The War

From The New York Times > Opinion:

When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

"misunderstandings"

From the New York Times, this morning:

Lyrics sung by Pearl Jam criticizing President Bush during a concert last weekend in Chicago should not have been censored during a Webcast by AT&T, a company spokesman said Thursday.

AT&T, through its Blue Room entertainment site, offered a Webcast of the band’s headlining performance Sunday at the Lollapalooza concert. The event was shown with a brief delay so the company could bleep out excessive profanity or nudity.

But monitors hired by AT&T through a vendor also cut two lines from a song to the tune of “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd. One was “George Bush leave this world alone,” and the other was “George Bush find yourself another home,” according to the band’s Web site.

The AT&T spokesman, Michael Coe, said that the silencing was a mistake and that the company was working with the vendor that produces the Webcasts to avoid future misunderstandings.

Think about that for a minute. There are people in this country who believe, when hired to screen out naughty language and naked people, that non-profane criticism of George Bush somehow qualifies. We live in a country where it's possible to have such a "misunderstanding".

Bravo, Republicans! Bravo! Why make it an actual crime to criticize the Dear Leader when you can just convince people to censor the criticism as a matter of course?

I continue to fucking despise those loathsome SUVs

This story is a perfect encapsulation of one of the reasons why I fucking loathe those cretinous SUVs. The victim is a sort-of relative (an uncle-in-law, if you will), killed by some idiot driver jumping the curb in her absurd fucking shiny assault truck. I bet my eyeteeth that she was yakking on the phone at the time.

While we were sunbathing...

The congress, inexplicably, again gutted the constitution. Why, people, why? Can we stop giving in to the thugs, please? Jack Balkin says:

Do not be mistaken: We are not hurtling toward the Gulag or anything that we have seen before. It will be nothing so dramatic as that. Rather, we are slowly inching, through each act of fear mongering and fecklessness, pandering and political compromise, toward a world in which Americans have increasingly little say over how they are actually governed, and increasingly little control over how the government collects information on them to regulate and control them. Slowly, secretly and imperceptibly, the mechanisms of government surveillance are being freed from methods of political control and accountability; and the liberties of ordinary citizens are being surgically removed under a potent anesthesia concocted from propaganda, fear, ignorance and apathy.

I hope the Democrats are justly proud of themselves for their cowardly contributions to this slow-motion destruction of our constitutional system.

. Glenn Greenwald writes:

It is staggering, and truly disgusting, that even in August, 2007 -- almost six years removed from the 9/11 attacks and with the Bush presidency cemented as one of the weakest and most despised in American history -- that George W. Bush can "demand" that the Congress jump and re-write legislation at his will, vesting in him still greater surveillance power, by warning them, based solely on his say-so, that if they fail to comply with his demands, the next Terrorist attack will be their fault. And they jump and scamper and comply (Meteor Blades has the list of the 16 Senate Democrats voting in favor; the House will soon follow).

Nancy and Harry: Why should I do a damn thing for you guys if you cannot control your party? Let's see some of that Stalinist party discipline I've heard we all have these days. Oh wait, it's too late for that. The milk was already split all over the supreme court.

Man, I'm depressed.