George Bush and the NRA

 ". . . and forgetting long-passed mischiefs, we mercifully preserve their bones and piss not on their ashes."

-Thomas Browne-

 _______________

I have to admit that there was a time I considered joining the NRA -- a couple of times actually.  The first was when I heard that Michael Moore belonged to it and I thought that membership would mean that my frequent maledictions might find their way to someones desk,  and the second was when I found that the one local rifle range that allowed black powder muzzle-loaders like my flintlock Kentucky long rifle required NRA membership.  In both instances my better senses took over and I decided it wasn't worth it.

I understand that following Wayne LaPierre's comments after the Sandy Hook massacre there has been a rash of resignations from the rank and file membership and a recent Snopes e-mail and a number of blog articles have reminded me of  the 1995 resignation from the NRA of George H.W. Bush. The President wrote an open letter to the NRA  after the group's refusal to disassociate itself from the then NRA spokesman LaPierre who gloated over the deaths of  the "Nazi's" as he called the federal officials slaughtered in Oklahoma City.

TREASON: the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family.

I didn't vote for Bush.  I've condemned him vehemently for his positions and offensive statements.  Although to compare GHWB to his 'George-without-the-H' scion is to make the old man look like George Washington in retrospect, I was enraged when he told us that he couldn't see how an atheist could be a citizen, and when he vetoed the Brady Bill, I wrote him an unpleasant letter.

These days, I have no faith that the Brady three day waiting period measure had any salubrious effect, and although I'm still not a real fan,   I have to give him credit for some things -- amongst which is his resignation letter.  Responding to Mr. LaPierre's vicious characterization of some of the murdered Federal Officers he had know personally as:

"jack booted thugs . . . wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms” wanting to “attack law abiding citizens,”  the former president and life member of the NRA condemned LaPierre's words  as a "vicious slander on good people."

And slander  it was, a thundering manifesto of obvious disregard for the 19 children murdered by a mad bomber or bombers  and of utter and vicious contempt for the lawful government of the United States of America and a tacit approval of armed insurrection.  Now what is the definition of treason again?  Does anyone still see that loathsome miscreant as the defender of  the Constitution or the advocate for lawful and peaceful gun owners?  I don't even want to know the answer. 

Bush,  "a gun owner and an avid hunter."  wrote :

"Over the years I have agreed with most of N.R.A.’s objectives, particularly your educational and training efforts, and your fundamental stance in favor of owning guns. However, your broadside against Federal agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us."

For an organization heavily funded by those seeking to make the government the tool of  plutocrats, an organization  willing to ignore the murders of 168 people in it's quest to de-legitimize the legitimate government and its institutions and interfere with enforcement of its laws to claim to be upholding anything but  violence and lawlessness is foul and disgusting and worthy of the same kind of contempt as the Klan or the Aryan Nation. They are not a gun owner's lobby, they are a Hate Group, an enemy of  freedom promoting the use of arms to oppose and defy a democratically elected government. 

George H. W. Bush is an old man in failing health I've never really liked, but for that one act I choose to remember him.  And to Mr. Lapierre: I tell thee churlish beast:  A ministering angel
shall he be when thou liest howling.

Bush Pilot

"What the President meant to say. . ." How many times have we heard the foot extraction specialists begin to move the shells around the able with that phrase? Really, when George Dubya, the ex cheerleader with the parachute harness arranged to show off his gonads aboard the Abraham Lincoln to give his "mission accomplished" speech, he really didn't mean to say the whole mission was accomplished said Scott Sforza, former deputy assistant to President Bush for communications. Yeah right. Sure, perhaps the crew of the Abe Lincoln thought it pertained to the end of their mission, but you know it wasn't a private thank you to the crew, it was broadcast around the world via satellite and he sure as hell didn't say your mission is accomplished, even though Sforza would like to whitewash Bush's shameful and fraudulent exhibition and his own part in it.

It was, as the attack on Iraq was, an infantile attempt to portray significance; to be as he titled himself, a Warpresident, the Commander Guy, like a little boy wearing his father's old uniform and playing army.

Does anyone who has ever flown a fighter plane think Bush, who hadn't flown in years and years and had no specialized carrier training actually landed that plane as the newshorns blared and continue to blare? Ridiculous. Just ask any Navy pilot and yes, I have asked. Had Bush really meant what his apologists claim, would he have attempted to stop combat pay nearly a decade before combat ended - if indeed you can now say it has?

No, just as the assault on Clinton precisely mirrored the proceedings and charges against Nixon, the assault on Obama has it's roots in our 8 year national embarrassment and every valid criticism leveled against Bush: ignoring the constitution, creating massive debt and the largest administration in history amongst other things is being reflected onto the current administration and I think these little attempts to reconstruct a more forgivable past need to be countered and not just passed by and dismissed as the excuses of failed politicians.


Really, is there a better example of a pathetic attempt to pull something from the cesspool and pass it off as a hero -- at least since the attempted rehabilitation of Tricky Dick?

Obama goes to bat for the bad guys

Well, I was there and I saw what you did
Saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off that grin, I know where you've been
It's all been a pack of lies

-Phil Collins-

The truth can set you free, and it can get you hanged. It all depends on who you know and how much they owe you. Yes, we may live in a world of denialism, mythology and cover-ups but I hope truth still has a few teeth left. That's why I'm rarely the first to scream 'treason' when someone blows a whistle or leaks a secret. Sometimes it even gives me hope.

So people have been asking me, since my last post on the latest Wikileaks fatwah, just what we learned that was useful enough to warrant embarrassing our delicate diplomatic efforts. Well a number of things, in my opinion. For one, we now have cause to reflect upon the Obama administration's efforts to thwart international prosecution of Bush, Cheney et al, for using torture to extract confessions from suspects.

Spain has had a lot of experience with torture and gruesome treatment of prisoners from the Inquisition right up through the last of the Fascist dictators. I think they've grown a bit intolerant and perhaps touchy on the subject of right wing excesses. So perhaps when that country set out to prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes, our current administration had many reasons to worry about turning tables, embarrassing revelations and the repercussions of such an investigation on our future conduct. Without Assenge and Wikileaks, we might never have known that Obama and company had a rare bipartisan success in 'persuading' Spain to squelch the effort. It's nice to know and it sheds some light on the puzzling friendliness that Bush has recently shown the man his party has been presenting as something loathsome and dangerous.

We didn't need any breaches of state secrecy however to learn that Dick Cheney's vast ossuary of a closet still has occupants with inconvenient stories to tell. Nigeria is planning to charge him and his Halliburton cronies with bribery and to issue an Interpol warrant, says Bloomberg Businessweek. You may recall that the Right Wing US Chamber of Commerce has been pushing Congress to ditch The Foreign Corrupt Practices act which makes such practices illegal under US law. If you were puzzled as to why we needed so badly to do that so quickly, perhaps we now can answer the question.

Will Wikileaks make Obama think twice about protecting war profiteers and international criminals - maybe even think a third time about trying to portray leakers as dangerous traitors now that we have had a glimpse of what's been going on?

The Torturer of Tehran

Saaed Mortazavi is sometimes called the “Torturer of Tehran” but probably not to his face. The man also known as “Butcher of the press” has been given authority by the Iranian government to "interrogate" people involved, or said to be involved in the demonstrations in Tehran. Mortazavi earned his nicknames for his role in the death of a Canadian-Iranian photographer who was tortured, beaten and raped during her detention in 2003 says the Times Online. The TOT was behind the detention of more than 20 bloggers and journalists in 2004, held for long periods of solitary confinement in secret prisons, where they were allegedly coerced into signing false confessions.

I expect to be hearing a great deal about how Iranian concern over the strange results of the recent election are the products of American propaganda and the protest sponsored, choreographed and financed from Washington, DC.

Of course such things are more effective in terrorizing the locals than in convincing them that these confessions don'e have more to do with cattle prods and genitals than with American interference, but isn't it too bad that the US has lost any ability to deplore enhanced interrogation? Isn't it too bad that the US must remain silent about starting wars and killing people based information extracted by torture?

Thank you George W. Bush and all the other cowards that dragged our proud country down to the level of these savages!

Poor George

My jaw has been dropping often enough that I've got bruises. After getting over Frist's announcement that Bush has left the world a better place than when he oozed into office, I find that all the major failures of his administration were things, like his personal fortune, he inherited: or so says Fox News.

Bush inherited the 9/11 attack. Bush inherited a recession and the tough times on Wall Street, according to Martha MacCallum and Wendell Goler. Either they deserve the Nobel Prize for physics for having invented a Causality Reversal Time Machine -- or a week in the pillory. I'm sure they'll get neither.

Isn't it interesting how Bush can be given credit for turning around the recession they blame Clinton for, while all the while they claimed there was no recession, but that the "libs" were simply talking down the thriving economy? Interesting, of course is my polite way of combining words like fraud, deceit and lie.

Isn't it interesting that Bush chose to do nothing about terrorism, to essentially disband all investigations into terrorism and ignore direct warnings about terrorism; isn't it interesting that he did inherit the USS Cole attack and did essentially nothing; isn't it interesting that Fox can run it through the Roger Ailes Reversotron and blame this on Clinton, whom they attacked for attempting to retaliate against al Qaeda with cries of "wag the dog?" Interesting indeed.

Far more than interesting though, is the question of how and why Fox continues to produce propaganda for the small minority of people who still think W & C0. are victims. I think the answer may well be found by asking ourselves: whom do the lies benefit and who can afford to produce and distribute them?

Morning quickie

So only days before the second Bush leaves town (not that he spends much of his time there) his father is already touting Jeb Bush as a presidential candidate.

Now let's see, we had Prescott Bush laundering money for Hitler and getting caught, We had Neil Bush involved in scandalous S&L shenanigans that cost us billions and getting off unscathed, we had George who made the dubious claim of being "out of the loop" during the Iran-Contra scandal, we had George the second who officially sealed the incriminating evidence and who is certainly a contestant for the worst American president (and I think we can include Central and South America in the contest) and perhaps we'll have another Bush, by and by.

Now how many gang members have to screw us before we can call it a gang bang?

Scott free

Anyone who has been hoping that the end of the Bush autocracy would entail the opening of Cheney's information crypt will probably be frustrated. It's possible that nothing prosecutable ever done by this administration will ever come to light. Although there is enough evidence of a vast smorgasbord of crimes, misdeeds and prosecutable acts above and beyond the deliberate instigation of a war by means of false information; although the unrestrained domestic spying continues, although the evidence is there that even foreign leaders like Tony Blair have had their bedrooms bugged, that domestic groups have been infiltrated, wiretapped and followed; even eye witness testimony may never be backed up by official records. Millions of White House e-mail records may disappear into the bit bucket forever.

One of the first actions of the Commander Guy was to dismantle the system for archiving electronic records and replace it with a system that never has worked. Apologists for Bush might argue otherwise, but this was just another act in the unprecedented assault on openness that has obsessively classified not only the records of executive misprision, but nearly every day to day thing that was previously held to be public record.

Some argue otherwise and cite the need to "move on" but just as the discrediting of Nixon was held up for decades by his pardon and the loss of crucial records, Bush may be able to stifle history and thwart accountability as thoroughly as the folks who recently tried to arrest Karl Rove were stifled. The resurrection of George W. Bush may take place long before his demise, his policies given a new coat of paint and unmerited dignity and launched against us again. The Party that once convinced us that criminals were regularly let go because of Liberal Judges will, in effect, get away with murder,will be set back on the street to loot and pillage -- and there's probably nothing we can do about it.

Good times

Any time you meet a payment. - Good Times.
Any time you need a friend. - Good Times.
Any time you’re out from under.
Not getting hassled, not getting hustled.
Keepin’ your head above water,
Making a wave when you can.

"And I know that many of you here are watching how the United States government will address the problems in our financial system."

George W. Bush said in his last speech before the United Nations as President of the United States Tuesday. Having been buffeted by questions from all corners as to what he was going to do about the disaster he and his party had so assiduously worked for all these years, he reassured the world:

"I am confident we will act in the urgent time frame required.''

Did anyone ask why the hell he didn't do something 8 years ago; why did his party continue the easy credit rip off; the supply side shell game; the deficit spending, the deregulation, the tax cuts in time of the most expensive war in 63 years? Did anyone need to?

Temporary lay offs. - Good Times.
Easy credit rip offs. - Good Times.
Scratchin’ and surviving. - Good Times.
Hangin in a chow line - Good Times.
Ain’t we lucky we got ‘em - Good Times.

When is a crime not a crime?

"Professionalism is alive and well at the Justice Department,"

says Michael Mukasey and I'm sure he's right, but just what is it that the Bush Action Team is professional about? Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association, the Attorney General said

"not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime."

So when is breaking the law not a crime? I think we know: not when the professional lawbreakers do it.

Mukasey has announced, according to USA Today, that "former Justice Department officials will not face prosecution for letting improper political considerations drive hirings of prosecutors, immigration judges and other career government lawyers."

Not that it's not against the law and it's not as though there is no evidence and testimony that the law was broken. It's just that certain people are above laws meant for the proletariat. Certain people belong to the class of übermenschen. Just ask the Nazis Bush administration.

Gods, flags and idiots

Expatbrian over at The Impolitic points out that George Bush, while attending the Swimming finals at the Beijing Olympics, held up the US flag -- backwards. I have to disagree that we will be hearing a lot about this, but I'm still getting the viral e-mails about how Obama-the-Muslim-terrorist hates the flag.

George of course is over there making a fuss about religion and how uplifting it is to worship God. Outside the Kuanjie Protestant church, George who obviously knows nothing or less than nothing about the long religious history of China declared that

"it just goes to show that God is universal, God is love and no state, man or woman should fear the influence of loving religion."

Come to think of it, he seems to know less than nothing about the Crusades, the Inquisition and 1500 years of war, conquest, genocide and murderous persecution by European followers of Jesus the Love-God. I'm sure that like most Americans, he knows nothing about the Opium wars either and about how China was forced to accept bibles and narcotics from missionaries, immune from Chinese law and backed by Christian military might. Everyone in China is still quite aware and more than a bit cynical about the benefits of having foreign controlled religions running amok in their ancient land.

Of course Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, religions not really concerned with the kind of gods Christians imagine, and certainly not accepting of the universality of Yahweh whether in the original version or the Romanized impregnator of virgins are still very much active and the temples are packed, to which I can testify. There are millions and millions of Muslims in China. I once spent a magical and yes, uplifting afternoon in the ancient Xi'an Mosque. Christianity is still present as a minority religion and I know a number of Chinese Catholics personally, but When George talks about religious freedom, I'm not sure he doesn't mean the same kind of Christianist domination he dreams about for the United States. I'm quite sure they are aware of our history of exploitation under the name of George's God-O-Love and want no part of it ever again.

The Ugly American

The recent HBO John Adams series , showed Lawyer and Statesman Adams a bit out of his depth at the court of King Louis in Paris. Brilliant, educated but shabby and with provincial manners, he never fit in and apparently was a bit amusing to the effete Parisians. Unlike "life-of-the-party" Ben Franklin, he was unable to make his backwoods background work for him.

I can't compare George W. Bush to John Adams. Out of his depth even in shallow waters, Bush is always the life of the party if it happens to be at a fraternity house filled with spoiled and boisterous sophomores. So he seems to have come across at the G8 conference in Hokkaido -- as the back slapping and prolix uncle nobody wants to sit next to at Thanksgiving, the insurance saleman you avoid at parties: chewing with his mouth open, calling Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi "Amigo," and with mouth and microphone wide open, braying about fireworks, his bicycle, his birthday party, his mother's knees; all the things that are important to his position as the center of the universe; all the things that make him look like a damned and boorish fool abroad, and got him elected back home.

How long, how long has our self respect been gone
How long, how long, baby how long?

With apologies to Leroy Carr

Listening to generals

La guerre! C’est une chose trop grave pour la confier à des militaires.

-Georges Clemenceau-

I beg to differ. I think it's far more likely that if our Iraq adventure had been planned by military men instead of the neocon know-it-alls, the mission would indeed have been accomplished, or very nearly so, quite some time ago, or perhaps we wouldn't have begun. Those Generals who will speak out today seem to mirror the opinions of the most severe and early critics of George's "war on the cheap." Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, seems very frustrated by the inability to send more troops into Afghanistan, where corruption and violence are escalating and the Taliban is regaining lost territory. Too bad George didn't listen to the Generals right from the beginning instead of firing any who questioned his genius.

In the early days of this blog, I was resoundingly excoriated by a young sergeant about to be deployed to Iraq. I was absolutely wrong in my suggestion that the US military would be stretched too thin to be able to deal with the country that aided the people who attacked us. I was wrong to suggest that the justification for the war was based on false information, because we civilians didn't share in all the secret information the government had. There weren't gong to be enough casualties to worry about, he said condescendingly and most of all, there was no sign whatever of impending economic worries as I had suggested in my "elitist left" way. I hope he has survived to reconsider his confidence.

But yes, we need to elect a president who will listen to the military, or at least to those who have been through wars and have learned that it's not at all like High School sports. Our next commander in chief needs to listen to the Generals rather than weeding out those who question his tactical genius. Back when Dick Cheney was selected as Bush's running mate, the media made much of his assertions that civilian control of the military was essential. We didn't realize that this extended to making strategic and tactical and logistical decisions based on personal profit and political expediency. Cheney was billed as the man who would reverse the profligate military spending of Clinton, who would dress down the generals and downsize the Pentagon. Cheney has survived, but I doubt he ever reconsiders anything. Indeed, with oil at $147 for a barrel, his mission has been accomplished.

John McCain in his new role of victim is making much of his qualifications as a military man, but judging from what I've heard he seems to be listening more to The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth people (and spending their money) than to guys like Mullen. Why dropping bombs and spending years in a jail cell qualify him for expertise in world affairs, military planning, strategy and anything else I don't know, but it's plain to me that we do have to leave quite a bit more to the generals then we have been doing and we have to have a president who listens, who asks questions first and then decides whether to pull the trigger.

Who would bin Laden vote for?

It's been called Godwin's Law, the idea that the longer a political dialog continues, the more likely Hitler will be brought up. Of course, it's not a law; the longer any conversation continues, the more likely that anything will come up, but reductio ad Hitlerium as other wags have dubbed it, does seem to occur all too often when the subject is a government we dislike, a political figure we hate or when a policy we are trying to justify needs a good old fashioned bogeyman to override considerations of accuracy, truthfulness or sometimes even sanity.

The notion that trying to deal with any bogeyman without the use of bombs and tanks and sanctions is "appeasement," has been a standard gambit since British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and the Munich Agreement of 1938, but rarely if ever has it been an apt analogy but rather a clumsy attempt to denounce diplomacy as a political tool. Is it any kind of surprise that it was used by the neocons against continuing to inspect and assess Iraq's nuclear potential? If that were true, airport security checks would be "appeasing terrorists" which makes no sense.

Did Nikita Khruschev really back Kennedy over Nixon because Kennedy was "soft on Communism?" Did Ho Chi Min really want Hubert Humphrey to win? Are we really not sick and disgusted of all this idiocy by now?

Hardly surprising that the strutting little Commander Guy has little other defense to the suggestion that talks with "evildoers" may sometimes be productive. No, talking to Adolph Hitler in 1938 wasn't a way to keep him from invading Poland the following year, but then not talking to Fidel Castro hasn't done a damned thing while we continue to appease the Saudi Royal Family and their medieval monarchy.

Let's be honest. Dealing sensibly with the Germans in 1918 might have made a difference and dealing with Palestinians differently in 1948 might have made a difference, but when it comes to deciding when it's time to stop trying and to start bombing isn't something the "Decider" seems to be good at deciding, is it?

Analogies can be helpful, but only in so far as they are honest and accurate. Neither of those terms applies to much we hear from the "Warpresident" and his latest jive from Jerusalem insisting that Barak Obama and other Democrats would endanger Israel and perhaps the world by actually engaging Ahmadenejad and other bogeymen in a conversation. "rewarding bad behavior" is the typical administration phrasing, as though trigger happy America is the world's school teacher, but either way, it's an opinion much related to past failures and with little success to its credit.

It's the sort of thing he hopes Israel will buy into, since he would love to have them pressure American Jews into supporting Republicans. In my opinion, that's bad behavior; the kind dishonesty and cowardice usually produces and I would hate to see the losers, crooks, cowards and failures we flatter by calling Neocons, rewarded for it.

Ozymandias

The excellent HBO miniseries John Adams concluded Sunday night with some ruminations by our second President about how the gritty history of the American revolution had, after only 50 years, been lost to the mythologizing processes of patriots and painters and poets. I'm not sure that he ever read Shelly's ironic poem of 1818, although he lived long enough. I'm sure however, seeing his classical education, that he knew that such things are eternal and ineluctable. Indeed, anyone with any kind of memory at all can see that the words and deeds of our current administration are lost to reinterpretation, redaction, braggadocio and denial in a far shorter period than a half century and eventually are reduced to ridiculousness.

If I still had a sense of humor about such things I would laugh at Flim-flam George's latest attempt to blame the effects of his fiscal irresponsibility on the failure of Congress to solve our problems. They failed by looking the other way at Corporate swashbuckling, by bitching excessively about no-bid contracts to companies that pay no taxes and will not be investigated when billions disappear, by not taking the burden of inheritance taxes off the very, very rich and by ignoring a host of other really brilliant ideas like unrestrained spending and profligate borrowing, but of course I don't. I lost it some time ago and all I could wish for is to miraculously to survive the explosion of our sun just long enough to see the man vaporize into a wisp of plasma to be born by the solar wind into the infinite emptiness of the universe.

But I digress. The Bush Nebula is still Earthbound and the Occupation still awaits a definition of "victory."

"I've repeatedly submitted proposals to help address these problems, yet time after time Congress chose to block them,"

said the Sultan of Smirk today. Too bad they didn't block the "warpresident" entirely by impeaching him or at least keeping him from starting the war, but what we're seeing here, I fear, is the beginning of a tendentious falsification of history on a level not seen since the great Redactor put together the Bible.

Canonical History will be kind to George Bush, since it isn't really possible to be unkind in degree adequate to his stupidities, his iniquities and his weakness. Indeed, knowing this country and its love for self-ennoblement, he may be sneering down at us from Rushmore or gleaming at us from the face of a highly devalued Dollar before my grandchildren are old enough to be cynics. Some Parson Weems will emerge to write stories about his early honesty and there will be paintings of George the Brush Clearer and heroic marbles of the Commander Guy in his flight suit poking up through the desolate sands of post-apocalyptic America. Who will be there to laugh?

Watch and weep

Many of us are going to get a government handout this month; you know, the kind of thing the Republicans have usually treated as another form of the Socialist Plague when the dollars are directed toward indigent children. For a good number of those recipients, that money will go not to purchase the Japanese cars, Korean televisions and Chinese everything else that we're being told is an economic stimulus plan that will prevent the recession that has already happened. For most, I think, it won't go to pay down the crippling debt or to pay for needed medical care, but to buy gasoline; the indispensable substance of a nation with the poorest public transportation system in the civilized world.

Our Bushtopia can always find a way to get you to buy oil, no matter who suffers in the process and they're very good at making it sound like patriotism. Of course real patriotism has little to do with lapel pins or stupid looking plastic flag holders clipped to SUV windows or yellow "Support the Troops" ribbons, and while you're pouring your government handout into the tank of your 7000 pound monument to fashionable folly, remember who is suffering and dying so that you can exercise your plastic patriotism.

Remember the men and women living in dirt and filth and blood for year after year until they either die or are discharged with a "personality disorder" like shrapnel in the skull, so as to deprive them of decent medical attention and the support they deserve. If you want -- if you really want to see how Uncle Scam treats our "heroes" when they return home to wait to be sent back for another 15 months watch this video. Watch all ten minutes of it and consider taking the hush money George is sending you and using it to defeat each and every Republican candidate with the gall to support this sham government and its sham war. Use that money to make sure not one of these criminals gets another term; these thugs who get free medical care, large pensions and all they can squeeze from the suffering citizens, abused soldiers and victims of American aggression. Watch it and weep.

State of the Nation

At his regular April First, State of the Nation news conference today, President George W. Bush announced that the blood running ankle deep in the streets of Iraq is proof that the "surge" has been successful enough that we can say "mission accomplished." Civilian deaths are up by more than 30% making March the deadliest month in the last half year.

"It's the blood of patriots"

said Bush.

"Just like Tom Jefferson said every democracy needs. What better proof than that Iraqis are saying 'God, I love freedom! - only maybe not God - I think they say Allah, he, he, he."

Bush continued his optimistic evaluation by pointing out that since 28 million Americans are now on food stamps, the economic "rough patch" is over. He urged all of us to take our $600 handouts and go to Disneyland. White House Press Secretary Phineas T. Bluster had no comment about unconfirmed reports suggesting that the President is planning a surprise entrance to the New York Stock Exchange trading floor at today's close, where he will, dressed in cape and tights, descend from a cable to announce that happy days are here again.

Media reporters all had a great laugh at the silly, doom and gloom Liberals who have been predicting rough times ahead.

Cross posted from The Impolitic

Throw da bum out!

Yes sir, Baseball fans are a loony, Irrational, Bush Hating, Liberal fringe element buncha lefty, commie, pinko America haters who choose to ignore the wonderful things Bush has brought to our wonderful world. It warms my heart to see it confirmed. You may have seen the clip already, but see it again. It may bring some cheer to your Monday Morning.

Same old George

No, I don't mean George Orwell, although the two will forever be linked with antinomial rhetoric. I know the theme has been beaten to death, but Bush's reflexive promotion of bad news as good news simply won't let the comparison die. When he didn't send enough troops, that was a good thing and then when finally he did, that was a good thing and now that the all too brief and all too small down tick in violence seems to have lost the coat of whitewash - that's a good thing. "It's a positive moment" he said of the renewed fighting to The Times of London; just as it was positive that British troops had withdrawn previously. In fact every military debacle in recent years has been positive to this administration, including the horrible miscalculation that allowed the collapse of Iraq's infrastructure and the rise of an insurgency and the need for re-enforcements.

Reiterating his commitment to occupying Iraq until they become a willing client state and oil source, Commander Guy said he would not listen to "those who scream the loudest," which of course means those who question his fantasy. It's good to know that foolish consistency remains as unchanging as his mind.

“I understand people here want us to leave, regardless of the situation, but that will not happen so long as I’m Commander-In-Chief.”

How long has it been since we've had or even wanted leadership that recognized the sovereignty of "the people here" or recognized that the term "commander in Chief" refers only to command of the military and not to the nation?

"a very positive moment in the development of a sovereign nation that is willing to take on elements that believe they are beyond the law"

says Bush despite the fact that Iraq isn't a sovereign nation and with the smug consciousness that we aren't either. If we were, we would be willing to take on elements we believe are beyond the law instead of gibbering like demented monkeys about Obama's preacher and how we just hat, hate, hate oh yes hate Hillary. If we were a sovereign nation and not the Kingdom of a God chosen ruler, we would have put the junta behind bars long ago.

Could be

I guess the idea is to keep the lies coming so fast and furious that rebuttal is useless. I guess the idea is just to keep saying things, no matter how factually or logically untrue they might be so that the faithful will continue to have something to hold on to as the lies get shot down one by one.

Sure the administration has denied any connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein or that he had a nuclear weapons program or had chemical weapons factories and the means to deliver all that stuff to Festus Missouri in a suitcase, but they keep saying it anyway; they keep basing arguments on it and they keep getting people to believe their war was necessary.

The McClatchy website today quotes Bush as saying on a Radio Farda broadcast that Iran has "declared they want a nuclear weapon to destroy people" and that the Islamic Republic could be hiding a secret program. [italics mine] Of course they never actually declared any such thing and the phrase could be doesn't accompany the caveat that could be covers everything from the likely to the ludicrous. I could be the Easter Bunny. Saddam could have had invisible nuclear bomb factories and George Bush could be an honest man too.

"they've hidden programs in the past and they may be hiding one now. Who knows?" says Bush. The US has gone to war under false pretexts in the past and they may do it again, say I.

If George Bush had not turned the nuclear inspection program in Iraq into a passion play we would not have had this war and it could be that we could have contained Saddam quite well at a ten thousandth of the cost, which would have allowed him to continue to keep al Qaeda out of Iraq and us to concentrate on crippling the group that planned the 9/11 attack rather than the economy and our civil liberties. Could have - it's a fun game. You can do almost anything.

Still full of it after all these years

I tuned into CNN just now to find the haggard face of George W. "commander guy" Bush stripped of it's sneering cockiness, but asserting that Iraq is where the US was just after our revolution. I turned it off. He's still full of it after all these years.

Iraq is not a country with a parliamentary history. It does not have a government founded on a concept of certain inherent and inalienable human rights or founded on the concept of the sovereignty of the people rather than obedience to the dictates of a God chosen leader. The infant United States was not a country laid waste, not a country where various religious and political sects were being blown apart by their rivals and most importantly our revolution freed us from an occupying imperial power; it didn't have its government and treaties and laws and business arangements dictated by an army of infidels.

Iraq isn't a self sufficient nation engaged in passionate debate among learned proponents of humanism. Jawad al Maliki isn't Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin or James Madison or anyone similar. Our nation in its infancy wasn't having it's resources syphoned off by corrupt warlords, it's leaders weren't being assasinated, it's churches weren't being blown to bits. In fact nothing in the present circumstances of Iraq has any similarity to the phantasmagoria we have been and are being given by George W. Bush and his familiars.

The strain of keeping up a the shifting series of phantasms, illusions and deceptive appearances, as created by the imagination of the Neo-cons has clearly begun to show. This is not the same man giving us that tired story. One can speculate that he isn't sleeping or that he's drinking again and both guesses may be right, but to me the real horror isn't seeing a crumbling, delusional president, but the idea that he may soon be replaced by one with the same disconnected convictions and freshly charged batteries.