Sunday Morning Comin’ Down -- Part II

On “Face the Nation”: Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn and ... Hadley!

Bob Schieffer: The Iraqi government is taking a month off. They were going to take two months. Shit, the average American gets his boss’ boot up his ass when he or she asks for a long fucking weekend?

Hadley: Surge!

Schieffer: How can they work this out if they are not there?

Hadley: Surge. They’ll stay through July.

Schieffer: How long has it been since they had a fucking quorum?

Hadley: Surge! They had one last week.

Schieffer: And before that.

Hadley: Well…suuuuurge…before that there was a period of time when there wasn’t a quorum.

These are, of course, serious questions which were never, ever, ever even hinted at on Fox. Because that would make Chris Vucovich and Baby Jebus cry.

Shit, why wouldn’t they take a month off in the middle of Armageddon?

After all, aren’t they just modeling America's own crises leadership behavior at the

Very


Highest


Levels.

(Helpful driftglass suggestion: Dubya, if you really want to inject a fat dose of hurry-up into the Iraqi government, drop the name "Terri Schiavo" into the Iraqi benchmarks.

I guarantee you that every Christopath in Congress would suddenly wake up and jump at the chance to personally drag every single member of the Iraq Parliament back from Wallyworld by their pubic hairs.)

Lamar! Notes that: People are actually (re) reading Baker/Hamilton.

Lamar! Laments: If only Harry Reid would back the fuck off…and if only Dubya would be more flexible…we could have sixty votes.

Helpful driftglass translation: Dubya is a liar. But I can’t say he’s a liar and keep my job.

Of course, Lamar! Knows full well that the Bush “My Way or the Highway” Regime doesn’t do “flexible”.

We tried flexible.

We tried compromise.

We tried the “Gang of 12” to give the GOP “Up ior Down Vote Brigade” everything it wanted to avoid the horrible!horrible!horrors! of the F-word.

Filibuster.

And of course, as long as Lamar!s Party held a bare majority, for all of our centrist exertions we got “Sam the Sham” Alito and the Robertson Court, the repeal of habeas corpus, a Department of “Justice” straight out of August Pinochet’s wet dreams, the Constitution used as ass-floss while secret prisons, illegal wiretapping and torture became national policy, and on and on.

For all of our centrist exertions, we were told to go piss up a rope.

One tactic among many that has been kicking around?

Actually make them filibuster.

Make them put their mouths where our money is.

Make them bring in the cots and camp stoves and thermoses full of Irish coffee and speak in the well of the Senate for hour after hour after hour about their great love of the Dear Leader and his Excellent Iraqi Adventure.

While the cameras roll.

Then...the McCain campaign craters.

The Straight Talk Express has blown a hole in the cash coolant reservoir. The engine has seized up and his “band of brothers” have grabbed their garment bags and are hitching rides in other directions.

While Saint John McCain sits behind the wheel of the smoldering hulk of his limitless ambition going “Vroom! Vrooooooom!”



On “Meet the Press” Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Jim Webb, D-Va.

Shorter MTP: Webb Smash!

Jeez, this was fun to watch.

Webb: There is no war. There is a botched occupation. The war was over in a first few weeks. And the shitstorm people like me warned would happen, has happened.

Timmuh: Are you trying wrest control away from the Commander Guy?

Webb: No. But all executive power has its limits. Four years into this war, you havce to put some rational limits on what you can ask the military to do. The White House will not do it.

Graham: War? Occupation? It’s the Center of the GWOT! Those who want to withdraw are making a “mistake for the ages”.

Webb: When in comes to war planning, I used to do this for a living. Four years into this, we have been experimenting with one different boutique half-assed tactic after another on the backs of our kids.

If you want to stay in Iraq forever – like Graham does –

Webb: When Graham says, “al-Qaeda has some to Iraq”, that is true, because there is no greater recruiting tool for al-Qaeda than our occupation of Iraq.

Timmuh: Graham Cracker, you said the Webb Amendment would be “deployment by polls”. Isn’t this stoopid war breaking the military?

Graham: Surgy surgy goodness. The military is not the problem. The problem is politicizing the war. I ain’t gonna listen to some pol'tician tellin’ me what to do. Ahm a’gonna listen to the gen’ral.

Timmuh: You keep mentionimg “al-Qaeda”. Our own government estimate says al-Qaeda is not the most important threat. Not even the second or third. It is the fifth.

Graham: Shut up.

Timmuh: Prime Minister al Malaki said we can leave anything.

Graham: Well, General Petraeus said…

Timmuh: I don’t give a shit about what your BFF Petraeus says. If Iraq is a sovereign country, and they say we can leave, why can’t we leave?

Webb: These Chickehawks like Lieberman are attacking me every day. Kapo Joe wants to roll tanks into Tehran. Then into Damascus. Shit, maybe into maybe we should just send the entire military to the Middle East and they should all stay there forever.

There is no way to fairly render what happened next other than to say that:

1. Republican Senator Barney Fife kept lying about what’s really going on in Iraq.

2. Republican Senator Barney Fife kept lying about why we are there.

3. Republican Senator Barney Fife kept lying about what soldiers really think.

4. Republican Senator Barney Fife kept lying about the causal relationship between his Glorious Christian Occupation of the heathen lands, and the catalyzing effect it is having on driving people into the arms of the Bad Guys.

5. And Democratic Senator Jim Webb just smacked the holy shit out of him.

It was, I think, a genuinely and existentially important exchange to cap off a week that featured the “Chris Vucovich versus Actual Veterans Show”.

It was an important exchange because, from the streets to the Senate, good Americans finally appear to be squaring off with residue of spokesrodents, cowards, and bigots who make up the Bush Elite Republican Guard.

It was not an exaggeration to say that I would not have been surprised to see Webb to just boot Graham’s lying huckleberry hole across the studio.

One hopes that Crooks & Liars will have the video soon.

Crooks & Liars has a fresh slice of video here.

The Chris Matthews Show yielded one, salient and honest observation

Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker (and roughly translated into saltyspeak by me): To say that Bush is simply “listening to the generals” and doing as they recommend is utter bullshit. Everybody knows that Bush and Cheney set this policy, then dump the generals who don’t tell them what they want to hear, and promote the generals who do.

A-yep.

End Part 2 of 2