Gall and Galloway

This is taken from my blog, The Office of the Independent Blogger.

Christopher Hitchens is an interesting columnist -- a former Dove turned into a Neoconservative -- and George Galloway is -- aside from a man who called the Soviet Union's demise a day for which for him there was great mourning -- well, special. Today, they had a debate that was furious in tone and rhetoric.

Before taking the stage, Hitchens had handed out leaflets to the crowd outside documenting Galloway's cozying up to such despots as Saddam Hussein and Bashar Assad. (Hitchens later described Assad as "the slobbering dauphin who rules Syria only because he is the son of the slobbering dictator who ran Syria.") Hitchens began by asking for a moment of silence for the 160 Iraqis killed by terrorists earlier that day "on their way to work and as they were preparing for upcoming elections." As Hitchens no doubt expected, a few hecklers refused to honor the dead.

"George Galloway had to leave the Labor Party after publicly advocating jihad on British troops," Hitchens reminded the crowd. Galloway, who called the U.S and Britain "rogue states," stumbled when he brought up 9/11: "You think those planes came out of the clear blue sky? I think they came out of a swamp of hatred we created." When the boos subsided, Hitchens chided him. "You picked the wrong city to say that in, arguably the wrong month as well." Hitchens later said, "To come here after embracing these bloodstained bastards, and to tell us we deserve it — that's too much." Attacking "this hypocrite Hitchens" for inconsistency, Galloway said, "You were an angel, but now you are working for the devil — and damn you!"

Warms your heart to hear a man that loves the Soviet Union and admires the Hussein Regime call anyone, especially an editorialist, a "devil."

Last night, the President spoke and it was an excellent speech. You've all heard me, no doubt, say that the President is a moron and criticize his actions quite vociferously, correct? Well, yesterday's speech was the kind of thing that I thought this country needed and which I believed no one could possibly screw up. I was wrong.

I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.

How insensitive, how inhumane, how wrong. It's been sad before, many times, that the Bush White House has no policy apparatus and is merely a political machine, interested not at all in policy but only in maintaining their power with issues like gay marraige. This news is enough to make me jump to certain conclusions. (Hint: That the Republican Party is shameless and shouldn't be allowed to control the government.)