Thursday, July 29, 2004

Timing is Everything

3 weeks ago, I posted an article that talked about an alleged attempt by the Bush administration to pressure Pakistan to have a “showcase” capture of a top Al Qaeda terrorist be announced during the Democratic convention. Today, as requested, Pakistan produced the person allegedly responsible for the embassy bombings in Africa in 1998.

According to reports, he was captured several days ago, but the announcement was held until today, the day of Kerry’s acceptance speech. This is no coincidence, and it was announced in a press conference held long after midnight in Pakistan, so it would break in the late afternoon here.

The link within this paragraph is to “The New Republic”, a very reputable political magazine:
"I urge you to read this article that details an administration attempt to overshadow the upcoming Democratic convention. In it, the author talks with Pakistani officials who say that they have orders from Bush to produce Osama Bin Laden or one of his top deputies before the November election. The date suggested to do this is in late July, specifically the 26th, 27th or 28th of July, which are the first 3 days of the Democratic convention."

- Bob Woods

Monday, July 26, 2004

Mickey Blows It Bigtime

By now everyone’s heard of how Disney washed their hands of “Fahrenheit 9/11”, and refused to distribute it. Then they said they didn’t want to be involved with a “blatently political” movie, especially in an election year.

The next week, they released “America’s Heart and Soul” - they had put $1 million into the film, and spent $400,000 in print promotion. Advertisements read, “Move over Michael Moore,” and “Disney and Move America Forward team up to show a brighter side of America. Unlike the negative and misleading storyline of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, Disney’s America’s Heart and Soul features a collection of upbeat storylines of real-life Americans who pursue their passions in a way that underscores what makes America a great nation.”

So much for not being political, at least as far as the promotion went. But the ironic part of this is that the movie they wrote off is now the top documentary of all time, has grossed about $100 million and is playing on over 2000 screens (it’s even playing in my little neighborhood theater); and the one they chose to support has taken in a grand total of $311,572 (in one less week than F 9/11) and is now down to 13 screens.

Hopefully, this says something about the mood of voters this year…

- Bob Woods

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

The Arabian Candidate

By Paul Krugman, NY Times
Published: July 20, 2004

In the original version of “The Manchurian Candidate,” Senator John Iselin, whom Chinese agents are plotting to put in the White House, is a right-wing demagogue modeled on Senator Joseph McCarthy. As Roger Ebert wrote, the plan is to “use anticommunist hysteria as a cover for a communist takeover.”

The movie doesn’t say what Iselin would have done if the plot had succeeded. Presumably, however, he wouldn’t have openly turned traitor. Instead, he would have used his position to undermine national security, while posing as America’s staunchest defender against communist evil.

So let’s imagine an update - not the remake with Denzel Washington, which I haven’t seen, but my own version. This time the enemies would be Islamic fanatics, who install as their puppet president a demagogue who poses as the nation’s defender against terrorist evildoers.

The Arabian candidate wouldn’t openly help terrorists. Instead, he would serve their cause while pretending to be their enemy.

After an attack, he would strike back at the terrorist base, a necessary action to preserve his image of toughness, but botch the follow-up, allowing the terrorist leaders to escape. Once the public’s attention shifted, he would systematically squander the military victory: committing too few soldiers, reneging on promises of economic aid. Soon, warlords would once again rule most of the country, the heroin trade would be booming, and terrorist allies would make a comeback.

Meanwhile, he would lead America into a war against a country that posed no imminent threat. He would insinuate, without saying anything literally false, that it was somehow responsible for the terrorist attack. This unnecessary war would alienate our allies and tie down a large part of our military. At the same time, the Arabian candidate would neglect the pursuit of those who attacked us, and do nothing about regimes that really shelter anti-American terrorists and really are building nuclear weapons.

Again, he would take care to squander a military victory. The Arabian candidate and his co-conspirators would block all planning for the war’s aftermath; they would arrange for our army to allow looters to destroy much of the country’s infrastructure. Then they would disband the defeated regime’s army, turning hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers into disgruntled potential insurgents.

After this it would be easy to sabotage the occupied country’s reconstruction, simply by failing to spend aid funds or rein in cronyism and corruption. Power outages, overflowing sewage and unemployment would swell the ranks of our enemies.

Who knows? The Arabian candidate might even be able to deprive America of the moral high ground, no mean trick when our enemies are mass murderers, by creating a climate in which U.S. guards torture, humiliate and starve prisoners, most of them innocent or guilty of only petty crimes.

At home, the Arabian candidate would leave the nation vulnerable, doing almost nothing to secure ports, chemical plants and other potential targets. He would stonewall investigations into why the initial terrorist attack succeeded. And by repeatedly issuing vague terror warnings obviously timed to drown out unfavorable political news, his officials would ensure public indifference if and when a real threat is announced.

Last but not least, by blatantly exploiting the terrorist threat for personal political gain, he would undermine the nation’s unity in the face of its enemies, sowing suspicion about the government’s motives.

O.K., end of conceit. President Bush isn’t actually an Al Qaeda mole, with Dick Cheney his controller. Mr. Bush’s “war on terror” has, however, played with eerie perfection into Osama bin Laden’s hands - while Mr. Bush’s supporters, impressed by his tough talk, see him as America’s champion against the evildoers.

Last week, Republican officials in Kentucky applauded bumper stickers distributed at G.O.P. offices that read, “Kerry is bin Laden’s man/Bush is mine.” Administration officials haven’t gone that far, but when Tom Ridge offered a specifics-free warning about a terrorist attack timed to “disrupt our democratic process,” many people thought he was implying that Al Qaeda wants George Bush to lose. In reality, all infidels probably look alike to the terrorists, but if they do have a preference, nothing in Mr. Bush’s record would make them unhappy at the prospect of four more years.

Monday, July 19, 2004

Good for a Giggle

NEW DETAILS SURFACE
by PAUL SIMMS, The New Yorker
Posted 2004-07-19

Vice President Dick Cheney cursed at Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, in a confrontation on the Senate floor while members were having their annual group picture taken earlier this week. . . . According to [an] aide, Mr. Cheney . . . responded with a barnyard epithet, urging Mr. Leahy to perform an anatomical sexual impossibility.
—The Washington Times.

After Mr. Cheney successfully delivered the epithet and started to walk away, Mr. Leahy—sotto voce—referred to the Vice-President using a term more often heard in taverns and locker rooms than in the august Senate chamber, a term that refers to a sexual act commonly acknowledged as taboo among all cultures that proscribe incestuous contact between a mother and a son

Mr. Cheney—apparently hearing Mr. Leahy’s remark—stopped, turned, and invited his colleague from across the aisle to engage in a sexual act that is considered a felony in some states, and which involves oral-genital contact.

Mr. Leahy then suggested that the president of the Senate take his gavel and use it to perform an act that, while not technically impossible in anatomical terms, would certainly be considered both unseemly and unhygienic, and which would require an unusual combination of single-minded ambition and physical relaxation.

Mr. Cheney wasted no time in informing Mr. Leahy that he should feel free to perform yet another anatomical impossibility—this one involving aviation, a standard sexual act, and a rolling doughnut.

At this point, according to observers, both statesmen decided—by seemingly unspoken mutual consent—to abandon the gutter patois of the common carnival worker and to resort instead to an eminently more quotable (but, to those not versed in the vagaries of hip-hop idiom, more confusing) exchange of viewpoints.

“Oh, it’s like that?” Mr. Cheney queried.

“Whut? Whut?” Mr. Leahy shot back.

“Once again,” Mr. Cheney replied (quite obviously quoting a lyric from Ice Cube’s 1990 album, “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted”), “it’s on.”

As a quick-thinking senatorial aide switched on the Senate’s public-address system and cued up the infamous “Seven Minutes of Funk” break, Mr. Leahy and Mr. Cheney went head-to-head in what can only be described as a “take no prisoners” freestyle rap battle.

Most of the rhymes kicked therein cannot be quoted in a family publication, but observers gave Mr. Cheney credit for his deceptively laid-back flow. Mr. Leahy was applauded for managing to rhyme the phrases “unethical for certain,” “crude oil spurtin’,” and “like Halliburton.”

Despite the fact that both participants brought their A-game and succeeded in dropping mad scientifics, the bout seemed to end in a draw.

Unfortunately, as other senators (along with assorted aides and support-staff members) were casting their votes to decide the winner, using the admittedly subjective but generally accepted “Make some noise up in here!” protocols, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Leahy took the proceedings to what one aide accurately described as “the next level.”

Edward M. Kennedy (D.-Mass.) was the first to notice that the two men were circling each other, Mr. Cheney brandishing a switchblade and Mr. Leahy the jagged neck of a broken bottle.

“Oh, snap!” Mr. Kennedy recalls thinking at the time. “It’s getting kind of hectic up in this piece.”

But before either of the aggrieved public servants could bust a potentially injurious move on his rival, cooler heads prevailed: a veteran Capitol Hill security guard pacified the bloodthirsty white men (Mr. Leahy first, then Mr. Cheney) with a shot from a tranquillizer gun. He then had them returned to their cages in the sub-basement of the Old Executive Office Building, where both men are kept and fed during non-business hours under the watchful eye of a volunteer from Washington’s National Zoo.

(In a related story, an AM talk-radio host in Billings, Montana, who expressed his disappointment with the behavior of Mr. Cheney and Mr. Leahy—on the air, he asked his listeners, “Do we taxpayers really have time for this kind of crap?”—was fined five hundred thousand dollars for violating the F.C.C.’s recent, Senate-approved guidelines prohibiting explicit references to human excrement.)

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

A Sweet Victory

Just minutes ago, the Senate rejected the “Federal Marriage Amendment”, an attempt to write discrimination into the Constitution, and the first time an attempt has been made to take away a right from a whole class of people.

For once, the politics of division and “wedge issues” didn’t work. This was nothing more than an attempt to “change the subject” - to distract attention from the disasterous war in Iraq and the faltering economy.

- Bob Woods