Happy Hour Discurso

jacob1 Comment

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

Whatsa matter, cat got your tongue?:

Yesterday, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a Bipartisan Energy Summit featuring experts from MIT, Google, Shell, and others. At one point in the hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-DE) tore into the energy protest House Republicans have been holding for the past several weeks. This political stunt was meant to demand a vote on oil drilling and “attack Democrats for leaving town” in August “without doing something to lower gas prices.”

[snip]

WHITEHOUSE: Gentlemen, we’re in the middle of a near total mortgage system meltdown in this country. We have a health care system that burns 16 percent of our GDP, in which the Medicare liability alone has been estimated at $34 trillion. We’re burning $10 billion a month in Iraq.

This administration has run up $7.7 trillion in national debt, by our calculation. And there is worsening evidence every day of global warming, with worsening environmental and national security ramifications. In light of those conditions, do any of you seriously contend that drilling for more oil is the number one issue facing the American people today?

[NINE-SECOND SILENCE]

WHITEHOUSE: No, it doesn’t seem so.

That is the sweet sound of the Republicons being pwnd. Their grandstanding fuckery points them up as the shallow, misguided morons they are.

They have to rely on grandstanding. They have no substance, and the two people trying to carry the Republicon torch into office are relentless, corrupt serial liars. New revelations of their fuckery come out on a nearly hourly basis.

Take Sarah Palin’s “energy expertise.” There’s just one small problem with that – she ain’t even an expert on her own state:

Challenged by Gibson on her “national security credentials,” Palin cited her experience as the governor of a “state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy” as a credential that she “brings to the table“…

[snip]

But, as the non-partisan FactCheck.org points out, Palin’s claim about Alaska producing 20 percent of America’s domestic energy supply is “not true. Not even close.” In fact, “Alaska’s share of domestic energy production was 3.5 percent.”

She’s either lying or clueless, or clueless and lying. At this point, it really makes no difference. This is the woman McCain chose to run with him. This is the woman he chose to put within spitting distance of the presidency. This is who he trusts to make the right decisions for this country. And that choice speaks volumes about what he thinks those decisions should be.

He’s chosen someone who not only fought to keep polar bears from being listed as endangered because of greed, but who diverted money from global warming deniers to do it:

Most interesting, though, is the description of where Palin got the money to sue the Federal government in an attempt to delist the polar bear as an endangered species.[McClatchy]

Earlier this year, the state legislature approved $2 million for a conference inviting climate change skeptics here to hash out the causes.

“It is important to remember that climate change is occurring, but then it has occurred continuously for millions of years,” wrote the legislature’s Republican leaders, House Speaker John Harris and Senate President Lyda Green. “And, so far, there are too many dissenting opinions to state matter-of-factly that it is being caused by humans.”

The project was derided by some as a “conference to nowhere” and now appears unlikely to take place. Much of the money was later diverted to fund a lawsuit by the Palin administration against listing the polar bear as a threatened species. [my emphasis]

The reality-haters in Alaska wanted to host a party for similar reality-haters. But instead, the listing of the polar bear as an endangered species gave them their opportunity to challenge reality on a national scale. With the added bonus for them, of course, that if they won, they could continue to trash the polar bear’s habitat with abandon.

McCain and his running mate have lied relentlessly since they burst onto the national stage. They’re even lying about how many people have come to see them on that national stage:

Number one: how sad are you when you fluff your crowd numbers to appear popular? Especially when it’s something easily double-checked. Guess the McCain campaign thought the media wouldn’t bother. Seems they thought wrong.

Until Palin, 44, joined him on the campaign trail, McCain, 72, had limited his political events to smaller town hall meetings and rallies of a few hundred people….

That changed on Aug. 30, at Palin’s first big public appearance after her nomination. The McCain campaign said 10,000 people showed up at the Consol Energy Arena in Washington, Pennsylvania, home of the Washington Wild Things baseball team.

The campaign attributed that estimate, and several that followed, to U.S. Secret Service figures, based on the number of people who passed through magnetometers.

“We didn’t provide any numbers to the campaign,” said Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service.

Hmmmm…didn’t they try to use the FBI as a false source recently, too, claiming they had done a background check on Palin as part of McCain’s craptastic vetting-palooza? Why, yes, they did. Bad move.

They’ve lied about Sarah Palin’s foreign trips – we already discovered Ireland was merely a stopover, and now this story about her visiting Alaska National Guard troops in the battlezone in Iraq – surprise! – turns out to be a big fat fucking lie (h/t Steve Benen):

Sarah Palin’s visit to Iraq in 2007 consisted of a brief stop at a border crossing between Iraq and Kuwait, the vice presidential candidate’s campaign said yesterday, in the second official revision of her only trip outside North America.

Following her selection last month as John McCain’s running mate, aides said Palin had traveled to Ireland, Germany, Kuwait, and Iraq to meet with members of the Alaska National Guard. During that trip she was said to have visited a “military outpost” inside Iraq. The campaign has since repeated that Palin’s foreign travel included an excursion into the Iraq battle zone.

But in response to queries about the details of her trip, campaign aides and National Guard officials in Alaska said by telephone yesterday that she did not venture beyond the Kuwait-Iraq border when she visited Khabari Alawazem Crossing, also known as “K-Crossing,” on July 25, 2007.

Let’s see how her foreign trips look now:

  1. Iraq
  2. Kuwait
  3. Ireland
  4. Germany

Fully half of the countries she originally listed as examples of her “foreign policy experience” turned out to be bull. Nice vetting, by the way, McCain team! Only four — four! — countries claimed, and you still couldn’t get that right. (Cue the “can’t count because he was a P.O.W.” excuse.)

I begin to see why McCain chose her. It’s not merely that she’s a woman who could rally the rabid right base, steal the news cycle, and whose energy could infuse the dessicated campaign with some pizazz. She’s also a perfect match for McCain and his lies:

Not content to pack the LHC [lies, half-truths and contradictions] barn in English only, the McCain dropped a Spanish-language ad Friday that accused Obama and the Dems of killing comprehensive immigration reform. One pro-immigrant comprehensive immigration reform advocate said Johnny Mac’s ad “misrepresents history.”

The 30-second spot states that “Obama and his Congressional allies say they are on the side of immigrants. But are they? The press reports that their efforts were ‘poison pills’ that made immigration reform fail.”

Not exactly. It was the lack of Republican support that killed immigration reform last time around.

[snip]

Indeed, McCain said at this GOP debate in January that he wouldn’t vote for his own immigration bill…

The lying has gotten so egregious that even his media fan club has started to smell something rotten, and have in many cases even been forced to use the L word. You’d think the campaign would show a little bit of caution now that a narrative of McCain as a big fat fucking liar has started to spring up. But they’ve flat-out stated they intend to keep right on lying with impunity:

A McCain spokesman, Brian Rogers, said the campaign had evidence for all its claims. “We stand fully by everything that’s in our ads,” Mr. Rogers said, “and everything that we’ve been saying we provide detailed backup for — everything. And if you and the Obama campaign want to disagree, that’s your call.”

No, facts are not a “call,” that’s why they are called facts. And the facts say that John McCain is a liar.

They’ve apparently gotten used to running with a crowd that swallows enormous fucking lies with evident enjoyment. They think they can pull the same shit Bush did. But you know what? They’re wrong. The country’s sick of being lied to. The polls don’t show it just yet, but there’s a groundswell of angry rumbling beginning. And Obama’s getting ready to ride that wave right into the Oval Office. His campaign’s not pulling punches anymore:

“We will take no lectures from John McCain who is cynically running the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern Presidential campaign history. His discredited ads with disgusting lies are running all over the country today. He runs a campaign not worthy of the office he is seeking.”

Exactly so.

Happy Hour Discurso
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Terror In St. Paul

jacob

I found this originally through AOL’s comedy video channel, but it’s not comedy – it’s real terror, and it’s a stark reminder of just how out-of-control our police agencies got during the RNC.

These people were being herded. This didn’t seem like crowd control – it seemed like a cruel game, police drunk on their own power letting their inner thug loose, knowing the crowd was too weak to strike back.

This is our country if the Republicons stay in power. This is just a taste of what they consider appropriate.

Bitter, isn’t it?

Terror In St. Paul

Reasons to Vote Republicon

jacob1 Comment

Do you need a good laugh on this hurricane-ravaged Saturday morning? Well, then. If you’re drinking something, I suggest you swallow before proceeding.

Ready for some great reasons to vote Republicon? Here ye go, a selection of my favorites:

I’m voting Republican because being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you’re a conservative radio host. Then it’s an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

I’m voting Republican because “Standing Tall for America” means firing your workers and moving their jobs to India.

I’m voting Republican because the best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans’ benefits and combat pay.

I’m voting Republican because a good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

I’m voting Republican because Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a “we can’t find Bin Laden” diversion.

I’m voting Republican because a president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

There’s a lot more reasons to vote Republicon. Nothing like having your blood boil while you’re laughing, is there? Go. Enjoy.

Reasons to Vote Republicon

Cat-hater, Too? That Clinches It

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Sarah Palin fears cats:

When asked to reveal something about Palin that no one knows, one woman offered, “She doesn’t care for cats very much,” and another chimed in, “Oh, yes, she’s afraid of my cat.”

As if the ten tons of lying, corrupt fuckery wasn’t enough, she’s afraid of a fucking housecat.

She’s afraid of this:


She doesn’t care for this:


‘Nuff said.

(Tip o’ the catnip to Paul Krugman, by way of Kevin Drum)

Cat-hater, Too? That Clinches It

Don't Like Ike

jacob1 Comment

I’m sitting here watching the numbers of customers without power in Houston tick up: 1.3 million, 1.6 million, 1.8 million…

I’m reading about the thousands of people who either ignored or couldn’t heed evacuation orders, and whose calls to 911 are now being answered with a sad, “We can’t help you.”

You don’t really think of things burning down in a flood and driving rain, but fires are burning: Galveston yacht basin, Brennan’s restaurant in downtown Houston, among others. It’s hard to respond to a fire when there’s eight feet of water on the road. The images are jarring: gray rain, gray floodwaters, bright orange flames.

The National Weather Service’s “face certain death” warning starts to look understated.

I have a friend in Houston. I hope he and his grandparents got out, or are in a somewhat safer area. At the moment, high ground and strong walls surely look inviting.

According to the pictures, some people find standing on sea walls watching waves crash is more inviting. There’s already one man dead because of it. When forecasters are predicting waves that will overtop the seawalls by several feet, it seems like a good time to slip your inner daredevil a mickey and get the fuck out of the area.

People do some damned fool things when floodwaters strike. When I lived in Arizona, we had one group of idiots die because they decided to take a backhoe out into a flooded wash in New River to see how deep the water was. Answer: deep enough to topple a backhoe and drown the people riding it. Another group of intrepid fools in Prescott decided that the best time to go canoeing on Willow Creek was at the height of a flood. They didn’t survive, either.

We don’t realize the power of water until it sweeps us away.

My ex-grandmother-in-common-law told me, after her vacation house in the Virgin Islands got destroyed by Hurricane Hugo, that she’d once had to ride out a hurricane in Hong Kong in a high-rise apartment building. She and the group with her spent a good portion of their evening bracing the wall, feeling the wind try to batter it down on them. The roar of wind and rain was nearly deafening, even inside. The glass wall groaned under the strain: they could feel it bowing under their hands. They were lucky to survive.

Houston’s high-rises look set to take a pretty hard hit, themselves. Reports say there’s already debris flying.

Water is pouring over levees in Louisiana. There’s only so much man-made structures can do to protect against storms like this. What Ike lacks in ferocity, it’s more than made up for in size, and when you’re talking about miles and miles of water being herded inland, size matters very much indeed.

At times like this, you understand that Mother Nature pwns humanity with ease.

Don't Like Ike

Happy Hour Discurso

jacob

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

To any readers here from the Gulf Coast: get the fuck out of Dodge and stay safe, K? This one looks horrific:

Meteorologists, hard-bitten science bloggers, and sober-minded weather watchers are using some unusual vocabulary to talk about Hurricane Ike. For instance, here’s Dr. Jeff Masters, cofounder of Weather Underground (who used to fly with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters), with some bolding added for emphasis:

Hurricane Ike is closing in on Texas, and stands poised to become one of the most damaging hurricanes of all time. Despite Ike’s rated Category 2 strength, the hurricane is much larger and more powerful than Category 5 Katrina or Category 5 Rita. The storm surge from Ike could rival Katrina’s, inundating a 200-mile stretch of coast from Galveston to Cameron, Louisiana with waters over 15 feet high. This massive storm surge is due to the exceptional size of Ike. According to the latest wind field estimate (Figure 1), the diameter of Ike’s tropical storm and hurricane force winds are 550 and 240 miles, respectively. For comparison, Katrina numbers at landfall were 440 and 210 miles, respectively. As I discussed in yesterday’s blog entry, a good measure of the storm surge potential is Integrated Kinetic Energy (IKE). Ike continues to grow larger and has intensified slightly since yesterday, and the hurricane’s Integrated Kinetic Energy has increased from 134 to 149 Terajoules. This is 30% higher than Katrina’s total energy at landfall. All this extra energy has gone into piling up a vast storm surge that will probably be higher than anything in recorded history along the Texas coast.

Storm surge heights of 20-25 feet are possible from Galveston northwards to the Louisiana border. . .

[snip]

Earlier this morning, Eric Berger (author of the Houston Chronicle’s “SciGuy” blog) tried to explain what to expect for folks living in different parts of the area. Most chilling was this:

If you live east of San Luis Pass and less than 20 feet above sea level, God help you at this point if you have not evacuated.

There’s a lot more in that article about the fact that many seawalls are only 14 or 15 feet high – far less than what would be needed to protect the cities.

And don’t rely on the authorities to help you – there’s already breathtaking signs of utter cluelessness:

Same thing happened in Katrina, as I recall. The stupidity and callousness is astonishing.

Galveston Island residents were told to flee Hurricane Ike or face “certain death,” but the Sheriff has inexplicably decided not to evacuate 1,000 prisoners from the county jail as the first flooding has already begun in the city.

It’s bad enough to risk the inmates’ lives, but downright bizarre to me that the Sheriff is willing to risk his deputies. The National Hurricane Center has predicted waves that will top Galveston’s seawall potentially by several meters, which would easily flood the town.

The sheriff’s excuse? Positively Bushian in its inanity: “‘We did this during (Hurricane) Rita (in 2005) and no one knew until it was absolutely done,’ said a Sheriff’s spokesman.”

Look, you stupid fuckwit: getting lucky once doesn’t make you fucking bulletproof. I just hope that 1000+ people don’t die from your delusions.

Today is a day of ridiculous rationalizations. Here’s McCain on why his campaign has resorted to sleaze, sewage, and endless lies:

As part of last night’s forum on national service, John McCain was asked about the tone and direction of the presidential campaign. His response was arguably the most fascinating moment of the evening.

Questioned about the tone of the campaign, Sen. McCain insisted he was running an issues-based campaign and put the blame on his opponent for refusing to join him in town hall meetings.

“First of all this is a tough business,” the Arizona senator said. “Second of all, I think the tone of this whole campaign would’ve been very different if Sen. Obama had accepted my request for us to appear at town hall meetings all over America.”

[snip]

There’s a word to describe this argument, but it’s probably not appropriate for a family website.

No, indeed, Steve. So let me say it for you: Bullshit.

Utter. Fucking. Bullshit.

It’s the “devil made me do it” defense. It’s the “he hit me first!” excuse. It’s the “he didn’t love me enough” weasel. Small children are expected to come up with bullshit excuses like this. Ancient old men who have been in office since 1982 know better.

But not McCain.

Up next: Sarah Palin’s first interview with Charlie Gibson didn’t go at all well, but it’s not her fault – it’s Charlie’s:

Over at The Corner, though, Lisa Schiffren thinks the problem isn’t Palin, it’s Gibson having the gall to ask substantive questions: “For the record, it just looks condescending and inappropriate for one of the great minds of the national media to sit, notebook in hand, quizzing this younger woman, as someone said, as if she were a grad student.” Goodness yes. Holding a reporter’s notebook and asking questions. Charlie should have known better than to do that while interviewing a 44-year-old woman running for vice president of the United States.

Something tells me our nation’s right wing has gone soft. They had the media so cowed for so long that it’s now considered “condescending and inappropriate” for reporters to do their jobs. This also says a lot about the right wing’s attitude toward women: if they can’t answer mildly-difficult questions about important policy issues, it’s not because they’re ill-prepared fuckwits who have no business running for a city council position, much less national office. No. It’s because the reporter is being too hard on the poor dear. How could a woman be expected to answer such difficult questions?

If you’re not infuriatingly insulted, you’ve got issues.

And if you swallow this load of bullshit, you don’t just have issues, you have subscriptions:

During an interview yesterday on ABC, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) indicated that she did not know what the so-called Bush Doctrine is. When asked for her interpretation, Palin guessed, “His worldview?”

Even though Palin was unaware of the foundation of President Bush’s national security strategy, some in the media have come to her defense, arguing that ordinary Americans don’t know about it either. In short, the vice president of the United States shouldn’t be any more intelligent than “most” Americans:

– CNN’s Jessica Yellin: The question is given that many Americans themselves don’t know what the Bush doctrine is… it’s unclear how much of a fallout that would be — that question and the answer would have.”

– CNN’s David Gergen: She didn’t know what the Bush doctrine was. But I don’t think most people know what the Bush doctrine is or was.

CNN’s Candy Crowley dismissed the gaffe by saying that regular Americans don’t care. Fox News’s Juan Williams gave Palin a pass because he admitted that he also wouldn’t have been able to answer the question:

WILLIAMS: I thought actually Charlie did try a gotcha question with this business about the Bush doctrine – which if you ask me in the middle of the night, I would have been: “What? What?”

What the fuck is this shit? Call me a dirty liberal elitist, but one of the prime criteria I’ve always had for those who would be leaders is that they should know what the fuck they’re doing. I believe they should know a fuck of a lot more than I do. I’ve just suffered eight years of having a President who’s dumb as a stump, running around the world like it’s his own fucking backyard and all he needs to do is clear some brush with some cluster bombs to make it jest right, and now I have this specter looming in front of my face of another four fucking years of ignorant whackos running this nation’s foreign policy, economy, environmental agencies, and a billion other things that ensure I stay safe, secure, and can eat and breathe, and you want to tell me that Sarah Fucking Palin gets a pass on ignorance because she’s as ill-informed as the average American?

No no no no no.

No more average Joes and Janes in the fucking White House.

No more fucking piss-poor excuses.

No more of this shit.

At this point, I’m not only hoping the Democrats sweep White House, Senate and House, but that the Republicon party doesn’t survive. Seriously. I hope that they implode under the force of their ignorance and bigotry and warmongering. I hope the culture war they started destroys them. We need that party to crash and burn, because it’s the only way a saner conservative party is going to have a chance of emerging. I don’t mind conservatives. I do mind batshit insane fuckheads with their lies and their lame fucking excuses poisoning this nation’s political discourse and having a stranglehold on its freedoms.

Here’s hoping that this election cycle turns out to be their swan song.

And good luck, Galveston.

Happy Hour Discurso

Friday Favorite Sport

jacob3 Comments

Just to be clear, here: I’m no sports fan.

I don’t follow sports. I don’t participate in those sports days at work where you’re supposed to wear your favorite team’s jersey and compete for sports-related prizes. If the talk turns to sports, I immediately tune it out. Dead boring.

But even a disinterested person such as myself has a few favorites.

It may surprise you to learn that Nascar is among them.

My family is old Indiana redneck stock. The Indianapolis 500 was a big deal in my household (no, it’s not Nascar, but it’s a close cousin). During racing season, my dad always had the TV tuned to the races. And we used to watch them together avidly.

My dad, at one point in his life, had wanted to design stock cars for Nascar. He’d even dreamed of becoming a race car driver. One of my earliest memories is being at a go-cart race and sitting on the tailgate of our old blue pickup while my dad raced and my mom bit her nails. A lot of those drivers who were famous back in the ’80s and ’90s were people my dad knew personally.

I didn’t know this until we were watching a race one day, and my dad started laughing at a maneuver A.J. Foyt whipped out. “He pulled that same trick on me in a race once,” he said.

“YOU KNEW A.J. FOYT?” I shouted. “You raced with A.J. Foyt?”

He did indeed. A.J., in fact, was one of the major reasons my dad decided that being a rockstar racer was an impossible dream. A.J. was just too damned good.

So I still have a fondness for a good car race. I understand it on a tactical level, because my dad would explain what the drivers were doing and why. To me, it’s not just a lot of cars going in circles around a track really fast. It’s a nail-biting test of skill, determination, and a little bit o’ luck.

Still. It’s got nothing on my favorite sport: steeplechasing.

I had a dream, once. I wanted to become a steeplechase jockey. The only thing that really stopped me was the fact that you just don’t get the opportunity to steeplechase in this country. We have flat racing. And that wasn’t enough for me – I know it takes a lot of skill to maneuver 1,000+ pounds of excited equine around a track, but it’s a whole different thing when that track has jumps in.

Thirty miles an hour over jumps, people. That’s some seriously intense racing.

I used to take my poor pony out and teach him to jump. I think he enjoyed it – he certainly seemed to have fun making me do the jumping first, to demonstrate – and we’d play the Grand National in slow-motion regularly on weekends. The “jump” was a plywood board about 18 inches high, and my boy’s speed was about equivalent to a geriatric gerbil, but it was still a thrill. There’s nothing quite like the sensation of those muscles under you bunching for a leap. And this is still my dream: if I become a fabulously wealthy author, I shall have my own track, and my own hunters, and I’ll be out there playing Grand National all over again, only this time with better steeds.

Blame Dick Francis for the obsession. He was a steeplechase jockey turned mystery writer, and the way he describes that communion between human and horse is intoxicating. I’ve owned horses. I know what he’s talking about. Becoming one with another creature while doing something just a little bit reckless can be tremendous fun for the both of you.

I love the thunder of hooves over turf, and the sudden silence as rider and horse become airborne. I love watching those bodies merge. I love watching them strain and strive and do their level best to come out ahead. I’ve seen plenty of equine atheletes who glory in their skill. And I love that sparkle in their eyes as they strut off the track. They seem to know they just wowed all those silly humans. They’ll put a little extra prance in their step, a little extra arch to the neck, going by the stands. Glorious show-offs. My pony was the same way. Total ham who loved nothing better than pulling a fast one on us.

A lot of talk takes place about the brutality of horse racing, and make no mistake: it is brutal. Especially steeplechasing, where a lot more horses and jockeys die than in regular old flat racing. A bleeding-heart liberal such as myself should probably not have the passion for it that I do. But I’ve also experienced the love between trainers, jockeys, owners, and horses. I know a lot of good people within the industry are working to minimize the risks and make things as humane as possible. That allows me to enjoy the beauty of it all.

So those are my favorites. How about yours?

Friday Favorite Sport

Hangover Discurso

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I know, I know. Two Hangovers in two days. But Aunty Flow has my ass fully kicked – I spent today feeling like I was having a miscarriage, and as far as substantial thought right now, I just can’t do it.

Besides, there’s just too much political fuckery to pass up. I feel like going on a tour through small-town America, shaking people by the scruff of their necks, and shouting, “Wake the fuck up! The Republicons think you’re this stupid, and the polls seem to be proving it! What the fuck was so great about the last eight years that you’re willing to risk an encore?”

First up, Joe “I Used to be a Democrat before I Went Totally Fucking Insane” Lieberman. I really don’t get this stupid fuck. I don’t. I have no idea how a human being can be this tremendously dense and still manage to hold a Senate seat. Here’s Joe, on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, spewing more insanity and lies into our political atmosphere:

In late July, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) said he would introduce a resolution in the Senate to applaud the success of the surge “against enemies who attacked America on 9/11.”

Yesterday, Lieberman introduced the formal amendment (S. Amdt. 5368 to S. 3001), which “expresses the sense of the Senate recognizing the strategic success of the troop surge in Iraq.” In his statement, he linked the surge to 9/11 (via the Congressional Record):

If there is anyone in this Chamber who doubts the strategic stakes in Iraq, I urge them to listen to General Petraeus. Listen to General Petraeus who warned us in an interview published today in the Washington Post that “Iraq is still viewed as the central front for al-Qaida.” Let me repeat that: “Iraq is still viewed as the central front for al-Qaida,” which is to say by al-Qaida. Not Afghanistan, Iraq; not Pakistan, Iraq.

This is not the opinion of a Member of Congress. It is not the opinion of a politician running for office. It is the judgment of America’s most successful battlefield commander in the war on terror which began 7 years ago tomorrow when America was brutally attacked on 9/11/2001.

While the surge has certainly produced calmer streets in Iraq, it has not achieved its primary purpose of facilitating political reconciliation. The surge has essentially frozen into place “a fragmented and increasingly fractured country” and produced an “an oil revenue-fueled, religious Shia-dominated national government with close ties to Iran.”

[snip]

As Yglesias explains, “An al-Qaeda offshoot only arose in Iraq in the first place because we invaded there and created an appealing venue in which to try to kill American soldiers and bleed American resources.”

But here’s Lieberman, spouting off this neocon fuckwittery, speciously linking Iraq to 9/11 although that’s been debunked about two hundred billion times, and introducing this ridiculous amendment that’s basically just an endorsement of Republicon lies, misdirection, and fantasy.

That I in “I-CT” must stand for “Imbecile.”

And how’s Sarah Palin doing on foreign policy? Don’t make me laugh – it hurts. Here she is swallowing that big chunky steaming pile of dog vomit that is the throughly debunked notion that Iraq had a damned thing to do with terrorist attacks on this country:

Earlier today, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin linked the Iraq war to the attacks of September 11, 2001, “telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would ‘defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.’” “America can never go back to that false sense of security that came before September 11, 2001,” said Palin at the deployment ceremony.

[snip]

As the Washington Post’s Anne Kornblut points out, “The idea that Iraq shared responsibility with al-Qaeda for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself.”

So she sends her son off to risk his life for a lie. That’s judgement we can believe in.

How clueless is she? So clueless she can’t even survive a gentle interview with a man hand-picked by the McCain camp to ensure she didn’t have to suffer any real journalism:

I watched the first clip of Sarah Palin’s interview with Charlie Gibson, and to me, the most striking part was her complete inability to answer the question: “Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?” Here’s what she said:

“Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?”

“In what respect, Charlie?”

“The Bush — well, what do you interpret it to be?”

“His world view?”

“No, the Bush Doctrine, enunciated in September 2002, before the Iraq war.”

“I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell-bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership — and that’s the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.”

[snip]

The transcript doesn’t really do it justice; the video is here, and it makes it pretty clear that she has no idea what the Bush Doctrine actually is.

The Bush Doctrine, simply put, means that America is allowed to kick the arse of anyone who we think is looking at us funny. It’s the doctrine that’s nearly destroyed this country. And she’s fucking clueless about it. How the fuck are Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum s
upposed to change one single solitary godsdamned thing if they aren’t even aware of what it is that needs changing?

She’s breathtakingly ignorant. Dangerously ignorant. And this is the woman cons want us to believe is prepared to step into the driver’s seat and not run the country over a cliff? Go on, pull the other one, it’s got bells on.

As Steve Benen said after a terrifying review of just how dramatically unprepared Palin is, “…it was eerily reminiscent of watching George W. Bush, circa 2000.” That gives me the screaming cold chills. So I ask again of those voters who are either undecided or breaking for McCain: just what was it about the last eight years that was so fucking fantastic you’re willing to risk an encore?

Do you think like this?

Then there’s the other side.

Robert Kagan, a foreign policy advisor to McCain, derided criticisms of Palin as elitist.

“I don’t take this elite foreign policy view that only this anointed class knows everything about the world,” he said. “I’m not generally impressed that they are better judges of American foreign policy experience than those who have Palin’s experience.”

I see. Those who spend their careers on foreign policy are fine, but their judgment is no better than a rookie Alaskan politician who has never said or written a single word on the subject.

And how does this work, exactly? It’s about ideology, not experience. As Kevin noted, this is the same crowd that never cared for Nixon or H.W. Bush, despite their foreign policy background.

Yglesias explains what Kagan & Co. are looking for.

Kagan, like most neoconservatives, thinks that in-depth knowledge of foreign countries and the politics and culture of foreign societies isn’t helpful in thinking about foreign policy questions. Similarly, they believe that in-depth knowledge of theoretical and empirical work in the field of international relations isn’t helpful. Indeed, they think that this kind of in-depth knowledge is actually harmful. They prefer the judgment of people who have little knowledge of the outside world but do possess a degree of gut-level nationalism.

One gets the distinct impression that if given a choice between a combat veteran who teaches international affairs at Georgetown after 12 years working in the State Department, and a high school junior who memorizes Bill Kristol columns, a surprising number of conservatives would prefer the latter be responsible for shaping U.S. foreign policy. And those same conservatives would make up a McCain/Palin administration.

Because if this is what you’re thinking, you’ve failed your country. You may call yourself a patriot, but you’re intent on destroying the thing you claim to love, because you want it to be as ignorant as you.

No wonder the smarter conservatives are pining for Obama:

Even Michael Smerconish, the right wing radio host in Philadelphia, has had enough:

Forget ideology or politics. I wish every American could agree that our obligation to bring these two [bin Laden and al-Zawahiri] to justice needs outrage. I wish Hillary Clinton would have done more than promise to answer the White House phone at 3 a.m. Forget following bin Laden to the gates of hell; I just want John McCain to follow him to Pakistan. Most important, I wish Barack Obama’s calls for refocusing the War on Terror there would fall on receptive ears.

I skimmed his article just now. I’ll read it in-depth later, but the thing that struck me was the number of times he approvingly quoted Obama.

So, our country’s falling apart, Iraq’s paralyzed and will explode into violence the moment we take our foot off its neck because some complete asshole in the White House decided we could have war without subsequent nation building, our economy’s in tatters, our constitution’s a shambles, our reputation internationally is in the toilet and about to get flushed, and our world is about to bake to death in our greenhouse gasses, and what does McCain have to offer? A cute running mate who can’t open her mouth without lying or sounding like an uninformed nitwit, and insults. Oh, and a cribbed line about “change” when it’s clear he has no plans to change anything.

And yet McCain’s still nearly even with Obama in the polls.

America: wise the fuck up.

Hangover Discurso

Happy Hour Discurso

jacob1 Comment

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

On the seventh anniversary of the War on Terror, let’s have a substantive discussion about war and foreign relations, shall we?

Oh, fuck, who am I kidding? These Republicons can’t have one. Let’s have a discussion about Republicon inanity instead.

Let’s start with our head honcho war guy, George “Fuck ’em All” Bush:

While serving as CentCom commander between March 2007 and March 2008, Adm. William Fallon consistently pressed the Bush administration for more engagement with Iran and criticized the calls for another war. “This constant drumbeat of conflict is what strikes me which is not helpful and not useful,” Fallon told al Jazeera last year.

In his new book “The War Within,” Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward details a telling White House meeting on Iran in spring 2007 (p. 334):

“I think we need to do something to get engaged with these guys,” Fallon said. Iraq shared a 900-mile border with Iran, and he needed guidance and a strategy for dealing with the Iranians.

“Well,” Bush said, “these are assholes.”

Fallon was stunned. Declaring them “assholes” was not a strategy. Lots of words and ideas were thrown around at the meeting, especially about the Iranian leaders. They were bad, evil, out of touch with their people. But no one offered a real approach.

No. No one offered a real approach on Iran, and no one offered a real approach on Iraq – not that Monkey Boy George and his cohorts would listen to – and hence the dangerous mess we find ourselves mired in today.

Let’s continue our saga with John “Bomb ’em All” McCain:

On the morning of the 9/11, just moments after the World Trade Center collapsed from the terrorist strikes, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) went on television and immediately began focusing the nation’s attention on Iraq. In an interview with CBS’ Dan Rather on 9/11, McCain said:

To be honest with you, Dan, I never thought that an operation of this sophistication and size would take place. I just never did. But I don’t think there’s any doubt that there are countries — Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea and others — who we know engage in proliferation of — of capabilities and, from time to time, involve themselves in state-sponsored terrorism. But never did we imagine on a scale such as this.


The next day, on 9/12, McCain reiterated the point in an interview with Chris Matthews. “It isn’t just Afghanistan,” he said, “we’re talking about Syria, Iraq, Iran, perhaps North Korea, Libya and others.”


Because attacking every country in the world is going to do such wonders for our country. McCain may have temporarily fought in Vietnam before getting himself shot down, but he apparently didn’t absorb a few important lessons, such as: the more fronts you fight on, the less fucking likely it is you’ll succeed.

And Sarah “I Learned Foreign Policy by Osmosis!” Palin thinks we need to bomb more than just scary brown people:

ABC News reports, “On the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, Gov. Sarah Palin took a hard-line approach on national security and said that war with Russia may be necessary if that nation invades another country”:

Palin advocated the accession of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, meaning that if attacked again in the future, the United States would be bound to go to war.
“I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help,” she said.

So. Entire Middle East, much of Asia, and now Russia. Is there anywhere these people don’t want to bomb?

This is what passes for serious foreign policy: kill ’em all, and let God sort ’em out. Seriously. And these fuckwits think this nation has the will, the resources, and the warm bodies necessary to singlehandedly defeat at least half the world.

I’m emigrating if these idiots get elected. But it may not do any good – they’ll probably decide that Australia’s been looking at America funny, and the bombs should start falling…

Happy Hour Discurso

It Didn't Need to Happen

jacob4 Comments

On September 11th, I remember flowers.

I didn’t know what they were, although I’d grown up with them. They were the last little bit of wild glory before winter came, spreading across the ground like moons in the sunlight. September is one of the finest seasons in Flagstaff, Arizona: the thunderstorms of the monsoons are over, the late August heat mellowed, and the sun spills honey yellow light down from the bluest skies on earth. Other, taller wildflowers put out their last bursts of color in the little patch of Ponderosa forest beside my apartment. Warm, dry earth, vanilla-sweet bark, slightly acerbic pine needles, and those flowers turn the air into a subtle symphony.

I don’t know why I was hyper-aware of it walking to work that afternoon. I lived in an apartment with no cable, internet or telephone. But I knew winter was coming, the dying season, and this day seemed cheerfully defiant. Migrating birds sang up in the trees. The sun blazed as if it had never heard of any such thing as a cloud. And those ground-hugging flowers had taken over the beauty bark on the gym’s landscaping, sending out runners that scampered right up to the sidewalk. I stopped, bent down to smell them, marveled at their symmetry. I remember feeling perfectly, blissfully content. Writing was going well, the weather was perfect, and the world felt like the grandest place in the universe to be. And there were my favorite flowers, my childhood friends, delightfully sprawled everywhere.

Cliche? Maybe. But I did have a spring in my step as I continued on to work. It was a perfect moment, frozen in time. I’ll never forget it.

I was practically humming as I crossed the parking lot to the building, a silly little smile plastered on my face. I was too happy to notice Tobi’s expression. She was sitting on the smoker’s bench, staring at the street and the trees, and watching me approach. I got slammed by two dark eyes in a stark white face, and before I could say anything, she stated, “We’re at war.”

I stopped. Those three words, laid down like hammerblows, didn’t penetrate. I thought she was joking. “What?”

“The Towers are gone,” she said, every word emphasized. “We’re at war.” It was all she could say.

The sun still shone. I could still hear the birds from a vast distance. The flowers continued to bloom behind me. And I felt cold. There’s a reason why things become cliches: this is what happens when you hear those words, and you go from bright sunlight into the dim, cool building, and you hear televisions chattering and hushed voices speaking in fragmented sentences.

We never had televisions on in the call center in the middle of a week day. Never on the floor. But I could hear one from the breakroom, and one from the work area. I could tell from the staccato dialogue that they were tuned to news broadcasts.

And yes, my feet were numb as I walked into the work area. My whole body was numb. My mind was silent, listening, on full alert. I’d stopped thinking Tobi was having me on. But I still couldn’t believe she wasn’t exaggerating. Until I got to the queue manager’s desk, and turned to the television there, and saw a plane fly into the World Trade Center and become a fireball.

I remember grasping the top of the cubicle wall and watching the future come crashing down. I knew. I knew without CNN telling me exactly what was happening, because I saw a second plane loop around and hit the second Tower, and those things don’t happen by accident. I knew it was terrorism, and I knew this was an act we couldn’t ignore, and I knew that Tobi was right. We were at war.

I knew that war would consume us.

I knew the United States would respond with bombs and aircraft carriers and soldiers, and I knew we couldn’t win that way. We’d respond with overwhelming force, and only breed more terrorists. I knew Muslim Americans would find themselves persecuted. I knew we’d destroy ourselves for vengeance.

All of those things I knew in that instant. And I felt the world end. I felt the future die. I clung to the cubicle wall, shaking, and watched the world come down.

“It’s all right,” a faint voice said. “We survived.”

I held my breath, straining to hear the voice of my main character. Some people reach for gods when tragedies strike, some reach for friends and family: as a writer, I’ve always reached for my characters.

“We survive,” her voice rang out. “We survive this. It’s all right.”

I took my hand from the cubicle wall. I told the queue manager, who was explaining that if I didn’t feel up to work I could go home, that I’d stay.

That night, I took a call from a business customer in Manhattan. He sounded shocky, brittle, overwhelmed as we all were. He was close enough to ground zero to smell the jet fuel and the burned bodies. Ash was flying in through his window. He was ordering forms for his business because he needed that one ordinary act to counter the chaos that had been unleashed down the street, in his city. He and I stayed calm together, reassured each other: yes, this is horrible. We will survive it. Our country will survive.

The skies were deafeningly silent as I walked home. For days, not a single plane flew overhead. Their absence jarred.

Condolences poured in from around the world, even from Libya. For a little while, we didn’t respond as I’d feared: it seemed we wouldn’t strike out in a blind rage, but build a coalition, come together as one against the few who had been vicious enough to murder three thousand people, that we would use this not only to punish, but to create a better world. We would forge closer ties. We would eradicate terrorism not just through force, but through decency. Finally, there would be the will to understand one another, put petty differences aside, find diplomatic solutions to problems between nations, and eradicate the conditions that drove some people to extremes of violence. There would always be the fanatical few among us, but one world united was more than strong enough to handle them.

I saw people come together in ways I’d never thought possible. I saw not only courage and heroism, but compassion, caring, a unity I’d never witnessed. The boundaries between us and them dissolved for just that little while. I thought, finally, we had a chance to truly become united nations.

It didn’t last.

We all know what happened next. Patriotism turned rabid and shut down reason. Shock turned to hatred. Who wasn’t with us was against us. We tore down when we could have built. And we went to war.

We were lied to.

We were manipulated.

What terrorists couldn’t take from us, our government did.

And now we know it didn’t need to happen.

Too many people act as if this came from nowhere, as if no one could have possibly known, but klaxons were screaming all throughout the intelligence agencies in those late summer days when the last flowers were bursting into bloom. The information gathered was accurate enough and the threat clear enough that a CIA analyst flew to Crawford, Texas to put a briefing in George Bush’s hands. “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” the briefing stated.

“All right,” Bush said after reading it. “You’ve covered your ass now.” And then he went fishing.

We had the names of the hijackers. We knew enough specific detail at that point that the attacks could have been prevented. Read two documents if you don’t believe me: The Markle Foundation Task Force’s “Protecti
ng America’s Freedom in the Information Age(pdf),” specifically page 32, where a case study lays out exactly what information was available and how it could have identified the hijackers; and The 9/11 Commission Report.

We knew enough to stop this. It didn’t need to happen.

On September 11th, I remember flowers. I remember that last, innocent moment watching field bindweed spread across the ground. I remember the sheer perfection of that instant before the ordinary world came crashing down, and I learned just how drastically a president can fail his country and the world. I remember the people who died, and the opportunities we squandered. I remember the importance of hope in the face of catastrophe, and the necessity of vigilance against those who would use tragedy to manipulate and exploit us.

And I remember that the world contains too much beauty to give up on even in the face of so much horror.

I will never forget.

It Didn't Need to Happen