A great SNL Digitial video by Andy Samberg, a love letter to Ahmadinejad with Adam Levine singing background. 

It would have been easy to miss, since the Seattle Times made it practically invisible and it showed up at the back of section A today, but here it is: Saddam Hussein would have been willing to walk away from Iraq, prior to the start of the war, for the low, low price of $1 billion and some state secrets on nuclear energy. It ran originally in the Washington Post:

Less than a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein signaled he was willing to go into exile as long as he could take with him $1 billion and information on weapons of mass destruction, according to a report of a Feb. 22, 2003, meeting between President Bush and his Spanish counterpart published by a Spanish newspaper Wednesday.

The newspaper, El Pais, leaked what was apparently the transcript of the meeting on its web site (this is Google’s translation). El Pais has been openly critical of the Iraq war.
Though they discussed alternatives, it appears that Bush was unwilling to back down from attacking, or giving the U.N. more time to search for weapons of mass destruction or gain more allies from U.N. members:

Bush made it clear in the meeting that he expected to “be in Baghdad at the end of March.”

So where does that leave us? Hundreds of billions of dollars in the hole, hundreds of thousands of Americans and Iraqis dead, a sinking economy (anyone else thinking of shifting their investments to the loonie or the yen?), and the laughingstock of pretty much the entire world. How’s this related to say, Iran president Ahmedinejad’s visit to New York this week? Had you ever heard of the president of Iran before the war in Iraq, much less one who’s as standoffish and critical of the U.S. and Israel?
To attempt to garner more support for the war, Bush allegedly even attempted to use strong-arm tactics such as getting Congress to hold off on approving free trade agreements.

Bush agreed to continue trying to sway Security Council members, saying “countries like Mexico, Chile, Angola and Cameroon ought to know that the security of the United States is at stake. (Then-Chilean President Ricardo) Lagos ought to know that the Free Trade Agreement with Chile is waiting for Senate confirmation and that a negative attitude on this could endanger ratification.”

And, once again, confirmation from this report that Bush could have easily stopped this war before it began, had he been so inclined:

Later in the conversation, Aznar asked: “Is it true there’s a possibility Saddam Hussein might go into exile?”
“Yes, it’s possible,” Bush responded.

The writer Shalom Auslander, whom you can hear regularly on This American Life, has a new book coming out in a few weeks called Foreskin’s Lament, a memoir of growing up as an Orthodox Jew. He didn’t much like the experience. It looks like it will be one of the big books of the season. He has a great essay up on Nextbook about the trappings of success. Money quote:

I think about all the douche bags I see—puffing their chests out on TV, demanding Cristal and vanilla candles in their dressing rooms—and I wonder if they ever worried. There had to have been a first photo session, a first interview, a first dab of concealer, a first fluff of their hair. Did they worry then? Because I do. Because I don’t trust myself. Because it feels good, this moderate attention, this occasional praise, and I worry I’ll get hooked. “First one’s free,” says the crack dealer, and fame is the worst drug of them all. At least crackheads only urinate on themselves; fame addicts piss on everyone. And so I wonder if they ever thought, early on, “Uh oh.” If they ever thought, “This isn’t me, I don’t want to be this asshole, I want to stay honest, I want to stay real, this is not me,” and six months later they’re wearing large white-framed sunglasses and fur coats and talking about themselves in the third person and asking to be photographed on their good side when every side of them is rotten. Are they their own worst nightmares, or just mine? If I enjoy it, any of it, what will I look like in five years? What will I sound like? Dinner at the Ivy and back home to work on another Hollywood chase scene? And so, terrified of getting knocked up by the cock of success, I abstain.

(Hat Tip: Gawker)

FromScience Blog  A kosher vending machine that works 24/6.

And a New York Times aricle here

I was just checking out Amazon’s new music downloads, and came across this song [choose track 7] - sort of a Sha Na Na story of a bris and the supposed alternatives. I’ve heard Devendra Barnhart’s name kicked around on KEXP on occasion, but I’d never heard him actually sing before. His new album, Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Mountain, was released today, and it sounds pretty good. Check it out…