Straight Talk Express Indeed

John McCain proves he is not merely a pathetically bad panderer. He is just stupid.

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”

The zen of New York

From Overheard in New York - http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/

White guy with dreads: Think about this -- taking a shit is the one thing in which all people of all races, sexes and religions are truly equal.
Hippie girl: Not exactly. Some people shit on solid gold toilet bowls while others shit in a bucket.
Little boy at next table, standing on booth seat: I shit in my pants! Hahaha!

--Wo Hop, 15 Mott St

Overheard by: Big Larry

sometimes it really is that simple

The Rude One nails it - A shamelessly too easy pun but really what else can you say?

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2007/02/understanding-nie-and-global-warming.html

The News Blog says it

Steve Gilliard seems to have sucked the marrow out of every military campaign since Napolean decided Russia would be a pushover and I think he sums up Bush's "plan" pretty well - it ain't one.

"But in the end, it doesn't matter if the surge happens. It won't change anything but who dies in Iraq." (http://www.thenewsblog.net/2007/01/its-time-to-buy-clues.html)

As some of the few remaining supporters of this disaster (usually these are Joe Lieberman) like to say - "Freedom isn't free". But in Iraq you can still die for nothing.

Don't hide anymore

Chick Hagel stock goes up. Sure he was maybe just a stomach rumble in the great fart that was the Rubber Stamp 109th but now he is pissed: at Bush and his colleagues the Great Enablers. This tirade directed at Lugar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3cwQYx9hDU&eurl=

"I want... 100% of us to look in the camera right there and tell our people back home what we think."

The Lieberman Death Tally

I guess we can call this the first day of the Lieberman War In Iraq.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/1/19/221444/921
It links back to an NPR interview but here is the money quote (also from KOS)

MS. BLOCK: Can you imagine a scenario where you would join in with a Republican filibuster to stop the resolution, if it comes to that?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: I can because I think that it – this is this important.

So there you have it. Mark it Friday the 19th of January 2007.
According to this site: http://antiwar.com/casualties/list.php there were 2 deaths on the Lieberman War on that day.

Today the 20th there are 21 more reported. Already St. Joe has 23 deaths and that doesn't even count the 3000+ assists.

Oh yeah and, Thank you Connecticut for sending the Great One back to the Senate. A Grateful Nation casts its eyes upon you.

from the AP

• House Dems Close the First '100 Hours'
• House Dems to Support Iraq Resolution
• House Democrats Beat 100-Hour Clock
• House Rolls Back Oil Company Subsidies

Top 4 AP headlines at 7:30 p.m.

I guess they ain't used to a Congress that actually tries to do something other than fetch George Bush's paper.

Blowing the 2 year warning

In 2 years (and 36 hours and 49 minutes) as I write this will be the Constitutional end of the Great American Bush Disaster. Oh, not that we'll be done with the legacy of George W Bush. We're gonna live with that shit for the rest of my life and in a generation they will still cursing the Bush legacy - a phrase that will be uttered with the same staccato spit that one uses when saying "Nixon Presidency" - back in those days president's didn't have legacies they just tried not to fuck things up too much.

But anyway, on Sat January 20 - this Saturday - it will be exactly 2 years to when Bush turns over the throne to another - that is of course if he doesn't in his deciding decide to stay.

But anyway, being the 2 year mark to that glorious day (plus 2 years) I think the occasion should be marked. Like maybe with that most emblematic of all Bush sounds - the fart. He does like him some fart jokes that jolly old sport of a president of ours .

No wait that probably won't work. Probably won't make much of impression on anyone other than the guy standing next to you even if you do it while shouting "Only 2 more stinking years of George Bush!" at the top of your lungs.

But you will want to mark the day when George Bush - the war criminal - loses whatever immunity he has as a sitting head of state and can be arrested in whatever country he visits. I realize the chances of the notoriously incurious George actually leaving the US once he leaves office is pretty slim. But to live is to dream - no?

But anyway, it might be interesting on that day to use the other Bush sanctioned noise machine, I mean of course the automobile. Well, the horn really, no one will notice the noise of your normal car unless you rip the muffler off. You have fixed that muffler haven't you?

But anyway, perhaps it is worth a beep while you are out and about on Saturday. When you are in traffic driving along or passing a gaggle of pedestrians. you can use you own judgment what to make your horn do but might I suggest SOS? In morse code that would be ... --- ... or 3 shorts, 3 longs, 3 shorts. Why SOS? Because it will take a foreign country to bring this criminal to justice. God knows our own Congress will never truly do their Constitutional duty and bring this rogue administration to heel.

Or don't like SOS? You can try this ----- that's 5 longs. That's morse code for zero which exactly equals George W Bush.

Happy 2 and counting.

semiotic first blush

Bush throws his Hail Mary and it MUST be important. How do I know? There was no American flag (except the old lapel pin). And he stood in front of real (apparently) books.

George Bush? In front of books? Is he serious? Oh yeah, he must be. There are books.

Finally and most important, George Bush did not say "Good night and God bless America."

That, or some variant has been, if my memory serves me, in every presidential speech since at least His Goodness Ronnie Reagan if not before. Absent that phrase there was NO mention of god in this speech. He did refer to the "author of freedom" but hell that could have been Thomas Jefferson for all we know*.

Once again, the staging is more important than the speech itself. Bush and his team want us to know that there really is no room for political code here. Is the absence of code, code?

Well. Let's look at the history. Everything the Bush Administration does is political. That is Karl Rove's job and legacy after all. There has not been one staged event from Mission Accomplished to Katrina where George Bush did not stage it without absolute attention to detail.

This is one more. The message this time? George Bush grows up.

Of course in both those cases as a MAJOR HISTORICAL WAR PRESIDENT and as a MAJOR HISTORICAL REPAIRER OF NATURAL CATASTROPHES George Bush has shown that the pictures he makes never measure up to the message and most importantly to the actions he achieves.

So we can expect that George Bush as a MAJOR BIG PERSON will fail.

Let us be clear what this speech was all about. George Bush the consummate jock is playing out the clock. On Jan 20th 2009 at 12:01 PM the Iraq war will be someone else's war to lose.

* I was most amused by George's ability to keep a straight face while he was talking about responsiveness of the Iraqi government and the need for freedom while of course His Highness has done everything in and out of his power to defeat same in his own country. Nice touch George.

Bush wants earmarks cut in half for fiscal 2008 - day 1

So the George said.

Yet the George Bush War In Iraq has been run almost completely off the books (i.e. as an earmark). According to the National Priorities running tally The Bush Earmark has spent $355 billion on the Iraq fiasco. Much of it off the books. In other words, if you were a budget wonk and took all the earmarks by the the 109th Congress - The Most Corrupt Congress in History (tm) I would guess you would have to build a lot of bridges to nowhere ($315 million) to match what George Bush has achieved.

George Bush is of course full of shit. If he wants to control spending, he has the power to begin - even within the Constitution. How's that for a change! When was the last time you got to think "George Bush" and "acting legally" in the same thought?

He can stop pissing American lives and money into the earmark called "Iraq".

swing low...

According to the wires Saddam gonna hang at
dawn. It's a suitably melodramatic moment. I suppose why waste the day. I won't cut the evil bastard any slack here but the fact that he was tried in an Iraqi kangaroo revenge court and convicted in same under what can best be described as civil war conditions (is chaos too strong a term?) does not bode well for the aftermath of the execution.

The irony of course is that even under the conditions as they are in Iraq, Saddam was guaranteed more even jurisprudence than he would have been had Bush tribunalized him in Gitmo.

All that aside, Bush has never been one for the rule of law so to see him bollocks up this one isn't a surprise. Bush could of had Saddam tried under international law as the international criminal that he (Saddam not the other one) is.

Or he could have actually assisted the Iraqis in a Truth and Reconciliation process instead of his "The Iraq government is sovereign because they can do whatever I tell them to do" trial. But that time has long since past. Both for T&R and for Iraqis giving a jackshit what George Bush thinks.

A cynic might say (oh. not I for sure) that Bush didn't see to it that Saddam went to the Hague because he didn't want to enhance the prestige of a court at which he himself might one day be in the docket. But we shall leave that for cynics and for those that dream what might have been.

What we will have instead is Saddam hung at dawn. Likely it will be privately videotaped and somehow just somehow the execution will be leaked and next week we can look forward to seeing Saddam dangle all over the internets just like we saw Britney's nethers dangle a few weeks ago.

And in the next 24 hours we will get the Bush gloat and smirk as he calls a press conference to discuss the end of tyranny and the triumph of democracy in the middle east. Not withstanding the fact the neither justice nor democracy nor anybody's well-being was served by Bush and his thugs destroying Iraq in order to save it(s oil) and shredding the Constitution in the process if I may gratuitously add.

All the while he is planning to escalate the troop level in the war in Iraq another very useful 10% or 15% for no reason other than because he gotta do something to look all deciderful and stuff.

Well so long, Saddam. You no doubt will find some amenable company in Hell. Now and in the future.

George Bush - homunculus

George Bush continues being the homunculus of the American Presidency. He has cast himself in no particular order as Truman, Washington, Lincoln, FDR, JFK (remember Mars), Poppy and now both LBJ and Nixon. As if in a political manifestation of Moore's Law, these last he is conflating with breathtaking speed. It was only November 7 that he had his LBJ moment. The American voters no matter how you read it told Old George to go fuck himself and to take his fucking war with him.

Of course W's Nixononian tendencies have been there for all to see with De Facto Re Cheney making the rules and the Fristulan Congress being let's say compliant while George stomps all over the Constitution as he heralds it in support of his imperium.

But now as I said, no sooner has he had his LBJ moment that he is going into his Nixonian "peace with honor" phase which George calls "victory" and "A new way forward" (He's got me so turned around for once I don't know whether to give him props for honesty in that he ain't getting out and unlike Nixon he doesn't care who knows). Nonetheless his slogans would make nifty banners. I bet in years to come those in-house tee-shirts and coffee mugs will fetch an even bigger bundle on E-Bay than the usual run of the mill presidential detritus - I mean memorabilia.

But to my point. Despite the fact that George has dabbled with his inner Nixon with the aid of Cheney and Yoo, he has now gone full Milhouse with his plan to escalate the war in Vi*** - no I mean Iraq. Shit that ghost has presence.

But here we are - after a complete repudiation by the American voters, a continuing repudiation by the polls, a repudiation by the Joint Chiefs of Staff until the White House did the Republican thing and held the voting open until they could knuckle the opposition, even after all that - George is going to send even more American soldiers to endanger themselves for no apparent reason - at least no reason that I and the majority of the American people and even George W Bush can articulate.

And he is doing it right on time. It is Christmas - that magical time of year when illegal wars are escalated through illegal means that will in future times constitute sound arguments for accusing the inhabitant of Office of the Executive of War Crimes.

A modest proposal

Y'know how George Bush likes to think of himself as the CEO president? I mean, he has called himself the decider - that essence of CEO-ness. He is the one to make the decidings that affect everyday life. Because that is what CEO's do.

It's become pretty clear that the American people don't think much of George Bush or of his deciderings.

Via Political Wire
comes this
"Monday's poll results suggest the widespread dissatisfaction with the Iraq war may be dragging down public approval of Bush's handling of anti-terrorism efforts as well. Support for his management of that issue plunged to 42 percent, down from 50 percent in a poll taken Oct. 13-15, while the percentage of those who disapproved rose from 47 percent to 55 percent -- the first time more than 50 percent have registered disapproval on that topic."


What to do? Well everyone knows that the witch hunt that was the Starr Inquisition has destroyed the integrity of the impeachment process. Impeachment being a supremely political act is always dicey. Once turned into the rabid and idiotic farce that the Republican Congress made of it under the Clinton Administration, it has become political anathema.

That is only marginally so bad. impeachment of a president - even for just and legal reasons - is too powerful a remedy to be taken for any but the most heinous conditions. This isn't to say that I don't think that George W Bush should have his political ass impeached and hung on its very own Wall of American Shame. I'd mix the concrete myself.

But clearly that will only happen is we can reach near acclamation in our desire to be rid of George Bush. And how likely is acclamation if there are still 30 or so percent of dead-enders who can't bring themselves to admit that George Bush is a royal fuck up (and who has fucked them up pretty good along the way). Not to mention that guy out there who thinks he's doing a good job.

Now as I said - Lonesome George is a CEO president. And when CEO's fuck up - as George Bush has done mightily, there is one thing that CEO's understand. The Buyout.

Happens all the time. CEO gets caught spying on its board of directors say, or CEO takes too much advantage of home decorating opportunities or worst of all runs the company's stock into the sewer what comes next?

The Buyout! Call it the Golden Parachute, The Golden Handshake. Whatever, invariably it involves gold. And equally invariably it gets the bastard's ballast out of the corner office and more importantly off the stock price. America's stock price isn't doing too good in the world just now - if you know what I mean. And given the holy mess that Lonesome George has created in his mad pursuit of what we might laughingly call his Iraq policy if it wasn't so tragic, it ain't gonna improve much over the next eight business cycles.

We have reached that point in the sad, sorry stain on our nation that is the Bush Presidency. Let us all buck up and be true to our Capitalist principles.

I say forget ISG - he already pissed all over that one. Forget hearings, forget impeachment. No, forget all that. Instead, buy out George Bush's Contract. Throw in Cheney's for good measure - pure chump change. It can't possibly cost more that a few days in Iraq - worse case. And it has to be a lot better than enduring these fools for one more market.

jeff greenfield hearts Iran?

Here's what he said:

"But, in the case of Obama, he may be walking around with a sartorial time bomb. Ask yourself, is there any other major public figure who dresses the way he does? Why, yes. It is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, unlike most of his predecessors, seems to have skipped through enough copies of "GQ" to find the jacket-and-no-tie look agreeable."

Is Jeff Greenfield a walking time bomb right there on CNN?

you decide

exhibit a: http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/WORLD/meast/12/12/iran.holocaust.conference.reut/newt1.2130.ahmadinejad.ap.jpg


exhibit b:
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/US/Northeast/08/15/otsc.greenfield/story.greenfield.jpg

control:
http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:NPks_Yj_x4NUeM:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/homepage/hp4-25-05d.jpg

No bones about it

Wondering about Neanderthals and DNA as in this story:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2455248,00.html

"DNA extracted from a Neanderthal bone has been analysed in detail for the first time and the genetic code of humanity’s closest cousin will be mapped completely within two years, scientists announced yesterday."

Now the article says that Neanderthals are humanity's "closest cousin." What DNA-wise does that mean. Is a Neanderthal embryo as "valued" as a human embryo in the US? The reason I bring this up is that if we can clone all kinds of non-human animals, is there a moral reason to forbid using Neanderthal DNA to make. well, a Neanderthal.

There is some evidence that Neanderthals and humans might have been able to interbreed - making the different species argument problematic. On the other hand - like wooly mammoths - there aren't any Neanderthals around anymore.

If we could create a mammoth, would we? I think someone somewhere would do it. And other than the initial shock has worn off - it would after all be a little like having a UFO land in the town square - I think no one would have a durable moral argument against it.

So back to the Neanderthal. Would we if could? Should we? Why? Why not?

COWARD

According to Laura Rozen Rumsfeld is bailing after the elections.

This is the mark of a true coward. When faced with the likelihood that he is going to grilled by Congress - something he has 1) had to do rarely and 2) under the most shall we say congenial circumstances - he decides that it is time to spend more time with the family.

Of course a REAL Congress doing REAL oversight and pursuing REAL investigations will have a subpoena. Just the ticket to drag his sorry retired ass under the klieg lights to get his patented bromides.

I... can't...wait. Next summer will be fun.

Of course in the real world it means that he leaves it someone in the waning days of The Bush Disasteration - someone no doubt approved in the most bitter of circumstances - to try to clean up the dogshit he has made of our defense policy.

Good old Rummy... just like a coward.

Our very own Nero

Is it too early to start figuring out how we can undo the damage caused by this one?

From Daddy Party to Creepy Uncle Party

I really don't have anymore to add to that headline. I am flabbergasted by the implosion of the Republican Party. In the same week they gut the Constitution they become the next big child sex abuse law suit.

And as if that is not bad enough we get this image from This Modern World (http://thismodernworld.com/3215) :



which seems to capture both men as they feel the massive shitflow pouring in over the top of their waders.

I really really hope that in twenty years (assuming we survive with a nation in tact) that we can look back at this period and really understand what really happened. It is just too weird to be the offices of a normal mortal agency.

Of course as we see in this weeks revelations from Woodward's book Henry Kissinger is a top unofficial advisor on the Iraq mess. Which not only explains the mess in Iraq but also the weirdness beyond human agency.

Unfortunately it virtually guarantees in twenty years time we will be doing it all over again - maybe in the dessert plains of antartica (imagine the untapped resources there). Kissinger not being human, leaves me unconvinced of his mortality.

Someone ask Hitchens. That is, if you can get the rug from between his teeth.

rethinking the approach

warandpiece has this post about Woodwrds latest show and tell

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004954.html

The big news is a July 10,2001 meeting where Tenet and aide in near panic mode tell Condi that OBL is gonna get big soon. She fluffs them off according to the account.

The White House acknowledges the meeting but says it is mischaracterized. Now the problem is that Bush et al have only one mode.

Like a skunk when they sense fear, they skunk everything in sight. As a strategy, that is pretty effective in the short term but the problem is that afterwards only a skunk can stand to be nearby.

join 'em

On the campaign trail, Goerge Bush criticized his critics saying, "You do not create terrorism by fighting terrorism." Of course George being George he neglected to include any mention of the quality of that fight. That is too much nuance I guess.

Or maybe I am wrong. Maybe George Bush has been right all along and it really is that simple. So ok let's do it. George has asked nothing of us as Americans to fight terrorism except to shop more. But I am as American as anyone and I want to do more. And I know you do too. So let's fight terrorism. Here's my plan.

See we make a bunch of mud pies. No, now don't get too excited we're going to throw them at Democrats. We're looking for real terrorists here. Like Osama Bin Laden. Well Maybe not the real Osama Bin Laden. We can't seem to find him and that's kind of sad but wait!

We have plenty of photgraphs and even videos. We can project pictures as big as, well, as big as it seems Osama really must be. What's that 100 feet tall? And maybe some of those jihadist fighters. You know the ones. Those guys that the Republican led Congress including my Senator Collins (Senator Snowe voted a courageous "not present" on the bill) decided that they should gut the Constitution and give George Bush the ability to torture any American he wanted. Yeah, Those guys.

So that's the plan. We get pictures of terroists and throw mud pies at them.

I know it doesn't sound like much but consider this: it is cheaper than what we are doing in Iraq and we won't be worsening the problem like the NIE that Bush refuses to release says he is doing in Iraq. And remember, the President Of The United States said it himself - and he is a WAR PRESIDENT and stuff - "You do not create terrorism by fighting terrorism." so it would be at least as effective as George Bush's war policy.

And a whole lot smarter.