How Did He Say This Without His Tongue Bursting Into Flames?

Bush on the immigration reform debate:

“The immigration debate should be conducted in a civil and dignified way,” the president said as the Senate prepared to tackle the hot-button election issue of what to do with the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants this week.

Translation: you guys have to play nice while we sic our attack dogs on you.

Yeharr

What a Coincidence

...that a major new offensive in Iraq starts on the third anniversary of our descent into the rabbit hole.

...that a major new offensive in Iraq starts shortly after this president's poll numbers hit an alltime low.

...that a major new offensive in Iraq starts while a Senator introduces a motion to censure this president.

...that only now, at the height of discontent and dissatisfaction with this president, are documents discovered that allegedly show that Saddam: a) had WMD's that he either destroyed or hid; and b) show ties to terrorists planning attacks against the US.

What a coincidence.

It has to be a coincidence, right? After all, a big part of the Bush apoligentsia's playbook is the phrase "This president doesn't care about poll numbers; he cares about security."

And I'm sure that if you look back at the history of this president, you won't find other instances where announcements, proclamations, or offensives were mounted just as his numbers hit low points. Just as you won't find investigations held up until a later point, when the damage they might cause is limited.

Have you heard about the documents? I predict they'll be the next big piss in the right wing blogosphere. A bunch of documents seized when Baghdad was captured by the US reportedly show that the statements made by Bush at the beginning of the war were right, after all.
Give me a break.

Here are my takes on this:

1. The first place I've seen the allegations is in an online investor's editorial, yet mickey at instapundit is already trimphantly linking to it. Yeah. Great. I always go to an online investment website for definitive answers regarding military invasions. The information has no attribution, and I wasn't able to find any corroboration elsewhere, other than the fact that they're being released. Which to me says either it's an exaggeration, or the ink's not dry on the three year old documents yet.
2. Lemme get this straight--Hussein was able to hide/destroy/export his WMD's but couldn't get rid of the documentation? I can see that. After all, paper is one of the most durable substances known to man. It's not like it burns or anything.
   
3. If Hussein had WMD's, why didn't he use them instead of destroying them? I know, he didn't want to hurt or kill any of his own citizens. After all, he's shown that sort of reluctance in the past.
   
4. So we decided to divert our army from finding the guy who demonstrated the ability to attack and kill thousands in terrorist attacks on the US, and who was actively and openly planning future attacks, in order to get a guy who might have the potential to do what the first guy was already doing?
   
5. What a tremendous lack of imagination from Wingnuttia: First they said we went to Iraq because there were WMD's and ties to terrorists. When that information was effectively disproven, all of a suddend the reason we went to Iraq was to build a democracy. As that country dissolves into civil war, they need to find another reason to justify our foray into the hellhole. And they can't think of anything else, so they're going back to the first argument!
   

Hate is a strong word. I try to limit my usage of it. It's a negative emotion, and I try to avoid those.

But God help me, I hate this president. And all his minions. Call your Senators. Call your Representitives. Let then know you don't want these people destroying our country anymore.

Yeharr

Liberal Media, My Ass...

Cross-posted at The Cranky Yankee Daily Crank

For those of you who are deaf, dumb and ignorant to the fact that the U.S. mainstream media is nothing more than a propaganda piece for the same corporate giants that are running shrubco there are a few bold groups out there like Fairness and Accuracy in Media - FAIR that are willing to stand up to the media and call it what it is. Below are excerpts from a FAIR Media Alert reminding us how badly the U.S. media failed to live up to its responsibility in the run up to the illegal, unwarranted, irresponsible and highly unsuccessful war against Iraq.

In addition to all the evidence below of media failure and malfeasance let us never forget the White House had no less then the "so called" liberal New York Times on its payroll to sell the bogus WMD story through Judith Miller and her yellow journalism based on shrubco lies.

"The Final Word Is Hooray!"
Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits

3/15/06

Weeks after the invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel host Brit Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the media's supposedly pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War.

"The majority of the American media who were in a position to comment upon the progress of the war in the early going, and even after that, got it wrong," Hume complained in the April 2003 speech (Richmond Times Dispatch, 4/25/04). "They didn't get it just a little wrong. They got it completely wrong."

Hume was perhaps correct--but almost entirely in the opposite sense. Days or weeks into the war, commentators and reporters made premature declarations of victory, offered predictions about lasting political effects and called on the critics of the war to apologize. Three years later, the Iraq War grinds on at the cost of at least tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Around the same time as Hume's speech, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas declared (4/16/03): "All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken for granted, but their credibility will be lacking."

Gathered here are some of the most notable media comments from the early days of the Iraq War.

Declaring Victory

"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."
(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/27/03)

"We're all neo-cons now."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."
(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)

Mission Accomplished?

"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific."
(PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech)

"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)

Neutralizing the Opposition

"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically."
(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)

Nagging the "Naysayers"

"Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?"
(Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)

"I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)

"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, "The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated." Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong tail, again.

"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)

"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."
(Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)

"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right."
(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)

"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated so far.... The final word on this is, hooray."
(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)

"Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad out in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still hasn't figured out we won the war."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)

Cakewalk?

"This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."
(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer,
3/30/03)

"There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter of weeks, try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going to fold like that."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)

Weapons of Mass Destruction

NPR's Mara Liasson: Where there was a debate about whether or not Iraq had these weapons of mass destruction and whether we can find it...

Brit Hume: No, there wasn't. Nobody seriously argued that he didn't have them beforehand. Nobody.
(Fox News Channel, April 6, 2003)

"Speaking to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell made so strong a case that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is in material breach of U.N. resolutions that only the duped, the dumb and the desperate could ignore it."
(Cal Thomas, syndicated column, 2/12/03)

"Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where are the supplies of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes to justify pre-emption? (Freed scientists will lead us to caches no inspectors could find.) What about remaining danger from Baathist torturers and war criminals forming pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance? (Their death wish is our command.)"
(New York Times' William Safire, 4/10/03)

No matter how you wingnuts out there spin it the shrubco cooked the intelligence toward its own end. They spun it to the willing media and they media lapped it up like the corporate puppy dogs they are. There were a few of us out there who knew it was all bullshit but our protests fell on deaf ears. We were accused of treason and all sorts of unpatriotic epitaphs were heaped upon us.

We were right! We love our country so much that we were willing to stand up to the mainstream, speak the truth and absorb the abuse. To all of you still out there beating the drum that the WMD did exist in the threatening manner shrubco sold them I say, "You are they traitors. All the deaths, military and civilian in Iraq are on your heads. Screw you and I was and still am right."

On Things Hanging Out

My Soon-to-be-Ex-Sister-in-Law sent me this editorial, written by literary theorist and law professor Stanley Fish, and asked me what I thought about it.

I figured I'd share my opinions with the class:

As much as I hate using a man's name to make a point, you can tell Mister Fish is old, because his thinking stinks.

Who the hell am I kidding? I love doing stuff like that!

The first clue is the title. "Letting it all hang out?" Wow. I was so surprised about that that I almost dropped my Hai Karate aftershave, man.

Seriously, though, this guy's setting up liberal straw men, but he's not even doing a good job knocking them down."The first tenet of the liberal religion is that everything (at least in the realm of expression and ideas) is to be permitted, but nothing is to be taken seriously."

Umm. It's not a religion, dude. That you think it so shows not the failure of liberalism, but your failure to grasp basic concepts of freedom in society. Not every expression is to be permitted. Inciting a crowd to riot is not permitted under freedom of expression; nor is yelling 'fire' in a movie theater. And as far as taking things seriously--who is he to decide who does and does not take any particular point of view 'seriously?'

Then he goes on to denigrate the concept of 'respect:' "The thing about respect is that it doesn't cost you anything; its generosity is barely skin-deep and is in fact a form of condescension: I respect you; now don't bother me."

If anyone's doing any condescending, it's you, Mister Fish. Respect, to me, means a deferential regard towards something. If I have a deferential regard towards someone's religious views, it means I accept that this person has a specific viewpoint, and (assuming he or she is not being hypocritical,) has just as much a right to that viewpoint as I do to mine. It does not mean that I have to agree with it, nor will I feel the need to make him or her agree with my differing view. Where is there condescension in that?

If, however, I espouse respect, yet my actions towards you and/or your beliefs show a lack of respect, now that's some condescension. I would contend that this sort of behavior is more in line with the current Neocon way of doing business. Perhaps Fish is doing a bit of transference here, no?

I also find it fascinating that he has the power to read minds. After all, he knows that "the editors who have run the cartoons do not believe that Muslims are evil infidels who must either be converted or vanquished. They do not publish the offending cartoons in an effort to further some religious or political vision; they do it gratuitously, almost accidentally."

Hold on there, Kreskin. You must be losing something in the telepathic transatlantic translation. Jyllands-Posten is one of the most conservative of Danish newspapers--sort of the Manchester Union-Leader of Denmark, not some moonbat bastion of liberal causes. And did you know that the very same Flemming Rose who ran these cartoons had previously rejected a series of cartoons lampooning Jesus and a host of other Christian icons on the grounds of being too offensive? Rose explained that he used the term 'too offensive' because it was more polite than saying the cartoons were just plain bad. In what world is 'too offensive' more polite than 'just plain bad'? And have you seen the cartoons they did run? They make the guy who draws 'Marmaduke' look like the love child of Rembrandt and Mark Twain.

Just for fun though, let's follow through on his way of thinking. Let's assume that he's right when he says: "The belief in the therapeutic and redemptive force of dialogue depends on the assumption (central to liberalism's theology) that, after all, no idea is worth fighting over to the death and that we can always reach a position of accommodation if only we will sit down and talk it out."

I guess that means that there are ideas worth killing over. So, in his view, it's OK for us to kill Muslims because of our differing belief system? That must mean then that, since they believe differently than us, that it's OK for Muslims to kill us.

Or does he espouse to a double standard?

And what is wrong with believing that we should sit down and discuss our differences? In the end, when everyone's tired of killing, isn't that what we do anyhow?

From where I sit, dude is just using this incident as a launching point for another typical Conservative swipe at the First Amendment. Which, of course, is a bit strange, seeing as how none of the players in this story happen to be from the US. Typical.

Yeharr

Link

5

...the number of days since the Vice President shot anyone.

4

...the number of days since the world was notified that the Vice President shot anyone.

Top Ten reasons Cheney shot that 78 year old guy in the face.

From the home office, Dick Cheney's Top 10 Excuses for Shooting That Guy:

10. Sure, like you've never seen giant game birds wearing day glo orange vests
9. Warrantless domestic spying revealed he was getting phone calls from al Qaeda
8. If the Vice President does it, its not against the law
7. Hoping to put him in a persistent vegetative state so the GOP could pass a law to keep him alive
6. Thought he was hunting Dan Quayle
5. The love between them could not survive back in Washington
4. Birds, Cows, People-- with my eyesight I'm lucky I hit anything
3. Positive the guy's family will welcome him as a liberator
2. Pheasants? I thought we were hunting peasants

and the number one Cheney excuse for shooting that guy:

1. Open season on liberals started early this year

#3 is my favorite. Thanks Dallas Dem at DKos

As I posted over at my crib, Dr. Evil may have been drunk when he shot that guy.

Doesn't Anyone Get it?

We are treated to a spectacle where a half-assed excuse of an AG sits in front of a half-assed excuse of an Senate investigative panel and gives half-assed answers that are all framed exactly the same way: "We need this wiretapping to keep our country safe."

Bullshit. Bullshit bullshit bullshit.

It is illegal wiretapping, pure and simple. Has anyone asked this schmuck the following question: "Mr. Gonzales: what does the wiretapping without FISA approval get you that a wiretap WITH FISA approval doesn't? And don't say expediency, because we all know that is a lie."

Of course, it doesn't matter if he lies or not, since he couldn't be bothered to be sworn in.

The reason no one asks the question is because Al can't give us the truth, which is: the only thing this wiretapping gives the President is the ability to spy on people and organizations that oppose the President's policy. This is wiretapping for political gain, not any sort of highminded antiterror use.


And then I go to the Newsweek site and discover that the problem isn't that we have Big Brother watching us--it's that Big Brother isn't competent enough.

Micheal Hirsch says the problem isn't that we have an oppressive overlord--it's that our oppressive overlord isn't very good at the job.

Well, that makes me feel better.

How about you?

Yeharr

Link

$500

My company offers a pre-tax savings account, where we can set aside a certain amount of money per year to help pay for medical expenses.

I did a check of my finances, and that's the amount I can set aside this year.

$500.

Now, here's the thing: To use that $500, I have to first pay the health-care provider, THEN submit the bill for reimbursement.

So that's $1,000 out of my pocket--at least temporarily--to get that money.

Oh--and I can't touch any of it until next year. So if I need to spend five hundred on something THIS year...well, as a friend of mine used to say: TS, eliot.


Nice racket, eh?

I mention this, because The Worst President Ever wishes to take this policy nationwide. In lieu of actually providing affordable health care for all, he wants us to start savings accounts for our healthcare.

Yes, on the heels of his wildly successful (for the drug companies) Medicaid reform, TWPE is expected to say tonight that Americans should take ownership of their health care by putting money aside specifically for future health issues, and then have high-deductable health policies for all. At the same time, he's also expected to call for changes in malpractice lawsuits that would restrict damages to hospitals.

Put in another way, he wants us to save money we don't have to save to pay for health care problems we don't have yet, and if the hospital screws up, we won't be able to do much about it.

And we don't have the money, folks. Not just debt-ridden li'l ol' me. We are all spending more than we make. Which is not surprising since most companies give a 3% COLA to their employees, while the actual Cost Of Living rose something like 3.25%.

So here's what we're going to be asked to accept from TWPE: A plan that will likely increase the number of uninsured and increase health care costs, all while costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

Aren't you glad this guy got to choose our Supreme Court?

Yeharr