This story sent to me by a good friend in Los Angeles is inspiring. The life and death of a gay athlete....read it.
Lordy - why don't Bush and his crew just come out and say "we are gonna attack Iran because we want to. nah nah nah" and quit with all the bullshit?
Today's Iran is bad story has this money quote: this possibility (of Iranian involvement) is being looked at because of the sophistication of the attack and the level of coordination. By the Pentagon's logic, the killers must have been German or Swiss, who always attack with coordination and sophistication. God knows the Iraqis we have trained could not have pulled this murder spree off.
MSNBC had "breaking" news about the bad, bad Iranians, along with an immediate pixar animation of the alleged Iranian attack. The story was animated the moment it broke. Thank God. It is hard to hate the Iranians unless I can see them as stick figure gun men who are coming to kill American children and then eat all my Hot Pockets. CNN dutifully picked up the story and blared it on the internets. Fox I cannot abide so who knows what they are doing. A story about how Al Gore molested Obama as a child and Obama liked it and showed pictures of it to Hillary who posted them on her myspace page where she sends secret coded messages to Rosie...all of which has been verified by a man with a colander on his head at the corner of Hollywood and Vine.
Alas , in the dead of night one day this spring W will bomb... etc etc etc. Cuz we would hate the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud...unless, of course, it is our mushroom cloud...
This is another war of choice. It can be stopped.
Speaking of the "Breaking News" on MSNBC last night they concluded that the plan to kidnap and kill the American soldiers must have been done by Iranians because it was too sophisticated. The inference being that the Iraqi's we've been training for four years could not have pulled it off. However, they would have had to assisted because all of the checkpoints the Suburbans went through were Iraqi check points.
By the way, MSNBC, lose the South Park animation and actually make the soldiers walk. To quote Wayne's World - it's a war - spend some bucks.
Does anyone doubt that bombs will be falling on Tehran soon? Is anyone else as terrifed as me? These schmucks have lost two wars and they're going to start a third?
Bush and the Doughboy have to go.
The man who advertised on line to take it up the ass sans condom says Hillary gives HIM "cooties". hahahahaha. These is the kind of thought process that results in Presidents like W - they think arrogance and belligerence in a white heterosexual man is "strength" . While a clear headed women give them a bad "vibe" and "cooties". Hence the politicians we have had for the last 6 years spending other people's money, killing other people's kids, and wondering why anyone could be upset with it - because they are "strong" and show "leadership".
Andrew, your dick did not get bigger because you voted for Bush and it would not get smaller if Clinton wins. Self Hate is not a political platform.
God save us from more conservative government. We need liberal government to right the ship. ASAP. Andrew Sullivan sucks and not in a good way.
So, I was flipping through the channels on Sunday and caught a bit of Fox News Sunday. They were talking about the Libby trial and Britt Hume said that there shouldn't even be a trial. There was no crime. Juan Williams did say deal with it - there is a trial. What he should have said is that we shouldn't even be in Iraq - there were no weapons of mass destruction - there was no plan for occupation - there were no grown ups in the room to say sit in the corner and shut up! You don't want to discuss that, do you? You don't want to discuss the runup to the war because it is a big screw up that you took part in.
Poor, poor Britt. The delicious Libby trial is giving us insight into the Bush White House and it is not pretty. Those neo-con bastards just can't deal.
I'm loving every minute of it.
So glad you started this war. Good Job, George!
We do have a choice.
We all must do what we can to stop the Bush war machine. The people in the White House are insane. They want to ignite the world.
How very quaint of the Brookings Institute. They think Bush's Iraq failure might cause a war with Iran. Oh. My. Why is it so hard for intelligent people to see that BUSHCO WANTS THE WAR TO SPILL OVER TO IRAN? Chaos IS the strategy.
We are in deep, deep trouble. The closer one looks the more CONFLAGRATION seems to be the Bush/Cheney goal. Main Entry: con·fla·gra·tion
Pronunciation: "kän-fl&-'grA-sh&n
Function: noun Etymology: Latin conflagration-, conflagratio, from conflagrare 1 : FIRE; especially : a large disastrous fire 2 : CONFLICT, WAR
P.S. Here is some more bad news we have to contend with since dickless, idiot corporate whore "conservatives" have been in charge too long. As long as quarterly earning are up they will happily continue to destroy the planet and say global warming is a "myth." VOTE FOR LIBERALS! ALL THE TIME!
Is there anyone sadder and creepier right now in American life than John McCain?
and on a totally different note: Hillary wows them in Iowa. I love watching these people campaign. There is a fine line between over calibrating a message and being a smart campaigner. She is not as good as her husband - but here is the unexpected power of Hillary: -THE RIGHT HAS BEEN SO RELENTLESS IN INSISTING SHE IS A MONSTER THAT WHEN SHE ACTUALLY ARRIVES ON THE SCENE THE REALITY IS QUITE REFRESHING. So far expectations of Hillary are actually skewed in her favor. "Conventional Wisdom" is behind the curve, again. (if the "wisdom" is conventional is it really "wisdom". Is "conventional wisdom" actually just "the common assumption"?
I WOULD LIKE TO SUGGEST THAT "WISDOM" - CONVENTIONAL OR NOT - CANNOT EVOLVE IN SOUND BITES.
This is why I love the Clintons:
"When you are attacked, you have to deck your opponent," Clinton said. "I have been through the political wars longer than some of you have been alive. We've got to be prepared to hold our ground and fight back." Go Hillary...
Now then about the actual war and how it will play out in 08:
Here is the problem with attacking "those who voted for the war before they voted against it." Voting for the war and then voting against it is what the whole country did. Vox Populi voted for the war before they voted against it. Clinton and Kerry and Hagel and Warner all represent different segments of an electorate "that voted for the war before they voted against it." To repeat myself again. and again.
If would be lovely if the media had given equal time to the minority who were clear and correct about the war from the gate - such as me, co blogger Lynne, Gore, Webb, and Obama - listed here in order of importance. But they did not.
08 is going to be about Iraq. Sadly, it is not going to be about who was always right about Iraq. Liberals, who consistently deserve and earn respect by being the vanguard of American history, get no respect in the media. 08 is going to be about "adulthood" - that's my guess so far.
Adults 08!
The question all the "conventional" wisdom foamers ask about Senator
Clinton continues to be the wrong one. It is not "Can she win? It is WHO CAN BEAT HER?
There are people on both side who can beat her - but none of the announced candidates will come close. ( Rudy is B.S. - wait until the klieg light shines on HIM - Hillary will clock him. She runs even with him NOW - and we know her. Warts and all. We think we know Rudy G. - we don't. His support is based on an impression. )
Who can beat her? Arnold (can't run)....Hagel (isn't running) ....the list is painfully short. McCain has ruined his chances. Unless he becomes vice-president....after the Libby trial...hahahahaha...could happen...
Hillary Clinton's Mission Unaccomplished
By FRANK RICH
HILLARY CLINTON has an answer to those who suspect that her "I'm in to win" Webcast last weekend was forced by Barack Obama's Webcast of just four days earlier. "I wanted to do it before the president's State of the Union," she explained to Brian Williams on NBC, "because I wanted to draw the contrast between what we've seen over the last six years, and the kind of leadership and experience that I would bring to the office."
She couldn't have set the bar any lower. President Bush's speech was less compelling than the Monty Python sketch playing out behind it: the unacknowledged race between Nancy Pelosi and Dick Cheney to be the first to stand up for each bipartisan ovation. (Winner: Pelosi.)
As we've been much reminded, the most recent presidents to face Congress in such low estate were Harry Truman in 1952 and Richard Nixon in 1974, both in the last ebbs of their administrations, both mired in unpopular wars that their successors would soon end, and both eager to change the subject just as Mr. Bush did. In his '52 State of the Union address, Truman vowed "to bring the cost of modern medical care within the reach of all the people" while Nixon, 22 years later, promised "a new system that makes high-quality health care available to every American." Not to be outdone, Mr. Bush offered a dead-on-arrival proposal that "all our citizens have affordable and available health care." The empty promise of a free intravenous lunch, it seems, is the last refuge of desperate war presidents.
Few Americans know more than Senator Clinton about health care, as it happens, and if 27 Americans hadn't been killed in Iraq last weekend, voters might be in the mood to listen to her about it. But polls continue to show Iraq dwarfing every other issue as the nation's No. 1 concern. The Democrats' pre-eminent presidential candidate can't escape the war any more than the president can. And so she was blindsided Tuesday night, just as Mr. Bush was, by an unexpected gate crasher, the rookie senator from Virginia, Jim Webb. Though he's not a candidate for national office, Mr. Webb's nine-minute Democratic response not only upstaged the president but also, in an unintended political drive-by shooting, gave Mrs. Clinton a more pointed State of the Union "contrast" than she had bargained for.
To the political consultants favored by both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Bush, Mr. Webb is an amateur. More than a few Washington insiders initially wrote him off in last year's race to unseat a star presidential prospect, the incumbent Senator George Allen. Mr. Webb is standoffish. He doesn't care whom he offends, including in his own base. He gives the impression - as he did Tuesday night - that he just might punch out his opponent. When he had his famously testy exchange with Mr. Bush over the war at a White House reception after his victory, Beltway pooh-bahs labeled him a boor, much as they had that other interloper who refused to censor himself before the president last year, Stephen Colbert.
But this country is at a grave crossroads. It craves leadership. When Mr. Webb spoke on Tuesday, he stepped into that vacuum and, for a few minutes anyway, filled it. It's not merely his military credentials as a Vietnam veteran and a former Navy secretary for Ronald Reagan that gave him authority, or the fact that his son, also a marine, is serving in Iraq. It was the simplicity and honesty of Mr. Webb's message. Like Senator Obama, he was a talented professional writer before entering politics, so he could discard whatever risk-averse speech his party handed him and write his own. His exquisitely calibrated threat of Democratic pushback should Mr. Bush fail to change course on the war - "If he does not, we will be showing him the way" - continued to charge the air even as Mrs. Clinton made the post-speech rounds on the networks.
Mrs. Clinton cannot rewrite her own history on Iraq to match Mr. Obama's early opposition to the war, or Mr. Webb's. She was not prescient enough to see, as Mr. Webb wrote in The Washington Post back in September 2002, that "unilateral wars designed to bring about regime change and a long-term occupation should be undertaken only when a nation's existence is clearly at stake." But she's hardly alone in this failing, and the point now is not that she mimic John Edwards with a prostrate apology for her vote to authorize the war. ("You don't get do-overs in life or in politics," she has said.) What matters to the country is what happens next. What matters is the leadership that will take us out of the fiasco.
Mr. Webb made his own proposals for ending the war, some of them anticipating those of the Iraq Study Group, while running against a popular incumbent in a reddish state. Mrs. Clinton, running for re-election in a safe seat in blue New York, settled for ratcheting up her old complaints about the war's execution and for endorsing other senators' calls for vaguely defined "phased redeployments." Even now, after the Nov. 7 results confirmed that two-thirds of voters nationwide want out, she struggles to parse formulations about Iraq.
This is how she explains her vote to authorize the war: "I would never have expected any president, if we knew then what we know now, to come to ask for a vote. There would not have been a vote, and I certainly would not have voted for it." John Kerry could not have said it worse himself. No wonder last weekend's "Saturday Night Live" gave us a "Hillary" who said, "Knowing what we know now, that you could vote against the war and still be elected president, I would never have pretended to support it."
Compounding this problem for Mrs. Clinton is that the theatrics of her fledgling campaign are already echoing the content: they are so overscripted and focus-group bland that they underline rather than combat the perennial criticism that she is a cautious triangulator too willing to trim convictions for political gain. Last week she conducted three online Web chats that she billed as opportunities for voters to see her "in an unfiltered way." Surely she was kidding. Everything was filtered, from the phony living-room set to the appearance of a "campaign blogger" who wasn't blogging to the softball questions and canned responses. Even the rare query touching on a nominally controversial topic, gay civil rights, avoided any mention of the word marriage, let alone Bill Clinton's enactment of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
When a 14-year-old boy from Armonk, N.Y., asked Mrs. Clinton what made her "so inspirational," it was a telltale flashback to those well-rehearsed "town-hall meetings" Mr. Bush billed as unfiltered exchanges with voters during the 2004 campaign. One of those "Ask President Bush" sessions yielded the memorable question, "Mr. President, as a child, how can I help you get votes?"
After six years of 'Ask President Bush," "Mission Accomplished" and stage sets plastered with "Plan for Victory," Americans hunger for a presidency with some authenticity. Patently synthetic play-acting and carefully manicured sound bites like Mrs. Clinton's look out of touch. (Mr. Obama's bare-bones Webcast and Web site shrewdly play Google to Mrs. Clinton's AOL.) Besides, the belief that an image can be tightly controlled in the viral media era is pure fantasy. Just ask the former Virginia senator, Mr. Allen, whose past prowess as a disciplined, image-conscious politician proved worthless once the Webb campaign posted on YouTube a grainy but authentic video capturing him in an embarrassing off-script public moment.
The image that Mrs. Clinton wants to sell is summed up by her frequent invocation of the word middle, as in "I grew up in a middle-class family in the middle of America." She's not left or right, you see, but exactly in the center where everyone feels safe. But as the fierce war critic Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator from Nebraska, argues in a must-read interview at gq.com, the war is "starting to redefine the political landscape" and scramble the old party labels. Like Mrs. Clinton, the middle-American Mr. Hagel voted to authorize the Iraq war, but that has not impeded his leadership in questioning it ever since.
The issue raised by the tragedy of Iraq is not who's on the left or the right, but who is in front and who is behind. Mrs. Clinton has always been a follower of public opinion on the war, not a leader. Now events are outrunning her. Support for the war both in the polls and among Republicans in Congress is plummeting faster than she can recalibrate her rhetoric; unreliable Iraqi troops are already proving no-shows in the new Iraqi-American “joint patrols” of Baghdad; the Congressional showdown over fresh appropriations for Iraq is just weeks away.
This, in other words, is a moment of crisis in our history and there will be no do-overs. Should Mrs. Clinton actually seek unfiltered exposure to voters, she will learn that they are anxiously waiting to see just who in Washington is brave enough to act.
Had Friday's Keith Olberman with my Saturday coffee. DVRs are near to being the perfect invention. I have to admit - Chuck Hagel is an attractive candidate. He does give me pause. Real pause. What a strange election Clinton/Hagel would be. The GOP candidate slightly to the Left of the DEM on the war. And to the Right on everything else.
For a host of reasons I do think we need a liberal government for 4 to 8 years. Liberal as in FDR. I think we need a Marshall Plan type of government intervention when it comes to global warming and energy. WE SIMPLY CANNOT AFFORD FOUR MORE YEARS OF "CONSERVATIVE" ATTITUDES TOWARD GLOBAL WARMING. We are in real danger. A President beholden to the Fox News audience could very well do catastrophic damage with inaction. The Federal Government in this country is going to have to be aggressive in curbing CO2s. Also, the Robber Baron society created by Bush and the super wealthy has got to be reigned in - before - we'll just before....wealth imbalance like we have now in this country never turns out well. We need national health care. I really can't even engage an argument about it anymore. We are 20 years past due. We will leave Iraq no matter who wins. And in this country we need to be able to discuss "class" with modifiers other than "middle". How the top 1% and the bottom 20% came to be where they are has got to be a topic on the table.
The next President is going to have to raise taxes on the rich. Bush's war is being financed by unborn children. This is an obscenity.
Can Hagel deal with this? Of course. Does he want to? Bill Clinton did it the last time GOPS ran the country's finances into a ditch. Hagel is certainly up to it. I happen to think, like Newt G, it is Hillary's job to lose. And she or Hagel are as close as we are going to get to someone who can handle the many messes the Bush GOP has left us. Many many things can happen though. I do love politics.
Anyway, I, John in Los Angeles and my running mate - Monty Hall - (my overweight border collie) have set up a presidential exploratory committee. To go where Presidential exploratory committees have never gone before. Only he and I are on it - but things are moving fast. Carlton the door man, Mel Gibon's neighbor's maid's son, and Shirley Q. Liquor are hosting a big Hollywood fund raiser for us at Norm's by LAX - SAVE THE DATE!
I do love my Trojans. I hope that Reggie Bush and his parents did not screw the university over with their greed and stupidity. This quote from the LA Times is saddest of all:
"Griffin went to Los Angeles, where he and Bush used the cash to buy a 1996 Chevrolet Impala, "
Are you kidding me? Reggie, you endangered a National Championship, two conference championships and your Heisman - to buy 1996 Impala????? Say it ain't so.
IF true this is a sign of the end times. What ever became of tact and good taste anyway? I miss it. They were so 20th Century....
Regardless, the rapacious college presidents and television executives have slaves called "players" they cash in on big time. How is a 20 year old with greedy parents who is on the verge of a huge payday supposed to wait 2 years? Most do, I admit, but not all. The system is set up to use and screw the players.
John made valid points about Chuck Hagel's voting record but I have to say that the next president is not going to be able to accomplish much in the way of domestic policies. The next president is essentially a maid hired to clean up after a week long frat party. It's messy and disgusting and we need someone with a strong stomach to clean up that bathroom.
The next president is more than likely going to be a one-termer. He/She is going to be the Ford of our time. Stop the war and hopefully heal the country.
Who wouldn't vote for a Hagel/Powell ticket?
Poor Libby he was "Scapegoated" by the other vipers in the White House. So sad for Scooter. Now daddy dick is gonna say "you hurt my boy!! Karl and I am so mad at you."
Actually is is delicious to see these scumbags eat their own. Let them ALL rot in jail. God will sort it out eventually.
Bush said yesterday: "I've picked the plan that I think is most likely to succeed," Bush said in an Oval Office meeting with senior military advisers.
Military advisers thought "No, you created this mess we are in now - why the F*** should anyone believe you now? For F*** sake - shut up, resign, and go back to Crawford."
Cheney told Wolf Blitzer that the idea that blunders had been made in Iraq :"Hogwash"
Blitzer thought: Wow - this guy is truly out of his mind. I think he really believes nothing has gone wrong in Iraq. This is amazing. I think I love him. I can't wait to bring him home to meet Mommy.
hmmm what else? Bushco wants a fight with Iran. This is clear. They are also spoiling for a fight with congress.
I find this remarkable. Go look. How is this possible?
Oh my - there is no joy in what Bush is doing in our name in Iraq. But I had a moment of glee in reading that even the Vice President of Iraq says the invasion was an "Idiot Decision."
Good lord. Gotta love that. Even the peeps Bush installed think he is a moron.
They are, of course, correct.
And another thing - and I think this is really what is sticking in my craw about the over reporting of GOPs who are turning on Bush and his war of choice after 4 years - WHY DOES THE MEDIA GO APESHIT WHEN A CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN FINALLY COMES TO HIS SENSES?
Yes, Hagel is forceful now about the stupidity of the war. That's nice. RUSS FEINGOLD ACTUALLY STOOD UP FOR WHAT WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG. What we should be doing right now is examining how it is that yet again - THE LIBERALS HAD IT RIGHT YEARS AGO, AND NO ONE IN THE MEDIA LISTENED. How many times does this have to happen? Frankly, I am sick of the deification of the Johnny come lately Republican. Liberals like Obama and Feingold should be the focus of our admiration and respect now.
They were right all along. If we had listened to Feingold, and Kennedy, and Jack Reed and the rest a long time ago we would not be in this fix.
Was at church last night listening to a talk given by Chris Hedges. Strongly recommend that we all listen to him. So Tivo'd Keith O. and just watched Chuck Hagel. The ever intelligent and lovely c0 blogger Lynne and I may part ways on Hagel. I have deep reservations about his voting record - some of which is listed below.
I wrote last night there is no GOP on the horizon who COULD beat Hillary. Horizon being defined as assumed to be running. I think Keith is one of the few who have assumed this. If Hagel gets in I would, in fact, have a hard time choosing between Clinton and Hagel because Hagel has been so clear about the war. I would want him to run as an independent. Read this. Hagel is a true national hero for, in essence, calling Bushco what it is - a pack of liars.
War mongering is the most important issue right now - BUT it is not the only issue. Hagel's votes on many things are simply put, morally wrong.
But read this about Hagel, it is not pretty:
Voted YES on prohibiting lawsuits against gun manufacturers. (Jul 2005)
Voted NO on raising the minimum wage to $7.25 rather than $6.25. (Mar 2005)
Voted YES on repealing Clinton's ergonomic rules on repetitive stress. (Mar 2001)
Voted YES on killing an increase in the minimum wage. (Nov 1999)
Rated 100% by the Christian Coalition: a pro-family voting record. (Dec 2003)
Voted NO on disallowing an oil leasing program in Alaska's AMWR. (Nov 2005)
Voted NO on $3.1B for emergency oil assistance for hurricane-hit areas. (Oct 2005)
Voted YES on loosening restrictions on cell phone wiretapping. (Oct 2001)
Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. (Jun 2000)
Voted NO on $100M to reduce teen pregnancy by education & contraceptives. (Mar 2005)
Voted NO on including prescription drugs under Medicare. (Jun 2000)
Rated 12% by APHA, indicating a anti-public health voting record. (Dec 2003)
Voted NO on restricting business with entities linked to terrorism. (Jul 2005)
Voted NO on restoring $565M for states' and ports' first responders. (Mar 2005)
I am for Chuck Hagel for President.
I like Hillary but I love Senator Hagel. He is impassioned and reasonable. Watching him yesterday made me so proud.
We need someone who has convictions and will stand by them. We need someone who is willing to come in and clean up the massive mess that Bush and the Doughboy will have left.
Let's go Chuck.
The "surge" is about Iran. Not Iraq.
Former weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, has laid out a grisly and very plausible scenario for the attack on Iran. The US and the British, possibly with the aid of the Israelis, launch a missile attack on Iran. In retaliation, Iran will try to cut off all oil and gas flowing from the Persian Gulf. Also, Iran has an agreement with Venezuela that, if the US should attack Iran, then Venezuela will also cut off its exports to the US. Within one week, US motorists will be crying at the gas pumps and the US economy will be in danger of collapse. Bush will send in troops, but he will not have adequate forces available to even begin the job. US forces will be caught inside Iran and threatened with capture or destruction. As per his stated policy should US troops be overpowered, Bush will resort to nuclear weapons. And once the US drops nuclear weapons on the Middle East, the madness will not stop until we lose one or two US cities to nuclear retaliation.
I think President Hillary is a done deal. I like her. I am going to vote for her. I like voting for a winner and rarely get to - being a Democrat. She is going to win. No GOP on the horizon will be able to take her down. Obama is Howard Dean circa 2008. The sooner we all get over him the sooner we get on to winning the Presidency.
But I feel bad for her. Or anyone who might be President next. Bush is burning down the country, grabbing cash and running for cover between now and 2009.
However, I would walk out on the Clintons in a heartbeat if Gore got in the race. It is not exclusively Nader's fault Gore lost - but all that arrogant bastard had to do was tell his voters to vote for Gore in Florida. In one state. Think it doesn't matter? Think about the last 8 years.
Why has Ralph Nader never run for an office he could actually win? Why do otherwise thoughtful people on the Left who support Nader never ask this question? He could be mayor of Berkeley. A state rep. from Santa Monica. Lt Governor of Vermont. There are many places in this country Nader could actually implement policy. If he ran. If he meant what he says he would run in a race he could win. And yet he runs for President. He is no longer a serious man. He is an arrogant buffoon who gave us George W Bush.
Imagine. Gore could have won. Imagine. Decisive victory in Afghanistan, no war in Iraq, serious progress stopping Global warming, real alternative energy developed....etc etc etc.
Thanks, Ralph. Good job
Bush is so shameful and pathetic I ignored most of his blather last night while i waited for Senator Webb to speak. But one line Bush excreted really sticks in my craw: "Many in this chamber understand that America must not fail in Iraq "
America did not fail in Iraq, Mr. Bush. You did.
So many lies so little time.
When is this moron out of a job? There was no good reason to attack Iraq. It turned out just like many many liberals and moderates and true conservatives said it would. The war is making America's situation WORSE. Bush created this war.He and Rummy lost this war. He ought to send his daughters or get us out.
And is anyone else sensing a Bush vs. Cheney bitch fight brewing?
The first category of nominees for the Conservative Amoral Awards - popularly known as The Weenies- were announced this morning.
For Most Despicable Comment the competition was tough in 2006 but the five nominees are:
1. George W Bush for "Iraq will be just a comma..."
2. George Allen for "Maccaca"
3. Ann Coulter for "9/11 widows attack"
4. Rush Limbaugh for "Mocking Michael J. Fox."
5. Bill O'Reilly for "Do I care if Sunnis and Shiites kill each other?"
Mr. O'Reilly was also nominated in the Most Idiotic Rant and Gaseous Blowhard categories. He will go up against the Vice President in the latter category.
Hot new couple Ted Haggard and Mark Foley will present the award.
The Weenies will be hosted by Bill Frist . Mr Frist won the coveted GOLDEN ASS in 2005 for "Terri Shiavo Video Diagnosis."
Talking about 2008 seems a little early to me, what with the war and all, but if you look at the difference in the parties and who is running it's amazing that any minority would support the Republicans.
All of their candidates are white, rich men.
Meanwhile, we have a woman, a black and a Latino. We also have a plethora of rich, white men but the field running for President is much more representative of the United States. We had a woman on the ticket in 1984. A Jew in 2000. An openly gay man in the House. The Republicans may try to represent themselves as a big tent party but the non-white members are only there to hold up the poles and look good on TV.
Although, if the war continues to go the way it's going and we're still mired in Iraq in 2008 it won't matter who we run. We will win.
Today in Iraq: Here and here.
There will be a relentless meme to"look forward in Iraq" or a "we must have a new way forward." etc etc. But beware the attempt by the Bushies to avoid accountability. We cannot finally and totally learn the true lesson of Vietnam and this idiotic Bush created war without examining what happened, how it happened, and why. Too many people have died for no reason. Too many of our kids have been maimed and killed for no reason. We must find and affix blame. Unless we understand what happened we cannot heal. And this country needs to heal from 6 years of lies, deceit and cavalier contempt for our collective well being as a nation.
None of this had to happen. Thoughtful liberals and moderates predicted exactly this outcome in Iraq before the war began. Clear headed people knew and were vocal about the fact that Iraq had no WMD's and that it had no connection to Bin Laden.
These people were ignored because neo-cons, oil interests, and war profiteers wanted war.
In no particular order these are some of the people who need to be held to account for the international, unnecessary crisis in Iraq and our country. Some should be punished legally. Some should resign and apologize. Some should be removed from our political life, some should simply be ignored forever more. This is not a small mistake. The Neo-cons were so wrong, in such a large and destructive way, that they should be SHUNNED. And no - not everyone thought there were WMDs in Iraq. Many people did not. And said so. This lie is particularly putrid.
George W Bush
Dick Cheney
Condi Rice
Paul Wolfwitz
Andrew Sullivan
Fox News
Scooter Libby
Joe Lieberman
John McCain
Rush Limpbough
Jonah Goldberg
Ann Coulter
Judas Miller
Bill Kristol
Bill Frist
Newt Gingrich
Feel free to add to the list.
Some of these people are hucksters, some are just stupid, some war profiteers, some are just too arrogant to admit a mistake. A few are still true believers. People in mental hospitals around the world believe they are Napoleon. This does not make it so - and no one is giving them an army to fight with.
Laws have been broken. Lives ended and destroyed. People must be held responsible.
A sane near future is contingent on understanding the recent past.
OK - here's a great idea - let's send more troops in to Iraq and once again not give them armored vehicles.
The thousands of troops that President Bush is expected to order to Iraq will join the fight largely without the protection of the latest armored vehicles that withstand bomb blasts far better than the Humvees in wide use, military officers said.
Vehicles such as the Cougar and the M1117 Armored Security Vehicle have proven ability to save lives, but production started late and relatively small numbers are in use in Iraq, mostly because of money shortages, industry officials said.
More than 1,000 American troops have been killed by roadside bombs since the war began in March 2003. At present there are fewer than 1,000 of the new armored trucks in Iraq. At $500,000 to $700,000 each, they cost more than twice as much as a standard Humvee, but already they are proving their worth.
So, where is the $2 billion per week going? Into Halliburton's coffers? Apparently it's not going to "support" the troops.
This is the answer to the troop surge - if you cannot protect them with armored vehicles you cannot send them.
Newt G. is wrong about nearly all policy. But he engineered the end of 40 years of Democratic rule in the House. Not a small feat. He has damn good political instincts. He is one of the few that has stated clearly that Rove's genius was an illusion. This is true. I have said so on this blog. Rove lost 2000 and had to have James Baker and Katherine Harris step in. He won 2002. He barely won 2004 against a pathetic opponent. And lost 2006. He is 2-2. He is not a genius. He is a prick with a good work ethic.
Newt also assumes Hillary Clinton will be President. And I think he is right. She is gonna be one tough broad in every sense. T.T. = Think Thatcher. Her political instincts probably still suck - but who cares. Her husband's are the best.
Hillary is too far to the Right for me. Fine. I am with her anyway. The Dennis Kusinch, Phil Angelides, Eugene McCarthy loser wing of the Democratic party is consistent in two things: principles and losing.
(The Clintons are GOOD - she has moved so quietly and consistently Rightward the gripe against her on the actual Right as being a "loony liberal" seems laughable now. ) She has won the positioning primary and regardless of what Ms. Huffington thinks good repositioning wins elections. We DO NOT have a parliamentary system. The middle is what it is all about in this country.
I am perfectly willing to be wrong. I have been - in 2000 I thought Bush would serve only one term. Then Kerry did not respond to the Swift Boat bullshit for 3 weeks - and I knew by mid August of 04 nothing would make a difference. W had won.
I knew GW Bush was going to be President in 2000 way back in 1994 the night he beat Ann Richards.
In 1992 Bill Clinton had just come in 2nd in New Hampshire - 2nd! He went on 60 minutes and one could see right then that this guy was going to win.
And when did Bill Clinton win reelection? Watch his speech in Oklahoma City after the bombing. He was very unpopular 2 years into his first term - but watch that speech - it is the moment he became a two term President.
AND when did Bush the First lose reelection ? When he was at about 88% approval and did not know what a grocery store scanner was.... I turned to my father and said - "that guy just lost"
And he did.
Anyway I do not go back much further. My gut says Hilary is not only the favorite but the overwhelming favorite to win it all. It takes a strange combination of timing, and guts, and viciousness, and savvy, and positioning, and the right opponent and the backing of the largely unseen powers "that be" and frankly - she has been roasted by the FOX Rightwing for a decade. Her weaknesses are old news. And new "revelations" about her will be suspect and since she is not John Kerry "new" bull shit from the Fox News Toadies will be dealt with swiftly and brutally by her team.
She did spent too much money on her last election - and Newt is right here - Obama forced her to enter sooner than she wanted to. Fine. She is already polling ahead of McCain and even with Rudy G. Which is to say she is running even with "for" Clinton and "for" who ever is not Clinton. -Rudy is a thrice married ex Mayor to the Left of Hillary on some core social issues.
The IRON LADY with Bubba Bill Clinton in tow vs. the ex Mayor of NEW YORK who supported gay rights - who is gonna win Florida and Arkansas? All a Democrat really needs down there. As my pal Cartman from South Park says "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" Look at them both closely. Rudy is not a President.
Hillary is.
Rudy's "base" is ABC - Anybody But Clinton. And when is the last time an "Anybody But _____" won?
She could blow it. Hagel could get in. A lot can happen. Watch and listen to Newt. He gets the game.
I AM JUST DAMN EXCITED TO HAVE BILL BACK ON THE TRAIL. WHOO HOO!
Lying Like It's 2003
By FRANK RICH
THOSE who forget history may be doomed to repeat it, but who could imagine we'd already be in danger of replaying that rotten year 2003?
Scooter Libby, the mastermind behind the White House's bogus scenarios for ginning up the war in Iraq, is back at Washington's center stage, proudly defending the indefensible in a perjury trial. Ahmad Chalabi, the peddler of flawed prewar intelligence hyped by Mr. Libby, is back in clover in Baghdad, where he purports to lead the government's Shiite-Baathist reconciliation efforts in between visits to his pal Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran.
Last but never least is Mr. Libby's former boss and Mr. Chalabi's former patron, Dick Cheney, who is back on Sunday-morning television floating fictions about Iraq and accusing administration critics of aiding Al Qaeda. When the vice president went on a tear like this in 2003, hawking Iraq's nonexistent W.M.D. and nonexistent connections to Mohamed Atta, he set the stage for a war that now kills Iraqi civilians in rising numbers (34,000-plus last year) that are heading into the genocidal realms of Saddam. Mr. Cheney's latest sales pitch is for a new plan for "victory" promising an even bigger bloodbath.
Mr. Cheney was honest, at least, when he said that the White House's Iraq policy would remain "full speed ahead!" no matter what happened on Nov. 7. Now it is our patriotic duty - politicians, the press and the public alike - to apply the brakes. Our failure to check the administration when it rushed into Iraq in 2003 will look even more shameful to history if we roll over again for a reboot in 2007. For all the belated Washington scrutiny of the war since the election, and for all the heralded (if so far symbolic) Congressional efforts to challenge it, too much lip service is still being paid to the deceptive P.R. strategies used by the administration to sell its reckless policies. This time we must do what too few did the first time: call the White House on its lies. Lies should not be confused with euphemisms like "incompetence" and "denial."
Mr. Cheney's performance last week on "Fox News Sunday" illustrates the problem; his lying is nowhere near its last throes. Asked by Chris Wallace about the White House's decision to overrule commanders who recommended against a troop escalation, the vice president said, "I don't think we've overruled the commanders." He claimed we've made "enormous progress" in Iraq. He said the administration is not "embattled." (Well, maybe that one is denial.)
This White House gang is so practiced in lying with a straight face that it never thinks twice about recycling its greatest hits. Hours after Mr. Cheney's Fox interview, President Bush was on "60 Minutes," claiming that before the war "everybody was wrong on weapons of mass destruction" and that "the minute we found out" the W.M.D. didn't exist he "was the first to say so." Everybody, of course, was not wrong on W.M.D., starting with the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq. Nor was Mr. Bush the first to come clean once the truth became apparent after the invasion. On May 29, 2003 - two days after a secret Defense Intelligence Agency-sponsored mission found no biological weapons in trailers captured by American forces - Mr. Bush declared: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories."
But that's all W.M.D under the bridge. The most important lies to watch for now are the new ones being reiterated daily by the administration's top brass, from Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney on down. You know fiasco awaits America when everyone in the White House is reading in unison from the same fictional script, as they did back in the day when "mushroom clouds" and "uranium from Africa" were the daily drumbeat.
The latest lies are custom-made to prop up the new "way forward" that is anything but. Among the emerging examples is a rewriting of the history of Iraq's sectarian violence. The fictional version was initially laid out by Mr. Bush in his Jan. 10 prime-time speech and has since been repeated on television by both Mr. Cheney and the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, last Sunday and by Mr. Bush again on PBS's "NewsHour" on Tuesday. It goes like this: sectarian violence didn't start spiraling out of control until the summer of 2006, after Sunni terrorists bombed the Golden Mosque in Samarra and forced the Shiites to take revenge.
But as Mark Seibel of McClatchy Newspapers noted last week, "the president's account understates by at least 15 months when Shiite death squads began targeting Sunni politicians and clerics." They were visible in embryo long before that; The Times, among others, reported as far back as September 2003 that Shiite militias were becoming more radical, dangerous and anti-American. The reasons Mr. Bush pretends that Shiite killing started only last year are obvious enough. He wants to duck culpability for failing to recognize the sectarian violence from the outset - much as he failed to recognize the Sunni insurgency before it - and to underplay the intractability of the civil war to which he will now sacrifice fresh American flesh.
An equally big lie is the administration's constant claim that it is on the same page as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as we go full speed ahead. Only last month Mr. Maliki told The Wall Street Journal that he wished he "could be done with" his role as Iraq's leader "before the end of this term." Now we are asked to believe not merely that he is a strongman capable of vanquishing the death squads of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, his political ally, but also that he can be trusted to produce the troops he failed to supply in last year's failed Baghdad crackdown. Yet as recently as November, there still wasn't a single Iraqi battalion capable of fighting on its own.
Hardly a day passes without Mr. Maliki mocking the White House's professed faith in him. In the past week or so alone, he has presided over a second botched hanging (despite delaying it for more than two weeks to put in place new guidelines), charged Condi Rice with giving a "morale boost to the terrorists" because she criticized him, and overruled American objections to appoint an obscure commander from deep in Shiite territory to run the Baghdad "surge." His government doesn't even try to hide its greater allegiance to Iran. Mr. Maliki's foreign minister has asked for the release of the five Iranians detained in an American raid on an Iranian office in northern Iraq this month and, on Monday, called for setting up more Iranian "consulates" in Iraq.
The president's pretense that Mr. Maliki and his inept, ill-equipped, militia-infiltrated security forces can advance American interests in this war is Neville Chamberlain-like in its naivete and disingenuousness. An American military official in Baghdad read the writing on the wall to The Times last week: "We are implementing a strategy to embolden a government that is actually part of the problem. We are being played like a pawn." That's why the most destructive lie of all may be the White House's constant refrain that its doomed strategy is the only one anyone has proposed. Administration critics, Mr. Cheney said last Sunday, "have absolutely nothing to offer in its place," as if the Iraq Study Group, John Murtha and Joseph Biden-Leslie Gelb plans, among others, didn't predate the White House's own.
In reality we're learning piece by piece that it is the White House that has no plan. Ms. Rice has now downsized the surge/escalation into an "augmentation," inadvertently divulging how the Pentagon is improvising, juggling small deployments in fits and starts. No one can plausibly explain how a parallel chain of command sending American and Iraqi troops into urban street combat side by side will work with Iraqis in the lead (it will report to a "committee" led by Mr. Maliki!). Or how $1 billion in new American reconstruction spending will accomplish what the $30 billion thrown down the drain in previous reconstruction spending did not.
All of this replays 2003, when the White House refused to consider any plan, including existing ones in the Pentagon and State Department bureaucracies, for coping with a broken post-Saddam Iraq. Then, as at every stage of the war since, the only administration plan was for a propaganda campaign to bamboozle American voters into believing "victory" was just around the corner.
The next push on the "way forward" propaganda campaign arrives Tuesday night, with the State of the Union address. The good news is that the Democrats have chosen Jim Webb, the new Virginia senator, to give their official response. Mr. Webb, a Reagan administration Navy secretary and the father of a son serving in Iraq, has already provoked a testy exchange about the war with the president at a White House reception for freshmen in Congress. He's the kind of guy likely to keep a scorecard of the lies on Tuesday night. But whether he does or not, it's incumbent on all those talking heads who fell for "shock and awe" and "Mission Accomplished" in 2003 to not let history repeat itself in 2007. Facing the truth is the only way forward in Iraq.
It is time for a woman President. This will no longer be true if Hagel gets in. In which case the first woman President can wait till next time. For goodness sake - the country NEEDS BILL BACK IN THE WHITE HOUSE. She ain't perfect but she's a hell of a lot better than any of the GOPs. STOP ASKING YOURSELF IF HILLARY CAN WIN AND START ASKING YOURSELF - WHO CAN BEAT HER? The GOP contenders narrow to almost nothing in an instant. McCain has crippled his own campaign in the last month. Oh and did you see what she did to that poor punk in the debates in NY during the 2000 election?
(And let me say this now: the deal is done. She's gonna win the election anyway. Certain elections are decided well in advance - and not by you and me on election day. 1988, 1996, 2000, 2004 for example. 2000 was nearly botched because Bush II is such a moron. The Left really needs to stop ranting about secret power brokers running everything and then dismissing the idea of conspiracies in the next breath. Yeah yeah yeah - I'm a nut etc etc etc. I only wish I had documented my "hunches". )
Things can take unexpected turns but the only question I see today is who will become vice president on 1/20/09:
Hmm:
Clinton/Tester 08
Clinton/Webb 08
Clinton/Obama 08
Clinton/Richardson 08
Clinton/Feinstein 08
Clinton/Gore 08
Clinton/Hagel 08
Clinton/Clinton 08
Clinton/Stewart 08
Clinton/Winfrey 08
Clinton/Powell 08
Clinton/Clark 08
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Look, Obama is the Howard Dean or Gary Hart or Bill Bradley or Eugene McCarthy of 08. There always is one on the Democratic side. The person the base loves initially and then fades or chokes. Obama is great but let it go people.
Rants:
Hey now- Hagel IS a GOP who could beat Hilary. And, frankly, I am with lefty Bob Scheer - I would vote for him. Could he win the GOP nod? Who knows? He might be able to get the criminally insane wing of the GOP under control. ALSO Stephen Hawking and the clock move closer to midnight. Global warming is real - gee - who knew? oh yeah LIBERALS, PROGRESSIVES, And OTHER SANE PEOPLE KNEW all along. As usual. Everyone should listen to true liberals first all the time. How many times do we have to prove ourselves correct early and often??? We are almost always right and the Right is almost always wrong. It's called American "history". Check it out.AND ya know what? I do not give a shit what famous idiot is in rehab or going to rehab. And i am fucking sick of "celebrities" ignoring the anonymous part of Alcoholics Anonymous to get attention. Go to meetings, sit down, shut up and wash coffee cups after the meeting with the drunk who sleeps on the park bench. I really loath those white trash turds like Broccoli Spears and Lindsey Lowlife. Who are famous at this point because they are creepy freaks. HEY MEDIOCRE FAMOUS PEOPLE - STOP GOING TO REHAB AS A P.R. STUNT.
Finally Notre Dame Football is pretty but it sucks. It will continue to suck, has sucked for a while, and is sucking loudly right at this very moment.
It's over George. Read this poll. My friend Jay said this today "the only way any honor can be restored to this presidency is for Bush to resign."
But Bush has no honor. He is whoring for the Saudis and always has been.
While we wait for the NEXT BIG BUSH BLUNDER - let me get a few things off my chest:
1. I am proud to say i have never seen a single America Idol. I believe that American Idol, Childhood Obesity, and Super Big Gulps are the true signs that the U.S. is on the downward slope as a nation. School shootings and Sean Hannity are also sure signs we are slipping fast.
2. Why does Huffington hate Hilary so much?And so far, I must say that my predictions about Clinton being the last person standing, and therefore winning the White House are shaping up. McCain can't even win a straw poll in Arizona. And Obama will make a mistake....watch....and, lets see, a Mormon from Massachusetts (a state he would lose to Clinton) or the person standing next the Bill Clinton? Or pick your random far right wing nutter from Kansas, or San Diego, or Colorado. They gonna beat Hilary? Newt G. has already conceded 08 to her. Colin Powell could beat her. She could beat herself... That ex-New york mayor that no one liked on Sept 10, 2001? hahahaha. He would lose NY to her... Come to think of it - Colin Powell and Senator Clinton - Clinton/Powell 08!!! He could make amends for his whorish U.N. debacle.
3. How come the Saudis are letting oil sink RIGHT NOW? Maybe no reason. However...it invites speculation. Being who I am - I am going with a conspiracy - The Saudis are leaving wiggle room for prices so when they shoot up after America/Israel attacks Iran in Feb/March...
4. Dee lish us.
5. Carl's Jr ads suck. All of them. They are revolting. And freaky.
6. I feel like the whole country is waiting for a big disaster so we can all exhale.Labels: gulp
Bush thinks congress can't stop his escalation of the illegal, immoral, illogical, insanely expensive, truly stupid war he created so his friends could make money. Maybe. Maybe not.
But people can stop it. And must. Labels: protest
So it seems there is this game they play in my home town called "soccer". Hmmm. Curious. Though I love the gigantic mess that is L.A....
(But I AM a lefty on a jihad against the word "diversity" - which REALLY means "mediocrity" by almost everyone who says it. Try this thought game gentle reader: the next time you see some over baked 60's leftover ramble on about "diversity" replace "diversity" with "mediocrity" and the real meaning of the diatribe will emerge. Sort of like when GOPs talk about W's "leadership" they really mean "panic driven belligerence". In fact, GOPs say the opposite of what they mean so much it is a game for them. Also - "diversity" is actually NOT what Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech was about- at all, the speech imagined a colorful but essentially homogeneous culture.
We libs say the buzzword "diversity" so much it is now meaningless. Like my all time favorite nonsense phrase that the media could not stop repeating "Saddam's elite Republican Guard" a group soon proven to actually be "the part of Saddam's lame army that got better food". But the media peeps could not stop themselves from saying "elite"....hmmmm....I wonder why?)
...I do not know this game "soccer". I know there is a Staples Center - but now I come to find out that there is also a Home Depot Center in Los Angeles - but one cannot buy office supplies or caulk at either "center". And there is this bloke that every one on earth knows that plays this mystery game and he is married to a "spice" girl. Hmmm. What are these spice girls? Are they assistants to sous chefs? Who is David Beckham? Will Arnold's health plan cover him? What is this game "soccer" and why does it have so many moms? Is Candy spelling? Or just guessing at words...I love L.A.
And excessive use of "quotes".Labels: bullshit, Bush, diversity, home depot, soccer, staples
Keith Olberman needs some help from Congress. We need to start talking about impeachment and removal seriously. Bush and Cheney need to be forced out. I am now convinced that Bush is mentally unstable. Or mentally stable - in another reality. The more that freakish speech from the White House lie berry sinks in the more it seems to me it was about Iran. They are desperate to provoke Iran. They arrested Iranians in the Kurdish north - for what? Who cares - so long as it pisses the Iranians off. It has the added benefit of offending the Kurds - they were the people who still sort of liked us in Iraq...
Allowing Adolf to open another front on the east would be a disaster for for this nation and the world. uh...i mean George, of course.
And - ain't it nice that The GOPs in the senate have rediscovered the filibuster. Maybe Harry Reid should just get rid of it...oh, the Irony. I say "lets just have up and down votes." !!!
Stepping back from the Bushcheney monster's apocalypse party for a moment - let me just say I think Chris Dodd would make a damn good President. I am glad he is running. If he hires the right people he is going to make some noise in the primaries.
And remember kids: Bush created the war with Iraq for no good reason. Bush
approved the idiotic strategy that any bone head with a Risk game could
have figured out would fail. Bush lost the war in Iraq. No one else.
Liberals were right all along. As usual.
I think we should increase troops level by two: Jenna and Barbara.Labels: Barbara, Bush, Dodd, Jenna
Bush's speech was bullshit. 20,000 more troops is bullshit. It makes no sense. It will do nothing but cost more blood and money. Cheney and Bush are stalling long enough to provoke Iran. The "takeaway" Cheney took from Vietnam was that the Gulf of Tonkin lie worked. Bush is stalling until the Iranians burp toward an American ship and he can go to Congress with a "Persian Gulf resolution."
These neo-cons are psycho. Where are the protest rallies? That is not a rhetorical question. Where are they? I want to know. Bush is shoving the world toward the abyss.
Did anyone else watching Mr. Bush think for a moment that when he was talking about Iran that he was going to announce that he had already sent missiles?
Is that his end game or is it just to not be the one taking the people of the rooftops of Baghdad as Senator Biden said?
Okay we all know Bush is a dangerous moron. He is probably going to send America over the edge with his stupidity. Until there are massive rallies in the streets of America against Bush's escalation of his "war for his EGO” the whole thing has become redundant. He will do what he wants. No one will stop him. Things will get worse. and on and on.
He is going to "apologize" for his lazy ass dumb ass, lethal, expensive, foolish policy so far. George, start with Cindy Sheehan, asshole.
It is too late, bud. You should have listend to the Liberals a long time ago. BUSH, YOUR JUDGEMENT IS FLAWED. WE CANNOT TRUST YOU - IT IS TOO DANGEROUS FOR US TO TRUST YOU. RESIGN NOW.
However all is not lost for us on the Left Coast: Arnold, as I predicted years ago, is governing to the Left of the man he ousted. Let the California secession movement begin! We, like Islam in the Dark Ages, will preserve all that was once great about Western Civilization that BGC (Bush, Greed, and Corporations) have destroyed.
But first we Californians must build a wall along our border with Nevada and Arizona to ensure that the hordes of Red Staters don't try to enter our homeland after the utter destruction of the U.S. is completed by Bush.
CALIFORNIA SECEDE!!!!Labels: Bush, California secession, Iraq
How sad it is watching John McCain sell off his soul one chunk at a time? However, it is worth remembering an earlier version of McCain - The man is good at trading and selling.
I always knew the anti-Christ would be a conservative.
The Timely Death of Gerald Ford
By FRANK RICH
THE very strange and very long Gerald Ford funeral marathon was about many things, but Gerald Ford wasn't always paramount among them.
Forty percent of today's American population was not alive during the Ford presidency. The remaining 60 percent probably spent less time recollecting his unelected 29-month term than they did James Brown's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag." Despite the lachrymose logorrhea of television anchors and the somber musical fanfares, the country was less likely to be found in deep mourning than in deep football. It's a safe bet that the Ford funeral attracted far fewer viewers than the most consequential death video of the New Year's weekend, the lynching of Saddam Hussein. But those two deaths were inextricably related: it was in tandem that they created a funereal mood that left us mourning for our own historical moment more than for Mr. Ford.
What the Ford obsequies were most about was the Beltway establishment's grim verdict on George W. Bush and his war in Iraq. Every Ford attribute, big and small, was trotted out by Washington eulogists with a wink, as an implicit rebuke of the White House's current occupant. Mr. Ford was a healer, not a partisan divider. He was an all-American football star, not a cheerleader. He didn't fritter away time on pranks at his college fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, because he had to work his way through school as a dishwasher. He was in the top third of his class at Yale Law. He fought his way into dangerous combat service during World War II rather than accept his cushy original posting. He was pals with reporters and Democrats. He encouraged dissent in his inner circle. He had no enemies, no ego, no agenda, no ideology, no concern for his image. He described himself as "a Ford, not a Lincoln," rather than likening himself to, say, Truman.
Under the guise of not speaking ill of a dead president, the bevy of bloviators so relentlessly trashed the living incumbent that it bordered on farce. No wonder President Bush, who once hustled from Crawford to Washington to sign a bill interfering in Terri Schiavo's medical treatment, remained at his ranch last weekend rather than join Betty Ford and Dick Cheney for the state ceremony in the Capitol rotunda.
Yet for all the media acreage bestowed on the funeral, the day in Mr. Ford's presidency that most stalks Mr. Bush was given surprisingly short shrift - perhaps because it was the most painful. That day was not Sept. 8, 1974, when Mr. Ford pardoned his predecessor, but April 30, 1975, when the last American helicopters hightailed it out of Saigon, ending our involvement in a catastrophic war. Mr. Ford had been a consistent Vietnam hawk, but upon inheriting the final throes of the fiasco, he recognized reality when he saw it.
Just how much so can be found in a prescient speech that Mr. Ford gave a week before our clamorous Saigon exit. (And a speech prescient on other fronts, too: he called making "America independent of foreign energy sources by 1985" an urgent priority.) Speaking at Tulane University, Mr. Ford said, "America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam" but not "by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned." He added: "We, of course, are saddened indeed by the events in Indochina. But these events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the world."
All of this proved correct, and though Mr. Ford made a doomed last-ditch effort to secure more financial aid for Saigon, he could and did do nothing to stop the inevitable. He knew it was way too late to make the symbolic gesture of trying to toss fresh American troops on the pyre. "We can and we should help others to help themselves," he said in New Orleans. "But the fate of responsible men and women everywhere, in the final decision, rests in their own hands, not in ours."
Though Mr. Ford was hardly the unalloyed saint of last week's pageantry, his words and actions in 1975 should weigh heavily upon us even as our current president remains oblivious. As Mr. Ford's presidential history is hard to separate from the Bush inversion of it, so it is difficult to separate that indelible melee in Saigon from the Hussein video. Both are terrifying, and for the same reason.
The awful power of the Hussein snuff film derives not just from its illustration of the barbarity of capital punishment, even in a case where the condemned is a mass murderer undeserving of pity. What really makes the video terrifying is its glimpse into the abyss of an irreversible and lethal breakdown in civic order. It sends the same message as those images of helicopters fleeing our embassy in April 1975: Iraq, like Vietnam before it, is in chaos, beyond the control of our government or the regime we're desperately trying to prop up. The security apparatus of Iraq's "unity government" was powerless to prevent the video, let alone the chaos, and can't even get its story straight about what happened and why.
Actually, it's even worse than that. Perhaps the video's most chilling notes are the chants of "Moktada! Moktada! Moktada!" They are further confirmation, as if any were needed, that our principal achievement in Iraq over four years has been to empower a jihadist mini-Saddam in place of the secular original. The radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr, an ally of Hezbollah and Hamas, is a thug responsible for the deaths of untold Iraqis and Americans alike. It was his forces, to take just one representative example, that killed Cindy Sheehan's son, among many others, in one of two Shiite uprisings in 2004.
The day after Casey Sheehan's slaughter, Dan Senor, the spokesman for the American occupation, presided over a Green Zone news conference promising Mr. Sadr's woefully belated arrest on a months-old warrant for his likely role in the earlier assassination of Abdel Majid al-Khoei, a rival Shiite who had fiercely opposed Saddam. Today Mr. Sadr and his forces control 30 seats in the Iraqi Parliament, four government ministries, and death squads (a k a militias) more powerful than the nominal Iraqi army. He is the puppetmaster who really controls Nuri al-Maliki - the Iraqi prime minister embraced by Mr. Bush - even to the point of inducing Mr. Maliki to shut down a search for an American soldier kidnapped at gunpoint in Sadr City in the fall. (And, you might ask, whatever happened to Mr. Senor? He's a Fox News talking head calling for a "surge" of American troops to clean up the botch he and his cohort left behind.) Only Joseph Heller could find the gallows humor in a moral disaster of these proportions.
It's against the backdrop of both the Hussein video and the Ford presidency that we must examine the prospect of that much-previewed "surge" in Iraq - a surge, by the way, that the press should start calling by its rightful name, escalation. As Mr. Ford had it, America cannot regain its pride by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned and, for that matter, as far as Iraq is concerned. By large margins, the citizens of both countries want us not to escalate but to start disengaging. So do America's top military commanders, who are now being cast aside just as Gen. Eric Shinseki was when he dared assert before the invasion that securing Iraq would require several hundred thousand troops.
It would still take that many troops, not the 20,000 we might scrape together now. Last month the Army and Marines issued an updated field manual on counterinsurgency supervised by none other than Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the next top American military commander in Iraq. It endorsed the formula that "20 counterinsurgents per 1,000 residents" is "the minimum troop density required." By that yardstick, it would take the addition of 100,000-plus troops to secure Baghdad alone.
The "surge," then, is a sham. It is not meant to achieve that undefined "victory" Mr. Bush keeps talking about but to serve his own political spin. His real mission is to float the "we're not winning, we're not losing" status quo until Jan. 20, 2009. After that, as Joseph Biden put it last week, a new president will "be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof." This is nothing but a replay of the cynical Nixon-Kissinger “decent interval” exit strategy concocted to pass the political buck (to Mr. Ford, as it happened) on Vietnam.
As the White House tries to sell this flimflam, picture fresh American troops being tossed into Baghdad's caldron to work alongside the Maliki-Sadr Shiite lynch mob that presided over the Saddam hanging. Contemplate as well Gerald Ford's most famous words, spoken as he assumed the presidency after the Nixon resignation: "Our Constitution works; our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule."
This time the people do not rule. Two months after Americans spoke decisively on Election Day, the president is determined to overrule them. Our long national nightmare in Iraq, far from being over, is about to get a second wind.
Read this. It's all true.
The idiots in the White House are ANTI-AMERICAN. Bush, Cheney and the rest hate us and all that we stand for - they prove it over and over again. Latest example here.
Oh and Bush's lapdogs....uh I mean government in Iraq - has managed to turn Saddam into a martyr.
Bush proves the Peter Principle wrong - he is way past the level of his incompetence. If he had another last name he'd be fired from his job as a Manhattan doorman.
Pray we get a Democratic president in 2008 - we really need the adults back in charge in 2 branches of Government.
Never been a big fan of Pelosi - but I am glad she is Speaker for a lot of reasons. Mostly, as a nation we need to get to the bottom of this catastrophe in Iraq Bush created for no reason- expect Haliburton has cleaned up.... Oh and the freak in the White House gave himself the right to open your mail. These goons are anti-american nuts.
On a another note - have you noticed that fundamentalists insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible except when it is an inconvenience to THEM?.... For example - the Rapture is implied, sort of, in the bible - but never actually mentioned.
Also - (I am in a mood) in Revelation "John" is almost transparently talking about the Roman empire and the feeding of Christians to the lions. Why do wing nut Christians act so stupidly? Theory: they are, in fact, terrified by the REAL Jesus message - so they make up dragons and monsters and an idiotic narrative to feel safe and special.
The first half of the Sermon on the Mount is a liberal treatise. And demanding as hell. The whole sermon is the most progressive, liberal document in Western history.
AND divorce is pretty cleared banned by Jesus: ÂWhoever divorces his wife and marries someone else commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries someone else, she commits adultery Period. That's from Mark. Not a lot of room for interpretation. And those wing nut fundy mentalists don't interpret - it is all literal!!! God's Word!!! So I guess Ron and Nancy Reagan were living in sin...
In the L.A. area and looking for a church that doesn't require believers to become idiots? And does not cater to idiots with money. Go here - All Saints.
So Bush "wrote" some horseshit OP-ED in the Wall Street Journal. It is such nonsense I won't even link to it. At any rate, it is asking DEMS to work with him and be nice (which is Bush pig latin for "do what I want!!! I am the boss of me!!!") Pelosi needs to bitch slap Bush back right away in WAPO or the NYT. Tell that sociopath in the White House that he has ignored the will of the people for years. THAT HE NEEDS TO LISTEN TO THE DEMOCRATS AND WORK WITH THEM - not the other way around. THAT THE ELECTION WAS A VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE IN HIM. So he should shut his food hole for a bit and take direction from the adults in D.C. Like the Dems and his Daddy's golfing pals.
Here is a list of traits of sociopaths - it reads like a list of requirements for GOP presidential candidates- or George W Bush's third grade report card:
impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure
not learning from experience
no sense of responsibility
inability to control impulses
lack of moral sense
chronically antisocial behavior
no change in behavior after punishment
emotional immaturity
lack of guilt
self-centeredness
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