GOP Hypocrite of the Year

Guess who. From BuzzFlash:

Look, when your daddy engineers a perennial milquetoast D.C. commission to haul your butt out of the frying pan, you should already feel like you're back in nursery school.

But when the group of status quo insiders, including your father's consigliere, concludes that you've crapped in your pants, killed all the livestock and burnt the house down -- and you sit there and basically say "thanks, but I've got more important things to do," then you are beyond being a hypocrite; you're a dangerous moron.

Bush is no longer content with achieving the oil grab, he wants U.S. GIs to continue to die so that he isn't "embarrassed' by withdrawing them from the most dangerous areas and appearing to "lose" the war.

That's criminal behavior and misconduct in office to sacrifice lives for a man's ego.

But BuzzFlash can't indict or impeach Bush, we can just declare him the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of 2006.

They're too kind. He may very well be the biggest hypocrite - and many other negatives as well - in the GOP since its inception. In a party full of 'em, that's quite a distinction.

Explains a lot ...

I got about 8 sets of Man Magic in my toolbox ... tha's right ... heh ...

Ladies and Gentlemen ...

The President of the United States:

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I thought we would succeed quicker than we did.

God, it's so embarrassing to travel out of the country.

They were warned ...

Brother Lurch has a piece up showing that the Chimp was briefed on the deteriorating situation in Iraq over two years ago. The briefers described the current scenario accurately and warned of the consequences if the flawed policy in Iraq was pursued.

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And so now we are come upon the dark days of 2006, (and 2007, and 2008) when the world sits on the sidelines watching, waiting for the Quarterback of the Free World to be blitzed and dumped 75 yards behind the scrimmage line as he desperately flounders back and forth trying to find someone anyone that he can lateral off to in order to make the lost ball someone else's fault. His line still struggles to hold off the opposing players, some of whom have gotten into the backfield and are pursuing him. Some of his own running backs, far downfield are waving their arms trying to signal their open position as Mr Bu$h scrambles, but h[e] doesn't see them because the game has always been about him, rather than moving the ball and scoring a touchdown.

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Unless the Chimp and Cheney are impeached or arrested, or Congress pulls the purse strings shut, our brothers and sisters will continue to die in Iraq until 2009.

The World Has Had Enough!

Heh ... deuddersun. And yes, we could do a better job.

Come on and Cry Me a River,Cry Me a River....

I cried a river over you.....

Poor Pathetic Poppy.

When I first saw this I almost felt bad for Poppy. He sounds old,tired and frail. And I do have respect for my Elders. But this man isn't sorry for the hell his oldest son has unleashed on this planet. Nope. He's sorry because the "Bush Family Legacy" is forever tied to W and his demented,delusional and delirious douchebaggery. GOOD.

America,this crime family is precisely WHY political dynasties of any stripe are a very.BAD.IDEA. I don't give a damn what party they're from. I hope there are investigations of the Bush family all the way back to Nazi Germany. I want their ugly,nasty,filthy laundry aired on the public square. They're criminals,thieves and liars. Now they can add murderer and genocidal maniac to their "legacy".

And this guy can kiss my ass.

Tell you what buddy,tell that shit to our troops in that big fucking clusterfuck of a sandbox. I'd bet most of those folks would love to work 3 fucking days a week and then get to spend 4 days with their families you useless piece of crap. Not to mention that your "job" Representative Kingston,doesn't involve getting shot at or RPG'd. You prick,you make 165K a year,paid by the American Taxpayer(not counting your perks and"other income"). And you worked what? 100 days and some change this year? Fuck You. If We the People need you to work 24/7/365 then by god you should do it,with a smile. If that's too much for you,FIND ANOTHER JOB. Quit you little weasel. Read my lips,you are a Public Servant. So serve or get the fuck out of the way. And you had the BALLS to vote against raising the minimum wage how many times?

Or whine to my husband who already this week has clocked about 60 hours of work. And he will be going in to work to put in a 15 hour day tommorrow. You Sir are not fit to shine my husband's shoes. Tell ya what you whiner,trade jobs with my husband for a year. You'll get a taste of what it means to work,and the people of Georgia would have a man in office who gave a damn about working families and poor people. It's a win/win. But,you wouldn't last a week in my hubby's job because a)you'd have to have some actual skills and b)you'd have to get dirty and be outside in the cold.

I'm so sick of grown people who think they are entitled to everything just because they've decided they're better than everyone else. Suck it up and do what everyone else has to. Work and stop your whining.

Bring back lead poisoning

Think Progress

"The Bush administration is considering doing away with health standards that cut lead from gasoline, widely regarded as one of the nation's biggest clean-air accomplishments," the AP reports. "Battery makers, lead smelters, refiners all have lobbied the administration to do away with the Clean Air Act limits."

Lead is dirt cheap, and from an engine's standpoint is actually better than reformulated cleaner-emissions gasoline in terms of lubrication and anti-knock qualities.

When I worked in the Standard Oil refinery in El Segundo "Where The Sewer Meets The Sea" CA many years ago, we had tetraethyl lead gas additive by the tank-car load. It was one of the most dangerous substances in a dangerous environment. One drop could kill you.

Engines don't have that problem. Neither do batteries and paint, just people, but people's health isn't seen as contributing to the lead-using industries' bottom line, only as unwanted, unnecessary overhead, possibly capable of being overcome by greasing Repuglican palms.

We got the lead out of gasoline and paint, most fishing sinkers and shotgun shells, and nearly everything else except automotive batteries, which could do it if they wanted to.

Leave the lead out. If I want heavy-metal poisoning, I'll eat some albacore.

7 December

Today might be a good day to remember about a nation, in an attempt to maintain and expand an empire built on a desire for hegemony and access to natural resources in a large part of the world, but couched in terms of 'liberation', which pre-emptively criminally attacked another.

I think it would also be good to remember that the nation that was attacked eventually won the conflict and hanged a whole lot of the aggressors by the neck until they were dead.

Archeological find

An archeological team, digging in Washington DC , has uncovered 10,000 year old bones and fossil remains of what is believed to be the first Politician.

"Let my river flow..."

Following up on yesterday's post, here is an article and video on the opening of the gates to restore the Lower Owens River. Los Angeles' Mayor Villaraigosa makes a humorous, or perhaps ironic, freudian slip in his address to the assembled throng. Made 'em laugh. Maybe a little nervously. Go see.

LATimes

The largest river habitat restoration effort ever attempted in the West was jump-started at 12:15 p.m., when Villaraigosa turned a control knob to open a new clamshell-shaped steel gate at a diversion dam that has been directing the waters that have flowed into the Los Angeles Aqueduct since 1913.

The event marked a brief detente in historic water wars that have boiled in the Owens Valley since the early 1900s, when Los Angeles city agents posed as ranchers and farmers to buy land and water rights in the valley. Their goal was to build an aqueduct that would help transform Los Angeles into a metropolis.

The stealth and deception became grist for books and movies that portrayed the dark underbelly of Los Angeles' formative years.

The most notable movie is Chinatown directed by Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson.

This is a good thing, but besides the obvious benefits of riparian restoration, I hope at some point they let some water flow into Owens Lake. Just enough to cover it to hold down the clouds of alkali dust ("Keeler fog") stirred up when the wind blows, which is pretty often.

One thing at a time.

McCain on the ISG

For all those who think McCain would make a good President:

...

The sharpest break with the [Iraq Study Group] report's recommendations came from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has criticized the Bush administration's war strategy and called for boosting U.S. troop strength in Iraq. He called "tenuous at best" the report's linkage between the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict and the violence in Iraq, and objected to any "limited timeframe" on the U.S. military presence.

"Only by cracking down on independent militias, reducing criminal and terrorist activity, and protecting the population and key infrastructure - none of which can be accomplished without more troops - can a political settlement begin to take hold," McCain said in a statement.

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I don't know what the fuck they did to him in Hanoi, but he seems to have a case of Delayed Onset Stupidity. Did he learn anything from Vietnam? Did he forget how many GIs (58,000) were not as fortunate as he was (he actually got to go home)? Did he forget they all died (let alone the maimed and those who came home with demons) in an unjust, optional war and were also victims of the 'let's throw more troops at a failed situation' mindset in Washington at the time? Did he forget his stay at the Hanoi Hilton was a direct result of the policy he's advocating today?

Yes, Senator, let's just send more young men and women into that meat grinder. Two years from now we'll realize we're in the same place we are today, except more of our nation's sons and daughters will have died. It's time to get out now, not send more troops in hopes of salvaging something that will never come close to the objectives stated when we embarked on this folly. This supposed 'future President' is advocating proven failure: more troops and don't talk to our enemies:

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McCain, who is expected to seek the presidency in 2008, was also skeptical of the recommendation to involve Syria and Iran: "You have to understand that the Iranians and the Syrians do not have common interests with us."

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Is there any difference between him and the Chimp? Not so much it seems. We have to talk to everyone who might be able to help us get out and has influence with the people carrying AKs and RPGs on the ground. James Baker said as much yesterday:

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"For 40 years we talked to the Soviet Union during a time when they were committed to wiping us off the face of the Earth," Mr. Baker said. "So you talk to your enemies, not just your friends."

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As I said the other day, it is in Iran and Syria's best interest not to have anarchy prevail so close to their territory:

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It's time to get out and let the Iraqis sort out what works for them. Diplomatically, we should enlist Iran and Syria's aid to prevent a failed state existing between them, as Chuck Hagel said yesterday.

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And for a man who wants to be President to think this does not stem from the Arab - Israeli conflict is either in the pocket of the Israel lobby or totally out of touch with what's actually going on in the world. Every source of conflict in that part of the world is derivative of the Arab - Israeli conflict and our unconditional support for everything Israel does.

It's time to dispel the myth that John McCain is some sort of Patton or MacArthur, anointed by both Right and Left to lead us into the Great Enlightened Dawn. He's just a self-serving piece of shit who will do or say anything to get into the White House.

Alternate Brainfart

This appears in our left sidebar:

"You gotta stop thinking with the alternate brain, Sarge." - Col. William 'Stonewall' Bryant to Sgt. Fixer after freeing him from the custody of the London Metropolitan Police.

One wonders how much those Bobbies raised when they took up a collection to bribe Col. Bryant to take him back...

Goodness Gracious! The Truth!

Maureen Dowd on Gates and Rumsfeld:

First Junior took over the house with grandiose plans to remodel it and make it the envy of the neighborhood. But then he played with matches and set the house on fire. So now he's frantically trying to stop the flames from torching the whole block.

Mr. Gates asserted that if America left Iraq in chaos, Iran and Syria could encroach more, and Turkey and Saudi Arabia might jump in to stop the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis by Shiites. "We're already seeing Hezbollah involved in training fighters for Iraq," he said. "I think all of that could spread fairly dramatically."

It was the sort of realistic assessment that never came from Rummy, except when he privately admitted in a classified Nov. 6 memo that their Iraq strategy was "not working well enough or fast enough," offering a silly hodgepodge of wildly tardy or dubious options, like telling the Iraqis to "pull up their socks."

So with the Pentagon deciding whether to Go Big, Go Long or Go Home, Rummy urged the White House to Go Minimalist and simply streamline the spin.

Junior took the advice to manage perceptions by minimizing Rummy two days after he sent the memo. [...]

The old criticisms of whether Mr. Gates massaged intelligence were forgotten; the senators would have embraced an ax-murderer if he had seemed sensible about Iraq.

There was no blathering yesterday about "known unknowns" or "Henny Penny" pessimists. The soft-spoken, vanilla Mr. Gates offered a sharp contrast from the finger-wagging, flavorful Rummy. In a remarkable shift from the mindless bellicosity and jingoism of the last few years, Mr. Gates said he did not favor military action against Iran or Syria.

After lunch the nominee clarified his remarks, saying he had not meant to criticize the troops, that the reversals in Iraq were not their fault. They don't lose battles in Iraq because there are no battles. There's just a counterinsurgency that they can't see and that they weren't prepared or equipped to fight.

Gates hasn't even sat in his office chair yet, and already he's light-years ahead of Rumsfeld, in perception at least.

It remains to be seen, of course, what he can and/or will do, or more correctly, what he will be allowed to do.

A little good news...

As regular readers of the Brain will know, the Owens Valley in Eastern California is one of my favorite places. Thanks to the end of a long court process, the valley is going to get some long overdue environmental relief today. From the LATimes with photos and videos:

INDEPENDENCE, Calif -- Hundreds of spectators led by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are expected to gather today to watch the 62-mile-long Lower Owens River ripple anew with its first surge of High Sierra water in nearly a century.

The largest river habitat restoration effort ever attempted in the West (my em) will launch with Villaraigosa's push of a button, opening a steel gate at a dam that has been diverting the Lower Owens' water into the Los Angeles Aqueduct since 1913.

If all goes according to plan, within five years nature will transform the revived river's lazy loops into a lush serpentine oasis of willows and cottonwood trees, wetlands for waterfowl and shorebirds and warm water fisheries for bass, catfish, frogs and crayfish.

Please read the rest and watch the videos.

Suggested reading :

Rivers in the Desert by Margaret Leslie Davis

Water and the California Dream by David Carle

As Mark Twain once said, and California has taken to heart, "Whisky's fer drinkin'. Water's fer fightin' over."

Update:

Passerby left us this comment:

Man, we caught so many trout out of the Owens River one day that we nearly got nauseous cleaning 'em all in the bathtub of our hotel...

Rainbows and browns till our arms were tired. Never seen anything like it.

Not sure those hotel maids ever saw anything like that, either.

Next time, PB, check for this feature, common amongst the better accommodations in the area:



Just look for a lotta cats hangin' around!

Been there ...

The one and only Paul Rieckhoff, citing a story on NPR, via Blondie:

Soldier Tyler Jennings says that when he came home from Iraq last year, he felt so depressed and desperate that he decided to kill himself. Late one night in the middle of May, his wife was out of town, and he felt more scared than he'd felt in gunfights in Iraq. Jennings says he opened the window, tied a noose around his neck and started drinking, "trying to get drunk enough to either slip or just make that decision."

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In my case, I was sitting in my van with a pistol to my head.

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Five months before, Jennings had gone to the medical center at Ft. Carson, where a staff member typed up his symptoms: "Crying spells... hopelessness... helplessness... worthlessness." Jennings says that when the sergeants who ran his platoon found out he was having a breakdown and taking drugs, they started to haze him. He decided to attempt suicide when they said that they would eject him from the Army. [my em]

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Fortunately, when I began to deal with these symptoms (instead of snorting coke and drinking myself into oblivion daily), I was already out of the military and married to an understanding woman who helped me through it. This treatment is downright unconscionable and obscene.

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It's time for the military to step up. Just last week, they finally released new guidelines for troops suffering from mental health problems in theatre. It's a good start, but just issuing another memo isn't going to make difference.

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Memos won't do it. Prosecution and jail for officers and NCOs who harass their people when they need serious help will.

Hebeas Corpus

In the truest sense of the term. My pal Lambert reminds me that he and the guys and girls at CorrenteWire have been chasing the 'Bush Gulag' story for over a year. Yesterday I directed you to a post over there about the camp at Stare Kiejkuty, Poland. Today, Lambert follows up with one on the wherabouts of the 7,000 - 35,000 'detainees from the War on Terra' that were presumably interned at the '21st Century Gulag Archipelago':

Let's do some arithmetic on how many prisoners Bush is holding in his gulags.

  1. We know that there are thousands of prisoners (estimates range from 7,000 to 35,000).

  2. Gitmo holds only 500

  3. So, where are the missing thousands? The only alternatives I can think of:

    a. They've been released

    b. They're still in jail

    c. They've been disappeared.

Barring divine intervention, the bodies of the missing thousands occupy time and space in this world. Where are they?

...

Hitler, Stalin, Bush, birds of a feather.

The Army you have ...

ANNISTON, Ala. -- Field upon field of more than 1,000 battered M1 tanks, howitzers and other armored vehicles sit amid weeds here at the 15,000-acre Anniston Army Depot -- the idle, hulking formations symbolic of an Army that is wearing out faster than it is being rebuilt.

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Equipment shipped back from Iraq is stacking up at all the Army depots: More than 530 M1 tanks, 220 M88 wreckers and 160 M113 armored personnel carriers are sitting at Anniston. The Red River Army Depot in Texas has 700 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and 450 heavy and medium-weight trucks, while more than 1,000 Humvees are awaiting repair at the Letterkenny Army Depot in Pennsylvania.

Despite the work piling up, the Army's depots have been operating at about half their capacity because of a lack of funding for repairs. In the spring, a funding gap caused Anniston and other depots to lose about a month's worth of work, said Brig. Gen. Robert Radin, deputy chief of staff for operations at the Army Materiel Command at Fort Belvoir. [my ems]

...

They're gonna be hitchhiking from the airport to the Green Zone soon. Didn't the idiots in the White House think this shit would break? Good God.

Big tip o' the Brain to Montag for the link.

And you people thought I was crazy ...

When I said we should give Saddam the keys back and say, 'never mind' ...

Gates Says U.S. Is Not Winning Iraq War

Think Progress

Incoming Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin's (D-MI) first question to Defense Secretary nominee Robert Gates: "Mr. Gates, do you believe that we're currently winning in Iraq?"

Gates' answer: "No, sir." Watch it:

I can't believe Faux News showed that!

Whatever is in Gates' past, or his present motivation, at least he gave the right answer.

Mutiny at the White House

Steve Young at HuffPo:

I don't want to go Woodward and Bernstein all over you, but last week, just after Air Force 1 lifted off towards a meeting with Iraq's Prime Minister al-Maliki, someone in the administration who had had enough of the President's insistence that he knows what he's doing, sent a message that everyone seems to have missed: an administration mutiny is in the offing.

The coup d'état warning came in the form of a leaked memorandum that national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, had sent Bush three weeks ago describing, as the New York Times editorial put it, "how Iraq was being pulled apart by sectarian hatreds and warning that Mr. Maliki was either 'ignorant of what is going on' or unwilling or unable to stop it."

Some say the President may actually heed the memo and his public pronouncements of Rumsfeldian praise ("Maliki is the right man for the job") prior to dismissal is just the Bush M.O. at work. That Maliki's Medal of Freedom is already in the smelter.

Which gives further indication the warning shot was not aimed towards Maliki, but just above the President himself; a notice to POTUS that if he continues to ignore the reality of his failed strategy in Iraq that the whistleblower(s) just might keep leaking to the American public that what Bush maintains as a victory or nothing policy, is far worse than nothing, That it is, in fact, so disastrous, an administration intimate is willing to jeopardize his position to out the boss.

That White House 'insider' must have realized that the future of the nation, not to mention his own soul, demands the collapse of this administration, and he's helping by outing its seedy machinations by any means possible.

It doesn't matter much if Bush gets the message or not, just that someone does who can take him down. Or get him committed.

Update:

Drips in the White House

The famous discipline of the Bush administration has completely broken down. This level of leaking suggests administration aides no longer feel the sense of cohesion and teamwork - or the fear of retribution - that kept them from leaking in the past. A leaker may go to the papers to make himself or his agency look good, or because the president, or those close to him, aren't listening. But in any case, the public venting of private information suggests factionalism and infighting that can't be peacefully controlled or contained. Even if these were authorized leaks - meant to influence the debate without official fingerprints - it suggests that the Bush administration has so little credibility left that the press and public won't listen unless we think we're eavesdropping.

Even before last week, administration leaking had grown to a steady drip. Senior officials at the State Department, Pentagon, and CIA had already learned to fight their battles by leaking inside stuff and offering anonymous opinions to the papers. (It was an interagency spat of this kind that produced Valerie Plame's outing.) Other leaks have appeared in the many books to be found in the "Finger-Pointing and Recriminations" section at Barnes & Noble.

[...] Perhaps this is the message the struggling administration now wants to send out about Iraq. OK, the president's a liar. But he's not as clueless as he looks.

Clueless or not, he's still a liar.

In the spirit of mutiny, I volunteer to pull Bush's rope when we keelhaul him. I hope the bottom of the ship hasn't been de-barnacled recently, too.