What's the Mission?
Here's the finish from a great
op-ed by Harold Meyerson:
We have plumb run out of mission in Iraq. We have enemies galore, but, other than the Kurds, precious few friends. We defend the idea of Iraq in the absence of Iraqis willing to do the same. We are at best a buffer -- unable to deter the daily atrocities but ensuring by our presence that they won't grow cataclysmically worse. Since we cannot deter the sectarian polarization, however, the cataclysm will follow our leave-taking whether it comes sooner or later.
Those who argue that we should send more troops (as if we had them) to Iraq, or train more Iraqis, or stay until the situation stabilizes should at least explain how the situation will stabilize, how nation-building will work in a nation that doesn't want to be built. We should, as George Packer has argued, rescue as many individual Iraqis as we possibly can on our way out. But rescuing Iraq from the forces we unleashed is plainly beyond us.
Or we could, I suppose, wait it out. About 100,000 Iraqis now flee the country every month for Syria or Jordan. At that rate, if we just hang on for 20 years, Iraq will be completely depopulated. The insurgency will be vanquished; sectarian strife will subside. Victory will be ours, and we can go home.
Well worth reading the rest as well. And
this from Juan Cole:
The Iraq Study Group or Baker-Hamilton Commission will urge intensive diplomacy with Syria and Iran to help deal with the Iraqi civil conflict but will not urge a phased pull-out of US troops.
If they don't, they should specify the mission. What is the mission of the US military in Ramadi [in Al-Anbar Province]? I hope my readers will press their representatives in Congress and the executive branch to answer this question. What is the mission? When will it be accomplished?
...
Syria and Iran are not responsible for the resistance in Ramadi or Baquba and probably can't do anything about it. Therefore negotiating with them is not a silver bullet, though it might be useful in its own right.
What is the military mission? I can't see a practical one. And if there is not a military mission that can reasonably be accomplished in a specified period of time, then keeping US troops in al-Anbar is a sort of murder. Because you know when they go out on patrol, a few of them each week are going to get blown up or shot down. Reliably. Each week. Steadily. It is monstrous to force them to play Russian roulette every day unless there is a clear mission that could thereby be accomplished. There is not.
A day after that, ABC News reported:
Pentagon Considers Moving Troops From al-Anbar Province to Baghdad. Juan picks out the take-away quote:
' "If we are not going to do a better job doing what we are doing out [in al-Anbar], what's the point of having them out there?" said a senior military official.'
Enough said.
Uncorking Ethnic Slaughter
I'm going to give this terribly short shrift, and people much wiser than me have written entire books on these subjects, but the historical record stands:
- After the fall of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia crumbled and a massive ethnic/civil war ensued. The U.S., allied with NATO, ended the violence.
- After 9/11, the U.S. decided to overthrow Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq, thereby unleashing another sectarian/civil war.
If you pull the top off of a brutal regime, one that has suppressed tribal and religious differences for decades, you'd best be ready for an all out slaughter when those forces are set free to roam the country and settle up differences.
Just sayin'...
Iraq
Suzanne Nossel over at Democracy Arsenal had a
great post the other day about where we are now (here's her summary):
So what do we do next:
In short, develop a withdrawal scenario that includes whatever steps can reasonably be taken to minimize the chaos in our wake. A regional conference, talks with Syria and Iran, improved training and reconstruction efforts, political mediation and efforts to bolster the security of less violent regions should all be part of the package. To the extent we can engage Iraq's neighbors as well as any other global powers who are willing to step up to the plate and help us and Iraq, we should. We should be honest with ourselves and with the Iraqis about what we are doing and why, acknowledging all of the above rather than pretending that we're handing off a country that's in better shape than it is. But we should commit to getting out of there regardless of how the diplomacy and mediation progress.
Our exit should be as responsible and forthright as our entrance was wanton and misleading. The best thing we can promise troops who are now being asked to put their lives at risk for an all-but-declared failure is that they are taking risks to enable the US to make the best out of a terrible situation, preserving what can be saved of both Iraqi stability (in geographic pockets) and of American credibility. Its by no means the mission they signed up for, but its an important one nonetheless.
Kevin Drum higlighted the last point in her post, and for good reason:
If we don't begin a planned exit, there's a good chance we'll find ourselves in an unplanned one - Its surprising that by now we haven't experienced the Iraqi equivalent of the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut or the dragging of a corps of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu a decade later. But it seems likely that that day will come.
Oh, very likely
indeed:
The intrepid Edward Wong of the New York Times reports that a car bomb targetting the Iraqi speaker of parliament, Mahmud Mashhadani [Sunni], was detonated inside the Green Zone on Tuesday. The Green Zone is a 4 square mile area of downtown Baghdad behind concrete walls, with a heavy US military guard. It houses the main political institutions of the new Iraq, and many parliamentarians live there. Likewise the US embassy and other Coalition institutions are based there. This is the most serious incident inside the Green Zone for some time.
As much as I loathe the thought, I believe the moment that Suzanne describes
is coming. As unpopular as this war has become, wait until Americans get a look at some kind of Mogadishu moment in Iraq. At that point, support for the war will plummet. Another far-fetched possibility is one where the armed forces' supply lines are cut off. While airlifts would pick up the slack, and the severing would probably only be temporary, the effect on the view here at home would be major.
In other news, it's pretty clear the Brits are headed for the door. They may be tip-toeing around it, but they want out by
next year:
"We expect Najaf to be the next province to be transferred to Iraqi control in December," Beckett told lawmakers in the House of Commons.
"In our own area of responsibility, we expect Maysan to follow in January," she said. "The progress of our current operation in Basra gives us confidence that we may be able to achieve transition in that province too at some point next spring."
Last month, Defense Secretary Des Browne said Britain was "quite far down the process" of transferring responsibility to the Iraqis.
No Magic Bullet, No Silver Lining
As I was rooting around blogostan, as I tend to do, a theme popped up. That theme would be: even though it's being hailed as some kind of savior in the media, The Iraq Study Group won't have much to add or offer us in the way of policy changes in Iraq. And why is that? There are no good options left. Let's do a little roundup.
From
David Kurtz at Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo:
It has become the consensus view, crosses party lines, and seems to be based in part on the assumption that anything is better than the current Iraq policy and its chief implementer, Don Rumsfeld.
[...]
If the first step in solving a problem is admitting you have a problem, then we may be at that first step. Our long national denial may be over. But admitting you have a problem doesn't in and of itself solve the problem. And right now Iraq is a problem begging for solutions.
Go read the meat of that
post.
Kevin Drum
mined the essence of the media dance from the National Review:
You are sure to hear time and again how Baker et al. have given the Democrats cover to push even harder for withdrawal. And why do they need this "cover"? Well, because they are going to be attacked by Republicans. Now, every time some GOP spokesman tells Tim Russert that the Democrats want to cut-and-run, Russert can respond that even the Baker Commission wants withdrawal (turn on your televisions; this is already happening). And why does the Baker Commission have such "credibility"? Because the press has been telling us that it does. What a beautiful circle.
Foreign policy expert Juliette Kayyem offers
this:
I know we all should be eagerly awaiting the results of the Baker-Hamilton report, right? The press is giddy with the notion that this will be the cure for what ails us: an insolveable problem in Iraq, a way forward between the "stay the course" and "cut and run."
Let's be serious here, cause it is war. We, including Democrats, are setting ourselves up for some closure that doesn't exist. As Jim Zogby has written, we're all "waiting for godot." Remember, he never arrives.
And finally, Michael Hirsch from Newsweek
sums it up:
...and [Washington] anxiously waits for the sage Jim Baker to fix the mess made by the Bush family’s black sheep, who also happens to be president of the United States. The headline is: "Will Bush Talk to Iran and Syria about Iraq?" Apparently that's a big part of the Baker plan, judging from the long, convivial dinner he had the other week with Iran's ambassador to the U.N., Javad Zarif, which according to an informed source was all about Iraq.
[...]
It’s easy enough to blame the departing Donald Rumsfeld for this, as he leaves town like the biblical goat cast into the wilderness. But let's not forget that Rummy, for all his sins, wanted to pull out of Iraq quickly after the spring 2003 invasion and leave things to the Iraqi Army. It was Bush, with his vague ideas of a deeper transformation communicated just as vaguely to civil administrator Paul L. (Jerry) Bremer III, who opted to dismantle the Iraqi Army and Baath Party. That committed Bush to a long occupation, but he never bothered to check whether his Defense secretary was following through with the troops and resources that were needed (Rummy wasn't). If Barbara Tuchman were alive, she'd be adding another chapter to "The March of Folly." Sorry folks. Iraq is broken, and all the Jim Bakers and all the Bob Gateses can't put Humpty Dumpty together again.
With Cheney isolated because of the departure of Rumsfeld, let's see how this plays out. Any way you slice it, it's a national nightmare.
Another Horrific Month
We're halfway through November, and so far
41 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq. While everyone in Washington is sitting on their hands and waiting for a report from some commission, our kids are dying. Despicable doesn't even come close. Decide something and make a change, assholes.
Corporal Joker
From Laura Rosen:
Hashim al-Menti smiled wanly at the marine sergeant beside him on his couch. The sergeant had appeared in the darkness on Wednesday night, knocking on the door of Mr. Menti’s home.
When Mr. Menti answered, a squad of infantrymen swiftly moved in, making him an involuntary host.
Since then marines had been on his roof with rifles, watching roads where insurgents often planted bombs.
Mr. Menti had passed the time watching television. Now he had news. He spoke in broken English. “Rumsfeld is gone,” he told the sergeant, Michael A. McKinnon.
“Democracy,” he added, and made a thumbs-up sign. “Good.”
The marines had been on a continuous foot patrol for several days, hunting for insurgents. They were lost in the hard and isolating rhythms of infantry life.
They knew nothing of the week’s news.
Now they were being told by an Iraqi whose house they occupied that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, one of the principal architects of the policies that had them here, had resigned. “Rumsfeld is gone?” the sergeant asked. “Really?”
Mr. Menti nodded. “This is better for Iraq,” he said. “Iraqi people say thank you.”
The sergeant went upstairs to tell his marines, just as he had informed them the day before that the Republican Party had lost control of the House of Representatives and that Congress was in the midst of sweeping change. Mr. Menti had told them that, too.
“Rumsfeld’s out,” he said to five marines sprawled with rifles on the cold floor.
Lance Cpl. James L. Davis Jr. looked up from his cigarette. “Who’s Rumsfeld?” he asked.
"The Plan Was Solid"
"There was nothing wrong with the plan."
Conservative leaders meet to plan a comeback; Return to power is based upon policies that lead to resounding defeat.
That may as well have been the title of the
article in the L.A. Times if you go through the guts of it.
There's some good stuff in here, like this:
"There was no ideological rejection in this election," said Richard Lessner, former executive director of the American Conservative Union..."This was about the Republican Party not behaving like Republicans," Lessner said. "And the voters gave the party a timeout and said, 'Go stand in the corner.' "
Not behaving like Republicans? If that means acting like Democrats, well, they have a word for that: Treason. These were the people
they wanted elected. Here's the soon-to-be-former head of the RNC, Ken Mehlman:
"We have a long history as a movement, if you think about it — of using our difficult election outcomes to make ourselves better," Mehlman said. "The fact is, we do need to do better, and I think we need to look at it as a big opportunity as a party and a cause to return to our reformist approach and our reformist principles."
His "reformist" calptrap is nothing more than a code word. He means to reform nothing. This talk is about continuing to shift the overall tax burden from corporations and the wealthy onto the middle class and the poor.
Here's more talk about how, "I didn't do it!":
"There's no doubt in my mind it was not a repudiation of conservatives but it was a repudiation of the Republican Party," said the group's president, former congressman Pat Toomey.
I wonder which other vehicle Pat sees as his horse to ride to victory? I guess Pat needs more "reformist Republicans" in his camp. If Pat went Libertarian, and ran on his choice of ticket anywhere in PA., we could rightly write him off for good. But Pat doesn't like to work on the fringes, he likes to shake things up! Indulge me for a minute. Pat, an anti-tax zealout, served in the House, and then ran to defeat in the 04' PA. Senate race against Arlen Spector. Now he's the head of the Club for Growth, a phony astroturf outfit that has been nailed
dead to rights:
Elsewhere, Christina Larson documents the pain of the Club for Growth's Pat Toomey. It seems the Club took a poll before the election and they didn't like the results:
Two-thirds agreed with the notion that the GOP used to be the party of fiscal responsibility and limited government but was not today. By an 11-point margin, likely voters expressed greater confidence in Democrats to handle select fiscal matters responsibly. “We have lost our brand,” Toomey bemoaned.
Get real, guys. The Club for Growth and its ilk have never cared a tenth as much about lower spending as they have about lower taxes. They know perfectly well that if a Republican administration actually cut spending to match its tax cuts it would get voted out of office for the next century.
And they've never cared. They just want low taxes (the easy part of fiscal responsibility) without the spending cuts (the part that gets you voted out of office). It's similar to the GOP's Iraq strategy: they want the glory of winning a war, but without the pain of making the hard choices it would take to actually do so.
Toomey's Phony Shithouse came close to casting Rhode Island's popular Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffee out of office in a primary, even when they
knew the candidate they had backed would lose the seat to Democratic candidate Sheldon Whitehouse by overwhelming margins. Turns out, Chaffee won the primary against the Club for Growth cretin, and
still lost the seat to a Democrat. And now Toomey "bemoans" the "brand"? He'll bemoan anything but his way of thinking. If I were a Rhodie Republican, I'd tell Toomey to go sell his dogma elsewhere, because what he put the GOP incumbent through in a useless primary certainly didn't help Chaffee in the general. What a sham.
Now, I bring you Grover Norquist:
Despite short-term setbacks, Norquist said, the conservative movement is "perfectly healthy. No one is losing because they favor tax cuts, are pro-life, pro-gun or pro-growth.
"In two years, there is no George W. Bush and almost no Iraq war as presently constructed," Norquist said.
Now, that's moral clarity. Grover's pining for the time when the Iraq War is not as it is "presently constructed". If it weren't for Richard Perle, I couldn't think of a more colossal asshole on the planet than Grover Norquist. When his "
Ass To Mouth" movement has failed, he knows where the blame goes:
"'And Democrats will be standing there, naked to the winds, having been forced by Nancy Pelosi to vote for tax increases, gun control and impeaching the president,"' he added, referring to the future speaker of the House."
Yeah Grover, whatever. Conservatives should took a long look at their ideology and quit blaming the vehicle they chose to implement it.
Update: Right on cue,
here's Newt Gingrich:
"We have to recognize that this was a defeat for Republicans, not for conservatives," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The Washington Times yesterday.
There is hope to advance a conservative agenda, Mr. Gingrich said, if House Republicans can find allies among conservative Democrats.
"The balance of power in the House is now 50-plus blue-dog [conservative] Democrats," he said.
We can't
debunk this enough.
Big Doin's
Obviously.
The House
and the Senate.
Pretty Sweet.
Now the circular firing squad is in full effect on the Right. It'll continue for a couple of months at least due to all the ensuing firings and "stepping downs".
Looking back, it kills me how much time and how many lives have been wasted in Iraq, just so a bunch of idealouges could prove they were right all along, even though many of us knew they were wrong about literally
everything. Sickening and tragic at the same time.
This midterm election was a call for a massive shift in the political direction our country. And none too soon.
Look for hard core conservatives to start braying about how it was never conservatism that failed, only the GOP's implementation of it. Let's drown that baby in the tub now. It's a fallacy. The generations that follow mine will become more and more open to different ideas, which in turn means more and more centrist and liberal.
The future, from my vantage point anyway, just turned a lot brighter.
What's Being Left Out
Well, it's now wall to wall election coverage for the next day or two at least.
As we pass into the 7th day of this month, there have been
18 U.S. military casualties in Iraq so far in November. That includes a helicopter crash, killing two.
In the last two days I have yet to see one report in the news, from the myriad of sources I check every day, that would inform the American people of this fact. Astounding as well is how fast the fact that 105 U.S. military personnel perished in October has been swept under the rug by the mainstream media as they pursue all the horserace "drama" of the midterms.
Just to add a little perspective, the last time we had more American losses than this October was January of 2005. In addition, October's losses are the the fourth highest monthly total
for the entire war. And given the numbers for November so far, we're in for another horrific month.
All this shows a major escalation in attacks on American troops in Iraq. The media's nowhere to be found on this. I'm unsurprised as usual.
My heart goes out to all that have lost loved ones and friends.
Best Campaign Ad EVER
Tube it...
Bring on the Recriminations!
There's lot of buzz about
this new article in Vanity Fair featuring some of the neoconservatives that pushed for the Iraq War. Kevin Drum has a great post about it,
here:
It's worth saying very plainly what's going on here: the neocons are using these interviews to make the case that neoconservatism is in no way to blame for the disaster in Iraq. If they had been in charge things would have been different.
This baby needs to be strangled in its crib. The 1997 "Statement of Principles" of the Project for a New American Century, the neocon Bible, was signed by, among others, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, Scooter Libby, and Elliot Abrams. All of these men were deeply involved in the formulation, planning, and execution of the Iraq war. The neocon creed was part and parcel of every move they made.
That's the teaser, go read the
rest.
The long knives are definitely out. If the GOP loses both the House
and the Senate, there's going to be a virtual Conservative bloodbath. Oh the coming
schadenfreude...
President Shitmouth
Oh yes, we're turning very shrill over here at the MB. One of the best bloggers in the business is Steve Benen. He hangs his shingle under the name
The Carpet Bagger Report. Pretty sweet. I'm hoping Steve won't mind, because I'm snagging this entire
post:
Once in a great while, Bush says something so unbelievable, I have to wonder if he's an incredibly good liar or living in some kind of bizarro world in which reality has no meaning. Consider, for example, this gem from the president's interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity.
"I don't like the tone in Washington, D.C. I feel like that the politics has gotten ugly, and that tends to discourage people around the country. And that's just too bad.
"I would hope in my last two years I can — and, by the way, I've never really resorted to name-calling. And I'm not trying to say, well, you know, I'm innocent and everybody else is guilty. That's not what I'm trying to say. But I understand that it's one thing to disagree with a person, but it's another thing to have to resort to kind of shameless name-calling. And I really don't think it's fitting for the president to drag the presidency into that kind of a mudslinging."
You've got to be kidding me.
"Gotten ugly"? A few weeks ago, the president kicked the campaign season into high gear with some unusually bitter rhetoric. "We know the enemy wants to attack us again," Bush said, whereas Democrats "offer nothing but criticism and obstruction and endless second-guessing." Shortly thereafter, the president upped the ante, telling a partisan crowd, "If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party, it sounds like — it sounds like — they think the best way to protect the American people is, wait until we're attacked again." This week, Bush pushed the envelope to the breaking point, telling a crowd that Dems want terrorists to win.
"Drag the presidency into that kind of a mudslinging"? Bush is the first president to so blatantly use a war to smear his political opponents with unfair and untrue attacks.
In what universe can this man consider himself above the fray?
This is, after all, the president said in 2002 that Senate Democrats are "not interested in the security of the American people" because they disagreed with him on a labor issue, and then refused to apologize.
When Dick Durbin questioned the administration's gulags, Team Bush has accused Democrats of being traitors.
When Jack Murtha unveiled a redeployment plan for Iraq, Team Bush said Murtha has endorsed "the policy positions of Michael Moore" and suggested Murtha wants to "surrender to the terrorists."
When Patrick Leahy questioned no-bid contracts for Halliburton, Bush's VP told him to go f*** himself.
And, of course, lengthy books are available on Team Bush's vicious smears of John McCain and Al Gore in 2000, and of John Kerry in 2004.
The "tone" in DC is noxious because Bush and his team a) made it that way; and b) prefer it that way. For the president to lament the environment that he created is simply breathtaking.
As you can plainly see, I'm a little bit more harsh with blog post titles than Steve is, but he's a respected guy, and I'm a shitmouth myself.
When Steve says, "You've got to be kidding me", he's not joking. I said the same thing to myself when I read Bush's phony horseshit. Then I remembered that this was the playbook Newt Gingrich created to energize the voting public to buy into the Contract With America in 1994, and ultimately vote Republican. Have a
look at the words Republicans were instructed to use to describe Democrats:
- abuse of power
- anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
- betray
- bizarre
- bosses
- bureaucracy
- cheat
- coercion
- "compassion" is not enough
- collapse(ing)
- consequences
- corrupt
- corruption
- criminal rights
- crisis
- cynicism
- decay
- deeper
- destroy
- destructive
- devour
- disgrace
- endanger
- excuses
- failure (fail)
- greed
- hypocrisy
- ideological
- impose
- incompetent
- insecure
- insensitive
- intolerant
- liberal
- lie
- limit(s)
- machine
- mandate(s)
- obsolete
- pathetic
- patronage
- permissive attitude
- pessimistic
- punish (poor ...)
- radical
- red tape
- self-serving
- selfish
- sensationalists
- shallow
- shame
- sick
- spend(ing)
- stagnation
- status quo
- steal
- taxes
- they/them
- threaten
- traitors
- unionized
- urgent (cy)
- waste
- welfare
Somewhere along the line, George got the memo. After all, "traitors" is on the list, and I'll probably be dead before the Republican party stops using that term to describe anyone that opposes them. In this case George pictures himself as "above the fray". Someday he'll figure out that
he is the fray.
Unpopular? No, Toxic
According to a new NY Times/CBS News
poll, the president's approval rating is at 34%.
The president hasn't broken the 50% barrier since right after the '04 election, where he had an approval rating of 51% (11/18-21/04).
At this time during the 2002 midterms, he had an approval rating of 62%.
If the Democrats win the House, and Nancy Pelosi becomes Speaker, she has stated that impeachment of the president is off the table. I couldn't agree more.
He's already promised to leave all of his disastorous policies in place, and to try and privatize Social Security
again. Let this fraud of a man become the most unpopular two-term president in American history. Let the stench of the dead albatross around his neck ensure long-term darkness for the band of criminals he's brought into power with him. And, let the Bush name be wiped clean from American politics forever.
Let him crawl out of the White House on January 21st, 2009, on his knees in shame for what he has done to our democracy.
I'll be amazed if he leaves with more than a 26% approval rating, if that. If he's not impeached, he'll make Nixon look popular.
Blood like rain fallin' down
Eye on the TV
'cause tragedy thrills me
Whatever flavor
It happens to be
Like:
"Killed by the husband"
"Drowned by the ocean"
"Shot by his own son"
"She used the poison in his tea
"he kissed her goodbye"
That's my kind of story
It's no fun til someone dies
Don't look me at like
I am a monster
Frown out your one face
But with the other
Stare like a junkie
Into the TV
Stare like a zombie
While the mother, holds her child
Watches him die
Hands to the sky cryin,
"Why, oh why?"
Cause I need to watch things die
From a distance
Vicariously, I
Live while the whole world dies
You all need it too - don't lie.
Why can't we just admit it?
Why can't we just admit it?
We won't give pause until the blood is flowin'
Neither the brave nor bold
Will write us the story so
We won't give pause until the blood is flowin'
I need to watch things die
From a good safe distance
Vicariously, I
Live while the whole world dies
You all feel the same so
Why can't we just admit it?
Blood like rain fallin' down
Part vampire
Part warrior
Carnivore and voyeur
Stare at the
transmitter
Sing to the death rattle
La, la, la, la, la, la, la-lie
Credulous at best
Your desire to believe in
Angels in the hearts of men.
But pull your head on out
Your head please and give a listen
Shouldn't have to say it all again
The universe is hostile
So impersonal
Devour to survive
So it is, so it's always been ...
We all feed on tragedy
It's like blood to a vampire
Vicariously, I
Live while the whole world dies
Much better you than I.
Lately, Some Mencken...
H.L. that
is:
"As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
Billmon
reminds us:
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."
November Surprise? The Media.
Way back when, I predicted that reducing the number of troops in Iraq, along with parades and patriotic fanfare, and another declaration of "We're Winning", would be the big October surprise.
I knew I was wrong months ago when reports kept dribbling in about increases in troop numbers, Operation Together Forward in Baghdad, and Rove planning on driving the votes home by highlighting the war.
Stupid me.
Now, it seems the news networks want a hand in helping the GOP grunt the ball over the goal line. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens on Tuesday, but one flub by the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate has sent to media into a mindless frenzy. Apparently, the numerous dictums, even recent
ones, from our man-child president are just ho-hum by now; six years into his failed presidency. He's an idiot that can't speak well, yes, but he sure is authentic!
I know, I'm being gloomy, and I hope this flap goes away before it's featured as the first story on the nightly news
for the third fucking night in a row.
I watched with mort and marvel as Tim Russert, NBC's political "expert", grabbed his lower lip, yanked it over his pumpkin-sized head, and uttered this shit:
First the Democrats, they are furious about this because this is the third news cycle that this has dominated political news coverage...
Stop right there. Another Democratic circular firing squad, all generated by the media. Why is this the third consecutive news cycle where this has dominated everything? Because, for morons like you Tim, that's what passes for actual news.
Every time I see a little sign that our country may be on a path towards better leadership, I see this filth that passes for news, and I'm left wondering who will vote which way, or who will even vote.
Even if the Dem's gain control of one House, the sniping from the Right will be merciless, haughty, sickening, and un-American. It's coming...
