Long Weekend



Off to the beach. As you may recall, the internet connection there was non-existent last time. But I'll do my best (and plenty of screenwriting.)

So, maybe I'll see you tonight, or maybe I'll see you Monday.

things fall apart - out.

Thy Will Be Done

And apparently, thy will is four more years of Bush and Cheney.

From The Washington Post:

The Bush-Cheney reelection campaign has sent a detailed plan of action to religious volunteers across the country asking them to turn over church directories to the campaign, distribute issue guides in their churches and persuade their pastors to hold voter registration drives.

Campaign officials said the instructions are part of an accelerating effort to mobilize President Bush (news - web sites)'s base of religious supporters. They said the suggested activities are intended to help churchgoers rally support for Bush without violating tax rules that prohibit churches from engaging in partisan activity.

...

But tax experts said the campaign is walking a fine line between permissible activity by individual congregants and impermissible activity by congregations. Supporters of Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, charged that the Bush-Cheney campaign is luring churches into risking their tax status.

...

Milton Cerny, a tax specialist in the Washington office of the law firm Caplin & Drysdale who formerly administered tax-exempt groups for the IRS, said there is nothing in the campaign instructions "that on its face clearly would violate" the law.


"But these activities, if conducted in concert with the church or church leadership, certainly could be construed by the IRS as the church engaging in partisan electioneering," he said. "The devil is in the details."

Rosemary E. Fei, a tax specialist at the San Francisco law firm of Silk, Adler & Colvin, said the campaign checklist "feels dangerous to me" not just because of what is in it, but because of what is not. "There's no mention whatsoever that churches should be careful to remain nonpartisan," she said.

[Spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign Terry]Holt suggested such warnings are unnecessary. "Why would we warn one citizen about the boundaries of their political discussion with another citizen?" he said.

Because, you disingenuous waste, if the citizen in question is a religious leader, such as a priest or pastor, their respective congregation sees them, in some form, as an Earth-bound instrument of God. Therefore, when that religious leader endorses a candidate, certain members of the congregation may be inclined to see it as an endorsement from God.

Which is exactly what Terry Holt and Secretary of Genius Karl Rove want.

ALABAMA CHRISTIAN VOTER GUIDE

Incumbent

Name: George W. Bush

Party: Republican

Kills Babies: No

Eats Babies: No

Loves Queers: No

Would Allow Queers To Marry: No

Would Allow Queers To Marry, Adopt A Baby, And Then Kill And Eat It: No

Challenger

Name: John F. Kerry

Party: Democrat

Kills Babies: Yes

Eats Babies: Unknown

Loves Queers: Yes

Would Allow Queers To Marry: [says no, but] Yes

Would Allow Queers To Marry, Adopt A Baby, And Then Kill And Eat It: Yes

JK Rowling - Bane Of My Existence

From Reuters:

LONDON - JK Rowling has silenced the rumour-mongers by confirming the new book in her series will be called "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince".

The author of the multi-million selling books revealed the title behind a magic door on her official website, JKRowling.com but gave no indication of when the book would come out.

This is wrong. You don't get people hooked on crack only to refuse to sell it to them...

2 Kewl 4 Skewl

Via World O'Crap, we discover Michelle Malkin in the midst of another conniption. It seems a high school in Worcester, MA has assigned students a book of poetry by Tupac Shakur for summer reading.

If that's the standard, why not just drop the pretense of academic instruction and assign them comic books and romance novels?

Interesting that Michelle has such an aversion to romance novels being taught in public schools, given that this particular romance novelist (also a facist hack who, consciously or not, appears to have lifted the plotline of her masterwork from a 40's serial) happens to have: a) inspired a major change in Michelle's life; and b) been a part of her high school literature curriculum.

Allow us to sample the kind of awe-inspiring prose that spurnned a young Michelle Malkin onto greatness:

The light cloth of his shirt seemed to stress, rather than hide, the structure of his figure, his skin was suntanned, his body had the hardness, the gaunt, tensile strength, the clean precision of a foundry casting, he looked as if he were poured out of metal, but some dimmed, soft-lustered metal, like an aluminum-copper alloy, the color of his skin blending with the chestnut-brown of his hair, the loose strands of the hair shading from brown to gold in the sun, and his eyes completing the colors, as the one part of the casting left undimmed and hardly lustrous: his eyes were the deep, dark green of light glinting on metal.

If you close your eyes and read it again, you can practically see Fabio posing for the book cover.

Damn You Apes!

Blogger is having crazy problems. I know it's not my fault because The Mothership has been having difficulties as well...

At least on my computer. Maybe this is all my fault.

Oh well. Enjoy.

TROY McCLURE: I hate every ape I see,
From chimpan-A to chimpanzee,
No, you'll never make a monkey out of me!

(Statue of Liberty rises)

TROY: O my God! I was wrong!
It was Earth, all along!
You've finally made a monkey,

APES: Yes we've finally made a monkey,

TROY: Yes you've
WITH APES: finally made a monkey out of me!

TROY: I love you, Dr. Zaius!

The More Things Change...

From Reuters:

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb blast has killed three U.S. marines in Baghdad in the first reported fatal attack on U.S. forces in Iraq since the formal handover of sovereignty to an interim government.

A U.S. military spokesman said two marines were also wounded in the explosion that wrecked a Humvee vehicle escorting a convoy carrying engineering equipment.

"I don't know why the terrorists want to kill us. We just want to help Iraqis," said a marine at the scene on Tuesday.

...

Iraq's independent Al Mada newspaper said only time would tell how much freedom Iraqis would have to manage their affairs.

"It was a celebration with no marches, not one shot fired in joy, and in the streets everything remained as it was, with American patrols, Iraqi police checkpoints. Even the terrorist gangs that had warned Iraqis of hell carried out ordinary operations -- an explosion here and there and some shells at the Green Zone," it said in a front-page editorial.

The early transfer of power to the Iraqi government, in order to avoid potential terrorist attacks, is a pretty savvy move. However, the act itself, changing plans due to fear of terrorist activity, is inconsistent with everything President Bush has told the American public since 9-11. If anything, it is an admission that the President's earlier, cowboy-style rhetoric ("bring 'em on" anyone?) was a huge mistake.

How long can the President continue to campaign on his record while simultaneously contradicting himself?

Letting The Terrorists Win

From the AP:

BAGHDAD (AP) - The U.S.-led coalition transferred sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government two days early Monday in a surprise move that apparently caught insurgents off guard, averting a feared campaign of attacks to sabotage the historic step toward self-rule.

Legal documents transferring sovereignty were handed over by U.S. governor Paul Bremer to chief justice Midhat al-Mahmood in a small ceremony in the heavily guarded Green Zone. Bremer took charge in Iraq about a year ago.

...

Two hours after the ceremony Bremer left Iraq on a U.S. air force C-130, said Robert Tappan, an official of the former coalition occupation authority. Bremer was accompanied by coalition spokesman Dan Senor and close members of his staff. Bremer's destination was not given, but an aide said he was "going home."

This is interesting for two reasons:

1) The moment those legal documents changed hands, Bremer dumped his file cabinet in a paper shredder and fled on horseback to the awaiting C-130 faster than hizzoner, Mayor Joseph Quimby.

2) In the past, President Bush has given Americans the impression that changing our plans due to fear of potential terrorist attacks is equivalent to surrendering our freedom to terror.

We appreciate your steadfast willingness to fight terror on your own. You stand against terror by flying the airplanes and by maintaining them. You stand against terror by loading a bag or serving a passenger.

And by doing so, you're expressing a firm national commitment that's so important, that we will not surrender our freedom to travel, that we will not surrender our freedoms in America, that while you may think you have struck our soul, you haven't touched it, that we are too strong a nation to be carried down by terrorist activity.

When they struck, they wanted to create an atmosphere of fear. And one of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry, is to tell the traveling public: "Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Go down to Disney World in Florida, take your families and enjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed."

Why does President Bush believe brown-skinned people aren't strong enough to avoid being "carried down by terrorist activity?"

This Summer I Hear The Drumming...

From the AP:

SACRAMENTO -- The mother of a soldier killed in Iraq summoned news outlets to photograph her son's flag-draped casket arriving at Sacramento International Airport to protest a Pentagon policy banning media coverage of America's war dead.

...

"I don't care what President Bush wants," his mother, Nadia McCaffrey, told the Los Angeles Times. Patrick "did not die for nothing ... The way he lived needs to be talked about. Patrick was not a fighter, he was a peacemaker."

Patrick McCaffrey was killed June 22 along with Lt. Andre Tyson, both members of the 579th Engineer Battalion, when the two were ambushed by insurgents near Balad, Iraq.

The debate over whether Americans should see the coffins of McCaffrey and other troops flared last April after The Seattle Times published a front-page photograph of caskets in a cargo plane in Kuwait and a First Amendment activist posted on his Web site dozens of like images from Dover, Del., home to the nation's largest military mortuary.

Sunday night's brief ceremony, however, did not violate the policy because it applies only to military facilities. The airport and the California National Guard worked Sunday to arrange the event.

...

McCaffrey was a manager with a collision repair company in the Silicon Valley when he enlisted in the National Guard in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But he had grown disillusioned with his mission in Iraq, his family said.

For her part, Nadia McCaffrey said she planned to continue speaking out against the war.

"This is enough," she said. "We have to react."

Softball-Sized Heil

Via Jesse at Pandagon, (and let's face it, excluding Neocon VS. Decepticon, everything you read on this site can be found sooner and better there) comes the news that ALF is documenting instances of Bush supporters comparing liberals to Nazis, Hitler and the like. Because I never miss an opportunity to slam the conservative movement's Screech, here's my favorite Tucker Carlson moment:

CARLSON: Now, Tad, as you know, part of what it means to be Democrat is to count people by race, much like the Nazis did.

The best thing about Tucker is that he accuses others of this on a somewhat regular basis.

For instance:

CARLSON: The biggest fund raiser for Democratic causes in the United States, George Soros, compared the president to Hitler. Nancy Pelosi, your leader, accuses him of being responsible for the deaths of servicemen in Iraq. You see no extremism on the left?

And:

CARLSON: I want to talk about pure, seething hatred that exists at the core of your[party]. And I'm going to give you the example. And those are the ads posted by MoveOn.org, the left-wing Web site. You're fully aware of them.

The only question is, if Tucker is Screech, does that make Bob Novak Mr. Belding?