Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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“WWBCD?”, Olympic version

Blue Star Chronicles is keeping an Olympic eye on things, and sent this:
Pres. Bush declines to slap Misty May-Treanor’s bikinied butt

Today, as the busy crowd over at our Olympics blog notes, after an hour’s brisk bit of mountain-biking himself, Bush paid another visit to the American athletes, watching the women warm up for softball, regretting the disappearance of that sport from the next Olympics (“It’s good for the world to have girls playing softball and these women are going to show young girls how to win”) and trying his hand, so to speak, at volleyball.

Bush knuckled off a couple of lobs, but defending gold medalists Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh gave the chief executive some pointers. Then after a good play, in the tradition of female volleyballers, May-Treanor turned, bent over slightly and offered her bikinied rear-end for the 43rd president to slap.

“Mr. President,” she said, “want to?”

Want to has nothing to do with it in public life.

As the son of a president, a husband of nearly 37 years, the father of two daughters, the subject of some attempted tabloid exposes and a seasoned political veteran, who is not a female athlete but knows that every camera for a half-mile is trained on him, Bush wisely chose instead to brush his hand across the small of May-Treanor’s back. (See photo.)

Darn!

Reuters had to redo their captions.

Now ask yourselves, “What would Bill Clinton do?”

Fortunately for everybody, George W Bush is not Bill Clinton.

And Laura Bush is not Hillary.

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In the Olympic spirit, today’s books and shoes:

First, the books:
The WSJ’s Five Best Books on the Olympics, selected by ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap:

And now the shoes,
Puma Espera, in silver/white/blue.

My experience with the Puma brand is that they run slightly small, so order a 1/2 size larger.

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Something good to say about George Bush

Via Darleen,

“President Bush talks with Andrea Duran and head coach Mike Candrea as he visits the practice of the U.S. women’s softball team at the 2008 Summer Olympic games in Beijing, China Saturday, Aug. 9, 2008. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)”

The Anchoress was saying,


You remember Bush, right? The guy who goes to Asia and tells China to free her people, while the press jeers, the guy who, while in Asia also meets with Democracy Activists in Burma and gets ignored for it, the guy who drew enormous and supportive crowds in Korea, while the American press yawned?

Sure, you remember Bush! He’s the guy whose life was threatened along with Barack Obama’s but only the threat to Obama was newsworthy for a very long time at CNN. Bush? You mean the creepy moron who will be charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity as soon as congress can figure out how to do that without exposing itself or having to put some of its own members under oath?

Yeah, that guy! The guy who does more than just talk about freedom and progress. The guy who has brought real hope and change to people all over the world, and yes, here in America. But you don’t want to hear it. It’s the wrong and inconvenient narrative, the embargoed one.

I couldn’t have put it better, so I’m glad she did.

UPDATE
Also via The Anchoress, What Bush Got Right.

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Bush asks Congress to clear way for offshore oil drilling

Thank you, Mr. President:

President Bush asked Congress Wednesday to permit drilling for oil in deep water off America’s coasts to combat rising oil and gas prices.
…
Bush also renewed his demand that Congress allow drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, clear the way for more refineries and encourage efforts to recover oil from shale in areas such as the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

Bush said that the basin potentially contains more than three times as much recoverable oil as Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves, and that the high price of oil makes it profitable to extract it.

At the Beeb

President George W Bush has called on Congress to end a 27-year ban on drilling for oil in US coastal waters, to reduce dependence on imports.

Look at the numbers:

Estimated reserves:
18bn barrels of recoverable oil
77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas

US annual energy usage:
7.6bn barrels of oil
21 trillion cubic feet of gas

As McCain said,

…speaking in Houston on Tuesday, Mr McCain called for the ban to be lifted to help counter US dependence on foreign oil.

“This was a troubling situation 35 years ago. It was an alarming situation 20 years ago. It is a dangerous situation today,” he said.

“And starting in the term of the next president, we must take control over our own energy future and become once again the master of our fate.”

We also need to increase refining capacity.

We’ll see if Congress can ever get around to understanding the importance of energy to their future, or whether they’ll dream of a Pooh approach.

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Noon roundup: WaPo realizes Bush didn’t lie, the al-Khaiwani verdict, and more

The Anchoress has an excellent post, WaPo: Bush “substantiated by intelligence”, where she quotes from this article, ‘Bush Lied’? If Only It Were That Simple

On Iraq’s nuclear weapons program? The president’s statements “were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates.”

On biological weapons, production capability and those infamous mobile laboratories? The president’s statements “were substantiated by intelligence information.”

On chemical weapons, then? “Substantiated by intelligence information.”

On weapons of mass destruction overall (a separate section of the intelligence committee report)? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.” Delivery vehicles such as ballistic missiles? “Generally substantiated by available intelligence.” Unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.”

As you read through the report, you begin to think maybe you’ve mistakenly picked up the minority dissent. But, no, this is the Rockefeller indictment. So, you think, the smoking gun must appear in the section on Bush’s claims about Saddam Hussein’s alleged ties to terrorism.

But statements regarding Iraq’s support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda “were substantiated by intelligence information.” Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda “were substantiated by the intelligence assessments,” and statements regarding Iraq’s contacts with al-Qaeda “were substantiated by intelligence information.” The report is left to complain about “implications” and statements that “left the impression” that those contacts led to substantive Iraqi cooperation.

The bottom line:

But the phony “Bush lied” story line distracts from the biggest prewar failure: the fact that so much of the intelligence upon which Bush and Rockefeller and everyone else relied turned out to be tragically, catastrophically wrong.

THAT is the real issue.

Stephen Hayes has More on Rockefeller’s Feculent Senate Report from today’s NY Sun editorial

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Jane Novak posts that today is The Worst Day for Press Freedom in Yemen as journalist Abdul-Karim al-Khiwani has been sentenced to six years’ hard labor in jail.

Speaking of Yemen, Over half of women who marry in Yemen are under 15 years of age (h/t the Baron)

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Snapped Shot has a display of Government insurance, government efficiency that may be heading our way.
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Top Talent Scout for Obama Tied to Subprime Lender. Who sent him?

Richard Fernandez comments on growth of the Obama-Rezko connection and quotes from Salon,

After law school, Obama went to work for the firm of Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland. During Rezko’s stint in ghetto rehab, Davis Miner represented three community groups in partnership with Rezmar. Through them, the law firm helped Rezko obtain $43 million in government funds.

At last week’s debate in South Carolina, Hillary Clinton stung Obama for “representing your contributor, Rezko, in his slum-landlord business in inner-city Chicago.”

If Clinton was trying to stick Rezko on Obama, that was the wrong line of attack. At Davis Miner, Obama did a total of five hours of legal work for Rezko, under the supervision of more-experienced attorneys. Obama didn’t really become tight with Rezko until he ran for the state Senate, in 1995. Rezko, who can spot a comer, was first in line with a check. The day the campaign started, Obama received $2,000 from two of Rezko’s fast-food businesses. Eight years later, when Obama was campaigning for the U.S. Senate, Rezko hosted a fundraiser at his suburban mansion.

Richard points out that

Apart from being a slum landlord, Rezko has also been accused of trying to take control of a $40B Illinois teacher’s pension fund so that he could loot it.

The world of Chicago politics and international intrigue seems to loop around. Not only was Tony Rezko tight with former Saddam moneyman Nahdmi Auchi, guess who put up bail money for the pizza magnate? Aiham Alsammarae.

The Chicago Sun Times reports:

A former Iraqi official and ex-international fugitive helped spring Tony Rezko from jail earlier this month, putting up homes that comprise nearly one-third of the $8.5 million in property and cash securing Rezko’s bail, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

The three homes belonging to former Iraqi Electricity Minister Aiham Alsammarae — a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen who broke out of a Baghdad jail in 2006 — are part of a long list made public in Rezko’s case Friday following a Sun-Times request.

Don’t tell me: they weren’t that way when Obama first met them…
Brutally Honest has All Obasms all the time

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Truly disturbing: young child threatening the President

Via Gates of Vienna and Jawa, this video of a young boy (perhaps of school age but it’s hard to tell) threatening to kill the President and his family.

This boy is clearly very disturbed. He refers to himself as “a little kid who is f***ng psycho”.

He had to have had help on making the video, coming up with the text of the message (notice how he does not hesitate or repeat in the way people normally do when improvising a message), reading it or memorizing it, and then posting it on YouTube which removed it. If you read the comments, there is even more hate there.

Whether the kid can be located and helped, and the adults helping him arrested, remains to be seen.

But the question of where does a culture of death leads us is very much an issue that will not go away.
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Who’s paying for the study?

George SorosAssociated Press, this morning: Study: False statements preceded war

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
…
The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

The Fund for Independence in Journalism mission, in their own words:

The Fund’s primary purpose is providing legal defense and endowment support for the largest nonprofit, investigative reporting institution in the world, the Center for Public Integrity

According to AP, that makes them two nonprofit journalism organizations, when in fact it’s one organization with a legal branch to shield it from lawsuits.

Ed Morrissey takes a look at who’s behind the Center for Public Integrity:

the Center for Public Integrity hardly qualifies as “independent”. It gets much of its funding from George Soros, who has thrown millions of dollars behind Democratic political candidates, and explicitly campaigned to defeat George Bush in 2004.
…
Nowhere in these articles do either news organization bother to inform their reader of the partisan nature of the CPI. Besides Soros, it gets financing from the Streisand Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Los Angeles Times Foundation. The FIJ shares most of its board members with the CPI, which hardly makes it a separate entity in terms of its political direction.

Big Lizards explains How to Lie About Lying:

One notes that “Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members” — isn’t that a lovely grammatical construct? — do not deny that Iraq was “trying to… obtain” WMD, even though they appear to include such claims under the category of “false statements.”

Nor do they deny the administration’s claim that Iraq had “links” with al-Qaeda. They merely dispute the meaningfulness of those links… and dub that another “false statement” by the president and his administration.

If you look at the Wikipedia entry on the Center for Public Integrity, you’ll find more on the sources of funds. By the way,

Mr Soros was the man reported to have made $1bn profit in September 1992, betting correctly that the British currency would have to be devalued and leave the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

Now,

“I’m looking for a significant shift of power and influence away from the US in particular and a shift in favour of the developing world, particularly China.”

So, before you descend into further APDD (Associated Press Deficit Disorder), it’s worthwhile asking, “Who’s paying for the study?”, and take it from there.

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Dora translates the road map, stay off the vaginal couch, and other morning items

President Bush and His New Spokeswoman, Dora the Explorer

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Craigslist Item: “Pink Upholstered Vagina Couch” Eeew!
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Castro Says He’s Too Unhealthy to Speak
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The Top 25 Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians
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Obama’s Admiration of Ronald Reagan means he’ll say anything to get elected.
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How Metrosexuals Came Into Being

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"Israeli terrorism", Mr. President?

Shame:

(Video via Gateway Pundit)
Text of Bush’s Remarks at Annapolis Conference:

We express our determination to bring an end to bloodshed, suffering and decades of conflict between our peoples; to usher in a new era of peace, based on freedom, security, justice, dignity, respect and mutual recognition; to propagate a culture of peace and nonviolence; to confront terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis.

And, sure as rain, Israelis will be forced into yet more concessions: Elder of Ziyon looks at the map.

The NYSun:

The sad fact is that Annapolis is sideshow to a larger battle that has to be won before anything appropriate in the way of peace negotiations can take place between Israel and her Arab enemies. Yesterday, while everyone was focusing on Annapolis, Lieutenant General Lute, Mr. Bush’s “tsar” for the Battle of Iraq, quietly announced, as our Nicholas Wapshott reported yesterday, that the administration and the Iraqis are about to commence talks on withdrawing American troops in advance of the end of the U.N. mandate in 2008. The important, the most urgent battle in the coming seasons will be securing the victory that our GIs have been crafting in on the battlefield there and advancing the spread of democracy in the neighboring lands. What peace can be established between Israel and her neighbors while a regime exists in Iran to stoke the arsenals of the terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon, the latter of which, our Benny Avni reported earlier in the week, is the more logical place for Annapolis to focus. Messrs. Bush and Olmert are, sadly, the only players on the Middle Eastern battlefield with the kind of credentials — democratic credentials — that really matter.

Over in Saudi Arabia, the authorities have released more than 1,500 reformed extremists who underwent counseling.
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