A whore late ...

Usually, I post a new chapter of my novel The Fourth Estate on Saturdays at The Practical Press but I wasn't in the mood last night so I did it this morning.

We had a wonderful dinner with Mrs. F's folks at one of our favorite restaurants to celebrate my mother-in-law's 80th. A bonus, our lovely and talented niece Lauren (2nd year theater major at Adelphi University; yes, we're proud) joined us as a surprise for grandma and grandpa. A good time was had by all.

Buckle Up!

Two-thirds of us will be traveling by car this holiday weekend. Listen to the Governor. He knows what he's talking about.

Great thanks to the lovely Pam Spaulding for the video.

Cross-posted at Fixer & Gordon.

Quote of the Day

“This Memorial Day we remember the dead, and the politicians who killed them.” —John Aravosis at AMERICABlog

R.

Somebody appreciates Bill

PODUJEVO, Serbia (Reuters) - Kosovo Albanians plan to honor their "savior" Bill Clinton by erecting a statue of the former United States president in the capital of Serbia's breakaway province.

The three-meter (10-foot) tall monument is still under construction in a studio in Podujevo north of Pristina.

"He is our savior. He saved us from extermination," sculptor Izeir Mustafa told Reuters. "I was thrilled by the work because I know what he did for us."

...

Dear Mr. Bush,

This is what it means to be "greeted as a liberator', you dipshit.

Regards,

Fixer

I hope the statue of Clinton is anatomically correct and his cock is gold plated.

Link thanks to Maru.

Told ya 2

Not that I'm one to say I told ya so (well, yes I am).

WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence agencies warned the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq that ousting Saddam Hussein would create a "significant risk" of sectarian strife, encourage al-Qaida attacks and open the way for Iranian interference. [my em]

...

So, explain to me how the deaths of close to 3500 U.S. troops aren't murder, or as D.R. says "genocide".

Big tip o' the Brain to Barbara at C & L.

I'm still here...

Please pardon the light blogging. I'm still decompressing from truck lag. Our trip and my HS reunion were exciting and wonderful and I had a really great time. There'll be more on that in the next few days.

I re-connected with a couple folks I haven't seen in over 40 years, and I'm in the midst of an e-mailpalooza with them. It takes time away from other things. One of them is actually coming to visit sometime this weekend. Whee!

On the more mundane side, I have a slow-running sink drain and a plugged-up commode that I have to deal with toute suite. Connect the dots between "expecting visitors" and "non-functioning guest shitter". Did I mention the leaky water heater...

Hasta la vista, baby. I'll be back.

Troop reductions?

It's all horseshit. Greenwald gives examples of the same bullshit that gets drug out every couple months to placate the masses. Some basic Fixer math: If General Shinseki said in 2002 that he needed 250,000 troops to do the job right and we only have 160,000 there now, do you really think we can cut troop strengths and still 'achieve victory' as the Liar-in-Chief wants?

Listen to me: There will be great numbers of American troops in Iraq until Congress defunds the war or until a Democratic President gets us out. The Republicans do not want to leave, period, regardless of what they say.

The point ...

Our friend and all-around good guy Creature makes a point the Dems in Congress fail to understand:

... This compromise was done for political considerations and this funding bill showdown was about life and death ...

That's the crux of the biscuit, ladies and germs. These clowns have been in Washington long enough to have their judgment clouded. People are dying and that's the bottom line. Political expediency be damned, political careers be damned; this is an illegal war and a little bit of America dies with every loss of one of our troops over there.

This isn't some stupid pork spending argument or some procedural vote. Lives are on the line and it's time to quit dicking around with the psychos running this country. End the war and get them out. We can't wait until 2009. Our troops can't wait.

I don't know about your parents ...

But I'da been dead.

Addendum:

One of my dad's favorite sayings: [British accent] "I created you, boyo. I can take you out and then make another one that looks just like you." [/British accent]

Prepare ...

For the shit to hit the fan:

BAGHDAD, May 25 — The populist Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr appeared in public for the first time in months on Friday, delivering a fiercely anti-American sermon and offering himself in a new guise as a nationalist intent on bridging the divide between Iraq’s warring communities of Shiites and Sunnis.

...

“No, no, no to Satan! No, no, no to America! No, no, no to occupation! No, no, no to Israel!” Mr. Sadr told about 1,000 worshippers, frequently mopping his brow in the 110-degree heat of Iraq’s early summer.

He renewed earlier demands for a timetable for an American troop withdrawal, saying the Iraqi government “should not extend the occupation even for a single day.” But he avoided setting a deadline, perhaps because of widespread fears among Iraqi Shiites that the country’s new Shiite-dominated army and police were far from ready to stand alone against the Qaeda groups and Baathist diehards who have driven the Sunni insurgency.

...

This is the guy who runs Iraq. If you think the last Friedman Unit* was a bad one over there, wait until the next one. Wait until 2/3 of the population starts planning to kill every last one of us.

*Thanks to Maru for the link.

Bonus Quote of the Day

“If we quit Vietnam, tomorrow we will be fighting in Hawaii and next week we will have to fight in San Francisco.” —Lyndon B. Johnson

Hat tip to too many places to mention all by name. It is all over the web, so I figured we might as well have it too. ;)

R.

Quote of the Day

“Do you think anyone will buy my idea for a book? The title is "How Can America Be a Great Country Having Put This Crowd in Office?"” —Dick Cavett

R.

Kriegsmarine building

Talk To Action

Recently, an astounding, apparent US government sponsored anti-Semitic display, on an enormous scale, has come to my attention; the giant Swastika shaped building cluster at the US Navy's Coronado, California Naval Amphibious Base, built in the late 1960's, can be viewed from space, via Google Earth and while the architect who designed the structures said the shape was quite intentional, a US Navy spokesperson has declared the shape of the swastika building cluster to be an unfortunate accident....

Ain't Google Earth great? And here I thought it was just for lookin' at the tops of your friends' houses...

Chief of Naval Operations, Grosadmiral Karl Dönitz, was unavailable for comment.

Much more and many links at site.

Yeah, right

Atrios:

So, we're fighting "them" over there so we don't fight them here, if we leave they'll follow us home, we're fighting al Qaeda terrorists who want to kill us all, etc... etc... Except if the Iraqi government asks us to leave we'll go home and wait for destruction.

...

It's amazing how big a part George Orwell (or Get Smart) plays in our foreign policy.

Again ...

The cat is us. The doc is the Dem congressional leadership.

Pic courtesy of the Cheezburger. Click to embiggen.

And we all know what they've done to us.

Update:

Via BuzzFlash. Only 14 Senators voted against that fucking supplemental. Two of the 14 sum it up nicely:

...

"I fully support our troops" but the measure "fails to compel the president to give our troops a new strategy in Iraq," said Clinton, D-N.Y.

"Enough is enough," Obama, an Illinois senator, declared, adding that Bush should not get "a blank check to continue down this same, disastrous path."

...

Off to work ... It's Friday and Mrs. F is home!!!!

Moving on ...

The General puts it all behind him.

...

I hope we can all get past this whole Justice Department scandal now that Monica Goodling has admit ed she made a mistake and broke the law by vetting civil service applicants for ideological and theistic correctness. After all, everyone makes a mistake. Goodling and the Administration who worked for should be entitled to a few as well.

...

Wish I'da been the one ...

... to call in air on this asshole. Heh ...

Question of the Day*

Maru:

Here's my question -- would this al-Qaeda-in-Iraq thing have been possible if Saddam was still in power?

No.

*A variation of 'Quote of the Day'.

The Dems' "Neville Chamberlain moment"

Here's another quote from Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on how the Dems sold out to Bush.

"We seem to be very near the bleak choice between war and shame," Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne in the days after the British signed the Munich accords with Germany in 1938. "My feeling is that we shall choose shame, and then have war thrown in, a little later…"

That's what this is for the Democrats, isn't it?

Their "Neville Chamberlain moment" before the Second World War. All that's missing is the landing at the airport, with the blinkered leader waving a piece of paper which he naively thought would guarantee "peace in our time," but which his opponent would ignore with deceit.

The Democrats have merely streamlined the process.

Their piece of paper already says Mr. Bush can ignore it, with impugnity.

Chamberlain's wishy-washy appeasement of Hitler in '38 set the stage for six years of Hot World War and almost fifty years of Cold World War.

I wonder what the Dems' apparent sellout to Bush will lead to. I say "apparent" because in the back of my mind I keep hoping they know something I don't and have done this thing for some underlying purpose other than the '08 election. I'm not going to hold my breath.

Good luck ...

So you wanna sell your house? Good luck. One of my oldest friends is trying to sell her house here on Long Island. It's in a good neighborhood, in a great school system, really close to shopping, in the $500 - 750,000 range. Ain't happening. Her husband's job moved south and they have to be out by the end of June, and they're seriously debating renting it out. They've already come down $65,000 in asking price and there are still no takers. I have customers telling the same tales of woe. It's like that all over Long Island. Our pal Skippy sees it out west too.

There are some big economic problems brewing in our future, and with gas prices at record highs, the housing market so shaky, and the Iraq occupation draining the treasury, it just might be a perfect storm. We're gonna be feeling the effects of the Republican 'plans' for a long time.