or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
•
"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
•
"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
August 01, 2008
Ho-Hum, Just Another Day In The Craziest Country On Earth
So Seymour Hersh says that Vice President Cheney and his staff sat around back in January and discussed having Navy SEALS dress up as Iranian sailors and then attack American ships. This would fool Americans into supporting a war with Iran, you see.
In non-insane countries, this would merit screaming headlines and congressional investigations, all leading to mass resignations if it turned out to be true. In America, it merits a few blug posts.
Oh, and remember all stuff about how Saddam was killing us with his evil anthrax?
In October 2001, [Wayne] Downing, [Paul] Wolfowitz, and other proponents of a war with Iraq thought they had yet more ammunition for the case against Saddam. A series of deadly anthrax-laced letters had been sent to the Capitol Hill offices of Senator Daschle and Senator Patrick Leahy and to several newsrooms. Mylroie asserted that Saddam was behind the mailings. An early forensic test of the anthrax letters (which was later disputed) appeared to show that the anthrax spores were highly refined and "weaponized." To the Iraq hawks, the news was electric. "This is definitely Saddam!" Downing shouted to several White House aides. One of these aides later recalled overhearing Downing excitedly sharing the news over the phone with Wolfowitz and Feith. "I had the feeling they were high-five-ing each other," the White House official said.
Turns out we were a little off on that one—it looks like the perpetrator was probably someone from the US government's own biological weapons lab. Well, no harm, no foul. Ho hum.
—Jonathan Schwarz
Posted at August 1, 2008 12:26 PMMakes sense to me; Hitler dressed up some Germans as aggressive Poles preliminary to 9/1/1939.
Posted by: Seth at August 1, 2008 01:08 PMThat's the GREATEST craziest country on Earth, mister!
Posted by: albany layman at August 1, 2008 01:34 PMDoes anyone still trust this Bush crime government and their hired goons? A quick cruise of the blog sites, reveal that both lefties and righties, innies and outies, are expressing a great deal of skepticism about this most recent FBI news and the reported "suicide" of the perpetrator. The people really do recognize that the emperor has no clothes.
Posted by: Continuum at August 1, 2008 02:03 PMDoes anyone still trust this Bush crime government and their hired goons?
Good question. The real point is not that they're telling the truth now, but that the Iraq stuff was always bullshit.
Posted by: Jonathan Schwarz at August 1, 2008 02:22 PMCrazy or possessed?
Because the idea of possession is bound up with established institutional religion it's discarded as delusional fantasy. It's a binary inside the science v. religion polarity. But what if the earth really does orbit the sun?
What if oh wait we did that one.
Okay what if human personality is more like software than hardware?
What if something has tooken hold of Dick Cheney's formidable head? And all them other heads?
In secret invisible ways?
Like that thing that gets inside the cricket and makes it climb up on grass stems where it will become lunch for the next host in the parasite life cycle?
Craziness is dismissable, almost comforting. we know about crazy, we know other crazy people. We even get a little crazy ourselves know and then.
Not to disparage people who struggle with mental illness and an uncaring pharmo-greed-driven health system plus a lot of whack professionals who don't have their best interests at heart.
But crazy is a known quantity, it's acceptable sort of. Familiar and slottable.
Infestation by alien life forms is way scarier.
Roy Belmont: EXACTLY! Its called GREED.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at August 1, 2008 06:47 PMThen he fell in love and married STUPID for The Big White House.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at August 1, 2008 06:50 PMThen that skinny broad with the big rack HYPOCRICY moved in with them, somebody brought the beer and here WE are its Aug, 2008.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at August 1, 2008 06:54 PMI was bitching about Bush with several people today and one said "you're ignoring his good qualities" and I said (of course) "what good qualities?" and he said "I don't know but he must have some".
So I said "so you're saying that his imaginary good qualities mitigate his demonstrated bad qualities?"
He thought for a minute and said "yeah, they do".
Posted by: Jimbo at August 1, 2008 07:39 PM
Jimbo: I think you just defined "crazy."
Posted by: b at August 2, 2008 09:06 AMEmptywheel has a great discussion and comments about all the holes in the "story" that the suicide was the perp for the anthrax attacks.
Posted by: IntelVet at August 2, 2008 02:38 PMhttp://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/index.html
above is a link more about the anthrax - looks like Ft. Detrick made and shipped the stuff, and then some anonymous sources told ABC news that it had signs of coming from Iraq (false) but the point is - who were these anonymous sources promoting war?
Posted by: Susan - NC at August 3, 2008 02:07 PMoh, and the anonymous sources were also from Ft. Detrick.... we are our own worst enemies, it seems
Posted by: Susan - NC at August 3, 2008 02:12 PM...who were these anonymous sources promoting war?
What? You don't believe in the sanctity of journalistic sources?
Judith Miller needs our support folks.
Posted by: Labiche at August 4, 2008 08:10 AM
