AddieStan

North Korea has declared its conduct of a test of a nuclear weapon, and geologists report seismic activity in the region that suggests Pyongyang is telling the truth. President Bush has called the test "a provocative act," which indeed it is -- leaving one to shudder at the thought of what response may be provoked. Let us not forget who we've got at the United Nations, representing U.S. interests. Yes, it's still John Bolton, the man who has expressed his contempt for that very institution. Pray that the gods of multilateralism hold out against the titans of go-it-aloneism. Your blogstress takes some comfort in the notion that the opportunities for Bush-friendly contractors seem somewhat minimal in an occupied North Korea.

From Reuters: Marijuana may stave off Alzheimer's WASHINGTON, (Reuters) -- Good news for aging hippies: Smoking pot may stave off Alzheimer's disease. New research shows that the active ingredient in marijuana may prevent the progression of the disease by preserving levels of an important neurotransmitter that allows the brain to function. Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in California found that marijuana's active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, can prevent the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from breaking down more effectively than commercially marketed drugs. If I could only remember where I left the bong...

President George W. Bush with Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev in the Rose Garden at the White House, Friday, Sept. 29, 2006, following their meeting in the Oval Office. White House photo by Eric Draper. This comment by our commander-in-chief caught your blogstress's delicate ear earlier this week, but being an easily distracted, prone-to-the-vapors sort of gal, your blogstress must concede that la tête de t'écrivaine was set spinning by the scandal, murder and mayhem that has besieged our benighted nation over the course of the last few days. What momentarily drew your Webwench's attention to the mystical realm of foreign policy was the president's description of Kazakhstan as "a free country." This he said with the dictator of that oil-rich Central Asian nation by his side -- Nursultan Nazarbayev, the dictator who has ruled the Kazakh people with an iron fist since before the republic gained independence in the disintegration of the Soviet Union....

Unlike many of her colleagues in the blogosphere, your blogstress does not find herself in a position to judge whether or not former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who has checked himself into a subtance-abuse rehabilitation facility , is actually an alcoholic. To make that determination, your cybertrix would have to take the former congressman's inventory , a practice strongly discouraged by the cult of powerlessness through which your Webwench became sober. Yes, one imagines rehab to be a good place to hide from scandal, and it would be a pity if that were the raison seulement for which the teen-eyeing politician sought entry. However, either way, the 12 steps he is likely to learn in that facility, if taken to heart, could help with the management of that behavior, as well.

Normally a rather docile creature, content to drift from lingerie emporium to chocolatier , your blogstress today, alas, finds herself in a position that requires the unsheathing of her mighty sword of rhetorical wit. This crusade arises from a very poorly executed attack on your Webwench by one of the resident liberal wags of Fox News Channel, who has accused your cybertrix of writing things she never wrote -- a trick more typically used by right-wing commentators. Herewith, your écrivaine 's rebuttal: With (the Christian) God on her side, who needs facts? I don't find it particularly surprising that a Fox News commentator would resort to a factually challenged and misleading retort to an essay on Pope Benedict XVI 's recent geopolitical mischief in the Islamic world. I did, however, find it a bit alarming to see that modus operandi employed at The American Prospect Online , by Kirsten A. Powers . In her commentary, Who Should Apologize? (which includes an ostensibl...

Who knew that, in the land of liberals, there lives a pundit with designs on becoming the Ann Coulter of the left. At least that's how it seems. At The American Prospect Online , one Kirsten Powers uses your blogstress's essay on the pope's dastardly comments about Islam to falsely accuse , by implication, your Webwench of justifiying the violence conducted against women and Christians by Islamists and their leaders. But at no point does Powers thoughtfully address the central premise of your the point made by your cybertrix: that the pope's remarks were irresponsible, and designed to provoke the response they got.

Among the many unsettling things your blogstress heard tonight from disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was a call for the imposition of a literacy test for parole from prison. From the podium of tonight's gala at the Family Research Council Action PAC Washington Briefing , Newt also seemed to call for Congress to shut down the 9th Circuit federal court. (That would be that troublesome group of federal judges located in San Francisco.) More tomorrow. Bon soir, mes amis.

What won't your blogstress do for her devotees? Today, for instance, she has been at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, feeling the hate pouring off the rostrum of the Family Research Council Action PAC " Washington Briefing " gathering for "values voters." (Don't all voters have values? Otherwise, what would be the point in voting?) While there was so much more hate to report on than your cybertrix has energy for at this late hour (imagine Ann Coulter, L. Brent Bozell and Gary Bauer speaking from the same podium on a single day), it was Bauer who took the cake in the category of hard-core demonizers of his opponents. Most interesting was Bauer's swipe at Senator John McCain (R-Az.) for his refusal to accept the White House version of a bill that would have created unconstitutional tribunals for so-called "enemy combatants" that also would have permitted some forms of the "inhumane and degrading treatment" forbidden by Article Three of the...

In the U.S., the top stories today focus on who's dissing us now at the big rectangle on the East River (a.k.a., the U.N.). In Germany, the top story also focuses on the U.S., but there the big news is the disclosure of the identities of three CIA contractors who abducted an apparently innocent man, Khaled el-Masri , from where he was staying in Macedonia, then beat him and shipped him to Afghanistan, where he languished in a secret prison for five months. Because el-Masri is a German citizen, pressure is mounting on the German government to issue arrest warrants for the three, who, according to a European broadcaster, live in North Carolina. Spanish authorities are under similar pressure because the flight manned by the three originated on the Spanish island of Mallorca. According to Deutsche Welle : [M]any journalists wonder why it is taking prosecutors [so long] to find out more about el-Masri's case. In an article on Thursday, the Süddeutsche Zeitung wondered why German...

Did you think your blogstress had abandoned you, mes amis ? Tsk, tsk; you should know by now that at times the work of a blogstress will demand her removal from the world -- yes, even her own blog in the virtual world we call cyberspace -- in order to prepare herself spiritually and sartorially for all that lies ahead. And so it has been that your Webwench has been hunkered down in the Oppo Factory, mitts deep in a box of bon-bons , nose buried in theology and history texts -- and fall fashion magazines. The impetus for the history cramming was provided by those unfortunate comments about Islam uttered by the Holy Father from a podium in Germany. As for the fashion mags, well, your cybertrix hears that the pontiff does love Prada -- yes, the same Prada reportedly worn by the devil, whose identity, revealed this week by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez , is shared by a man named George W. Bush . In case you missed it, Latin America's socialist standard-bearer took some time out...

My last memory of former Texas Governor Ann Richards , who died yesterday , was of her needling fellow Democrats -- who wanted to avoid talking about gay rights and appear unified at the 2004 party fundraiser at which she payed host: “We are so unified,” said emcee Ann Richards, the former Texas governor, “that before their wives got wind of it, Joe Lieberman and Al Sharpton were on their way to San Francisco for a marriage license.” True to form, Richards, all wise cracks and cotton-candy hair, once again proved herself to be a character who, had she not existed, would have to be invented by a playwright with a queer eye... That quote is from your blogstress's coverage of that event for the Washington Blade . For more of your Webwench's musings on the the late doyenne of Texas politics, go to TAPPED , the blog of The American Prospect Online .

NBC News In response to your blogstress's musings on the great Clash of Civilizations published at The American Prospect Online on the 5th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, the mail is rolling in. From the land of Tom DeLay (she notes with some irony), your cybertrix received this well-reasoned missive from a reader less cynical than she: Dear Ms. Stan: [Your blogstress loves it when they call her "Ms."] I read your article at The American Prospect Online with interest, however, I do feel that we need to combat what I see as a fundamental misperception which is common in America and is actively promoted by the President and his minions. In your fourth paragraph, your friend states “They hate our way of life…” In the next paragraph you partially agree with her conclusion. That is where I would disagree. If you want to know why we were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, I think it would be wise to ask the people doing the attacking; after all, who knows their reasons better t...

So the president once again used the tragedy of the September 11th terrorist attacks to justify every lie he's told to the American people, every transgression of the U.S. Constitution his administration has executed and unleashing of unspeakable violence on a nation of Arabs who had nobly endured the tyranny of the despot who ruled them, and the cruelty of policies intended to starve the despot out of office. Non, mes amis , your blogstress is not surprised by what she heard tonight from the Oval Office, but she finds herself nonetheless enraged. Vying for most audacious line in his speech is the president's quoting of Osama bin Laden 's description of al Qaeda's offense against the West as "World War III." Mr. Bush failed to mention the use more recent use of that description by one Newt Gingrich , the disgraced former Speaker of the House. Also in competition, however, is the president's appropriation of Gingrich's " clash of civilizations ...

As I write, President George W. Bush is addressing America on the subject of the attacks of September 11, 2001. He defined the enemy that committed those attacks as one that "hates freedom, rejects tolerance and despises all dissent." The same could be said of his own administration, no?

On this somber anniversary, your blogstress contemplates the ballyhooed clash of civilizations between the West and the Islamic world -- and concludes that the clash is real. Read it here , at The American Prospect Online .

The folks at Media Matters for America have apparently prevailed in their challenge to ABC's entertainment division for its politicization of the upcoming anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, prompting ABC to re-edit its docudrama, "The Path to 9/11," which depicts Clinton administration officials as dismissive of the threat posed by al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden . Media Matters also won the day with Scholastic Inc. , which produced and distributed accompanying classroom materials that were misleading and contained factual errors. Great work, folks! Now, can anybody explain why the reputation of 9-11 commissioner Tom Kean , who served as a consultant to the project, isn't marred by this? Obviously, coming so close to the November mid-term elections, the presentation would likely have, whether or not by design, the effect of shoring up the Republicans' fear-mongering message. Kean's son, Tom, Jr. , is challenging Democrat Robert Menendez for the U.S...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Even as the indefatiguable Brian Ross of ABC News broke a blockbuster story revealing the Bush administration's flexible standards for evil-doers in its so-called "War on Terror," the ABC entertainment division appears poised to enter the political fray on the side of the Bushies -- and against former President Bill Clinton and the Democrats -- in its dramatized depiction of the events that led up to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. That the docudrama, "The Path to 9/11," will air nationally less than two months before mid-term congressional elections in which national security issues will take center stage, shows the willingness of ABC honchos (note: ABC is owned by Disney) to throw in with the Republicans in a most blatant way. If you have any doubt, mes amis , consider the fact that while Bill Clinton was denied a review copy of the mini-series, Rush Limbaugh and a handful of other right-wing commentators were visited by ...

St. Jude as he stands in the New Orleans Chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe near Congo Square On Rampart Street, just west of New Orleans's historic and sacred Congo Square , sits a sweet little Roman Catholic chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe , the image of the Blessed Mother Mary said to have appeared to a Mexican Indian on Tepeyac hill, just northwest of what is now Mexico City, in 1531. She is often referred to as the patroness of the Americas. When Africans were brought as slaves to Louisiana in the early 1700s, they found it necessary to syncretize their native faith traditions with those of their European captors; it was the only way to keep their own traditions alive. This gumbo of West African and Roman Catholic practices gave birth to voudoun -- what we now call voodoo -- as well as the Brazilian tradition of candomblé , and the Latin American Santeria rituals. As an icon, Our Lady of Guadalupe has a distinctly Mexican Indian appearance, right down to the anatomi...

NEW ORLEANS, LA. -- On the line at McDonald's on Canal Street (it can't all be gumbo and jambalaya, y'all), your blogstress, wearing press tags, was approached by a woman in her 30s or 40s, who offered a piece of paper bearing the following message: What is Esther's Haven House? Esther's Haven House is a non-profit organization that provides emergency safe accomodations for battered women and children. These women are housed free of charge and given the tools to restore their lives. Temporary refuge, job placement assistance, security, access to healthcare, childcare assistance and referral to educational resources for children are all provided. Our ultimate goal is resettlement of the family in a new, safe environment. ALL FREE OF CHARGE. We help as many women as our resources allow. If you want to help us help these families, please make a donation today! Esther's Haven House • 1900 St. Claude Avenue For More Information Contact: Kiesha Keller 504-872-946...

NEW ORLEANS, LA. -- New Orleans legend Dr. John has a message for your blogstress's devotees, and for all Washington liberals. Check it out on TAPPED, the Weblog of The American Prospect Online .