A reread of the WP report on Woodstein’s latest revealed this curious bit:

Bush agreed, and later referred to the Camp David session with Blair as "the cojones meeting," using a colloquial Spanish term for courage.

Huh?
Isn’t the word colloquial Spanish for testes?
Attention all you dainty sissies at the Post, these cojones are not just any testes but giant hairy huevos befitting a hombre oozing mas macho.
God forbid Miss Woodstein could get a shiver!
Thanks to the internet, individual citizens of the world can now test (or teste) the size of one’s personal cojones by taking Queendom.com’s interactive Cojones Test.
Buenos Suerte!


Kerry, yesterday, in Pittsburgh

From the Los Angeles Times, Senator John F. Kerry speaking to more than 10,000 people attending a rally at the University of Pittsburgh:

Well, I'll tell you something: The political bombs may be bursting in air today around us as they try to distort the truth, but when I look up, that flag is still there...And it belongs to all of Americans, not to them … it belongs to us.

FLASH!

Watch the very effective Mistakes Were Made video from the DNC.
The video is available for Windows Media and Real Player.
A less dramatic transcript is also available from the on target folks at the DNC.

Reflecting on yesterday’s post, I’m still befuddled that the Pottery Barn web site doesn’t contain one image of pottery or, for that matter, any pottery for sale.
The PB has towels, lamps, crystal, candles and lawn furniture but not one speck of fired ceramic.
It smacks of a hamburgerless Hamburger Hamlet and a nukeless Iraq!
I’m aghast!

Images: Sean, Reuters, DNC
- posted by Sean @ 10:15 AM  

 

From the Washington Post and Woodward’s latest bush & tell:

Powell bluntly told Bush that if he sent U.S. troops there "you're going to be owning this place”… What they called "the Pottery Barn rule"on Iraq -- "you break it, you own it."

Photos: Reuters, US Department of State, Pottery Barn
- posted by Sean @ 2:23 PM  

 
From Don MacNarummy’s Who Gives a Crap File

This morning’s Washington Post reports that the plundering of global archaeological sites and the theft of cultural objects was the subject of a press conference yesterday in Washington, DC by representatives of the International Council of Museums.
The ICM has published lists called Red Lists of endangered African, Latin American and Iraqi cultural objects and these lists are intended to help Customs officials determine which cultural objects are legally outside their native milieu in a global environment of increasing cultural theft.
The American Association of Museums, the State Department and several respected scholars, endorsed the list, at its first US presentation yesterday.
While the morning's Post focused almost exclusively on Latin American objects, intrepid readers might spot the glaring absence of a highly newsworthy and recently culturally raped country from the following excerpt:

An illustrated guide of examples of frequently targeted objects from Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala and other countries.

Since last year’s war, the Post has offered limited and grudging coverage of ongoing efforts to recovers objects stolen from that still embattled land and, this morning, makes no effort to expand the coverage beyond the horrific Latin American thefts.
No mention of recovered objects, arrests or ongoing investigations involving the highly newsworthy mystery nation, no mention of the high-rolling and well-connected American Council for Cultural Policy and no mention of the Treasures of Nimrud either gold or ivory by a newspaper that should know better.

Related posts can be found on June 14, June 28 and the 28th and 29th of October 2003.

Michel van Rijn offers an interesting peek into the cultural object trade.

Image: icom.museum
- posted by Sean @ 1:46 AM  

 
BartCop declassifies the President's hardcopy of the August 6, 2001 PDB:

- posted by Sean @ 9:25 PM  

 

Any casual reader of the liberal blogs has encountered references to “Howie the Ho” and other similar mocking references to Washington Post and CNN employee Howard Kurtz.
This morning, wearing his faux plastic impartiality with the panache of a true quisling, the baleful Howie wonders if the disaster of the President’s babbling prime time press conference might not really be a success among the majority Attention Deficit disordered citizens of the fly-over states:

Imagine that you're a casual viewer in Kansas City or Orlando or Phoenix. You hear the president talk about Sept. 11, how Saddam was a threat, how battling terrorism is a tough task, how he will do whatever it takes for America to prevail, how he doesn't like seeing dead bodies on television either but his responsibility is to remain resolute. You haven't heard him say this 20 times, like the journalists have. You see a plain-talking president sticking to his guns. You don't think it's reasonable to blame a guy who'd been in office for eight months for 9/11.

Since Tuesday evening’s most suspiciously curious Bush version of an American tradition, the corporate domestic US media has been, for the most part, in full Emperor’s New Clothes mode.
White House Correspondent Has Christian Anderson reports:

The chamberlains, who were to carry the train, stretched their hands to the ground as if they lifted up a train, and pretended to hold something in their hands; they did not like people to know that they could not see anything…Nobody wished to let others know he saw nothing, for then he would have been unfit for his office or too stupid.

Unfortunately for those peddling the increasingly tatty War Leader costume, even the most severely attention disabled Midwesterner can’t escape the weeks long and current $40 million Bush media blitz.
The President likes to say 911 changed everything.
For many in the fly-over states and, I’m sure, many on the golden coasts the changes that followed the 2000 election, 911 and Enron have cut deeper and more personally than anything the President’s marketing strategists can imagine.
America is growing weary of mumbo-jumbo and soon, as Hans Christian Anderson concludes:

“But he has nothing on at all,” said a little child at last. “Good heavens! Listen to the voice of an innocent child,” said the father, and one whispered to the other what the child had said. “But he has nothing on at all,” cried at last the whole people.

Photo: Reuters
- posted by Sean @ 10:55 AM  

 

From the Los Angeles Times:

President Bush's reelection team is scaling back its massive level of television advertising…viewers in the 18 states where the ads have aired since early March will see about 30% fewer a week…The reelection team spent so much so soon "with the intent of putting this thing away early, and it didn't happen," said Erik Smith, executive director of the Media Fund…Independent analysts agreed with that assessment…One gauge is the tracking conducted for by TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group, which follows the political ad purchases in the nation's 100 largest media markets. Its data show that through Saturday, Bush had aired 37,212 spots in those markets at a cost of $26.6 million.

Modified Image: Bush/Cheney04
- posted by Sean @ 8:33 AM  

 
Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens.


You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet…I don't want to sound like I've made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.

White House Transcript April 13 Press Conference

Photo: The White House
- posted by Sean @ 11:50 PM  

 

Mona Lisa Mask

The Art Newspaper, in a report with today’s date, says that the Treasure of Nimrud ivories continue to fragment and suffer mold growth from imperfect and incomplete drying after their submersion in sewage water during the Iraq War.
The article, interestingly, details one of these unique and endangered ancient artifacts:

Among the ivory treasures dating from the eighth and ninth centuries BC is the famed “Mona Lisa” mask, discovered by Max Mallowan in 1951 in the North-West Palace of the Assyrian kings. He was accompanied by his wife, Agatha Christie, who cleaned the Nimrud Ivories, using face lotion.


Meanwhile a moldy artifact of another sort was photographed while visiting family in Crawford, Texas yesterday.


And War Leader, leaving Crawford this morning, appears to be courting the metrosexual vote with his insouciant farewell kiss to the assembled Crawfordopolitans.
Fabulous!

Note
Late Saturday the White House changed the information the Associated Press was reporting early Saturday morning about the President’s weekend fishing schedule.
The White House now says the President taped the cable TV fishing segment Friday and cancelled the Saturday session in favor of a hastily assembled Iraq briefing.
My friend Bob Somerby examines this under reported fish story.
Scroll down to Moscow on the Bass Pond.
Also
The Smoking Gun is offering copies of the August 6, 2001 PDB, the July 2001 FBI Memo by Kenneth Williams and the May 1998 Memo from the Oklahoma FBI office.

Photos: theartnewspaper.com, Reuters
- posted by Sean @ 5:36 PM  

 

Photo taken August 6, 2001

Dana Milbank and Mike Allen, this morning, refresh memories with items from President Bush’s carefree and golf and fund raiser-packed August 2001 vacation:

President Bush was in an expansive mood on Aug. 7, 2001…he seemed carefree …On Aug. 23, Bush…volunteered his afternoon schedule: a meeting with Rice, a phone call to the Argentine president, lunch with the first lady, a visit with the family pets, a call to his personnel office and a lesson on trees. "We've got a horticulturist coming out from Texas A&M to help us identify the hardwood trees on our beautiful place," he said.

On the 24th, according to the Washington Post, Condi Rice and Karen Hughes:

"Briefed" him on the Chandra Levy matter.

Photo: Associated Press



- posted by Sean @ 2:01 AM