Lucky woman ...

What Mrs. F was doing while she was away on business.

Legacies ...

Lately, when the Chimp is asked what the debacle in Iraq will do to his legacy, he says that history will remember him well. Not so much:

WASHINGTON - History's view of George W. Bush will be harsh, Americans predict.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, a 54% majority says Bush will be judged as a below-average or poor president, more than double the negative rating given any of his five most recent predecessors.

...

And for the icing on the cake:

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Rated most highly: Ronald Reagan, seen as outstanding or above average by 64%, below average or poor by 10%.

Bill Clinton ranks second; 45% say he will go down in history as an outstanding or above-average president. He is followed by Jimmy Carter, the elder Bush and Gerald Ford. [my ems]

...

As someone said the other day - sorry but I forget who - the descendants of James K. Polk are grateful to the Chimp. Their forebear is no longer the worst President in U.S. history.

Tip o' the Brain to Maru for the link.

Late ...

The Mrs. got in on a late flight last night and I overslept. Fortunately, we have a furry alarm clock who won't let it get too late before she wakes us. Thanks, Shayna.

Good reading at Digby's, who posits that McCain is praying the Chimp doesn't actually take his advice.

See yas lata ...

Damn right

Wolf Blitzer 2 minutes ago: Is America ready for an African-American or female President?

Me: Ready? We're begging for it. Fuck all these middle-aged white guys.

Bubble Boy

Jonathan Chait

Try to mend Iraq all you want; just don't tell Bush the war was a mistake.

There is a famous "Twilight Zone" episode about a little boy in a small town who has fantastical powers. Through the misuse of his powers, the little boy has ruined the lives of everybody in the town - for instance, teleporting them into a cornfield, or summoning a snowstorm that destroys their crops. Because anyone who thinks an unhappy thought will be banished, the adults around him can do nothing but cheerfully praise his decisions while they try to nudge him in a less destructive direction.

This episode kept popping into my head when I was reading about President Bush and the Baker-Hamilton commission. Bush is the president of the United States, which therefore gives him enormous power, but he is treated by everybody around him as if he were a child.

Indeed, everybody seems to understand that if you want to help amend the disaster in Iraq, the No. 1 rule is that you can't acknowledge it's a disaster in Bush's presence. Weekly Standard Executive Editor Fred Barnes, the court stenographer of the Bush administration, recently reported that this was a key factor in the hiring of Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Now, I would bet every dollar I own that Gates thinks the war was a mistake. But you can't say that to Bush. "Before hiring him," Barnes wrote, "Bush had to make sure Gates didn't think America's intervention in Iraq was a mistake."

Yes, Mr. President, it's good that you turned Iraq into a Hobbesian inferno of Al Qaeda terrorists and Islamist death squads. It's really, really good!

Please let me treat him like a child for a few minutes. He wouldn't be able to do any more damage standing in the corner (or chained to a radiator) with a sore behind.

Alterations to my "lifestyle"....

Ok,I quit smoking. Last night. So,it's been about 10 hours since I had a cigarette.

I have "the patch",and I must say,it's not HELPING. So far this morning I've yelled at my son,threw a slipper at the cats and started crying because there was no hot water in the shower. And it's only 8:30 in the morning. This could get ugly.

I have to quit,I promised my son. And it's effecting my health. I've been smoking for most of the last 30 years. The only times I've quit was during my two pregnancies and a little while after the kids were born.(I know,why I started up after not smoking for at least a year,twice,is just plain stupid)

And just to make it interesting,I've given up coffee and soda too. Because having them triggers my urge to smoke. Coffee and cigs has been one of my food groups for so long I'm not sure what the hell I'm gonna find to replace them.(and please,no mind in the gutter suggestions,my husband has covered that territory already,thank you very much. I then threw my other slipper at him.) I suppose there's plenty of crap around here to do to keep me occupied,but it still sucks.

So,if you've quit smoking and never looked back,share something helpful. Please. I beg of you. Otherwise there could be film of me on CNN taking a chainsaw to my house or something.

Christian soldiers

I am so totally sick of this shit:

A military watchdog group is asking the Defense Department to investigate whether seven Army and Air Force officers violated regulations by appearing in uniform in a promotional video for an evangelical Christian organization.

...

"I found a wonderful opportunity as a director on the joint staff, as I meet the people that come into my directorate," Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack J. Catton Jr. says in the video. "And I tell them right up front who Jack Catton is, and I start with the fact that I'm an old-fashioned American, and my first priority is my faith in God, then my family and then country. I share my faith because it describes who I am."

...

These bible-thumping morons should not be allowed to lead our servicepeople. When some genius says he puts God before country, it means he believes the lives of his troops are expendable and 'God' will see to their souls once their lives are squandered. I don't want Jesus freaks like this being in charge of some of the most dangerous weaponry ever devised by man.

Too many people have gone to war because they believed it was 'God's will'. I'll tell you something, the Nazis thought God was on their side too. I don't want an army of 'christian soldiers' who someday may decide their loyalty to some dusty old holy book is stronger than their loyalty to their commander-in-chief. These guys should be cashiered faster than Gen Shinseki was after he testified before Congress.

Tip o' the Brain to C & L.

Finally...

A good use for the Chimp. Via Cabana Boy at Blondie's.

Explaining Christmas

Atrios has the best one I've ever heard. Stolen fully and completely:

Look, it's very simple. There are two Christmas holidays. One is the secular holiday, decreed by the federal government to be a national holiday, which is celebrated and marked with festive displays of trees, lights, fat guys with beards, and elves, along with lots of shopping and the giving of gifts. The other holiday involves a celebration of the birth of the Messiah, and is celebrated with religious rituals and displays of nativity scenes and other religious imagery.


Public displays of secular Christmas imagery? fine.

Public displays of religious Christmas imagery? less fine.

Christmas trees in airports? fine.
Baby Jesus scenes in airports? less fine.

Short, sweet, and it works for me.

Go ahead and let the door hit ya in the ass on the way out, Junior...

Today's 'must read' by Robert Parry

As U.S. policy in the oil-rich region spins out of control, the stark choice confronting the American people will be whether the country can stand two more years of this or whether it's time for Bush to go.

George W. Bush had a point when he disparaged the Baker-Hamilton commission's plan for gradual troop withdrawals from Iraq by saying "this business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever." It's now obvious that there can be no exit from Iraq -- graceful or otherwise -- as long as Bush remains President.

And, oh yes, the Iraq War was not started by Islamic militants who hate peace but by George W. Bush.

In other words, Bush still insists on living in a world of ideology and made-up facts, not one of reality and pragmatism. Bush has fixed in his mind what his neoconservative advisers sold him on in 2001 -- and he can't break with that.

Bush appears not to have budged one inch from his longstanding hostility toward any questioning of his war judgments. He is determined to keep U.S. troops in Iraq regardless of the will of the American people or anyone else.

So, given Bush's rhetoric and actions, there is little reason to believe that he intends to reverse course. If anything, he will continue toying with notions about expanding the conflict by bombing Iran's nuclear facilities or seeking escalation of political confrontations with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

That means that by 2009, whoever becomes the next President will face a likely conflagration in the Middle East, with the real possibility that Bush will have enflamed Islamic radicalism so much that the region's few pro-U.S. pillars -- such as the Saudi royal family or the Egyptian dictatorship -- will be tottering if not already fallen.

Disruptions of Middle East oil supplies could wreak havoc on the U.S. and world economies. Plus, Bush might end up precipitating just the grim vision that he has long articulated -- an interminable world war pitting the West against large segments of the planet's one billion Muslims.

Faced with this looming catastrophe, the congressional Democrats may have no choice but to reconsider what incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others have ruled "off the table," the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Indeed, Bush's cavalier dismissal of the key Baker-Hamilton recommendations creates a possible framework for a bipartisan impeachment effort.

A less confrontational approach could be Republican and Democratic pressure on Bush and Cheney to agree to sequential resignations, replacing Cheney first with a new Vice President who would then assume the presidency upon Bush's resignation.

As unlikely -- and extreme -- as these scenarios may sound, the future of the American Republic may demand nothing less.

If Bush cannot come to grips with reality -- and adopt a less ideological approach toward the Middle East -- there may be no realistic choice but for the American people and their elected representatives to make clear that it's time for him to go.

If our country is to have any future, it depends on Bush and Cheney departing. The earlier the better. I think it would help our world standing immensely if we chucked 'em out the door and got someone - anyone - who has at least some idea of reality.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Iraqis Near Deal on Distribution of Oil Revenues Among Three Groups
Earnings would be divided equally among ExxonMobil, British Petroleum and Shell.

Descendants of James K. Polk Thank Bush
Because of him, their forebear's no longer considered worst president.

Go see "The War President's Score Card", bottom of Page One.

L'il Bush

Go see "Sociopathic Decider Babies" at Welcome to Pottersville.

The 'L' Word...

Daddy Frank nails it on the Iraq Study Group.

In America we like quick fixes, closure and an uplifting show. Such were the high hopes for the Iraq Study Group, and on one of the three it delivered.

Mr. Simpson notwithstanding, the former senator who most comes to mind is Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. In the early 1990's he famously coined the phrase "defining deviancy down" to describe the erosion of civic standards for what constitutes criminal behavior. In 2006, our governmental ailment is defining reality down. "The Way Forward" is its apotheosis.

This syndrome begins at the top, with the president, who has cut and run from reality in Iraq for nearly four years. His case is extreme but hardly unique. Take Robert Gates, the next defense secretary, who was hailed as a paragon of realism by Washington last week simply for agreeing with his Senate questioners that we're "not winning" in Iraq. While that may be a step closer to candor than Mr. Bush's "absolutely, we're winning" of late October, it's hardly the whole truth and nothing but. The actual reality is that we have lost in Iraq (my em).

That's what Donald Rumsfeld at long last acknowledged, between the lines, as he fled the Pentagon to make way for Mr. Gates. The most revealing passage in his parting memo listing possible options for the war was his suggestion that public expectations for success be downsized so we would "therefore not 'lose.' " By putting the word lose in quotes, Mr. Rumsfeld revealed his hand: the administration must not utter that L word even though lose is exactly what we've done. The illusion of not losing must be preserved no matter what the price in blood (mine).

The lesson in that is clear and sobering: As bad as things may seem now, they can yet become worse, and not just in Iraq. The longer we pretend that we have not lost there, the more we risk losing other wars we still may salvage, starting with Afghanistan.

The members of the Iraq Study Group are all good Americans of proven service to their country. But to the extent that their report forestalls reality and promotes pipe dreams of one last chance for success in this fiasco, it will be remembered as just one more delusional milestone in the tragedy of our age.

I have nothing to add. Mr. Rich got it dead nuts. Please read the rest.

No queers ...

At a time when, of the 1000 people serving at the American Palace Embassy in Baghdad, only six speak fluent Arabic, it might behoove them to put their 'beliefs' aside and hire back some of the gay folks they threw out:

Between 1998 and 2004, the military discharged 20 Arabic and six Farsi speakers. Bleu Copas, 30, was a decorated sergeant and Arabic language specialist who was dismissed from the U.S. Army this July for being gay. But he was closeted and was outed by an unidentified email campaign and it was never proven. According to Andrew Sullivan the number of gay discharged Arab language specialists is now 55.

...

At this desperate stage you'd think, regardless of the belief that gays somehow can't serve in the military (I've got news for you, the gays I served with acquitted themselves honorably and with distinction), pragmatism might prevail. But no, we stubbornly hold our ground, even when having some of these folks on the ground might help the situation there (or might have if, instead of purging these people from the ranks a few years back, we'd have used their expertise to actually win some hearts and minds).

You know, I was thinking (a first!) last night. Bush was handed such an opportunity in 2001 to use the tragedy of 9/11 to do some good in the world. Remember back then, when 'everybody was an American'? We could have come so far in five years but instead we've fallen so low. It's this closed-minded thinking, not just on the part of the people in charge but of average Americans, that brought us to this point. It's time we grew up.

Howling at the Moon

Via the one and only Skippy, this snippet from a Newsweek article:

...

That places the president in a distinct minority. According to the NEWSWEEK poll, more than two out of three Americans believe the United States is losing ground in Iraq (68 percent), versus 21 percent who say it is making progress - the most pessimistic assessment the NEWSWEEK poll has ever recorded. A near-record 53 percent believe invading Iraq was a mistake, compared to 39 percent who say it was the right course of action.

In fact, the public goes farther than the Baker-Hamilton report. Sixty-two percent of Americans want the Bush administration to set a timetable for withdrawal. And not in the distant future. Forty-eight percent of Americans want U.S. soldiers and Marines to come home now or within the next year. Add in the 19 percent who say they would support U.S. troops remaining in Iraq one to two years more and 67 percent of Americans say they would support keeping large numbers of U.S. military personnel in Iraq for no more than another year or two. [my ems]

...

The public knows Iraq is lost and no matter what that schmuck McCain says, most of the weasels on Capitol Hill know it too. It's just a matter of getting our guys out in an orderly fashion so they're not running for their lives.

Update:

Commander Huber cuts to the chase as usual:

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I've got news for Gates and everybody else who has their head cross-threaded up a place that sunshine seldom penetrates: when history's mightiest nation isn't winning a war nearly four years into it, it's losing.

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Good

See you in Hell:

Pinochet dies peacefully at a ripe old age. The son of a bitch got off easy.

Animusic sampler

I saw this stuff for the first time last night on PBS. I just think it's cool. If you like it, there's dozens of these things at YouTube, or you can go to their site.

animusic

ISG: It's still all about the oil

LATimes

WHILE THE Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.

Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq's importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder: "It has the world's second-largest known oil reserves." The group then proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendations as to what the United States should do to secure those reserves. If the proposals are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be commercialized and opened to foreign firms.

The report makes visible to everyone the elephant in the room: that we are fighting, killing and dying in a war for oil. It states in plain language that the U.S. government should use every tool at its disposal to ensure that American oil interests and those of its corporations are met.

All told, the Iraq Study Group has simply made the case for extending the war until foreign oil companies - presumably American ones - have guaranteed legal access to all of Iraq's oil fields and until they are assured the best legal and financial terms possible.

We can thank the Iraq Study Group for making its case publicly. It is now our turn to decide if we wish to spill more blood for oil.

We knew it all along. Now it's in writing.

Blood for oil: it's the American Way.

The road to Hell ...

Is paved with good intentions.

Hmmm ...

Maybe we were hasty?

...

Ha, I thought at the time, aren't these Republican lawmakers incompetent. These guys are given enormous responsibilities to understand the challenges we face in the Middle East, and they aren't even sure about the basics, such as what faith al Qaeda is. Just wait, I thought, until Dems get in there and show them what competency looks like.

Perhaps I was a little hasty.

Stein sat down with Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), soon to be the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and started asking him some of the same basic questions Republicans got wrong a couple of months ago. It didn't go well.

Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?

'"Al Qaeda, they have both," Reyes said. "You're talking about predominately?"

"Sure," I said, not knowing what else to say.

"Predominantly - probably Shiite," he ventured.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they'd slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.

Asked later about Hezbollah, Reyes said, "Hezbollah. Uh, Hezbollah... Well, I, uh..."

Now, it's worth noting that Reyes wasn't completely lost. Stein noted that Reyes, unlike the House Republicans he talked to a couple of months ago, "knows that the 1,400-year-old split in Islam between Sunnis and Shiites not only fuels the militias and death squads in Iraq, it drives the competition for supremacy across the Middle East between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia." The GOP didn't even know this much, so Reyes is a little better off.

But in the end, he was still shaky on some pretty basic details. When the typical person on the street doesn't know about al Qaeda's or Hezbollah's beliefs, he or she can be forgiven. When the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee doesn't know, one has to wonder what members of Congress have been doing the last four years.

...

Before I got into blogging, I thought I was pretty well informed about what went on in government. I was under the impression, since most of our elected representatives had much more formal education than I did, that the people we sent to Washington were intelligent, curious people who would do research on subjects they were involved with, subjects they are expected to vote for the good of the nation on.

Shit, I was a babe in the woods.

I think many of the American people share my former misconceptions. Most of the people we put in government are clueless ignorants who couldn't find their ass with both hands tied behind their backs. Let's just hope the incoming bunch is smart enough to listen to real experts instead of ideologues.