Sunday Morning Comin' Down...Redux

In which I write a little unfair, loosely transcribed, pointillistic rendition of what I saw at the Mouse Circus today.

There were actually some fun talk today. And a bitch-fight between the Thuggish Paleo-Conservative Bizarro-Gumby Brit Hume and fey, kinder, gentler Empire-Lite Neocon apologist Bill Kristol.

Go see it here, because it’s just goddamned funny, and because this highlights with brutal clarity exactly what the fault lines that run right through the mantle of the GOP look like: the No Apology, Nuke Everything, Screw the Weak goons like Hume and a certain repository of the Republican Party that still gets at least vestigially peeved when it’s actions aren't even tangentially related to its principles.

To which I say, Fuck You Kristol: You helped build this rhetorical rape room where anyone got thrown into the abattoir who was ever even mildly critical of the Wingnut Agenda was, so now bend over and take it.

Lindsey Graham and Pat Leahy on Face the Nation

Pat Leahy weighs in on Gitmo. Prosecute them or let them go. Three years ago the Admin said we would have military tribunals; where are they?

(Me: They’re liars, Pat. Just shameless fucking liars. About everything. Oh, sorry; that was rhetorical wasn’t it...)

Graham says that we underestimated insurgency. That we didn’t have enough troops. And so isn’t surprised that a majority of people of people think the war is going badly.

That recruiting falling. That our soldiers not being taken care of.

That the war was still a good idea – that we went to war in order to “replace a dictator with a democrat” – but now we’re in a "season of adjustment". And we are at least TWO YEARS AWAY from training up enough Iraqis to leave.

(Me: First, Lindsey Graham needs to have a care lest one day old-school GOP traitors like G. Gordon Liddy or Ollie North decide to go back into the wetwork trade. Second, good on you, for at least being willing to discuss the fact that things are not going as Dear Leader keeps insisting they’re going.

Third, when exactly did we all sign up for a war to “replace a dictator with a democrat?” I think you may be confusing the 2004 election – wherein we failed to oust a torturing liar – with Iraq, which I believe had something to do with Terrorist Training Camps, Nukuler Programs, Mushroom Clouds, WMD’s and the imminent threat of their use against us by Saddam Hussein. Seriously; it was in all the papers.

You can look it up!

Fourth, I dearly looove watching as the GOP suddenly re-discovers the Passive and Plural Voices: the magic, linguistic talismans that lets them edge right up to border of actual truth-telling without leaving the Land of the Lost.

Compare the difference between the following:

“We underestimated the insurgency.”
And
“George Bush was warned – repeatedly -- about the nature and strength of insurgency – but continues to lie about it to the American people about it because the Truth conflicts with his Ideology.”

Or ...

“We did not have enough troops.”
And
“George Bush was warned – repeatedly -- about the need for twice as many troops as he committed to Iraq, but fired those who told him the hard truth and continues to lie about it to the American people about it because the Truth conflicts with his Ideology.”

Must. Not. EVER. Admit. Bush. Lied.

Watch for it: as Iraq continues to spiral badly downward, more and more GOP will break all over out it the Passive Voice like a herpes.)

Pat Leahy reminds us that we are spending a billion dollars a week in Iraq.

(And going on three years in, and we don’t have the fucking lights back on, but the Oil Ministry is as secure as the vault in James Dobson’s basement where he keeps Herr Senator Doktor Frist’s testicles.

And our Pet Iraqi Government keeps finding more and more lucrative gigs to hand over to Iraqi War Provocateur and Intel Fabricateur, Serial Liar, Uncle Sugar Check Casher and CIA Golem Ahmed Chalabi.

And untold billions of dollars of Iraqi oil has been stolen on our watch. And Eight Billion dollars of reconstruction gelt that was supposed to go to rebuilding their country has vanished into the pockets of politically connected contractors who will keep right on looting our Treasury and using our soldiers as wheel-men for the greatest Bank Robbery in modern history as long as their criminal co-conspirators continue to control the courts, the Senate, the House, and the Oval Office.

So, Jeez, wherever do you suppose the Iraqi are getting the idea that we’re just a bunch of debauched, oil-drunk Post Modern Conquistadors plundering Oil Dorado solely because we have the firepower to get away with it, and hunting ay-rabs for sport on the side?)

And then I rambled on over to Fox to see what Dick Cheney’s intestinal tract looks like.

Brit Hume informs that that it would be a terrible mistake to shut down Guantanamo Bay and that basically all the charges leveled against and the charges are OUTRAGEOUS.

After all, that fella from Human Rights Watch who said all of them bad things, he worked for the Clinton Administration! Horrors! Because as we know, Every Single One of the hundreds of thousands of people who were employed by the Executive Branch during the eight Clinton years were all America-Hating Liars.

And then he comes with the Sentence of the Week. The words perfectly sum up Republican Thinking, that, “To close the prison down would be an acknowledgement that what is going on down there is wrong.”

The issue for propagandist traitors like the Hume-unculus is not whether on not something is actually Wrong...it is acknowledging that something is Wrong. When, through a concerted assault of the Truth you actually get away with parading the Naked Emperor all over the teevee and demanding fealty to the Lie that he is dressed to the Nines...the only Unpardonable Sin is not going along with the scam.

(BTW, does anybody remember that we were going to bulldoze Abu Ghraib? That it was such a symbol of dread to the Iraqi People that it was to be razed as a sign of good faith...instead of repurposing it as Uncle Sam’s Anal Rape and Genital Electrocution Spa?)

And then Hume brings it all home, in yet another flawless example of what happens when you let criminally irresponsible thugs tart themselves up and pretend to be journalists, by stringing together The American Left, Europe and Terrorists in one sweet move.

And that’s when the Kristol/Hume bitch-fight took off in earnest and I saw something I’d never seen before on teevee, well, not “news”, but in whatever we’re calling this ridiculous content-fact-and-integrity-free Wingnut Kabuki that the Rush crowd persist in pretending is news.

I saw one of those fast camera sweeps and tracks – out of frame and slightly out-of-focus -- usually reserved for field reporters running away from tornadoes, or amateur video of plane crashes.

Suddenly the camera zooms into Mara Liasson off-center and captured there a look of utter astonishment usually only seen by cartoon characters as them plunge through a hidden trap-door.

As Bill Kristol starts in and contradicts every word that just fell from Hume’s rotting meth-mouth...

Kristol suggests that we can’t just can hold people outside of any jurisdiction forever.
Hume says why the fuck not, and then actually wipes his pasty, fish-belly white ass with the Constitution, and throws it in Kristol’s face...which might have gotten the likes of Andrew Sullivan all excited, but Kristol shook off his big, fluff mittens, screamed “It’s On Bitch!” and leaped across the desk.

Oh boy!

Even the reading of the mail was Happy Fun Fox -- half saying that they were appalled that Wallace kept interrupting Mr. Schultz (I missed it. Last week. Human Rights Watch), badgering him, generally not letting him answer and beating him up...and half of it say, “America! Fuck Yeah!


Back on Face The Nation – Bob Schieffer gives a little reason and shines a little clear light when he points (I’m paraphrasing) out that, with regards to Science generally, our national debate has become an embarrassment. We used to be the leaders and the trailblazers. And it used to be the job of Government to regulate the PRODUCTS of science...not science itself. Now we are governed by scared little idiots who want to ban science because it threatens their Hillbilly Cult superstition.

Over on ABC -- This Week -- Bob Reich – notes that it’s interesting that Fat Tony Scalia loves States Rights like a milkshake...right up until it bothers his ideology -- like using cannabis to easy the pain of the sick and dying, or, I suppose, over-ruling a State Court to anoint his pal President -- and then he happily bids State’s Rights a fond "Fuck It" farewell.


Over on Punkin' Haid - Curt Weldon and Senator Biden tell us that the American people are being misled (I think he means LIED TO.) That far from being anywhere near ready to leave – far from the Happy Good News Lies we are being fed by the Adminiustration – we have maybe three battalions or Iraqis adequately trained. Three fucking Battalions. a few thousand.

With a minimum of around two more years stuck in-country in Iraq

Biden comes with quotes from field commanders. Men on the ground who actually risk lethal consequences if the try to head-fake reality, and not Administration chickenhawks who, like the Big Guy from WKRP, think, “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”

And when Turkeys like Iraq don’t so much “fly” and “plummet”, that all they need to do is fire the people that warned them it would happen, dole out medals to the cowardly ass-kissers who continue to insist that the Boss is infallible, double the number of Turkey Drops and just categorically refuse to look at any data that doesn’t comport with their delusions.

But the men on the ground have to live with the consequences of those lies say...

"We have all the toys, but not enough Boys."
"Commanders can't use the word, but we are withdrawing"
"If we can win this thing is six years, we'll be setting new land speed records.”

Pause for breathe. Be back later with Part II.