Two Quick Thoughts

When I was little and in elementary school, I played “Duck Duck Gray Duck.” Turns out that everyone I’ve ever talked to that’s from Minnesota has played the Gray Duck version, and everyone else has played the Goose version. Us Minnesotans are exceedingly special, apparently.

Rebecca, when I was growing up in Nebraska, we used “Grey” Duck. But since moving to Minnesota, I agree that the correct usage has is “Gray” Duck. “Goose” sounds so….wrong.
Rove is a non-elected (or electable) staffer, and the prez gets to choose his hatchet man. All had someone like that around…just not quite to the extent of Dear Friend Karl. Usually, the person would be at the prez’ bidding, not the other way around.

Of course Iran is yanking our chain.

My theory for a long time has been that a large part of the “intelligence” (and I use that word advisedly in the context of anything the Bush Administration has done since taking office) was Iranian disinformation to suck us into the Iraq quagmire.

I can’t pull up the story at the moment but shortly after the Iraq war settling into its “long, hard slog” phase (which was some sixteen nanoseconds after the “Americans will be greeted as liberators” phase), Ahmed Chalabi was exposed as being in cahoots with Iran. I believe he had taken no small amount of moola from the mullahs there.

It’s not a terribly great stretch of the imagination to at least theorize that much of Chalabi’s “intelligence” was deliberate disinformation from Iran and that he was and, probably, still is a double agent.

That most likely goes double for the informant Curveball, who told the Neocons precisely what they wanted to hear.

The Iranians are probably sitting back laughing themselves to death at the quagmire into which they’ve lured the Great Satan.

All I know is after watching this afternoon’s performance by Henry
Waxman et al, I want more hearings!! The committee is still wiping the remains of Victoria Toensing off their shoes. I think Patrick Leahy will be just as prepared for all of Karl’s human shields, although Harriet seems to have been excised from Karl’s hip.

ok. harriet miers - I may be wrong but is she currently an ex-aide anyway? It is bull that Scooter Libby was the scapegoat for pre-war intelligence lies and manipulation of the media. GW said that he would fire anyone who was involved in the leak of Valerie Plame. You can find the clip (he may have said the leak of classified information instead of Plame and I doubt it but he might have said anyone that committed a crime - which is ridiculous because of course if they are convicted they can’t work for you anymore - he or Dick knew about Armitage, Libby, and Rove linking the names to the press when he made this statement)

also, on what planet can GW say at a press conference - “I’m not going to answer any questions about that” and then now they saw “I won’t comment on an ongoing legal matter.” SCOOTER WAS CONVICTED. Appeals go on for decades - most people - they stay on death row even if it is ‘pending appeal’

finally. I feel people have forgotten one thing in terms of Harriet Miers. I don’t know her or Alito but I would have voted for her over him if I had the chance. The reason why she is not on the supreme court right now is that the far right had a shit fit over her because “they could not trust her” subtext: SHE IS A WOMAN with NO BABIES! How can we trust this woman who has a successful career with no babies to subvert women’s rights. I mean sure she told James Dobbs that she is against abortion - but who exactly is FOR abortions anyway? We can’t trust a successful women WITH NO BABIES to want to cripple women’s rights. (no one discussed this in the media. The story was that it was a strategic misstep on the part of Bush and I’m sorry but any liberals who fought against her nomination were stupid because of course GW is going to appoint a republican - better sandra day o’connor (who does not like abortions) then Scalia (who has not read the 14th ammendment as far as I can tell)

sorry for the length. I do read FA all the time and the comments a lot.
P.S.
below is an interesting artilce from the LA Weekly about The War on Terror on the Home Front.
http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/a-terrible-thing-to-waste/157 82/

P.P.S.
Am I a traitor for reading Mo’s new blog? http://newsbloggers.aol.com/bloggers/mo-rocca I really like his video of a Hillary Clinton look-a-like picking up dog poop as part of his series where he asks people what they would like to see Hillary do so that she can have a photo-op where she looks like a regular person and we can identify with her. I think Mo gets paid for that blog which is why he writes there more then he did here.

I think the real reason why Harriet Miers is no longer getting the White House blame for “Gonzogate” is because someone in the Administration finally remembered - “Oh, wait - she’s an idiot! She’ll do more harm than good.” Leahy’s pals would have her confessing to every wrong she’s witnessed or committed since she broke wind that time in Sunday School when she was 6 years old. (She blamed it on Timmy; it scarred him for life and drove him from the chuch.) BTW, this is the same reason they pulled her nomination to the Supreme Court - because during the confirmation process, she’d have spilled her guts about every single nefarious White House deed - and that, as we know, would have drug the proceedings on forever.

A great clip, cooper.

All of you basketball fans can focus your attention on other matters, but I’m kinda pissed that I’m out of the running on the Gonzales resignation pool. Maybe they’re holding off so they can announce on Monday and distract everyone from fourth-anniversary-of-the-war stories. Or maybe the need to save him so they can throw him to the wolves for the surveilance story.

Hedera was right. I did enjoy it. Thanks.

(I was about to make a truly geekish comment, but will refrain.)

And coop, thanks for the link. We missed Maher on Friday night, and are looking forward to the repeat.

Still hoping not to have to quarter some Brit troop in our home…

This is completely unrelated, but I figured this crowd of WWDTM listeners would appreciate the strangely poetic spam I got this morning. I think”Carl Kassell Teen Spirit Scientists” would be a great band name.

———
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 19:27:35 +0100
From: “on Ebert”
Subject: [SPAM:#] Peter Sagal Sexiest Man
To: arester@uchicago.edu

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Back in my 640/1240 Conelrad youth, goose was the real objective when we were instructed to duck-duck-cover-cover. The only way color figured in was if someone started singing “The old grey goose she ain’t what she used to be…

Ah, those glorious days of sudden annihilation rather than the protracted demise of global warming. Sorry, waterfowler, but global warming is as real as evolution, only the latter lead to us, while the former appears destined to purge nature of its most creative creation.

waterfowler, I hated to see your Longhorns go down today. I tried to send some of the mojo back.

Play? I understand thee not.

Sorry David, the Sweet 16 is just as sweet the second time - Go Butler! (I really can’t help it - I was at the NCAA tournament with the basketball pep band 4 years ago when we did this the first time.)

Cool, Rebecca. Gotta be a memorable experience to be in the pep band in such circumstances. You guys took us to the wire in the opening round in 2000, which clip they are already running on the sports shows, and I imagine this is an even better Butler team than was that one. I look for a great game (with my Gators victorious, of course, knock on wood, please Lobster). One of us will get to quote Ralph Cramden a second time.

Aggh! Fannie ate my comment!

Here it is…the T-shirt about Peter Sagal:

http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2007/03/peter-sagal-sexiest-man.html

All of you must have had a completely different childhood than I did. I never heard of “Duck, duck, grey goose” - or “duck, duck, grey anything” (except, of course, duck duck cover cover; thanks, David) - until someone mentioned it here. Part of the problem may have been that, due to massive allergies, I spent lunchtimes in the principal’s office for most of grammar school, because going outside was Bad For Me.

And we sang about the old gray mare who ain’t what she used to be.

And Increase has his verb endings messed up; he should have said, “Someone stealeth my son’s identity, I think. I must kick butt.”

hedera, we were easily confused as children, a tradition I have proudly carried right through adulthood and on into retirement.

Make it “Sexiest Game Show Host in the Audio World.”

I posted my other comment before I read this one, waterfowler. I do think, though, that the intensity of your vitriol toward Al Gore is misguided, and I do think that the human contribution is pretty certainly both significant enough and reversible enough to make us answerable to our grandchildren for not taking the most proactive steps to slow, and then partially reverse, what is being set in motion by human activity. While it is true that there are forces and changes in nature that have very little, if anything, to do with human activity, the loss of the tropical rainforests stands as just one example of pure human destruction with not insignificant consequences, and the unprecedented rise in CO2 levels is another.
Al Gore’s testimony before the Senate environmental committee was both informed and compelling. And he is way too smart not to know what he is talking about, particularly given how much effort he has put into this issue. Remember, he became an environmentalist as a child at the breakfast table, along with his father, and I imagine his sister, because his mother read them Rachel Carson’s THE SILENT SPRING. There is nothing phony about his environmentalism. Like all of us, he is dependent on the accumulated work of the scientific community, to which he has turned in what I argue is a very responsible way. Mr. Inhofe is more agenda-driven, I think, although he might sincerely believe his position to be the more scientific one.

If A&M puts it on Memphis Thursday and then prevails in the Elite 8 and round one of the Final 4, and Florida also continues to win, maybe the Gators and the Aggies can go at it for all the marbles (I can hear you now, Rebecca Bulldog, saying Wait just a damned minute).

Rebecca “Bulldog,” you know I’d be looking for your comeback. Butler brought the better game tonight, but our bigs were too much in the closing minutes for your guys. You neutralized our height advantage for much of the game, and played as good defense as we’ve seen this year. We didn’t win until your big who can hit 3s with deadly consistency fouled out and we hit those clutch free throws. My hat is off to Butler (again). I would enjoy having Butler as an opponent every year, although it might give me heart failure. I will close with Ralph Cramden’s “How sweet it is!” We beat a very, very good team tonight. On to the Elite 8.