BRAVA!!!  GIMLETS FOR EVERYBODY!!!

Check out Salon Blogger Julie Powell at CBS News!!!  Congratulations, Julie!!!

(And no, Julie, we don’t all blog porn – but that’s okay, I catch your drift.  I’m buying!)

10:34:09 PM    comment []

RantsCounterRants:  Headline at AOL reads:  "GOP Balks at Iraq Weapons Hearing"

To which I immediately think:  No sh*t.

How does it feel, all you righteous GOP members of Congress who railed and ranted about a possible <gasp!> blow job in the Oval Office?

This was no damned blow job between consenting adults, violating a private relationship between a man and a woman.  That was a personal betrayal you were only to eager to haul out into the light of day, under the hot lights of the media, to be mauled over by Ken Starr.

THIS is a far different thing.  It was a war that caused the deaths of thousands of civilians and hundreds of our military based on what may have been a lie to Congress, to the American public, to the U.N. and its Security Council, to the entire world.  We, the American public, the rest of Congress, the world, deserve and demand to know the truth.

Balk?  I shouldn’t wonder you’d balk.  You’re balking the way Mr. Bennett did when it was first disclosed he liked to gamble.

But like Mr. Bennett, it would be best if you quit this damned charade.  Stop circling the wagons around people who’ve sold you up the river, lied to you as well.

If they’d lie about this, what else would they lie about to you, the loyal supporters?  Hmm?

I notice that hasn’t occurred to you just yet, based on comments from  Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts:

"I will not allow the committee to be politicized or to be used as an unwitting tool for any political strategist," the Kansas Republican said.”

Too late.  You’ve already been used. 

Like a familiar blue dress.

9:25:10 PM    comment []

RantsCounterRants:  The liberation of what?

Micah Holmquist ranted recently about the backpedaling by Bush on WMD and his spin about terrorism.  It made for a few good comments, particularly Micah’s choice rebuttal:

“When is there going to be a “Battle of Sudan”? The Bush Administration has apparently decided that people in Sudan don’t deserve freedom, or at least don’t deserve it as much s the Iraqis. Of course that could change depending on what the Sudanese government does.”

Unfortunately, there’s no compelling “national security interest” in Sudan, therefore no reason for us to intervene in this sovereign nation’s internal politics. 

In straight talk, there’s no oil in Sudan.  Richard Perle’s cronies have no reason to press for the “liberation of Sudan” via Perle’s puppet, Wolfowitz.

It’s quite sad that some people genuinely believe that oil isn’t in any way a contributing factor to the Bush Administration’s attitudes towards other countries.  Compare Iraq to North Korea; oil is the fundamental reason why the US went to war against an abstract threat based on weak intelligence instead of a real threat based on strong intelligence.  As I rebutted in comments:

…I did read the entirety of Wolfowitz comments, published after the Guardian's original version. I've also heard Richard Perle's comments on PBS Frontline regarding North Korea versus Iraq, which augments Wolfowitz' opinions. The truth is right there, and Wolfowitz is fairly upfront about it. I'll make it easier to comprehend: think about leverage, and what kind of leverage Iraq and NK have to employ.

Oil gave Hussein/Iraq a lot of leverage, meaning the US needed to cut that off; the fact that Bush Administration corporate supporters would like a nice chunk of that action makes it only too easy to muster political support at home to remove that massive amount of leverage. Hussein's other leverage was WMD -- he could use them to extort performance from others as long as the threat of potential WMD lingered. In other words, Hussein didn't have to have them, only the illusion of them (far more cost effective -- no capital outlay for real WMD but all the impact of actually having WMD; it's a classic move from Sun Tzu's "Art of War"). Far greater UN inspections than were permitted would eventually have disclosed the illusory nature of the leverage; it's why Hussein resisted inspections.

NK is perceived by Perle as a bunch of loonies trying to extort what ever they want -- he believes we should never negotiate with them. NK has little leverage with the rest of the world, only offering limited missile technology and nothing else due to its location and bankrupted conditions. Once Wolfowitz and Perle began to push the idea of disengagement as foreign policy, NK lost its relationship with the US and had to scrounge up more leverage in the way of nuclear force to get the US back to the table. The question before us is whether this is another use of shadow or not; can we afford not to negotiate, get inspectors back in there to take a peak? Could our pride combined with lack of commercial interest actually force NK to use weapons if they do have them?

Just because Perle no longer has a titled position with the government doesn't mean he's not influencing the situation; he continues working as a adjunct advisor to the Administration all the while also working as a consultant to military-industrial complex. You can't tell me it's not about the oil when whatever Perle believes comes out of Wolfowitz mouth -- and Perle is getting what his corporate constituency expects. Oil. Lots of it.

Watch how this new quagmire plays out in Iraq.  Bet we’ll end up just coasting along, the corporate-whore media playing footsy with the Bushies for as long as it appears Perle’s corporate slave-masters get oil out of Iraq.  Never mind the fact there’s no WMD discovered yet, and possibly never; that’s because it was always about the damned “liberation of oil”. 

Oops.  I meant the “liberation of Iraq.”

I guess that begs the question: if it wasn’t about oil and it was really about the liberation of the Iraqi people, when the hell will there be a “Battle of Yongbyon” in North Korea?

3:42:17 PM    comment []

Last day of school

Although the summer solstice hasn’t yet arrived, summer begins today.  At least in this household it does.

I did something rather whacked today; I’ve not been able to do this in the past because I worked full time.  I went to school to pick up my daughter on her last day of school before summer vacation.

The building is palpably vibrating with an aura, an energy field, emanating from each classroom.  The halls are thick with a miasma-like smell of Kool-Aid and children’s sweat, kraft glue and crayons, pencil shavings and clay.  Other parents who’ve arrived to do the same thing, mill about in the halls in front of classroom doors, nervously smiling.  They’re visibly affected by the escalating energy flowing through the building.

I scurry down the hall to my daughter’s classroom.  I’ve tried not to get there too early; if she spots me, she won’t pay any attention at all to the teacher during the last few minutes.  I have only five minutes to position myself surreptitiously to take photos through the glass of the classroom door.

Omigod, it’s pandemonium.  Utter chaos.  The kids already have their backpacks on; they’re half-sitting, half-standing, draped across their desks, moving restlessly.  One boy is anxiously chomping on the straps of his backpack; thank goodness for the backpack, I cannot help but wonder what he’d bite instead to sooth his restlessness.

My daughter sees me, jumping up and down.  I gesture to her, asking her to be quiet and sit.  She slumps, looks furtively at the teacher, then to the clock, then back to me, then all around again in rapid succession.  She’s far from calm.

Backing away from the window of the classroom door, I step back into the hall.  Across the way, in another classroom door window, a second-grader jumps up and down and up and down as if on a pogo stick.  Oh my.  He must have been a treat to work with this year; I think to myself that teachers are grossly underpaid animal trainers.

The door to my daughter’s room pops open; the teacher has finished her final words to the students.  She waves to me and another parent, beckoning us in, knowing we wanted to capture this last day by camera.  We slowly ease in, uncertain whether we’ll me mobbed as we take pictures.  I snap a few shots, including one of the boy still chomping on his backpack straps; I’ll send it to his mother.  Won’t she be proud?

As I finish and begin to back out of the room with the door behind me, the school bell rings.  Damn, I’ve made a gross tactical error.  I’ve not worn my watch and didn’t realize the bell was about to ring.  And I’m in the worst spot – in the middle of the doorway.

Agh!!!  My feet are stepped on a dozen times as these screaming and quivering fine monsters wend their way past me and out the door.  My eardrums are pierced by the squeals of these little gleeful ogres as they stream around me.  I couldn’t move an inch forward or backward, until the last of the kids pushed by me.  I clutched my camera tightly, afraid I’d end up on the floor, my camera crushed.

The mounting energy subsides, shrill yelps fading in the distance as bus engines rumble in low counterpoint to high-pitched shrieks of joy.  The miasma thins; the temperature drops in the halls, cool air from the doors thrown open by fleeing children, pouring in and scouring away the fog of the school day.

We take a picture of the now much-relieved teacher with my daughter, then head out into the hallway. 

My daughter hums a little tune and skips out the school door towards the parking lot, mindless of the weight of the backpack under which she usually shuffles.

Ah, it’s summer.

1:39:01 PM    comment []