The Nobel Prize for Literature. Congratulations to playwright Harold Pinter, this year's winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here is one of his lesser-known works from 2003:

Dear President Bush,

I'm sure you'll be having a nice little tea party with your fellow war criminal, Tony Blair. Please wash the cucumber sandwiches down with a glass of blood, with my compliments.

Harold Pinter
Playwright

You can imagine what a shitstorm this would arouse in Wingnuttia if they weren't so focused on their "political capital" being flushed down Cheney's, Rove's, DeLay's and Frist's toilets.

But Michelle Malkin managed to notice, citing the opinion of Laura Bush's aspiring luncheon companion Roger Kimball.

There's only one problem with their arguments: his political opinions aside for the moment, Pinter made a contribution to literature, and they didn't. On the contrary, their entire output and agenda consist of a politics of exclusion that is based on nothing but their opinions. Kimball's predictable rhapsodizing should be considered not art or even criticism but propaganda.

Conclusion: The Nobel Committee did its job admirably.

{ 9:49 AM }

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Let the waitress pick up the check. Garance Franke-Ruta at TAPPED reminds us that in September 2004 John Edwards prophesied the tax package that Bush is salivating to spring on us:

The President's new 'tax reform' is the ultimate expression of his values. We don't know all of the details, but we know that people who inherit hundreds of millions will pay nothing; firemen and waitresses and working people will pay everything. And we know his plan will take away the most important incentive for the single most important form of ownership: it will eliminate entirely the tax deduction for home mortgage interest.

Meanwhile, snug under the cover of "faith," Pat Robertson's vast enterprises pay no taxes. Paris Hilton gets a free pass on her inheritance. And Cheney's dividend income is tax-free. In fact, if George W Bush is lucky enough for his father to die in 2010, he will receive his own dynastic inheritance without paying a nickel in estate taxes.

In Bushworld, the Ownership Society no longer applies to non-decamillionaires. Sadly, Kerry-Edwards called it right, and the blinkered press corps is discovering what a fool they promoted for over five years now that the damage is already done.

{ 9:30 AM }

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How to find a quarter billion dollars. "Californians' pot consumption could yield at least $250 million a year in sales taxes."

{ 9:21 AM }

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Investigating the obvious. All of the chatter about "investigating" Cheney's role in the Plame affair reminded me of this exercise in meta-algebra (or is it meta-triangulation?):



(Source)

{ 3:02 PM }

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Too close for comfort. It's somewhat reassuring when a large and growing segment of the population recognizes that it's unseemly for a president to fill a seat on the Supreme Court with his nanny:

[Harriet Miers's] demure exterior, however, cloaks a tough will and an uncommonly close relationship with Bush. In the Oval Office and on the road, Miers has spent more time with him than perhaps any aide except Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. On Sept. 11, 2001, she was flying on Air Force One as it sped the president to the Midwest and back after the terrorist attacks.

In June 2003, when Bush stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to declare that "major combat operations" had ended in Iraq, Miers was part of a nucleus of aides who stayed overnight with him on the aircraft carrier. She is with him often at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., and is a regular weekend visitor to the presidential retreat at Camp David.

So on 9/11/01, after Bush was finished reading The Pet Goat, Miers was right there to minister to his needs while ricocheting around the United States. That was probably the day he made the most momentous decision of his presidency: to link those events to Iraq.

And Miers was there! So she must be qualified. QED.

{ 8:44 AM }

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In lieu of flowers. Let's admire this recently deceased gentleman's immortal sense of humor and justice (Chicago Tribune):

Theodore Roosevelt Heller, 88, loving father of Charles (Joann) Heller; dear brother of the late Sonya (the late Jack) Steinberg. Ted was discharged from the U.S. Army during WWII due to service related injuries, and then forced his way back into the Illinois National Guard insisting no one tells him when to serve his country. Graveside services Tuesday 11 a.m. at Waldheim Jewish Cemetery (Ziditshover section), 1700 S. Harlem Ave., Chicago. In lieu of flowers, please send acerbic letters to Republicans.

Via Gaper's Block.

{ 9:22 AM }

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Man and Donkey: the blog.

{ 4:53 PM }

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When bad prescription drugs go to war. What's behind the rash of military suicides?

Chief Warrant Officer William Howell was a 15-year Army Special Forces veteran who had seen combat duty all over the world. Sgt. 1st Class Andre McDaniel was a military accountant. Spc. Jeremy Wilson repaired electronics.

They had little in common, other than having served in Iraq with the 10th Special Forces Group based at Fort Carson, Colo. They did not know each other, and they had vastly different duties.

Each, however, committed suicide shortly after returning home, all within about a 17-month period.

[...]

Laura Howell said she blamed Lariam, an Army-issued anti-malaria drug, for her husband's suicide. The drug's manufacturer, Roche Pharmaceuticals, says side effects can include anxiety, paranoia, depression, hallucinations and psychotic behavior.

Earlier military murder-suicides and my own experience are entirely consistent with Laura Howell's explanation of her husband's death.

Lariam is an unbelievably irresponsible drug to prescribe to people with weapons. We can only hope that Roche's Lariam gets half the bad press that Merck's Vioxx got — the risks are so much higher with Lariam.

{ 3:56 PM }

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Colorful Bush ancestors. There's an obscene amount of foreshadowing in an ancestor like this:"A desperate, land-grabbing warlord whose calamitous foreign adventure led to the suffering of generations."

Another Bush ancestor recognized "the features of a personal enemy poking from a pile of severed heads after a battle, snatched up the rotting flesh and tore it with his teeth in a 'hideous frenzy.'"

Is that behavior substantially different from the modern treatment of Uday and Qusay Saddm Hussein?

Via Sideshow.

{ 9:01 AM }

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How to destroy the National Guard and Reserves. It's very easy to annihilate the reserves of American military strength — just make George W Bush the Commander-in-Chief:

The National Guard and Reserves are suffering a strikingly higher share of U.S. casualties in Iraq, their portion of total American military deaths nearly doubling since last year.

Reservists have accounted for one-quarter of all U.S. deaths since the Iraq war began, but the proportion has grown over time. It was 10 percent for the five weeks it took to topple Baghdad in the spring of 2003, and 20 percent for 2004 as a whole.

The trend accelerated this year. For the first nine months of 2005, reservists accounted for 36 percent of U.S. deaths, and for August and September, it was 56 percent, according to Pentagon figures.

The Army National Guard, Army Reserve and Marine Corps Reserve accounted for more than half of all U.S. deaths in August and in September — the first time that has happened in consecutive months.

Dubya's daddy problem will be the true lasting legacy of his reign. Junior's obsession with Saddam trumped everything else about his administration, costing hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives. It's difficult to recall the faux-outrage over Saddam's "rape rooms" after Abu Ghraib and especially now that the proportion of all military deaths experienced by the Guard and Reserves has more than quintupled in just two years.

Repeat after the president: "We're making progress."

{ 8:28 AM }

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