McCain Throws Gramm Under His Bus, Backs Up, And Runs Over Him Again

When John McCain throws his real BFF Phil Gramm under the bus, it's news:

Republican John McCain distanced himself from an economic adviser who dubbed the United States "a nation of whiners" in a "mental recession" as Democrat Barack Obama turned the remarks against his rival.

"I strongly disagree" with Phil Gramm's remarks, McCain told reporters in Belleville, Mich. "Phil Gramm does not speak for me. I speak for me."

The Republican presidential hopeful said a person who just lost a job "isn't suffering from a mental recession."

"America is in great difficulty. And we are experiencing enormous economic challenges as well as others," McCain said, seeking to stem the fallout of Gramm's comments.

Gramm, a former Texas senator who is a vice chairman of the Swiss bank UBS, made the remarks in an interview with The Washington Times. Gramm has a doctorate in economics.

Gramm had basically said that Americans were "whiners" and since that gaffe, he's been trying to backtrack and say that he was talking about the leaders, not the people. This comes on the heels of McCain saying that Social Security is a "disgrace." There HAS to be a media mancrush the likes of which we have never seen before--that's the only way to explain two wrenching, out of control gaffes of major importance happening so close to one another, one from the candidate and one from a friend like Gramm. I mean, how do you get away with having Gramm on your campaign in the first place? Gramm was instrumental in the recent mortgage meltdown and has worked as a lobbyist for a foreign-owned bank.


Remember, it was McCain who was once the surrogate for Gramm, when Gramm electrified this nation and came within several thousand delegates of being the Republican nominee for President. (I kid--Gramm was within 1,800 delegates or so at one point, probably.)

Senator Obama twists the knife, and we appreciate that kind of thing:

In Virginia, Obama seized on the comments as he tried to paint McCain as out of touch: "America already has one Dr. Phil. We don't need another one when it comes to the economy."

He drew cheers and laughter with that comment referencing television psychologist "Dr. Phil" McGraw - and boos and hisses when he read Gramm's quotes to his audience. He contrasted them with rising gas and food prices, home foreclosures and job layoffs.

"It's not just a figment of your imagination," Obama said at a town-hall event focused on helping women advance economically. "Let's be clear. This economic downturn is not in your head."

Shades of the first President Bush in 1991, I would say. McCain is out of touch, out of his element, and lost when it comes to economics. And he's getting advice from people like Gramm who have failed, miserably, at electoral politics.

John Derbyshire is a Blithering Idiot

Please stand by for one of the most racist and ugly things you're going to see this week--courtesy of our friends at the National Review Online. The link might be broken soon--I can't see them keeping this column up for very long. John Derbyshire decided one day to try to write about race, Barack Obama, and America. All I can say is, wow. Somewhere, a lonely village is missing its Derbyshire.

He’s black, and so is God. Working in combination with other factors that I’ll get to, Obama’s négritude will help him with a lot of politically vague types who are neither black nor distinctively liberal, but who have been oriented the Obama way by decades of watching Numinous Negro types saving the world, or defying it with a supernatural level of dignity and gravitas, in the movies and on TV: characters played by Will Smith, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Michael Clarke Duncan, Denzel Washington, and of course the numinousest of them all, Morgan Freeman. There is probably now an entire demographic cohort of young Americans whose mental image of God is Morgan Freeman.

[SNIP]

He’s black, in an exotic way. This can’t be underestimated. If the candidate was George Obama, or Barack Washington, he would be twice as acceptable to the voting public. Cast your eye back down the list of U.S. presidents. “Exotic” is surely one of the last words they bring to mind, even a tad behind “black.” (There is, after all, an excellent chance that on the one-drop rule, Barack Obama will not be our first black president.) Our country has always had a scattering of high-achieving exotics, but none of them ever got close to the White House. In their presidential preferences, Americans of all parties are conservative. Other things being equal, we prefer boring white guys.

Obama’s East African origins don’t help. Most black Americans take their African descent from West Africa. The distribution of physical types in East Africa is considerably different. (As we shall no doubt see in the upcoming summer Olympics, where runners of West African ancestry will take all the sprinting awards, while East Africans will sweep the long-distance events.) There is of course a lot of overlap, but enough difference in physical types to give Obama a tinge of strangeness. The minds of many nonblack voters — and perhaps some black ones, too — will contain, at some level well below the surface, a thought like: He’s a black guy, but is he one of OUR black guys?

It's okay--my jaw hit the floor, too. It's alright--I'm as mad as you are. And it's fine--you can stick your head out the window and scream obscenities--I understand.

Please bear in mind--this was written and published in the National Review Online. Yes, it's a real publication and website. It really is. And Derbyshire was paid money to write that. YES! It's true. Can you think of anything--anything--that is stupider than what I just quoted to you? Anything?

John Derbyshire--vehemently challenging Douglas Feith for the title of "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the Earth."

--WS

Is this going to do it for Imus?

Poor Don Imus. He just can't stop saying things that he doesn't mean when the microphone is turned on. I don't know what the lame excuse he will use to get out this will be, but it really doesn't matter at this point. When you get to your ninth, tenth, eleventh incident like this, somewhere, some sort of decency has to kick in and someone has to take this guy off the air.

This morning on his show “Imus in the Morning,” host Don Imus “made a racially freighted comment” about an African-American athlete. Imus and his colleagues were discussing Adam “Pacman” Jones of the Dallas Cowboys and how he wants to now drop his nickname. At one point, Imus’s co-host, Warner Wolf, notes that Jones has “been arrested six times since being drafted by Tennessee in 2005.” Imus’s reaction:

IMUS: What color is he?

WOLF: He’s African-American.

IMUS: Well, there you go. Now we know.

All I can say is, I'm very disappointed. I can't believe he would stoop this low and I can't believe he would say something this stupid on the air. The guy has done a lot for charity, he has done enough for the kids with cancer project to get him into heaven, but he's now done enough with his mouth to get himself off the air.

He really does need to go this time, and no one should hire him back.

--WS

UPDATE: He probably won't get fired from WABC in New York--this is the station, after all, that employs Bob Grant. [special bonus Wikipedia link for those of you trying to figure out what is bullshit and what isn't...]

UPDATE: Soldier who shot Koran removed from Iraq

Probably a good idea--although I hope they don't come down too hard on the soldier:

An American sniper was removed from Iraq after he used a copy of the Quran for target practice, the military said Sunday, a day after a U.S. commander held a formal ceremony apologizing to Sunni tribal leaders.

The elaborate ceremony _ in which one U.S. officer kissed a new copy of Islam's holy book before giving it to the tribal leaders _ reflected the military's eagerness to stave off anger among Sunni Arabs it has been cultivating as allies.

The tribesmen have become key in the fight against al-Qaida in Iraq militants, who depict the American forces as anti-Islamic occupiers. One anti-U.S. Iraqi Sunni group condemned the Quran shooting, calling it "a hideous act." Similar perceived insults to Islam have triggered protests throughout the Muslim world.

Iraqi police found the bullet-riddled Quran with graffiti inside the cover on a firing range near a police station in Radwaniyah, a former insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, U.S. military spokesman Col. Bill Buckner said.

American commanders launched an inquiry that led to disciplinary action against the unidentified soldier, who has been removed from Iraq, Buckner said.

Members of the local U.S.-allied group said the Quran was found with 14 bullet holes in a field after U.S. troops withdrew from a base in the area.

Sheik Ahmed Khudayer al-Janabi, a local tribal leader, said the group had planned a protest march last Thursday but called it off under pressure from U.S. forces and to prevent any insurgent violence as retaliation.

The incident, which occurred on May 9 and was discovered two days later, was first reported by CNN, which broadcast a ceremony at which the top American commander in Baghdad apologized to tribal leaders Saturday in Radwaniyah. The military confirmed the details Sunday in an e-mailed response to a query.

"I come before you here seeking your forgiveness," Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond was quoted as saying at the ceremony. "In the most humble manner I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me and my soldiers."

"The actions of one soldier were nothing more than criminal behavior," he added. "I've come to this land to protect you, to support you _ not to harm you _ and the behavior of this soldier was nothing short of wrong and unacceptable."

The problem with coming down hard on the soldier is this--it will drive the "conservative" American electorate crazy and will lead to outrage in communities that will then stage their own "shooting" of the Koran in order to support the soldier. The soldier should be disciplined and the matter should be dropped immediately. Making a "martyr" out of someone who did something stupid and immature accomplishes nothing. The apology has been delivered, and that should be enough. Kudos to the US Army for at least recognizing that they had to do something. Now is not the time to hand radical elements fodder for controversy, be they the radicals in the Middle East who hide behind Islam or the radicals in this country who hide behind Christianity and the Republican Party to further their own agendas.

Shooting the Koran was offensive because it wasted a perfectly good book and it was offensive to the sensibilities of the people who revere that book. When you are sent into a country to try and win the hearts and minds of the people over to a more peaceful way of settling their political differences, shooting their holy book is a frustratingly immature and stupid thing to do. It teaches no one about free speech to use the opportunity of making a statement to ruin a book with bullets and to write profanity in that book. It is just as wrong to shoot a Torah, a Bible, or any other book. It is a symbolic thing that wallows in the stupidity of the act. No one's mind is changed from shooting a book. Reading a book, on the other hand, is something this soldier should be asked to do, as in, reading the COIN manual, reading a book about basic tolerance for other religions, and reading a book about how to express oneself in a more mature and thoughtful manner. This is the kind of thing that sets small minds to twittering, and we need much less of that.

"...this burdensome guy who will be leaving soon"

Humiliation from Egypt:

Egypt's state-owned press opened fire Saturday on U.S. President George W. Bush as he arrived for talks with regional leaders at the conclusion of a five-day Mideast tour.

The newspapers, whose management are all appointed by the government, criticized Mr. Bush's speech Thursday in front of the Israeli Knesset for being overly supportive of the Israelis and not mentioning the Palestinians' plight.

"The Torah-inspired speech of Bush raised question marks over the credibility of the U.S. role in the Middle East," wrote Mursi Atallah, the publisher of Al-Ahram, the flagship daily of the state-owned press. "Bush aims to do nothing but appeasing Israel."

Mr. Bush's tour, which included stops in Israel and Saudi Arabia, represents another effort to push Mideast peace talks forward as his time in office winds down.

In his speech marking the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding, Mr. Bush reiterated the U.S.'s close ties to its regional ally, and dismissed the notion that the Jewish state should have to negotiate with its armed adversaries.

A front page editorial in Al-Gomhouria, another Egyptian state-owned daily, described Mr. Bush as "a failed president who delivers nothing but a lousy speech."

Akhbar Al-Youm also on Saturday published a picture of Mr. Bush hugging Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and captioned it "lovers."

The paper also ran a front page cartoon showing an Egyptian peasant consoling President Hosni Mubarak for having to meet with "this burdensome guy who will be leaving soon," in reference to Mr. Bush.

An extra special case of stupid for you:

A soldier used the Quran -- Islam's holy book -- for target practice, forcing the chief U.S. commander in Baghdad to issue a formal apology on Saturday.

Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, apologized to leaders in Radhwaniya, in the western outskirts of Baghdad, for the staff sergeant who was a sniper section leader assigned to the headquarters of the 64th Armored Regiment. He also read a letter of apology by the shooter.

It was the first time the incident -- which tested the relationship between U.S.-backed Sunni militiamen and the military -- was made public since it was discovered May 11.

"I come before you here seeking your forgiveness," Hammond said to tribal leaders and others at the apology ceremony. "In the most humble manner I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me and my soldiers."

Another military official kissed a Quran and presented is as "a humble gift" to the tribal leaders.

The soldier, whose name was not released, shot at a Quran on May 9, villagers said. The Quran used in the incident was discovered two days later, according to the military.

Hammond also read from the shooter's letter: "I sincerely hope that my actions have not diminished the partnership that our two nations have developed together. ... My actions were shortsighted, very reckless and irresponsible, but in my heart [the actions] were not malicious."

Copies of the pictures of the Quran obtained by CNN show multiple bullet holes and an expletive scrawled on one of its pages.

What a sick fuck

Have you seen Mike Huckabee remind us why he is a sad pathetic joke who should never try to tell one. Especially if he is going to attempt improv.



For those who can't watch video, Huckabee was addressing the NRA convention today when his address was interrupted by a loud noise. He tried to make a joke, saying "[T]hat was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He's getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he -- he dove for the floor."

What the fuck? That is the sort of thing that a kid would get expelled from school and sent to see a shrink for saying.

But it was a joke, you see.

Well, listen up, Huckleberry. Lemme asplain this and I am going to type r.e.a.l.l.y. s.l.o.w. so you can follow and I only have to say it once.

First of all, Huckster, stick with jokes that start "a Priest, a Rabbi and a duck walked into a bar..."

Second, no one is obligated to say "Oh, well, okay then. Never mind," and just let it slide every time some stupid mother fucker says some stupid, hateful, bigoted thing - in "joke" format.

The problem isn't now, and has never been, that the people who are offended need to get a sense of humor. The problem is that stupid, bigoted, hateful "jokes" are not funny. And any joke that implies an assassination attempt on a candidate that has received secret service protection since early in the primary season is so far from funny that words fail me.

And this is what the republicans have to offer. They can slander. They can imply cowardice and they can scream "appeaser!" That's it.

*******************

Okay. I understand that Huck has apologized.

To which I say "so?"

Let me put it this way - I have a four year old granddaughter. Even she understands that even the most heartfelt apologies are not get out of jail free cards.

So shut up and go away now. This is the sort of thing that should hound him off the public stage that he might molest decent people no more.

Attention war architects: If every last one of you was surrounded by idiots...it follows that every last one of you is an idiot

As the Bush administration limps toward the finish, those who enabled the criminal enterprise as it made illegal, immoral and unjust war are scrambling to deflect blame for the clusterfuck in Iraq to anyone but themselves.

We just got done mocking Doug "Stupidest Fucking Guy on the Planet" Feith and now Paul Bremer is weighing in with his two cents worth of revisionist history.

In my view, one of the more unfortunate aspects of having lawyers involved in the project was they determined that under international law, we became an occupying force and that was confirmed by the UN security council resolution.

I used to say to the Iraqis it is also not very fun being an occupier, especially for an American; I always thought it was an unfortunate term.

There was nothing I could do to change the noun, occupation. When Iraqis raised their concerns with me all I could do is sympathise and say "I understand you’re problem but there it is, it’s the international law."

The political ramifications and psychological ramifications I think were in many ways more important because of the implication to the Iraqi’s that we were an occupying and not a liberating force.

For many Iraqis they were delighted we had thrown out Saddam Hussein and his cronies. But they wake up the next day and hear that we’re occupying them and look out the door of their house and see Americans in tanks… I think it had an important, negative political ramification.

I think it was the case that as we were unable to provide security for Iraqi citizens, that’s when the coalition became less and less popular.

We could see in the opinion polls we did starting in September of 2003; there was a steady decline in the Iraqi view of the occupation as their concerns about security rose - you could see a direct relationship.

So it's the lawyers fault that you idiots didn't think through the ramifications of what you were about to do?

But my favorite bit is how he has completely rewritten the part about his decision to disband the Iraqi military. He now says the entire army deserted. Understandable, you see, because they were mostly poorly treated Shia draftees...

But three years ago, he was fiercely defending his decision to disband the Iraqi army, insisting it was the most important step he took in his entire tenure as Viceroy of Iraq in the wake of the invasion.

Read the whole thing - just put on hip-waders first, because it gets pretty damned deep.

Some of You People Weren't Answering Those E-mails...

When bad things happen to good people:

The owner of a multimillion-dollar home on Foxhall Road in northwest D.C. was evicted on Monday.

The homeowner, Oladipo Aina, is a Nigerian-born CEO of a company called "The Potentional Millionaires Investment Club International." His business card says he is a foreclosure specialist.

Workers emptied the contents of the five-bedroom, 5,000-square foot home onto the sidewalk Monday.

Federal marshals looked on as two Rolls Royces were towed from the driveway.

"I am not afraid," Aina said.

Bank records show Aina and his associates in October were served with a 30-day notice to quit and vacate because another owner had purchase the home in a foreclosure sale.

"They are lying," Aina said.

Chairs, furniture and bags of personal effects took up nearly half a city block, causing people who live in the neighborhood to stop and stare.

Now, before you start to feel sorry for him...

Aina has 24 hours to move his positions. He said he's been railroaded.

"I have 30,000 acres of emerald mines worth billions," he said. He said the mines are located in Zambia.

Aina said he will move into an $8 million home in McLean as soon as he can get the people living there to move out.

I guess that settles that. Wanna bet the E-mails asking you, the most dearest one, to help transfer some funds from the Central Bank of the Ivory Coast to a Swiss bank account are "interrupted" until Aina can get his Internet access turned back on?

Danger UXB

I'm not sure what to make of this:

Sam White got hooked on the U.S. Civil War early, digging up rusting bullets and military buttons in the battle-scarred earth of his hometown.

As an adult, he crisscrossed the Virginia countryside in search of wartime relics - 19-century weapons, battle flags, even artillery shells buried in the red clay. He sometimes put on diving gear to feel for treasures hidden in the black muck of river bottoms.

But in February, White's hobby cost him his life: A cannonball he was restoring exploded, killing him in his driveway.

I think what's missing here is a little critical thinking--what would possess someone to take a grinder and try to "clean up" an artillery shell?

Experts suspect White was killed while trying to disarm a 9-inch, 75-pound naval cannonball, a particularly potent explosive with a more complex fuse and many times the destructive power of those used by infantry artillery.

Biemeck and Peter George, co-author of a book on Civil War ordnance, believe White was using either a drill or a grinder attached to a drill to remove grit from the cannonball, causing a shower of sparks.

Because of the fuse design, it may have appeared as though the weapon's powder had already been removed, leading even a veteran like White to conclude mistakenly that the ball was inert.

The weapon also had to be waterproof because it was designed to skip over the water at 600 mph to strike at the waterline of an enemy ship. The protection against moisture meant the ball could have remained potent longer than an infantry shell.

Brenda White is convinced her husband was working on a flawed cannonball, and no amount of caution could have prevented his death.

"He had already disarmed the shell," she said. "From what I was told, there was absolutely nothing he had done wrong, that there was a manufacturing defect that no one would have known was there."

After White's death, about two dozen homes were evacuated for two days while explosives experts collected pieces from his collection and detonated them.

It took TWO DAYS to remove the unexploded ordnance from his home--a sign that, at least to me, this guy was up to his eyeballs in something that, frankly, should have been illegal. His "accident" could have killed others. Shrapnel from the explosion that killed White sent pieces of metal flying up to a quarter of a mile from his home. I mean, really. Was it worth it? To put on a diving suit and pull a cannonball up out of the water?

Who Cares What You Believe?

How is this even an issue? Oh, that's right. The "God Boys" are running wild in the US Army as well as the US Air Force:

"I was ashamed to say that I was an atheist," Hall said.

It eventually came out in Iraq in 2007, when he was in a firefight. Hall was a gunner on a Humvee, which took several bullets in its protective shield. Afterward, his commander asked whether he believed in God, Hall said.

"I said, 'No, but I believe in Plexiglas,'" Hall said. "I've never believed I was going to a happy place. You get one life. When I die, I'm worm food."

The issue came to a head when, according to Hall, a superior officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, threatened to bring charges against him for trying to hold a meeting of atheists in Iraq. Welborn has denied Hall's allegations.

Hall said he had had enough but feared he wouldn't get support from Welborn's superiors. He turned to Mikey Weinstein and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

Weinstein is the foundation's president and a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate. He had previously sued the Air Force for acts he said illegally imposed Christianity on students at the academy, though that case was dismissed. He calls Hall a hero.

"The average American doesn't have enough intestinal fortitude to tell someone to shut up if they are talking in a movie theater," Weinstein said. "You know how hard it is to take on your chain of command? This isn't the shift manager at KFC."

Hall was in Qatar when the lawsuit was filed on Sept. 18 in federal court in Kansas City, Kan. Other soldiers learned of it and he feared for his own safety. Once, Hall said, a group of soldiers followed him, harassing him, but no one did anything to make it stop.

The Army told him it couldn't protect him and sent him back to Fort Riley. He resumed duties with a military police battalion. He believes his promotion to sergeant has been blocked because of his lawsuit, but he is a team leader responsible for two junior enlisted soldiers.

Somewhere, there's the stupidest MP battalion ever. And I think Hall is serving in it.

Hall needs to get transferred to a Military Intelligence battalion (certain battalions have MPs to guard secure facilities) and he'll find atheists, Wiccans, Mormons, Episcopalians and worshippers of the alien God Zogart. And he'll just be another dude in BDUs.

Doug Feith explains it all

And lets just put it this way...Clarissa did a better job.

You must understand...mistakes were made...But Doug "Stupidest fucking guy on the planet" Feith insists that he wasn't the one making them. It was everyone around him, you see. That is the case he makes in his soon-to-be-remaindered (premaindered?) book.

He argued that former secretary of state Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, were the ones who failed to challenge the logic of going to war -- not him. He suggested that Powell, Armitage, Franks, former Iraq viceroy Jerry Bremer and even Feith's old boss, Donald Rumsfeld, should be blamed for the postwar chaos in Iraq -- not him. He blamed then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice for the way she operated ("fundamental differences were essentially papered over rather than resolved"). He accused the CIA of "improper" and unprofessional behavior. And he implicitly blamed President Bush for not cracking down on insubordinate behavior at the State Department.

Yet at the same time, Feith told the CSIS crowd that he disapproved of the "snide and shallow self-justification typical in memoirs of former officials," or what Feith cleverly called the " 'I-was-surrounded-by-idiots' school of memoir writing." Feith pointed out that he supported his account with 140 pages of notes and documents. And yet, in his hour-long panel discussion, Feith seemed to be of the impression that he had, in fact, been surrounded by idiots.

There was, for example, the question of the campaign waged by Feith and his section of the Pentagon against the CIA when the agency argued that there was no evidence of al-Qaeda having ties to Saddam Hussein. "The CIA and the intelligence community should not be shading intelligence," Feith lectured. But the self-justification missed the obvious point: The CIA was correct.

Lacking a hint of a scintilla of a clue about "irony"; the soulless, craven, neocon fuck continues to blithely stumble along, as clueless as Mr. Magoo, assigning blame like he's the Queen of Hearts shouting "off with their heads!" (Have I set a record for pop culture references in a blog post yet? Can someone check on that for me?)

Hey - there is plenty 0f blame to go around, no doubt about it. There are at least a score of administration officials that should go to The Hague. And Feith is in the top ten, no doubt about that, either.

He is an idiot, and he is a liar. And as he does not have the decency to just go the fuck away, let's let someone we actually respect and admire, Pat Lang, relate a recap of the comedy stylings of this Doug Feith, via the marvelous Steve Clemons at the Washington Note:

Jeff Stein of Congressional Quarterly has a great recap of what former Pentagon spy-master Pat Lang and former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson had to say at a University of District of Columbia forum on May 7th.

Here's some Feith fun from Pat Lang:

Patrick Lang told a hilarious story the other night, for example, about a job interview he had with Douglas Feith, a key architect of the invasion of Iraq.

It was at the beginning of the first Bush term. Lang had been in charge of the Middle East, South Asia and terrorism for the Defense Intelligence Agency in the 1990s. Later he ran the Pentagon's worldwide spying operations.

In early 2001, his name was put forward as somebody who would be good at running the Pentagon's office of special operations and low-intensity warfare, i.e., counterinsurgency. Lang had also been a Green Beret, with three tours in South Vietnam.

One of the people he had to impress was Feith, the Defense Department's number three official and a leading player in the clique of neoconservatives who had taken over the government's national security apparatus.

Lang went to see him, he recalled during a May 7 panel discussion at the University of the District of Columbia.

"He was sitting there munching a sandwich while he was talking to me," Lang recalled, "which I thought was remarkable in itself, but he also had these briefing papers -- they always had briefing papers, you know -- about me.

"He's looking at this stuff, and he says, 'I've heard of you. I heard of you.'

"He says, 'Is it really true that you really know the Arabs this well, and that you speak Arabic this well? Is that really true? Is that really true?'

"And I said, 'Yeah, that's really true.'

"That's too bad," Feith said.

The audience howled.

"That was the end of the interview," Lang said. "I'm not quite sure what he meant, but you can work it out."

Feith, of course, like the administration's other Israel-connected hawks, didn't want "Arabists" like Lang muddying the road to Baghdad, from where -- according to the Bush administration theory -- overthrowing Saddam Hussein would ignite mass demands for Western-style, pro-U.S. democracies across the entire Middle East.

How the hell can I top that?

Stupidest fucking guy on the planet, indeed.

It's all over but the shouting

Spitzer is all but gone. ABC is reporting that he is in "transition talks" and had planned to announce his resignation last night at 7:00, then abruptly changed his plans on the advice of his attorneys.

"It is inevitable; it is just a question of when," said one cabinet-level New York state official.

The Lieutenant Governor, David Patterson, and his chief of staff reportedly spent all morning sequestered with his chief of staff, reviewing organization charts and deciding what members of Spitzer's staff might be retained in the Patterson administration once Spitzer officially tenders his resignation.

Fine. He's gone. And good riddance. Stupid fucker.

But just once in my life, I want to see a wronged wife get properly pissed and make a god-damned scene. I want to see one of these randy jackasses forced to stand in front of a gaggle of reporters with a cut above a black eye, a broken, bleeding nose and more than a couple of gaps where teeth used to be. And I want that bastard to stand there alone. I want to see the wife on the other side of a split screen, holding her own damned press conference, pointing to his clothing on the street and his Harman Kardon in the driveway in pieces, because she has run over it a few times. I want to see one of these wives hold up a copy of the divorce papers and restraining order that were filed less than an hour before. I want to see the furniture from his den and all of his memorabilia reduced to ashes and smoldering on the lawn.

In short - I want to see one of those women react the way I would.

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

I want to see Dr. Laura parading around in her lingerie, keeping her OWN man happy:

[h/t to Think Progress]

Dr. Laura blames Spitzer’s wife for scandal.Today, right-wing radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger appeared on NBC’s Today Show in a segment called “Why do men cheat?” Schlessinger argued that Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) cheated because his wife failed “make him feel like a man”:

When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings — sexually, personally — to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like her hero, he’s very susceptible to the charm of some other woman. […]

The cheating was his decision to repair what’s damaged and to feed himself where he’s starving. But yes, I hold women accountable for tossing out perfectly good men by not treating them with the love and kindness and respect and attention they need.

He was "starving" for over-priced bareback action with twentysomething skank?

I Don't Know Any of These Women

I'm late to the party by posting about this, but let me just say up front--I don't know any of the swooning idiots that Charlotte Allen talks about. I don't have any experience with shallow, preoccupied women who are flighty and ridiculous. The ones I know are smart, tough and professional. The ones Allen knows seem to have been thrown under the bus--how'd you like to be her pal?

Anyway, this just sounds like another cheap shot at Hillary Clinton. If you want to guarantee yourself a published article, just attack Hillary.

"Women 'Falling for Obama,' " the story's headline read. Elsewhere around the country, women were falling for the presidential candidate literally. Connecticut radio talk show host Jim Vicevich has counted five separate instances in which women fainted at Obama rallies since last September. And I thought such fainting was supposed to be a relic of the sexist past, when patriarchs forced their wives and daughters to lace themselves into corsets that cut off their oxygen.

I can't help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women -- I should say, "we women," of course -- aren't the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial. Women "are only children of a larger growth," wrote the 18th-century Earl of Chesterfield. Could he have been right?

I'm not the only woman who's dumbfounded (as it were) by our sex, or rather, as we prefer to put it, by other members of our sex besides us. It's a frequent topic of lunch, phone and water-cooler conversations; even some feminists can't believe that there's this thing called "The Oprah Winfrey Show" or that Celine Dion actually sells CDs. A female friend of mine plans to write a horror novel titled "Office of Women," in which nothing ever gets done and everyone spends the day talking about Botox.

We exaggerate, of course. And obviously men do dumb things, too, although my husband has perfectly good explanations for why he eats standing up at the stove (when I'm not around) or pulls down all the blinds so the house looks like a cave (also when I'm not around): It has to do with the aggressive male nature and an instinctive fear of danger from other aggressive men. When men do dumb things, though, they tend to be catastrophically dumb, such as blowing the paycheck on booze or much, much worse (think "postal"). Women's foolishness is usually harmless. But it can be so . . . embarrassing.

Take Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign. By all measures, she has run one of the worst -- and, yes, stupidest -- presidential races in recent history, marred by every stereotypical flaw of the female sex. As far as I'm concerned, she has proved that she can't debate -- viz. her televised one-on-one against Obama last Tuesday, which consisted largely of complaining that she had to answer questions first and putting the audience to sleep with minutiae about her health-coverage mandate. She has whined (via her aides) like the teacher's pet in grade school that the boys are ganging up on her when she's bested by male rivals. She has wept on the campaign trail, even though everyone knows that tears are the last refuge of losers. And she is tellingly dependent on her husband.

Then there's Clinton's nearly all-female staff, chosen for loyalty rather than, say, brains or political savvy. Clinton finally fired her daytime-soap-watching, self-styled "Latina queena" campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, known for burning through campaign money and for her open contempt for the "white boys" in the Clinton camp. But stupidly, she did it just in time to alienate the Hispanic voters she now desperately needs to win in Texas or Ohio to have any shot at the Democratic nomination.

What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental? Take a look at the New York Times bestseller list. At the top of the paperback nonfiction chart and pitched to an exclusively female readership is Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love." Here's the book's autobiographical plot: Gilbert gets bored with her perfectly okay husband, so she has an affair behind his back. Then, when that doesn't pan out, she goes to Italy and gains 23 pounds forking pasta so she has to buy a whole new wardrobe, goes to India to meditate (that's the snooze part), and finally, at an Indonesian beach, finds fulfillment by -- get this -- picking up a Latin lover!

This is the kind of literature that countless women soak up like biscotti in a latte cup: food, clothes, sex, "relationships" and gummy, feel-good "spirituality." This female taste for first-person romantic nuttiness, spiced with a soup¿on of soft-core porn, has made for centuries of bestsellers -- including Samuel Richardson's 1740 novel "Pamela," in which a handsome young lord tries to seduce a virtuous serving maid for hundreds of pages and then proposes, as well as Erica Jong's 1973 "Fear of Flying."

Are you feeling patronized and denigrated yet? Damn.

Talk about writing a column that you should have deleted before you posted it.

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

Take Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign. By all measures, she has run one of the worst -- and, yes, stupidest -- presidential races in recent history

Yeah, that's Mark Penn's fault, sweetie. You can argue that Clinton should have fired him in January, but what you can't argue is that he is, in fact, a man.

Bill Kristol - A True Believer in the Conservative Cause?

Yes--that's a picture of a Disney character. A Disney character called "Scrooge McDuck." But it is being used as satire, as a way of commenting on the miserly ways of a public figure.

The New York Times probably should have looked askance at the resume of William the Bloody Kristol before hiring him--chief of staff to Dan Quayle? Hello? [Blue Girl has already posted some excellent observations on why people should just walk away from the Grey Lady for doing something so reprehensible--I just wanted to add a little something to it. And incite a dozen Disney copyright lawyers into stampeding into my bottle washing factory to harangue me for using an image of one of their minor, not-so-beloved characters.]

But if you look at who he's been giving money to, it ends up being about $8,000 in donations, going back to the early 1990s. Yep--that's it. That's all he's given to the cause. So you true-blue conservatives out there--pay attention. One of your spiritual and intellectual leaders has only given a paltry amount of his vast wealth and income to the politicians who are to carry the spears and fight the conservative fight. Most of the money he's handed out went to one guy, Spencer Abraham. Conflict of interest, there, for future "columns" in the NY Times? I hope they disclose it, if it's at all relevant in the future.

See that happy smile on the beak of Scrooge McDuck? That's Bill Kristol smiling his little smile at the thought that he now gets all of that prominent real estate in the NY Times. He's laughing at America for falling for his ridiculous bullshit. He's laughing because he has spent his adult life getting paid to be wrong on a consistent basis about everything of substance. He's laughing at you, Mr. Wingnut, because you give so much more than he does. He's laughing all the way to the bank, because the vast majority of the money he does earn is not recycled back into the cause. It goes in his pocket. And he buys himself nice things. And lives in Northern Virginia, in one of the most exclusive areas, and he thinks you're all chumps for giving money to Republican politicians.

Giving money to Republicans should not disqualify anyone from getting a job at the New York Times--so long as that person is open and honest about it. In fact, giving money to politicians is perfectly fine.

But George Allen?

KRISTOL, WILLIAM
MCLEAN, VA 22101
WEEKLY STANDARD/EDITOR ALLEN, GEORGE (R)
Senate - VA
FRIENDS OF GEORGE ALLEN $250
general 07/10/06

And he only gave him $250 dollars? Thanks, but no thanks. I guarantee you--thousands of conservatives in Northern Virginia gave Allen a hell of a lot more than $250 bucks--and the majority of them probably didn't live in McLean and didn't have the vast amounts of right wing welfare money rolling in that Kristol has had rolling in since getting his first job. Wouldn't you wingnuts want to have a rich daddy to "create" a career for you and subsidize your fanciful ideas and steaming piles of bullshit recycled as observation and thought? Wouldn't you like to get paid to sit on your ass and be wrong about everything, and even go on Fox News and do it in public, with a smirk on your face? Just like Bill?

Good Lord. Scrooge McDuck would be proud...

Huckabee, Huckabee, Huckabee

Here's an example of how not to view what happened today, courtesy of the former governor of Arkansas:

From CBS News' Nancy Cordes:

ORLANDO, FLA. -- With about 150 supporters crowded around a podium set up on the tarmac of Orlando Executive airport (and about 20 Ron Paul supporters waving signs outside) Mike Huckabee strode out to the strains of “Right Now” by Van Halen and immediately addressed the Bhutto situation, expressing “our sincere concern and apologies for what has happened in Pakistan.”

He said the assassination is a reminder that here in the US, we are lucky to vote “not with bullets but with ballots,” and said “I guess we are sometimes lulled into failing to appreciate the magnitude” of the democratic process.

After moving onto other subjects in his rally (more on that in a moment) he took questions from the press. I asked him what he would do right now if he were President to tackle the situation. He avoided taking a strong policy position, saying he would offer sincere sympathies to the people of Pakistan, and monitor who’s behind it. When asked what he thinks of the Musharraf government and how it has handled the security situation and aid from the US, he replied, “I think today is not the best day to comment on what the Musharraf government should or shouldn’t have done” though “we need a full accounting of that money.” He was also asked if today’s news highlights why the next President needs to have foreign policy, which he lacks. His reponse: “I think it’s more important to have the right principles for the American people.”

He made a bad choice of words when saying the U.S. needs to consider “what impact does it have on whether or not there’s going to be martial law continuing in Pakistan.” He should have said whether or not martial law will be reinstated – it was lifted nearly two weeks ago. A minor slip, maybe, but not a subject he wants to mess up on when he is already considered weak in the area of foreign policy.

While it is odd to read someone's "suggestion" for what Huckabee should have said, all you can do is wince and try not to think about what an election eight years from now would be like, given the continuing downward spiral of media coverage in this country.

Van Halen? Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen is his theme song? What the fuck?

Just Another Day in a Terrified Land

Imagine what would have happened if someone had sung a song about puppies and love and cotton candy...

------------------------------

ROXBURY, Conn. (AP) ― A scary threat to a teacher at a Roxbury school turned out to be nothing more than some bad singing.

State police say a teacher at Booth Free School barricaded herself in a classroom Wednesday when she mistook someone singing a Guns N' Roses song over the public address system for a threat.

Her 911 call brought in troopers and police dogs who detained three men until an investigation at the scene cleared up the misunderstanding.

Troopers discovered that the three teens, one of them a custodian at the school, had been playing with the public address system.

Police say one of them sang "Welcome to the Jungle" into the microphone. The song contains the lyrics "You're in the jungle baby; you're gonna die."

------------------------------

Now, is this because Americans are subjected to endless stories about violence in school, terror threats at home, and racially charged hate mongering from Presidential candidates? Is this typical of a country gone mad with fear and paralyzed with stupidity?

Fire that idiot and don't let her near children. She does not have the "judgement" to teach anyone anything. "Judgement" is defined as the ability to question what you hear and use some common sense to assess whether there really might be a "threat." And if you can't tell a threat from someone screwing around, who's problem is that? It's your problem.

It reminds me of this incident:

The January 31, 2007 Boston Mooninite scare (also known as the Boston advertising security scare, Aqua-Gate, Boston Mooninite Massacre or Boston bomb scare) occurred when Boston police officers mistakenly identified small electronic devices found throughout Boston and the surrounding cities of Cambridge and Somerville as improvised explosive devices. The devices turned out to be battery-powered LED placards with an image of a cartoon character called a "mooninite". The placards were part of a guerrilla marketing campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, a film based on the animated TV series Aqua Teen Hunger Force (ATHF) on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim late-night programming block.

This harmless marketing prank caused the city of Boston to collectively lose its fucking mind:

During the preliminary investigation at the site, the police found that the device shared some characteristics with improvised explosive devices, except the actual explosive. These characteristics included an identifiable power source, circuit board with exposed wiring, and electrical tape. After the initial assessment, the Boston police shut down the northbound side of I-93 and parts of the public transportation system. Just after 10 a.m. the bomb squad used a small explosive filled with water to destroy it as a precaution. MBTA Transit police Lieutenant Salvatore Venturelli told the media at the scene, "This is a perfect example of our passengers taking part in Homeland Security." He refused to describe the object in detail because of the ongoing investigation responding that "It's not consistent with equipment that would be there normally," Investigators were trying to determine "if it was a hoax or something else entirely" according to Venturelli.

Oh, to live in a country where people are savvy enough to walk down to the room where the intercom is located and yell, "you suck" or maybe "you want some of this?"

"Judgement" is a precious commodity, and this country seems to lose more and more of it every single day.

Nora Ephron, would you just SHUT the F#%! Up?

Okay, what's wrong with me? I'm sure Nora Ephron is a perfectly nice woman. I'm not about saying bad things about people. I'm not into criticizing people...

[I couldn't keep going with that thought--I just fell of my chair laughing in hysterics at how wildly ridiculous and hypocritical that last bit was of me to say.]

I read this earlier tonight and couldn't figure out what to say at first:

It's hard to be a Democrat, don't you think? There's no alternative, of course, but it's hard. Someone asked me the other day to write something about why I was a Democrat, and I had no trouble making a list of 10 reasons. Of course, five of those reasons were the Supreme Court, and the other five were more or less historical -- reasons like FDR, which is not meant to mean Franklin Delano Roosevelt exactly but some fantasy blob of Democratic values that are a distant racial memory.

But it's hard. It's especially hard to remember that the real enemies are the Republicans, when the Democrats tend to break your heart and the Republicans are just the boys you'd never go out with anyway.

It's hard when you watch a debate and decide that in the end you're probably going to throw your vote away in the primary and vote for someone who doesn't have a chance, like Dennis Kucinich. I mean, look at them, look at the front runners: Hillary Clinton, who can't help being Hillary Clinton; Barack Obama, who was a disappointment from the beginning and whose new-found attack mode is as dispiriting as his low energy level used to be; John Edwards, whom I am afraid I will never be able to think of again (after this week's Peggy Noonan column in the Wall Street Journal) as anything but a desperate furry little woodland animal.

First of all, it's not "hard" to be a Democrat. It's as easy as can be. YOU might have a personal crisis of conviction, but I don't.

If you don't like what the Democrats who currently hold office are doing, then, and I say this collectively to the larger population, get off your dead ass and participate in the primary process. Remember what that's supposed to be about? It's supposed to be about finding the best candidate to run for office. It's not supposed to be about putting another crown on the head of someone who you have to hold your nose and give five bucks to. It's about finding better Democrats.

So instead of whining, find better Democrats.

Nora thinks FDR is some "distant racial memory?" What does that even mean? No, FDR is with us today in the form of Social Security. Every time someone who is old has money to buy food, think of FDR. There's nothing distant to me about FDR, and I'm not even forty yet.

Nora thinks that Republicans are the boys she wouldn't go out with? Uh, I don't know how to put this, but the Republicans are the boys who torture animals, solicit sex in public restrooms, stick dildos up their asses, molest children and moan about the feel of a diaper on their skin while defecating on prostitutes.

Nora thinks that Peggy Noonan has "defined" John Edwards?

I'm sorry, but if you claim to be a Democrat, and if Peggy Noonan--Peggy Noonan!--writes something on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal that makes you think of a Democrat as a "furry woodland creature," you're an idiot. You are a grade-a, mouth breathing, short bus riding idiot of massive proportions.

Instead of lamenting what Democrats have or haven't done, sort out your personal problems in a more appropriate forum for discussion. Ever heard of the term "buzzkill?" Because I was pretty happy to see that the Democrats found a way to override a Presidential veto last week. I'm happy they were able to do that. They have a lot of things they need to do.

But, man--what a buzzkill.

"Return on Success"?

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

The sort of thing that terrifies me

You can cower in fear of 'terrists' if you want. I choose to be terrified by the prospect of Idiocracy as prophecy.


The results of a study conducted for the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center is the sort of thing that scares me much worse than any terrorist.

• Only 15% of Americans can identify the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (John Roberts). To contrast: 66% know at least one of the judges on American Idol.
• Only 30% realize that the Supreme Court is the last stop on the litigation train. 32% believe that Supreme Court decisions can be appealed, and 38% either "didn't know" or "weren't sure."
• 55% do not know that when the Supreme Court rules 5-4 on a case, that decision is the law of the land and must be followed.
• 14% believe that 5-4 decisions are sent back to congress for further consideration, 7% believe it goes back to the lower courts, and 34% simply "don't know."

It is easy to take the civil rights away from a group of people who do not know they have them.

I see ignorance among the populace as a far graver threat to the American way of life than any terrorist anywhere. I don't care how determined or deranged that terrorist might be. Until the nation as a whole gets smarter than a fifth grader, we are screwed - seven ways from Sunday.