Needless to say, it was all about Halliburton. The story’s everywhere by now, but I read it first at Wonkette:

CNN is reporting that on the floor of the Senate yesterday, Dick Cheney told Sen. Pat Leahy, “Go fuck yourself.”

We agree! Go fuck yourself — while it’s still legal!

UPDATE: Speaking of sodomy. . . Wonkette operatives tell us that the fighting words sprang from an exchange in which Cheney told Leahy he didn’t like what Leahy had been saying about Halliburton, to which Leahy replied that he didn’t like Cheney calling him a bad Catholic. So you’d see how “Go fuck yourself” is the only appropriate response.

Nobody says it quite like Wonkette.

But seriously, this doesn’t look good. Is this acceptable behavior, on the floor of the Senate, no less? Is our VP, the guy who’s a heartbeat away from the presidency, in control of himself?

UPDATE: From Sirotablog.

Cheney On Civility and Respect in Washington
CLAIM:

“Governor Bush and I are also absolutely determined that [we] will restore a tone of civility and decency to the debate in Washington.”
– Dick Cheney, 8/4/00

CLAIM:

“I look forward to working with you, Governor, to change the tone in Washington, to restore a spirit of civility and respect and cooperation.”
– Dick Cheney, 7/25/00

FACT:

“Typically a break from partisan warfare, this year’s Senate class photo turned smiles into snarls as Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly used a profanity toward one senior Democrat, sources said.” Cheney “blurted out the ‘F word’ at Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont during a heated exchange on the Senate floor… The incident occurred on Tuesday in a terse discussion between the two that touched on politics, religion and money, with Cheney finally telling Leahy to ‘f— off’ or ‘go f— yourself,’ the aides said…Cheney, who is president of the Senate, ripped into Leahy for the Democratic senator’s criticism this week of alleged war profiteering in Iraq by Halliburton, the oil services company that Cheney once ran…During their exchange, Leahy noted that Republicans had accused Democrats of being anti-Catholic because they are opposed to some of President Bush’s anti-abortion judges, the aides said. That’s when Cheney unloaded with the ‘F-bomb,’ aides said.”
– CNN, 6/24/04; Reuters, 6/24/04

* Also…remember, White House Chief of Staff Andy Card attacked Senator Kerry for using the F-word, saying, “I’m very disappointed that [Kerry] would use that kind of language. I’m hoping that he’s apologizing.”

For many more utterly priceless examples of GOP double standards on the F word, go to Patriotboy now!

Links in this update are via Eschaton.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The WaPo has the story and they actually use the F word, uncensored! What will this do to our children?

In Josh Marshall’s absence this week, a slew of other DC insiders are blogging over at TPM, and two of them each wrote a lengthy piece on why Kerry should pick Edwards as his running mate. Each hints that the word in DC is that he is still leaning toward Gephardt or Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, and each states unequivocally that these selections wold be wrong. They’re great posts.

With so many blogs and news programs and pundits buzzing on this subject, there’s precious little I can add — except to reiterate how sorry I’d be to see Kerry steer away from Edwards solely because he is “uncomfortable” with him. Being uncomfortable with a vice president sometimes seems like a requirement, as with Kennedy-Johnson and, even more notoriously, Reagan-Bush. The decisions weren’t based on comfort levels, but on realpolitik, i.e., what would be strategically smartest.

I don’t think choosing Gephardt would ruin the race for Kerry, and it may help in a few Midwest hot spots. But this pales in comparison to the infusion of energy and charisma that Edwards would bring the ticket. There was a reason Edwards rose out of nowhere to do so well in the primaries, and it’s his blend of optimism, populism, intelligence and youth. Gephardt’s got the populism part, but none of the others.

I would be disappointed at the selection of Gephardt on more than one level, my personal lack of enthusiasm for the man aside. It would confirm a concern I have about Kerry being a bit out of touch with what the people are looking for in their leaders. It would confirm a concern among some that he lacks imagination and bravura, going for what he sees as a “safe” and “comfortable” pick. (The fact that he went after McCain proves this point is invalid, but again, it’s about perceptions, and picking Gephardt creates a definite perception, one that I see as a strong negative.)

Sorry for going on about this, but at the very moment this campaign needs a breath of fresh air, a stunning rebound, I fear it may shoot itself in the foot.

John, if you are reading this now, I ask you to consider carefully. It’s not about comfort, it’s about winning. Make Gephardt your secretary of state or of labor or whatever — after you win. But for now, keep your eye on the prize and do whatever it takes to capture the public’s imagination and its votes. See your VP candidates through the voters’ eyes, and ask yourself honestly and objectively, which one is going to energize and inspire Americans, Gephardt or Edwards? I don’t think there’s any debate.

This is the strangest story I’ve seen in a long time. I always wondered what judges did behind that high bench.

Truly shocking — Muslim children re-enact the beheading of Nick Berg in this amazing video clip. They’re having so much fun. Terrorists on training wheels.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

What are you waiting for? Very funny, and very rich in content, links and graphics.

Via UggaBugga.

The Bishop of Xuanhua was arrested on May 27 and was never heard from again. This is the third Roman Catholic bishop arrested in China over the past month, but the other two have since been released.

A strongly-worded statement demanded an explanation from China, which has long sought to control religious expression.

Its millions of Catholics are split between followers of Pope John Paul II and members of a state-backed church….

BBC religious affairs correspondent Jane Little says the Vatican response indicates it has lost patience with China.

It called the bishops’ arrest “inconceivable in a country based on laws”.

“The Holy See feels deep pain for these actions, for which no explanation has been given,” said Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls.

They breached “the rights of the person, in particular religious freedom, that are sanctioned in numerous international documents, also underwritten by the People’s Republic of China”.

Thanks to a post at China Letter, I see that China Daily has printed an opinion article that actually takes the CCP to task for banning minors from using Internet cafes over the summer.

The decision to bar youth from Internet cafes deprives the right of young people with no access to personal computers to make use of legitimate business operations.

A better way to protect China’s youth and at the same time respect their right to Internet access is to strengthen control on the cyber content provided by public Internet outlets. It is technically feasible to use software to block pornographic or excessively violent content.

Strengthened regulation always incurs costs. It means the government will have to spend more resources than simply issuing an all-round ban.

But it may be a better solution.

It’s kind ot tame, and it doesn’t touch the far bigger and more controversial issue of the government’s paranoid obsession with controlling what citizens do on the Net. But the writer is absolutely correct — the summer ban sounds like a really bad idea. And I doubt if the young people are going to be very appreciative of the CCP’s concern for their well being.

Reed is no flaming liberal. Here’s his thoughts on Fahrenheit 9/11.

Michael Moore leaves no turn unstoned. There are multitudes of shattering, seminal moments in his brilliant Bush-whacking documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, that reveal more about the cynicism, greed and ineptitude in the U.S. government than you will ever learn from any sound bite on the right-wing late-night cable-channel blabfests, but one will stay with me forever. Forget about the “official” reports from the White House about the activities of George W. Bush on the fateful morning of Sept. 11, insisting he learned about the Al Qaeda attacks while meeting with Florida pre-schoolers and quickly dashed from the room to save the country. The truth, it is now revealed, is that he was informed of the first attack on the World Trade Center before he even entered the schoolroom, and he decided to continue with his photo-op anyway. There he is on camera when Andrew Card informs him of the second plane and utters the fatal words, “We’re under attack!”—but he continues to read My Pet Goat for another seven minutes, his eyes sliding sideways in his puzzled face, like a moron looking for a bathroom, until his staff insists that he leave. (He stayed for another half hour.) If nothing else, that defining moment says volumes about what we can expect from the President of the U.S. in the center of a supreme, history-altering crisis: He’s just clueless.

And this man is the veritable king of the world. He can determine who is thrown into prison for as long as his minions see fit, with no hope of appeal, without even a lawyer. He can decide the fate of the earth with the touch of some buttons.

There are other moments that will impact some viewers and polarize others. So many, in fact, that you watch Fahrenheit 9/11 with disbelief, and leave shaking with rage. Sometimes sarcastic, always funny, Mr. Moore is armed with facts, and he presents them accurately and succinctly. The controversial filmmaker stated on the Today show that White House mouthpieces have denounced the film as “outrageously false” without seeing it, and right-wing Republicans have charged Mr. Moore with staging a “left-wing conspiracy” to influence the forthcoming election. Well, duh. For years, reactionary conservatives have been famous for staging right-wing conspiracies of their own to disgrace and discredit elected Democratic public officials. Maybe this is payback time. Whatever it is, everyone should see Fahrenheit 9/11 first—before debating the issues. The purpose of any documentary is to influence opinion. But instead of the customarily droning voice that comments on the action and tells you what to think, this one asks tough, logical questions, gets rational answers, and never loses its entertainment value.

This is a long and incredible review, and I urge you to read the entire thing. I never knew Rex Reed had it in him. I’m blown away.

Of course, having not been able to see the film yet, I can’t say whether it is great or terrible. But I sure think I have a good idea. I’ll confirm this on Friday, when I’ll be the first ticketbuyer on line for the first performance in Arizona.

Note: I plan to write my own review of Fahrenheit 9/11 later this week. This is a look at some of the reviews to date.

I’ve always believed that Michael Moore needs to be taken with a gigantic grain of sea salt.

I’ve also always believed he is brilliant, funny, artistic, and a true muckracker. One must never rely on him for the entire story, whether it’s in regard to guns in America, the Iraq war or Saudi influence over Bush. He is not a documentarian, he is an entertainer, a film maker and a propagandist. That doesn’t mean he is not valid, or that he should be slighted or ridiculed. Quite the contrary.

I’ve been delighted to see the flood of positive reviews for Fahrenheit 9/11 today. Many of them make the same point, which is: Say what you will about Moore, but he is brilliant at what he does, and what he does is important.

Of course, at its roots, “Fahrenheit 9/11” is no laughing matter. It calls George Bush and his tight band of cronies a bunch of irresponsible fools who have led the United States into this war without reason. Does Moore play with the order of events or edit out parts of speeches or, in other words, manipulate the film and its viewers? Maybe, but he also backs himself up with corroborative facts.

Michael Moore’s purpose as a filmmaker is to teach, unflinchingly, what those facts are. And he does so in gloriously rabble-rousing manner. He’s a sort of modern day Thomas Paine, unafraid to say what he feels, and damn the establishment. After all, for those of us who believe in what he says, and shows, the establishment – in this case Bush – is all wrong.

The best single piece I’ve read is Andrew O’Hehir’s review in Salon, which goes so far as to compare Moore to Dickens and Solzhenitsyn.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is an enormous film, an angry film, a flawed film and often a very, very funny film. There is anguish in it and death, and not as much coherence as there might be. It’s a political screed that makes our commander in chief look like a simpering dolt (and also like the instrument of a massive machine he cannot control), but — as in the horrifying scenes where Bush sits in that Florida classroom reading “The Pet Goat,” clearly nonplussed, while people dive from the twin towers — it is not entirely devoid of a certain curious compassion for him. It contains multitudes. In its bigness and rage, its low humor and its sentimentality, it has something of Whitman, something of Twain, something of Tom Paine. Love him or hate him, Michael Moore is becoming one of the signal artists of our age.

O’Hehir’s most significant point is that moore is not a journalist, but a story teller. He has an agenda, he takes a side, he has a point to get across. The storytelling and the comedy — Moore uses these to give you a picture you won’t get from reading the NY Times.

My point is not to damn Moore as a fabricator, but rather to suggest that from early in his career there were signs that his true calling lay not in journalism but in storytelling, or, more specifically, in the dangerous and difficult territory that lies between them. In the years since “Roger and Me,” he has become an increasingly skillful entertainer and propagandist, probably the closest American parallel to Dario Fo, the Italian radical clown, satirist and Nobel laureate. Moore might be understood as a court jester in the vein of King Lear’s Fool, whose burlesques and exaggerations and farcical asides are meant to cast light into shadowy regions where the sober, scrupulously neutral Ivy League guys and gals of mainstream journalism dare not venture.

This is crucial. Some critics watch the movie looking for holes, the way Chrtistopher Hitchens did in a beautifully worded and terribly weak and silly review yesterday. Of course Moore is going to be slippery at times. He isn’t documenting history so much as getting us to think. And in a world where so many outspoken “journalists” (Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, Horowitz, Shapiro, O’Reilly, etc.) go to criminal lengths to embellish what is actually being presented to us as journalism, I think Moore should actually be congratulated for having so few slippery spots in a work being presented as entertainment.

Maybe we need to look at Michael Moore the way we do at great war poets like Wilfred Owens, who I wrote about some months before. Bear with me for a moment. Owens is not really a reporter or a documentarian, and yet he is telling us the story of World War I as he sees it, from the very narrow perspective of a soldier experiencing the gore and the horrors of the battlefield. True, he doesn’t give us perspective on the geo-political factors that led to the conflict, nor does he describe opposing points of view. It is just his story as he sees it, the flying streams of intestines of disemboweled young men, the soldiers chocking to death on gas as white froth oozes from their lungs…. It’s not complete. It’s not necessarily a fair picture. It paints a hideous portrait of the masters of war, sitting in their parlor rooms in London sipping Courvoisier as an entire generation is sent into the meat grinders in Ypres and Verdun and Gallipoli. But that does not make Owens’ telling any less great or less important or less valid. Moore may not be quite on this level of artistic genius, and he may want to perceive himself as a teller of The Whole Story and of The Complete Truth. All I am saying is that I think this is where he really belongs, in the realm of the gifted storyteller, as O’Hehir says.

The NY Times offersa strikingly similar review of the movie, contending that whether you agree with Moore’s worldview or not, the film’s artistry and power make it a must-see.

It is worth seeing, debating and thinking about, regardless of your political allegiances.

Mr. Moore’s populist instincts have never been sharper, and he is, as ever, at his best when he turns down the showmanship and listens to what people have to say. “Fahrenheit 9/11” is, along with everything else, an extraordinary collage of ordinary American voices: soldiers in the field, an Oregon state trooper patrolling the border, and, above all, citizens of Flint, Mich., Mr. Moore’s hometown. The trauma that deindustrialization visited on that city was the subject of “Roger and Me,” and that film remains fresh 15 years later, now that the volunteer army has replaced the automobile factory as the vehicle for upward mobility.

The most moving sections of “Fahrenheit 9/11” concern Lila Lipscomb, a cheerful state employee and former welfare recipient who wears a crucifix pendant and an American flag lapel pin. When we first meet her, she is proud of her family’s military service — a daughter served in the Persian Gulf war and a son, Michael Pedersen, was a marine in Iraq — and grateful for the opportunities it has offered. Then Michael is killed in Karbala, and in sharing her grief with Mr. Moore, she also gives his film an eloquence that its most determined critics will find hard to dismiss. Mr. Bush is under no obligation to answer Mr. Moore’s charges, but he will have to answer to Mrs. Lipscomb.

And let’s not forget that even my nemesis, Fox News, gave the picture highest marks last week:

It turns out to be a really brilliant piece of work, and a film that members of all political parties should see without fail.

As much as some might try to marginalize this film as a screed against President George Bush, “F9/11” — as we saw last night — is a tribute to patriotism, to the American sense of duty — and at the same time a indictment of stupidity and avarice.

Most of the reviews note that, unlike Bowling for Columbine, Moore depends less on his silly gimmicks and narration and more on actual video clips, without his bloviating in the background. This lets the viewer do more of his own thinking — although Moore no doubt wants to get his very pointed message across.

It looks as though, like it or not, Fahrenheit 9/11 is set to impact the nation in a way no other film ever has. I think we are so polarized it won’t have much effect on most viewers in terms of changing whom they’ll vote for. I certainly hope it becomes a hit among young people, notorious for not voting, not to mention the undecideds, who will have a big say in who our next president will be. After being pounded by the non-stop, deafening right-wing noise machine for years, Fahrenheit 9/11 should restore some terribly needed balance, despite Moore’s mischievousness and biases.

Guest-blogging over at TPM, New Republic writer John Judis has a smart piece on America’s irrational and self-injurious student visa policies in the wake of September 11.

The legislation establishing the Department of Homeland Security included a provision creating “Sevis.” a database for keeping track of international students. Each student would have to register with the Sevis. Last October, the Department of Homeland Security proposed that in addition to the $100 visa fee, every prospective student would have to pay another $100 to fund Sevis. The payment would have to be through a credit card or dollars. Universities have not objected to the program itself; but they have objected strenuously to imposing another fee on foreign applicants. “Having yet another thing students have to do to come to the US that they don’t have to do in any other part of the world will drive more people away at a time when enrollments are declining,” said one official from the Association of International Educators.

The universities, of course, are understandably worried about declining enrollment, but what is most disturbing about the administration’s program–and about its general approach to foreign students–is its hostile attitude toward the outside world. It’s fortress America applied to educational policy. Such an approach won’t necessarily prevent terrorist attacks, but it will in the long run encourage the anti-Americanism on which al Qaeda and other terrorist groups feed.

Judis begins the piece by pointing out how during the cold war, foreign students studying here was the best and cheapest way to promote democratic capitalism. And now we’ve made it next to impossible. This is a sore spot with me for personal reasons, and I just don’t understand why our government is so obdurate on this issue, which does very little for our national security but hurts us in all sorts of ways.