Friday, February 28, 2003

More chin music for the recording industry Remember when CD's first came out, in the early 80's, and they were expensive? Then we entered those halcyon days of the 90's.... and they were even more expensive. Now its 2003, and we're still paying $15-$20 for that Justin Timberlake album. Sound a bit strange to you? If you answered "yes", you're not alone. Attorneys General of 43 states agree with you and brought about a class action law suit against various labels and retailers alleging illegal price inflation (well, duh!). Lo and behold, the machine is ready to settle this ugly little matter so that it can move on to bigger and better things, like whining about a dip in album sales. Is there a connection there? Nah. Go get your $5-$20 piece of the pie, kids. Click here for more fun with Homeland Security graphics "Sheets of fire melted triple-decker bunk beds, light fixtures, eyeballs." Lest we forget that people actually died during the Gulf War, albeit brown people who worship the wrong god, this Reuters piece does a bang up job of putting "weapons of mass destruction" in perspective. I think Ann Coulter should be forced to watched looped footage of that charred, Iraqi convoy for hours on end, a la "A Clockwork Orange." - M.C. No Shame 3:31:54 PM    comment []

This War Can't Start Soon Enough for Karl Rove For the first time, less than 50 percent of registered voters say they would vote for Bush in 2004. The fact that the economy has been in the terlet ever since the Man from Crawford started making policy seems to have finally begun to sink in. Note to the Presidential Prayer Team: Pray harder! This Time It's Impersonal "This guy tried to kill my dad!" Well, actually, according to FBI and CIA sources, including a noted whistleblower who helped push through major reforms in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it's unlikely that Saddam in fact tried to kill the first President Bush. More likely is that it was a Kuwaiti intelligence operation planned to stir up American anger against Iraq. In that case, it worked like gangbusters, Kuwaiti intelligence dudes. Maybe This is Why Bush Doesn't Want Their Kids to Have Good Schools An organization of Persian Gulf War vets are calling for Rumsfeld's resignation based on the Secretary of Defense's professed ignorance about shipments of biological and chemical agents to Iraq during the 1980s. Not only is Rumsfeld's claim that he knew nothing about it dubious (he was several times an envoy to Iraq on behalf of Reagan, meeting and greeting the "evil madman" who was then our buddy), even if it were true it would be cause for his resignation. After all, shouldn't the Secretary of GD Defense know who our country is sending weapons to? Celebrate Your Freedom By Spitting on Someone's Mother I really respect this woman, a self-identified "42 year-old Cobb County housewife" who recently turned out to greet an appearance by El Busho in her hometown with a sign that said "No War for Oil." You can read all about the very respectful and polite hearing her neighbors gave to her position. It would be easier to hear the pro-war side's case if they weren't always spitting and telling us to "leave the fucking country." A Great Day for the Fair and Balanced Media It takes a lot to make Americans pay attention to other countries, you know. The fact that more Americans are turning to foreign news sources because they can't get news in this country (witness the near-blackout of coverage over here concerning the Labour Party's revolt against Blair) is sad indeed for the press. But who can complain when there's a story about "Joe Millionaire" every day? Not me! Celebrate Your Freedom By Telling Teachers to Shut Up Apparently, a dozen children of soldiers in the great state of Maine were upset because teachers and students at school were criticizing the war. Big deal, you say. Live is full of people who disagree with you; learning to live with that is part of the educational process, right? Not in the state where the president does his drunk driving, pal! The state education commissioner sent a letter to every public school telling teachers to keep mum on criticism of the war, and both a Republican Senator and the damn governor said they were "disappointed" in the actions of public school teachers. If you ask me, they should be more disappointed that Maine's two chief industries are OxyContin banditry and jacklighting deer, but then what do I know? You See? It's Not Just Southerners! Liberty bread pizza hits Europe! Some guy in Denmark has banned German and French people from his restaurant. In the words of Kent Brockman, "Whether you agree or disagree with the politics, you've gotta come gawk at this crazy idiot." - Consider Arms 3:23:45 PM    comment []

Right Watch! Mona Charen, February 28, 2003 It's Mona Charen versus Dan Rather! Like most of these things, you have to read the column to get the true essence of the absurdity at play, but Charen’s basic message is simple: "So just what is newsworthy about getting [Hussein] to sit down for a one-on-one interview?" Here’s what is, Mona: he is a world leader on the brink of destruction. Even if everything he has to say is ridiculous, as citizens of the country about to attack him, we ought to be at least curious about what Hussein has to say. You don’t see a lot of press coverage about what Saddam himself has to say; most of it these days is whatever Bush has to say in his latest regurgitation of his "delay and deception" speech. It is certainly newsworthy to know more about this monster. And hey, if everyone knows he’s evil anyway, what’s the harm? She goes on to try and discredit Rather (this is a common tactic among pundits of Charen’s ilk; if you can’t silence dissent, at least try to dismiss anything that isn’t support as ridiculous) for not asking tough questions. You could go on to argue his failure to do that with the sitting U.S. president, but more importantly, think of it this way: Dan Rather is in Iraq, in the company of Saddam Hussein, who Charen herself is championing as a madman. Let her ask the "tough questions" and see what happens. Later, she attacks Rather’s rhetoric: when he says that the U.S. military is "aimed at [Hussein's] heart and your throat," she takes issue and suggests, "Well not exactly. It’s aimed at command and control, military targets and infrastructure." Stop the presses! How dare Dan be so misleading? Our arsenal isn’t literally directed precisely at the area around Saddam Hussein’s chest? Well, now I support the war! Such a shameless apologist for the Bush Administration should not be so careless in trying to attack meaningless rhetoric. Oliver North February 28, 2003 And then there is Oliver North, who is an apologist for the Administration only because he was part of the first version of it. His column, entitled "Irrelevance or impotence," is no more than another series of attacks against the U.N. ("irrelevant"), the French (Saddam’s appeasers) and Germany (hypocrites, among other things). What’s on Ollie’s mind? "…the assumption has been that…the United Nations actually cared. Now…we know better. What they want most is for the United States to appear impotent." There’s more: In dining at a Berlin restaurant, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder were there to "scheme up new ways to denigrate the unparalleled economic and military prowess of the United States" and "abandon the people of Iraq to tyranny and imperil the United Nations." And what advice does North have for Jacques Chirac? "Iraq does not play by Swiss diplomatic rules." Let’s be honest here, Oliver: neither does Bush. Come to think of it, neither did you when you were SELLING WEAPONS TO THE THIRD MEMBER OF THE AXIS OF EVIL (Did you think I’d get through the whole post without even mentioning it?). There isn’t a lot to say here. Either you believe that other nations have the right to disagree with America’s current demagogue or you don’t. If you believe the latter, what can I say? The United Nations was designed to protect its members from the wanton aggression of a certain nation. I guess the division comes between those who believe that nation is Iraq and those who believe it is Bush’s America. Appeasement, it seems, is a word that is about to have full time membership in the vocabulary of the American public. Pull out your dictionary's folks: hypothetically speaking (that's all it ever is with these clowns), to appease Hussein would be to grant him concessions to get him to back down in a crisis he created. I think the U.N. showed its intolerance for that sort of thing in 1991. France, Germany and the U.N. aren’t appeasing Hussein here because he (surprisingly enough) is not the aggressor. It is the U.K., Spain, Turkey, etc., etc. that are appeasing the United States. - Marcus-Marcus 11:57:40 AM    comment []

News You Can (Not) Use At least there is comity about something on this Iraq thing: Everybody on the Security Council agreed that 8,000 pages of that country's weapons disclosures should be censored. For why? Perhaps because those pages pages reveal the extent to which Iraq was armed by companies based in Allied countries. Hewlett-Packard sold nuclear and rocket technology; Dupont sold nuclear tech; Eastman Kodak sold rocket tech (Eastman Kodak?), etc. The US departments of defence, energy, commerce, and agriculture and the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories all supplied Saddam with WMD tech. Not to mention the Centers for Disease Control and American Type Culture Collection which shipped Saddam botulism, anthrax, and West Nile virus, among other goodies. We weren't even the worst: 80 German companies sold weapons technology to Iraq, including technology used to manufacture the poison gas used on the Kurds and Iranians (because, hey, when you want to make poison gas, you go to the people with the experience). All of these sales were legal, and the vast majority ended when the Gulf War began. The point, though, is that if we're going to be trying people for war crimes and if one of our motivations for war against Saddam is what he did in the 1980s, we have to acknowledge a certain amount of culpability in all this. Not the UN, though. They said it would be "counterproductive" for the information to be released. - Consider Arms 9:50:48 AM    comment []

Saddam is hinting he might destroy his illegal missiles; Rummy is hinting that's not good enough; Fred Thompson is making pro-war TV ads; and Suge Knight, destroyer of worlds, is out of jail. Thank you, AP Wire (http://www.ap.org) The Big News: Will they or won't they? Iraq says it will begin destroying the dread Al Samoud missiles on Saturday, meeting the UN deadline. Tony Blair says that "thousands of tons" of chemical and biological weapons missing, presumably on the "terror ships." Russia says it is considering vetoing the second Security Council resolution, prompting someone in the American South to consider renaming vodka "liberty juice." Donald Rumsfeld disputes suggestions that large numbers of US troops would be needed to occupy a post-Saddam Iraq; Rumsfeld suggests calling on the services of Superman. After all, he's faster than a speeding locomotive! The Roundup: France says Iraq's "agreeance" (as per Fred Durst) to destroy the Al Samoud missiles shows the inspections are working. . . Two policemen were killed in Karachi when gunmen opened fire on the US Consulate there. . . President Arroyo in the Philippines has given the military 90 days to wipe out Abu Sayyaf. Comically, the Filipino government still insists that US forces won't be involved in combat there, while the US insists they will . . . The Ivory Coast's government has begun using pop music in their propaganda offensive against rebels there. Reports that Toby Keith has recorded a song called "The Orange, White, and Green (The Ugly Ivory Coastian)" could not be confirmed at press time. . . Troops are in the streets of Rio de Janeiro "trying to stop a wave of shootings and firebombings ahead of the city's world famous carnival." And you thought Mardi Gras in New Orleans was rough. - Consider Arms 9:37:19 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Marc Hatfield.