Stitt

It's hard, even in absurdist satire, to stay one step ahead of this crew. - John Cusack

Thursday, June 23, 2005

An unknown known

Rummy thinks the war is going splendidly:
"Any who say we are losing this war are wrong," Rumsfeld told congressional Democrats demanding answers about the future of U.S. troops in Iraq. "We are not."

Yet he's tried to resign twice:
Citing what he called "gross errors and mistakes" in the U.S. military campaign in Iraq, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) asked Rumsfeld if it wasn't time for him to resign.
"I've offered my resignation to the president twice," Rumsfeld shot back, adding that President Bush decided not to accept it. "That's his call."

Nothing says success like "I Quit!"


Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Save a flag, burn some oil

"If the flag needs protection at all, it needs protection from members of Congress who value the symbol more than the freedoms that the flag represents." said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., whose district includes the site of the former World Trade Center.

And let us not forget this aint the first time...
But your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
They're already overcrowded
From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
   -John Prine


Monday, June 20, 2005

Brother can you spare a Middle Eastern culture course

Gary Bald, the FBI's current anti-terrorism chief, said his first training in that area came "on the job" when he moved to headquarters to oversee anti-terrorism strategy two years ago. when asked about his grasp of Middle Eastern culture and history, he replied: "I wish that I had it. It would be nice."
Yeah, uh we wish you did too.


Friday, June 17, 2005

Much ado about nothing

Remember when Cheney said this:
"But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we've gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors - including Saddam's own son-in-law, who was subsequently murdered at Saddam's direction. Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon." -- Dick Cheney 8/26/2002

That actually wasn't what Saddam's own son-in-law said, which was:
"I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons — biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed" -- Gen. Hussein Kamel, the former director of Iraq's Military Industrialization Corporation 8/22/1995

Talk about your cherry-picked intelligence, in his reference to this interivew with General Kamel, Cheney not only neglects to mention that all weapons were destroyed, he completely fabricates the assumption that the nuclear program had resumed. See the original interview transcript for proof.


Thursday, June 09, 2005

Playing softball

Welcome to the spinzone: The Foxnesified Bush interview
Gibson: "Now, Neil, nobody can talk to the president very long without bringing up the war."

Cavuto: "Right..."

And yet, somehow the topic never came up. Not a single question, even though according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, Americans consider the war in Iraq Bush's number two priority, right after the economy and jobs.


Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Light (en) Up Sandy Baby!

Despite the weak piling of "assertion upon assertion" from the majority opinion, the dissenters in the Supreme Court's decision on Gonzales v. Raich have the interesting points:
O'Connor: Relying on Congress’ abstract assertions, the Court has endorsed making it a federal crime to grow small amounts
of marijuana in one’s own home for one’s own medicinal
use. This overreaching stifles an express choice by some
States, concerned for the lives and liberties of their people,
to regulate medical marijuana differently.

Thomas:Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never
crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable
effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress
can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can
regulate virtually anything— and the Federal Government
is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers and may now regulate quilting bees, clothes drives, and potluck suppers throughout the 50 states..
Well, duh...
But the absolute funniest thing to come out of this is DEA Administrator Karen Tandy's assertion that marijuana "myths" are "killing people". Now what exactly has she been smoking? It should be noted that the Federal Government keeps stressing that they won't use their sway to "arrest low-level users"
Czar Walters: Criminal justice sanctions are sometimes necessary, but we are not locking up low-level marijuana offenders.
yet that's exactly what has happened, just as he admitted in February.
...concluding that unless there is a shift in the fundamental approach, "you are chasing primarily small people, putting them in jail, year after year, generation after generation."


Thursday, June 02, 2005

Win Ben Stein's Amnesia

While all the WashPo has been hailing Deep Throat as an American hero (with reservations due to his own criminal endeavors), Ben Stein has the audacity to suggest that Felt "made the conditions necessary for the Cambodian genocide."

Basically, Stein's under that impression that had Nixon been allowed to remain in office, despite his pesky criminal enterprises and pathological lies, he would have put a stop to the even peskier tyrannical reign of Pol Pot. Yes, since RN was so successfull at halting the NVA, protesters and "those jews", such as yourself. Following that logic further, the students shot at Kent State who protested the bombing of Cambodia were just showing their solidarity with the Khmer Rouge? You can't remember what Nixon did wrong? Have you lost your frickin mind, man? I was in the womb at the time and even I remember...