Irritatingly dismissive, in a poised, diplomatic sort of way

You'd think that as a former NSC member and the current secretary of state that Madame Dr. Rice might want somewhat faster feedback on the screw ups. Or maybe not.

MS. COURIC: Not only are Americans questioning the U.S. role currently in Iraq, but they're questioning the decision to go there in the first place. . . .In retrospect, with the benefit of hindsight being 20/20, is there anything you believe now, sitting where you're sitting, that the Administration should have done differently?
SECRETARY RICE: Oh, I'm certain, Katie, that when you look back over it, there will have been many things that we could have done differently. It's the nature of big changes like this.
MS. COURIC: What is -- specifically, what is the biggest thing?
SECRETARY RICE: Katie, I will leave that to the people who will write dissertations about things that could have been done differently -- some of which I'll probably supervise when I go back to Stanford. [link]

Okay, people, let's keep our code books up-to-date

Just as Rich Lowry perceives more and more shades of gray (see below), Billmon notices the Bush administration's further classification and codification of the non-Coalition people who are shooting and bombing in Iraq.

If you go back and look at the old party lines (versions 1.0 and 2.0) you can quickly see that something new has been added. Heretofore, the "anti-Iraqi forces" have consisted of:
1.) Foreign Terrorists (aka "assassins")
2.) Regime Remnants (aka "dead enders")
3.) Criminal Elements (aka "thugs")

But now we have a fourth category, one with a nice neutral name that doesn't allude to hacking people's heads off or gassing your own people or hating our freedoms:
4.) Iraqi Insurgents (aka "negotiating partners.")

Iraq: It's winnable negotiable!

Bush may have refused to negotiate with himself over Social Security, but his administration is gaining considerable flexibility about negotiating with the bad guys in Iraq -- at least, the bad guys who fall within the good end of the bad guy spectrum.

"Would that we could simply kill all our enemies in Iraq in a neat black-and-white battle. Alas, we can’t," sighs Rich Lowry, the apparently sadder but wiser National Review editor who now understands that there are indeed shades of gray in the world.

So suck it up, Neo-Manicheans:

If we are to prevail against the Sunni insurgency, success will look like our victory over Sadr — a messy, imperfect amalgam of military pressure and negotiations, ending with some of the bad guys getting positions in Iraq’s government.

Rest assured that this approach applies only to "bad guys," "contemptible thugs," and "the insurgency's more reasonable fringes." It does not apply to "the foreign jihadists [who] are truly irredeemable." At least, not until the Bush people realize that a few more shades of gray could come in handy.

Uggabugga and Bush in glorious Technicolor!

Uggabugga gives us a wonderful color-coded version of Bush's speech, along with Our Fearless Leader's favorite words in extra-large print.

Why, it's almost suitable for use in the Reading Corner at the Emma Booker Elementary School.

Sunday sermons and anarchy

Bartleby over at Four has a thought-provoking post up on state and statelessness, "Caution: Politics and Religion!" Be sure to check out the comments, too.

Never laminate your checklists

Why I thought of this:

"There are fifty ways to screw up on this job. If you can think of twenty of them, you're a genius......and you ain't no genius." -- Mickey Rourke to William Hurt, in "Body Heat", discussing arson.

When I read this:

Rumsfeld said Sunday [that before the war] he gave President Bush a list of about 15 things "that could go terribly, terribly wrong before the war started.". . . Asked if his list included the possibility of such a strong insurgency, Rumsfeld said: "I don't remember whether that was on there, but certainly it was discussed."

[Kevin Drum] I think we can take that as a "no," especially since there's pretty overwhelming evidence that no one before the war took the possibility of a sustained insurgency seriously, least of all Rumsfeld.

[Link via Progressive Blog Digest]

Echolalia

Gee, you'd think they would at least try to change a few words, shuffle up a few concepts.

Here's Donald Rumsfeld on FOX News Sunday, June 26, 2005:

WALLACE: Let's start with these reports of these direct meetings between U.S. officials, including allegedly a representative of the Pentagon, and insurgent commanders. Did they happen, and, if so, what did they accomplish?
RUMSFELD: Well, the first thing I would say about the meetings is they go on all the time. . . . [edited for blah-blah-rumspeak] And if you think about it, there aren't the good guys and the bad guys over there. There are people all across the spectrum.
There's the government, people who strongly support the government, people that are leaning and not quite sure what to do, people who are leaning the other way and not quite sure what to do, and then insurgents and people who oppose it, which is a mixture. . . .[emph added]

And here's Tony Blair on Monday, June 27, 2005:

British, U.S. and Iraqi officials have been in talks with groups in Iraq that support violence to try to bring them into the political process, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.
He spoke Monday a day after U.S. and Iraqi officials said they were talking to tribal leaders, clerics and some groups linked to the Sunni Arab insurgency. Blair said Sunnis were involved in the talks.
However, he said they did not compromise London's position on terrorism and added there was no contact with hardliners such as al Qaeda's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who he said was at the extreme end of a "spectrum". . . ."There'll be a spectrum leading through to people who aren't engaged in violence but who are sympathetic to the violence, and then in the middle you've got some people who may be involved in parts of the violence or not," he added. [emph added]

If-fing

In addition to op|pulp|ed fiction -- that wonderful genre in which hack columnists conjure up an endless variety of unidentified characters and unsourced direct quotations that just too perfectly mesh with a column's thesis -- I loathe if-fing.

Here's a brief sample of if-fing from Victor Davis Hanson's NRO column, "The Politics of American Wars: Islamists Have Proved Adept at Winning Liberal Exemption From Criticism."

If President Bush were a liberal Democrat; if he were bombing a white Christian, politically clumsy fascist in the heart of Europe; if al Qaeda and its Islamist adherents were properly seen as eighth-century tormenters of humanists, women, homosexuals, non-Arabs, and non-Wahhabi believers; and if Iraq had become completely somnolent with the toppling of Saddam's statue, then the American people would have remained behind the effort to dismantle Islamic fundamentalism and create the foundations to ensure its permanent demise. [emph added]

Here is my response to Victor Davis Hanson, military historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution: Prove it.

In your mind's ear, you can just hear Rumsfeld saying this

Go on over to I'm Not One to Blog, But and read "Camp Swampy."

Pitch perfect.

Bush, off Tourette meds, gives fucking great GWOT speech; nation rallies, enlistments surge

Special report from Prudence Livingstone of The Quahog Morgenaftenpost

Washington DC-- Amid growing concerns over eroding support for both the war in Iraq and his policies regarding the global war on terror, President George W. Bush addressed the American people during a brief prime time television speech last night.

A standard tactic, most political observers would agree. But what stunned Beltway pundits and normal people alike was the president's daring gambit to stop taking the drugs prescribed for his Tourette's syndrome -- a previously undisclosed medical condition.

White House sources, who wish to remain anonymous, say Mr. Bush made the decision last week, in consultation with Karl Rove, who is Assistant to the President, Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor, and Senator Doctor Bill Frist, who is pretty much neither. The president wanted the public to see him without being affected by the drugs' frequently off-putting side effects, including smirking, shrugging, thumb-upping, occasional delusions, and a stunning lack of physical coordination.

The gambit paid off with what many hail as a truly historic presidential speech, one laced with sometimes shocking profanity but powered with passion and conviction.

When I became whoop whoop oh boy now president in 2001, who knew we would suffer a deva-shit-shit-shitting attack on our homeland, or that our nation would be buggered bungled bunged plunged into a quagwar unlike any other. Today, we fuck face cakewalk men who thirst for absolute power. In this war, there is only one option -- ream bunghole victory.

Today, what what that's what we've made our cunt-cunt-nation more secure, but we still need to fuck the whore-bitch-war-terror head and hole. We will not whoop whoop oh boy allow mass mass masturbater killers the tools oh boy oh god of destruction. Jerk off bitch motherfucker. In the 21st century, America will rape rape rape room any challenge, and kill the cocksucker-clucker-fucker-mothers.

Thank you and may fuck wank bugger shithead asshole god whoop you bless.

Although the president still repeatedly winked and blinked and remained afflicted by spasms of lip-puckering, he stood tall with his shoulders squared back. It marked the first time in his political career that Mr. Bush did not slump to either side of a podium, leaning on one elbow and with obviously pooling lip spittle.

Local military recruiting stations say they are being flooded with phone calls by young men, and some young women, eager "to kill the cocksucker-clucker-fucker-mothers." Overnight online polls, which are not scientific, indicate a significant upsurge in support for the president. However, the FCC is reviewing videos of the president's speech to determine whether broadcast decency standards were violated and, if so, whether the violations are impeachable offenses.

Asked for her appraisal of the speech, presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin observed, "Well, certainly, in terms of rhetoric, it was not in the same class as speeches by Roosevelt or Kennedy or even Truman. In private, and when severely constipated, Lyndon Johnson could reach such oratorical heights. Otherwise, I'd say Bush's speech is in a class by itself."

Related Link:

A handy guide to Tourette's syndrome: It's not just about cursing, you dickhead

RETRO-GAGGLE: Bush gets lawyered-up for the Plame investigation

The White House June 24, 2004

MR. McCLELLAN: I told you I'd keep you informed at the appropriate time. The President met with Pat Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney in charge of the leak investigation, as well as members of his team. The meeting took place in the Oval Office. It lasted for a little more than an hour, probably about an hour and 10 minutes.
Q This morning?
MR. McCLELLAN: This morning. He also recently retained a lawyer, Jim Sharp, who you all have reported about before. I would just say that -- what I've said previously, and what the President has said: The leaking of classified information is a very serious matter. The President directed the White House to cooperate fully with those in charge of the investigation. He was pleased to do his part to help the investigation move forward. No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the President of the United States, and he has said on more than one occasion that if anyone -- inside or outside the government -- has information that can help the investigators get to the bottom of this, they should provide that information to the officials in charge.
And I think because this is an ongoing investigation that further questions are best directed to the officials in charge of the investigation.
[snip]
Q Well, let me ask this as a policy question. You said that the President sees this as a serious matter, anybody inside or outside who has information should disclose it. What does the President -- if someone in the administration did disclose this information, what action is the President prepared to take against that individual?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, now you're asking me to speculate about an ongoing investigation --
Q No, no, I'm not. I'm just asking you to talk about what White House policy is.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I previously, I think, addressed that question. But the President --
Q Well, could you just refresh my memory?
MR. McCLELLAN: -- this is an ongoing investigation and --
Q Can you refresh my memory?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, this is an ongoing investigation, John, and I'm going to direct further questions to the officials in charge of the investigation.
Q Yes, but this would be a White House matter. I mean, would the President fire a person if they had -- if it's found that they leaked this information? Would he admonish them, reprimand them -- what would he do?
MR. McCLELLAN: I think that we made that clear previously -- I made that clear previously in briefings, you can go back and look exactly at what I said. It still stands.***

***The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.

Update: Here's a fascinating read on the Plame case, "John Bolton, Downing Street, Mohamed ElBaradei, and Valerie Plame," by Hunter, over at Daily Kos.

Of high horses, stampedes, and splattering manure

It went on . . . for hours, with Republicans and Democrats alike pelting Rumsfeld and the three top generals with complaints. Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of Central Command, contradicted Vice President Cheney's contention that the Iraq insurgency is in its last throes. Abizaid said that the level of insurgents is not in decline. There's a lot of work in Iraq left to do, he said.

At one point, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., said he couldn't take it any more. He said Americans have a right to know what's happening in Iraq because they're paying for the war with the lives of their young men and women and billions of tax dollars.

Looking at Rumsfeld, Byrd accused him of sneering. "I don't mean to be discourteous, but I've heard enough of your smart answers. Get off your high horse when you come up here. I have to run for reelection and you don't. We represent the American people and they are asking questions. They haven't been told the truth. The administration says we're unpatriotic if we ask questions, but that's our job."

From "Washington Watch: Senators demand hard answers on Iraq," by Ann McFeatters of the Block News Alliance at SITNEWS, Ketchican, Alaska]

Turdblossom Special: Karl Rove on "Hardball"

Karl Rove: I’m an idealist.




[HARDBALL link]

Telling time

As the lone non-Republican, non-conservative, non-dittohead, non-wingnut in my family, I have spent decades at birthday parties, Christmas celebrations, high school graduations, even funerals surrounded by howling and wildly gesticulating relatives (whom for some reason I still love). At some point, I stopped debating. Really, what is the point trying to discuss critical issues with people whose "facts" come from Rush and O'Reilly and Hannity and Savage and Coulter and NewsMax and WorldNetDaily.

So I just stopped. Now when challenged I just smile a knowing half-smile and say, "Time will tell."

There's really no arguing with that.

And time is starting to tell in Iraq. And my chickenhawk relatives won't even look me in the eye.

This year, I'm actually looking forward to the Fourth of July barbecue. But I'm still going to sit at the kiddie table -- they have better manners.

Do the words even matter anymore?

Bush's Radio Address Adapted for the Reality-Prone

Today we face two --maybe three, possibly four, five max -- issues of vital importance for all Americans. But since I can concentrate on only two issues at a time, I've chosen growing our economy and protecting our citizens from those who wish to do us harm. So in the weeks ahead, I will continue to focus on ways to ensure that our government takes the side of working families -- just focus, I won't actually do anything that will help working families -- and neither will Congress, for that matter. Oh, and America prevails in the war on terror. As we take the steps necessary to achieve these goals, we will make our future one of peace and prosperity. One, two, three, march and spread. One, two, three, march and spread.

Today we have good reason to be optimistic about our economy. You'll just have to trust me and Al Greenspan on this one. More Americans are working today at something and earning less than a living wage for doing it than at any time in our history. More Americans own their homes financed with interest-only mortgages than at any time in our history -- and isn't that exciting. More Americans are going to college, at least that's where they park their cars in between shifts at McDonald's, and own their own businesses, most of which do not provide employee health insurance and which will fail within the first five years than at any time in our history -- and a new economic report shows that inflation is in check, but that the check may bounce. Our policies have put us on the track to growth, but since the track is owned by Amtrak, heavy maintenance is needed.

Delivering opportunity means allowing families to keep more of the money they earn. So we enacted the largest tax relief in a generation. That is only a beginning. You need a reformed tax code that is simple, fair, and easy to understand, and rewards your hard work and entrepreneurial spirit, maybe with some leftover Braniff frequent flyer miles. And Congress needs to do its part by making the tax relief we passed permanent and burying the death tax forever. We've also buried 1,700 brave men and women forever, but I really shouldn't have said that, should I?

Delivering opportunity, like delivering hot pizzas and Buffalo wings, also means adapting to the needs of a new century. In this new century, American prosperity will increasingly depend on our ability to outsource our jobs, so we need to pass initiatives like the Central American Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement to create a level playing field, excluding the pitcher's mound, and maybe expand Major League Baseball to the Dominican Republic -- wouldn't that be exciting. In this new century, Americans require a reliable and affordable supply of energy, so stock up on long-life batteries now.

As we work to deliver opportunity at home, we're also keeping you safe from threats from abroad. We went to war for a lot of reasons, most of which I can no longer keep straight. Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world's terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror -- because let's face it, the Iraqis are getting the shit bombed out of them, not us. These foreign terrorists violently oppose the rise of a free and democratic Iraq, because they know that when we replace despair and hatred with liberty and hope, one, two, three, march and spread, they lose their recruiting grounds for terror. We've also lost our military recruiting grounds here in the United States, but that's a topic for another Saturday radio address.

This mission isn't easy -- let's face it, we're screwed -- and it will not be accomplished overnight, or even over the next decade. We're fighting a ruthless enemy. They're not the pussies that Rummy said they were. By making their stand in Iraq, the terrorists have made Iraq a vital test for the future security of our country and the free world. We will settle for nothing less than victory -- one, two, three, march and spread.

I'll continue to pretend to keep our people safe from harm and our future bright Together we will do what Americans have always done: ruthlessly screw over each other in order to achieve the best return on investment possible.

Thank you for listening, and I hope this buys me at least another week in office.

More squeaky sounds of people coming unhinged

Condi Rice answers Chris "Poop Yourself" Wallace's questions about the last throes of the insurgency:

In terms of the security situation, yes, there are a few terrorists and so-called insurgents who are plying their wares in a way that gets a lot of attention. They can create a lot of havoc, wreak a lot of havoc, create carnage against innocent Iraqis and against the coalition. . . .Yes, [the insurgents] can continue to cause carnage. But what they're losing is that they're losing the Iraqi people. And that's the most important loss that you can inflict upon an insurgency.

Doesn't sound like much of a plan to me.
***

Are you bullish or bearish on torture and lack of due process?

Wayne Rogers (yeah, the guy from M*A*S*H) joins Terry Keenan on Cashin' In. They ponder: Is Gitmo good for the stock market?Critics say the prison detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay is hurting our image abroad. But would closing the camp actually be bad for America and the stock market? James Walcott reports on this classic television moment:

This morning on Cashin' In, part of Fox's Saturday morning business/investment block, the first topic was (I kid thee not) "The Prison at Guantanamo Bay: Good for the Stock Market?"
Opening up the mental-midget debate for the panel, host Terry Keenan asked, "If we 'cut and run' from there, isn't it all bets off for the market?"
Yeah, if we close Gitmo, everyone's going to sell Google and into the black hole goes the stock market: real smart thinking there, Terry.

***

New and Improved! It's no longer a personal Social Security Account -- now it's a "personal lockbox"

The public is anxious about President Bush's reform of Social Security, and the idea is in trouble. Ceaseless pounding by liberals has driven many Republicans into a defensive crouch. It's time for some political jujitsu that will instead focus the public's attention on stopping Congress from spending the extra payroll taxes now flowing into Social Security on anything else. The only effective way to prevent that would be to take the money off the table by starting personal Social Security accounts for every American who wanted one. . . . [O]nce Congress couldn't get its mitts on the payroll tax money, it would be put to more productive use in the hands of individuals owning their own accounts.

[From John Fund's Opinion Journal piece, "Saving the Surplus."]

The squeaky sounds of people coming unhinged

Jim Angle: Lazy, stupid, or both?

In slamming Sen Dick Durbin's statements about detainee abuse at Guantanamo, Fox News chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle put into play the always handy (and always unnamed) "knowledgeable official." This one, according to Angle, had detailed knowledge about the FBI emails that Durbin mentioned on the Senate floor.

What a wanker! Angle exposed himself as the poseur he is: the FBI emails are publicly available.

My guess as to the identity of the "knowledgeable official": some FOX summer intern who googled around or Lexis-Nexis'd and printed out some pages.

[Wanker alert via Media Matters]
***

Chris Wallace on the comparative joys of self-defecation

[A]nd I'm not saying, you know, there aren't legitimate questions there, is that someone is chained to a floor and forced to defecate on themselves, and has loud rock music playing. Excuse me? I mean, you know, Auschwitz? Bergen Belsen? The Soviet gulag? I think they would have been very happy to be allowed to defecate on themselves.

[Link from the wonderful Clever Peasantry]
***

Terri Schiavo died because Florida feeds on the dead

I'm wondering if this case is the tip of the iceberg in Pinellas County. A far out theory - the whole place may be a den of corruption and fraud preying on the weak in society.

Scientology is based there and the rumor is they are the modern day nazism and believe in getting rid of the weak, old, deformed (don't know if true). They are lawyer heavy and use those lawyers for their goals. Also, the euthanasists working their members into the lawmaking areas, hospices, hospital decision makers.

Florida is a retirement state. Many probably hope to feed on the assets of the weak, and create their "pure" socialism society through lawmaking and the courts. A good place to do that since the elderly have little ability to fight.

[Where else but from Free Republic]
***

Christopher Hitchens (not under Breathalyzer rules) claims to have seen the sweets and flowers

"The welcome that I've seen American and British forces get in parts of Iraq is something I want to start--I want to mention first because there are people who say that that never happened. It is commonly said by political philosophers like Maureen Dowd say that the--where were the sweets and where were the flowers. Well I saw it happen with my own eyes and no one's going to tell me that I didn't."

[Link to Unhitched via Needlenose]

Crass, crude, conservative

[Thong for sale through various conservative websites. Also available with the "I heart Gitmo" logo is a dog coat.]

For more on the repulsive antics of some chickenhawk conservatives, check out this post at The News Blog.

Update Here are some additional comments on this sickening trend:

"You want Nazi, I'll give you Nazi" at Seeing the Forest.

I can't help but think that McCain could have significant influence here but chooses not too (after all, he voted to confirm Gonzales as Attorney General). I'm of the age where I remember spending childhood Memorial Day picnics with a survivor of the Bataan Death March, where my some of friends' dads had war injuries (limps, scars, burns), and where some of my friends had lost relatives in concentration camps.

I am beyond anger.

A run-on sentence and other verbal nonsense for a run-on nonsensical war

Condi's getting her stilettos re-heeled.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pledged to work harder to explain the administration's objectives [in Iraq].

"I'm going to, like I think all members of the administration, perhaps try to do more to get out to the public to talk about what it is we are trying to achieve and what it is we are achieving," Rice said at a news conference.

And a Lt. Gen. is spit-shining something other than his boots.

It is concerning that our public isn't as supportive as perhaps they once were," said Marine Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, director of operations for the Pentagon's Joint Staff. "We'd like, I believe, to try to reverse those figures and start the trend back the other direction.

[link]

Debits and credits

Now, this sounds like great news:

The government has hit a financial milestone -- taking in more money in tax revenue in a single day than ever before.
After totaling it all up, the Treasury Department announced Thursday that it had collected $61 billion on Wednesday [in second quarter estimated taxes]. The bulk of the revenue - $49 billion - came from corporate tax payments, also a one-day record for such receipts. The old mark was $46 billion set last Dec. 15. Wednesday's date, June 15, and Dec. 15 are both deadlines for corporations to make quarterly tax payments.

Until you realize this: The House is currently considering passing a $45 billion emergency war supplemental. That money would be in addition to the $82 billion supplemental for Iraq/Afghanistan passed in May 2005.

This math is Sesame Street simple.

The emergency war supplementals for May and June will total $127 billion.

The second quarter estimated tax revenues total $61 billion.

Which number is larger?

Now this is just friggin' asking for it

Bush wants more information on Schiavo's collapse; call to 911

You know, Jeb might be even dumber than Dubya.

Gov. Jeb Bush said Thursday he might ask a state attorney to investigate allegations that Terri Schiavo's husband waited more than an hour to call 911 after her 1990 collapse.

Terri Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, have previously said their son-in-law waited more than an hour to make the call. An autopsy report released Wednesday didn't address the allegation.

"There's some doubt about when she did collapse and how long it took ... for the 911 call to be made," Bush said. "Which I think is worthy of some investigation. I don't know what form it would take."

Bar' raised a litter of dumb sons.

[link]

Cheap and sophomoric (and it feels so good)

Bush Is Expected to Address Specifics on Iraq

White House officials acknowledged yesterday that the public's gloomy near-psychotic mood about the Iraq war is starting to forcing President Bush to take a more assertive and public role to reassure nervous Americans and Republican lawmakers about the White House plan for victory freak them out.

Bush had hoped the successful January elections in Iraq would boost the popularity of the conflict and allow him to distance himself from it would allow him to forget all about the war. But his aides have concluded that recent events in Iraq -- bombings, deaths, bombings, deaths, fragging, deaths -- have contributed to an erosion in support for the president and that he needs to shift strategies for God's sake he needs to appear to be doing something. Bush's new approach will be mostly rhetorical bullshit, however, as the White House does not plan any changes. to the policy or time frame for bringing home the 140,000 U.S. troops, as some lawmakers are demanding.



Bush, who had hoped to spend this summer focusing on Social Security peddling his bike and playing with Barney and Miss Beazley at his Crawford ranch, is instead being forced to defend his economic record and war policies in the face of growing uneasiness among the public and Republicans in Congress. everything he has ever done as president. His poll numbers on his handling of Iraq have dropped to all-time lows totally crapped out, as numerous lawmakers, including some Republicans, have accused him of not offering honest assessments about as Americans are figuring out the strength of the insurgency and the slow pace of training battle-ready Iraqi forces.

"The war has gone on longer and more violently than people envisioned," Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said. "Whoddathunkit?"

[With apologies to Jim VandeHei and the Washington Post]

It's official

An update to "Start of the fragging season in Iraq": From MSNBC comes this report:

An Army National Guard staff sergeant has been charged with premeditated murder in a “fragging incident” that killed two senior officers at a U.S. base near Tikrit last week, the U.S. military said Thursday.

The MSNBC story also briefly touches upon the history of fragging in the US military and its ominious implications.

[Thanks to Needlenose]

Gonzo in Baghdad

From The American Spectator comes this report, "Down Baghdad Boulevard," from John C. Walsh, an American civilian working in Iraq. Here's an excerpt:

What is either truly funny, or truly pathetic, about this huge group of men [ie, Iraqi soldiers and police] is the way they get around. All of them ride in badly beat-up old pickup trucks! The backs of the trucks are packed with guys standing with their AK-47's pointed skyward as the pickup literally races along, putting all of their lives at risk. Have you ever tried standing in the back of a pickup as it chugs along at anywhere between 30 and 60 miles an hour through city streets?

All the soldiers in the back are waving and shouting and it is quite obvious that to all of them this whole thing is a gigantic game of Cowboys and Indians! They are in it for the sheer excitement of looking and sounding very macho, being armed to the teeth and racing around at high speed while firing their weapons in the air to make a lot of noise. It is a truly rag-tag looking group.

Well now we know why we're not getting any straight answers out of Rumsfeld and the Pentagon about the size and training status of the Iraqi army and police force.

Nonetheless, Walsh finds the rag-tag Baghdad brigade endearing.

From all the above you might deduce (as would I) that the Iraqi Army and police are some kind of Marx Brothers operation. There are certainly many reasons to think so. But maybe, just maybe, I am starting to see a tiny change in things. The sheer enthusiasm of these guys as they go tearing around, the way they mindlessly congregate in large groups and stand around chattering the better to be killed by suicide bombers, is quite awe-inspiring. In spite of the untold number of deaths among these men, they keep enlisting in numbers that defy comprehension.

I'm not impressed, if only because the entire Iraq War defies comprehension.

Shepard Smith spins the veg-a-thon

Damn near did a Danny Thomas spit-take on this one.

While CNN was covering live the release of the Schiavo autopsy reports (significant brain atrophy, no signs of abuse, definitive persistent vegetative state, cortical blindness), FOX News was still para-sailing in Aruba.

But then Shephard Smith's slot began and he reported, very briefly, on the autopsy findings. Then he sighed and said something about "all that nonsense everybody and the government put us through."

Update Here it is: the transcript of Smith's comments from earlier today, upon the release of the Schiavo autopy findings:

You have to wonder, if all of that nonsense that the country went through and that so many politicians put us through, was good for us? We'll break it all down in a few minutes.

Truly amazing!

Useful for conducting successful military occupations and/or passing your real estate exam

Here's some light summer reading from the Heritage Foundation: Winning the Peace: Principles for Post-Conflict Operations, by James Jay Carafano, PhD, and Dana R. Dillon. Backgrounder #1859, as it's affectionately known, yields this interesting factoid:

The U.S. military has conducted an operation related to peacekeeping, peacemaking, or post-conflict occupation roughly every two years since the end of the Cold War. Ironically, despite these frequent post-conflict operations, there is no doctrine to guide the President and his Cabinet in planning for and conducting military interventions and post-conflict operations.[emph added]

All that practice and we still don't get it right. Sorry, the irony escapes me at the moment.

Anyway, the two guys from Heritage clearly see what the big problem is: we don't have a plan.

Congress should require the executive branch to draft an interagency strategy for addressing the challenges of stabilizing countries after a conflict. The strategy should reflect the practical imperatives of occupying a defeated or failed state, establishing a legitimate government, securing U.S. vital national interests, and building up a civil society in the occupied state. Based on that doctrine, Congress should provide the legislative framework and resources to implement the strategic concept.

This way, everybody at the Pentagon and the NSC gets his/her own copy of the to-do list, copies are clearly posted in all the restrooms in the Capitol, and a laminated copy remains on file in the Library of Congress, just in case.

In addition to having a plan, the two Heritage guys also stress the importance of keeping our terminology straight:

►Peacemaking involves the use or threat of violence to compel compliance with resolutions or sanctions designed to end conflict. Note that because "peacemaking" is war waged with the intention of ending war, it is not actually called war.

►Peacekeeping operations are undertaken with the consent of all major warring parties and are designed simply to implement a peace agreement. The two guys from Heritage consider this optional if, in the strategic judgment of you and your buddies, your military is starting to get stretched thin.

►Post-conflict operations include those minimum military activities that are required in the wake of war. Post-conflict operations are not the same as an “exit strategy,” which implies that exiting the country is the focus of operations. This is both good and bad to know if you're a soldier trying to guess if you'll be home in time for Christmas.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States [note: excluding those actually in power] has relearned painful lessons on how to win the peace. Institutionalizing these lessons requires establishing a common national strategic concept for occupation operations, one that eschews the clean slate solution in favor of the disease and unrest formula.

Ahh, there's nothing like the prose of foundation writers. Masterful! Plus, it has footnotes.

Tear-brassing out of Iraq

First the Freedom Fries guy abandoned Bush and now, so it seems, have some US military brass. Iraq sucks. They don't want to play anymore. But they might be willing to negotiate.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A growing number of senior American military officers in Iraq have concluded that there is no long-term military solution to an insurgency that has killed thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,300 U.S. troops during the past two years.

Instead, officers say, the only way to end the guerilla war is through Iraqi politics - an arena that so far has been crippled by divisions between Shiite Muslims, whose coalition dominated the January elections, and Sunni Muslims, who are a minority in Iraq but form the base of support for the insurgency.

"I think the more accurate way to approach this right now is to concede that ... this insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations," Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said last week, in a comment that echoes what other senior officers say. "It's going to be settled in the political process."

[snip]

The recognition that a military solution is not in the offing has led U.S. and Iraqi officials to signal they are willing to negotiate with insurgent groups, or their intermediaries.

"It has evolved in the course of normal business," said a senior U.S. diplomatic official in Baghdad, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of U.S. policy to defer to the Iraqi government on Iraqi political matters. "We have now encountered people who at least claim to have some form of a relationship with the insurgency."

The message is markedly different from previous statements by U.S. officials who spoke of quashing the insurgency by rounding up or killing "dead enders" loyal to former dictator Saddam Hussein. As recently as two weeks ago, in a Memorial Day interview on CNN's "Larry King Live," Vice President Dick Cheney said he believed the insurgency was in its "last throes."

As I noted previously, it was all over once Bush lost the support of the Freedom Fries guy.

Presumably with electrodes

The Pentagon is committed to spending up to $300 million over five years in the hopes of injecting "more creativity" into its psychological operations efforts to improve foreign public opinion about the United States, particularly the military.

Said Col. James A. Treadwell, director of the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element, a part of Tampa-based U.S. Special Operations Command: "If you want to influence someone, you have to touch their emotions."

[link]

Kills

In case you haven't caught on, the US military has resorted to using "enemy" body counts as part of its good news from Iraq campaign, a move explored by Mark Benjamin in a column available at Truthout.

The body counts are back. For the first time since Vietnam, the US military has begun regularly reporting the number of enemy killed in the war zone -- in contradiction, apparently, to prior statements by its own top brass.

I first started to realize that there was a numbers game going on in the media a few weeks ago -- and it turns out I was very slow to catch on. Benjamin fixes the date back to the battle of Fallujah in November 2003.

[And] since Fallujah, headlines from the Department of Defense's American Forces Information Service have touted body counts in articles about apparently successful operations. "IED Kills US Soldier; Nine Terrorists Die in Firefight" read one headline in May from the Pentagon's information service. "Ten Insurgents Are Killed in New Round of Battles in Iraqi City" announced a headline in the New York Times last month, citing information from the US military.

In addition, the Defense Department is increasingly highlighting the number of alleged insurgents detained in raids -- though from the information released, there is no way to judge the intelligence value or guilt of the detainees labeled insurgents.

Top military officials in Washington have also begun citing body counts to support comments by Bush administration officials about the military's progress in Iraq.

Officially, the Pentagon has a "no body counts" policy; however, commanders in the field are allowed to tally up numbers "if it helps the public's understanding of the operations." Right.

A former Vietnam veteran quoted in Benjamin's article brutally sums it up:

Once you go to body count, anyone who is dead is an enemy. It will creep into everything and the perversions will multiply with reporting actual battlefield conditions and the actions of our troops….Only terrible things can come from it.

Random Nonsense Inc.

And the Shinseki Award goes to…

Congratulations, Major General Joseph Taluto! The senior US military chief said he could understand why some ordinary Iraqis would take up arms against the US military:

If a good, honest person feels having all these Humvees driving on the road, having us moving people out of the way, having us patrol the streets, having car bombs going off, you can understand how they could [want to fight us].

[Link via Best of the Blogs]
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In retrospect, the $30 billion was a bargain

Testimony by then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of Iraq policy, before a House subcommittee on Feb. 28, 2003, just weeks before the invasion, illustrated the optimistic view the administration had of postwar Iraq. He said containment of Hussein the previous 12 years had cost "slightly over $30 billion," adding, "I can't imagine anyone here wanting to spend another $30 billion to be there for another 12 years." As of May, the Congressional Research Service estimated that Congress has approved $208 billion for the war in Iraq since 2003."[emph added]

[Memo: US Lacked Full Post War Plan]
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Two intriguing concepts

From Justice Clarence Thomas's dissent in Gonzales v. Raich (regarding medical marijuana):

Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything — and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers. [emph added]

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FOX News goes touchy-feely

It was stunning: Neil Cavuto used up several minutes of precious national airtime to tell us, in no uncertain terms, that it's not nice to make fun of fat people.

I was coming back from my big interview with President Bush (search) — did I mention that I interviewed the president? Anyway, I was on line to get a cup of tea at one of those airport stands and a few people ahead of me was a woman trying to decide what to order.
She was fairly heavy herself. OK, maybe I'm being kind — she was quite heavy. And don't a couple of guys in back of me knew it.
They started grumbling about how she's holding up the line — which she really wasn't.
As she tried to decide what to order, one of them snapped, clearly within earshot, "Put down the donut, fatso."

And Cavuto, still on a testosterone high following his presidential interview, summoned up all his courage and… shook his head at them.

[link]
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George Bush and the Tao of Egbert Sousé

From the Downing Street Memo

Tony Blair/Og Oggilby: Oh... I knew this would happen! I was a perfect idiot to ever listen to you!
George Bush/Egbert Sousé: You listen to me, Og! There's nothing in this world that is perfect.
□

On Private Social Security Accounts

George Bush/Egbert Sousé: Ten cents a share. Telephone sold for five cents a share. How would you like something better for ten cents a share? If five gets ya ten, ten'll get ya twenty. A beautiful home in the country, upstairs and down. Beer flowing through the estate over your grandmother's paisley shawl.
Prescreened Republican/Og Oggilby: Beer?
George/Egbert: Beer! Fishing in the stream that runs under the aboreal dell. A man comes up from the bar, dumps $3,500 in your lap for every nickel invested. Says to you, "Sign here on the dotted line." And then disappears in the waving fields of alfalfa.
Prescreened Republican: Gosh! Do you think he was telling the truth?
George/Egbert: You don't think a man would resort to terra-diddle, do you?
□

On the Future of Iraq

The getaway car careens through streets, over ditches (over the heads of ditchdiggers), around curves and up a mountainside, missing collisions at every turn with the pursuit vehicles. An unruffled George/Egbert gives nonchalant comments about the traffic and scenery. As the car starts to fall apart, he jokes:

The resale value of this car is going to be nil after you get over this trip.

□

["The Bank Dick" quotes from IMDb and Filmsite.org]

And the hits just keep coming

Ooooh, a Townhall column that gave me an endorphin rush! Maybe Larry Elder should have thought things through before he turned in his assignment because his Dean's-got-problems column made me feel absolutely joyous. It's as if Larry Elder made a wonderful mix tape just for me, bringing together some of the very best of Howard Dean. Thanks for the compilation, Larry.

"I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for."

"The right wing of the Republican Party is deliberately undermining the Democratic underpinnings of this country," said Dean on Sept. 6, 2003 [regarding the California recall]. "I believe they do not care what Americans think and they do not accept the legitimacy of our elections and have now, for the fourth time in the fourth state, attempted to do what they can to remove democracy from America."

"You can't trust [Republicans] with your money, and you can't trust them with your votes."

"The Republicans are all about suppressing votes. Two voting machines if you live in a black district, 10 voting machines if you live in a white district." Dean considers Republicans either lazy or parasitic trust-fund babies: "[T]he idea that you have to wait on line for eight hours to cast your ballot. . . . You think people can work all day, and then pick up their kids at child care or wherever, and get home and . . . still manage to sandwich in an eight-hour vote?"

Mel Martinez: Possibly thinking about maybe asserting himself (but not too much)

Sen Mel Martinez (R-Fla) is joining fellow Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Joseph Biden (D-Del) in efforts to initiate a review the United States' enemy-combatant policy and ultimately close the Guantanamo prison.

Martinez boldly asserted: ``It's not very American, by the way, to be holding people indefinitely.

Well, by the way, no, it's egregiously un-American to hold people indefinitely.

But then his courage failed and Martinez waffled wildly: "Now they're like POWs, and the conflict is still ongoing, and typically you wouldn't release POWs until the end of the conflict."

So what exactly is Martinez committing himself to here?

Better to be thought a fool….

Craig Crawford suggests that Bush can "get his groove back" if only he'd shut up and go away:

There is too much Bush-speak out there…. [E]ven the president’s suddenly more regular encounters with reporters — he has held monthly news conferences since January — are not helping him. He’s not very good at them. His unscripted and unpunctuated ramblings sound defensive and weak.

That's our Bush: the more you see and the more you hear, the more you're horrified.

[Via]

Why wait? -- Now's the perfect time.

Over the past decade or so, I've become increasingly convinced that Americans -- intentionally or not -- excel at driving each other crazy. And now there's scientific proof:

Most Will Be Mentally Ill at Some Point, Study Says

The investigators arranged face-to-face interviews with a broad cross section of 9,282 Americans ages 18 and over, and the interviewers asked the participants whether they had experienced periods of extended sadness, alcohol or drug abuse, irrational fears or a host of other symptoms. [emph added]

The study was funded by those with the most to gain by having most Americans mentally ill most of the time, so feel free to dispute the findings. But I stand firm.

I also think the investigators should have added questions about Viagra addiction, breast and butt implants, excessive credit card debt, serial mortgage refinancing, 3-figure monthly cable and cell phone bills, steady viewing of FOX News and reality TV, Hummer and SUV ownership, and obsessive blogging -- but then again, I'm not a mental health professional.

What's really frightening is that the unraveling starts early in life and continues into the full flower of American adulthood, when we can drive and crash cars, buy and use guns, and vote extremely inappropriate people into high office.

Start of the fragging season in Iraq?

Here's how you know it's Friday afternoon: the AP reports:

Probe launched into deaths of two officers

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The U.S. military has launched a criminal investigation into this week’s killings of two Army officers at a base north of Baghdad, the military said Friday.
The soldiers were killed Tuesday at 10 p.m. in what the military first believed was an indirect fire attack on Forward Operating Base Danger in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, a military statement said.
The slain officers, Capt. Phillip T. Esposito and 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen, were assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company of the 42nd Infantry Division, New York Army National Guard.
Esposito was the company commander and Allen served as a company operations officer.
“The initial investigation by responders and military police indicated that a mortar round struck the window on the side of the building where Esposito and Allen were located at the time,” the statement said.
“Upon further examination of the scene by explosive ordnance personnel, it was determined the blast pattern was inconsistent with a mortar attack,” it added without elaborating.
U.S. military officials contacted by The Associated Press declined to comment further on the killings. But the statement said the military’s Criminal Investigation Division is investigating their deaths as a criminal case.
Commanding officer of the 42nd Infantry Division, Maj. Gen. Joseph J. Taluto, extended the military’s “deepest sadness and sympathy for the tragic loss of these two great soldiers.”
The 42nd Infantry Division took over from the 1st Infantry Division in January and is responsible for a vast section of northern and central Iraq.

So it wasn't indirect fire and it wasn't friendly fire. Maybe it was one of those cruel accidents of war. Or maybe not. I'm sure a reasonably robust internal investigation, after a suitable amount of time, will be inconclusive.

*NOTE: MSNBC actually used the term "fragging" on air.

And so begins the summer of George

This is gonna be my time. Time to taste the fruits and let the juices drip down my chin. I proclaim this: The Summer of George!

The summer of George -- fans of Seinfeld need no explanation, but for those of you who do, click here. This is the essence: The summer of George winds up being a suckfest of epic proportions.

I was thinking about the summer of George as I sat, elevating my left foot (the one with the matching set of black and purple broken toes) on the ottoman and waiting, waiting, waiting for the air conditioner repairman to arrive. First heat wave of the season = high number of newly discovered malfunctioning air conditioners = record number of calls for repairmen = 4 1/2-day wait.

The first day it was just the heat that got to me; the second day it was the heat and the humidity; the third day it was the stagnant gray-green BosNYWash ozone shroud draped around my house; the fourth day it was the newly broken toes (indirectly heat-related casualties) and the cumulative effects of sweaty sleep deprivation.

All in all, an excellent time to start reading David Brock's The Republican Noise Machine. So far, here's my favorite part, an excerpt from a Newsday article by psychologist Paul Ginnetty describing Rush Limbaugh's core audience:

Their certitude consigns them to what psychoanalyst Erik Erikson called the state of psychic foreclosure. Foreclosed persons are easily attracted to the beguilingly simple, one-size-fits-all belief system of powerful others that they adopt as their own so as to avoid the sometimes lonely rigors of personal searching. The foreclosed are the ready disciples of demagogues in every age. . . . What they sacrifice in terms of individuality and intellectual integrity is seemingly more than offset by the potent narcotic of reassuring simplicity.

Mega-dittoes to Paul Ginnetty.

Cakewalking to the Apocalypse

Well now. Clifford May is concerned, very concerned, about how things are going in Iraq. He's beginning to wonder: what would be the consequence of an American defeat in Iraq? Well it seems that the consequence would be the geopolitical equivalent of Bosch's "Judgement Day."

It surely would mean a blood bath as the Ba'athist insurgents and al-Qaeda terrorists settled scores and demonstrated – as an object lesson for others -- the price that must be paid for collaborating with American infidels.

Iraqi terrorist training camps would no doubt be re-opened. Refurbishing Salman Pak, for example, not only would humiliate America but, more practically, could turn out skilled replacements for those combatants lost during the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. . . .

Al-Qaeda, Saddam loyalists, agents of the Iranian mullahs – whichever group or alliance of groups emerged on top in Iraq would build on their success. Before long we could expect an “insurgency” in Kuwait: the assassination of a few key figures, some beheadings and suicide bombings. The wave would continue into Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and beyond. Who would stop it? How would they stop it? With expanding territory, population and resources, including vast oil wealth, the leaders of the new totalitarian confederation or empire – or caliphate -- could manipulate the world's economy to its benefit and to the detriment of those few nations who might dare obstruct their ascendance. Nuclear, biological and chemical weapons would soon be theirs. They'd want them only for peaceful purposes, of course; and for deterrence.

Before long, the dream of both Saddam and bin Laden would be realized. There would be an oil-rich, nuclear-armed new superpower, a true rival to the decadent and divided West. Quietly, it would empower “non-state actors,” AKA, terrorist groups.

In Europe, radical Islamists would become increasingly demanding. They'd find European leaders surprisingly accommodating. Americans, by contrast, would be obstreperous and try to better seal their borders. Such efforts would only delay the inevitable. Chances are that, eventually, a nuclear weapon or germ bomb would be detonated in some American population center. World leaders would express sympathy. But what could be done? Investigate who had supplied it to whom? Ask the United Nations to impose sanctions? Retaliate against the civilian populations of Baghdad and Tehran?

With so much on the line -- in May's vision, a potential Middle East apocalypse -- you'd think that maybe the Bush Administration would have thought things through a little more carefully. Maybe not have scoffed at Shinseki's numbers. Maybe have listened to the civilian DODs less and to the military DODs more. Maybe have conceded that sometimes the worst case scenarios do come true.

But no.

So now we get this bizarre buck-up jeremiad (in my head, I hear Stallone/Rambo):

This enemy is different. This war is different. This time, America has to win. Failure is not an option.

Oh, and by the way, 9/11 changed everything.

Huh?

From The Guardian (via AP)

Saudi intelligence officers tracked and apprehended Khaled bin Ouda bin Mohammed al-Harbi last year in eastern Iran, officials said. The arrest came nearly three years after the cleric had appeared with bin Laden and discussed details of the Sept. 11 planning during a dinner that was videotaped and aired across the world.

The capture was a coup for Saudi Arabia, which spent months tracking him and setting up the intelligence operation that led to his being taken into custody in exchange for eventual amnesty.

Okay, who signed off on that one?

First they come for your Social Security checks, then they come for your erections: Great moments in blog commenting

Quisp, commenting over at Majikthiese about Senate bill S. 1113, which would ban federal reimbursement for sexual or erectile dysfunction therapies, summed it up in way less than 30 words:

That's so great. First they come for your social security checks, then they come for your erections.

□

Over at Busy, Busy, Busy, Tom Friedman's "C.E.O.'s M.I.A." column riled up dittofinger:

Our dear leader said we don't have to take a "global test" and by God we won't. Just close the borders, build me a house with easy access to the outer-bypass so I don't have to see homeless people on my commute to and from work, give Ritalin to my kids and Prozac to my wife, a little CSI and Idol on the tube, and a flag in the wind on my Foxxy News (Old Glory never looked so good). Screw the rest of the world. They are just afraid of our freedom. And I hope Castro dies soon so I can watch another combat jump from my Lazy-boy.

□

Parsec visited Roger Ailes's blog and offered his views on Bernard Goldberg's new "book" -- 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken Is #37):

Is Bernie still "riding the retro?"

That means trying to find the market for the most perverse, backward, obstinately blind, willfully ignorant point of view imaginable. You do this because there's supposedly no market for the truth and it's easier than troubling to get your facts straight.

□

On Rush Limbaugh and the popping of right-wing blood vessels, Petey, over at The Next Hurrah, observed:

I find it difficult to think that otherwise intelligent people don't understand the intentional uses of outrage by the right wing demagogues. See Newsweek, Ward Churchill, etc for any necessary clarification. The VRWC runs on perceived victimization the way cars run on gasoline.

■

Random nonsense incorporated

Is there any government agency that doesn't hire a PR firm?

A Washington public relations firm, Widmeyer Communications, hired by the [Selective Service] agency to offer strategic advice, noted last year that "virtually any move taken by Selective Service is seen in many quarters as clear evidence that a draft is imminent."(link)

Here's my pro bono strategic advice: The one move that won't trigger draft fears is the complete and total shut down of the Selective Service System. Let's just -- oh, what's the word -- disassemble it.
♂

Fill in the answer circle completely using a No. 2 pencil

The following statement represents the op/ed policy of:

o FOX News
o New York Times

[They] are entitled by their mandate to engage in the unfair use of statistics, the misleading representation of opposing positions, and the conscious withholding of contrary data….(link)

●

One tough mother

LARRY KING: Are you fond of [Bill Clinton]?

BARBARA BUSH: Yes. All right. Yes, no, I like him.

KING: You don't like him, though?

BARBARA BUSH: No, I think he's...

GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH: She hasn't been around him.

BARBARA BUSH: No, I haven't. But he's been very good about not criticizing the president. As of today's paper, he did not criticize the paper -- I mean the president. And I appreciate that.

♀

Riding his mountain bike or blowing snot rockets at the world, Dubya's just one happy dude

"I don't worry about anything here in Washington, D.C…. I feel comfortable in my role as the president…." (link)

☺

A critical change to Bush's Social Security thingy

Regular visitors to the whitehouse.gov's Social Security section may have noticed a critical change in presentation. Gone are the photos of the vigorous Baby Boomer retirees of the future (and one old coot who looked suspiciously like Dick Cheney). Now we have a photo of what appear to be 14-year-old conjoined twin girls. Weird.

Would Ben Shapiro let Paris Hilton do him?

Forget about Carl and Bob and Deep Throat, the virgin Ben Shapiro is much more hot, documenting in heavy-breathing detail Paris's sluttiness, bemoaning the crassness of American culture, and whoring his new book on porn. A dry hump trifecta.

Paris's real or implied sluttiness doesn't bother me, but her vapidity does. And her money. All that money. All that money and those huge tax cuts. And that perpetual tan.

The crassness of American culture doesn't bother me either. But the rising cost of all that exquisite crassness (using my monthly cable bill as the benchmark) does bother me. Crassness don't come cheap anymore.

And it's not the virgin Ben's new book on porn that bothers me -- no, wait, that does bother me. Such a tender and true soul should not be writing thoroughly researched and meticulously documented books on porn. Why should he risk joining the rest of his generation, "lost in a maelstrom of moral relativism in a culture obsessed with cheap, degraded, casual sex." He should consider serving in Iraq instead.

Yes, the virgin Ben has been strong so far, but the temptations must be growing daily, along with his fame in Rightwinglandia. Which brings me back to the question: Would the virgin Ben let Paris do him? Would he give in to expensive, upgraded, casual sex -- especially if it's good for book sales? I'd like to think so.

Miracle Max: Have fun stormin' da castle, boys!

Originally uploaded by Grace Nearing.