Bughouse Square

Links and commentary -- Thrilling!

 

The Daily Show on the kinder, gentler new U.S. Army and the magic of deficit spending

Bill Moyers on Campaign Finance Reform

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/27/06 08:22 | link | comments |

Nerd in Spidey Costume Robs Comic Store

He'll lose karma for that.

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/24/06 15:16 | link | comments |

Port, um, Gate?

Jon Stewart gives the story
Lou Dobbs accepts Bush's challenge to explain why this should be different from a deal with a British company
Lou Dobbs goes on to connect the dots between the UAE and the Bush administration

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/24/06 07:06 | link | comments (1) |

The Daily Show on victim's remorse

Letterman on why McClellan is being disingenuous when he insists the press "get back to the things that are important to the American people."

Low res net video "proving scientifically" that Cheney lied

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/22/06 08:37 | link | comments (3) |

For my students, here are the readings for Monday:

Terrorists are Made, Not Born
The Stanford Prison Experiment

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/17/06 10:31 | link | comments (1) |

Cheney Tips his Hand

A couple of blog entries on Cheney's assertion of  a vice presidential power to declassify information:

Moxie Grrrl
Just One Minute

Are they floating a test balloon?  I don't think it'll help Libby, because he has not been charged with leaking classified information but with lying to federal investigators.  Still, it looks like a hint of what's to come.

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/17/06 07:43 | link | comments |

More from the Cheney Pile-on

On the shooting...

David Letterman uses Cheney's own words against him (though not actually his own sentences)
Jon Stewart uses a similar gag on Michael Brown

Scarbrough and Franken think the problem is the apparent evasiveness of the vice president
O'Beirne thinks it's about the media getting their feelings hurt by being scooped by a podunk paper

Tucker Carlson insists that hunters don't drink -- laughter ensues
Dick Morris says alcohol is usually involved in incidents like this

Cafferty calls Cheney cowardly for running to FOX for a softball interview
Leno's mock interview

On Cheney authorizing Libby to leak information on Plame...

Um.  Hmmmm.

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/17/06 07:27 | link | comments |

Not apropos of anything, but goddamn this guy can shoot.

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/15/06 07:08 | link | comments (3) |

Cheney Shoots Guy in Face

Sadly, I have no new jokes to add to this non-news event, especially after The Daily Show pretty much nailed it:

Cheney's Got a Gun

Hunting accidents happen all the time, of course, and this really shouldn't be much of a story.  And yet, it's turning into a story just because there's something hincty about how information got out about this non-story.  Reporters hounded Scott McClellan about why it is the president didn't know Cheney had accidentally shot somebody on saturday until the morning after it happened:

McClellan: Useful Tool

Scott McClellan explained that it was because they were more concerned about making sure the victim got help.  How many people did that take?  And they decided to release the information not through the normal White House channels but to have the lady who owned the ranch where the accident took place put in a call to a local Corpus Christi paper in the morning.  Why?  Anyhow, later The White House insisted that Bush did know as of saturday night:

So there (Requires a Salon day pass)

Okay, so that means that Scott McClellan, the White House Press Secretary, was sent to the wolves without even that basic bit of information -- more evidence that he's generally kept in the dark. 

All of which is managing to distract from an important stories, such as that Libby is stooling on Cheney and Abramoff is stooling on Bush. 

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/14/06 07:59 | link | comments |

Daily Show Zings Gonzales on Constitutional Grounds

Tom Delay, Removed from Powerful Leadership Seat due to Corruption, Moved to other Powerful Leadership Seat

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/09/06 22:08 | link | comments |

Bush offers Syllogism, and Details

According to the AP wire, Bush has given some details of a successful 2002 thwart of an al-Qaida plot to attack L.A.

Probably you're thinking that nothing but petty hatred of America and an inability to admit that Bush has done something right would make anybody raise cynical questions about this glorious news.  But you know, it's funny.  I can't help but wonder...

* Why reveal this now, when it could have helped his election chances less than a year-and-a-half ago?  If the answer is "because this has nothing to do with boosting his popularity" then the question remains.  Why now?  His popularity could certainly use a boost lately.

Of course, as the article points out, he is not claiming that his illegal, unconstitutional and unpopular wiretapping of American citizens helped in this case.  So obviously he can't be trying to prove that this program was a success.  Unless of course he was hoping we'd make that inference anyway. 

In fact, he did not actually say that the U.S. had a part in foiling the plot.

 "The president said the plot was derailed when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaida operative. Bush did not name the country or the operative."

Nor does he say this resulted from anything the U.S. did.

"Bush said only that "subsequent debriefings and other intelligence operations" after the arrest of the unnamed operative led to information about the plot, and to the capture of other ringleaders and operatives involved in it. Hambali, for instance, was captured in Thailand in 2003 and handed over to the United States."

No information here on who performed these debriefings.

Here's the closest he comes to claiming the U.S. actually took part in the bust:

"It took the combined efforts of several countries to break up this plot," the president said. "By working together, we took dangerous terrorists off the streets. By working together, we stopped a catastrophic attack on our homeland."

It looks like some unnamed countries in Southeast Asia did all the work.  And there's something hincty in what he's not saying about that, too.  He didn't say what kind of evidence led to the arrests of these four Southeast Asian terrorists, and it appears that all information about the plot came to light after the arrests. 

Step 1.  Arrest people
Step 2. ???
Step 3. Confession!

There has recently been controversy about various means employed to glean information from persons in the custody of the U.S. or of allies not nearly so hung up about human rights.  And it has been pointed out many times that people being tortured are quite willing to make things up to end the abuse. 

So, yeah.  Maybe it's all the puppies I was force fed as a child, but I don't think this shows that Bush's policies had anything to do with foiling a plot, and I'm not entirely convinced that a plot was actually planned, even if it did get confessed.

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/09/06 17:26 | link | comments |

Louis the Sqealer

Libby Fingers Cheney, as reported by Murray Waas of the National Journal.  Chequez vous:

"Libby's legal strategy in asserting that Cheney and other Bush administration officials authorized activities related to the underlying allegations of criminal conduct leveled against him, without approving of or encouraging him to engage in the specific misconduct, is reminiscent of the defense strategy used by Oliver North, who was a National Security Council official in the Reagan administration."

It seems that Scooter's defense team has brought Ollie's former attorney John D. Cline onboard.

"Among his detractors, Cline is what is known as a "graymail" specialist-an attorney who, critics say, purposely makes onerous demands on the federal government to disclose classified information in the course of defending his clients, in an effort to force the government to dismiss the charges... I]n the Libby case, Cline has frustrated prosecutors by demanding, as part of pretrial discovery, more than 10 months of the President's Daily Brief, or PDBs, the president's morning intelligence briefing. The reports are among the most highly classified documents in government, not only because they often contain sensitive intelligence and methods, but also because they indicate what the president and policy makers consider to be the most pressing national security threats. In the past, the Bush administration has defied bipartisan requests from the Intelligence committees in Congress to turn over PDBs for review."

Hoo boy.

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/09/06 14:31 | link | comments |

The Coretta Scott King Funeral
The stature of Corretta Scott King is such that the president cannot avoid attending her funeral.  Unfortunately, he is there surrounded by people who disagree with him, a state which he generally avoids.  Opponents of his administration took the opportunity to air their views where he could not avoid hearing them:

Funeral Speeches Compilation -- An overview of the funeral as a whole.

The Offense
Dr. Reverend Joseph Lowrey's speech
The Controversial Bits from Lowrey's and Carter's Speeches -- Lowery on WMDs, Carter on illegal wiretapping

The Sputtering Outrage
Snappy O'Beirne on Hardball
Limbaugh and Lowery Responds to Controversy
O'Reiley makes an Unintentional Racist Remark -- Well, anyway I don't think he realized he was stepping in it anyhow.  Sharpton gets to needle him a bit.

The question is:  To what extent is political posturing appropriate at a funeral even if it's consistent with the politics of the honoree?

Brief note on the Wellstone Funeral referred to by O'Berne:  Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash in 2002, 11 days short of a midterm election in which he was the Democratic incumbent senator from Minnesota.  The funeral was widely decried as a partisan Grand Guignol.  Al Franken, comedian turned politcal commentator, spends a chapter of his Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them debunking this story, claiming that isolated moments of emotional breakdown were edited to create the appearance of a funeral dominated by howling demagoguery in order to score political points for the Republican opponent, Norm Coleman, who did in fact win the seat.  Not so brief a note, I guess, but there you go.

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/08/06 14:43 | link | comments |

OneGoodMove brings you The Daily Show's take on voting irregularities in picking a new majority leader. 

The Funny Papers
Here's a quick orientation to the controversial cartoons that are starting riots all over the Muslim world and in some Muslim communities in Europe, as reported by ABC:

Nightline Report

Note that they have not shied from actually showing the cartoons in question, as many have done. Also check out the coverage on The Daily Show and the Colbert Report:

Daily Show/Colbert Report 2/7/06

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/08/06 13:44 | link | comments |

Stephen Colbert on the Bush administration's backpedaling on reducing foreign oil dependency.
And here may be found the Knight-ridder wire store to which he refers.

In a nutshell, a day after Bush made a dramatic announcement in his State of the Union address  that  the U.S. would break its addiction to foreign oil by reducing its oil imports by 75% by 2025, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the president didn't mean it literally.

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/08/06 12:46 | link | comments |

Just in case you're thinking about becoming a yo-yo champion, here's what you have to contend with.

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/08/06 11:34 | link | comments |

Sadly, it appears that the Random Garfield page has been h4><0red.  If you follow the link posted previously, you'll be treated to loud music and a flashy background. 

In other news, today is the 47th anniversary of the death of Buddy Holly. 

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/03/06 13:50 | link | comments |

Sadly, it appears that Coretta Scott King turned to quacks for treatment.  Many people do when traditional medicine offers faint hope.  Medical quacks instead offer false hope, often in pseudoscientific jargon.  There is no word, however, on whether her condition would have been treatable using scientific medical techniques.

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/01/06 16:24 | link | comments |

This article, which I found linked from Salon.com's Broadsheet blog, is Business Week's new column on advertising to women.  An ad design firm called 3iYing evaluates a Jansport ad and comes to the conclusion that they could have done a better job.

So, am I to understand that the entire case against the effectiveness of the ad is coming from a group with a competing ad design service to sell? An ad is produced that mocks the trend of creating the insecurities the product is meant to remedy, and Business Week is giving space to the advertising firm's competitor to create and offer remedies to the insecurities of potential clients? Is Business Week paying them, or are they paying Business Week?

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 02/01/06 14:53 | link | comments |