perfidy

Plagiarizing senator Joe Biden, (D-Deleware) today said that President Bush is "brain dead." While discussing prescription drug policy quite often sets my blood to boiling, and I have nearly come to blows with those who disagree with my estimate of the damage that socialist health care policy is causing to working class Americans; I have rarely had cause to call my opponents brain dead. I would likely be even more careful about casting such aspersions had I, like the good senator, a long history of passing the ideas of others off as my own.

Maureen runs a nifty little interweb doodad that places bloggers in the DC area in their proper location on a map of the DC metro system. Since half of the Ministry team lives here, she was kind enough to add us to her most excellent map. 

Minister Johno's wife might be interested to know that Teresa Heinz doesn't think being a librarian is a real job. I know my stepmom, aunt, and several good friends will also be pleased to hear that all that schooling was for nothing. Perhaps if they had had the foresight to obtain really, really, wealthy parents, they needn't have bothered.

The only possible explanation for the Red Sox victory today - making them the only team in Baseball history to come back from a three game deficit to force a game seven playoff - is that fate has decided to visit some truly horrific punishment on long suffering Sox fans. After a wild ride, with two calls falling their way, and protection offered by the NYPD, the curse seems to be threatened. But much as I hate and despise the Yankees I also believe that Boston has been singled out for special attention by cruel fortune. They are the anti-chosen people. They will win the next game with the Yankees and advance to the World Series

And then they will lose.

An Australian Journalist was released by terrorists after they confirmed his identity using Google. Apparently, what they found on the internet convinced his captors that he was not working for the CIA or an American contractor.

People are looking at whether Kerry might not have initially been honorably discharged. Kerry still hasn't signed his form 180, which would release the 100 pages of documents that the Naval Personnel Office says it still has and either dismiss or support these allegations.

I like this Nobel Laureate a lot better than the wacko who thinks that AIDS is a CIA plot.

Somebodies a-scawad! This fine example of letting the terrorists win comes to you courtesy of Democratic Senator Mark Dayton.

For the week ending 11Oct04:

Spotlight Sinai: At least thirty are dead and well over 100 injured following three bombings at two resort hotels in the Egyptian Sinai near the Israeli border. Most of the victims were Israelis on vacation. A previously unknown group, Jama'a Al-Islamiya Al-Alamiya (World Islamist Group) claimed responsibility, but our old pals Al Qaida are now the most likely suspects according to US, Israeli and Egyptian security forces, with possible connections to Palestinian groups or domestic Egyptian Islamic terrorists (the ones who did the Luxor hit back in the late nineties.) Names that have surfaced in the discussion include bin Laden's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri and Jordanian cum-Iraqi Al Qaida terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi.

It seems that the Islamic terrorist world is linking arms and standing shoulder to shoulder to fight both the Little Satan and the Great Satan. One could almost think this great coming together - this laying down of internal disputes to fight the common enemy - was a noble thing if it didn’t involve the surprise bombing of innocents. I think that the terrorists are going to continue to have a serious public relations problem. Maybe a little nonviolent resistance would get them sympathy from people outside the Chomskyite left.

Spotlight Iraq: Briton Kenneth Bigly was unsurprisingly beheaded by yet another group of Islamic funlovers. It seems as though Bigley made a last ditch effort to escape but didn’t make it out. Several Turks were also beheaded this week, showing that Islamic fundamentalism is essentially nihilistic, and will attack anything that looks at it funny.

Spotlight Spain: In what is described as a “fit of cannibalism” (as opposed to the chronic, continuing cannibalism) British ex-robber Paul Durant killed, dismembered and ate British tourist Karen Durrell. Said Durant,

"Before I killed Karen I told her I had come to Spain where I was going to kill and eat pedophiles. My mental stage was breaking down at this stage. I believed God had delivered her to me…"

As laudable as his desire to end paedophilia is, we can only conclude that his mission was tragically unsuccessful.

Spotlight Hanoi: Distressed that former colonial subjects the Vietnamese are no longer speaking French, French President Jacques Chirac has declared that the world’s cultures are in danger of being “choked” by the American cultural hegemony. Likening this to an ecological holocaust, Chirac warned that the loss of global cultural diversity would be a “catastrophe.” Therefore, he argued, the French are right to stand up to the brutish Americans, and continue to consume American movies, jeans, cigarettes, music, cars and TV in huge quantities. To counteract the threat of a French cultural resurgence, we should expand the successful EuroDisney program, and build a Disneyworld in every single fucking French City, town, hamlet and village.

[wik] All of this puts France below Singapore – which while only the size of a piece of snot, is worth significantly more than a heaping pile of shit.

Spotlight Egypt: Back to the surreal and twisted world of the Religion of Peace, an Egyptian Intellectual has accused former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu of planning the 9/11 attacks. Sadly, these confused ravings are more common than many in the western media will ever admit.

For some reason known only to the now-deceased html gnomes charged with properly posting the text of this post, only the picture and the title survived. Which made my post seem rather cruel. Which was not my intent. Here, as best I can reconstruct it, is the original post:

Superman is dead. Christopher Reeve died Sunday at the age of fifty-two from complications arising from an infected bedsore. The superman movies seem dated, hokey and schmaltzy now - but that is not so much the fault of the movies but the penalty of viewing the past through our green-hued spectacles of jaded hindsight. We are unable to watch Superman without remembering what came after - the brilliant gothic epic that was Batman, the snazzy special effects of the X-Men movies, and the host of lesser superhero movies that would never have seen the dark of a movie theater but for Superman. Like its comic book forerunner, the movie superman paved the way for what came after. Other superhero movies might be more clever, better drawn, more whatever, but Superman is always first.

Christopher Reeve made that movie a success. Superman in the early eighties was a clean cut, muscular, cheerful, diffident and even (dare we say) a bit fey. Reeves gave us a Superman with no ironic overtones, no sarcastic asides, no incestuous self-referential humor, no gloomy cityscapes no five o'clock shadow; in short, none of the things that we now absolutely require in order to suspend our disbelief. We can't watch movies like this anymore. But we should.

Well, the first issue of Undecided Voter magazine has just hit the newstands.

Bill Gertz of the Washington Times is reporting that Saddam Hussein used the UN oil-for-food program to skim billions of dollars and directed $1.78 billion to French businessmen, officials and journalists in order to get the French to oppose American policy.

Here's a juicy bit:

The report named former French Interior Minister Charles Pascua as getting a voucher for 11 million barrels of oil, and Patrick Maugein, who received a voucher for 13 million barrels of oil. The report said Mr. Maugein, the chief executive officer of the SOCO oil company, was a "conduit" to Mr. Chirac.

The report mentioned is the report of the CIA's Iraq survey group, the basis of Gertz' article. For comparison, French oil companies Total and SOCAP each got vouchers in the neighborhood of 100 million barrels of oil.

The corruption extends beyond France. Russia and China also featured prominently on the list. Those who have most vociferously opposed the war in Iraq might be shocked and embarrassed that the actions of their allies in the governments of France and Russia were not motivated by simon-pure pacificism and upright morals. (Why they might imagine this in the first place is another question altogether, given those nation's history.) If America's primary non-Iraqi opponents in the war in Iraq had not been bought off on the cheap and had remained neutral or even provided minimal support; would world opinion have swung so dramatically against the United States? Would those in the US who opposed the war been so confident if they had not been able to point at France, Germany and Russia?

Ironic that the most damage Saddam did in the war, he did before the war started. Of course, any apparent correlation between those who received billions of dollars from Saddam and those nation's anti-US policies might be merely accidental.

[wik] For more info on the Oil For Food Scandal, go here.

EARTH FIRST!

We'll strip mine the outer planets later

Loyal reader #0009, Mapgirl, informs us that someone has taken the novel step of complaining about "that time of the month." I will admit that - for all my inherent inability to really, you know, empathize with this problem given my status as a triped - I found this to be truly effing hilarious. After a slow start, our essayist really warms to her subject:

I have long maintained that we should put pictures of gorgeous men on the packaging. Really butch guys on the heavy-absorbency products, and femme guys on the pantiliners. For the ever-more-popular "teen" size, we could get pictures of the boy band du jour. So you could have pictures of N'Sync and Justin Timberlake on your black thong-cut pantiliners (yes, such things exist).

You know if guys had periods, the packages would be slathered with pictures of Carmen Electra, and would frequently include a free bikini magazine or offers for $50 rebates on Coleman grills. What do girls get? Fucking pastel colors and super-quiet pouches. Such is our shame. I really think hip advertising is the key to breaking this taboo.

My husband thinks they should take it one step further and create cartoon characters, like Tony the Tiger or Cap'n Crunch. I suggested they should use caricatures of real-life people . . . like a cartoon Bloody Mary holding her severed head. His suggestion was the best. Bloody Bill Anderson, that grim figure of the American West.

I can just see the commercials now.

"When you're ridin' the rag . . . ride with the best! Dancin' girls and preachers' daughters alike agree: use Bloody Bill's Pads! Available in two delightful scents: poison sumac and gunpowder. Now with blood gutters!"

"Cork that revoltin' wound with Bloody Bill brand Tampons! Individual packages come with cotton batting, gauze, and a 60-second length of dynamite fuse. Free ramrod with each purchase."

"Monthly Curse got you feelin' a mite insecure? Get the assurance you need with Bloody Bill's Roll-your-Own Tampons! I left a trail of blood clear across Kansas, but you don't got to!"

But we will never see the subject approached with such humor.

Not for the squeamish, but well worth the read.

Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne is wafting gently back to Earth after successfully making the second trip into space in less than a week. In the process, they have won the Ansari X-Prize and ten million dollars, and beat the X-15's forty year old altitude record. A second pilot has won astronaut wings. This is the beginning of a revolution in space travel.

Due to a medical emergency in the Buckethead clan, Buckethead, Mrs. Buckethead and Sir John-the-actually-quite-well-behaved-in-the-car-considering-he's-been-in-a-car-seat-for-fifteen-hours lit out for the wilds of Massachusetts. As it turns out, all is well and Buckethead's beloved mother was sightseeing again two days after a heart attack thanks to the wonders of modern technology and the puissance of the Cape Cod Medical Center's staff.

So, unlike most of the politically addicted citizens of this great nation, we listened to the great debate on AM radio. No cable news, no cspan, nor even streaming interweb video. It was a challenge to create an accurate mental image of the debate. Where do I insert my mental jpeg of Kerry sticking his tongue out for maximum verisimilitude? Was Bush clenching his forehead or smirking as he made that comment? As of this moment, I have not seen any replays of the debate on TV, so my impressions are purely based on what I heard driving through the smelliest bits of Eastern PA in the rain.

I think that the debate was a draw - Kerry had more debating style fu, and scored a few hits. Bush was his typical aphasic self at times, but pulled out the heavy artillery on the flip-flopping. Here are some of thte things I was thinking during the debate:

• Kerry repeatedly said he'd do better, but failed to actually say how he'd do better. The very few times he actually offered specifics, it was something that the administration is already planning or doing. His theme for the debate seemed to be, "Anything you can do, I can do better." Armchair quarterbacking is a hell of a lot easier than actually throwing a pass in the big game. Something bloggers should be well aware of, btw.
• Is it just me, or was Kerry being hypocritical for bitching that we were insufficiently multilateral in Iraq, but then saying we should ditch the laboriously arranged six party talks in North Korea to go it alone?
• Mrs. Buckethead made the insightful comment as the debate was winding down that all of John Kerry's suggestions for defense policy revolve around the good wishes of others. Getting the French and the Germans to participate. UN approval. ICC. Summits. "Global Tests" for American use of military force. Those good wishes are far from guaranteed, especially in the case of the the axis of weasels and the UN. I really, really, really have a hard time believing that France would be willing, next January, to reverse their policy and send troops to Iraq, or share the costs of reconstruction just because John Kerry's phiz is staring back across the negotiating table. Which leaves us in the same situation, with the added bonus that an incoming president Kerry would have little goodwill from the allies we do have given what he has said of them so far.
• Kerry used a lot of his time attacking Bush. Bush used a lot of his time quoting Kerry to Kerry. I think Bush was more effective with his tactic.

Kerry needed to do something spectacular, or at least have Bush commit political seppuku, to have an effect on the larger campaign. Neither happened. Which leaves Kerry where he was, five to ten points behind in the polls. Four years ago, Al Gore deeply unimpressed the electorate with his debate performance, and it had an effect on the election. Here, a tie does nothing to gain Kerry back the ground he's lost since August. There is a chance that he may achieve something in the next two debates, but given that the Kerry campaign had settled on Iraq as "the" issue, this was their shot to change the dynamics of the race. The economy is steadily if slowly improving - and certainly not in the middle of a meltdown. Domestic policy is taking a back seat to the war on terror because of both reality and the decisions of campaign managers on both sides. I don't think Kerry supporters will have much to do but pray for Bush to screw up in some truly miraculous way, and evil genius Karl Rove will likely manage to prevent that.

As a side note, I have to say that the post debate conversation on AM radio was entirely pathetic. It left me with a craving for the blogosphere I stronger than I have ever felt. Compared to the jackassery running rampant over the AM dial, I would even have been happy watching Chris Matthews on Hardball. Callers to talk shows are almost universally ideologically driven incarnate talking points. Not one in ten actually said anything about the debate per se, instead merely repeating DNC and RNC party lines. Dreadful.

Something to raise the ire of our beloved Ross and the economic question, by way of relatively-new-to-blogging, just-moved-to-DC Clutch Pearls.

The idea shop's subtitle, "Where the dismal science gets groovy" seems like an impossible claim, on the order of Kerry's idea that Republicans will reinstitute the draft. But reading a few of the posts over there, it seems that they are making good their boast.

This is really, really goddamned funny.

[wik] Iowahawk's list of suggested Kerry campaign slogans is also a bit of a hoot. I liked these:

Projecting American Strength Through Intricately Complex Nuance

Those Atrocity Stories? Dude, I Was Just Shitting You

Fear Not, America, I Have Deigned to Lead You

The Next Time America is Attacked, I Promise To Open Up a Carafe of Whupass

In regards to GeekLethal's post, a necessary precursor to worrying about what to do once you've received a singing telegram from ET is worrying whether you have a telegraph machine to receive telegrams with.

I think that worrying about ET's message is pointless. It is clear that hyper-advanced aliens, wise with the knowledge of the eons, will completely endorse my worldview. Therefore, to prepare for their arrival, attend to my words and all will be well.

The fact that reasonably thorough searches of the sky have completely failed to reveal the existence of radio broadcasting, Dan Rather in the sky aliens leads us to several potential scenarios, all of which rather undercut SETI as it currently exists.

1) The cool aliens don't use radio. If we are going to be accepted by our social betters, we must move beyond attempting to speak with a hick accent on the radio waves. Quantum entanglement, even with our current, limited understanding of the laws of nature, holds open a possibility of FTL communication. Other quantum high wierdness may also be infinitely more efficient than radio. Some heretics even believe that relativity may be incomplete, and that gravity may propagate significantly faster than light. We have only recently become even marginally technologically competent. By galactic standards, we were born yesterday, and slept in late today for good measure. Are we to imagine that radio is the ne plus ultra of communication techniques forever?

2) There are no aliens, cool or otherwise. This would certainly explain why we haven't gotten any dancing ape telegrams on the white house lawn. It would be reassuring in some regards to know that we have the galaxy to ourselves. Given the rate at which we have lately been discovering planets, its feels unlikely to me that there is no one else out there, anywhere.

3) There is some compelling reason that the aliens are not communicating at all. Long time readers will know about the novel Killing Star, which set outs the Central Park analogy for life in the galaxy:

Imagine you're alone and unarmed in Central Park at night. From where you are, weapons are concealed and intentions hard to discern. The very last thing you do is wander around shouting, "I'm here! That could attract the attention of decidedly unsavory types. What do you do? You hunker down, keep quiet; and wait for a policeman to come round or for daylight and walk out of the park. However, there are several unfortunate differences between the universe and Central Park:

1. There's no policeman
2. You can't leave the park
3. Night never ends

If this scenario even remotely approximates reality, sending signals into space is just about the stupidest thing we could imagine doing. It's painting a bullseye on your chest, and screaming, "Shoot me!"

I don't think that SETI is at all likely to detect any signals. The energy cost to send a radio broadcast that would be coherent at distances greater than a few lightyears is absolutely enormous. And if aliens are sending narrowcast sigals, we would only pick them up by the thinnest of chances. The only remotely plausible radio broadcast would be the nearby deathshout of a species that had been wacked a la Killing Star, and no longer had anything to lose. At that stage, stealth is no longer a priority and having some memory of your existence better than no existence at all.

Life on this planet is scary enough. I don't think that life throughout the galaxy is going to be the big rock candy mountain, either. As we develop the technology to start moving around outside the cradle, we will have to be more than a little cautious.

Howard Wolfson, a representative of the DNC, was just interviewed on Fox News. He was attempting to explain how a Kerry-run Iraq war would ease the burden on the United States. Fox News' Linda Vester asked for details. How, exactly would Kerry do this? I kid you not, the man said, "We can bring in our allies." Vester: "Like who?" Wolfson: "Like France."

You could hear the entire audience doubling over in laughter.