Sunday Morning Comin’ Down.

When it says “Hadley, Hadley, Hadley”
On the label label label,
You know there’s leaky, sneaky, Rummy
On the table table table...

The Mouse Circus was dominated by Stephen Hadley broadcasting live and simultaneous on all channels.

Like a National Emergency Bullshit System.

And since he just ran the same script on all frequencies, to save time let's just aggregate all the little Hadlites into a single Metahadley.

Q: Will there be a change in strategy?

A: Thing are being discussed. And we are committed. To good stuff.

We will apparently be sniffing a bicycle seat of some kind.

Also widening the aperture.

Also “winning”.

Also be “finding a way forward”.

Q: But practically the day before, YOU Mr. Hadley wrote a memo about what a weak sister (Well, “weak sistani”) al Malaki is. And now – Bam! – he’s Winston Friggin’ Churchill.

A: No. See. Uh. Bullshit Bullshit Bullshit.

Q: So in two weeks al Malaki has suddenly become no longer ignorant and weak, and is now the right guy.

A: These are not the ‘droid you are looking for…

Q: You people go apeshit over every little leak, and yet when this one was dropped like precision guided munitions on Bush’s Roamin’ Holiday, not a fucking peep? Was this an “authorized” leak?

A: Oh no. No, no, no…

Q: So will there be an investigation.

A: An internal investigation, and you know we don’t talk publicly about those things.

driftglass: Really? Because when the leak pops up in the NYT, even when its nothing more than a “leak” of already-publicly available information, doesn’t Bush himself usually go on teevee to call for the defenestration of the reporter involved?




On Fox News Sunday -- Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Joe Biden
Plus Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer

The Rummy Memo.

driftglass: This was a “Fuck You For Firing Me” Memo. Left behind to say, “I coulda saved your ass if you’d just have listened to my Sekrit Genius Ideas. But nooooo!”

Biden: Timeline good.

Graham: Timeline bad! Bad! Bad timeline! We have to “win” in Iraq. Win!

Graham then, sadly, goes full Lieberman, laundry-listing desirable outcomes like he was sitting on Santa’s lap talking about fleets of rocketships and herds of Arabian ponies.

Meanwhile Biden, who resides about every other day in the Real World, flops the family checkbook on the desk like Disgusted Dad and asks the same question sane adults have been asking all along. Specifically, whatever you think of the path that has led us into this debacle, how exactly do you plan to pay for rocketships and herds of Arabian ponies now that the available balance in the family account is down to $18.93?

So, New Rule: If you do not have an answer to that question – if all you do is maunder wishfully and self-righteously about how you’d like things to be without showing us the hard numbers – you have to Shut The Fuck Up Right Now.

Biden: If every jihadist in the Universe were killed tomorrow, we’d still be in the middle of a major fuckup in Iraq. The only solution is a political solution. This is Does anyone in their right mind believe that we’re going to have Kurdish troops policing Sunni regions? Shia troops?

Biden: We have long passed the point when adding more troops will improve things. Let’s be clear; I was calling for more troops two years ago. Back then, people who are calling for more troops now like St. John McCain called me hysterical.

Graham (on Russia): Bush misread Putin’s soul (snap!) Putin is becoming a one-man show – a dictator -- and we‘ve let him slide.

It was fun watching Justice Breyer lecturing Wallace The Hack. Being a Fox Brand “journo”, Wallace comes right off the factory floor preprogrammed to obediently fellate Conservatives and jab his spindly rhetorical finger into sternum of anyone on the Left, so it was a delight to see him try to bring his peevish Peanut League game to a genuine Constitutional expert.




Face the Nation - Hadley. Then Holy Joe Lieberman, and Chuck Hagel.

Hagel (soberly recapitulating Biden, or vice versa): This is bad. Getting worse. We Bush has one chance left. This commission plan – not a strategy but a direction – is his last shot.

Holy Joe: Timelines Bad!

Hagel: Of course you have to have timelines. WTF?

Hagel: The entire senior structure of the Shia wing of the Iraqi government has close ties to Iran. This is a fact. We need a policy that recognizes this fact.

Lieberman: I believe Iraq is winnable. There is too little talk of the consequences of losing. This is a battle between Good and Evil. Iranians are BAD. Syria is BAD.

Again, the New Rule: If you do not have a hard-number answer to the “How?” that comes at the end of your pompous truckling, you have to Shut The Fuck Up Right Now.

Oh, and “Thanks, Connecticut!” Teevee Asshat Heaven would surely have shone a little dimmer if you had dispatched Holy Joe to a richly-deserved political oblivion.

Hagel: Of course [Syria and Iran] are not coming to our aid. But as Talleyrand said “Nations don’t have friends. They have interests.” All countries act in their own interests, and we can involve regional powers to our mutual advantage not because they love us but because they don’t want a failed state in the neighborhood any more than we do.

Lieberman does what he always does. Blat out his fortune cookie pronouncement about how bad everyone else’s plans are -- “Withdrawal is a sign of weakness” -- while steadfastly refusing to detail any ideas of his own. Why? Because there are no good ideas left. Bush has methodically eradicated them all as Holy Joe obediently trailed behind. Lips firmly pressed to POTUS’s ass the whole way.

Hagel: Of course we have to withdraw. Jebus Christ, Joe. The President has said we have to withdraw.



Meet the Press – Hadley. Then John Warner's hair and Carl Levin

Russert actually holds John Warner to his 1/3-of-a-Friedman promise. (I forget if that’s a “khalilzad” or a “lieberman”?)

“You said if, in two months, shit didn’t straighten out we’d have to beat cheeks out of there.”

Warner (trying mightily to hyp-mo-tize Russert with his Very Good Hair): “Our president is listening. Learning."

Considering. Musing. Masticating. Pondering.

Oh yeah. He’s a’studyin’ on it, Pa! He’s a’larnin’!

No, Warner. He’s doing his cipherin’, alright, but he’s only figured out his gazintas (“goes-into”s) and has completely flunked his take-aways.

Warner: “In perhaps the next six to eight months to come…”

Shut up, Warner.

Levin: Bush’s rhetoric has changed. He’s even hinted that he’d be willing to listen to – hold onto your panties -- Democrats! Shocking! These people have done nothing but either ignore Dems entirely, or call us traitors for six years. Now the Crawford Dauphin has deigned to notice we exist.

Well Hu-fucking-zzah!

That’s the rhetoric.

When it comes to actual action, Bush says “We will stay in Iraq as long as the Iraq’s want us there.” It’s the same, stay-the-course-no-matter-what idiocy that has been the hallmark of this Administration


This Week with George Stephanopoulos... Hadley. Then Evan Bayh, Tom Vilsack
Panel: George Will, Martha Raddatz, and David Corn


This Sunday, the only thing want to hear coming out of Stephanopoulos’s hole is this:

“George, why did you lie about James Webb in your Washington Post column? And why should you– or any journalist -- should be allowed to keep his job after lying for any reason, much less lying to serve an explicitly partisan agenda?"

Yadda Yadda Yadda.

Nuthin’.

Yadda Yadda.

Zip.

Yadda.

Nada.

Sigh.

Ah, George; Once more proving himself to be the Lapdog that Didn’t Bark in the Night.

Because it would positively up-end the cocktail weenie tray and set the dessert cart ablaze to ask any of your Kewl Kid Klubhouse members any hard questions on your Major Political Story Teevee Show when it turns out they are at the absolute center of a Major Political Story that everyone else is talking about.


The Chris Matthews Show -- Joe Klein, Elisabeth Bumiller, Cynthia Tucker, Andrew Sullivan.

Cynthia Tucker opines that the “peacenik” wing of the Democratic Party may “have learned their lesson.”

Oh and Joe Klein wuuuvs Hillary.

Holy Shit. The “Chris Matthews Show” is now literally “The [Hillary] View”.

27 minutes of slumber party chick-talk about the Alpha Female they all pine for.

There was one good line from Sully – “[Bush] looked like my dog when I’m trying to give it a bath” – but otherwise, what an embarrassment.


This concludes this test of the National Emergency Bullshit System.