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Showing posts with label neocons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neocons. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
The Tattlesnake – Top Ten Neocon Republican Hits Edition
These top ten lists get tedious, and this one's no different.
1. "This Land Ain't Your Land, This Land Is MY Land"
Scotty and the Koch Brothers
2. "America The Profitable"
Moe Greenback and the Wall Streeters
3. "Take Your Job And Shove It"
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce
4. "Dead Man's Curve"
Chris Christie and the Budget Cutters
5. "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling"
The Palin Family Choir
6. "Viva Low Wages!"
Wal Mart and the New Peasants
7. "It's My Party And I'll Cry If I Want To"
Long John Boehner and the Wailers
8. "Liar, Liar (Pants On Fire)"
Mike Huckabee and the Birthers
9. "He Got The Gold Mine And I Got the Shaft"
Glenn Beck's Suckers
10. "(Here It Comes Your) 19th Nervous Breakdown"
Michele Bachmann and her Teabaggers
©2011 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
1. "This Land Ain't Your Land, This Land Is MY Land"
Scotty and the Koch Brothers
2. "America The Profitable"
Moe Greenback and the Wall Streeters
3. "Take Your Job And Shove It"
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce
4. "Dead Man's Curve"
Chris Christie and the Budget Cutters
5. "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling"
The Palin Family Choir
6. "Viva Low Wages!"
Wal Mart and the New Peasants
7. "It's My Party And I'll Cry If I Want To"
Long John Boehner and the Wailers
8. "Liar, Liar (Pants On Fire)"
Mike Huckabee and the Birthers
9. "He Got The Gold Mine And I Got the Shaft"
Glenn Beck's Suckers
10. "(Here It Comes Your) 19th Nervous Breakdown"
Michele Bachmann and her Teabaggers
©2011 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Friday, January 08, 2010
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Monday, December 07, 2009
Thursday, December 13, 2007
You Might Be a Neocon If...
With a hat tip to Jeff Foxworthy, it's time to play:
You Might Be a Neocon If...
... you believe Bush and Cheney are moral men with your best interests at heart.
... you believe Bush's press secretary Dana Perino (or any Bush press secretary in the past) is actually telling you the unvarnished truth.
... you don't want to pay a dime for national health care, yet expect a taxpayer-funded emergency room to treat you immediately after you've had an accident.
... you think Bush is right even when he's proven wrong, again and again.
... you think Karl Rove is a great historian.
... you think there actually is a War on Christmas outside of Bill O'Reilly's head.
... you think Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" is a pack of lies from start to finish, yet you've never seen it and have vowed you never will.
... you've ever rendered a strong opinion on ANY book, magazine article, website, film, TV show or play you've never actually read or seen.
... you think waterboarding is a new sport for teenagers.
... you think any government program that helps ordinary people is horrible socialism, but when our tax money is spent to pay contractors for shoddy work and overcharges, that's free market capitalism at work.
... you think questions surrounding the events of 9/11 are ridiculous, but firmly believe that the Clintons had something to do with the death of Vince Foster.
... you think Bush ignoring the August 6, 2001 CIA brief entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in United States" was understandable, since he was on vacation.
... you think Rudy Giuliani is a hero for making a few speeches and posing for some photo-ops after the 9/11 attack.
... you think Osama bin Laden is a lying terrorist sack of crap, yet he was telling the truth when said he wanted John Kerry as president in 2004, right before Election Day.
... you think every problem America has can be traced to liberals and/or Democrats.
... you've ever called anyone a 'pinko' or 'commie,' especially someone who demonstrably isn't either.
...you don't know the difference between socialism and communism and you don't really care either.
... you think a) Saddam Hussein had WMD and hid them somewhere outside of the country right before the US invaded, or b) you think we found WMD in Iraq.
... you think the torturing of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was no worse than a fraternity initiation.
... you think former CIA covert agent Valerie Plame 'deserved' to be outed because her husband is a 'traitor' who revealed the truth about Bush's phony claims that Iraq tried to buy Niger uranium.
... you think junkies should spend long sentences in jail but Rush Limbaugh should be forgiven for his human frailty.
... you think Ann Coulter is hilariously funny.
... you think talk show blabber Dennis Prager is either a religious expert, conservative intellectual, political philosopher, entirely sane, or all four.-- you are a Christian who experiences temporary blindness whenever you read the Sermon on the Mount.
... you think every word in the Bible was written by God in English, even the letters to the Greeks by Paul.
... you are waiting for Armageddon and believe you will be taken up into heaven during 'The Rapture,' even though you lie to your customers, sell products that are made by slave labor overseas, or own a private mercenary company that murders people in other countries.
... you think individual people need strong laws and strict enforcement to keep them in line, but corporations should be able to make their own rules without government interference.
... you think no-bid contracts are a smart way for the government to do business.
... you think Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney are 'good Christian men.'
... you think Richard Nixon was brought down by the 'liberal media.'
... you think 'habeas corpus' has something to do with hamsters, so what's the big deal?
... you hate the theory of evolution even though you've never read it.
... you've ever read a rant by Michelle Malkin without laughing out loud at its sheer rancorous stupidity.
... you think Charles Krauthammer is sane.
... you think Norman Podhoretz should be the Secretary of Defense.
... you can't find anything that Don Rumsfeld did wrong as Secretary of Defense.
... you watch "24" and believe if we only had a guy like the fictional Jack Bauer in charge of our intelligence operations, we could lick the terrorists in a month or two.
... you are a self-hating closeted gay male politician.
You Might Be a Neocon If...
... you believe Bush and Cheney are moral men with your best interests at heart.
... you believe Bush's press secretary Dana Perino (or any Bush press secretary in the past) is actually telling you the unvarnished truth.
... you don't want to pay a dime for national health care, yet expect a taxpayer-funded emergency room to treat you immediately after you've had an accident.
... you think Bush is right even when he's proven wrong, again and again.
... you think Karl Rove is a great historian.
... you think there actually is a War on Christmas outside of Bill O'Reilly's head.
... you think Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" is a pack of lies from start to finish, yet you've never seen it and have vowed you never will.
... you've ever rendered a strong opinion on ANY book, magazine article, website, film, TV show or play you've never actually read or seen.
... you think waterboarding is a new sport for teenagers.
... you think any government program that helps ordinary people is horrible socialism, but when our tax money is spent to pay contractors for shoddy work and overcharges, that's free market capitalism at work.
... you think questions surrounding the events of 9/11 are ridiculous, but firmly believe that the Clintons had something to do with the death of Vince Foster.
... you think Bush ignoring the August 6, 2001 CIA brief entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in United States" was understandable, since he was on vacation.
... you think Rudy Giuliani is a hero for making a few speeches and posing for some photo-ops after the 9/11 attack.
... you think Osama bin Laden is a lying terrorist sack of crap, yet he was telling the truth when said he wanted John Kerry as president in 2004, right before Election Day.
... you think every problem America has can be traced to liberals and/or Democrats.
... you've ever called anyone a 'pinko' or 'commie,' especially someone who demonstrably isn't either.
...you don't know the difference between socialism and communism and you don't really care either.
... you think a) Saddam Hussein had WMD and hid them somewhere outside of the country right before the US invaded, or b) you think we found WMD in Iraq.
... you think the torturing of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was no worse than a fraternity initiation.
... you think former CIA covert agent Valerie Plame 'deserved' to be outed because her husband is a 'traitor' who revealed the truth about Bush's phony claims that Iraq tried to buy Niger uranium.
... you think junkies should spend long sentences in jail but Rush Limbaugh should be forgiven for his human frailty.
... you think Ann Coulter is hilariously funny.
... you think talk show blabber Dennis Prager is either a religious expert, conservative intellectual, political philosopher, entirely sane, or all four.-- you are a Christian who experiences temporary blindness whenever you read the Sermon on the Mount.
... you think every word in the Bible was written by God in English, even the letters to the Greeks by Paul.
... you are waiting for Armageddon and believe you will be taken up into heaven during 'The Rapture,' even though you lie to your customers, sell products that are made by slave labor overseas, or own a private mercenary company that murders people in other countries.
... you think individual people need strong laws and strict enforcement to keep them in line, but corporations should be able to make their own rules without government interference.
... you think no-bid contracts are a smart way for the government to do business.
... you think Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney are 'good Christian men.'
... you think Richard Nixon was brought down by the 'liberal media.'
... you think 'habeas corpus' has something to do with hamsters, so what's the big deal?
... you hate the theory of evolution even though you've never read it.
... you've ever read a rant by Michelle Malkin without laughing out loud at its sheer rancorous stupidity.
... you think Charles Krauthammer is sane.
... you think Norman Podhoretz should be the Secretary of Defense.
... you can't find anything that Don Rumsfeld did wrong as Secretary of Defense.
... you watch "24" and believe if we only had a guy like the fictional Jack Bauer in charge of our intelligence operations, we could lick the terrorists in a month or two.
... you are a self-hating closeted gay male politician.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Whatever Happened to Ann Coulter? Edition
Her Influence Nearly Gone, She's Still Out There Slipping Further Into Inconsequence as Reality Proves Her Wrong -- Even to Many Conservatives
"Facts are stupid things."
-- Ronald Reagan, at the Republican National Convention in 1988.
On Dec. 3, 2007, C-SPAN aired a speech Ann Coulter gave at the National Press Club in Washington on Nov. 28th, sponsored by the neocon Young America's Foundation and it's Orwellian adjunct, something called the National Journalism Center, which has as much a relationship to real journalism as Ann's Christianity has to the principles expressed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. The NJC is very proud that Coulter herself went through their program twenty years ago -- which gives you a good idea of its journalistic worth -- and invited her to address its 30th anniversary dinner.
Appearing a tad raccoonish in her heavy black eye make-up, Coulter's negligible grasp of fact and logic has now exited stage right completely, leaving her resembling nothing so much as a piece of smirking Swiss cheese framed by long blonde hair, shakily babbling with intermittent coherence into a microphone.
Plowing the same rut she has turned into a muddy grave by sheer repetition, and sketching the typical Coulter cartoon portrait with a house painter's brush, Ann attacked her usual enemies; all of those horrid 'liberals and Democrats,' the amorphous grab-bag target for her hate; an evil entity with one mind who, in Ann's hilarious political psychosis, run the country with an iron hand suppressing poor brave conservatives like herself, while simultaneously meekly surrendering to 'Islamofacist' terrorists and anything larger than a bedbug everywhere else. If you detect a little 'cognitive dissonance' here, congratulations and welcome to Coulter's home planet where the mental landscape is a continual funhouse ride requiring a 'memory hole' to forget what you just said every three paces.One example of this would be Ann's baffling delirium that liberals and Democrats started demanding "Where's Osama?" after Saddam Hussein was captured, and only then because former Iraq War supporter and sporadic Bush apologist Peter Beinhart chiseled the embarrassing question on a tablet and handed it down to the rest of us. In the earth-orbits-sun cosmos Coulter shuns, 'Ls & Ds' were asking this long before the Iraq War even started, and it had nothing to do with Beinhart, as a few minutes at 'the Google' will reveal.
But in her hasty slide to media oblivion, fast-and-frothing Ann has no time for Googling or fact-checking -- that sort of thing is strictly for the wimpy liberals who dwell in the fringe moonbat minority, loathed by 'real Americans,' yet are powerful enough to destroy our country.
Included among the other lowlights of Coulter's addled presentation was a swipe at New York Times columnist Paul Krugman alleging that "no one reads him," although this may have been mere literary envy: Krugman appears regularly in one of America's highest-circulation newspapers and his columns are seen by millions; Ann's flaky diatribes are buried amid the 59 other conservative columnists at TownHall.com and surrounded by the tasteful 'Liberal Hunting Permit' and '3 books for a buck' Conservative Book Club ads at her own website.
She also made the bizarre statement that no one listens to Air America Radio or watches MSNBC and asserted that, to cover its embarrassment, MSNBC will not disclose its ratings. In fact, AAR's ratings are up, as are MSNBC's, especially in Keith Olbermann's time slot vs. Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, and the ratings information is easy to obtain -- Olbermann himself has talked about MSNBC's ratings several times on his program. But, then, that would require doing a little research before you open your mouth and pick up your foot, not, as we've seen, Ann's strong point.
She riffed on classic Coulter standards as well, and with as much underwhelming logic: Hillary Clinton is a 'whiny feminist' who, if elected president, will put every American woman in a burqa, which should induce a double-take even in those who don't like the New York Senator and, once again, places Ann at odds with her own expressed doubts about women having the vote in this country.
Then she moved on to her strong support for the Second Amendment, but a smirking dismissal of the First as "highly overrated" -- you know, the same constitutional amendment guaranteeing free speech and a free press that Ann and her colleagues in the right-wing media habitually abuse to 'get their message out.'
And Good Christian Ann wants to kill more "moo-slims" (that's how she pronounced it), not in the name of defense, but for revenge, and it doesn't seem to matter to her if they're actual terrorists or not. After all, she did want to bomb their countries, kill all of their leaders, and convert them to Christianity, apparently just for following Islam. On Coulter World, the thought never intrudes that this might be a very poor way to introduce people to your religion, but Ann figures that it worked so well on Native Americans and Filipinos that it should be tried again. That many of them had to be massacred in the process of being rendered safe for Jesus doesn't enter Ann's mind. Oh, I forgot -- to a neocon, this is a 'funny' remark, and not in an ironic sense.
She also briefly engaged in the fringe right-wing lunatic history myths that have become her trademark: the drunken Sen. Joe McCarthy was a Great American whose demise came solely at the hands of the 'liberal media' and not anything he did to himself; the Democrats have always been the pro-slavery, pro-segregation party since Lincoln was president in the 1860s, ignoring a large chunk of the 1940s thorough the 1960s when Lyndon Johnson finally passed the various civil rights acts that legally ended segregation in the Old South, leading to 'integrationists' such as Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and other Dixiecrats becoming Republicans, and ushering in Nixon's tacitly racist Southern Strategy in 1968. But then, this is all in a day's work for the historically-challenged Coulter.
However, to be fair, let's give Ann credit where it's due: She did freely confess that she's "not a builder," she's "a destroyer," and she just loves to "tear people down."
Reflecting the utter ideological chaos that is the current Republican Party, she also admitted she doesn't much like Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John McCain or Mike Huckabee, although she previously spoke highly of Romney at the CPAC 2007 convention. (A flip-flop?) These days her favorite candidate is the troglodytic Rep. Duncan Hunter, under investigation in a 'Duke Cunningham'-style bribery scandal and listed by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) as one of the "22 Most Corrupt Members of Congress." However, she did allow as how she'd vote for "any idiot the Republicans nominate."
Well, I won't belabor this topic further; suffice it to say that her speeches and ideas are mired in the moldy "I'm a victim" neocon carping of two decades ago and her enemies and attacks are always the same, except now she's donned the mantle of Christianity to try and gull the faithful into buying her books. If you want to know what else she said in her speech, all you need do is read a dozen of Coulter's columns at random, then make sure to cross-check her 'facts' with 'the Google,' so you won't be misinformed; and her crimes against common sense and logic will be apparent to those who possess an average amount of either one.
Times have changed and most Americans want to dump the neocon Republican failures in the nearest trash heap, but Coulter's still playing her pathetic one-note samba that's now turned into a whiny funeral dirge.
During her talk, the C-SPAN camera occasionally panned the room and the faces were revealing; Coulter's well-worn lines were greeted with tepid applause or subdued laughter and some of the conservative Republican audience, heeding the reality of the last six years under Bush and the anger of the citizenry at the GOP, simply stared at Coulter as Rupert Murdoch might stare at a speech by an avowed Marxist. It's said by those who managed to escape the mass suicide at Jim Jones' People's Temple in Guyana that, while some fanatics willingly drank the cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, others had to be forced at gunpoint to pour it down. A feeling similar to that of the latter faction was in evidence here -- Ann was the crazed Jones, bleating blabber to the end, while some of her acolytes were scheming ways to save themselves and their party from the sure doom ahead. To use a dreaded sports analogy, the team was getting a pep talk at the two-minute warning, but the smarter players had faced the reality that the score is 63 to 3 against them, and their eyes had glazed over in anticipation of defeat.
Coulter was ironically followed on C-SPAN by Bill Clinton; considering her ongoing obsession with his sex life, perhaps that's Ann's secret desire as well.
At least Ann admitted she "didn't really have a job."
Observing the weak reaction of this supposedly Coulter-friendly crowd, she might soon have to find one.
"Facts are stupid things."
-- Ronald Reagan, at the Republican National Convention in 1988.
On Dec. 3, 2007, C-SPAN aired a speech Ann Coulter gave at the National Press Club in Washington on Nov. 28th, sponsored by the neocon Young America's Foundation and it's Orwellian adjunct, something called the National Journalism Center, which has as much a relationship to real journalism as Ann's Christianity has to the principles expressed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. The NJC is very proud that Coulter herself went through their program twenty years ago -- which gives you a good idea of its journalistic worth -- and invited her to address its 30th anniversary dinner.
Appearing a tad raccoonish in her heavy black eye make-up, Coulter's negligible grasp of fact and logic has now exited stage right completely, leaving her resembling nothing so much as a piece of smirking Swiss cheese framed by long blonde hair, shakily babbling with intermittent coherence into a microphone.
Plowing the same rut she has turned into a muddy grave by sheer repetition, and sketching the typical Coulter cartoon portrait with a house painter's brush, Ann attacked her usual enemies; all of those horrid 'liberals and Democrats,' the amorphous grab-bag target for her hate; an evil entity with one mind who, in Ann's hilarious political psychosis, run the country with an iron hand suppressing poor brave conservatives like herself, while simultaneously meekly surrendering to 'Islamofacist' terrorists and anything larger than a bedbug everywhere else. If you detect a little 'cognitive dissonance' here, congratulations and welcome to Coulter's home planet where the mental landscape is a continual funhouse ride requiring a 'memory hole' to forget what you just said every three paces.One example of this would be Ann's baffling delirium that liberals and Democrats started demanding "Where's Osama?" after Saddam Hussein was captured, and only then because former Iraq War supporter and sporadic Bush apologist Peter Beinhart chiseled the embarrassing question on a tablet and handed it down to the rest of us. In the earth-orbits-sun cosmos Coulter shuns, 'Ls & Ds' were asking this long before the Iraq War even started, and it had nothing to do with Beinhart, as a few minutes at 'the Google' will reveal.
But in her hasty slide to media oblivion, fast-and-frothing Ann has no time for Googling or fact-checking -- that sort of thing is strictly for the wimpy liberals who dwell in the fringe moonbat minority, loathed by 'real Americans,' yet are powerful enough to destroy our country.
Included among the other lowlights of Coulter's addled presentation was a swipe at New York Times columnist Paul Krugman alleging that "no one reads him," although this may have been mere literary envy: Krugman appears regularly in one of America's highest-circulation newspapers and his columns are seen by millions; Ann's flaky diatribes are buried amid the 59 other conservative columnists at TownHall.com and surrounded by the tasteful 'Liberal Hunting Permit' and '3 books for a buck' Conservative Book Club ads at her own website.
She also made the bizarre statement that no one listens to Air America Radio or watches MSNBC and asserted that, to cover its embarrassment, MSNBC will not disclose its ratings. In fact, AAR's ratings are up, as are MSNBC's, especially in Keith Olbermann's time slot vs. Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, and the ratings information is easy to obtain -- Olbermann himself has talked about MSNBC's ratings several times on his program. But, then, that would require doing a little research before you open your mouth and pick up your foot, not, as we've seen, Ann's strong point.
She riffed on classic Coulter standards as well, and with as much underwhelming logic: Hillary Clinton is a 'whiny feminist' who, if elected president, will put every American woman in a burqa, which should induce a double-take even in those who don't like the New York Senator and, once again, places Ann at odds with her own expressed doubts about women having the vote in this country.
Then she moved on to her strong support for the Second Amendment, but a smirking dismissal of the First as "highly overrated" -- you know, the same constitutional amendment guaranteeing free speech and a free press that Ann and her colleagues in the right-wing media habitually abuse to 'get their message out.'
And Good Christian Ann wants to kill more "moo-slims" (that's how she pronounced it), not in the name of defense, but for revenge, and it doesn't seem to matter to her if they're actual terrorists or not. After all, she did want to bomb their countries, kill all of their leaders, and convert them to Christianity, apparently just for following Islam. On Coulter World, the thought never intrudes that this might be a very poor way to introduce people to your religion, but Ann figures that it worked so well on Native Americans and Filipinos that it should be tried again. That many of them had to be massacred in the process of being rendered safe for Jesus doesn't enter Ann's mind. Oh, I forgot -- to a neocon, this is a 'funny' remark, and not in an ironic sense.
She also briefly engaged in the fringe right-wing lunatic history myths that have become her trademark: the drunken Sen. Joe McCarthy was a Great American whose demise came solely at the hands of the 'liberal media' and not anything he did to himself; the Democrats have always been the pro-slavery, pro-segregation party since Lincoln was president in the 1860s, ignoring a large chunk of the 1940s thorough the 1960s when Lyndon Johnson finally passed the various civil rights acts that legally ended segregation in the Old South, leading to 'integrationists' such as Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and other Dixiecrats becoming Republicans, and ushering in Nixon's tacitly racist Southern Strategy in 1968. But then, this is all in a day's work for the historically-challenged Coulter.
However, to be fair, let's give Ann credit where it's due: She did freely confess that she's "not a builder," she's "a destroyer," and she just loves to "tear people down."
Reflecting the utter ideological chaos that is the current Republican Party, she also admitted she doesn't much like Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John McCain or Mike Huckabee, although she previously spoke highly of Romney at the CPAC 2007 convention. (A flip-flop?) These days her favorite candidate is the troglodytic Rep. Duncan Hunter, under investigation in a 'Duke Cunningham'-style bribery scandal and listed by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) as one of the "22 Most Corrupt Members of Congress." However, she did allow as how she'd vote for "any idiot the Republicans nominate."
Well, I won't belabor this topic further; suffice it to say that her speeches and ideas are mired in the moldy "I'm a victim" neocon carping of two decades ago and her enemies and attacks are always the same, except now she's donned the mantle of Christianity to try and gull the faithful into buying her books. If you want to know what else she said in her speech, all you need do is read a dozen of Coulter's columns at random, then make sure to cross-check her 'facts' with 'the Google,' so you won't be misinformed; and her crimes against common sense and logic will be apparent to those who possess an average amount of either one.
Times have changed and most Americans want to dump the neocon Republican failures in the nearest trash heap, but Coulter's still playing her pathetic one-note samba that's now turned into a whiny funeral dirge.
During her talk, the C-SPAN camera occasionally panned the room and the faces were revealing; Coulter's well-worn lines were greeted with tepid applause or subdued laughter and some of the conservative Republican audience, heeding the reality of the last six years under Bush and the anger of the citizenry at the GOP, simply stared at Coulter as Rupert Murdoch might stare at a speech by an avowed Marxist. It's said by those who managed to escape the mass suicide at Jim Jones' People's Temple in Guyana that, while some fanatics willingly drank the cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, others had to be forced at gunpoint to pour it down. A feeling similar to that of the latter faction was in evidence here -- Ann was the crazed Jones, bleating blabber to the end, while some of her acolytes were scheming ways to save themselves and their party from the sure doom ahead. To use a dreaded sports analogy, the team was getting a pep talk at the two-minute warning, but the smarter players had faced the reality that the score is 63 to 3 against them, and their eyes had glazed over in anticipation of defeat.
Coulter was ironically followed on C-SPAN by Bill Clinton; considering her ongoing obsession with his sex life, perhaps that's Ann's secret desire as well.
At least Ann admitted she "didn't really have a job."
Observing the weak reaction of this supposedly Coulter-friendly crowd, she might soon have to find one.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Headlines at a Glance Edition
Who Knows -- They Might Even Be Real Someday
Bush Seeks 'Decision Czar' to Run Executive Branch
"I'm the decider," says president, "and I decided we needed somebody to make the decisions around here."
Rice Asks for 'New Strategy' in Middle East
"But no one should imply that the old one isn't working fine, of course," the Secretary of State tells reporters
New GOP Bill Says Illegal Immigrants Should Be Sold to Highest Bidder
"This is the traditional American way we dealt with unskilled workers who came over here for jobs," says bill co-sponsor Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, "I think it's time we tried it again."
Cheney: Iran Bought Yellow Cake Uranium from Niger
"We have the proof," claims vice president, "We just received the intelligence documents from Italy."
Phil Leotardo Named New US Ambassador to Iraq
"So he's not real and he's dead," says White House press aide, "He'll fit right in over there."
Bill O'Reilly Wins Nobel Prize in Fiction
"It took them long enough," jokes political pundit as Stockholm committee names "Culture Warrior" for top award
Paris Hilton to Run for L.A. County Sheriff
Celebrity heiress: "This is my first move to show everybody I'm not really dumb."
TV Actor Arrested in Motel Room with Rental Car Navigation System
"This is unnatural, disgusting," says police spokesperson, "Pants down, drooling -- I can't even describe what he was trying to do to it -- he was mumbling something about 'awesome Chinese' when we caught him."
US Senior Found Who Exists Without Prescription Medication
"Not even an aspirin," says Hugo Wayback, 81, "and I'm healthy as a horse."
Hasselhoff Slated for Hip Operation
"Everybody thinks I'm passé, out of it," says actor, "I'll show them."
Super TB Man Hired to Prosecute JFK Plotters
Andrew Speaker claims if there's a case here, he'll find it
Bush Seeks 'Decision Czar' to Run Executive Branch
"I'm the decider," says president, "and I decided we needed somebody to make the decisions around here."
Rice Asks for 'New Strategy' in Middle East
"But no one should imply that the old one isn't working fine, of course," the Secretary of State tells reporters
New GOP Bill Says Illegal Immigrants Should Be Sold to Highest Bidder
"This is the traditional American way we dealt with unskilled workers who came over here for jobs," says bill co-sponsor Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, "I think it's time we tried it again."
Cheney: Iran Bought Yellow Cake Uranium from Niger
"We have the proof," claims vice president, "We just received the intelligence documents from Italy."
Phil Leotardo Named New US Ambassador to Iraq
"So he's not real and he's dead," says White House press aide, "He'll fit right in over there."
Bill O'Reilly Wins Nobel Prize in Fiction
"It took them long enough," jokes political pundit as Stockholm committee names "Culture Warrior" for top award
Paris Hilton to Run for L.A. County Sheriff
Celebrity heiress: "This is my first move to show everybody I'm not really dumb."
TV Actor Arrested in Motel Room with Rental Car Navigation System
"This is unnatural, disgusting," says police spokesperson, "Pants down, drooling -- I can't even describe what he was trying to do to it -- he was mumbling something about 'awesome Chinese' when we caught him."
US Senior Found Who Exists Without Prescription Medication
"Not even an aspirin," says Hugo Wayback, 81, "and I'm healthy as a horse."
Hasselhoff Slated for Hip Operation
"Everybody thinks I'm passé, out of it," says actor, "I'll show them."
Super TB Man Hired to Prosecute JFK Plotters
Andrew Speaker claims if there's a case here, he'll find it
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Comparing Plastered Paris and the Plastic GOP Edition
Twenty-One Incredible Similarities Between Paris Hilton and the Republican Party:
1. Both are famous for accomplishing nothing.
2. Both have large amounts of unearned income derived from an intimate relationship with the wealthy.
3. Both constantly pose for empty photo-ops.
4. Neither one has a brain cell between them.
5. Both deserve jail time for sheer incompetence and stupidity.
6. Both have exploited pornography for media attention.
7. Both retain a tiny fan base of faithful idiots who believe they can do no wrong.
8. Each causes grief for themselves whenever they 'Rove.'
9. Both try to solve complex problems with simple-minded answers.
10. Both have trouble separating fantasy from reality.
11. Both have a Bush.
12. Both like Dick.
13. Both whine and cry like babies when held accountable for the trouble they bring on themselves.
14. Both rely on cheesy marketing ploys to manipulate the media.
15. Both wish they had some acting talent to salvage their futures.
16. Both are held in contempt by most Americans, sick and tired of their silly antics.
17. Both are vain and self-absorbed, and pretend to be something they're not.
18. Both should never be allowed behind the wheel again.
19. Both are usually drunk on something.
20. Both have a habit of attacking their old friends.
21. Both would look good in orange jumpsuits.
1. Both are famous for accomplishing nothing.
2. Both have large amounts of unearned income derived from an intimate relationship with the wealthy.
3. Both constantly pose for empty photo-ops.
4. Neither one has a brain cell between them.
5. Both deserve jail time for sheer incompetence and stupidity.
6. Both have exploited pornography for media attention.
7. Both retain a tiny fan base of faithful idiots who believe they can do no wrong.
8. Each causes grief for themselves whenever they 'Rove.'
9. Both try to solve complex problems with simple-minded answers.
10. Both have trouble separating fantasy from reality.
11. Both have a Bush.
12. Both like Dick.
13. Both whine and cry like babies when held accountable for the trouble they bring on themselves.
14. Both rely on cheesy marketing ploys to manipulate the media.
15. Both wish they had some acting talent to salvage their futures.
16. Both are held in contempt by most Americans, sick and tired of their silly antics.
17. Both are vain and self-absorbed, and pretend to be something they're not.
18. Both should never be allowed behind the wheel again.
19. Both are usually drunk on something.
20. Both have a habit of attacking their old friends.
21. Both would look good in orange jumpsuits.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Defining the Neocon Lexicon Edition
Translating the Republican Can-Do Cant to (Nearly) Plain English:
Abu Ghraib: A character from the Gasoline Ali comic strip who specialized in tortured logic. (See also Woo Woo below.)
Bush's Economy: Something that seems good only when dropped into a neocon think tank, or the Wall Street Journal editorial boardroom, and cooked for six years by deaf, dumb and blind economists. The resulting elixir is called champagne by the wealthiest 10 percent, but tastes like low-paid Kool-Aid to everyone else. (See also the Great Depression.)
Bush Intelligence: Cheney telling the CIA what the White House wants them to say. (See Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.)
Christian Right: Two words erroneously applied to a highly vocal religious sect of the Republican Party as they represent neither the philosophy of the former nor the definition of the latter.
Communicate (as in "communicate to the public our beliefs"): To lie unabashedly. (See also the Frank Luntz Dictionary of Political Evasion.)
Compassionate Conservatism: Screwing the citizenry blind, but calling it a "program for the improvement of visual acuity" for the sake of the mass media and the twits who believe them. (See also the Differences Between Grapes and Golf Balls.)
Election: An opportunity in 2008 to test the new 'secret proprietary code' voting software that will work better for the GOP than it did in 2006. (See also the Help America Vote (Republican) Act.)
DeLay: What inevitably results when a GOP politician gets too much of de money and de power.
General: A supporter of Bush's war in Iraq, until he or she retires from the service.
Giuliani Time: A festive period in New York City when minorities are allowed to party with the business end of a police officer's billy club or taser and, in some cases, the lead slug from a service pistol.
Gonzalizing: The ability to complacently tell an unbelievable lie to cover a previous unbelievable lie and smile afterward, even in front of adults.
Goodling: A poorly-educated and naive incompetent who is nevertheless installed in a position of senior governmental power, the better to attract the blame when the proverbial feces slaps up against the electric fan blades. (See Sap, Sucker and Yellowbelly.)
Immigration Reform: Allowing poor illegal Pablo to work for rich Peter cheap and on the sly so that Peter's corporation can make a huge profit, while maintaining a flowing sewer of coded rhetoric to satisfy the party racists. (See Nixon's Southern Strategy.)
Iran: The repository of all human evil and Bush's next war, now that Saddam Hussein is dead and North Korea has the bomb. Like Saddam, they had no connection to 9/11, but that's a distinction worthy only of sissy peaceniks and pinko commies. (See also Making Osama Smile.)
Military Recruiters: Non-commissioned officers who don't bother to set up a table at Young Republican events. (See also Chickenhawk Yolks.)
Rice Pudding: A visit from an American dignitary for the sole purpose of taking a picture while smiling and shaking hands. (See also World's Silliest Publicity Stunts.)
Rove Toast: A slice of stale white bread that has been baked in hubris until it falls apart. (See also Fatal Diseases Caused by Mold and Arrogance.)
Romney: A car that runs on unleaded grassroots or GOP premium, depending on which way the wind is blowing. (See also Forked Tongue Syndrome.)
Serving the People: In the same way a tennis ball is placed across a net. (See also The Twilight Zone's Best Episodes.)
Think Tank: When referring to neocon foundations that dash out lofty-sounding reports to justify idiocy, it means to literally sit there and ponder how best to use a heavily-armed military vehicle to solve every problem, from unrest among foreign civilians to border control. (See also Attila the Hun; Vlad the Impaler.)
Thirty-Second Spot: The byproduct of a cow's digestive system put into a blender, heated in a pot, and served as gravy; all is fine until you take a bite. (See also Optical Illusions.)
USS McCain: An old battleship built with two aft ends and no bow; in action, the props tend to cancel each other out, leaving the ship dead in the water and sinking fast. (See also The Wackiest Ship in the Navy.)
Victory in Iraq: A sand castle built in a neocon's mind, held together by the glue of persistent ignorance or the sugar of insistent greed. (See also the Psychopathology of Losing Gamblers.)
Weekly Standard: The equivalent of 'Fantastic Stories' for the educated neocon. (See also Geek Mythology and Kristol's Pistol.)
Woo Woo: Any neocon with a law degree who attempts to legally justify torture, trespassing, wiretapping, and a host of other criminal acts the current administration seeks to redefine as virtuous for the state, but still illegal for civilians. (See also Torquemada; Henry VIII.)
Abu Ghraib: A character from the Gasoline Ali comic strip who specialized in tortured logic. (See also Woo Woo below.)
Bush's Economy: Something that seems good only when dropped into a neocon think tank, or the Wall Street Journal editorial boardroom, and cooked for six years by deaf, dumb and blind economists. The resulting elixir is called champagne by the wealthiest 10 percent, but tastes like low-paid Kool-Aid to everyone else. (See also the Great Depression.)
Bush Intelligence: Cheney telling the CIA what the White House wants them to say. (See Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.)
Christian Right: Two words erroneously applied to a highly vocal religious sect of the Republican Party as they represent neither the philosophy of the former nor the definition of the latter.
Communicate (as in "communicate to the public our beliefs"): To lie unabashedly. (See also the Frank Luntz Dictionary of Political Evasion.)
Compassionate Conservatism: Screwing the citizenry blind, but calling it a "program for the improvement of visual acuity" for the sake of the mass media and the twits who believe them. (See also the Differences Between Grapes and Golf Balls.)
Election: An opportunity in 2008 to test the new 'secret proprietary code' voting software that will work better for the GOP than it did in 2006. (See also the Help America Vote (Republican) Act.)
DeLay: What inevitably results when a GOP politician gets too much of de money and de power.
General: A supporter of Bush's war in Iraq, until he or she retires from the service.
Giuliani Time: A festive period in New York City when minorities are allowed to party with the business end of a police officer's billy club or taser and, in some cases, the lead slug from a service pistol.
Gonzalizing: The ability to complacently tell an unbelievable lie to cover a previous unbelievable lie and smile afterward, even in front of adults.
Goodling: A poorly-educated and naive incompetent who is nevertheless installed in a position of senior governmental power, the better to attract the blame when the proverbial feces slaps up against the electric fan blades. (See Sap, Sucker and Yellowbelly.)
Immigration Reform: Allowing poor illegal Pablo to work for rich Peter cheap and on the sly so that Peter's corporation can make a huge profit, while maintaining a flowing sewer of coded rhetoric to satisfy the party racists. (See Nixon's Southern Strategy.)
Iran: The repository of all human evil and Bush's next war, now that Saddam Hussein is dead and North Korea has the bomb. Like Saddam, they had no connection to 9/11, but that's a distinction worthy only of sissy peaceniks and pinko commies. (See also Making Osama Smile.)
Military Recruiters: Non-commissioned officers who don't bother to set up a table at Young Republican events. (See also Chickenhawk Yolks.)
Rice Pudding: A visit from an American dignitary for the sole purpose of taking a picture while smiling and shaking hands. (See also World's Silliest Publicity Stunts.)
Rove Toast: A slice of stale white bread that has been baked in hubris until it falls apart. (See also Fatal Diseases Caused by Mold and Arrogance.)
Romney: A car that runs on unleaded grassroots or GOP premium, depending on which way the wind is blowing. (See also Forked Tongue Syndrome.)
Serving the People: In the same way a tennis ball is placed across a net. (See also The Twilight Zone's Best Episodes.)
Think Tank: When referring to neocon foundations that dash out lofty-sounding reports to justify idiocy, it means to literally sit there and ponder how best to use a heavily-armed military vehicle to solve every problem, from unrest among foreign civilians to border control. (See also Attila the Hun; Vlad the Impaler.)
Thirty-Second Spot: The byproduct of a cow's digestive system put into a blender, heated in a pot, and served as gravy; all is fine until you take a bite. (See also Optical Illusions.)
USS McCain: An old battleship built with two aft ends and no bow; in action, the props tend to cancel each other out, leaving the ship dead in the water and sinking fast. (See also The Wackiest Ship in the Navy.)
Victory in Iraq: A sand castle built in a neocon's mind, held together by the glue of persistent ignorance or the sugar of insistent greed. (See also the Psychopathology of Losing Gamblers.)
Weekly Standard: The equivalent of 'Fantastic Stories' for the educated neocon. (See also Geek Mythology and Kristol's Pistol.)
Woo Woo: Any neocon with a law degree who attempts to legally justify torture, trespassing, wiretapping, and a host of other criminal acts the current administration seeks to redefine as virtuous for the state, but still illegal for civilians. (See also Torquemada; Henry VIII.)
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
A Speech Bush Will Never Deliver Edition
Unfortunately, Bush's Swan Song is Only in the Imagination of This Nattering Nabob of Nutty Neoconservatism
The neocon natives are getting restless. Their bungling Texas hero and his trusty sidekick Deadeye Dick are tied to the track and the cavalry isn't on the horizon to save them. (It's bogged down fighting a civil war in Iraq.)
What's left of the Bush Believers -- that hardy little band impenetrably immune to fact or logic -- sense the downfall that's coming next, and they're desperately seeking a fallback position, one where they can claim that Bush would have prevailed in his screwy plans, if not for treasonous DemoRats, lefties, atheists, feminazis, pinkos, commies, Michael Moore, and the New Yawk Times, all of whom wield the levers of power in America, or, at least, that's what they'd like you to believe. Remember, these are the same types of mental giants who continued to insist on Nixon's innocence long after the tapes proving otherwise were made public and he had resigned in disgrace.
In the past six months, Your Intrepid Tattlesnake has received several emails from disheartened neocons, finally facing the reality that their little wax god is melting in the hot lights of his own unbelievable hubris and incredible incompetence.
Their bitter reaction, as evidenced by the email below, advises Bush to 'teach the country a lesson' for abandoning him by quitting because, to them, if you can't succeed you must always do something appallingly dumb as a parting shot to show others how bad things could be without you -- like the good Republican who slashed his own tires so that his wife couldn't go shopping on Sunday only to have to ride the bus to work on Monday and spend $1000.00 for new tires to prevent her from spending $200.00 on new clothes, which she eventually spent anyway. Guess he showed her. (Of course, in this case, Bush would actually be doing the country a favor by resigning, but the neocons don't know that.)
The piece of wincing scrap below, a fantasized speech by George W. Bush no doubt churned out by some so-far-unindicted Bush Goodling in the bowels of the RNC, is chockfull of laugh lines and eye-rollers by itself, but I couldn't resist adding my comments in bracketed italics.
It's concluding threat, that Nancy Pelosi would become president, is particularly risible. To rational people, the threat of a President Pelosi doesn't sound so bad -- how could she possibly do any worse than Ol' Blood & Oil and his greedy Halliburton Veep?
Here's the email in full, author unknown:
The neocon natives are getting restless. Their bungling Texas hero and his trusty sidekick Deadeye Dick are tied to the track and the cavalry isn't on the horizon to save them. (It's bogged down fighting a civil war in Iraq.)
What's left of the Bush Believers -- that hardy little band impenetrably immune to fact or logic -- sense the downfall that's coming next, and they're desperately seeking a fallback position, one where they can claim that Bush would have prevailed in his screwy plans, if not for treasonous DemoRats, lefties, atheists, feminazis, pinkos, commies, Michael Moore, and the New Yawk Times, all of whom wield the levers of power in America, or, at least, that's what they'd like you to believe. Remember, these are the same types of mental giants who continued to insist on Nixon's innocence long after the tapes proving otherwise were made public and he had resigned in disgrace.
In the past six months, Your Intrepid Tattlesnake has received several emails from disheartened neocons, finally facing the reality that their little wax god is melting in the hot lights of his own unbelievable hubris and incredible incompetence.
Their bitter reaction, as evidenced by the email below, advises Bush to 'teach the country a lesson' for abandoning him by quitting because, to them, if you can't succeed you must always do something appallingly dumb as a parting shot to show others how bad things could be without you -- like the good Republican who slashed his own tires so that his wife couldn't go shopping on Sunday only to have to ride the bus to work on Monday and spend $1000.00 for new tires to prevent her from spending $200.00 on new clothes, which she eventually spent anyway. Guess he showed her. (Of course, in this case, Bush would actually be doing the country a favor by resigning, but the neocons don't know that.)
The piece of wincing scrap below, a fantasized speech by George W. Bush no doubt churned out by some so-far-unindicted Bush Goodling in the bowels of the RNC, is chockfull of laugh lines and eye-rollers by itself, but I couldn't resist adding my comments in bracketed italics.
It's concluding threat, that Nancy Pelosi would become president, is particularly risible. To rational people, the threat of a President Pelosi doesn't sound so bad -- how could she possibly do any worse than Ol' Blood & Oil and his greedy Halliburton Veep?
Here's the email in full, author unknown:
The speech George W. Bush SHOULD give:
Normally, I start these things out by saying "My Fellow Americans." Not doing it this time. If the polls are any indication, I don't know who more than half of you are anymore. I do know something terrible has happened, and that you're really not fellow Americans any longer.
[Love it or leave it, Mr. Bush? Take the 28 percent who are still Bush lovers along with you when you go.]
I'll cut right to the chase here: I quit.
[Yay!]
Now before anyone gets all in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution or something, let me assure you: there's been no breaking of laws or impeachable offenses in this office.
[Well, except for incarcerating Americans for years without the right to due process and illegal warrantless wiretapping of US citizens, both contrary to your oath of office to uphold the Constitution; lying to get us into a war, violating international agreements by invading Iraq without UN Security Council permission, exposing a covert CIA agent for political reasons, sanctioning torture in defiance of the Geneva Convention treaty, using the Justice Department for political ends and about a half-dozen other impeachable offenses.]
The reason I'm quitting is simple. I'm fed up with you people.
[The feeling, judging by all the major polls, is mutual.]
I'm fed up because you have no understanding of what's really going on in the world. Or of what's going on in this once-great nation of ours. And the majority of you are too damned lazy to do your homework and figure it out.
[Ha, ha, as if a pumped-up preppy rich kid, a hothouse flower and Yale legacy with a phony Texas accent who's been surrounded by bodyguards for six years, would have any idea of what's really going on in the world. In fact, the majority of us have been doing our homework, which is why you're so unpopular.]
Let's start local. You've been sold a bill of goods by politicians and the news media. Polls show that the majority of you think the economy is in the tank. And that's despite record numbers of homeowners including record numbers of MINORITY homeowners. And while we're mentioning minorities, I'll point out that minority business ownership is at an all-time high. Our unemployment rate is as low as it ever was during the Clinton Administration. I've mentioned all those things before, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in.
[The majority think the economy's in the tank because they've seen their good-paying jobs fly overseas leaving them wearing a blue Wal-Mart vest or flipping burgers for a living, if they even have a job. And if it hasn't happened to them, it's happened to a friend or family member. There are a record number of homeowners, and a record number of foreclosures and bankruptcies as those homeowners are unable to keep their homes, due to the situation described in the first sentence. There may very well be a record number of minority-owned businesses, but there are also a record number of small businesses going under. The official federal employment rate is culled from the number of people collecting unemployment benefits; the rate is low simply because many have run out of benefits, not necessarily because they found jobs.]
Despite the shock to our economy of 9/11, the stock market has rebounded to record levels and more Americans than ever are participating in these markets. Meanwhile, all you can do is whine about gas prices, and most of you are too damn stupid to realize that gas prices are high because there's increased demand in other parts of the world, and because a small handful of noisy idiots are more worried about polar bears and beachfront property than your economic security.
[While your pals in the stock market are getting richer, thanks both to the market temporarily rising from job cuts and GOP tax breaks for the wealthy, the rest of us 'whiners' out here are getting hit with the highest gas prices of all time, courtesy of your friends in the oil industry, who are earning record profits. Already other prices -- such as for food, clothing, etc. -- are rising as a result of the devaluation of the dollar and the high oil cost. Soon we'll be paying six bucks a gallon for regular, and it's not because of 'noisy idiots' who want to preserve polar bears and beaches, they don't set the price per gallon: it's because of your campaign contributors in the energy industry gouging us for all we're worth.]
We face real threats in the world. Don't give me this "blood for oil" thing. If I was trading blood for oil I would've already seized Iraq's oil fields and let the rest of the country go to hell.
[That's precisely what you did.]
And don't give me this 'Bush Lied People Died' crap either. If I was the liar you morons take me for, I could've easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be 'discovered.'
[You tried and failed at that, too.]
Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty. Let me remind you that the rest of the world thought Saddam had the goods, same as me.
[That's true: your intelligence is faulty; has been your entire life. The rest of the world may have thought Saddam Hussein had some kind of bio-chemical weaponry (no nukes, though), but, except for you, your poodle Tony Blair, and a few small countries you bribed with our tax dollars, none of them thought the threat was serious enough to warrant an invasion of Iraq.]
Let me also remind you that regime change in Iraq was official US policy before I came into office. Some guy named 'Clinton' established that policy. Bet you didn't know that, did you?
[Let me remind you that Clinton wasn't foolish enough to invade Iraq; in fact, he turned down a request in 1998 by Don Rumsfeld's Project for a New American Century to do just that. And you were the one, with Rummy and Dick, who cooked up the new Iraq War plan even before 9/11. It's pathetic and weak how you always try to blame all of your failures on Clinton. Can't you take responsibility for anything -- even the dumb wars you start?]
You idiots need to understand that we face a unique enemy. Back during the cold war, there were two major competing political and economic models squaring off. We won that war, but we did so because fundamentally, the Communists wanted to survive, just as we do. We were simply able to outspend and out-tech them.
[We spend more than every other nation on earth for defense, and yet we can't find terrorists who live in caves and hijack airliners because they don't have an air force. This is what's making you shudder in fear? Coward. Maybe we need better police work, a better president and less of the Pentagon -- a howitzer isn't the most effective way to get rid of gnats, you idiot. And, by the way, when are you going to declare your 'War on Stairs'? After all, stair-related accidents cause more death and injury in this country than terrorist attacks.]
That's not the case this time. The soldiers of our new enemy don't care if they survive. In fact, they want to die. That'd be fine, as long as they weren't also committed to taking as many of you with them as they can. But they are. They want to kill you. And the bastards are all over the globe.
[And your belligerent policies are creating more of them every day. Unfortunately, they can't get to you, so they kill us. Why don't you, Cheney and Rumsfeld make a sacrifice for the nation and do this: Offer to the terrorists that you'll surrender to the International Court in The Hague to be tried for war crimes and we'll pull all of our armed forces out of the Middle East; in return, they vow to stop trying to kill Americans. If anyone attacks Israel, we'll go after them, but otherwise we'll let the nations there work out their own problems without our help and our blood. We'll pay whatever price they charge for oil while we convert our country to a sustainable energy source that doesn't enrich Saudi despots and keep them in power. The money saved from our leaving Iraq and other military installations in the Middle East would be enough to cover this conversion and the increased price of oil. Meanwhile, the US taxpayer will pop for the best lawyers we can find to defend you, Dick and Rummy at your trials. I think that's a pretty generous offer, considering that your administration has wasted so much of our military and our tax money, and ruined our standing in the world.]
You should be grateful that they haven't gotten any more of us here in the United States since September 11. But you're not. That's because you've got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that.
[No one has any idea because you've classified everything, only leaking that which makes you look good. Sorry, but your self-serving word isn't good enough.]
When this whole mess started, I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight. I'm disappointed how many of you people think a long and difficult fight amounts to a single season of 'Survivor'.
[That's an outright lie. In fact, we were told that Iraq would be a cakewalk; you even declared major combat operations in Iraq over on May 1, 2003. Apparently you don't recall that silly 'Mission Accomplished' PR stunt on the aircraft carrier -- you know, the one where you wore a flight suit and forgot to disconnect one of the straps so that it dug into your groin as you walked.]
Instead, you've grown impatient. You're incapable of seeing things through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do. You think that wars should last a few months, a few years, tops.
[We defeated Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire in less time than it's taken to pacify Iraq and Afghanistan, and we still haven't pacified Iraq or Afghanistan. Now, would that be due to the disastrous incompetence of the Commander in Chief? So far, every corner you've said has been turned has led up a blind alley and every prediction you've made about Iraq has been dead wrong. In the short lens of history, Al-Qaeda has prospered and Osama has gained influence while increasing numbers of the billion Muslims in the world hate us. With that track record, why should we trust your notion of what the 'long lens of history' will show? You can't even get the short term right.]
Making matters worse, you actively support those who help the enemy. Every time you buy the New York Times, every time you send a donation to a cut-and-run Democrat's political campaign, well, dammit, you might just as well Fed Ex a grenade launcher to a Jihadist. It amounts to the same thing.
[Oh, brother, are you full of crap. Glad you're not politicizing the war on terror.]
In this day and age, it's easy enough to find the truth. It's all over the Internet. It just isn't on the pages of the New York Times or on NBC News. But even if it were, I doubt you'd be any smarter.
[That's right, Mr. President, it's all over 'the Internets': read Think Progress, Common Dreams, Buzzflash.com, Truthdig, Make Them Accountable, Bartcop, Disinfotainment Today, The Daily Kos, FAIR, Media Matters, and others to get the truth. Use 'the Google' to find their URLs.]
Most of you would rather watch American Idol.
[Most of us would rather not worship as an American idol a hapless and inept president who always tries to avoid responsibility for the disasters he causes, especially one who was originally installed in office by the Supreme Court rather than the votes of the majority of Americans.]
I could say more about your expectations that the government will always be there to bail you out, even if you're too stupid to leave a city that's below sea level and has a hurricane approaching.
[Apparently your head of Homeland Security was just as stupid. Michael Chertoff, and others, testified that he didn't know how bad things were in New Orleans until he read the paper after the hurricane hit. Mike "Heck of a job" Brown, your director of FEMA, wasn't prepared for the emergency either. The Army Corps of Engineers also assured the state that the levees they built would hold back the waters of Lake Ponchartrain in the event that a hurricane raised water levels. You yourself were warned (it's on video tape) before Katrina of the possibility of a hurricane ravaging New Orleans but you couldn't be bothered to take any action, just as you didn't do anything when you were warned by the CIA in a presidential daily briefing on August 6, 2001 that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike inside the United States. After all, in both cases you were on vacation in Crawford at the time.]
I could say more about your insane belief that government, not your own wallet, is where the money comes from.
[Thanks for that, President Pickpocket. You head up the largest, most expensive government in our history, and you're constantly adding new layers to the bureaucracy -- now you want a 'War Czar.' That used to be the president before you came along and decided the buck shouldn't stop with you.]
I've come to the conclusion that were I to do so, it would sail right over your heads.
[Please don't try -- listening to you talk about anything these days is painful for most Americans.]
So, I quit. I'm going back to Crawford. I've got an energy efficient house down there (Al Gore could only dream) and the capability to be fully self-sufficient.
['Fully self-sufficient' as long as Daddy and his friends are standing by, and there's plenty of cheap domestic help to be had, and there will be, thanks to your rotten economy.]
No one ever heard of Crawford before I got elected and as soon as I'm done here pretty much no one will ever hear of it again.
[Thank God! The place is a hellhole where the temperatures during the summer soar over 100F; only an idiot would take a vacation in August in Crawford, Texas.]
Maybe I'll be lucky enough to die of old age before the last pillars of America fall.
[Before you can pull them down.]
Oh, by the way, Cheney's quitting, too.
[Double yay! Break out the champagne!]
That means Pelosi is your new President. You asked for it.
[How could she possibly be any worse?]
Watch what she does carefully because I still have a glimmer of hope that there are just enough of you remaining who are smart enough to turn this thing around in 2008.
[If by 'turn this thing around' you mean making it better by reversing your ignorant policies, then 'bring it on.']
So that's it. God bless what's left of America. Some of you know what I mean.
[Yes we do, and it's frightening, unless you believe America should be a theocracy.]
The rest of you, Fuck off.
[The last two words of that sentence sum up your entire occupancy of the White House. It's just a shame we'll be paying a half-million a year to support you for the rest of your life after you quit, just as we paid for that disgraced crook Nixon to live in leisure.]
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Rev. Falwell's Visit to Heaven Edition
A Short One-Act Play Featuring God, Jesus and Dick Nixon
(It is much as he thought it would be. The Rev. Jerry Falwell, shucking off the corruption and wretchedness of the flesh, flies through puffy white clouds, heading toward a pinpoint of light in the distance. As the pinpoint gets bigger, Jerry sees it is an enormous Eveready flashlight, the shiny silver six-battery Urban Enforcer model, held by an elderly black man with a long white beard in a terrycloth bathrobe. "We've been waiting for you," he says, as he leads Jerry through yet more clouds to a large golden door. "Go on in and make yourself comfortable," mutters the elderly man, opening the huge door. Inside there is a golden throne, the biggest he's ever seen, and sitting upon the throne is the Almighty God of the Universe. Twenty feet below the front of the throne is a plain wooden chair. Jerry sits down in the chair and stares up at God, his mouth agape.)
GOD: "You look surprised, Jerry."
FALWELL: "Well, ah, uh, Lord, you're not what I expected."
GOD: "Oh, really. How is that?"
FALWELL: "Well, ha, ha, I mean you're, ah...black, uh... and a woman... and, uh, you sound like Moms Mabley."
GOD: "That's right, Jerry. You got a problem with that?"
FALWELL: "Oh, no, no, no -- not at all, Lord..."
GOD: "Now Jesus here tells me that we have a little accountin' problem with y'all."
(Jesus emerges from behind a cloud, a tall man in a flowing white robe who strongly resembles Paul Robeson.)
FALWELL: "Jesus H. -- uh, I mean, Jesus -- you're black, too?!"
JESUS: "As you taught, Jerry, humanity was created in God's image, and the first real human beings were black folks in central Africa. If you'd studied science, you'd know that."
GOD: "Jesus, what do your calculations say Jerry owes us?"
JESUS: "Well, Mama, I figure in his lifetime Jerry collected about $1.5 billion in our names and he hasn't paid a cent to us."
GOD: "Whoa, another deadbeat. Okay, Jerry, pay up the $1.5 billion you owe and you can enter heaven."
FALWELL: "What -- I can't believe this! You use money in heaven?!"
GOD: "In heaven as it is on earth, Jer. And don't get cute with God -- you pay that money in good old U.S. currency."
FALWELL: "But I'm dead! I don't have any money!"
GOD: "You don't have any money? You collect $1.5 billion in the name of God and Jesus and YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY FOR US?!?!"
JESUS: "See, Jerry, the way it works up here is that whatever was the most important thing to you in life is what you must pay to get into heaven. Now, on the contrary, if you had renounced wealth and dedicated yourself to something altruistic like helping the poor or peace on earth, you would get a free pass into heaven. You really should have read the Bible more closely; I talked about this at length."
FALWELL: "I'd be glad to give you your money, but I don't have any in this these circumstances!"
GOD: "Hmmm, guess you shoulda thought of that while you were alive. What say, Jesus -- thumbs down?"
JESUS: "Oh, you know it, Mom."
GOD: "Sorry, Jerry, you don't have no money, you can go straight to hell."
JESUS: "Good for the company, I hear."
GOD: "Dick, we got another one for you."
(At that, Richard Nixon, his skin a bright red and sporting horns and a long forked tail, steps from behind a cloud, chuckling deeply.)
NIXON: "Come with me, Jer."
FALWELL: "This is crazy! I can't believe you're sending me to live in hell just because I don't have any money!"
GOD: "Just like on earth, Jerry."
NIXON: "Don't worry, Jer, hell's not so bad if you ever get used to the climate and the toxic smell, and you'll be surrounded by all your friends."
FALWELL: "But, but -- I dedicated my entire adult life to the glory of God and bringing Jesus' message of hope and salvation to the people! This just ISN'T FAIR!"
GOD: "Jesus, look who cares about being fair all of a sudden. Take him away, Dick."
FALWELL: "You can't do this to me -- I'm BORN AGAIN!"
NIXON: "Huh, huh, huh -- good one, Jer, but save your A material until we get downstairs."
(End)
(It is much as he thought it would be. The Rev. Jerry Falwell, shucking off the corruption and wretchedness of the flesh, flies through puffy white clouds, heading toward a pinpoint of light in the distance. As the pinpoint gets bigger, Jerry sees it is an enormous Eveready flashlight, the shiny silver six-battery Urban Enforcer model, held by an elderly black man with a long white beard in a terrycloth bathrobe. "We've been waiting for you," he says, as he leads Jerry through yet more clouds to a large golden door. "Go on in and make yourself comfortable," mutters the elderly man, opening the huge door. Inside there is a golden throne, the biggest he's ever seen, and sitting upon the throne is the Almighty God of the Universe. Twenty feet below the front of the throne is a plain wooden chair. Jerry sits down in the chair and stares up at God, his mouth agape.)
GOD: "You look surprised, Jerry."
FALWELL: "Well, ah, uh, Lord, you're not what I expected."
GOD: "Oh, really. How is that?"
FALWELL: "Well, ha, ha, I mean you're, ah...black, uh... and a woman... and, uh, you sound like Moms Mabley."
GOD: "That's right, Jerry. You got a problem with that?"
FALWELL: "Oh, no, no, no -- not at all, Lord..."
GOD: "Now Jesus here tells me that we have a little accountin' problem with y'all."
(Jesus emerges from behind a cloud, a tall man in a flowing white robe who strongly resembles Paul Robeson.)
FALWELL: "Jesus H. -- uh, I mean, Jesus -- you're black, too?!"
JESUS: "As you taught, Jerry, humanity was created in God's image, and the first real human beings were black folks in central Africa. If you'd studied science, you'd know that."
GOD: "Jesus, what do your calculations say Jerry owes us?"
JESUS: "Well, Mama, I figure in his lifetime Jerry collected about $1.5 billion in our names and he hasn't paid a cent to us."
GOD: "Whoa, another deadbeat. Okay, Jerry, pay up the $1.5 billion you owe and you can enter heaven."
FALWELL: "What -- I can't believe this! You use money in heaven?!"
GOD: "In heaven as it is on earth, Jer. And don't get cute with God -- you pay that money in good old U.S. currency."
FALWELL: "But I'm dead! I don't have any money!"
GOD: "You don't have any money? You collect $1.5 billion in the name of God and Jesus and YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY FOR US?!?!"
JESUS: "See, Jerry, the way it works up here is that whatever was the most important thing to you in life is what you must pay to get into heaven. Now, on the contrary, if you had renounced wealth and dedicated yourself to something altruistic like helping the poor or peace on earth, you would get a free pass into heaven. You really should have read the Bible more closely; I talked about this at length."
FALWELL: "I'd be glad to give you your money, but I don't have any in this these circumstances!"
GOD: "Hmmm, guess you shoulda thought of that while you were alive. What say, Jesus -- thumbs down?"
JESUS: "Oh, you know it, Mom."
GOD: "Sorry, Jerry, you don't have no money, you can go straight to hell."
JESUS: "Good for the company, I hear."
GOD: "Dick, we got another one for you."
(At that, Richard Nixon, his skin a bright red and sporting horns and a long forked tail, steps from behind a cloud, chuckling deeply.)
NIXON: "Come with me, Jer."
FALWELL: "This is crazy! I can't believe you're sending me to live in hell just because I don't have any money!"
GOD: "Just like on earth, Jerry."
NIXON: "Don't worry, Jer, hell's not so bad if you ever get used to the climate and the toxic smell, and you'll be surrounded by all your friends."
FALWELL: "But, but -- I dedicated my entire adult life to the glory of God and bringing Jesus' message of hope and salvation to the people! This just ISN'T FAIR!"
GOD: "Jesus, look who cares about being fair all of a sudden. Take him away, Dick."
FALWELL: "You can't do this to me -- I'm BORN AGAIN!"
NIXON: "Huh, huh, huh -- good one, Jer, but save your A material until we get downstairs."
(End)
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The Virginia Tech Killer: Who Does It Sound Like? Edition
"It would be a gross deception to admit power intoxication only for the individual psyche. The mass also is guided by this goal and the effect of this is the more devastating as in the mass psyche the feeling of personal responsibility is essentially reduced."
-- Alfred Adler, "The Psychology of Power," 1928.
"The close relationship between politics and power has always been recognized. In the world of politics, Lassalles' expression still has currency: 'Constitutional struggles are struggles for power.' ..... Masaryk's expression, 'There will be no peace in the world as long as individual ethics do not also apply to the state,' is as much a criticism of the present as a challenge for the future."
-- Alexander Mueller, "The Principles of Individual Psychology."
April 19, 2007 -- On MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night, the subject, as it has been on most of the cable news shows recently, was once again the Virginia Tech killer, Cho Seung-Hui.
Keith's been better at plowing this gutted field for new information than most of the news media, but what caught my attention were the words and phrases uttered by his guest experts.
Former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary described Cho Seung-Hui as full of "paranoid delusions," addicted to his own "grandiosity,"and someone who wanted to gain "power through violence."
Later in the show Keith welcomed Dr. Susan Lipkins, a psychologist, who gave her professional perspective on the crazed murderer, depicting him as "operating outside of reality" and exhibiting "extreme behavior" as a result. She added that, typically, psychotic killers "think that they are god" at which time they should be "removed from society" when they are "found to be incompetent."
This morning Melissa Segrest had an article up at MSN, "Getting Inside the Mind of a Killer." She also consulted experts who rendered their opinions on the Virginia Tech maniac.
Dr. James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Boston's Northeastern University who has spent 25 years studying mass murderers, said, "Typically you have someone who has a long history of frustration and failure..." and "They have a diminished capacity to cope with disappointment." He added, "they are people who blame others for those failures, they externalize blame, they never see themselves as responsible, ... and they're angry, they're full of blame and resentment."
Dr. Robert R. Butterworth, a Los Angeles psychologist who works with violent criminals and heads International Trauma Associates, told Segrest, "A lot of times these people are somewhat aloof from people. They're very sensitive to slights," and summed up, "They're not friendly, they're usually socially inept, they have problems a lot of times with females and sometimes they have a fascination with guns."
Dr. Stanton Samenow, a clinical psychologist who has been has been studying killers since 1970 and wrote the book "Inside the Criminal Mind," added, "These men interpret any affront or adversity very personally. It threatens their very sense of who they are. They think in extremes... They are constantly angry at a world that, from their perspective, does not give them what they are due."
Samenow also said, "These are people who know right from wrong. They also know the potential consequences to themselves if they are caught .... When they commit the crime, they are certain about their course of action. They are deliberate and purposeful. They may have planned the crime well in advance. At the time they commit the crime, they are calm -- having shut off all fear."
Dr. Butterworth put in, "We're developing a narcissistic, angry culture that, when crossed, are prone to attack."
And Dr. Fox concluded, "We've become much more of a competitive society. We admire the winners and we pity the losers. We have no tolerance for them. We ridicule them and vote them off the island." Later, he said, "The more people they kill, the greater the level of satisfaction they feel and derive from the crime."
Read through these quotes and what picture emerges -- who does it sound like?
"[P]aranoid delusions," "grandiosity" gaining "power through violence."
"operating outside of reality" "extreme behavior" "think that they are god."
Just look at the history of the Bush Administration; paranoid delusions about the power of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations; obvious grandiosity and god-like thinking in Bush believing he was installed as president by the Creator of the Universe; gaining power through violence is in progress in the Middle East, if not in this country; some might consider invading another country on false pretenses and killing innocent civilians was extreme behavior; and operating outside of reality is the modus operandi of the Bushies and their neocon supporters.
"[They have] a long history of frustration and failure...They have a diminished capacity to cope with disappointment. [T]hey are people who blame others for those failures, they externalize blame, they never see themselves as responsible, ... and they're angry, they're full of blame and resentment."
The Bush neocon 'experiment' has been one long trail of frustration and failure, and the Bush neocons pathologically evade responsibility and blame others for their failures. The media neocons -- O'Reilly, Hannity, Boortz, et al -- are hair-triggers seething with anger, blame and resentment and appeal to an audience similarly ill-disposed.
"These men interpret any affront or adversity very personally. It threatens their very sense of who they are. They think in extremes ... They are constantly angry at a world that, from their perspective, does not give them what they are due."
Both the neocons and the Bushies are prime examples of this: political disagreements are always personal, and they can't deal with adversity maturely. Every slight or failure is a challenge to their manhood. Thinking in extremes and angry at the world? Read Ann Coulter, Anti-Idiotarian Rottweilers, Little Green Footballs, Charles Krauthammer or listen to Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz or Rush Limbaugh.
"These are people who know right from wrong. They also know the potential consequences to themselves if they are caught.... When they commit the crime, they are certain about their course of action. They are deliberate and purposeful. They may have planned the crime well in advance."
Isn't this a pretty good description of the Bush Administration? From using false intelligence to invade Iraq, to leaking Valerie Plame's name, to Alberto Gonzales' blatant lies, to the current fiasco over Rove's emails, ad nauseum, they knew what they were doing was wrong, but were deliberate and purposeful in their planning to accomplish their treacherous and illegal goals.
"They're very sensitive to slights,...They're not friendly, they're usually socially inept, they have problems a lot of times with females and sometimes they have a fascination with guns."
Check out who advertises on neocon websites, and the fascination with guns, general unfriendliness, problems with females and social ineptitude should be clear. Sensitivity to slights -- have you ever known anyone as thin-skinned as a neocon?
"We're developing a narcissistic, angry culture that, when crossed, are prone to attack."
Read the neocon blogs -- it doesn't get more angry, narcissistic and prone to attack than that.
"We've become much more of a competitive society. We admire the winners and we pity the losers. We have no tolerance for them. We ridicule them and vote them off the island. ... The more people they kill, the greater the level of satisfaction they feel and derive from the crime."
The entire greedy, demented consumer culture, the one advertised and promoted every day by the six big US media conglomerates and global corporations, and wallowed in by the Bush neocons, has no tolerance or pity for losers. "The good calls are for winners." Losers -- usually defined as minorities, Democrats, women and liberals -- are mercilessly derided by right-wing sites, who, steeped in their fervid delusions and contrary to harsh reality, think they are winners with all the answers. They don't realize the only winners are the corporations and their political and media shills making a buck off them and conning them for votes. At some point, they will have a rude awakening as they are 'voted off the island' by those they idolized when they lose their job, their pension or their house. (It's happening every day.) Then, they might be enlightened by reality but, more likely, they'll just crawl further back in the cave, alternately bellowing and whimpering. And, yes, they do seem to derive great satisfaction from the deaths of those they've deemed the enemy -- Iraqi insurgents, Afghanis, Muslims in general, Spanish-speaking immigrants, poor blacks and, of course, the Devil's minions who are the fount of all the world's problems, liberals and Democrats.
They should be "removed from society [when they are] "found to be incompetent."
I don't think this government's monumental incompetence is even an issue for reasonable debate any longer. In the case of the Bushies, impeachment is the obvious answer to remove them from doing further harm. In the case of the neocons, they have, and should have, freedom of speech, so they can say or write whatever they want, but I'd keep them away from the Glock 9mm's just in case.
Most of them are only courageous when hiding behind a screen name or a microphone -- hence the paltry number of neocon frothers who've signed up to fight in Bush's Global War on Terror -- but you never know when one of them might take some Viagra and go off half-cocked.
"To prevail through violence appears to many as an obvious thought. And we admit: the simplest way to attain everything that is good and promises happiness, or even only what is in the line of a continuous evolution seems to be by means of power. But where in the life of men or in the history of mankind has such an attempt ever succeeded? As far as we can see, even the use of mild violence awakens opposition everywhere, even where the welfare of the subjugated is obviously intended."
-- Alfred Adler, "The Psychology of Power," 1928.
-- Alfred Adler, "The Psychology of Power," 1928.
"The close relationship between politics and power has always been recognized. In the world of politics, Lassalles' expression still has currency: 'Constitutional struggles are struggles for power.' ..... Masaryk's expression, 'There will be no peace in the world as long as individual ethics do not also apply to the state,' is as much a criticism of the present as a challenge for the future."
-- Alexander Mueller, "The Principles of Individual Psychology."
April 19, 2007 -- On MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night, the subject, as it has been on most of the cable news shows recently, was once again the Virginia Tech killer, Cho Seung-Hui.
Keith's been better at plowing this gutted field for new information than most of the news media, but what caught my attention were the words and phrases uttered by his guest experts.
Former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary described Cho Seung-Hui as full of "paranoid delusions," addicted to his own "grandiosity,"and someone who wanted to gain "power through violence."
Later in the show Keith welcomed Dr. Susan Lipkins, a psychologist, who gave her professional perspective on the crazed murderer, depicting him as "operating outside of reality" and exhibiting "extreme behavior" as a result. She added that, typically, psychotic killers "think that they are god" at which time they should be "removed from society" when they are "found to be incompetent."
This morning Melissa Segrest had an article up at MSN, "Getting Inside the Mind of a Killer." She also consulted experts who rendered their opinions on the Virginia Tech maniac.
Dr. James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Boston's Northeastern University who has spent 25 years studying mass murderers, said, "Typically you have someone who has a long history of frustration and failure..." and "They have a diminished capacity to cope with disappointment." He added, "they are people who blame others for those failures, they externalize blame, they never see themselves as responsible, ... and they're angry, they're full of blame and resentment."
Dr. Robert R. Butterworth, a Los Angeles psychologist who works with violent criminals and heads International Trauma Associates, told Segrest, "A lot of times these people are somewhat aloof from people. They're very sensitive to slights," and summed up, "They're not friendly, they're usually socially inept, they have problems a lot of times with females and sometimes they have a fascination with guns."
Dr. Stanton Samenow, a clinical psychologist who has been has been studying killers since 1970 and wrote the book "Inside the Criminal Mind," added, "These men interpret any affront or adversity very personally. It threatens their very sense of who they are. They think in extremes... They are constantly angry at a world that, from their perspective, does not give them what they are due."
Samenow also said, "These are people who know right from wrong. They also know the potential consequences to themselves if they are caught .... When they commit the crime, they are certain about their course of action. They are deliberate and purposeful. They may have planned the crime well in advance. At the time they commit the crime, they are calm -- having shut off all fear."
Dr. Butterworth put in, "We're developing a narcissistic, angry culture that, when crossed, are prone to attack."
And Dr. Fox concluded, "We've become much more of a competitive society. We admire the winners and we pity the losers. We have no tolerance for them. We ridicule them and vote them off the island." Later, he said, "The more people they kill, the greater the level of satisfaction they feel and derive from the crime."
Read through these quotes and what picture emerges -- who does it sound like?
"[P]aranoid delusions," "grandiosity" gaining "power through violence."
"operating outside of reality" "extreme behavior" "think that they are god."
Just look at the history of the Bush Administration; paranoid delusions about the power of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations; obvious grandiosity and god-like thinking in Bush believing he was installed as president by the Creator of the Universe; gaining power through violence is in progress in the Middle East, if not in this country; some might consider invading another country on false pretenses and killing innocent civilians was extreme behavior; and operating outside of reality is the modus operandi of the Bushies and their neocon supporters.
"[They have] a long history of frustration and failure...They have a diminished capacity to cope with disappointment. [T]hey are people who blame others for those failures, they externalize blame, they never see themselves as responsible, ... and they're angry, they're full of blame and resentment."
The Bush neocon 'experiment' has been one long trail of frustration and failure, and the Bush neocons pathologically evade responsibility and blame others for their failures. The media neocons -- O'Reilly, Hannity, Boortz, et al -- are hair-triggers seething with anger, blame and resentment and appeal to an audience similarly ill-disposed.
"These men interpret any affront or adversity very personally. It threatens their very sense of who they are. They think in extremes ... They are constantly angry at a world that, from their perspective, does not give them what they are due."
Both the neocons and the Bushies are prime examples of this: political disagreements are always personal, and they can't deal with adversity maturely. Every slight or failure is a challenge to their manhood. Thinking in extremes and angry at the world? Read Ann Coulter, Anti-Idiotarian Rottweilers, Little Green Footballs, Charles Krauthammer or listen to Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz or Rush Limbaugh.
"These are people who know right from wrong. They also know the potential consequences to themselves if they are caught.... When they commit the crime, they are certain about their course of action. They are deliberate and purposeful. They may have planned the crime well in advance."
Isn't this a pretty good description of the Bush Administration? From using false intelligence to invade Iraq, to leaking Valerie Plame's name, to Alberto Gonzales' blatant lies, to the current fiasco over Rove's emails, ad nauseum, they knew what they were doing was wrong, but were deliberate and purposeful in their planning to accomplish their treacherous and illegal goals.
"They're very sensitive to slights,...They're not friendly, they're usually socially inept, they have problems a lot of times with females and sometimes they have a fascination with guns."
Check out who advertises on neocon websites, and the fascination with guns, general unfriendliness, problems with females and social ineptitude should be clear. Sensitivity to slights -- have you ever known anyone as thin-skinned as a neocon?
"We're developing a narcissistic, angry culture that, when crossed, are prone to attack."
Read the neocon blogs -- it doesn't get more angry, narcissistic and prone to attack than that.
"We've become much more of a competitive society. We admire the winners and we pity the losers. We have no tolerance for them. We ridicule them and vote them off the island. ... The more people they kill, the greater the level of satisfaction they feel and derive from the crime."
The entire greedy, demented consumer culture, the one advertised and promoted every day by the six big US media conglomerates and global corporations, and wallowed in by the Bush neocons, has no tolerance or pity for losers. "The good calls are for winners." Losers -- usually defined as minorities, Democrats, women and liberals -- are mercilessly derided by right-wing sites, who, steeped in their fervid delusions and contrary to harsh reality, think they are winners with all the answers. They don't realize the only winners are the corporations and their political and media shills making a buck off them and conning them for votes. At some point, they will have a rude awakening as they are 'voted off the island' by those they idolized when they lose their job, their pension or their house. (It's happening every day.) Then, they might be enlightened by reality but, more likely, they'll just crawl further back in the cave, alternately bellowing and whimpering. And, yes, they do seem to derive great satisfaction from the deaths of those they've deemed the enemy -- Iraqi insurgents, Afghanis, Muslims in general, Spanish-speaking immigrants, poor blacks and, of course, the Devil's minions who are the fount of all the world's problems, liberals and Democrats.
They should be "removed from society [when they are] "found to be incompetent."
I don't think this government's monumental incompetence is even an issue for reasonable debate any longer. In the case of the Bushies, impeachment is the obvious answer to remove them from doing further harm. In the case of the neocons, they have, and should have, freedom of speech, so they can say or write whatever they want, but I'd keep them away from the Glock 9mm's just in case.
Most of them are only courageous when hiding behind a screen name or a microphone -- hence the paltry number of neocon frothers who've signed up to fight in Bush's Global War on Terror -- but you never know when one of them might take some Viagra and go off half-cocked.
"To prevail through violence appears to many as an obvious thought. And we admit: the simplest way to attain everything that is good and promises happiness, or even only what is in the line of a continuous evolution seems to be by means of power. But where in the life of men or in the history of mankind has such an attempt ever succeeded? As far as we can see, even the use of mild violence awakens opposition everywhere, even where the welfare of the subjugated is obviously intended."
-- Alfred Adler, "The Psychology of Power," 1928.
Friday, April 13, 2007
CBS Firing Imus Signals the End of the Neocon Shock Radio Era
"CBS fires Don Imus from radio show"
-- AP headline, April 12, 2007.
"You ain't no racist, Mister Imus, nah suh. No, thank you, I don't want no watermelon!"
-- Bernard McGuirk, Don Imus' producer, using an 'Amos 'n' Andy' voice to a laughing Imus on his radio show, as quoted by Newsweek.
"An entertainer like Imus can trace his lineage to Bruce, with one crucial distinction: Lenny made fun of the powerful and their orthodoxies. You won't find Imus mocking WASPs on a regular basis. Instead, this rude dude focuses on groups whose status is still contested, such as blacks, immigrants, and gays."
-- Richard Goldstein, "Celebrity Bigots," The Village Voice, July 18, 2000.
"There are 100 people in this country right now that can solve hate television. They are the CEO of Procter & Gamble, the CEO of General Motors. These people control all the advertising dollars and they spoke... These CEOs can spend the money in places that don't promote hate."
-- Donnie Deutsch, the host of CNBC's "The Big Idea," quoted by Mike Celizic at TODAYshow.com, April 12, 2007.
Things Change
April 13, 2007 -- Rush Limbaugh senses it coming, telling his listeners yesterday that he's next, and the other Rush wannabe radio bile spillers of the right may be dimly aware of it, but Don Imus' firing by CBS Radio, removing him from the air nationwide, augurs the end of their run of nasty spittle-flecked bigotry disguised as 'humor'; a vicious humor designed to appeal to their core audience of Angry White Men who blame minorities and women because they're losers, ignorant boys cowering in adult bodies, whispering racists, snickering water-cooler-wit a-holes, and mutant teenagers who thought the Garbage Pail Kids were brilliant comedy.
It won't happen overnight, as major societal changes rarely do, but gradually advertisers will begin pulling ads from Limbaugh and his clones, realizing that the country has shifted away from the mean-spirited neocon tripe they've successfully peddled for over two decades and is heading in a new direction.
Most media analysts will credit Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson with bringing Imus down; they'll focus on the "nappy-headed ho's" remark as the centerpiece of his downfall; all of it was certainly a factor but, if Imus were as popular as he was even a decade ago, his critics would have been ridiculed into silence or ignored. What I see happening now was expressed by Newsweek's Howard Fineman on the Imus show April 9th. He told the 'I-man': "[T]hings have changed. And the kind of -- some of the kind of humor that you used to do you can't do anymore. And that's just the way it is."
Here's 'the way it is' these days: The country is becoming aware that "nappy-headed ho's" are not the problem; the problem is the smooth-haired caucasian variety who infest the halls of power in Washington and the broadcast booths in New York.
While Imus may claim he's not a racist, a long trail of reprehensible remarks argues that he wears a white sheet in private. He or his 'crew' -- especially his execrable producer Bernard McGuirk -- have habitually referred to black people as "bugaloos," "brilloheads," "dark meat," "dingos," and "mandingos." He's called Sammy Davis Jr. a "a one-eyed lawn jockey," and regularly referred to Aretha Franklin and other black women as "ho's." Terms for other minorities like "raghead," "camel jockey," "gook," "zipperhead," "banana picker," and "our urine-colored brothers" have been uttered with sneering gusto on the Imus airwaves, as well as his bashing of gays with such tried-and-true nuggets as "homo," "fag," "faggot," "fag-queen," "queer," and "load-swallower." All in good fun, of course, Imus assures us -- as long as you're not black, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim, Arab, gay or female.
Several years ago, Imus even promised columnist Clarence Page, who is black, that he would stop using racial slurs. Obviously, he didn't.
Notoriously he said in 1995 of black New York Times correspondent Gwen Ifill, "Isn't The Times wonderful? It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House." He even admitted to 60 Minutes back in 2000 that he uses the 'N-word' in private, but never in public. (Uh, the ghost of Dr. King thanks you, Don.) On that same show, he said, "I don't apologize for offending people ... I know it's not politically correct, and I don't care."
Well, times have changed -- Imus was forced to care, and apologize, but it was much too little, too late. Imus is not by any means the worst of the bigoted shock jocks, however, just the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
The ludicrous age of victimized White Man Ranting is breathing its last as the promise that the Republicans would 'fix everything' has turned into a bitter joke under Bush. More and more Americans every day realize that it isn't blacks or women or some minority that's keeping them down, that is ruining our economy and our standing in the world; it's soft, rich, pampered ofay jerks like Limbaugh and his ilk that are pulling the strings putting them out of work and getting them killed in wrong-headed wars.
Ironically -- since the neocons so worship 'free markets' -- as the worm turns and the 'invisible hand' of economic reality asserts itself, advertisers will flee from the right side of the dial, anxious not to offend minorities or the many whites who are becoming cognizant of the fact that the neocon Republicans have been steadily destroying this country for the past six years, methodically dismantling a government designed to respond to the wishes and needs of the people and replacing it with an over-easy plutocracy that serves the privileged few at the expense of the majority.
The results of the last election and every poll since has shown that the majority of Americans are heading in a new direction, a direction that doesn't include the vitriol and spite of vain 'funnymen' like Imus and Rush.
Ratings for right-wing radio and TV shows have been steadily falling for three years running; even Bill O'Reilly has lost over a million viewers since 2004, and they won't be coming back. Most purchasers of the neocon ideology promoted by Bill and Rush and Fox News have realized it's a modern-day Edsel, one with four flat tires and an engine that doesn't run.
Rush, do you hear that growling at the door?
It's for you.
"What all you folks need, who still treat fellow human beings as 'black', 'white', 'yellow', or 'red', is to watch a Documentary entitled 'The Angry Eye' by Jane Elliott which is described as follows: Documentary which features Jane Elliott's blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise in discrimination involving college students forced to experience racist treatment minorities have received for years. Jane Elliott was an elementary school teacher in Iowa in the 1960s when she developed her exercise on the effects of racism in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr."
-- Comment by JPBreeze at Common Dreams, April 10, 2007.
Sources for this piece include:
-- Mike Celizic, "Is Imus firing a turning point?" TODAYshow.com, April 12, 2007.
-- Isaiah J. Poole, "Imus and Beyond," Tom Paine, April 11, 2007.
-- Richard Goldstein, "Celebrity Bigots," The Village Voice, July 18, 2000.
-- Philip Nobile, "A Catalogue of Slurs," Tom Paine.com, May 16, 2000.
-- Marcus Mabry, "The Ugly Truth About Imus, Power and the Press," Newsweek, April 11, 2007.
-- Media Matters, "Imus Cancellation: Statement from Media Matters," April 11, 2007.
-- Gwen Ifill, "Trash Talk Radio," The New York Times, April 10, 2007.
-- Media Matters, "Imus Has Long Record of Incendiary Remarks," April 9, 2007.
-- Adam Howard, "No More Imus," The Nation, April 9, 2007.
-- AP headline, April 12, 2007.
"You ain't no racist, Mister Imus, nah suh. No, thank you, I don't want no watermelon!"
-- Bernard McGuirk, Don Imus' producer, using an 'Amos 'n' Andy' voice to a laughing Imus on his radio show, as quoted by Newsweek.
"An entertainer like Imus can trace his lineage to Bruce, with one crucial distinction: Lenny made fun of the powerful and their orthodoxies. You won't find Imus mocking WASPs on a regular basis. Instead, this rude dude focuses on groups whose status is still contested, such as blacks, immigrants, and gays."
-- Richard Goldstein, "Celebrity Bigots," The Village Voice, July 18, 2000.
"There are 100 people in this country right now that can solve hate television. They are the CEO of Procter & Gamble, the CEO of General Motors. These people control all the advertising dollars and they spoke... These CEOs can spend the money in places that don't promote hate."
-- Donnie Deutsch, the host of CNBC's "The Big Idea," quoted by Mike Celizic at TODAYshow.com, April 12, 2007.
Things Change
April 13, 2007 -- Rush Limbaugh senses it coming, telling his listeners yesterday that he's next, and the other Rush wannabe radio bile spillers of the right may be dimly aware of it, but Don Imus' firing by CBS Radio, removing him from the air nationwide, augurs the end of their run of nasty spittle-flecked bigotry disguised as 'humor'; a vicious humor designed to appeal to their core audience of Angry White Men who blame minorities and women because they're losers, ignorant boys cowering in adult bodies, whispering racists, snickering water-cooler-wit a-holes, and mutant teenagers who thought the Garbage Pail Kids were brilliant comedy.
It won't happen overnight, as major societal changes rarely do, but gradually advertisers will begin pulling ads from Limbaugh and his clones, realizing that the country has shifted away from the mean-spirited neocon tripe they've successfully peddled for over two decades and is heading in a new direction.
Most media analysts will credit Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson with bringing Imus down; they'll focus on the "nappy-headed ho's" remark as the centerpiece of his downfall; all of it was certainly a factor but, if Imus were as popular as he was even a decade ago, his critics would have been ridiculed into silence or ignored. What I see happening now was expressed by Newsweek's Howard Fineman on the Imus show April 9th. He told the 'I-man': "[T]hings have changed. And the kind of -- some of the kind of humor that you used to do you can't do anymore. And that's just the way it is."
Here's 'the way it is' these days: The country is becoming aware that "nappy-headed ho's" are not the problem; the problem is the smooth-haired caucasian variety who infest the halls of power in Washington and the broadcast booths in New York.
While Imus may claim he's not a racist, a long trail of reprehensible remarks argues that he wears a white sheet in private. He or his 'crew' -- especially his execrable producer Bernard McGuirk -- have habitually referred to black people as "bugaloos," "brilloheads," "dark meat," "dingos," and "mandingos." He's called Sammy Davis Jr. a "a one-eyed lawn jockey," and regularly referred to Aretha Franklin and other black women as "ho's." Terms for other minorities like "raghead," "camel jockey," "gook," "zipperhead," "banana picker," and "our urine-colored brothers" have been uttered with sneering gusto on the Imus airwaves, as well as his bashing of gays with such tried-and-true nuggets as "homo," "fag," "faggot," "fag-queen," "queer," and "load-swallower." All in good fun, of course, Imus assures us -- as long as you're not black, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim, Arab, gay or female.
Several years ago, Imus even promised columnist Clarence Page, who is black, that he would stop using racial slurs. Obviously, he didn't.
Notoriously he said in 1995 of black New York Times correspondent Gwen Ifill, "Isn't The Times wonderful? It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House." He even admitted to 60 Minutes back in 2000 that he uses the 'N-word' in private, but never in public. (Uh, the ghost of Dr. King thanks you, Don.) On that same show, he said, "I don't apologize for offending people ... I know it's not politically correct, and I don't care."
Well, times have changed -- Imus was forced to care, and apologize, but it was much too little, too late. Imus is not by any means the worst of the bigoted shock jocks, however, just the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
The ludicrous age of victimized White Man Ranting is breathing its last as the promise that the Republicans would 'fix everything' has turned into a bitter joke under Bush. More and more Americans every day realize that it isn't blacks or women or some minority that's keeping them down, that is ruining our economy and our standing in the world; it's soft, rich, pampered ofay jerks like Limbaugh and his ilk that are pulling the strings putting them out of work and getting them killed in wrong-headed wars.
Ironically -- since the neocons so worship 'free markets' -- as the worm turns and the 'invisible hand' of economic reality asserts itself, advertisers will flee from the right side of the dial, anxious not to offend minorities or the many whites who are becoming cognizant of the fact that the neocon Republicans have been steadily destroying this country for the past six years, methodically dismantling a government designed to respond to the wishes and needs of the people and replacing it with an over-easy plutocracy that serves the privileged few at the expense of the majority.
The results of the last election and every poll since has shown that the majority of Americans are heading in a new direction, a direction that doesn't include the vitriol and spite of vain 'funnymen' like Imus and Rush.
Ratings for right-wing radio and TV shows have been steadily falling for three years running; even Bill O'Reilly has lost over a million viewers since 2004, and they won't be coming back. Most purchasers of the neocon ideology promoted by Bill and Rush and Fox News have realized it's a modern-day Edsel, one with four flat tires and an engine that doesn't run.
Rush, do you hear that growling at the door?
It's for you.
"What all you folks need, who still treat fellow human beings as 'black', 'white', 'yellow', or 'red', is to watch a Documentary entitled 'The Angry Eye' by Jane Elliott which is described as follows: Documentary which features Jane Elliott's blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise in discrimination involving college students forced to experience racist treatment minorities have received for years. Jane Elliott was an elementary school teacher in Iowa in the 1960s when she developed her exercise on the effects of racism in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr."
-- Comment by JPBreeze at Common Dreams, April 10, 2007.
Sources for this piece include:
-- Mike Celizic, "Is Imus firing a turning point?" TODAYshow.com, April 12, 2007.
-- Isaiah J. Poole, "Imus and Beyond," Tom Paine, April 11, 2007.
-- Richard Goldstein, "Celebrity Bigots," The Village Voice, July 18, 2000.
-- Philip Nobile, "A Catalogue of Slurs," Tom Paine.com, May 16, 2000.
-- Marcus Mabry, "The Ugly Truth About Imus, Power and the Press," Newsweek, April 11, 2007.
-- Media Matters, "Imus Cancellation: Statement from Media Matters," April 11, 2007.
-- Gwen Ifill, "Trash Talk Radio," The New York Times, April 10, 2007.
-- Media Matters, "Imus Has Long Record of Incendiary Remarks," April 9, 2007.
-- Adam Howard, "No More Imus," The Nation, April 9, 2007.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Baghdad Johnny Defines 'Safe' Edition
McCain's Terminal Foot-in-Mouth Disease
"There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today. The U.S. is beginning to succeed in Iraq."
-- Sen. John McCain on Bill Bennett's Morning in America radio show, supporting Bush's 'surge,' March 26, 2007.
"To suggest that there's any neighborhood in this city [Baghdad] where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I'd love Sen. McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll."
-- Michael Ware, CNN correspondent in Baghdad, to Wolf Blitzer on CNN's The Situation Room, March 27, 2007.
"Honestly, Wolf, you'll barely last twenty minutes out there. I dont know what part of 'Neverland' Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad."
-- Michael Ware, as quoted by Crooks and Liars.
"That's where you ought to catch up on things, Wolf. General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee."
-- John McCain to Wolf Blitzer on CNN's The Situation Room, March 27, 2007.
"And to think that Gen. David Petraeus travels this city in an unarmed humvee? I mean, in the hour since Sen. McCain's said this, I've spoken to military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly the general travels in a humvee. There's multiple humvees around it, heavily armed. There's attack helicopters, predator drones, sniper teams, all sorts of layers of protection. So, no, Sen. McCain is way off base on this one."
-- Michael Ware, ibid.
"I checked with General Petraeus's people overnight and they said he never goes out in anything less than an up-armored humvee."
-- John Roberts to John McCain, CNN, March 28, 2007.
"UPDATE: Now McCain is denying he ever said any of this, even though he said it on camera only yesterday AND in his denial today he repeats the claim that there are several 'safe neighborhoods' in Baghdad, though he qualifies his statement by saying that they are very dangerous safe neighborhoods (I'm not kidding)."
-- John Aravosis, "Demand that John McCain name that 'safe' neighborhood in Baghdad," AmericaBlog, March 28, 2007.
"After a heavily guarded trip to a Baghdad market, Sen. John McCain insisted Sunday that a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown in the capital was working and said Americans lacked a 'full picture' of the progress being made."
-- Kim Gamel. "McCain visits Baghdad market, proclaims U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown is working," AP, April 1, 2007.
April 3, 2007 -- Declining GOP presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain [R-Dupe], accompanied by Gen. David Petraeus, toured a 'safe' market in Iraq on, appropriately, April Fool's Day for the benefit of US media cameras. CNN news floozie Kyra Phillips, embedded for the ride, reported that he was surrounded by inner, outer and perimeter rings of security, including snipers on roof tops; over 100 soldiers in all. Oh, and he was wearing fashionable body armor too, as well as the rest of the Republican Congressional delegation. The trip to the market was considered so safe that McCain and Co. were ferried from the Green Zone to the market place by Blackhawk helicopters guarded by Apache gunships. Little wonder with that kind of firepower that many of the Iraqi merchants were trying to give their wares away to McCain's party.
Gee, if we could only get the taxpayers to cough up the (borrowed) money to provide every Iraqi with this level of heavily-armed protection and assault helicopters, then these neighborhoods really would be safe.
Just think -- if Bush's 'surge' weren't working so well, Big Mac might have needed five or six rings of security to keep him safe from harm.
Of course, that market's safety was short-lived as insurgents returned to the neighborhood 24 hours after McCain's departure, something Big John doesn't want to dwell on in his embrace of dewy-eyed optimism that the escalation is working. Well, facts are stupid things, as Reagan once famously said, and I'm sure the senator agrees -- if only he could get the media to stop reporting what's going on over there, we could win -- in the November 2008 US presidential election, I mean, not in Iraq. Iraq, as everyone with a functioning brain knows, is a hopeless case.
Incidentally, the AP article noted that over 600 Iraqis have been killed in 'sectarian violence' since McCain burbled his March 26th idiocy.
McCain apparently has a different definition of safety for Iraqis compared to safety in his home state of Arizona, where the DOJ's Bureau of Justice Statistics reported 445 deaths statewide due to murder or non-negligent manslaughter for the year 2005.
600 Iraqis in a week versus 445 Arizonans in a year? Something, or someone, is a little unbalanced here.
"There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today. The U.S. is beginning to succeed in Iraq."
-- Sen. John McCain on Bill Bennett's Morning in America radio show, supporting Bush's 'surge,' March 26, 2007.
"To suggest that there's any neighborhood in this city [Baghdad] where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I'd love Sen. McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll."
-- Michael Ware, CNN correspondent in Baghdad, to Wolf Blitzer on CNN's The Situation Room, March 27, 2007.
"Honestly, Wolf, you'll barely last twenty minutes out there. I dont know what part of 'Neverland' Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad."
-- Michael Ware, as quoted by Crooks and Liars.
"That's where you ought to catch up on things, Wolf. General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee."
-- John McCain to Wolf Blitzer on CNN's The Situation Room, March 27, 2007.
"And to think that Gen. David Petraeus travels this city in an unarmed humvee? I mean, in the hour since Sen. McCain's said this, I've spoken to military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly the general travels in a humvee. There's multiple humvees around it, heavily armed. There's attack helicopters, predator drones, sniper teams, all sorts of layers of protection. So, no, Sen. McCain is way off base on this one."
-- Michael Ware, ibid.
"I checked with General Petraeus's people overnight and they said he never goes out in anything less than an up-armored humvee."
-- John Roberts to John McCain, CNN, March 28, 2007.
"UPDATE: Now McCain is denying he ever said any of this, even though he said it on camera only yesterday AND in his denial today he repeats the claim that there are several 'safe neighborhoods' in Baghdad, though he qualifies his statement by saying that they are very dangerous safe neighborhoods (I'm not kidding)."
-- John Aravosis, "Demand that John McCain name that 'safe' neighborhood in Baghdad," AmericaBlog, March 28, 2007.
"After a heavily guarded trip to a Baghdad market, Sen. John McCain insisted Sunday that a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown in the capital was working and said Americans lacked a 'full picture' of the progress being made."
-- Kim Gamel. "McCain visits Baghdad market, proclaims U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown is working," AP, April 1, 2007.
April 3, 2007 -- Declining GOP presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain [R-Dupe], accompanied by Gen. David Petraeus, toured a 'safe' market in Iraq on, appropriately, April Fool's Day for the benefit of US media cameras. CNN news floozie Kyra Phillips, embedded for the ride, reported that he was surrounded by inner, outer and perimeter rings of security, including snipers on roof tops; over 100 soldiers in all. Oh, and he was wearing fashionable body armor too, as well as the rest of the Republican Congressional delegation. The trip to the market was considered so safe that McCain and Co. were ferried from the Green Zone to the market place by Blackhawk helicopters guarded by Apache gunships. Little wonder with that kind of firepower that many of the Iraqi merchants were trying to give their wares away to McCain's party.
Gee, if we could only get the taxpayers to cough up the (borrowed) money to provide every Iraqi with this level of heavily-armed protection and assault helicopters, then these neighborhoods really would be safe.
Just think -- if Bush's 'surge' weren't working so well, Big Mac might have needed five or six rings of security to keep him safe from harm.
Of course, that market's safety was short-lived as insurgents returned to the neighborhood 24 hours after McCain's departure, something Big John doesn't want to dwell on in his embrace of dewy-eyed optimism that the escalation is working. Well, facts are stupid things, as Reagan once famously said, and I'm sure the senator agrees -- if only he could get the media to stop reporting what's going on over there, we could win -- in the November 2008 US presidential election, I mean, not in Iraq. Iraq, as everyone with a functioning brain knows, is a hopeless case.
Incidentally, the AP article noted that over 600 Iraqis have been killed in 'sectarian violence' since McCain burbled his March 26th idiocy.
McCain apparently has a different definition of safety for Iraqis compared to safety in his home state of Arizona, where the DOJ's Bureau of Justice Statistics reported 445 deaths statewide due to murder or non-negligent manslaughter for the year 2005.
600 Iraqis in a week versus 445 Arizonans in a year? Something, or someone, is a little unbalanced here.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Rove to Inherit the Breaking Wind of Monicagate Two Edition
As Whiteouse Scandals Mount, the Stench of Bush's 'Monicagate' May Be the Low Blow That Leads to Rove Resigning and Bush's Impeachment
First off, the solons of the MSM and right-wing media keep repeating the mantra that there was 'no underlying crime' to Bush dismissing eight federal prosecutors since they 'served at the pleasure of the president.' This is partial nonsense and entirely confusing. While the attorneys may be dismissed by the president for poor performance, they can't be fired for pursuing investigations that may involve criminal activity by the president's party; they take their oath of office, as does every employee of the federal government, to uphold the Constitution and serve the law of the land, not the president. Every case they bring is headed 'The United States vs. ...' not 'George W. Bush vs. ...' They are not personal lawyers for the president, and, if it can be proven that they were fired because they pursued political corruption cases -- which is part of their job -- there might very well be an underlying crime here. The White House cannot instruct the Justice Department to prosecute some cases favorable to its political prospects and ignore others, as Richard Nixon found out. If some of those on the right think that the president should be able to fire any attorney who doesn't 'serve at the president's pleasure' then, as the quote below advises, let George W. Bush pay their salaries from now on instead of the taxpayers. I'd also be interested to hear the opinions of the neocons if a President Bill Clinton had targeted and fired US attorneys who were prosecuting Democrats for corruption. Would there have been an 'underlying crime' then?
As the burgeoning mess in 'Fredo' Gonzales' Justice Department gradually unravels, an astute friend pointed out the other night that now Bush has his own 'Monicagate,' the Monica this time around being Gonzales' senior aide Monica Goodling. In one of the most twisted, illogical and laughable excuses I've heard since the Final Days of Tricky Dick, Goodling's lawyer John Dowd told the media that his client will take the Fifth like some sleazy mob boss rather than testify before Congress because "The potential for legal jeopardy for Ms. Goodling from even her most truthful and accurate testimony under these circumstances is very real." (Wow -- this is better than the Twinkie defense.)
What are these horrible circumstances that might cause her potential legal jeopardy? Well, the Democrats who are now a majority in Congress may ask tough questions and hold her accountable for her answers. It's called the American system of justice.
While I realize that Ms. Goodling graduated from something called Messiah College in Pennsylvania (bet it teaches a whizbang course in Creationism), and took her law degree from Pat Robertson's Regent University, this sturdy little DOJ satrap still should understand the basic concept of our legal system -- it's called 'adversarial' for the reason that two sides, a prosecution and a defense, present conflicting views in open court in order to get at the truth, and sometimes things can get rough; in fact, they are designed to get rough. Yes, if you're lying through your teeth, you might perceive such an environment as 'perilous.' Millions of muggers, murderers, con artists and other criminals have certainly felt that way. Of course, if Monica's telling the truth, then she should have no problem testifying openly -- isn't that what the neocons always tell us: If you have nothing to hide than there's no reason to take the Fifth?
So, what's Monica hiding if this is all just about the routine firing of some attorneys and there is 'no underlying crime'?
After all, the university where she got her law degree is dedicated to disgorging "Christian leaders who will make a difference, who will change the world." Do they plan on changing the world through the Christian act of deception?
Hearkening back to the Clinton analogy in the first paragraph, what would be the reaction of the right if a senior Justice official in a Democratic administration had said they were taking the Fifth in a similar situation?
It should be remembered that Bill Clinton's dalliances with Monica Lewinsky involved no criminal activity, except perhaps to connoisseurs of fine cigars. However unsavory or immoral some thought his affair with an intern it was legal; he was impeached by the Republican-majority Congress for lying under oath. The first Monicagate did not cost us a dime (except in Ken Starr's rabid puritanical prosecution) and hid no corruption; in the final analysis, it was no more important to the health and wealth of the nation than the winner of American Idol.
This Monicagate is different; the image of Karl Rove sitting in the White House directing through underlings DOJ firings for purely partisan reasons -- essentially having taxpayers, even those who can't stand George W. Bush, finance Rove's fantasy of a permanent Republican majority -- is a revelation of the cheesy corruption and cheapjack political schemes that have trumped all other concerns in this administration, even national security, and the White House has been gutted open, its ugly innards running out in plain view.
Pay close attention to this Monicagate; her taking the Fifth is the loose brick that will ultimately bring down the wall that Rove built, along with Karl himself.
"Why can't Karl Rove just put his hand on the Bible and tell the f**king truth?"
-- Jon Stewart on The Daily Show March 21, 2007, as seen at Bartcop.com.
"He had arrived at the point where presently the illusions would cease and he would have entered upon the realities of life, and God help the man that has arrived at that point."
-- Mark Twain, "Joan of Arc."
"The specter of Karl Rove under the 'klieglights' would be political poison to Bush -- and to the GOP. So he's digging in. And the hole could get a lot deeper."
-- Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic.
"Monkeys, warm with envious spite, their most obliging friends will bite."
-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack.
First off, the solons of the MSM and right-wing media keep repeating the mantra that there was 'no underlying crime' to Bush dismissing eight federal prosecutors since they 'served at the pleasure of the president.' This is partial nonsense and entirely confusing. While the attorneys may be dismissed by the president for poor performance, they can't be fired for pursuing investigations that may involve criminal activity by the president's party; they take their oath of office, as does every employee of the federal government, to uphold the Constitution and serve the law of the land, not the president. Every case they bring is headed 'The United States vs. ...' not 'George W. Bush vs. ...' They are not personal lawyers for the president, and, if it can be proven that they were fired because they pursued political corruption cases -- which is part of their job -- there might very well be an underlying crime here. The White House cannot instruct the Justice Department to prosecute some cases favorable to its political prospects and ignore others, as Richard Nixon found out. If some of those on the right think that the president should be able to fire any attorney who doesn't 'serve at the president's pleasure' then, as the quote below advises, let George W. Bush pay their salaries from now on instead of the taxpayers. I'd also be interested to hear the opinions of the neocons if a President Bill Clinton had targeted and fired US attorneys who were prosecuting Democrats for corruption. Would there have been an 'underlying crime' then?
"Fine -- if all of the Justice Department's federal prosecutors 'serve at the pleasure of the president' and not on behalf of the people, then the president can damn well pay them out of his own pocket."
-- Max Publico
"To put it charitably, the Bush administration already has a reputation for being less than truthful on a wide range of matters -- and now we have a high-ranking Justice Department official [Monica Goodling], the legal liaison between Gonzales and the White House, opting to clam up. Even for many conservatives, this is too much."
-- Dick Polman, March 2007.
As the burgeoning mess in 'Fredo' Gonzales' Justice Department gradually unravels, an astute friend pointed out the other night that now Bush has his own 'Monicagate,' the Monica this time around being Gonzales' senior aide Monica Goodling. In one of the most twisted, illogical and laughable excuses I've heard since the Final Days of Tricky Dick, Goodling's lawyer John Dowd told the media that his client will take the Fifth like some sleazy mob boss rather than testify before Congress because "The potential for legal jeopardy for Ms. Goodling from even her most truthful and accurate testimony under these circumstances is very real." (Wow -- this is better than the Twinkie defense.)
What are these horrible circumstances that might cause her potential legal jeopardy? Well, the Democrats who are now a majority in Congress may ask tough questions and hold her accountable for her answers. It's called the American system of justice.
"The Attorney General and his key staff will testify before the relevant congressional committees to explain how the decision was made and for what reasons."
-- George W. Bush, March 20, 2007.
"Monica M. Goodling, who has taken an indefinite leave of absence, said in a sworn affidavit to the Senate Judiciary Committee that she will 'decline to answer any and all questions' about the firings because she faces 'a perilous environment in which to testify.'"
-- The Washington Post, March 26, 2007.
"Poor little Monica -- if she testified truthfully she would be forced to lie and then those mean Democrats might charge her with perjury like Scooter Libby. It's all just so unfair!"
-- Elizabeth P. Scott
While I realize that Ms. Goodling graduated from something called Messiah College in Pennsylvania (bet it teaches a whizbang course in Creationism), and took her law degree from Pat Robertson's Regent University, this sturdy little DOJ satrap still should understand the basic concept of our legal system -- it's called 'adversarial' for the reason that two sides, a prosecution and a defense, present conflicting views in open court in order to get at the truth, and sometimes things can get rough; in fact, they are designed to get rough. Yes, if you're lying through your teeth, you might perceive such an environment as 'perilous.' Millions of muggers, murderers, con artists and other criminals have certainly felt that way. Of course, if Monica's telling the truth, then she should have no problem testifying openly -- isn't that what the neocons always tell us: If you have nothing to hide than there's no reason to take the Fifth?
So, what's Monica hiding if this is all just about the routine firing of some attorneys and there is 'no underlying crime'?
After all, the university where she got her law degree is dedicated to disgorging "Christian leaders who will make a difference, who will change the world." Do they plan on changing the world through the Christian act of deception?
Hearkening back to the Clinton analogy in the first paragraph, what would be the reaction of the right if a senior Justice official in a Democratic administration had said they were taking the Fifth in a similar situation?
It should be remembered that Bill Clinton's dalliances with Monica Lewinsky involved no criminal activity, except perhaps to connoisseurs of fine cigars. However unsavory or immoral some thought his affair with an intern it was legal; he was impeached by the Republican-majority Congress for lying under oath. The first Monicagate did not cost us a dime (except in Ken Starr's rabid puritanical prosecution) and hid no corruption; in the final analysis, it was no more important to the health and wealth of the nation than the winner of American Idol.
This Monicagate is different; the image of Karl Rove sitting in the White House directing through underlings DOJ firings for purely partisan reasons -- essentially having taxpayers, even those who can't stand George W. Bush, finance Rove's fantasy of a permanent Republican majority -- is a revelation of the cheesy corruption and cheapjack political schemes that have trumped all other concerns in this administration, even national security, and the White House has been gutted open, its ugly innards running out in plain view.
Pay close attention to this Monicagate; her taking the Fifth is the loose brick that will ultimately bring down the wall that Rove built, along with Karl himself.
"Time discovers truth."
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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