Two degrees of Henry Kissinger

Gibbons vs. a gibbon, next on The Weakest Link

Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV)--whose last name is also the name of any of several small arboreal apes of the genus Hylobates of southeast Asia and the East Indies, having a slender body, long arms, and no tail with an IQ commensurate to the congressman's--has refused to appologize for proposing that "those liberals, tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, hippie, tie-dyed liberals... go make their movies and whine somewhere else." Where's somewhere else? According to this simian-brained Nevadian, they should be used as "human shields" in Iraq.

His reason for not apologizing: "It was all said for the soldiers. I support our troops, and don't apologize for that."

UPDATED TO ADD: Apparently there's a blog called Vote Gibbons Out! I hope they're talking about the congressman and not the adorable primates of equal intelligence.

Also, Gibbons vitriolic speech appears to be plagiarized. Check out Eschaton.

The Court and the Commandments

Excerpts from today's arguments:

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor: It's so hard to draw that line. If the legislature can open its own sessions attended by the public with a prayer, you say it cannot, in the same building, display the Ten Commandments.

Chemerinsky: That's right, because the message from the government is quite different. The message with legislative prayers, as this Court found in Chambers v. Marsh, is a recognition of a long historical practice. But when it comes to the Ten Commandments, it really is different than even a legislative prayer. This declares not only there is a God, but that God has proclaimed rules for behavior. The Ten Commandments come from sacred texts.

So true. In fact, there's never really been a historical practice of displaying the Ten Commandments in government buildings. One of the displays in question, for example, was donated to the State of Texas by Cecille B. DeMille as a way to promote his movie, The Ten Commandments. But the behavioral point is a good one too. While the vague prayer sessions that usually start legislative proceedings, as well as the proclamation before any Supreme Court session, don't really endorse any religion, or religion at all, simply the existence of God. The Ten Commandments are a lot more specific.

Justice John Paul Stevens: Would it equally be permissible to have a crucifix of the same size in the same location on the Capitol grounds?

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott: I seriously question whether or not a crucifix would be constitutionally acceptable in that same location, and for the very same reasons which I'm articulating why the Ten Commandments would be acceptable in this location. The crucifix is not like the Ten Commandments in that it's not an historically recognized symbol of law. It doesn't send a secular message to all the people, regardless of whether they are believers or not believers of the important role the Ten Commandments have played in the development of law.

Justice Scalia: It's not a secular message. I mean, if you're watering it down to say that the only reason it's OK is it sends nothing but a secular message, I can't agree with you. I think the message it sends is that our institutions come from God. And if you don't think it conveys that message, I just think you're kidding yourself.

Again, the Ten Commandments are not a "historically recognized symbol of law" in the United States. Show me in the Declaration of Independence, or in the Constitution, the part that references the Ten Commandments. Those documents purposely distance themselves from the Ten Commandments. Remember that the original draft of the Declaration of Independence read "we hold these truths to be sacred" and it was Benjamin Franklin who convinced Jefferson to change it to self-evident to distance the new republic from religion, which they thought wasn't too far off from divine right and tyranny.

Support for Bush’s Social Security plan

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press:
46 percent, down from 54 percent in December
53 percent of respondents trust the AARP over the president
Only three in 10 people approve of Bush’s plan
65 percent feel the president has not explained his proposal clearly enough

CNN-USA Today:
Only 35 percent approve of the plan, that’s down from 43 percent only three weeks ago

AP:
39 percent approve of the plan

Can't say it surprises me....

From Yahoo News:

U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond and his staff tried to get the FBI to build a case against civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 on the grounds that King was "controlled by communists," according to a recently released FBI memo on the late senator from South Carolina.

I know he fucked black chicks, but I wonder if he ever fucked any rotten doctor commie rats?

Matthew Yglesias, your secret is out

Look at this picture:

This is ostensibly a picture of the very talented and successful blogger Matthew Yglesias, but look closer and you will notice an uncanny, undeniable resemblense to Erneste "Che" Guevara. Of course, this couldn't be Che because he was killed 40 years ago in the jungles of Bolivia, and it couldn't be an old picture of Che because of the anachronistic presence of a laptop computer in the shot, not to mention the empty bottle of Gatorade.

My theory: Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and the ubiquitious Dr. Mengele got together to clone Che a la The Boys from Brazil. You will remember the defunct revolutionary's remains were returned to Cuba not long ago--you think all the Cubans did was bury him? The clone's purpose: attend Harvard, become an influential blogger and insidiously change American foreign policy from inside the blogosphere. And he would have gotten away with it if AGI hadn't outed him.

Yeah, I know. It's a silly post. But I'm bored at work.

Minor Crime

The Supreme Court has barred the execution of minors (USAT). (The court had banned the execution of those 15 and under; this decision adds ages 16 and 17 to the ban.) The decision was 5-4 with Scalia, Rehnquist, Thomas and surprisingly, Sandra Day O'Connor voting to uphold states' right to decide in the matter. The whole transcript of the decision is not up yet, but parts of Scalia's dissent are:

The court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: 'In the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty.'

The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation's moral standards.

Scalia has been making the same Eighth and Ninth Amendment argument for 20 years. But you know what, I don't care. I'd rather the court be arbiter of the nation's moral standards than the state of Florida.

Real regime change

Hiatus over. I need to post about this.

Real regime change comes from inside. I’m not going to get into a semantics argument, but at least we can all agree that it’s less likely to generate an insurgent movement.

We’re now seeing the second such movement of the year in Lebanon (the first one being Yushchenko’s Orange Revolution). Anyway, it appears that the government has collapsed under pressure from popular demonstrations in Beirut and opposition in parliament. This is the kind of regime change Americans need to be encouraging but it always seems to happen without us even knowing that it’s about to.

I suppose one could make the argument that the American intervention in Iraq has encouraged opposition parties to antagonize their governments but I don’t know how valid that is. It’s the kind of self-congratulatory argument that takes credit away from the actual people that faced down oppression. I love it when stupid people parrot out the notion that Reagan ended the Cold War and defeated the Soviet Union. What about the fucking people that stood in front of scores of tanks for days while Reagan, half amnesiac half narcoleptic, was taking mid-afternoon naps?

The U.S. can only assist such movements. And now it needs to foster democracy in Lebanon with surgeon-like precision.

Lebanon is the most liberal Arab country. How liberal? In the Arab world this question answered in by looking at the women of the country. Look at the picture below. Had you no auxiliary information, where would you think these women were from? Najaf or Cleveland? (Also, look at their hands, what do they want? In this context, is that not the most poignant hand gesture you've ever seen?

If that doesn't convince you, then maybe this brief account by an Egyptian friend upon returning from Lebanon will: "you can buy porn in Beirut!"

But it could easily go the other way. This is not an American victory, and it certainly is not an Israeli victory. The Israeli and the Syrians are so pitted against one another that every surrounding country has become a stage for their antagonism. And many innocent Lebanese died because of this. This is a Lebanese victory that Americans and Israelis need to support, while only making sure that there's no outside influence (including from our governments). The Lebanese, if left alone--and they've wanted nothing more for decades--will make the right decision.

A quick word from a supposedly busy man

I've been on a posting hiatus for the past two or three days. I'll start posting when I start liking my job again--or when I am not expected to do actual work at, ahem, work.

My point: Alex Segura Jr., a contributor to AGI, and the man responsible for The Great Curve and its overnight success , has started a blog chronicling the hilarity of his everyday life--I am not being sarcastic. Check it, it's a good one.

Go Westerberg, young man

Though I'm a bit loath to link to Billboard, the mag's site did announce that Paul Westerberg's first -- and coolest -- band, the Replacements, will see their albums reissued in the near future. Despite a link to Westerberg's site that doesn't really take you anywhere, the story also reveals something more about the former 'Mats lead singer/guitarist:

Paul Westerberg will be the subject of a solo retrospective this spring via Rhino. According to the artist's official Web site, the 20-track set will feature two new songs, B-sides and rare tracks, Westerberg's soundtrack contributions and highlights from his post-Replacements releases.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. My initial reaction was to scoff at another unwarranted and truthfully unnecessary compilation/best-of/box set/whatever-the-fuck. But if Toto can get the magic treatment, why not Paul, arguably one of the 10 best band leaders in rock history? Hell, everyone likes 14 Songs. I'd argue, though, that Westerberg's most innovative post-Replacements work doesn't even feature his name. Do yourself a favor and check out his wonderfully stripped-down work with pseudo-rock outfit Grandpaboy. Westerberg plays all the instruments, sure, but this is the closest he's come to reigniting the glory that was The Replacements.

And for those on the pointless reunion watch, Westerberg recently revealed he'd written a song with former 'Mats bassist Tommy Stinson for the film Elizabethtown.

But I wouldn't hold your breath:

And while the likelihood of a Replacements reunion remains slim ("It can't be the Replacements without Chris [Mars] the drummer, and he's moved on into art and doesn't really want to come back," Westerberg told Jones), a host of reissues are in the works.

Come to me, all you rabble-rousing academic plutocrats!

The best essay I've read about the Ward Churchill vs Bill O'Reilly kerfuffle appeared in this week's Village Voice. Illinois State University professor Curtis White argues that Churchill and O'Reilly are bound to one another, a blustering Judas Iscariot and Jesus of Nazareth, hostages of a socio-economic system without which they couldn't profit. This is not, needless to say, an observation of world-historic originality (paging Borges and Wilde), but sometimes the most obvious points need stressing:

This is not something Americans should fault him for. In all of these ways he is quite typically American. He's movin' on up, for God's sake. He is in the most unexceptional way a whore to the system he claims to hate. He, too, is a Good German. We all are. In the end, we go to work, do what's expected of us (even if that means just assigning grades), and accept our paycheck (and a nice six-figure thing that can be for a full professor at a flagship institution like Colorado, and you get to live in Boulder!). Worst of all, at the end of the year we pay our taxes, which we know are going toward things that would break our hearts to witness. And we have little choice but to continue to do these things

It's mildly gratifying to read an academic with a grain of modesty.

And the World's Most Mean-Spirited Music Critic Award goes to....

Dom Passantino of Stylus magazine. Here's the first sentence of his review of Tori Amos's latest, The Beekeeper:

I'm going to hell anyway, so I may as well come out and say what you’d be thinking if you sat all the way through Tori Amos’ career from Y Kant Tori Read to The Beekeeper: the only way that we’re going to get a good album from her in this day and age is if someone has the decency to abduct and kill her daughter.

Points also for misspelling Beekeeper in the second paragraph, and finally getting to what amounts to quite a flaccid review of the cd in the penultimate paragraph. Keep 'em coming, Dom!

Road Kill Gummi Candy, nuff said.

Points go to Kraft for gross-out chewables:

The fruity-flavored Trolli Road Kill Gummi Candy — in shapes of partly flattened snakes, chickens and squirrels — fosters cruelty toward animals, according to the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Doesn't beat Testa-Mints for originality, though...

All Hail Darth Pope!

I just know the bastards at Vatican City are gonna build a faster, stronger Pope, somehow....

VATICAN CITY The health of Pope John Paul II took a serious turn for the worst Thursday as a tracheotomy was performed on him to ease troubled breathing, which forced his second emergency hospitalization in a month....

I wonder who's gonna play the part of Yoda?

Only if you're gentle, Rep. Cadman...

Choice words by Rep. Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, to Rep. Val Vigil, D-Thornton, courtesy of Rocky Mountain News:

"If you try that again, I'll ram my fist up your ass."

Oh, those reppies and their potty mouths....

This Gannon/Guckert thing is not even fun anymore

Gannon/Guckert on the Today show. Stolen from AMERICAblog; the complete transcript can be found at MSNBC:

Brown: You have said that you registered a number of pornographic Web sites. Is that accurate?

Gannon: Well, I registered a number of domain names, that some have suggested are…

Brown: Pornographic Web sites.

Gannon: Well, yes.

Brown: Did you advertise yourself as a gay, male escort for hire on a Web site?

Gannon: I cannot go into those specifics. I can tell you that there is a lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot of fabrication out there, and a lot of misinformation.

Brown: Why can't you then clear it up right now? The cameras are rolling.

Gannon: As I've said, I've been advised not to get into the specifics out there. Is there some truth out there? Yes. Is there a lot of falsehood out there? Absolutely.

Does anyone know why Alas, a Blog is no longer up? That was a good blog.

Hitch on HST

From Christopher Hitchens obit on Hunger S. Thompson. Bringing out the Dead indeed:

"He was never one to hang around when it was time to go," a mutual friend e-mailed me on Monday. The realization that this might have occurred to him before it occurred to us is a very melancholy one.

NEWS SO BREAKING IT'S BROKEN!!!!!

The Pope's still a spazz, but a spazz with a recurring case of the heebeejeebees.

"I Support the Occupation of Iraq, But I Don't Support Our Troops"

From The Onion (thank you Liza):

The U.S. went to war in Iraq to remove an evil and dangerous political adversary from power. Now that we have done that, the American troops must remain in Iraq until the country is a fully functioning democracy, able to spark change throughout the entire Middle East. While I find this obvious, there are still a lot of people in our country who fail to grasp it. I support Bush-administration foreign-policy goals, but I stand firmly against the individual men and women on the ground in the Persian Gulf.
Yes, occupying Iraq does require troops, but they are there for one reason and one reason only: to carry out the orders of the U.S. Defense Department. As far as their overall importance goes, they are no more worthy of our consideration than a box of nails. Ribbons and banners in ostensible "support" of the troops miss the whole point of the invasion, which is to gain a strategic hold over that volatile and lucrative geopolitical region.

How do you expect to be taken seriously?

Me on the Pet Shop Boys in Stylus Magazine. I wish they were still as consistently funny as this.

BREAKING NEWS!!!

The Pope's a spazz.

In "Memory and Identity," the Pope also calls abortion a "legal extermination" comparable to attempts to wipe out Jews and other groups in the 20th century....

In one section about the role of lawmakers, the Pope takes another swipe at gay marriages when he refers to "pressures" on the European Parliament to allow them.

"It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man," he writes.

Does the Dalai Lama also hate homos?

Toothless poodle

It's unfortunate that Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants is merely serviceable entertaiment instead of classic. James Wolcott's blog and Vanity Fair column are a delight; his prose is erudite and demotic, worthy of someone who admires Pauline Kael.

Attack Poodles goes after easy targets: the mediacracy whose members publish in the New York Times (Brooks, Dowd), the Washington Post (Krauthammer, Broder), and populate scores of cable talk shows (rattle off the list: Wolf Blitzer, George Will, Cokie Roberts, Fred Barnes, Bill O'Reilly, etc). To whom is this book addressed? All that distinguishes Attack Poodles from the left-wing/right-wing screeds piled on bookstore remaindered tables is Wolcott's prose, which in this book is distressing. Let's see: cliches and facile alliteration (Mickey Kaus "slices and dices" Hillary's "sallow soul"); description worthy of Mickey Spillane paperbacks (Of Max Boot: "He has the soft cheeks of a baby-faced killer and a byline that spells danger."); lazy thinking (he calls Ann Coulter "the Paris Hilton of postmodern politics" after reminding attack poodles that "pop-cult patter dates fast"); and an obtuse reverence for old fellas like Walter Cronkite and Helen Thomas ("an unglamorous reminder of a more civic, idealistic era," ahem). Irreverence and sentimentality are a nauseous mix, even for sallow souls.

Kael and Wolcott's other idol Gore Vidal would have yawned and asked Jimmy for a drink. A pity.

A Dean, mean, fighting machine

John Nichols comments on the "election" of former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean to lead the DNC. He says:

With the selection of Howard Dean as its chairman, the 213-year-old Democratic Party has become something it has not been for a long time: exciting.

...unlike past DNC chairs, Dean won't have to scream for attention. Taking over as chairman of a party that is locked out of the White House and unable to muster anything more than a "minority leader" to flex its legislative muscle, Dean has positioned himself as the most camera-ready Democrat in the country.

This is fairly accurate. People are excited, sure. And Dean will definitely be one of the most visible Dems around. But is that a sign that the Democrats are inching closer to a solution, or fueling the problem? Let's try this. Step back for a second and tell me who the chairman of the GOP is. Could you name him without clicking on my oh-so-technologically-savvy embedded link? Exactly.

Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson sums up the pro-Dean sentiment when he says Dean will "bring new spirit and new energy to the party, the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time."

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to pooh-pooh the ascension of Dean. I personally like the guy. He was my early choice in the primaries. I think he will do some good for the party, and maybe slap some sense into "veteran" Democrats still posing at the Republican look alike contest. If anything, he can help get a party once known for it's strong ties to the working class and minorities away from the corporate puppet masters and back to the liberal, grass roots efforts that make younger voters gravitate to the Green Party. At least that's the ideal.

But the DNC chair can't do everything. Not in the fashion Nichols suggests. Especially since he won't be running for president in 2008. Making someone who won't be a candidate your most visible and vocal party member kind of poses a problem.

So, who's left? Certainly not John Kerry or John Edwards. That's the bigger question. Because in the end, people didn't think about Terry MCauliffe when casting their votes in 2004, and they won't be thinking about Howard Dean in 2008.

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, R.I.P.

The best Cuban novelist of the last 50 years died yesterday afternoon. He was much an irritant to the Castro regime as Hunter S. Thompson was to Nixon, except that Cabrera lived under the constant threat of assassination. Go read tres tristes tigres now.

Good article from NYT on Cuban independent libraries and their supporters stateside.

In this ever changing world in which we live in...

The music blogs I frequent have torn a new one in Andrew Sullivan for this mawkish drivel, in which he blames iPods for the increasing atomization of society. In pronouncements that rival Nick Hornby's for sheer bathetic generalization, Sullivan informs us that it takes a village (a global one?) to raise a child:

Music was once the preserve of the living room or the concert hall. It was sometimes solitary but it was primarily a shared experience, something that brought people together, gave them the comfort of knowing that others too understood the pleasure of a Brahms symphony or that Beatles album.

Guess Sullivan's been too busy tittering with the other Beltway corpses on "The Chris Matthews Show" to attend concerts. Or hasn't tossed out the Walkman and Discman taking up space on his closet shelves.

Say Nope to Dope

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200502/s1306960.htm

We all agree that Doug Wead has an unfortunate name, but do his tapes accomplish anything other than to make him seem weasely and untrustworthy, and Bush touchingly concerned about his role as a leader?

Thirty-Ought-Six Salute!

HST was a linkage, a nodal point deserving one final hurrah here on A Grand Illusion.

From NYT:

Mr. Thompson managed to live and write his own version of the Heisenberg principle: That the observer not only changes events by his presence, but his presence also frequently surpasses the event in terms of importance.

Slainte!

The political dance that no one watches

I link to The Herald only because I first came across this story while editing on the night desk. Apparently, failed Democratic (or "Demmie," as some seem to say around these parts) VP candidate John Edwards might not perform the same bow-and-back-off maneuver that fellow failure Joe Leiberman vowed to do in 2004 for former running mate Al Gore. Could we see Edwards facing off against ticket-buddy John Kerry?

EDWARDS WON'T STEP ASIDE FOR KERRY
RALEIGH -- Former vice presidential candidate John Edwards will not talk about whether he plans to run for the White House in 2008, but he is not pledging to stand aside if running mate John Kerry tries again. Edwards said in an interview aired Sunday on ABC's This Week that he and Kerry have talked often since they lost in November.

Seriously folks, who cares? Aside from playing second fiddle to Barbara Boxer during the at-times-interesting-but-largely-irrelevant Condi Rice Secretary of State confirmation hearings, has Kerry really made enough noise for anyone to tab him the Democratic frontrunner? I mean, sure, he's shown a tad of humanity (which would have been really keen during the presidential campaign) since his loss, but what does that add up to? Not much, except a few bits of interesting trivia. Let's face it. It's very unlikely Kerry -- or Gore, for that matter -- will pull a Dick Nixon and win the presidency on the second or third try. America doesn't like losers. At least not Democratic ones.

And more importantly, back to Edwards, will the former senator even merit more than a blip on the political radar even if he manages the near-impossible feat of recapturing the lightning in a bottle he had during the 2004 primaries? Doubtful. So, in essence, Edwards has tried to make this bit of non-news into something that could light the few twigs still lying around the 2004 Campaign campfire. I can't blame him. He'll probably have a lot of spare time on his hands for the next few years.