WTF Is It Now?!?

The kittens were exploring the kitchen yesterday afternoon.

Merlin, the new parrot, is not cooperating - I'm trying to teach him to say "Wolf, you shameless %#%$^@ whore", but all he does is laugh.

Yogurt flavor-of-the-day: Stonyfield Farm's whole milk Mocha-ccino, with real cream on top. Ohhhhhh, man.

"Mobster John Gotti will be buried in the family plot in New Jersey, along with the Nets." - Kilborn





Celebrity Boxing: Ari the Liar vs Colin Powell

Plans to launch a Middle East peace initiative were in chaos last night after a split between Emperor Snippy and Colin Powell burst into the open like a boil on the face of a drunken chimp.

Bunnypants sent White House propaganda reichsmarshall Ari "the Liar" Fleischer to deliver a public rebuke to Mr Powell for daring to float proposals that included creation of a "temporary" Palestinian state. He accused Colin of parroting the ideas of foreign government leaders rather than reaching his own conclusions. This from a farking press secretary, for petessake. Who the hell does he think he is, Squinty's boss? His mommy?

"Welcome to the Middle East," Ari lied. "This is a situation where people get a variety of information, a variety of advice and if the 'president' has anything further to indicate, he will." (As if.)

The Toxic Tinhorn and Mr Sharon are in agreement on marginalising Arafat and hoping another Palestinian leader will come out of the woodwork. Meanwhile, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, alarmed at the extent to which Sharon's voice rather than the Arab one is being listened to in the US administration, is to hold talks in Washington today.

More at The Guardian.


"Terrorists, India-Pakistan, the Middle East - don't you wish you were president Bush and didn't know about any of this?" - Letterman


Operation Enduring Poll Numbers

First it was to be a crusade. Then it became the "War for Civilisation". Then the "War without End". Then the "War against Terror". And now - believe it or not - Reznit Dumbass is promising us a "Titanic War on Terror". This gets weirder and weirder. What can come next? Given the latest Bush projections last week - "we know that thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us" - he must surely have an even more gargantuan cliché up his ass sleeve.

Well, he must have known about the would-be Chicago "dirty" bomber - another little secret he didn't tell the American people about for a month. Until, of course, it served a purpose. Now new American "security" rules will force hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims from certain countries to be fingerprinted, photographed and interrogated when they enter the US. This will apply, according to Jesus John Ashcroft, to nearly all visitors from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Sudan, most of whom will not get visas at all. The list is not surprising. Iran and Iraq are part of Preznit Poopypants' infantile "axis of evil". Syria is on the list, presumably because it supports Hamas' war against Israel.

It is a political list, constructed around the Bush policy of good-versus-evil. But not a single citizen from Iran, Iraq, Syria or Sudan has been accused of plotting the atrocities of 11 September. The suicide-hijackers came principally from Saudi Arabia, with one from Egypt and another from Lebanon. The men whom the Moroccans have arrested - all supposedly linked to al-Qa'ida - are all Saudis.

Yet Saudis - who comprised the vast majority of the September killers - are going to have no problems entering the US under the new security rules.

Snipped from Robert Frist's article at The London Independent.



Operation Enduring Repression

In an effort to maintain its media blitz to scare US citizens into accepting a developing police state and to bury all the emerging evidence of its own criminal negligence in 9/11, the Bush Administration has unveiled an alleged al-Qaeda agent who plotted to unleash a "dirty bomb" on US soil. Although arrested on May 8 on his return to Chicago from Pakistan, an American citizen, Jose Padilla, a former Latino gang member, is now languishing as an "enemy combatant" in a military prison in South Carolina. While the allegations about Padilla/al-Mujahir's connections to al-Qaeda and the "dirty bomb" plot are yet to be proved, the timing and story about the plot and the plotter raise important questions about the present motivations of the Bush Administration and US government's policies in the past and future.

Fran Shor at Counterpunch.


"A woman sued her hairdresser for making her look like Osama bin Laden. And as a result, now the CIA can't find her." - Conan



'The real White House vandal scandal'

The BFEE: vindictive, humorless partisan liars, changing the tone from bad to worse.

SmirkingChimp.com has the Kerry Lauerman story.

Though the whole episode is breathtaking in the childish petulance of Chimpy the Boilfaced Bonghead and his handlers, there are some parts that put an evil grin on my face: 'White House counsel Alberto Gonzales excoriates the GAO for refusing to include in its draft report "portions of a sign of a mock Time magazine cover" that was among the graffiti and prank signs left behind in the White House. The mock Time cover Gonzales apparently refers to circulated on the Internet during the Florida recount, and was reportedly left in the White House complex. It shows a troubled-looking Bush with the headline "Oh, shit." (Note from maru: I also remember seeing one that said "We are Fucked")

"It is vital to include the substance of specific graffiti, messages and signs observed" in order to fully document the acts of vandalism, Gonzales huffed. "The content of a message can -- and often does -- indicate who wrote the message, and when" and "often provides an insight into the mindset or intention of the person who wrote it."

But the GAO wouldn't budge on itemizing that particular slight to Bush. It did agree with Gonzales that in describing a piece of graffiti that read "Jail to the Thief" as "arguably derogatory" was a bit too modest, so the word "arguably" was stricken. But Gonzales wanted more, much more, listing in detail every slight to the new president that Bush staffers had to endure, from a "sign comparing President Bush to a chimpanzee" to an "8 x 10 color piece of paper that said 'See you in four, Al Gore' in drawer of the copy machine," to the "same president Bush/chimpanzee sign found in a printer" and to a "sign taped to a desk of a mock MasterCard ad that includes a picture of president Bush and reads, 'NEW BONG: $50, COCAINE HABIT: $300, FINDING OUT THAT THE GOOD-OLD-BOY NETWORK CAN STILL RIG AN ELECTION IN THE DEEP SOUTH: PRICELESS. For the rest of us there's honesty.'"'