-- The Unreal Slim Shady insists Real President Dick 'Dick' Cheney will be retiring within the year for 'health reasons.' He, no doubt, doesn't feel too well, not only from his many infirmities, but from feeling the uncomfortable warmth emanating from various investigations targeting the Veep's office. Rove, too, USS claims, will soon be vacating his White House post for similar prosecutorial reasons, probably riding the revolving door to a cushy job at a major defense contractor. Both Bush consiglieri have lost considerable clout recently as the Republican Hard Right's future prospects have dimmed. Ironically, Bush, like Hillary, has been urged to 'run to the middle' to crawl up from his approval-rating deficit as the 'tough guy' themes of Dick and Karl have bottomed out. Oh, and the GOP 'base' the pundits keep blabbering about? It's showing some rather large and nasty cracks these days, so to speak.
-- Speaking of the pundit class, there's nothing funnier than watching George Will incorrectly diagnose what the 2006 elections will be about, as he did on ABC's This Week Sunday, his right-wing street cred a pair of dice hanging off the rear-view mirror of his Republican hot rod. The economy's booming, so saith Wordy-Gurdy George, so that's off the table; it's national security, stupid, and Bush has that in his back pocket, like so many White House lawyers and Supreme Court judges, multifarious scandals and prosecutions need not apply. How a man can be so dizzy and still sit upright in a chair is a mystery for the ages. I keep waiting for panel-mate Cokie Roberts to lean over and bite the Prissy Preacher Boy's neck -- not that she'd find any actual blood there.
-- Bye the bye: Who in hell does Bush think he is -- I mean, besides our emperor from Texas? Last week he's issuing imperial orders to the Great Unwashed, and the media and politicians who refuse to represent us, as to what is 'acceptable' disagreement regarding his Iraq fiasco. Wha? The First Amendment and its guarantee of unabridged free speech is apparently another section of the Constitution Bush failed to have read to him, just like that lease he signed in Houston back in the '80s with a clause that prohibited blacks and other minorities from staying at his home in an upscale subdivision, unless they were domestic workers.
-- Inside Baseball Tip o' the Week: The Washington Post's new ombudsman (or should that be 'ombudswoman') Deborah Howell is in trouble deep. During her short tenure, she's been an unmitigated disaster, demonstrating that she has neither the maturity, composure nor temperament to handle the job by equating any criticism of her work with a vicious personal attack, and refusing to reply to those who have made honest and reasonable analyses of her opinions. In short, she's coming off like a pouty teenager akin to Reese Witherspoon's character in the film "Election." Word is, Deb is soon to be shuffled around to a different department in the Post mediaplex, perhaps to the gardening section where she'll theoretically do less damage to the paper's already-dented reputation.
-- The Big Ace says: "The basic problem with the American military is that we're like a heavyweight boxer fighting a hornet's nest. The boxer can knock hell out of the nest and kill some of the hornets, but some will escape and the boxer's going to get stung, stung enough to make him never want to beat up on another hornet's nest. That's what happened in Vietnam. The U.S. war machine, even with Delta Force and the SEALS and all that, is still designed to fight big strategic battles against other big world superpowers like Russia and China. We aren't going to win any guerilla wars -- the guerillas can hit and run; we can't. They know the land; we don't. The sooner the Pentagon gets that through their skulls, the better off -- and safer-- we'll all be."
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Quote to Quote: Victory in Iraq
"Bush's new emphasis is on 'winning' the war and 'complete victory' is questionable and suggests that he has a military triumph in mind. That's not going to happen in Iraq, where U.S. military leaders repeatedly stress that a political solution is the key to ending the conflict there. Part of the solution should be the withdrawal of U.S. forces."
-- Helen Thomas, "Dubya makes his war pitch," San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 15, 2006.
[This is Luntz Republicanism 101 -- frame the debate as 'victory' or 'defeat' and -- voila -- anyone who opposes your policies is a 'defeatist' who wants America to lose the war on terror.]
"War is terrible, but one way people can help as we're coming down the pike in the 2006 elections, is remember the effect that rhetoric can have on our troops in harm's way, and the effect that rhetoric can have in emboldening or weakening the enemy."
-- George W. Bush, speaking in Louisville, KY, Jan. 10, 2006.
[And the effect it can have on Republican chances of maintaining a majority in Congress.]
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The Lowest of the Low
Isn't it interesting that any decorated military veteran who opposes the Bush Machine finds their military history besmirched? And, when the charges are investigated, it's discovered that they were baseless; just lies and rumors created out of thin air by hype artists and cranks with a axe to grind. You'd think someone in the mass media would find this an interesting story: why are right-wingers desperately and continually trying to denigrate the military records of their political opposition?
First, there were the various drunks and deceivers of the Swift Boat Vets group who smeared Kerry's Navy record without a shred of evidence, and now Rep. John Murtha's honorable 37-year career in the Marine Corps is getting the tar brush, a career where he was decorated for serving in combat in both Korea and Vietnam.
Meanwhile, not much mention is made in contrast of Bush's missing his Air Guard meetings in Alabama and other questions about his record; war lover Cheney's five draft deferments because he had 'better things to do' then serve in Vietnam, although he doesn't seem to mind sending other young men less precious than himself to die in Iraq these days; Rumsfeld's undistinguished peacetime stint in the Navy; Karl Rove's determined avoidance of military service, and Rush Limbaugh's raging case of anal cysts that kept him from getting the rest of his ass shot off in Southeast Asia. You'd think that would also be a good story: Chickenhawks who have never served a minute in combat drooling to start wars all over the Middle East where some of our kids will die or come home permanently disabled.
Well, those would be good stories to real journalists, but timid Bush Cabana Boys like Howie Kurtz at the Washington Post prefer to repeat phony allegations against brave men like Murtha from right-wing propaganda weasels such as Brett Bozell.
"The Post's Howard Kurtz effectively -- if unintentionally -- illustrated this bizarre tendency by news organizations to pretend that they merely reflect what people are talking about rather than shaping the national conversation. In his January 18 online column, Kurtz responded to criticism by Media Matters for America and others that he gave unwarranted attention to ages-old, baseless right-wing attacks on Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA) by writing an article recounting the attacks for the January 14 edition of the Post. Kurtz noted that the attacks are, indeed, old, but added they are now 'getting national play.'
"But the attacks aren't 'getting' national play -- Kurtz is giving them national play. Prior to his article, the only "play" the allegations were getting came in a hatchet job by the Brent Bozell-operated Cybercast News Service upon which Kurtz based his article."
-- Jamison Foser, Media Matters, Jan. 20, 2006.
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