Pin the Tail on the Dickhead

It doesn't even need to be said, except because our media see fit to give voice to morans, it really does: Obama is absolutely right. Hannity, per usual, is a complete waste of bandwidth, oxygen, monkey butter, and the case of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill his parents were drinking the night he was conceived.

Now, I've got to tell you -- I mean, why do we wear pins? Because our country was under attack. And to politicize once again the war to this extent. Well, who cares about the war? Are you proud of your country? Do you believe in America? Do you believe that America has been, continues to be the greatest force for good in this world? I think the answer, if you ask that question of any, you know, liberal today, I think they doubt that America is a force for good in the world, that America has been, continues to be a force for good in the world. And I think it's, you know, the greatest gift God gave us and continues to be a force for good.

[emphasis in original]

I agree about America's wonderfulness, but that is in spite of toxic oafs like Hannity and the crowd of shitbirds he rolls with, not because of or even correlated with. I think making hay out of cheap lapel symbolism lowers the already embarrassingly low bar of rhetoric and conjecture, which means it's perfect for a slug like Hannity.

Maybe we should check the candidates' vehicles for suitable placement of approved Chinese ribbon magnets, per the Fox/Regnery Politburo diktat.

Brainless

I see America's favorite idiot loon is making her periodic pub crawl through what passes for the American media these days. Hell, why not bring in the raving sandwich-board idiot from the sidewalk while you're at it?

I'll see your disenfranchisement, Sweet Cheeks, and raise you the idea that maybe they shouldn't be allowed to write books anymore either. That would at least give the country a much-needed break from your scroungy ass. Apparently the title of the wizened shrew's two-ply manifesto is If Democrats Had Brains, They'd Be Republicans, but I'm inclined to scribble out a quick riposte called If Conservatards Had Brains, They Wouldn't Pay This Insane Tranny Thirty Bucks Every Eighteen Months for the Same Fucking Book.

Shorter title: House of Coulter: Where It's Always Shark Week.

Boogers Is Tasty

Important decision about to be made -- eat or flick?

I remember my first beer:

LANCASTER, Pa. - Give the man a microphone and he'll talk about anything. For 76 minutes, [Junior] prowled the stage Wednesday in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, giving a speech and answering questions about everything from his opposition to tax increases to his veto of a bill to expand children's health insurance.

Yeah well, you can field just about any question on any subject when your only answer is to surf incoherently on a nose-picking symphony of boilerplate, homilies, and (hopefully) invented anecdotes.

He offered a pointed description of his job.

"My job is a decision-making job. And as a result, I make a lot of decisions," the president said.

He elaborated on that point later.

"I delegate to good people. I always tell Condi Rice, `I want to remind you, Madam Secretary, who has the Ph.D. and who was the C student. And I want to remind you who the adviser is and who the president is.'

"I got a lot of Ph.D.-types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, `[Dude who clears tumbleweeds], here's what's on my mind.' And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device (sic), I decide, you know, I say, `This is what we're going to do.' And it's `Yes, sir, [Mister Man].' And then we get after it, implement policy."

With this kind of rigorous decision-making process, it's no wonder we are where we are. But shit, is he retarded, or does he assume that we are? As usual, probably both.

Still, the same tired-ass stories every freakin' time, man, like he's proud of that shit. "Heh-heh, see, ya studied hard 'n' played by the rules 'n' lurned lots 'n' lots of heavy stuff -- an' yer still workin' for a guy like me! Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh!"

It's all about him and his wittle ego, isn't it? It's about smarter, more qualified people having to be deferential to him and his gut, never mind that there is no university management program on the planet -- especially Harvard's -- that tells you to just go with your gut at the expense of all countervailing empirical evidence and analysis. He'll show 'em all; nobody can tell him nothin'.

Well, he's your preznit, Lancaster, that's why he's there, so choke on it.


The PhD and the C student consult on a weally big decision.

Chickenhawks of a Feather

Shorter Fred Thompson:

Rush, I say, Rush Limbaugh and his trusty butt boil Ralph are the next best thing to actually showin' up for war.

Is this what Leghorn means by "strongest supporters"? [emphasis mine]

On the October 2 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh denounced a recent ad by VoteVets.org that featured Iraq war veteran Brian McGough, calling the ad "a blatant use of a valiant combat veteran, lying to him about what I said, then strapping those lies to his belt, sending him out via the media in a TV ad to walk into as many people as he can walk into." Limbaugh went on to say that "[w]hoever pumped [McGough] full of these lies about what I said ... has betrayed him." Limbaugh denounced the ad despite admitting "I haven't watched the ad."

No, McGough seems quite clear about what you said, fatboy.

In the ad, which was created in response to Limbaugh's recent characterization of U.S. service members who oppose the war in Iraq as "phony soldiers," McGough says to Limbaugh, "Until you have the guts to call me a 'phony soldier' to my face, stop telling lies about my service."

Let's see, Limpballs has already been caught lying about what he said, and clipping and changing the audio excerpts in a self-serving effort to minimize the fallout. It makes sense that an insufferable hump like Thompson would bother to defend a motherless fuck like Limbaugh; after all, there's obviously a great deal of overlap to their respective fan bases.

And Limbaugh's gotten away with a lot over the years, in terms of who he'll pick on and how he goes about it -- women, children, the disabled, dissembling and mischaracterizing (and outright lying) along the way. Since he's saying what his retard listeners are thinking anyway, it's all good.

Has he finally crossed a line here? It's tough to say. It depends entirely on whether he can sell the retards on this latest grift, if they wanna keep on believing a drug-addled liar with chronic wimmin trouble, a likely sex tourist, someone who is clearly nothing more than a prevaricating butt-boy to the scum who have sold this country down the river.

Since they're part of the problem, I'm betting most of them stick with the devil they know. That's what makes them morons. And they deserve him, just like they deserve to get their chains jerked by Fred Thompson. But it'd be nice if the Democrats keep up -- hell, ramp up -- their volleys at Limbaugh, and by association Thompson. It's time to quit letting these cockroaches get away with this shit, and just squash them already.

Climbing the Poll

Following up on this post, it appears indeed that some 70% of Americans wish to reduce or defund the war entirely (Question #15). If the poll is accurate (and it does seem that most recent polls corroborate these figures to a great extent), then we have a real synaptic disconnect at work here. How can 2/3 of a nation claim to be in opposition to an enormously major issue, and yet do absolutely nothing significant about it?

You want to defund the war, then defund the system, delegitimize the institutions, the spokesweasels, the mealy-mouthed punditocracy and their corporate running-dog factoid-reading sidekicks. And then vote with your dollars and your patronage, reflect it in what you drive and where your food comes from. If 200 million people are on board just to that small extent, it will make a much greater dent than any undercounted march on the National Mall.

Money is the only thing these fuckers understand. Clearly the Democrats are not going to gather the collective spine to do anything about this, and I am starting to wonder about what kind of monkey-wrench a focused, disciplined, well-funded third-party candidacy could throw in all this.

This is not a plea for Ralph Nader to jump back in, anything but. But I'm old enough to remember John Anderson, and before Reagan toddled up and became everyone's favorite grampa, Anderson had a real shot at giving voice to disaffected Democrats who had been skewered with stagflation and a flailing foreign policy. I wouldn't have guessed it at the beginning of this summer, when change still seemed not only possible but likely, but continuing in the current direction of gutless incrementalism and puling ineffectuality, the early primary season opens up some possibilities. And a cynical pseudo-populist appeal from a Bloomberg-Hagel or some such ticket come April, when the major-party nominees are settled, would give a lot of people a chance to say "fuck you" to Democratic listlessness.

I don't say that out of hope, but rather fear, because the Perot factor cuts both ways, and another six months of calculated pussyfooting will likely cause more Dems to stray from the reservation than on the GOP side, no matter what James Dobson is threatening. And even gutless incrementalism is better than sociopathic aggression and toxic ignorance.

But in the end, people vote for how they see themselves, and nobody sees themselves as a capitulating pantywaist. Aside from that, the only thing we can control is how we spend our money. If we actually care as much as we tell the pollsters we do, we'll start there. Anything less is just self-serving bullshit people tell themselves to avoid the truth.

Pleather Diplomacy

It's always good to see Perry Farrell working again, but he might want to tone down the playa-hatin' on the Iranians and the British. "You're all a bunch of assholes", strangely, is not the best tack for a responsible foreign policy.

But what do I know? I'm just one of millions of people who pays to have this idiot clop around the world insulting allies and threatening anyone who looks at us funny.

Gilded Cage Match

The way out is the way in. -- Rush, Secret Touch

Commenter thedevilzone points out a great post from IOZ, which neatly encapsulates the political predicament we find ourselves in, perhaps without many of us even realizing or thinking about it.

If you asked me, "What would a contemporary police state look like?" I'd reply that it would look an awful lot like what America looks like right now. I would tell you that subsidized consumer affluence has proven a far more effective method of social control than centrally planned, faux-egalitarianism. I would tell you that someone finally figured out that breadlines breed rebellion but lines at the multiplex for the midnight opening of the next blockbuster do not. I would tell you that keeping up with the Joneses has proven a more effective enforcer of conformity than any book of Dear Leader's wisdom ever did. I would tell you that hope for Vegas vacations beats fear of the work camps for quashing dissent. I would tell you that subtle is better than overt, seemingly random better than routine, carnivalesque better than somber, colorful better than drab. Look at the billions of dollars and man-hours thrown into deciding between a guy from Massachusetts and a gal from New York who evince no convincingly held differences of belief. Has ever a nation been farther from revolution than the United States in the year 2007?

I feel a great many people waiting, breathing shallowly, as if one day at last the whole edifice will tip over and reveal its infested foundation. It won't. I feel as if a great many people are waiting for a president to suspend the government, or for black-hood squads to start snatching people in broad daylight, or for the police to establish checkpoint entrances to our cities and loyalty oaths in our schools. (That last, of course, already . . . ) They are waiting, in other words, for incontrovertible and public evidence that Denmark is rotten, some moment of national epiphany when Candidate-for-Life Benito Giuliani descends through the clouds in his own airline trailing some athletic blond with a camera on his way to a firelit vigil in Yankee Stadium.

Breadlines breed rebellion, but lines at the multiplex do not. That's it right there. The control mechanisms do not have to be overt. We have managed to spook ourselves with nasty tales of extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo suicides as concrete indicators of creeping authoritarianism, due to this administration. These are very real and very dangerous, but only part of the picture. We are expending more energy on marginal abstractions than on pernicious realities.

There are many more "soft" indicators which we simply accept. Every public event and many major urban streets are now constantly, openly surveilled. Gated communities abound, are prized even. The gap between the have-mores and have-nots grows inexorably, while the remaining haves scramble for upward mobility and the illusion of security. This in itself is the seemingly benign control mechanism to which we have all become accustomed.

And these subtler mechanisms have been in play for years, so they cannot be attributed solely to this administration. It's systemic. Which means that the next one, be it Mitt Pepsi or Hillary Coke, will extend or at least maintain those mechanisms. We may wish to fool ourselves that because Coke is more amenable to preserving Roe v. Wade or hiking cigarette taxes to fund low-income children's insurance programs, that they are "better" than Pepsi. And on those boutique issues they may indeed be objectively better. Super. Now poor people can still get free health care thanks to an accelerated sin tax. Feel better now? Coke still empowered the very same people she has implied are incompetent liars to move forward with plans to expand the pre-emptive war doctrine into Iran. Plus ça change....

I recently finished watching the second season of The Wire, which I hadn't seen since it originally aired. It all came back with amazing quickness, but I'd almost forgotten how phenomenally those twelve pitch-perfect episodes describe the evisceration of the American dream. The rug has been pulled out from under the skilled blue-collar middle-class, leaving finance weasels with their hands in each other's (and everyone else's) pockets above, and a feral grey economy below (and all around), which the workers reluctantly join just to supplement their dwindling income, not to mention a small role in steering the course of their own lives. Politicians at several levels weave through and above, taking their cut and exerting their influence where possible. Crime pays, as always; what changes is the players and the places. The game is the same, even (perhaps especially) in a $3,000 suit. The only question is whether people's hopes and dreams get pickpocketed, burgled, or mugged by reality.

---

Last month's big protest march was a fine illustration of the kabuki we continue to subject ourselves and each other to when it comes to how we view our place in our country. I think a public airing of grievances is a fine thing, especially since we are still at least nominally entitled to such things, so long as we stay in the free speech zone. But people seem to be under the impression that this is necessary to effect real change in the world. When it happens in Ukraine or China or Burma, it's Truth to Power; here it's a short-counted rabble of marginalized, patchouli-smelling traitors.

And nothing changes from it. Urban police forces are more paramilitary organiztions these days anyway, and it is nothing for them to gear up and let ANSWER run through its paces every few months. You get your protesters -- who again are undercounted in the media anyway, so's not to upset the corporate hierarchy -- and you get a few counter-protesters, a couple of them scrap, the cops knock a few heads and maybe arrest a couple dozen, and everyone goes home. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Becoming a genuine agent of change is not a day-long event, but a real commitment. It is paradoxically both simpler and yet more complicated than marching asshole-to-teakettle with fifty thousand other sweaty bastards outside the White House, when you know Junior is either in Bumfuck Texas chasin' tumbleweeds or cranking up the Toby Keith and drawing the curtains in The People's House. It's not really accomplishing anything lasting, sorry.

Now, if the same number of people want to do that every day for a solid month, then you might get somewhere. But clearly, right now nobody in your representative government gives a rat fuck what any of you think. If they did, they'd do something. Instead, their idea of constructive governance is to bitch about a fucking newspaper ad. Even Pat Leahy yea'd that happy horseshit, and don't get me started on Feinstein.

On the other hand, real change can be accomplished with very simple lifestyle alterations. Collectively we're getting mired in waste and excess, consumption and distractions. I keep reading how a consistent majority of people claims to have Had It With This War. Very well ,then. Our greatest vulnerabilities are oil dependency, food (specifically processing and transportation, and now with the ethanol scam, production and ancillary pricing), and finance.

If this consistent majority of folks has truly Had It, then they had best start looking at how they each impact those areas. Where we drive, what and where we eat, what we consume, and how much we live on the margin all ultimately contribute to the systemic inertia and political stasis that so many of us ritualistically complain about. So people who want to drive their Hummer to Wal-Mart, have at it -- it's still at least notionally a free country. But that essentially strips them of the right to gripe about the problems facing them. I'm with P.T. Barnum on that one -- it is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.

As I constantly say, people do not change until they understand that the cost of not changing is greater than the cost of changing. So we either overcome the system, or disengage from it as much as possible. Showing them at the ballot box hasn't done it, nor has showing them in the streets. Don't kid yourself for a second that they're laughing with you.

And in the process of disengaging, perhaps we re-engage, with our communities (for example, multi-use planning/zoning, as well as buying local), and with ourselves. I think we're on the downside of a society that has too many distractions to keep itself motivated and innovating, too busy trudging through life to look up, and the government has simply turned into a money-grubbing snakepit of grifters and lobbyists.

And again, that doesn't mean that we must shed ourselves of all amusement and fun and live monklike existences of privation. It's just time to stop being short-sighted about what and how we consume, and where we apply what precious little political leverage we still retain. Instead of jockeying for position on a crashing bus, maybe it's time to just get off the fucking thing. The thing about a grift is that the one sure way to beat it is to stop being a sucka. It's time to opt out.

Little Fred Corvette

Senator Leghorn lets a bunch of rubes buy him breakfast. Awful large of him, doncha think?

When Fred Thompson stopped for breakfast in Jackson on Friday morning, he had only one thing to say about critics who say he is not up-to-date enough on current issues to be president:

"They're wrong; they're wrong.”

Oh, well I guess that settles that, doesn't it?

Thompson's visit to Jackson came the day after he told reporters in Franklin that he did not know about a federal court ruling that found the state's lethal injection procedures unconstitutional. Thompson was a stout death penalty supporter during his 1994 Senate bid.

It was another in a pile of such moments for Thompson, who has said earlier that he was not familiar enough with the 2005 Terri Schiavo right-to-life case in Florida or recent civil rights protests in Jena, La., to comment on them.

In the face of those questions, campaign spokesman Jeff Sadosky maintained that Thompson is a strong conservative leader who is bankable in a general election.

"He's the same person he was in 1994" when he was elected senator, Sadosky said. "He's not going to change for election-year expediency."

Which means what, that he's still not going to pay attention to hot-button issues that his own party cynically uses from time to time? And this is supposed to be a good thing? What's wrong with these people, seriously?

Well, we know what's wrong with them, obviously. They're afraid of even the hint of change, and they have deep-seated daddy issues, so they're more than happy to pay $250 for someone to show up late and tell them that everything they think they know is just right. Thompson has no plan except to function as a psychological mirror and reflect their "concerns" and insecurities. Then again, since he'll be out in a few months with a fat wad of cash in his pocket, it's as good a plan as any.

Friday's event was closed to the press, but those who attended said Thompson talked up the need for stronger national security and immigration controls as well as the preservation of Social Security.

Kathryn Wilson, 70, of Bruceton, Tenn., said Thompson showed he knew what Americans care about by tapping on those topics.

“I think all that time he was keeping up with it,” she said.

Bullshit. If he was up on those things he would have allowed the press in, so's he could shout it from the sagging rooftop of every outhouse in Spittle County. That people care about things like "stronger national security", "immigration controls", and "the preservation of Social Security" (insofar as that last, coming from a "conservative", always means letting Wall Street piss it away on some fucking hedge fund, followed by bailing out the grifters that lost the money in the first place) is not in dispute.

The issue is whether Fred Thompson has any coherent idea of what to do about any of those things. There is nothing to indicate that he does, because he is running a stealth George W. Bush campaign, straight outta 2000 -- let the press reverentially cover every dump you take, enhancing your name recognition, let the rubes spread the word of mouth, and never tell anyone what you actually think about anything, much less let sensible people get the impression that you have no idea what you're talking about.

That's how you get a home-state newspaper to do a fluff piece called "Critics are wrong", while never explaining at all how they are wrong. Thompson could have wrestled a greased pig the entire time, and this guy wouldn't have known it, because he wasn't allowed inside. Yet he, as an astute reporter, feels compelled to transcribe the deep musings of attendees and spokesweasels. I feel very informed now. Thanks, free press!

Campaign officials declined to disclose how much Thompson pulled in Friday in Jackson. The cost of the fundraiser was $250 a plate, and those who kicked in an additional $750 could snap a photo with the former Law & Order star.

Hey, who let the French guy in?

I Fart Huckabee's

Mike Huckabee, one of the few non-undead Republican candidates (but will still be out by the end of the year), wildly miscalculates in his comparison of Bush and Musharraf.

For one, Pervez Musharraf can actually speak English, and think extemporaneously. More importantly, his need to play both political sides off each other is literally a life-and-death matter for him and possibly his country, not just some dumbed-down Oedipal complex wrapped up in frat-boy egotism.

Because, you know, this time it's about character. Or something.

Queer As Dork

Shorter KnuckleHead Retardlution:

No, I don't obsess about Teh Gay a bit much. Or leather, and what a bad boy I've been, and how I deserve to be punished. Or the volcanic eruptions of man-gravy that accompany my regular....ah, no. Not obsessed at all. Why do you ask?

Blackwater Blues

This story has been moving fast, gaining steam, but beyond the details it's really the fundamental principles that should make it a no-brainer to resolve.

As anyone who has been in Iraq (like me) knows, on the ground the unspoken rule of Bush’s counterinsurgency efforts over the past four years has been that almost all Iraqis, at least the males, are guilty until proven innocent. Arrests, beatings and sometimes killings at the hands of security firms and sometimes U.S. military units are arbitrary, often based on the flimsiest intelligence, and Iraqis have no recourse whatever to justice except in a few cases like Haditha. Imagine the sense of helpless rage that emerges from this sort of treatment. Apply three years of it and you have a furious, traumatized population. And a country out of control.

Considering just how often our self-appointed spokestools proclaim the inherent Christianity of the nation, it's astonishing just how little common-sense logic is utilized in applying the Golden Rule to what we've done. Too many Americans seem to be genuinely pissed that the average Iraqi is not more grateful to us. Well, shit, how grateful do you think you would be if some bumbling oaf freed you from your oppressor (for his own reasons), wounding you in the process, and left you to simultaneously fend off a dozen or a hundred oppressors? Something about "the devil you know" might be useful here.

What this Blackwater mess is really bringing to the surface, beyond simply how corrupt and self-contained their operatives are, is how dependent this whole house of cards is on them. Already the Iraqis are simultaneously backing down on their demand for immediate expulsion of Blackwater personnel, even as they claim to have videotape proof of an unprovoked slaughter in the streets. This belies several claims made repeatedly by various Bush lackeys, including Saint Petræus:

• Sovereignty. Clearly despite all the purple-finger euphoria, Iraqis are no closer to being incharge of their own lives and government than they were four years ago. This is not even in dispute -- the decision on Blackwater was effectively taken out of their hands. This is not just a rejection of the decision they made, it is an active assertion that the decision was not theirs to make in the first place.


• The surge is working. If it was working, these things wouldn't be happening, but violence has spread largely unabated, if localized differently than before.


• The Army is in good shape. If that's the case, then why are we, not just the Iraqis, so heavily dependent on mercenary Prætorian Guards for high-level security details? It has been tacitly acknowledged that we would not be able to maintain any diplomatic or political conciliatory presence whatsoever without private security details. Private contractors now equal (or by some accounts, exceed) the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.
  
  The claim has been that even with paying PMCs four to six times the going military rate, it's still cheaper because of the extensive bureaucratic/logistical supply chain issues in the armed forces. Fair enough, but none of that explains why PMCs should be exempt from the UCMJ, or either Iraqi or American civil law.

This is bullshit. There is no reason at all for PMCs to be allowed to have some sort of get-out-of-jail-free card, to quite literally get away with murder. This is nothing new; it's been going on the entire time. The hanging and burning of Blackwater contractors in Fallujah back in '04 did not happen by accident, but rather in an utter moral vacuum. And it continues today. What's different is that this time apparently the Iraqis have enough corroborating evidence. Whether there will be actual consequences is highly doubtful; after all, Jenna Bush has a book to pimp, and no doubt Lindsay Lohan is about to do something stupid.

[Update: I think Kaplan is essentially correct in his assertions, that there is a logistical necessity for PMCs. But that is not the quibble, and really never has been. The question, once again, is one of accountability, and really should not be all that difficult to resolve if everything is indeed on the up-and-up. There are reasons for keeping this accountability chasm intact at the policy level, and none of them are good, but all of them are entirely deliberate.]

In Oxy Veritas

I guess there's nothing really to add to fuckface Limbaugh's happy horseshit, except to agree that the double standard is still very much in effect. MoveOn is the spawn o' Satan himself, because they dared to criticize the veracity of General NewJesus' testimony. Therefore, anyone who refuses to completely repudiate MoveOn hates the troops. QED, chumps!

On the other hand, a toxic waste of space like Limpballs spouts off specifically against soldiers who dare to disagree with Junior's Master Plan, which all can agree is going just superbly. Some of these "phony soldiers" have literally given their lives or limbs for what Limbaugh and his dark masters earn quite a nice living to believe in. Someone else always does the wet work.

This is of a piece. This is a person who thinks it's funny to parody Parkinson's sufferers; why should his loathing of actual soldiers be any different? They dare to disagree with the people who put money in Limpballs' greasy pockets. And he's gotta get money for his oxy and boner pills somewhere.

It's only a matter of time before this piece of shit either gets caught cruising for head in a public bathroom, or has a bout of conscience and finally does the honorable thing. It boggles the mind to try to imagine what kind of animal still listens to this fucking creep.

Hall of Suck

It is impossible to parody or criticize these idiots adequately anymore.

Madonna and disco queen Donna Summer are among nine acts nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as the hall embraces more musical genres.

Other nominees include U.S. rock singer John Mellencamp, Canadian poet-singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, 1960s English band The Dave Clark Five and instrumental rock band The Ventures.

Also nominated are New York-based funk group Chic, rap pioneer Afrika Bambaataa and hip-hop group The Beastie Boys, reflecting the Hall of Fame's willingness to accept a diversity of genres.

Where to start? I don't have it in me to rant about the RRHF these days; they've managed even to suck the fun out of that. I'll just say this -- where most past picks managed the simple effrontery of musical lepidoptery, this has to be either a practical joke or the result of the highly technical dartboard selection process.

"Embracing more musical genres". What is this here thing called again?

Preznit Miss Teen South Carolina

Jesus. Now I'm starting to be embarrassed for him:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - How do you keep a leader as verbally gaffe-prone as U.S. President George W. Bush from making even more slips of the tongue?

When Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, the White House inadvertently showed exactly how -- with a phonetic pronunciation guide on the teleprompter to get him past troublesome names of countries and world leaders.

The White House was left scrambling to explain after a marked-up draft of Bush's speech popped up briefly on the U.N. Web site as he delivered his remarks, giving a rare glimpse of the special guidance he gets for major addresses.

It included phonetic spellings for French President Nicolas Sarkozy (sar-KO-zee), a friend, and Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe (moo-GAH-bee), a target of U.S. human rights criticism.

Pronunciations were also provided for Kyrgyzstan (KEYR-geez-stan), Mauritania (moor-EH-tain-ee-a) and the Zimbabwe capital Harare (hah-RAR-ray).

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the draft, labeled the 20th version and complete with typos and speechwriters' cellphone numbers, had been turned over in advance to help U.N. interpreters who must simultaneously translate leaders' speeches into several languages.

The easy road would be to put (puh-REE-no) after Dana's name, but I prefer to pronounce it "milftastic", and my teevee screen has the dents where I've been grinding my loins to prove it.

Seriously, though -- Mauritania? Mugabe? I know I joke about it, but for Christ's sake, did he really just play pinball, snort coke and brand plebes all through college or what? Wasn't there a Will Ferrell skit back in 2000 about Bush showing up to the second debate with Gore, all proud of himself for saying "Obasanjo" correckly and all?

This is sad. If we're just going to have dopey airheads running things, let's at least make them hot dopey airheads. Americans are much less irritable when they have a good reason to spank their hapless monkeys.

Duck Soup

I figure I spent most of my twenties at a minimum .20, and yet I managed to stay out of trouble, so I'm wondering just how shit-faced this asshole had to have been.

DENVER — The man accused of decapitating a tame duck at a Twin Cities hotel is a Denver federal health agency auditor who was on a government trip, an agency spokesman said Tuesday.

Now, Scott D. Clark faces a felony animal cruelty charge and has been placed on paid administrative leave from his job with the Office of Inspector General in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said agency spokesman Don White.

"He was in St. Paul on an official government auditing assignment," White said. Clark, whose annual salary is $56,378, has worked one year for HHS.

Clark, 26, stunned people at the Embassy Suites Hotel in St. Paul, Minn., on Saturday when he cornered the duck against a wall by an atrium pond and ripped its head off, according to acriminal complaint.

He then told onlookers, "I'm hungry. I'm gonna eat it," and carried the headless fowl on the elevator up to the fifth floor, police said. Hotel security agents detained him there until police arrived.

Arriving officers said "feathers and blood were found strewn about the lobby area." They also saw the duck's head bobbing in the pond and blood drops on Clark's shirt, according to the complaint.

"It sounds like there was quite a bit of alcohol involved," police Sgt. John Wuorinen told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Oh, ya think there, Fargo? Let's see -- 26 years old, $56K/year cush gov't job, and this is how he road-trips, by getting blotto and going Ozzy Osbourne on a duck in a hotel pond? Jesus, whatever happened to finding the nearest pick-up joint and bringing back some strange? How hard could it be with that kind of money?

This new generation of kids, with their crazy music and their duck-killing, they need to stay off my fuckin' lawn. Somethin' ain't right with 'em.

Pants Afire

You want your smoking gun, here ya go (transcript and analysis here):

Today, the Spanish newspaper El Pais published a transcript of a discussion between President Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in February 2003 in which the Bush told Aznar that the U.S. would go to war with Iraq to disarm Saddam Hussein with or without a UN resolution:

“We must take him right now. We have shown an incredible degree of patience until now. There are two weeks left. In two weeks we will be militarily ready.”

Though Aznar asked Bush to “have a little patience” and urged, “It is very important to have a [UN] resolution,” Bush pushed for war throughout the meeting, telling the Spanish Prime Minister, “We will be in Baghdad by the end of March.”

Just a few days later, Bush insisted to the American public that war with Iraq was not a certainty:

BUSH: “I’ve not made up our mind about military action. Hopefully, this can be done peacefully.” [3/6/03]

BUSH: “We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force.” [3/8/03]

Here's Bush plotting teh warporn with noted foreign policy enthusiast Harry Reems Aznar:

Yeah, baby, why doncha put on yer French maid outfit, and invest heavily in oil futures and PMCs? You know how I like it.

[Super Happy Fun Bonus: About 20-25% of the way down the translation page, there's a rather unfortunate remark by the Li'l Genius, comparing the protracted UN resolution process to "Chinese water torture". All those other dummies, getting in the way of his Great Idea. He should have them freedom-boarded for their impertinence. Definitely read through the conversations there. Fascinating stuff.]

Wall of Astound

Party at Phil's place tonight. As always, bring your own gun.

Evidence for the prosecution:

But prosecution witnesses painted Spector as a gun-toting menace, with five women telling harrowing tales on the witness stand of the music producer threatening them with firearms. Spector's driver testified he heard a loud noise and saw the producer leave the home, pistol in hand, saying, "I think I killed somebody."

....

Clarkson was found inside, slumped in a chair in the foyer. She had been shot in the mouth. A .38-caliber Colt Special revolver lay at her feet. It appeared someone had attempted to clean up the blood with a diaper found in the guest bathroom.

....

Prosecutors pointed to the leopard print purse slung over Clarkson's shoulder as evidence she was trying to leave when she was shot.

Exculpatory evidence:

Spector's attorneys argued that Clarkson was depressed over a recent breakup, grabbed the gun and took her own life.

....

The defense argued that blood-spatter evidence on the white women's jacket Spector wore showed he was standing too far away to place the gun in Clarkson's mouth.

Wow. Just wow. Apparently those two fence-sitters (at least one of whom will no doubt grace us with some hack-job of a book explaining away their fucktardery) needed either a video of the crime or a confession from Crazy Phil. Short of that, they got everything and the proverbial diagram drawn for them.

At least now Michael Jackson should have a pretty good idea of just how much more he can safely get away with. If you're an anonymous douchebag, you're gone before you know it, but if you're a rich celebrity freak, you can usually skate.

American Idols

Tucked away at the end of this revisiting of Wall Street, I thought this was interesting, if not at all surprising:

Money Never Sleeps [the upcoming Wall Street sequel] promises a newly globalized milieu (Pressman has stated that the film's locations include London, the United Arab Emirates, and "an Asian country"), but it may also provide an opportunity for Douglas et al. to provide a corrective to one of the unexpected side effects of Wall Street: the cult of personality attached to Gordon Gekko. Douglas says he's still stunned by the number of people who tell him that his Oscar-winning role was the reason they went to work on Wall Street. "It's so depressing and sad," Douglas says.

It is depressing and sad, but it makes perfect sense. Any field where individuals can wield disproportionate influence, they are bound to seek out justification for their being -- or, more problematically, intending to be -- irredeemable shitheads.

For self-absorbed pseudo-centrists wishing to salve their fractured political consciences, there's the freshly powdered pastel summer frock of Bobo Brooks, or perhaps the more testosterone-fueled ravings of Ann Coulter. And for well-heeled number-diddlers choking on their own pelf, there's Gordon Gekko.

I suppose it's good work if you can get it; even better if you can still excuse it enough to sleep at night.

The Big Show

Okay, I think we all get it now -- Ahmadinejad is a little wingy, a little showy and preachy, even ridiculous at times. Not a serious person who should be leading a responsible power.

Sounds familiar.

Instead, the U.S. State Department denounced Ahmadinejad as himself little more than a terrorist. Critics have also cited his statements about the Holocaust or his hopes that the Israeli state will collapse. He has been depicted as a Hitler figure intent on killing Israeli Jews, even though he is not commander in chief of the Iranian armed forces, has never invaded any other country, denies he is an anti-Semite, has never called for any Israeli civilians to be killed, and allows Iran's 20,000 Jews to have representation in Parliament.

There is, in fact, remarkably little substance to the debates now raging in the United States about Ahmadinejad. His quirky personality, penchant for outrageous one-liners, and combative populism are hardly serious concerns for foreign policy. Taking potshots at a bantam cock of a populist like Ahmadinejad is actually a way of expressing another, deeper anxiety: fear of Iran's rising position as a regional power and its challenge to the American and Israeli status quo. The real reason his visit is controversial is that the American right has decided the United States needs to go to war against Iran. Ahmadinejad is therefore being configured as an enemy head of state.

That's pretty much it, all that's left is getting the marketing campaign rolling. Easier said than done; even the military advisors are backing away from this one. They've got their hands full as it is. So what's left is to consistently portray Ahmadinejad as a strutting, preening buffoon tweaking the nose of his betters. (Not that he doesn't make it easy for them to do so.)

The howls from the critics in the wake of Ahmadinejad's offer to lay a wreath at Ground Zero were something else. As if Benito Giuliani's shriveled cock and Count Chocula presence could ever be pried out of there, so anyone else could squeeze in. Not gonna happen.

So what's left is self-righteous lectures about Iranian support for terrorist groups, as if we don't support terrorist thugs like the MEK in Iran, under the guise of "democracy building". (Hint: the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq is not democratic, lest the name fool you. I believe it means "Kittens and Rainbows" in Arabic.)

In the end, you have to assume that we're heading to war because this is the way our leaders want it. Nothing else makes sense. Bush has his Majlis just like Ahmadinejad, they just wear Armani suits instead of robes and turbans and ZZ Top beards. And how they choose to go about it is textbook propaganda.

Would there be such fatalist expectation of a strike on Iran if Mohammad Khatami were still president? Try as Fox might, the reformist advocate of a "Dialogue Among Civilizations" could not be made to put on the Hitler mustache. If the United States wanted a diplomatic solution and a rapprochement with Tehran, he was their man. But it didn't, and he wasn't. In 2003 the Swiss ambassador to the US carried a proposal from Khatami to negotiate a resolution to all outstanding issues, including Iran's nuclear program and a two-state solution to Israel and Palestine. Washington's reaction was to censure the Swiss ambassador.

In Detroit, as in many cities and nations ruled by kleptocrats who are aliens to their own citizens, infrastructure has been starved of public funds, and tens of thousands have found themselves without water. Why? To make circumstances so dire that any solution offered will be taken as an escape from institutionalized misery. And the only solution the rulers offer is privatization.

Spurning Khatami's overtures and the season of conciliation from Iran toughened its hardliners, but it wasn't a missed opportunity for Washington. It was the last thing they wanted, while Ahmadinejad is just the devil they needed. ("US Focus on Ahmadinejad Puzzles Iranians," reads a New York Times headline today. “The United States pays too much attention to Ahmadinejad," an Iranian political scientist is quoted. “He is not that consequential.”) Why? To sharpen the tensions to such a point that opinion makers determine the situation cannot be allowed to continue. And the only solution the rulers offer is violence.

When the only choices being offered keep coming down to death or chi-chi, and open, serious debate is nothing more than a dog-and-pony show with barely token opposition followed by rote cringing, then we have to start thinking about ways to get ourselves back into the decision-making loop, and stop dicking around with false compromise and gutless capitulation.

Victory or Fubar

By now you've probably heard about this Macleans article, mostly because of its provocative photo. But the article itself also cuts neatly to the nature of the problems with Junior's ongoing folly.

Instead of polls and data mining, the governing Shia parties have taken control by using militias to “sectarian cleanse” Baghdad, a retaliation against al-Qaeda’s spectacular car bombing campaign. By one estimate, Baghdad was once 65 per cent Sunni; today it is 75 per cent Shia. Deaths from sectarian killings are reportedly down, in large measure because there are few mixed neighbourhoods left. Almost the entire Sunni middle class lives in Jordan or Syria. If you are named Omar, a traditional Sunni name, chances are you are dead or living abroad. Under Saddam, no one on the streets of the capital ever uttered the word mukhabarat, mean­ing the feared security police. Today, no one says maktab, meaning “office,” but in fact referring to radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army’s bases from which members control neighbourhoods. Their preferred method of torture is the electric drill.

Qualitatively, how exactly is this substantially different from life under Saddam, from the ordinary Iraqi's perspective? If you ask this question, the usual fart-knockers rejoinder obtusely that you're equating American efforts (which are cynically touted as "coalition" efforts when convenient) with the Stalinist tactics of Hussein's psychotic mafia. This has the effect of getting one caught up in explaining the distinction, which is a complete waste of time. They know the difference, just like they know what the stupid MoveOn ad actually means. Everything's a ploy with these people, regardless of how many civilians get murdered with power tools because of chronic neotard bungling.

The discussion in Washington and New York has always drowned out the reality of Iraq. One of the terrifying aspects of the war is the monumental failure of analysis and action on the part of America’s political, military, journalistic and even business elites.

That problem may be systemic—the result of a “fact-based” America confronting a society it did not understand and simply making up an alternate reality, guns ablaze. So far, the Republicans have done an impressive job at failing in Iraq. Soon it may be the Democrats’ turn to fail, albeit in a different way.

I think so too. It seems that the Democrats will benefit electorally from the sheer number of retiring rats and remaining empty suits on the other side. The truly sorry lineup for preznitential contenders on the Republican side speaks volumes; there are cartoon characters that could beat bozos like Tom Tancredo in an election. And he has to know that, but he stays in because either he enjoys the sound of his own voice, or there's money in it. See Thompson, Fred.

But if this past year is any indication, it seems that even another resounding message at the voting booth will ultimately fall on deaf Democratic ears, possessed by people lacking even more in spine. They seem to be remarkably unready for what may, in its denouement, turn out to be a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Peter Galbraith has sufficient insight, on the off chance anyone has the balls to read it to Mister Man before sleepy time some night.

Since 2005, Iraq's Shiite-led government has concluded numerous economic, political, and military agreements with Iran. The most important would link the two countries' strategic oil reserves by building a pipeline from southern Iraq to Iran, while another commits Iran to providing extensive military assistance to the Iraqi government. According to a senior official in Iraq's Oil Ministry, smugglers divert at least 150,000 barrels of Iraq's daily oil exports through Iran, a figure that approaches 10 percent of Iraq's production. Iran has yet to provide the military support it promised to the Iraqi army. With the US supplying 160,000 troops and hundreds of billions of dollars to support a pro-Iranian Iraqi government, Iran has no reason to invest its own resources.

....

The scale of the American miscalculation is striking. Before the Iraq war began, its neoconservative architects argued that conferring power on Iraq's Shiites would serve to undermine Iran because Iraq's Shiites, controlling the faith's two holiest cities, would, in the words of then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, be "an independent source of authority for the Shia religion emerging in a country that is democratic and pro-Western." Further, they argued, Iran could never dominate Iraq, because the Iraqi Shiites are Arabs and the Iranian Shiites Persian. It was a theory that, unfortunately, had no connection to reality.

Iran's bond with the Iraqi Shiites goes far beyond the support Iran gave Shiite leaders in their struggle with Saddam Hussein. Decades of oppression have made their religious identity more important to Iraqi Shiites than their Arab ethnic identity. (Also, many Iraqi Shiites have Turcoman, Persian, or Kurdish ancestors.) While Sunnis identify with the Arab world, Iraqi Shiites identify with the Shiite world, and for many this means Iran.

But hey, what really matters is that the latest administration patsy to show up and lie with a straight face to Congress and to the American people, had a snappy uniform on. No criticism allowed, ungrateful rabble!

The identity of Iranian recipients of US funding is secret but the administration's neoconservative allies have loudly promoted US military and financial support for Iranian opposition groups as diverse as the son of the late Shah, Iranian Kurdish separatists, and the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), which is on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Some of the Los Angeles exiles now being funded are associated with the son of the Shah but it is unlikely that either the MEK or the Kurdish separatists would receive any of the $75 million. US secrecy—and that the administration treats the MEK differently from other terrorist organizations—has roused Iranian suspicions that the US is supporting these groups either through the democracy program or a separate covert action.

Here's the thing -- even if the Iranians suddenly became so brazen and stupid as to announce publicly that they were finishing their nuke program tomorrow, and pointing missiles at Tel Aviv, it would still be impossible to trust the current oafs to take the right steps to deal with the crisis comprehensively. They know how to start wars, but have no idea how to end them, which is much more important to success.

One of the main reasons we regard World War 2 as the great, justified war is that we went the extra mile to end it correctly, insofar as rebuilding and investing in conquered enemies, even for rational self-interest rather than altruistic motives, is far better than plundering the ruins and salting the earth. And as long as there's a buck to be made in Iraq's oil reserves, we'll never exactly salt the earth, but we've shot our wad.

Everything here on out, just like everything for the past two years or so, has been pure damage control and risk management. There's not a charitable way to look at this any longer, we're going to spend more money next year than any other year so far in Iraq, and our representatives are playing grab-ass over goddamned newspaper ads.