SENDING A MESSAGE

They've had some time to think about it, and they want to get back together:

The Iraqi government issued a plea on Wednesday to former junior officers in Saddam Hussein's military who were sacked by the U.S. occupiers after his fall to return to the army as it battles a fierce Sunni Arab insurgency.

Six weeks before an election, there may be a political as well as practical security motive behind the move; the loss of army pay has been a major source of discontent among Saddam's fellow minority Sunni Arabs, who dominated the officer corps.

Within weeks of Saddam's fall in April 2003, U.S. administrator Paul Bremer disbanded at a stroke Iraq's 400,000- strong armed forces and security agencies. U.S. officials said it simply formalized the fact that the army had evaporated in the aftermath of the war, with soldiers deserting en masse.

Bush claims that setting a timetable for U.S. withdrawal would embolden our enemies, whereas pleading for Saddam's officers to come back to the Iraqi Army is sure to scare the shit out of them.

AL SHAMSHOONS

The Simpsons are "culturally adapted" for the Middle East.

As with any family moving to the Arab world from the West, "The Simpsons" quickly discovered they'd need to make some adaptations to their lives if they were to connect with the natives. First, they would change their names - the family now called Al-Shamshoons; the father, once Homer, now goes by Omar; his mischievous son Bart, now Badr.

There would be fundamental changes to their lifestyles as well. Omar, once a fan of tossing back a few beers with friends, now goes to the club or the ahwa (coffee shop) and sips on sodas and juice. The list goes on. Donuts have been replaced by kakh (Arabic cookies); bacon is done away with altogether as it is against Islam; and the kids, once a rowdy bunch of conniving delinquents, are still just as cunning but mind their manners with their parents a bit more.

Hmm, Homer without bacon...

LA PETITE

This is one of the greatest headlines ever.

Sociopathic elephant exiled to Israeli barn after murderous past

Ostracized by her herd, La Petite is looking to pack her trunk and move to a new home.

The 19-year-old elephant with a checkered past -- she killed her first baby and is suspected of killing a handler -- failed to fit in at a British zoo, and now is having trouble at an Israeli safari park.

Suspected? What, they couldn't put her at the scene? A giraffe and a lemur confirmed her alibi that they were all at the movies together at the time? Sure. Right. These sociapathic elephants, man. They're mean and they're clever. And they think ahead. Wouldn't be surprised of the giraffe and lemur have disappeared. Have you tried contacting them? Hmm, yeah. They're probably part of the foundation of some house now.

I'm imagining the L&O episode.

WAITING FOR GOOFBALL

Dave Niewert starts getting his engine warm for Jonah's new book.

Jonah Goldberg's new book represents both a special problem, as well as a special opportunity, because of the Newspeak that its title -- "Liberal Fascism" -- represents. Goldberg, in the Newspeak tradition, is not just negating the meaning of both "liberal" and "fascism", but he's providing cover for a conservative movement that, evidently, is intent on adopting fascism as the essence of its agenda.

This is what makes his book the ultimate Newspeak: Newspeak is one of the earmarks of the budding fascist -- and what better way to bud further than to accuse your opponent of engaging in precisely the politics you intend to pursue?

And yet. And yet: What better way, really, to expose the nature of the conservative beast than to let conservatives bring up the subject of fascism?

COLE

Interview with Juan Cole over at HNN.

BUTTERNUT SQUASH GRATIN

Never before have vegetables tasted so much like dessert. Made it last night. You should try it. (Note: No need to pre-cook the spinach, it will wilt sufficiently when added to the simmering cream.)

AN ENEMY OF DECENCY

Mr. Sunshine declares Brent Scowcroft an enemy of decency for his criticism of the Iraq War.

Even today Scowcroft says, "I didn't think that calling the Soviet Union the 'evil empire' got anybody anywhere." Tell that to Natan Sharansky and other Soviet dissidents for whom that declaration of moral -- beyond geopolitical -- purpose was electrifying, and helped galvanize the dissident movements that ultimately brought down the Soviet empire.

It was not brought down by diplomacy and arms control, the preferred realist means for dealing with the Soviet Union. It was brought down by indigenous revolutionaries, encouraged and supported by Ronald Reagan, a president unabashedly dedicated not to detente with evil, but its destruction -- i.e., regime change.

While I suppose it's significant that as doctrinaire a Reagan-humper as Krauthammer would actually admit that the Evil Empire did not collapse at a mighty wave of Reagan's steely phallu--err, missiles, you simply can't separate dissident movements from the diplomacy and peace movements of the time, which conservatives, then as now, constantly sniped at. Diplomatic efforts like the 1975 Helsinki Agreement, and the networks created by American and Western European democratic and anti-nuclear activists in its wake, are acknowledged as having provided integral support to the dissident movements which Krauthammer credits. Of course, it's essential that conservatives ignore this in order to continue arguing that what the Middle East really needs is a good beating.

And how perversely perfect of Charles to pick as his standard bearer of freedom Natan Sharansky, a man who, having escaped Soviet oppression, has remade himself into an abject apologist for Israel's oppression of Palestinians.

MERRY FITZMAS

Libby indicted on 5 (count 'em!) counts, resigns. I must admit the waiting is delicious.

EL-ERIAN

Al Jazeera interviews Essam el-Erian, a recently released member of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

PHILIP ROTH PLAZA

Philip Roth finally gets what every author secretly pines for, a plaza named after him.

WITHDRAWAL VS. ENDURING BASES

John Kerry, a year late:

Kerry expressed regret yesterday about his vote to authorize the war, telling the audience: "I understand that as much as we might wish it, we can't rewind the tape of history." He added that he accepted responsibility for his vote but that at that time, he was not aware of the "full measure of the Bush administration's duplicity and incompetence."

Kerry is the highest profile Democrat thus far to come out in favor of a phased withdrawal from Iraq, which I think has been the obvious course for some time. Unfortunately, the good effects of any such decision by the administration will be undercut by the fact that the U.S. military is building four large "enduring bases" there. (more here)

IF YOU'RE A VEGETARIAN, DON'T GET A JOB COOKING AT SIZZLER

LGM and others have been monitoring the developing story of pharmacists at Target stores refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception because of religious beliefs, and Target's defense of this on civil rights grounds. Nice try. Not only will that dog not hunt, that dog's a chair.

CHENEY'S WORLD

Dick Cheney has offered a plan which would make Sen. McCain's proposed ban on torture essentially meaningless.

The proposal, which two sources said Vice President Cheney handed last Thursday to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the company of CIA Director Porter J. Goss, states that the measure barring inhumane treatment shall not apply to counterterrorism operations conducted abroad or to operations conducted by "an element of the United States government" other than the Defense Department.

Hmm, so the executive branch would continue to have the authority to declare almost anyone beyond the scope of the legislation. No doubt Cheney would characterize this as a "compromise." Here's hoping McCain stays strong.

MY JUNK EMAIL ASKS...

Whopper or Big Mac? This is kind of tough, because although I do not eat at either Burger King or McDonald's very often, there are rare occasions when almost nothing else will do, such as when I'm on a long road trip or deep in the bowels of a research paper.

It's like this: When a Whopper is good, it beats a Big Mac with a Big Stick. But compared to McDonald's Burger King is very hit or miss. Four times out of five you'll get a soggy bun, brownish lettuce, and too much mayo. A Big Mac, on the other hand, pretty much always tastes like a Big Mac, no matter where you are. This is why I enjoy eating in McDonald's in other countries, not because the food is so yummy, though to be honest sometimes it really hits the spot, but because I'm just so darn impressed, and a little frightened, by the global uniformity of it all. Moscow, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Frankfurt, Jerusalem, yes, friends, after a long, hard day of espionage and/or searching for ancient artifacts and/or deftly eluding capture by Nazis/Communists/narco-terrorists/autograph seekers, it's great to know that I can hunker down with a Combo Number 5 and be completely unsurprised.

That said, I'll take a Dick's Deluxe over either a Big Mac or a Whopper.

COMPENSATION

Israel has reversed its policy toward the Arab Israeli victims of August 4's terror attack by a Jewish extremist. Their families will now receive compensation, just as do Jewish Israeli victims of Palestinian attacks.

The quasi-governmental Jewish Agency announced Sunday that it would pay compensation for the first time to the families of Arab Israelis who have been victims of a Jewish "act of terrorism."

The relatives of four Israeli Arabs shot dead on August 4 by a Jewish extremist, who had hoped to sabotage the pullout of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip, will receive 100,000 shekels ($22,000), the agency said.

"We have decided not to make any distinction between victims of whoever resorted to terrorism," the agency's director Zeev Beilsky told public radio.

The agency has previously paid out funds to some 3,000 families who have suffered as a result of attacks carried out during the five-year Palestinian uprising.

UMM, YEAH...

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison on yesterday's Meet The Press regarding the possible indictments of Libby and Rove:

I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars.

Hmm, like an investigation of a real estate deal that eventually resulted in impeachment for lying about a consensual sexual relationship? I don't know what's more disturbing, that Hutchison can say something like this without cracking a smile, or that she might actually believe it's consistent with her support for the Starr investigation. One of the very few upsides to the Bush presidency is that it has provided Republican after Republican the opportunity to demonstrate a complete lack of principles.

PHAIR

Liz Phair's performance of God Bless America in yesterday's Game 1 may not have been the worst I've ever heard, but...no, it was the worst I've ever heard.

BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN

This month Billion Dollar Brain(1967), the third film in the Harry Palmer spy series, was finally released on DVD. I'd never seen it before, and had been bugging my video store guy about it for years. (Turns out the hold up was because the film originally contained Beatles music in one scene, and licensing the tune for video release was prohibitively expensive. So they eventually just took that brief scene out.)

Serious fans of the spy movie genre should be familiar with the Harry Palmer films. The first two, The Ipcress File(1965) and Funeral in Berlin(1966), are both good entries made great by Michael Caine's fully inhabiting the role of Palmer, a grouchy, super-intelligent bloke dragooned into the service because, well, he's just so damned good at the work. TIF and FIB both made head fakes toward the counterculture by positioning the surly, working-class Palmer as a counterpoint to the suave, upper-class James Bond (Harry Saltzman was a producer of both film series.) This website puts it beautifully: "When Bond was getting the girl, Palmer was filling out government expense forms in triplicate." Palmer's relationship to his superiors is not one of playful rebellion, as is Bond's, it's one of genuine disdain. He knows he's being sent out there as cannon fodder, but he'll be damned if he'll give them the satisfaction of him dying for his country.

Billion Dollar Brain takes Palmer's alienation and essentially builds a film around it, while still staying within the lines of the 60s spy movie. Directed by Ken Russell (his first feature film), it has an Alice in Wonderland quality, unfolding like a dream, with every event making you shake your head as you reconsider the previous scenes. Each doorway indicates a new reality, the minimally but beautifully designed sets manage to stay just this side of bizarre, and characters make strange little asides as they come and go. Oh, and there's a barbecue picnic in Texas that turns into a Christian-fascist rally. Through it all there's Palmer, looking entirely unimpressed, with little more than his cynicism as defense, quite aware that there's only so much he can do to change the course of events.

There's a certain psychedelic quality to all spy films, given that they deal to such a great extent with questions of identity and perception. Russell takes this to brilliant lengths in BDB, creating one of the most flat-out trippy films I've ever seen. Highly recommended, though you might want to watch the other two first.

BLOGGING THE BUGMAN

Lindsay Beyerstein is blogging Tom DeLay's perp walk.

TDMB

The right evil Raoul Vega has Thursday Deposed Monarch Blogging.

A couple more:
Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani. Emir of Qatar, deposed by his son in 1995. Lived in France for a while, currently kicking it back in Qatar.

Tenzin Gyatso, better known as the Dalai Lama. Ruler of Tibet, deposed by the Chinese in 1959. Travels the world dispensing wisdom and good vibes.

NOONAN!

You can always count on Holy Dolphin Lady:

We make presidents crazy. They receive endless encomiums from friends and staff telling them of their their brilliance, their courage, their foresight. "God sent you to lead us." And the authors of such statements aren't always or even usually sucking up. They mean it. They're excited, fervent, full of belief.

Peggy Noonan Mad Libs:

We make presidents out of liver pate. They receive endless encomiums from friends and staff telling them of their deliciousness, their courage, their creamy consistency. "God sent you to be spread on this cracker." And the authors of such statements aren't always or even usually sucking up. They mean it. They're excited, fervent, full of ground, whipped liver.

ROSS

Dennis Ross offers the interesting suggestion that South Africa should get more involved in Palestinian affairs, while at the same time quibbling with the comparison:

Yasir Arafat loved to equate the Palestinian struggle for statehood with the struggle of South Africans against apartheid, but his was always a false analogy. In South Africa, less than 15 percent of the population controlled all the power and wealth and subjected the other 85 percent to a degrading, inhuman and segregated existence. For the oppressed majority, the answer was not one state for non-whites and one for whites; rather, the goal was justice and majority rule.

Compare that to the Palestinian movement for self-determination. Arabs today remain a minority in the area that encompasses Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. To be sure, given demographic trends, Jews will become a minority in that area within this decade, but even by 2050, Arabs would outnumber Jews by only 60 percent to 40 percent.

I really don't think demography is the pertinent aspect of apartheid, as if segregation and institutionalized racism would have been less despicable if the whites were a majority in South Africa. It certainly didn't make it less despicable when it was practiced in the United States, nor does it now in Israel, where Israeli Arabs live under a form of Jim Crow.

As for the occupied West Bank, the term apartheid is insufficient to describe the condition of 2.5 million Palestinian Arabs corralled within a series of military checkpoints for the benefit of 450,000 Israeli settlers.

Ross is probably right that the Palestinians would benefit from imitating the ANC a bit more, but I reject his root assumption that the Palestinians must prove themselves worthy of their own state, must prove that they deserve to have the military occupation of their land and the daily brutalization of their people ended. This argument would never have flown in regards to South Africa.

---------------

On a side note, though he doesn't specifically mention it, Ross's putting the onus on the Palestinians is of a piece with his efforts over the past few years to cast blame on Arafat and deflect it from Barak and Clinton (and himself) for the failure of the 2000 Camp David summit. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I still run into intelligent people who regurgitate the "Arafat walked away from Barak's generous offer! This proves Arafat didn't really want peace!" line, given that this is virtually the only version on offer in U.S. media. It's simple, it's straightforward, and it safely plays into American assumptions about the reasonableness of people in suits versus the unreasonableness of people in kaffiyehs. It's true that Arafat didn't accept Barak's offer, because that offer was DOA. Arafat knew that Barak would not have been able to sell the offer to his own government, not least because of the opposition of people like Ariel Sharon. Was Arafat wrong not to counter-offer at Camp David? Very probably. Don't get me started on things that Arafat should have done. But the fact remains that Arafat warned the Clinton administration coming into the negotiations that he and his team had not had adequate time to prepare, and that he would not be pressured into accepting a deal. As it was, pressure was brought to bear from the moment Arafat arrived at Camp David. The only thing his refusal of Barak's offer proves was that he paid attention to Israeli politics.

MY JUNK EMAIL ASKS...

Doritos or Cheetos? Come on, that's no contest. It's Cheetos. Along with being a spectacular shade of orange not found in nature, Cheetos crunch at a good three or four times the volume of Doritos. Also, if you hold a Cheeto and a Dorito up next to each other, the Dorito will show fear.

Let us not forget this.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- A motorcade with two sheriff's cars and a fire truck were part of the ceremony that helped unveil a giant Cheeto as a tourist attraction in northwest Iowa. The event culminated with the Cheeto's first live television appearance.

The Cheeto appeared slightly smaller than a tennis ball and dwarfed a regular size piece of the snack food. It weighs only six-tenths of an ounce but has quite a girth, Wilson has said.

The Cheeto will be on permanent display in a glass case at Sister Sarah's Restaurant in Algona.

Frito-Lay, the Texas-based maker of Cheetos, donated items to be auctioned at the event. About $1,600 was raised for the Kossuth County food bank.

Perhaps one day I can make a pilgrimage to Algona and be healed.

THE WORLD'S BIGGEST RACKET

Foreign Policy has this photo essay tracking the path of a diamond, from Sierra Leone to your finger. There is so much that is perverse about the world diamond trade, from the fact that prices are kept artificially high because supply is controlled by the DeBeers cartel, to the fact that, thanks to an almost century-long marketing campaign by DeBeers, Western working-class grooms feel obliged to scrimp and save to buy engagement diamonds dug by desperately poor Africans.

Those of you planning to get married, hear me now: Save the money for the rock, and have a full bar at your wedding instead.

ARABIC

Today's Washington Post has couple of interesting articles about the Arabic language.

The Foreign Service classifies language ability into five levels, with "1" being the lowest (able to handle only the very simplest social situations) and "5" the highest (a level rarely assigned to anyone but a native speaker).

[snip]

No responsible person would ask a 3 to speak before an unfriendly crowd at the local university (or at the embassy gates), much less put a 3 in front of a television camera and expect a clear, engaging and cogent discussion of U.S. Middle East policy in Arabic. For that you need a 4, and preferably a 4+ or a 5. So how many of these 4 and 5 level speakers do we have in Arabic? As of August 2004 -- 27. At the highest levels (4+ and 5), we have a grand total of eight individuals worldwide. (emphasis added)

CRYING AND LAUGHING

Via LGM, a couple of posts from Shakespeare's Sister ask "which movie scenes always make you laugh, which always make you cry?"

Now, I've been known to cry at movies. I've never had a problem suspending disbelief (I'd probably be better off in general if this were harder for me), taking a film on its own terms and getting swept up. Been this way my whole life, except perhaps for a few pretentious years between 15-18. (There's a story of me at 8 years old watching Snoopy Come Home and just wailing over it, and my dad reminding me that I'd watched this show last year, and so I knew that Snoopy in fact did come home.) As Jack Handey said, it takes a big man to cry, and it takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man. At 6' 5", I've rarely ever been laughed at for crying. But it has happened. Anyway, the scenes that always get me:

The Sound of Music, when Christopher Plummer's voice breaks as he sings Edelweiss at the end. There's something very beautiful and moving in the way he breaks down at the thought of his beloved country coming under the Nazi shadow, a patriotism that is neither belligerent nor haughty. (Of course, Edelweiss isn't actually an Austrian folk song, but was written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the musical. It was the last song the two ever wrote together, in fact.)

The Truman Show, when Truman pulls himself together and raises his sail again after Kristof has capsized his boat. Indomitability of the human spirit and all that, plus some of Philip Glass's most sublime music ever.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, pretty much throughout, though the scene near the beginning where Elliot is explaining his stuff to the alien, the scene where Michael curls up amongst the toys as E.T. is dying, and of course the ending are all especially powerful. It's also got John Williams' best score, from way back when he actually wrote new music for each film instead of shamelessly cannibalizing his earlier work. I will spare you (for now!) my longer exegesis on E.T. as a commentary on the absence of God.

Field of Dreams, when Burt Lancaster is congratulated by the ballplayers for having saved the young girl's life. He had wanted so badly to be a ballplayer when he was young, it wasn't to be, and now he is praised by his own heroes for his life's work as a doctor.

As for scenes that always make me laugh, oh there are so many. I think the better question is: What scenes are so funny that they make you laugh as you're walking down the street and just happen to think of them?

Harold and Maude, Harold's sly look into the camera after he has faked his self-immolation and caused his would-be girlfriend to run screaming from the house. The Cat Stevens tune makes it even funnier.

Trading Places, Eddie Murphy's "Do you believe this shit?" look into the camera as the Dukes are explaining the buying and selling of pork futures to Billy Ray: "Bacon, like you might find in a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich." Priceless. (The breaking of the fourth wall is one of my favorite gags, especially when it's done only once in a film.)

Crimes and Misdemeanors, when Woody and his niece are trying to find a taxi, and Woody goes "I think I see a cab. If we run quickly, we can kick the crutch from that old lady and get it."

Blazing Saddles, "Hey, where the white women at?" The insouciant look on Cleavon Little's face.

Young Frankenstein, "SEDAGIVE???!!!" Freaking Gene Wilder, man.

Animal House, the sound and frozen shot of the horse having a heart attack in Dean Wormer's office. I'm even cracking up as I write it.

FASCISM AND THE LEFT

Dave Niewert has a great post on recurring myths about fascism and socialism.

So, let's do a reality check: Both Hitler and Mussolini pretended to have socialist aspirations as part of their propaganda efforts during their rise to power, largely as a way of encouraging working-class support. But they were unquestionably right wing politically by the time they obtained power, and in fact were viciously anti-left-wing as well.

Those who repeat the "Nazis were socialists" claim are, in fact, falling for (and repeating) Nazi propaganda from the 1920s.

Mussolini was indeed an active socialist at the beginning of his political career. But he was remarkable for shifting his alliances and adjusting his ideology accordingly as he climbed the ladder of power; and by the time he had completed his climb, he was an outspoken and lethal anti-socialist.

And I'm very much looking forward to Niewert (along with probably many, many others) eventually taking his red pen to this.

YES, I DISCRIMINATE IN MY COMPASSION

I was at party this past weekend in the beautiful Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle, got into a political discussion with a few people out in the back yard after one woman announced that she had had a breakdown that evening while watching the McLaughlin Group. There had been some debate on the Group about fois gras, over whether the force feeding of ducks and geese in order to swell their livers should continue to be an acceptable practice. This woman was outraged that A) this point should even be debatable, of course no! and B) that the Group would waste time on such a stupid bourgeois subject when there were Important Political Issues much more deserving of attention.

That's fine as far as it goes. Me, I'd have just changed the channel. If I ever watch the McLaughlin Group it's usually only to see what new and fascinating shades of pink Tony Blankley has attempted to match. But I took her point. It did seem a rather frivolous subject for a political talk show. Plus, we had all been drinking, and drunken political rants are fun. Right then, this woman was joined by her friend, and the two ladies began a very animated conversation about Kate Moss and the raw deal she was getting, crucified by the media for her cocaine use. They both were very indignant about the injustice of this. Got that? Kate Moss. I mean, this woman's earlier fois gras rant still echoed down the street, and here she was expressing outrage over the press's treatment of a supermodel.

I mentioned we'd been drinking, right?

Now, I aways get a familiar feeling that lets me know a rant is coming on. Warm sensation in the stomach, pupils dialate, fingertips begin to vibrate slightly, old baseball injury in the right knee goes ding!

When the rant is very good, I go into a sort of trance, and don't remember a thing. I don't remember much about this one, but I think the thrust of it was: "I've got a limited amount of attention and compassion. Call me selfish, but I don't think a pampered, coke-snorting multi-millionaire deserves any of it. And weren't you just complaining about people wasting time on meaningless crap when there are Important Political Issues needing attention?" though of course with many more references and asides and, at one point apparently, me pantomiming the flogging of a Royal Navy sailor by Dick Cheney dressed as the Queen.

Through the rant-smoke still drifting out of my nose, the two ladies stared at me as if I'd offered them a severed human finger on a plate. Thankfully, I had my small dictaphone recording of thunderous applause which I carry for just such occasions. I clicked it on, and said over the cheering, "Well, the people seem to agree with me." Then I went to find a shot of tequila.

ZOD IN 2008

You will kneel.

I'M HONORED

This shiny happy website lists me thusly:

Duss, Matthew: This Seattle, Washington New Age Hippie Jew feels that Israel is an illegal occupier and colonizer. Really? Read this. He also a supporter of far left Jewish group, Brit Tzedek.

Is my writing really that good? Or is it my self-deprecating manner, my vaguely Semitic good looks, or my mania for smoked fish and latkes? As it happens, I am in fact not a member of the tribe, but thanks. I am a supporter of Brit Tzedek V'Shalom though, so they got me there.

The charge of "new age hippie," however, is one I consider worthy of pistols at dawn.

Readers with strong stomachs can follow the "Read this" link to get an idea of the sort of racist historical revisionism which characterizes that website, and which also prevails among many hardcore Zionists. Their central claim, most infamously elucidated in Joan Peters' book From Time Immemorial (which one might call The Bell Curve of Middle East Studies, though that might be giving Peters' work too much credit), is that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people, that the al Nakhba refugees of 1948 were recent Arab immigrants from surrounding regions who had been attracted to Palestine by Jewish enterprise and were "occupying" Jewish ancestral land, and that the Dome of the Rock was actually built in 1947 and specially painted to look "aged" (okay, Peters actually doesn't make that last claim, but it would not be out of place.) The book has been widely discredited, but unfortunately its central thesis, like so many poisonous-but-scholarly-sounding lies which serve to justify bigotry, persists.

COLE

The good professor argues with Bush.

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS

Stacius turned me on to them and I haven't been able to listen to anything else for the past week.

FIVE YEARS AFTER

Bitterlemons has a series of essays reflecting on five years of intifada.

FITAR B'FROST?

David Frost to join al Jazeera.

Sir David is to appear on al-Jazeera International, the pan-Arab news network's new English-language channel, due to be launched next spring.

The Qatar-based channel said Sir David, who broadcast his final Breakfast with Frost programme for the BBC in May, would be among the "key on-air talent".

Sir David was quoted as saying he felt "excitement" about his new role.

BUSH: ON GOD'S ORDERS

In yet another in a series of episodes that could have been specially designed in a lab to offend Muslims:

U.S. President George W. Bush believed that God told him to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, a senior Palestinian official says in a broadcast interview.

The British Broadcasting Corp. On Thursday released an excerpt from an interview with Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Shaath that was part of a series called "Israel and the Arabs." Shaath described his first meeting, in company with Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen, in June 2003.

"President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did. "'And then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq." And I did. "'And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it."'

Abu Mazen told the BBC that, at the same meeting, Bush told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state."

And Karen Hughes was making such progress!

It's not hard to imagine the thought process, using the term loosely of course, that went into this inestimable PR nightmare. I'll bet Bush figured that he could speak and relate to Abu Mazen as a man of faith, completely clueless that his American evangelical "God is my buddy!" approach to religion would certainly be unfamiliar, and very likely offensive, to Mazen. Also, over the past 1400 years Muslims have had some experience with war in the name of God, and it's rarely been very enjoyable. Would it be indelicate to suggest that it's high time someone grabbed the president by his head and screamed this into his face?

As for Bush "getting" the Palestinians a state (after they've agitated, struggled, and suffered for one for more than half a century) well, that's really sweet of him. Of course, by the time Bush makes good on this, Palestine will probably consist of a few isolated, extremely overcrowded Arab enclaves amidst a matrix of Israeli settlements and bypass roads, settlements which Bush himself gave the green light to continue building. But it will be a state, just like Iraq and Afghanistan are democracies, so quit complaining.

UPDATE: The SF Chronicle has more.

"One of the biggest problems the Bush administration has is the translation of American Christian culture to the world, and specifically to Muslim countries," said commentator Micah D. Halpern, author of "What You Need to Know About: Terror."

"It's not that these societies are foreign to Christians, it's just that the Christianity that Bush embraces is not the Christianity that these Muslim countries see at home," Halpern said. "In that mistranslation, his message is ballooned out of proportion. One of America's biggest diplomatic mistakes is their lack of understanding of local Muslim and Arab cultures abroad. You can't just throw out the word God and assume that everyone's on the same page."

NOONAN!

Holy Dolphin Lady never disappoints:

What everyone forgets about the case of Robert Bork in his confirmation hearings is that regular people watched him, listened to the workings of his fabulous and exotic mind, saw the intensity, the hunger for intellectual engagement, caught the whiff of brandy and cigars and angels dancing, noticed the unusual hair, the ambivalent whiskers, and thought, "Who's this weirdo?"

I...I...oh.

New feature: Peggy Noonan Mad Libs (which is how I suspect she writes anyway)

What everyone forgets about the bootleg video of Robert Bork in his shower is that regular people watched him, listened to the workings of his fabulous and exotic colon, saw the intensity, the hunger for spicy beef short ribs, caught the whiff of fire and brimstone and women dying of illegal back-alley abortions, noticed the unusual sideburns in the shape of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the ambivalent hygiene, and thought, "Who's frying eggs?"

Maybe Rob, Erik, and Lance would like to play.

WHATWHATWHAT?

Shorter John Cornyn:

Harriet Miers is a qualified nominee because she was a trial lawyer.

VERY METAL

Seen on the bus yesterday: Scruffy young dude listening to extreme heavy metal on those old-style headphones, young lady sits down next to him, he reaches into his backpack and withdraws a canister of whipped cream, says to her, all serious: "Would you like some whipped cream?" She declines, and he proceeds to spray whipped cream into his mouth for the next few blocks.

Maybe that move has worked for him in the past, I don't know.

LENIN

What to do with an old tyrant's cadaver?

For eight decades he has been lying in state on public display, a cadaver in a succession of dark suits, encased in a glass box beside a walkway in the basement of his granite mausoleum. Many who revere him say he is at peace, the leader in repose beneath the lights. Others think he just looks macabre.

Time has been unkind to Lenin, whose remains here in Red Square are said to sprout occasional fungi, and whose ideology and party long ago fell to ruins. Now the inevitable question has returned. Should his body be moved?

Revisiting a proposal that thwarted Boris N. Yeltsin, who faced down tanks but in his time as president could not persuade Russians to remove the Soviet Union's founder from his place of honor, a senior aide to President Vladimir V. Putin raised the matter last week, saying it was time to bury the man.

May I suggest kicking him out of a helicopter somewhere over the Siberian tundra?

And here's the NYT playing to caricature:

Some still see in [Lenin] the architect of a grand and daring social experiment. Others describe an opportunist who ushered vicious cronies to power, resulting in a totalitarian police state.

And still others recognize that, vicious as his cronies and successors may have been, it was Lenin himself who defined the terms and exemplified the uses of party-state terror. It's way past time to dispense with any illusions that the dungeon which the Soviet Union became was in some way a Stalinist abberration of Lenin's idealism, rather than the necessary result of Lenin's eliminationist ideology.

BROOKHISER

Richard Brookhiser thinks he spies anti-semitism on the left. Or is it anti-Zionism? Or just pro-Palestinianism? Apparently they're all the same.

My National Review colleague Byron York reported on last Saturday’s anti-war rally on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. The main message of the rally was President Bush’s evil and stupidity—fair enough, in a two-party system—and the main instance of it was Iraq...But another theme was anti-Zionism. As Mr. York reports, kaffiyehs outnumbered American flags. George Galloway, the left-wing M.P., wore one around his neck. Occasionally, the themes were weirdly conflated: One group of college kids chanted, “From Palestine to New Orleans, no more money for the war machine.”

Having been to more than a few such demonstrations myself, I've observed that some of the rhetoric and signage occasionally crosses the line. But, the presence of George Galloway aside, the mere display of Palestinian kaffiyehs does not in itself indicate anti-Zionism, let alone anti-semitism, any more than the display of the Israeli flag promotes the forcible transfer of Palestinians to Jordan.

Then:

Think of the word “neocon” and its current usage. The actual neocons were Jewish intellectuals who began thinking outside the Great Society box in the 70’s. Some of them—Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz—became conservative Republicans. Others—Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer—remained liberal Democrats. Pat Moynihan allowed the neocons to say that they weren’t all Jewish. But none of that is what “neocon” now means. “Neocon” now means hook-nosed Nosferatu-the-vampire warmongers who plotted the invasion of Iraq, and the dumb goyim they manipulate. When Mick Jagger sings about “sweet neocon,” or when Maureen Dowd uses the word, every other paragraph or so, that is what they evoke. They evoke it, I am afraid, even if they don’t intend to, for the words we use can carry their own freight, and we are not always in charge of packing and unpacking them

Yes, they may not even know it or mean it, but these people are trafficking in anti-semitism. But what about Irving Kristol when he self-identifies as a neoconservative? Would Brookhiser argue that Kristol, unbeknownst to Kristol himself, is a self-hating Jew?

It's certainly true that there are those who use politically loaded code-words to communicate politically incorrect messages and stereotypes. Take the GOP's use of "welfare mothers" (poor, lazy blacks) or "coastal elites" (dope-smoking homosexual Democrat pornographers), for example. The difference is that you don't see anybody proudly self-identifying as those things, let alone publishing books with the title. Regardless of the ethnicity of those with whom neoconservatism originated, the term has come to stand for an ideology of American global dominance.

Throughout the article, Brookhiser attempts to weave criticism of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza into a narrative of liberal anti-semitism, even trotting out the 1984 Jesse Jackson "Hymietown" episode as evidence. Oy. Brookhiser is a conservative whose writing I generally admire (his Founding Father is an excellent short biography of George Washington), but I don't think this sort of careless argumentation, the lazy conflation of pro-Palestinian with anti-Jewish, is at all productive. Further, when you publish a piece entitled "American Jews Unprepared For Attacks From the Left," it might be a good idea to provide a single example of such an "attack" that isn't two decades old.

DELAY

Indicted again. It's the little things like this that really make one's day.

BLAMING DAVID BROCK

This is just too much. David Frum on the Bill Bennet flap:

... my heart goes out to Bill Bennett this week. All of us who speak and write for a living have the experience of saying something less perfectly than we might later wish. If only life were like the Congressional Record, and we were all free to revise and extend our remarks. Still, even so, it seems to me almost incredible that anybody could have construed Bill Bennett's now controversial words about abortion and crime as anything other than a statement of his commitment to the equal value of all human life.

[snip]

I never did quite see the point of organizing an elaborate and lavishly fund website just in order to mobilize angry emails to conservative writers who would promptly delete them. I get it now, though: The real value of Brock's site is that it can invoke the values of honesty and integrity in media and then go on to damagingly distort the words and beliefs of its conservative targets. It seems a lousy way to make a living - but there's no denying that after a decade in the wilderness, David Brock is once again exerting his special and inimitable influence on American politics.

As I'm sure Frum knows, David Brock began his career as a tambourine player in the right-wing noise machine funded by cranky conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, the main purpose of which was to damagingly distort the words and beliefs of its liberal targets, precisely what Frum accuses Brock of doing now to conservatives, though I'm pretty sure Frum didn't have any problem with Brock back then. (Scaife's smear operation also is responsible for Ann Coulter's career as cable news' go-to shrew, among other egregious offenses.) Focusing on Brock and ignoring the broad and diversified right-wing propaganda operation of which Brock was only one part is like blaming Nicolas Cage for National Treasure, never mentioning Jerry Bruckheimer.

As for Bill Bennett, I don't think he deserves to be condemned as a bigot. He deserves to be condemned, as always, as a sanctimonious, hypocritical blowhard.

KHOURI

Rami Khouri on democracy in the Arab world:

The mechanics of democratic practices are increasingly common throughout the Arab world, but the substance of power remains firmly in the hands of small ruling elites. Of the three keys to power that controls entire societies - guns, money, and knowledge - the state's ruling elites still dominate the security-military systems and the national budgets that in turn define economic interests and distribution of wealth. Only the control of information through the mass media has been largely pried out of the hands of the state, due to the impact of regional satellite television, FM radio services, region-wide newspapers, and the Internet.

The real test of democratic rule will be when legitimately representative civilian bodies oversee and hold accountable those in the government who decide on national budget expenditures and security-military policies. That has not happened in any Arab country, but serious agitation in that direction is now evident in several countries, including most notably in Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Bahrain, and Morocco.

A balance sheet of democracy in the Arab world would show that serious talk and some activism toward that end are now common throughout much of the region, but breakthroughs to success have yet to be achieved. When one Arab country does succeed in achieving democratic governance (probably with a strong Islamist tinge to it, like Turkey or Iraq), the impact throughout the region is likely to be electric, with other countries moving more quickly toward the same goal.

BAD IDEA

Over the past few weeks, Israel has been arresting Palestinian Islamist political activists to prevent them participating in upcoming elections.

The Israeli army is cracking down on civil servants and community leaders, including elected local government officials, throughout the West Bank, in what some believe to be a bid to force Hamas out of upcoming Palestinian elections.

Palestinian sources told Aljazeera.net that Israeli soldiers arrested on Monday dozens of Islamist political activists, including a number of municipal council officials.

One of the arrested is Hakim Shalalda, the mayor of Sair, 10km northeast of Hebron. Shalalda won the town's mayoral elections nearly three months ago.

[snip]

Last week, the Israeli army arrested the seven elected members of the municipal council of the village of Shuqba in the northern West Bank.

Israeli soldiers continue to carry out nightly raids targeting the homes of potential Islamist candidates for the third and last phase of the municipal elections in the West Bank, set to take place before the end of the year.

Hamas sources estimate the number of Islamic political leaders and activists arrested during the past 10 days is 450, including academics, teachers, civil servants, students and business people.

According to East Jerusalem lawyer Tawhid Shaban, who defends many of the detainees before Israeli military courts, up to 80% of the detainees have already been sent to the Negev desert detention camp, Kitziot.

Danny Rubinstein suggests that Israel's actions only strengthen extremists:

After all, everyone knows that Abu Mazen and his colleagues in the Fatah leadership are afraid of Hamas success in the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (the parliament), which are to be held in late January. Against this background, people have begun to talk in the West Bank street about how the arrests are part of a scheme hatched by Abu Mazen and Ariel Sharon, with the aim of striking at Hamas and weakening it in the period leading up to the election. Such talk harms the chairman and his partners in the government.

Another outcome of the arrests that is possibly even more significant is that the Hamas movement could move increasingly toward clandestine underground activity. This is at odds with the Palestinian Authority's plan for dealing with it. Abu Mazen is trying to encourage Hamas to end terrorist activities and become a political party. He has had limited success, such as the cease-fire agreement in which Hamas was a partner, and its willingness to take part in elections to the city councils and to parliament. In the opinion of the Palestinian leadership, this is an important stage on the path of Hamas toward acceptance of the Oslo Accords and joining in the diplomatic process, which would mean recognition of the State of Israel.

Mass arrests such as those of last weekend, and the targeted assassinations, of course, make Hamas move backward, and strengthen its extremist wing. Since it is a movement that has won the admiration and respect of the masses, Israel's struggle against it must not take on a solely military character. An exclusively military campaign would not help. On the contrary, it would weaken Fatah and Abu Mazen and would fortify his opponents.

AUGUST WILSON (1945-2005)

Our country has lost a great treasure today.

I was introduced to Wilson's work by a high school English teacher who took our class to see The Piano Lesson in New York. Ten years later I found myself living in his neighborhood, Capitol Hill, Seattle, and would see him around regularly, reading the newspaper in a coffee shop, or walking with his daughter. While I certainly respected his privacy, I consider Wilson an artist of such magnitude that I did make a point of greeting him one day as he was strolling down the street, and telling him how much I love his work. He was very friendly and gracious. I'm glad that I did it.

RIP, and thank you.

BUCKLEY

Interesting article on William F. Buckley's 1965 campaign for mayor of New York City. I've always been fascinated by Buckley, who, along with Joseph McCarthy, should be considered the father of modern American conservatism. A master debater and writer, he has the uncanny ability to give intellectual heft to ideas which are, in the end, quite destructive of genuine human liberty. I think this bit from the article perfectly captures the nature of Buckley's legacy:

Although he did not sound like a bigot - and indeed he was not - he seemed to give comfort to those who were.

There it is.

While we're on the subject, anyone who has never seen Buckley's catfight with Gore Vidal while they were commentators on the 1968 Democratic Convention should go watch, now.

SERENITY

Trying to do my part to push up its opening weekend grosses, I played hooky on Friday and went to a matinee of Serenity. It's been a while since I had this much fun at the movies. I enjoyed it so much I decided to wait a couple days before posting a review, thinking perhaps that I was just bedazzled by all the outer space coolness and the ZING! and the BOOM!, as has been known to happen. But no, a couple days' reflection confirms for me that it's a very strong film, and I'll probably try and catch it one more time in the theater. I'm pretty confident it would be enjoyed by someone who has never seen Firefly, though the experience will be much, much richer for anyone who has watched the series.

Let me get this out of the way: The dude falling on the sword at the beginning? That was messed up. That got a couple of "Daaaaaaaamn!"s out of me.

The action and the special effects are well done without being showy, but the strength of the film is the characters. All of them are played slightly darker than in the TV series, and it really works. Nathan Fillion is a great if somewhat unconventional leading man, and I would pay good money to watch Morena Baccarin fold laundry, but the true revelation of the cast for me remains Adam Baldwin as Jayne. I've been a fan of Baldwin's ever since 1980's My Bodyguard, his first film, but to my knowledge this is the first role in which he's ever steered this close to comedy, unless you count Animal Mother in Full Metal Jacket, which maybe you could. Jayne, like Buffy's Xander, because he's the dimmest of the group, seems to get the best punchlines. In addition to being just outright funny and well-timed, they relieve the self-conscious, occasionally annoying (though occasionally sublime) cleverness of Joss Whedon's dialogue.

I'll leave it to others to make too much of the film's lite conservative-libertarian message regarding the imperfectability of human nature and the value of jes' lettin' people be. Me, I enjoyed the stuff getting blowed up real good. I was, however, mildly disappointed that Vera didn't make an appearance.

One question: The Reavers. They're crazy insane feral outer space cannibals, yet lucid enough to maintain spacecraft? Okay.

GREAT MOMENTS IN ROCK MUSIC

New feature.

In the song Middle of the Road, track one from The Pretenders' Learning To Crawl, the part where Chrissie Hynde gives that kitty cat growl leading into the harmonica solo.

That is a Great Moment in Rock Music.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: CONSERVATIVES BLAMING THE MEDIA

It's revealing of the sad state of conservative thought that Mark Steyn is considered by many conservatives to be one of their best writers. Ever the water-toting partisan clown, here we have Steyn dutifully pushing the always-useful "Blame the media!" meme in regards to coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Steyn seems to think that the fact that some of the worst rumours and predictions turned out to be untrue somehow exonerates the Bush gang, which is a bit like arguing that things are going great in Iraq because no one has set off a nuke yet (give Mark a few more months on that one). Take this:

The facts [the media] put in front of us were wrong, and they didn't talk truth to power. They talked to goofs in power, like New Orleans' Mayor Nagin and Police Chief Compass, and uncritically fell for every nutso yarn they were peddled. The media swallowed more bilge than if they'd been lying down with their mouths open as the levee collapsed. Ten thousand dead! Widespread rape and murder! A 7-year-old gang-raped and then throat-slashed! It was great stuff -- and none of it happened. No gang-raped 7-year-olds. None.

Think about that: Hurricane week was in large part a week of drivel, mostly the bizarre fantasies of New Orleans' incompetent police chief but amplified hugely by a gullible media. Given everything we now know they got wrong in Louisiana, where they speak the language, how likely is it that the great blundering herd are getting it any more accurate in Iraq?

Okay, taking Steyn's critique at face value (instead of acknowledging it as the red herring which it is), I wonder if he would consider his critique equally applicable to the media's credulity and complicity in advancing "evidence" of Iraq's WMD, or in publicizing the Swift Boaters' allegations? Somehow I doubt it, but I suppose part of the fun of being a shameless hack is never having to consider such things.

A CLUELESS SHILL ABROAD

Sid Blumenthal on Karen Hughes in the Middle East:

After two undersecretaries of state for public diplomacy resigned in frustration in the face of the precipitous loss of U.S. prestige around the globe, Bush found a new slot for Hughes this year. She may be the most parochial person ever to hold a senior State Department appointment, but the president has confidence she can rebrand the United States.

This week, Hughes embarked on her first trip as undersecretary. Her initial statement resembled an elementary school presentation: "You might want to know why the countries. Egypt is of course the most populous Arab country ... Saudi Arabia is our second stop. It's obviously an important place in Islam and the keeper of its two holiest sites ... Turkey is also a country that encompasses people of many different backgrounds and beliefs, yet has the -- is proud of the saying that 'all are Turks.'"

Hughes appeared to be one of the pilgrims satirized by Mark Twain in his 1869 book, "Innocents Abroad," about his trip on "The Grand Holy Land Pleasure Excursion." "None of us had ever been anywhere before; we all hailed from the interior; travel was a wild novelty to us ... We always took care to make it understood that we were Americans -- Americans!"

Oy.

Update: Fred Kaplan has more.

Put the shoe on the other foot. Let's say some Muslim leader wanted to improve Americans' image of Islam. It's doubtful that he would send as his emissary a woman in a black chador who had spent no time in the United States, possessed no knowledge of our history or movies or pop music, and spoke no English beyond a heavily accented "Good morning." Yet this would be the clueless counterpart to Karen Hughes, with her lame attempts at bonding ("I'm a working mom") and her tin-eared assurances that President Bush is a man of God (you can almost hear the Muslim women thinking, "Yes, we know, that's why he's relaunched the Crusades").

ID

Will Saletan on Intelligent Design:

So here's what ID proponents are offering to teach your kids: They won't say how ID works. They won't say how it can be tested, apart from testing Darwinism and inferring that the alternative is ID. They won't concede it has to be falsifiable. All they'll say is that Darwinism hasn't explained some things. But that's what the first half of the Dover policy says already. So there's no need for the second half—the part that mentions ID.

At the very least there should be some mention of the competing theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

THE ROAD MAP

Ariel Sharon insists these aren't the droids you're looking for:

"There is no other plan besides the road map," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Thursday a day after key officials declared their support for more unilateral steps.

Sharon, who addressed an economic conference in Tel Aviv, said, "This country is plagued by rumors. Yesterday such a rumor began circulating, a rumor which emanated from unfounded comments, as if Israel was examining other plans."

"Israel is not and will not examine any other plan; there is only one plan – the road map. It is the best plan for the future of Israel," Sharon emphasized.

Here we have Sharon sitting in a pile of Big Mac wrappers and declaring "I must stick to my diet!" when someone suggests a slice of pie. Despite Arik's sanctimony, the massive expansion of settlements , which was begun before the ink on the road map was even dry, puts Israel in violation of the road map's principles. This is why it's good to have stark raving eliminationist zealots as part of your government, you can always appear the more reasonable.

SUPERFICIAL, NAIVE

Via Crooked Timber, Ann Althouse offers this gleaming gem:

To be a great artist is inherently right wing. A great artist like Dylan or Picasso may have some superficial, naive, lefty things to say, but underneath, where it counts, there is a strong individual, taking responsibility for his place in the world and focusing on that.

Althouse is engaged in a bit of "South Park Republican" analysis here, ignoring mountains of disconfirming evidence in order to lay claim to an artist she likes as "right wing." Leaving aside the specious claim that there's anything inherently right-wing about being "a strong individual, taking responsibility for his place in the world," (which is the kind of thing you'd more expect from a fifteen year old who just read Atlas Shrugged for the first time), if Althouse thinks those things accurately describe "great artists," then she needs to get herself a library card.

I'm seriously not interested in arguments over artists' political tendencies, and I think that any political significance that attaches to art does so regardless of the particular views of the artist herself. The significance of Dylan's work, indeed of Dylan, is largely unrelated to who Dylan actually is as a person. But just to play the game for a moment, I think that a good artist is skilled at making and wearing masks, at representing different characters and points of view, and at highlighting ambiguity. Dylan is certainly a good example of this. If you want to consider whether these thing are left or right wing, have at it. I suggest that it has less to do with any particular character type that with how an artist serves his work.

OF GOD AND METH

Sometimes the Lord is a little slow showing up, so you have to turn to your stash of illegal narcotics:

Ashley Smith, the woman who says she persuaded suspected courthouse gunman Brian Nichols to release her by talking about her faith, discloses in a new book that she gave him methamphetamine during the hostage ordeal.

Smith did not share that detail with authorities at the time. But investigators said she came clean about the drugs when they interviewed her months later. They said they have no plans to charge her with drug possession.

In her book, "Unlikely Angel," released Tuesday, Smith says Nichols had her bound on her bed with masking tape and an extension cord. She says he asked for marijuana, but she did not have any, and she dug into her illegal stash of crystal meth instead.

Not that the facts of the story will have much effect on those who've turned Ashley Smith into an evangelical folk hero. Like the apocryphal tale of Cassie Bernall, it's already in the cultural bloodstream, and will persist, quite immune to anything as quaint as verifiable truth.

DING-DONG...

DeLay indicted.

A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, an indictment that could force him to step down as House majority leader.

DeLay attorney Steve Brittain said DeLay was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee.

GOP congressional officials said the plan was for DeLay to temporarily relinquish his leadership post and Speaker Dennis Hastert will recommend that Rep. David Dreier of California step into those duties.

And our word for the day is schadenfreude.

23:5

Via Rob.

The title of my 23rd post was Is There a Third Choice? The fifth sentence was

I'll choose C: Sail the Caribbean while having my intestines chewed out by badgers.

And I stand by that.

1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

Must infect Stacius.

I'M BACK

From the wilderness. Played some cards, won some money, met a new friend, Mezcal, which Frito brought back from Mexico. Had great success with some ribs marinated in soy sauce, crushed chopped garlic, a little black pepper, and a generous amount of dark brown sugar. Waded across a stream after stranding myself on a rock island. Weekend enjoyed.

I'M OFF

To the 3rd annual Gentlemen's Wilderness Bible Study and Poker Retreat. Wish me luck.

OF GIANT PINK BUNNIES

Via Professor Tim, a story that's so much like my dreams it's scary:

An enormous pink bunny has been erected on an Italian mountainside where it will stay for the next 20 years.

The 200-foot-long toy rabbit lies on the side of the 5,000 foot high Colletto Fava mountain in northern Italy's Piedmont region.

Viennese art group Gelatin designed the giant soft toy and say it was "knitted by dozens of grannies out of pink wool".

Group member Wolfgang Gantner said: "It's supposed to make you feel small, like Gulliver. You walk around it and you can't help but smile."

And Gelatin members say the bunny is not just for walking around - they are expecting hikers to climb its 20 foot sides and relax on its belly.

The giant rabbit is expected to remain on the mountain side until 2025.

As much as I wholeheartedly support the erection of giant pink bunnies wherever, whenever, I must admit to being troubled by this giant pink bunny's inappropriately seductive pose. We must protect the children.

Also, does the U.S. have any giant pink bunnies? We can't allow a giant pink bunny gap.

"I GUESS THIS MEANS WE'VE WON THE WAR ON TERROR"

Now here's an interesting use of crime-fighting resources:

Early last month, the bureau's Washington Field Office began recruiting for a new anti-obscenity squad. Attached to the job posting was a July 29 Electronic Communication from FBI headquarters to all 56 field offices, describing the initiative as "one of the top priorities" of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and, by extension, of "the Director." That would be FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.

Mischievous commentary began propagating around the water coolers at 601 Fourth St. NW and its satellites, where the FBI's second-largest field office concentrates on national security, high-technology crimes and public corruption.

The new squad will divert eight agents, a supervisor and assorted support staff to gather evidence against "manufacturers and purveyors" of pornography -- not the kind exploiting children, but the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults.

"I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage."

Among friends and trusted colleagues, an experienced national security analyst said, "it's a running joke for us."

Pornography, the fourth horseman of the Republican apocalypse, along with evolution, gay marriage, and weed.

CONSERVATIVES ARE GROOVY! pt 291

This adult bookstore-owning heavy metal guitarist proves just how diverse and "with it" the conservative movement is!

“You know, I’m all for screwing or whatever, but I like that Bush has always been with Laura and is kind of boring. Clinton was a party animal who worked in as many ladies as he could, and look what that got us: A nuclear North Korea, Saddam spitting in our faces and Osama bin Laden having plenty of time to do whatever he wanted. Thanks, anyway. I’ll take boring any day.”

Uh...never mind.

HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE

I finally got around to watching this movie the other night. As I watched, I thought it vaguely reminded me of a book by Douglas Adams which I'd once read. Lance Mannion does good work pointing out some of the major problems of the film, notably the transformation of Arthur Dent into your standard movie romantic hero schlub. Bleh. I strongly concur that Alan Rickman was great as Marvin ("I've been talking to the main computer...It hates me.") and that Zooey Deschanel should be allowed to sing in every movie she's in.

That said, taken as a movie unrelated to any book, it's still a mess. I'd see another movie featuring Sam Rockwell's character, though.

TIM COLLINS

Via Eric Alterman (who also offers a good, concise review of last Wednesday's Galloway-Hitchens 2005 Sodden Windbag Invitational Debate, of which I could only watch about ten minutes before passing out under the weight of the participants' magisterial self-regard), Tim Collins, a British former Colonel who gave a famously stirring speech to his troops on the eve of war, writes in the Guardian:

When I led my men of the 1st Battalion the Royal Irish Regiment across the border into Iraq we believed we were going to do some good. Goodwill and optimism abounded; it was to be a liberation, I had told my men, not a conquest.

What I had not realised was that there was no real plan at the higher levels to replace anything, indeed a simplistic and unimaginative overreliance in some senior quarters on the power of destruction and crude military might. We were to beat the Iraqis. That simple. Everything would come together after that.

The Iraqi army was defeated - it walked away from most fights - but was then dismissed without pay to join the ranks of the looters smashing the little infrastructure left, and to rail against their treatment. The Baath party was left undisturbed. The careful records it kept were destroyed with precision munitions by the coalition; the evidence erased, they were left with a free rein to agitate and organise the insurrection. A vacuum was created in which the coalition floundered, the Iraqis suffered and terrorists thrived.

It is time for our leaders to explain what is going on. It was as a battalion commander trying to explain to his men why they would embark on a war that I came to public notice. The irony is that I made certain assumptions that my goodwill and altruistic motivations went to the top. Clearly I was naive. This time it is the role of the leaders of nations to explain where we are going and why. I, for one, demand to know.

Me too.

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE

Cathy Young on the unfortunate attempt by British Muslims to downgrade "Holocaust Memorial Day" into "Genocide Memorial Day," and to include the Palestinians as victims of genocide.

Come on. There is no doubt that a grave crime was committed against the Palestinians in 1948, one for which the state of Israel has never properly been held to account. It is, however, plain stupidity to think that there's some measure of justice to be gained for the Palestinians by de-emphasizing the singular crime of the Holocaust. Neither is it any good to equate the experiences of the Palestinians in al Nakhba to European Jews in the Shoah, as it hardly needs to be pointed out that, as tragic as was the former, the latter was, by any possible measure, larger and more sinister in scope.

This isn't to say that there aren't disturbing parallels between the two events, there are, or that there hasn't been an ongoing effort by Israel to violate Palestinian rights, there has (through a process which Israeli scholar Baruch Kimmerling has termed politicide), but any argument which starts off by casting the Israelis in the role of Nazis seems to me to be a loser. Yes, the irony is hard to resist. Please try.

CRONYISM

Noam Scheiber: There's cronyism, and then there's cronyism.

THE END

Is nigh.

HUNDREDS OF TERRORISTS?

Always one to look on the bright side, he is after all one of the Bush administrations head water carriers, Victor Davis Hanson offers this praise for Bush's anti-terrorism efforts:

Hundreds of terrorists and their sympathizers, from Lodi and Portland to New Jersey and Florida, have been arrested or deported for either planning attacks or seeking to spread their venom.

Wow, that paragraph is impressive in its imprecision. Hundreds of terrorists and their sympathizers, does that mean hundreds of terrorists plus some sympathizers, hundreds of terrorists and sympathizers, or a few genuine terrorists plus a bunch of people who overstayed their visas? Were they planning attacks, or just bad-mouthing the U.S.? Is "spreading venom" covered under the Patriot Act? Given that Hanson is a guy who accuses those who point out Bush's manifest incompetence of weakening our resolve and helping the enemy, it's really not clear at all.

DOWNFALL

This film, about Hitler's last days as the Russians closed in around Berlin, painted as subtle and merciless a picture of hell as I've ever seen in the movies. I found the portrayal of the relationship between Hitler and Albert Speer particularly interesting.

As good as Bruno Ganz is as the Fuhrer, and he's astoundingly good, Ulrich Matthes' Goebbels steals most of his scenes with barely any lines, just a chilling glower.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

B.B. King.

THE MINGLING OF CIVILIZATIONS

Waleed Ziad in today's Times:

The story of Sayyid Qutb, the father of neo-fundamentalism, exemplifies what happened next. Qutb was an Egyptian teacher trained in the Western system. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, it was not his trip to America in 1948 that radicalized him. While he was shocked by some aspects of American culture, like women dancing in public, he returned to write about the importance of emulating the educational, economic and scientific achievements of the West.

But in the 1950's, he was jailed and tortured for speaking out against Gamal Abdel Nasser's autocracy, while scores of dissidents were executed. Only then did he decide that violence could be used against an unjust government. He spoke as a Muslim, but his rhetoric was grounded in Western-nationalist and leftist revolutionary principles. His call had great resonance, and thus was neo-fundamentalism born.

As persecution continued across the Arab world, the neo-fundamentalist rhetoric became more Manichean and xenophobic. With mainstream opponents silenced, ultraradicals became the loudest voices of dissent. In Egypt, for example, those who emerged from prison in the 1970's formed militant organizations, including Al Jihad, led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is now chief lieutenant for Osama bin Laden. These men were not thinkers or theologians; rather, many were disillusioned Westernized professionals, former leftists and nationalists.

This new wave of fundamentalism, unlike all the others before it in the Islamic tradition, is inherently anti-intellectual and reactive; it is more reminiscent of the anarchical movements of 19th-century Russia. This "Islamism" is nihilistic, expressing a lack of faith in all political systems, in history, and in all past social developments. The jihadists justify their actions by claiming that they are returning to "pure" Islamic sources to establish a "government of God." Of course, the paradox here is that the Koran does not lay down a mode of governance. What perhaps we in the United States do not understand is that in rejecting the status quo, these groups demonize not just the West, but mainstream Islamic culture and philosophy as well; they pose perhaps the greatest existential threat to 1,400 years of Islamic tradition.

Far from signifying a "clash of civilizations," the neo-fundamentalist ideology involves the appropriation of elements of Western political thought by radical Islamism.

TERROR AND GLIBERALISM

In an otherwise very good article, I think Spencer Ackerman misrepresents George Soros a bit here:

What accounts for Soros' emerging gliberalism? The central preoccupation of American foreign policy—which, disastrously, is not al-Qaedaism. "The invasion of Iraq has spawned more insurgents and suicide bombers than there were before," Soros noted, making an indisputable point. Then he went further: "Most people have come to realize that the invasion of Iraq was a blunder, but they still accept the war on terror as the obvious response to 9/11." In other words, for Soros—as for many others in attendance—the disastrous and counterproductive Iraq War is the direct consequence of answering al-Qaeda's call to arms.

Now, you might notice that this contention is the exact opposite of the vastly more compelling argument that invading Iraq was a strategically disastrous misapplication of anti-al-Qaedism, that it was a distraction from the real and manifested enemy—a case made by the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, expert al-Qaeda journalists like Peter Bergen and Jim Fallows, and, at least by the October presidential debates, John Kerry. Instead, Soros and Bush apparently agree that a straight line connects Ground Zero to Baghdad, which makes both of them idiots.

Err, Soros' argument is not that a "straight line connects Ground Zero to Baghdad," it's that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were inappropriate and counterproductive responses, both wrong in their own way. I don't agree with him, but that's what he meant. Maybe Ackerman was just dazzled by the prospect of twinning.

SHARON AT THE UN

A couple views on what I think was a significant speech by Ariel Sharon.

While it's excellent that Sharon has recognized, at long last, the right of Palestinians to their own state, the settlements continue to expand, and the encirclement of Jerusalem continues, whittling away at what will eventually be an archipelago of economically unviable Palestinian cantons. Which makes the-even-more-hardcore Netanyahu's complaints about "withdrawals and concessions" all the more ridiculous.

GAZA

Gazans swim in their very own sea...

Ahmed Akil put a cautious bare toe into the water, then waded in up to his blue jean covered knees. Then, laughing, he flung himself fully clothed into the surf.

The 14-year-old from the Khan Yunis refugee camp, less than two miles from the coast, had never before seen the sparkling stretch of Mediterranean beach that fronted the Jewish settlement block of Gush Katif. On Monday, he and thousands of Palestinians — robed women, ragged children, even weapons-toting militants — flocked to what for decades had been a forbidden shore

And listen to hip hop.

The official Palestinian rally for Gaza's "liberation" from Israel was winding down Wednesday afternoon when a throbbing bass groove shook the ground in the former Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim.

On stage, three fresh-faced men - hair gelled, clad in sports jerseys and baggy pants - swaggered and bobbed their heads, telling all the shabab (young men) to wave their hands in the air. The crowd swayed to the booming beat and the group PR (Palestinian Rappers) recited a song called "Al-Hurriya" (freedom), until a few angry Islamists in the back fired their Kalashnikovs in the air.

A man screamed a Hamas-inspired chant about resistance and the crowd roared back "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great). People lunged toward the stage and the sedate rally turned into bedlam.

When PR say they're coming at you from the toughest neighborhood in the world, it's not a boast.

IS THE PRESIDENT INFECTED?

Did everyone hear President Bush refer to New Orleans as "the Crescent City" last night? Didn't he get the memo from Wingnut Goofball HQ that all references to crescents, French baked goods, the letter C, and cookies with a single bite out of them are right out? Or was the reference some kind of coded message to his Islamist masters?

PRAIRIE HOM COMPANION

(Via Andrew Sullivan) In what I'm sure will prove to be an extremely ill advised move, Garrison Keillor is suing this blogger over a parody t-shirt. Really. Question: Does Keillor have the same lawyer as Bill O'Reilly? I predict sales of the Prairie Ho Companion shirt will skyrocket.

I've got nothing against Garrison Keillor, though I've never understood why my Seattle public radio station chooses to devote some twenty broadcast hours every weekend to his maddeningly unfunny show. In the spirit of self-promotion, however, I would like to offer my own parody in the hope that Keillor will sue me and make me a star. So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen...I present the Prairie Hom Companion.

GARRISON KELLER
It's a beautiful day here in Lake Wobegron, and the white people are whiter than ever, in fact there's little Billy Johanssen, who was just voted "whitest little boy in town" by the judges at the county fair after he turned whole milk into skim just by sticking his finger in it. Hey Billy, how ya doing?

BILLY
Hi there, I--Oh my gaagggh!!!

GARRISON
Gaaaagggh!!

(GARRISON AND BILLY ARE DEVOURED BY SWARMS OF FIRE ANTS)

END

Come and get me, Keillor!

ON THE ROBERTS HEARINGS

Did Orrin Hatch just say "woman lawyer?"

ISLAM AS MIRROR

Timothy Garton Ash offers six different views on the West's relationship with Islam.

I'd probably go with 6, with a dollop of 4 and 5. I'm not someone who locates blame for all of the ills of the developing world in the legacy of colonialism, but it's impossible to deny that the Western nations encouraged and manipulated Arab rivalries in order to maintain control in the region, first for access to trade routes and later for oil. Moves toward genuine self-rule in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were frustrated by the colonial powers, even as they claimed to be bringing democracy to the countries they occupied.

At root, however, even though it's become something of a cliche (as happens with things that are true), I think the main conflict we're witnessing is within Islam. Bin Laden and the al Qaedists have targeted the Western powers (the far enemy) because they rightly perceive us as supporting what they view as illegitimate, apostate regimes (the near enemy) in the Islamic world. In the view of the al Qaedists, all the problems of the Muslim world can be traced back to the umma having fallen away from true Islam, and only when the sharia is observed and enforced throughout Muslim lands will Islam experience a new golden age. This sort of view, of a "previous golden age" to which we can and must return, is common to all brands of fundamentalism, but it has particular resonance to Muslims, particularly Arab Muslims, because, unlike Jews or Christians, they can refer to a time, an actual golden age, when their prophet and his successors ruled over the most advanced civilization on earth, one in which Islamic law was the law.

Taking this into account, the main question for us in the West should be: How can we best support and encourage democracy and human rights in the region while at the same time letting Muslims develop political institutions appropriate to them? And how will we respond if we really, really don't like what they come up with?

THE LESTER DOCTRINE

The Good Right Reverend Stacius Myron Lester on his philosophy of arachnid deterrence:

I don't recall ever being bitten by a spider...until I moved in with Frito a great while later. I mind finding a bump on my inner arm, just a bit above my elbow. It didn't hurt but it itched a bit...way milder than a mosquito bite. I looked closer...there were two holes there.

EW!!

Another time I found a spider bite on my ear.

And then I got bit on my face.

ON MY FRIGGIN FACE!!

I changed my policy on the bastards sometime after that. Do unto others, I say -- and I got done unto first. I still don't smash them, but they get sent down the toilet!

We had a shit-ton of the little (heh) buggers around the house this spring and summer. You had to be careful when going out the back door because there would be a huge web with some big bastard sitting innit like (s)he owned the joint.

The last time that happened, I got out my empty pellet gun and pumped it up 6-7 times, pointed it at the wide-o, and fired. The spider flew across the yard, landing I know not where. But it didn't come back! So, I'd found my new favorite method of getting rid of them.

I haven't been bitten this year...go figure.

Like the good reverend, I find myself at once attracted and repelled by spiders. They're pretty cool, the way they spin webs and hang out there, waiting for dinner to be delivered. But the way they kind of creep along, especially the big ones, as if to say "Yes, you can run, oh yes! you can run (in fact, why don't you run?), but I'm just going to go at my own pace and sooner or later I will find you, and our eyes will meet just before I sink my enormous fangs into your soft, milky flesh..." Well, I'm just not down with that.

As for my own policy on spiders, I have a size test for pre-emptive action. Spiders up to the size of a quarter are ignored. Bigger spiders are strongly encouraged to emigrate outdoors, sometimes being detained briefly in a wine glass and then deported. Spiders nearing the size of my closed fist are introduced to my tennis racket as I scream "Where are the others?! WHERE ARE THE OTHERS???!!!"

SHADID

Be sure to check out Anthony Shadid at the TPM Cafe Bookclub this week, talking about his new book, Night Draws Near. It's next on my list after I finish Amos Oz's In the Land of Israel.

PINOCHET

"Oh geez, back to court again to answer some dumb questions about some political activists I had killed."

Chile's Supreme Court has ruled former military ruler Augusto Pinochet can face charges related to the killing of 119 dissidents.

Gen Pinochet is accused of direct involvement in the death of at least 15 activists in a 1975 secret police operation known as Operation Colombo.

It is the third human rights case in which the Supreme Court has lifted the former military ruler's immunity.

But in the previous two cases, a court ruled he was too ill to stand trial.

Upon hearing the decision, the former dictator pretended to be alseep.

I seriously doubt the old murderer will ever see the inside of a prison cell, the families and friends of his victims will just have to be satisfied with keeping him inconvenienced for the rest of his life.

Of course, Pinochet's big mistake was taking off those sunglasses. No one can get you when you're wearing sunglasses.

 

CRESCENTS, MEMORIALS

Apropos of the controversy over the design of the Flight 93 memorial, here's some background on the crescent's significance in Islam:

The city of Byzantium (later known as Constantinople and Istanbul) adopted the crescent moon symbol. According to some reports, they chose it in honor of the goddess Diana. Others indicate that it dates back to a battle in which the Romans defeated the Goths on the first day of a lunar month. In any event, the crescent moon was featured on the city's flag even before the birth of Christ.

It wasn't until the Ottoman Empire that the crescent moon and star became affiliated with the Muslim world. When the Turks conquered Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453, they adopted the city's existing flag and symbol. Legend holds that the founder of the Ottoman Empire, Osman, had a dream in which the crescent moon stretched from one end of the earth to the other. Taking this as a good omen, he chose to keep the crescent and make it the symbol of his dynasty.

[snip]

Based on this history, many Muslims reject using the crescent moon as a symbol of Islam. The faith of Islam has historically had no symbol, and many refuse to accept what is essentially an ancient pagan icon. It is certainly not in uniform use among Muslims.

Something tells me that, even if they were made aware of the tangential relationship between the crescent symbol and Islam, Michelle Malkin and the rest of the wingnut choir could quickly dig up some righteous hatred of the people of ancient Byzantium.

There was much controversy over Maya Lin's design for the Vietnam Memorial, and for many of the same reasons has people are barking over the Flight 93 design: it was defeatist, it was depressing, it didn't feature a huge, gold 50-headed eagle with 40-foot wings, breathing fire and devouring its enemies and farting cruise missiles, clutching the entrails of Communism in one claw and laying down a covering fire with an M-60 (that actually sparked and smoked!) in the other. Today Lin's design is generally recognized as an appropriate, powerful, and effective remembrance of that war and those Americans it killed. A major difference, as was noted in regards to the Manhattan 9/11 memorial, is that we were almost a decade out of that war when the Vietnam Wall was built, and now we're proposing to commemorate events while still midst of the conflict that those events opened.

As for Michelle Malkin:

This is no way to fight a war. Or to remember those who have died fighting it.

A proper war memorial stirs to anger and action.

I think she's confused. She doesn't want a memorial, she wants a Nuremburg rally.*

*Just to let you know, Junkyard Blog Godwinned first.

PALAST ON WINDBAG DEATHMATCH

Greg Palast in anticipation of today's Hitchens-Galloway debate:

But it is not good enough for the Left to oppose Mr. Bush's re-colonization of Iraq. We needed to have actively supported Iraqis fighting to remove their Mesopotamian Stalin. And now, we'd better come up with something a little less nutty than a recent suggestion by one otherwise thoughtful writer that we, "unconditionally support the insurgency" of berserker killers and fundamentalist madmen. If that's the Left's program for Iraq, count me out.

We can't define ourselves as the "anti-Bush," blindly supporting those he opposes, and thereby letting the nitwit Napoleon in the White House pick our enemies for us. Nor can our revulsion for Bush's horrors throw us into the arms of swamp-things like George Galloway.

Don't get me wrong. Unlike Hitchens, I cannot support the Prevaricator-in-Chief, the President who ordered Cindy Sheehan's son, Casey, to march to his death in Najaf. But I'll be damned if I'll cheer some rich white Brit-hole who brings joy to Casey's killers.