taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Funny: The Daily Show’s GWB reelection film: ‘George W. Bush — Because He Says So’ (Quicktime MOV, 6MB). This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages.

Remember — don’t listen to the facts — listen to the words!

(thanks to anaxamander for the file. This URL is cached through CoralCDN, so pass it on!)

Tags: anaxamander, daily, film, funniest, funny, gwb, mov, quicktime, reelection, show, thing

TV: RTE’s ‘Prime Time’ secured a fantastic interview with GWB, with Carole Coleman asking a few very pointed questions. Watch it with RealPlayer, or listen to the audio in MP3 (2.7Mb).

There’s a pretty accurate transcript here:

Let me finish! How many times do I have to tell you how to do your job? See, I gotta insult France at least once. Then I gotta claim ‘merica to be the most generous nation in the whole wide world, even though it’s not true. And listen, let me mention that democracy in Pakistan, too. And guess what? I’m the first president to ever call for a Palestinian state and I’m damn proud of it - just look at the size of my smirk now. Listen, as long as I keep repeating myself and mouthing empty platitudes, you won’t have a chance to call me on any of the bullshit coming out of my mouth.

OK, the official one is here.

It appears that the White House just dropped the ball on this one; reportedly, they had her list of questions three days in advance, but given that they suggested that she ‘ask him a question on the outfit that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern wore to the G8 summit’ (!!!), they weren’t paying attention, and expected some kind of giggling moronic schoolgirl, or something.

Hilariously, the White House has since complained to RTE, the Irish Embassy, the Irish Government, and the reporter herself. Probably God, too. I doubt Prime Time will ever get a White House interview again, but given what they clearly expect from the poodles in the White House press corps, that’s hardly much of a loss.

(I’d love to see what’d happen if he had to deal with Paxman ;)

Also, went to see Fahrenheit 9/11. Fantastic movie, and best of all, incredibly well-attended.

My favourite moment: the reminder of just how easily the US news media sold itself out during the war. Seeing Katie Couric blurting ‘Navy Seals rock!!’ like some kind of starstruck 5-year-old with an Action Man toy, was a classic. It’s good to see that this will be immortalized in celluloid, as it was truly shocking at the time. (Not much has changed; Judith Miller is still writing for the NYT.)

Tags: gotta, gwb, house, interview, irish, kind, prime, rte, time, tv, white

Iraq: OK, I’ve been keeping quiet on the whole Iraq thing — so far, it’s pretty much turned into what I was suspecting would happen once GWB declared ‘Mission Accomplished’, and now there’s lots more people saying what I previously felt wasn’t being said. However, I’ve just heard something that really winds me up.

Richard Perle was being interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s PM show about the torture at Abu Ghraib. He made a comment to the effect that ‘at least the Abu Ghraib incidents weren’t as bad as Saddam’s use of the human shredder’.

First off, two wrongs do not make a right, and the neocons needs to stop assuming that this is an excuse.

Secondly, the human shredder story is uncorroborated rumour from a single person in Northern Iraq, and no evidence has ever found to support it. All evidence points to the opposite.

But if we let it pass without debunking, this one’s going to go down as ‘history’, alongside the ‘babies thrown out of incubators’ story from Gulf War I, and the ‘bayoneted babies’ story from 1914.

Tags: abu, accomplished, evidence, ghraib, gwb, iraq, mission, shredder, story, the, thing

Craig links to the livejournal of Kim Jong Il, featuring IM logs with GWB — very funny.

Forteana: on a totally unrelated note — The Lab @ ABC.net.au notes:

An Australian neuroscientist claims he can conjure up the mysterious Australian outback phenomenon of the Min Min lights, now that he has worked out what causes them.

Fantastic description of how, exactly, he did this, by using a temperature inversion, and landscape features, to simulate it. Very interesting, and it makes a lot of sense. Another wierd ‘floating lights’ phenomenon explained… (link via the forteana list, of course).

The article also discusses the fata morgana__ phenomenon, in which landforms that are beyond the horizon appear to float above it in an inverted form. This is interesting, as it explains the Chinese legend of the Blessed Isles, which says that there’s a group of islands that appears infrequently floating above the sea, shaped like mushrooms (if I recall correctly, can’t find much about it online).

Tags: abc, forteana, gwb, jong, kim, lab, livejournal, neuroscientist, note, phenomenon