The Lincoln Curse?

As you probably already know, Donald Trump has turned the USS Abraham Lincoln into a floating gulag for any sailor unlucky enough to be stationed there:

Trump says record USS Lincoln deployment 'not nearly long enough'

President Donald Trump reacted to reports of poor conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln on Friday, claiming that families of service members are "not" concerned and saying that the vessel hasn't been deployed for "nearly long enough."

The president also confirmed that a new aircraft carrier is headed to the Middle East to replace it during a very brief gaggle with reporters on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews Friday afternoon. 

The aircraft carrier's movements come amid reports of mental health and supply issues aboard the USS Lincoln, whose long deployment to the Middle East in support of the Iran war includes a record-setting time at sea of more than 200 days. Navy leaders, including the Navy's acting Secretary Hung Cao, last week held a heated town hall for families of the USS Lincoln who had raised concerns about the conditions on the ship.

Tapper: What is your husband saying about conditions on the ship? Wife of Service Member Aboard USS Lincoln: My husband is appalled at the conditions on this ship. This is not his first deployment. And he is saying that it is the worst deployment that he's ever been on. His shipmates say the same.

[image or embed]

— MeidasTouch (@meidastouch.com) August 14, 2026 at 8:31 PM

This should come as no surprise, as Donald Trump has never given a shit about the United States military except as a toy for him to play with.  Trump also thinks anyone willing to risk their life for their country is a "sucker" and a "loser". 

John Kelly confirms Trump privately disparaged U.S. service members and veterans

Trump called fallen soldiers "suckers” and "losers" during his presidency, according to a 2020 report in The Atlantic.

But do you remember the fate of the USS Abraham Lincoln during the last Republican administration that lied us into a disastrous war in the Middle East and then catastrophically botched it?  

It was in all the papers.

That would be Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech, delivered on May 1, 2003.

And that, just two days before that speech, the cover story of the now-defunct Weekly Standard featured David Brooks declaring that The War Was Over! 

Yay!  

The Good Guys had triumphed! Neoconservatism had been vindicated.  And it was time for the resistance to crawl under a nearby porch and quietly die, or dry up and blow away or dissolve into laughably delusional absurdism.  

Pieces of Mr. Brooks' radioactively reckless and vindictive claptrap can be found here.

As you literati know, maritime myth and literature are full of stories about ships "sailing under a doom." The story of Jonah from the Bible.  The tale of the Mary Celeste.  The legend of the Flying Dutchman.  Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Poe's MS. Found in a Bottle.  Melville's Moby Dick.  And so on.

Now I'm not saying that the USS Abraham Lincoln is cursed.  I am saying that, if it is cursed, we definitely know why.  And that, out of an abundance of caution, it wouldn't hurt to burn some sage, flick a little holy water around, ring some church bells, and never, ever put another Republican in the White House.   

I Am The Liberal Media

Dubya Walked So Trump Could Run: Part 1003.

As you read this, please note that this NBC headline is not from last week.

It's from 20 years ago.  NBC, August 8, 2006:

Administration seeks to weaken war crimes law

The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments...

Bush regime panic was triggered by the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which ruled that the Bush regime's existing military tribunals for Guantánamo detainees violated both U.S. military law and parts of the Geneva Conventions.

The Bush Regime's reaction to that ruling was on par with General Saito's reaction to the Conventions in The Bridge on the River Kwai

Since it was pretty clear Republicans were widely expected to get their asses kicked in the 2006 midterms and lose control of one or both houses of Congress (sound familiar?) with Republicans facing the likely end of four years of unified control of Washington.  Before that happened the Bush regime hurry-up-quick rammed through the  Military Commissions Act.

Remember: it authorized new military tribunals, drastically narrowed the definition of punishable war crimes under U.S. law, gave the president broader authority to interpret the Geneva Conventions, and attempted to block detainees from challenging their detention through habeas corpus petitions in federal court. 

There was little debate or somber reflection of what this might mean.

Instead it flew through the Republican-controlled Senate on September 28, 2006.  The vote was, Republicans: 53 despicably predictable yesses, 1 no, 1 absent,  Democrats: 12 shameful yesses, 32 no, and Independent: 0 yes, 1 no.

Then it flew through the Republican-controlled House the very next day, September 29, 2006.  The vote was, Republicans: 218 despicably predictable yesses, 7 no, 5 not voting, Democrats: 32 shameful yesses, 162 no, 7 not voting,  Independent: 0 yes, 1 no 

Then George W. Bush signed it into law on October 17, 2006.  But in 2008, the Supreme Court (No kidding!  Guess you had to be there!) ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that the law’s attempt to strip detainees of habeas corpus rights was unconstitutional.   The court was split 5-4, and it will surprise absolutely no one that the four Republican-appointed dissenters were John Roberts,  Nino Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

You see kids, the depraved values and trajectory of the Republican party were there for anyone to see who cared to look with honest eyes.  A Republican president and his blood-thirsty regent who believed the president should be able to rule as an emperor (as long as he was a Republican.)  A Republican Congress eager to let the president do it (as long as he was a Republican.)  And a slim Republicans minority on the court -- two appointed by Dubya, one appointed by Dubya's daddy, and one appointed by Dubya's daddy's boss -- willing to bless that unholy Republican aspiration.   

I keep 20 or 30 of these examples in my back pocket for when our Never Trump supervisors figuratively put their feet up on our coffee table, swill our good beer and begin to wax nostalgic about the "good old days" of the GOP before Trump.

I usually get through three or four examples before they block me and stomp away.  Which is weird, 'cause didn't you want to talk about the past?

Burn The Lifeboats

On March 8, Don’t Forget to Set Your Clocks Back to 2003

Regime Change Begins At Home

Ghosts Of The Before Time: June 2005 -- How Bush's Iraq Debacle...

... turned Both Siderism from a journalistic fetish into journalism's Trump-enabling State Religion.  And why Thomas Friedman is dead to me, now and forever.

From June 15, 2005:

What this Liberal Sees… 

...when he looks at Iraq.

Tom Friedman has well and truly surpassed himself.

Just when you think Captain Obvious could not possibly crawl any further up into his own puffy little butt, he manages to scramble up those last, few inches and burst through into an entirely new, “Being John Malkovich” kind of alternate Friedman-iverse, populated exclusively by LSD-scalded dolts stagger in tiny circle, jabbering incessantly about how amazing their hands look, and how amazing the air is, and have you ever noticed how amazing my shoes look as they go flippy-flop, flippy-flop ‘round and ‘round and ‘round.?

You meet these kinds of blown-out stoners wandering in the parks sometimes, or cadging transfers in the cool, dank stairwells of CTA stops. Pupils as big as manhole covers. Hair that’s become a free-range ecosystem for lice and roaches and ringworms.

What I usually do is give them some change and steer way the hell around them.

What I do not do is let them write for the New York Fucking Times.

Friedman has already been righteously and rightfully beaten down as the leading-edge of the execrable Apologist Wedge by Atrios, Gilliard, and god knows who all else, so I will keep this short. Ok, short-ish.

Here’s a tiny sip of the rancid stew:

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: June 15, 2005

Ever since Iraq's remarkable election, the country has been descending deeper and deeper into violence. But no one in Washington wants to talk about it. Conservatives don't want to talk about it because, with a few exceptions, they think their job is just to applaud whatever the Bush team does. Liberals don't want to talk about Iraq because, with a few exceptions, they thought the war was wrong and deep down don't want the Bush team to succeed. As a result, Iraq is drifting sideways and the whole burden is being carried by our military. The rest of the country has gone shopping, which seems to suit Karl Rove just fine.

First, Captain Obvious has again renewed his wretched subscription to the despicable and now, really, outright treasonable world-view that

A) No one is talking about Iraq. Which is such an nakedly demented lie that one must wonder if Tommy-boy has, at last, just lost his mind. As I sat at Wrigley field last week, in a park packed to capacity with highly-focused and well-informed Cubs and BoSox fans, at no point did I ever feel compelled to lean over to my fiends and remark -- shouting over the noise – that it was sure a pity the no one wanted to talk about baseball.

Had I done so, my friends (being my friends) would have, have cut off my beer, gotten me out of the hot sun and into an ER immediately. We’ll immediate…after the ninth inning, but they would have been very concerned.

What they wouldn’t have done is give me a column in the New York Fucking Times.

B) The Universe is carefully divided into Conservatives – who are wrong – and Liberals – who are somehow, mysteriously and equally wrong all the time and in equal numbers on every issue. And only Captain Obvious, frolicking across the few lonely yards of sand on his Isle of Reasonableness, can see the truth.

It does not matter how many millions of miles the Shining Path Republicans drag the “middle ground” to the Right.

It doesn’t matter that the Party of Lincoln is now infested crotch-to-crown with maggoty Segregationists.

It doesn’t matter that Nixon looks like a fucking Socialist compared to the positions now being advocated by the GOP today.

However far into the Armageddonist Abyss the wingnuts charge, Captain Obvious will dutifully pace off half that distance back towards where the Left (the band formerly know as “Rockefeller Republicans”) happened to be that day, drive his little stake into that shifting ground and declare that THIS is where the treasure of Comity and Reasonableness is buried. And that everyone on either side of his little islet is equally and oppositely wrong.

And then stamp his chubby little feet and whine that No One Is Listening to Him!

What a lazy pint of watery poo he is, and if that were all he is, that would be bad enough, but with his second absurd “indictment -- "Liberals don't want to talk about Iraq because, with a few exceptions, they thought the war was wrong and deep down don't want the Bush team to succeed.” – he definitively crosses the line into outright treachery.

So you want to know how this Liberal views Iraq?

Take a look at the sickening image that came roaring out of our collective unconscious and onto our televisions on 9/11: a human being confronted with two choices too terrible to contemplate -- leap into oblivion or be roasted alive.

And once in the air, whatever intentions or dreams or hopes or beliefs this poor bastard might have had became irrelevant. Flapping their arms didn’t matter. Prayer didn’t matter.

Once in the air, the Cold Equations were all that mattered. Once in the air, my fellow human being became a physics demonstration; an object on a downward arc governed by the Laws of Science that the Republicans hate so very much.

That, you despicable little stooge, is EXACTLY how Iraq looks to me.

On the heels of our greatest modern national trauma, the President and his minions shrieked and bellowed, roared and raged that there was a conflagration at our backs. That we were all in immediate, lethal danger from a massive, murderous attack by Saddam Hussein and that if we didn't act right now we were fucked.

Mushroom-cloud fucked.

And that the ONLY alternative was to jump. He was advised by wise men of the costs of jumping, of the dangers, of the number of troops necessary, of the extremely complex situation into which he would be dropping. He was warned that beating Iraq militarily would be easy…but that securing the Peace would be hard.

He told us that the fall would be simple. That we would alight in a land where we would be greeted as Liberators. The costs would be negligible. The gains would be high. Virtually painless.

But MOST of all, that the fire was nipping at our heels. It was so urgent, so imperative. that if we didn’t want to see our children perish, we had to jump right now.

So we did.

Convinced by Bush that it was the only option left to us -–and that he had planned carefully for the consequences -- we leaped out of window and into the sky.

We jumped, because we were told we had to.

And in jumping, we committed our troops, our nation and our good name to the brutal calculus of war; to factors beyond our control, and now we are plunging down and down and down into tragedy.

And as we fall we find that the building was not on fire at all.

That the people that pushed us into space had lied to us.

That the parachute of carefully planning that they were supposed to have prepared to save us from ruin had been packed with nothing but empty slogans and ideology-drunk fantasies.

Now we are falling, out of control.

And pointing out that we are falling because of the lies and delusions of the Administration has nothing to do with whether or not I "want the Bush team to succeed” you contemptible little weed. We are watching the country we passionately love plummet into darkness along the exact trajectory we warned you about, and you think that there is any joy in being right? Any pleasure in seeing your beloved wasted and playing in traffic?

Sorry, Friedman, but no.

Now whatever intentions or dreams or hopes or beliefs we might have had have become irrelevant. Flapping our arms doesn’t matter. Prayer doesn’t matter.

Once in the air, the Cold Equations are all that matter.

Once in the air, my nation became a physics demonstration; an object on a downward arc governed by the Laws of Science that the Republicans hate so very much.

And if you had bothered to pull your head out of your ass long enough to actually look, you would see that these are what the faces of Liberals look like…

…as we are forced to watch the fall, and as we are forced to listen to preening rodents hector us for not paying the right kind of attention.

Here ends today's sojourn to the Before Time.

I Am The Liberal Media.

The Bush-Off Machine Never Stops Running

In case you are unfamiliar with the Fabulous, Tea-Baggulous Bush-Off Machine, here's the link.  

In a few weeks, that link will be 14 years old.  

That's five years before Trump oozed down the escalator.

Back then, every single Never Trumper you know was just a bog-standard Republican douchebag, willing to swear on the bones of St. Ronald Reagan that Barack Obama was very likely a Kenyan communist usurper hell-bent on killing your sainted white grandma with something called a "Death Panel", that Democrats were spendthrift wastrels, that the GOP  was 100% problem-free and superawesome, and that any dirty hippie who suggested otherwise was a terrorist-loving, Murrica-hating degenerate.

Now, 14 years later, all those recently-former Republican Never Trumpers are very invested in making sure nobody talks about nuthin' that was going on in politics before 2016.

And the Bush-Off Machine?

    It's still going like 60.  Like it just rolled of the showroom floor..

Performing exactly as it was designed perform.

Which is why we...

Burn The Lifeboats

Ep 703 No Fair Remembering Stuff Podcast: Iraqi War and Remembrance

"It is unknowable how long [the war in Iraq] will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." -- Donald Rumsfeld

Don't forget to visit our website -- http://www.proleftpod.com -- for all those sweet bells and whistles:  there are links to donate to our podcast work at that site, as well as links to our swingin' Zazzle merch store,  our respective blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Kittehs! and much more. Many thanks once again to @theologop for her invaluable support!

No Fair Remembering Stuff is a Professional Left podcast production and is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!

Link to  Blue Gal's Blogroll Amnesty Day ad here!

It Was 20 Years Ago Today...

In case you'd forgotten, February 15, 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of the largest protest marches in history.  From Wikipedia:

On 15 February 2003, a coordinated day of protests was held across the world in which people in more than 600 cities expressed opposition to the imminent Iraq War. It was part of a series of protests and political events that had begun in 2002 and continued as the invasion, war, and occupation took place. The day was described by social movement researchers as "the largest protest event in human history".

According to BBC News, between six and ten million people took part in protests in up to sixty countries over the weekend of 15 and 16 February.

The largest protests took place in Europe. The one in Rome involved around three million people, and is listed in the 2004 Guinness Book of World Records as the largest anti-war rally in history. Madrid hosted the second largest rally with more than 1.5 million people protesting the invasion of Iraq; Mainland China was the only major region not to see any protests on that day, but small demonstrations, attended mainly by foreign students, were seen later.

It didn't change a thing.

Bush and Cheney went right ahead and bulldozed the nation into catastrophe.  The mainstream media rolled right over.  And all of today's Never Trump media darlings were still gung-ho Neocons, with all-access passes to pretty much any teevee, radio and the op-ed platform they pleased, from which they slandering us as American-hating, terrorist loving scum.

It was a time when Republican Party, the Conservative movement and the mainstream media jointely declared open season on Liberals 

In case you'd forgotten.

This Is Why We Burn The Lifeboats

Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Twitter Bums

Almost a year ago the Twitter cops kicked me permanently and irrevocably off of Twitter over nothing.

I availed myself of their appeals process three times, was rejected without explanation each time, and the third time they told me that I had used up all my appeals and to shut up and go away.  These pronouncement were accompanied with several Dire Warnings of what would happen if I persisted or attempt to evade the might hand of Twitter Justice.

So here's a thing you need to know about bloggers like me.  

When you're a little guy, an independent blogger with no bylines anywhere and no affiliations with any coastal Liberal networks, the only PR you get is the PR you drum up for yourself.  And, of course, word-of-mouth carried into the world by lovely people.  

Self-promotion.  Or what A-List bloggers used to disparage as "blog whoring".  Unseemly.  Wait your turn kid.  And so forth.  Much of which was motivated by the fact that the A-Listers already had friendly contacts in the legacy media and paying gigs in the legacy media, and/or were already networked together and would drive traffic almost exclusively to one another.  

And traffic means revenue, from fundraisers, advertisers and regular contributors.  .

This led such unpleasantness as Blogroll Amnesty Day, which the late, great Jon Swift explained in unsparing detail on his blog long ago.

I remember how difficult it was to get people to notice my blog when I first started out. "Build it and they will come," apparently only works with magic baseball fields. The only way to get anyone to notice my blog was to get them to link to me and that was not always easy. I linked to other bloggers and clicked on those links hoping they would notice my link in Sitemeter. I sent emails to other bloggers asking them to take a look at my latest piece or to add me to their blogrolls. I instituted my "Liberal Blogrolling Policy" offering to exchange links with anyone who linked to me. As more blogs began to link to me and add me to their blogrolls, a curious thing began to happen. More people came to my blog from those links and from Google. And many of those readers then visited the blogs that I linked to. Though it cost nothing to link to someone, I realized that on the Internet links are capital. Every link has value. And when two bloggers link to each other, they both profit.

The idea that links are the capital of the blogosphere seems so obvious that you would think an economist like Atrios of Eschaton would have realized it long ago. And as he is a progressive who has accumulated quite a bit of link wealth, you might also think he would be in favor of redistributing some of that wealth instead of just letting it trickle down. So when he announced last year that he was declaring February 3 Blogroll Amnesty Day, and other bloggers followed suit, I assumed he meant that he was opening his blogroll up to the masses. I sent him a polite email pointing out that his blog was on my blogroll and I would really appreciate it if he would add my blog to his. I never heard back from him.

When February 3 rolled around, many bloggers discovered to their horror that instead of adding new blogs to his blogroll he was throwing many off, including some bloggers who were his longtime friends. Blogroll Amnesty Day, it turned out, was a very Orwellian concept. Instead of granting amnesty to others he was granting amnesty to himself not to feel bad for hurting others feelings. Though Atrios has stubbornly refused to acknowledge that he made a mistake, some bloggers who initially joined him, backtracked. Markos of the Daily Kos instituted a second blogroll that consisted of random links from diarists. PZ Myers of Pharyngula now has real Blogroll Amnesty Days where he invites anyone who has blogrolled him to join his blogroll. And in the wake of the bloodletting quite a number of smaller blogs, like my friend skippy the bush kangaroo, changed their own blogroll policies and now link more freely to others...

As I am reminded every time I take a turn doing Mike's Blog Roundup over at Crooks & Liars and go looking for the latest word from the smaller Liberal   blogs...the Liberal blogosphere is a mere shadow of its former self.  Defunct blogroll links hugely outnumber live, recent ones.  Most of the bloggers who were around back then are gone now.  Moved on, lost interest, or died. 

And yet traffic is still currency, especially for those very few of us who are still around and still have  no bylines anywhere and no affiliations with any coastal Liberal collectives.  And the cheapest and most reliable means of self-promotion out there for someone like me is definitely Twitter.  Virtually no one shows up at my blog front door based on a link or a like on Facebook, but when Twitter cut me off, my traffic dropped by 60-70% almost overnight.  

I write new stuff or doodle up new graphics almost every day, but spontaneously stopping by someone's blog to check out what they've been up every day to is just not how humans operate.  Jon Swift was right;  "Build it and they will come," apparently only works with magic baseball fields.  It does not work for blogging,  People need to have a link and an enticement placed in their hands where they are.  Often repeatedly.  And if what you're offering is more than a single click away, they won't come.   

In the world as it is, promotion is absolutely necessary.  If you need proof, just head over to The Bulwark note of how they use every column, every podcast and every appearance on any media platform at their disposal to relentlessly promote their own people, their advertisers and their various paid subscription offers.

That's what they've got.

What I've got is Twitter, and the podcast I do every week with my wife. and, as I mentioned, the word-of-mouth put into the world by you lovely people.  So when the Twitter cops suddenly decided to toss me out forever for no good reason, that really stung.  Tangibly.  And so for about a year I have been off that hellsite.  Still writing because that's what writers do (he added tautologically) but for a much smaller readership.

So how did I get sprung from Twitter jail?

I have no idea, but I do know how bureaucracies operate, and I figured that after a year there was a decent chance that the pissy, digital ribbon clerk who decided to kick me out and keep me out might well have either quit or moved on to bigger and better things at Twitter, Inc. because nobody stays in that kind of martinet/traffic cop job for long.  So, to quote Lester Freamon, I guess they just forgot about me.  

Some new person reviewed my new appeal, dropped me a note that I had, in fact, not violated any Twitters rules  And just like that, after returning some of my personal effects...

...they sprung me.

So, since I had never violated their terms of service to start with, the question remains, "What was the real reason I was cast out of Twitter with such aggressive finality in the first place?"

And like so much in life, the answer is, I'll never know for certain.

But I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with me engaging in the transgressive practice of asking impertinent questions of important people and remembering inconvenient truths in public without the benefit of clout-heavy friends in high places or a blue check or anything.  

Which, if I remember correctly all these years later, was the reason I got into blogging in the first place. 

No Half Measures

The Beast that Shouted Rove

At the Heart of the World

There is no need to tell me I am stealing.

I know I’m ripping Ellison’s title off. I also know that book has been laying around like the last pork chop for seven year just begging for someone else to take it and use it this way, and after seven years under the heat lamp, fuck it, it’s mine.

I’m taking it for the simple reason that it fits today – this ugly anniversary – like black bunting fits a funeral and whiskey fits a wake.

Because behind all of the formidably, tragically chartable, graphable, timeline-able, quotable and footnotable facts stands one man.

George Walker Bush.

Iraq was, is, and ever shall be his war. The war he wanted. The war he lied us into because there was no way on Earth he was ever going to be able to lead us into it. The war he has cowered behind. The war he terrified us into continuing.

The war he has used as a club to brutally suppress dissent.

The war he has used as a box cutter to slit open our Constitution and drain away our rights.

The war he has used hammer to smash open the treasury and leave us bankrupt.

The war he has used as a .38 pressed to our skulls to extort monarchical powers from us while he rifles our pockets and gets our children killed.

The war he has used to ruin us.

The war he has used – and will go right on using to the end – to blast hole after hole after ragged hole below the waterline of our Ship of State.

The war he believes he can use as an escape pod; a luxury yacht on which he believes he will sail safely away from any responsibility for the disasters he has wrought -- as he has his entire, worthless life -- into a glorious, forgiving and well-appointed History. While behind him he leaves all of us vanishing in the rosy rear-view mirror that all despots use to console themselves after their time in the sun has passed. Leaves us all -- the United States of New Orleans -- to drown and die in bloody wake of his epic incompetence and villainy.

The short and dirty of it is that America -- for all kinds of reasons, some of them felonious -- allowed someone who was criminally unfit for the job to become President.

And he used that position of power and trust to do many, many awful and unforgivable things.

And then America -- for all kinds of reasons, some of them felonious -- allowed a man who had now been clearly shown to be demonstrably criminally unfit for the job to be re-elected President.

And while his predictions were ultimately wrong, I can think of no better sideline analysis of the “treacherous little freak” George Walker Bush cum history lesson than that provided by the late and much lamented Doctor Hunter S. Thompson after the October 2004 Presidential Debate in Florida.
(emphasis added.)

Sigh. Florida. Fucking Florida. Sigh.

Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004

…
Kerry came into October as a five-point underdog with almost no chance of winning three out of three rigged confrontations with a treacherous little freak like George Bush. But the debates are over now, and the victor was clearly John Kerry every time. He steamrollered Bush and left him for roadkill.

Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all. The tide turned early, in Coral Gables, when Bush went belly up less than halfway through his first bout with Kerry, who hammered poor George into jelly. It was pitiful. . . . I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him "Mister President," and then I felt ashamed.
…

Bush signed his own death warrant in the opening round, when he finally had to speak without his TelePrompTer. It was a Cinderella story brought up to date in Florida that night -- except this time the false prince turned back into a frog.

Immediately after the first debate ended I called Muhammad Ali at his home in Michigan, but whoever answered said the champ was laughing so hard that he couldn't come to the phone. "The debate really cracked him up," he chuckled. "The champ loves a good ass-whuppin'. He says Bush looked so scared to fight, he finally just quit and laid down."
…

Presidential politics is a vicious business, even for rich white men, and anybody who gets into it should be prepared to grapple with the meanest of the mean. The White House has never been seized by timid warriors. There are no rules, and the roadside is littered with wreckage. That is why they call it the passing lane. Just ask any candidate who ever ran against George Bush -- Al Gore, Ann Richards, John McCain -- all of them ambushed and vanquished by lies and dirty tricks. And all of them still whining about it.

That is why George W. Bush is President of the United States, and Al Gore is not. Bush simply wanted it more, and he was willing to demolish anything that got in his way, including the U.S. Supreme Court. It is not by accident that the Bush White House (read: Dick Cheney & Halliburton Inc.) controls all three branches of our federal government today. They are powerful thugs who would far rather die than lose the election in November.

The Republican establishment is haunted by painful memories of what happened to Old Man Bush in 1992. He peaked too early, and he had no response to "It's the economy, stupid."

Which has always been the case. Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous "trickle-down" theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow "trickle down" to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote.

Things haven't changed all that much where George W. Bush comes from. Houston is a cruel and crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It's a shabby sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West -- which can mean just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch.

Houston is also the unnatural home of two out of the last three presidents of the United States of America, for good or ill. The other one was a handsome, sex-crazed boy from next-door Arkansas, which has no laws against oral sex or any other deviant practice not specifically forbidden in the New Testament, including anal incest and public cunnilingus with farm animals.
…

*****

The genetically vicious nature of presidential campaigns in America is too obvious to argue with, but some people call it fun, and I am one of them. Election Day -- especially a presidential election -- is always a wild and terrifying time for politics junkies, and I am one of those, too. We look forward to major election days like sex addicts look forward to orgies. We are slaves to it.

Which is not a bad thing, all in all, for the winners. They are not the ones who bitch and whine about slavery when the votes are finally counted and the losers are forced to get down on their knees. No. The slaves who emerge victorious from these drastic public decisions go crazy with joy and plunge each other into deep tubs of chilled Cristal champagne with naked strangers who want to be close to a winner.

That is how it works in the victory business. You see it every time. The Weak will suck up to the Strong, for fear of losing their jobs and their money and all the fickle power they wielded only twenty-four hours ago. It is like suddenly losing your wife and your home in a vagrant poker game, then having to go on the road with whoremongers and beg for your dinner in public.

Nobody wants to hire a loser. Right? They stink of doom and defeat.

"What is that horrible smell in the office, Tex? It's making me sick."

"That is the smell of a Loser, Senator. He came in to apply for a job, but we tossed him out immediately. Sgt. Sloat took him down to the parking lot and taught him a lesson he will never forget."

"Good work, Tex. And how are you coming with my new Enemies List? I want them all locked up. They are scum."

"We will punish them brutally. They are terrorist sympathizers, and most of them voted against you anyway. I hate those bastards."

"Thank you, Sloat. You are a faithful servant. Come over here and kneel down. I want to reward you."

That is the nature of high-risk politics. Veni Vidi Vici, especially among Republicans. It's like the ancient Bedouin saying: As the camel falls to its knees, more knives are drawn.
…

[Florida 2000] was about forty-six percent, plus five points for owning the U.S. Supreme Court -- which seemed to equal fifty-one percent. Nobody really believed that, but George W. Bush moved into the White House anyway.

It was the most brutal seizure of power since Hitler burned the German Reichstag in 1933 and declared himself the new Boss of Germany. Karl Rove is no stranger to Nazi strategy, if only because it worked, for a while, and it was sure as hell fun for Hitler. But not for long. He ran out of oil, the whole world hated him, and he liked to gobble pure crystal biphetamine and stay awake for eight or nine days in a row with his maps & his bombers & his dope-addled general staff.

They all loved the whiff. It is the perfect drug for War -- as long as you are winning -- and Hitler thought he was King of the Hill forever. He had created a new master race, and every one of them worshipped him. The new Hitler youth loved to march and sing songs in unison and dance naked at night for the generals. They were fanatics.

That was sixty-six years ago, far back in ancient history, and things are not much different today. We still love War.

George Bush certainly does. In four short years he has turned our country from a prosperous nation at peace into a desperately indebted nation at war. But so what? He is the President of the United States, and you're not. Love it or leave it.
…

Richard Nixon looks like a flaming liberal today, compared to a golem like George Bush. Indeed. Where is Richard Nixon now that we finally need him?

If Nixon were running for president today, he would be seen as a "liberal" candidate, and he would probably win. He was a crook and a bungler, but what the hell? Nixon was a barrel of laughs compared to this gang of thugs from the Halliburton petroleum organization who are running the White House today -- and who will be running it this time next year, if we (the once-proud, once-loved and widely respected "American people") don't rise up like wounded warriors and whack those lying petroleum pimps out of the White House on November 2nd.

Nixon hated running for president during football season, but he did it anyway. Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for -- but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him.

You bet. Richard Nixon would be my Man. He was a crook and a creep and a gin-sot, but on some nights, when he would get hammered and wander around in the streets, he was fun to hang out with. He would wear a silk sweat suit and pull a stocking down over his face so nobody could recognize him. Then we would get in a cab and cruise down to the Watergate Hotel, just for laughs.
…

The Fun-hogs are starving for anything they can laugh with, instead of at. But George Bush is not funny. Nobody except fellow members of the Petroleum Club in Houston will laugh at his silly barnyard jokes unless it's for money.

When young Bush was at Yale in the Sixties, he told the same joke over and over again for two years, according to some of his classmates. One of them still remembers it:

There was a young man named Green
Who invented a jack-off machine
On the twenty-third stroke
The damn thing broke
And churned his nuts into cream.

"It was horrible to hear him tell it," said the classmate, who spoke only on condition of anonymity. He lifted his shirt and showed me a scar on his back put there by young George. "He burned this into my flesh with a red-hot poker," he said solemnly, "and I have hated him ever since. That jackass was born cruel. He burned me in the back while I was blindfolded. This scar will be with me forever."

There is nothing new or secret about that story. It ran on the front page of the Yale Daily News and caused a nasty scandal for a few weeks, but nobody was ever expelled for it. George did his first cover-up job. And he liked it.
…

Bush is a natural-born loser with a filthy-rich daddy who pimped his son out to rich oil-mongers. He hates music, football and sex, in no particular order, and he is no fun at all.
…

We were angry and righteous in those days, and there were millions of us. We kicked two chief executives out of the White House because they were stupid warmongers. We conquered Lyndon Johnson and we stomped on Richard Nixon -- which wise people said was impossible, but so what? It was fun. We were warriors then, and our tribe was strong like a river.

That river is still running. All we have to do is get out and vote, while it's still legal, and we will wash those crooked warmongers out of the White House.

When your Enemies

Are your Leaders.

One of the great, underlying themes of Orwell’s “1984” is how the State subjugates and perverts that last safe-house of liberty -- memory. How Outer Party members -- like Republican Party members -- are relentless reminded that the Past is not a fixed object. That “backwards looking” is dangerous and unpatriotic, in our case chiefly because that Past is full of the “evidence” of the “failures” and “lies” of the Dear Leader.

So we certainly don’t want people snooping around there.

We want them instead looking at an Invented Past, because then, when the Past has become the manufactured product of a political machine, it is magically transformed into a bottomless wingnut treasure-house stocked with an infinity of outrages and betrayals and wily enemies always just beyond our reach, and yet against whom we are always on the verge of Complete Victory.

A Past full of grievances and Righteous Christian Fury and predicates for war to keep the Hate that powers the Party strong forever.

Because in that world, the Leader has become the Enemy, and within the bubble of the Party the Past is nothing more or less than whatever the fuck Big Brother or Little Dubya says it is.

So when Dubya says something patently ridiculous like this:

Bush says Iraq war was worth it

By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House

President Bush says he has no doubts about launching the unpopular war in Iraq despite the "high cost in lives and treasure," arguing that retreat now would embolden Iran and provide al-Qaida with money for weapons of mass destruction to attack the United States.

Bush is to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on Wednesday with a speech at the Pentagon. Excerpts of his address were released Tuesday night by the White House.

At least 3,990 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war in 2003. It has cost taxpayers about $500 billion and estimates of the final tab run far higher. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglizt and Harvard University public finance expert Linda Bilmes have estimated the eventual cost at $3 trillion when all the expenses, including long-term care for veterans, are calculated.
…

It just of hangs in the air.

Meaningless, quacking noises slurred for the thousandth time from the mouth of a liar and halfwit.

I mean, at long last who the fuck is he even talking to? Who is there left on the face of the Earth who has not already made up their mind?

And then I remember, yet again, that this liar and halfwit is the Leader of the Free World.

That this is a liar and halfwit who is still fervently worshiped as the Greatest Fucking Christian American Hero Evah by millions of my fellow citizens.

Millions of loyal Outer Party members.

Millions.

And when Dick Cheney (who, after five years of war, still has to sneak into the heart of the Fabulous Iraqi Catastrophe he created) announces this (emphasis added):

Cheney again links Iraq invasion to 9/11 attacks as bombing victims are buried

By Hannah Allam and Laith Hammoudi, McClatchy NewspapersTue Mar 18, 5:20 PM ET

BAGHDAD — Amid tears and wails, mourners in the southern city of Najaf on Tuesday began burying victims from a suicide bombing that killed nearly 50 worshipers and injured dozens of others just before evening prayers Monday in nearby Karbala .

In Baghdad , a long-anticipated Iraqi national reconciliation conference began with great fanfare, then quickly dissolved into the usual sectarian and political stalemates that have marred several similar gatherings in recent years.

But Vice President Dick Cheney gave an upbeat view of conditions in Iraq as he concluded his unannounced trip to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion. Cheney also defended the toppling of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as part of the struggle against terrorism following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

This month, an exhaustive Pentagon-sponsored review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents captured during the 2003 U.S. invasion found no evidence that Saddam's regime had any operational links with the al Qaida terrorist network.

But Cheney, who spent the night at a sprawling U.S. base in the northern town of Balad, told soldiers they were defending future generations of Americans from a global terror threat.

"This long-term struggle became urgent on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 . That day we clearly saw that dangers can gather far from our own shores and find us right there at home," said Cheney, who was accompanied by his wife, Lynne, and their daughter, Elizabeth.

…

It also just hangs in the air.

Another in such a long, long, long litany of ridiculous, bare-faced, treasonous lies by a man who, by all rights, should be rotting away the rest of his miserable life in federal prison wearing an orange jump suit with “War Criminal” stenciled across the back.

But instead is free to stride across the world stage and lie his ass off because he and Dubya have one more duty to perform.

Like the vile defenders of slavery, the final act to their hideous legacy is to reshape the world insofar as it is possible into a place where their unspeakable crimes cannot be undone.

Like the despicable authors of Jim Crow, their final aim is to rip the body politic so violently, and to grind their feculent, blood-drunk authoritarian insanity into our wounds so deeply, that America will never be rid of festering disease they leave behind.

Using torture, murder, economic catastrophe, the loss of whole cities and wars to sheer incompetence, the beatification of Teh Stupid, pardons, signing statements, illegal domestic spying, secret prisons, radical deregulation, the Feudalization of America, and on and on and on, the final transgression of the Bush/Cheney junta is this:

To try and make the rest of crimes of the last seven years seem normal.

In the most nakedly Orwellian way imaginable, they are seeking to smother any conception that it might be possible to have a President who is not a lazy and proudly ignorant sadist. A President who can actually be bothered to pronounce big words correctly and can actually be bothered to understand big ideas at all.

A President who doesn’t smirk and snicker at the catastrophes he has unleashed, as if Katrina or Iraq were some particularly mischievous fart jokes.

To kill any memory of a time when a Vice President wasn’t simply an evil, rapacious beast. Was something other than a genuine monster, left completely unsupervised to run murderously amok, lie at will, ignore the rule of law, and then order up Presidential Pardons for any of his traitorous underlings who got caught gutting the Constitution as causally as you or I might order Chinese take-out.

All of which provides (if you are looking at it from this angle) the most dramatic backdrop I could possibly imagine for Senator Obama’s speech.

Because today the President and Vice President each told horrendous lies.

They told them casually and for the hundredth time, and no one in the media freaked out, or fainted, or ran into the bowels of their building screaming “Stop The Presses!”

Because after seven long years of crime after crime and travesty after travesty, having leaders who despise our nation -- leaders who openly hate We The People and have done more than any foreign despot or terrorist to destroy America as we know it -- has become the New and Terrible Normal.

And so while many people have said many nice things about Barack Obama’s speech today –- for example, comparing it glowingly to speeches by Lincoln, Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt -- I would add one more adjective.

"Churchillian"

It was, on its face, a brilliant speech about race in America. Perhaps the brilliant speech about race in America.

However as much as we are a nation crippled by centuries of racial injustice and tragedy, we are also a nation traumatized by seven years of vicious, deliberate and continual battering at the hands of evil men.

We are also a nation that has lost cities, soldiers, treasure and our good name at the hands of those evil men.

We are also a nation that, after seven years of bombardment not from foreign shores but from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, has become dazed and exhausted and not a little despairing by the shrieking, 24/7/365 barrage of Neocon bullshit, threats, open lust for endless war and open contempt for our laws and way of life.

And onto that stage strode the Junior Senator from Illinois, who proceeded to remind us for 37 minutes that it is still possible to have leaders who speak plain, painful truths with honesty and eloquence.

Who reminded us with every word and gesture that we deserve so much better, so much finer, than the likes of Bush and Cheney.

That when the shitstorms come, good leaders do not drag the world into the sewer with them by playing on the people's fears, but instead rise to the meet the moment and rally the people to greatness by appealing to their goodness.

That although, as Churchill said,

“We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering”

Churchill also said

“But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope.
I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, ‘come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.’"

So while the national press could not be bothered to mention today that the President and Vice President lied to us, yet again, on matters of life and death, for 37 minutes all across the nation, just as in the days of old -- around radios and teevees in offices and cabs and cafeterias and gyms -- Americans listened and even wept as the Junior Senator from Illinois stood against the tide of filth and incompetence and fear that Bush and Cheney and their legions so desperately want us to believe is all we can ever have and reminded us of how much better we can be if we just demand better of ourselves and our leaders.

For 37 minutes the Junior Senator from Illinois looked America’s race problems dead in the eye, and at the same time managed to remind a beleaguered and exhausted nation that Hope Rocks.

And Smart is Beautiful.

And that, my friends, was something to see.