Quick Hits

The more I read, the more I want to write about, which makes me read more, and so on, and so on...

• More on the Thai coup. They've apparently had 18 such uprisings since 1932. The Prime Minister was wildly popular in the countryside but hated by the elites in Bangkok. There's very vague talk of "corruption" being the problem for the PM. I'm not getting how the goal of the world according to Bush needs to be spreading freedom and democracy, and yet the military takeover of a democratically elected government can go off without a peep.

• Harry Reid and Dick Durbin try to be funny and they actually sort of succeed. The fact that the biggest boobs in the Bush Presidency have received medals for their incompetence deserves to be mocked.

• Amnesty International calls Hezbollah war criminals for targeting civilians, and the UN criticizes Israel for dropping cluster bombs on civilians in Lebanon, most of them falling in the last three or four days after a framework of a ceasefire agreement was already in place.

The point of similarity there is "targeting civilians," which is abhorrent no matter who does it.

• Hugo Chavez: now there's a guy who won't be making CBS' Free Speech segment! Honestly, the "Bush is the devil" thing is ridiculous. I don't like the guy's policies and his politics. I may have an opinion on him as a person but I honestly don't believe in "pure evil" or anything like that.

• According to the head torture lawyer John Yoo, we have to torture now instead of back in the day because the US faced no security threats in the 1970s. This will come as news to Leonid Breshnev and everyone alive in America at the time, who all collectively had thousands of Soviet missiles pointed at their heads.

• DC in the Republican era: So much corruption, so little time.

There is so much political corruption on Capitol Hill that the FBI has had to triple the number of squads investigating lobbyists, lawmakers and influence peddlers, the Daily News has learned.
For decades, only one squad in Washington handled corruption cases because the crimes were seen as local offenses handled by FBI field offices in lawmakers' home districts.

But in recent years, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and other abuses of power and privilege have prompted the FBI to assign 37 agents full-time to three new squads in an office near Capitol Hill.

Yeah, THAT'S not hurting the war on terror.

• Finally, I need to book a flight to Iceland.

Pop star Bjork is to rejoin her former bandmates in The Sugarcubes for a one-off concert in Iceland.
The gig in November will mark the group's 20th anniversary, according to a statement on the singer's website.

Anybody that can help me out with that, give me a ring.