in one of the greatest things ive ever seen

(click miss costa rica for the video)

kids, this is why you need to study in school, so that if some asswipe tries to pull you into a public situation accussing you of all sorts of bullshit (some of which may be true) you will come out of the fight bruised a tad but victorious.

George Galloway didnt read from any fucking teleprompter yesterday in washington, he didnt have a manila folder of bullshit at his fingertips to distract him. he had a chip on his shoulder, a well organized plan of attack, and he looked at his enemy the way adam sandler looked at quarterbacks in the waterboy

like they had baby heads.

and then he popped them off one-by-one like a kid in a dandelion patch.

here are just three simple chunks from a delightful 45 minutes of holding ones own, and then some. if Mark McGuire had taken tips from this dude, he’d still have a shot at getting in the Hall.

“Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one – and neither has anyone on my behalf.

“Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.

“Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are – let’s be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had ‘many meetings’ with Saddam Hussein. This is false.

“I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as “many meetings” with Saddam Hussein.

“As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country – a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defence made of his.

…

“You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry, provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country now realise played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq.

“There were 270 names on that list originally. That’s somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster.

“You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I’ve never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he’s your prisoner, I believe he’s in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places.

“I’m not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong.

. . .

“Now, the neo-con websites and newspapers in which you’re such a hero, senator, were all absolutely cock-a-hoop at the publication of the Christian Science Monitor documents, they were all absolutely convinced of their authenticity. They were all absolutely convinced that these documents showed me receiving $10 million from the Saddam regime. And they were all lies.

“In the same week as the Daily Telegraph published their documents against me, the Christian Science Monitor published theirs which turned out to be forgeries and the British newspaper, Mail on Sunday, purchased a third set of documents which also upon forensic examination turned out to be forgeries. So there’s nothing fanciful about this. Nothing at all fanciful about it.

“The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It’s a proven fact that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.

“Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life’s blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

“Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

audio and video here + buzzmachine ignores it? + metafilter certainly didnt

by tony pierce

for the hotties. right, mr. rushdie?

mainly. but also because my hero the instapundit, doesnt seem interested in it any more.

over the last few days two incredibly juicy stories about the never-boring Bush administration popped up and very few of my favorite warbloggers including the mightiest one chose to even acknowledge them.

the first happened on friday when President Bush’s Uncle, Jonathan Bush, (his daddy’s brother) found himself in a Saudi money-laundering scheme.

Uncle Jonathan works for Riggs Investment Management, a “major” arm of Riggs Bank, who was fined Thursday for a record $25 million for violating anti-money laundering laws when it failed to report millions of dollars of cash withdrawls from Saudi accounts.

Jonathan Bush not only works for Riggs, he is President and CEO of Riggs Investment Management.

“Riggs failed to properly monitor, and report as suspicious, transactions involving tens of millions of dollars in cash withdrawals, international drafts that were returned to the bank, and numerous sequentially numbered cashiers’ checks,” the Treasury Department said last week.

Riggs Bank, the Associated Press describes as having a “near exclusive franchise” on the banking needs of Washington DC embassies, serving 95% of them including the Saudi one.

of course.

so where’s my favorite university law professor on this one?

bro gets 150,000 hits a day, more eyeballs than most local newspapers, doesn’t he think that any of them would be fascinated to learn that the president’s uncle, the brother of the first george bush, is the CEO of a company that is very closely tied to monies that may have funded some of the terrorist acts committed on 9/11?

i mean, fuck, man.

the last time Riggs was mentioned by the instapundit was about six weeks ago when Newsweek reported that the feds had identified about $27 mill in suspicious transactions from the Saudi Embassy through the president’s uncle’s bank. Transactions that included “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to muslim charities being investigated for funding terrorist activity.

“keep tightening the screws,” the Instapundit typed.

last week they did just that, and what does Prof. Reynolds choose to talk about today instead of this interesting lil tidbit of the $25 mil fine? oh, gay marriage, a link to a restaurant in manhattan that serves caviar omlettes, the debate over watching films in law school classes, and a few paragraphs on an article about an ROTC cadet in “Campus Life” which the most powerful blogger on the web sez is “pretty interesting”.

pardon me while i continue not to give a fuck about the opinions of a random rotc cadet via campus fucking life.

the feds said that Riggs didnt even pretend to monitor the activities of its richest client until they were forced to last year and then began letting the government know that the Saudis were wiring $461,341.72 in Jan of 2003 to the Muslim World League who has officials abroad who have been linked to al Qaeda, on top of the 25-30 other suspicious 2003 transactions that totaled over $25 mil.

i admit that im a hack.

i tell everyone straight out, dont believe me, im full of shit.

and i try to prove it by making up lies that super hot chicks come to my apartment night after night and watch tv with me, and party, and get naked, and make sweet lust to me as today’s sounds play through my computer.

but the instapundit is supposed to be the real deal.

smart and stuff.

which is why when i hear about such bizarre fucking dealings going on between a new Bush and the Saudis the first place i go to is prof. reynold’s incredibly popular site.

and people say to me, dude, he didnt cover rummy’s testimony earlier this month, he knocks kerry for anything he can, hes a shill, hes on the take, hes another foxnews guy in the making.

and im all, shut up, we had beers and talked about tractor punk a few years ago.

and they go dude.

and then they just go.

the other story was just some little thing from pulitzer winning investigative reporter seymour hersh who says that the cia tells him that rummy expanded a highly secretive operation originally intended to find Al Qaeda, to include the aggressive and sexual interrogation of prisoners in Iraq.

Hersh says, “The instructions were let’s get tougher, let’s use much more coercion, let’s use sexual intimidation because it’s� in the Arab world that’s the easy way to make somebody talk and maybe you can even get somebody so frightened he’ll go back into the community and become an asset.”

the article which will be published in the May 24th issue of the New Yorker is already getting reviews from the pentagon:

“This is the most hysterical piece of journalist malpractice I have ever observed,” said Rumsfeld spokesman Lawrence DiRita.

and yet not interesting enough for my boy glenn.

maybe if campus life covers it, the good professor might give it some pixels.

n and x + why does this chick hate me? + toronto 1051 + just one bite

today

you know your party is going well when you turn around and see this guy looking at you.

every party is going to have its share of randoms, but the quality of your randoms defines the quality of your bash.

most people judge parties by the quality of hot chicks, amount of beer on tap, or the variety of exotic drugs in the candy dishes.

but if you dont have those things then you dont even really have a party in the first place so step bitch.

any hollywood gettogether is going to attract beautiful people and rock stars and tv stars and superheros and runaway teens from maryland, bloggers, and theives. and youre going to get those who either were invited by the invited of the invited, or who overheard the address, or who just walked by and got lucky.

bad parties will have drunken frat boy water polo beer bongers who keep jamming the steve miller into the boom box even though the stereo is bumping bitches brew.

bad parties will have coked out mods hogging up the only bathroom applying eyeliner and sniping and ignoring the knocks at the door from people who seriously need to pee.

bad parties will have sleepy neighbors kicking the floor which is your ceiling and call the cops and peek through the blinds once the cops come and tell you that they dont like the smell they dont want to know anything about and the other cop says sir is that absinthe?

and i submit that these parties can be predicted, determined and graded by the quality of strangers who find their way into your home for the festivities. if you look around and see assholes, kick em out, they will fuck the shit up, ruin the mood, and tweak the vibe.

if you look around and see a dude with some jrr tolkien shit tattooed on his arm guzzling a miller high life sporting an eighty five bears super bowl shuffle tshirt and an excellent fake british accent, then you can take off your shoes and enjoy the bash cuz its gonna be okay.

mc brown is the other red flag youve got to look for. if he’s in the house that trumps four or five dumbasses.

if you look around and cant find a random, you’re probably the random. even in your own house.

my terrible memory was exposed when a beautiful young woman reminded me that she and i took in a concert together back in san francisco. apparently we had seen victoria williams at the great american music hall and youd think id remember even some of that, especially with such a pretty girl, but nope. zip. nada. thanks, xbi.

and i was the only drunktard dumb enough to be sipping the baby blue absinthe all night, in big gulps at first, and then waterered down slurps once the walls started moving and the voices started speaking czech.

the hallucinations were vivid and fluid. i coulda swore i saw like five six people on my bed listening to weezer and singing along.

i could have sworn i saw a butterlfly flutter in with a record player and prince’s purple rain on vinyl.

and thats where things get fuzzy.

and last night i went to bed, caught by the sun, and this morning i woke up with the worst hangover ive ever had.

so bad i needed two asprin.

thanks all the nice people who came and drank and smoked and had a great time.

i had a great time too.

you really should have a blog.

youre wasting good shit on a dude who lives very very far from you and is twice your age and wouldnt appreciate you, probably, no matter how many promises you keep.

i will get to some of your questions but you ask too many for one week let alone one night and i have to wake up early (10a) tommorrow so i can go to the doctor before my insurance runs out. ive been healthy as a horse for years, my bee sting was cured by a fifty cent box of baking powder of which i used perhaps a halfpence.

theres a doc on ifc about the z channel which was around before hbo here in southern california but for some reason i didnt have it and never heard of it even though i used to go art films in the eighties all the time with michele which speaks to your point about everything happening for a reason.

michele was a great girl and i was the most innocent midwestern virgin youve ever met. even though we dated on and off for three years we never had sex until it was totally over for us and i was at ucsb. so for three years we saw gregorys girl and my life as a dog and the gods must be crazy and starstruck and my beautiful laundrette and sammy and rosie get laid and it seemed like every single movie that we went to was awesome.

now. michele was like a goth hippie punk. when i was growing up in hangover park illinois i didnt know anything about goths let alone punks and who knew you could actually also be a hippie on top of it.

i envisioned surfing, dating blonde girls who wore bikini tops 24/7 and maybe skateboarding when i wasnt working for a record label. how was i to know that i was going to learn poetry and journalism and kissing and movies and vegetarianism and malibu and the cure u2 bowie velvets dylan all from this ghost with black hair and ruby red overlipsticked blue eyed local.

similarily no one writes like you. dont worry that you cant write like janet finch. dont worry that you cant write like hemingway. bukowski couldnt write like hemingway either but thats what the beer was for, so it didnt seem that much more uglier to buk while he was writing it.

we are all dirty little fucked up snowflakes with less time to live lucky to fall on the eager tounge of tomorrow let alone today

sparkle with every ragged corner you havent already chewed off

highlight every twisted flaw and watch it add to your glimmer

the problem we have with books we put down is that there isnt enough originality there isnt enough passion there isnt any magic there and i say there isnt any magic there because theres no friction theres no risk

the risk for you is to not write like steinbeck

the trick is to figure out why you werent born an old white man and why the lord made you you

iron maiden figured it out and we’re grateful for it

as did bella donna

evel knievel

and lemmy

another thing to remember is that we’ll probably both be gigantic failures at all of this, however if the only true victory is a norton anthology or a pocket guide, then pretty much everyone is a failure and we know thats not true,

plus how many norton anthologies do you actually read when yr not in college?

similarily, how often do you go to the technorati top 100 to find a blog to read. never. so dont buy into the hype.

think about all the great kisses youve had

a girl like you has probably had so many youve forgotten about many of them

hell ive never been a pretty girl and ive forgotten about lots

for every great kiss youve had youre capable of turning a good line, and if you keep typing soon you’ll have so many good lines and then might forget the old quote, the more i practice the luckier i get.

practice hitting publish.

of course im getting “tested” tomorrow, you should get tested at least once a year even if you use the safest techniques known to latex.

and no, i take pictures every day.

xiaxue lives up to the hype + the la times BLOG links matt welch