses, not much. When you add the word ?marriage? to the formula, the similarities become clear.
Are you seeing the similarities dear reader? Was alcohol involved at all? It doesn’t matter — Brian can enlighten you:
Marriage was the backbone of society before there were even governments to legally recognize it. It has been the one universal constant with all societies. Marriage is normal. Without that lifeline to normal society homosexuals must wallow in their own culture.
In other words, marriage is so old there was marriage even before there was marriage, and without it, homosexuals remain condemned to their alternate (and) abnormal universe, forced to roll themselves about in an indolent or ungainly manner in gayness. And that would be bad, because if there’s one thing most homosexuals want (we guess,) it is to join the normal society made up of the Brian Cherry (and his single male roommate) of the world. Brian, fortunately, is only getting started:
Read the rest of this entry »
And this time, we’re not even being sarcastic! MSNBC reports:
U.S. troops, Iraqi police raid Chalabi’s home
Arrest warrants issued for 16 affiliated with Iraqi National Congress
NBC News and news services — Updated: 6:52 a.m. ET May 20, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq – U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police raided the residence of Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi on Thursday, and aides accused the Americans of trying to pressure him to stop complaining about U.S. plans for Iraq after sovereignty is transferred at the end of next month.
NBC news has learned that an Iraqi judge issued arrest warrants for 16 people affiliated with Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. The raid is said to be related to alleged financial misdealings at the end of last year during the conversion from Saddam-era dinars to new Iraqi dinars.
There was no comment from U.S. authorities, but American officials here have complained privately that Chalabi is interfering with a U.S. investigation into allegations that Saddam Hussein’s regime skimmed millions in oil revenues during the U.N.-run oil-for-food program. [Emphasis added]
Booyah! (Thanks to Blair for the link.)
Added: An instant classic from Roger Ailes. Go read it now.
In honor of busy, busy, busy and d-squarred, we offer a random roundup of shorter assorted conservative authors.
Shorter Barbara Stock: Must We Loose the Dogs of War?
I received a lot of negative emails from Muslims after comparing them to Hitler, which leads me to conclude that Muslims are a great threat to humanity and must consequently be destroyed.
Shorter Debbie Daniel: We Don’t Expect Americans To Act Like That
War means never having to say you’re sorry for anything, whether it’s putting Japanese-Americans in jail or torturing dark skinned savages we picked up at random in backward countries.
Shorter Chuck Muth: Poisoning the Conservative Well
The Founding Fathers were totally opposed to forcing car-makers to increase their fuel efficiency standards. Besides, caribou love crude oil!
Shorter La Shawn Barber: The Unconstitutionality of Brown v. Board of Education
If only I had been so lucky as to attend a segregated school!
Shorter Joe Mariani: Treason or Not? The Case Against Ted Kennedy
We’re already at war for fuck’s sake so why waste our time trying to figure out if we should have attacked Iraq in the first place?
Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog has the latest from the Every Sperm is Sacred crowd:
Catholic World News Editor Cites Acceptance of Contraception as Leading to Current Gay Unions Situation
Phil Lawler, editor of the Boston based Catholic World News and author of five books and numerous articles, has responded to today’s beginning of legally sanctioned homosexual unions in Massachusetts. In his Phil’s Forum for today, Lawler lays out the case that Christians themselves are to a large degree responsible for this logical outcome of the acceptance of contraception.
You just can’t make that shit up. And he has more!
Way, way back in the summer of 2003 one of the first blogs we discovered was General Glut’s Globblog:
General Glut, sworn enemy of Jean-Baptiste Say and neo-classical economics, continues to maintain as he has through the days of Sismondi, Marx and Keynes that capitalism’s tendencies are toward crises of overaccumulation and underconsumption. Globalization performs this sorry old tale through debt, deflation and depression on the stage of the whole world.
Unfortunately, life took over and he stopped blogging in September, when we assumed we’d heard the last from him. We’re happy to note however that while we were away the General came back. Now please say hello.
If this is the same type of 155-mm weapon of mass destruction currently being floated as justification for invading Iraq, it sure explains all the sensational headlines.
(Shown at left, an Iraqi child participating in an unrelated cleanup effort of shells in Baghdad, 05/17/04 India Tribune)
I’m skeptical, though. That high-tech delivery system might look imposing, but I doubt that kid could make it to American shores in 45 minutes, at least not without a note from his mom. Plus, he doesn’t look capable of eluding the $150 billion state of the art all-kid missile defense system the Pentagon has in place. (That’s where a telegenic kid points to a light in the sky and goes, “Hey, look!” before all hell breaks loose, just like in the movies.)
Still, the Republican Faithful have been asked to wax bombastic about the WMD find on the floor of the Senate and House, even though the potency of the WMD rhetoric barely survives first paragraphs of the AP article.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cautioned that the sarin results were from a field test, which can be imperfect and more analysis needed to be done.
“We have to be careful,” he told an audience in Washington Monday afternoon. Rumsfeld said it many take some time to determine precisely what the chemical was, what its presence means in terms of risks to U.S. forces and other implications.
U.S. troops have announced the discovery of other chemical weapons before, only to see them disproved by later tests. Deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said “the jury is still out” on whether chemical or other weapons of mass destruction remained in Iraq.
The former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, David Kay, said it was possible the shell was an old relic overlooked when Saddam said he had destroyed such weapons in the mid-1990s.
Kay, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, said he doubted the shell or the nerve agent came from a hidden stockpile, although he didn’t rule out that possibility.
Former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, speaking to the AP in Sweden, agreed the shell was likely a stray weapon scavenged from a dump and did not signify that Iraq had large stockpiles.
Numerous arsenals and weapons depots were looted in the turmoil following the collapse of the regime last April. Some depots are still only lightly guarded. Many of the materials used for roadside bombs were believed to have been looted.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said he believed that insurgents who planted the explosive did not know it contained the nerve agent. The 155-mm shell did not have markings to indicate it contained a chemical agent, a U.S. official said.
He said a U.S. military convoy discovered the round, which had been rigged as an explosive device. A detonation took place before soldiers could make the bomb inoperable, producing “a very small dispersal of agent.”
U.S. officials believe, based on evidence, that the shell was an experimental munition produced before the 1991 Gulf War, called a binary type – a bomb carrying two separate chemicals that when combined in an explosion, produce sarin. (05/18/04 AP/Torchia)
The only possible explanation for the screaming headlines about WMDs being found is that, the Abu Ghraib scandal having been declared officially over by the Department of Hooey, the White House has resumed torturing the media.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page finds yesterday’s news sarinific:
The media all but closed the books on the WMD story once it wasn’t found in “stockpiles” quickly enough to vindicate the Bush Administration’s case before the U.N.
When it wasn’t found quickly enough. Because as the President said:
But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong. We found them.
Right. Moving along…
We’d put more stock in Gazi George, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist under Saddam, who told Fox News that he believes the weapons were either buried underground or transported to Syria.
Who is Gazi George? Thanks to Geek Like Me for a summary:
Gazi George has been in exile from Iraq for twenty years. He lives in the Detroit area now. See this link.
Extra Credit to the WSJ for big conspiracy theory 1:
Keep in mind that, before the Iraq War began, U.S. commanders feared Iraqi use of chemical and biological toxins so much that they required chemical suits for their invading troops. To our knowledge, none were ever used.
To their knowledge? WTF are they implying? That the suits were used although no weapons were? Or that the weapons were but that it remains a secret?
Do you like big finishes? Well then, the WSJ has one for you:
But just because we haven’t found everything that the CIA anticipated doesn’t mean it still isn’t a threat.
If by everything you mean very close to nothing then yes, we guess we haven’t found everything.
Bonus points: Gazi George has also appeared on CBS, where he had more tales to tell:
He [George] fears that Saddam will attempt to use some of his illegal weapons stores soon. “On the level of chemical and biological, I believe that these weapons are distributed to his forces in the field,” he says. “This is why I think they’re either going to be used or the U.S. soldiers are going to discover them.”
George is getting upset!