Open thread - So I saw Star Wars....

SPOILER WARNING - I DON'T REALLY GIVE AWAY THE PLOT, BUT IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE, YOU DECIDE IF YOU WANT TO READ ON...
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1. Yes, the acting sucked. Yoda was good. As was the lead evil guy. Anaken, or whatever, is cute, but as an actor, good God. Even Ewen McGregor, or whoever was Obiwan, was pretty crappy and one dimensional. The lead femme, same thing - pretty, and boring. They even managed to make Jimmy Smits suck.

2. The story. Ok.

3. The script. Yes, it's as bad as they say it is.

4. There's been some brouhaha with Republicans complaining it's an anti-Bush movie. Is the movie about George Bush? Yes.

Okay, it's not ABOUT George Bush, i.e., a criticism of Bush per se, but it's clearly an allegory of our times. Republic at war, freedoms slipping away, evil head of government has his own plans that don't involve keeping the country democratic, weak congress gladly hands more and more power to the evil leader, and on and on and on. They'd have to be brain dead not to have known their story kind of sort of resembled the current debate in our country. They even throw in the "if you're not with me, you're against me" line (or something close).

As for whether the movie is "anti-Bush," well, that depends on whether Bush is a megalomaniac set out to undercut our Republic by taking advantage of a war and a weak Congress to undermine our democracy. If that doesn't define George Bush's presidency, then no, it's not an anti-Bush movie.

:-) Read More......

Missouri's Governor honors the Confederacy...

Raw Story has the story....Missouri Governor Matt Blunt supports flying the Confederate flag in his state:

Republican Gov. Matt Blunt has ordered the Confederate flag to fly Sunday at the Confederate Memorial State Historic Site in Higginsville, where an afternoon graveside service is planned to mark Confederate Memorial Day.

The flag will fly for only one day, but a Blunt spokesman said Friday the governor also supports a scholarly review of whether it would be appropriate to again fly the Confederate flag regularly at the historic site.

Theocracy here, confederacy there.

Btw, Matt Blunt's dad is Roy Blunt, the third-ranking GOP member of Congress, right after Tom DeLay. Read More......

Bill Frist: Wounded and Weakened

The NY Times has a piece for Sunday's paper documenting the woes of Dr. Frist. Seems this Majority Leader gig has been hard work for him, and he hasn't really been doing all that well at it:

With lawmakers returning from the Memorial Day recess, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, faces a crucial test of whether he can re-establish his authority after a rapid sequence of events that many say diminished his standing and exposed a lack of experience in Congressional intrigue.

Adversaries, independent analysts and even some allies say the Senate leader was wounded by a compromise on judicial nominees achieved last month by a handful of Republicans who bucked him, including Senator John McCain, a potential presidential rival in 2008. The damage to his image was made worse, they say, when Democrats blocked another important White House nominee just a few days after the judicial agreement.

The doctor is defended by one of his puppet masters, Paul Weyrich who admitted Frist has been "weakened":

But while Mr. McCain was seen as a winner in some circles, Dr. Frist appeared to maintain his standing among conservatives, who commended him for his efforts to win votes on the judges while castigating Mr. McCain and the others who signed the compromise for undermining the majority leader.

"I've heard literally no one say, 'Well, if we had somebody else as leader, this would have been done better,' " Mr. Weyrich said. "No one."

Dr. Bill vows to fight back and be redeemed. Unlikely. He's been exposed as an empty suit. The Senate sharks are circling.... Read More......

White House says urinating on Quran is no big deal

Wanna bet how many days until the riots begin?

On Saturday, a day after the Pentagon described a series of cases of U.S. personnel mishandling the Quran, the White House downplayed the issue. "It is unfortunate that some have chosen to take out of context a few isolated incidents by a few individuals," presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said in a statement.

Funny, Abu Ghraib was a few isolated incidents out of context until of course we discovered our boys were abusing prisoners all over the world.

These people make me sick. Read More......

Open thread

Heating up some Chinese and heading to the Star Wars flick. Read More......

Taliban Attempts Takeover Of Italy

Sorry, did I say the Taliban? I meant the Catholic Church. Pope "Hey, I was just a kid when I joined the Hitler Youth" Benedict has made his first push into politics.

Did Pope Benedict support calls for massive debt relief in Africa, or an end to major countries like the US and France peddling their weapons of war to the corrupt governments on that troubled continent? No.

Did Pope Benedict decry the lack of attention spent on fighting AIDS, the worldwide plague killing tens of millions that is spreading faster than it can be fought, and which CAN be fought with inexpensive, humane intervention? No.

Did Pope Benedict condemn the mockery of one of the world's major religions by the US military's mistreatment of the Koran, calling for respect of all peoples of faith as a cornerstone of decency? No.

Instead, Pope Benedict supported a far-right Italian push to keep people from the polls, so that a referendum on fertility treatment would fail for lack of support. Among other measures, the current law insists the government has the right to decide who can and cannot get pregnant (if you're not married in a government-approved marriage, you're out of luck as far as fertility treatment goes). So if you can't get pregnant on your own, they'll force you to stay that way. And if you DO get pregnant, they'll force you to stay that way as well.

Pope Benedict is indeed continuing Pope John Paul II's legacy of hatred of democracy (it's so annoying when the meek insist on controlling their own lives) and a desire to make its own morality not simply the rule for faithful Cahtolics, but the law of the land for everyone else as well. Read More......

Imagine the firestorm in the U.S. if...

....if the wording of this AP story were changed every so slightly:

U.S. military officials say no guard at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects flushed a detainee's Quran Bible down the toilet, but they disclosed that a Muslim Christian holy book was splashed with urine. In other newly disclosed incidents, a detainee's Quran Bible was deliberately kicked and another's was stepped on.

On March 25, a detainee complained to guards that "urine came through an air vent" and splashed on him and his Quran Bible. A guard admitted he was at fault, but a report released Friday evening offering new details about Quran Bible mishandling incidents did not make clear whether the guard intended the result.

In another confirmed incident, water balloons thrown by prison guards caused an unspecified number of Qurans Bibles to get wet, and in a confirmed but ambiguous case, a two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside cover of a Quran Bible.

The findings, released after normal business hours Friday evening and after the major TV networks had aired their evening news programs, are among the results of an investigation last month by Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, the commander of the detention center in Cuba. A Newsweek magazine report - later retracted - that a U.S. soldier had flushed one Guantanamo Bay detainee's Quran Bible down a toilet triggered the investigation.

You get the drift....What would the theocrats be saying about that? Read More......

Israeli Soldiers Killed Unarmed Palestinian Cops For Revenge

Depressing, sad tale of Israel losing its soul via the Occupation -- this time in the revelation by Israeli soldiers that they shot and killed Palestinian policemen as revenge for the killing of six Israeli soldiers -- even though some of the Palestinians were unarmed and their ties to the killing of the Israelis were flimsy at best. If there's any silver lining, it's that this atrocity came to light because of Israeli soldiers who formed the group "Breaking The Silence" to reveal tactics by the government they believe are wrong. Read More......

Open thread

The comments are being wacky - they're still working, just showing "zero," ignore them :-) Read More......

Ohio's Coin-gate's Tom Noe and Karl Rove...and Arnold

Can't overlook this little tidbit from yesterday's Toledo Blade:

During the campaign, Mr. Noe had frequent contact with Karl Rove, the architect of Mr. Bush’s re-election bid. Mr. Bush numerous times during the campaign visited Ohio, which turned out to be the pivotal state on Election Day.

Today, from the Toledo Blade, we learn Arnold won't give his Noe money back. Yeah, it's more important for the multi-millionaire actor, married to a multi-millionaire newscaster to hold on to that $10,000. Means more to them than injured workers in Ohio:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger terminated any efforts to get him to return $10,000 that Toledo-area coin dealer Tom Noe contributed to his campaign...."The allegations about Mr. Noe became public a year after we accepted his contribution," said Martin Wilson, a spokesman for Mr. Schwarzenegger. "As he was an active Ohio Republican Party fund-raiser and donor, we had no reason at the time to question his contribution and have no intention of refunding the money."

Read More......

Our Allies In War On Terror: Despots, Dictators and Traffickers In Humans

Yes, the best way to fight the war on terror is to provide financial and military support to the cruel monarchy in Saudi Arabia (the world's biggest supporter of terrorism), the petty military tinpots of Pakistan (the world's biggest supplier of nuclear material and know-how) and other bastions of freedom.

The latest proof in how perverse we are in greedily pairing with countries like this? Bush's own goverment singles out four of our allies as not even meeting the minimum standards when it comes to combatting the trafficking in humans. Yes, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirate join such lovely folk as North Korea, Myanmar and Cuba as countries that don't even try to pretend they care about halting the international trafficking in humans. Another word for trafficking in humans? Slavery.

Of course, Bush released the report on Friday, hoping everyone would forget about his hypocrisy by Monday. Read More......

Amnesty fires back at Bush administration

I only wish Amnesty International had fired back earlier in the week so it would not get lost in the weekend news.

Kate Gilmore, the group's executive deputy secretary general, said the administration's response was "typical of a government on the defensive," and she drew parallels to the reactions of the former Soviet Union, Libya and Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini, when those governments were accused of human rights abuses.

Amnesty has fired right back, pointing out that the administration often cites its reports when that suits its purposes. "If our reports are so 'absurd,' why did the administration repeatedly cite our findings about Saddam Hussein before the Iraq war?" wrote William F. Schultz, executive director of the group's United States branch, in a letter to the editor being published Saturday in The New York Times. "Why does it welcome our criticisms of Cuba, China and North Korea? And why does it cite our research in its own annual human rights reports?

Long used to biting criticism, the group said this was the first time one of its reports had drawn the public wrath of the United States president and vice president, its secretary of defense, its secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ms. Gilmore said the response was telling. "When we see a government at this level engaging in rhetorical attacks and avoiding dealing with the details or the facts," she said, "we interpret that as being a sign that we are starting to have an impact."

Read More......

Open Thread

What's going on? Read More......

Africa "Marshall Plan" to get little from Bush

Hmm, so I guess it's actually a Marshall Plan but without the money or reconstruction, so it's not really a Marshall Plan, is it? I'll be curious to hear what Bush proposes but for starters it's not a bad idea to make free trade a bit easier for Africa since it so often is blocked out of business due to import duties in the EU and US.

The Independent has a good article about just how unfair western policies are, with a particular focus on US cottom farmers who are living off of US taxpayer subsidies, raking in millions while African farmers get run out of business. (The "new Republicans" just can't get enough government welfare, can they?)

Maybe a more important target out to be blocking international weapons shipments to Africa which bleed government funds, continue wars and do nothing in the way of helping the countries move forward. Since that trade is so often dominated by France, US, China and other traditional weapons manufacturers I don't see much happening on that front. Imagine what could be done with all of that money currently being used for weapons in Africa, not to mention the peace and stability that it would bring. Read More......

"New kind of apartheid" in Zimbabwe

In the growing chorus of criticism, the UN is also speaking out against the forced evictions by the Mugabe government that have left at least 1 Million people homeless and called for a stop to the eviction of the urban poor in Zimbabwe. This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with power and maintaining power at all costs. Read More......