TW3 and two less candidates

January 30th, 2008

That Was The Week That Was … more than a bit demented. Read here about General Butt Naked, the Christocratic cannibal and Mr. Shit, the chicken kidnapper … and violence that makes you wince. Amazing!

I’m late with this — as you’d suppose, I had a bad day, got swept away with the early news of Edwards withdrawal [and Rudy's, yep yep ... no more 911 mantra or cross-dressing pictures, and that IS a saving grace for a dark day] and then a deadline and a series of fire-drills. All in all, my day has shaped up to be too busy to grieve, so I’ll let Susan over at Welcome To Pottersville blog say it for me:

“Forgive me while I go be heartsick for the rest of the day [or years, perhaps.]”

In John’s withdrawal speech from New Orleans he noted, with a slight grin, that he wanted to tell those who met with him in the last days in Missouri and Oklahoma that they’d almost changed his mind. I got a bit teary then. Maybe if I’d yelled louder, huh?

I’ve scanned the blogs and there are a lot of devastated progressives out there. Others are calculating who will get the votes and the delegates, playing the odds. I’ll get to this tomorrow, including Ralph Nader allowing a respectful five minute pause at the news before announcing a presidential exploratory committee and an op/ed blast at Bloomberg.

Jude

HARPER’S WEEKLY REVIEW
January 29, 2008

At 20 points along the Gaza Strip’s southern border, Hamas
operatives detonated explosives to topple an Israeli-built
fence, allowing as many as 200,000 Palestinians–13
percent of the territory’s population–to cross into Egypt
and shop. The Gazans purchased camels, candy, cement,
chairs, cheese, cigarettes, computers, cows, doughnuts,
gasoline, generators, goats, mattresses, medicine,
motorcycles, pistols, potato chips, sheep, snack cakes,
soap, and televisions. Supplies at Egyptian shops
dwindled, prices spiked, and fistfights ensued. Several
Gazan women married Egyptians, and the Israel Defense
Force patrolled its southern border for would-be suicide
bombers and hostage takers. Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, the
36-year-old son of Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Qaddafi
was linked to attacks that killed 38 Iraqis, wounded 225,
and destroyed 50 buildings in a Mosul slum. The London
School of Economics graduate, known in Libya as “the
Engineer” for his reputation as a reformer and an advocate
of human rights, allegedly funds the Seifaddin Regiment,
which is allied with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Stanching
rumors circulating in a widely forwarded email that he is
a radical Muslim, Senator Barack Obama repeatedly
professed his faith in an “awesome” Christian God and
defeated former President Bill Clinton’s wife in the South
Carolina Democratic primary. Senator Edward Kennedy of
Massachusetts endorsed Obama, and Fred Thompson and Dennis
Kucinich withdrew from the presidential race. Indonesian
dictator Suharto, Archbishop Christodoulos of the Greek
Orthodox Church, Mormon church president Gordon
B. Hinckley, and actor Heath Ledger died.

Jerome Kerviel, a 31-year-old arbitrager for the French
bank Societe Generale recalled by many of his
acquaintances as a mediocrity, was arrested in Paris for
allegedly losing $7 billion of his employer’s capital in
fraudulent stock bets. Experts linked the bank’s unwinding
of Kerviel’s trades to last week’s precipitous drop in
world markets. “Wouldn’t it be embarrassing,” asked Barry
L. Ritholtz, chief of the investment firm FusionIQ, “if
the Fed had to make one of the biggest emergency rate cuts
ever because of some rogue trader?” Leaders gathered at
the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, attempted
to dispel a global mood of pessimism. “People have to keep
in mind, throughout history we have always had cycles,”
said JPMorgan CEO James Dimon. “Corporation,” said PepsiCo
chief Indra K. Nooyi, “has soul.” “The good news about our
world today,” said former British Prime Minister Tony
Blair, “is that idealism is the new realism and the reason
for that is the interconnectedness.” British Conservative
MP Hugh Walpole delivered a speech in Parliament against
the creation of a permanent president of the European
Council, a position said to be coveted by Blair. Such a
consolidation of power, he said, would make it difficult
for national governments to restrain dictates from
Brussels “even if the European Commission proposed the
slaughter of the first-born.”

Eleven Luo children and eight Luo adults in Naivasha,
Kenya, were incinerated when a mob of Kikuyus chased them
into a house and burned it down. The number of revenge
killings following Kenya’s recent elections had reached
750, mostly by means of burning, arrows, and
machetes. Local radio programs were blamed for
perpetuating the violence through dehumanizing metaphors:
Kalenjins call Kikuyus “mongooses”; Kikuyus call Luos
“beasts of the west”; and Luos refer to the election of
President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, as “the leadership of the
baboons.” Testifying before the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Liberia, Milton Blayee, a.k.a. General Butt
Naked, confessed to war crimes that he and his Butt Naked
Battalion often committed in the nude. The born-again
Christian evangelist apologized for “the killing of an
innocent child and plugging out the heart which was
divided into pieces for us to eat. More than 20,000 people
fell victim. They were killed.” Selectmen in Brattleboro,
Vermont, passed a measure allowing town residents to vote
to indict President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick
Cheney for war crimes, and Paul Wolfowitz rejoined the
Bush Administration as an adviser on arms control. Omar
Osama bin Laden, son of Osama bin Laden, announced that he
is organizing a multi-month horse race across North Africa
to promote peace. Canadian police Tasered a man who was
attempting to scalp himself in the bathroom of an
Ottawa-bound bus, and authorities arrested a 16-year-old
Louisiana male for plotting to hijack a Southwest Airlines
plane. Dwarf thieves had infested Swedish buses, Lithuania
was pondering changing its name, and a plot by retired
Turkish Army officers to kill Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk
was foiled. Police in Malda, India, were battling avian
flu by conducting a poultry massacre. “We have planned to
collect ‘backyard chickens’ from the houses in the evening
and kill all of them late at night,” said the district’s
deputy director of animal-resources development,
N. K. Shit. George Piro, the FBI field agent who
interrogated Saddam Hussein, recalled his last meeting
with the Iraqi dictator, when the two smoked cigars and
Saddam kissed Piro on the cheek three times. “It made me
feel,” he said, “somewhat awkward.”

– Christian Lorentzen
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/01/WeeklyReview2008-01-29

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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