My Life With Jenna Bush

Mark Morford sorta, er, morfs into 'Rude Pundit gets a day job' with this one:

What's it like to be married to the booze-friendly, party-ready Bush twin? A vision

I got her trained just right. She brings me a steady supply of cold Bud Lights while I chill on the La-Z-Boy watching the Nationals game on the plasma. Here's a funny: After any home run, I'll down whatever's left of my beer and suck in a big mouthful of air and then belch her name really, really slowly and blow it right in her face. "Oh my God that is so gross!" she squeals, and then totally cracks up and makes that funny snorting noise and goes to get us both another beer. Man, I love being married.

Her hair smells like kitty litter and nachos and bad domestic wiretapping law. I take deep whiffs just before bed and later dream that I'm back in law school and it's finals and I'm totally not prepared because I've been burning pages of the U.S. Constitution in my bathtub and blasting gay people and women and pretty much all of humanity with my giant death-ray laser. Wait a sec, this is Karl Rove's dream! How the hell did he get in here? He's so sneaky. But I love him. No, I mean I really love him. But he won't return my text messages anymore. Bitch.

"Poor sick people are so amazing!" Jen says that a lot these days, ever since the Panama thing, ever since the party made her get the hell out of the country so as to deflect all the bad PR about the beer bongs and the partying and the dumb-blonde-Texas stories. But Jen says she learned "a ton" interning for UNICEF, now thinks people with HIV are "so sad and nice and not, like, nearly as skanky as I thought." Once she even wondered, out loud, why we all don't have more and better access to condoms and real birth control info and true sexual education. I shot her a look. Then she remembers: "Oh, right."

So anyway, Mary Cheney's been advising J on how to handle the book publicity. In fact, they've been spending a lot of time together lately, sharing smokes, going to movies, having late-night gabfests. Sometimes J doesn't stumble home until 4 or 5 a.m., always sort of flushed and giggly. And get this: More than once her lipstick was totally smeared all over her mouth. She said Mary was just "showing her something." Yeah right. More nights like that and I'm telling Laura about Jen's new Brazilian wax job that spells out "Obama '08." Except she misspelled it as "Osama." Whoops.

Please enjoy the rest. Oh, right, their sex life? It's in there, right between the pineapple pizza and the throwing up...

Reincarnation ...

Ari Flyshit surfaces:

Wow. The Bush administration is clearly going off the deep end. They are now using their passion for negative ads against their fellow Republicans (like Mitch McConnell who said that come September we'd better be changing course in Iraq). And, of course, it's all about Iraq. They are doing it through some phantom organization called "Freedom's Watch." The spokesperson for the group is none other than Bush spinmeister Ari Fleischer:

...

Late for work ... kthxbai. Heh ...

Stranger than not

More than half strange. That's me.

You Are 54% Strange!

Based on your score, it seems you do have a healthy dose of strangeness. You aren't THAT far out, but you are somewhat bizarre. Congratulations on being different and having some quirks. It makes you an interesting person!

How Strange Are You?
Quizzes for MySpace

And that gets you ...

The Medal of Freedom:

Former CIA director George Tenet "bears ultimate responsibility" for failing to create a strategic plan to stop al Qaeda prior to 9/ll, according to a review by the CIA's inspector general that was made public today, more than two years after it was written.

...

Not that the White House would have approved a plan, regardless of what Tenet pulled out of his ass. Without 9/11, we would be talking about President Kerry right now. Leave us look at what the Chimp learned on 6 Aug 2001:

...

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a . . . service in 1998 saying that bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

Nevertheless, F.B.I. information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York. [my em]

...

Yes, Tenet bears some responsibility, but the ultimate failure belongs solely to the White House and the occupant of the Oval Office.

Great thanks to Holden for the ABC News link.

More wasted lives . . .

Iraq helicopter crash kills 14 US troops

y'know something, it doesn't matter if it was shot down or it was an accident, one clear, cold fact remains, they would not have been in harm's way if BushCo hadn't lied. Bush and Cheney are no better than murderers. It is time that they were not only impeached and convicted. It is time that they were arrested. We have to show future generations that being "elected" President does not put you above the war. I am so frustrated by the actions of this Congress that I am feeling tied in nots. We have to get them out of there, that is the ONLY thing on the table. All else, including the election, is subservient to that. How do we make it happen?

JG.

Now that's strange

More than half un-strange. Certainly not in Fixer's or Lurch's class. Where have I failed? I bet it had something to do with the french fries...

You Are 46% Strange!

You are a bit strange, though still more normal than strange. You definitely have some quirks, don't get me wrong. But you aren't exactly freaking out old ladies on the street. It's okay though, you've got a healthy mixture of strangeness and normality.

How Strange Are You?
Quizzes for MySpace

I'm almost as strange ...

As Lurch. And, having met the man, I think that's a pretty good thing. Heh ...

You Are 62% Strange!

Based on your score, it seems you do have a healthy dose of strangeness. You aren't THAT far out, but you are somewhat bizarre. Congratulations on being different and having some quirks. It makes you an interesting person!

How Strange Are You?
Quizzes for MySpace

Beelzebub Meets the Sunday Press

The Rude Pundit on Turdblossom's dead-dog-and-rotting-pony show on the Sunday TV gasfests:

The Testament of Solomon is a fascinating early Jewish text from, possibly, the first or fourth century. In it, King Solomon uses a magical ring to meet and talk to a bunch of demons, thus giving Goth kids and oh-so-spooky devil worshipers a template for their masturbatory maunderings. One of the demons Solomon interviews is Beelzebub, who describes his activities in an amazingly honest fashion for an angel who fell with Lucifer: "I said to him, 'What are your activities?' He replied, 'I bring destruction by means of tyrants; I cause the demons to be worshiped alongside men; and I arouse desire in holy men and select priests. I bring about jealousies and murders in a country, and I instigate wars.'" Oh, for the days of such forthright evil beings.

[...] Got that? Chris Wallace of Fox "news" is just a tool of those fuckers in Congress who would dare question the White House.

Wallace, in a line that would be laughable in most other contexts replied, "I like to think I'm an agent of the public, not the Congress." Rove would not back down, saying to Wallace, "Well, in this instance, you're an agent of Senator Leahy and Congressman Waxman." So to even question the notion of executive privilege is to be named an enemy of the administration. And you see that language - "an agent," doing their "bidding." Man, nobody can demonize like a demon. See, Rove's argument is that he's protecting the Constitution by giving advice to the President. Rasputin doesn't have to fuckin' tell you what he advised the Czar to do.

...he needs the head of a Clinton on his wall.

Beelzebub will not be denied

I think the reference to Grigori Efimovich Rasputin is most apt. The Mad Monk was hard to kill, too.

Keep in mind that all his advice to the Czar was swept away in the Russian Revolution of 1917...

Karl Rove and American Fascism

Dr. J's Commentary. Memorize this first part. Zere vill be a qviz.

Fascism can be briefly defined as a politico-economic system in which there is: total executive branch control of both the legislative and administrative powers of government; no independent judiciary; no Constitution that embodies the Rule of Law standing above the people who run the government; no inherent personal rights or liberties; a single national ideology that first demonizes and then criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition to it; and total corporate determination of economic, fiscal, and regulatory policy.

[...] 'You're not such a scary guy,' joked his guide. 'Yes, I am,' Rove replied. Walking away, he muttered deliberately and loudly: 'I change constitutions, I put churches in schools ...' "

He's probably the guy who shit in the punch bowl at the rare party he got invited to, too, out of spite for being rejected by his peers.

One does not have to look at Cheney and Addington and Yoo and Gonzales for the source of the Bush approach to amending the Constitution (although they have certainly been at the center of it as well): who needs Congress and the States; do it on your own. Either simply ignoring the Constitution, as the Bushies have done, or legally in the first instance changing it beyond recognition, as Hitler did to the German Weimar Constitution, is at the center of establishing fascism in an existing Constitutional Democracy. And here is Karl Rove, at the center of the Georgite Revolution, not only on the tactical side, but on the strategic side as well. Look out for him, folks. He is hardly done yet.

A snake can still bite you after his head is cut off. Watch out for this sonofabitch. He'll be dangerous 'til he's dead.

Catch-22

Pauly Jim (I still can't get used to that) informs us about the Catch-22 that's keeping us from "winning" in Iraq:

... But if they want to be able to walk away from Iraq with a win, even a worthless one, then bringing back the draft really is the only option left ...

Indeed, my friend. Pauly riffs off the same article I did last night, noting that if the Army is Dixie-fried (where I made the point we couldn't possibly invade Iran) we can't possibly achieve anything close to "winning" in Iraq.

A draft would be the only way we could raise the manpower needed to accomplish a complete occupation (pacification) of Iraq to the point where insurgent attacks (never be able to stop them completely) are reduced to a minor nuisance (realistically, we need 250,000 to 500,000 troops on the ground).

Thing is, the minute Congress passes the legislation, there will be a social upheaval equivalent to the peace movement of the '60s. That's what got people into the streets then and will certainly do it now; now that the majority of folks realize this war is a sham and a waste.

There will be no draft (and they say Social Security is the 'third rail of politics') and we will lose the war in Iraq. Faster if we manage to open a third front in "The War on Terra".

Since we're done in Iraq anyway (it's just a matter of time), it's also time we consider the way we're gonna leave. The Political Cat takes a look at this and the post got me thinking about it.

...

Then it's down through Basra province and into Kuwait and home free, right? Not quite, apparently. You see, the British are urging an immediate withdrawal from Basrah. And with good reason, apparently.

...

The Brits are watching our backs and they'll be gone soon. Most of our supplies come over land from Kuwait (through British-controlled territory). Were I an insurgent, those supply convoys would be my prime target. An army can have all the guns it wants, if it can't resupply, it can't fight.

Why do you think I always say, 'amateurs talk strategy and tactics, experts talk logistics'? My feeling is, our departure from Iraq will resemble this ...

Pic courtesy of IraqScam.

... more than anything else.

Do yourselves a favor and read Brother Lurch's post on the situation in southern Iraq. The Brits pulling out affects a lot more than our supply lines:

...

If the CIA is abandoning a prime listening post, we’re about to see some momentous changes. Having to spread our already over-stretched forces even farther will be a terrific problem. For one thing it could spell death to the 15 month tours as I speculated here.

...

As I said above, Iraq is done. The only question remaining is how we put it to bed. Anybody who talks about "winning" should be ridiculed, mocked, and spanked publicly. The only thought we should have is how we're getting out with the least carnage possible.

How?

Since we've been on this Iran thing lately, this report should make you feel better about us going ... not:

WASHINGTON - Sapped by nearly six years of war, the Army has nearly exhausted its fighting force and its options if the Bush administration decides to extend the Iraq buildup beyond next spring.

The Army's 38 available combat units are deployed, just returning home or already tapped to go to Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere, leaving no fresh troops to replace five extra brigades that President Bush sent to Baghdad this year, according to interviews and military documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

...

What the Chimp has done to our Army and Marine Corps is unconscionable. The most we could do to Iran is a combination of naval blockade and bombing. By the time Bush is out of office, our military will be worse off than it was after Vietnam.

Update:

And as the Chimp et al are looking toward Iran as an enemy, our puppets are courting a new friend. Ted at Creature's:

...

If Iran is the enemy, why is our puppet in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, referring to Iran as "helpful?" Why is our puppet in Bagdhad, Nouri al-Maliki, buddying up with not just with the Iranian president but also Iran's top religious leader?

...

It looks like the Afghanis and Iraqis are getting ready to deal us out. As I've said many times, the Chimp was way out of his league when he decided to fuck around in the region. These folks have been double-dealing for 5000 years and they're all playing us for fools.

Winning hearts and minds ...

How it's done:

Pristina. Hundreds of Kosovo Albanians attended a folk concert to celebrate the 61th birthday of former US president Bill Clinton on Sunday, remembering his support for their separatist struggle.

Dancing to Albanian folk music before a huge birthday cake outside the national theatre, they expressed gratitude for Clinton's approval of a NATO bombing campaign to end a Serbian crackdown during the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict.

"I hope president Clinton lives to be 101. I hope his wife Hillary is elected president and rules America as her husband did," said Lutfi Salihu, a 66-year-old pensioner who attended the concert.

"If it wasn't for him you wouldn't have one single Albanian in Kosovo nowadays."

...

Think the Iraqis are gonna be celebrating the Chimp's birthday anytime soon? Me neither.

Big tip o' the Brain to Maru.

How to be a conservative pundit

Chris Kelly in a HuffPost about Peggy Noonan:

And then it struck me, suddenly, like a slow-moving vehicle: That's how you get a job as a conservative pundit. Figure out what makes you different from a white, male, protestant businessman, and hate your own guts for it.

If you're black, hate civil rights. If you're a woman, hate feminism. If you grew up poor, despise the poor. If you're a visible minority, demand more profiling. If you're gay, say you're cured. If you're Jewish, praise anti-Semites, if you're Christian, praise war. If you're Michelle Malkin... I don't know where you start with your problems if you're Michelle Malkin.

Just take a good, long look in the mirror, and ask yourself: Who am I? And how am I failing to be Neil Bush?

I think that goes a long way toward explaining why there are gay and minority Repuglicans - beat me, whip me, exploit me, lie to me and steal from me and trample on my rights, but let me be one of you because I hate myself. Or just make me rich and give me power over others like myself and fuck everybody else.

Oh, the irony...

You can't make this shit up. From Raw Story

A plan to drop Guantanamo detainees smack in the middle of Kansas is drawing broad support from Democrats and civil rights groups.

But not everyone is happy.

Least of all, the detainees!

On the one hand, what better place to put religious fanatics?

On the other hand, it's a good thing they have no Constitutional rights. This would be a clear violation of the 8th Amendment.

No word yet if Fred Phelps is to be named their chaplain...

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Chuckle. Snort. Clean keyboard...

It's growing ...

...

Tearful reunion in the USA
Day by day, those memories fade away
Some babies grow in a peculiar way
It changed, it grew, and everybody knew
Semi-mojo
Whos this kinky so-and-so?

...

~ Haitian Divorce - Steely Dan

More saber-rattling on the Iranian front:

BAGHDAD - For the first time, the U.S. military said on Sunday that Iranian soldiers are in Iraq training insurgents to attack American forces.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a top U.S. commander who is in charge of a large swath of Iraq south of Baghdad, believes there are about 50 members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps in his battlefield area, military spokeswoman Maj. Alayne Conway said.

...

Oh wow! Iranians in Iraq! Of course, being the U.S. military, they must have found proof, right?

...

Conway said that U.S.-led forces have not caught any of the Iranians, but she said military intelligence and recently discovered caches of weapons with Iranian markings on them indicate that the Iranians are there. [my em]

...

Just like, "we haven't found any WMDs in Iraq, but we know they're there".

Listen to me. There has been, to date, no (zero, nix, nyet, nada) evidence of Iranian military involvement in Iraq. The 'evidence' they've presented us with so far is weaker than the line of crap they fed us about Iraq. All this bleating and babbling about Iran is just that, bullshit.

As for weapons with Iranian markings, kill a couple insurgents and take a look at their AK-47s. You'll see Chinese pictograms on them (under the Soviets' license to manufacture them). Are we gonna bomb the Chinese? The Middle East is a weapons supermarket.

Are there Iranian operatives working in Iraq? I'd be surprised if there weren't, but that in no way justifies attacking a sovereign nation. If another nation, Russia say, occupied Mexico, you can bet we'd be keeping an eye on them too, sending people over the border to fuck with 'em in little ways. Look at what we did in Afghanistan in the early '80s and that's half a world away.

It's time to worry about getting out of Iraq, not thinking up more bullshit to get us involved in Iran. Unfortunately, the war drums will beat louder and the bullshit will get deeper as autumn arrives and Congress returns to their spawning grounds Washington. Hopefully, the Dems won't fall for it the same way they did before Iraq.

Tip o' the Brain to Dr. Attaturk.

Heroism and the language of fascism

Rosa Brooks takes a look at and expands on something I've thought was bullshit for a while too:

Civil service is commendable, but worshiping soldiers and police for doing their duty has gotten out of control.

Once upon a time, you had to do something truly exceptional to qualify as a full-fledged hero: single-handedly hold off a battalion of enemy soldiers to allow your platoon to escape, or rescue 100 children from a Nazi concentration camp. But today, just showing up at your Army recruiting station makes you an instant hero -- and getting yourself hurt or killed doubles your heroism, even if you were sound asleep when your supply convoy went over an IED.

The empty rhetoric of heroism is everywhere these days. You know what I mean. Pat Tillman -- the former NFL star -- is "an American hero," apparently because he volunteered for duty along with several hundred thousand other people, then had the misfortune to be accidentally(?-G) shot by his own side. Every wounded service member is a "hero" too: Sen. Hillary Clinton proudly sponsored the "Heroes at Home Act of 2007," intended to improve medical care for wounded military personnel, and the Defense Department recently sponsored the "Hiring Heroes Career Fair" to encourage companies to hire wounded veterans. No soldier left behind!

Bah, humbug.

But it's a big mistake to mix up the idea of service -- or the idea of sacrifice and suffering -- with the idea of heroism.

Distinguishing heroism from service and suffering is important for two reasons. First, it's always worth fighting the Lake Wobegon effect because, in a world where "all the children are above average," the truly special child gets no recognition, and genuine acts of exceptional courage are trivialized.

But there's a deeper reason to be wary of the "everyone's a hero" rhetoric. Simply put, it fits neatly alongside other terms beloved of the powers that be, such as "warrior" and "the Homeland": It's part of the language of fascism.

For a chilling account of another society in which "the devaluation of the concept of heroism" was "proportional to the frequency of its use and abuse," check out Ilya Zemtsov's "The Encyclopedia of Soviet Life." In 1938, Zemtsov notes, the Soviet Union instituted "the title 'Hero of Socialist Labor'. . . . Thousands of those heroes emerged. . . . The hero was supposed to die in the name of Stalin during wartime [and] give his or her all in labor on communist constructions. . . . [But] a person upon whom the title 'hero' is bestowed has often performed no heroic deed whatsoever, but may receive the title . . . merely in return for displaying loyalty and/or diligence. . . . With time, the awarding of the title came to be used as a token to be disbursed or withheld according to political considerations. . . . "

In other words, comrades, whenever it seems as if they're handing out "hero" medals for free, look out: There's usually a hidden price.

For each loyal bastard to whom Bush awards the Eisernes Kreuz Medal of Freedom, there are thousands, perhaps millions who will pay the price.

La Boricua

So I was reading this piece about how Puerto Ricans are keeping their high school kids' info from military recruiters when came unbidden into my old-but-still-male little pea brain an image of Puerto Rico's secret weapon...


There's a draft coming from under my keyboard...

The War As We Saw It

[Welcome to Memeorandum readers. ~ F.]

A 'must read' OpEd in the NYT by some Iraq Vets, a Specialist and a buncha Sergeants. When my Sergeants spoke, I listened. We should all do that now as well.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

A battalion commander with no influence over his troops? Holy shit. In my day (yeah, yeah, button it...) we heaved the rocks and spears at whomsoever our C.O. said to.

And we've "trained" 129 battalions of Iraqis this way? That's fucked up.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

One wonders what the Chimp's reaction will be when - not 'if' - the Iraqis say they desire us to leave. At once. I think it will be that the poor beknighted fuzzie-wuzzies don't know what's good for themselves, and need their white saviors to show them the way to enlightenment, which we will gladly trade for their oil and we will be there until we get it and that's that.

Much more. Please go read.

Der Volkssturm ... revisited

[Welcome to RCP readers.]

I wrote last week about the breaking of the U.S. Army, comparing it to the Volkssturm (disclaimer: the U.S. Army has a long way to fall before it becomes the Volkssturm, but the road there is certainly being paved now) of the desperate days of the German Army at the end of WW2. More indication of that:

FORT MONROE, Va. -- The US Army, struggling to cope with stepped-up operations and extended deployments of its soldiers to Iraq, has shortened the duration of several of its bedrock training courses so that troops can return to fighting units on the front lines more quickly, according to senior training officials.

One training course that is considered the "first step" in educating newly minted sergeants -- the noncommissioned officers considered the backbone of Army units -- has been cut in half to 15 days. Meanwhile, an intensive program designed to prepare young officers for advanced leadership has been compressed from eight months to less than five months so that the Army can fill positions in constant demand from commanders in the Middle East.

...

Smell that? It's desperation.

By the way, I been through NCO Leadership School and what I learned there was helpful not only in the military but throughout my life since.

I lifted this from Wiki last week:

... Typically, members of the Volkssturm received only the most basic of military training. This included brief indoctrination training, and then training on the use of basic weapons such as the Karabiner 98k rifle and Panzerfaust ...

Great thanks to Susie Madrak for the link.

Quote of the Day

Our pal Mimus Pauly Jim Yeager:

...

Boy, that Karl Rove is amazing. He had everything. The imprimatur of Bush the Lesser? The acquiesance of congressional Republicans? The testicles of the mainstream media? He held it all. Right there in the palm of his pasty little hoof. And that one-trick piggy still found a way to blast all of his well-laid plans to hell and beyond! It's not every day you meet your match and it turns out to be you!

...