Just a few notes from reading the Saturday morning news:
In the ongoing Republican presidential candidates' contest to see who can be the most pathetic panderer to the right wing boobs, Rudy Giuliani attained a new level of absurdity.
Rudolph W. Giuliani yesterday sought to persuade members of the National Rifle Association to look past his lengthy record of pushing for tougher gun control by saying that his views on this issue had been changed by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.Yes, if New Yorkers had all been armed on 9/11 we could have shot down those planes before they crashed into the towers. Or maybe if citizens just shot Muslims or other suspicious types on sight, we'd all be a lot safer from a terrorist attacks. Perhaps Rudy will propose a law to make shooting people for the hell of it legal? Something like that would get him that NRA support he craves. And our troops and mercenaries in Iraq, as well as the Iraqis themselves, can shoot whomever they want. Why can't we can't do it here? After all, we saved their sorry asses from Saddam.
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A lot of people have noticed that Hillary Clinton generally supports Bush’s worst policies. Apparently Bush himself has taken note of this as well.
Bush made no explicit election predictions, according to some in the room, but clearly thought Clinton would win the Democratic nomination and talked in a way that seemed to suggest he expects her to succeed him -- and will continue his Iraq policy if she does.
Of course Bush is wrong about almost everything, and that's encouraging, but I fear his predictions of Hillary carrying on his policies as president may well be accurate.
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We also learn that Michael Vick has nothing on Orthodox Jews, who apparently don't have anything on the practitioners of Santeria.
The ritual, among the more awesome features of the Days of Awe -- the period of reflection between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur -- works like this: A person buys a chicken for about $7, then waves it in clucking circles above his head or enlists an on-site rabbi to do so. A prayer is said, symbolically transferring the person's sins to the chicken, whose throat is then slit.
Awesome? Not the word I would have chosen.
And religions deserve respect? Why exactly? We should recognize primitive barbarism for what it is and ridicule these people. Brutally killing animals to appease some make believe super being is no better than killing them for gambling purposes.
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In Iraq news, aside from all the mass murders and cholera epidemic, evidence is presented that we have our priorities in good order.
The money spent on one day of the Iraq war could buy homes for almost 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children, or could outfit 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity,
Housing, health care for children? Fuck a bunch of that shit. We want murder. It makes us feel so good and manly. And renewable electricity? Without our need to waste so much oil, what excuse would we have for all that murder? Priorities people. Priorities.
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And the government, ever on the lookout for the stupidest possible means to keep people safe from islamofascism or whatever , is keeping records of what we carry when we travel, including the books we're reading.
Officials yesterday defended the retention of highly personal data on travelers not involved in or linked to any violations of the law.Of course they did. How could they not defend gathering information that may some day be used against us in a secret trial?
On my recent travels I carried books by Italo Calvino and Michel Houellebecq. Do you think that pegs me as a potential subversive or just another ineffectual English major type?
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In science news, a study concluded that the little people of Indonesia whose bones were found a few years ago represent a distinct species from homo sapiens. Other scientists, of course, dismissed the findings. I don’t care either way, but the dissenter’s put down of the study is priceless. He describes it as “an exercise in the presentation of misleading ideas in an obfuscatory manner.”
An exercise in the presentation of misleading ideas in an obfuscatory manner. Pretty much sums up the news as a whole, eh?
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