Saturday whorage

Another chapter of Thirty Days at Zeta is up at The Practical Press.

Leave your links in comments.

I'm with Philip ...

Headline of his post on what he'd do with his 'stimulus' check:

I'm spending my stimulus on beer and hos!

Hear hear!

More on the 935

I hope we keep talking about the report that quantifies what we've known for years until the bastards are put away where they belong. Fat chance.

Visitor Update

The other day I posted that I had some old friends coming over to visit. We had plans to go out to dinner and eat and play catch up.

Didn't happen.

They made it part way up from Reno and the snow started dumping a little. It's been doing that for days. Those folks are from L.A. and so aren't used to driving in the snow. Wisely, I think, they turned back. Me 'n Mrs. G were already dressed to go out to dinner, so we did. After a large glass of the house white zin, Mrs. G turned to the non-present Vivian and carried on quite a nice conversation.

I spoke with Vivian this morning, and told her to make sure everybody knows that Arnie, outlaw biker and former US Navy hard-hat diver* who once cleared mines in the Red Sea, weenied out in two inches of snow.

*He has a tattoo of a a hard-hat along with the text of what he likes to breathe: "Mixed Gas and Muff".

She asked me if I'd told him that. "Hell no! Ya think I'm nuts?" She said she'd tell him on the plane home where the windows don't open!

We're disappointed that our visit didn't come off as planned. Hey, they tried, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Next time. At least we're back in touch now, and that's a good thing.

On the plus side, I did get the house cleaned up to "presentable" and the guest bathroom rebuilt to human specs...

Troops felled by a 'trust gap'

[A big welcome to Skippy's readers. - F]



As usual, the furrin press is better at lettin' us in on what's really goin' on in Iraq and the halls of power than our own. Asia Times:

With US requirements in Afghanistan - estimated by McCaffrey at four brigades permanently engaged in a campaign that would last 15 years, a continued war on terrorism in Southwest Asia has become nearly impossible. Additionally, McCaffrey says, "The US Army is starting to unravel. Our recruiting campaign is bringing into the army thousands of new soldiers who should not be in uniform" - those with criminal records, who have used drugs, who have been given moral waivers, or who have not graduated from high school. A senior Pentagon official agrees. "We have increased our recruiting totals and tripled the number of our police battalions," he says, bitterly. "We will soon have to build new stockades to handle the influx."

Build more stockades. Swell. The military really does reflect the society it comes from. Yeesh.

In fact, the shift in strategy is more the result of necessity than choice - of decisions made by commanders on the ground who opposed the White House, National Security Council, CPA - and State Department view that all opposition to the Americans must be, ipso facto, evidence of terrorism. "We've not only started to define the real enemy," a senior military office says, "but we've stopped shooting people. We've figured out that protecting Iraq is Iraq's job, not ours."

All of which raises the question of whether the United States should have invaded Iraq in the first place, an issue that is becoming more pertinent to military officers who view the American adventure in Iraq as a political and military failure.

Some of these officers have become outspoken in their condemnation of the Bush administration: which is a rarity, even among retired senior officers. "There's a reason for that," former four-star General Volney Warner says, "and the reason is that every former and currently serving military officer's fear is that we in the military will be left holding the bag, that we will be blamed for this debacle. And that's the last thing that we want to have happen. We didn't make the decision to go into Iraq. We were ordered to do it. So the blame should go where it belongs."

Remember, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame, and the Bushies are damn good at blaming others for their own mistakes.

American military officers in key combat commands (the captains, majors, lieutenant colonels and colonels who are actually responsible for carrying out the orders of their superiors) are leaving the services in record numbers. "The Marine Corps has just ceased to exist," a former marine commander says. "They have been gutted by the insurgency. They are losing their cadre of officers, their majors and captains. They are coming home and they are dedicated and these are fine young men. And Yale and Harvard are offering them positions and the marines are saying, 'Well, we can send you to do recruiting in Minot, North Dakota.' I don't understand that. They are doing nothing to retain them. And the army is just on the ropes - the tours are being extended and then reextended. And they say the recruiting numbers are not down, but the truth is they are lowering the bar. They are letting people in now that they would never have allowed in five years ago. This is a disaster. The army is over-extended and the Marines Corps has just been eviscerated. Iraq has been a catastrophe for the American military."

More specifically, and in the view of a large number of military professionals, the reason fewer and fewer field grade officers are agreeing to stay with their chosen profession has been a loss of faith in the general officer corps, an officer corps that has consistently failed to stand up to civilian leaders and who have allowed themselves (in the words of one officer) to be "stabbed in the back by the likes of Rumsfeld, [former under secretary of defense for policy Douglas] Feith and [former deputy defense secretary Paul] Wolfowitz".

Seen in this light, the question of whether the "surge" is working seems unimportant for many American military officers: for even if it is working in Iraq (and that is still a very big if) it is clearly not working in the US military. In fact, the time for victory may long be past, as thousands of the nation's soldiers have simply lost faith in their commanders and in their government.

In a time when the rest of the nation is consumed with November's vote, America's soldiers are already voting with their feet. They are doing what Michael Mullen says they must do if they have lost faith in their country. They are leaving.

Please read the rest.

Dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew...*

That actually looks more like a wine cellar than a coal mine, but you get the idea.

*Apologies to Merle Travis.

Quote of the day due

Headline from BuzzFlash, Liquid alert!

We thought the humor writers were on strike; Fox News: U.S. economy tanking because of fear of Democrats taking White House

If you want details, go find it yourself. I'll link to F** Noise if I have to, but not today.

29 things to be happy about

Don't miss this one by Mark Morford!

Yes, it's all doom and gloom and war and global warming and Bush. Except when it's not

Excerpts:

4) Women and minorities appear to be galvanized by Hillary Clinton's presidential run. Youth and college-educated voters appear to be galvanized by Barack Obama's. No one at all is truly, deeply galvanized by Mitt Romney or John McCain or crazy little Mike Huckabee, and everyone is generally repulsed by the fetid little tyrant that is Rudy Giuliani. All of this, remarkably, seems just about exactly as it should be.

Then you're like, wait a sec, you know what? Screw the Gray Lady; Google should buy General Motors, Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Kraft and Dow and Viacom and pretty much all of North Korea and just wipe them all away and replace them with nice organic flowerpots and solar farms and really big trampolines. How much better! (Note to Google: Forget the NYT. Please buy The San Francisco Chronicle. Way cheaper. Plus, we're local. I would very much like to eat free sushi in your amazing cafeteria every day. Thank you.)

7) "I Don't Want to Blow You Up!" is a new children's book by the author of "It's Just a Plant." It dares to tell children that the vast majority of scarf/turban/headband/burqa-wearing peoples in the world do not, in fact, wish to bomb them, eviscerate them, eat their brains with a rhino horn or hang them upside down and steal their Playstation 3 and rape their dog. Despite what Bill O'Reilly's children's book says.

26) Karl Rove is gone. Trent Lott is gone. Rick Santorum is gone. Richard Pombo is gone. Sweet Jesus, a whole rancid stew of hardcore Bushites has vanished like rat-tailed thugs from a murder scene, leaving behind all manner of shrapnel and smoking craters and karmic wreckage for the next wave of politicos to try and clean up. But hey, at least they're gone. Mostly.

28) A whopping 84 percent of Americans claim to be somewhere between "pretty happy" and "very happy." No, no one knows what sort of crack they're smoking. I mean, haven't they all seen the global warming? The imminent apocalypse? The staph infections and the drug-resistant bacteria and the Islamo-fascists and Dick Cheney's black and vile stare? Why all the happiness? It is because of all the Prozac? Or is it because of No. 29?

Gently raise rod tip, set hook...

Ever so much more, including an alarm clock that won't last a day. Many links. Enjoy.

Quote of the Day

Fred the Cat:

... Jeez, is shopping the new answer to all American problems? ...

Off to work. It's Friday!

Are the Iraqis dumb enough ...

To let us stay?

Depends if there are rifles pointed at their heads or not:

WASHINGTON — With its international mandate in Iraq set to expire in 11 months, the Bush administration will insist that the government in Baghdad give the United States broad authority to conduct combat operations and guarantee civilian contractors specific legal protections from Iraqi law, according to administration and military officials.

This emerging American negotiating position faces a potential buzz saw of opposition from Iraq, with its fragmented Parliament, weak central government and deep sensitivities about being seen as a dependent state, according to these officials.

...

You see, even though the Republican Crime Family has managed to loot our Treasury without accountability, they've failed to gain control over the Iraqi oil reserves. The agreement will allow Halliburton and their ilk to reap rewards long after the Chimp is a bad memory. Hey, gotta plan for retirement, don't ya?

...

At the same time, the administration faces opposition from Democrats at home, who warn that the agreements that the White House seeks would bind the next president by locking in Mr. Bush’s policies and a long-term military presence.

...

And a prolonged military presence means more government contracts. And you know who gets those*, don't ya?

*Required reading today.

Selling out your rights ...

Like yesterday, I direct you to Greenwald. Like yesterday, he highlights a Dem lawmaker who's been bought and paid for by the telecom industry to cover their collective ass in the warrantless wiretap debacle. Unlike yesterday, it's not Harry Reid who's been co-opted, but Jay Rockefeller:

...

But ponder the "win" that is giving him these feelings of immense self-satisfaction. Is he finally accomplishing what Democrats were given control of Congress to do: namely, impose some checks and limits on the administration? No. The opposite is true. Rockefeller is doing the bidding of Dick Cheney. The bill that he is working for is the bill the White House demanded. Rockefeller is supported by the entire Bush administration, urged on and funded by the nation's most powerful telecoms, and is backed by the entire GOP caucus in the Senate.

...

He is being allowed to win only because he is advancing the Bush agenda and those of his largest corporate donors, and waging war against members of his own party, acting to destroy the allegedly defining values of that party. Yet he's so desperate to feel like he's won something that this is enough to cause him to strut around giddily battling feelings of cockiness over his impending "win." At least he's being honest here about whom he represents. [my ems]

...

The nation will never move toward progressive principles of honesty, ethics, and good government until paid shills like Rockefeller, Reid, Feinstein, and others are held up for what they are, ridiculed, and then drummed out of the party. Then it would be time to do some 'urban renewal' on K Street; clean out all the lobbying firms and remove the money from the process.

You know, it's bad enough having to worry about the Republicans constantly trying to screw the nation, it really torques my sphincter that we have to worry about the people on our side too. With Dems like these, who needs Republicans?

Quote of the Day Zwei

Barbara Ehrenreich

With all the talk about how to stimulate it, you'd think that the economy is a giant clitoris.

Better have some women in there to tell 'em how to do it...

Quote of the Day

Part of a headline at BuzzFlash:

One party preaches bi-partisanship while kicking the other party in the groin, and one party hobbles around Congress on kneepads. Guess which one the Democrats are.

Lemme guess - the ones being held by the ears with the holders' cocktails perched on their heads?

Question: Can pols be impeached for giving a massive 'bi-partisan' blow job?

The Legacy of George W Bush's Presidency

The Country He Inherited, The Country He Leaves Behind

All his failures tamped into a nice little brick that will sit on a shelf at his presidential library in lieu of books. Or maybe it'll be a nice mural.

Your Democratic Congress ...

Giving the Chimp what he wants, regardless of what the voters demand.

Glenn Greenwald highlights how Harry Reid et al have been bought and paid for:

Harry Reid -- who has (a) done more than any other individual to ensure that Bush's demands for telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping powers will be met in full and (b) allowed the Republicans all year to block virtually every bill without having to bother to actually filibuster -- went to the Senate floor yesterday and, with the scripted assistance of Mitch McConnell and Pat Leahy, warned Chris Dodd, Russ Feingold and others that they would be selfishly wreaking havoc on the schedules of their fellow Senators (making them work over the weekend, ruining their planned "retreat," and even preventing them from going to Davos!) if they bothered everyone with their annoying, pointless little filibuster.

To do so, Reid announced that, unlike for the multiple filibusters from Republican colleagues, he would actually force Dodd and company to engage in a real filibuster ...

Ahem, Mr. Reid, Chris Dodd has a 'D' next to his name. You know, he's on your side. Or do you have a problem because Chris Dodd has more ethics in his little finger than you have in your whole body? An elected representative who wants to do what his constituency demands, as opposed to, say, the telecom lobbyists? Go figure.

...

That is what Democrats have been urging Reid to do to the filibustering Republicans all year -- in order to dramatize their obstructionism -- but he has refused to make them actually filibuster anything, generously agreeing instead that every bill requires 60 votes. Instead, he reserves such punishment only for the members of his own caucus trying to take a stand for the rule of law and the Constitution, those who are trying finally to bring some accountability to this administration. [all ems in orig]

...

No impeachment, giving in to everything Bush wants, and forcing fellow Dems to deal with an obstacle course of congressional protocol when Rethug criminals get a pass. Is he the Democratic leader in the Senate or a Republican plant? Hard to tell nowadays. Can somebody tell Harry that we voted a Dem majority to stop the criminal looting of our rights and solvency? If we wanted to keep getting fucked over, we would have voted for Republicans.

And an addendum: Just in case it's been forgotten during the last 7 years, we don't pay our reps and senators to party with the rich folks. We pay them to do the nation's business. They get too much time off as it is. I wonder if any of 'em could hold down a real job. They all should be paid like piece-workers and we might get something done.

A blast from the past

Light to no blogging today. I got an old pal coming over that I haven't seen in about twenty years. He's in Reno to meet his daughter's fiance. She's at UNR. Last time I saw her, she was a babe in arms. Gulp. Tempus flat fuckin' fugits don't it?

Anyway, when Mrs. G heard about this, I got my orders, something to the effect of "get this fuckin' pigsty cleaned up!" So, good husband that I am, that's what I'm up to today.

I'll leave ya with this from Tony Peyser:

And finally: the percent of Army recruits with a high school diploma dropped last year, continuing a trend that has worsened since the start of the Iraq war. An army spokesman emphatically insisted, "I is not so sure that all the fact is right in this reports."

So what's new? Sounds like my recruiter...

Later.

Update:

Arnie and Vivian aren't coming 'til tomorrow. They're going to Virginia City today. In my impish way I reminded them that while they're walkin' around up there to keep in mind that there's nothing for 2000 feet beneath them except rotting timbers...

I'm just done cleaning the guest bathroom. I think I'd rather chip all the paint off USS Ronald Reagan. Not only would it probably be less work, I'd get a warm glow from smackin' him her repeatedly with the chippin' hammer.

Who killed Heath Ledger?

Because his death was the perfect distraction to clear any real news off the networks' schedules. How much you wanna bet the WH does a document dump tonight? How much you wanna bet the Jesus freaks are gonna say it was god's punishment for him being in 'that queer cowboy movie'?

God bless Auntie Beeb.

Arrivederci, Baghdad

Or, it's the Army's problem now:

Sarcastic irony in the Air Force. Who could have guessed?

Hey, when you're sitting in a bar, hangin' wit da ladies, back in a rear area while the grunts are sitting in a hole getting shot at, whaddaya 'spect, bro?

But in all seriousness, Brother Lurch has a good post up about the Corps leaving Iraq to operate in Afghanistan, leaving the Army to continue the occupation.

...

Only cynical people would claim that the Marines wanted to get out from under a situation (Iraq) that has been a complete failure, and especially to get out of Anbar before it blows up. I’m sure the Commandant and his staff felt they could contribute something significant to the fight in Afghanistan.

...

Which they can. Afghanistan has the potential to turn into the dismal failure Iraq has, as troops have been directed away from the real problem spot to fight the Chimp's vanity war in Iraq.

Being just back from Europe, public opinion (anecdotal) is clearly against getting involved (or further involved) in anything American when it comes to foreign adventures, at least until we have a new President. We won't see any more European troops over there for a year at least. If anyone can make a difference in Afghanistan, it's the Marines, though Lurch finds the political corollary to moving the Marine force from Iraq to Afghanistan:

...

This will make the proposed complete failure in Iraq the fault of the Army, and not the republicans and Mr Bu$h.

Of course, because the Republicans are "The Party of National Security". If the Army would fight the war the way the leadership wanted ...

...

By the end of 2005, Rice's opposition to any opening to the Sunni leadership in Iraq became almost obsessive, according to currently serving senior military officers. In one incident, now notorious in military circles, Rice "just went completely crazy" when she learned that a marine colonel had dispatched combat helicopters to help a "a Sunni sheikh" in Fallujah fight what the sheikh called an "imminent al-Qaeda threat".

...

What, sarcastic irony from the Air Force?

From the Department of No-Fucking-Shit:

WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses." [my em]

...

Unfortunately, you won't see this from 'the most trusted name in news'. The Chimp spread it on and the media ate it up. "Saddam = WMD, Saddam = 9/11, Saddam = Mushroom Cloud".

4000 US troops dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, a trillion dollars lost in the Big Catbox, and the price of gas at record levels. Mission Accomplished.

Note to news media: The next time some dumbass tells you he has a big cock, make him take it out and show it to you, you gullible motherfuckers.

Great thanks to Arkades for the link.

Question

Is it just me, or is Haloscan sucking wet monkey ass today?