A little Friday night music

Múm – The Island of Children’s Children.

Fade to black.

Please look down

Watertiger has something you should see.

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

Billmon contrasts Nick Turse and Edward Gibbon, on how the American military has been destroyed.

Senator Joe Lieberman parked his car here

From LamontBlog.

Hat-tip to Christy Hardin Smith.

I pray for George Bush

I do. I hope he finds peace some day. I hope that his understanding will come soon that he is not going to win. We are not against America. We are Americans. And people of all other countries too, are eager to be friends with us, the leadership of this country is lying to us.

They do not hate our “freedom” they hate our government. The government defines itself as freedom. It defines war as peace making. It is making peace in the Middle East — the peace of the grave.

And George Bush wonders if there is a new religious awakening. He wonders if he is part of it. He is, and it is, and he is on the wrong side. He is my brother, and my friend, and my sadly lost sheep.

So all you Republicans who are reading this and think that I hate you, I do not. I despise the things that are being done in your name. I am asking you to withdraw your consent. I am saying that you should take some responsibility to find out what is going on and pull your own head out and say you won’t be party to it. You won’t be party and that means you won’t be in the same party. Do you understand?

You always have a choice to belong to any organization. You never have to sign away your right to disagree, and to express your disagreement through disassociation. If you have a member that behaves in ways unacceptable, then you have a choice of either removing that member from the organization or removing yourself. You can stay and negotiate if you are making progress and if the organization has not descended to the point of committing crimes. When the organization commits crimes it is a criminal organization. You are a member of a criminal organization if you are a Republican today.

Please come out of there. Let this be reduced to the smallest number of evil actors and we can deal with them peacefully. There is no need for you to fight us, and we will care about you and take as much time as it requires to help. We love you all.

Will you please accept that your friends and your loved ones use cannabis? Will you please stop condemning us? Will you love us and care for us, as we will for you? That is the base of this conflict, today.

I need a music break

30 minutes. Tortoise. Live. Relax and enjoy.

Freudian slip of the day

From the White House press briefing yesterday:

Q Does that not invite other countries to do the same, to have other interpretations of Article III?

MR. SNOW: What it allows every country to do is to have an interpretation. Our European allies don’t have an interpretation.

Q And your critics say that’s bad for U.S. troops if you allow those kinds of interpretations.

MR. SNOW: No, I think just the opposite. As a matter of fact, the five guys who are Judge Advocates General right now say we need it. The people who interpret the law, the people who serve as the chief legal officers within the Pentagon themselves say we need it. ..

Q Tony, I’m confused. Everybody I talked to today on the Hill says, look, you’ve had the Geneva Conventions in place since 1947. This isn’t the Migratory Birds Treaty we’re talking about. This is the Geneva Conventions.

MR. SNOW: Right.

Q And it’s a very simple argument. We don’t want to talk about the definition of amend or change, but that it stands on its own as written, hasn’t been tinkered with since 1947, doesn’t need to be tinkered with now. So if that seems to be the position from a former JAG and a former POW and a former Secretary of the Navy, where’s the room to work anything out?

MR. SNOW: Well, I think there is. For instance, in 1987, we didn’t know what the Genocide Convention said, so we passed a law to deal with it.

Q Not the Geneva Conventions.

MR. SNOW: It appears. Yes, the Geneva Convention.

This is an administration that is grasping at anything to authorize torture.

Hat-tip to TBogg.

Update: More from The Heretik. And another.