Month: September 2006

Next week, I’m informed via troubled White House sources, will see the full unveiling of Karl Rove’s fall election strategy. He’s intending to line up 9/11 families to accuse McCain, Warner and Graham of delaying justice for the perpetrators of that atrocity, because they want to uphold the ancient judicial traditions of the U.S. military and abide by the Constitution. He will use the families as an argument for legalizing torture, setting up kangaroo courts for military prisoners, and giving war crime impunity for his own aides and cronies. This is his "Hail Mary" move for November; it’s brutally exploitative of 9/11; it’s pure partisanship; and it’s designed to enable an untrammeled executive. Decent Republicans, Independents and Democrats must do all they can to expose and resist this latest descent into political thuggery. If you need proof that this administration’s first priority is not a humane and effective counter-terror strategy, but a brutal, exploitative path to retaining power at any price, you just got it.

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

"Among all the governments in the world, the only legitimate government endorsed by the Almighty is the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Islamic Republic is an extension of God, its Leader is appointed by God, its Revolutionary Guard is God’s Army, and all its citizens are members of the Party of God (Hezbollah)," – Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Meshkini, Iran’s President of the Assembly of Experts, that selects key government posts. Some consider him the second most powerful figure in Tehran.

Wilmington, Ohio, 10.45 am.

Once again, gay men led the way with the bear phenom. Next up: Hollywood:

A little while ago, movie stars like Heath Ledger and Hugh Jackman and then just regular dudes started turning up at parties with their shirts unbuttoned. Not, like, all-the-way-to-the-navel, Vinnie-at-the-club unbuttoned — but undone enough to let a few tendrils of chest hair curl out suggestively, as if to say, I am Man. Feel me.

It’s not that I’m a chest hair fetishist, exactly. I just prefer it. The bald male chest is disconcerting to me in the same way that a hairless dog is. It seems unnatural, as though it’s been engineered by science, and it’s sort of vain. Plus, I like a little something to stroke and pet and tug on, a springy, hairy pillow on which to lay my head. A quick text-message poll confirmed that fourteen of fifteen female friends agreed. "Yes!!!" wrote one. "Liking lush forest!" replied another.

The fight continues.

It’s becoming clearer and clearer that Donald Rumsfeld is a worse defense secretary than Robert McNamara. Why was there no post-invasion war-plan in Iraq? Because Rumsfeld forbade one, and threatened to fire anyone who devised one. Money quote from an eye-witness in the military:

Planning continued to be a challenge.

"The secretary of defense continued to push on us … that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we’re going to take out the regime, and then we’re going to leave," Scheid said. "We won’t stay."

Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like occupation.

Even if the troops didn’t stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.

"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."

Unbelievable. Even more unbelievable is that this man is still secretary of defense. Even after the fiasco in Iraq; even after the torture policy; even after Abu Ghraib; even after a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and a civil war in Iraq. Democrats, Independents and sane Republicans who want to win the war against islamism should unite this fall in a single rallying cry: Fire Rumsfeld Now.

(Hat tip: Kevin Drum).

I’ve been pondering the astonishing bravado of the president’s statement last week:

"I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it – and I will not authorize it."

I knew it reminded me of something and yesterday, it hit me. Bush’s statement is true in his own private universe, and the criterion of his version of truth depends entirely on what the meaning of the word "torture" is. I think what you have to do is think of George W. Bush’s statement in the same light as Bill Clinton’s famous declaration that he had not had "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky. Both statements are semantic evasions to avoid a direct lie. Each man is using a private dictionary to redefine a word otherwise clear to any other rational person. But the broader conclusion is obvious: Clinton lied about an extra-marital affair in a civil sexual harrassment lawsuit. Bush is lying about one of the core featurs of a civilized and decent society in the middle of a vital war. The Republicans ridiculed Clinton for his linguistic somersaults – and even impeached him for it. They are mostly silent today. A telling contrast, I’d say.

I’m a big fan of burp and fart jokes. Call me juvenile. And you don’t have to click on a YouTube of Jessica Simspon burping. But if you felt like a diversion …

The recently fired blogger for the New Republic is, in some ways, a treasure. He was dumped for writing for his own comments section under a pseudonym. But what’s quite wonderful is what he actually wrote about himself. Here’s an example unearthed by blogger JMW:

How angry people get when a powerful critic says he doesn’t like their favorite show! Like little babies. Such fragile egos. Siegel accuses Stewart of a "pandering puerility" and he gets an onslaught of puerile responses from the insecure herd of independent minds. I’m well within Stewart’s target group, and I think he’s about as funny as a wet towel in a locker room. Siegel is brave, brilliant, and wittier than Stewart will ever be. Take that, you bunch of immature, abusive sheep.

Remember this is Siegel arguing that Siegel is wittier than Jon Stewart ever will be. Yes, I have an ax to grind. Siegel accused me of anti-Semitism in Harper’s Magazine, using as proof my attacks on anti-Semitism. But I will miss his hilarious cultural criticism:

Pairs proliferate throughout the film, reminders of our double natures. A sculpture in Ziegler’s house, seen at the beginning of the film, is of two figures, a winged one bending over another without wings; people lift both their arms and raise both their hands; there are symmetrical doors and coffee cups; in Ziegler’s billiard room, you see two pineapples, a perfect image of the banal duality of our desires.

The following Slate diary won the Poseur Alert of the Year a while back. It’s still a classic.

Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel … Oh! There you are. This "Diary" creeps up on you in the most unguarded moments. I recently improved my condition from self-intoxication to self-obsession, and I was just doing some lunchtime exercises‚ÄîI ate lunch around 1:30 today; my cat Maya poached some salmon from Citarella‚Äîmeant to bring me to the next stage, which is self-absorption. Dr. von Hoffenshtoffen, whom I mentioned yesterday, devised these "identity calisthenics," as he calls them. I think they’re helping, but this Diary, with its emphasis on "I," gave me a "soul hernia" (another Hoffenshtoffenian phrase).

How will we live without him?

"Ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s anger is unquestionably justified. The version that I saw has her self-righteously owning up to actions that effectively tipped off Osama bin Laden to a strike against his Afghan training camp. "We had to inform the Pakistanis," the movie’s Albright insists.

The real Albright says she neither did nor said such a thing and that the meeting we see in the movie never took place. The 9/11 Commission report, on which the film is partly based, says it was a senior military official who told the Pakistanis. The portrait of Albright is an unacceptable revision of recent history and an unfair mark on a public servant who, no matter her shortcomings, doesn’t deserve to be remembered by millions of Americans as the inadvertent (and truculent) savior of Osama bin Laden," JPod, in the NYPost.

What a great phrase to describe the increasingly shrill rhetoric of the dead-end Bushies.