Bush-neocon parting of the ways?

These are truly disturbing times. I have a little trouble coming to grips with the fact that I find myself occasionally agreeing with Pat Buchanan. Politics does indeed make for strange bedfellows. Thank you, self, for that mental picture!

The neoconservative hour may be coming to an end in the Bush era. Reason: The cakewalk war they plotted long before 9-11, on which their dreams of Middle East empire and reputations hang, has gone awry

Dissent in the U.S. establishment is growing louder. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to George H.W. Bush, fears the elections, by giving the Shia majority dominance of Iraqi politics, could lead to "incipient civil war." Scowcroft thinks America's best bet may be to turn Iraq over to the United Nations or NATO, whose presence might be less detested and inflammatory than our own.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, seems even more pessimistic: "I do not think we can stay in Iraq in the fashion we are now in. ... If it cannot be changed drastically, it should be terminated." Brzezinski estimates it would take 500,000 troops, $500 billion and resumption of the draft to pacify Iraq.

And so, reality intrudes. Where once, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice and Bush marched in lockstep with the neocons, U.S. national interests and Bush political interests seem now to diverge from the neocon agenda of more troops in Iraq and expanding the war to Syria or Iran. Rumsfeld appears to have recognized this truth and begun to act on it. Hence, the Weekly Standard calls for his firing.

President Bush now approaches the crossroads LBJ reached in December 1967. Then, Gen. William Westmoreland came home to tell LBJ he needed 200,000 more troops, in addition to the 500,000 already committed. A war-weary LBJ said no. Came then the Tet Offensive, and the presidency of Lyndon Johnson was broken.

Bush is nearing his Tet moment. After the Jan. 30 elections, he will have three options. Persevere in a no-win war with 150,000 U.S. troops bleeding indefinitely until America turns on him, his policy and his party. Send in tens of thousands of fresh U.S. troops to crush the insurgency as we undertake a years-long program of training Iraqis to defend their own democracy. Third, find an honorable exit, and leave Iraq to the Iraqis.

The success or failure of the Bush presidency will likely hang (good choice of words -ed.) on his decision. For which, he can thank the neoconservatives.

He can thank them as they all ascend the gallows steps, Patrick me boy-o. Soon, I hope.

Bush Manure

We all know that Bush and all his henchmen are lyin' sacks o' shit. Molly Ivins knows it, too, but she has a real way with words. Via Working For Change.

Excuse me, but is that smoke in your ear?

I wouldn't go calling anyone a liar, but as we say in our quaint Texas fashion, this administration is stuffed with people who are on a first-name basis with the bottom of the deck. They've been telling us only four out of the 18 provinces in Iraq will be too unsafe to vote in. Doesn't sound that bad, does it? Unless you happen to know that about 50 percent of the population lives in those four provinces.

Resigned to the fact that Social Security will have to be dismantled because it's in such terrible, awful trouble, headed toward bankruptcy the day after tomorrow? Well, the $10 trillion in unfunded liabilities they keep talking about sure sounds like a load of trouble. Except that it's a completely phony number. Not based on what will happen in 25 years or 50 or 75, but on infinity. Forever and ever.

Now, in addition to the regular misleading, fudging, distorting and phony statistics games, we're getting actual covert propaganda, and dammittohell, they're making us pay for it. A quarter of a million bucks to a right-wing commentator to talk up No Child Left Behind. Why? Distributing video "news" releases to television stations made and paid for by the government, but not identified as such. It's not enough that Bush has the bulliest pulpit on earth, he has to sneak his message across with government propaganda? What the hell is this?

Here in the National Laboratory for Bad Government (She's in Texas - ed.), we are happy to help out by showing everyone else how not to solve problems, but it's really annoying when Bush insists on taking what didn't work here and making it nationwide.

Not that I'm accusing anyone of lying, of course, but these people are slicker than bus station chili. Count your change when dealing with Bushies

Thank you, Ms. Ivins. I'll be sure to count my change. It's probably all the money I'll have when this nightmare is over.

Happy 268

John Hancock, the first man to sign the Declaration Of Independence, was born on this date in 1737. It was a dangerous thing to do, going against the King of England, and he wrote his name quite large. A brave man.

Seeing as how we are now faced with the dangerous task of going against yet another King George, I think it would be interesting to install a tachometer at Mr. Hancock's final resting place to see how fast he's spinning.

Be careful

Cross-posted from TF&G:

Now your car can be used as a witness for the prosecution:

The National Transportation Safety Board wants all cars to be equipped with black box data recorders, which keep records of, as Fox News reports, "everything from speed, brake pressure, seat belt use and air bag deployment."

The Fox story sums up some privacy advocate objections, and includes this mordantly amusing example of regulators' thinking:

According to Joe Osterman, director of highway safety at the NTSB, the recommendation was inspired in part by a tragic auto accident involving a 86-year-old man who drove his car into a crowded Santa Monica farmers’ market last summer, killing 10 and injuring 63.

Osterman said a black box in the car might have not saved the people in the crash, but would have allowed investigators to find out how it happened and how cars could be better designed to reduce the likelihood of greater injury in the future.

Since there is no reason to believe that that tragedy occurred for any reason other than a bad driver stepping hard on the gas, thusly propelling him forward, at a time when a competent driver would have been stepping on the brakes, Osterman's comment belongs in the hall of fame of lame uses of tragedy to justify government action.

I debated this topic last December, when California became the first and so far only state to mandate that car buyers had to be told when their cars had the devices, on CNN's Talkback Live with Public Safety's Joan Claybrook; transcript here.

I saw an article in Newsday (the fishwrapper) yesterday at the shop about an accident here on Long Island where the anti-lock brake computer was allowed as evidence against the driver at fault. I'm still looking for the link to the story online. The story above was written last September.

Now, I personally think the computer is the greatest thing that ever happened to the automobile. They're cleaner, faster, and more powerful while using less gas than ever. You three-huggers bitch about a 10-cylinder Excursion, but it still gets better gas mileage than a mid-60s 6-cylinder and runs a thousand percent cleaner.

Thing is, if you got a problem with your car's computer tattling on you, you'd better get with your elected representatives, cause the computer in your car is here to stay.

Do as I say

AP:

EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AP) - A court-martial was ordered Tuesday for an Air Force officer charged with illegally shipping AK-47 assault rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers and other souvenirs from Iraq to this Florida Panhandle base.

[. . .]

Corrente:

[. . .]

But Rummy goes free:

We know that Rumsfeld (and other high FBI officials)

1. looted 9/11 relics (back here)
2. which is a Federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in jail (back here)
3. for which ordinary citizens have been indicted, prosecuted, convicted, and punished (back here).
(from deep within the Corrente Time Vault)

Oh, but what am I thinking? Rummy is a High Administration Official! And a Republican! And since we have become a government of men, not laws, that makes everything OK!

Much as I like to think my Air Force boys are the smartest service, this guy's a typical officer.

[. . .]

McMillion was a maintenance officer with the Eglin-based 728th Air Control Squadron in Iraq. Air Force officials said the alleged contraband was found in crates of equipment shipped to Eglin in September 2003 about two months before the ground radar unit returned.

If you're gonna do it, have the shit shipped to your fucking house, nitwit. Enlisted folks wouldn't have gotten caught.

Gloomy Glen

Glen's gettin' a passport:

I think I'm finally going to get a passport. It's generally useful, and I have this fantasy of spending two weeks in Ireland and maybe Wales. (I'm a Celtophile.) But the sudden impulse is simply that I may need to get out of here one day, just long enough to clear my head: my beloved country is really beginning to depress me.

[. . .]

Intelligent design, of course, is re-branded theology, and pre-Thomist at that. (Aquinas at least believed that reason and faith would arrive at the same conclusions, which made them equals; not so this crowd.) The most "scientific" argument ID's defenders can advance is, "Because I'm not able to figure out how it happened, Somebody brighter than I must have done it." I shudder to think of this country ruled and run by the suitably "educated" children of today.

[. . .]

It's getting scary, the traction these Creationists are getting. I can't believe so many people in this country are willing to throw away centuries (sometimes millennia) of scientific observation for this loony crap. The whole ID debate is just another Christo-fascist whitewash to make creationism palatable to the 'fence sitters'. Think 'Clear Skies', 'Healthy Forests', and 'No Child Left Behind'.

This Just In...

I'm sure there'll be more on this later. Joe Trippi, Dean's former campaign manager, came out on Hardball on MSNBC, for Rosenberg for DNC Chair. He says Dean is not all that interested in organizational matters and that Rosenberg is well suited to this position due to his experience. Trippi also said that Dean's forte is speaking out loudly, and that being DNC Chair would stifle him to a large extent. Stay tuned, sports fans.

Disclaimers

Pudentilla:

[. . .]

This conclusion, however, leads us to consider Oliver's campaign to make conservative pundits state whether they have received any funds from Il Ducetto's administration. We believe this is a worthy effort but insufficent. We need to ask the networks, newspapers and syndicators whether they know if any of the pundits who appear on or in their media outlets and/or receive payments from them have received compensation from Il Ducetto's administration or campaign. And if they don't know, we need to ask them why not.

Just a public statement and disclaimer. The Brain will never put its principles or ethics on sale for anyone. The world might not turn on what we say here, but you're getting it the way we see it.

Fox, henhouse, again

Yesterday I brought you Allan Hubbard. Today I bring you Robert Joseph:

WASHINGTON -- The man who insisted that President Bush make the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium for nuclear weapons in Africa is poised to assume a top State Department job that would make him the lead US arms negotiator with Iran and North Korea, according to administration officials.

Robert G. Joseph, a special assistant for national security to President Bush until a few months ago, is on the short list to become undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, the nation's senior diplomat in charge of negotiating arms control treaties, said the officials, who spoke on the condition they not be named.

[. . .]

Link via Laura Rozen.

The Devil you know

------------------------------------------------------
MSNBC Breaking News
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Bush to name Chertoff as secretary of Homeland Security -
President Bush has selected federal appeals court judge Michael Chertoff to be the new secretary of Homeland Security, officials said Tuesday.

About Chertoff:

[. . .]

Because Chertoff was recently vetted for the federal bench, we assume that he's passed his background check with flying colors, and we won't be hearing about any more World Trade Center love nests, arrest warrants. Mob pals, and all the other things that made the brief Kerik period such a fun time to be a journalist.

That's the "good" news. The bad news is that while Chertoff may lack the whiff of sex scandal that would put the NY tabloids on the case, he's arguably a worse choice than Kerik. In the days after 9/11, Chertoff -- as head of the criminal division under John Ashcroft -- was architect of some of the most regrettable policies of Bush I.

[. . .]

What's more, Chertoff was responsible for the badly botched prosecution of al-Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, who has yet to be brought to any type of justice even though he was arrested three-and-a-half years ago. Under his leadership, the Justice Department pursued a theory that Moussaoui was "the 20th hijacker" -- despite zero evidence to support that claim. However, that argument has been used as an excuse to deny the American public from information that might prove what really happened to Flight 93 on 9/11.

[. . .]

And we thought we dodged a bullet with Kerik. Schumer's already caved, so's Bill Press on MSNBC, and we got snookered again. Just like they did with 'Abu' Gonzales, the Senate Dems are gonna confirm this guy without a fight because he ain't Kerik. The same way Gonzales 'has to be better than Ashcroft'. Fucking idiots.

And then again, maybe not

I don't know if I agree, but Ezra makes a good point:

[. . .]

Dean has baggage. Lots of it. And while I'm confident in his ability to quickly silence the final sniggers at his scream, I'm more concerned about his potential to feed negative storylines. Assume Dean wins the race and, despite our best efforts, we lose seats in 2006. It's damn possible, we've got an unfriendly map and a rash of upcoming retirements. With the Great Liberal Hope occupying the top spot, the newspapers and Third Way'ers will have more than enough ammo rerun -- and even amplify -- the narrative of a fringe Democratic party long separated from the mainstream. That'll give the party's conservative wing more power and further alienate our progressive base. Worse, it increases the likelihood that the Party actually will actually engage in another ill-advised lurch to the right.

[. . .]

And he links to the same Gadflyer post about Rosenberg Gordon did. This is what I like about him[Rosenberg]:

[. . .]

. . . We don't need some old-guard, timid patsy who'll buckle under to the competing complaints of the Party's various constituencies, prima donnas and contract-seeking consultants who are currently paralyzing the Party by trying to please everyone during the campaign at the expense of winning the election.

[. . .]

Testicles.

Shakespeare's Sister weighs in too.

Bubba'n Dubya, Sittin' In A Tree....

MSNBC reports that Clinton and Bush are becoming fast friends.

For two men at opposite ends of the political spectrum, the relationship between the 43rd and 42nd presidents has grown surprisingly warm and personal over the last six months. Clinton endorsed Bush's approach to the tsunami catastrophe, defending him against criticism about his initial response as well as raising cash alongside the president's father. Friends and aides say the two men enjoy each other's company and, as fellow pros, respect each other's political talents.

Jay Leno says Bubba's just trying to get close to the Shrub so he can put the moves on Jenna and Not Jenna. I hope he's setting him up for an internship at his library. Either way, pictures please!

Who The Hell Is Rosenberg?

The Gadflyer supports Simon Rosenberg for DNC Chairman. I never heard of the guy. What do you think?

You Know You're a Republican When...

...You fire someone for supporting the troops. From Boldprint:

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., lost his post as chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs this week for the worst possible reason: He spoke out loudly against cuts in veterans programs at a time when House GOP leaders - and President Bush - were touting the party's wartime support for the troops.

Next time you see someone driving around with a "support the troops" ribbon on their car, let them know what Republicans think of the troops.

And he's a Republican! They're starting to eat their own if they don't follow the party line. Good. Eat hearty, boys.

I hope the VFW, of which I am a Life Member and which is firmly in the Bush camp, takes note of this.

The word of God

From Night Light:

[. . .]

God was asked about Tom Delay’s widely criticized use of quotes from Matthew 7 in a prayer service for victims of the Asian tsunami. “I gave mankind the tools to prevent that tragedy by use of early warning systems, but sadly they weren’t put in place.” He added regretfully, “That was not my choice. Why, I even gave the wealthier countries the money needed to get it done, but they just kept it.” When pressed further about DeLay He said “I forgive all my children, but distorting my words that way was despicable of him. It must be the bug spray.”

[. . .]

It bothers me too

From JRH:

[. . .]

Another thing that bothers me about this whole thing is that this is what we reserve our outrage for in this country. Hundreds of thousands of people get killed a couple of weeks ago, and it only inspires us to argue over who is charitable and who is not. We are involved in a war, with people (Americans and others) getting killed everyday, but we are largely apathetic about it. We make no demands on our government to do things right, or even to explain why the war isn't a complete waste of human life. But Randy Moss pretends to drop his pants and suddenly we're outraged and we all want to have our say.

[. . .]

American priorities, puh!

Nuremburg revisited

FORT HOOD, Texas (Reuters) - A lawyer for Charles Graner, accused ringleader in the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal, on Monday compared piling naked prisoners into pyramids to cheerleader shows and said leashing inmates was also acceptable prisoner control.

Graner's attorney said piling naked prisoners into pyramids and leading them by a leash were acceptable methods of prisoner control. He compared this to pyramids made by cheerleaders at sports events and parents putting tethers on toddlers.

"Don't cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?" Guy Womack, Graner's attorney, said in opening arguments to the 10-member U.S. military jury at the reservist's court-martial.

[. . .]

First and foremost, the 'I was just following orders' defense went out the window in 1945. Second, this fucking idiot lawyer should be thrown in jail just for drawing the parallel between what happened in Abu Ghraib and cheerleader competitions. What a fucking asshole.

A kick in the ass

WaPo via Melanie:

D.C. officials said yesterday that the Bush administration is refusing to reimburse the District for most of the costs associated with next week's inauguration, breaking with precedent and forcing the city to divert $11.9 million from homeland security projects.

Federal officials have told the District that it should cover the expenses by using some of the $240 million in federal homeland security grants it has received in the past three years -- money awarded to the city because it is among the places at highest risk of a terrorist attack. [my emphasis]

[. . .]

They say that it will cost close to $12 mil for security for the coronation . . . er, inauguration. It's the most expensive of these shindigs that we've ever held. Ya think they could have sprung for their own security, instead of expecting D.C. to pick up the tab. Is this what D.C.'s Homeland Security funds were earmarked for? Somehow, I don't think so.

Democracy at work

In Palestine. From the Dog:

[. . .]

Sorry. I was actually talking about Palestine, where Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas garnered around 65% of the vote and declared victory in the post-Arafat presidential election. BTW: international observers declared the election pretty clean by international standards, minimal interference from Israel, although there was a low turnout doubtless helped by a Hamas boycott.

[. . .]

Maybe we can learn a thing or two. Ya think?

Additions

To the rogues gallery. Remember this name, Allan Hubbard. From Corrente.