Thursday, January 12, 2006

Instahoglets 12th Jan 06

More snarky punchposts in the traditional and accepted style of Glenn and Duncan...

  • As if we didn't already know this, here's someone else who thinks warrantless surveillance is illegal - this time the former CIA General Counsel. Of course, he held that position during the Clinton administration so he must be a traitor...

  • Can anyone explain to me the sense of Democrats like John Kerry jumping on the bipartisan bandwagon for "doing something about Iran" while they happily go along with giving nuclear aid to India - a country that has never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (Iran has); has refused to seperate civilian applications from military ones (Iran has); has never allowed inspections or kept the international community informed (Iran has) and has already developed nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them (Iran hasn't)? Anyone?....Bueller?...Bueller?

  • Talking of which - according to one Western diplomat Iran is a long way from from being able to enrich uranium. Come to that, the report contains the surprising data that Iran has exactly 164 centrifuges at their plan, which are mostly not functional.

    What happened to the 4,000 (some wingnuts said 10,000) centrifuges they were meant to have? Oh yeah, they are buried in tunnels the Russians built. How do we know? Because a bunch of armed Marxist-Islamist terrorists who used to be enforcers for Saddam, led by a nutter who thinks he is the Twelfth Prophet and wants to be dictator of currently democratic Iran says so. Oh, that's OK then...NOT!

  • America does not torture. That's what Condi told Europe. Which is why it is so utterly mystifying that a U.S. general testifying in abuse cases should feel the need to assert the right not to incriminate himself. You can bet those pesky European diplomats made another note in their files about that one. Bush has said he wants to look outside traditional calitions like NATO for future allies. I think that's probably because the traditional allies no longer believe a single word his administration says. He needs some more gullible friends.

  • The WaPo on Tuesday: Rising health care costs, already threatening many basic industries, now consume 16 percent of the nation's economic output -- the highest proportion ever, the government said yesterday in its latest calculation. That is 1.878 trillion dollars. Yet the US could have the best universal healthcare system in the world for rather less than that. The Democrat leaders, though, are too scared of moneyed interests to suggest the obvious.

  • Why The Religious Right Loves the Imperial Presidency (via Crooks and Liars). Enter Samuel Alito, and enter the great hope for a living "unitary executive," which under this president could be used to steamroll ahead the religious right's beloved Christianization agenda, and would almost certainly also embolden George Bush in his own public religiosity (Won't Alito's confirmation be evidence of Jesus' divine endorsement of all Bush stands for?), thereby foisting onto The United States of America its first Commander-in-Chief and de facto Pontifex Maximus. Go read.

  • Could someone print out this crib-sheet by Sidney Blumenthal on BTK-personality Sam Alito's record and why he shouldn't be confirmed and run it up to the blowhard idiots on the Hill? Thanks very much.

  • I don't expect the religious right will like this one at all.

    JUDAS ISCARIOT, the disciple who betrayed Jesus with a kiss, is to be given a makeover by Vatican scholars. The proposed “rehabilitation” of the man who was paid 30 pieces of silver to identify Jesus to Roman soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane, comes on the ground that he was not deliberately evil, but was just “fulfilling his part in God’s plan”.

    Damn those liberal Catholics, there goes the wingnuts' religious justification for their anti-semitism! Then again, maybe Bush could spin it as a reason for a pardon or two dozen and not putting DeLay and the rest in the slammer? "Forgive Tom for his hundreds of thousands of pieces of silver - he was just fulfilling his part in My plan"...
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