{"id":61,"date":"2007-06-05T15:16:02","date_gmt":"2007-06-05T20:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ngc2632.com\/blog\/?p=61"},"modified":"2007-06-05T16:12:15","modified_gmt":"2007-06-05T21:12:15","slug":"somewhat-different-song-and-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/everything\/somewhat-different-song-and-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"Somewhat different song-and-dance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>And now, a stylized form of homoerotic performance art made popular in Japan:<\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/newsimg.bbc.co.uk\/media\/images\/42996000\/jpg\/_42996771_sumo_afp416.jpg\" alt=\"Mongolian-born sumo grand champion Hakuho\" title=\"Mongolian-born sumo grand champion Hakuho\" border=\"0\" height=\"300\" width=\"416\" \/><\/center><br \/>\nFrom personal experience, I know what the backside of one of these looks like. There are some people in the audience back there gettin&#8217; a <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">good<\/span> look. Look at them, craning their necks like that.<\/p>\n<p>I dunno, man.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/newsimg.bbc.co.uk\/media\/images\/43008000\/jpg\/_43008997_vang_ap203b.jpg\" alt=\"General Vang Pao\" title=\"General Vang Pao\" align=\"right\" border=\"0\" height=\"152\" width=\"203\" \/>Meanwhile, <a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/americas\/6721313.stm\">our belabored US Attorney General&#8217;s office has decided to prosecute nine or ten people for plotting to overthrow the Communist government in Laos.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Talk about mixed messages.<\/p>\n<p>This guy over here on the right is General Vang Pao, who, back in the mid seventies, got CIA-backing to do this exact thing. Although in the seventies, he was a Loatian general, in Laos, and was fighting against Communist guerillas. Problem was he lost, they won, and we just &#8220;normalized&#8221; relations with Laos in 2005. So the Feds picked him up.<\/p>\n<p>You can almost hear Laos Foreign Minister Yong Chanhthalansy snickering as he tells Reuters the following: &#8220;We hope the United States will prosecute them strictly under the Patriot Act and punish the violators of the law severely&#8230;. I am sure that such vigorous investigation will lead to the uprooting of the network of the villains who have caused the most difficulty in bilateral relations between the Lao and Thai governments.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Chanhthalansy can&#8217;t be serious, right? Because, you know, the Patriot Act is for catching and punishing US collaborators conspiring with foreign terrorists fighting insurgencies against governments we&#8217;ve <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">installed<\/span> versus catching and punishing US collaborators conspiring with foreign terrorists fighting insurgencies against governments we&#8217;ve failed to topple and now merely <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">tolerate<\/span>. It&#8217;s like he doesn&#8217;t even know what Patriot means!<\/p>\n<p>And, although Nancy Pelosi said impeachment for Bush was off the table, we have this wonderful list compiled by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.democrats.com\/blog\/4716\"><strong>David Swanson<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cities and towns that have backed impeachment by resolution, public vote, or both: 79.<\/li>\n<li>Largest cities: Detroit, home of the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and San Francisco, home of the Speaker of the House.<\/li>\n<li>Earliest and most frequent city: Santa Cruz beginning in 2003.<\/li>\n<li>States where impeachment has been introduced into the legislature at least once: 10 (California, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, Vermont).<\/li>\n<li>State legislative bodies that have voted on impeachment: 3 (Vermont Senate, Vermont House, New Mexico Senate).<\/li>\n<li>State legislative bodies that have passed impeachment resolutions: 1 (Vermont Senate).<\/li>\n<li>National political parties backing impeachment: 1 (Green).<\/li>\n<li>Non-Democratic state political parties backing impeachment: 2 (Vermont Progressives, California Greens).<\/li>\n<li>Democrats Abroad Chapters backing impeachment: 1.<\/li>\n<li>Local political party organizations that have backed impeachment: 32.<\/li>\n<li>Labor unions backing impeachment: 1.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>  (Updated list with extra details available <a href=\"http:\/\/impeachpac.org\/resolutions-list\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>We all know that articles of impeachment against Cheney have been drafted by Dennis Kucinich. Articles against Bush have been drafted by wacky and lovable Cynthia McKinney, who is basically a neighbor of mine.<\/p>\n<p><a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/americas\/6720315.stm\">And back in Guantanamo<\/a>, a US military judge has already thrown out charges against a Canadian man accused of killing a US soldier in Afghanistan with a grenade and the famous Yemeni who has been accused of being Osama bin Laden&#8217;s driver. The reason for this is that they are designated as &#8220;enemy combatants&#8221;. Fine, says the judge. Soldiers fight enemy combatants all the time. We call them &#8220;enemies&#8221;. We kill them or capture them as the situation warrants, and if they survive we send them home. We do not put them on trial. If they were &#8220;<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">unlawful<\/span> enemy combatants&#8221;, on the other hand, then we could have some show of legal proceedings.<\/p>\n<p>Amazing.<\/p>\n<p>As of ten minutes ago there were exactly <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">zero<\/span> detainees at Guantanamo that were designated as <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">unlawful<\/span> enemy combatants. We&#8217;ll see what that number looks like tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p> [*]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And now, a stylized form of homoerotic performance art made popular in Japan: From personal experience, I know what the backside of one of these looks like. There are some people in the audience back there gettin&#8217; a good look. Look at them, craning their necks like that. I dunno, man. Meanwhile, our belabored US [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1rL5j-Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}