Another busy week for the BHC, folks. Hussein is caught so, naturally the world is now a much safer place and the GOP gets to beat down the Dems, who expose their true nature as a gaggle of headless, thrashing chickens. A revelation that Strom Thurmond experienced at least one lapse in his life long rant against the "Negro race" and the Chairman of the 9/11 commission blames Bush et al. for the WTC disaster and then, in a flourish of backpedalling, recants.

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You Say Husssein

Many a reader will have seen far more of the inside of Saddam Hussein's mouth than they would likely ever have wanted to. And while everything from an instantly improving economy to a reduced incidence of bunions will be, or has already been, attributed to the capture of Saddam, we here at the BHC will spare the reader anything further such accounts. What has been entertaining, if not particularily amusing, is watching the Republicans and their vocal supporters now proudly proclaim the rightousness of their mission and how much better off the larger world is while the sadly besotted Democrats are scrambling. The "nya nya" pummeling of the Democrats seems like nothing more than payback for the all pounding the White House has been taking over the WMD issue because we all know the capture of Hussein isn't going to change anything over there. Almost instantly more bombs started going off and the continuing mayhem robustly reasserted itself. The White House position in the spring, when US forces failed to capture Saddam, that his capture was clearly not important to any imagined progress in Iraq, seems lost in the mists of time. Oddly enough, while Karl Rove's conduit, George Bush, happily announced the new found safety of a world without Hussein, the White House upped the "Terrorism Alert" status to Orange. This is, apparently, bad.

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Calm and Caution

A day after the Terrorist Threat Level Indicator turned orange, Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge tells the American public that they are supposed to draw "reassurance and confidence" from the orangeness of their threat awareness, while ignoring the declaration of chair of the 9/11 commission that the attack on the WTC was entirely preventable (see below).

Ridge further asserts:

"We know from experience that the increased security that is implemented when we raise the threat level, along with increased vigilance, can help disrupt or deter terrorist attacks

So the evidence that we are deterring terrorist attacks is the fact that there haven't been any lately. Of course, nothing happening is also evidence of nothing happening. More disconcerting, though apparently not noticed by the mouth emitting it, nor the stultified "journalists" listening, comes the admission that, indeed, the White House was well aware of the threat reports prior to 9/11 as Ridge explains the reason for our purported predicament:

"The strategic indicators suggest that it is the most significant threat reporting since 9/11."

We don't need to hear the Chairman Kean of the 9/11 commmission say it. Tom Ridge is saying it right here: there was significant threat reporting about 9/11...and it was ignored.

www.nytimes.com/2003/12/22/national/22CND-ALER.html

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Entirely Preventable

The Chairman of the 9/11 commission, former Republican N.J. Governor Thomas Kean, announced this week that the fateful September 11 attacks could have and should have been prevented. This is not news to anyone who bothers to read much of anything. But what is amazing is that Kean, appointed by Bush, comes right out with this blast. But, doubtless after some period of "debriefing," Kean comes back out the next day and "clarifies" his remarks with this assertion,

"There are a number of steps along the way, that if they had occurred differently, this [9/11] event wouldn't have occurred"

Like Bush's most memorable elucidations (eg., I believe what I believe and what I believe is right), Kean quickly learned, possibly while strapped to the rack in the White House basement, to frivolously emit Bush-like existential certitudes: if things had happened differently, then different things would have happened.


www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/17/eveningnews/main589137.shtml

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Will and Testament

That George Will is considered one of the right's most erudite "thinkers" seems laughable and yet , in the larger sense, perfectly apropos, for he exhibits the same inability to understand his own words as the rest of right-wing rabble. While chastizing "the self aggrandizement of international institutions of questionable competence, legitimacy and accountability", he appears oblivious to how well those words can be applied to the Bush administration and its international grandstanding. Even more jaw-dropping is his decry of those "internationalists," who seem to be about the worst kind of human being, wanting to "hijack Hussein's prosecution [...] for the purpose of derogating the importance and legitimacy of nation-states generally." That the Bush administration chose to violate an enormous volume of international laws and treaties designed by those said same "internationalists" to ensure "the importance and legitimacy of nation-states", i.e. sovereignty, seems not to dawn on the estimable Will who clearly announces himself as a pinched and thoughtless dolt.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A445-2003Dec14.html

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Knit one Perle two

At some talking head panel in Washington this week entitled ""Is the Neoconservative Moment Over?", Richard Perle had this to say,

"Saddam Hussein living in a spider hole is much less capable of conducting operations against us than if he had a government behind him".

The continued neocon bloviating about Saddam as threat fails miserably in the face of historical reality. Saddam has never conducted "operations against" the US, certainly not directly. A friend and ally in the eighties, chummy with Rummy, even as the US was whacking him in the first Gulf War, he launched misslies at Israel.

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A Perfect Strom

"All the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes".

Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the half African-American daughter of the man who said those words, came forth this week and announced her existance to a bemused America. Well, some Americans were bemused. Many, many others were just plain amused. We at the BHC are imagining that there must have been some awfully convoluted psychology going on in Strom's head which reconciled his life-long rant against the "Negro Race" with his life-long support of his half-black daughter. Party on, Strom.

www.nytimes.com/2003/12/17/national/17CND-STRO.html

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Believe

When then Illinois Governor George Ryan announced the commutation of 167 death sentences in response to the growing number of such sentences which had been recently overturned via new, mostly DNA, evidence, he appeared to many to be a man of reason and integrity. In that January 11, 2003 speech, he said he was a "a firm believer in the American System of Justice". Well, he has some newly minted and very personal evidence supporting his belief as a 22-count indictment including charges of racketeering, mail and tax fraud, and giving false statements was issued by Chicago's US attorney on Dec. 17. We here at the BHC wonder if his beliefs have changed any.

www.nytimes.com/2003/12/17/national/17CND-RYAN.html

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Justice for All

We insist on calling John Ashcroft's government division the "Justice Department," while the so-called department tosses American citizens in jail without charges or legal counsel, rounds up, detains, and abuses hundreds of foreign nationals all the while proudly proclaiming that they are justly fighting the War on Terror. The courts are finally starting to assert that this conduct is illegal and unconstitutional. Of course, the Justice Department has no compunction about the constitutionality of its treatment of either immigrants or citizens and plans to appeal the ruling in the hopes that they may continue their unconstitutional behaviour. White House spokesman Scott McClellan, displaying his acumen in the field of constitutional law, called the court's opinion that unconstitutional behaviour is unconstitutional, "troubling and flawed."


www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/politics/18CND-DETA.html

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Nothing to Fear

The Dems are so busy pummeling each other, whoever emerges with the nomination will be a bloodied pulp before Bush even fires his first salvo. It seems that some new PAC, Americans for Jobs, Health Care and Progressive Values, is buying up TV time to spread the propaganda that Howard Dean is weak on foreign policy - and that he cannot compete with George Bush on that issue. Quoting the spot:

We live in a very dangerous world. And there are those who wake up every morning determined to destroy western civilization. Americans want a President who can face the dangers ahead. But Howard Dean has no military or foreign policy experience. And Howard Dean just cannot compete with George Bush on foreign policy.

If you thought this sounds like the Republican National Committee is getting off some early, pre-emptive rounds, you'd be wrong. Because Americans for Jobs, Health Care and Progressive Values is backed by a host of Democrats, none of whom appear to like Howard Dean:

The press secretary, Robert Gibbs, recently campaigned for Kerry.
The treasurer, David Jones, raised money for Dick Gephardt
The president of the organization, former Congressman Edward Feighan, was one of the earliest contributors to Dick Gephardt's presidential campaign.

This campaign "strategy" is clearly so wrong-headed, it simply makes the Democrats appear divided and confused. A continuation of this nonsense will surely doom this country to another four years of George freaking Double-U freaking Bush.




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No Big Whoop

During Diane Sawyer's interview of Bush this week, she pointedly asks him whether Saddam had weapons of mass destruction or just might try to acquire them, Bush said, "What's the difference?...If he wants to acquire weapons, that would be the danger...And so we got rid of him."

The follow-up question is obvious to most people who live in the real world where, if caught with a kee of coke or a stolen car, an adequate defense would not be "what's the difference" whether I have the coke or not?


www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/politics/18PREX.html

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Private Rush

It seems Rush Limbaugh is developing an new-found attachment to the previously underappreciated rights to privacy and against unreasonable search and seizure. In his case though, federal prosecutors have reason to seize his medical records since he is a known, admitted drug addict who is believed to have allegedly engaged in illegal activities to acquire those drugs (The BHC loved writing those words, we hope, gentle reader, that you enjoyed reading them). Now, Rush is howling like one those lefty ACLU fomenters he rails about so much. Of course, unlike the ACLU's concern for everyone's civil liberties, Rush's only real concern is his own. Like a good wine, this story just keeps getting better and better.


www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,105858,00.html

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Bring it on!