This is what "Class" looks like

Hillary Clinton didn't dawdle when it came time to turn her wrath on George (grandson of Nazi collaborators) Bush for his act of treachery in front of the Knesset today. She tore him a new asshole, and reminded a lot of folks why she is still fighting on. She's scrappy, she's tough and she's smart as hell. Whether you like her or not, she is all of those things and more than a few of us find those traits endearing on some level. I know I do. But I'm the kind of mouthy broad who, when someone casts the epithet bitch, smiles brightly and says "thanks for noticing!"

When Bush compared Obama to Chamberlain, he got a face-full of Hillary claws, swiping at him from half-a world away and drawing blood.

President Bush’s comparison of any Democrat to Nazi appeasers is both offensive and outrageous on the face of it, especially in light of his failures in foreign policy. This is the kind of statement that has no place in any presidential address and certainly to use an important moment like the 60th anniversary celebration of Israel to make a political point seems terribly misplaced. Unfortunately, this is what we’ve come to expect from President Bush.

There is a very clear difference between Democrats and Republicans on foreign policy and that difference will be evident once we take back the White House.

Amen, Sister.

Not that the haters will ever give her any due whatsoever - they are likely looking for her fingerprints on Bush's speech. After all, she's a witch and must be burned, or at least cast from society and implored to offend decent people no more with her uppity ways.

Of course, she outclasses those assholes by a mile, too.

The Ugly American

aWol charged into the NATO summit like a bull in a china shop and immediately started embarrassing everyone capable of feeling shame.

What a schmuck.

First, he hijacked a press conference, cutting off questions and asking the Romanian President - who was hosting the press event - if he was ready to take a stroll along the waters edge.

"Just a moment," said a flabbergasted President Traian Basescu.

"Oh, you got..." Bush started, obviously astounded that it wasn't all about him.

"Just a moment," Basescu repeated.

"He's not through," Bush said, seemingly bemused.

Basescu, determined, went on "[T]he information I would like to add to refer to two delicate issues, issues that are visible for the Romanian public...

And by this point, I was curled in a fetal ball, feeling shame to the point of nausea.

And the summit wasn't even underway.

I checked the supply of Tums. Good thing I did, too, because I needed them in short order.

The summit was barely convened when he went off script and started whoring for membership for Georgia and Ukraine. "This is my last NATO summit," was his explanation for co-opting the proceedings and making salvaging something he can call a legacy a NATO priority. Even though France and Germany have both announced that they will block the move.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, was described by some German officials as upset and even angry Wednesday, especially after she and Bush had had numerous conversations over the last two months about the issue.

Merkel had thought that a compromise solution was in the works, so that Washington would support a warm statement welcoming the interest of Ukraine and Georgia in NATO and encouraging both countries to work toward a membership plan in time for NATO's 60th anniversary summit meeting next year in Berlin.

Germany and France believe that since neither Ukraine nor Georgia are stable enough to enter the program now, a membership plan would be an unnecessary blow at Russia, which firmly opposes the move.

In fact, senior diplomats in Bucharest said, President Vladimir Putin, who is scheduled to come to his first and last NATO summit meeting on Friday, has threatened to cancel the visit if the two former Soviet states enter the membership program.

Merkel visited Moscow on March 8 and met with Putin and his successor, Dmitri Medvedev, who will take over as president in May, and told them that Russia would not be allowed a veto over NATO membership.

Nevertheless, a senior German diplomat, Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador to London, said that a MAP offer to a divided Ukraine could destabilize the new government there, and that not enough diplomacy had taken place beforehand with Russia.

The hubris and arrogance Bush brought to the proceedings and put on prominent display are unprecedented. And an affront to every civilized American with any sense of protocol or diplomacy.

Can it be January now?

Halle-Fucking-Lujah!

The House just told George Bush to fuck off and die, and his little dog, too.

And whadya know? A crack appeared in the Bush facade!

Here is what happened this morning...after the spineless assholes in the Senate voted to roll over for telecom immunity and campaign contributions a couple of days ago, the House decided this morning that they would just let the current bill expire, and go on and leave town for a one-week recess.

In the wake of the Senate capitulation to perfidy and fascism, the House has been squabbling about how to proceed. The Republican boot-lickers - surprise, surprise - want the House to roll over like the Senate sycophants and give the telecoms immunity for listening in on your conversations and reading your email - but there seems to be a spine or two present in the lower chamber.

Yellow feathers are filling the air, and rivers of piss are running on the Republican side of things right now. The repugnant ones are indignantly setting up quite a chickenhawk-squawk, accusing Democrats of severely hampering intelligence operations and putting the country at risk! Terrorists will kill all 300 million of us by sundown Saturday if they don't capitulate the rest of the Fourth Amendment right now! (Boehner, change your Depends and man up, you sniveling chickenshit.)

Well, the House has aWol's attention - for the first time, a crack is appearing in the facade of feclkessness.

He has delayed his trip to Africa this weekend, saying he will stay in Washington to get the bill signed. "If we have to delay, we'll delay, " he said. "The House should not leave Washington without passing the Senate bill," he whined, pleadingly adding that insistence on Constitutional principles on behalf of the Democrats would "put the American people at risk."

I disagree - I happen to think that it is an affront that anyone would even suggest that Constitutional abrogation and domestic spying should be overlooked and the companies that played ball and spied on us should receive immunity from facing the consequences of their actions. All the little idiot has to do is give up on the insistence that telecoms be excused for their illegal behavior, and he will have his bill to sign.

And by the way - the next time someone tries to peddle that tired old trope that Republicans value personal responsibility - I am going to bust up laughing, in my rudest guffaw, right in the face of whoever is so stupid.

UPDATE: Check out the comments on this post at the WaPo blog...there is zero support for the Republican fearmongering. People finally get it, and I thank a God I don't believe in, and a Constitution I do.

Playing Military Families Like Pawns - it's what aWol does best

Our military families also sacrifice for America. They endure sleepless nights and the daily struggle of providing for children while a loved one is serving far from home. We have a responsibility to provide for them. So I ask you to join me in expanding their access to child care, creating new hiring preferences for military spouses across the federal government, and allowing our troops to transfer their unused education benefits to their spouses or children. (Applause.) Our military families serve our nation, they inspire our nation, and tonight our nation honors them. --George W. Bush, 28 January 2008, State of the Union

That passage drew thunderous applause when the President said it during the State of the Union address. Yet a week later, when the current occupant sent his $3.1 trillion dollar budget to the congress for approval, there wasn’t a single dollar allocated for the program subscribed in the SOTU - even though the cost of the proposal would run between $1 and $2 Billion annually.

Congressional critics have pointed to the episode as a visual aid that illustrates precisely what they perceive as the slapdash, slipshod manner in which Bush threw together the legislative priorities for his final year in office limp toward the finish line. The idea Bush touted has actually been introduced as legislation by congresspersons of both parties. "It has some merit to it. I don't have any idea what it costs -- that's been one of the problems in the past," said Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.), chairman of the House Budget Committee. "That's not the only inconsistency or contradiction in his budget by any means. The budget overstates revenues and understates expenditures in a big way."

Two other topics were touched on in the speech and deserve to be funded: Child care for military families, and programs to help military spouses compete for government jobs. Think about it -military spouses are almost all, by definition, capable, reliable, top-shelf employees with valuable diverse experiences, and frequently they bring critical language skills. But they stagnate in careers because every two years it’s another entry level job that the spouse won’t be on long enough to become vested, or to advance up the corporate ladder. The portable nature of federal jobs from one billet to another is well known and many spouses have shrewdly finagled that set-up of their own devises.

It’s about time that the government got around to promoting a common-sense measure to help military families achieve economic parity with civilian counterparts that those of us who have lived it have known for decades and struggled to make work without any help from the military nor the agencies employing the civilian spouse.

But the feds aren’t going to employ all spouses, so once we get those ducks in a row, we need to talk about setting up federally administered retirement plans for civilian spouses of career military personnel that would encourage civilian employers, through the tax code, to match contributions and make exceptions for military spouses to the time-on-job rules that govern whether or not military spouses retain the employers matching contributions when they leave a job because the military spouse is transferred.

Military spouses do serve and sacrifice to support the mission. Recognizing this and greasing the economic skids a little by taking into account the professional price paid by the spouses would be a good start.

Rather's Suit Goes Forward--Will The Truth Come Out?

Things just couldn't get any worse for the Bush Administration. They are already irrelevant--whether it concerns foreign policy, domestic policy, the culture at large--there is little or no interest in them or what they have to say. They are the past. Everything happening this week has been about the future--the next President, the race for the nomination and the race to see who can get in there and fix everything that is broken (see the GAO report Blue Girl is going over with a fine tooth comb)

Then, this happens:

Breaking: It looks like former CBS News anchor Dan Rather will indeed get his day in court. On Wednesday evening Justice Ira Gammerman of the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan made a preliminary ruling denying the TV network's motion to dismiss Rather's $70 million lawsuit. "I think discovery should go forward," said Gammerman.

Rather's suit, you'll recall, claims CBS unfairly shuffled him off the air after that infamous 60 Minutes Wednesday story about Bush's performance (or lack thereof) in the Texas National Guard. Rather alleges that being shown the door was just the network's misguided attempt to placate the White House and shield CBS's then-parent company Viacom from political fallout. You know, the usual reasons for dismissal from a high-profile media job.

Now that the case will be moving forward, Rather's lawyer Marty Gold wants CBS to start forking over internal emails and documents to prove his case, including exchanges between network brass and the White House. Naturally, this has CBS lawyers asking the court to limit the scope of the discovery. "It seems pretty clear they don't want to produce [the documents]," said Gold.

Well, that wasn't too difficult, was it?

The incident, which fueled the wingnut dreams of so many wannabe "investigative" bloggers, stands as one piece of unfinished business. Did Bush have his associates "scrub" his National Guard records to hide, I don't know, a positive test for cocaine? Some other nasty piece of business? A little AWOL?

Here's Rather, talking to Karl Rove in 1972--what a great photo. And a great haircut:



Who knows? But maybe, just maybe, this case will reveal what was done behind the scenes to make certain that the American people wouldn't get to find out the truth.

In other words, he couldn't possibly care less

Well, isn't this precious? It seems that aWol can't be bothered to watch the Iowa returns. His need for sleep is paramount to the course being charted for the Republic tonight in Iowa.

Asked if the president planned to stay up to find out who wins the opening contests of the 2008 election season, White House press secretary Dana Perino said Thursday: "What time do all the results start coming in? Because he goes to bed early."

Later, Perino said Bush planned to watch a bit of the returns but would not stay tuned for the accompanying political punditry.

Republican caucus results could be in by mid-evening. Democratic results might be late.

"Look, obviously it's a very exciting time for America as they look to all the choices that they have for who is running for president," Perino said. "And the president is watching it as he has been over the past little while, as an observer, as somebody who is obviously very interested in politics. But he's not spending a lot of time on that."

So I guess that now that his Dionysian work is all but complete, he's sticking his fingers in his ears and singing "la la la la la! I can't hear you!"

What a petulant fucking dork.

This reign of error can not possibly end soon enough. If he goes sideways five minutes from now, it's still seven fucking years too late - but on the bright side of that equation, I bet THEN we could get some Impeach Cheney momentum going!

Is anyone else spoilin' for a god-damned fight???

If you ain't pissed off enough to skip aerobics this morning, keep reading. I intend to make you mad enough to take to the streets with pitchforks and torches...okay, maybe we'll have to settle for patio Tiki's and garden hoes, but WTF, mate? You get the idea....

The Little Idiot's Splendid Wars™ are costing this country $15.8 Billion dollars...Every. Single. Month.

"This cost of this war is approaching $15 billion a month, with the Army spending $4.2 billion of that every month," Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska), the ranking Republican on the Appropriations defense subcommittee, said in a little-noticed floor speech Dec. 18. His remarks came in support of adding $70 billion to the omnibus fiscal 2008 spending legislation to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, as well as counterterrorism activities, for the six months from Oct. 1, 2007, through March 31 of next year.

Come March, Dave Petraeus will be back in front of Congress and passing the hat for more money to continue the fruitless occupation of Iraq.

I, for one, am loud and clear about threatening the political lives of all my congressional representatives. (Fuck civility, Mayor Cleaver. I want someone right now with no qualms about deliverin' a knee-cappin' with a hickory stick to the feckless chickenhawk fuckers still backing the biggest cock-up since Suez.)

No more fucking around.

Turn off the god-damned money tap.

Or we, the electorate, will turn off yours.

We are, after all, 70% of the American electorate.

Get the fucking picture yet, Senators and Congressmen?

The aWol motherfucker is as good as gone.

Unless you want to join him, stand the fuck up, right fucking now.

March is coming.

We are watching.

And come November...WE ARE VOTING!!!

Have I mentioned lately that I really HATE aWol?

Warning! Hormonal rant ahead!

Skip this post if you are easily offended, or think aWol Bush has any redeeming qualities at all!

Listening to George Bush talk about how congress has wasted time and the taxpayers money takes me back to high school. Some of us remember the asshole upperclassmen who would take Freshmen girls out on Friday nights after the football game, give them what was likely their first beer, take them parking out in the country, tell them "fuck or walk" (now we call that date rape) - then spend Monday telling all their buddies what little sluts their victims were.

This particular quip from the drooling fucktard during his press conference today made me wish I believed in and knew something about the dark arts, that I might cast an evil spell: ''It's an antagonistic world from some people's point of view,'' the president said. ''I try to make it less that way and to focus on high priorities.'' I know that there is no God, because the motherfucker didn't burst into flames right there on the spot when those words tumbled from his fetid maw.

In spite of his ridiculous assertion that he tried to be anti-antagonistic (guffaw/spit-take/snort - and btw, I'm sorry, but I just can not make myself type a sentence that implies that piece of shit who should get ass cancer and die is protagonistic) he went on to launch into a laundry list of things that are the fault of the Democrats in Congress:

He pissed and moaned about Congress sending him an omnibus spending bill instead of individual spending bills. ''When Congress wastes so much time and leaves its work to the final days before Christmas, it is not a responsible way to run this government.'' Last year, the exiting Republicans didn't pass a budget at all, instead leaving the entire Government to be run on continuing resolutions all year, and Resident Evil™ didn't whine like a little bitch. But hey - IOKIYAR.

He also sniveled that congress hadn't passed his domestic spying wet-dream that would embarrass Big Brother himself and give retroactive immunity to the big telecoms who were all too eager to help him spy on you and me.

He refused to talk about the CIA destroying the tapes that we can only presume would have shown the torture of terrorism suspects in CIA custody. He insists he knew nothing (finally the fuckwit said something that I could agree with!) about the destruction of the tapes before hand, even though four White House lawyers were involved in the decision.

He tread carefully when asked about Time Magazine's selection of Vladimir Putin as their Person of the Year for 2007. ''I presume they put him on there because he was a consequential leader,'' Bush said. ''And the fundamental question is, consequential to what end? What will the country look like 10 years from now? My hope, of course, is that Russia is a country that understands there needs to be checks and balances.'' (Funny - America doesn't look anything like it did seven years ago.)

He did a bit of hand-wringing about the waning support for the mission in Afghanistan among America's NATO allies. ''My biggest concern is that people say, 'Well, we're kind of tired of Afghanistan and, therefore, we think we're going to leave,''' Bush said. (I keep forgetting that it was our allies that took their eye off the ball to go charging into Iraq half-cocked. I gotta get that straight - it'll be my New Years Resolution. I promise...)

He ended on a humorous note (and we know what a comedic talent he is, cracking up absolutely everyone looking for WMD's under his desk) by predicting a Republican resurgence and White House victory next year, in spite of the fact that the Republican slate would lose in a landslide to "None of the Above."

I didn't know that Rahm Emanuel had it in him to be a pussified wimp, but by golly, he sure does. ''President Bush's veto pen prevented the kind of significant change our country needs,'' Emanuel pouted. And at that point I started yelling at my computer screen. "You feckless, complicit fuckers should have made him veto everything! Page after page after page!" And I continued to rant about wanting Democrats who know how to put a knee to his groin, kick him in the throat when he goes over, and keep kicking him once he is on the ground until he is spitting teeth.

But that's just me, and I am probably PMSin' real hard right now, because I really, really want my pound of flesh today - and not just that - after I collect that pound of flesh, I want to dump a box of salt in the wound.

What if they staged a presser and no one even bothered to mock it?

So, the verbally-challenged nincompoop held a press conference this morning. Fox didn't even air the whole thing, cutting away to regularly scheduled programming about half-way through.

He stood up there, totally devoid of intellect, sentience and the ability to reason and put his pathetic version out there. At one point, he actually asserted that the pressure he has been applying to Iran recently - is why they stopped their weapons program in 2003!!!

Who knew that Mr. Peabody and his Wayback machine were serving in the Bush (mal)administration?

It amounted to a half hour of insisting that Iran is "still dangerous" and a "threat to peace" and can't be allowed the "knowledge" to make a noo-kyu-ler weapon. It was a fucking embarrassment.

They simply can't admit that they are wrong about anything.

And blogtopia™, (Yes! skippy coined that phrase!) didn't even show up to mock him.

Since our pathetic congressional Democrats don't have the political courage, nor the intestinal fortitude to impeach these lying, warmongering, pathetic excuses for Americans - will someone just escort them off the stage, dose, 'em with Haldol, and fast-forward the clock to January 2009?

aWol, just stay your ass at home...

Seriously. Just go to Crawford and wait for next January. If anybody needs you, they'll know where to find you...playin' rancher, clearin' brush and still scared of horses.

Every damned time you do anything, it turns out to bad.

Desperate to redeem his image after Katrina, the Federal Disaster jetted off to SoCal yesterday to roll up his sleeves for a photo-op. Hey! It's hard work! Photo-oppin' and hand shakin' and consolin' an' fakin' concern...

And snarling traffic and extending the misery of others. Residents who were allowed to return to their homes were stuck in traffic for hours on end and firefighters were cut off from food and showers while the pResidential motorcade disrupted life even further.

Bush concluded his trip with remarks to the firefighters and the public at Kit Carson Park in Escondido.

His departure from the command post allowed traffic to flow once again from northbound Interstate 15 and the West Bernardo Drive exit through the streets of Rancho Bernardo, letting motorists get to their homes or the recreation center.

Some of the firefighters seemed more interested in a shower and a hot meal than Bush's visit.

Still covered in ashes, firefighters Danny Chandler and Chris Cortright from Mount Laguna waited in the back of a pickup. They could see the showers and the food tent, but the president's visit kept them and dozens of other firefighters from moving. Chandler had been fighting the fire in Ramona for 24 hours. Cortright had been at it for 48 hours.

“I appreciate him being here,” Chandler said, drinking Gatorade as he waited in the sun. “But they could have organized this better. I'd just as soon eat.”

In seven years, you have been wrong about every fucking thing you have done. Every photo-op has been a sham, like when the lights were shining on you in New Orleans, but no where else.

You have the support of 24% who are, the case could be made, simply Non Compos Mentis. Everybody else just wants you to go away. Since Nancy is pathetic and useless and won't bring impeachment charges against you, just go to fucking Crawford and stay the hell out of the way. Everybody hates you. Go eat worms or sumthin.'

The theme of the aWol Bush residency: Spendin' money like there's no tomorrow!!!

Remember aWol's reason for vetoing SCHIP? That it cost too much to expand the health coverage for kids who are at risk of falling between the gaps of Medicaid, which covers the truly poor, and private insurance? What a loathsome, feckless assertion!

There is not a kernel of truth in his assertion. He is just a stone-hearted prick who doesn't give a good-god-damn about anyone else, and certainly not kids.

He puts the brakes on for children's health care, but he is the biggest spender in the last half century, tossing money around like a drunken sailor with 72 hours of shore leave after 12 months at sea. (Would that he had settled for a two-day drunk, a new tattoo and a dose of the clap that would present in two weeks.)

The Cato Institute and the Club for Growth are not amused.

“He’s a big government guy,” said Stephen Slivinski, the director of budget studies at Cato Institute, a libertarian research group.

The numbers are clear, credible and conclusive, added David Keating, the executive director of the Club for Growth, a budget-watchdog group.

“He’s a big spender,” Keating said. “No question about it.”

Take almost any yardstick and Bush generally exceeds the spending of his predecessors.

Indeed. By any metric you choose, Bush has outspent his predecessors dramatically, practically tripling the discretionary spending under Reagan, who oversaw the largest military buildup in history.

From McClatchy:

When adjusted for inflation, discretionary spending — or budget items that Congress and the president can control, including defense and domestic programs, but not entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare — shot up at an average annual rate of 5.3 percent during Bush’s first six years, Slivinski calculates.

That tops the 4.6 percent annual rate Johnson logged during his 1963-69 presidency. By these standards, Ronald Reagan was a tightwad; discretionary spending grew by only 1.9 percent a year on his watch.

Discretionary spending went up in Bush's first term by 48.5 percent, not adjusted for inflation, more than twice as much as Bill Clinton did (21.6 percent) in two full terms, Slivinski reports.

Defense spending is the big driver — but hardly the only one.

Under Bush it's grown on average by 5.7 percent a year. Under LBJ — who had a war to fund, too — it rose by 4.9 percent a year. Both numbers are adjusted for inflation.

Including costs for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, defense spending under Bush has gone up 86 percent since 2001, according to Chris Hellman of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

Current annual defense spending — not counting war costs — is 25 percent above the height of the Reagan-era buildup, Hellman said.

Homeland security spending also has soared, to about $31 billion last year, triple the pre-9/11 number.

I feel a rant coming on...

I am old enough to remember the 80's. I was an Air Force wife during the Reagan era, and when spending would come up, my peers were quick to assign all of the blame to the Democrats in Congress. People told me then with a straight face that if a Republican president ever had Republican majorities in both houses, we would by-god see some fiscal responsibility! I snorted. I was snorted at for snorting. (And now that I think about it, I believe I will spend my afternoon googling the people who outnumbered me and send them all "I told you so!" emails...)

Remember that the Democrats have yet to hammer out a fiscal year operating budget. This budgetary trainwreck is 100% on the heads of the Republican party.

Word to the wise for both of my conservative readers...Never, never bitch to me about Democrats and fiscal responsibility. I will take tax & spend Democrats running things over these borrow & spend, paper-hangin' fools, every damned election cycle.

Good! Now maybe the right questions will be asked! In court! Under oath!

Dan Rather is suing CBS News for $70 million dollars over the treatment he received in the wake of the fallout over the story Rather presented on the midweek edition of 60 Minutes that accused the incumbent president of failing to fulfill his obligations to the champagne unit of the Texas Air National Guard his daddy’s connections got him attached to.

Since the story tracks, but the documents weren’t authentic, I would love to see this aired in open court.

In the suit, filed this afternoon in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Rather charges that CBS and its executives made him “a scapegoat” in an attempt “to pacify the White House,” though the formal complaint presents virtually no direct evidence to that effect. To buttress this claim, Mr. Rather quotes the executive who oversaw his regular segment on CBS Radio, telling Mr. Rather in November 2004 that he was losing that slot, effective immediately, because of “pressure from ‘the right wing.’ ”

He also continues to take vehement issue with the appointment by CBS of Richard Thornburgh, an attorney general in the administration of the elder President Bush, as one of the two outside panelists given the job of reviewing how the disputed broadcast had been prepared.

Frankly, let me say right now that I am not shedding any tears over the outcome of the suit no matter how it is resolved – unless there is a quick, sealed settlement that sweeps the whole thing under the rug. (If that happens, I might have a stroke. Fair warning.)

I am glad to see this lawsuit, because anything that brings attention to the fact that it is at least possible that the incumbent president is Absent With Out Leave from military service in the Air National Guard to this very day is a big freakin’ deal, and I want answers.

It was just too convenient, you know? If the idiot and his minions could manage to organize a two-car parade I would almost think that Rather was set up – but c’mon…the idiot and the cast of evil clowns are a pathetic fucking joke. If brains were dynamite, they couldn’t blow their collective nose. There is no way they could pull off something like that. (Excuse me while I wipe a tear from my eye - I am laughing so hard I nearly embarrassed myself...)

And because they are not very bright, I have a glimmer of hope one of ‘em will slip up and step on the incumbent president’s genitals. I never pretended to like the smarmy little prick, and I hope daily that he gets a heaping helping of comeuppance.

If this makes that happen, hell, I am liable to get religion.

I suppose I have to blog about that speech...

...or risk getting a "Bad Blogger! No Biscuit!" citation.

But really...what is to say? It was the Diet Coke of Presidential Speeches. There was no substance and the flavor wasn't quite right, but nonetheless, it was pretty much what was expected; rancid aftertaste and all.

But like Diet Coke is calorie free, the Resident's speech was fact free:

• "Iraq's national leaders are getting some things done," such as "sharing oil revenues with the provinces" [The oil law fell by the wayside, was doused in gasoline and set alight a full day before the bullshit banquet was served up this evening.]

• Bush made the proclamation that Baqubah, capital of Diyala province, (once, (impossibly) simultaneously considered both restive and the al Qaeda - Iraq mothership) is now pacified. "[t]oday, Baqubah is cleared." stated the President. [The pResident makes this claim, yet on 27 August the head of the Foreign Service Office in Diyala said the security situation was far from stable and impeded access to both sustenance and energy needs.]
  

• Further separating himself from reality, he thanked "the 36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq." [He was only off by a dozen or so. Give a dry drunk moron credit for not fucking this up worse...]
  

• He referenced a panel report assembled by Marine Gen. James Jones, and presented to congress last week, but he misrepresented it, saying that "the Iraqi army is becoming more capable..." [The report actually says that the Iraqi Army "cannot yet meaningfully contribute to denying terrorists safe haven." It also described the 25,000 member national police force as being infiltrated to the core by sectarian militias, and at best of specious loyalty. The Jones report recommended that it be disbanded.]

• He pointed to the relatively restive Baghdad of today, as compared to the Baghdad of a year ago, and pointed to lessened violence in the capital as evidence that his Surge™ strategy is showing success. [When the ethnic cleansing is complete, the supply of people fleeing and being murdered naturally dries up.]

At least in Japan miserable failures like the fool currently occupying the oval office have the decency to go sideways. But not this Dionysian fuckwit. He will go to his grave, at far too distant a date, and after enjoying too much health for too many years, convinced that we lost Iraq because I personally didn't clap loud enough.

"Return on Success"?

Tell these people and their families, who returned all right, but with your feigned success charged at their expense.

You weren't really sucked in, were you?

About that Petraeus “Report” that he assured all he would be writing himself after it leaked out that the report would be coming from the White House?

Yeah, scratch the indignant “I'll be writing my own report” bullshit – and by the way, I will remind you here and now that anyone familiar with the mans body of work knew he was blowing smoke.

Today we learned that the only hard-copy Petraeus will be working from will be his opening statement. He will bring a stack of PowerPoint graphs and charts – the sort of thing that sucked in the lame-brained Brian Baird – but Petraeus won’t be writing, nor will he be presenting, a “Petraeus Report” because no such animal exists.

Yes, I realize full well that the text of PL 110-28 says:

“the President, having consulted with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Commander, Multi-National Forces-Iraq, the United States Ambassador to Iraq, and the Commander of U.S. Central Command, will prepare the report and submit the report to Congress.”

“[T]he United States Ambassador to Iraq and the Commander, Multi-National Forces Iraq will be made available to testify in open and closed sessions before the relevant committees of the Congress.”

…so save the slavering wingnuttery. Especially since you probably didn't know yourself until some right-tard fatassed-fascist chickenhawk war-blogger with no skin in the game gave you the petticoat to crawl under within the last 72 hours. For the record, I read the text of the law in May, have known what it said for months and I've been waiting for the wingnuts to crawl out of the woodwork. I have my can of Raid at the ready for the vermin.

In other words, I am in no mood to tolerate having my leg pissed on and being told it’s raining.

Now, riddle me this, Batman (nice cowl, by the way) : What do you think got through to more people: The actual text of the law? Or the lawmakers talking on the TeeVee? (I’m going with the TeeVee, because there is no possibility of a boob-shot if you are reading the text of the legislation that rules our lives, and Galileo knows that Americans will always go for boobs over substance.) I am guessing that MAYBE .5% of Americans who consider themselves well informed read the text.

(h/t John Amato @ Crooks & Liars for the rundown)

Senate Minority Leader McConnell:

Let me remind the Senate of what we agreed to…We voted, and put into law, that General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker would report in September on progress. The benchmarks report and the timeline we set in May was clear. It gave us, the troops, and our allies, clarity on what was expected.

Senator McCain:

The war will be discussed in September again—we all know that—when General Petraeus is ready to report to the Senate…General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will come to Washington in September to report on the status of their efforts and those of the Iraqis.

Senator Sessions:

To press the point further, I strongly believe that whatever the inclinations of Senators on the conduct of the war in Iraq, to change our strategy now before we even hear from General Petraeus in September would be a colossal blunder for a host of reasons. To do so would be unthinkable…I am anxious to hear General Petraeus’s report.

Senator Coleman:

Fifty-four days ago we sent a message to General Petraeus: Go forth with the surge, and then come back and report to us.

Senator Chambliss:

I have never been more convinced that waiting for General Petraeus’s report in September was more right than yesterday afternoon…

Senator Craig:

That’s why when we confirmed General Petraeus unanimously in the Senate, we said to him very clearly, you go to Iraq in relation to a surge that is being implemented and you come back to us and give us your honest and fair assesement in September.

Senator Cornyn:

But the fact is, Gen. David Petraeus…will come back and report to us in September.

Senator DeMint:

The Democrats agreed on that funding, but they requested that we have a report from General Petraeus in the middle of September to find out what progress we were making. We all agreed to that.

Senator Bunning

I promised in person, in my office, to General Petraeus, that I would wait to hear his report this fall.

And of course I couldn’t leave out everyone’s favorite Republican:

Senator Lieberman

In fact, this amendment should not even be considered now…Because in that bill we required General Petraeus, along with our Ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, to come back in September and report to us…I made a personal pledge to him. I am going to give him and the troops a fair chance, which this amendment would deprive him of, and I am going to give him until September to come back and tell me how it is going.
[All emphasis mine]

So lets do a rundown, shall we? Refresh our memories on the high- (and low-) lights of the past 12 weeks:

First, Resident Evil™ and his minions in the Senate systematically set out on a disinformation campaign designed to pin all hopes on a “Petraeus Report” that every last mother-fucking one of them knew was actually going to be written by the White House. (This is called lying. It ought to be called Treason when it involves a war and the lives of other peoples children.)

When the citizenry began to grumble about being lied to, wingnut congresscritter from Virginia, Tom Davis tried to tamp down the controversy by explaining that the report would be Petraeus’ but the White House would probably “tweak” it, but it would be Petraeus’ report.

(Another lie from a Republican. Surprise, surprise, surprise! They always fall back to their default position, don’t they?)

There will be no written report from the Surgin’ General. His statements to Congress will be made public, but there will be no public record of what information he provides to aWol. This obscuring process doesn’t go very far toward discrediting the reports we got this week that pull the masks off the bandits, does it?

I am left with one conclusion: Petraeus did such a good job of producing Kabuki this summer, they are extending the run into the fall!

(H/T to the bloggers at Think Progress. Their archives were relied on heavily for this post.)

A graphic is worth a thousand words

The analogy was apt, but I do not think it was the one he meant to draw

[Updated below]

Something - okay, most things - about Bush's speech today at the VFW convention bothered me. But most disquieting was the passage where he seized on The Quiet American by Graham Greene.

In 1955, long before the United States had entered the war, Graham Greene wrote a novel called "The Quiet American." It was set in Saigon and the main character was a young government agent named Alden Pyle. He was a symbol of American purpose and patriotism and dangerous naivete. Another character describes Alden this way: "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused."

After America entered the Vietnam War, Graham Greene -- the Graham Greene argument gathered some steam. Matter of fact, many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people. In 1972, one anti-war senator put it this way: "What earthly difference does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos whether they have a military dictator, a royal prince or a socialist commissar in some distant capital that they've never seen and may never heard of?"

Talk about missing the point! The book was not about the way we left Vietnam - it was written as a warning after the first U.S. military advisers had been sent to that nation. The book is about stumbling into a brutal war because hubris and a belief in exceptionalism overrides common sense.

I am not surprised that Bush has not read the book (which is obvious, or that analogy would never have been made) but I expect that his speechwriters have a modicum of understanding and at least a couple of classes in Modern American Literature.

If they had, they would have never opened him up to the comparison I am about to make - that even if he was well-intentioned (in aWol's case, I doubt that very much). Bush's efforts, like those of the fictional Alden Pyle, are doomed to failure.

Update: David Shuster on MSNBC this evening totally eviscerated the resident's pathetic rhetoric. H/T Crooks & Liars...with video! (And fwiw, I agree with John Amato - time to give David his own show!)

Tony Snowjob says aWol is "on the front lines every day"

GMAFB...

However, when I saw this...



It immediately made me think of this...

Psychological Warfare – or – how aWol got Lute-Fisked

I should probably keep this to myself and enjoy the yucks in private – but I just can’t – you all need to know what a thumb in the eye Doug Lute is to George Bush.

But think about these points, in no specific order.

Lute is an active duty flag-rank. This intimidates the fuck out of the aWol one. He punked out, every officer and active duty NCO in a leadership position knows it, and aWol himself knows it too. A real live put-up-or-shut-up general intimidates the fuck out of him. I laugh my ass off at Lute briefing aWol on a daily basis – and dude – you do too, if you so much as sat through Platoon and Full Metal Jacket in one setting. Oh, to be a fly on that wall…

Thing is, I know a lot of O-3 to O-6’s – and trust me…a lot of them would attempt to arrest the fucker on charges of being…AWOL. He is not popular amongst those doing the fighting and the dying.

Robert Gates doesn’t just know this, he is banking on it.

Gates is not aWol’s man – he is his father’s man. He was reluctantly accepted in the wake of the dissing of the ISG – of which Gates was a part. aWol does not want to deal with Gates. Gates is a living breathing reminder of his abject failures.

Douglas Lute had his turn before the Senate on Thursday, and he didn’t seem to have any aversion at all to truth-telling and sobering assessments. He told senators during his hearing before the Armed Services Committee that he believed there was no purely military or America-only solution possible.

Not words that the punk president would care to hear.

And he is going to hear them every single day for the rest of his term.

A Perfect Specimen of Stubborn

The Useless Toll™ is in Kansas today – and Tony Snow took the opportunity to bluster and blow about the next Iraq funding bill that is being hammered out in the House of Representatives right now, and threaten another veto. You know, because the last one was so successful...

While White House officials have previously made clear their displeasure about the new House bill, this is the first time any administration official threatened another veto. House leaders said there could be a vote as early as this week on the new measure.

Snow expressed hope that the administration and Congress could still work out a deal, noting that Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten was supposed to meet Wednesday with Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.)

aWol needs to realize that he ain’t getting his way here. His day is done and we are not going to let our congress back down to his punk ass on this. Every bill he gets needs to be taking something away from him and applying stronger benchmarks and shorter timelines. Fuck him. The arrogant, hubris-driven intellectually incurious, mentally defective, amoral toad needs dealt with. We elected this cast and crew to put his poisonous ass in a bell jar. The sooner that reality sinks in across the board, the better off we'll all be.

The Constitution sets my bearing in the first three words: It is We, the People, asshole – and when we get cranky about illegal wars and stuff, we can be a right pain. Shoulda realized that it’s never a good idea to whack a hornets nest, and it’s just flat-out stupid to poke the bear at the same damned time. But that’s exactly what the stupid sumbitch did. So constrain him by any means necessary.

Yeah, George. Veto another one. I double dog dare you to keep vetoing. For the love of Harry Truman, veto, veto, veto. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Please veto these bills.

In fact, I think for the next one, he should fly to a carrier and do it on the flight deck. I'll kick in ten bucks for the banner.