brainrow

Via Hetty Litjens: here is Dubya, the Movie.

Only one actor can play him.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. Then you’ll really cry, when you realize that this is our president.

Thomas Friedman on Thanksgiving Day:

In my next life, I want to be Tom DeLay, the House majority leader.

…I want to wear a little American flag on my lapel in solidarity with the troops, while I besmirch every value they are dying for…

If I can’t be …, then I want to be just a simple blue-state red-state American. I want to take time on this Thanksgiving to thank God I live in a country where, despite so much rampant selfishness, the public schools still manage to produce young men and women ready to voluntarily risk their lives in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to spread the opportunity of freedom and to protect my own. And I want to thank them for doing this, even though on so many days in so many ways we really don’t deserve them.

Predictions: Colin Powell will write a book.

Shortly thereafter, the White House will launch a program of character assassination against Mr. Powell. They will object to certain passages in his book. What those passages might contain, no man can say.

My mystic psychic prognosis: the objectionable passages will raise doubts about George W. Bush’s honesty, his competence, and/or his intelligence.

Okay, I confess. I’m not really psychic. I’m just imagining a repeat of the White House response to books from former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill and former anti-terrorism chief Richard Clarke. This White House has a limited playbook, and they always go back to the classics.

He may be a crook, but he’s our crook:

Moving to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay, House Republicans want to change party rules to ensure that DeLay retains his post if a Texas grand jury indicts him as it did with three of his political associates.

An indictment is not a conviction. Tom DeLay hasn’t even been indicted yet. But current Republicans seem awfully willing to change the rules to get whatever they want, whenever they want it. Ultimately, that’s the problem with Alberto Gonzales and his torture memos. Tailoring the law to suit current convenience is no law.

Still trying to understand the election. Still trying to come to grips with an America so completely different from the one I thought I lived in.

A few more maps to try to shed some light. The population-adjusted cartogram in shades of purple is really interesting—why, there’s hardly any red at all!

Tom Negrino on Condoleezza Rice:

Rice was arguably the most feckless, ineffectual, and powerless National Security Advisor in modern history. Under her watch, America suffered the worst terrorist attack in our history. Did she work to find out why, root out the problem, and make sure that it never happened again? She did not.

Rice is an extraordinarily gifted person, but we all have our weaknesses. It’s uncanny that all her weaknesses seem to be in the area of her job.

Personally, I don’t think she is the problem. It’s hard to do good work providing advice to a man who doesn’t take advice.

People who have had an impact on the lives of the Iraqi people: Saddam Hussein. George W. Bush. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Margaret Hassan.

Only one person in that list has ever cared about the lives of ordinary people in Iraq. Margaret Hassan didn’t work for Saddam Hussein. She didn’t work for George Bush or Tony Blair. She was a true humanitarian worker, employed by CARE International. She had lived in Iraq for thirty years.

Now it appears she is dead—murdered by kidnappers who would like us to believe they are Iraqi patriots, insurgents fighting the hated American occupation of Iraq.

By murdering this true friend of the Iraqi people, they have unmasked themselves. There can be no doubt that these killers are enemies of Iraq.

At last, a logo for those who admire George W. Bush’s leadership.

Via Backup Brain: The Jesusland T-Shirt.

Warning: Looking around their site, I’m starting to suspect that the t-shirt sellers don’t fully accept Bush’s Doctrine of Infallibility. Plus, they say mean things about Ohio.

Interesting software for the Religious Right. This may make it easier for them to re-purpose some old Taliban documents.

More on the censors and Saving Private Ryan:

From The Journal News:

“Ryan” is an hours-long treatise on selflessness — which is to say that it stands apart from the television chiefs who Thursday decided to buck ABC network plans to run the film. Without a shot being fired, more than a dozen stations across the nation buckled under financial pressure — the mere hint of fines — and decided to air something else. They might as well have run and hid at Omaha Beach.

Ellis Henican in Newsday:

viewers in Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix, Orlando and a bunch of other American cities got to fill their evenings with socially uplifting fare like “The Apprentice” (NBC) and “Survivor: Vanuatu – Islands of Fire” (CBS). Instead of experiencing this gripping film about courage, loss and humanity, they were snickering at some pushy moron getting fired by Donald Trump or watching some dimwit being dismissed from the tribe.

This is protecting us from … what?

Ken Schram from KOMO TV:

I honestly don’t know who’s more at fault for this stupidity.

The FCC?

…

How about those simpering, whimpering broadcasters?

They regularly air crap that doesn’t tweak what conscience they might have, but an honest depiction of war leaves them legally queasy.

…

for all the veterans who fought and died preserving freedom; for all those who are fighting and dying today, I wish Private Ryan could have been saved for you.

Instead, we’re becoming a nation of the self-righteous and self-absorbed who’d better start looking to save ourselves.

As the pundits keep pointing out, George W. Bush won the election thanks to the Religious Right, and it’s time for disappointed Democrats to stop pouting and start obeying the Big Guy.

The Bible has replaced the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, and all those trial lawyers that President Bush hates so much are scurrying around in confusion. Clearly, we benighted souls who have lived our lives under secular laws need to seek guidance from those whom God has chosen to rule over us.

I was emailed an open letter asking President Bush for help in understanding how to apply some of the laws. One of the many important questions:

I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2. clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

I hope President Bush (or perhaps his new Attorney General) will answer these questions. They have been asked before — a Google search showed me the same questions being asked of Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Rev. Jerry Falwell, but I haven’t been able to find any indication that either of those arbiters of morality has responded. We need their wise guidance. Without it, we’re in danger of living our lives just as we choose. Too dreadful to contemplate.

The Moral of the Story: If you’re going to be selective about which Biblical laws you observe, maybe you shouldn’t characterize your own choices as God’s immutable law.

At long last, the FCC’s new anti-obscenity drive is achieving the intended “chilling effect.” A number of ABC affiliate TV stations are refusing to carry the network’s broadcast of “Saving Private Ryan.”

“Would the FCC conclude that the movie has sufficient social, artistic, literary, historical or other kinds of value that would protect us from breaking the law?” WOI-TV President Raymond Cole said in a statement appearing on its Web site. “With the current FCC, we just don’t know.”

An FCC spokewoman said the agency wouldn’t tell stations whether the program would run afoul of indecency rules “because that would be censorship.” She added, without irony, “If we get a complaint, we’ll act on it.”

Among the balking stations are Sinclair Broadcasting’s six ABC affiliates (including the ABC affiliate here in Columbus, Ohio). This seems to fit right in with Sinclair’s decision earlier this year to ban Nightline’s tribute to fallen U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Take that, Janet Jackson!

The Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. He has a duty to enforce federal laws and to preserve and protect the Constitution.

If you want to know what President Bush has in mind for his second term, take a look at his nominee for Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales has dismissed the Geneva Conventions as “quaint.”

Still, Gonzales is quite a step up from John Ashcroft.

Ashcroft is out.

Bush is going to have his hands full finding someone worse than John Ashcroft to serve as Attorney General. “It’s hard work,” as the president often says with a pained scowl, as if he himself would do the heavy lifting. Ashcroft will be a tough act to follow.