(no subject)

Fun, busy weekend and productive too. The henna experiment was fun, even if it did turn my hair sample "scary clown" orange. I cleaned it up in the morning and exclaimed, "Gah!", then told myself it would look better after it dried. Held it up to my face after that and thought, "I don't wanna be a Weasley!" Well, experiment Phase II will begin this coming weekend.

Ended up being busy Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to about 1:00 a.m. Sunday, but had such a glorious time that it seemed far too short a day. tamago was very naughty and got me hooked on music fanvids. But she needs to point me at that fantastic SW one to "Teenage Dirtbag" as I can't find the damn thing anywhere, and believe me I spent most of Sunday trying.

Got up bright and far too early Sunday to see "Memoirs of a Geisha", which was very pretty and I thought, a fairly decent version of the novel. They skipped a lot and didn't really go into the significance of a few episodes (the fire damage at the Okia was kind of skimmed over, for example), but it did make me want to read the novel again. And hey, two hours of Michelle Yeoh and Ziyi Zhang is not a bad thing.

Ok, now I've got a question regarding HP that is a bit odd, but bear with me. I need to know if you're using Polyjuice Potion to make yourself look like someone else, does that person need to be alive? From what I can tell the hair is all you really need, and there's no textual evidence that would indicate that you need to collect it from a living person. So could you collect hair from a recently deceased person and use it in a PP? Would it still work? If not, why not?

They get mail

Digby shares this email he received:

Dear Digby,

Once again it falls to me the thankless task of instructing you and your rabid base of liberal mouth-foamers on a few realities of public life in America.

It is true that in recent times the current administration and the GOP as a whole has proven sporadically incompetent, sleazy and downright mendacious in dealing with a host of matters of grave national importance. The list of such transgressions has been ably chronicled by you and your ilk in the partisan hack brigade. There is little need for me to run through it - WMDs, Katrina, Abramoff, Plame, FISA violations, torture, etc. etc., blah blah blah, yada yada yada.

Yes, you folks have had all these and more little "gotcha" moments, upon the discovery of which the Left has regularly shown itself to be basely thrilled to toot its own horn as "speakers of Truth to Power."

What your side fails to appreciate is that as terrible as any crimes by Republicans in leadership positions might be, it is in fact the whole concept of "speaking Truth to Power" that is the real cancer destroying our country from the inside out. The British of the Raj had a word for it: "Croaking."

The American polity understands this. It's why few on our side fear that the Democrats will regain any semblance of power in 2006, 2008 or beyond. But because you, Digby, and others like you so clearly have a tin ear to the concerns of real Americans, allow me to explain.

We are at war. When President Bush concedes that there exist "responsible ways" to debate our progress in the War on Terror, he is being overly generous (to his credit). But there is simply no "responsible way" to undermine through criticism of any stripe our leadership's actions to protect us, no matter how plainly mistaken, inadequate or served by ulterior motives those actions may be. There may be time for future historians to do so, though the nature of this particular war means that the proper time for such revisionism will be at least decades from now.

An analogy: The "facts on the ground" are that we Americans have, through the democratic process, lined ourselves up behind a lead dog in a sled race against Islamofacism. Even though we may at times think that this lead dog is dragging us towards thin ice, or miring us in soft snow, or hurtling us over a cliff, the only purpose served by "fouling the traces" through criticism of the leader is to lessen our resolve to compete in this Global Iditarod against Terror at all.

Nor is the profound problem of the Left's counterproductive harping limited to the affairs of war. What did incessant criticism of the President's handling of the Katrina disaster do but promote more despair amongst the victims, who clearly needed a reason for hope as much as they needed relief supplies and an evacuation plan? Who amongst the survivors will find the inner spirit to rebuild, when the Digbys of the world are constantly reminding them of promises unkept by their leaders?

In an economy that is increasingly stratified and underserving of a growing underclass mired in debt and with vanishingly few options for entry into positions of financial health, the Left would only add to the problem by putting the brakes on any optimism that may naturally, if fitfully, arise under such conditions. How? By relentlessly picking apart every failed initiative by our leadership, by doggedly bringing to light every omission of relevant data in the administration's projections ... when instead of such micro-criticism of details, a macro-optimism towards Bush economic strategy is called for, nay incumbent upon any who would call himself a
patriot.

To put it bluntly, the problem is not the efficacy of any particular plan for war, disaster relief or economic growth put forward by our leaders, but rather the real threat that under the assault of liberals like you, we may have no leaders and no plans at all.

Cordially, etc.

William G. Henders

Now my question to you is, real email troll or brilliant parody of GOP mindset along the lines of "A Modest Proposal"? So, Swiftian satire or Fascist dogma? I just can't quite make up my mind. But then these days the two are so fucking close that it's almost impossible to tell them apart. Though I have to say the phrase "Global Iditarod agaist Terror" is just fucking brilliant. I mean it's like Stephen Colbert level stuff. So points for that.

**headdesk**

Sure our information has been pretty much uniformly wrong, and we've admitted as much, but we're still going to lob bombs first and ask questions later, thanks:

DAMADOLA, Pakistan - Al-Qaida's second-in-command was the target of a U.S. airstrike near the Afghan border but he was not at the site of the attack, two senior Pakistani officials said Saturday. At least 17 people were killed...

"Their information was wrong, and our investigations conclude that they acted on a false information," said a senior intelligence official. His account was confirmed by a senior government official, who said al-Zawahri "was not there."

Pakistan's government was expected to formally issue its reaction later Saturday.

An AP reporter who visited the scene in Damadola village about 12 hours later saw three destroyed houses hundreds of yards apart. Villagers recounted hearing aircraft overhead moments before the attack. By their count at least 30 people died, including women and children.

...at one destroyed house, Sami Ullah, a 17-year-old student, said he alone lost 24 of his relatives. Five women were weeping nearby, cursing the attackers.

"My entire family was killed, and I don't know whom should I blame for it," Ullah said. "I only seek justice from God."

Surgical strike indeed. But I'm sure they were all terrorist sympathizers...or something.
via Rising Hegemon

The Doughy Pantload gets a drubbing

Glenn Greenwald's( prose just sings: )

A little good news for a change

Jane at Firedoglake reports that Kate O'Beirne's book Women Who Make the World Worse has been sinking down the Amazon sales charts like a stone. From #28 to #78 as of today. Kudos to her and Jesus' General for their outstanding efforts, and here's to the conservative foundations who bulk purchased it to try to land it on the NYT bestseller's list using copies of it to fix their wobbly desks.

And please go read Al Gore's amazing speech which should be playing on every news organization as we speak, but has been ghettoized to C-Span. Here's a little taste of what you'll find there:

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

And I missed 60 Minutes last night but apparently Murtha was interviewed and he kicked ass.