King Sihanouk's blog

Very cool. And he's in favor of gay marriage. Wow.

I got to get to know his granddaughter, Princess Rattana-Devi Norodom, a few years ago at the world AIDS conference in Barcelona - I helped her craft her address to the conference, and we hung out a bit as I was in charge of making sure everything went smoothly for her address, attendance, etc. Totally TOTALLY cool woman, and only in her mid-twenties. Her handlers were quite protective, as you can imagine with a "princess," but like I said, she was totally cool.

This is a picture I took of Her Royal Highness in the VIP area before her speech. And yes, of course, that's our man with her. (As an aside, you should have seen the crowd react when Clinton arrived on the stage. Almost a thousand people from around the world - including some of the most critical AIDS activists on the planet, people who were highly critical of the US - and they went nuts when Clinton arrived. We're talking rock star status. It's amazing the goodwill we have out there to be tapped into, if only we had a president who wasn't an idiot.)



I'm having a hard time finding the "blog" itself, but his Web site is cute, including some songs that he apparently played and recorded himself on, I think, a synthesizer (think Soviet cocktail hour (of which I've attended a few, but that's another story)). Read the rest of this post...

Bush rewards analysts behind faulty Iraq war intel

The bigger the screw up, the bigger the reward. Had they only gotten us into a SECOND war based on a lie and killed a FEW more innocent soldiers and civilians they could have gotten a cabinet post:

Two Army analysts whose work has been cited as part of a key intelligence failure on Iraq — the claim that aluminum tubes sought by the Baghdad government were probably meant for a nuclear weapons program rather than for rockets — have received job performance awards in each of the past three years, officials said.

Read the rest of this post...

Another open thread

Nap time Read the rest of this post...

Judge orders Bush to release all photos of abuse to public, Abu Ghraib and more

Something wicked this way comes. This is gonna be fun. Read the rest of this post...

Global protests against US Koran mishandling

Nice job Scotty-boy. You must be pleased to have thrown all of the blame over to Newsweek when you knew the real story about how the US has mishandled the Koran. So if people die in these protests are we to blame Scott McClellan who was so quick to blame Newsweek? Just how stupid was McClellan to jump so hard on Newsweek when this information was bound to get out?

The US admitting that they erred is a good first step but it's not really enough now, is it? When is Rumsfeld going to be asked to step down? How many more incidents are we going to have to hear about before he is asked to leave? He's been the one running the ship in the Pentagon and it's just one bad story after another but the military and the administration always seem to prefer low level scapegoats instead of the people in charge. And what about Gonzalez who approved torture for detainees? What a bunch of gutless wonders we have in charge. It's always "the buck stops over there with that other person...good old what's her name." Read the rest of this post...

MTV censors Nine Inch Nails for attempted criticism of Bush

Yes, God forbid that art be political, Herr MTV. And kudos to Nine Inch Nails (a band I love) for telling MTV to stick it where the Cheney don't shine. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Nice day in DC Read the rest of this post...

Ohio GOP Coin-Gate hits the NY Times Front Page

Jim Dao from the NY Times has a good article on the Ohio GOP Coin-gate scandal. Pretty much captures all the main elements:

For nearly a decade, Thomas Noe has been the Republican Party's man to see in northwest Ohio, a confidant of governors and a prodigious fund-raiser for legislators, judges and just about every Republican statewide elected official.

He also happened to be a dealer in rare coins. And in 1998, the Ohio Workers' Compensation Bureau agreed to invest in a rare-coin fund that he controlled as a way to hedge its holdings in stocks and bonds, an investment that experts have called highly unorthodox.

But this week, Mr. Noe's lawyers said that as much as $13 million of the state's $50 million investment in his two funds could not be accounted for. Mr. Noe, meanwhile, has become the focus of at least six investigations or audits involving either his handling of the coin investments or his campaign fund-raising. Federal investigators are also looking into his contributions to President Bush's 2004 campaign as a "Pioneer," raising more than $100,000.

And suddenly, Republicans who once stood staunchly at Mr. Noe's side, and at his fund-raising parties, cannot seem to run from him fast enough.

The article captures some of the political implications of the growing scandal:

Democrats have tried to turn the missing coins into a morality tale about the dangers of one-party government. Indeed, in Ohio it is hard to find anyone responsible for government problems who is not a Republican, since Republicans control not only the governor's office, but also the Legislature, the attorney general's office, the Supreme Court and the state auditor's office.

"One-party rule has made the Republicans much more sloppy in their corruption," said State Senator Marc Dann, a Democrat.

But the scandal has also jolted the Republican Party simply because Mr. Noe, thanks to his energy, charm and sheer fund-raising prowess, has helped or befriended just about every prominent Republican in the state. Mr. Taft, who cannot run for re-election because of term limits, received about $20,000 in donations from Mr. Noe and his wife over the past decade.

The three Republicans trying to replace Mr. Taft in next year's election - Auditor Betty Montgomery, Attorney General Jim Petro and Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell - have all received thousands of dollars from Mr. Noe and his wife, Bernadette, in recent years, according to state campaign records. All three have opened audits or investigations into Mr. Noe's coin funds or campaign contributions.

If people in Ohio think the GOP is better for them now, they are beyond hope. And, the Democrats really need to drive this home. And is it me, or is it not a good thing when the GOP Party Chair starts comparing Coin-gate to Watergate?:

"Of course this damages the party," Robert Bennett, the chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, said in an interview. "But we're going to be judged by how we respond to it. The people in Ohio understand that if you try to cover up, try to do the Watergate cover-up, it never will work in this day and age."

And, Mr. Bennett, if it weren't for the investigations of the Toledo Blade, you would be covering this up...and there were a lot of rumors flying around about how you were trying to do just that. Read the rest of this post...

Mugabe continues brutal campaign against urban poor

Together with his clamp down urban street vendors, Mugabe is now raiding squatter homes leaving more people homeless in an already troubled country. Once again the repressive campaign is targeted at poor black, urban people who voted against Mugabe in the last election. This crackdown has nothing to do with the white population but has everything to do with political repression against black voters who supported opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai.

With the UN food aid coming, thanks to incompetent farming by Mugabe's cronies, one can take a guess at who's going to control food distribution. Maybe the UN ought to start working with the African Union to protect and feed the people of Zimbabwe as well. Read the rest of this post...

Darfur calling - time to dig deep

Isn't it interesting how the US can "find" billions for the disastor of a war in Iraq yet sit by and do so little with the emergency in Daruf? Perhaps since the petroleum companies of the US, UK and France are all drooling to have full control of the oil in Sudan we ought to make them fork over the money that the African Union needs to supply and equip the troops to feed and protect the millions of displaced people there.

"Never again" should mean, "never again" and not "never again unless it's a poor African country." Dig deep rich countries, because no matter how you look at it, we have a hell of a lot more cash than the people of Darfur have to solve this political problem. Read the rest of this post...