Random Thoughts

It's called collateral damage and that phrase is a big favorite at Camp Clusterfuck (the Bush White House). In this case, you have two pieces of such victimization, an innocent civilian and taxpayers on the hook to pay off the judgement he won in the ensuing lawsuit.

Also innocent is the Associated Press, which objected to rightwing naysayers who assert that the incident in which some Baghdad Muslim worshippers were burned alive by insurgents. Now here is why I can't figure this out: the GOP may be disturbed about all the reports of in your face attacks by the terrorists in Iraq, but this incident only displays the utter depravity of the religious fanatics who are perpetrating these acts and should be useful propaganda for the American side. But noooo! Not in Republican-ville.

The Bush administration, similar to Joe Stalin during the Soviet era, just cannot tolerate ANY insinuation that things are going other than peachy keen. This is how divorced from reality they are. Bush would like to be staging Kim Jong-il style precision dancing in the Green Zone, but they can't deal with all the party crashers.

Ratcheting up the criticism of Bush is none other than the Republican asswipes at Time Magazine, who accuse him of creating a catastrophe in Iraq. Even asswipes are right occasionally.

And while we're on the subject of asshats, Brent Bozell says that generals in Iraq don't think it's civil war. Uh, Media Matters indicated that Bozell may want to take another look at the facts.

Following up on my rant about Ford the other day, they just laid off 38,000 workers, albeit with severance packages (which no doubt take together wouldn't match the total compensation of the members of the company's board and other executives).

And while we're on the subject of crappy car companies, rapper and self-styled pimp Calvin Broadus (aka Snoop Dog) has been busted again. If you remember, Broadus starred in a commercial for Chrysler with former chairman Lee Iacocca. Again, it was an exhibition of corporate America's inattention to morality, as Broadus was (is?) a gang member and had once been tried for taking part in a drive by murder. When I saw that commercial, I half-expected O.J. Simpson to show up at some point. So you will never see me in a Chrysler. They are shitty cars anyway.

This is becoming a week of no-shows. First, Fidel Castro takes a rain check on his own birthday party. Let's hope he never sees another one.

Senate leader Bill Frist, he of the Psychic Friends Diagnosis Network, has shelved his presidential ambitions. Like he had a chance.

Then Iraqi leader Nuri Al-Miliki stood Prez Turbo up Wednesday in their scheduled meeting.

NY Governor George Pataki, the space between whose ears is some of the most untouched real estate in the country, was in Iraq and didn't like the looks of what is going on there. Can we please knock it off with these vanity sightseeing junkets to Iraq at taxpayer expense? What the fuck is Pataki doing there anyway? Pols like him just get in the way over there. I'm sure the security detail he had guarding him had better things to do.

But apparently bored, his imperial Turboness banned sales of IPods and other "luxury items" to North Korea as a juvenile way to get Kim's goat. The only trouble with that is Kim can get them from Japan and China rather easily.

Also, is Bush going to do anything about those Fiats his buddy, the Rev. Sun-myung Moon, has made in North Korea at a plant Moon owns there (with the help of slave labor, I'm guessing)? Apparently not so much. But that is the Bush administration, one empty gesture after another.

A division of Halliburton will pay the U.S. more than $8 million for engaging in fraudulent charges under a government contract. Nobody is going to jail for this, however. How did THAT happen? (Dick Cheney). If I set up a three card monte table in front of my house and bilk my neighbors out of a couple of hundred bucks I likely end up in the slammer. But not the officials of KBR. Lesson: if you gotta pull a bunko scheme, make the government your victim.

The rightwing straitjacket that Republicans currently wrap themselves in is hurting them, says E.J. Dionne.

But what is hurting democracy is stuff like you see in Texas.

The Seattle Times has this series on immigration.