Day: January 11, 2007

Bush: Iraq Study Group Report a ‘Flaming Turd’

Jon Ponder

Scatman: What is it with our fratboy-in-chief’s obession with scatalogical slang:

“He’s also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides.”

Informed correspondents of the Washington Post and New York Times related in conversation that Bush furiously called the [Iraq Study Group] report “a flaming turd,” but his colorful remark was not published. Perhaps it was apocryphal. Nonetheless, it conveyed the intensity of his hostile rejection.

This is from the same class act whose term of endearment for Karl Rove is “turd blossom.”

Update: EvilPoet reminds us about the president’s obsession with fart jokes:

“He loves to cuss, gets a jolly when a mountain biker wipes out trying to keep up with him, and now we’re learning that the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes. A top insider let that slip when explaining why President Bush is paranoid around women, always worried about his behavior. But he’s still a funny, earthy guy who, for example, can’t get enough of fart jokes. He’s also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides, but forget about getting people to gas about that.”

Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ Inconvenienced in Washington Schools

Buck Banks

The heat is off: A guy named Frosty in Federal Way, Wash., is trying to ice Al Gore’s movie about global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” because it does not present an alternative to science as an explanation of why the world is getting measurably hotter. Frosty Hardison supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education — SURPRISE!

There is no opposing view to science, which is fact, and the facts are clear that global warming is here, now.

When he heard that his daughter was going to be exposed to Gore’s PowerPoint presentation, Frosty complained about the film and the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it is calling a “moratorium” on teachers showing the film in class. Frosty explained why he wants to cool Gore’s jets to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

“Condoms don’t belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He’s not a schoolteacher,” said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. “The information that’s being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. … The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn’t in the DVD.”

Neither is the opposing view that the world will end in ice.

“Somebody could say you’re killing free speech, and my retort to them would be we’re encouraging free speech,” said school board member David Larson, a lawyer. “The beauty of our society is we allow debate.”

School Board members adopted a three-point policy that says teachers who want to show the movie must ensure that a “credible, legitimate opposing view will be presented,” that they must get the OK of the principal and the superintendent, and that any teachers who have shown the film must now present an “opposing view.”

That shouldn’t be hard to do, as the oil companies have been spending millions to disprove man-made global warming for years, using the same tactics as the tobacco companies used to convince people smoking is good for you. Chrysler has gone so far as to criticize European views of global warming, describing climate change as “way, way in the future, with a high degree of uncertainty.”

So there’s plenty of naysayers out there. You don’t have to be a knuckle-dragging creationist like Frosty to find alternative theories. Like Satan is doing it. But the Hardisons’ opposition is actually more, er, simple than that:

“From what I’ve seen (of the movie) and what my husband has expressed to me, if (the movie) is going to take the approach of ‘bad America, bad America,’ I don’t think it should be shown at all,” Gayle Hardison said. “If you’re going to come in and just say America is creating the rotten ruin of the world, I don’t think the video should be shown.”

You can’t argue with that kind of rhetoric, now can you?

Laurie David, a co-producer of the movie, said that this is the first incident of its kind relating to the film.

“I am shocked that a school district would come to this decision,” David said in a prepared statement. “There is no opposing view to science, which is fact, and the facts are clear that global warming is here, now.”

Sorry, Laurie, there is an opposing view to science. It’s called ignorance.

Polls: Majorities Have Lost Faith in Bush, War

Pensito Editors

Two new polls provide more evidence that decided majorities of Americans have lost conifdence in Pres. Bush:

Bush is scraping bottom even before his new war escalation gets underway.

ABC/Washington Post: Americans broadly reject President Bush’s plan for a surge of U.S. forces into Iraq, with substantial majorities dismissing his arguments that it’ll end the war more quickly and increase the odds of victory, an ABC News/Washington Post poll finds.

Indeed, rather than Bush bolstering public confidence, the national survey, conducted after his address to the nation on his new Iraq strategy, finds that a new high — 57 percent — think the United States is losing the war. Just 29 percent think it’s winning.

CBS: Fifty percent of those who saw the speech said they disapprove of the president’s proposals, while 37 percent said they approve. Just one-third of those surveyed said they support Mr. Bush’s call to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq.

Following the speech, 68 percent of Americans — the same number as prior to the speech — said they were uneasy about the president’s ability to make decisions about Iraq.

The 29 percent in the WaPo poll who are under the delusion that we are winning in Iraq is very similar to another number: In 1974, roughly 25 percent of Americans still approved of Pres. Nixon when he resigned over his involvement in Watergate-related crimes. The Nixon number has historically been considered the benchmark for the hardcore Republican base.

If so, Bush is scraping bottom even before his new war escalation gets underway.

Post-Withdrawal Iraq Could Resemble Bloody Aftermath of First Bush’s Gulf War

Jon Ponder

In 1991, the first Pres. Bush promised military support to Iraqi rebels after Saddam’s surrender. But Bush broke the promise and Saddam’s forces masssacred 30,000 rebels and buried them in unmarked graves.

This is how Pres. George W. Bush’s failed Iraq war will end. When U.S. forces pull out of Iraq — whether it is next week, next month, or, as Pres. Bush now prosposes, 10 years from now, the civil war for control of the country will escalate.

The warring factions will include various sects within the majority Shia communtiy, the Sunni minority and the Kurds seeking secession and independence. There may also be forces of outside fundamentalists militias, including al Qaeda, who move in to fill the vaccuum left by departed American forces.

The battle for control of Iraq could be bloody and long, perhaps comparable to the war in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Unfortunately, George Bush lit the fuse on this bomb in the heart of the Middle East in 2003, when he foolishly ordered the invasion of Iraq. Those of us who opposed the war from the start, and who now favor moving our troops out of harm’s way, should be prepared for the violence and bloodshed that erupt in the aftermath of our retreat.

To get a sense of what Iraq will suffer when the U.S. pulls out, we need look no further back than 1991, in the aftermath of the first Gulf War.

Inmediately after the end of the first Gulf War, Pres. George H.W. Bush promised Iraqi Shiites and Kurds American military support if they would rise up and overthrow the newly defeated Saddam Hussein. In a broadcast to Iraqis via Voice of America on Februrary 15, 1991, then-Pres. Bush said:

There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: And that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations’ resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.

But when the rebellion got underway, Bush and his war council, which included Defense Sec. Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell, changed their minds about helping the rebels.

This decision led to the massacre of at least 30,000 rebels who were buried in mass graves. Mr. Bush himself has said that what happened to the Shiites was one of the deepest regrets of his presidency

Details of the uprising and its horrific aftermath below the fold.

[…]

Sanctuary for Santorum in D.C. Think Tank

Buck Banks

Stink tank: Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has landed at a Beltway think tank following his royal pasting in the midterm elections, according to Congressional Quarterly. The irony of Santorum — never known for his thoughtful, measured rhetoric — going to work for something called a “think” tank was not lost on us.

The 48-year-old Santorum will head a program at the Center for Ethics and Public Policy focusing on “America’s Enemies.” According to the center, Santorum will examine a “growing array of anti-Western forces that are increasingly casting a shadow over our future.”

It’s pretty clear who Santorum believes America’s enemies are: His valedictory speech in the Senate Dec. 6 focused on “Islamic fascists” as the prime threat to the United States.

Santorum, in fact, had sought throughout his 2006 Senate campaign to portray himself as tougher in the war on terror than his highly touted Democratic challenger, Bob Casey, then the state treasurer and namesake son of a popular former governor.

But Santorum’s overall image as a conservative hardliner — on social and economic issues as well as on national security — made him highly vulnerable in an Eastern swing state where voters have increasingly been leaning Democratic, especially in an election year when the national tide was running strong against the Republican Party. CQPolitics.com, throughout the campaign, had Santorum rated as the underdog.

Nonetheless, most observers were stunned by the blowout margin by which Santorum was sent packing. Casey won the race by 59 percent to 41 percent, with a margin of more than 700,000 votes.