Category: Grave

This is surreal…even more surreal than former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer’s ability to deliver press conferences from Bizarroland in which reporters’ questions were asked, only to be deftly deflected by irrelevant non-answers. Flipping the tables a bit, and following the lead of his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, after throwing out the opening pitch for the Chicago Cubs-Cincinnati Reds game, spent a few minutes on Monday being interviewed from the radio booth by sports announcers Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall – while the game was in progress – resulting in perhaps the most bizarrely irrelevant back-and-forth to be made available on the White House’s press transcript page since, well, ever.
Cheney on life at the White House:

Q: Is this a welcome break for you?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It really is. I’ve got to go on tonight. I was in the White House this morning with the President. I’ve got a speech in New Orleans tonight, and I’ll be back in the White House tomorrow. But, sure, to get a few hours out here at the ball park, it doesn’t get much better than this.
Q: Kerry Wood at the plate, and a diving jab at the ball and knocked down by Castro. If he doesn’t touch it, Larkin fields it, a run scores and it’s a 5 to 2 ball game. So if Castro doesn’t touch the ball, Larkin is right there. But he doesn’t know that.

Cheney on current events, uncluding, presumably, the election and the situation in Iraq:

Q: A ball and a strike to Grudzielanek, and the stretch and the pitch: breaking ball drops in for a called strike, and a 1-2 count to Mark Grudzielanek. He is one for two this afternoon, has scored a run.
Q: Busy year for you folks, huh?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Looks that way.
Q: It sure does. (Laughter.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: A lot of work going on, a lot of stuff happening around the world, and then, of course, the campaign on top of that.

Cheney on his campaign itinerary:

Q: So now you’re in New Orleans tonight?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: In New Orleans tonight, and there’s a Senate race down there next year, or this — come November. And as I say, I’ll be back in Washington late tonight, and then be in the office tomorrow. I’m out on the road usually a couple days a week. And then on Friday, I take off for Asia for a week.
Q: Lidle delivers, and Patterson a swing and a miss. And it’s a 1-2 count to Corey Patterson.

Cheney on the economy:

Q: Are you pleased with the way things look as far as the economy is concerned?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I am. I think all the signs are headed in the right direction.
Q: One-two pitch, swung on and missed. And Lidle picks up his second strike-out.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: And, of course, the employment numbers are looking good. We got those out last week. We’ve got some 400,000 jobs created here in the last couple of months, since the 1st of the year. So everything is, I think, moving in the right direction.

(via Al Kamen’s article in the April 7, 2004 Washington Post)

Regarding events of April 5, 2004, by way of the St. Francois County Daily Journal in Missouri:

ST. LOUIS (AP) – President Bush is getting the hang of throwing out first pitches. He tossed one in from the mound at Busch Stadium Monday, ceremonially opening the 2004 Major League Baseball season, and the catcher hardly had to move his mitt.
Bush said, in advance, “My wing isn’t what it used to be.”
But when he reared back and threw, the pitch was right in there. He also had said he planned to throw a “hopping fastball” to open the Brewers-Cardinals game, but it looked more like an off-speed pitch. The Cardinals’ Mike Matheny caught it easily.
“It just goes to show you a guy can get lucky occasionally,” Bush said afterward.

Regarding events of April 5, 2004, by way of the Washington Post:

In Baghdad’s Kadhimiya district, meanwhile, three members of the Army’s 1st Armored Division died in combat Monday and Tuesday.
One died from wounds received Tuesday when a rocket-propelled grenade hit his Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Another was killed Monday when his convoy was attacked with small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire. The third died later in the day Monday during a firefight, the military announced Tuesday.

From the New York Times, “7 G.I.’s Killed in Iraq Fights Since Weekend, U.S. Says,” April 6, 2004:

Mr. Bremer, in an interview on CNN today, vowed to arrest Mr. Sadr.
“He believes that in the new Iraq, like in the old Iraq, power should be with the guy who’s got the guns, and that’s an unacceptable vision for Iraq,” he said.

OK, it’s happened before when, during the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, Newsweek ran a puff piece on Condi Rice in its December 16, 2002 issue, under the headline “‘The Real Condi Rice’ The Most Powerful Woman In Washington Is Black, Brainy and Bush’s Secret Weapon.” That cover story, however, had at least a semblance of dignified and topical news content, unlike Maki Becker’s “20 things about Condie: You probably didn’t know this about Condoleeza Rice” in the April 4, 2004 New York Daily News.
Selected lowlights:

1. She’s a fitness buff who likes to unwind by working out to music by heavy-metal legends Led Zeppelin, according to People magazine. She wakes up at 5 a.m. and hits the treadmill right away.
4. She loves to shop. “On a Sunday, don’t be surprised if you see me at one of the malls in Washington, D.C.,” she once told Glamour magazine.
7. While in high school, she was a competitive ice skater (l.).
13. She’s a huge football fan and loves the Cleveland Browns. She’s said her “dream job” would be NFL commissioner.
17. In February 2001, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told reporters he was distracted the first time he met her. “I have to confess, it was hard for me to concentrate in the conversation with Condoleezza Rice because she has such nice legs.”

Oh, and Maki? If you’re going to christen the devil in shorthand like that, it’s Condi and not fucking Condie. At least, that’s how she signed my holiday greeting card.

From Reuters, “Rwanda’s Kagame Scolds Outside World Over Genocide”, April 4, 2004:

Rwandan President Paul Kagame accused the outside world of deliberately failing to prevent genocide on Sunday, opening a week to mark the tenth anniversary of the killing of some 800,000 fellow countrymen.
The United Nations, the United States and European countries have all faced criticism for failing to intervene during the three-month genocide in Rwanda, which ended in July 1994 when Kagame seized the capital at the head of a rebel army.
“We should always bear in mind that genocide, wherever it happens, represents the international community’s failure, which I would in fact characterise as deliberate, as convenient failure,” Kagame told the start of a genocide conference.
“How could a million lives of the Rwandan people be regarded as so insignificant by anyone in terms of strategic or national interest?” he told the meeting at a hotel used 10 years ago as a base by military planners directing the massacres.

RELATED:
Worldbank Data for Rwanda
CIA Factbook, Rwanda (Natural resources: gold, cassiterite (tin ore), wolframite (tungsten ore), methane, hydropower, arable land)
Official Website of the Government of Rwanda (www.rwanda1.com…at what point did nations start having to adopt the equivalent of AOL usernames for their WWW domains?)

From “Mass. Gay Marriage Ban Passes Hurdle” by Jennifer Peter (Associated Press), March 30, 2004:

BOSTON (AP) — Legislators approved a constitutional amendment Monday that would ban gay marriages while legalizing civil unions. If passed during the next two-year Legislative session, the measure would go before voters in November 2006.
[…]
The constitutional convention took place in front of thousands of citizens, who crowded the Statehouse each day to watch from the gallery and protest in the hallways.
After each intonation of “Jesus” by gay rights opponents inside the building Monday, gay rights advocates tacked on “loves us.” The two opposing sides then shouted “Jesus Christ!” and “equal rights!” simultaneously, blending into a single, indistinguishable chant.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, this tastes awful, and leaves me feeling rather empty inside.

You know how it sounds so much more palatable to go scuba diving than to, say, strap on a “Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus?” In that same vein, legislators on the Hill caught on to this a few years ago, and began packaging their now-commonplace rollback of civil rights in grandiose acronyms.
This began most notably with Congress’ October 26, 2001 passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, an acronym for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.” USA PATRIOT sounds far better than the proposed alternative, KAFKA, or the “Keeping Americans From being Killed by Airplanes” Act.
Following on the heels of their success with that bill, the Bush administration and likeminded legislators brought forth Operation TIPS, or “Terrorism Information and Prevention System,” which would have enlisted the help of postal workers, meter readers, truck drivers, and other workers in the public sphere in an elaborate effort to look out for “suspicious” activity. Again, better than the alternative, SPY, or “Subtly Prying Youths,” which would have brought America’s toddlers on board in the campaign to root out terrorist educators. This iteration of the bill never made it out of the House judiciary committee, of course.
And now the acronym brigade is at it again, according to Wired News. In the wake of Johnny Depp‘s Oscar nomination, and their subsequent downloading of that relevant film, Americans are bracing for PIRATE fever:

[O]n Thursday, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) introduced a bill that would allow the Justice Department to pursue civil cases against file sharers, again making it easier for law enforcement to punish people trading copyright music over peer-to-peer networks. They dubbed the bill “Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004,” or the PIRATE Act.
The bills come at a time when the music and movie industries are exerting enormous pressure on all branches of government at the federal and state levels to crack down on P2P content piracy. The industries also are pushing to portray P2P networks as dens of terrorists, child pornographers and criminals — a strategy that would make it more palatable for politicians to pass laws against products that are very popular with their constituents.

Meanwhile, civil libertarians across the nation are eagerly awaiting this fall’s ELECTION, or “Eliminating Leaders Elected to Congress To Impugn Our Nation”.

From “Rice Defends Refusal To Testify” by Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, in the March 29, 2004, edition of the Washington Post:

Rice gave no ground on the administration’s decision that she will not appear in public before the panel or testify under oath because Bush officials believe doing so would compromise the constitutional powers of the executive branch. The renewed refusal came despite the panel’s unanimous plea for her testimony.
Republican commissioner John F. Lehman, who has written extensively on separation-of-power issues, said that “the White House is making a huge mistake” by blocking Rice’s testimony and decried it as “a legalistic approach.”
“The White House is being run by a kind of strict construction of interpretation of the powers of the president,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” “There are plenty of precedents that the White House could use if they wanted to do this.”
[…]
Rice said she has “absolutely nothing to hide” and “would really like” to testify but will not because of the constitutional principle.

Gee, guys, this whole “Constitution” document sure comes in handy when you need it most, huh? That is, when you’re not too busy covering your ears to cries of “Hypocrisy!” and otherwise obliterating the fucking thing, like you’ve been doing for the past two-and-a-half years.
RELATED (and very much worth reading): Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo discusses the issue of Constitutional precedent here and here.