Day: October 22, 2006

If Andy Rooney Is Against You…

Trish

What does it mean for the Bush team when Andy Rooney uses his slot on 60 Minutes to ask, “What in the world are we doing in Iraq?” Hey Jon, you and everyone else in later time slots should tune into the the last three minutes of the show tonight. Believe me, it was accident that I caught it but I’m glad I did. Talk about the tide turning…

I just checked, and the transcript is up on the the CBS site.

I’d like to talk to you about something you probably don’t want to be talked to about.

Someone – and I guess it’s President Bush – has to tell us what in the world we’re doing in Iraq now. I don’t think any of us know. We did the right thing getting rid of Saddam Hussein, but what are we doing there now?

The Pentagon never tells us anything. Usually reporters and cameramen let us know quite a bit but it’s so dangerous for them in Baghdad now that even they can’t show us much of what’s going on.

So far almost 2,800 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq. I say “almost 2,800” because there is no exact number. It changes by six or eight every day. That’s how many of our young men get killed? And for what? Just tell us, Mr. President. For what? It hasn’t even been good for Iraq; it certainly hasn’t been good for us. The whole world thinks less of us for what we’re doing there.

This little war is costing us $2 billion a what? I forget, a day, a week, a minute? It’s the kind of money I can’t even imagine.

President Bush should stand up there in front of us on television and do the hardest thing of all for any president to do. Tell us the truth. He should just say “Americans, there’s something I have to tell you. You trusted me to be your leader and I thought I was doing the right thing when we went into Iraq. Well, I hate to admit it but I was wrong. I’m sorry but we never should have gone in and now we should get out.”

Well, I’m not holding my breath until President Bush says that because I’ve never heard him admit he was wrong about anything. It isn’t something presidents do. I don’t recall hearing Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter admitting they were wrong either.

I was asked to keep this short tonight. Fortunately it’s easier to be short when I’m serious. Funny takes longer.

Are the Bushes Moving to Paraguay?

Jon Ponder

Get out your tinfoil hats, ladies and gentlemen.We have incoming and it is a doozy. Via Wonkette and Bring It on, here are the facts:

  • According to Project Censored, the U.S. military moved into Paraguay last summer: “Five hundred U.S. troops arrived in Paraguay with planes, weapons, and ammunition in July 2005, shortly after the Paraguayan Senate granted U.S. troops immunity from national and International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction. Neighboring countries and human rights organizations are concerned that the massive air base at Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay is potential real estate for the U.S. military.”
  • First Daughter Jenna Bush has recently returned from a 10-day visit to Paraguay. She went under the auspices of UNICEF, but reportedly met with the American ambassador, James Cason. She arrived Oct. 9, and was planning to stay about 10 days.
  • President Bush has recently purchased nearly 100,000 acres of ranchland in Paraguay, the poorest country in South America. The source of this information is Prensa, a state-owned news service in Cuba, which is a bit dubious.

Whoah! Is President Bush afraid of a coup? Or maybe he has done something so heinous that he knows he’ll be exiled when it is revealed. So many possibilities.

If there’s any truth to it, I would just say adios, el presidente, and Paraguay ain’t far enough.

A Story of Iraq, Katrina, and a Dismembered Girlfriend

Trish

I can’t get the report about the guy who dismembered his girlfriend in New Orleans and then committed suicide out of my head.

I am a hundred percent in the personal responsibility camp but it seems, even to me, like this story is evidence of the very bad karma George Bush has loosed upon our country

After Hurricane Katrina, Zackery Bowen and his girlfriend Adriane Hall appeared in news stories as examples of young people who had pressed on in the battered city despite evacuation orders and a lack of power and water.

Their story came to a disturbing end this week: Bowen leapt to his death from a hotel, leaving a note that led police to a French Quarter apartment where they found a woman’s charred head on the stove, limbs in the oven and torso in the refrigerator.

Yes, if it were a movie I would be hiding my eyes during this part, but the obvious details aren’t all that’ve been bothering me. I am a hundred percent in the personal responsibility camp but it seems, even to me, like this story is evidence of the very bad karma George Bush has loosed upon our country.

[Bowen] served in Kosovo and Iraq as a military policeman, earning several medals including the NATO medal and the Presidential Unit Citation, which is awarded to military units that have performed a heroic act in the face of an armed enemy.

After his discharge, Bowen returned to New Orleans, where he was hired at several bars because of his good looks, charming manners, and long blond hair…

A fellow bartender told the New Orleans Times-Picayune that after downing rounds of Miller High Life and Jameson’s Irish Whiskey, Bowen would grow depressed when talking about his military service, indicating that there was an overseas incident involving a child that haunted him.

New Orleans is the perfect backdrop in this horror screenplay. After all, the town with one of the richest histories in America was rendered a practically Biblical backwater after the Bush administration left its residents to die and its structures to crumble.

Alligators have been dragged from abandoned swimming pools. Foxes had to be removed from the airport. Coyotes are stalking rabbits and nutria…in city streets. And armadillos are undermining air conditioning units.

In the year since Hurricane Katrina drove out many of the people of New Orleans, wild animals have been moving in. Some were blown in by the winds or redistributed by the floodwaters. Others were drawn by the piles of rotting garbage and by the shelter afforded by all the abandoned homes and tall weeds.

Responsible for killing his girlfriend and himself: Bowen
Responsible for sending Bowen to Iraq and ruining his life: Bush
Responsible for ruining the formerly great American city where the murder-suicide took place: Bush
Ruin, ruin, and more ruin: Bush

Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way, and I’m sure Bush supporters will leave nasty comments deriding me for doing just that, but it seems to me that this story is one more indication that there are consequences for what Bush himself calls “evil doing.”

Karma is often misdefined by the My Name is Earl model of direct cause and effect. A more accurate definition is the very simple idea that whatever you create more of in the world is what you, and others, are more likely to encounter. It’s the law of mathematics.

While Katrina was still a fresh crisis, Republicans loved to say there was plenty of blame to go around, meaning none of the blame was theirs. I’m not for a second defending the acts committed by this ruined man in this ruined place. But sometimes a story is so bad that you have to really think about it. And on this one, I just keep ending up at the White House door.

Repug Proposes Unorthodox Solution to School Shootings

Trish

Who says the GOP is not the party of ideas? A Republican who wants to be the next superintendent of schools for Oklahoma has burned the midnight oil to come up with a plan to keep students safe in the event of a school shooting.

Or, judging by the plan itself, maybe it was something green with buds that he was burning. AP:

“There are some rifles not even Webster’s Dictionary will stop.”

A candidate for state superintendent of schools said Thursday he wants thick used textbooks placed under every student’s desk so they can use them for self-defense during school shootings.

“People might think it’s kind of weird, crazy,” said Republican Bill Crozier of Union City, Oklahoma, a teacher and former Air Force security officer. “It is a practical thing; it’s something you can do. It might be a way to deflect those bullets until police go there.”

Hey man, pass the bong this way. Oh wow, you know what we should do? We should, like, shoot some books and make a video!

Crozier and a group of aides produced a 10-minute video Tuesday in which they shoot math, language and telephone books with a variety of weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle and a 9mm pistol. The rifle bullet penetrated two books, including a calculus textbook, but the pistol bullet was stopped by a single book.

Crozier said the demonstration shows that a student could effectively use a textbook as protection in a school shooting.

For those not on drugs, it’s hard to respond to the idea seriously.

An Oklahoma Highway Patrol spokesman was skeptical.

“He probably needs to take a look at some ballistics tests,” Lt. Pete Norwood said. “There are some rifles not even Webster’s Dictionary will stop.”

Platitudes and Pralines: The Ice Cream Shop Photo Op

Jon Ponder

As we reported on Friday, President Bush celebrated “Character Counts” week by campaigning in Pennsylvania for GOP Rep. Don Sherwood. The congressman’s campaign is in a bit of trouble because he is a newly admitted adulterer and accused mistress-strangler.

After the speechifying, Karl Rove took the president and Rep. Sherwood out for a photo op. I guess the “mom and apple pie” shoppe was closed, so he opted for the wholesome goodness of an ice cream parlor:

During the quick stop, the president picked a cone filled with pralines and cream while Sherwood opted for a more conservative Styrofoam cup of vanilla ice cream.

Bush told [Paul Manning, the owner of the ice cream shop] that “hard-working people are the backbone of the country,” and to “keep up the good work,” Manning recalled.

The president and Manning exited the store ahead of Sherwood and company. A crowd of onlookers cheered and applauded as the president spoke of his dairy delight in a cake cone.

“This man knows how to make good ice cream,” the president said. A reporter asked to know what kind of ice cream the commander in chief preferred. “Pralines and cream; I strongly recommend it.”

All that stage-management, scripting and security, and yet the takeaway photo of the photo op is one of the president caught mid-bite, staring awkwardly at the floor, looking retarded.

The Blank Check

Jon Ponder
“The moral force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection [has been] snuffed out.”

Keith Olbermann:

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom, to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens “unlawful enemy combatants and ship them somewhere, anywhere, but may now, if he so decides, declare you an “unlawful enemy combatant” and ship you somewhere, anywhere.

And if you think this hyperbole or hysteria, ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was president or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was president or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was president.

And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant,” exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?

This President now has his blank check.

He lied to get it.

He lied as he received it.

Is there any reason to even hope he has not lied about how he intends to use it nor who he intends to use it against?

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