GOP Vixen

Remember Halabja: 20 years ago

So any reader of mine knows that I enjoy crashing protests and reporting from within. But today, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't bear to see the signs stating that deposing Saddam wasn't worth it, that the U.S. was the evil aggressor -- particularly considering that this weekend is the 20th anniversary of Halabja.

I write about the grim anniversary today at Pajamas Media:

"...Being no stranger to crashing war protests, I can bet that if you held a poster bearing one of the infamous images of a man who fell and died at the base of a home’s steps clutching an infant whose mouth was frozen in a vain gasp for air, or the pile of bodies in traditional colorful clothing strewn across an otherwise verdant hill, most demonstrators would assume the grisly images are products of the American war machine. They wouldn’t like to hear that these murders were committed by the dictator we deposed.

On March 16, 1988, Iraqi warplanes bombed the Kurdish town of Halabja with chemical weapons including sarin and mustard gas, targeting civilians as part of the Anfal campaign to rid Iraq of its Kurds. Five thousand — three-quarters of them women and children — died from the chemical cocktail. Children trying to rush home fell in the street, while the insidious gasses claimed those who cowered in basements from what they thought was a traditional bombardment. Thousands were left with chemical burns, blindness, cancers, birth defects, etc.

The Halabja attack was, in Josef Mengele fashion, an experiment to determine which of the various chemical agents worked best on the population, where were the best strategic places to drop the poisonous canisters, where victims would fall and how many. 'These were field tests, an experiment on a town,' Iraqi defector Khidhir Hamza, the former director of Saddam’s nuclear-weapons program, told then-New Yorker reporter Jeffrey Goldberg in 2002. 'The doctors were given sheets with grids on them, and they had to answer questions such as "How far are the dead from the canisters?"'”

Read the whole thing!

Acknowledging Halabja, though, means acknowledging that ousting Saddam served a purpose -- and that the international community turned a blind eye (again) to genocide.

My newest addiction: 'Afghan Star'

My favorite contestant is the old guy in this audition tape from Mazar-e-Sharif:

It's like "American Idol," but scours for contestants in Kabul, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Kandahar, etc. There's even an Afghan Ryan Seacrest (who's actually a medical student) and a woman on the judging panel a la Paula Abdul. It's in its third season, and this year a woman from Kandahar placed third, the highest ever for a woman, drawing lots of fans and pissing off conservative clerics. And I can't help but notice that, sans beards, there are some hot guys in Afghanistan...

Obama Greed; Audacity Indeed!

Consider this: Michelle Obama works for the University of Chicago Hospital as vice president for community affairs making a cool $121,910 salary. Just after Mr. Obama takes office, Mrs. Obama’s salary jumps more than 2 ½ times to $316,962! Shortly thereafter, Mr. Obama requested an earmark for $1 million to construct a hospital pavilion for…..the University of Chicago Hospital! Can't wait to see the McCain ad on this.

Now it seems Obama has suddenly found earmark religion. Although McCain’s plan to stop earmarks for one year was soundly defeated in the Senate, both Obama and Clinton voted for the ban. Obama even tried to take the opportunity to take a poke at Clinton. Obama pledged to not seek earmarks even if the earmark ban failed, and then challenged Clinton to do the same. This gives the impression that Obama is against earmarks while Hillary is not. You have to hand it to Obama; he is a master of perception.

I wonder if anyone will ask Obama or Clinton what it says about their leadership abilities when neither can muster up more than four democrat votes for a bill they both support.

Take Note McCain

Geraldine Ferraro is upset. After years of being a democrat insider and working for, and with, minorities of every stripe, Ferraro has been called a racist. Decades of public service were no shield after Ferraro suggested that Obama’s candidacy might have more to do with his race than his lofty achievements. The caterwauling is so loud you might have thought Ferraro had been caught with some of Robert Byrd’s bed sheets in her linen closet.

Although the Clinton campaign has apologized, Ferraro is not backing down. Ferraro insists the Obama camp is playing the race card and publicizing her remarks in order to flog Clinton. The irony seems to be lost on Ferraro that the Clintons have been using that tactic on republican opponents for years, but John McCain should take notice. Obama and his camp will try to paint McCain and anyone working for him a racist at the drop of a hat. If Obama’s people are willing to suggest longtime Democratic Party stalwarts like Bill Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro are racists, what can we expect them to say about republicans?

Obama wins Mississippi (gee!), so now...

Might he say a word or two about the pleased comments about his potential presidency that were found on a laptop of the Colombian terror group FARC? You know, the nuggets buried at the bottom of the AP's story on the contents of the seized laptop:

"Writing two days before his death, (FARC commander Raul) Reyes tells his comrades that 'the gringos,' working through Ecuador's government, are interested 'in talking to us on various issues.'

'They say the new president of their country will be (Barack) Obama,' he writes, saying Obama rejects both the Bush administration's free trade agreement with Colombia and the current military aid program."

Surely a notorious killer, kidnapper, and drug trafficker isn't an ideal endorsement. Two days after Reyes' death, before the laptop discovery was released, Obama released a short, general statement against the threats of war in South America, saying diplomacy through "international actors" (Danny Glover?? Sean Penn??) should be used to defuse the situation. Obama's previously signaled his opposition to free trade with Colombia, but what about the U.S. aid agreement by which President Alvaro Uribe has been able to battle the traffickers and the FARC (which still holds three American hostages), thus making the cities there livable again? I'd love to hear Obama's opinions in light of the Reyes mail...

C'mon, Spitz, resign already...

So I've heard the argument all day on TV: If politicians had to resign for being unable to control their sexual urges, we'd have no politicians left. Yeah, no great debate there. But Eliot Spitzer paid for sex, thus breaking local law, and paid to transport his call girl from N.Y. to D.C., thus breaking federal law. Break the law, step down. It's not a "personal" matter.

Plus, the affair should call into question his money-managing skills as governor, too. Five grand for an hour or two? Potentially $80,000 spent over his career as a high-class john? That averages out to about 16 moments of, er, sexual satisfaction for the price of the first house my parents bought. Undoubtedly, he thought the money was buying his anonymity (though he used a friend/donor's name without the guy's knowledge -- nice!) and buying his secrecy (yeah, that worked really well).

So Spitzer should wipe the Gumby look off his face and call it a day.

Incidentally, I was at the Mayflower hotel a little over a year ago, but all I got was an omelet from a book publisher who wanted to yap about ways to stick it to the left. She should have left the cafe, gotten in the elevator, went about eight floors up, and gotten the story, evidently...

Plus, the affair should call into question his money-managing skills as governor, too. Five grand for an hour or two? Potentially $80,000 spent over his career as a high-class john? That averages out to about 16 moments of, er, sexual satisfaction for the price of the first house my parents bought. Undoubtedly, he thought the money was buying his anonymity (though he used a friend/donor's name without the guy's knowledge -- nice!) and buying his secrecy (yeah, that worked really well).

So Spitzer should wipe the Gumby look off his face and call it a day.

Incidentally, I was at the Mayflower hotel a little over a year ago, but all I got was an omelet from a book publisher who wanted to yap about ways to stick it to the left. She should have left the cafe, gotten in the elevator, went about eight floors up, and gotten the story, evidently...

How McCain can win the White House

So the other day I touched on McCain's need to win the moderates to win the presidency, but Mac's appearance to the Council for National Policy prompted me to expand upon these thoughts in my Los Angeles Daily News column today:

"Hey Sen. McCain, wanna know how you can win in November?

Let's go back to Friday and the Council for National Policy, where you met behind closed doors with - and I say this as a lifelong Republican - some of the right-wingerest of right-wingers in a pre-election kiss-up. The super-secret CNP, founded by Tim LaHaye as a forum for select conservatives, reportedly includes members such as James Dobson, Bob Jones III and Amway co-founder Richard DeVos.

'I don't think he came close to saying something to excite conservatives sitting on the sidelines waiting to hear something that would get them on his team,' Richard Viguerie, a longtime business associate of Sun Myung Moon, was prominently featured saying in The Washington Times, Moon's baby. 'Everything he said was rehash of what he has said before.'

Viguerie, according to the Times, echoed a sentiment of other CNP members: 'He didn't assure us he would bring conservatives into his White House or administration.' Viguerie was also upset that McCain wasn't more candid about his personal - that's the keyword, folks - faith.

McCain, don't worry about exciting the Christian Right. They'll be 'on your team' at a place called the ballot box when they're wretching at the thought of a Democrat-controlled White House. Yeah, even as they run to the next secret-handshake CNP meeting to gloat about their alleged 'protest vote.'

Everything you said was a rehash? Cool, Mac, because you shouldn't be changing your message right now to please the right. No assurances of CNP-acceptable righties in the White House? No promises needed.

Let them rant. Let them complain. Keep shaking off anti-Catholic televangelist John Hagee. You've got work to do. It's called 'being yourself.'

Because that, my friend, is the only way you'll win the election come November.

You are one of the few Republicans, in this day and age and after eight years of Bush's divisive presidency, who has the ability to handily lay claim to the middle. You need the ever-growing middle, moderate sea of voters to win the White House. You don't need to do anything that will get you painted as a panderer to the far right. The middle's reaction to that would be a sort of synchronized electoral 'ick.'..."

Read the whole thing!

Another deadly sin

The Vatican has updated the seven deadly sins to include polluting the environment and the creepy type of genetic engineering. While they're taking sins high-tech, can they include spammers? You know, the ones that ask if you want your penis to be five inches longer even if you're a woman and have no penis? And you wake up to find 100 such mails in your bulk e-mail folder, as well as the ones that sneak through to your regular folder? Even the ones who pitch replica watches or discount pills -- don't you think you belong in the confessional?? That'll be two Our Fathers, one Hail Mary, and permanently unplugging your computer, spammer!

Eliot Spitzer, another horny politico

So Eliot Spitzer once again confirms what we've all basically known about politicians for ages: they're sleazy. So the New York governor -- er, Client 9 --does his whole mea culpa sphiel about how hooking up with his call girl "Kristen" and being busted in an international prostitution ring has wounded his relationship with his family, blah blah blah blah.

So when are you gonna resign, jackass?