Borat sparks summit

From Showbiz News:

LIFE STYLE EXTRA (UK) - Sacha Baron Cohen has prompted US President George Bush to host a White House summit, after angering the Kazakhstan government with his comic creation Borat.

The British star has infuriated Kazakhstan leaders with his latest movie, 'Borat: Cultural Learning of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan'.

Borat is portrayed as a backward, racist and sexist man who, in one of Cohen's previous comedy sketches, once sung "kill the Jews".

The first scene of Cohen's latest movie, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last week, shows Borat kissing his sister inappropriately before riding off in a horse-drawn car to explore the US.

Kazakhstan's President Nazarbayev now plans to fly to America to meet with President Bush to discuss his country's image.

Eh? Shouldn't Nazarbayev fly to the UK to bitch about this? Cohen isn't American. But more importantly, DOESN'T BUSH HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT??

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Above the law

From AP:

WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) thought he had a deal when President Bush, faced with a veto-proof margin in Congress, agreed to sign a bill banning the torture of detainees. Not quite. While Bush signed the new law, he also quietly approved another document: a signing statement reserving his right to ignore the law. McCain was furious, and so were other lawmakers.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is opening hearings this week into what has become the White House's favorite tool for overriding Congress in the name of wartime national security.

"It's a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution," the committee's chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm interested to hear from the administration just what research they've done to lead them to the conclusion that they can cherry-pick."

Apparently, enough to challenge more than 750 statutes passed by Congress, far more than any other president, Specter's committee says. The White House does not dispute that number, but points out that Bush is far from the nation's first chief executive to issue them.

Okay, this is scary. He’s officially above the law. Even his own party is worried.

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Bush Unaware of Ports Deal Before Approval

From Netscape News/CNN:

President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday.

Nice.

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Foiled L.A. Terror Plot

Bush is now saying that mere months after 9/11 a terror plot that would've targeted the Liberty Tower in L.A. was thwarted. Naturally this is supposed to justify the illegal wiretapping and make us forget about those terrorists that escaped from prison in Yemen.

Sorry, I'm just not buying it.

How come he didn't drop this bombshell during the 2004 election? How could he have resisted that temptation if this was true?

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NSA spying on U.S. citizens

It was revealed this week that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to spy on U.S. citizens, and he’s been doing so since 9/11.

Now, I’m not one of these naïve people who think “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be worried about your government spying on you,” but I do wonder why everyone thinks this is significant. The FBI and the local police spy on Americans every day, right? That’s okay but when the NSA does it it’s wrong?

Or are people mad because the NY Times sat on this story for a year and it could've changed the 2004 election?

Me & Barbara Bush

Back in November in the Twenty Answers post I mentioned that I had once had dinner with Barbara Bush.

Here’s the picture I promised!

Twenty Answers

Hello! Wow, a lot of people participated in this game! I have to try this again another time.

[Sorry for the delay, but my staff meeting ran overtime.]

These are the answers:

1. I am a member of Mensa.
   TRUE: I have been a member of Mensa for over ten years, though I have never attended a single meeting of my local chapter.


2. I am divorced.
   FALSE: I have never been married. Jamaican Queen and Luke Cage astutely guessed this, but others seemed to have been led astray.


3. I am related to a former Governor-General of Barbados.
   TRUE: Through my mother, I am distantly related to the late Dame Ruth Nita Barrow, the first and only female Governor-General of Barbados.


4. I have been to the DMZ.
   TRUE: As part of a 50th anniversary commemoration of the Korean War, my Army unit visited the Korean Demilitarized Zone (or DMZ). They sell barbed wire souvenirs in the gift shop there.


5. I knew Biggie Smalls before he was famous.
   FALSE: I did not personally know Christopher Wallace, the late Notorious B.I.G., however he did grow up in my neighborhood. I have a vivid memory in high school of a chubby, sullen boy getting into an altercation with a crackhead on a crowded C train over nothing. I thought to myself, “What a jerk that kid is.” :)


6. I am Catholic.
   TRUE: Born and raised. I disagree with a great deal of Church doctrine, however. I was greatly disappointed that Pope John Paul II’s successor was not from Latin America.


7. I have had dinner with Barbara Bush.
   TRUE: My company contributed heavily to an Americares fundraiser dinner about five years ago and they were looking for bodies to fill up the table. I volunteered and sure enough, I ended up sitting at a table adjacent to George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush. I’ll post the picture where I’m cheesing standing next to her. I think she was scared, but she made a good show of it. LOL!


8. I was on the fencing team in high school.
   TRUE: I was on the fencing team for four years. I still have my gear.


9. I lost a tooth playing football.
   TRUE: I was only six, though, and the tooth was loose.


10. I wore an eye patch as a child to correct a vision problem.
    TRUE: Yes, like Captain Typho, I rocked an eye patch back in the day. Do they still do that to kids now? They made me wear it to strengthen the vision in my weaker eye.


11. I once performed in Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey circus.
    TRUE: It wasn’t much of a performance, though. My mom took me to the circus and a guy came and picked me and some other kids out of the crowd. They put us in a chariot and we got to clown around and wave at the crowd from the center ring. There were elephants and acrobats all around us. Very exciting!


12. I went to school with former basketball player Mark Jackson.
    FALSE: Completely false! ;)


13. I have a stepsister.
    TRUE: I met her for the first time at my paternal grandmother’s funeral. I was like, WTF? I wasn’t even aware that my father had remarried! (rolling my eyes)


14. I escaped from Manhattan by boat on 9/11.
    TRUE: My office is about three blocks away from Ground Zero. At about noon when the dust cloud had lifted enough so that there was some visibility, two co-workers and I started walking towards the Brooklyn Bridge. As we got towards the water we saw a ferries, tug boats, sanitation boats, personal craft, you name it, lining up to take people to safety! Those people didn’t have to help us. I still get choked up when I think about that.
    
    The evacuation of Dunkirk in WWII must’ve been a lot like that.


15. I have shot a member of my family.
    TRUE: I shot a cousin in the eye at pointblank range with a pistol that used little army men for ammo. I thought he was holding my doll hostage and I was not in the mood to eff around with him, so I popped a cap. Turned out he didn’t have the doll, his brother had it! Oops! Shot the wrong guy! He turned it over quick since he saw I meant business. See, I should’ve been a cop.


16. I started a race riot at a day camp.
    FALSE: I was involved in an “incident” between the black girls and the white girls at a Catholic Youth Organization day camp, but the nuns put both sides on lockdown before we had to represent.


17. I am a Democrat.
    FALSE: I’m not a Republican either. I’m an Independent.


18. My family is from Panama.
    TRUE: My parents were both born and raised in Panama. Their parents came to Panama from Barbados, Jamaica and Colombia to build the Panama Canal.


19. I was deployed to Cuba as part of operation Enduring Freedom.
    TRUE: My Army Reserve unit was sent to Guantanamo Bay about 8 months after 9/11. I could tell ya more, but… you know the rest of that sentence. ;)


20. I graduated from MIT.
    TRUE: I don’t go to any reunions or anything, though.

Twenty “Truths”

I saw a variation of this one someone’s site. I forget who. Anyway, there are 15 true statements below, and five false ones.

1. I am a member of Mensa.


2. I am divorced.


3. I am related to a former Governor-General of Barbados.


4. I have been to the DMZ.


5. I knew Biggie Smalls before he was famous.


6. I am Catholic.


7. I have had dinner with Barbara Bush.


8. I was on the fencing team in high school.


9. I lost a tooth playing football.


10. I wore an eye patch as a child to correct a vision problem.


11. I once performed in Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey circus.


12. I went to school with former basketball player Mark Jackson.


13. I have a stepsister.


14. I escaped from Manhattan by boat on 9/11.


15. I have shot a member of my family.


16. I started a race riot at a day camp.


17. I am a Democrat.


18. My family is from Panama.


19. I was deployed to Cuba as part of operation Enduring Freedom.


20. I graduated from MIT.

Can you guess which statements are false?

Chancellor Steps Aside

Chancellor Palpatine, er, Harriet Miers, had the good sense to withdraw her nomination for Supreme Court justice today.

Thank God. There was absolutely no support for this clearly unqualified Bush crony. Still, I was surprised at how viciously she was attack from the Right. Whew! The Dems didn’t even have to open their mouths. The Right feasted on one of their own.

Interesting.

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Court Nominee Has No Judicial Experience

From Yahoo News:

President Bush named White House counsel Harriet Miers to a Supreme Court in transition Monday, turning to a longtime loyalist without experience as a judge or publicly known views on abortion to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

It’s comforting to know that you don’t have to actually be a freaking judge in order to sit in judgment of others as a member of the highest court in the nation.

WTF?

Bush's "bathroom break"

From ABC News Online:

A photographer has snapped United States President George W. Bush apparently writing a note to ask whether a toilet break is possible during a United Nations meeting.

Mr Bush is said to have written the note to his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

"I think I may need a bathroom break? Is this possible?" a Reuters news agency photographer caught him writing during a UN summit.

George needs to ask "Condi" if he can pee?

ROFL!

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Hurricane Katrina's Wall of Shame

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (Democrat)
Told people to evacuate New Orleans, but provided no means for the 250,000 people without transportation to do so. Sent people to shelters that had inadequate food, water and sanitation to support them. Nagin made broadcasts on the radio during and after the storm, but he didn't have the balls to show his face at the Superdome or the New Orleans Convention Center where people were living in slave ship conditions. Contrast him with Rudolph Giuliani who was on the scene during 911. He didn't actually do anything, but if your constituents don't see your face during a crisis, don't be surprised when anarchy ensues.

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (Democrat)
Mobilized the National Guard too late. Slow to ask the federal government for supplies and troops from other states. Too scared to visit the squalid refugee centers. Even lame Governor Pataki of New York made sure to get his ass to Ground Zero quick in the aftermath of 911.

FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) Head Michael Brown (Republican)
Claims to not have known until Thursday that thousands of people were at the Convention Center, despite the fact that the media showed people arriving there as early as Tuesday and reported that no one was in charge. Brown turned away trucks of water sent by WalMart. When Al Gore arranged a chartered flight to rescue approximately 100 elderly patients from a New Orleans hospital, FEMA threw up roadblocks that delayed the process until Saturday, endagering their lives even further.

Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff (Republican)
Finally arrived in Louisiana on Sunday. Apparently didn't know he was supposed to be in charge. Continued to insist all week that evacuations were taking place in an orderly fashion and that food and water were on the way while people were dying of thirst and diabetics were going into comas. At a press conference today he praised his staff for doing a "fantastic job." He says that 10,000 people were rescued in the last two days, but his own agency's press release says the number is only 4,500.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (Republican)
Was spotted in New York late last week enjoying her vacation, buying $1,000 worth of designer shoes in a midtown store and catching a performance of Spamalot on Broadway while elderly people and babies were dying of dehydration and living in their own filth in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, her home state.

United States President George W. Bush (Republican)
Placed an emphasis in every press conference on the specific number of soldiers he was sending to the affected area, and how they had orders to shoot to kill desperate people who were getting food and water for their families by any means necessary, as opposed to talking about how many doctors were being sent, how much medicine was being sent, how many civil engineers were being sent, etc. Chose to make scheduled stops in Arizona and California to pump up support for the war in Iraq for most of the week. Finally got his ass to the affected areas on Friday for a sanitized photo-op with two clean, calm light-skinned girls from a suburban neighborhood in an attempt to dispel the appearance of a racial aspect to this tragedy.

Michael Moore to George W. Bush

A letter to Dubya from Michael Moore re: Hurricane Katrina.

And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!

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