Top Ten Bushisms Of 2007

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

Compiled by Daniel Kurtzman:

10. "And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I’m sorry it’s the case, and I’ll work hard to try to elevate it." –interview on National Public Radio, Jan. 29, 2007

9. "I fully understand those who say you can’t win this thing militarily. That’s exactly what the United States military says, that you can’t win this military." –on the need for political progress in Iraq, Washington, D.C., Oct. 17, 2007

8. "One of my concerns is that the health care not be as good as it can possibly be." –on military benefits, Tipp City, Ohio, April 19, 2007

7. "Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction. Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit." –addressing Australian Prime Minister John Howard at the APEC Summit. Later, in the same speech: "As John Howard accurately noted when he went to thank the Austrian troops there last year…" –referring to Australian troops as "Austrian troops," Sept. 7, 2007

6. "My relationship with this good man is where I’ve been focused, and that’s where my concentration is. And I don’t regret any other aspect of it. And so I — we filled a lot of space together." –on British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Washington, D.C., May 17, 2007

5. "You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 — 1976." –to Queen Elizabeth, Washington, D.C., May 7, 2007

4. "The question is, who ought to make that decision? The Congress or the commanders? And as you know, my position is clear — I’m a Commander Guy." –deciding he is no longer just "The Decider," Washington, D.C., May 2, 2007

3. "Information is moving — you know, nightly news is one way, of course, but it’s also moving through the blogosphere and through the Internets." –Washington, D.C., May 2, 2007

2. "There are some similarities, of course (between Iraq and Vietnam). Death is terrible." –Tipp City, Ohio, April 19, 2007

1. "As yesterday’s positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured." –on the No Child Left Behind Act, Washington, D.C., Sept. 26, 2007

And by the way, Time’s Person of the Year is no longer "You."  It’s Putin.

The Clampetts Of Hollywood Keep Spawning

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

They got birth control in Lweezeena?

UPDATE:  The news of Jamie-Lynn Spear’s pregnancy (at age 16) has caused Britney and Jamie-Lynn’s mother to postpone completion of her book on parenting. 

I’ll type that again, just in case you missed it.

The news of Jamie-Lynn Spear’s pregnancy (at age 16) has caused Britney and Jamie-Lynn’s mother to postpone completion of her book on parenting!

Let me type that again, and say it in a slightly different way.

The woman who passed on her maternal instincts to her custody-challenged no-baby-seatbelt daughter Britney, and her 16-year-old pregnancy other daughter Jamie Lynn, will have to delay a parenting book.

The book was to be published by a Christian book publisher.

The jokes write themselves…

Back To The Videotape

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

The story of the destroyed torture tapes is back in the news, and this time, the White House isn’t looking as clean.

Earlier, it had been reported that the White House (specifically, Harriet Miers) had advised against destroying the tapes, which is the correct legal advice.

Now, the facts are a litte fuzzier:

It was previously reported that some administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed.

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Some other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes. Those officials acknowledged, however, that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal.

FYI:

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.

Given what we now know about Gonzales — and especially Addington — I find it hard to believe that they would advocate preserving the tapes.

BREAKING NEWS — Apparently, they’re burning documents as well:

ArtfireoeobwindowcnnFirefighters battled thick smoke and flames Wednesday inside the historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, which houses the vice president’s ceremonial offices.

They used axes to break windows on the third floor of the ornate building shortly after the blaze broke out after 9 a.m.

Within an hour, smoke had stopped pouring from the building.

Vice President Dick Cheney’s working offices are in the West Wing of the White House, and he was not in the EEOB at the time of the fire.

Smoke could be seen from the White House driveway.

Blackwater Shoots The New York Times’ Dog

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

The New York Times has been reporting how the security firm, Blackwater, has been going around shooting innocent people in Baghdad for no good reason.

And guess what happened last week?

The U.S. embassy in Iraq is investigating another deadly shooting incident involving its Blackwater bodyguards — this time of the New York Times’s dog.

Staff at the newspaper’s Baghdad bureau said Blackwater bodyguards shot Hentish dead last week before a visit by a U.S. diplomat to the Times compound.

Blackwater is saying that the dog was a threat of some sort, but the State Department is investigating and taking it "very seriously".

Playing The Victim

Ken AshfordCrimeLeave a Comment

Conservatives often like to play the victim over imaginary threats (i.e., the left-wing conspiracy to attack Christmas [the so-called "War On Christmas"]), and I find that (for some reason) very very amusing.

Some conservatives, however, let their imagination run away with them:

A Princeton University junior who claimed to have been beaten by two men in black ski caps for his conservative views….

Of course, Nava’s "beating" was Exhibit A throughout the conservative punditry about how craaaazy liberals are.  Brit Hume of Fox News led off his "Grapevine" report with the case (video here).  Instapundit linked to the story, claiming it showed that conservatives were now living under a "climate of fear".

But a few days later, the "victim" of the attack….

…admitted on Monday that he made up the attack, according to Princeton Township police officials.

Francisco Nava, 23, told police that he was attacked on Friday evening, two days after he and three other students belonging to a conservative group, the Anscombe Society, had received threatening e-mail messages, according to the university. The society opposes premarital sex and advocates for a return to more traditional morality in society. A politics professor who serves as an unofficial adviser to the group, Robert P. George, also received e-mail threats.

So much for that meme.

[Note: it’s not the first time a conservative college activitst claimed — falsely — to have been beaten up by "liberal thugs"]

How Loony Is Huckabee?

Ken AshfordElection 2008Leave a Comment

In 1998, then-Arkansas-governor Huckabee wrote a book entitled Kids Who Kill: Confronting Our Culture Of Violence, spawned from a March 24, 1998, school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

In Kids Who Kill, Huckabee argued that school shootings were the product of a society in decline, a decline marked (and caused) by abortion, pornography, media violence, out-of-wedlock sex, divorce, drug use, and, of course, homosexuality. Huckabee and his coauthor bemoaned the "demoralization of America," observing, "Despite all our prosperity, pomp, and power, the vaunted American experiment in liberty seems to be disintegrating before our very eyes." Huckabee, who was governor at the time and a well-known social conservative, blasted away at those whom he held responsible for America’s ills, and he took a rather tough stand against government social programs and their advocates. In lamenting the "cultural conflicts" besetting the country, he wrote,

Abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual activism have fragmented and polarized our communities.

Excuse me?  Environmentalism is besetting the country, leading kids to shoot other kids?

Of course, when you consider that Huckabee himself has a "kid who killed" (his son, as a Boy Scout camp counselor, once hung a stray dog — apparently just to watch it die), one wonders what kind of moral depravity is going on inside the Huckabee home.

FOR FURTHER READING via Perrspectives — the Top 20 Moments of Huckabee Extremism:

    1. Huckabee Enables the Politically-Motivated Parole of Repeat Rapist/Murderer
    2. Huckabee Offers Faith-Based Pardons
    3. Huckabee Undermines the Teaching of Evolution
    4. Huckabee Speaks for God
    5. Huckabee Speaks to God
    6. Huckabee Claims God Behind His Rise in the Polls
    7. Huckabee Proclaims His Theology Degree a Unique Qualification to Fight Terrorism
    8. Huckabee Flip-Flops, Calls for Federal Abortion Ban
    9. Huckabee Calls for Consumption Tax, Abolition of the IRS
    10. Huckabee Vows to Take Nation Back for Christ
    11. Huckabee Declares Culture War in 1998 Book
    12. Huckabee Declares Women Should Graciously Submit to Their Husbands
    13. Huckabee Predicts Victory over Islam at the End of Times
    14. Huckabee Boasts About Theology Degree He Doesn’t Have
    15. Huckabee Destroys His State Computer Records – and Church Sermons
    16. Huckabee Offers State Appointments in Exchange for Gifts
    17. Huckabee Uses Wedding Registries to Furnish New Home
    18. Huckabee Offers Clemency to Repeat DWI Offender (and GOP Donor)
    19. Huckabee Intervenes to Save Dog-Killing Son from Legal Jeopardy

My, Aren’t We Vain!

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

AP:

NEW YORK (AP) – More Americans are Googling themselves – and many are checking out their friends, co-workers and romantic interests, too.

In a report Sunday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said 47 percent of U.S. adult Internet users have looked for information about themselves through Google or another search engine.

That is more than twice the 22 percent of users who did in 2002, but Pew senior research specialist Mary Madden was surprised the growth wasn’t higher.

"Yes it’s doubled, but it’s still the case that there’s a big chunk of Internet users who have never done this simple act of plugging their name with search engines," she said. "Certainly awareness has increased, but I don’t know it’s necessarily kept pace with the amount of content we post about ourselves or what others post about us."

Fascists Everywhere

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

Via Sadly, No!, a look at the dustcover of Jonah Goldberg’s forthcoming book entitled "Liberal Fascists".

This is the book that Jonah himself described back in March with these words:

My book isn’t like Dinesh’s latest book. It isn’t like any Ann Coulter book. It isn’t what the Amazon description says or what the Economist claims it is. Or what Frank Rich imagines it is. It is a very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care.

(Emphasis mine).

Ooookay….

Libfascism3

Let’s take a closer look…

Liberalfascism_2

That, apparently, is what passes for "very serious, thoughtful" and non-Ann Coulterish scholarly works these days: characterizing female grade school teachers as "friendly" versions of Nazis.

Ladies and gents, meet the new quintessential fascists….

UPDATE:  Yeah, right .  Well-researched…

UPDATE:  How about this?  Hitler was a liberal because he was a vegetarian…

Jonahpullquote

To his credit, Jonah argues that people who are concerned with health issues aren’t fascist per se, but rather that people who want to ban trans fats merely have fascist tendencies.

Which makes a difference.

Also, this:

Libfascism9

Got to love that "primacy of race" thing.  Yes, Hitler believed that "the Aryan race was superior" and the New Left believes that "all races are equal".  And they since they’re BOTH concerned about "race", BOTH groups get thrown in the "primacy of race" bin and are painted as equivalents.

Sondheim Dismembers Sweeney

Ken AshfordTheatreLeave a Comment

Good series of articles in yesterday’s New York Times about the cuts made to bring the stage musical Sweeney Todd to the screen.  For example:

After 20 years of directors and deals falling by the wayside, Mr. Burton and the screenwriter John Logan came along with an idea for retelling the story in more cinematic terms. First, there would be no chorus commenting on the action in song; the singing would be done entirely by the principals. This meant cutting or truncating all ensemble numbers, a major element of the stage production, which had a chorus of 18. Out went “The Letter,” “City on Fire” and two-thirds of “God, That’s Good!” Even the show’s opening number and recurrent theme, “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” which was to be sung by the ghosts of Sweeney’s victims as the movie progressed, was dropped just before filming. Happily, the song’s “Dies Irae” climax and creepy, buzzing string figures — Mr. Sondheim’s tribute to the film composer Bernard Herrmann — remain as underscoring.

The filmmakers also suggested cutting most of the sunnier songs that offered relief onstage but would be hard to film interestingly or would dissipate the desired atmosphere of unrelenting dread. Out went “Ah, Miss,” “Kiss Me” and “Parlor Songs.” To keep the movie under two hours (the stage show lasts about three) most of the songs that did remain were trimmed by about 20 percent, Mr. Sondheim estimated. In all fewer than 10 of the stage show’s 25 major numbers survived substantially intact.

It’s clear from the articles that Sondheim was instrumental (no pun intended) in making these cuts, and were it not for his blessing, I would probably have reservations.  As he notes, some of the numbers simply would not work on the big screen, lest the film be over three hours long.

It’s not set to open until later this week, but skippy the bush kangaroo (and his wife) saw an advanced screening and enjoyed it:

we think that any concern that the younger generation don’t relate to musicals will be put to rest (pun intended) by this film. because we think that the same audience that loves to watch the splatter fest of rob zombie films will enjoy the gallons of blood flowing in this feel-good film of the holiday season.

tim burton does wonderful things with camera shots, angles and movement, which certainly helps in several of sondheim’s more plodding musical soliloquies …and the art direction by dante ferretti is definitely as much a star as johnny depp or burton-squeeze helene bonham carter.

the london that ferretti creates onscreen is not necessarily historically accurate victorian london, but rather jeckyll-and-hyde jack-the-ripper haammer-horror classic london. and it works thrillingly well.

luckily for the integrity of art, depp, bonham carter and the other cast members (including alan rickman, timothy spall and borat) sing their own songs. luckily for us, they sing not only well, but with passion and great control. we were worried that depp would "talk sing" his way thru this tour-de-force role, but the man can belt it out!

which makes the free-flowing gallons of blood spurting out of the necks of sweeney’s victims in the middle of the arias all the more disturbing. the musical convention of real life stopping while characters burst into song is completely turned on its head, which is both delightful and grotesque. while depp sings about his lost wife and his need for revenge in a stylist, stagey musical approach, the actors who play his victims very realistically shudder and gurgle as blood squirts out of their necks. the result is rather like watching michael myers doing a number from "singing in the rain" as he slaughters everyone in halloween.

Okay then.

Tuna Christmas

Ken AshfordLocal Interest, TheatreLeave a Comment

From The Winston-Salem Journal, on the subject of Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance’s production of "Tuna Christmas"

Once again, director Jamie Lawrence knows just how to tap body language and voice inflection to convey character after character. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that the same actor can inhabit so many different personalities.

Well, credit is certainly due to Jamie Lawson for his direction and vision, but as for tapping the body language and voice inflection?  That kudos goes to Gray Smith and Tim Swift.  Twenty-two over-the-top eccentric charactors, portrayed by just two guys.  Each one got its own unique stamp in the laugh-filled holiday fest.

For those who missed, not to worry.  It’s running again next weekend.  Get yer tickets soon, fer itsa sellin’ faster ‘n blazers at the DQ on a scorcher.

Typepad Update

Ken AshfordBloggingLeave a Comment

Sporadic blogging.  Something up with Typepad.  Bear with me while they fix the technical difficulties…

UPDATE:  Problems fixed.  For the record, it wasn’t Typepad.  It was some coding I did this weekend for the site.  Grrrrrr…..

UPDATE NO. 2:  Hmmmm.  It’s now listing all my posts for the past several months on the lefthand column….

The FISA Fight Begins

Ken AshfordWiretapping & SurveillanceLeave a Comment

The Senate is set to begin debate today on a FISA bill that would overhaul the rules for electronic surveillance. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) has elected to bring legislation to the Senate floor that would provide retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in the Bush administration’s illegal spying efforts. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) will reportedly filibuster the bill.

FDL has more.

Lieberman Endorses McCain

Ken AshfordElection 2008Leave a Comment

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., just endorsed Republican John McCain’s bid for the presidency, Saying:

"I know it’s unusual for a Democrat to be endorsing a Republican…"

Except for one thing Sen. Lieberman — you’re not Democrat.

UPDATE:  Ned Lamont, the Democrat that Lieberman defeated in 2006, says:

During our debate last year, Senator Lieberman intoned that he wanted to "elect a Democratic President in 2008," and that my election would "frustrate and defeat our hope of doing that." With his endorsement of John McCain today, it is now clear that Joe Lieberman is the one working to defeat our hopes.

Yup, that’s what Lieberman said: