Headlines of the day

Bad news: Most of the press praies Bush for traveling to Baghdad to show support of the new Iraqi government but last night CNNI had his news conference, and one bimbo asked Bush wasn't it an insult that he didn't notify the Iraqi president before he landed.
So I guess this is the new spin:
Bush drops in unannounced on prime minister (note: Story originally from The Washington Post)...
sigh.

Good news: French jail 25 "islamic militants" for plotting to bomb the Eifel tower and possibly use chemical weapons.
But what is interesting is that they were convicted of "..."criminal association in relation with a terrorist enterprise", a broad charge which covers numerous crimes.."
Hmmm....maybe we need to send the Gitmo prisoners to a French court..
---------------
Update: NYTimes lets one Gitmo suspect lament about how he innocently was caught while on a simple vacation...Roger Simon points out:Later he writes: I was eventually released and I will go on trial next month in Paris to face charges that I've never denied, that I spent two months in the Qaeda camp. Oh, really? Those were the charges? Did the Times' vaunted fact-checkers bother to check or were they too mired in their reactionary world view to investigate. Unfortunately for them, by a strange quirk of fate, Mr. Benchellali and his beloved family - the ones who invited him on his "dream vcation" - were sentenced yesterday in France..

In related news, the Canadian terror suspects are claiming "torture"...hmmm...sound familiar?

Bad News: Ed Koch points out how the press constantly criticizes the US (and Israel) when the try only to target murderers, yet gives a pass when those murderers deliberatly target civilians.....On the other hand, when Israelis mistreat their Bedouins, they are not helping matters.

Good news: Lileks has a take on AlQaida documents found HERE:
there are issues that need to be addressed.
1. The Crusaders have made several dozen raids since al-Zarqawi's release from mortal concerns, and each raid leads to more. I must repeat: Stop printing out Google Maps and leaving them around. At least clear your browser history, brothers.
2.You may have read reports that al-Zarqawi had in his possession a tiger-skin negligee. This is infidel propaganda. He was a man of the highest moral standards. The suggestion that he made his bride, whom he nobly made full with child when she was 14, wear such a sinful garment is meant to weaken your spirit, and make you think of slim, dark-eyed, ripe women draped in the clothing of wild beasts, lips parted, exhaling the softest perfume of --
3. All warriors must take four cold showers a day, not two.

Bad News: Celebrities move on...HIV not trendy anymore..
Guess there are just too many ribbons to clash with your dress.

A more obvious indicator of the flagging interest in AIDS in the entertainment industry is the absence of the once-omnipresent red ribbon, which not too long ago was a de rigueur Oscar accessory.It's been at least five years since AIDS Project Los Angeles was asked to hand them out at the award shows, Thompson said. "I'm not sure people over the last few years were even noticing them anymore."Now there's a ribbon for everything and every color and every cause," he said. There's pink for breast cancer, yellow for testicular cancer, light blue for tsunami relief."If they wear a red ribbon, they have to turn down the ribbons of four other organizations," he said of the dilemma faced by celebrities. "It just became too politically difficult to wear one at the expense of another. We've acknowledged that people have moved on."
Poor Celebrities. SUCH a dilemma...

Good news: US has new poet lauriate...Donald Hall....link2....LINK3
Bad news: his poems seem like bad prose to me...for example...poem Wolf Knife:
In the mid August, in the second yearof my First Polar Expedition, the snow and ice of winteralmost upon us, Kantiuk and I attempted to dash the sledgealong Crispin Bay, searching again for relicsof the Frankline Expedition...
Right.
PDF of poems HERE...you judge.

The problem of modern poetry is best summarized in poet Dana Goia's essay HERE...Summary:
Poets should be teaching us new and delightful ways of expressing ourselves, but instead have become marginalized even in the literati subculture.

As one poet put it: LINK
Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savour life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!”.
Artists of the world, may your many different paths all lead to that infinite Ocean of beauty where wonder becomes awe, exhilaration, unspeakable joy.