Good radio news here

If you're in Chicago, starting December 11, catch Stephanie Miller on WCPT 850 AM weekday mornings at 8:00. Great stuff.

A penny for your thoughts..

I have a few ill-formed random thoughts bouncing around in my head, and some are bouncing out:

1) R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me

The Jim Webb incident has generated a lot of talk and I'm wondering what it all means. The right-wing echo chamber is all over Webb's supposed "rudeness" and "boorishness" (they seem to have forgotten how one Sen. Jesse Helms effectively threatened Bill Clinton's life) and his lack of "respect."

If you have read these pages, you know that "respect" for George Walker Bush is a scarce commodity around here, and our contempt is well-justified. This is nothing new of course. Go back and see our 16th president referred to as "the original gorilla" and mercilessly caricatured in the cartoons of the day.

My question though--is there any validity to the old saying, "I don't respect the man, but I respect the office?" Is that possible, and if so, what does it mean?

… I get tired, just a little bit, keep on tryin' (just a little bit), you're runnin' out of foolin' (just a little bit) and I ain't lyin' (just a little bit)

2) Isn't it remarkable that it is the Democrats' responsibility to solve George's mess when they haven't even been sworn in yet?

3) It looks like the much-hyped "Baker Report" will be warmed-over nonsense and people will just keep dying. It will speak in vaguely-defined platitudes and indefinite objectives--and people will keep dying.

4) Speaking of death, remind me to take al-Maliki in next year's dead pool (if he's still eligible, this is a tough month for him).

State Department Press Release

DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Press Release

The Department of State advises that the use of the phrase "civil war" in Iraq is not appropriate. Based on our review of events in Iraq, we have determined the proper terms to use. From now on, the conflict will be referred to as:

1) a "Kerfuffle"
2) Explode-y Tag
3) Iraqi PUNK'D!
4) Hazing
5) Sectarian Slapdown
6) Damned ungrateful A-Rabs!

Some Headlines Don't Even Need a Story

(link)

Police Arrest Two in Shooting of Man Waiting
on Playstation 3 Line in Connecticut

I'd like to buy this man a drink..

The Washington Post: At a recent White House reception for freshman members of Congress, Virginia's newest senator tried to avoid President Bush. Democrat Jim Webb declined to stand in a presidential receiving line or to have his picture taken with the man he had often criticized on the stump this fall. But it wasn't long before Bush found him.

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

"I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

"That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

Sour, Uninformed Grapes

Elizabeth Pearson of Elmhurst, IL worked up some indignation and sent the following message to the Op/Editor at the Chicago Tribune:

"We will work together" is the heady plaudit we now hear from both parties. If this was at all possible, why was this affirmation not forthcoming from the Democrats who never ceased to give the president total uncooperation? What is really meant is, "Now you can do things OUR way-cooperate, or else!" Elephants have great memories and can be stubborn too.

Oh Elizabeth! Clearly, the last time you poked your head out of the sand you heard moderate GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush stating that he was a compassionate conservative and a uniter, rather than a divider. That was a long, long time ago, and since then things have changed somewhat. The GOP gained total control of both houses of congress over two election cycles ago. That's when George and Dick took off the sheep's clothing and revealed themselves to be Drinky McLiar and Darth Cheney. Drinky went on to lose his veto pen for a record period of time, allowing the GOP-controlled congress to spend all of your children's inheritance. In return, congress allowed Drinky and Darth to make a mockery of the constitution while sacrificing life and limb of America's youth (not to mention tens of thousands of Iraqis) to make the world safe for Wall Street, Halliburton and Exxon. During all this time the "uncooperation" of the neutered Democrats amounted to a couple of judicial filibusters in the senate. The GOP response was to threaten to do away with the filibuster!

Fortunately, enough of America had their heads out of the sand and their ears open over the past four years and found that a GOP-controlled government (like a unitary executive) is a really BAD idea. That "Cooperate, or else" that you're hearing is coming from the PEOPLE who voted the criminals and the liars out of office. You see, it turns out that progressives have long memories too.

So Elizabeth, thanks for sharing. Now you can feel free to

Bizarro World

Below I commented on Thomas Friedman's bizarre blame assessment for the Iraq nightmare. Let us not, in our haste, forget the wisdom of the leader of the free world:

(link) The United States will not withdraw its forces from Iraq before its mission of building a stable democracy is complete, President Bush said Tuesday. "There is one thing I’m not going to do. I am not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete."

Oh my God. Could this man possibly be any more detached from reality?

He added that

“There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of the attacks by al-Qaida...

No, George, it's not al-Qaida, it is a home-grown, completely foreseeable civil war that YOU caused. He stumbled on that

“When you see a young democracy beginning to emerge in the Middle East, the extremists try to defeat its emergence,” Bush said. “Extremists attack because they can’t stand the thought of a democracy. And the same thing is happening in Iraq.”

No again, George. This is not a "young democracy." This is a failed occupation decorated with faux "elections" for show. None of the elements of statehood are present, the regime is absolutely devoid of legitimacy and no further sacrifice of blood and treasure on the part of the United States can change those two basic facts.

Friedmania

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times said something remarkable this morning.

For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Friedman, he is one of the supposed "liberal hawks" on the war. He was a gung ho supporter of U.S. intervention, and believed such action could be justified solely by regime change alone. Imminent threats or UN resolution defiance were unnecessary adornments in Tom's world.

Well, Mr. Friedman has basically spent the last 18 months telling us to ignore what he wrote for the previous 18 months, as regime change has turned into an ever-worsening nightmare. This morning, on the Today show, Tom told us that the blame for this disaster falls squarely on the shoulders of the Sunni Iraqis who have not accepted "the verdict of this war."

Think about that one for a second. We should blame those who have not embraced the invasion and occupation of their country by a foreign power, coupled with the imposition by that alien power of a stooge government where Shi'a death squads operate with impugnity under that government's (at least nominal) authority.

I doubt many would blame them for not accepting that "verdict."

A Missive from Retard America

You folks know how I like to troll the letters to the editor in search of pearls of idiocy. One of the frequent visitors to my special corner is one Terry Nugent. His comment to the online version of the LTE suggests the fundamental problem the administration has with the war--they can't even explain the "mission" to the stupid. Get a load of this reason for "why we're there:"

"We fight to avoid a Sunni victory which may lead to an Al-Qaeda dominated caliphate that will use Iraqi oil revenue to purchase the nuclear bombs that will be used to commit an American Hiroshima. Any questions?"

Just one, Terry--how do you feed yourself?

Ladies and gentlemen, Retard America.

Alex, may I have "Grasping the Obvious" for $1000?

WASHINGTON - NBC News Monday branded the Iraq conflict a civil war—a decision that put it at odds with the White House and that analysts said would increase public disillusionment with the U.S. troop presence there. NBC said the Iraqi government's inability to stop spiraling violence between rival factions fit its definition of civil war.

In a related announcement, NBC News Monday branded the Golden Gate a "bridge" and the Statue of Liberty a "statue."

Stuff you can't make up

OK, guys, get out your checkbooks...

(link) Eager to begin refurbishing his tattered legacy, the President hopes to raise $500 million to build his library and a think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Bush lived in Dallas until he was elected governor of Texas in 1995. Bush sources with direct knowledge of library plans told the Daily News that SMU and Bush fund-raisers hope to get half of the half billion from what they call "megadonations" of $10 million to $20 million a pop...The legacy-polishing centerpiece is an institute, which several Bush insiders called the Institute for Democracy. Patterned after Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Bush's institute will hire conservative scholars and "give them money to write papers and books favorable to the President's policies," one Bush insider said.

That's odd, I thought we already had lasting memorials to the Bush legacy


and

and

'Tis good to be back

Once again, the long holiday weekend showed that ANYONE who says they are retiring from politics, pro sports, corporate management, etc. to "spend more time with their family" IS LYING. NO ONE wants to spend more time with their families!

I have stories, oh, do I have stories, from my sojourn into Red State America, but unfortunately, for the sake of domestic tranquility, I can't share most of them here. But one very quick one--I went with my 15-year old son to see Borat. It is as funny and as grotesquely inappropriate as you have heard. The next morning, the local paper runs a column on said film by the loathsome Jonah Goldberg. A Limbaugh-Hannity listening [unnamed] family member showed it to me and asked if I had read it. I said, politely, "no--considering the source." Unnamed Family Member responds, "Why, because he's CONSERVATIVE?" Again as politely as possible I responded, "no, because he's an IDIOT!"

Happy Thanksgiving.

But some leftovers for a delicious dessert, courtesy of Gadflyer and Tapped:

Total votes

HOUSE

Democrats 39,267,916 (57.7%)
Republicans 28,464,092 (41.8%)

SENATE

Democrats 31,405,754 (53.7%)
Republicans 24,920,212 (42.6%)

"This is presumably the first cycle since the modern party system began that no party (in this case the Dems) lost not a single House, SEN, or GOV seat."

Now THAT'S happy!

Tomorrow

I will be venturing to a computer-free zone for the next few days (beautiful Fort Wayne, Indiana), so have a great Thanksgiving all.

And yes, tomorrow is November 22, the anniversary of the first event I can say that I truly remember:


Hard to imagine a Jack Kennedy pushing 90....

Viet Duh?

"We'll win unless we quit."

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is the lesson learned from Viet Nam by George W. Bush, that great freedom fighter who saved Alabama dental offices from the scourge of communism.

No one ever said he was a quick study. There are of course many obvious lessons to be learned from that painful era (even The Princess Bride gave us "Ha ha.. you fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is: Never get involved in a land war in Asia.")Those lessons tend to revolve around the limits of American military power, the crucial role of nationalism and ethnicity as motivational forces and the inability to impose unpopular western-style regimes on cultures we don't understand. Somehow I don't see winning unless quitting, a simple-minded cousin of "stay the course," on that list of lessons learned.

And then there is Dennis Byrne, one of the dimmer bulbs that for reasons that pass all understanding is allowed to bloviate on the op-ed page of a major newspaper:

The folks who believe the Iraq war looks increasingly like the Vietnam War are right. At least the part where the United States pulls out and leaves millions of people hanging out to dry. That part where the war comes to a dishonorable, murderous end. Like on the day, April 30, 1975, that America broke its promises to millions of South Vietnamese and jumped ship. The day on which hysterical Vietnamese civilians and officials were crowding a ladder to the top of the U.S. Embassy, pleading for a seat on the last American helicopter out. The day that crowds of Vietnamese swarmed the embassy gate, crying for escape or protection, as North Vietnamese tanks approached. The day that uncounted thousands turned into freedom-seeking boat people. We abandoned millions of people to be stripped of their freedoms, imprisoned for their beliefs or slaughtered by a monstrous, tyrannical regime. It was one of the most shameful days in American history. It was our own day of infamy. Blame public opinion for bringing shame on ourselves. Public opinion demanded a Congress that simply decided to choke the life out of the South Vietnamese. Yes, the Iraq war is beginning to look a whole lot like the Vietnam War.

No, Denny, that day was not the day of shame. The shameful days were those of more than a decade past when, like today, we fought an unnecessary, misbegotten war conceived of hubris, deceit and a fatally flawed ideology.

We did not leave "millions of people hanging out to dry" that day, we left Viet Nam to determine its own destiny. No doubt the course of that process was made more painful by generations of western imperialism and war, buty the process was Vietnamese. The "government" of South Viet Nam was horrifically corrupt, and was peopled by holdovers from French imperialism, priviled and Catholic, known as the "whites" in an agrarian, Buddhist nation. No matter how many American bodies were sacrificed on the altar of the domino theory, this regime never commanded the respect and loyalty of the people.

There were many lost opportunities in the Viet Nam saga. Ho Chi Minh was at Versailles in 1919 seeking inclusion of Asian peoples within Woodrow Wilson's vision of self-determination. During World War II, Ho used the words of Jefferson to declare Vietnamese independence, yet FDR returned his people to the French to enlist DeGaulle's help in post-war Europe. Dien Bien Phu in 1954 should have allowed us to see this as a post-colonial contest for the soul of a small, distant nation rather than the central front in the war on terror sorry, the struggle against global communism.

In The March of Folly, popular historian Barbara Tuchman wrote that America "betrayed" itself in Viet Nam, and how right she was. Unfortunately, another lesson, apparently unlearned, of the Viet Nam era is how willing American leaders are to engage in those same acts of betrayal, and how willing the betrayed nation is to allow them to do it.

Fox Gets Bitch-Slapped

Unless you've been living under a rock, you're aware that Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation got into bed with O.J. "I found my ex-wife's murderer in the mirror" Simpson on a commercial venture designed to squeeze profit from a miscarriage of justice. On December 1st, HarperCollins (a wholly owned subsidary of News Corp) was going to release a book (purportedly written by O.J.) describing "hypothetically" how he would have killed his ex-wife and Ron Goldman. In the run-up to publication, there was a TV Special, a "no-holds-barred" interview to be aired over two nights. This tripe was first offered to NBC - which passed without hesitation. Apparently the higher-ups at News Corp didn't even bother to offer it to anyone else. They made an announcement late last week that Fox would carry the interview next week on the 27th and 29th. The disgust was immediate and palpable.

I wondered outloud which company (ies) would even consider sponsoring this program. Apparently the answer was ZERO. Today, Murdoch actually apologized as he cancelled BOTH the book and the TV special:

I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project," said Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. chairman. "We are sorry for any pain that this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson."

Perhaps Murdoch read this little tidbit from the Fox station manager in Louisville, KY as he explained his reasoning for NOT airing the proposed special:

"I have my own moral compass and this was easy," said Bill Lamb, general manager of WDRB in Louisville.

Make love, not war

Marin couple calls for global orgasm for peace

(AP) SAN FRANCISCO - Two peace activists have planned a massive anti-war demonstration for the first day of winter. But they don't want you marching in the streets. They'd much rather you just stay home. The Global Orgasm for Peace was conceived by Donna Sheehan, 76, and Paul Reffell, 55, who live together on a houseboat along scenic Tomales Bay in Marin County, just north of San Francisco.

Their immodest goal is for everyone in the world to have an orgasm on December 22 while focusing on world peace. "The orgasm gives out an incredible feeling of peace during it and after it," Reffell said on Sunday. "Your mind is like a blank. It's like a meditative state. And mass meditations have been shown to make a change."


Male activists reported feeling sleepy immediately after planning the event, while women were frustrated that the men were unable to bring the plans to a mutual, satisfying conclusion.

John, why the long face?

No, no, no, a thousand times NO

WASHINGTON - Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry said Sunday he is still considering a second run for the White House in 2008, despite public criticism of what he has has called a “botched joke” about the Iraq war.

I hope my wife isn't looking...

As I'm sitting here watching the latest "Game of the Century" between "The" Ohio State University and University of Michigan, who should pop up on the screen but



I've felt an odd attraction to her for a long time and having done a little research, now I understand why. She was an NCAA gymnast AND graduated magna cum laude from the University of Maryland... No mention of marital status!

Run in fear

Headline on CNN.com:

"Liberals' wish list focuses on rights"

Not rights! Please, no, not rights! Anything but rights!

(Actually, an earlier version read "Liberals' wish list focuses on abortion, gay rights", so this is an amazing improvement.)

Rummy's "Accomplishments"

(This is real)

DoD ACCOMPLISHMENTS SINCE 2001

In the last six years, the Department has made great strides in modernizing its forces to address the threats of the 21st century.

I. WAR ON TERROR

Overall: A multinational coalition has liberated more than 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq, with formation of representative governments and security forces.

Liberated 31 million Afghans from Taliban control and destroyed Al-Qaeda sanctuary –and stood up a provisional Afghan government eight months after operations began

Liberated 27 million Iraqis from a brutal dictatorship and turned over sovereignty of the country to an Iraqi government in 16 months:

Recruited, Organized, Trained, and Equipped Iraqi and Afghan Security Forces:

131,000 Iraqi Ministry of Defense
180,000 Iraqi Ministry of Interior
33,000 National Army
37,000 Afghan National Police

Conducted safe and secure elections in Afghanistan and Iraq

Elections in Iraq

January 30, 2005 election / roughly 55% of voters turnout
October 15, 2005 constitutional ratification / 63 % of voters turnout
December 15, 2005 election / 78 % of voters turnout
March 16, 2006 – Permanent Iraqi Government seated

Elections in Afghanistan

October 9, 2005 election / roughly 80% of voters turnout
December 7, 2005 – Afghan President inaugurated

Captured or killed much of the extremists’ senior leadership; while others are on the run
Saddam Hussein’s sons, killed July 22, 2003
Saddam Hussein, captured December 13, 2003
Ali Hassan Mahmud al-Tikriti AKA Chemical Ali, captured August 21, 2003
Al Qaeda in Iraq leader, Al Zarqawi, killed June 7, 2006

45 of 55 of Saddam’s top regime (deck of cards) killed or captured
Conducted hundreds of intelligence and tactical operations throughout the world with partner nations against terrorist organizations directly or loosely affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

NATO has expanded its reach in Afghanistan – the first time the Alliance has acted outside of its traditional boundaries.

Suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have revealed information that has helped thwart attacks against our troops, the American people and our allies.

Oh my God.