A Brush with Destiny. Erm, I mean - A Destiny with Brush

Chris Hedges: The End of the Road for George W. Bush

The Gilbert and Sullivan charade of statesmanship played out by George W. Bush and his enabler, Condoleezza Rice, as they wander the Middle East is a fitting end to seven years of misrule. Despots stripped of power are transformed from monsters into buffoons. And this is the metamorphosis that is eating away at the Bush presidency.

Bush stood in Jerusalem, uncomfortable and palpably bored. He mouthed platitudes about a peace settlement that mocked the humanitarian crisis he aided and abetted in Gaza, the rapacious land grab by Israel in the West Bank and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The diminished George Bush, increasingly irrelevant at home and abroad, is fading into insignificance. A year from now one half expects to see him stand up at the next president’s inauguration and screech “I’m melting! I’m melting!” as he sinks into a puddle of slime. He will return, I expect, to his ranch, where he will be able to spend the rest of his life doing the only task for which he has shown any aptitude—cutting down brush with a chain saw.

One man's foreclosure...

Trader Made Billions on Subprime

On Wall Street, the losers in the collapse of the housing market are legion. The biggest winner looks to be John Paulson, a little-known hedge fund manager who smelled trouble two years ago.  Funds he runs were up $15 billion in 2007 on a spectacularly successful bet against the housing market. Mr. Paulson has reaped an estimated $3 billion to $4 billion for himself -- believed to be the largest one-year payday in Wall Street history.

A friend of his got in on the act and made himself a few bob but, it seems, Mr Paulson was none too pleased about it:

One thing he didn't count on: A friend in whom he had confided tried the strategy on his own -- racking up huge gains himself, and straining their friendship. (emphasis mine)

Blindfold, Mr Blair?

UK Indymedia - Jan 15 press conference: Scotland Yard to investigate Blair&Goldsmith war crimes

Officers from Scotland Yard have commenced a criminal investigation into the deaths of Iraqi citizens killed during the armed invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Metropolitan Police are acting in response to crimes reported by peace activists from We Are Change UK and The Campaign to Make War History. In an unprecedented step, the case was handed to the War Crimes division of the Counter Terrorism branch who are now investigating allegations of 14 criminal offences committed by Tony Blair, Lord Goldsmith and others. The offences are under the International Criminal Court Act 2001, which came into effect under English common law, just two days before 9/11.

Via Justin

Cheer up you bastards!

I've been tagged.

The meme, originating with Larry T, involves listing seven things  I'm in favour of in order to prove that I'm not a miserable old git. As I sit here in the middle of a dark Aberdeen winter, in front of my high-intensity SAD lamp, with a virus playing havoc with my bowels having just doubled my antidepressant intake I can't help thinking...bad timing!

But here goes: Fats, Artie, Bill, 3 minute ones, Montecristo No.2, Otima, Happy pills.

Tagged are: Aaron, DK, Andy, Dizzy

Fighting them over there...

Iraq veterans leave a trail of death and heartbreak in U.S.

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in the United States, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment - along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems - appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced charges for murder, manslaughter or homicide for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving.

Caravanserai

Justin is back online at Chicken Backup.

Nil by blog

“As a woman I know it’s hard to get out of the house and get ready…”

Judith Warner - Domestic Disturbances

How absurd. How depressing and disheartening and just plain dumb this whole business is.

The lesson from the coffee shop interlude – if that interlude is indeed mainly the thing that led the 37 percent of voters who were undecided or lukewarm about their choices in the final days of the campaign to ultimately go for Hillary – ought to be summed up in a new slogan. “It’s the Economy, Stupid,” was the famed James Carville adage that kept candidate Clinton on message in 1992. “It’s Not About You, Honey,” could be the new slogan for Clinton redux. It’s all about how you make voters feel.

Feeling – not thinking – becomes all-important when you have a field of candidates who aren’t really all that different from one another politically. It’s particularly important for not-so-political voters; the ones who, for example, aren’t super worked up about Hillary’s Iraq vote, or the lack of universal coverage in Obama’s health plan, or the finer points of Edwards’ billion-point plan to Build One America. I’m not sure if these really are the voters who created the upset in the New Hampshire primary — after all, according to exit polls, the lion’s share of the people who said they made up their minds prior to this past month voted for Hillary — but they’re certainly the ones who stole the headlines. And in a general election, it’s the undecided voters who, in the end, make all the difference.

Is it cos I is a Democrat?

Consortiumnews.com

Many people who know the Clintons insist that the power couple truly wants what’s best for the American people. It’s just that too often their political needs or their personal foibles overwhelm their responsibility to the public interest. Share this article Bookmark Digg!Digg emailEmail printPrinter friendly

But rarely could the Clintons’ determination to get their way be more detrimental to both the Democratic Party and the United States than if Hillary Clinton continues to play the "gender card" on behalf of her presidential campaign, especially in what is shaping up as a two-person race against an African-American.

Instead of an inspiring campaign between two trail-blazing politicians, the race could degenerate into a spasm of “identity politics” in which two groups – women and blacks – compete over who has been more unfairly repressed.

See also this piece and the 'bitchy' comments over at Liberal Conspiracy

You've seen the rest...

Sir Edmund Hillary dies aged 88

Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb the world's highest mountain, Mount Everest, has died aged 88

Well, the first white man, maybe. Did Tenzing Norgay actually arrive on the summit first? That was certainly the impression Tenzing gave to his colleagues at the time, when he explained how he reached out his hand to help Hillary onto the peak, much to the consternation of the New Zealanders. In the end they agreed that the official story would be that they both arrived at the summit together. How jolly decent! And, of course, it's quite possible that Mallory and Irvine beat them to it way back in 1924, but we will never know for certain.

It was such a huge achievement at the time. Nowadays fat, asthmatic accountants attempt to get to the top of Everest and it can't be long before McDonalds opens a branch at base camp, next to the clinic that's also up there, for treating all those alltitude sickness casualties. 

It's my party and I'll cry if I need to, cry if I need to...**

Reason Magazine - The Latest Version of Hillary Clinton

Going into the New Hampshire primary, Hillary Clinton implored voters to keep a level head and not get carried away with a passing crush. Unable to match Barack Obama's inspiring oratory, she sniped, "You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose." But after winning Tuesday, she was all gooey sentiment: "I felt like we all spoke from our hearts, and I'm so gratified you responded."

Head, heart—what does it matter, as long as she wins? If it took a show of tears to elicit sympathy from New Hampshirites, Sister Frigidaire (as she was known in her youth) was prepared to engineer a melting thaw. And it worked. The only thing sufficient to summon a wave of emotion, though, was the prospect of losing. The Clintons often manufacture shows of feeling—remember when Bill, caught smiling after the death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, feigned tears when he noticed a TV camera? Or when Hillary, after coming in third in Iowa, gave a victory speech sporting an eerily immovable smile? But they're always completely sincere in their self-pity or anger, both of which were on display after the Iowa debacle.

During last weekend's New Hampshire debate, Hillary Clinton fumed that she was not getting credit for all her accomplishments. "I want to make change, but I've already made change!" she exclaimed. "I'm running on 35 years of change." Meanwhile, her husband scorned Obama's campaign as a "fairy tale," in which his countless horrible flaws were being covered up by the news media, or the vast right-wing conspiracy, or someone else who has resisted the appeal of the Clintons. When they fall short, someone else is always to blame. Even that moment when her eyes welled up gave way to a flash of her rigid us vs. them mentality. "Some of us are right, and some of us are wrong," she insisted. "Some of us are ready, and some of us are not."

Like the tears, her victory speech suggested that Clinton is resolved to inhabit a new persona, at least as long as she needs to. Instead of her usual power suit, she wore a flowery brocade jacket that oozed femininity. She gushed about her "full heart," and how she had "found my own voice." Sixty years old, with all that massive experience in the work of transforming the nation, and she's just now finding her voice? More likely, she's just found a new way to disguise her essential self.

**With apologies to Lesley Gore

Nothing to do with Israel...

Chief rabbi thanks Bush for 'war against Iraq'

During a short verbal exchange Wednesday at the Ben-Gurion Airport Terminal, Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger thanked President George W. Bush for the US's military intervention in Iraq. "I want to thank you for your support of Israel and in particular for waging a war against Iraq," Metzger told Bush, according to the chief rabbi's spokesman. Bush reportedly answered that the chief rabbi's words "warmed his heart."