Quote of the Day - Late Night Edition

Cdr. Huber:

...

And I am horrified that, by fiat of the worst commander in chief in U.S. history, a vital decision on foreign policy is about to be dictated to Congress by a four-star general.

It's the fucking Principle, not malice

A megachurch canceled a memorial service for a Navy veteran 24 hours before it was to start because the deceased was gay. As the pastor states, it's about the principle of the thing, ya know - the word of Gawd, not about any ole' mlaice.

Cecil Sinclair, 46, who served in the first Gulf War "died Monday from an infection after surgery to prepare him for a heart transplant. " He worked as a janitor at High Point Church.

The 5,000-member High Point Church was founded in 2000 by Simons and his wife, April, whose brother is Joel Osteen, well-known pastor of the 38,000-member Lakewood Church in Houston. Now High Point meets in a 432,000-square-foot facility in Arlington, near Dallas.

Of course, John at Americablog and a few other places have had their say....... suffice it to say, sanctimonious bullshit ALWAYS sets me off, and yep - this quote did it.

"Can you hold the event and condone the sin and compromise our principles?" Simons said in the article. "We can't." *

"Even though we could not condone that lifestyle, we went above and beyond for the family through many acts of love and kindness," Simons said.**

* The pastor, 'Reverend' Gary Simons, is brother-in-law of nationally known preacher, Joel Osteen.
**Simons said ...

the church offered to pay for another site for the service, made the video and provided food for more than 100 relatives and friends of Sinclair's."

I fuckin' feel better......

Yes ...

I'll admit to being a Francophile. Pudentilla:

...

no french soldiers have died in iraq. french citizens pay half what americans do for better health care. do the french chuckle when right wing hacks in america mock them, or do they merely indulge themselves with a gallic shrug and a smile?

Best. Healthcare. In. The. World.

...

MANY advocates of a universal healthcare system in the United States look to Canada for their model. While the Canadian healthcare system has much to recommend it, there's another model that has been too long neglected. That is the healthcare system in France.

Although the French system faces many challenges, the World Health Organization rated it the best in the world in 2001 because of its universal coverage, responsive healthcare providers, patient and provider freedoms, and the health and longevity of the country's population. The United States ranked 37.

The French system is also not inexpensive. At $3,500 per capita it is one of the most costly in Europe, yet that is still far less than the $6,100 per person in the United States. [my em]

...

Tell me why we wouldn't want something like this here beside the fact the HMOs and Big Pharma won't make windfall profits every year?

A word about the masthead art

Thank you, Fixer, for the trip down memory lane with this week's art. It's very nostalgic, warm and fuzzy even, to recall the good ol' days of rum, sodomy, and the lash! Aaargh...

Perseid Meteor Showers

Last night I was walkin' my pup about 11:30. I do this every night, but last night I got a great reminder of what time of year it is. I was walking past my neighbor's house when the sky lit up. I thought his motion sensor light had come on. I looked up and there was a good size fireball to the south, headin' eastbound and down. Blue center, orange on the edge, trailin' flame. It was over in half a second, but damn, it was bitchin'!

The meteors won't all be that exciting of course, but tonight and tomorrow night are going to be the best nights for viewing the annual Perseid meteor shower, and it will be especially prime this year as it's the dark of the moon. It should be especially good if you live in area without much light pollution.

So get a comfy seat you can lean back in and go outside tonight and look up.

Roll over, Dems. Arf!

That darlin' Old Ay-rab:

President Bush has the Democrats' number on Capitol Hill. All he has to do is play the fear card and invoke the war on terror and they will cave.

What's more, the president has found out that he can break the law and the rubber stamp Democratic Congress will give him a pass every time.

It boggles the mind to imagine what secret executive orders the next president will uncover after Bush leaves office and what the American people will eventually learn about the secret infringement of their rights.

That's assuming he doesn't impose martial law and declare himself President For Life.

If he does in fact allow Democracy to return, he'll be safe from prosecution in Paraguay.

Quote of the Day

The great PSoTD in toto:

Anyone who thinks we need a horrible terrorist event in our country to "wake America up" is a potential terrorist. It doesn't matter what the reasoning is - they believe in the use of terrorism as a means to an objective of purpose in this country. And all of those people should be shipped out of this country immediately, even if Fox News can't staff their network anymore.

Drafty ...

Do I have to dig up all the instances where I've said one day Gord and I will be fixing Humvees in Kuwait?

WASHINGTON (AP) - Frequent tours for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the all-volunteer force and made it worth considering a return to a military draft, President Bush's new war adviser said Friday.

"I think it makes sense to certainly consider it," Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."

...

Shit that the Chimp is 'considering' today becomes policy in 6 months. I won't tell you 'I told you so' when they come for your kid.

Tip o' the Brain to Joe for the link.

Update:

And you know why they're considering this? Good ol' Cenk Uygur:

According to McClatchy Newspapers, Dick Cheney is on the precipice of convincing Bush to attack Iran. Diplomacy has gone nowhere because Cheney set a precondition that could not be met (stop enriching uranium before we negotiate over whether you should enrich uranium). There are almost no competent pro-diplomacy advocates inside the administration. All the generals who disagreed have been replaced. And the so-called opposition party is the biggest set of push-overs in the history of this country.

Do you think the Democrats will be able to stop Bush if he decides to strike Iran? If you do, you have no idea what you're talking about. It is an IGNORANT position to think that Democrats would even fight back against military strikes aimed at Iran, let alone effectively stop them. The Democrats WILL fold like a house of cards the minute the first bomb is in the air. They will rally around the flag like a bunch of trained Pavlovian dogs.

...

You don't think they're gonna stop with air strikes, do ya? The Iranians are going to retaliate against our troops in Iraq and, seeing the great job we're doing 'winning hearts and minds' there, I'm sure the locals are more than willing to help them. If we hit Iran, the draft will be just around the corner.

Yawn ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York police stepped up security throughout Manhattan and at bridges and tunnels on Friday in response to an Internet report -- which authorities said they could not verify -- that al Qaeda might be plotting to detonate a dirty bomb in the city.

...

I wonder what bad news they're trying to distract us from this time?

Sorry, but I've been lied to for so long by this administration, and the fact the info comes from these clowns, I'll take it seriously when I don't have to turn on the bathrooom light to take a leak in the middle of the night.

Give me whority* or give me death ...

As with every Saturday morning, barring cataclysm or vacation, another chapter of my novel The Fourth Estate is up at The Practical Press.

*Okay, it's a reach but it's early.

Obcenity ...

One man's porn is another's political witch hunt:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 — Tom Rogers, a retired Indianapolis detective, toils away most days in his suburban home office reviewing sexual Web sites and other Internet traffic to see whether they qualify as obscene material whose purveyors should be prosecuted by the Justice Department.

...

I know the kind of 'toiling' I'd be doing if I was surfing for porn all day long.

"Hey, where'd Fixer go?"

"See that little pile of dust on the chair in front of the computer?"

"Yeah?"

"That's him. No more bodily fluids."

Heh ... But seriously, this is what the government can waste your money on.

...

The grant, about $150,000 a year, has helped pay for Mr. Rogers and another retired law enforcement officer in Reno, Nev., to harvest and review complaints about obscene matter on the Internet that citizens register on the Justice Department Web site.

In the last few years, 67,000 citizens’ complaints have been deemed legitimate under the program and passed on to the Justice Department and federal prosecutors.

The number of prosecutions resulting from those referrals is zero. [my em]

...

So, we're paying these two jerk-offs 75 grand a year to field complaints from people who've had their sensibilities offended because they landed at a porn site, either accidentally or whatever? What's the test?

"Hey, Sam, did Granny Lesbian Fetish get ya off?"

"No, Tom, stayed limp as a noodle."

"Well, that ain't obscene. Next ..."

And you wonder why this guy looks like Smilin' Bob?

Pic courtesy of NYT.

Pic courtesy of Enzyte.

It'd be nice to use this money to ... say ... add a couple more inspectors to the FDA payroll. Maybe a couple more shrinks at the VA to help our guys coming back from the war? I don't know ... something useful as opposed to supporting a couple Viagra crash test dummies.

Great thanks (I think, heh ...) to the lovely Avedon for the NYT link.

The Meaning of American Pie

I got this via e-mail from an old school friend just a few minutes ago. I think it behooves us all to attend a class reunion every half century or so. I liked it so much I had to share.

It's about music, but it goes deeper than that. Call it "20 years of America in 8:45". The shit we're going through now may be worse, and indeed it is because it's NOW and could have been prevented if the powers-that-be had any sense of THEN, but it's nothing new. Enjoy.

And yes, we did dress like that...

The power of the purse ...

Digby hits the nail on the head:

...

Only in a society and economy fueled by high tech imperial warmaking could "sacrifice" be seen as a result of ending the war. But that's how Sanchez sees it, and rightly so. Her constituents would sacrifice their well-paid livelihoods if she were to vote against that defense spending bill. Neat how that works, isn't it?

...

Indeed. My dad made (and I hate to admit this because I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea) millions as a defense contractor during the Vietnam War. He had contracts with Grumman Aerospace, Republic Aircraft, Rockwell, Bell Helicopter, Boeing Aircraft, Remington Arms, DoD, and NASA and employed 150 people (union, he was a Dem after all. Well, except for me, whom he paid minimum wage so he didn't have to hear the remarks about "the boss' kid having a cushy job"). His business started going down when Republic Aircraft left Long Island not long after Vietnam was over. He always told me that he would never see the profits he did during that time unless we got into another war.

He'd kid me when I was in the Air Force, asking to arrange something like dropping a bomb in the wrong place, in order to drum up more business. His favorite line was "America runs on war" and he was absolutely right. At least my dad earned the money he made from the American taxpayer (I know how hard he worked, watched him kill himself working 18 hour days to make that damn company run), not swindled it away like Halliburton, KBR, and the rest of the current crop with connections.

The Military/Industrial complex and the filthy rich who run it have a lot more to say about how this illegal war will end than the elected representatives of the people. They employ a lot of people who vote (how many thousand people work at Boeing?) and if this war ends, those people are gonna vote with their wallets. All they need to hear is they're losing their jobs (and more importantly benefits) because of government cutbacks.

The moral aspects of this war should be enough to bring it to an end, but it won't as long as so many jobs depend on keeping it going.

It's easy for soldiers to score heroin in Afghanistan

Salon has a good article on the ease with which our troops can score smack in Afghanistan, the how and why, and what may lie in store for returning Vets. This is going to be with us for a generation or more. May require a site pass. Worth it.

With deepest apologies to Rudyard Kipling:

When yer bored out of yer skull on Afghanistan's plains,
Roll out yer needle and shoot up yer veins...

Simultaneously stressed and bored, U.S. soldiers are turning to the widely available drug for a quick escape.

BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- Just outside the main gate to Bagram airfield, a U.S. military installation in Afghanistan, sits a series of small makeshift shops known by locals as the Bagram Bazaar. For Afghans, it is the place to buy American goods, but the stalls that make up the heart of the bazaar are also well known for what they provide American soldiers stationed at Bagram. Walking through the bazaar it takes less than 10 minutes for a vendor in his early 20s to step out and ask, "You want whiskey?" "No, heroin," I tell him. He ushers me into his store with a smile.

Back in the States, it is not difficult to find a soldier who has returned from Afghanistan with an addiction. Nearly every veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom I have spoken with was familiar with heroin's availability on base, and most knew at least one soldier who used while deployed. In June, I spent a week in Southern California talking to veterans who had used while in Afghanistan. Getting one of them to talk to me on the record, however, was tougher.

But they also don't want to get in trouble with the military for talking to the media. They believe that tarnishing the military's image would bring far more consequences than actually getting caught for using (my em).

Yeah, the military's got enough PR problems these days. Yeesh.

The methadone clinic in the West Los Angeles VA hospital itself has seen significantly more. An individual familiar with the methadone program at the hospital says they are "lined up 50 or 60 deep each morning." While the source does not know the service record of the patients, the source says, "These are young guys." The VA has 250 substance abuse centers nationwide.

Belcher of New Directions expects the caseload to pick up later, echoing Jodie Trafton's words about a delay between addiction and treatment. The Afghanistan and Iraq veterans Belcher's group has been seeing have been discharged about two years on average. "That's how long it takes for them to be forced into a detox unit by family, or law enforcement, or circumstances."

Both Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are coming home with substance problems. But the reasons behind their addictions are frequently different.

Because the deployment to Iraq is so much larger than the deployment to Afghanistan, with more than five times as many troops in country at any given time, the VA is likely to be treating more Iraq veterans than Afghanistan veterans for substance abuse. Anecdotally, addiction among veterans returning from Iraq seems largely linked to post-traumatic stress disorder. Overall, more than a third of the VA's 350,000 substance abuse patients from every era also suffer from PTSD. For soldiers suffering from PTSD, the use of heroin and other illicit drugs is frequently a form of self-medication, and a way to keep their stress and trauma at bay.

Many of the addicts returning from Afghanistan, however, point to sheer boredom as the reason for their use. "I had to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, but half the time there was nothing to do," one reservist who served at Bagram complained. Another expressed frustration at the number of contractors sharing their positions. "It really pissed us off that we were there doing the same job as KBR guys who were making three or four times as much. It sucked." Bored and disillusioned with the process and mission at hand, many soldiers turn to heroin to pass the time and escape the monotony. While heroin is available in Iraq, it is that much easier to obtain in Afghanistan, a source country.

But both conflicts have something in common with a prior war -- Vietnam. [...]

There's that 'V word' again. The parallels continue to grow:

The number of troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan recently passed 1.5 million early this year. No expert has yet ventured an estimate of what percentage will come home addicted to heroin. For now, Anthony Belcher is going with his gut. "You can make analogies to Vietnam ... Afghanistan and Iraq, especially Iraq, seem to be another Vietnam."

Track suits and running shoes instead of black pajamas and Ho Chi Minh sandals, sand instead of jungle. They're still shootin' AKs at our guys, though. Some things never change.

The 'how':

The shopkeeper apologizes for the delay in the courier's return, lights a cigarette, and tells me to call ahead next time. He offers me his cell number. "I can have it ready then, no wait. But now you have to wait 10, 20 minutes. OK?"

I ask why he doesn't have any heroin ready to sell, that last year shops had heroin on hand. He apologizes again, and says the district governor has cracked down. "They are sweeping the shops now, because of the Cheney bomb."

Now shopkeepers have moved big ticket items off-site for safety. Bulletproof vests, DVD players, military gear and other items stolen or traded for on base have been relocated to protect against confiscation. Heroin, hard liquor and Viagra, meanwhile, have been moved to locations within a 10- to 15-minute radius of the bazaar.

Gee, what a crackdown! 15 minutes is less time than you wait for a pizza.

There is nuch, much more in the article. Also, at the bottom of page 4 there are links to related articles that may be of interest. Check it out.

The party of hypocrisy ...

Stolen from PW @ Jane's.

The environment is all around us and closing in...

Good stories, one in Newsweek about global warming, and in related news, one in Time about New Orleans.

Nah, no such thing ...

As global warming. Yeah, and if you ever told me we'd get a tornado in Brooklyn I'd ask you to share whatever you were smoking.

An EF-2 tornado tore through Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

Nor do we get flooding like this unless we get nailed with a hurricane.

Bayside, Queens Long Island Rail Road station this morning.

More here.

So what, is this what we can expect on a regular basis now? But Al Gore is fat ... like Michael Moore.

To Fresno and Back*

*With apologies to Audie Murphy and Fresno.

As you know (backstory here), Me'n Mrs. G went to Fresno to pick up her new sled last Saturday. The motorcycle part went very well, the folks at Harley-Davidson/Buell of Fresno were friendly and professional and treated us beautifully and everything went smoothly, exactly as planned. No glitches whatsoever. They threw in a coupla $24.95(!!!) T-shirts, a chrome license plate frame, and a coupla nylon ratchet-type tie-down straps that had secured a new Hawg in its shipping crate.

Those tie-downs saved my ass. I had one set with me and was prepared to buy a set if I had to, but I didn't have to. Please enjoy the funny visuals of, a) the service department wise-ass who stalled the bike trying to ride it up the loading ramp into our pickup and then just sat on it while sorta paddling with his feet and exhorting two of his minions to push faster, dammit!. Even I got a kick out of that one. I've loaded hundreds of bikes into trucks and never saw that before! Pushing someone else's fat ass up a ramp is usually not in the cards. Heh.

Funny visual b) yours truly sweating all over the new bike in the 100° Fresno coolth whilst trying to figure out how to tie down a motorcycle I'd never tied down before into a pickup that had never had one tied down in it before, using only locally available materials and 40 years experience. The comp tie-downs did the trick. I was a little leery of ratchet tie-downs without hooks before, but they were what was called for given the lack of tie-down points on this bike, and now I kinda like 'em.

Kind of a sad commentary on our litigious society was that the deal closer guy had Mrs. G sign a buncha places that she had declined things like the extended warranty and insurance (we had our own) so when something went wrong later on we couldn't come back and sue 'em. We're old school - you get the money, we get the bike, we'll take it from here, see ya around. Not everybody's like that, and I don't blame 'em one bit for taking precautions.

"...the havoc Gord and Mrs. G are wreaking on the people of Truckee with the new bike. Heh ...- comment by Fixer.

It's a nice thought, but the only thing that got any havoc wreaked on it was me'n Mrs. G. We're talkin' climate change and deteriorating infrastructure pretty much from here on out.

We left home a little after 6AM, just after daylight. Temperature was 44°. Naturally, as we came down outta these hyar hills and the day progressed, it warmed up to about 98° by the time we got to Fresno, which is smack dab in the middle of California's Central Valley. Nothing unusual about a hot summer day in those parts, so we were expecting it.

What we didn't expect was the pickup's thermometer to read 111° when we passed back through Sackatomatoes Sacramento at 5PM on our way home. That's pretty warm, even for there. Thank you, Mr. Toyota, for that lovely air conditioner! An hour and a half and 6000 vertical feet later when we got home, the temp was a gorgeous 76°, thus reaffirming why I like living in the Sierra, which on many days is the coolest spot in the whole state.

Interestingly enough, the very next day Sacramento set a new record for its lowest high temperature for the date ever at 76°. Go figure.

I think a 67° swing in the same day might be a 'personal best' for me. Maybe I'll go from the top of Mt. Whitney at dawn to the depths of midday Death Valley to try and beat it, but I'd have to go out of my way to do that instead of just going about my business like on this trip.

Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure - Steppenwolf

I-80 down to Sac ain't too bad, except for the aroma of fryin' truck brakes. US99 from there on south is fuckin' junk. The fast lane's pretty bad, but the truck lane's worse. The next time you slice a tomato or put on a cotton shirt, they rode in a big rig up or down that road from farm to market. As a result of all that wear, the surface is more like glued-down gravel than pavement. It's bumpy and potholed as well, and it sucks. It doesn't get resurfaced very often because that would cost money and impede commerce. It might get fixed more often if it collapsed, but it's got nowhere to collapse to. It's actually somewhat dangerous to drive on and there are accidents on it all the time. It's scarier'n shit, too. It had my full and complete attention for the lovely 320 miles we enjoyed on it. I only used it because it's the only direct route to where we were going.

I-80 back up into the mountains is just as bad. Every item labelled Made in China (or, increasingly, Hecho en China. Heh.) that comes into this country through the Golden Gate heads east to your local Wal-Mart up I-80 on a truck. A tremendous amount of truck traffic passes right by my house every day.

Exacerbating the problem is the weather conditions in the mountains in winter. The big rigs are clawing for uphill traction with several sets of tire chains. The snowplows haul ass in a shower of sparks and sand to keep the road clear. Thousands of folks in a mad dash to take their money to Reno don't help. Then there's the Chinese Gambling Tour Buses...(shudder!)

I-80 through the Sierra gets fixed pretty often because it gets real dangerous in the wintertime. Folks crash all over the place, and it closes the road for hours, not to mention the time and expense of emergency responders. If you want a thrill, picture a big rig swapping ends in front of you on an icy downhill slope that you can't really stop on either. All you can do is try to slow down without sliding out yourself. You just sorta aim your rig and look for a soft cheap place to hit. Real 'pucker power'. In between fixin's, I-80 gets pretty bad pretty quick.

I'm not really snivelling about road conditions. They're the way they are because of overuse and under-funding for maintenance. It's the way it is for a lot of reasons and I'm used to it if not happy about it. Folks who use those roads every day probably don't even notice it. I'm a lot happier stayin' up hyar in the hills and hidin' from the world under my porch. I have friends there.

Some stats: Total mileage for the day was 525. Elapsed time was 12½ hours. One stop each in either direction for food, to take on fuel, and to drain the dogs. $60 for gas and $40 for breakfast and lunch out, which leads us to what I call "Gord's Theorem" - "These days, a hunnert miles costs twenny bucks". The corollary to which is, "Why, tarnation, I remember when ya could spend a week in a nice whorehouse fer less'n that!"

The mission was successful and a good time was had by all. The trip kicked our ass for a day or so, but everybody's fine now. Thanks fer puttin' up with my rant.

Keep your eyes on Fixer & Gordon for a 'first impressions' post on the new bike in the next coupla days.

Bush as Clouseau

p m carpenter's commentary on the situation in Basra:

Maybe Dick only meant to say that Basra is in the last throes of things going pretty well, because the less tendentious view is that the city is imploding from "the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors."

That, anyway, is how the International Crisis Group looks at it. And given Mr. Cheney's rather chronic case of the wrongs, I believe I'll go with the ICG.

Up to a point, that is. Because in addition to its above assessment of mayhem and carnage, the ICG, as reported by the Washington Post, "described Iran, Britain and the United States as equally confused about what is happening in Basra."

Now hold it right there. Other nations may possess more resources, others more history, and still others more cultural traditions; but when it comes to confusion, the Bush administration bows to no country.

The administration's obliviousness to Basra's deteriorating situation reminds me of Inspector Clouseau's analytical powers -- especially the classic scene in which the unobservant detective devotes all his attention to berating a posturing blind man for packing around an "unlicensed minkey," while the cohorts of the imposter -- who's actually a look-out man -- are robbing the nearby bank.

And it's not just Basra, for its implications elsewhere are devastating: "The current U.S. security operation to 'clear, hold and build' in Baghdad and its surroundings is almost a replica of Operation Sinbad, which British and Iraqi forces conducted in Basra from September 2006 to March of this year with a mission of 'clear, hold and civil reconstruction.'"

Hence our continued presence is merely a waiting game for the bad guys -- a farce being played out with deadly predictability. As one U.S. intelligence official candidly framed it: "The British have basically been defeated in the south."

And this comes after the Brits' oft-touted "victory" in the south, which we'll soon be told we're achieving in Baghdad.

I guess the Brits figured out they were assigned to the part of Iraq without any oil and decided to leave before they had to admit defeat.

Defeat for Cheney and Bush will be if we have to leave without a lock on the oil. They will gladly kill thousands more U.S. troops in their heroic effort for Big Oil's bottom line.

Rove's Diary

Go see "Rove's Diary" at The Crisis Papers:

Impeachment "off the table"? Thank you, Madame Speaker. You've just let us pass Go as often as we like, collect the $200 each time, and hang onto a permanent Get Out of Jail card. Thank God! Even just the existence of an impeachment panel -- since it's pretty certain the Senate would not convict -- would derail many of our initiatives, forcing us to devote most of our time and energy on playing defense, not our strongest suit.

Dems are clueless about how to stop us. They're used to playing by the rules, getting along to go along, compromising to get things done, democratic niceties, etc. But we don't operate that way. That way lies namby-pamby, always worrying about who not to offend. You think like that and your agenda gets bogged down in the reality-world.

It's much more effective to rev up the old rammer, hit 'em and hit 'em hard, grab what we can get, full-scale smashmouth politics, call their bluff, demonize them, cut 'em off at the knees, rub their noses in their powerlessness, find their weak points and go for the jugular, take their strong points and demolish them. You'd think after six years, the hapless Dems would have figured all this out by now, but they still stand there like deer in the middle of the road, mesmerized by the headlights of our power and ruthlessness. God, I love this job!

In short, we're good to go for another 16 months. And, if things somehow go spinning out of control and it looks like we may be facing political or criminal jeopardy or a landslide defeat of the GOP at the polls, some "imminent" act of terror might "require" us to declare martial law, postpone the election, and rule by decree for awhile. Let them suck on that one!

We'll probably have to engineer a replacement for al-Maliki, who is to governance what a fish is to a bicycle. Petraeus, who is dependent on our favors, will give us six more months after September -- he'll report that there is some good "progress" on the ground and the new Iraqi government "deserves a chance" to succeed -- and we'll try to get six or eight more months after that to take us through the election campaign. Petraeus then can join al-Maliki among the fall-guys when the war is lost. Joining the scapegoat list will be the Democrats, of course, who didn't "support the troops" and thus stabbed our war effort in the back. Certainly, we in the Bush Administration are not going to be caught anywhere near that humiliating defeat.

Domestically, we'll consolidate our power base inside the government and take care of our enemies outside, if you get my drift. The Dems certainly have helped give us the enormous police powers that make our job such fun. We're always two steps ahead of them, and, surprisingly, they haven't put two and two together as to why we always know how to block their next move.

Gotta run. I'm rehearsing another rap number for a You Tube ad against the Democrats. It's called "Lie Back and Enjoy It, Bee-itch."

Parody and satire are never very far from the truth. Grrr.