First of all, I apologize for assuming that you paid any attention to the speeches given by candidates in the New Hampshire Republican primary last night. Hell, most Americans weren’t watching, and practically none of us pay any attention to your elections, even the ones conducted in countries with which we share a border.
Maybe one in 20 of us could name the leaders of our neighboring countries, and a not-insignificant percentage would respond with a blank stare if asked to name those countries. That’s how we roll. But I am assuming that many of you do follow our elections—perhaps in the same spirit that the driver of a Mini Cooper keeps tabs on the movements of a semi-truck that is fish-tailing wildly in the traffic ahead.
Anyhoo, if you did see the speeches, you may have noted that all the candidates agreed on one thing: America is the greatest country in the history of the planet—nay, the galaxy! Nay, the universe! The candidates didn’t deliver this observation in a perfunctory way to scratch their listeners’ patriot-itch: They asserted it and repeated it and returned to it again and again. And most of all, they compared their own bug-eyed devotion to that notion to the president’s and found his pride in his homeland wanting.
Much virtual ink has been spilled in the past few days about Ron Paul’s leftier-than-thou credentials, especially regarding warfare. What does his campaign’s senior adviser, Doug Wead, have to say about all that?
Megyn Kelly: You know, one of the issues, obviously you know, that Congressman Paul’s most controversial on is his foreign policy stance, and in particular Israel and Iran, and whether he would allow Iran to get the bomb. He’s said he doesn’t want it, but he doesn’t want it because he’s worried that the United States will then go to war with Iran, and he doesn’t want that, just the same as he didn’t want the Iraq War, he thinks we’re too ... too prone to attacking other countries and to ... injecting ourselves militarily .... Newt Gingrich came out and said given that kind of attitude and policy stance, it would be a tough choice for Americans if the choice came down to Barack Obama versus Ron Paul, and Ron Paul is to the left of Barack Obama on certain issues, including foreign policy with respect to Iran. To those voters and to Newt Gingrich, what do you say?
Doug Wead: Yeah, yeah, I totally disagree with ... that idea he’s to the left or the right. He’s pro-Constitution. He’s in favor of taking the idea of war ... he’s not against war. He was the only public figure in 1981 to stand up and defend Israel’s right to defend herself and take out those Iraqi nuclear facilities. He’s not against war, he’s in favor of going to the US Congress as the Constitution says, debating it, committing to war, getting in, winning it, then getting out. He’s against these endless wars that just happen ... at a whim because somebody ... believes that someone’s a threat to the United States. If they’re a serious threat to the United States and/or our allies, then let’s take it to Congress, let’s discuss it, let’s commit, and let’s get in and win it and get out.
The Iraq War is over, at least officially. It was, as then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama said in 2002, a “dumb war:”
I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
The “cost in lives and hardships borne” Mr. Obama accurately predicted is impossible to fully reckon, as is the monetary cost. Well over 100,000 people are needlessly dead, tens of thousands more physically and psychologically scarred for life and around a trillion sorely needed-dollars poured down a rat hole.
How did this happen? There are many reasons, but the short answer is that it was a perfect storm of assholes. It was an event that brought together a small but influential group of arrogant neo-con dick-swingers eager to impose their vision on the world, profit-seeking conglomerates yearning to cash in, a supine media and a nation insane with fear in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
But none of it would have been possible without the insecure, not-too-bright scion of a prominent political family who was then in the Oval Office and burning to prove to his patrician daddy that he is too smart and capable, not dumb, not like people say. So now we know what happens when Fredo Corleone leapfrogs his smarter brother to become the Godfather—only of a nuclear-armed superpower instead of an organized crime family. Not pretty, is it?
Nothing about the NDAA? Seems to be a liberal blog blackout regarding the official death of the Bill of Rights.
Uh… why, no, Raven Rant, I was um, I was just going to address that! I mean, I certainly haven’t been bought off by the Obama administration, if that’s what you’re implying… hey! Bill Daley, what are you doing in my apartment? In that apron? Get the hell out and take your delicious-smelling homemade treats with you!
(SLAM)
The nerve, thinking my silence could be purchased with their filthy blood money, or in this case, toffee and confectioner’s sugar.
Did you know that today is the 220th birthday of the Bill of Rights? Well, don’t put on that little hat and blow that whistle with the rolled-up paper attachment that unfurls just yet, because it’s also… its deathday! There, Raven, happy? Or do I have to specify that I’m not in favor of the NDAA? Because I’m not, I think it’s bullshit.
Hey waaaiiit a minute. I just cursed. In public! Hold on, lemme try something.
(assembles freely, plays with Voltron toy)
(regulates militia, and pretty darn well, I might add)
(takes dog out, observes doo process)
Clearly the Bill of Rights’s death has been greatly exaggerated.
Anyway, here’s Rachel Maddow talking with someone who knows more about the NDAA than I do, a bar he clears by knowing it’s not the governing body for dodgeball:
I’ve always found neocon retread John R. Bolton somewhat fascinating—not only because former President Bush (recess) appointed him US Ambassador to the United Nations after Bolton had explicitly denied the existence of that organization—but because of his weird, carpet-don’t-match-the-curtains cranial hair.
As it turns out, his views on occupations are as contrasting as his forelock and mustache:
Now, Wired’s Danger Room is challenging its readers to brainstorm an equally unhinged backup stratagem to spread fear and destabilize the Global Hegemony.
Yeah, it’s a sick, cynical, silly exercise. But it’s Friday…and I don’t know anyone who couldn’t use a laugh right now.
The attrition rate among the vast crop of GOP presidential candidates is only rivaled by that among their staff, what with Gingrich and Bachmann losing large chunks of their hired help in the last couple of months.
Des Moines, Iowa (CNN) - The communications director for Herman Cain’s presidential campaign has resigned, CNN has learned.
Ellen Carmichael told CNN on Saturday her decision is firm but not yet finalized.
“I have resigned but the paperwork’s not final,” Carmichael said.
Carmichael explained her decision is a personal one and that she’s pursuing other professional opportunities. She also said that her assistant, Francis Boustany, is also leaving for professional reasons.
All parties claim the split is amicable, though there are rumors otherwise. The Cain team’s replacement is ex-Defense Department spoke from the Rumsfeld era J.D. Gordon, whose résumé is, uh, colorful:
While in the Pentagon, he served as the Press Team Leader for Operations, Policy & Intelligence and was responsible for Western Hemisphere Affairs and U.S. Southern Command; Asia-Pacific Security Affairs and U.S. Pacific Command; and Detainee Affairs. In this capacity, he was DoD’s principal spokesman for all facets of Guantanamo detention operations and detainee-related litigation, to include lead media escort and on-scene spokesman for military commissions, the war crime trials for alleged Al Qaeda and Taliban combatants and supporters.
Gordon has reportedly already been helping out with Cain’s communications strategy. I’m not clear how much the recent change in tone of messaging from the Cain campaign is down to his influence and how much is just Herman Cain being Herman Cain.
The Reuters newsfeed on a Monday morning isn’t usually a barrel of laughs. But still reeling from the tortuous to-and-fro on securing the US-Mexico border in the last couple of weeks’ Republican Presidential Debates—which saw Newt Gingrich proposing that these efforts be handed over to American Express, Rick Perry branded a traitor by Jon Huntsman for saying that you can’t just box the whole country in, and the likes of Michele Bachmann seeking to hand fence manufacturers the biggest Keynesian stimulus they’ve ever seen—I was left wondering how this development will play out in the next one:
(Reuters) - To Mexican drug traffickers, the tall new steel fence now carving along the southern boundary of this Arizona border city looks more like field goal.
Since its completion in July, police on the U.S. side of the 18 to 30-foot-tall fence have retrieved dozens of football-shaped bundles of marijuana.
They say the tightly wound packages are being lofted over the new bollard-and-steel mesh barrier from Nogales, Mexico to rogue receivers in the namesake city in Arizona.
“They are quarterbacking them (the bundles) over the fence and hoping the receivers are in the right spot to pick them up,” said Santa Cruz County Sheriff Antonio Estrada of the new trend at the start of the U.S. football season.
The cannier candidates may seek to join the dots and put some of the unemployed to work as blockers, kick returners, quarter and zone defense, scrimmagers, or indeed anyone capable of delivering a slobber-knocker in aid of homeland security. Hell, if they televise it, it could be self-funding.
The former president of Afghanistan - a major figure who was leading peace talks aimed at ending the war - was killed in his home Tuesday by a suicide attacker wearing an exploding turban.
Burhanuddin Rabbani died when he hugged his assassin, who triggered the bomb, officials said.
This is, incidentally, a very bad thing, and not just for Mr. Rabbani.
I live a few blocks from Ground Zero, or as I’d like to think it will be known someday, One World Plaza. Last year, seeing the twin blue beacons, those elegant, quiet expressions of loss amd remembrance, I decided to follow them to their source.
I don’t know what to say about the tenth anniversary of 9/11. So here’s a picture of a contemplative boxer dog:
Despite my unaccustomed lack of a firm opinion on the meaning of this day, thanks to Mr. Mark Steyn of the National Review, I have a pretty good idea of what an inappropriate reaction looks like. In paragraph after paragraph, Steyn waxes contemptuous about any 9/11 observance that includes public service, expresses a desire for peace or acknowledges the existence of non-terrorist Muslims.
After delivering a thorough scolding to limp-wristed, candy-arsed, diversity-worshiping hippies with their dumb peace quilts, world peace-promoting wish trees, inappropriately curvacious memorial designs, etc., Steyn shares his thoughts on why the 9/11 terrorists hated America:
And so we commemorate an act of war as a “tragic event,” and we retreat to equivocation, cultural self-loathing, and utterly fraudulent misrepresentation about the events of the day. In the weeks after 9/11, Americans were enjoined to ask, “Why do they hate us?” A better question is: “Why do they despise us?” And the quickest way to figure out the answer is to visit the Peace Quilt and the Wish Tree, the Crescent of Embrace and the Hole of Bureaucratic Inertia.
That’s as fine an illustration of the global distribution of hate-based politics as you’re likely to encounter. And yet we endure.
Former Vice President Cheney to Matt Lauer this morning:
“I don’t think that it [the Iraq war] damaged our reputation around the world. I just don’t believe that. I think the critics at home want to argue that. In fact, I think it was sound policy that dealt with a very serious problem and eliminated Saddam Hussein from the kind of problem he presented before.”
Here on Planet Earth, the other nations that collectively bestow our “reputation” watched our Iraq war murder-suicide-faceplant in the horrified fascination with which a passerby might attend a loud, belligerent drunk’s demonstration of his puppy-and-Hattori-Hanzō-sword-juggling act. Cheney could look it up.
One of the serious drawbacks to being an atheist is knowing that there is no hell in which smug, lying bastards like Cheney will eventually roast. Pity.
Pre-operative transemite Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Courage” tour in Israel isn’t getting the warm, gooey US media-love that last year’s “Restoring Honor” event in DC attracted. Not only that, but the Israelis aren’t exactly thrilled that he’s there, either.
The domestic attention received by Beck’s visit appeared to be largely negative, with Israeli-Arab Parliamentarian Ahmed Tibi calling him “a bizarre, conservative, neo-fascist comedian who is motivated by a hatred of Islam,” according to an article in the Jerusalem Post last Thursday. The next day, the weekend edition of Israel’s largest daily Yediot Aharonoth published an article dripping with sarcasm and smirk, describing Beck’s visit to the West Bank settlement of Itamar, where he toured the house where five members of a settler family were murdered this past March. In the article, Beck is described as a sort of hapless charlatan crying on cue and traipsing through the West Bank in an armored convoy suitable for a head of state. The left-wing Israeli organization Peace Now announced Sunday that it will be holding a protest on Wednesday afternoon, ahead of Beck’s penultimate rally on later that night.
Having gotten the boot from Fox and wrung as many fake tears as he could from the mummified husks of the Founding Fathers, Beck is seeking ever-larger crosses on which to crucify himself. Unfortunately, no one can see him bleeding on radio, and only the hardest of the hard-core would pay good money to watch him work out his demons here.
Here’s hoping he never appoints himself the spokesperson for the Armenian Genocide, ‘cause those folks got enough problems already.
Fie on those shortsighted alarmist shmendricks who are promulgating the notion that our wicked western carbon-spewing ways not only cause climate change but further destabilize vulnerable third-world countries. So nuclear-armed, Taliban-riddled Pakistan is devastated and the people are desperate and angry. What has that got to do with our National Security?
The United States announced Sunday that it would provide Pakistan with $10 million in humanitarian assistance, a high-profile gesture at a time when the Obama administration is trying to dampen anti-American sentiment in the country.
Besides, it’s obvious globull climate change wasn’t responsible. It was HAARP.
