Top Ten Cloves: Possible Reasons Moammar Gadhafi Is Not Being Buried At Sea

News Item: Gadhafi body stashed in shopping center freezer


10.  Secret plan to just dump him in Zuccotti Park, and blame OWS crowd


  9. Can't find a Sea that will take him


  8.  Libya doesn't have a Navy anymore


  7.  Not sure if there were enough Front Page Death photos to warrant it ...


  6.  Conflict with the World Series


  5.  Everybody too busy reading new Bio on Steve Jobs


  4.  Waiting to see if Groupon issues a discount coupon for it


  3.  Negotiating with Will Ferrell to just do a cheap dramatization of it


  2.  Talking with the Head of The Charles Regatta, to see if they can handle it


  1.  President Obama has already used up his "Frequent-Burial-At-Sea" miles for the year


 


Bonus Riffs


BBC: Row over Muammar Gaddafi's body delays burial plans


Mary Hockaday: The challenges of reporting Gaddafi's death


Craig Silverman: The Story of the Gaddafi Story - How news of the Libyan leader’s demise spread on Twitter


Top Ten Cloves: Possible Places Muammar Gaddafi Is Hiding


Top Ten Cloves: Possible Disney Navy Seal Team 6 Movies To Be Release


Top Ten Cloves: Things Ex-President Hosni Mubarak Might Do When He Steps Down

Top Ten Cloves: Possible Places Muammar Gaddafi Is Hiding

New Item: Qaddafi’s Complex Falls to Revolutionaries


10.  Near the epicenter of the big East Coast Earthquake


  9.  Detroit - Grab one of those $1000 houses, and toss an idea, or two, to Mayor Dave Bing


  8.  At Hewlett Packard (he forced them to spin off PC Unit)


  7.  Sneakily, behind Hurricane Irene


  6.  As Rick Perry's Campaign Manager


  5.  The Kardashian Wedding


  4.  Some place the Navy Seals can't find him


  3.  The London Riots (he may have thrown a rock, or two)


  2.  As an anonymous,  wage-less writer for Huffington Post


  1.  With LeGone James - One non-finisher, with another

Map of the Day!

Last week, we gave Juan Cole's post "Quote of the Day", on the Israeli announcement of housing expansion on the day Vice President Joe Biden arrived to, hopefully, jump-start the stalled peace talks, and now, causing a good deal of tension.

Today, he follows up (with pointers to the blog flare-up, between Andrew Sullivan and Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, with additional commentary from Spencer Ackerman and Matthew Yglesias) with more;

The Map: The Story of Palestinian Nationhood Thwarted After the League of Nations Recognized It

As part of my original posting, I mirrored a map of modern Palestinian history that has the virtue of showing graphically what has happened to the Palestinians politically and territorially in the past century.



[snip]

The map attracted so much ire and controversy not because it is inaccurate but because it clearly shows what has been done to the Palestinians, which the League of Nations had recognized as not far from achieving statehood in its Covenant. Their statehood and their territory has been taken from them, and they have been left stateless, without citizenship and therefore without basic civil and human rights. The map makes it easy to see this process. The map had to be stigmatized and made taboo. But even if that marginalization of an image could be accomplished, the squalid reality of Palestinian statelessness would remain, and the children of Gaza would still be being malnourished by the deliberate Israeli policy of blockading civilians. The map just points to a powerful reality; banishing the map does not change that reality.

Phew!

You can almost look at that map and think it was shaken, like an Etch-A-Sketch.

Go read Juan Cole's "The Map: The Story of Palestinian Nationhood Thwarted After the League of Nations Recognized It", it's a good briefer on what's all the fuss going on.


Bonus Bonus

Steve Clemons, over on The Washington Note, has a bit of fun, creating some hijinks, reworking, tongue-in-cheek, an AIPAC press release;

The AIPAC Statement We Need But Have Not Gotten (Yet): Netanyahu Government Needs to Remove Daylight Between US & Israel

Quote of the Day!

When Vice President Joe Biden returns home, from his humiliating visit to Israel, the White House chef should cook him up a big ol' ham steak, to go with the egg on his face.

Juan Cole has the Quote of the Day, in his "Abbas Reported to have Withdrawn from Israeli-Palestinian talks; Obama Mideast Policy Sabotaged by Netanyahu";

Since 1949, the US has given Israel over $100 billion in direct aid, and the indirect forms of aid are orders of magnitude greater. That the vice president of the United States (and therefore the president himself) were ambushed by the prime minister in this arrogant and nearly sadistic manner raises the severest questions about why US taxpayer money should flow in such enormous amounts to a country that is actively and on a massive scale violating the Hague Agreement of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 on the treatment of populations by occupiers. And this at a time when the US budget deficit is ballooning and there is not enough government money to take care of the needs of US citizens. The argument that Israel is a security asset for the United States is undermined if the Israelis are provoking enmity toward the United States among 1.5 billion Muslims by their inexorable annexation of Palestinian land and daily oppression of the Palestinian people.

[snip]

Obama is in real danger of seeing his allies lose respect for the United States once they see that Israel can treat him in this humiliating way with impunity. The security implications for the US are enormous. Many European allies feel strongly that Israel is an aggressor state in the region, and when Obama asks them for help in the fight against al-Qaeda, they may feel that Washington's coddling of Israeli colonialism produced much of the radicalism that they are now asked to spend blood and treasure combating. Moreover, many leaders may be emboldened to treat Obama and Biden just as Netanyahu did, if the latter faces no consequences for his impudence.

To embellish this circus, maybe they can make Eric Massa the new Ambassador to Israel.

New Bush Export - Preemptive Horseshit!

Maybe this is the secret weapon to to steady the faltering economy.

It seems the Bush Grindhouse, led by The Commander Guy himself, are launching a new policy export - Preemptive Horseshit.

The first client buying, or, certainly help shoveling, the horseshit, is Fouad Ajami, who Eric Boehlert called, in Salon, "The media's favorite Arab expert".

If you were wondering what a blow job looks like in the Wall Street Journal, you'll have to read Ajami's "Bush of Arabia", were he offers the hummer of "But Mr. Bush is traveling into the landscape and setting of his own legacy. He is arguably the most consequential leader in the long history of America's encounter with those lands."

It's as wet, to Bush, and Scooter Libby, as his "Fallen Soldier" wet kiss last June.

And, here we have Bush, in a series of interviews with Arab journalists, in preperation of his Legacy Shopping Trip to the Middle East this week, waxing, without a shred of reality present, on his potential legacy, heaping praise upon himself without a hint of modesty.

Here's a gem, a passage, from Dan Froomkin's "Bush's Messiah Complex", in which he says "As it turns out, the president sees himself as quite the heroic figure";

"I can predict that the historians will say that George W. Bush recognized the threats of the 21st century, clearly defined them, and had great faith in the capacity of liberty to transform hopelessness to hope, and laid the foundation for peace by making some awfully difficult decisions," Bush told Yonit Levi of Israel's Channel 2 News. Bush held several interviews with Middle Eastern journalists last week in anticipation of his trip to the region, which starts tomorrow.

"When he needed to be tough, he acted strong, and when he needed to have vision he understood the power of freedom to be transformative," Bush said of himself to Nahum Barnea and Shimon Shiffer of the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot.

As for the people of the Middle East, Bush told Hisham Bourar of al-Hurra Television: "I would hope that they would say President Bush respects my religion and has great love for the human -- human being, and believes in human dignity."

The Bush record, the president told Nadia Bilbassy-Charters of al-Arabiya Television, is one of liberation -- "liberation, by the way, not only from dictatorship, but from disease around the world, like HIV/AIDS or malaria."

Got that?

In the same article, a different view;

"As for real-time views of Bush's legacy, Abramowitz and Knickmeyer write: "In Arab streets, many blame Washington for the plight of Iraqis and Palestinians. Bush's presidency has been 'disastrous,' said Hisham Kassem, an Egyptian journalist who received a National Endowment for Democracy award from him last fall. 'America's neither feared nor loved. It's neither feared by the regimes anymore, and it's hated by the people of the Middle East. . . . That's the Bush legacy.'"

Froomkin wraps it up, most appropriately;

"Bush's view of himself is particularly delusional as he heads to a region that remains traumatized, angry and distrustful on account of Bush's disastrous war in Iraq, his antagonism of Iran and his perceived crusade against Islam."

Go to Froomkin's "Bush's Messiah Complex", it's chock-full of these type of delusions.

And, regarding his Mideast trip, the victory-less, victory-lap, Warren P. Strobel, of the McClatchy Newspapers, has in his report;

"The official Arab view of Bush was summed up inadvertently by a diplomat from a major Arab state, who indicated disbelief that the president will use the trip to renew his drive for Middle East democracy.

"Is that still on?" the Arab official replied sarcastically. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.

Bonus Bush Delusional Links

Maha: Welcome to the Asylum

BraveNewFilms: Quote of the week, Bush: "I'll be dead..."

PrairieWeather: Wanking with #43, poor chap

Libby - The Newshoggers: Bush on Bush

Kagro X - The Libby Letters: Fouad Ajami

The Condoleezza Rice Ballroom Dancing & Charm School - Or: Shopping For A Legacy on Cyber Monday

The Garlic's Weekly Poll Is Back!

Well, Well, Well ... We have our Garlic Poll back up-and-running ...

Lo siento for the delay ... While there has been (and continue to be) some minor technical glitches, and my non-blogging time has been a bit burdened lately, that's still no excuse for being so remiss in letting it lag ... Again, my apologies ...

We're back with a good one this week.

While other events take center stage, the Bush Grindhouse is out legacy shopping again, so weigh in with your vote.

And, for the handful of diehard poll fans, here are the results of the last two polls.

This years' National Thanksgiving Turkey should ...

1. Look up at the President and ask who really is the turkey in the room Tally 65%

2. Make sure it gets a pardon, and not a commutation Tally 21%

3. Stay as far away from Dick Cheney as possible Tally 7%

4. Run around, making a lot of noise, claiming its been tortured Tally 7%


If Condi Rice is having trouble managing the Dept. of State, she should ...

1. See about ordering the book ''State Department for Dummies'' Tally 59%

2. Ask the President if she can talk to his Higher Father for some advice Tally 21%

3. Volunteer herself for one of the posts in Iraq Tally 10%

4. Sell rights to Donald Trump for new show ''State Department Apprentice'' Tally 10%


This week’s Poll - President Bush's sudden attention to a Middle East Peace Plan likely has to do with ...

Scroll up to the top right corner to place your vote

Condi! Whose Cup Are You Drinking From Lately?

Power comes from lying ... Lying big and getting the whole damn world to play along with you ... Once you got everybody agreeing with what they know in their hearts ain't true, you get them by the balls

Senator Roark, from “Sin City - That Yellow Bastard”

Just curious there, piano girl, but do you ever see yourself on television? Do you review your public statements, so, theoretically, you don't go out the next time and put your knee-high-booted foot in your mouth?

I ask, you see, due to you, our Nanny of State, last week, while in Russia, chastized the Russian government, and its' leader, Vladimir Putin, over what appears to be a consolidation of power;

"In any country, if you don't have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development," Rice told reporters after meeting with human-rights activists.

"I think there is too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. I have told the Russians that. Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the independence of the electronic media and there are, I think, questions about the strength of the Duma," said Rice, referring to the Russian parliament."

First off, when did the memo go out that Russia was a beacon of democracy?

Are they going with an a la carte democracy, or did they buy the Starter Kit, complete with a ready-to-go Constitution and a bonus set of "Mission Accomplished" banners?

And, if they are installing the Bush-Style Democracy, they shouldn’t have any problems complying with their FISA Act, being, if it takes a week to make a phone call, there's plenty of time to get down to the courts for the warrants.

Secondly, and here you have the boatload of irony, did it occur to you there Missy ... Well, better asked ... Is not having countervailing institutions and "the power of any one president" a problem for already-established democracies?

I'm surprised Putin didn't laugh in your face and shoot back - "You, mean, like in your country!"

We know that our Nanny of State has been out of the limelight for some time (although, Barry Crimmins has the scoop that she was "found by the BBC"), so maybe you've got, I don't know, a Vitamin D deficiency, or something, going on ...

I mean, there's the above lulu (almost as good as when here work husband, The Commander Guy, uttered, with similar straight face "I'm aware of the fact that perhaps somebody in the administration did disclose the name of that person ...") and there's the one last month, when you equated Zarqawi To Ulysses S. Grant And Robert E. Lee ...

Whose cup are you drinking from down there?

Is it the pressure of being husband-less? ... The new rumors on your lifestyle? ... Still steamed about the Pope blowing you off?

I don't know, with you now running off to the Middle East, you might be tempted to try to kick-start a late-second-term-facing-saving-Mid-East-Peace-Plan that calls for ... I don't know ... Something like the Palestinians to have their own state...

Oops!

Bonus Condi Girl Links

Michael J.W. Stickings/The Reaction: Headline of the Day (Condi Rice edition)

Glenn Kessler/Washington Post: Transformed By Her Bond With Bush; Rice's Loyalty Brings Power and Pitfalls

Top Ten Cloves: Things About Condoleezza Rice Becoming NFL Commissioner

Our Girl Condi Gets A Theme Song - Neocons and Lovers