I just love this story.

President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are among nominees for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize before a Sunday deadline for nominations despite failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

“Nominations are pouring in,” said Geir Lundestad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute. He said he gets letters and up to 1,500 e-mails a day from people either supporting or denouncing candidates.

Among nominees are the European Union to mark its expansion to include former East bloc states. Pope John Paul, the Salvation Army, former Czech President Vaclav Havel, Chinese dissidents are also among nominees.

“Bush and Blair definitely still deserve it,” said Jan Simonsen, a right-wing independent member of Norway’s parliament who nominated the two for the 2004 prize shortly after the U.S.-led war toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in April.

“Even though they haven’t found those weapons they got rid of a dictator and made the world more safe,” he told Reuters on Friday, sticking by the choice. “They got rid of a madman.”

Heh.

I am officially sick of talking politics. I’m sure after a weekend of hanging out with the family and watching the Super Bowl (Go Pats!) I’ll be re-energized, but for now, it’s all just one big blah. Well, all one big blah except for one interesting thing I found while surfing around today.

John Kerry: tough on national security. Not a waffler, right? So, explain this:

Consider his record on the first Gulf War, which he voted against. In early January 1991, constituent Walter Carter sent Kerry a letter urging him to back the war. He received two responses. A January 22 letter from the senator, addressed to Carter as though he were an opponent of the war, indicated that Kerry favored sanctions and opposed war. A January 31 letter said, “From the outset of the invasion [of Kuwait by Iraq], I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush’s response to the crisis and the policy goals he has established with our military deployment in the Persian Gulf.”

Kerry aides at the time said that a computer error was responsible for the screw-up. The “unequivocal support” letter dated from the previous September, when the Iraqi invasion and American deployment had just happened but senators were not voting on war. Carter should have gotten yet a third letter saying that Kerry had thought war inadvisable but supported the troops. Kerry’s press secretary explained that the senator’s “position has been 100 percent consistent on this issue.”

Consistent? Consider the text of the letters (link via Kaus):

“Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition … to the early use of military force by the US against Iraq. I share your concerns. On January 11, I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work and against a resolution giving the president the immediate authority to go to war.”

–letter from Senator John Kerry to Wallace Carter of Newton Centre, Massachusetts, dated January 22 [1991]

“Thank you very much for contacting me to express your support for the actions of President Bush in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush’s response to the crisis and the policy goals he has established with our military deployment in the Persian Gulf.”

–Senator Kerry to Wallace Carter, January 31 [1991]

Doesn’t sound too consistent to me.

The headline on Fark reads “Fiscally conservative republicans submit budget with $540 billion deficit”… which is both amusing and sad. When I saw it, I had a momentary vision of President Bush throwing his hands in the air and proposing the following:

-shut down the Department of Education. You want local control, you got it.

-get rid of Medicaid and Medicare. Please show me where in the Constitution the government agreed to help provide medical care to its citizens.

-phase out Social Security. Same thing. If I’m saving for my retirement, let me decide how to save, rather than trusting the government to do it for me. I’m a conservative. I believe in less government, because the less there is, the less there is to screw up.

-abolish funding for the NEA. I know, it’s a drop in the bucket, but if increasing funding ticked off conservatives, imagine how thrilled they’ll be when we axe it completely.

I know there are countless other programs that are nothing more than entitlements that should get axed, but I’m already late for an appointment. Feel free to continue the list in the comments section.

That’s the headline, or a close approximation to it. But it’s not really an increase in arts funding… it’s an increase in NEA funding. The same NEA that paid for Piss Christ and Mapplethorpe’s “The Perfect Moment”.

The good news for conservatives is that the increase in funding won’t pay for S&M photos or religious figures submerged in urine. Instead, it looks like the majority of the money will pay for arts in school.

Some new money sought by Mr. Bush would expand initiatives with broad bipartisan support, like performances of Shakespeare’s plays and “Jazz Masters” concert tours.

Mrs. Bush also plans to introduce a new initiative, “American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius.” This would combine art presentations — from painting and literature to music and dance — with education programs. The program would give large numbers of students around the country a chance to see exhibitions and performances.

The bad news for conservatives is that once again Bush is alienating his base by announcing spending proposals. Every one of these spending proposals needs to be accompanied by a press release detailing the end of a government project that costs just as much money as the one being proposed.

Two theories:

Karl Rove is calculating just how much Bush can appeal to moderate voters without alienating some of his conservative base to the point that they don’t vote. If that’s the case, the answer is simple: he’s already lost some conservatives, and the more we see proposals like this, the more he’ll lose.

Or… Dubya is doing this out of principle, and his advisors can’t convince him that these ideas are going to cost him votes.

Regardless of what’s really behind this, the image is of Bush becoming just another politician. He really needs to get back to the image of a statesman; the leader who guided this country through the dark days following 9/11.

Recently, Perry wrote about the need to remember 9-11. As he put it:

Someone, a while back- maybe it was Lileks- pointed this out first, so I claim no points for originality, and I’ve even said this before, but we need to be angry about this. We need to remember the punch in the gut, the knee to the balls, the horror, the wrenching horror of watching innocent people burn to death or jump from 100 stories up. We need to remember because in forgetting, we’re giving aid and comfort to the people who celebrated that event, who want us either dead or subjected to their beliefs.

Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe you have to accept the fact there is not a fiscal conservative running for President. Maybe you have to accept the choice of deficit spending or a tax increase. And when it comes down to it, maybe you have to ask “If and when there’s another 9/11 style attack, what candidate is going to best defend this country?”

After talking about President Bush’s plan to increase spending for the NEA, a faithful listener sent me the following email this morning:

Dude, it’s Maplethorpe. Pronounced like the syrup, not Mapplethorpe.

I replied by pleading ignorance when it comes to photographers specializing in homoerotic art… but hey, at least I pronounced Andres Serrano correctly. I know my urine artists.

I’ve had something weird happening with my webmail, and I figured one of you smart folks might have an answer for me.

In the past three or four days, I’ve received four messages that tell me I sent an email that’s undeliverable. The problem is… I didn’t send any of these emails, nor do I recognize the email address it was sent to. The subject line of the emails I’m supposedly sending reads “Hi”.

This makes me think I have a virus, but if so, it’s apparently not doing anything with the Outlook I have installed on this particular computer… just my webmail.

Does this sound like a virus, or is this a particularly weird form of spam?

I haven’t found a full transcript for David Kay’s hearing on Capitol Hill today, but CNN has a transcript of Kay’s opening remarks.

Here’s Kay’s bottom line:

In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [U.N.] Resolution 1441.

Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities — one last chance to come clean about what it had.

We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.

Everything I’ve seen about David Kay indicates he’s a standup guy. He’s not pointing fingers, he’s not blaming anybody, and he’s not a puppet of the Bush administration (he’s said he believes there should be an independent investigation, while the administration to this point hasn’t indicated any desire for that to happen). It seems he just wants to get to the bottom of the intelligence failures, and that’s an admirable thing. I honestly don’t know if it’s possible to do so in an election year, however.

From the Houston Chronicle via Obscurestore:

A former Cy-Fair High School student serving five years’ probation for felony arson in a flag-burning case headed a group of self-described environmental guerrillas who vandalized almost 50 sport utility vehicles, officials said Tuesday.

Precinct 4 deputy constables said the group, led by Randall W. Heinrichs, 18, smashed windows and slashed tires on SUVs in north Harris County from October through December.

Investigators said the vandals used bats embedded with nails to smash windows and cut tires and sprayed graffiti, including Nazi swastikas, on the vehicles.

Four teenagers have been charged with criminal mischief.

Heinrichs, placed on deferred adjudication last year after pleading guilty in the arson case, has a “personal hatred” for SUVs, said Precinct 4 Capt. Rick Brass. “He talks about how they are environmentally unfriendly (and) decadent,” he said.

Heinrichs, of Houston, was arrested Jan. 9 and is held in Harris County Jail without bail because of his arson probation.

Lindsey Garofano, 18, of Houston and Jarett Barger, 19, of Cypress were arrested Tuesday. Their bail was set at $5,000 each.

Joshua Killen, 18, of Cypress is expected to turn himself in shortly, deputy constables said.

Garofano told deputies she particularly resented “arrogant ladies” who drive expensive SUVs instead of buying more economical cars and donating the surplus money to charity.

Yes, how arrogant of these ladies to drive expensive SUV’s. Thank goodness for people like Lindsey Garofano, who can peer into the minds of others to see if they’ve donated to charity. Thank goodness for patriots like Lindsey Garofano, who takes the law into her own hands and dispenses justice at the end of a can of spray paint.

Thank goodness she’s only charged with criminal mischief so she can get a slap on the wrist. Soon she’ll be free, able to once again fight for truth, justice, and the right to destroy property because you disagree with someone.

I’ve been getting quite a few visits over the past few days from visitors to KTOK.com, so I just thought I’d take a moment to say thanks.

By the way, if you haven’t been to KTOK.com in a while, you should check it out. A complete redesign of the website to make it more functional and less cluttered. Links to the organizations in the news, audio from our reporters, and of course, live streaming audio.

We’re always looking for ways to improve it, of course, so if you have any suggestions feel free to mention them here or via an email.

I could swear John Kerry just inferred that the war in Iraq was about oil.

Wow. A Dean-like moment for the front runner.

*and really, Senator… you used the “bring it on” line in Iowa. Aren’t the voters in New Hampshire worthy of a new line?

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Al Franken might have a new gig if his liberal talk show doesn’t pan out. Turns out Al’s quite the bouncer.

Wise-cracking funnyman Al Franken yesterday body-slammed a demonstrator to the ground after the man tried to shout down Gov. Howard Dean.
The tussle left Franken’s trademark thick-rim glasses broken, but he said he was not injured.

Franken - who seemed in a state of shock and out of breath after the incident - was helped back to his feet by several people who watched the tussle. Police arrived soon after.

“I got down low and took his legs out,” said Franken afterwards.

Franken said he’s not backing Dean but merely wanted to protect the right of people to speak freely. “I would have done it if he was a Dean supporter at a Kerry rally,” he said.

Wonder what would have happened if it was a Dean supporter at a Bush rally?

I think George Carlin is a funny guy. Carlin on Campus probably did more to warp my young mind than any brat pack movie (for a few years, HBO showed that comedy special at least four times a day… or so it seemed).

That being said, he’s dead wrong when it comes to this country.

Q: You’re known as a very liberal comic. Are you trying to change people’s political views when you go out there? Do you have an underlying agenda?

A: No. First of all, I’m not liberal. I’m just about (being) anti-United States. I don’t like the way this country operates. I think we’ve ruined this place. And I think it’s largely because of businessmen. And businessmen are not liberals. So if that makes me a liberal, then that’s just an association. It’s not a choice. …

I do not care about changing anybody. Nobody. I go out there to show the rest of the Americans how badly they’re doing. This country has been, for about 180 years now, badly mishandled. And it’s been in the wrong hands. It’s been in the hands of the business interests.

And a lot of the beauty of this country has been shattered by them. The physical beauty and the kind of institutional beauty that was originally built into this place - this experiment, this magnificent experiment in democracy is just being shredded to pieces by these right-wing Christians, the Ashcroft branch of Republicanism. (They’re) just shredding the rest of the Bill of Rights which hadn’t been shredded already. (But) they’d been doing a pretty good job on it up until then, anyway.

One hundred and eighty years? What happened in 1824 to make Carlin so ticked off? The election of John Quincy Adams? The fact that the election went to the House of Representatives? The whole Corrupt Bargain incident is what’s fueled Carlin’s rage all these years?

Yeah, life was good until that bastard John Quincy Adams came along.

I normally don’t even mention stuff like worms and viruses, but considering I had multiple versions of this one in my inbox, just thought I’d warn you.

A malicious program attached to seemingly innocuous e-mails was spreading quickly over the Internet on Monday, clogging network traffic and potentially leaving hackers an open door to infected personal computers.

The worm, called “Mydoom” or “Novarg” by antivirus companies, appears to be an e-mail error message. A small file is attached that, when launched on computers running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating systems, can send out 100 infected e-mail messages in 30 seconds to e-mail addresses stored in the computer’s address book and other documents.

Besides sending out e-mail, the program appears to open up a backdoor so that hackers can take over the computer later.

“As far as I can tell right now, it’s pretty much everywhere on the planet,” Gullotto said.

Unlike other mass-mailing worms, Mydoom does not attempt to trick victims by promising nude pictures of celebrities or mimicking personal notes. Instead, one of its messages reads: “The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent as a binary attachment.”

“Because that sounds like a technical thing, people may be more apt to think it’s legitimate and click on it,” said Steve Trilling, Symantec’s senior director of research.

Subject lines also vary. The attachments have “.exe,” “.scr,” “.cmd” or “.pif” extensions, and may be compressed as a Zip file.

Microsoft offers a patch of its Outlook e-mail software to warn users before they open such attachments or prevent them from opening them altogether. Antivirus software also stops infection.

Christopher Budd, a security program manager with Microsoft, said the worm does not appear to take advantage of any Microsoft product vulnerability.

“This is entirely a case of what we would call social engineering — enticing users to take actions that are not in their best interest,” he said.

Again, if you get a “mail error” or “unicode” message with a .zip attachment (I’ve received both)… just say no and send it to the trash.

Frosty Troy, one of Oklahoma’s most liberal voices, has a lovely piece on public schools that the Oklahome Education Association has reprinted. It’s really due a good fisking, but I’ve got to get home and wait on a dining room table to be delivered. Be sure to read it for yourself…

Al Gore endorses Howard Dean and Dean promptly begins his slide.

Michael Moore endorses Wesley Clark and now Clark’s numbers are down.

Probably coincidental, but awfully fun to point out.

Howard Dean says Iraqis are worse off now than under Saddam Hussein.

I could trot out that email going around quoting Paul Bremer and the list of accomplishments, but I don’t think it’s necessary.

No rape rooms. No more mass graves. No more children kidnapped from rest rooms for daring to write “Down With Saddam” on a bathroom wall.

It’s not perfect, but I’d say freedom is always the better standard of living.

David Kay, the man in charge of searching for Iraq’s WMD, now says he doesn’t believe Iraq had any stockpiles of WMD.

A couple of interesting things… and this isn’t as simple as some would make it out to be.

First of all, Kay doesn’t think the Bush administration misled the American public.

Kay’s remarks on National Public Radio reignited criticism from Democrats, who ignored his cautions that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction was “not a political issue.”

“It’s an issue of the capabilities of one’s intelligence service to collect valid, truthful information,” Kay said. Asked whether President Bush owed the nation an explanation for the gap between his warnings and Kay’s findings, Kay said: “I actually think the intelligence community owes the president, rather than the president owing the American people.”

And even now, Kay says we don’t have all the answers.

David Kay, the former head of the coalition’s hunt for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, yesterday claimed that part of Saddam Hussein’s secret weapons programme was hidden in Syria.

In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay, who last week resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year’s war to overthrow Saddam.

“We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons,” he said. “But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam’s WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved.”

By the way, the Associated Press article contains one of those oft-repeated mistakes, quoting Dick Cheney as saying Iraq had “reconstituted nuclear weapons”. It’s been demonstrated elsewhere that the VP was blurping out a verbal miscue, when he meant to say “reconstituted nuclear weapons program”. Interestingly enough, the Vice President might have been wrong on that account as well.

As noted in the Associated Press article, this is already a political issue, despite Kay’s warnings. It truly is an intelligence issue dating back more than a decade. How could the intelligence have been so wrong?

1- Saddam never complied with the cease fire agreement to document the destruction of the WMD he had after the first Gulf War.

2- Saddam’s scientists apparently misled the government over progress in WMD programs. There was a story a couple of months ago (can’t find a link, sorry) about the scientists who would tell Saddam and his cronies about their progress, even though nothing was really happening.

3- The U.S. and others relied too much on the word of defectors.

The intelligence failure (if in fact there was one) is a concern, but it wouldn’t be the first time. Glenn points out the CIA blew the fall of the Soviet Union as well. He also points out the Bill Clinton’s still saying he believed Saddam had WMD right up until Iraq fell.

There are people in politics who want to make this a political issue. That’s because they’re politicians. The few statesmen in this country should do their best to make sure this becomes a national security issue instead.

Tonight is the first night since Sunday that I’ve had nothing to do. It feels glorious, and I plan on wallowing in my free time this weekend.

Regular updates will resume Sunday evening. Have a wonderful weekend, and be safe.

Just found this in the comments section of Why America Isn’t Facist, one of my earlier posts.

I suggest you check this very impressive web site about the present status of America. It provides both strong intellectual argument, powerful facts, passionate plea and very moving visual impression. That’s www.nationofhate.us

Oh yes, I’m sure it provides lots of powerful facts. It only took me 45 seconds to find the first George Bush is a Nazi statement. George Bush is a liar, a killer, a draft dodger, a deserter, Karl Rove is evil, Dick Cheney’s evil, it’s all about the oil, Michael Moore is a God, Babs Streisand is the greatest ever, and so on and so forth.

It’s amazing that people that stupid can learn HTML… but I’m sure Rev. Robin Meyers is proud to have their support.

On that note, I think I need to go to bed.

Lord have mercy, I agree with Ron Jeremy on the state of American education.

It’s gotten a little worse in some ways. Kids have gotten a little too Internet crazy. Why do you have to know anything when you can look at the Internet? I had to memorize my times tables. I had to memorize facts from books. …

To find out why we care about a porn star’s opinion on education you really need to read the whole thing. I love the ending.

Not to frighten you, but has anyone ever told you that you have nice eyes? They probably go unnoticed in your line of work.

Yeah. I’ve been told that once in a while.

Aw, you’re a little doll! (Leans into the recorder) “And he gives her a kiss on the cheek.”

Epilogue: And she went back to her room and thoroughly exfoliated.

Classic.

Found the comments section of Life Is Good:

I don’t know about the economy as a whole and unemployment for the whole country, but my economy just got better because my unemployment rate just went down to 0%. the job will help me in this evil capitalist nation. hehehe

For those of you who had me in your prayers, thank you.

Posted by Revelator at January 22, 2004 09:43 AM

That’s just fantastic, Rev. I’m so happy to hear it, and I know you must be thrilled.

Remember the discussion about whether or not NPR is a liberal news and talk organization? From the radio industry website All Access:

NEWS: KATHERINE LANPHER makes official what ALL ACCESS previously reported and announces her departure from MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO’s “MIDMORNING” to join the new PROGRESS MEDIA liberal talk network as AL FRANKEN’s co-host for Noon-3p ET.

Guess I was wrong. NPR’s apparently too conservative for her.

A nice article with some hard truths in Australia’s The Age.

The Iraq war has cost the lives of about 500 American soldiers. Some would have you believe that this makes Iraq a quagmire. But the truth is, if Western nations have come to the point where 500 deaths is an unbearable war-time loss, then we should also say we are no longer prepared to fight wars, because about the same number of soldiers die every year, in peacetime.

Americans are not casual about casualties. Each and every one of the lives lost was precious to them. I remember sitting on a small plane, travelling from North Carolina to New York, when the war was a few weeks old. I was reading USA Today and, as I opened it to study a map of Iraq, one half of the newspaper fell into the lap of my fellow passenger. I turned to apologise, but he said: “No problem. Actually, do you mind if I have a look?”

Together we studied the picture, trying to work out how far the Americans were from seizing power. It was clear from the diagrams that troops were near Saddam’s airport, and close to the centre of Baghdad. I turned to my seat mate and said: “I don’t think this is going to be a long battle, after all.”

It was only then that I noticed, with horror, that he had started to cry. And then I noticed something else: a photograph, wrapped in plastic, pinned to his lapel. It was a picture of his 20-year-old son, a young marine who died in the first days of the war. The man’s wife was sitting across the aisle from us. She had a round bowl on her lap, filled with water and some drooping tulips. The movement of the aircraft was making the water slop around. She was trying to wipe her hands, and her tears.

The couple told me they had just been to a private meeting with Bush to discuss the loss of their son. At the time, it was already clear that Saddam didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction.

“But I never thought it was about the weapons,” my seat mate said. And, although I can’t remember his exact words, he also said something like: “We have always stood up for freedom, in our own country, and for other people.”

Any student of history knows that this is true. America saved the Western world from communism. America saved Australia and, for that matter, France from a system that would stop you from reading this newspaper.

hat tip to instapundit.

Just caught the Flock of Seagulls episode of VH-1’s Bands Reunited.

Nice to see they no longer have the new wave hair. Of course, half the band don’t have any hair these days, which is just as painful to see.