With A Name Like Tutu...

Unbelievable. Now we've got ANOTHER expert sounding off on his uncalled-for opinion of President Bush and the war in Iraq. Tutu, the floor is yours:

NEWSWEEK: You said recently that if forgiveness and dialogue were possible in post-apartheid South Africa, the same could be true for Iraq. What impact do you expect the Jan. 30 elections to have there?
BISHOP TUTU: Any normal human being ought to be feeling considerable outrage and deep, deep, deep hurt for so-called ordinary [Iraqi] people. We hardly ever hear about what the casualties have been on that side. How I wish that politicians could have the courage and the humility to admit that they have made mistakes. President Bush and Prime Minister [Tony] Blair and whoever supported the invasion ought at least to have the decency to say [they] went into this war because [they] were given the wrong reasons for going to war.

Removing Saddam was not a mistake. I'm still waiting for the CIA's apologies for bad intel. And Tutu wants to hear them say "We went to war for the wrong reasons"? Um... no. The wrong reasons? What are the wrong reasons? Freedom? Democracy? A viable threat? Tell me, oh Bishop of all Tutu's.

You said George Bush should admit that he made a mistake. Were you surprised at his re-election?
[Laughs] I still can't believe that it really could have happened. Just look at the facts on the table: He’d gone into a war having misled people—whether deliberately or not—about why he went to war. You would think that would have knocked him out [of the race.] It didn’t. Look at the number of American soldiers who have died since he claimed that the war had ended . I was teaching in Jacksonville, Fla., [during the election campaign] and I was shocked, because I had naively believed all these many years that Americans genuinely believed in freedom of speech. [But I] discovered there that when you made an utterance that was remotely contrary to what the White House was saying, then they attacked you. For a South African the déjà vu was frightening. They behaved exactly the same way that used to happen here [during apartheid]—vilifying those who are putting forward a slightly different view.

First, and for the thousandth time, HE DID NOT MISLEAD THE PUBLIC. Second, he never claimed the war had ended. He said it was the end of major operations. Third, we do believe in freedom of speech. You're naive if you don't think we do. Fourth, there's a difference between putting forward a "slightly different view", and ignoring the facts.

So have the attacks of September 11 and the so-called war on terror given America and its allies another focal point?
Yes. There's no question at all. It appears as if we need enemies for our self identification.

We "need" enemies? We already HAVE enemies. They've been attacking us in different forms since 1979. And we don't need self-identification. We know who we are. The greatest country on the planet.

I've never claimed to know everything. But I can do some things most liberals cannot: I can read. I can research. I can think logically about something, without having my emotions runneth over.

And that makes all the difference.

At Least He's Working

Once again, Jesse Jackson concludes, without actual evidence, that the election was rigged in Ohio. Apparently taking a break from his annual Kwanzaa ceremonies, he spoke to Newsweek:

NEWSWEEK:What’s the matter with Ohio?
Rev. Jesse Jackson: In Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron, Youngstown, Cleveland, where I was, you had blacks standing in line for six hours in the rain. That’s a form of voter suppression.

Voter suppression? He should be happy that so many people actually turned out. Regardless of voting for Bush or Kerry, it was a record turnout. I have a feeling that there were some Asian, Mexican, and even some white people that waited in long lines to vote. Voting may take 5 to 10 minutes, but there's no suppression by standing in line. If that's the case, Disneyland has been suppressing people for decades.

So you think (Ohio Secretary Of State Kenneth) Blackwell stole the election for Bush?
It was under his domain to have enough machines; the machine calibration, tabulation issue. You could rig the machines. We have reason to believe it was rigged.

What is your evidence?
Based on distrusting the system, lack of paper trails, the anomaly of the exit polls. In Ukraine, there’s an exit poll gap, they say, “Let’s have another election.”

OK. So a basic distrust of "the system", no paper trails, and shoddy exit polls are his "evidence" that the voting machines were rigged. Just pure genius.

He wants to get Kerry and his lawyers involved, wants a "forensic investigation" of the machines, a "random recount", etc. He won't stop until 2008.

Is it possible that election will be overturned?
I don’t know. All we want is a fair count and a transparent election. We can live with the result. We’re fighting the odds but we will not faint in the face of the odds.

JJ, if you could live with the result, you wouldn't be doing all this. You would give it a rest and realize you lost.

Happy Kwanzaa!

I Am Sam

Sean Penn speaks again. I'll just let his words tell the story:

From AP:
Set in 1974, the film ( The Assassination Of Richard Nixon ) stars Penn as the real-life Samuel Byck, a business failure who blamed his shortcomings on societal corruption and attempted to kill President Nixon by hijacking a plane to crash it into the White House.

Penn, 44, who had been developing the project for two years before Sept. 11, said he never viewed the similarities between the Byck incident and the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks as impediments to the film.

"Not at all. If anything, it might have encouraged it," Penn said in an interview.

Encouraged. Yes, let's take 9/11 and reduce it to some footnote in history about a moron and played by a moron.

AP: Has corruption in government grown worse since Nixon?

Penn: No question about it. The arrogance with which it's played out. I think you'd have a very difficult time Watergating George Bush. The spin and the manipulation of media, the distraction of planned emergencies, is on a whole new level. And there's a kind of general lack of diversity of principle within the Congress. So I think when you can get something like the Patriot Act passed, it would be kind of like child's play to pull off a Watergate ...

First off, what an incredibly stupid question to ask a leftist like Penn. But let's break it down:

Arrogance? Because we actually ARE the dominating country on the planet? And this piece of shit better start explaining what he means by "distraction of planned emergencies." Is he trying to say Sept. 11th was staged? Or that other incidents have been staged? If so, what are we being distracted from? You want to talk about arrogance, you need not look any further than Hollywood. Please read Dennis Prager's article this week. Especially Wish #3. He says it better than I can.

AP: What did you think of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11"?

Penn: All of that footage — how long was it, seven plus minutes (when Bush sat in the classroom)? ... That's who George Bush is. I think it speaks very specifically to something that not everybody has. Forget politics, forget Republican, right, left. But it speaks to his unfitness to lead anything.

OK. He's still harping on the 7 minutes Bush spent in the classroom. This same asshole would be bitching and moaning that the President acted like a cowboy if he had jumped up and ran out of the classroom. And let's see.... Bush has been a leader for... four years? Going on eight? But he can't lead anything, according to Sean "Around Iraq In 72 Hours" Penn. Bush just doesn't lead like Penn would like... by kissing the ass of the United Nations.

And I'll give Penn credit on one thing: President Bush sitting there DOES speak about something not everyone has: the ability to understand what had just happened... and to take the fight to the terrorists.

Bush tries, Penn lies.

Damned If You Do...

Jiminy Christmas. You just can't please people. If President Bush had come out within minutes or hours of the tsunami disaster in Asia, he would have been criticized for having false sensitivity. We all know it's tragic. We all feel bad for the many thousands who lost their lives. But dammit, we live on an unstable planet that will occasionally throw some force of nature at us. Is every disaster a tragedy? No. Shakespeare wrote tragedies.

If this sounds insensitive, so be it. Apparently, since President Bush didn't do what Clinton always does, which is find the cameras, bite his lower lip, and say, "I feel your pain", like he did today with the BBC, he's insensitive.

Let's be realistic about this. If you want to send aid and comfort, you can. It's not mandatory, nor is it an obligation. But if you're going to weep with every single disaster that occours, you're never going to enjoy the happiness that life can bring. Friends of mine are having a baby in May. My career change is starting to happen. I have an Xbox.

I'm not going to allow, and I doubt the President will allow, the media and the rest of the world to dictate how we're "supposed" to feel about this disaster. I know how to grieve. I've experienced it before.

"There is no normal life. There's just life. You live it." - Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday, TOMBSTONE

There Is No Sanity Clause

What is a military family? I have a 2nd cousin who's shipping to Iraq soon. Does that make mine a military family?

So why do families get outraged at the president when their son or daughter is killed in action? Oh, that's right, they think the president started a "revenge" war. Did they feel that way to begin with? I'd like to know...

I've lost count at how many different reasons people have come up with to hate the Iraq war. The latest is the fact that Donald Rumsfeld uses a stamping machine to sign the letters of condolence to famlies who've lost loved ones. One mother claimed "It personally shows me how callous and unfeeling he is and our government is."

How insanely stupid. If you had a choice between writing out the return address section of an envelope or placing a sticker, which would you choose? It seems that the arguments against the war are failing, so they come up with the charge that Rumsfeld doesn't "personally" sign the letters.

Quick, Robin, to the Bat-Pen!

Take Off, Part II

Jeremy Hinzman has finally said his piece. In an update to Monday's blog, Hinzman laid the case for his defection to Canada:

TORONTO -- An American seeking to become the first U.S. soldier granted refugee status in Canada after refusing to serve in Iraq told immigration officials Tuesday that the Army was drilling its soldiers to think of all Arabs and Muslims as potential terrorists.

"We were being told that it was a new kind of war, that these were evil people and they had to be dealt with," said Pfc. Jeremy Hinzman, 26, who fled from Fort Bragg, N.C., on Jan. 2.

The reason for that? We don't see a lot of Mexican terrorists blowing up buses, or Italian terrorists blowing up nightclubs, or Swiss terrorists flying planes into buildings. And it IS a new kind of war. The Geneva Convention has rules of war, for combatants that wear actual uniforms. Terrorists do not, routinely hiding behind and using mosques and civilians.

"We were told that we would be going to Iraq to jack up some terrorists," Hinzman told the Immigration and Refugee Board on the second of his three-day hearing for political asylum.

What does he think we're gonna do, praise them for their accomplishments?

He said U.S. military training since Sept. 11 is designed to "foster an attitude of hatred. It gets your blood boiling to carry out the mission."

An "attitude of hatred"? Those cowardly bastards killed 3000 innocent civilians of many different races and religions. Is this jackass trying to say there were just "misunderstood?"

Hinzman is arguing that the war in Iraq is illegal and fighting in it would have made him a war criminal. He also said he would face persecution if forced to return to the United States because he likely would be court-marshaled and sentenced to an Army jail.

Once again, another U.N. punk. If he believes the Iraq war is illegal, by the same token he should have believed that about the war in Afghanistan. But I don't expect consistency from this idiot.

"Serving one day in prison for refusing to comply with an illegal order is one day too long," Hinzman told the tribunal, which likely will take several weeks to reach its decision.

Hinzman said he enlisted for four years in 2000 to experience the army, believing it would give him guidance and maturity. But he fled the 82nd Airborne Division about two weeks after learning his outfit would be sent to Iraq.

"The military is to fight justified wars," said his lawyer Jeffrey House, an American who first came to Canada as a draft dodger during the Vietnam War. "I don't think he joined the military to invade other countries who had done nothing to the United States, just at the pleasure of the United States president."

Sheer genius. His lawyer is a former draft-dodger. Yes, Mr. House, Iraq was never a threat, just ask President Clinton. I'm getting really damn tired repeating myself as to the reasons for this war. If he's too stupid to know them, I won't repeat them.

Hinzman is among several young American soldiers seeking refugee status in Canada, hoping to capitalize on the country's opposition to U.S. President George W. Bush's foreign policy.

Key word: capitalize.

Jimmy Massey, a staff sergeant who served in Iraq before being honorably discharged after 12 years in the Marines, was called by House to testify that American soldiers were routinely committing atrocities against innocent Iraqis.

"The code of silence you take in the Marines is much like the one in organized crime," he said, noting it was not uncommon for Marines to fire on wounded Iraqi combatants, a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

First off, you do realize that Massey is the Iraq war's John Kerry. He's going to undermine the troops STILL SERVING overseas. And it's interesting that the war has been going on for nearly two years, and he's just now coming forward with reports of atrocities.

And, to be a completist, he brings up the Geneva Conventions, which the terrorists ignore, because, well, they're terrorists. They have no army. They have no combat uniforms. The cut off heads, hands, and anything else they can think of. They are not human.

"I have witnessed Marines putting rounds into enemy combatants who are expiring," Massey told the tribunal.

If a terrorist is "expiring", why not help him along on his journey to meet the 72 virgins in paradise?

Blame Canada.

Take Off To The Great White (Flag) North

This is interesting:

TORONTO (AFP) - A US soldier who walked out on the 82nd Airborne Division and his country after learning he was being sent to Iraq, launched a long-shot bid for political refuge in Canada. Jeremy Hinzman, 26, a veteran of the US-led war in Afghanistan, appeared before Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) to formally plead that he would face persecution if sent home to the United States. "I was in a culture that looked upon the army as a good thing to do. The missions that they carried out were with the aim of (doing) good and spreading democracy," South Dakota-born Hinzman said. "To me that was more meaningful than just working in the workaday world," said Hinzman, who admitted he also enlisted for four years in January 2001 to take advantage of a US army college sponsorship fund.

Despite all that, he doesn't give a single reason as to why he decided to punk out on the military and run to the loft-apartment-over-a-great-party called Canada.

Outside, a knot of anti-war supporters, some waving banners reading "Let him stay" braved a blizzard to cheer as he entered the building.

Unbelievable. He defects to Canada, and people cheer him. Wait till they hear he doesn't like hockey.

Hinzman was later expected to explain why he quit the US army, and a US Marine Corps sergeant was due to be called by his lawyer to detail alleged war crimes by US soldiers in Iraq to back up the plea.

OK. He's a veteran of Afghanistan, and doesn't want to go to Iraq beacuse of... alleged war crimes? Did he think that "doing good" only meant handing out milk and cookies to children? You know, Pat Tillman gave up a football career to go and fight in Afghanistan. He knew what he was getting into, mainly because I think he had something that Hinzman lacks... common sense.

When are these geniuses going to realize that if you join the military, you may actually have to enter a combat zone?

Set In Stone

Oliver Stone apparently doesn't like DVD's. Yet, he's recorded commentary for nearly every film he's made.

Now, he decides to sound off on the format, nearly eight years after its debut:

From VIDEO STORE Magazine:
"It's the end of movie-movies the way we know them. ... If you walk into a room with 5,000 DVDs, how are you going to respect movies? How do you know the good ones?," Stone asked. "It's going to the LCD -- the lowest common denominator. It's making movies into supermarket-shelf items, which is probably the best you can get at Wal-Mart. ... It's hopeless."

First off, what the hell is a "movie-movie"? How do people generally know movies? The phrases "I saw it on video", "I'll wait for the video", "I'd rather watch it at home" have been common since the early eighties. And I don't blame people for waiting, choosing to watch movies at home. Aside from the theaters themselves, the movie-going experience can be fairly annoying.

Second, his questions about how to respect and know the "good ones" are two of the dumbest questions I've ever heard. "Respect" a movie? How about just enjoying the damn thing? And he completely misses the point about DVD's. People don't go to see every movie released, for many different reasons: no time, theater is too far, etc. So when these films come to DVD, they have a much better chance of watching them, along with finding some jems in the process. And while browsing for a movie, something may catch your eye, you may rent or buy it, and find a new favorite. How exactly is that going to the "lowest common denominator"?

I'm so glad ALEXANDER is tanking.