Bush's response to Katrina

Bush's response to Katrina
Originally uploaded by Editor at Large.

President Bush gives the finger to victims of Hurricane Katrina while pretending* to play a guitar. This Associated Press photo was taken in Coronado, California, on Tuesday, August 30 - the day after Katrina hit New Orleans.

*His fingers are positioned to play a "G" chord, but they're a fret too high. Perhaps that's what country singer Mark Wills, rushing to Bush's aid, looks so concerned about.

Bush: Iraq war is moral equivalent of our involvement in WW II

Yesterday Bush told an audience of sailors and Marines at a naval base in Coronado, California, that the war in Iraq is the modern-day moral equivalent of the struggle against Nazi fascism and Japanese imperialism in World War II. He also characterized Iraqi "insurgents" as every bit as "ruthless" an enemy as the Germans and the Japanese were.

But since we attacked Iraq, doesn't that make us more like Germany and Japan in WW II? And aren't the Iraqi "insurgents" more like the U.S. was then, trying to defend our country and others from the attackers?

Wait, there's more. Referring to Franklin Roosevelt (a Democrat), Bush said, "He knew that it was the lack of democracy in Japan that allowed an unelected group of militarists to take control of the state, threaten our neighbors, attack America, and plunge an entire region into war."

Hmmm...unelected militarists...control of the state...threaten our neighbors...plunge an entire region into war...does any of that sound familiar?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/30/AR2005083001078.html

The best response to Pat Robertson's statement that the U.S. should kill Hugo Chavez

"This is a huge hypocrisy to maintain an antiterrorist line and at the same time have such terrorist statements as these made by Christian preacher Pat Robertson coming from the same country."
—Jose Vicente Rangel, vice president of Venezuela

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/politics/24robertson.html

Tehran has U.S. troops?

In today's Newsweek World Update:

"With 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tehran has many ways to retaliate against an American military strike."

The intended sentiment is worth wording more precisely: "A U.S. military strike against Iran could leave our 150,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan vulnerable to retaliation."

Idiotic design

We would like to go on record as saying that "intelligent design" (the latest euphemism for creationism) doesn't qualify as a theory, because it's already been disproven...by the very existence of the idiots trying to promote it.

But of course, the scientific validity of intelligent design doesn't really matter. As Paul Krugman notes, "The important thing to remember is that like supply-side economics or global-warming skepticism, intelligent design doesn't have to attract significant support from actual researchers to be effective. All it has to do is create confusion, to make it seem as if there really is a controversy about the validity of evolutionary theory. That, together with the political muscle of the religious right, may be enough to start a process that ends with banishing Darwin from the classroom."

Planet of the Apes, anyone?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/05/opinion/05krugman.html