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Saturday, March 18, 2006
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If you’re looking for some interesting reading over the weekend, look no further than a report recently released by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) called “
Top 10 Reasons to Change the Saudi-U.S. Relationship
.” In a great 14-page read made very relevant by the sick relationship between the Bush clan and the Saudi Royal Family, Lautenberg gives ten good reasons that this partnership isn’t in America’s best interests.
And those reasons are…
1. Saudi Arabia is producing the majority of foreign insurgents in Iraq
2. The Saudi government allows money to go to terrorists
3. Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis
4. The 9/11 Commission called for a change in the U.S.-Saudi relationship
5. Saudis teach anti-American, radical Islam to children
6. The Saudi government persecutes Christians and other religious minorities
7. The Saudi government oppresses women
8. Saudi Arabia’s dictators oppose Democracy
9. The Saudi government calls for Israel’s destruction
10. The Saudi government controls the OPEC oil cartel that keeps gas prices high
Far from a funny, Letterman-style top ten list, this report backs up every one of these assertions with facts and cites sources.
It’s a PDF file that you can get here and is well worth reading.
(Via Yellow Dog Blog.)
4:54:47 PM 
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- 1. Frank 'The Tank' Ricard in Old School - played by Will Ferrell
- 2. Arthur Bach in Arthur - played by Dudley Moore
- 3. Wong Fei-Hung in The Legend Of Drunken Master - played by Jackie Chan
- 4. Marion Ravenwood in Raiders Of The Lost Arc - played by Karen Allen
- 5. Trent Walker in Swingers - played by Vince Vaughn
- 6. Rick Blane in Casablanca - played by Humphrey Bogart
- 7. James Bond in Goldfinger - played by Sean Connery
- 8. John 'Bluto' Blutarsky in Animal House - played by John Belushi
- 9. ET in ET-The Extra Terrestrial
- 10. Henry Chinaski in Barfly - played by Micky Rourke
Good list. But I like the next 10 much better as a group. And Nick Charles should be in the top 10, if not #1. (By the way, Al pointed out recently that he had just read the entire Ian Fleming Bond set, and that James was a Bourbon man; the Vodka Martini thing was in the movies only.)
- 11. William Powell & Myrna Loy as Nick & Nora Charles in The Thin Man
- 12. Billy Bob Thornton as Willie T. Soke in Bad Santa
- 13. Walter Matthau as Coach Buttermaker in The Bad News Bears
- 14. Gene Wilder as Jim, The Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles
- 15. Dave Thomas & Rick Moranis as Doug & Bob McKenzie in Strange Brew
- 16. W.C. Fields as The Great Man in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
- 17. Jeff Bridges as The Dude in The Big Lebowski
- 18. Richard E. Grant as Withnail in Withnail & I
- 19. Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy in Anchorman
- 20. Paul Giamatti as Miles Raymond in Sideways
Yeah, I definitely like the second 10 much better. It's some strange list, though that includes Will Ferrell twice!
(Via Days That End in Y.)
4:40:45 PM
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The much touted "Operation P.R. Swarmer" involved 1,500 personnel including 50 aircraft. George Bush was guarded on his recent trip to Pakistan by 5,000 American security personnel, 6,000 Pakistani police, and a dozen aircraft.
(Via Left I on the News.)
10:13:52 AM
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It's being reprinted all over the place now (including at my other gig), but I believe it's appropriate to spread it as far and as wide as possible. On the third anniversary of our invasion of Iraq, let's look back at the wisdom of Professor Heh-Indeedy at the time.
Yeah, there has been a lot of pro-war gloating. And I guess that Dawn Olsen's cautionary advice about gloating is appropriate. So maybe we shouldn't rub in just how wrong, and morally corrupt the antiwar case was. Maybe we should rise above the temptation to point out that claims of a "quagmire" were wrong -- again! -- how efforts at moral equivalence were obscenely wrong -- again! -- how the antiwar folks are still, far too often, trying to move the goalposts rather than admit their error -- again -- and how an awful lot of the very same people who spoke lugubriously about "civilian casualties" now seem almost disappointed that there weren't more -- again -- and how many people who spoke darkly about the Arab Street and citizens rising up against American "liberators" were proven wrong -- again -- as the liberators were seen as just that by the people they were liberating. And I suppose we shouldn't stress so much that the antiwar folks were really just defending the interests of French oil companies and Russian arms-deal creditors. It's probably a bad idea to keep rubbing that point in over and over again. Nah.
The father of the WingNet, folks. Give him a hand. Hard. In the back of his pointy head.
Update: Because there is no stupidity rank enough that Reynolds will refuse to embrace it, here's his take today now that the above argument has abandoned him: "Yes, the more damaging critique of Bush is that he hasn't pressed the war hard enough -- against Iran, Syria, and the terrorist supporters in Saudi Arabia -- not that he should have done less."
Sure. That makes lots of sense. Invade everybody! Draft every able-bodied man! The sun will never set on the American empire!
(Via apostropher.)
10:02:52 AM
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Mark Frauenfelder:
Salon is running Michelle Goldberg's long review of a frightening book by conservative author Kevin Philps, called: American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century.
Kevin Phillips, no lefty, says that America -- addicted to oil, strangled by debt and maniacally religious -- is headed for doom.
...[I]f Phillips is correct, the coming years are going to be ugly for all of us, not just blithe exurbanites with SUVs and floating-rate mortgages. With oil growing scarce and America unable or unwilling to even begin weaning itself away, we could see a future of resource wars that would inflame jihadi terrorism and bankrupt the country, shredding what's left of the social safety net. As Phillips notes, a collapsed economy would leave many debt-ridden Americans as what Democratic leaders have called "modern-day indentured servants," paying back constantly compounding debt with no hope of escape via bankruptcy. The prospect of social breakdown looms. The desperation of New Orleans could end up being a preview.
Desperate economic times are not good for democracy. The Great Depression, which ushered in the New Deal, was an anomaly in this regard. In an Atlantic Monthly article published last summer, the Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman wrote, "American history includes several episodes in which stagnating or declining incomes over an extended period have undermined the nation's tolerance and threatened citizens' freedoms." During the Midwestern farm crisis of the 1980s, when tens of thousands of families lost their land due to a combination of rising interest rates and falling crop prices, the Posse Comitatus, a far-right paramilitary network, made exceptional recruiting inroads. One poll had more than a quarter of Farm Belt respondents blaming "International Jewish bankers" for their region's woes.
The right's ideological infrastructure has only grown stronger since then. Kunstler may not have been exaggerating when he told Salon, "Americans will vote for cornpone Nazis before they will give up their entitlements to a McHouse and a McCar."
Link(Thanks, Craig!)
(Via Boing Boing.)
9:34:59 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Steve Michel.
Last update: 4/1/2006; 5:26:17 PM.
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