Month: February 2006

How Much Do They Hate Us? Pretty Damn Much

Trish

For all the people who asked how we would like to be on the receiving end of an objectionable Hollywood-esque portrayal, we have an answer: Not so much.

CNN reports on a film that opened today in Turkey starring Gary Busey and Billy Zane as a couple of people we would just as soon not share a nationality with.

In the movie, American troops kill dozens of innocent people with random machine-gun fire, shoot the groom in the head, and drag those left alive to Abu Ghraib prison — where a Jewish doctor cuts out their organs, which he sells to rich people in New York, London and Tel Aviv

In the most expensive Turkish movie ever made, American soldiers in Iraq crash a wedding and pump a little boy full of lead in front of his mother.

They kill dozens of innocent people with random machine-gun fire, shoot the groom in the head, and drag those left alive to Abu Ghraib prison — where a Jewish doctor cuts out their organs, which he sells to rich people in New York, London and Tel Aviv.

Whoa. Why would they make a movie like that?

One recent opinion poll revealed the depth of the hostility in Turkey toward Americans: 53 percent of Turks who responded to the 2005 Pew Global Attitudes survey associated Americans with the word “rude”; 70 percent with “violent”; 68 percent with “greedy”; and 57 percent with “immoral.”

I won’t bother saying we brought part of this on ourselves. O.K., I just did.

“Valley of the Wolves Iraq” opens with a true story: On July 4, 2003, in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, troops from the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade raided and ransacked a Turkish special forces office, threw hoods over the heads of 11 Turkish special forces officers and held them in custody for more than two days…the incident damaged Turkish-U.S. relations and hurt Turkish national pride. Turks traditionally idolize their soldiers; many enthusiastically send their sons off for mandatory military service.

In the movie, one of the Turkish special forces officers commits suicide to save his honor.

I’m already feeling sick. No popcorn, thanks.

Looking on the bright side, it’s just a movie, right?

“There isn’t going to be a war over this,” said Nefise Karatay, a Turkish model lounging on a sofa after the premiere. “Everyone knows that Americans have a good side. That’s not what this is about.”

So what is it about? And I wonder how they would have portrayed us if they didn’t know about our “good side.”

SecureUS PAC — Dems Getting Smart and Tough

Buck Banks

Training to win: Yesterday I was on the phone with Bob Graham and Gary Hart — no, really, I was. It was a teleconference in which Pensito Review was invited to participate along with a bunch of other on-line entities. The call was set up by Congresswoman Jane Harman of California, who currently serves as ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and as a member of the House Homeland Security Committee.

The purpose of the call was to alert the on-line community to the launch of a new political action committee whose purpose is to help Democrats win in the mid-terms and hopefully get one back in the White House in ’08. It’s SecureUS PAC, and it appears on the surface at least to be a good idea that potentially could make a big difference.

SecureUS provides a mechanism to train Democratic candidates and encumbents to be experts in the areas of national security and intelligence. Karl Rove thought he carved out that territory for the Repugs in the 2006 elections last week, but the folks at SecureUS figure it’s time for the Democrats to get “smart and tough” on national security policy.

National security policy is and will be the central issue of 2006. — Bob Graham

The organization has contacted more than 50 candidates and has asked them to complete questionnaires to evaluate their suitability for the SecureUS program.

Harman listed the issues the Democrtatic Party “needs to own”:

  • An exit strategy for Iraq that promotes true power sharing
  • Nuclear proliferation
  • Accurate, actionable and timely intelligence
  • A strategy for homeland security
  • An energy independence strategy

Ex-senator, ex-governor and former presidential candidate Bob Graham and ex-senator and former presidential candidate Gary Hart are board members and will help train candidates beginning April 3 in Washington. The other board members include:

  • Graham Allison — Founding dean of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. For three decades he has been a leading analyst of U.S. national security and defense policy with a special interest in terrorism. He served as special advisor to the Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan and as Assistant Secretary of Defense in Bill Clinton’s first administration.
  • Richard Holbrooke — Member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Citizens Committee for New York City and the Economic Club of New York. He is a board member of American International Group and the National Endowment for Democracy and is chairman of International Rescue Committee and Refugees International.
  • Claudia Kennedy — Retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Army and the first woman to hold a three-star rank in the army. She has served in the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command. at the Directorate of Training in Washington, D.C.; as Director of Intelligence, G2, Forces Command, Fort McPherson, Ga.; as Deputy Commander and Assistant Commandant at U.S. Army Intelligence School at Fort Huachuca, Ariz.; and Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence at Army Headquarters in Washington.
  • William Perry — Senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor at Stanford University in the School of Engineering and the Institute for International Studies, where he is co-director of the Preventive Defense Project, a research collaboration of Stanford and Harvard universities. He was a professor at Stanford from 1988 to 1993, when he was the co-director of the Center for International Security and Arms Control. He served as U.S. Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton 1994 to 1997, and Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1993 to 1994.

Graham and Hart gave some insight into the kind of critical thinking they plan to impart to their trainees: “We are going to teach the thought processes that lead to good judgment,” said Graham.
[…]

Who’s Burning Churches?

Trish

The fires at six churches in Alabama last night are pretty intriguing. Racism is not a factor in the suspected arsons, since the churches are organized by people of different races. CNN:

Is there really a war on Christianity? Have Satanist teens taken over Alabama?

The five Bibb County churches are “lined up very near U.S. 82 near Centreville,” about 45 miles southwest of Birmingham, said Ingram. Ashby Baptist Church, Pleasant Sabine Church and Rehobeth Baptist Church were destroyed, and Old Union Baptist Church and Antioch Baptist were damaged, he said.

Pleasant Sabine Church has a predominantly black congregation, and the other five are predominantly white, officials said.

The sixth “church” was actually a construction site in the next county, and the fire started in a storage building that held old clothes and other donated items. Investigators don’t think this fire is related to the others.

So who’s doing this? Who’s the target? Is there really a war on Christianity? Have Satanist teens taken over Alabama? I’ll be very curious to see who gets arrested for this, although three of the church fires in 1995 — the last time there was an epidemic of burnings — were never solved.

Lack of Support Not Stopping Florida’s Anti-Gay Marriage Proposal

Trish

Supporters are claiming that a constitutional amendment to bar gay marriage in Florida — which is already banned by state law — is yet another victim of last year’s hurricanes. The amendment fell 155,000 signatures shy of the 611,000 needed to get on the ballot in 2006, despite a last-minute mobilization that included aircraft and a fleet of vehicles delivering petitions to the state capital.

The real purpose of the initiative was to turn out mouth-breathing voters of the type depicted in that scene from Young Frankenstein

Two other amendments were apparently unaffected by the storms, and will be up for a vote in the fall. One, opposed by Gov. Jeb Bush and Republican lawmakers, would create an independent panel to draw legislative districts. The other would ensure that money awarded to the state in lawsuits against cigarette makers is used to fund anti-smoking campaigns. Florida Times-Union:

“It just didn’t have the kind of financial support that these other ones do,” Bush said. “I think if it was on the ballot, it would pass by two- or three-to-one.”

The Republican Party of Florida put up $150,000 of the $193,000 raised for the anti-gay marriage ban, claiming it was needed to protect against those activist judges we hear so much about, who might take it upon themselves to overturn the law Florida already has. The real purpose of the initiative was to turn out mouth-breathing voters of the type depicted in that scene from Young Frankenstein, when the mob lofts torches and goes after the monster. Jeb is correct that they would likely vote “Hell Yes” in droves.

But lack of popular support isn’t stopping the Florida Catholic Conference, Florida Baptist Convention, and Florida4Marriage.Org, headed by a wingnut personal injury lawyer named John Stemberger in Orlando, from forging ahead. The signatures stay on file for four years, and Stemberger wants to use them to qualify for the 2008 election. He also wants to waste the state Supreme Court’s time reviewing an amendment that won’t even be on the ballot this year. Tallahassee Democrat

…the group still wants the Florida Supreme Court to hold the oral arguments, scheduled for Wednesday, on the language of the proposed amendment…But the court isn’t required to review them until the year they would actually appear on the ballot.

”We’re hopeful they’re going to hear the case and not cancel the hearing,” Stemberger said Thursday. ”If we’re going to get an adverse hearing, we’d rather get that sooner than later.”

Well I guess you would, John, since if they find problems with this idiotic, pandering, hateful enterprise you’ll have to start all over. And there are one or two problems with it.

The ACLU of Florida, along with other gay- and lesbian-rights groups, plan to argue that the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment is deceptive because it could also deny same-sex partners other domestic benefits.

GAO: While Katrina Blew, DHS Sucked

Buck Banks

Days of reckoning: The General Accounting Office has issued a report that is highly critical of the Department of Homeland Security’s handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. DHS, typically, has responded by crying foul and accusing the government oversight organization of not playing nice.

According to GovExec.com, the GAO said DHS exhibited a “leadership vacuum” before, during and after the hurricane.

“In the absence of timely and decisive action and clear leadership responsibility and accountability, there were multiple chains of command, a myriad of approaches and processes for requesting and providing assistance, and confusion about who should be advised of requests and what resources would be provided within specific time frames,” Comptroller General David Walker concluded.

DHS responded quickly to the report, which was issued at a press conference Wednesday.

“Apart from its obvious errors, it displays a significant misunderstanding of core aspects of the Katrina response that could have easily been corrected in the most basic conversations with DHS leaders,” department spokesman Russ Knocke said in a statement.

Methinks DHS protests too much. Remember the truckloads of ice that were “staged” in Maryland? Remember Michael Brown’s concerns over his haberdashery? Remember the dead people?

AFA Targets God-Hating NBC — Again

Buck Banks

Whoops, they done it again: You’da thunk NBC would have learned its lesson after “The Book of Daniel.” If you recall, the American Family Association brought so much pressure to bear on the network that NBC pulled the show after three episodes with no outside advertisers.

According to AdAge, the AFA, led by Donald “Wildman” Wildmon and his merry band of Bible thumpers, is on NBC’s case for an episode of “Will & Grace” where Britney Spears portrays a conservative Christian talk-show host who does a cooking segment called “Cruci-fixins.”

Sounds damned funny to me, but the AFA ain’t laughing:

“They would not be making fun of Mohammed or Buddha,” said Randy Sharp, director of special projects for the AFA, which is based in Tupelo, Miss. “It’s almost sacrilegious. I wonder who is at the helm of NBC that they are not getting the message. NBC doesn’t seem concerned that they are tanking because they are offending their viewers and running them off.”

AdAge noted that the AFA is taking on a hugely popular program in its final season, not a mid-season startup, and that, given the show’s content (it portrays GAY people — gasp!), few of the AFA’s true-believing constituency even watch the goddamned program.

Just Wait Until I Tell the President on You!

Trish

The hometown news has a little more colorful reporting about the U.S. Representative from Florida’s wife how got ousted from the State of Union address, along with Cindy Sheehan for wearing a t-shirt reminding people about the troops. St. Petersburg Times:

Beverly Young said, “Wait until the president finds out.”

Young said she was sitting in the gallery’s front row, about six seats from first lady Laura Bush, when she was approached by someone from the Capitol Police or sergeant-at-arms office who told her she needed to leave the gallery.

She reluctantly agreed but argued with several officers in the hallway outside the House chamber.

“They said I was protesting,” she said in a telephone interview late Tuesday. “I said, “Read my shirt, it is not a protest.’ They said, “We consider that a protest.’ I said, “Then you are an idiot.”‘

Well, not really, Bev. Protesting is a crime in Washington, and if you thought for one minute you were exercising your right to free speech, it’s time to wake up and smell the facism.

They told her she was being treated the same as Cindy Sheehan, an antiwar protester who was ejected before the speech Tuesday night for wearing a T-shirt with an antiwar slogan and refusing to cover it up…

Sgt. Kimberly Schneider of the Capitol Police could not provide details about the incident but said, “She was not ejected from the gallery. She did leave on her own.”

No sense exaggerating, after all. It sounds like part of the problem is that Bev and her husband, The Honorable C.W. Bill, are used to ordering the hired help around since they have friends in high places.

Young’s husband, a Republican who chairs the House appropriations subcommittee on defense, was unaware she was removed until after the speech. He said he was furious about the incident.

“I just called for the chief of police and asked him to get his little tail over here,” Rep. Young said late Tuesday. “This is not acceptable.”

Beverly Young said, “Wait until the president finds out.”

Oh no, you didn’t say that.

‘My Name is George W. Bush and I’m An Oilaholic’

Trish

Borowitz:

One day after claiming that “America is addicted to oil” in his State of the Union address, President Bush stunned the nation by confessing that he was personally battling a petroleum addiction and was entering rehab immediately.

’When you start invading other countries to get more oil, you know you’ve hit bottom’

In a nationally televised address from the Oval Office last night, a visibly agitated President Bush began his speech with the following simple statement: “My name is George W. Bush, and I am an oilaholic.”

The president, seeming to choke back tears, said that he had thought he was keeping his petroleum habit “under control,” but added, “When you start invading other countries to get more oil, you know you’ve hit bottom.”

…In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that he hoped the United States would wean itself from its dependence on Middle Eastern oil and would gradually become dependent on Middle Eastern nuclear energy instead.