The U.S. military on Sunday said it was looking into how virtually identical quotations ended up in two of its news releases about different insurgent attacks. In each case the military quoted an Iraqi calling the attackers “enemies of humanity” and vowing to “take the fight to the terrorists,” according to a CNN report.

Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, spokesman for the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, said use of the quote was an “administrative error.”

Perhaps they’re simply 2 huge Bush fans, and like to clip out quotes from the President’s speeches.

I tracked down and contacted one of the two Iraqis. He said that he remains committed to “tracking down the Evil-Doers”. Asked if he had made any mistakes in the past four years, he could not think of anything.

I’m sort of threading water right here. To blog onsomething, but not knowing what. An old stand-by would be a quick encounter with LaRouchites, but alas — I desire something a bit more substantial.

So I ask: give me a news item, preferrably one receiving little attention in any corner of political discourse, preferrably one I’m unfamiliar with, and with that I will hopefully have something erudite and lucid to say (or rather, type) on the matter.

One of the movies I know every line of. That’d be Back to the Future, not — say — Top Gun. (All I know about Top Gun is that there’s some airplane flying and some guy makes a noise with his jaw.)

Actually, I’m hard-pressed to name another movie I “know every line” of.

I contemplate a few things, though.

What, exactly, is the backstory of Doc Brown and Marty McFly’s friendship? What opportunity does Marty McFly have, at what point growing up, to meet and start hanging out with a slightly mad scientist?

They filmed a third of the movie with Eric Stoltz, before they could wriggle out some contractual problems with Michael J Fox. What would the implications of this actor be on the movie?

And finally — the subtle change to McFly being afraid of being called a “Chicken” in the sequels to the fear of rejection (comes out of George McFly) in this one? (In a way, doesn’t that message contradict the message of George McFly’s standing up to the bully Biff through punching him out — I note the reality that Biff is presumably physically stronger than George — then again, Marty has less reason to go with the game of Chicken.)

From the Wikki entry on said movie:

Universal Studios executive Sid Sheinberg sent Robert Zemeckis a letter intending to retitle the film Space Man from Pluto, because he didn’t think that anyone would care to see a movie about time travel. Zemeckis contacted Steven Spielberg for help, who wrote Sheinberg a letter. In it Spielberg thanked Sheinberg for the humorous letter and said that they all really had a good laugh about it, knowing that Sheinberg would be too proud to admit that he was serious. The issue was then dropped and never brought up again.

Would David Limbaugh, right-wing pundit at the inglorious newsmax.com and author of a book about how Secular Americans are persecuting Christians, have any type of success if his brother wasn’t Rush?

why does john maccarthur write books against the four square church

A quick google seach suggests that John MacArthur’s problem is:

Implicit in MacArthur’s wholesale attack on the charismatic movement is that it is not derived from the Holy Spirit and therefore, has borne only bad fruit. He suggests that the fruit of the charismatic movement is entirely negative and, among other things, has “created divisions” (p. 293), “encourages mysticism” (p. 292), “denigrates reason” (p. 292), “leads to spiritual casualties” etc. Is there any fruit in the charismatic movement? “Surely, if the movement is of God,” MacArthur asks, “we ought to find abundant fruit.” Yet, MacArthur looks about him and sees no fruit at all. Perhaps the lens that he looks at the charismatics through is less than clear. A Christian approaching the charismatic movement without a clouded lens, might see the following.

Personally, my problem with the Four Square Church is the confusion that always comes up over whether if the ball touches the line if it is out or not, and who gets to decide if it did.

define self-depreciative

I’m too stupid to know.

my sports illustrated subscription number

3

how much wood would a woodchunk chunk if a woodchunk would chunk wood

A woodchunk would chunk as much wood as a woodchunk could if a woodchunk could chunk wood.

rainbow party suck lipstick photos

Ha ha. Um. Not available.

The third most searched word is “dogs”. I will not pander to the public by posting a dog entry. I must note how amazing the consistency of “invention of fire” is — which is to say, roughly the same number of searches (and hits) per month.

Hm. Did not know that.

Perhaps one of the most overlooked reasons for rejecting Bork in 1987 was his ignominious role in the Watergate Scandal. See, when the special prosecutor Archibald Cox issued a subpoena of Nixon’s secret tapes for research, Nixon knew that those tapes would incriminate him and his staff in the Watergate investigation. nixon ordered his Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused, and handed in his resignation, rather than be part of the coverup. Nixon then replaced him with a new Attorney General, William Ruckelshaus. Ruckelshaus also refused to fire Cox, and resigned rather than be part of the coverup. So Nixon then turned to his Solicitor General, Robert Bork, to stand in as the Attorney General, and Bork fired Cox. of course, this looked rather suspicious — The Nixon administration had gone through 3 attorney Generals in the course of a weekend, and the special prosecutor was fired without reason. The press took notice, and Congress was infuriated by the act, which was seen as a gross abuse of Presidential power. In the days that followed, numerous bills of impeachment against the President were introduced in Congress. Nixon defended his actions in a famous press conference on November 17, 1973, but it did no good, as he resigned before a new prosecutor could be appointed.

And thus, I find at the wikki:

In the years after the Saturday Night Massacre, a well-known joke said that “borking” was “firing a man for doing exactly what he was hired to do” (i.e. Judge Bork had “borked” Archibald Cox, whose job had been to investigate criminal activities in the Nixon White House). After Bork’s confirmation hearings, however, a new meaning was given to Bork’s name: to be borked is to have one’s presidential appointment defeated after fierce battles in the Senate.

I joked that Bush oughta just go ahead and renominate Robert Bork. Maybe he will when Rehnquist retires. Or he could offer it to a college Republican — you know the drill: then you’d have a reliable right-wing perch on the bench for 60 years instead of this wacky 30 that Roberts is set to have. (I ponder the fact that Clinton’s picks were 10 and 15 years older than Bush I’s Clarence Thomas pick.)

In his latest column, [name deleted, but its the name you most associate with the magazine] appears opposed to the battle in Iraq. He refers to possible political ramifications, but this war is beyond politics. The future of Western civilization is at stake.

The combat in Iraq is not a war but a battle in a war that was started 1,400 years ago. The cult of a self-proclaimed prophet has expanded to more than 1.2 billion people, and the disciples of this devil intend to t bring the entire earth under the rule of Allah. Currently, Western nations are the soft targets.

The meek enjoy liberties after the strong have fought, sacrificed, and died. If we don’t resist Islam, our culture has no future. There are two approaches: let posterity fight its own wars when the time comes, or maintain a place in the world for Jesus, our posterity, and Western civilization.

Damn the torpedoes. Let’s get down and dirty. Kill the bastards. Wars are dirty. It is wrong to elevate ourselves above their standards. They take no prisoners. Neither should we.

God bless America.
Warren E. Boisselle
Virginia Beach, VA

(letter to the “American Conservative”)

A google search shows that he was an advocate for all out war against terrorism since… at least 1996. (ProbabOklahoma City bombing? Or those listed here?)

I am reminded of a comment suggesting that you can’t ask whether this is a Religious War. That’s the question that, theoretically, would have to be settled by who wins.

Why the paleocons don’t hook onto this concept — extend the Cultural Wars you’re fighting here against a cartoonish set of Secularists to a cartoonist set of Muslims over yonder — I don’t know. Mired into the old Cold War rhetoric where they’re fighting the Atheist Communists, and can’t convert the enemy over to Muslims? Or are the Jews in Israel just standing in the way of this paradigm shift?

Or I’m too snarky and I may just not be giving them proper credit.

Campbell: Worst-case scenario: If they do have these nukes inside the borders and they were to use something like that, what would our response be?

Tancredo: What would be the response? You know, there are things that you could threaten to do before something like that happens and then you may have to do afterwards that are quite draconian.

CAMPBELL: Such as?

TOM Tancredo, Congressman of Colorado, gadfly seeker of Republican nomination for President: Well, what if you said something like – if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites.

Pat Campbell, talk show host: You’re talking about bombing Mecca.

Tancredo: Yeah

TANCREDO: Yeah. I mean, what if you said, “We recognize that this is the ultimate threat to the United States, therefore this is the ultimate threat, this is the ultimate response.” I mean, I don’t know — I’m just throwing out there some ideas because it seems to me, at this point in time, or at that point in time, you would be talking about taking the most draconian measures you could possibly imagine. Because other than that all you could do is, once again, tighten up internally.

That be the discussion our esteemed gadfly Republican presidential candidate be seeking.

Bombing Mecca was the province of the imagainations of plenty of folks in the wak of the 9/11 attacks. The desire to do such a thing pretty well died down, Ann Coulter insisting on “invading all their countries and converting them to Christianity” notwithstanding. (This attitude persists in some corners, and I have seen the TBN shows to prove it… the Christians that actually live in the nations America has invaded are pretty weary of.)

I heard a radio talk show host bemoan the idea that Americans aren’t “into” it the way they used to, insisting on the bombing of Mecca. It’s a curious pathology.

As for Tom Tancredo, the celebrator of the “Minutemen Project” of amature border patrollers on the Mexican border (and a person who I predict will get a good showing in the early 2004 primaries)… I can’t decide whether the Congressional district he represents means anything (with respect to topes of Violent Urgings) or if its doesn’t.

It encampasses some Denver suburbs, including that of Littleton, Colorado.

You know… once upon a time, years ago when the Vallerie Plame Leak Scandal first broke (to be smoldered a way for a while, to erupt again, to be smoldered again sometime soon, to erupt again sometime a bit later)…

The now-defunct cable television show Buchanan and Press was meandering on with Pat Buchanan trying to get some expert who claimed to know that it was Scooter Libby who was the “source” to Bob Novak:

BUCHANAN: … let me follow up because I worked in the EOB and to be honest, the president of the United States had his hide-away office on the first-you know the first floor where he goes up the steps. Right above him in that magnificent office up there are the suite of offices of the vice president of the United States whose chief of staff is Mr. Libby…

JOHNSON: That’s very telling. I think if I’m the FBI, I start by having a discussion with Mr. Libby.

At around the same time Joseph Wilson said

“At the end of the day, it’s of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words.”

We’ve gone through 2 years, and we’re pretty much back to the revelation that, with a great deal of fog thrown out, obfuscation and misdirections…

Scooter Libby and Karl Rove are the culpable ones in this case.

Good to know that.

I checked out a copy of the first Harry Potter. I read the first 30 pages or so. Then I returned the book to the library.

I can’t say I disliked the book. I simply didn’t want to read it.

Congratulations to JK Rowlings on its success, though. And may the legions of fans enjoy the latest installment.

………………..

There’s something troubling about Paul Anka singing out the lyrics to Nirvana’s “Smells like Teen Spirit”. Is Anka not a little bit embarrassed to sing (as opposed to belt out) “A mulatto … An albino … A mosquito … My libido … Yea“?

I guess it all starts with Pat Boone and “Stairway to Heavan”. Paul Anka disdains that musical interlude of Pat Boone’s career, and insists his versions of popular hits rises above “kitch”.

Johnny Cash is being played on the alternative rock station, 94.7 NRK. Both good songs and good covers, Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” and Nine Inch Nails’s “Hurt”. But they’re not lounge versions, were pretty carefully selected to fit Johnny Cash’s musical needs.